Night 67: Women's Showers (off Sun Room)

[repelling]

[ from here! ]

"I intend to--" talking as he walked through the doorframe, Uryuu's voice stopped along with his movements. The first sign of something off had been the abrupt sense of disorientation, a dizzying nausea that did little to ameliorate his already augmenting aching, slight but pervasive discomfort in his skin, and the ceasless headache. The ground felt as if it rocked beneath his feet, as if his vestibular system had been tampered with, and he grimaced as he attempted to orient himself.

The next sign: the ground beneath his feet, the smooth hardness (not carpet) that met the soles of his boots as he stepped forward, and the slight echo, that which carried his words. His eyes adjusted onto tile, and he fumbled to retrieve his flashlight, which he shone over the room that smelled of moisture, soap, and mildew.

As he passed the beam of his flashlight over the showerheads, dispensers, stacked stools, and red and white tiles, Uryuu realized that not only was this a showerroom, but having seen that the men's showers had blue tiling, it was a women's showerroom. Blood shot up his neck and swamped his cheeks, and he would have pivoted hard and attempted to march right out of there, except for the blocked doorway behind him, and the obviously more pressing issue of how the door to the entry room had led here.

"This, uh," he tried, using the flashlight to try and push up his glasses, "...isn't right."

A lame finish.

Comments

[repelling]

At the near collision, Uryuu forced himself to take another step into the room. He knew he should be focused on making certain, now that he had the light on anyway, that there wasn't anything aggressive waiting in a dark corner, and more than that, on the question of how this had happened, but it was difficult to get past the fluster. He swallowed, side-stepping now and turning to press his fingers to a red tile, then rap his knuckles against it. It felt as real as the smell of it, and the sight of it, but then, last night while strapped to a table, whatever they'd shot into his veins had thrust him into "memories" that at times felt as if he experienced them in the moment -- no less real.

The mind was deceptive in that way. It could be an illusion. Switching off his flashlight, he pinched the skin on the underside of his wrist, not expecting it to do much. At least the others experienced this as well, small comfort that it was. "There shouldn't be showers here," he said, stating the obvious, "though I expect a wet floor sign would be redundant."

Maybe in America, where they purportedly were, one could get away with suing over it. Irrelevant, either way, as was, "Feng shui is a Chinese term and a rather complicated idea, but in modern times, or Inoue-san and my modern times, has often been simplified and generally involves rearranging one's interior design or architecture in order to maximize reception of positive chi -- that is, basically, energy. Fang shoes sound uncomfortable."

He paused, the pointless explanation at least having given him a long enough distraction that the heat drained substantially from his face. "...Anyway, this is the women's shower room, judging by the color scheme, which really shouldn't..."

What had the doctor said? Try not to get lost. His first day here (not as long in his memory as it had apparently actually been), hadn't he spoken with a Mason-san at breakfast? The guy had said that on his first night here, the doors went mad. "...I think I've heard about this," he said.

Suspecting what would happen, he moved around the others, and headed back into the hall. Or somewhere.

[ rollin rollin ... to oz ]