AMLP 06

Chapter 06

The Alliance for Human Preservation had been conducting steady research into what were known as “Anomalies.”

However, little had yet been uncovered regarding the detailed circumstances of how these anomalies occurred.

Anomalies could happen anywhere in the world, and the spectrum of their scope was incredibly broad and varied.

Outdoors, indoors. Underground, in the air. Sometimes as small as a single room, other times large enough to swallow an entire art gallery.

Inside an anomaly, not just animals and plants, including humans, but even time and space become twisted and distorted.

They break away from the laws that humanity had carefully and precisely defined, taking on their own unique flow and identity.

No two anomalies were the same; they never repeated themselves, and each existed as an independent phenomenon.

Yet, despite these complex and ever-changing anomalies, there was one proposition the Alliance for Human Preservation could be certain of.

*’Observable anomalies can be eliminated.’*

Living things can be killed.
Breathing things can be consumed.
Therefore, an anomaly in a state observable by humans—that is, a ‘born’ anomaly—could also be ‘removed’ to the point where it was no longer observable by humanity.

It was a simple truth, a simple proposition, but the Alliance for Human Preservation was founded upon this very truth.

Consequently, the Alliance prioritized developing methods to observe anomalies.

After investing countless studies, the lives of its personnel, and enormous capital, several tools and methods for observing anomalies were developed.

One of those was the monocle held in Friedrich’s hand.

In front of the autopsy room’s glass window, from which the researchers and janitors had hurriedly evacuated according to safety protocols, only Colette and Friedrich stood, the monocle pressed to his left eye.

The siren blared furiously, and amidst the blinking red and darkening vision, Colette shouted.

“How big is it?”

“It won’t escape the autopsy room. At least, that’s how it looks from the outside. It’s relatively small for a sudden appearance.”

“Until now, there’s never been an anomaly originating from within the staff in the research wing. We don’t have any proper weapons right now, so entering immediately is difficult.”

“Well, at most it’s just one autopsy room, isn’t it? The Alliance research wing should have plenty of other usable spaces. If you’re uncomfortable, we don’t have to enter, do we?”

“What about the body inside? What are we supposed to do about that?”

“Now that we know it’s not one of the Red Witch’s pawns, that’s just an unidentified corpse. Leave it to rot inside the anomaly.”

“Again with that talk…”

Colette muttered at Friedrich’s unhelpful advice, but she looked at the device strapped to her wrist.

Approximately 14 minutes had passed since all personnel had been evacuated due to the anomaly detection.

For a field agent, she had waited long enough. Colette looked at Friedrich.

“Friedrich Paine, I formally request an investigation of this anomaly based on your external contract with the Alliance for Human Preservation. In accordance with the Alliance’s anomaly acquisition manual, this phenomenon is temporarily designated as ‘No. 101.’ I request you determine the anomaly’s classification and gather information on its ‘Imagery’.”

“I knew you’d say that. I’ll be relying on your external support. Of course, I trust you’ll do a good job.”

“I’m also requesting you secure the body. It’s against basic decency to just leave it there.”

“As you wish.”

“Be careful of erosion.”

“That’s your job—monitoring it well.”

With that indifferent reply, Friedrich opened the door to the autopsy room and entered.

One pair of black shoes stepped into the space where only half a corpse lay on the dissection table, but Colette, standing outside the glass window, could not see Friedrich.

There was only the corpse, illuminated by the red and white lights, and the scattered, disorganized dissection tools, left as if nothing had happened.

The autopsy room door closed, and a red number appeared on the square display of the device on Colette’s wrist.

[Heart Rate – //]
[Vital Signs – Normal Range]
[Anomaly Erosion Rate – 13%]

—

Friedrich watched the long line of children ahead of him walking with creaking, jerky movements.

Along the long, straight path, the crumpled children marched in neat rows, singing.

*”Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”*

Everything was smudged and blotchy, like a drawing made by an impatient child with crayons.

The cheeks of the stiffly marching children were red, their faces orange, and their eyes were pitch-black, devoid of any reflection of light. A creepy, giggling sound broke through.

*”Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”*

Friedrich walked alongside the procession of paper-doll children. It was humid, with a pungent, sharp smell that stung his nose.

Beyond the bumpy, brown fences lining both sides of the road, there was nothing.

No flowers, no trees, no sky, no grass, no adults. Only the road and the children existed, as if the master of this world had forgotten to draw the background.

*”Have mercy on us. Grant us peace.”*

At the end of the road where the hymn echoed.

There stood a building that seemed to be a desperate attempt to depict the word ‘heaven.’

Against the pitch-black background, the starkly emphasized white pillars and the bright, brilliant golden symbols were so large and imposing that even Friedrich, unlike the paper dolls, had to crane his neck to look up at them.

*”Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.”*

Is this what the gateway to heaven looks like when you die?

From the outside, it appeared open and welcoming, as if it would accept anyone, but Friedrich already knew that all humans must pass through a certain process before entering heaven.

*”Have mercy on us.”*

At the very front of the line of paper dolls, a piece of paper of unknown identity rustled and tried to enter the gates of heaven.

But before it could, a gigantic hand descended from the sky and picked up the doll’s head by its head.

As the doll, grasped between the long index finger and thumb, squirmed, another hand came down and placed several items before the doll.

A tattered skirt cut from crumpled paper, trousers, an unidentifiable porridge in a white bowl, a thick book emblazoned with a golden symbol, and a switch made of woven twigs.

Whenever the large hand presented a crumpled paper object before the doll, the doll shook its head.

After a moment’s hesitation on how to deal with the paper doll that had rejected everything,

the giant hand dropped what it was holding and began to tear the insolent paper doll to shreds.

The distinctive sound of tearing paper was mixed with screams.

*Kyaaaak!* The head, arms, torso, and legs were torn away, and the doll was no longer in human form.

The hand rolled up the ragged paper doll like a piece of trash and tossed it aside.

In that direction, instead of a trash can, a massive black cabinet was standing with its door wide open.

If this side was heaven, that place looked like the fiery pit of hell, a place only for sinners.

*”Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”*

The parade of dolls continued.

Under the judgment of the giant hand, every paper doll that refused the crumpled paper items was either crumpled or torn, then fell into the cabinet.

By the time Friedrich reached the hand, not a single doll had passed through the gates of heaven.

Not one.

Friedrich looked up at the hand that danced above his head.

Soon, the hand descended from the sky, picked up his round head, and lifted him into the air.

Despite the pain of feeling his head being pulled out, Friedrich calmly thought to himself: What an ugly hand.

“I don’t know who you are, but I’d like to make a proposal. How about we find a way to resolve this peacefully?”

The hand paused.

Perhaps noticing that Friedrich was different from the dolls it had been tearing apart, it fiddled with his three-dimensional head, turning it this way and that.

After playing with his head like it was a round glass marble for a while, the fingers suddenly tightened.

*Crunch!*

With a sound like a bursting watermelon, the index finger and thumb became drenched.

The fingers, now covered in blood and brains, picked up the twitching torso and threw it into the cabinet.

As if losing all interest.

The body fell into the wide-open black cabinet, tumbling down like a marionette with its strings cut.

The body bounced several times against the hard floor, rolling and rolling.

After a long tumble, it finally stopped. The headless body only slowly soaked the paper doll fragments scattered on the floor.

Then,

*Squelch.*

An arm bent at an odd angle twitched. A black-gloved hand stirred, and soon the body stood up.

It was a grotesque sight, the headless thing rising unsteadily to its feet.

Waving its arms in all directions, the groping body bumped into something. A rustling sound came with each movement of the gloves.

He—or rather, the headless body—quickly searched through the paper pile blocking its path and found something: the torn-off head of a paper doll.

Pressing it firmly onto the empty space where his head should be, like assembling a robot toy, the paper doll’s head miraculously returned to life.

“There’s nothing harder to persuade than something that leaves no room for compromise.”

Friedrich muttered.

His torso was human, but his head was now a flapping piece of paper. Only then could he clearly see his surroundings.

The very bottom of the cabinet.

There, a massive mountain stood.

The mountain was made of torn and mangled paper dolls. Abandoned dolls with identical features—black eyes, red cheeks, orange faces.

Thousands, tens of thousands of incomplete papers, arms and legs missing, only half a face left, unable to enter heaven.

From outside the cabinet, the marching dolls’ hymn echoed.

*”Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.”*

Friedrich began to climb the paper mountain.

Clutching his constantly shaking paper head, he climbed, and beneath his feet came the sighs, sobs, and voices of children begging for forgiveness.

At the top of the paper mountain, which he finally managed to scale,

there was someone just as incomplete as the paper dolls packed into the cabinet, someone who couldn’t prove their usefulness just by existing.

Pieces of paper fell without pause, fluttering and swaying. The half-torso didn’t move.

When Friedrich came within a step, the man shifted his hazy green eyes to the left.

Their eyes met for a moment.

It was Friedrich who spoke first.

“I’ve never heard of a dead person causing an anomaly. Were you perhaps alive?”

Raimund’s remnant did not answer.

Friedrich asked again.

“We’ve already confirmed your vital signs. Even if we hadn’t, logically, a human with 69% of their body missing cannot be alive. So you must be considered deceased.”

The thing that had been Raimund only stared at the man wearing the fluttering paper doll head.

The light head tilted to one side. It looked like he was deep in thought. Or perhaps, Friedrich was indeed thinking.

He knelt on one knee. His black-gloved hand lifted Raimund’s head.

The torso, connected to the mountain of broken paper dolls, couldn’t withstand gravity and was torn away.

The creaking bones, unable to articulate at the joints, spilled out haphazardly, nerve bundles and vertebrae dropping with a thud.

Friedrich barely managed to salvage Raimund’s pulverized, grayish-white brain and tucked it under his arm.

“This seems like it could be a meaningful sample. I’d better take at least this much.”

After all, there was hardly any body left to begin with. Wouldn’t it be most efficient to just take the head?

Friedrich muttered to himself, his body covered in various fluids, as he slid down the slope of the paper mountain.

Now that he had secured the corpse, he planned to follow the Alliance’s request and find the core of the anomaly—the Imagery.

But just as he started to gain speed, his light paper head flapping noisily,

*Kyaaa! Kekekeke!*

When Friedrich looked up at the commotion, he saw the intact paper dolls willingly leaping into the cabinet.

On their previously expressionless faces, bright smiles had been drawn with red crayon, as if they were about to split.

The dolls that had been cheerfully singing hymns now, in unison, came pouring down on Friedrich’s head.

*Catch! Catch! Cat⧞! Catch! Catch! Catch! Catch! Catch! Catch! ■a⸮ Catch! Catch! ⧞a! Catch! ≸a¿ Cat⸮⸮! ⧞a! Ca⧞∲∲! ■■! ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■*

“Crazy!”

Friedrich raised an arm to block the merciless downpour of paper dolls, but he was soon swept away by a sharp wave and thrown down the mountain.

His forearms, cut by the paper, stung along with the terrible sensation of floating. Laughter echoed from all sides. Gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha don’t go gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha don’t go don’t go don’t go gotcha don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go…

In that moment, he grabbed hold of something and pulled.

With a loud ‘Bang!’ he vaguely saw a black door shake precariously in the distance,

and his world was suddenly turned upside down.

—

A ceiling flashing with red light.

The pain in the back of his head, which had been numb, made his blue eyes snap open.

“Mr. Friedrich! Are you alright? Did something happen in there?”

“Huh?”

An incredible force pulled him to his feet.

Friedrich didn’t have time to fix his disheveled hair, stumbling as he looked at the autopsy room door where the alarm still blared.

He hadn’t intended to come out, so why had he left the anomaly area?

As if he had been forcibly expelled, a bewildered Friedrich suddenly looked down at what he had tucked under his arm.