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“...which means,” the lady in front of him said, tapping her finger against the line that read 0.0% - Tsukimi Shin - Self-employed, “that no matter how many times we ran the simulations, you still couldn’t survive! Isn’t that just the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?”
Everything about this was unreal. The fact that he’d been kidnapped was unreal. The things this lady in the unbelievably gaudy chocolate dress was saying were unreal. AI simulations? A death game? Determined by majority votes? How was he supposed to believe any of this?
“Eeheehee… That look on your face tells me you don’t believe me.” She was clearly trying to keep herself from laughing at him. The same damn expression just about everyone turned on Shin, and he hated it. She was mocking him. This was all just a joke to her. This was just like— “Well, believe it or not, this is your new reality! So I sure hope you paid attention to everything I told you! Who knows, maybe it’ll let you actually survive this time!”
She laughed again and turned away, skirts swirling about her legs, and left before Shin could get a single word in. The sound of the door closing behind her, the click as it latched into place, was suddenly very obviously the exact same goddamn sound as a nail being driven into a coffin lid. He was going to die in this place. That was what she’d told him, laughing the whole time. Tsukimi Shin was fated not just to die, but be killed by the other people trapped in this place. They were going to make the decision that he needed to die and that would be it.
Icy-cold fear snaked around him, fangs brushing against his neck where the collar that now dictated his existence was. He meant to try and touch it, see if he could pull it off and prove to himself this wasn’t real, but his fingers fell to his scarf instead. Shin shoved it into his face, taking a deep breath and trying to calm himself down. Even in a screwed-up situation like this, Hiyori’s scarf was still as soothing as it ever was.
He couldn’t die here. He had to live so he could see Hiyori again.
If Hiyori was here, he’d know what to do. He knew everything.
…What would Hiyori do here?
It had been two and a half years since Shin had last seen Hiyori Sou, and honestly, it was getting a bit hard to remember him right. Hiyori never let him take pictures of him and Shin wasn’t really artistic enough to have painted a portrait or something, so all he could remember about Hiyori’s face was his wavy green hair, tied back in a short ponytail, over his red, dotted scarf. The one that Shin was wearing right now. At least he couldn’t forget about that.
Hiyori had been…an amazing person. Unbelievably smart, unashamedly confident, and even if he’d had a few…a lot of…off-putting qualities, he’d still been someone that Shin had admired. Someone he still admired. It was a lot easier to admit it with two years of distance. Sure, Hiyori had been the type of person who liked making other people uncomfortable on purpose, but at the same time he’d also been willing to teach Shin the ins and outs of programming, answering any questions he had with an easy, cheerful smile. He’d get a scary look on his face if you brought up something he didn’t want to talk about, but if you just avoided those topics, he always stayed cheerful and upbeat. In comparison to someone like Shin, who was just a timid weakling, Hiyori was as radiant as the sun.
A month or two before Hiyori had vanished, Shin had promised him that he’d try to become the person he really wanted to be. But the person he wanted to be was…
Shin took another deep breath and looked around the room. The lady had left the pages she’d been using for her demonstration pinned up on the blackboard. There was…something that looked like a document shredder in one corner. The door was behind him and probably unlocked since she’d left so easily, and unless there was some kind of automatic locking mechanism, he hadn’t heard it lock. He could just walk out and leave this all behind.
That was what Tsukimi Shin would do. He’d just run away. But Tsukimi Shin was going to die here.
What would Hiyori Sou do?
Shin’s legs shook as he stepped over to the blackboard. Hiyori wouldn’t run away, he was better than that. He would try to remember as much of the information being offered, and then use it to his advantage. At the very least, Shin could try and remember the name of the person with the highest percentage and stay cautious of them—clocking in at 15.5%, almost double the person in second place, was one Chidouin Sara, a high school student. Chidouin Sara. Chidouin Sara… He had to remember that name.
Another deep breath. Shin pulled the pages off the blackboard. If he was Hiyori, the next step was getting rid of all of this so no one else could get this advantage over him. He had to destroy the evidence.
It was kind of funny, honestly. Shin had griped and complained all through their friendship til the day Hiyori disappeared about how Hiyori was always dragging him along and forcing him into things he wasn’t sure he could do, and now it felt like Hiyori was leading him forward onto the right path through uncertain waters. Hiyori was a selfish, careless person who never really cared how his actions were going to affect anyone else, but he’d still grabbed Shin by the hand and opened up his world so much by being nothing but himself. He…really was amazing. Shin wished he could be someone like that.
He ripped the papers in half. The name “Tsukimi Shin” tore right down the middle.
“Well then, should I introduce myself too? My name’s Hiyori Sou.”
The words slipped out of Shin’s mouth before he could think about them. And he just kept talking, making absolutely no effort to try and correct the lie he’d just told. It wasn’t like he was a habitual liar or anything, but it felt a lot easier to not admit to the truth when the bearer of the 15.5% victory percentage had somehow immediately ended up the center of the conversation. So many people were acting like they trusted her just on principle, and honestly, it was a bit terrifying. Was this why she had almost double the percentage of the next person on the list? Did anyone else know that they were going to be deciding to kill each other eventually?
No one called him on the lie. Not that anyone would’ve known it was a lie, he didn’t know a single one of these people. But if he could lie about that, the same way he used to lie to his parents for reasons about why he still didn’t have a steady income yet or why he was coming back home so late instead of explaining about the…odd jobs…he was doing to try and get any information on where Hiyori had gone, then he could probably keep it up the entire stupid game until he won. It was easy. Hiyori was the only person who’d always been able to tell when he lied, anyways. It was honestly kind of exhilarating.
Eventually, Sara tried to get more out of the scared girl with a bucket on her head, and Shin just watched and listened up until…she confirmed that her sister had died in front of her. Shin felt his heart stop, just for a moment. The girl passed out and everyone started panicking over her, and that meant no one noticed or cared about Shin standing back, clutching his scarf like it was the only solid, secure thing in the world. The whole room felt like it was spinning.
It was true. This wasn’t a joke or a prank, unless this girl was a very accomplished actor. Tsukimi Shin was going to die here.
…He could handle this. Hiyori could always take even the worst information in stride. This was just…how would Hiyori put it when his job dropped another unbelievably complicated project on his shoulders? This was just another way to prove his skills were better than anyone else’s. Shin wasn’t confident enough to say something like that even as a joke, but remembering it still made him feel a bit more like he could find a way to change things this time. …Where hundreds of AI Shins had failed. No pressure or anything. Hiyori always succeeded, and he could, too.
Feeling more grounded, Shin found himself somehow still able to participate in the discussion calmly, hand still firmly on Hiyori’s scarf. They were talking about a box that musclebound meathead—Q-taro Burgerberg, as if a name like that was actually meant to be believed—when a decapitated head fell onto the floor in front of them, its long, dark hair spread out beneath the stump of its neck. A couple of the girls screamed and frankly Shin had half a mind to join them until he realized that he recognized it. This was…the head of the lady who’d been talking to him.
“Wait…” He gingerly stepped forward and picked the head up while everyone stared at him. As he expected, this was pretty obviously not real, now that the shock had worn off. “Isn’t it just a doll?”
“Huh?!” The gaudy gyaru-looking guy—Joe, apparently—spoke up first, and Shin passed the head to him, and after tentatively examining it for a moment, Joe passed it to the blonde cop, Keiji.
“Oh, you’re right.” Keiji flicked a glance at him for all of half a moment before turning his attention to a letter that had been included with the head. Had it been…suspicious to be the first one to point it out? He shouldn’t have drawn attention to himself like that.
The punk-looking lady—Yabusame Reko, the vocalist of some band Shin had never heard of—elbowed him in the side and he yelped a little. “Not bad noticing that wasn’t real! Hell, even I was pretty shocked by that one. You’re way more put together than you seem.”
“Oh, err… Is that supposed to be a compliment…?” Shin rubbed his fingers against the fabric of his scarf. This lady was kind of…intense. He wasn’t good with people like her at all.
“It’s more of a compliment than I thought you’d get,” she said bluntly. “You look like a wimp.”
“Ahaha… That stings a little, but it’s not like I can say you’re wrong…”
The rest of the group was trying to decide how to split into groups to investigate the floor, and he saw Sara hesitating about who to ask to join her. Hiyori would…take advantage of the opportunity to find out more about the enemy. He really needed to get better at identifying what advantages he could take and then not hesitate to take them. Hiyori was more confident than that, the way that Shin always wanted to be—so he stepped up to her and smiled. Just the way Hiyori was always smiling. “Hey, Miss Sara, could we search together?”
Sara blinked at him. “Huh?”
“S-sorry!” The apology slipped out before he could stop it. Even if he was trying to follow a path someone else was laying out for him, old habits died hard. “If you can’t trust me…that’s fine…”
“It’s nothing like that, it’s just…” Sara shook her head. From first impressions, other than her downright impressive ability to move a crowd to her whims without most of them even noticing, she really seemed to just be a completely regular high school girl. Shin knew better, of course.
“Oh, I’m glad to hear that. I trust you too, Miss Sara.” The lie came with an easy smile. There wasn’t anyone in this room he trusted less than her. A few pretty words was all it had taken to convince people to follow her lead—that kind of charisma was dangerous. It…reminded him a bit of Hiyori, if he was being honest, and he hated the comparison. “But throwing around words like ‘trust’ just makes you look suspicious, huh.”
“No, no, that’s not…” Sara shook her head again. The meaning between the lines was completely lost on her, clearly. “It’s not like I actually distrust you, Sou.”
Hearing Hiyori’s name used to refer to him made something in his brain click into place. If Tsukimi Shin was fated to die in this godawful place, if Tsukimi Shin had a 0.0% survival chance, then what if he wasn’t Tsukimi Shin at all? What if he was Hiyori Sou? Not just Shin pretending to be Hiyori, but becoming Hiyori himself. That…that would work, wouldn’t it?
Yes. He could work with this. Ever since he made his promise with Hiyori, he’d been trying to shed his weak, pathetic self and become someone better, and the chance to do exactly that had just dropped into his hands. Who was better than Hiyori Sou, after all?
“Thanks,” Shin Sou said, and he meant it.
Q-taro was acting pretty damn suspicious, glancing around and putting some things that looked like cards down where it’d be hard to spot them if you weren’t actively looking for them. He still managed to miss Sou, though—walked straight past his hiding spot, even.
Sou poked his head out, and sure enough, the big lug was completely oblivious to him. He picked up one of the cards, and got greeted with a big ol’ skull icon—the Sacrifice card. That doll—Sue Miley, she called herself—had told him about the rules for the cards during the First Trial, something about giving him an advantage in the first Main Game, but he’d been in such a panic during that he could only remember the basics. The basics would just have to be enough.
This card, though? The one he held in his hands right now? If he used this right, he could use it to get rid of anyone he needed to, as long as she hadn’t been lying about the rule that anyone else finding out about the card meaning death being fake. He could control the whole damn game with this—that was one hell of an advantage to hand the poor, pathetic 0.0% loser. Not that he was going to turn his nose up at it, mind you.
Sou blinked. What the hell was he thinking? The person who held this card was going to die. If he used this card the way he’d just been thinking, he was going to be killing someone. In a court of law, it’d be ruled first degree murder—intent, deliberation, premediation. Even if he was trying to survive in a death game, that was just… He couldn’t…
Sou gripped the card tightly. 0.0%. Zero-point-zero. Failure destined from the start. What if he just gave up and accepted his death here, so at least he wouldn’t be the reason someone else died? It’d just be one final act of running away from things, but at least he could feel satisfied with that kind of death. His heart was constricting inside his chest.
That was a lie. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live and see his parents and try to find another shitty job at a convenience store and maybe, one day, see Hiyori again. That stupid goal was the only thing keeping him afloat right now as he stared at this card that would let him just run away from all of his problems cleanly and harmlessly, like the coward he knew he really was. His parents told him that anyone who went missing for more than three months was definitely dead, but Sou had never believed that. Someone like Hiyori Sou couldn’t just…die. If Hiyori had been in this game, he surely would’ve had Sara’s 15.5% instead.
Right. Someone like Hiyori would…survive. He wouldn’t run away from what he had to do. Hiyori was a strong person, far, far stronger than Shin could ever dream of being.
But Shin was Sou now.
Mishima was dying.
The smell of burning meat was harsh and acrid, and Sou had to stop himself from gagging as he watched the man struggle as his collar seared through his neck. Perhaps the most sickening part of all of it was that it didn’t smell any different from any other meat getting charred.
This was Sou’s fault.
He’d overheard Mishima telling Nao that the two of them should vote for each other, and it’d been the easiest thing in the world for Sou to get a peek of Mishima’s voting tablet—he’d voted for himself. If Nao voted for him too, that’d make two votes, and if everyone else did the obvious thing of voting for themselves, that’d make him the immediate loser. The doll—Sue Miley, she called herself—had said this was just a test vote, but Sou had already mostly figured out how the people running this game ticked, just from the fact that they’d run who knew how many AI simulations of this exact situation.
It wasn’t going to be a test. Someone was going to die. And at that moment, Sou had realized that he had two options: vote for Mishima and ensure his death and one less person to compete with, or vote for anyone but Nao, Mishima, or himself in the hopes of forcing a draw to make sure he lived.
What would Hiyori do?
Sou’s fingers hadn’t hesitated nearly as much as he wished they had as he tapped the screen.
It wasn’t his fault. It was Mishima and Nao’s fault for coming up with such a stupid plan in the first place. They were practically begging to be taken advantage of, acting like that. The reason Mishima was lying in a pool of blood in front of Sou was just because he’d been too weak to consider that being so soft in a damn death game wasn’t a good idea. What the hell was he thinking? The result would’ve been exactly the same no matter what Sou had done.
Nao was collapsed on the ground, shaking the body and trying to talk to it. Maybe if he repeated that to himself enough times, he’d believe it.
Honestly, Sou was grateful for the fact that he could shove all the responsibility of running around and exploring onto other people. Staying cooped up in this little hidden room tapping at a computer keyboard was way more his style, and way less exhausting.
Futilely trying to guess a random laptop’s password was kind of a pointless effort, but at least the fact that it looked like he was being useful meant everyone else would leave him alone. If he’d had his own here too, he would’ve been able to brute-forced it by now, but that would’ve been too easy, of course. He wasn’t really expecting to get anything out of it, but that was hardly the point. Everyone had their individual strong points; his was messing with computers, and absolutely nothing else. He was proud of it, dammit.
…Pecking away at trying to guess a password reminded him a bit of when Hiyori had first started teaching him things about computers. Maybe it was just because Sou had been thinking about him a lot ever since he first got shoved into this stupid game, but he found himself feeling awfully nostalgic—this dark, cramped little room was nothing like Hiyori’s apartment, and this laptop was obviously cheaper than one his friend would’ve ever approved of, but trying to remember everyone else’s names to try out as passwords felt a lot like when he was still trying to remember the phrasing of basic functions and kept second guessing himself.
Hiyori had made fun of him for being so hesitant, but had still patiently explained to him over and over how the operations worked. He’d been a good teacher, always willing to answer any question Sou had for him, willing to explain the flow of logic in a program and pull it up on a monitor they could both see and type out the next several lines. Sure, Hiyori would stare at him the whole time he did that, and he was always peeking around their computer setup to look at Sou’s face, but… That was just the kind of person he was. It was amazing how time and distance and grief could make even the traits Sou used to find creepy or annoying into endearing ones.
Sou’s fingers hesitated on the keyboard for just a moment before he typed hiyorisou into the password box and hit enter. He’d known that was going to be a dud, but something had made him want to check it anyways, just in case.
Sou kept letting himself float through memories that his mind was probably making more pleasant than they actually were as he tried whatever other passwords he could think of. Maybe it’d be easier to remember things if this scarf still smelled like Hiyori’s apartment, like clean laundry and a heater that didn’t get used often and cigarette smoke from the apartment next door, but that had faded as much as the memories Sou was still trying to cling to.
yabusame—nope, so at least whoever owned this wasn’t a music freak—burgerburg—god, what a goddamn name—satoukai—not that anyone would like a weirdo like that—tazuna, tazunajoe, and tazunajou were all duds—which meant it was finally time for Sou to test the passwords he’d just plain thought were too obvious to be the right ones. chidouinsara was a dud. Next was plain chidouin…
Sou hit enter, and after a moment, the desktop popped up in front of him. It was plain, boring, completely dull besides a couple of text files on it, and Sou could feel a grin spreading across his face. He knew it. He knew Sara had to be involved in this whole horrible game somehow. No one else was going to believe him if he couldn’t produce evidence for it since they were parading her around like she could break them all out of here through sheer force of will alone, but with this laptop he could prove every single damn thing from the password alone. It was Sara’s turn to die, not his.
The names of the text files seemed pretty benign, other than the one that was simply named Sara’s Tastes, which was pretty direct. There was also an email client and that seemed more likely than anything else to prove the point, if anything loaded, at least. Sou double-clicked the icon and started with the most recently sent one. It seemed like the best place to start, right?
Miss Sara is looking forward to the games. Surely her friend will also take part.
Sou blinked. When he was expecting blatant evidence, he wasn’t expecting something this blatant. This was so precisely what he’d been hoping for, he flat out didn’t trust that it could be that easy. But if a link could be drawn between Sara, Joe, and whoever was writing these emails…
It's about time. If any harm comes to Chidouin Sara, I will stand against even you as an enemy.
Whoopdeedoo, so even the person writing these emails thought Sara was the center of the universe. It was like everything in this horrible place was revolving around her, a star at the center of a galaxy, and Sou hated it. What did she do to deserve all this special treatment?
I feel a deep affection for Miss Sara as well. I will certainly protect her. I am prepared to offer myself up for the Chidouins.
Sou rolled his eyes, but at the very least if he could get a confirmation somewhere in these that they were all about this death game, then he’d even be able to tie Sara’s family to it. He’d stumbled onto something big here. Something big enough that if he played his cards right, he could completely undermine Sara’s credibility and get her out of the way immediately.
…Was Hiyori the kind of person who would sacrifice someone on a basis this flimsy? The person Sou remembered might’ve been a bit of a jerk, and definitely wasn’t the nicest person in the world, but Shin had idolized him enough to want to be him. Was Hiyori…really this kind of person?
He shook his head, trying to clear those thoughts out of his head. Did that even matter? This was the only way to survive. On to the next email.
As planned, 17 people have been secured. Just in case, is there no error in the date of the Death Game? Everything is proceeding smoothly.
Time slid to a stop.
Whoever wrote this was with the kidnappers. That had been obvious from the start. Whoever wrote this was connected to Sara and Joe. That had been obvious, too. Whoever wrote this was almost certainly part of their group—there had been twenty names on the list in the bar, the numbers added up perfectly, and that was way more concerning, because that meant…
Whoever wrote this…knew he was digging into it.
The door creaked, and Sou spun around, slamming the lid of the laptop down—but it was just Nao, that pitiful mop-headed girl who didn’t look like she could hurt a fly, even if she was a little off her rocker. There was absolutely no chance she was the one who’d written these emails. It had to be one of the older members of their group, maybe Keiji or—
Wasn’t Nao supposed to be missing?
She was holding Kai’s frying pan in her little hands.
…She’d realized Sou’s part in Mishima’s death. Kai had to be the owner of the laptop. Two stones, one bird. He respected the efficiency.
Nao shrieked something, maybe an apology, maybe a cry of vengeance, and then something crashed into Sou’s skull and he died.
Sou’s head hurt. That was the very first thing that ran through his mind after he woke up, and the second thing after his eyes flickered open was that he must be dead, because there was someone standing over him with a halo over their head.
…Ugh, no, that was wrong. As his vision cleared, the halo turned into Keiji’s blonde hair, and that man was anything but an angel. He struggled to sit up, and Keiji put a hand behind his back and then said…something to someone else in the room. It sounded a bit far away, almost like he was underwater or something—which sure fit, since Sou’s head was swimming. God, his head hurt so bad.
Sou managed to force himself up, and tried to piece things back together in his head. He’d been trying to figure out the password to the laptop, and he’d figured it out, and then…something had happened, and now he was laying on the floor with an awful headache. “...Ugh, did I pass out or something?”
“More’n likely, someone knocked you out. You got whacked in the back of the head.” Sou could finally hear Keiji’s voice more clearly. “Doesn’t seem to have caused any bleeding though, and you seem pretty okay for getting hit like that.”
“That’s awful… Who would do something like that?” He could remember up to the point where he…maybe heard something…? It felt like he was reaching out for something he knew should’ve been there, but wasn’t. How frustrating.
Keiji stood up and then helped Sou up too, and he finally turned his attention to the other person in the room—who Sou was realizing disastrously late was Sara, looking under the desk where Sou had stashed the Sacrifice card. Shit. “Sara.”
His voice had been sharper than he meant it to be, and Sara startled up, spinning on her heels to face them. “S–Sou! You woke up! What a relief…”
She’d definitely seen the card. That was the only thing that could’ve had her so focused she missed Keiji trying to catch her attention and the two of them talking right behind her. Either she was a bad liar, or just pretending to be one as some sort of elaborate mind game, and he couldn’t rule either of those out—what kind of honest person gets a victory rate as high as that? That would imply people were willing to kill themselves for her sake, which was even more frightening than the idea of her just killing everyone else normally. That was a level of magnetism and charisma not even Hiyori’d had, since while he’d certainly managed to end up as the person Shin wanted to be most, it wasn’t like Shin would’ve died for him or something like that.
Yes. He knew this about himself at this point, between what had happened to Mishima and what he was planning to do with that card under the desk. Tsukimi Shin was a coward who could kill someone to save himself instead of letting himself die to save someone else. That line had been drawn so clearly in the sand.
…Hiyori was a strong person. Would he…
No. He wasn’t Tsukimi Shin, a coward that only knew how to run away. He was Hiyori Sou, strong, confident, and that meant that if someone died because of him, that was just the price that had to be paid so that he could live. It wasn’t his fault, anyways. It was the people who trapped them here who were responsible for all of this.
“Um…” Sara looked down at her hands, apologetic. “It…seems like whoever knocked you out took the laptop, too. Or at least, it isn’t on the desk, and I was looking around for it, and didn’t see it anywhere.”
“Urgh… Dammit. They really got me.” It wasn’t any big loss. He could still remember the emails he’d read, the ones linking the girl in front of him to this whole horrible predicament they were in. Not having the physical computer to prove it meant it’d be a pain to actually prove they existed, but hey, if people could have this invisible faith in Sara just because she existed, then that meant they’d believe Sou too, right? “You didn’t find any clues at all?”
“No, sorry… I tried to check the ceiling as well to see if there was anything up there, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” What kind of chick was this that she thought the ceiling might have any answers for her? As if his assailant was going to be hiding up in a corner like an anime ninja or some kind of horror movie monster? “Did you see what was on the laptop, or at least figure out the password?”
Sou hesitated, just for a moment. “...I didn’t figure anything out. Not the password, and definitely not the data on it… Sorry.”
“Oh well.” Keiji shrugged. “It obviously must’ve been inconvenient for someone, so they decided to use the confusion to steal it. Not having the foresight to ask someone to guard you was my bad, Sou. But…” He grinned that lazy, sleazy smile of his. “The fact that it had to be someone on the first floor who did it is still a pretty big clue, huh?”
It was Kai. For some reason, Sou felt dead certain about that. Maybe there was some bit of text he’d seen on the laptop he couldn’t recall on account of getting bashed on the head hard enough to knock him out, or maybe he’d actually seen the person who did it and could only recall the knowledge and not the sight. It didn’t matter. It was Kai. He wasn’t saying anything to these two, though.
“I guess we should all meet up and tell everyone what’s happened, then?” Sara looked between both of them, but she couldn’t meet Sou’s eyes. “I think it’d be better to try and proceed with everyone cooperating.”
What a joke. Keiji nodded along, though, so Sou did the same. “Good point,” Keiji agreed. “No point in letting our feelings and actions get all out of sorts over something like this. Let’s round everyone up and take our sweet time sorting things out.”
The pair of them started moving towards the door to the hidden room, and Sou trailed behind them. Keiji stepped out and Sara was about to follow them, when Sou found himself speaking up. “Miss Sara?”
“Yes, what is it?”
She turned to face him, and judging by the look on her face, she didn’t have a clue what he was about to ask her. “Um… Were you looking at something earlier?”
Her expression flattened for just a moment before she smiled and said, “What are you talking about? I told you, I didn’t find anything.”
She’d had to think about if she was going to lie to him, and it had shown on her face. Well, not that he would’ve believed her even in the best of circumstances. “I see,” Sou said. “Sorry for bugging you again.”
“Sou,” Sara said, meeting his eyes calmly, “not even your words can be fully denied, I think.”
Everything had fallen apart in front of him. He’d been able to prove the laptop belonged to Kai, and he’d told them about the emails and how Kai, Joe, and Sara were all connected to each other, and everyone still insisted she could do no wrong. And now she had the audacity to kindly extend an olive branch to Sou, even as his words were being regarded as less than dirt by everyone else.
“Myself, I have no connections to the kidnappers. But…” Now she was addressing the rest of the participants. She was regarding this like some sort of report being demonstrated to the rest of her class. She didn’t even have the decency to keep looking at him while she did this to him. “I’m…also questioning who Kai really is.”
Was this the way she’d found her way to that impressive 15.5%? It wasn’t enough to have charisma. The way she talked, the way she moved, the way she appealed to the people around them—she had just dragged Sou through the dirt, and now she was showing off what a kind and wonderful person she was by trying to help him out of the situation she’d put him in in the first place. A kind and benevolent queen, poised to accept the reverence she deserved for being so kind to a pathetic liar like Sou, and her pretty little subjects were just eating it up.
“Sou…” She turned her eyes to him again and smiled. Absolutely disgusting. “It’s thanks to you that all of this became clear.”
Sou wanted to puke. Everyone in this room was pathetic, sickeningly so. They were all so willing to hang onto her every word as if they were gospel, even when there was solid evidence she was lying to all of them. And now she had the audacity to thank him? “What do you mean…thanks to me…”
Some emotion he couldn’t quite place was welling up inside of him. It wasn’t anger, not exactly. He wasn’t angry at Sara, and he wasn’t angry at their onlookers. It was something darker than that. A vile emotion, one that made him want to claw his chest open just to get it out. Instead, it came out as laughter—hysterical laughter that echoed through this massive room as a grin that wasn’t his spread across his face. “Amazing, Miss Sara! Amazing! You’re a prodigy at seizing people’s hearts, aren’t you?”
Sara took a step back, and Sou could feel everyone staring at him. Thanks to Hiyori, he had more practice than he ever wanted at having eyes he didn’t want on him, and he dug his fingers into the fabric of Hiyori’s scarf. Hiyori was guiding him, even now. “The rest of you are just shameful. Riffraff. Don’t you value your lives?”
Obviously not, if they really thought Sara was going to just save them all. Did they really think that some high school girl really had the power to do that? Did they really think she wasn’t just manipulating them?
“Don’t you doubt it when people are kind to you?”
Sou did. His whole life had been spent in that boring little area at the center—not terrible enough to be notable, and not good enough to be remarkable. If someone noticed him, if someone paid attention to him, if someone extended their hand to him, it was because they thought he was wimpy enough to use and discard without a second thought. He’d suspected the same of Hiyori, of course—but their friendship had lasted years, and Hiyori had always been there to drag him forward. But there had always been a part of him that doubted it, that doubted Hiyori, that doubted why someone so radiant had ever wasted time on someone as timid and weak and pathetic as Tsukimi Shin.
“Don’t you even have the brains to think for yourselves?”
Sou hadn’t. He’d just blindly followed along the path being set out for him by his parents, by societal expectations, by the pressure his classmates carelessly shoved onto his shoulders. He’d been so weak, letting himself get pushed around by the tide like a piece of driftwood—hollow, eroded, dried out. He was different now. He was…someone else.
“Death is just a matter of time for you. That’s just the way weaklings live!” Sou would know, after all. He started laughing again, while everyone stared on in…horror? Awe? Revulsion? Did it matter?
He’d figured out what horrible emotion was making its nest in his heart. It was self-loathing.
Joe was hanging from the ceiling, suspended like the lifeless doll he was. Sou had done this—Joe had taken the Sacrifice card, and Sou was effectively the one who’d placed it into his hands.
Kai was laying on the floor, a satisfied smile on his face. Sou had done this too—someone as unremarkable as him wouldn’t have made it into the secondary vote at all if not for Sou bringing up the laptop and trying to pin it all on him.
Sara had collapsed on the floor, her eyes thousands of miles away. In her hands was a device that Sue Miley had said might be able to save Joe, but it had just made him suffer longer, prolonging his pain. Her thumb was still clicking the button on it as fast as she could.
It wasn’t his fault. This…wasn’t his fault. Two people were going to die no matter what, anyways. Just because it was things Sou had said and done that led to these two specific people dying didn’t mean it was his fault. Kai had gotten seven votes. There were seven people at fault for this. And even then, this had all only happened because the people running this game had forced it to. It wasn’t his fault.
It was his fault. Hiyori Sou was a strong person who could bear the weight of the lives lost because of him. He wasn’t Tsukimi Shin, who would just run away from reality and die worthlessly. Or was Hiyori Sou supposed to be a strong person who could die for the sake of others? Was Tsukimi Shin a weak person who killed others so that he could escape on his own? It wasn’t his fault.
Sou tucked his fingers into Hiyori’s scarf, clutching it tightly. He was scared. He wanted Hiyori to come and save him again, the way that Hiyori scared off people who tried to bully him, or the way that Hiyori’s scarf had kept him hopeful that he’d get to see his friend again someday, or the way that when he’d needed a way to save himself from this horrible, horrible, horrible game he’d reached for Hiyori’s hand before even thinking of anyone else. The scarf felt so heavy on his shoulders, like when Hiyori would announce his presence by sneaking up behind him and draping his arms around him with a cheerful greeting.
“Hey, Shin,” Hiyori said as he looked out at the results of the game. His arms were warm like they always were, and he was putting all his weight on Shin again, the way he always did, just expecting him to be able to hold him up even though he knew Shin was the weakest person in the world. “Did you keep our promise? Have you become the person you wanted to be?”