As you walk this path, you once again find yourself flashing into a memory. This one looks recent, given Akemi’s appearance. Perhaps this is not long before she first arrived in this prison. She looks tired, but focused. It’s late, judging by the relative level of lighting around you. She checks her phone, anxiously confirming the time before approaching the door marked ‘Kuro Home Office’.
The door is locked. Akemi spends what feels like hours trying to slip a card into the door latch before it finally springs open. She stands back and stares at the open door, her hesitation apparent, before she slowly steps inside the office.
You watch as she begins to search the room, carefully at first. She glances at the books on the shelves and files through drawers, clearly taking care not to make a mess that will indicate her presence here. The drawback to this approach being that her search is far less thorough than what she apparently needs.
She searches this way for several minutes with no success. Frustrated, she stops in the center of the room, almost appearing ready to give up. Perhaps more accurately, she appears afraid to continue at all. To continue the search, to make a mess, is to risk being caught. To be caught means…
The stress on her face intensifies. She looks from the desk to the door, weighing the risk of carrying on versus the consequences of giving up. A desperate expression crosses her face as she turns from the door. She paces, hands on her head, before re-opening the drawers and methodically taking out each and every document. Her breathing is heavy, her eyes darting around the office as though, at any moment, she’ll be caught. You’ve never seen her this scared before. Her eyes are wild and fearful.
Then you watch as she finds…something. First, she pauses at a page amidst the documents she removed from the desk, narrowing her eyes and looking at them more closely. She takes another document, then another, her eyes darting between them. She photographs these documents and carefully puts them back exactly as they were, hands shaking.
Then she looks at the bookshelves once more, and she eventually comes across one book she seemingly does not recognize. She pauses, pulling it from the shelf and opening it. A phone clatters to the floor from the hollowed out opening within. She hesitantly retrieves and opens the phone, powering it on before she searches its contents.
Suddenly, her eyes go wide and her face turns white as a sheet. She drops the phone with a sharp, horrified gasp and stumbles backward. Her hand is gripped over her mouth as a stark, dawning horror washes over her. You can see the image on the screen as the phone clatters to the floor: photos of a crime scene. Blood everywhere. A man and a woman in their bedroom, littered with gunshot wounds.
The memory fades, and you are once again back in the maze. Looking down, the doll in your hands looks angry. There are even more cracks, you fear that no matter how you hold it, it will find purchase and slice your hands. Even so, you find that you cannot put it down.
Once again you hear a voice, Akemi’s voice, clearer this time: Coward.
Continuing on, you come across another fork in the road. This one feels different, though, as one path appears blocked with brambles, marked with a sign reading Expose Him. The other, indicated by a sign reading Punish Him, is locked behind a door with a keyhole.
By that door, you see a hammer.
