I wake up in a panic. My head rattles from the hum of an infernal machine hugging my eyes. There are five long shadowy ghosts floating above me, faceless and translucent. As soon as I notice the rubber cables from the headset sinking into the bottom of the bathtub, I tear through the straps around my head and hurl it against the wall furthest from me. I jump out without looking back and stumble nakedly through the rusted bathroom when I am shaken by the screech of a fire alarm.

"What the hell is going on?!?" I clutch my head, trembling, trembling, suffering, suffocating. My body is on fire. The hands on the cat-clock say three in the morning. I burst through the door, nauseated, and before I leave the lockbox apartment, covered in cobwebs, trash, crumpled newspapers and rusted fans, I open the door to the balcony and vomit onto the ground from the seventh story. Reflexively, my hand gravitates to my mouth as it dawns upon me that the entire building is covered in flames.

Hastily I run to the door and undo the guard before swinging it open; I emerge out onto the balcony, I see walls covered in blood; a long streak leads into the neighbors apartment that looks like someone struggling to cling to the wall before being dragged inside. I hear a faint beeping noise, and when I glance over the balcony, there's a crashed drone lying on the edge of the sixth floor, repeating a voice message:

"PLEASE CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM. PLEASE CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM."

I run towards the stairs, but something catches my eye before I can descend. The last apartment door is open and the light from outside is shining onto somebody's body. Smoke is leaking out of the room; it could be somebody who's unconscious. But as soon as I open the door, I see blood spattered against the wall and a shotgun lying beside a stark white body. The rest of the apartment is engulfed in flames. I struggle to contain the contents of my stomach, but I'm forced to hang my head over a balcony once more.

"PLEASE CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM. PLEASE CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM."

My form phases toward the sixth floor as I struggle to maintain my composure. My descent towards the bottom is a daze. I don't know who or where I am, and the longer I'm here, the more I lose my grip on reality. Before I know it, I'm at the bottom, on the first floor; I look up and the entire building is being lit up like a giant candle in the middle of the night. By the entrance to the apartment lobby there is a message written in soot.

"IN A SEA OF DESPAIR, THERE IS NO HOPE BUT A CONSUMING FIRE."

The phrase seizes me with an iron grip, pieced together with assemblages of something I once read or someone I once knew. Without thinking, I enter the lobby, and the pungent smell of aluminum rot reveals itself as soon as I encounter the moisture in the air. The light is dim and the single fixture in the room glows ominously in the mahogany reflection of the smoking chairs. There are several mail lockers attached to the adjacent wall, and all of them are rusted except for one. Upon taking a single step forward, I'm startled by a clicking sound, and gradually the aforementioned mailbox creaks open. Inside are a few articles of clothing; I lay out the rest of the clothes on the ground and put on a pair of underwear, and as I'm getting dressed, I do a double-take and recognize my Sekigahara Wolves denim jacket; a trophy I received for winning the Inter High School Championship when I was seventeen. When I check the inside of the jacket, I find a tag with the name imprinted:

"Maria"

And beneath it the words were scribbled:

"Seibo (The Virgin)"

And above it the words were scribbled:

"Shoujo (The Virgin)"

And as I read these words, a wall in my mind is torn down with the remembrance of former things. I feel an almost alien hint of warmth kindle in my body as if I had been a cold corpse for decades, and as a single tear falls from my eye, I fall onto the floor and my gaze gravitates towards the inside of the mailbox. I see something inside, and slowly I muster the strength to get back up. When I gaze into the back of the box, I see the words painted in red:

"BETWEEN US THERE ARE TWO KNIVES

YOU USE ONE TO CUT YOURSELF, I USE THE OTHER TO SET YOU FREE."

Lying in the back of the mailbox is an envelope. When I open it, there's a small blue postcard, a key, and a rainbow-colored hairpin that's shaped like a laurel leaf. The postcard is from a seaside church in Okinawa, and on the back it says "All rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full."

Besides the denim jacket, there's a red shirt with a star-embroidered collar, a pair of blue jeans and a pair of black combat boots. I slip on the rest of my clothes, and exit through the broken security door to find the landlord's office in the hallway, I try the key and successfully make my way in; I flip on the light switch and find myself in a cramped space filled with file cabinets on two sides and a small wooden desk that's wedged between them. I climb over and check the desk drawers first; in the bottom drawer on the right-hand side is a hand-painted paper gift box, the depiction of which was reminiscent of a woodblock print of Princess Takiyasha. I remove the lid, and lying beside a neatly printed handwritten note was a shiny silver pistol with a long barrel. On the handwritten note it says:

"For Kisaragi-hime,

If ever you should find yourself in the presence of another stalker, do not hesitate to deliver him this gift from me."

As soon as I touch the gun, a loud bang erupts from somewhere outside, and I instinctively grab it and point the barrel towards the door. My hands tremble as my wrists struggle against the sheer weight of the thing; my heart is pounding heavy and loud like a beat from a kick drum, waiting for something to happen. After a minute or so, the coast appears to be clear; I tiptoe over to the door, and as a bead of sweat rolls off of my chin, I close it as quickly and quietly as possible.

"Dammit..." I mutter to myself.

When I look behind me, I notice that the file cabinet in the back left corner of the room had been opened slightly, but I couldn't be certain if it was like that when I came in here, because I wasn't paying close attention. Before I open it, I try the three other file cabinets, but all of them are locked, and they fail to respond to the office key. When I open the file cabinet, I'm greeted by a compendium of apartment records, sorted by floor and room, and when I find the row for the seventh floor, I sift through the files and find photocopies of the ID Cards of each of the tenants below their names, some of which are crossed out.

"Yu Morita."

In the picture, his face is hard to see; the upper half of his face is faded, seemingly because the copy machine did not accurately reproduce the photo or something like that, but without needing to squint, I am haunted by the silhouette of the man from the seventh floor. He's wearing the exact same button-up shirt in the picture. Not very far behind his, I find my own file; my last name is crossed out with marker, but when I pick it up, I can't seem to suss it out by holding the edge of the folder closer to the light. Suddenly, a small object falls out of the folder. When I glance at it, I see my own face. I can't believe it; it's my actual ID card.

"Redacted." I say, upon picking it up and noticing that my last name had been covered over on the card too. In my picture, I was wearing the exact same outfit that was sitting in the mailbox, waiting for me.

Another loud crash causes me to jump, this time from behind. Through the window, at the back of the office, I see that a balcony had burned, collapsed and plummeted several stories to the ground; I am startled by a charred corpse buried halfway underneath it, but I try to maintain my composure and take it as a sign that it's time to leave. As I make my way back toward the lobby, I notice a red emergency phone by the door, but when I open the box, the line is cut. I hear a large explosion from somewhere up above me and dart for the exit. As I reach for the door, a loud creaking noise emanates from the ground. I exit out into a small courtyard; I see white shapes glowing in the moonlight, strewn out around me. It's surreal how many bodies there are.

I slam the gate behind me, taking a turn down the street, where I find myself stumbling as I attempt to run along an almost paper-thin sidewalk. I hop to the gravel and maneuver around the few compact cars that are lined along the street. I hear a rumbling in the distance; the suicide apartments collapse into the ground, expelling a jet of dust into the air. In the ominous glow of the desolate city, the plume looks like a stream of ashes drifting towards heaven.