"I actually got lost in a stairwell. Where exactly is the thirteenth floor?"
Yamanashi Inaba stopped in a stairwell with her sword bag in hand. Looking at the "12th floor" sign, she tilted her head, a trace of bewilderment on her face.
After such a major disturbance in the mall, all the elevators had stopped running, leaving the stairs as the only option. For Yamanashi Inaba, who had already become a Superhuman, reaching the thirteenth floor would take less than a minute at a full sprint.
But by now, Yamanashi Inaba had been trapped in the stairwell for over five minutes.
She might have been a swordswoman, but she had no trouble with directions.
Frowning, Yamanashi Inaba drew her katana from its bag and slashed a mark into the wall beneath the "12th floor" sign.
Then, her expression calm, Yamanashi Inaba once again climbed up from the twelfth-floor landing, one steady step at a time. By all rights, one floor above the twelfth should have been the thirteenth, but somehow, she arrived at the seventh.
"..."
Standing beneath the "7th floor" sign, Yamanashi Inaba fell silent for a moment, then immediately raced downstairs like the wind.
But the next floor was not the "12th floor" she had come from. It was the "6th floor"!
Ignoring that, Yamanashi Inaba kept her head down and continued running down the stairs.
"5th floor," "4th floor," "3rd floor," "2nd floor"...
Standing on the "2nd floor," Yamanashi Inaba leaned over to look down. All she could see were winding flights of stairs, one after another, as though they would never end.
And that was indeed the case.
After taking a few steps down from the "2nd floor," Yamanashi Inaba actually returned to the "12th floor." Seeing the mark a sharp blade had left on the