Chapter 4 - The Devil of Envy Part 3

Yua started hyperventilating. As soon as they were safe, she realized the fear again.

“Pant... Pant... Mizuki… It’s fine now.”

She lightly patted Mizuki’s shoulder and looked down from the couch to look at their surroundings.

“It seems like it left.”

Yua went down from the couch.

There, she noticed something strange.

“The chain got shorter. Our handcuffs are so close.”

The range of their handcuffs became practically zero.

Looking at it closely, the chain between the handcuffs fit inside them.

“If I’m not mistaken…”

Yua seemed to have noticed something and raised her hand with the handcuff.

By doing that, a chain inside the handcuff fell out and the length was fixed.

“As I thought, it’s the same function as measuring tapes.”

Yua immediately took out the notepad and pen.

Astonished, Mizuki touched the chain and handcuff.

Yua wrote,

“Look at the length of the nature of the handcuff and the length of the chain, then pull the chain hard.”

“Alright.”

The two of them stood up and walked to the respective sides of the room while extending the chain to the maximum.

When the chain couldn’t reach any longer, Yua gave Mizuki a sign to “take it easy.”

Mizuki loosened his pull on the chain.

“Oh!”

When he did that, he was pulled by the chain and fell to the floor.

The chain immediately pulled and its length became fixed.

Yua approached Mizuki on the floor and handed him a note saying,

“I’m sure of it. The handcuffs are pulled to fix the length and then pulled again to shorten it. It’s the same as with measuring tapes.”

“I see, then let’s set it to a good length.”

They adjusted the length and walked to the door Snakey had gone out of.

“I’m sorry about earlier. You were hurt because of me,”

Mizuki said hesitantly.

While thinking “did he worry about that?”, Yua smiled kindly and formed the words “It’s okay” with her lips.

“Th-then let’s go out through this gap.”

Mizuki averted his eyes and left through the small gap in the door that hadn’t been closed properly.

On the right side after exiting the room was the staircase they had taken up to the second floor.

On the left side a bit further was the human-sized gap they had first entered through.

Finally, further in the room was a door that looked like a front door.

“Let’s run through that door.”

They hurried to it.

“I’ll lift you up.”

“Thank you.”

They turned over the nearby trash and climbed up on it.

On top of it, Mizuki lifted Yua up and she grasped the door handle.

However, it was locked and wouldn’t open.

“It doesn’t work.”

“Here, take this.”

Mizuki took out a large key from his bag.

Yua took the key and tilted her head.

“I picked it up on the second floor.”

After putting the key in the keyhole, there was a clicking sound.

It seemed to have been unlocked.

“Ohh, we did it!”

After opening the door, Mizuki caught Yua falling down.

The key no longer mattered to them anymore so they left it in the keyhole.

“You did it, Mizuki, how smart of you.”

Yua got out of Mizuki’s hold and smiled lightly.

Although Mizuki didn’t understand what she had said, enough was communicated through her smile.

“What? This is nothing like the dark place from before.”

“You’re right, further ahead are… Fields? It’s strangely too bright.”

They were surprised to see the landscape behind the door.

Unlike the crumbling townscape from before, there seemed to be sunlight and a forest.

It looked like fields spreading out in front of them.

However, the size was suitable for monsters.

For them, the fields were like a forest.

“Let’s go and take a look.”

The two of them approached the field spreading out as far as they could see.

Although it wasn’t wheat, there were various kinds of bell peppers.

However, most of them were rotten.

“How big… The tomatoes are as big as us.”

“It’s so bright.”

It was as if sunlight was shining on them, and they became uncomfortable in the warm environment.

“Yua, look up.”

“W-what… Is that?”

They looked up with a sense of discomfort.

There, they saw a tiny sun shining down on them.

Even though the sun was close, it wasn’t that hot.

Rather than describing it as hot, it was more fitting to say that it was emitting warmth.

In either case, similarly to Snakey, the law of this world was definitely reversed.

“It’s floating… It’s not like we’re even in space.”

“This might not be our world… It’s probably different here than on Earth.”

“That… Might be true.”

They uttered their questions but had no answers.

There was only one thing they understood, and it gave them neither peace of mind nor safety.

“Rain?”

It abruptly began to rain.

Yua looked up.

“No way…”

Flustered, Yua covered Mizuki’s mouth and hid under a huge tomato.

It was because she had seen Snakey when looking up.

“Aaargh!”

What they had thought was rain was water from a watering pot Snakey poured.

Because of the forest-like fields, Snakey didn’t notice them there.

Mizuki raised his eyes and understood that Snakey was there.

“Oh no.”

Snakey stopped watering and brought its face closer to the tomato where they hid.