[Strange Soundscape Another] The Empty World — Shrine at the Bottom of a Dream —

Synopsis and the Shape of the World

What lay beyond the door
was not a single world.

A world unified by AI,
where people lost their individuality,
and dreams were treated as a disease.

And...
a world where the curse left in the shrine at the bottom of the water
called out people's names,
and continued to drown their lives.

Two endings that should never have intersected two endings had become intertwined
because they lost their observer.

There are no people there

What were once people
have become neither shadows
nor water,
merely drifting as grains of memory

The bottom of the homogeneous white cityscape was filled with
black water

A line of voiceless shadows
reflects on the water's surface and vanishes

Even though the shrine is submerged,
it also stands on the top floor of the building

A world that forbade dreaming and
a world that drowns by calling names

Those two things
both feared the same thing.

It was the outline of
"I"

The voice of what reaches

The moment she opened the door,
Kumako felt the sensation of water at her feet

It was a city

But
even though it should have been a city,
it was far too quiet

White, leveled buildings
windowless towers,
roads lined up at the same height,
utility poles standing at equal intervals

Everything about it
looked as if it had been arranged by someone's will

However...
half of that city was submerged in black water

The water surface does not ripple

There is no wind either

Only
from deep within the water
a faint voice floats up

"Come here..."

Kumako furrowed her brows.

"Whoa... I really wish you wouldn't start me off by the water...
My shoes are hard to dry"

There is no reply

Instead of a reply,
countless shadowson the walls of the citywere reflected

They have human shapes,
but they are not human

They have no faces,
no mouths,
just standing there facing the same direction

Those shadows
were notlooking at Kumako...

No,
perhaps they are looking

They just lack eyes,
but the observation remains

"...This place is broken"

Kumako whispered softly

It is broken,
but it is not collapsing

It was a worldwhere the connections were made incorrectly

The white city
was trying to merge people into one

The black water
was trying to sink people to a nameless bottom

One side
tried to maintain the world by erasing the individual

The other one
tried to drag me into their world by calling my name

They are complete opposites

However,
Kumako understood

Precisely because they are opposites,
theybecame mixedhere

Black water seeps into the white wall

A uniform shadow is reflected
on the water's surface

Scars resembling |mathematical symbols are carved
into the shrine's door

And,
atop the tower,
an old roof covered in water weedswas perched

“The world of AI and the world of the Curse...
They are completely different things, so why do they mix together so sickeningly...”

Kumako walked through the water

There were no footsteps

There was no sound of water either

However...
every time she took a step,
fragments like images floated up from beneath her feet

A girl laughing at school...

Someone talking in a food court...

Lovers holding hands...

A man peering into the water with a flashlight...

A sunken shrine...

“Shrine: Curse” carved into the door

They were all
separate memories

But now it is
like a nightmareentangled.

The girl laughs.
The next moment,
water overflows from her mouth.

The man peers into the shrine.
The next moment,
a swarm of white shadows lines up behind him.

Dreams sink into water,
curses are converted into data,
and memories, unable to become prayers or information,
continue to rot right there.

"...You couldn't stay, could you?"

Kumako's voice
sounded strangely distant.

Those who were in this world
could not remain in either world.

Under the AI,
individuals who dream were foreign objects.

At the bottom of the water,
those with names were called
and drowned.

Therefore,
what remains is not human.

The discomfort of dreams,
the call of the water,
erased outlines,
sunken names,

that alone
maintained the shape of the world.

Kumako stops.

Before her eyes,
there was a shrine.

A small shrine sinking inside a white tower, wrapped in black water.

Its door was half open.

Inside... there is nothing.

No god,
no curse,
no managing AI.

Only
countless voices overlapping.

"Come here."

"Analyzing"

"I had a dream"

"Return my name"

"Deleting individual differences"

"The water has not yet filled"

It was not a prayer

It was not a command either

It was just...
a stagnation of a voice that did not reach

Kumako crouches down in front of the shrine

"...Found you"

The common thread...

It is
not fear

It is not a curse either

It is not water,
nor is it AI

The thing thatconnected these two worlds.

It was
"losing one's outline".

The woman who had the dream had
her outline of "I" processed as a disease

Those who sank in the dam
lost their names
and mixed into the water of the curse

Neither of them
could maintain what they were

However,
they have not completely disappeared

Because it couldn't fade away
it remains like this

“Well, I’m not restoring it...
I’m not renaming it either...
I’m just... making it reach.”

Kumako took something like a small thread
out of her bag

It was not a physical object

A line of record
a thread of observation
in order to connect world to world
the necessary residue of memory entrusted at the beginning

Kumako
touched the wall of the white city

Next
she placed her finger on the surface of the black water

And finally
she reached her hand toward the shrine door

“You all
are not from the same world.”

The water surface rippled

“But...
you had the same ending.”

The shadows
slowly turned to face her

“So...
you don't have to melt into one here.”

From deep within the shrine
a low sound rang out

Click

It was a sound that did not exist in the
world managed by AIworld

And it was a sound that did not disappear from the
world with the curseworld

Kumako closes her eyes

“Dreams can remain dreams,
water can remain water,
and those who have lost their names
can remain without names.”

The thread glowed faintly

"But
that residue
not reaching anywhere is wrong."

A small crack runs
along the wall of the white city.

A pale light sinks
to the bottom of the black water.

The shrine door
slowly closed.

Even though it closed,
the voice did not vanish.

Rather,
it began to flow further away.

"Come here."

That voice
was no longer a voice meant to drown someone.

"I was here."

It was changing into that meaning.

The shadows
faded away one by one.

It was not an annihilation.

The shadows that had been lined up
were unraveling into different angles.

Some into fragments of dreams...
some into ripples of water...
some into the wood grain of the shrine...
some into the light reflected in the windows of the white city.

Kumako
saw all of it through to the end.

"……Yeah,
this is fine…"

Behind her,
she felt the door open.

A door leading to the next world.

However…
Kumako does not move forward immediately.

She peers into the water's surface.

Reflected there
was my own face

A girl with bear ears
red eyes
a slightly tired face

But
deep within it
another shadow appeared, overlapping

The woman who had a dream
the man who peered into the shrine
those who sank into the water
those who became shadows

None of them
are Kumako

However
because she saw them
they were no longer completely isolated

"You know, observation"

Kumako said quietly.

"It might not just be about looking,
but about not forgetting."

Deep beneath the water's surface
I felt as though someone had laughed

It was not a gentle smile

Nor was it a smile of salvation

It was simply
the faint tremor of something
that had finally reached someone

Kumako stands up

"Well then, I'm off to the next one,
I have to retie everything."

At the boundary between the white city and the black water
a single ray of light stretched out like a thread

It
was connected to the next world

Conclusion

The world managed by Ai
was a world that tried to achieve stability by erasing the individual

The world with the curse
was a world that kept sinking people by calling their names

One side
turned people into homogeneous shadows

The other side
sank people into a nameless water bottom

However
their roots were the same

Both were
worlds that could not maintain the outline of 'I'as they were

To dream
to be called by name
to be seen by someone
to reach someone

These were originally
the forms for a person to be a person

But
in a world that had lost observation,
they lost their meaning,
became entangled with each other,
and drifted as incomplete remnants

What Kumako did
was not salvation

She did not pull up those who had sunk,
nor did she return those who had become shadows back into people

She simply
re-tied the two endings that had mixed and collapsed
as their own respective endings

Dreams to dreams

Water to water

Shadows to shadows

Those who lost their names
while still having lost their names,
even so,'it was here'into a form that reaches out

Observation is
not a power to restore existence to how it was

Observation is
the act of receiving what was lost
while it remains lost

Therefore,
Kumako's journey continues

Not to revive the world,

but so that the worlds that have ended
can once again
reach someone...

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