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Shin had always been suspicious of that list and those fishy numbers. It seemed like much too calculated a move to show him those—statistics, if that’s what they truly were, and not hand-picked numbers with no other significance than being for the sake of convincing him of despair. It was all too obvious to him what a ploy it was, a ploy to make him desperate and willing to do anything it took to win this ruthless game. A ploy to make him willing to throw away anything and everything, himself, his morals, his feelings, until all he became was a shell of his former self, the ball of doubts he was now.
He laughed in the face of such underhanded and shoddy tactics. But thanks to the voice inside him that continued to doubt, he had ended up feeding that voice, and now it was all he was.
Doubt. Suspicion. Distrust.
It was all the same to him, no matter how you labeled it.
Shin didn’t want to doubt. It wasn’t in his nature. But then again, dying wasn’t in his nature, either. Shin was kind, perhaps to a fault, but he had never been so kind that he had ever lacked a sense of self-preservation. He was just as human as everyone else; he was just as selfish, ugly, and conceited. The 0.0% staring him in the face seemed ridiculous. No matter how kind he was, Shin would never be so kind as to lay down his own life for the sake of another. And even if he had been killed each and every time out of pure hatred or indifference toward him, he found it difficult to believe that he had been so detestable that he would have been elected as a sacrifice every single time.
Was there truly no hope of salvation?
He wanted to believe. He wanted to trust. He wanted to live.
He wanted it all, and yet this world seemed so unforgiving.
The 0.0% came back to haunt him. He continued to laugh at it. It was ludicrous. He didn’t believe it, couldn’t- no, wouldn’t believe it was true.
That is, until he met her .
Suddenly, it all made sense. She had garnered all the trust, stolen it away from Sou and rallied everyone against him, and as a result, he had ended up with that laughable 0.0%. He resented her. That 15% made no sense; she was younger than him, less trustworthy than him, weaker—well, maybe not weaker, but there was no reason for her to be better than him. How could she have ended up with a 15% chance of survival, and he, a 0.0%?
It was all her fault.
Logically, Sou knew he shouldn’t blame her. It was, after all, the fault of no one but their kidnappers that they were forced into a place like this, into staking their lives on a brutal game that didn’t make sense, a game of which they didn’t even know why they were playing. But he couldn’t help but think that if she had continued to survive so many times, it must have been due to her manipulation, her conniving personality. There was just no way someone could win a game like this without blood on their hands. You couldn’t go into a situation like this and come out pure, perfect, untainted. He knew because he had been dirtying his own hands every step of the game, and he hadn’t even survived it yet.
Even so, he realized it was all a ruse for Shin to excuse his lack of strength, lack of charisma, lack of whatever it was that she had and he didn’t. The real reason that she continued to survive and he continued to die.
Shin didn’t want to admit to his own incompetence. After all, that would’ve made his death the fault of his own, which would then be presumably preventable, even with a 0.0% chance of survival.
He felt sick. Was this how he had died? Weak, pitiable, and unfortunate? He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to die, but even more than that, he didn’t want to die without a shred of pride. Even someone like him had an ounce of pride, he thought to himself bitterly. A person without a respectable occupation, a respectable relationship, a respectable life.
No, this wasn’t how he wanted it at all. But it was the way it was going to be, unless he did something.
All he had to do was throw away Shin and become Sou, right?
Right?
It wasn’t until right before his preordained death that Sou had realized the true meaning of that 0.0%.
It was something he could never have predicted, something he couldn’t escape, even now that he was Sou instead of Shin. It couldn’t even have been thrown away because he didn’t have it before he became Sou.
It wasn’t a reflection of his incompetence. It wasn’t a reflection of her competence. It wasn’t even a reflection of this death game.
All along, it had simply reflected his love for her.