The elevator reached the sixth
He walked toward the far end of the corridor, where a well-kept staircase led upwards, as the woman followed, as if she was trying to regain some semblance of control over her situation.
"Why didn't we take the elevator to the seventh floor?"
Yuuta asked curiously like the cat that had lost its nine lives, not even having one live left after s/he became curious.
Maria adjusted her glasses with her middle finger as her right lens flashes for a moment, with the edges of her lips curving upwards for a moment, before she regained her cold, poker expression.
"...Due to precautions"
She answered simply and smoothly.
Meanwhile, Yuuta scratched the back of his head as he easily saw through Maria's cold attempts. He smiled inwardly before adjusting his question once more.
"Why doesn't the elevator go beyond the 6th floor?"
Maria's expression shook as she froze on her spot. She looked back to Yuuta with a startled look that asked the question 'How?'
The boy wryly smiled before he raised two fingers.
Maria furrowed her eyesbrows in confusion as she wondered what the boy was up to exactly. However her thought process was interrupted as she reeled in shock.
"There are two possibilities to why it does not go beyond the 6th floor"
He turned his hand into a fist before raising his first finger while slightly shaking it.
"One, the elevator was created that way due to a malfunction or insufficient funds"
He then proceeded with raising his second finger.
"Two, the elevator was created that way since it would be dangerous if someone by accident reached the 7th floor instead of the 6th."
Maria, who had held her breath listened intensly to the boys words.
He paused for a moment, letting the weigh of his words sink in.
"Option number one is highly unlikely, due to the prestiege of the building that wouldn't want a bad reputation to hit it due to a malfunctioning elevator. It is highly unlikely that such a case would occur. Only around 4.35%"
With his two fingers that were up; his index and middle, he slowly closed one finger.
"Option number two seems plausible at first, but upon inspection it is highly unlikely. The reason is because it is simply inefficient."
"If they really wanted to stop someone from going to the 7th floor by accident or even on purpose without authorization, they would have put a policy of a severe punishment that would befall whoever went there without authorization, whether by accident or on purpose. They could also purposely put on an automatic system that prevented the elevator from reaching the floor unless that person held a specific card or DNA print. That has a percentage of happening of around 23.7%. "
"This would have been a simple solution instead of completely removing the elevator. It would be ridiculous if they removed it because of that, except if there was something of great significance on the floor that they couldn't risk exposing"
He sighed slowly.
"So its none of them?" Maria asked attentively, her cold mask slowly melting.
The boy's eyes slowly opened before he gazed at her expressionlessly. However to Maria, who had seen all types of gazes on her since her birth whether love, obsession, hatred, fury, pity, she shivered as she saw the look in the boys eyes.
There was.... nothing.
Not emotion, not pity, not lust,.... not even emptiness.
There was simply nothing.
He simply answered her without removing his eyes from her.
"There is a third option"
He raised one finger after he had closed his two other previous fingers with a slight tilt of his head.
"It was created to stall time as a precaution for an ambush"
Maria trembled for a moment at the boys reactions but rapidly regained her composure. The perceptive eyes of the boy didn't miss her reaction before he smiled and continue.
"With that, we can formulate two things; either you have a traitor between you that you cannot identify, and thus are taking this as a precaution so that you can filter all individuals. The second one.... is a secret"
"But in both cases, it seems you have prepared emergency exits"
He held his chin with his fingers as he looked at the ceiling, still maintaining his smile.
"The emergency exits are unlikely to be using elevators. As such, they are either hidden in a wall, or even hidden somewhere, such as under a couch, where a hidden mechanism in the room would be activated to open the escape route. It would seem unrealistic if you had hidden the mechanism near the emergency exit, as the pursuers would have a high change of around 85%of detecting it early on."
"Thus that leaves us with many possibilities where they can be hidden, but we cannot judge before taking a look, can we now?"
The boy who was almost talking to himself shook off these thoughts before taking a look at the woman in front of her.
The woman had her mouth agap as the clipboard slowly slipped from her grasp, landing on the ground with a 'Tink!'.
The woman however payed it no heed as she held her mouth with her right hand and pointed at the boy like he was a horrifying monster.
"H-how?!" She tried to speak in her cold voice but only managed to mutter this out. In response, the boy merely smiled before he walked up to her
The woman slowly took a few steps backwards as the boy continue walking towards her.
Her hands trembled and she clenched her fists, as her breathing became erratic. Her back was against the wall, and her heartbeat hitched, as the boy continue his advanced with no signs of stopping.
'What kind of monster is he?' The woman wondered, as she couldn't believe the intelligence of the boy. It was like he had pre-read all the information before.
She entertained the idea for a moment, but it was simply impossible. The information couldn't be released, no, it simply was not known by anyone except a select individuals.
She narrowed her eyes as she considered that the boy was affiliated with the spy, but she doubted the spy knew about the emergency escapes, since the authorities had yet to ambush the building. This suggested that they still had their guards up for potential escape routes, and had not found any.
'Then how?'
She wondered before she shook her thoughts out of head and looked at her current situation.
The boy was approaching, and she got the feeling that this was the last day of life. Unknowingly, a tear slid down from her left eye, as she suprisingly touched her face.
'Why am I crying?'
Still touching her face, she realized that another tear slid down.
She reflected on the days she lived, she remembered her traumatic childhood, her broken heart, and her ruthlessness in her rise of power, the despair she felt, the darkness that she experienced.
Her life flashed through her eyes, and what came after despair?
Acceptance.
Acceptance of the very despair you ran from.
Acceptance from the hatred you felt.
Acceptance from the self-disgust you felt.
Acceptance from the unforgiving world.
Acceptance of your existence.
Acceptance of everything !
The woman's eyes gained a glimmer of acceptance, as she wiped the tear with her sleeve before looking at the boy with a resolute defiance.
She closed her eyes comfortably. If she died then so be it, if she lived, she would work again to walk the path she had chosen.
She had chosen it, and she would continue it to the end, even if it meant the end of her life.
The boy finally reached her.
Death flashed in her mind, as she felt the cold touch of it on her spine, slowly crawling. Suddenly opening her eyes, she gasped as she fell to the marble floor.
Trembling with widened eyes she touched where her neck was.
'W-what was that?' She wondered.
For a moment she felt an illusion of her head being severed from her body. The woman trembled as she looked with moist and wide eyes at the boy who smiled softly at her. To her however, he looked like a mysterious, unfathomable monster.
She had thought her life had left her, when she realized that she did not want to die. She was afraid of everything, afraid of her problems, afraid of the world, afraid of people, afraid of death.
She was afraid. Extremely so.
She was terrified even more when the boy squatted in front of her with his head tilting. Roughly, he grabbed her hair and she reacted with a 'kyaa!', as he peeked into her eyes, feeling her warm breath on his nose.
Pain enveloped Maria's lower lip as she realized he had bit it, drawing blood from it.
Her eyes widened in shock and fear, before the boy licked the now bleeding lips. He then looked at her right eye, licking her dried tears before he licked her cornea.
"You don't want to die?" He asked dismissively as he gave the impression that he already knew the answer to his question.
The woman gulped a mouthful of saliva before she nodded her head slowly.
"But who said I gave you a choice?"
The woman froze, as tears slid down her eyes silently. The boy, as if laminating her expression, smiled as he stuck his index and thumb into the woman's mouth.
He grabbed her slippery tongue with them, and pulled it out before casually commenting.
"You know, I really love your expression. I want to see you in more pain and crying more. I really want to pluck out those beautiful eyes for your."
Saliva dropped from her tongue onto the boys finger, but he paid it no heed. He continued gazing at the woman for a while before he let go of her tongue. Licking her saliva of his fingers, he stood up as he motioned to her to do the same.
Maria however, had an emotional breakdown as she started sniffing at first, before she started sobbing.
A extremely sadistic smile formed at the edges of the boy, but he regained his composure as quick as he had almost lost it.
When she had finished sobbing, she picked up her glasses the boy had laid on the ground before she tried to fix her cold face. It was clear, however, from her puffy red eyes that she had been crying.
She slowly stood up, only to slip when she tried to walk on her feet, and only after she leaned on the wall was she able to stand up. She brought a handkerchief from her pocket a wiped off the fresh blood on her lips.
She then looked at Yuuta's indifferent eyes, before she took a deep breath to calm down her mind before speaking with a slight bow.
"P-lease, follow me sir"
Yuuta nodded his head.
She walked with her hips swaying, still attempting to calm down her turbulent heart. Despite all he had done to her, she felt her heartbeat increasing dramatically when she was around him.
'No way... am I actually more of a masochist than I thought?'
Perhaps if she knew that he had intended to **** his new toy to to death but was not really in the mood, maybe she would have had a change of heart.