Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===Investigation Records of a Certain Pair of Twins 02===

When people fall asleep on the last train or on a train that begins deadheading, they go missing and never return. But for some reason, the fact that people are vanishing never ends up in the news.

The rumor had branched off into a number of forms, so some had a less frightening conclusion: a reunion with a forgotten first love, the return of a runaway pet, or the discovery of a lost treasure. But those derivations had spread outside Japan to places like Guam, so they had even less credibility.

It was already almost midnight.

Even so, Meinokawa Renge could not find her “sister” Higan.

“…”

Her confused mind went back over everything that had happened.

The monorail had come to a stop at one of Toy Dream 35’s switchyards. She had checked through every nook and cranny of every car and managed to pry open the doors even though the power was off, but she had not found her “sister” anywhere in the darkness.

The switchyard was large, but it was all indoors. There were no windows, so she had no idea if it was underground or a giant box dangling in midair.

A few possibilities had come to mind.

It was possible Higan had gotten off at another station while Renge slept.

It was possible Higan had woken up first at the switchyard and gone on alone.

It was possible it was Renge who had disappeared and not Higan.

“My phone…isn’t any help.”

She checked the cheap cellphone’s screen, but it had no bars for some reason. Her notebook-sized tablet also had no signal.

As she checked around the switchyard, she found wet footprints on the concrete ground. They looked like the footprints from the geta she wore, but she did not think she had run across her own footprints after wandering around too much. These footprints continuing further on were likely Higan’s.

(Although I don’t know if this was Higan herself or someone who stole her shoes.)

Even if it was a trap, it was definitely information leading to the next hint.

Renge gulped and slowly followed the wet footprints.

As she did, she noticed something odd about the scenery.

This was definitely a switchyard, but there was no sign of the maintenance equipment moving. There was not even a scent of machine oil and everything was covered in clear plastic as if being preserved as a crime scene.

Confused, she continued on, but then the hint came to an end.

The footprints led outside. And beyond the stainless steel door was the rain that seemed to be oozing from the night sky. The wet footprints vanished once they reached the wet roadway.

“Dammit!!”

Renge violently cursed and ran outside despite the rain. She searched around the door for some other hint, but she could not find any clue to her “sister’s” location. Panic grew inside her, but she did find something strange.

The city was entirely silent.

When she had visited before, the place had been filled with decorative lights twenty four hours a day, but not a single light bulb was on now. She also heard no passing cars and no talking people. There was no trash on the road and the entire place seemed entirely unlived in.

(Wh-what? What is going on here?)

To be blunt, this phenomenon was stranger than a national TV station’s power going out. This was a city of sightseeing, so the economy had a 100% chance of collapsing if they could not maintain a certain number of tourists.

Renge looked around in shock and found something else.

The billboard on a building wall was covered in a clear plastic sheet and duct tape just like the switchyard maintenance equipment. She looked to the text on the billboard through the raindrops on the plastic.

“Let’s give Toy Dream 35 a lovely name! In this new campaign, it’s your ideas that will name the city!!”

“What…is this?” muttered Renge.

Toy Dream 35 was Toy Dream 35. She had never heard of it having another name.

Some clearly odd things were mixed into the familiar city.

While unrealistically thinking it looked like a half-made city, she looked up and found something else that was odd.

A large retro flip clock was attached to a building wall. But the arrangement of numbers on the glow-in-the-dark display was clearly wrong. The date it showed was a few decades into the future.

The amount of deterioration and filth on a single building completely changed from floor to floor.

Each of the roadside trees had grown drastically different amounts.

The scenery was a complete mess, as if someone had torn up several different photos and cobbled them together.

Renge thought for a bit and then looked down at the notebook-sized tablet that was acting as a light source. She looked for any rumors that sounded related to this.

She used her fingertip to slide from one article to another.

Then she found a rumor that fit the current situation.

A writer for a town information magazine had gathered several ghost stories he had heard about in Toy Dream 35.

“I started to drift off on the train and suddenly woke up to find I was the only one onboard. I was too scared to see if anyone was in the driver’s compartment up front. As I trembled in fear, I blinked and suddenly found myself back on the train full of other passengers. I thought I had just woken up from a dream, but what if I have been wandering through a dream ever since? Or…?”

Another was an excerpt from “Strange Reports from the Official Records”, a popular collection of tidbits that ran in a weekly magazine.

“As the planner viewed the scene, he complained into his cellphone: ‘Your huge-ass sign is in the way, so no one can see our advertisement from the station.’ When the construction workers checked the plans back in their office, they all tilted their heads. There shouldn’t have been a giant sign there, so what was this guy seeing?”

Where had Meinokawa Higan gone?

No.

That was not the appropriate question.

“Where am I right now?”

This was an empty city.

All the lights were out in a place where the lights should never have gone out.

Strange things which should not have been found in the real Toy Dream 35 were mixed into the scenery.

What proof did she have that she was really in Toy Dream 35?