故事 ・ the green door

*do not read without first reading the intro *

Piętnaście

The Third

Zielone Drzwi

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Halfway through stepping through the door you already regret it. It’s freezing! You’re about to go back through to the white room but are stopped when you notice where you are. It’s grey and it’s pretty dark and it looks completely wrecked. The intrigue prevents your mind from seeking warmth. Walking around a bit, you gather that you’re inside a plane wreck. You would be scared of how the engers would be doing, but considering there are no seats, that fear washes away. You walk towards the window so you can see outside but-

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“Hello? Is someone in there?”

The girl outside runs around the plane so she can step inside. Once she’s inside, she starts rattling off words of concern while all you can do is marvel at how beautiful both her and her voice are.

“Oh god! Are you okay? You must be freezing! Why are you here? Do you need a coat? I’m not sure why I asked that I don’t have another but ah I don’t want you to be cold!”

You thank her for worrying but assure her that you will be fine.

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’m Haseul. I don’t know who you are though? How did you even get here? I haven’t seen anyone else anywhere.”

You tell her your name but distract her from her other question by rebounding it and asking how she’s here. You think that trying to describe how you came through a door that doesn’t have a visible other side may be too complex for you to handle.

“See that yellow car over there? That’s how I got here. It’s sort of weird though. There isn’t a driver. I just got in and it took me here.”

You ask her why she didn’t just get out?

“I mean, it’s not like getting out of a car while it’s moving is safe! Also, it just seemed cool? I don’t know. All I know is there’s this bird that keeps showing up and then flying away too quickly for me to get to. I kinda like it. I want to hold it.”

You tell her you’ll help her get it. The two of you go outside. You’re mesmerized by the wide white ground, spreading as far as your eyes can see. A beautiful gradient of white, pale blue, and pale pink cover the ground up through the horizon. It’s gorgeous.

As you wander around, taking in the landscape, you hear Haseul humming behind you. Looking back to her, you let out a little squeak when you see her completely transformed. She has short white hair now? And is wearing a white, feathery outfit? What the hell?

Before you get a chance to bring this up to her, she stops humming and yells out a “There it is!”, pointing at what at first seems like nothing, but as she fades back into her normal appearance you can see a white bird flying in the direction of where she was pointing. You don’t get a chance to dwell on her changing since you both start running to try to catch the bird.

Haseul pulls out what looks like a homemade slingshot and a small diamond from her bag. She aims it at the bird and lets go but misses. At that exact moment, the bird disappears.

“Ugh. Again,” she says with major disappointment in her voice. “That’s what happens every time. I shoot, I miss, and then it disappears. I don’t understand.”

You offer to shoot instead next time, just for a change, and she agrees.

“I’m running out of diamonds though. Help me find some more?”

She takes you to a different part of the white clearing. It’s somehow even more beautiful, with some water and chunks of ice aesthetically strewn over the ground. She informs you that the small diamonds can be found around that ice sometimes. You ask why she’s using diamonds anyway when it’d be much easier to use the much more abundant rocks covering the land.

“Oh right…about that. I was going to use rocks at first, but after I shot once with them, I immediately was scared of hurting the bird. See, I just want to hold it, not to kill it, so I lost my will to shoot at it. But then I found a paper airplane down near where that wrecked plane is. I don’t know how it got there, or who sent it, but when I opened it up it said that the diamonds wouldn’t hurt it. I don’t even know how it knew that I was shooting at it, but I figured with all the weird stuff that’s been happening, it couldn’t be wrong, you know?”

You nod. You figure it’s easier to just agree with her. You both scout for diamonds for a while, coming up with an impressive twelve in total. As she turns back to find some more, she starts singing a slow but beautiful song. You recognize that it’s the same one that she was humming earlier, and so prepare yourself to see her change again. But this time she doesn’t. You think that maybe it’s because she’s singing instead, and are about to turn away when you notice something tall and white a while away.

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Examining it closer, you realize that it’s the same figure that Haseul turned into earlier. You quickly yell to her to look towards it, but before you could mention that she had…well..been it earlier, she’s aiming her slingshot.

“Yes! I swear this time I’ll get it right! C’mon birdie, don’t fail me!”

You realize that she seems to think it’s just the bird again? Can she not see that it’s a person? Haseul…

You shout at her to stop! That she can’t shoot it!

That it’s her!

Your message doesn’t get to her in time. The small diamond is already soaring towards the other Haseul. Once it hits its target, both the white feathery Haseul and the normal Haseul fall down. You run over to her, extremely worried. The look on her face is one of both confusion and horror.

“I-I- As soon as I let go it wasn’t a bird anymore! It was a human! I only saw it for a split second! I didn’t mean to! I thought it was the bird…it was the bird…for a minute.”

You try to calm her down and ask if she’s hurt. She says she has a bit of chest pain, but that she’s more startled than anything. She stands up and runs over to where her target had fallen before you can suggest that she shouldn’t move. You follow her.

She’s already kneeling once you reach her. Shifting your gaze downwards, you see that instead of a fallen body, she’s holding a stiff white bird. You recognize it as the one she’s been chasing. As she mutters to herself phrases of confusion and wonder, you notice a hole in her clothes over her chest, right where she originally hit the feathery version of herself. A diamond falls out of the red material.

Both your heads are pulled away from the bird and the diamond when you hear the revving of a car and turn to see the yellow truck speeding away. Haseul stands up in a hurry and tries to run after it, but you catch her arm, telling her that there’s no point, it’s going to fast. You watch as it speeds out of view into the wandering white, then turn back to see Haseul on the verge of tears.

“I got to hold the bird.” She says with a broken voice.

You hug her as she starts crying.

“That car was the only way out of here,” she whispers. “What are we going to do. I just killed a bird, or a human, I don’t even know! I’m getting colder by the second, and now we can’t even leave!”

You decide now is definitely the time to bring up how you got here. You tell her that there’s a way out and that you can bring her to warmth if she just comes with you through the door in the wrecked plane. She seems skeptical, but she’s too overwhelmed by recent events to argue. The two of you find your way back to the plane and you help her up through the door back into the white room. She immediately sinks to the ground, basking in the warmth that the room provides as you close the green door behind you. You sit down with her, deciding to let her have a while to calm before you let her know that really the only way to get anywhere else is through another door. Once this is completed, she selects a light blue-grey door on the opposite wall that you hadn’t noticed before. You both slowly pull yourselves up off the floor and through the new door.

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《February 24, 2018》

《Updated April 17, 2018》