Chapter Text
You felt cold. You weren’t sure why you felt that way until you opened your eyes. You were in a blindingly white room, and you were sleeping on the floor. You scrambled to sit yourself up, taking in your surroundings.
Other than there being a piano with a seat in the middle of the room, it was empty. You stood up, walking over to the piano because you noticed that there were a few things to look at.
First, you grabbed what seemed to be a phone. When you pressed the only button on the device, the mic spoke to you.
"This is the First Trial. Complete the song written on the sheet with five or fewer mistakes to survive. Go over the limit, and the room will quickly start filling with water. Your trial will start when you hit the first note. Good luck."
“…What?” Looking over to the piano, there were sheets of paper stacked perfectly. In bold letters, you read ‘Clair De Lune by Claude Debussy.”
You were too frightened to make a joke. You tried to press the phone button again, but it just replayed the voice memo.
Not sure what else to do, you sat on the piano seat, setting the device down next to you.
Fortunately for you, you’d been taking piano lessons for the last ten years — since you were seven. You had only attempted to play Clair De Lune so many times, so you silently prayed that this would be simple enough.
Your hands shook as they hovered over the keys. You weren’t sure if you were stuck in a nightmare or if this was some sick prank Alexandris had decided to play on you. Taking a deep breath, your fingers began to hit the keys lightly.
The song itself is beautiful, though the slowness of it all had your heart beating in your throat. You tripped on one of the faster bits. You swore under your breath. You didn’t want to make many mistakes. You didn’t want to make any mistakes, because you weren’t sure if any of this was real or not. You were unsure of what consequences would come from simply messing up once. If there were any, you’d see them soon.
Continuing with the song, you got lost in the music. Clair De Lune is easily one of the most beautiful pieces you’d ever heard. You were only snapped out of your attraction for the piece when your hand slipped, missing the designated key. You didn’t take the time to slip out a curse this time, to focused on making sure you wouldn’t screw up again.
When the song ended, you froze. You weren’t sure how you had made it through the song with only two mistakes, but you were glad you hadn’t messed up any more than that.
A black space opened up from the middle of one of the four blank walls. Unsure of what more there could’ve been waiting for you in this room, you walked into the dark space.
You began to walk, not knowing where you were going. You walked for what felt like minutes before you wondered to yourself if you were really going anywhere at all. Only a moment later did the floor give out, leaving you to fall until you went unconscious.
~ * ~
You woke up with a gasp. At first, all you could hear was ringing in your ears. You sat up, your ears clearing, making it to where you could hear multiple conversations all going on at once. You were in some sort of cubby of sorts, and you sat on a large cushion. Outside of the cubby was a large blue room, where a group of people was trying to talk. A girl who was in the group turned around and locked eyes with you. You quickly covered your face with your hands and crawled backward until your back hit the wall.
“…Are you all right?” A feminine voice asked gently. You peaked through your fingers. The girl was crouched in front of you. She had a pretty fucked up haircut and was wearing a blue school uniform.
You pulled your hands away from your face, “…What?” You moved to scratch your neck, but when your fingers hit metal, you froze. You looked at the girl in front of you to see that she was wearing a metal collar.
“What’s your name?” She tried. You were in too much shock to reply. “…Mine is Sara.” She told you, holding her hand out. Carefully, you took her hand, and she helped you stand up.
“We’ve got a group assembled over here. None of us are sure what’s happening…” She let go of your hand. “Follow me.”
She led you to the group of people. Everyone was talking over each other. It was very… chaotic.
Most of the people in the group seemed to be young adults. Other than them, there were what looked to be two grade-school children, one girl and one boy, and another teenage boy who was also making his way over to the group. The boy was wearing a similar uniform to Sara’s.
“Sara, do you know him?” You finally spoke to her. She turned her head as the boy approached you two.
“Oh.”
“Sara! Oh my goodness. What’s going on? Where are we?” The boy said. He had spiky brown hair which was partially held back by a yellow clip. You found him somewhat attractive.
“Could not tell you,” Sara replied with a sigh. She turned to you and said, “This is Joe. We go to school together.”
“Oh… hey.”
“…Hello.” You said. A guy with piss-yellow hair walked over to your small group.
“So your name is Sara?” He asked, “Pretty normal name. Dunno why you didn’t feel like sharing it earlier.”
“I don’t know who you are. You didn’t try to offer out your own name. I don’t know about men who were born in the 1940s, but my mother taught me not to talk to strangers.”
The man smiled at Sara and let out an annoyed laugh, “Your father must be a lucky man.”
“My father is dead.”
“Okay!” He said loudly, getting everyone’s attention, “Now that we’re all awake and assembled, we should try working together to figure out what’s happening. Let’s do introductions. Name, occupation, and what you were doing before you found yourself here. Who wants to start?”
“Since you suggested it, why can’t you start?” You asked.
“Oh, you’ll start us off? That’s great.” The man smiled at you.
You didn’t want to argue, and you would need to introduce yourself eventually anyway, so you began the introductions. “My name is Y/N L/N… I’m a high school student and the last thing I remember doing is… I was walking home from being with my friend at a cafe.”
“Great, fantastic. We’ll just keep going on like this. Who would like to volunteer next?” The yellow man asked.
Joe spoke up next. “I’m… Jou Tazuna. I am also a high school student and the last thing I remember is being in my house.”
More and more people began to speak up, including the yellow man, who was revealed to be a police officer. With all these occupations and ages, you weren’t sure how your kidnappers were able to take all of you so easily. There was even a famous singer amongst you all…
After everyone had introduced themselves, the big red guy, whose name you believed to have rhymed with hamburger, revealed a key locked box. Fortunately, Sara and Joe had one key, the professor and his student had another, and the poor girl who had passed out with a scream during her introduction had the third key.
Without a care in the world, Q-Taro — oh, right, that was his name, you remembered— flipped over the box, leaving the contents to spill onto the floor. What came out was a head, which hit the ground with a hollow thud.
Everyone stepped away from the head, some people cursing and gasping out of shock. Joe stepped forward to pick it up. “Guys, it’s not real. Aren’t most of you adults? It’s a hollow doll head.” He smacked the side of the head as an example. “Is this really all we got..?”
Q-Taro looked back into the box. “Oh, there’s a note in here. ‘Find my body,’ it says.”
“Her body must be somewhere in one of these rooms.” Sara pointed at the three doorways that led out of the lobby room. “It would probably be best if we split up and search.”
“Fantastic idea. Probably best to search with at least one other person, and Kanna may need someone to watch over her.” Keiji said.
Nao and Reko volunteered to watch over Kanna, and everyone else began trying to find people to search with. Sara walked away from you and Joe, leaving you two to awkwardly stand there.
“Joe, right?” You tried to make conversation.
“Yes.” He replied shortly. You assumed he was nervous judging by how tense he was. “And you were Y/N right? Or— not were— are. You currently are Y/N.” He groaned with frustration at himself.
You chuckled, “Yes. Y/N is me. Would you like to search together? Sara just walked away, so I don’t know who else to ask.”
Joe bit his lip in an unattractive way, “Yeah, sounds good. Maybe we should ask Sara if she wants to join us as well.” Joe walked over to Sara, exchanging a few words with her that you couldn’t hear over the rest of the conversation. She shook her head, pointing at Keiji who was a few feet away. Joe ended up walking back to you a few moments later. “I guess she already decided to pair up with Keiji. She said that he was kind of weird so she wanted to keep him in check.”
“Uhm, excuse me.” You turned around to see that frail-looking bitch who’d introduced himself as Sou Hiyori. “Are you two going to search together?”
You glanced at Joe, then replied, “Yes.”
”Oh. Would you mind if I searched with you two?”
You turned to face Joe, not wanting to make the decision yourself.
“Uh… sure? I don’t mind.” He looked back at you awkwardly.
“Oh, great. Thank you. Well then, I’ll let you lead the way.”
~ * ~
“Oh, Sara.” When we entered a room with a blue door, Joe immediately walked over to his friend, leaving you and Sou to stand next to the doorway awkwardly.
“Okay, let’s continue searching in here, then,” Sou said.
“I’m sure if there was anything worth searching in here, the four others would’ve already found it, but sure.”
You ended up being wrong, to your surprise. The room had a bunch of chairs set up, some with dolls attached to the seat. One of the dolls you checked had a gun behind it. You shoved the gun in one of your pockets, turning around to see that Sou had watched you do it.
“What are you doing with that?” He asked.
You opened your mouth to say something, but the truth was that you didn’t know what you were doing with it. “I was gonna hand it off to the… police officer on the other side of the room.” You made up.
“Oh. I see. Hey, before you hand it to him, though, could I see it?”
You thought for a moment. You could give it to him. You could also just… not. “I’m… No offense, Sou, but I don’t know you well enough to comfortably hand off this gun to you. Whether it’s loaded,” You opened the barrel to reveal that there were, indeed, no bullets inside. You showed it to him, “Or otherwise.” You shoved the barrel back inside with a click.
Sou let out a small chuckle, “You’re smart.” You glanced at him once more before stepping away and towards Keiji.
“Hey.” You called, getting his attention. He was crouched down next to a chair.
“Hey there… uh, Y/N?” Keiji stood up.
“Yeah, that’s me.” You lowered your voice, “So I found this thing while I was checking one of the dolls over there.” You pulled out the gun and showed it to Keiji, trying to hand it over to him.
He did not take it, however. “Woah. Is it loaded?” You shook your head, “Hm, even still, Sara will get antsy if she sees me with it. She already seems to have a grudge against me. It’d be better if you held onto it.”
“Holding onto it is making me nervous too. Aren’t you a god damn police officer?”
“If you don’t want to hold onto it, try giving it to Sou or Joe.” Keiji walked past you to search another area, not giving you the chance to argue back. You groaned to yourself. You knew you weren’t giving that damn thing to Sou after the short and not-so-sweet conversation you’d had with him only moments ago, so Joe would have to be your only option.
You walked over to him after putting the gun back in your pocket, only to pull it out again and shove it into his hands. “Please, take it. I don’t want to hold onto this. You still have the dummy bullets from earlier, correct?”
“Oh— uhm— okay?” Joe put the gun in his pocket. “Yeah, I do, and when we came in, Keiji came over to me and gave me… uh, three real ones. …What’s with the face?”
You didn’t realize you were making a face. “Sorry. He’s just… confusing. I tried to hand him the gun but he wouldn’t take it.”
“Oh… that’s… strange. He’s a police officer, right?”
“That’s what I said, but he brushed me off and walked away.”
“I don’t think there’s anything left for us to search for in here, team,” Sou said, startling both you and Joe. The two of you just stared at him for a moment. “…Okay, I’ll lead the way out, then.” Sou turned, leading the way out of the room. You began to follow after, but once Sou had left the room, the doorway was blocked off.
“What?”
“Shit— what was that?”
“The door is blocked!”
“Oh, dear.” Sou worried, “I’ll go look for something to help open the door! I’ll be back!” He ran off before you got to say anything in response.
“I suppose we’re stuck here until the door opens, then.” Kai said. You turned to see who was left in the room. You, Joe, Sara, Keiji, Kai, and Q-Taro.
So when a voice that hadn’t come from any of the six of you had spoken up, you all froze.
“So, are you all ready for the game?”