Itsako, surprised by the voice, took another step forward.
The floating hologram seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Itsako stood silently in a corner of the storage room.
Processing all of this was extremely difficult for her. It weighed on her mind like a two-ton burden and prevented even the smallest idea from flowing into her thoughts. She was trapped within a narrow passage of ignorance, and with every passing moment, the power of thought drifted further away from her mind.
The pleasure of ignorance suddenly began to spread through her brain, as if telling her to abandon everything and bury her head in the snow within a void covered in darkness.
Itsako was in the process of surrendering herself to that feeling when a strange and irritating sensation suddenly brought her back to her senses.
That feeling began to enter Itsako's mind and soul, and with every passing moment, the disturbing presence of it placed more pressure upon her.
As that unpleasant sensation spread through her mind, Itsako suddenly realized that the pleasure born from ignorance was being pushed back. Her mind was slowly processing information that it could not process, as if some kind of external knowledge was being poured into her brain.
Amid this mental struggle, Itsako began examining the storage room in order to find a suitable place for her body to rest.
The best place that Itsako could identify was the worn-out mattress.
Although the mattress appeared to be one of the most useful items within the storage room, the truth could not be hidden that it was disgustingly old and worn.
Walking across the cold floor of the storage room, Itsako began creating echoes with her footsteps. The echoes were strangely soothing, yet they still could not compare to the pleasant feeling of a worn-out mattress when one threw themselves upon it.
After letting herself fall onto the mattress, Itsako tried to forget this mental chaos, but it seemed impossible. With a slight shift of her body, her troubled mind once again began to function for several seconds, struggling against the turmoil.
Unable to endure such a thing, Itsako forced herself to sleep, but her body seemed unwilling. Her body demanded alertness.
After a relatively long passage of time for the girl dressed in black, Itsako finally fell asleep.
Hour after hour passed, and her consciousness continued to fade, all because of a single reason: that strange and exhausting dream.
Yes! Once again, Itsako was seeing that original dream which she had believed to be a sign of some strange change. This time, however, the dream was no longer an incomprehensible illusion, and Itsako could understand the meaning behind those shapes and images, though they remained strange and meaningless, on a subconscious level.
As her mind twisted and tore itself apart in an attempt to understand the meaning of that incomprehensible dream, a turn upon the worn mattress and her fall from it caused her to come back to herself, only to find a sharp pain in her head.
Struggling to stand on her feet, Itsako cursed under her breath.
"Ah, damn this situation."
All of that twisting and turmoil, caused merely by looking at a holographic illusion for a few moments, suddenly reminded her of her hunger.
"I should've asked that damned illusion if it had something to give me before it disappeared."
Thinking those words merely for a brief moment of amusement, Itsako looked around, hoping she might once again see the holographic text. After a few seconds of searching, her eyes once more found the hologram. It stood silently in the middle of the storage room, exactly where Itsako had first seen it.
Taking long, irritated strides, Itsako walked toward the hologram.
"Hey, I don't know whether you're an illusion or reality, but if you've got something to eat, you'd better give it to me right now, because I'm starving to death!"
Itsako came back to herself. Although those words had left her mouth completely impulsively, out of irritation and without thought, she had never spoken to a stranger in such a manner before. Even if that stranger was merely a hologram whose reality she could not determine.
A moment later, a voice accompanied by text emerged from the hologram once again.
[Entrant... Additional features are currently locked. You may gain access to additional features by participating in puzzles, earning points, and acquiring sufficient experience.]
Then it fell silent for several seconds, as though processing and preparing something. The hologram spoke again, but this time its tone and text carried the nature of a question.
[Would you like to enter a puzzle? {Yes} {No}]
Only one response was passing through Itsako's mind at that moment, and she simply voiced it aloud.
"What do you mean?"
Itsako waited several seconds for the notification's reply, but the notification simply remained silent.
Which meant she would have to make the decision herself...