Chapter 15 14

4:25 Eri Asai's room. The TV is on.Ellie, who was in her pajamas, was watching from the inside of the screen.Her hair hung down her forehead, and she shook her head again.She pressed her palms together tightly inside the glass screen, telling something to this side, just like a person who strayed into the empty tank of the aquarium explaining his dilemma to the audience through the thick glass.However, the sound cannot reach our ears, and her voice cannot shake the air on this side. Ellie seemed to have sensory numbness somewhere again, and her hands and feet seemed to be unable to move freely.It must be because of the long sleep time.Still, she was trying to make sense of the unthinkable situation she was in, trying to grasp and comprehend the logic and benchmarks that made this place possible in a state of confusion and confusion, and her mood could be seen through the TV glass. The screen passes over.

Ellie neither yelled nor said anything harshly.It looked like she was tired of shouting and talking.Her voice couldn't reach here anyway, and she knew it herself. What she wants to do now is to replace what her eyes have captured and what she feels with her senses into appropriate and understandable words as much as possible.Half of the words are sent to us, and half are sent to ourselves.This is of course not easy to do.The lips can only move slowly and intermittently.As in a foreign language, all sentences are short, with uneven spaces between words.The white space stretches and dilutes the meaning that should be there.Although we on this side stared hard, it was difficult to distinguish the words expressed by the shape of Eri Asai's lips from the silence expressed by the shape of her lips.Reality slipped through her slender fingers like the sands of an hourglass clock.There, time did not favor her.

Soon, talking to the outside also made her tired, so she simply kept silent.A new silence was superimposed on the old silence.Later, she tapped the glass screen with her fist from the inside. She tried everything she could, but the sound still couldn't reach this side at all. It seems that Eri's eyes can see the scene on this side through the TV glass screen, which can be deduced from the movement of her gaze.She seems to be following the objects in her room (on this side) with her eyes: table, bed, bookshelf.This room was her place, where she belonged, and where she should sleep peacefully in her bed.However, she couldn't go back to this side through the transparent glass wall. During the time when she fell asleep due to some effect or some intention, she was moved to the room over there and was tightly closed.There was a lonely look in her eyes, like gray clouds reflected on the surface of a calm lake.

Sadly (or perhaps it should be said) there is absolutely nothing we can do about Eri Asai.To repeat, we are nothing more than viewpoints, and it is impossible to intervene in any form. But—we thought—who the hell is the Faceless Man?What did he do to Eri Asai?Where has he gone? The answer has not yet been obtained, but the TV screen suddenly became restless, and the radio waves were in chaos.Eri Asai's outline was a bit blurred, trembling slightly.Realizing that her body had mutated, she turned her head and looked around.Looking up at the ceiling, looking down at the ground, and then at my shaking hands, I stared at the outlines that lost their clarity, with a disturbed expression on my face.What exactly is going to happen? The harsh noise of "chirp, chirp, chirp" was getting higher and higher, as if a strong wind was blowing again on the distant hills.The line connecting the two worlds shook its joints violently, and the outlines of her existence were once again damaged by it.The meaning of entities is being eaten away.

"Flee!" we yelled, forgetting the rule of neutrality.Of course the sound didn't reach her, but Ellie herself had sensed the danger, and was about to escape from there, and ran quickly in some direction—probably the door.The figure disappears from the camera's field of view.The image quickly lost its previous clarity, shaking sharply, distorted and deformed.The light from the kinescope gradually faded, shrinking into a small square window, and finally disappeared completely.All information is reduced to zero, the place is withdrawn, the meaning is disintegrated, the world is far away, and all that remains is numb silence.

Another clock in another place. A round electronic clock hanging on the wall. The hour hand reads 4:31.The kitchen of Bai Chuan's house.Bai Chuan unbuttoned his shirt collar, loosened his tie, sat alone at the restaurant table, scooped up pure white yoghurt with a spoon and ate it.Instead of a saucer, he inserted a spoon into a plastic container and brought it straight to his mouth. He is watching the small TV in the kitchen.The remote control sits next to the yogurt container.The image of the seabed is projected on the screen.A wide variety of deep-sea creatures: ugly, beautiful, predatory, and captive.Small submarines for scientific research loaded with high-tech equipment, high-intensity light projectors, and sophisticated manipulators.Nature documentary program: "Creatures of the Deep Sea".The sound is muted.As he put yogurt into his mouth, he chased the changes in the TV picture expressionlessly.His head, however, was thinking about a different problem—the interrelationship of logic and function.Is it logical derivation that brings about the effect?Or does the effect bring logic to the result?His eyes were chasing the TV image, but they were actually looking at something far behind the image, something about a kilometer or two away.

He glanced at the wall clock on the wall: the hour hand pointed at 4:33, and the second hand rotated smoothly on the dial.The world is moving forward without interruption and continuity.Logic and action flow seamlessly, at least at this moment.