File 06: 385D
I was led here by a number I was cursed with.
“...I don’t quite understand what you are trying to say.”
“I don’t entirely understand what has happened to either.”
I was in a small non-chain café a bit away from the station. I was speaking with the woman who was the only other custor.
Yes.
I did not know what it ant, but I knew it had so aning. It had always been the sa. This was yet another checkpoint in a chain of events.
“385D. That number has been around for a long ti now. The very first ti, I received a piece of junk mail with that number on it. When I searched the block at column 38 and row 5D on the map, I found a plastic plate. When I left my things with the hotel cloak room, I was #385. The D ca from the word ‘deposit’. That indicated my things were to be treated as more valuable than normal luggage.”
After that, 385D was constantly following around. When I found a ti bomb and had no idea what to do, I randomly entered 385D and the tir stopped. I had once used a laser at an angle of incidence of 38.5 degrees for a data transmission. The D referred to the wavelength of the light used in the transmission. It stood for “deep blue”.
“So while you were chasing after 385D or being chased by 385D, you made your way to this café?”
“You don’t believe . Well, look at this table’s production number,” I said as I pointed at the small sticker on the side of the table.
I did not need to speak it out loud.
“It says 3-85-D.”
“That’s 385D. That number is everywhere.”
I had hesitated over whether I should sit across from her, but the café’s owner had glared at suspiciously while I remained awkwardly standing. I quickly sat down due to the pressure of his gaze. The woman did not seem to particularly mind that I sat across from her.
“Tell . What do you have? From everything that has happened to so far, I must assu that you have sothing related to the full picture of 385D. It might just be a small piece. I want you to tell what that is. What am I to do next?’
“Why do you think I have sothing like that?”
“I t you while following 385D.”
“What if I told you I didn’t know anything about it?” she said smoothly.
Her voice gave a feeling that she would act the sa even while viewing the end of the world.
“Then I would give up here. But I doubt it will co to that. I’ve managed to co this far. Whether I want it to or not, 385D always gives the answer. I could probably make it through a university entrance exam or the lock on the entrance of the White House using 385D. That is how my life has worked ever since that day.”
The look in the woman’s eyes changed ever so slightly.
She sipped at a coffee I did not know the na of and said, “I see. This is very interesting, but how did you get to the address of this café? Its address is quite different from 385D.”
“That was a tricky one. I started with 385 and D. If you want to use D as a number, you must switch over to base 16. That also ans you cannot think of 385 directly as 385. If you convert the base 16 number 385D into base 10...”
The woman’s expression did not change as I gave my rapid explanation. She had said it was interesting, but she did not look particularly interested. Well, whatever. I explained the process of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
“...And after all that 385D is transford into 12-9-41 which just so happens to point to this café’s address. And the sole custor in the café was you, sitting at a table with the production number 3-85-D.”
“I see. It does indeed seem you have gotten wrapped up in sothing quite strange. But it seems to that initial junk mail might have had so ill intentions behind it.”
“So what is the next 385D you have for ? Do you know?”
“I called this strange, but I never said it was 385D I found strange. In fact, 385D itself is aningless.”
“...?”
I fell silent and the woman continued.
“Let check sothing first. You have been followed around by the exact number 385D this entire ti, right? It hasn’t been so different number. It has been 385D the entire ti. And the consistency of the coincidences is what you find so odd, right?”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been explaining to you this entire ti! 385D is everywhere around !!”
“But 385D, 3.85D, and 38-5-D all seem like completely different numbers to .”
“What...?”
“They are, aren’t they? When working, do you see a monthly wage of 55,000 yen and a monthly wage of 5,500 yen to be exactly the sa? And setting 385 aside, what even is D? The number loses all aning as soon as you throw a letter of the alphabet in there. If you insist on it being a base 16 number like before, it could work, but it hasn’t been consistently base 16, now has it?” The woman raised her index finger. “What clinched it was this café’s address. You forced a number that clearly had nothing to do with 385D into fitting the pattern. You redid the calculations as many tis as it took to make it fit. That is the truth behind this. You are not being followed around by 385D. Soone has led you to connect every number you see to 385D.”
“Led ...? So 385D was never really there...?” I said blankly.
With her index finger still raised, the woman said, “What I was calling strange was that ‘sothing’ has trapped you in a mindset where you are obsessed with 385D. I do not know what the person who did this is after or how they did it, but if they can make 385D fit completely different things, it could be used for a cult or sothing. They could claim that everything in the world is related to ‘sothing’ and all your problems can be solved by relying on that ‘sothing’. You might have gotten caught in so experint being run by so dangerous people.”
“Wait, this is way more than just being followed around by a number. What is this? What is happening to ? What have I gotten involved in!?”
“Listen.” The woman stood up with a light smile on her face. “I was just killing ti after having finished a ‘job’. I suppose I can solve this 385D puzzle of yours to help kill so more ti.”
“What do you an by ‘job’? Oh, right. Who exactly are you?”
“It may be due to 385D’s influence that you got so far into this conversation without asking that.” The woman paused for a mont. “Let’s just say the ‘jobs’ that seem to follow around have much deeper aning than so number.”
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