PARTICIPANTS: V / G / D / B

【1】

Mercer:
Nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Elena Mercer.
I’m here to interview you for NOCTURNE’s Halloween feature.
I should tell you up front, I specialize in archaeology. I know nothing about music.

V:
...Right.

Mercer:
I have no experience conducting music interviews, either.

V:
...Okay, understood.

Mercer:
And I haven’t really listened to much of your music, either.

V:
...

【2】

G:
Okay, so why are you here?

D:
Hey, G!

Mercer:
That’s fine. I think I’m out of place here, too. Well then, may I ask you a few questions?

V:
Yes, of course.

V answers with a pleasant smile.

Mercer:
Is there any local folklore you’ve heard while traveling or for work that you remember unusually well?

V:
Folklore...? I can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought.

【3】

D:
Like cryptids? That’s pretty Halloween-ish.

Mercer:
That counts. Ghosts, monsters, creatures that collect unusual things, or spirits that come to visit humans in the middle of the night. Stories that only people from that area know.

D:
Oh, then yeah. You’d expect something like that in an empty concert venue late at night, or an old hotel, right?

G:
Like how D absolutely refuses to stay in a room alone. (laughs) You’re scared, aren’t you?

D:
No, I’m not!

Mercer:
What about B?

B:
No.

【4】

Mercer:
Even places you’ve been for work?

B:
...Never really paid attention to it.

Mercer:
I see.

Mercer doesn’t pursue the matter any further and writes something down in her notes.

Mercer:
Have you ever brought something back from a trip that you have no memory of acquiring?

【5】

There is a brief pause as the question takes an unexpected turn.

D:
Maybe. Like, I get back to the hotel, check my pockets, and there’s some receipt I don’t recognize.

G:
That’s because you’ll buy anything on impulse.

D:
So that counts as “something I don’t remember getting,” right?

V:
I suppose I’ve had that happen with coins. Ones I don’t know what country they’re from.

Mercer’s gaze returns to B.

Mercer:
What about you, B?

B:
Maybe some coins.

Mercer:
What country, for example?

B:
No idea. I don’t keep track of things like that.

Mercer:
If you found an unusual coin, would you keep it?

B:
No.

Mercer writes something down in her notes again.

【6】

A slight awkwardness begins to settle over the group.

Mercer:
Do places you’ve actually visited, or stories you’ve heard there, ever appear later in the visuals for your work?

V:
Visuals? Oh, you mean thumbnails?

V gathers himself now that the conversation has finally turned to their work.

V:
Um... we used one of the pictures from Polynesia, right, D?

D:
Yeah... that was awesome. The oysters were insane...

Mercer:
So, is the “Roll the Dice” thumbnail from Polynesia?

Mercer cuts in.

V:
Hm? No... I don’t think that one is.

Mercer:
All right, then. Was the thumbnail for “Roll the Dice” from somewhere you’d actually been?

V:
That one... I’m not sure. At least, it’s not anywhere I’ve been.

Mercer:
What about B?

B raises one hand and shrugs as if to say, “I don’t know.”

G, who has been watching Mercer for a while, cuts in.

G:
Hey, Mercer. That’s a lot of weird questions. This really for Halloween?

【8】

Mercer:
What?

G:
Archaeology. Folklore. Places we’ve been. Fine. Things we don’t remember getting? And you’ve been looking at B this whole time.

G gives her an incredulous look.

His expression practically says, “Are you too stupid to put your questions together properly?”

G:
Mercer, what do you really want to know?

For once, the other three don’t stop G. They look at Mercer as if to say, “Why?”

Mercer thinks for a moment.

【9】

Mercer:
You’re right. Sorry. I was being indirect.

Mercer:
I remember seeing someone who looked like B on an island once.

Could I ask you about it?

B:
Yeah, go ahead.

B, who had been watching G with apparent amusement, shifts his gaze to Mercer and answers briefly.

Mercer:
B, your official profile says you served in the military. Were you ever deployed to Flores?

B furrows his brow slightly.

B:
...Flores? Indonesia.

B smiles faintly, as if remembering something.

Mercer:
I understand you can’t discuss the details of your duties.

Mercer:
There’s just one thing I’d like you to tell me.
Is there anything about that island you still can’t explain—something you brought back from there, or something you saw there?

B:
...

D:
Oh... like a goblin or something?

Seeing B carefully choose his words about his military duties, D cuts in.

Mercer:
...Why a goblin?

D:
Because you were just talking about the “Roll the Dice” thumbnail.

Mercer thinks for a moment, then changes her question.

Mercer:
Could you tell me how that thumbnail came about? When was it made, and who created it?

G:
I made it. Last August.
The idea came from V. D provided the image.

As he speaks, G watches Mercer closely.

V:
Really?

G:
Yeah. You sent me that weird message full of typos, remember?

V:
Me?

D:
V? Making typos?

D says it as if he can’t believe V would make typos.

V:
...I don’t remember that at all.

Mercer:
Do you still have that message?
Could I see it?

G:
Yeah. Hold on.

G checks his phone.

Meanwhile, Mercer asks D another question.

Mercer:
D. Did you come up with that goblin image?

D:
No. B sent it to me, and I passed it on to G.

B:
Hey, I didn’t send it.

Mercer’s gaze returns to B.

D:
You did. I remember it pretty well because I wondered why you didn’t send it straight to G.

With that, D checks the folders on his phone.

He scrolls for a while, but the image is nowhere to be found.

Mercer:
So V doesn’t remember sending the message full of typos that G received.
And B doesn’t remember sending D the image D later passed on to G. Is that right?

D:
Huh... It’s not here. Maybe I deleted it?

Mercer:
G? Did you find it?

G doesn’t answer and keeps scrolling back.

G:
...It’s not here.

D:
Maybe you deleted it too?

G:
I don’t delete them. I keep them in the same place.

G’s expression hardens.

G:
I’ve got the messages with V from the day before. And the day after.
But that one message is missing.

V:
Maybe you’re misremembering it. It happens sometimes.

G:
I’m not misremembering it.

Mercer:
Do you remember what it said?

G:
Yeah.

G:
“Roll the Diize thumberenail. Put B and the gobogou facing each other in the woods. Gold coin in the sentorbe. Think D’ll send the imajee. Keep the orijinalen image.”

There’s a brief pause.

G:
...What?

D:
Seriously? You remember it that well?

After a moment’s thought, V continues.

V:
G, I wouldn’t send a message like that.

G:
That’s what I’m saying. It was weird, so it stood out.

V gives G a look that’s hard to read.

Mercer doesn’t smile. She writes down exactly what G just said.

Mercer:
And then you got the image from D, right? What about the original image?

G:
It’s gone.

Mercer:
So the only things missing are the production instructions and the original image?

G:
...Looks that way.

This time, no one says anything.

【10】

Mercer:
Okay. Just one last thing to confirm.
So who actually brought in that goblin image first?

No one answers.

D:
...So it was B, wasn’t it?

B:
I told you, it wasn’t me.

G falls silent.

V looks as if none of this has anything to do with him.

Mercer thinks for a moment, then closes her notebook.

Mercer:
I understand. That’s enough for now. Thank you.

G:
Yeah, well, we don’t understand any of this.

Mercer:
Neither do I.

With that, Mercer gets up from her seat.

The reason I wanted to speak with B this time was a thumbnail for Roll the Dice that I happened to come across.

B in the thumbnail closely resembled the tall American soldier I had seen on Flores Island in 2025, and the small creature shown there closely resembled what I had witnessed that night.

Those similarities may have been a coincidence.

Still, I wanted to hear what he had to say at least once. An acquaintance of mine who works as a web editor happened to be planning a Halloween feature, so I asked them somewhat insistently to set up an interview for me.

Admittedly, I asked the members of G:B some fairly roundabout and rude questions.

I'd like to apologize for that again here.

I hope this article also reaches readers and listeners who aren't part of their usual audience.

I'll only touch briefly here on what happened on Flores Island. Anyone interested can read this page.

[Flores Island Record]

What I really wanted to ask B was this: if B had actually experienced a situation like the one shown in that thumbnail, to what extent had that creature been able to handle objects or tools at the time?

I thought I might get some kind of clue.

But B answered almost every question with either “I don't know” or “I don't remember.”

In the end, I didn't get any of the information I wanted.

That should have been the end of it. But as I heard about how Roll the Dice had been made, another mystery emerged.

The process behind the Roll the Dice thumbnail can be summarized as follows:

G remembers receiving production instructions from V.

—V did not send them.

D remembers receiving the source image from B.

—B did not send it.

What's more, the production instructions and source image are the only things missing. The exchanges before and after them are still there.

G remembered the contents of the production instructions quite accurately.

They contained several nonsensical word substitutions of a kind V would never normally make.

That caught my attention.

In 2025, during the few days when anomalies kept occurring at TB-3, the investigation team's field notes also contained similar word substitutions that were unusual for the person who wrote them.

That record still exists.

There were a few other things I noticed.

First, the coin.

The thumbnail for Roll the Dice shows a gold-colored coin between B and the small creature.

At one point during the series of inexplicable events on Flores Island, one member of the investigation staff was clutching a worn-looking coin they had no memory of acquiring.

During the interview, I asked about things they had no memory of picking up on their travels. V mentioned loose change, so I followed that up by asking B whether he would keep an unusual coin.

The answer was “No.”

B's own reaction was interesting, too.

In 2025, I saw a tall American soldier on Flores Island who closely resembled B.

As soon as B heard “Flores,” he replied, “Indonesia?”

At the very least, the name did not seem entirely unfamiliar to him.

What follows is speculation.

Suppose that soldier was B.

Suppose, too, that B had encountered that small being on the island but, for some reason, retained no memory of it. Yet suppose that scene had remained somewhere in his mind.

Under those assumptions, the Roll the Dice thumbnail may have been reconstructed from fragments of what B actually experienced.

But I don't know how that found its way into the production process.

G's memory. D's memory. The missing production instructions and source image. And a creature that closely resembles what I saw on Flores.

In the end, I didn't get the answer I wanted from B. Instead, I was left with another question.

Where did that image come from?

For a Halloween article, perhaps having that much mystery left is just about right.

—Dr. Elena Mercer, Archaeologist