To You, Reading This

I am beyond saving.

I'm sorry.

I couldn't stop it.

So, I am leaving this behind.

I don't know if this will be of use to anyone.

In the first place, I don't even know if publishing this is the right thing to do.

Even so, I felt I had to leave it.

The first thing I found was a single child's drawing.

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【Document 1】

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A father. A mother. A girl.

And one more thing.

At first, I thought this drawing was just a scribble.

The faces of the father and mother are distorted.

The way the bodies are drawn is strangely off.

But it's a child's drawing.

If it were just that, nothing would be strange.

What bothered me was something else.

The father and mother are glued to their smartphones.

The daughter is smiling.

But the parents are different.

Both of them looked as if they were unable to take their eyes off something.

My desire to investigate the girl who drew this was the beginning of everything.

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【End of Document 1】

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As I investigated, I found several posts.

Anonymous accounts.

Someone's archive of deleted posts.

Text reposted to other sites.

There was no connection between the posters.

I didn't know where they lived, their ages, or anything.

However, there was a strange commonality.

"I saw a white room."

That's what was written in the first post I found.

A room surrounded by white walls on all four sides.

No windows.

No way to know how to get outside.

And in that room—

Something is placed.

However, the content written differed depending on the post.

One person wrote, "There was a chair."

Another wrote, "It was a desk."

Yet another wrote, "There was nothing."

At first, I thought they were just looking at different places.

But there was one thing.

Words common to every post.

"I am overlooking something."

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【Document 2】

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I also looked into the posters.

However, I learned almost nothing.

The accounts were gone.

The posts cut off halfway.

After the last entry, suddenly nothing remains.

I couldn't even verify it with the individuals themselves.

So I only gathered the information that was left.

That was all I could do.

Among the anonymous posts, there were several that mentioned a girl.

Tracing those posts, I found a single photograph.

A family photo of the girl and her parents.

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【End of Document 2】

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【Document 3】

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All three are wearing hiking clothes, lined up against a mountain backdrop.

The photo itself was quite old.

There are scuff marks, and the colors have faded.

At first, I thought it was just an ordinary old family photo.

But.

From the center to the upper right of the photo, there is a mark like a large tear.

Because of that, the faces and necks of the three were missing.

And one more thing.

I noticed an abnormality in the three people's faces.

Circular holes were open in everyone's faces.

They were far too similar to be a coincidence.

Holes created by damage to an old photo.

That's what I thought at first.

No, it was what could be seen deep inside those holes that was strange.

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It was a white room.

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Not the mountains.

Not the sky.

A white, inorganic space clearly different from the photo's background.

I could even see the corners where the walls met.

It was as if only the three people's faces had been cut out of the photo, peering into another room on the other side.

I checked the photo many times.

Was the image manipulated?

Did someone tamper with it later?

I investigated with those thoughts.

Unfortunately, I found no evidence that could conclude it was manipulated.

And I found one more post written about this photo.

"This photo, it looks like there's a white room on the other side... I wonder what happens if you look from the reverse side?"

At that time, I didn't understand the meaning of those words.

So I began to investigate not the photo itself, but

the phenomenon of "a white room being visible through holes in a photo."

Then, I found several anonymous posts.

There was no connection between the posters.

I didn't know where they lived or their ages.

None of them mentioned the photo.

However, there was a strange commonality.

I saw a white room in a dream.

A white room appears in my dreams.

I see the same room over and over.

They were all short posts.

Many were deleted, and almost no information remained.

At first, I thought it was just a coincidence.

That there are people who have similar dreams.

That was all.

And.

As I traced the posts further, I found a single name.

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【End of Document 3】