Stumbling against the tightly-drawn ropes woven by the wind, I was running to her. What for? I did not know. I was stumbling.⁠ ⁠… Empty streets.⁠ ⁠… The city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the ceaseless, triumphant, hubbub of birds. It seemed like the end of the world, Doomsday .

Through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this cut into my mind) I saw male and female Numbers in shameless embraces⁠—without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the middle of the day!⁠ ⁠…

The house⁠—her house; the door ajar. The lobby, the control desk, all was empty. The elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft. I ran panting up the endless stairs. The corridor. Like the spokes of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; 320, 326, 330⁠— I-330 ! Through the glass wall everything in her room was seen to be upside down, confused, creased. The table overturned, its legs in the air like a beast. The bed was absurdly placed away from the wall, obliquely. Strewn over the floor⁠—fallen, trodden petals of the pink checks.