A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 109

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 109.

Caroline did as Aiden instructed and made use of the Basement Passage. After descending the stairs, she lit a Lantern in the Basement, which seemed even darker than usual today.
She quickened her pace, passing through the straight corridor, then climbed the slippery stairs and pushed the ceiling open—the night sky appeared as the door opened. Memories surfaced, unbidden and vivid, of the first time she’d come here, following the figure of a young Aiden.
And so she reached the Maze.
‘How long will I wander in here?’
The internal structure of the Maze had been different the first time Caroline entered it and the second time. This matched what Aiden had testified—that the interior changed after several days had passed.
Only a day had elapsed, but surely the inside would have transformed.
Caroline stepped into the Maze, lantern held tight, every nerve taut.
Contrary to her fears, the Maze retained the same structure she’d explored before meeting Ephros yesterday. Following the crude map she’d sketched in her Notebook, Caroline arrived without difficulty at the fountain shaped like a weeping boy.
And immediately made her way to the blue iron door she’d seen the day before.
She slid Friedman’s Diary through the ornate slot in the door, then inserted the Blue Jeweled Key she’d found in the Peppermint Candy Tin.
Click.
The door opened with a smooth sound.
‘Will I be able to take this key with me?’
Everything that happened here would become a memory.
Standing before the open door, Caroline struggled to extract the key, but it would not turn back. In the end, she gave up and had to move forward beyond the threshold.
And then,
Bang!
“!”
The loud sound startled Caroline, and she spun around.
The door had slammed shut with a rough sound, but when she turned back, only ivy-covered walls formed a dead end.
In that moment, a conversation she’d had with the young Aiden’s phantom flashed through her mind.
“The First Space is kind. Even if you enter, as long as you know the way back, it gives you the chance to escape anytime. But the Second Space…… it’s a place where giving up is impossible.”
“Impossible to give up? What do you mean by that?”
“No matter how hard it gets, you can’t turn back. You can’t retreat.”
The path back had vanished in an instant. Now she could only think of moving forward.
‘It was always supposed to be this way, anyway.’
But still, why such a harsh design?
Bewildered but urgent, Caroline quickened her pace. Before her appeared a red door.
“Wow…….”
It was merely a mechanism for escape from the game, yet impossibly beautiful.
Shaped like Friedman’s door but painted entirely red, its outer edges were carved with bas-reliefs of gaudy toys—darts, a clown’s hat, Juggling balls, firecrackers.
“This must be Will’s.”
Caroline withdrew a red Diary from her bag and slid it through the slot. Then she took out Will’s Key, obtained while trapped in the warehouse, and inserted it into the lock on the iron door.
Click!
If she simply stepped through and left now, this place would become a dead end, as if it had never existed. Yet even as the door opened, Caroline paused to study the exquisitely carved door before moving on.
She repeated the same process with Ephros’s door and James’s door.
As the contents of her bag dwindled, Caroline felt something strange stirring in her chest. There was relief that it was almost over, but the procedure itself felt like returning memories shared with them.
‘I surrender the Diary, insert the Key…… and as if it never happened, the Space itself disappears too.’
It felt like denying the existence of their personalities, the fact that she had met them. As if she were truly abandoning them, a sharp pain bloomed in her chest.
‘Abandoning them is the right choice, though.’
For her own safety, hadn’t she made a different choice than the bold promises she’d made at the beginning?
Caroline moved forward with a bitter expression.
Before her now stood a pitch-black iron door. Unlike the doors before it, this one was smooth—bearing only paint, no bas-reliefs or carved details whatsoever.
‘It’s painful.’
It seemed to symbolize the hollow Aiden, and Caroline squatted before the door for a long while, running her hands over it.
Whether it was intensifying guilt before her final exit, or whether each device had become cruelly vivid—the act of placing the black Diary of Aiden in the daytime into this door, of inserting the Key and stepping through, felt like a vivid display of Caroline’s choice to abandon him.
But in the end, she crossed the threshold.
Turning her back on another dead end, Caroline faced the final gate.
‘This one is different.’
Here stood an ordinary iron door, save for one detail: a corroded bronze arm protruded from its center.
‘Somewhat grotesque.’
The hand, extended as if powerless, looked both like a desperate plea for help and like an arm offered in proposal. Caroline understood that she needed to transfer the Ring from her own thumb to the statue’s index finger.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘Why?’
She couldn’t discern what emotion it was, even to herself.
Yet the moment she looked at that hand, her breath caught. If she left the Ring inserted and passed through the door just like this, her mood would plummet into something altogether dreadful.
‘Is it because of that hand?’
No—it was the overall character of this Maze’s Second Space.
It felt like the space itself was asking whether she would truly abandon him. Like watching Caroline, her resolve to save Aiden drained away, withered to nothing.
‘I hate this space itself.’
She knew she was passing her guilt onto someone else’s shoulders.
Caroline set down her bag and sank to the floor before the iron door. The sky growing steadily brighter, the sound of crickets drifting in from beyond the Maze—sitting still amid all of it, a question surfaced in her mind.
‘Why would Aiden at Three in the Morning be last?’
Friedman, Will, Ephros, James, Daytime Aiden.
Caroline understood that their order hadn’t been particularly meaningful.
Yet she was curious why the final door before leaving belonged to Aiden at Three in the Morning. The most important one was the game’s Target of Conquest—the true self.
Wasn’t that Daytime Aiden?
That he appeared fifth seemed odd. Even if he didn’t stand at the front, shouldn’t he have occupied the last place?
Caroline treasured Aiden at Three in the Morning most of all, but in the game’s logic…….
‘It’s meaningless thinking.’
Caroline quickly shook her head, brushing away the stray thoughts. Then she began to recall everything that had happened since arriving at this Mansion.
With that, another question filled her mind—one that struck her as the root of all this, and something she’d never thought to question until now.
‘How did I ever come to this place?’
The system had never explained it in detail either.
After arriving here and receiving her status as a Player, how had she received Aiden’s Letter? Who wrote it, and who sent it?
Caroline opened her bag and drew out the Notebook with his Letter attached.
[My dear Caroline August.
I received the Letter you sent.
I couldn’t tell if it was the weather or the fact that it had just been delivered, still warm from transit.
The sun has been quite fierce lately—I hope you’re managing well. Do take care not to suffer heat exhaustion.
The reason I write is that I wish to invite you to my Mansion.
Not merely a day’s visit, but that you might spend the summer here.
There is no need to reply.
The morning after the Letter arrives, at ten o’clock, a carriage sent from here will be waiting.
Should you find it impossible immediately, tell the coachman of your schedule.
He will call for you at the appointed time. If you cannot meet the coachman tomorrow, I do hope you’ll send one more Letter in reply.
Though your luggage may not be prepared, I can furnish various necessities from my end, so come without worry.
All you need bring is a comfortable heart, a healthy body, and your love for me. Nothing more.
Then let us meet again when summer grows even hotter.
Aiden Christian Darvel]
In that instant, Caroline’s breathing stopped.
Daytime Aiden does not use the address “you” in that way.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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