The light gradually faded, and X finally saw what lay beyond the door.
A ring—like something out of countless fantasy works—flickering with an unstable sheen.
Taken as a whole, it looked exactly like the sort of portal found in sci-fi or fantasy stories: an unknown gateway to somewhere else, clearly linking to another space or dimension.
But before X could even think through the portal's origin or destination—
"Do you have any sin?"
A woman's voice rang out abruptly, echoing directly inside X's mind.
It was holy, ethereal, and unspeakably gentle—like it came from distant skies, yet it was close enough to breathe.
"Who—who's there?"
X's heart jolted. He scanned the room.
The containment unit was cold and empty. Aside from himself and the mysterious portal, there was nothing.
No one answered. Only the light at the portal's center rippled faintly, as though responding to his question.
"…"
X's gaze locked on the portal floating silently at the center of the unit.
That seemed to be where the voice came from.
"And that way of speaking…"
X stared at it.
"Redemption? Confession?"
"Is that… One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds? But… does the old 'skeleton' sound like this?"
He had never seen any report or record describing it as capable of producing such clear, such… human speech—let alone a woman's voice.
The dissonance was overwhelming. Everything he "knew" clashed with what he was seeing.
After hesitating again and again—facing an unknown portal, a potential threat, and a question that felt like it pierced straight into the soul—X ultimately chose not to continue.
In a situation this strange, curiosity could lead to consequences he couldn't predict.
X took a deep breath and forced himself back. He carefully retreated from the unit and pulled the heavy metal door closed, sealing the ethereal voice and the portal on the other side.
He returned to the main break room—but he didn't stop there.
As if trying to confirm his sanity, X went to the other doors leading out from the break room and checked them one by one.
The result matched his initial judgment.
The layout, the structure—even small scuffs on the walls—were nearly identical to what he had seen through the surveillance screens in the Manager's office: the familiar Control Team work area.
"Could it be… because I learned from B that an 'inside' Lobotomy Corporation exists… that information itself acted like a key, accidentally unlocking some 'lock,' and that's why I entered here?"
X leaned against the cold wall and muttered, trying to sort his thoughts.
"Or is this B's doing? Did they send me here as a demonstration? Or a warning?"
"No… it can't be… B can be ruled out… there's no reason…"
He racked his brain, thoughts spinning, but still couldn't find a perfectly coherent explanation that connected every clue.
In the end, after the futile loop of thinking, only deep fatigue remained.
X gave up and walked to the sofa in the center of the break room—a piece that at least looked comfortable—and sat down.
If he couldn't understand, and couldn't leave, then he could only wait.
Wait for this "dream" to end naturally. Wait to wake up.
Time crawled by in silence, each second stretched painfully long.
Just as X began to wonder whether he would be trapped here forever, the scene finally began to change.
First, the edges of distant objects blurred. Then the entire space seemed to lose focus; colors and light softened, and the whole world began to turn and fade.
Finally, his body began to slip out of his control—the suffocating feeling of sleep paralysis.
"Finally…"
Sensing the dream was ending, X's taut nerves loosened at once. He let out a long, relieved breath.
So his guess had been right. This really was an unnervingly vivid, bizarre lucid dream.
Disturbing, yes—but ultimately unreal.
Yet X's mind didn't stop working as the dream dissolved.
In the last few seconds before returning to reality, he was clearer than ever, seizing a key point he could verify:
"Tomorrow… no, it's already today… after work, I'll talk to the Control Team employees and ask properly—does One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds have a voice when it communicates?"
"And if it does, what kind of voice?"
The thought was like a small light cutting through the fog, giving him something concrete to do.
"If I confirm that, I can basically verify whether the voice I heard in the dream was actually One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds…"
"And that will help judge what kind of 'dream' this really was."
"And if B comes to confirm what happened here tomorrow morning, that will also prove whether this was their doing…"
"One stone, multiple birds."
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