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Everybody stared at White, who stood in the centre of the room, an unmaskable fear on his face, and raised their shotguns. They weren’t ready to do this by any means: none of them wanted to have blood on their hands, and yet now their hands were, quite literally, being forced.
An “Aim,” came from the speakers above them, and everybody braced themselves, Esme included. She waited in bated breath, secure in the belief that, no matter what, she couldn’t do this.
Suddenly, though, something came to her. Despite the undeniable pressure, she raised her head, unable to let this one thing slide.
“Hold on,” she said, perhaps a little too loudly.
Everybody around her, White included, raised their eyes to look at her. They all had her attention, it seemed: that was probably good, based on what she was about to dump on them.
“…What is it?” Blue said, a little hesitant in his speech but trusting of Pink nonetheless. Esme held a questioning hand up to her chin, deep in thought, and suddenly, the automated voice counting them all into action stopped. Seemed like even Smile had her attention at this point.
After a few seconds, her eyes turned over to the man stood in the firing range in front of them. “White,” she said, voice quizzical, “Black was your boss, wasn’t he?”
“…Yes,” White stammered out, looking a little puzzled himself. More than anything, it seemed like he didn’t know why the fuck he wasn’t dead yet. No matter, though.
Herbert looked at Esme, a strange expression that she couldn’t quite discern evident on his face. Nevertheless, Esme continued talking.
“…If he’s your boss, and he treats you the way he does…”
Everyone stared at Esme, waiting for her to finish her sentence.
“…Yes?” said White, not quite getting at what she was saying.
Esme narrowed her eyes. Immediately, she pointed a finger at White accusingly. “…In that case,” she said, “why the FUCK did he leave his bedroom for you at one in the morning?”
At this, White blinked. Suddenly, everyone had their eyes upon him.
“That’s a good point!” Orange exclaimed, squinting a little at White. “From what I saw, Black never treated you well at all, did he?”
Yellow looked onwards at the man in front of them, nodding her head in agreement. “…Yes,” she said. “…To think that he'd take such blind orders in the middle of the night, from someone like you… isn’t it just a little strange?”
White looked at them all, and he waved his hands dismissively. “W-what are you saying?” he said, anxious even after the death of his boss. “…Black got up because he thought I’d found something incriminating, and I murdered him! Isn’t that enough?”
“…Not really.” Esme shrugged, clearly unconvinced. “I mean, when the two of you were around us before, he really didn’t seem to want anything to do with you. And,” she added, “even if you did have some evidence, why wouldn’t he have told you to wait until the morning?”
Blue suddenly piped up, seemingly impressed by Esme’s deductions. “…She’s right,” he said indignantly, staring at White. “…Why even would Black just blindly listen to you and follow you somewhere in the middle of the night? That smells fishy.”
“…Unless…” Herbert finally piped up. White looked at him, as did everyone else in the room, and the former looked somehow even more anxious than usual.
Herbert looked at Esme, and she felt almost a silent berating for not figuring what he was about to say out herself hit her as he spoke. “…You’ve all been focusing on why Black wouldn’t go with White, but we know he went already,” he said.
Esme looked at him. Since when had he been so shrewd? …Oh, well. It didn’t matter. Wasn’t like this secret knowledge of his would come back to bite her in the ass and lead to her murdering him later, or anything.
“…The real question we should be asking ourselves is, if Black did leave the room with White, just why he did it,” he finished.
Yellow gleamed. “That’s right!” she said, suddenly seeming to become animated. “From what I saw, Black had no drugs or alcohol in his bloodstream apart from the poisoning, so he had to be fully conscious when he left. That means…”
“…White must have drawn him out some other way,” Esme finished. …But how, was the question. The two men had never gotten along, from what she’d seen, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why on earth someone like Black would have just instantly gone with White.
“N-no!” White retorted, worry merging with an uncharacteristic exasperation that didn’t become his previously weak nature. “Maybe… he just wanted to come for a walk with me that night, okay? …Smile, can we get this over with, please?!
The voice beeped out from the monitor. “NO.”
“What reason would Black have for wanting to go out on a walk with you?!” Esme pressed, almost eagerly. She would be proud of these kinds of detective skills in any other situation.
You know, if people weren’t dying, and stuff.
“Why would he just want to? You’re hiding something, and I know it!” she continued.
“S-shut up!” White shouted. “Maybe he just wanted to spend some time together with me, or something?! How am I supposed to know? Why does it matter, anyway?!”
Esme went to retort, but before she could open her mouth, Blue spoke, a little more hushed than she was used to. An unusual expression crossed his face that Esme could barely recognise. …Was he embarrassed?
Quietly, he spoke. “…So.. you called him at one, to… spend some… time…?”
White paled a little, eventually responding. “…I… I only meant that as an example…”
A voice from the monitor made itself known, and everybody looked up immediately. “SOME TIME?” it said, almost amused in its intonation. “IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? …COMPANIES CAN BE SUED FOR THIS KIND OF THING, CAN’T THEY?”
White looked up at the camera, then to everybody else watching him. He let out a curt laugh. “…None of you believe this… right?” he reasoned, eye twitching ever so slightly.
All eyes were averted from him, and the few that weren’t stared at him with an almost grossed-out expression.
Red, faced away from him, could only let out a quiet, “Scandalous…” at what was happening before her.
“…What do you mean, scandalous?!” White said, seeming to be in disbelief. “…I wasn’t… I wasn’t having sex with…!”
Orange’s eyes widened a little, and she looked precariously at White. “…We never said anything about that… did we?”
White blinked. “…W-What???”
“She’s right,” Herbert said, very clearly not wanting to be there right now. “…White, is there… something you want to tell us?”
“No, there isn’t!” White himself started to turn a little red at the accusations being made against him, and he raised his arms out in exasperation. “I told him I had something to show him, and he came to look at it with me! Why is him not blowing me off so hard to believe?!”
“Oh, someone got blown off in this situation, alright…” Silver said despairingly. The words came out a little louder than he’d expected them to, but he earned a small chuckle from Purple, so he didn’t care too much.
White, however, looked as if he was about to faint again. “I didn’t fuck my boss,” he said, seemingly unable to combat the claims of everyone around him.
“Well, obviously,” said Blue, almost a little too bluntly. “We’re saying you blew him, White.”
“I didn’t blow him, either!!!” White complained. “…Dear God, Smile, would you just make them kill me already?!”
The voice through the cameras let out a metallic hum. “…NO,” it said. “…ACTUALLY, OUR RATINGS ARE INCREASING. …IS THIS WHAT A TOKEN GAY CHARACTER DOES TO SHOWS…?”
White let out a cry, and he pulled on his hair with his hands. “Shut up!!!” he shouted. “Am I not allowed to die without being remembered as the damn token gay character on SYOC?!”
He looked as if he were about to cry. For a second, Esme almost felt a little sorry for him.
Almost.
“Wow…” Orange said, wincing a little with secondhand embarrassment. Then, as if visualising the image in her mind, she covered her eyes, letting out a disgusted, "Noooooo...."
“…Rich people are something else...” Brown muttered almost sympathetically, not daring to look White in the eyes. "Sweet Jesus..."
Poor White looked like he was flatlining. Before he could retort, though, the voice of Smile came back into their hearings once more.
“OUR RATINGS ARE ABSOLUTELY OFF THE GODDAMN CHARTS HERE, GUYS,” it said, its mechanical voice somehow sounding overwhelmed. “NO CAP. I HAVE TO GIVE THE PUBLIC WHAT THEY WANT, SO I GUESS NOW I’M OFFERING THE CHANCE FOR ANYONE HERE TO PAY POINTS TO SEE IF WHITE HERE REALLY DID BLOW BLACK.”
Within seconds, every single person (even Brown, who was shaking his head desperately at the concept in and of itself) had their hand up, offering all of their points up for such a stupid cause.
“What?!?!” White burst out. “You can’t know that! How would you even find that out?!”
Smile’s voice paused for a second, as if giving White a really long stare. “…WHITE, I’M A FUCKING CAMERA.”
White turned to everyone around him. Virtually nobody was looking at him anymore; the only exceptions to this were Purple, who seemed more than anything to be looking at him in morbid fascination, Silver, who was stifling laughter, and Esme, who was staring him dead in the eye threateningly, albeit a little weirded out.
He looked up at the camera, then down at the people in front of him again. He let out a sigh, clearly fed up with having to go through so much bullshit
.
Making a beeline towards Esme, he brushed back his hair a little. Esme looked a little startled as he made his way towards her, and White took advantage of this, taking the opportunity that she was stunned in to yank the rifle she was holding out of her hands.
“Fuck this shit,” he breathed, exasperation and tiredness evident in his voice. A gunshot sounded out across the room, and White fell to the floor within seconds.
The room went silent. Esme looked at the floor, eyes widened in horror, as did Blue, who was stood next to her. Smile went silent, too: in fact, the only out-of-place expression in the room other than White’s lifeless face was that of Purple, whose ordinary quiet acceptance was no surprise to anyone.
A brief wave of some foreign feeling washed over the group, and for a few minutes, nobody made a sound. Blue put his head in his hands, and Esme moved further towards him, desperate to be away from the body. Suddenly, though, the voice from the speaker piped up again.
“WELL,” it said, “I GUESS THAT TAKES CARE OF THAT.”
All Herbert could do was give a curt nod. “…I guess it does, Smile,” he said, under his breath, more than a little disturbed by the events that had just occured. “…I guess it does.”