Chapter
1 – Connected for Love
The muffled noise of a woman wakes
up a man from his sleep.
“Huh? What is it? Where am I?” he
says as he sits up from the solid black and red checkered floor, “I feel so light-headed.”
He keeps hearing the sound of a muffled
woman making noise while pulling at his left arm. The man tries to open his
eyes but is unable to. He tries to use his right hand to touch his eyes and feels
stitches on them.
“What the hell?! Why are there
stitches covering my eyes? What’s going on?”
The woman is trying to say words,
but her she can’t.
“Stop pulling at me. Where’s my
hand?! Why are our arms attached by stitching? Is there something on your mouth
that’s stopping you from talking? Let me see if I can remove it.”
The woman knows she can’t tell him
anything, so she lets him touch her mouth to show him that her mouth is stitched
shut.
“Your mouth is stitched shut like my
eyes. What about…” He moves his hands to her eyes to find that her eyes aren’t stitched
shut. “You can see and can’t talk while I can talk but not see?”
“Mm.”
“I wonder how we got here, but I guess
we’ll have to wait a while to find that answer. How are we going to talk effectively?
Oh. How about you say mm for yes and mm-mm for no? Is that okay?”
“Mm.”
“Good. Are there any cameras around
us?”
“Mm-mm.”
“Anyone around us?”
“Mm-mm.”
“Is this just an empty room?”
“Mm.”
“Okay, so we’re not being monitored.
My name is Bernardo. Write your name with your finger on my or I guess our arm,
so I know what your name is…Your name is Simona?”
“Mm.”
“It’s a pretty name.”
Simona blushes a bit at the compliment.
“So, let’s find a way out, Simona.
Lead us to the door and I’ll do my best to follow.”
Bernardo stands up with Simona as
she leads him out of the room. On the way out of the room, Bernardo walks into
a wall.
“Mm!”
Despite Bernardo hitting the wall,
Simona is the one who feels the pain, which confuses her. Bernardo, on the
other hand, is unaware of this.
“Oops. Move our arm in the
direction you want me to move next time.”
“Mm.”
Simona and Bernardo walk into a
somewhat cramped hallway with parts of the wall and ceiling jutting out in weird
places.
“I don’t know if this is accurate,
but it feels like this hallway is here to help us get used to walking with each other
because of how much we’re moving around.”
“Mm.”
They make it through the room and
enter a rooming of saw blades on the wall. The wall juts out just like the previous
room and unlike the previous room, this room has blood on the ground and on the
blades.
“Do I hear saw blades?”
“Mm!”
“Well, just be careful leading us
through this.
“Mm…”
“We can do this. I trust you.”
Strengthened by Bernardo’s support,
Simona carefully makes her way through the spinning blades while making sure
none of them touch Bernardo. After going further into the room, a solid wall
comes down and blocks the way they came in. A wall of saw blades then begins to
close in on them from behind.
“What was that? Are there blades
behind us now?”
“Mm!”
“Try not to panic. Just keep going.”
“Mm…”
Simona hurries while making sure that
Bernardo is safe. It gets more difficult as the paths become narrower and
narrower the further they go. The path becomes so narrow that Simona accidentally
touches a blade.
“Ow! Did I touch a blade?”
“Mm-mm!”
“I’m fine. I’ll be careful next
time.”
Bernardo still doesn’t understand
how pain works in this new place, so Simona concentrates on keeping herself
safe so that nothing happens to her. They then have to go down an even narrow
path that they have to move their bodies sideways to go through. Simona tries
to get Bernardo to move his body sideways by touching his chest and shoulder.
“What? Do you want me to move
sideways?”
“Mm!”
“Alright.”
They move into the narrow path just
in time as the wall of blades closes in on them. Broken pieces of metal start
flying everywhere as the wall of blades cut through the blades on the walls.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Mm!”
The door ahead of them opens by
itself as they get closer to it. Once they make it through it, a wall closes
off the door and protects them from the blades.
“Whew! That was a close one. Huh. I
don’t feel a wound on my hand. That’s strange. I guess you could say that about
this entire situation, eh?”
“Mm.”
Simona looks at their connected arm
to see that there isn’t a wound where she touched the blade. She tries not to
think too much about their situation and looks around the room to see what they’re
dealing with now. The next room is a sort of maze with holes in the way. Simona
looks through the holes to see the exit on the other side of the room, but she
is startled by something that passes through the maze.
“Mm!”
“Is something wrong?”
Simona puts her finger on Bernado’s
mouth, and he shakes his head, so she knows he understands to stay quiet. She
keeps him close to her as she makes her way through the maze.
Hearing something in the maze,
Bernardo whispers, “Is someone walking this way? Are there other people here?”
Simona hears something, but can’t
make it out, and trusts Bernardo as she hides in a corner of the maze. Sure
enough, something passes by them. Catching on that whatever in the maze is
dangerous, Bernardo keeps an ear out for noises.
“It’s gone now. I don’t hear
anything else.”
Taking the opportunity, Simona
moves through the maze and hiding when Bernardo hears something. This way of
advancing gets them through the maze and into the next room.
“Okay, we made it. Nice teamwork.” Bernardo
holds out his hand and Simona claps it. “What’s next?”
“Mm-mm.”
“Nothing? There’s nothing in this
room?”
“Mm-mm.”
“Is there something dangerous in
the room?”
“Mm-mm.”
“That’s good, I guess. Let’s take a
breather then.”
This “rest” room is filled with red
couches and pink rugs that make it seem like a comfortable place to be in. Unlike
the other rooms, the walls are red, and the ceiling is pink and black. Simona sits
down with Bernardo on the couch and relaxes as there is no exit to the room
other than the way they came in. A hole then forms on the ceiling and a woman
in a creepy mask and black and white hair creeps out of it.
“Mm!”
“What is it?”
“Hello, there you two!” the woman
says with cheerfulness, “I’m so glad that you made it here.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Ms. Mara. I’m the one
who brought you two love birds here.”
“Why?”
“To foster true love of course!
True love is found in the greatest of challenges and suffering. I want to see
true love bloom! During my life, I was unable to find true love, so I’ve made
it my mission to have others do what I couldn’t.”
“Why are we like tied together like
this?”
“To challenge you to trust each
other. There are three challenges that test your combined ability to help you
grow together with a reward at the end.”
“Why are there three challenges and
what are our rewards?”
“There are three challenges not
because it’s an optimal number because there are three words in ‘I love you!’,
so every time you complete the three challenges you say to your partner, ‘I love
you’. Your rewards are answers from me and a new ability to help you along the
way such as this!”
Two appendages come from the hole
Ms. Mara is in and pierces through Bernado’s and Simona’s head then quickly retreat
into the hole.
“What-what did you do to us?”
“Nothing major. All I did was allow
you to react to each other’s movements better. You can eventually get the ability
to hear each other’s thoughts later. How exciting is that?”
“How can we escape?”
“Just keep going and you’ll find
out! You might not know it yet, but you two lovebirds have a past, and you will
find that as out as well.”
“We know each other?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to find that
out later. Goodbye!”
Ms. Mara disappears back into the
hole in the ceiling. The room shifts so that the door they came in is replaced
with a different one.
“She barely explained that much.
How did she kidnap us and put us together? Why us? How is she controlling
everything? Who were those dangerous people in the other room?”
“Mm.”
“Come on, Simona. There’s no use
sitting around here anymore. Let’s find some answers.”
“Mm…”
“Don’t worry about what’s going on.
We made it through the first challenges, and we can make it through the rest. I’ll
trust you and help you in whatever way I can if you do the same. Deal?”
Bernardo holds out his hand and
after some thought, Simona shakes it.
“Mm.”
“We’re in business then. Nothing
can stop us now.”
“Mm!”
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