"I have other sheep that are not of this fold. It is necessary that I lead them also. They heard my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." — John 10:16

I admit I didn’t pay much attention to this quote before, but I think if I had stopped to analyze it, I would have understood the work better. After this quote, we are introduced to a mysterious being declaring its hunger and that it will devour everything in its path. At one point, a character even describes the creature as being snake-like, though it’s still hidden at that point.

Next, we meet a girl lying in a white room with the number 431 carved into her hand. In her seemingly innocent curiosity, she tries to open a door, but a creature stops her. This creature is a snake. The self-proclaimed snake asks the girl for her name, and she responds that it’s Alice. After hearing this, the snake tells her to wait for a party, explaining that the room is special because it grants all desires.

At that moment, a giant strawberry falls from the sky, since Alice is hungry, but curiosity gets the better of her. She opens the door, and part of her hand starts to, well... degenerate? The snake stops her, saying she has to stay in the room or she’ll die before the party, or before the "guest 666" arrives. But Alice ignores the warning and goes anyway, and that’s where the story begins.

In the first room Alice explores, we enter a traditional Japanese setting where a giant samurai tells a sinner to “come and face your sin.” A man with a cube-shaped head steps forward and admits his sin: bullying a boy in the real world. The bullying was so severe that he used the boy as a chair and brutally attacked him, almost to the point of the boy wanting to kill himself. It’s revealed that this boy is the samurai, and he has been stuck in an endless cycle of hatred, eternally choosing to kill the same boy. The atmosphere in this part is incredible. I could really feel his rage and his self-destructive path. He suffers in his own way.

In the next room, Alice begins to fall—not down, but up, towards a bird. The guest of this room wants to break free from the constraints of human society and fly forever. The snake asks Alice if she really wants to go back to the normal world, as it cannot, because of the system. Alice responds that she doesn’t want to live in a world full of lies she created. Instead, she wants to experience the small joys of the real world. At this point, Alice is right. Living in a perfect world isn’t human, because humans are imperfect. Enjoying the small things in life is the key to starting to love it. Ordinary days are extraordinary. Watching the rain fall, seeing other people—it’s magnificent. That’s life as it is, and it has to be that way. Why live in a fake reality when we have a real world, right in front of us, ready to give us sadness, joy, and so many other emotions? But we don’t know exactly why Alice was drawn to want to be a bird. Everyone suffers in their own way.

When Alice enters room 385, we notice a change in her body. Something like tree branches starts growing from her arm, and she’s visibly uncomfortable. When she opens the door, she’s attacked by a monster, but she’s saved by a hero named Eraqram, the owner of the room. He uses powers the snake gave him to experience everything he’s seen in games, manga, books, movies, etc., firsthand. In his world, everything happens as he wants, at his pace: girls, monsters that are easily defeated, and so on. He’s admired by everyone, a true hero. But in the real world, he’s just a chubby, bald guy who isn’t much of an example. There’s a point where he argues with a monster who keeps shouting, “WORK! STUDY! MARRY!” This monster is his father, who he defeats, and the cycle of him being considered a hero and getting the girls repeats over and over. He, too, wants to escape reality, the reality he created. He suffers in his own way.

After that, we quickly move through several other rooms, and Alice’s curse only grows stronger until we reach room 285. Here, we see a man having dinner with his family. When the man learns Alice wants to leave, he becomes angry and says she can’t enter his "house" with such an idea. The snake then reveals that this man was a teacher in the real world, always teaching his students how to be good humans. But at home, he was someone else, and his family began to distance themselves. When his son developed problems because of their relationship, his wife decided to leave. The man suffered greatly from what he had caused. He became addicted to alcohol and drugs, and lost all respect in society. "Time was the culprit. Time ruined the love that was once there," said the snake.

But in the mansion, nothing was ruined. He lived with his family, and his family lived according to his wishes. Everything was perfect, almost too perfect, too perfect. Perfection leads to madness. It was clear that he was losing his mind more with every page. The food he ate wasn’t real food, but gears from a clock, and he ate so many gears that they started tearing at his cheeks.
"Is this what you call life?"

"Is this what you call living?"

"He at least calls it living."

He suffers in his own way.

All the guests suffer in their own way, or rather, they escape suffering in their own way. This feeling is nothing but an illusion—it consumes them. This feeling cannot bring lasting happiness; it only corrupts them.

Amid all of this, we get glimpses of Alice’s past, or rather, five days before she entered the mansion. The countdown continues with each past scene. In the first past scene (five days earlier), we see what appears to be some kind of battle in the city. Alice is walking happily through town until she smells something familiar, something she says smells like her brother. (If only I had paid more attention—ah, if only!). Following the smell, she passes by wires, strange stairs, and huge, bizarre weapons. As we move to three days before she enters the mansion, we see these weapons still present in her path. Finally, she finds the source of the smell, which turns out to be a book wrapped in chains. When she opens it, it’s revealed that this wasn’t a mansion, but a book—the book of 666 pages that sucks in anyone who opens it.

Returning to the "present" time, she enters room 276, where a woman is gazing at herself in a mirror surrounded by a swamp. The woman asks why Alice wants to leave the mansion, since the real world is nothing but pain, pain, and more pain. Alice responds by asking if the woman has no family outside, nothing that would make her want to go back. The woman, who had a beautiful face, turns into a skeletal face, and the swamp around her transforms into a hospital bed. She says that her family wouldn’t care if she died because all she ever did was drain their money, living in that hospital bed, pushing her to the edge of despair, almost making her take her own life. Now, she lives in a world where she remains beautiful and perfect forever. The room begins to fill with tears of blood, and Alice moves on. That woman carries so much pain—pain not just of sadness, but of repulsion, of not feeling loved, which over time turns into hatred. She suffers in her own way.

After that, we see people trapped in a strange place, desperately calling for help. (Ah, if only I had paid more attention). Meanwhile, Alice, nearly consumed by the curse, enters room 268, where she meets the snake again. The snake tells her that the owner of this room also tried to reach room 000 but failed, and now his soul is made of words, part of the snake's grand design. We also see the same humans crying out for help, and the snake reveals that they will soon transform into words, just like the room’s owner. The snake confesses its deep hatred for humans and its annoyance at hearing their problems, eagerly waiting for the day when all pages are completed, and the “party” can begin. “They will hear my voice, and I will lead them,” says the snake.
In room 255, Alice's curse is reversed, and she returns to normal. But then she discovers that it was an antidote from a scientist who had cloned himself. He tells her the antidote can only be used once, and for a short time. It’s also revealed that when the book consumes 666 souls, it will fuse their souls and bodies into a single, immensely powerful being. That’s the “party” the snake keeps talking about. The magic slowly drives people mad as their desires are fulfilled, making them disconnect from the outside world, no matter who or what is out there. They don’t want to leave. Also, the mansion’s system is designed to make it impossible to reach room 000—the lower the page number, the more the curse spreads through the body. Before leaving, Alice asks the scientist's clones which one is the real one. They all answer "yes," and this creates a huge confusion, which is what Alice wanted.
When Alice leaves the room, we see several panels showing her suffering as the curse spreads over her body more and more until she transforms completely. This is one of the best panels in the entire work. She runs, runs, runs, passing through all the rooms quickly until she reaches room 099, where she collapses, dead on the floor. At that moment, the snake feels victorious, but is surprised to find Alice’s body hasn’t turned into words as expected. The curse seems to be leaving Alice’s body, returning her to her original form, leaving the snake in shock. But Alice seems calm, and she makes great progress to the next page. When she transforms back into the curse, it doesn’t matter; she returns to normal almost immediately, and continues like this until the great moment when she reaches page 000, ignoring all the snake’s questions about how she managed to do this since the system seemed perfectly normal. Alice just responds, “We’ll discuss it later.”

This leaves the snake bewildered, but its panic quickly dissolves with the arrival of a new guest. For a moment, the snake thinks it’s Alice returning to her page, but then all the other pages fill up. This marks the start of the "party." The snake doesn’t waste any time and begins devouring each guest, growing stronger until it consumes the last one and exits the book, assuming its full form (which is beautifully drawn) to destroy the world. But something’s wrong. As it starts destroying everything, it notices there are no screams, no people running—everything is empty.

Then, a single person appears beside it: Alice. She tells the snake that they’ll continue from where they left off. Alice begins telling the snake a story about a princess who never forgot anything.

This princess had a terrible disease that kept her confined to her castle, but she also had perfect memory—she could remember everything in perfect detail, and she had an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Eventually, she read every book in existence. The princess became terrified of death, so she ordered the creation of a special book—a book that would contain all books, the book of truth. When she came into contact with this book, the princess transformed into a monster that devoured the minds of everyone around her, gaining more and more knowledge. No weapon or disease could destroy the monster. People read about it in newspapers, on their phones—some didn’t believe it, some did. Eventually, humanity figured out how to defeat the monster using bibliographical ammunition. This explains the giant weapons we saw before Alice entered the book. These weapons had enough power to seal the monster in a coffin in hell. A worldwide celebration followed. But humanity couldn’t forget, so they made smaller versions of the Book of Truth with only 666 pages, spreading them around the world as weapons. However, most humans tried to forget about the event—but it didn’t work. After a few years, the Book of Truth opened again, devouring everything in its path. This time, it was so strong that even the special ammunition couldn’t stop it. After devouring the souls and knowledge of everyone, the monster was satisfied and returned to its original form. It then decided to go find its brother to discover what was inside the book.

After Alice left the book, she went to the place where the people were trapped, opened the books, and placed them inside, releasing the snake. She did this just to see what would happen when they were freed. Then, after telling the story to the snake, Alice returned to her original, beautiful form and devoured it—and all the knowledge the snake had. She then revealed that the thing that brought her the most happiness was devouring people's souls—even though there was no one left to devour.

ABSOLUTE CINEMA

I re-read the work, as the author recommends at the end, and wow, what a masterpiece! Easily the second best manga I’ve ever read. It's simply fantastic—everything is in the details, everything! This manga made me question so many things and solidify some beliefs. After reading and truly understanding the story, just one thought came to mind: Would you give up your freedom for your freedom? What does it mean to live happily among lies? Does it harm you? What’s the problem with that? Simply… simply…