The Northern Aberration (5)

I had seen a lot of strange things so far…infinite supermarkets with inhuman employees, gigantic forests that ran on a different scale of time, floods that were devastating enough to destroy the whole world…but by far, this was the most simply weird sight I'd been witness to in a while.

I stood now inside of one of the apartments in the complex. It looked completely innocent from outside, but standing inside the place now, I could tell that it was far from being normal.

All around there were papers plastered on the wall and across the floor. Staring at them, at first, they just seemed like meaningless writing.

And in the middle of it all was her - the violet-haired, cat-eared girl wearing a frilly black gothic lolita-style dress.

"Not too bad of a place, huh?"

She looked proud of herself. I couldn't help but give her a blank stare. The fact that she had a permanently blank expression on her face made it hard to get whether she really understood the sarcasm in my gaze.

"I can't really see much of the 'place' behind all the paper."

I looked around, taking a step closer to a wall papers. Upon closer inspection, they weren't just filled with meaningless writing, but held numbers - tables upon tables of numbers.

"Temperature readings." She answered before I could even ask, steps light as she glided over to the particular wall I was looking at. "I take them every hour on the hour. Both Fahrenheit and Degrees."

"So you're just…out here, measuring temperatures?"

"Yep." She replied tonelessly. "I just sit around and measure…before you ask, yes, it is boring. But what else do I have to do?"

She walked to another room, which I assumed was the repurposed bedroom. I followed her, and inside was more like a mini-house in and of itself.

There was the bed, but besides it was a table that had a stack of books, some opened on certain pages.

Tossed around the room were multiple jackets, hoodies, parkas, sweaters, and other types of warm clothing. And the bed had three whole blankets covering it.

Crowning everything else, there were tons of chips, sodas, and other junk foods that hadn't expired yet littering the place.

"You've got in here set up in a special way, alright…"

The girl flipped over onto the bed with all the gracefulness…of a cat, grabbing a bottle of chips and eating away lazily.

"So…you're gathering information on the Abnormality outside, I guess."

The girl nodded. With a wave of her hand, the nearby window was closed, alongside the blinds. The door behind me also softly shut.

"That's my job. For now, anyways. I'm just supposed to sit here and keep measuring the temperature. I can't sit in the room with notes for too long, though."

I stared at her curiously. "You can't? Why make all those notes if you're not going to bother staying around long enough to look at em?"

She shook her head, leaning against her bed with the covers over her.

"This Abnormality…you can't observe it." She stared at the now darkened blind-covered window. "Maybe I should say, you shouldn't? It's like…how do I put this…we're calling it the 'Infectious Winter' syndrome."

"We?"

Ignoring my questioning tone, she continued on. "It may not look it, but it's important to have a place like this. Where you can't hear the wind, where you can't see the snow, and there's almost nobody around to influence you."

She began, putting the chip bag to the side.

"That's because, the longer you have any thoughts about it being 'cold', the worse it gets for you."

She nodded out towards the door.

"Those notes? The readings are all faulty. That's not how cold it 'actually' is. It's how cold the Abnormality is making it appear to be. I mean…if it's so cold, why can you walk out there in a suit? Or why can I handle being in this outfit?"

I thought about her words for a while. I had assumed that it was because of the unique creation of my suit. Then again, Jay was resisting the cold well in the last regression turn, and they wore just a skintight habit.

"I get it…sort of." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "So, you only go out just enough to make readings, then spend the rest of your time in here?"

"Mostly." She grabbed a book and began reading. "After all, overexposure to anything that can 'make you think it's cold', and it's game over, nya."

"...anything?"

As if sensing my disbelief, she looked up to meet my gaze, her catlike eyes narrowing.

"The sight of snow falling, the slight frost of the breeze, other people calling it cold, temperature readings, and of course…the sight of those frozen bodies."

"And, all of those things that 'make it look cold', this Abnormality can fake all of that?"

She nodded listlessly, her eyes now lost in her book again.

I couldn't help but hold my breath in disbelief. That…that was seriously overpowered!!!

That meant that, in effect, just by stepping into the territory of the North, which was already known for being extremely cold, you were caught in a feedback loop.

In a place where year-round winter was already natural, how could you really tell apart the faked from the genuine?

"The only way to survive it is to keep hiding and block off as much information from the outside as possible…that's what I was trying to do, until I heard some idiot out there talking to one of the far-gone ones."

It sounded like an insult, but it was hard to take seriously when she had no tone in her voice.

"I guess you saved me, huh? Thanks."

I mean, even if I died, I would just regress, but I'd rather not waste another two weeks of this regression life because of a simple mistake.

She sighed. "It's whatever. Miss Nozomi wouldn't forgive me if I just let a random person die when I could actually stop it."

"Nozomi..."

I trailed off. I didn't expect her name to come up in the North of all places, but with a girl dressed like this, it was a given that the Magical Girls were involved.

I sighed, getting comfortable and in position. Frankly, there was no reason to start wandering around outside. I could get more information from this girl here, and have someone to hang out with while I wasted time.

Magical girls were definitely...eccentric in their own ways, but I had never met one I couldn't just sit down and talk to yet.