Kaito took another step. The moment his foot touched the ground, something felt... off. One second, he was walking down the crumbling stairs of an abandoned school, and the next, he was standing in a soft, unnervingly smooth space. He blinked, his head spinning as his surroundings shifted. The walls were now covered in rainbow-colored wallpaper, too bright to be real, with a strange sheen to them, as if they were made of cheap plastic.

  "This isn’t real," Kaito muttered to himself, running a hand through his messy hair. "I’m losing it."

  A quick scan of the room revealed three doors, each one bizarre in its own way. One was a rusty iron door that looked like it belonged in a dungeon. Another was made of bright, garish plastic, almost cartoonish in its gaudiness. The third was an overly shiny gold door, too glittery for comfort, but on closer inspection, it looked more like a piece of junk.

  “Which one is it going to be?” Kaito asked aloud, but his voice sounded hollow. He was already starting to feel numb.

  He walked toward the first door, his feet dragging like a man who had already given up.

  “I guess it’s better than standing around... But then again, maybe that’s the most logical choice. Standing still.” He pushed open the first door.

  It led into a dark void, a place so empty it felt as though all the meaning in the universe had been drained from it. It wasn’t even a proper room—it was just darkness. But not the kind of darkness where your eyes adjust after a few moments. No, this was something else. Something... oppressive.

  “Maybe I should turn back,” Kaito muttered. He could hear something in the silence—whispers. They weren’t quite words, but they felt like they were coming from somewhere inside his skull.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the voices seemed to say.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  Kaito took a deep breath. "Right... like I have a choice at this point."

  He turned away from the darkness, his footsteps reluctant, but still moving forward.

  The second door. The handle was sticky, like it hadn’t been touched in years. Without much enthusiasm, Kaito twisted it open.

  The room behind it was a marshmallow swamp—sticky, gooey, and smelling faintly of burnt sugar. It wasn’t the worst thing Kaito had ever seen, but it certainly didn’t help with the headache that had been creeping up on him since he stepped into this world.

  Giant marshmallows, bigger than Kaito’s head, roamed the swamp. They were slow-moving and eerily silent, but the longer he stood there, the more their presence began to unsettle him. And then, as if on cue, one of them turned its glassy eyes toward him, and for the first time, Kaito felt a jolt of genuine fear. He wasn’t sure if it was the marshmallow itself or just the idea that he might be stuck in this place forever.

  "Yeah, no thanks," Kaito muttered. “I’ll pass.”

  He didn’t need to wait for the marshmallow to take a step toward him before he slammed the door shut. His pulse was racing, and his mind was tired—too tired to think about what the hell was happening.

  The third door. The one that had caught his attention the most. It was too much of a contradiction for him to ignore. It was too shiny, too perfect, too... promising. But he knew better than to trust something that looked like it belonged in a fantasy. Maybe this would be the end of his misery. Maybe not.

  He opened the door.

  At first glance, it was all golden, a shining path stretching out in front of him, almost surreal in its perfection. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, convinced that he was seeing things. But there it was—the road of endless candy. Every corner was overflowing with sugary treats, and everything around him looked... too perfect to be true.

  “Perfect,” Kaito said dryly, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “Endless candy. What else could go wrong?”

  But as he took another step, something shifted inside of him. The allure of the candy was strong at first—too strong. His teeth felt like they were already aching from the sweetness in the air. He could taste it, even without touching a single piece. The sugar clung to the very air, and it felt like it was suffocating him in the most insidious way possible.

  "Yeah, this is definitely going to end well," Kaito muttered, glancing around at the golden path, now strangely distant, as if mocking him. He couldn’t help but laugh bitterly at the irony.

  Everything here was designed to lure him in, to make him think this was a paradise. The world he found himself in, though, was a trap—and Kaito had been walking right into it from the very beginning.

  "I should've just stayed in the damn school," he said, the humor in his voice hollow, drowned out by the oppressive sweetness around him. “Now I’m stuck in a world of endless candy, and I’m supposed to be happy about it?”

  He sighed, a hollow sound that felt too much like the weight of acceptance settling in.

  “Well, I guess this is it,” Kaito said flatly, the golden path ahead of him stretching endlessly, mocking him. "I’ve made my choice. Might as well make the best of it.”

  But deep down, he knew. There was no best to be made here...