I say the word quietly first, testing it.
"Numbers."
Nothing happens.
My heart pounds harder, not because I'm afraid, but because I recognize the hesitation for what it is. The room has punished guessing from the start. It responds to certainty.
I straighten.
I say it again, louder, not as a guess, but as a conclusion.
"NUMBERS."
For a moment, nothing changes.
Then I hear it.
A soft click, almost polite, like the room acknowledging that I've finally used the correct language.
The door unlocks.
It doesn't swing open dramatically. It opens just enough for me to step through.
The first room is behind me.
The second room greets me with silence.
It's emptier than the first. Cleaner. Almost clinical. No clutter. No distractions.
A single clock hangs on the wall.
8:10:09.
I step closer. The second hand is frozen mid-tick. I open the battery compartment. Empty.
Dead by design.
Below the clock, carved directly into the door, is an eye.
Too detailed to be decorative. Too deliberate to ignore.
Watching.
Waiting.
I try the obvious first. I say the numbers aloud.
"Eight. Ten. Nine."
Nothing happens.
I rearranged them. Still nothing.
I try words instead. Time. Clock. Watch. Eye. Vision.
The door doesn't respond.
I turn around and leave the second room, stepping back into the first.
I look back at the second poem, the line that stayed with me the most.
> The world is forgotten and the time is wrong.
Time.
This time, I didn't read anything.
I count.
The memoir book is where I left it. I pick it up again and flip through it carefully.
Five pages.
I stop.
Five isn't an accident. It's too clean. Too specific.
No memoir ends at five pages. No life compresses that neatly.
Something is missing.
I count again, slower, just to be sure. Front to back. Five.
I check the binding. No torn edges. No removed pages.
Manufactured absence.
I open the anatomy book next. Count pages. Normal. Too many to matter.
The photo album, full.
The poems.
I count the lines.
They repeat.
Not the words, the number.
I flip back to the poem from the slipper.
> The world is forgotten and the time is wrong.
I freeze.
The clock.
It isn't showing the wrong answer.
It's showing that the answer is wrong.
8:10:09 exists. It's visible. Countable.
That's the mistake.
The poems keep circling the same idea: forgotten worlds, erased sequences, null states. Things that appear complete but aren't.
The memoir has five pages because the rest are gone.
The clock shows numbers that shouldn't matter.
If five exists because it's incomplete…
Then the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is false.
I scan the room again, this time looking only for numbers.
Posters. None.
The notebook. Blank.
The clock.
I write them down.
They feel wrong immediately.
The poems don't reward presence. They reward absence.
What's missing?
I stand in the center of the room, the realization pressing down on me slowly, heavily.
If the world is forgotten…
If time is wrong…
Then the correct answer isn't what I can see.
It's what's skipped.
I think of the natural order. Counting. Progression.
If five is the end of a false sequence…
What comes after?
I feel the room tighten around me, not physically, but mentally. Like it's waiting to see whether I'll hesitate.
I don't.
There are only two numbers that fit.
I return to the second room, heart pounding now, breath shallow but steady.
I stand in front of the door with the eye carved into it, feeling its weight on me.
Everything visible was bait; only what the sequence refused to show could open the door.
I don't shout this time.
I say it clearly.
"seventy-six."
For a fraction of a second, nothing happens.
But then I remembered the poem saying closing in on each other through two forms, so I shouted sixty-seven making it 7667.
The door opens without a sound.
Not light. Not darkness. Just space.
I step forward and stop.