The Time I Almost Got Stuck at Roppongi Hills After an Event

Today there was an environment setup session for a Vision Pro hackathon connected to another event. It was held in Mori Tower at Roppongi Hills, in an office area where only employees can enter. Participants headed to the venue using passes issued by the organizers.

The event itself was very lively. We talked right up to the last minute and it ended successfully. I think it was a session with extremely active exchange.

It ended at 7 p.m., and everyone went home separately. I got into an elevator alone and pressed the lobby button. Then I glanced at the control buttons inside the elevator and noticed that some intermediate floors could also be selected, with "restaurant" written next to one of the buttons.

I had not eaten anything in the afternoon, and I was also tired, so I thought I might get off and eat dinner at a restaurant before going home. I imagined a row of rather expensive restaurants.

I opened the elevator hall door and looked left and right, intending to head toward the restaurants, but the doors required an employee ID to enter and exit. I thought I must have gotten off in the wrong place, so I pushed the door behind me to go back, but it would no longer open.

This area seemed to be a stopping point for various elevators. There were doors leading to elevator halls in front and behind me, and a few meters away there were also entrances leading to different elevator halls.

But none of the doors would open. In other words, there was no exit.

If it had been a weekday, someone might have left the office area after work and come through the elevator hall, but today was a holiday, the Vernal Equinox Day. Other than people coming down from the company holding the study session, probably no one would come down from the offices.

I started to get a bad feeling.

The elevator hall doors were extremely sturdy and looked difficult to break. In the first place, breaking one would cause a different kind of serious problem. The employee-only passage might have been possible to jump over, but that also seemed likely to cause various problems.

There were security cameras on the ceiling. It would be good if someone found me through them, but perhaps they were not being monitored in real time.

For a while I pushed various doors and looked for something like an emergency phone, but I could not find one. In this kind of situation, maybe I should call somewhere, but unfortunately I did not know any contact number, and there was no help information in the corridor. It was truly an empty corridor, a narrow space with no emergency stairs, no corners, nothing.

And nobody got off. There was no sound.

After wandering around this narrow corridor for about ten minutes, I started thinking I might not be able to go home today. I had brought my Vision Pro, but it was completely useless in this situation.

Just as I was beginning to feel resigned about everything, the elevator opened and I heard someone get off. I thought a goddess had descended. I asked the goddess to open the door and entered the elevator hall.

What a bliss-filled elevator hall it was.

When I pressed the down button near the elevator doors, an elevator came after a while.

Inside the elevator going down to the first floor, I vowed that once I got out, I would do something useful for the world. If the world had tilted in a different direction, I do not know what would have happened.

In life, darkness can be one step ahead. We should live with that in mind.