Chapter 77 Shadow Town 6 Shiraishi Mizuki

You run forward as fast as you can, your footsteps pounding on the metal floor of the laboratory, while behind you, Shiraishi Mizuki—she's even more anxious than you, all her serene and beautiful image gone, chasing after you like a demon.

"Where are you running to? Don't run!"

She screamed at the top of her lungs, and you were convinced that you had to concentrate on escaping and never look back, but you still glanced at her shadow—she was fast, always accelerating at a distance that seemed determined to catch you.

Hey, you've really been trained. When it comes to running away, there's probably no one who can beat you.

You run and she chases; the scene is so comical that you want to laugh but dare not.

The corridor of the pharmaceutical factory soon came to an end. You burst through the half-closed door and headed straight for the bright afternoon street.

The town was already eerie and terrifying, but ever since you learned that it was just a fictional story from a work of art, the sunlight became like an incandescent bulb, emitting light but not heat.

"Plop...plop..."

A familiar, wet, rubbing sound echoed through the streets and alleys.

You had to slow down, look up, and your pupils suddenly contracted—

The monsters have been attracted by your commotion and have started moving in your direction!

Those "Shadow Flower Infected" were once human, but now they have become twisted and terrifying. The monsters in the town are more refined and frightening than those at the station. Their faces are almost covered with mushroom mycelium, their mouths are unnaturally split open, and the mycelium is extremely thick and long, stretching out as if trying to devour everything.

Your eyes hurt just looking at them, so you immediately changed direction to avoid the monsters approaching you.

But you're not the only one being targeted by the monster—

Mizuki Shiraishi is right behind you!

You immediately tried to dodge and weave around to get rid of Shiraishi Mizuki to the group of monsters, but she was quite different. Before, when she was with Hayakawa Hana and the others, she looked like a "beautiful but useless person who was dragging the group down," but now she was incredibly clever. She neither let the monsters get close nor lost you at all.

She even seems to have a way of predicting the monster's movements. You just watch her and unconsciously follow her, and you end up leaving the monster even further behind.

Wow, that's pretty good.

You squint to observe her movements more closely; she follows you, and you peek at her—it's a perfect closed loop.

However, you eventually noticed more strange phenomena.

There's someone who suddenly turned into a demon and is chasing you from behind. Your route is completely random, but Shiraishi Mizuki's steps suddenly stop in certain places.

Your heart is pounding. You don't know what this means, but you instinctively find cover and hide, then quietly look back to observe.

She stood in front of an abandoned building, her steps faltering slightly, seemingly hesitant to approach you, yet also quite uncertain about the area.

She stopped and stood still, looking at the street ahead.

Is she hesitating...?

You voluntarily emerged from your hiding place, took a few more steps in that direction, and made a provocative gesture.

She found you, lifted her foot a few times, but couldn't catch up. What was she afraid of?

Mizuki Shiraishi is unlikely to be afraid; she is a typical evil madwoman who only cares about herself but (most likely) survives to the end.

—So why did she stop here?

You follow her gaze and see a dark alleyway behind the dilapidated building, even more run-down than the rest of the place, with dark gray mist swirling unnaturally in the air. Honestly, just looking at that place makes you feel like someone is hitting you on the head.

What's so special about this place?

Is it because this place is full of "spores"? You frowned as you looked at the black and gray things.

Does Mizuki Shiraishi also fear infection? Her character design—

Your eyeballs vibrate slightly at high frequency, and you feel like you've grasped something.

Why do you see the spores as just black and gray in the eyes of these four college students?

You haven't thought about this crucial question because you haven't been able to figure it out.

Is it possible that what you saw was not actually "spores," or that what you saw was not harmful to you at all?

If that's the case, and Shiraishi Mizuki doesn't dare to step into this place, then you can certainly go in and take a look. Besides—

You've been dodging the spores they've been talking about as you move forward, so is it possible that this area, filled with black ash, is "a loophole in this world"?

Your breathing quickened as you recalled what Shiraishi Mizuki had just said—

"What do you think you can find? The world is complete."

Her words can only be heard in half and guessed in half; it's just a world created by a story, so how can it be considered "complete"?

She followed you the whole time, whether afraid you would escape or find something, but here she refused to step inside.

This only means that there is something here that she doesn't want to touch!

You slowly moved your feet, meeting her gaze, and entered the dilapidated street.

The air suddenly felt different.

You still held your breath, even though the dark gray fog seemed extremely thin after you stepped inside.

The black mist settles on your body and face. When you reach a place where the black mist has dissipated, you raise your hands and find them covered in black grime.

Rub two fingers together, and you get pencil ash.

You look down at the ground and notice that the paving stones here are not as dilapidated as those in other parts of the town, but rather... unnaturally clean, almost pure white, with only a few of your footprints on them.

It's like... it wasn't "drawn" at all!

painting!

This world is a comic book!

Therefore, the scenery only has an appearance and no substance. Some places are full of monsters - this is to create a scene that can create an imposing atmosphere for the monsters, while some places have no monsters - because the focus of the picture is on the main characters.

So everywhere is shrouded in a dark fog—you are an outsider, you are a "reader," and the world you see is naturally the way the cartoonist presents it. Of course, the artist wouldn't draw every single spore in detail, but rather use some strange black dots to express it.

Comic books aren't always packed with plot and scenes. They also use white space to emphasize atmosphere, etc.

—This is a "blank page"!

Your eyes widened, your heart pounded wildly, and you pursed your lips as you continued walking.

The streets here are not dilapidated, nor destroyed; they are simply not fully depicted!

You look up at those buildings, and unlike other houses, they are not eroded by fungi or covered with spores. Instead, their shapes are blurred, as if they are still in an unfinished draft state!

It seems that the "blank page" here is actually an "unfinished area" in the entire Shadow Town!

If you can enter the "undrawn areas," does that mean you've broken free from the plot? Or even jumped out of the comic's framework?!

It must be like this, it must be like this!

In the distance, Shiraishi Mizuki's figure was obscured by the thick black fog and could not be clearly seen.

The shadow tilted its head slightly, and a long, empty voice came from behind it:

"Do you really want to go in there?"

Her tone wasn't like she was stopping you; it was more like she was looking at an actor about to "leave the stage."

“You know what I mean? If you go in… you’ll really have nothing to do with this ‘story’ anymore.”

You take a deep breath, your throat so dry you can hardly speak.

Her meaning is no longer clear; you can hardly tell whether she wants to lure you in or make you leave out of fear.

Anyway, you should give it a try first.

With immense anxiety—what if I go in and never come back? What if the "blank page" is pure nothingness? Then you'll not only be out of the story, but you might completely disappear from it.

But you know, you have to try!

You clenched your fists and charged into the "blank page" of Shadow Town without hesitation!

In an instant, all the colors of the world were stripped away, all sounds became blurred, and not only Shadow Town but also your figure gradually disappeared in the intense light of nuclear fission.

Every trace was erased, bit by bit.

And you yourself, your body only felt a sudden heaviness—

You have fallen into a complete "blank"!

After your eyes adjusted to the light, you forced them open. Looking down at your hands, you found they had become almost transparent, like an unfinished draft, with even the lines at your fingertips faintly visible.

"interesting."

You refrained from swearing; you're a person of good manners. You just took a few deep breaths and calmed down.

You tentatively took a step forward, only to realize with a start that the "ground" beneath your feet didn't exist. But you didn't continue falling; you simply floated in pure white. This anti-gravity scene didn't cause any adverse effects on your body, which was the only saving grace.

What makes you most uncomfortable is that the surrounding scene is too empty. Without any reference points, you can't even feel the passage of time.

You wander aimlessly in all directions, moving up and down, gradually becoming dazed.

You closed your eyes, deciding to take a nap first before facing your current predicament. Haha.

Within minutes, your mind, highly active, leaps up, clenching your fist in excitement:

By the way, "blank" is not a state, it should also be "an undefined area"!

Since this is a comic book world, and this is a part that hasn't been drawn yet, who sets up the rules? Without any rules, how are you going to find the rules and break them?

I feel sleepy again. You lie down peacefully—oh my god, I really can't sleep.

Sit cross-legged and analyze the current situation.

First, there are no laws of physics here, meaning you won't fall or be affected by gravity; second, there is no concept of time, so you obviously don't know how long you've been here, and you can't even be sure if you're really "staying" here; finally, there is no plot—you've completely broken out of the comic book world's storyline, with no possibility of any progress.

In other words, you are currently in a state of "nothingness".

How can someone who has no "set" regain "set"?

So, what would happen if you created "something" here?

Since you're the only person here right now, you should probably try to change things up?

I am a little hesitant, but that doesn't stop me from doing what I say.

Even in the emptiness where there is nothing to rely on, you still choose to squat down, assume a habitual posture, stretch out your hand, and try to draw a door in this pure white space with your fingertips.

Your finger traces across the blank space, however—

Nothing happened.

Without ink, without lines, your movements are meaningless.

You frown and try to make larger gestures, but still can't leave any trace.

—It failed.

You gritted your teeth and began to consider other possibilities.

You stand up and try to shout into the empty space: "I exist!"

Your voice echoed in the void, but was quickly swallowed by the pure white silence, without any response.

You try to say your name again, and even start to recall everything about yourself in the real world, trying to evoke some kind of resonance.

Unfortunately, nothing happened again.

You took a deep breath, your mind racing.

The area is "undefined," and your presence has no impact on it, so a self-reliant approach to finding a solution won't work. Since you can't control this area, could you perhaps use external forces to create settings that benefit you from the outside?

What you need is not to create, but to "trigger" a rule!

You look around, and all you see is pure white, with no sense of direction whatsoever.

You try to close your eyes and listen for any possible sounds, but the world remains deathly silent.

This place is so big and so empty, where could there be any external force?

Unless... it has boundaries.

Of course it has boundaries. If it didn't, how did you "fall" in?

Although you don't know where the boundary is... you take a step forward, randomly choose a direction that looks pleasing to the eye, and set off to see if you can reach the "end of the blank space".

Walk and walk.

Persistence pays off. After walking for a while, you noticed that faint lines began to appear around you.

They are discontinuous, like a few random strokes on a draft paper, but not complete.

As you slowly reach out to touch these "lines," and your fingertips trace their edges, the "white" of the entire world seems to tremble slightly.

—This is the “blank boundary”!

These unfinished lines might represent an abandoned concept or an unfinished storyboard!

If you can complete it…

Without further hesitation, you begin to follow these broken lines and try to fill in the missing parts.

You trace the blurry lines with your finger and easily break them, causing specks of black ash to fall down, as if you've moved the lines.

So this stuff is pencil ash.

You catch a small pinch of ash, and you're speechless.

A dusty hand can leave a mark in a blank space, but after "wiping" the hand clean, only a faint trace remains.

You can't complete these unfinished line drawings.

Because... you don't have the materials.

You suddenly have a change of heart and shift your focus again: What if you used the materials available here to build other shapes like assembling building blocks?

When you start working, these horizontal and vertical lines and scattered dots, along with your movements, barely manage to connect to form a door.

These lines begin to become clearer, and finally, as you draw the last stroke—

The whole world was suddenly jolted.

The white light before your eyes begins to rapidly crack, and different colored lights emanate from the door-shaped pattern. You feel your body being pulled by some enormous force, and you rush against this force into the door you drew yourself!

Everything around you begins to blur, color permeates the world again, and all the lines, light, shadow, and background collapse and recombine before your eyes—

Then, you open your eyes and find yourself back in a "transitional" alley where the lines begin to simplify.

You're back!

Although you're still in this comic... now you probably know how to leave completely.

You walk out excitedly, only to find yourself blocked by a figure you neither wanted to see nor expected to appear.

Mizuki Shiraishi looks at you quietly, and you look back at her intently.

The air between them seemed to freeze, and you braced yourself for her next provocation, or even further obstruction.

This time, however, she simply held the sketchbook in silence, a faint smile still playing on her lips, but her eyes held less of the playfulness and more of a...meaningful quality.

She looks at you, and a sadness appears on her perfectly drawn but always malicious face.

"…I see."

She murmured something softly, then turned and left with an air of nonchalance, as if she had lost interest in you.

You squinted, a little puzzled by her sudden change in attitude, but you didn't have time to worry about her right now.

Anyway, you already know the key facts—

This world is a comic book!

You can draw the exit using the "blank page"!

So, here's the question—

Where do you find enough materials to draw the door to the real world?

You look down at the houses around you, observing the lines of the walls, doors, windows, and streets, and without a word, you reach out to break them off, wanting to throw them into a blank page.

But soon, new problems arose again—

These things are solid "entities"!

Although they are also part of the comics, they are completely different from the scribbles on the "blank pages." You can reach out and scratch the wall with your fingernails, or even pry open the floor tiles with all your might, but no matter how hard you try, you can't turn these things into drawing material!

You frown, look around, and try to think.

If these houses won't work, then what will?

You recall once again how you just escaped the blank page…

You moved a chair and threw it through the door you drew, and it turned into a grayish-black powder. You could even knead it into lines with your hands.

A brilliant idea flashes in your mind!

"...That's the key!"

You immediately set off back to Shadowtown and frantically search for any movable furniture, decorations, or ornaments.

You move the table, chairs, and wooden door into the "blank page" area one by one and observe the changes they make.

Sure enough, once they entered the blank page, they immediately lost their "solidity" and turned into scattered, gray-black waste lead dust and lines!

You excitedly grab these lines and begin to build a door on the blank page—a door that allows you to leave the world of comics!

However--

A few tables and chairs are far from enough!

You keep moving things around, putting in lots of furniture and decorations, but the results are minimal.

Just collecting these materials has left you breathless.

You sit on the floor with blank pages, pinching the bridge of your nose, deep in thought.

At this rate, it will be impossible to obtain enough lines to construct a complete gate.

You might starve to death before that. Your stomach has been growling for ages, damn it, who remembers you just finished a morning of Japanese language lessons?

Is there really no faster way?

You slip out of the door and aimlessly sweep through the streets, searching for new "material".

In that instant, your gaze lingers on the monsters lurking in the distance.

The creatures parasitized by the shadow flowers have completely different appearances from ordinary buildings and objects.

Their skin is covered with intricate patterns, and every hyphae, wound, and even the ulcerated eye sockets on their bodies are depicted with extreme detail!

Your pupils suddenly contracted.

Yes, this is a comic, which the author creates line by line. The more detailed something is, the more lines it will have!

A lightbulb goes off in your head, and a daring plan begins to emerge—

If you can lure these monsters and bring them into the blank page, their bodies will turn into a large number of lines!

This way, you can quickly obtain enough materials to draw the exit gate as soon as possible!

You licked your dry lips, your eyes gradually hardening.

You know, this plan is very dangerous.

But you have no other choice.

You must dismantle these monsters and use their "lines" to build your exit!

You begin to take action.

Thanks to your previous observations of Mizuki Shiraishi, you have a general understanding of the monsters' behavior. You begin searching for a suitable "trap" location.

You observe the street and find a narrow alleyway with dilapidated buildings on both sides and only one exit.

—This is the perfect spot to hunt down monsters!

You stand at the end of the alley and then deliberately hit the wall with a stone, making a loud noise.

"Plop...plop..."

As expected, the monsters were attracted!

They slowly wriggled their bodies, approaching you, a nauseating stench emanating from their mouths and noses.

Your body is sending out alarm bells—purely physiological fear! But you can only forcibly suppress these fears and continue making noise to attract them all into the alleyway.

—We're almost there!

Once the last monster has entered the trap's range, you suddenly turn around and rush towards the blank page with all your might!

The monsters immediately gave chase!

These beings, devoid of consciousness and protected by the "Main Character Risk Avoidance Law," move faster than you can imagine, especially the completely mutated Shadow Flower Infected. Their limbs twist grotesquely, as if they could pounce on you at any moment.

I told you not to look back, so I ran desperately towards the blank page!

—They rushed in!

You leap into the blank page, and the monsters follow closely behind. The moment they step onto the blank page, their bodies begin to twist, dissolve, and decompose!

Like a painting that had been suddenly erased, the monsters' bodies turned into scattered gray-black lines!

You were momentarily stunned by the visual impact, then rushed forward in ecstasy, frantically grabbing these new "line materials"!

You almost desperately grasped the lines, constantly piling them up and piecing them together to build a door to the real world!

The monsters' existence has been completely dismantled, and their "ink" has been reshaped into the key for your departure!

Your breathing was rapid, your clothes were soaked with sweat, but you didn't stop, until—

The final stroke is complete.

Your heart pounded as you looked at the rough yet complete "door" in front of you.

It succeeded!

You raise your trembling hand and slowly push open the door—

There was no blank space behind the door.

There are no lines like in a comic book.

—But rather, it is the light of the real world!

Your eyes are slightly squinted from the sting, but that won't deter your determination to cross the threshold.

You were about to step through the door to reality when, at that very moment, you heard footsteps.

Extremely light, as if melting into the floating black mist, but your nerves are already on edge, and you immediately catch this unusual sensation.

You suddenly turn around, your pupils shrinking.

—Mizuki Shiraishi!

The guy you thought had given up, the girl who walked away on her own before, is now standing quietly at the edge of the blank page, gazing intently at the door you are about to leave through.

She is hidden in the floating black mist that you unintentionally created by applying paint, her figure appearing and disappearing.

Her eyes no longer held the mocking, indifferent, or malicious gaze of the past, but rather a...complex expression.

You don't know what she's thinking, but you instantly understand one thing—

She wants to leave this place too!

She's not some benevolent character! You've witnessed her indifference and cruelty; she's the embodiment of evil in the author's pen. You've seen plenty of female characters like this in Japanese comics.

What would happen if she entered the outer dungeon world? To be honest, you didn't know what other stories this comic told besides Shadowtown, and who knows if she had any curses or anything like that?

You were momentarily moved the moment she appeared, but even if it's just for your own good, you absolutely cannot let her leave!

Your body tenses, ready to stop her at any moment.

You thought she would argue with you, try to stall for time, or even throw out some sarcastic remarks, but she didn't say anything!

She simply looked at you with her narrow eyes, a slight smile playing on her lips—a smile that carried a hint of malice, a hint of indifference, and even a hint of relief.

Then, she suddenly moved!

She made a desperate leap and rushed to the center of the blank page!

In that instant, you didn't even have time to call out her name, and you watched helplessly as her whole body disappeared into the void!

There was no cover, no place to hide.

The white space swallowed her up, and her body began to disintegrate!

Her color gradually faded, and her delicate features, long black hair, and exquisitely painted dress all became blurred, beginning to shatter into streaks of ink, as if being erased by an eraser, peeling away from her body bit by bit.

As she brushed past you, her eyes remained fixed on you, her lips trembled slightly as if she wanted to say something, but ultimately no sound came out.

At this moment, you saw her true self—

She is not a living "person," she is just a pile of ink, a pile of lines, given life, trapped in a story she cannot change.

But she didn't want to be just a character in a "story," she didn't want to be just "something drawn."

So she risked everything, stepping into a blank space without any "setup," trying to break free from her own constraints in the most extreme way.

She wasn't afraid of disappearing; she wasn't afraid of being completely erased.

—Because if she doesn't try, she will always just be Shiraishi Mizuki, a character in a manga, a predetermined character.

She wanted to take a gamble; she wanted a "presence" that truly belonged to her.

She wanted to be a "free individual".

You reach out and grab her—but it's too late.

You froze for a fraction of a second, and when your fingers touched her arm, all you grabbed was a handful of ink.

Her body had begun to completely disintegrate, and patches of ink lines, like broken spider silk, drifted and melted in the blank space.

You could even feel her fingertips tremble slightly in your palm, like the last trace of her presence, but soon, even that warmth was wiped away.

She is no longer a tangible individual.

You can only watch helplessly as she dissipates, becoming an indescribable black ripple, with drops of ink seeping out from the gate.

You stood there, stunned, for a long time before you came to your senses.

You stood there silently, your heart pounding, but you couldn't utter a single word.

Then, you look back at that door, and without further hesitation, step into reality.

It took you a long time to accept the reality that you were really back.

I stood still, surrounded by the familiar starting station, where crowds were bustling and the announcement of the next train was playing over the loudspeaker.

When you look back, the blank page is gone, the gate is gone, and even the trace of Shadowtown has completely disappeared.

You look around, searching for her, but Shiraishi Mizuki is nowhere to be found.

She didn't escape, did she?

Has she really disappeared?

Your gaze fell upon a student not far away who was loudly complaining in Chinese.

"Why are the last few pages all covered in ink?!"

The man was holding a horror comic book with exaggerated graphics, flipping through the pages with dissatisfaction, pointing to the last few pages, seemingly complaining about the poor printing quality.

Your pupils contracted slightly, and the next second, without thinking, you rushed forward and snatched the comic book away!

"Hey!" The student looked at you in surprise, about to protest, but you had already quickly turned the pages of the book.

—First page, no problem.

— Page 2, no problem.

——Kage Jin, Akira Morita, Hana Hayakawa...

—Mizuki Shiraishi is mocking all of the above…

You continue flipping through the pages, however—

—From the moment Akira Morita was completely transformed, all the scenes turned into a black ink!

Large swaths of ink covered the paper, making it seem as if there had been a serious printing error, and no details were visible at all.

You feel as if a bird has crawled into your chest, crashing headfirst into the ground, and all you can see in your eyes is that black ink stain.

This is not a typical printing malfunction.

—It's like some kind of "existence" has been completely erased, or...it's a phenomenon caused by some kind of "escape"!

Did Mizuki Shiraishi really, in some way, "escape" the world of manga? Or was this her final fate?

A patch of ink had soaked through the pages of the book.

You swallowed hard, continued flipping through the pages, and finally found the last page of the comic, where the image was clear again.

It's the train station in Shadow Town.

In the final scene of the manga, only Hayakawa Hana is there, deep in thought, as she boards the car leaving Kagetown.

There is no Akira Morita.

Mizuki Shiraishi is not included.

Of course, you weren't there either.

—You were just an outsider who stumbled into this story.

You stared at the image, your fingertips trembling slightly.

In the real world, everything seems normal... but is it really normal?

You look up and around; the starting station is still bustling with people, and announcements are playing over the loudspeaker about the train's arrival...

But a slight chill ran down your back, and you felt a strange, indescribable feeling.

You hold the book up to the light and look at the ink stain; it's not even completely dry yet.

You really don't know if she actually escaped; your heart is in more turmoil than a ball of yarn.

If she comes, where will she hide? Could she... already be in the crowd?

She's not like you. You're an outsider who stumbled into the world of comics, while she's a fully awakened comic character; her very existence is an "abnormality."

If she really came here, how would she choose to live?

You slowly lower your head, looking at the last page of the comic, your gaze falling on Hayakawa Hana.

She remained in Shadowtown, boarding the train to leave.

But where will this train take her?

You close the comic book and turn to the cover.

"Yin Teng's Three Moves, the Complete Horror Comic Series: Shadow Town, Flower Transformation Group: Milk Tiger Overlord Oil..."

"Hey, sister, could you please give me back my book?" The girl whose book you snatched was wearing a high school uniform, with a standard neon-style outfit and the fearless attitude typical of girls from Japan. You had a hard time telling whether she was an outsider like you or a native foreigner from a dungeon world.

The little girl is staring at you with a pout and a puzzled look. Can you imagine what kind of image you will have in her and her circle of friends afterward?

You return the comic to her, hesitate for a long time, and then say, "What's this 'Flower Group'? The name is so weird. How can this be legitimate? It's not appropriate to read this kind of pirated book in Japan."

"Mind your own business. Mind your own business." The girl rolled her eyes, stuffed the book into her backpack, and stomped away in her leather shoes, disappearing eight hundred meters away from you.

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Author's Note: I'm too tired to keep writing... Tiger needs to sleep... sleep...