Recalling her days in the hospital only made Chara feel gloomy and depressed, so she decided not to dwell on the past any longer than necessary. Now that she was no longer having an existential crisis, she decided to try and figure out where she was, and ideally, what was going on.

As for how she got there… investigating this seemed like a lost cause. At the very least, it could be assumed that it occurred because she died, but without more information, this would probably be the extent of her findings.

What’s going on? Let’s see… I woke up. And then suddenly, I was here…

…

……

Chara’s information gathering had reached a dead end. Thinking it couldn’t be helped, she moved on to speculation.

Let me think… I guess I’m either completely blind, it’s really really dark, or I’m in space… concluded Chara.

If this was a choose-your-own-adventure story, and she had the luxury of only having one, she would probably choose blindness. Obviously, she would never want to be blind if given the choice, but the other two possibilities were even less desirable.

Space was out of the question; it’s too scary and everything is too far.

Darkness was also out. At least, if she could see the light of the stars, it would bring her a sense of reassurance. But it was so pitch black and dark that the only places where she could possibly be were trenches, labyrinths, and caves. It was too scary.

As for blindness… Hmph. If all I am is blind, then all I have to do is find a different way to see!

Her rationale was mostly centered around baseless confidence.

Chara let out a long remorseful sigh. If I’m blind, it’s a shame, but I won’t be able to see my gorgeous reflection anymore. However, if it means I won’t have to wake up in a stinky cave full of goblins, or a stranded space station full of man-eating aliens, then it’s a small sacrifice I’m willing to make…

In the end, her “speculation” turned out to be more like wishful thinking, but it couldn’t be helped. The alternatives were too hopeless and too scary.

Moreover, if it turned out she truly was in space or endless darkness, what would she even do? Travel sixteen light years to the nearest 7-El*ven? Figure out how to conjure light rays from her palms? She couldn’t even figure out how to turn on her vision or make a sound!

In any case, no matter which of the three turned out to be correct, she would still need to find a way to get around. So, it would be the most productive to just proceed under the assumption that she was blind. Even if it turned out she was wrong, at worst, she would only delay her 16-light-year journey by a couple of days.

Once she was done deliberating over the various possibilities, Chara moved on to looking for solutions.

Given that the problem she was trying to solve was blindness, what better place to look for inspiration than blind people? After taking a moment to recall the relevant information, she remembered that blind people got around the issue of blindness by compensating with their other senses.

Umm… If I remember correctly, bats and dolphins can use something called “echolocation”. Essentially, they emit intermittent sounds that bounce off of other objects. By measuring how long it takes for the sound to return, they can estimate the relative distance between themselves and other objects…

…

……

Okay, so how do I make sound?

The most obvious solution was revealed to be a dead end.

Realizing that her past life memories wouldn’t be nearly as useful as she had hoped, Chara let out an internal grimace, before sighing.

After waking up, I immediately started panicking. It wouldn’t be weird if I missed something obvious…

Chara sunk into concentration. After meticulously going over everything that happened since waking up, she realized that there was one phenomenon that she had been subtly ignoring. That is, ever since regaining consciousness, her mind felt like it had been surrounded by a mystical, dream-like fog.

Initially, she had assumed that the fog wasn’t real. Instead, it was a product of her half-asleep imagination. Chara didn’t have a way to keep track of time, but she felt like it had been a hot minute since she woke up. Despite that, the fog had persisted even now, long after she had become fully lucid.

Hm… based on everything that’s happened so far, I’m probably not dreaming. Moreover, my mind is far too clever to come up with a dream as simple and uninteresting as this…

If this was my dream, I probably would have been jump-scared by Liliana by now. But since I haven’t, the only logical explanation is that everything that has happened so far, including this dream-like fog, is real!

Even though the way she went about it was all wrong and her reasoning was weird, Chara somehow managed to stumble upon the correct answer. Or at least she hoped she did.

In any case, she had a feeling that this weird fog could be the key to regaining her senses or even developing new ones. Having said that, due to her inability to detect anything else, including herself, she didn’t actually have a choice but to make it work. If she couldn’t, then she’d be in a real pickle.

Feeling a bit uncertain about where to begin, she decided to start with something simple. She would clear her mind and just focus on her senses, without attempting anything elaborate.

Ideally, it would just work, and a three-dimensional map of her surroundings would magically appear inside her head. But if that really happened, it would either mean she had become an extreme genius of the likes the world had never seen, or she had transformed into a genuine alien.

Hm… Supposedly, when people lose their vision, their brain compensates by making the rest of their senses more sensitive or something…

Hehe~! I’m not really sure if ghosts have brains, but let’s see if I can achieve something similar!

Chara was more open to the idea that she could be a peerless genius than she was willing to admit.

Once she cleared her mind and calmed down, a task that took her much longer than originally anticipated due to her recent agitation, she entered a state of shallow meditation. Once she was feeling relatively “Zen,” she tried to focus on her senses instead.

The power within… The power within… The power within…

 

***

 

Nothing happened…

It was a complete failure.

To Chara’s utter shock and disappointment, even after meditating for so long, and nearly becoming a part of nature, the much-desired 3D map did not appear in her head.

She was still blind, but her intuition told her that if she looked up, there would be little rain clouds forming above her head. It was a woman’s intuition.

Despite her low spirits, she didn’t truly think her previous attempt was a complete failure. While it was true that she wasn’t able to get the result she was hoping for, there were two things that drew her attention.

The first is, while she was meditating, Chara felt a very slight sense of pressure. It was gentle, like air delicately brushing against her skin, only a lot more intimate. She couldn’t think of a good way to describe it, but the feeling was not merely that of air brushing against her form, she was part of it. Initially, the feeling was so subtle that she hadn’t even noticed it, but once she became conscious of it, it became natural, as if it had always been this way. It was a surreal experience.

I wonder where this feeling is coming from. Wait, wouldn’t this imply I have a body? If not, then how else would I be able to feel anything? Perhaps I can even use this to solve my blindness problem…

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that this was plausible. At the start, she could use the feeling of pressure to gain initial awareness over her body. Then, she could extend this awareness to cover even greater parts of her surroundings. In any case, she wouldn’t know until she tried.

That aside, while I was meditating, was it just me? Or did the fog seem a lot more… clear?

While she was in meditation, she felt like she could sense the ethereal dream-like fog much more clearly. Not only that, but she also started to feel a faint impression of clarity from it, though she was uncertain if and why this was the case.

It’s basically fog! It should be the other way around! Maybe my imagination was making things up…

The issue is… without a meaningful comparison, she couldn’t say for certain whether there truly was a difference before and after she entered meditation or if it was just her hallucination.

Well even if I did see more clearly, what am I supposed to do with this information? It’s completely useless! What I need, is the ability to see farther, not more clearly…

In that case, what should I do to increase the distance?

Perhaps, the problem is that I’m focusing too much on my senses, instead of trying to feel the fog itself?

Or maybe, I just have to feel outwards…?

Or could it be that this fog is actually blocking me, and I’m supposed to be trying to see past it……?

Uuuu…

Chara didn’t know what to do. She was making too many assumptions with not enough information.