CH 23

Vol. 1 Chapter 23

twenty-third day of confinement

Translated by SoundDestiny

Edited by Kaepinned

“Thanks for the food. It was delicious again today.”

We finish our elegant breakfast of French toast and consommé soup. We clap our hands.

“Osomatsusama.”

Konata smiles at my plate of finished food and leaves the room.

‘Ah, what should I do? I’m full and I’m getting sleepy. I’ll take a light nap and then start back.’

I lie down on the futon.

I close my eyes.

I am thinking vaguely about the name and slowly drifting off to sleep.

Mozozozozozo

“Uooo!!”

I feel a tickling sensation on my arm and I get up.

I open my eyes and there is a small brown spider.

I shake it off.

The spider has fallen to the floor and is wandering around aimlessly.

‘Let’s get rid of it’

I reach out my hand to the spider, take one look at the window and then I realise.

‘I can’t do that. I’m locked up.’

I naturally forgot about it.

‘Aree? Isn’t it bad that I’m getting too used to this abnormal environment?’

Bloodlust.

Thinking about it calmly, I’m in a pretty bad mental state right now, aren’t I?

It is true that my relationship of trust with Konata is deepening day by day, my living environment is improving and I don’t feel the urgent need to escape right now.

But after exploring the possibility of escape on about the second day of my confinement, I haven’t made a single effort to escape until now. This is indeed not good enough.

‘Alright. Let’s get serious about planning an escape plan for a bit today.’

I think to myself.

“Ah, I knew desk work would stiffen my shoulders.”

First, I decide to test the limits of my chain length by pretending to do exercises.

I’m going for the window, under the guise of training for thigh raises.

‘I still can’t do it.’

I still can’t reach the window.

Although the chains are longer than they were when I was first locked up, they need to be twice as long as they are now for me to reach the window.

‘The front door…needless to say.’

In the direction of the front door, I am currently unable to even try to escape, as she is near the kitchen.

But to begin with, the chain is only just long enough to reach the toilet and the bathroom next to it, so there is no need to try.

‘If so, breaking the chains – is indeed impossible.’

There are no tools in this room that can break a strong chain.

Even if I smash it on the floor or wall, or somehow get a spoon or a fork and crunch it, the sound would alert her to my activity.

‘If so, should I shout?’

This is a move I’ve considered before, but it’s still no good to do it here either.

Suppose my voice reaches my neighbour and he is lucky enough to call the police. If a policeman came to my room, she would probably take out a kitchen knife, which she hasn’t been using for a while, and threaten me. If she gets impatient with her clumsy fingers, she may chop me up like a clumsy zombie rabbit apple one day.

‘If the police raid the room after she stabs me, they’ll make her a criminal.’

That’s the first and foremost reason for rejecting the loud proposal.

Come to think of it, the timing when Konata went shopping for clothes was the biggest chance.

I let out a sigh.

Of course, Konata must have seen that I was sleeping very soundly and went out shopping, so I guess I had no chance after all.

‘That’s all I have right?…..If Konata goes out again at some point, I’ll try a few things then..’

Having her around makes it impossible to escape on my own at this time and I choose to patiently wait.

‘In the end, I have to wait for Konata to change her mind and stop locking me up.’

I harbour such vague hopes.

‘If so, is it still wise to turn her attention outwards? She seems to be having school-related problems, and it would be good if I could make it easier for her…….to that end, what I should be concentrating on right now is…manga.’

My thinking leads to the same conclusion as ten days ago, with no progress.

But there are some differences from before.

The storyboard is steadily approaching completion.

I have a feeling that 80% of it is done.

But there is a bottleneck in the development of the climax and I just can’t get to the end.

It’s frustrating.

‘When this name is finished, I’ll be brave enough to get out of here. I’m so close, so close to getting it done. ….’

My consciousness is drifting away from the escape plan and I am once again paddling out into the vast ocean of creativity.

──。

──。

──。

This is the outline of my realistic escape plan on the 23rd day of my confinement.

Thinking back, I had already lost my mind since then.

Because it’s impossible, isn’t it?

How could I be more reluctant to turn her into a criminal than to hurt myself?

But at that time, I didn’t have any particular discomfort with that thought.

Of course, in hindsight, there were plenty of ways to do more.

I had already recovered enough strength, so I could have just held her down by force and run away.

For example, if I had told her that I wanted to do a drawing of her backside, created an opening and bound her hands and feet with chains, it would have been easy to launch a counter-offensive.

If not, I could have taken a full nap during the day and waited for her to fall asleep before attacking her.

With the length of the chains on the 23rd day of confinement, even such a manoeuvre should have been possible.

But such violent measures never even cross my mind.

That, more than anything else, is proof that, unconsciously, even my mind is controlled by her.

At that time, I must have literally become her 『captive』.