[50] The Strange Study Group (2)
Nade immediately showed interest. But the class bell rang and the conversation was cut off.
"Teacher's coming. Let's get in for now."
Shirone put thoughts of the research club aside and focused on class. The day ended with the 5 p.m. lecture. He grabbed his bag with Nade and left the classroom.
"First, let's hear Iruki out."
Nade led Shirone to the research club. When they arrived at the magic warehouse Istas, Shirone stared at the building in a daze. The Istas he'd seen before had been clustered like a colony; now it rose as multiple towers.
"It's amazing every time I see it."
"There are eighty-nine buildings, so the patterns are endless. I hope Iruki's awake."
The interior of Istas had changed as much as its exterior. Still, Nade threaded through the complex corridors and headed for the lab.
"I've wondered for a while—how do you find your way? If the layout keeps changing, marking things wouldn't help, right?"
"Heh. We don't use crude tricks. We literally memorize everything. Long ago, one of the seniors in the club reconstructed Istas's blueprint."
Shirone's expression turned to surprise. It wasn't just drawing a single building's plans; it was understanding the mechanism of a complex structure with enormous repeating patterns.
Nade pointed to the corridor ceiling.
"See those three dots? That means this is Room Three. If it's Room Three, check the iron door of the third warehouse to see its color. Blue, right? Then the place's name becomes 'Room Three — Blue.'"
Shirone followed Nade's finger with his gaze.
"Once you confirm that, count how many warehouses connect to this place. There are four junctions, so four warehouses. Now the important part: assign the room number to X, convert the color to a number Y, the number of warehouses to Z, then plug them into the equation."
"What equation?"
"An equation the seniors made after analyzing Istas's pattern. Plug in the numbers and you get an answer to two decimal places. That tells you the direction. Memorize that one equation and you'll never get lost in Istas. Think of it as a mathematical master key."
Shirone wondered whether a club had to go to such lengths for research. Istas boasted an immense pattern—but the seniors had calculated the whole thing into a single equation. For the first time, Shirone felt there was something in this research club others didn't know.
"But wouldn't you have to recalculate every time a warehouse changes? That'd take forever."
"Only at first. With daily practice you get used to it. It becomes a routine. After about three months, you'll have a feel for it."
Shirone nodded, understanding.
"That's incredible. A formula as an escape map for a maze."
"Apparently one of the founding members was a servant-class talent like Iruki. Iruki said the equation was unbelievably beautiful when he first saw it. Anyway, this is top-secret. If the master key leaked, it'd be a disaster."
Shirone was grateful to Nade for telling him something so serious. At the same time, he sensed Nade was subtly hoping he'd join the club.
A place built from generations of unproductive, obsessive seniors. That was the Paranormal Psychoscience Research Club hidden in the Istas labyrinth.
They walked for about ten minutes and reached the lab. Like before, the sign hung crooked. Opening the door produced another cloud of dust. This time Shirone had the sense to cover his mouth and avoided catastrophe.
"Iruki, we're here."
Nade called without looking. Iruki, who'd been scribbling formulas on the blackboard, turned around. He smiled when he saw Shirone.
"Hey, Shirone. What brings you here? I didn't think you'd come back to such a gloomy place."
Nade laughed, remembering an old incident.
"Ha! Yeah, that's true. But now I want to join."
"Oh?"
Iruki's eyes widened in surprise. He didn't expect a model student like Shirone to want to join.
"Joining's one thing, but I also came with a problem. I was hoping to get some counseling from you guys."
"A genius who beat me has a problem. Even without hearing it, I know it'll be huge."
Shirone didn't mind Iruki's teasing—he already knew his personality well enough.
"Since the Speed Gun exam, something's changed. I've been having nightmares and I wake up feeling chilled. Sometimes it feels like someone is beside me. Could this be related to the supernatural or the paranormal? You two know a lot about this, right?"
Nade and Iruki's eyes lit up. As explorers and critics of the unknown, Shirone's words piqued their curiosity.
"You came to the right place. Come on, sit."
Nade dusted off the sofa and a tremendous puff rose up. Shirone flailed his hands in alarm. He finally realized the abnormal pileup of dust wasn't dust at all—it was Iruki's chalk dust.
"No, I'll just stand. Please don't do anything in this room. Or at least clean up sometimes."
"Come now. Don't yield to mere fine dust, first client of the research club. Tell us your issue."
Nade and Iruki pulled up chairs and sat, crossing their legs with the arrogance of experts. Shirone, exasperated, nonetheless spoke with the earnestness of someone desperate for answers.
"So, I've been having this dream—"
Shirone explained the recurring dream and the strange sensations that came over him at odd times.
"I don't know what's happening. It's not like a ghost entered my body, right? Have you heard of anything like this?"
An unexpected silence followed.
Shirone swallowed. He'd expected at least a joke, but their expressions were unusually serious.
"What's wrong? Are you two messing with me?"
Nade awkwardly scratched his eyebrow.
"Well, um… now that you mention it, it is pretty—"
"What do you mean? Explain in detail."
"The sensation you feel—shivery, like something unseen is there—that's what psychical researchers call a 'chosanggam.'"
"Chosanggam? Psychical research?"
The unfamiliar term tightened Shirone's nerves. Nade pressed his temple, thinking, then gave an example.
"Two hundred years ago, a scholar experimented on a condemned prisoner. They called it soul transmission—the hypothesis was that if the soul were material, you could ionize it electrically. The method was to lock the prisoner in a sealed conductive metal box and pass a current through it. It was too inhumane, so the experiment was halted midway. The prisoner survived but was unconscious for a month. The problem came after he woke: he knew everything that had happened outside while he was unconscious."
"No way. How could that be?"
"Strange, right? The scholar proposed the ionization of the soul. If you electrically decomposed the soul, the resulting electromagnetic effects could pull information from the world into the prisoner. The mainstream academy called him a madman. There were even rumors the prisoner bribed the guards to get information to save his life."
"Wow. They really did experiments like that."
"Mainstream scholars don't accept it, but in psychical science it's still debated. And religious groups officially recognize trance states, so the ionization idea isn't entirely dismissed. Anyway, the sensation that prisoner felt is what this field calls chosanggam."
A chill ran down Shirone's spine. The word chosanggam linked with his nightmares, and suddenly the possibility seemed real.
"Now it's time for my conclusion."
Shirone snapped out of his thoughts and looked up. He was curious to see how the logical Iruki would take it. Together they made quite a team in this field.
"But first, a question. You said the chosanggam started after the Speed Gun exam, right? Your photon output that day was different from usual. You don't have to tell me secrets, but knowing it might help."
Shirone agreed with Iruki. To analyze results, you needed the cause. He hadn't intended to keep the events from his friends; it had just been chaotic at the time.
He recounted in detail how he'd reached the realm of Infinity: the revelations he found along the journey through the sequence and the transcendence of numbers he'd unknowingly achieved under the pressure of confrontation.
Iruki nodded. He'd heard the concept before from his father. It looked like Shirone had opened a forbidden door.
"An Immortal Function, then."
"Immortal Function?"
"I heard about it when I was young. An absolute function that can unlock all the world's secrets. But I think it's very dangerous. 'All' ultimately equates to 'nothing' phenomenologically."
Hearing it placed in the same context as Etella, Shirone realized anew how risky his attempt had been.
"I only thought about it; I didn't expect to actually go that far. I never want to experience it again."
Iruki waved a finger as if to dismiss him.
"On the contrary. Like I said, the Immortal Function is a mental state already studied academically. The mind isn't the same as knowledge. Just because you understand something intellectually doesn't mean anyone can do what you did. Anyway, hearing your story makes me feel better. If you could beat me, you're probably at Immortal Function level. Heh heh."
Iruki's flippant dismissal of something even Etella warned about made him plainly eccentric. Yet his attitude oddly reassured Shirone.
"Hmm. So it was the Immortal Function. I see. That helps put things in order."
"Really? You've found an answer?"
Iruki turned his head and stared at the wall as if tracing formulas on a blank surface.
"I'm not specialized in psychical stuff, so I don't know chosanggam in detail. But those nightmares you have—I have a rough idea what they are and why you're having them."
Shirone clenched his fist without realizing it.
"Tell me. I'll listen to anything. I'm ready even for a ridiculous story."
"First, dreams distort or exaggerate memory. But your dream was probably a direct projection of memory. It's called psychological regression—like someone in hypnosis vividly recalling their past. If your nightmare is that type, then—"
"If, if that's the case?"
"What you saw was probably… the cosmos."
"The… cosmos?"
Shirone knew what "cosmos" meant: a vast reality beyond this one. But knowledge ended there. Who really knew it? Since ancient times humanity knew the cosmos existed, but no one had actually seen it.
The only race that had experienced space was the dragons. Six hundred eighty years ago, the saint dragon Gramish decided to leave the planet and set out for space in front of representatives of each race.
But it crashed back to the surface after thirteen hours. The dragon's corpse was said to be in a pitiful state.
The representatives followed Gramish's dying instruction to divide the remains and return them to their homelands. The relics they obtained later played a major role in developing cosmology.
"Are you saying what I dreamed of… was the cosmos?"