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When she looked at him again, those bead-like, piercing eyes frightened her. They looked out of an abyss, an endless space of unresolved mysteries. Yet they stared directly into her soul, her deepest, darkest secrets. They seemed to stare better than she could, understood her better than she did herself, and soon a soft whisper echoed, ‘I am your greatest fear, your Majesty.’
…
Mira waited at the rooftop of Shibuya Scramble Square, surrounded by an elegant lawn and gardens of white, clean roses. The stainless, clinical white color delighted her. They reminded her of her older days in the sanitarium, a place which marginally fulfilled her desire. A very dark desire, she thought, yet one that she was able to satisfy in this ruined place called the Borderlands.
The blimp that belonged to the King of Spades suddenly caught fire and exploded. Pieces of metals became torn apart, dropping and shedding down like soft leaves in the fall. Onto the desolate, burning ground of Shibuya. Onto the pathetic dead bodies that scattered around the place. She watched as the explosion, and the aftermath of the explosion ceased, watched as ash filled the area with a depressing color of gray. Some of her roses became tainted with ash, their bright white-colored petals became tarnished with ugly, grotesque dust.
“How unfortunate,” she sighed. Hers was the last game left. If anybody had survived the chaos caused by the seemingly immortal King of Spades, an invincible SDF officer, they would have to come to her now. For the last game. For the final deathmatch.
It was not long before the daring challenger revealed himself. A unique-looking, blonde young man in his twenties. He wore a sly, cunning smile. His lips curled into a disturbingly cunning smirk. Like a cat. More specifically, the Cheshire Cat.
Chishiya. Mira smiled. She always had a good impression of that boy. He was wicked, cold and calculating. He would make an interesting opponent.
Apparently Chishiya had found a perfect hiding spot during the King of Spades game, as he appeared to have no wounds at all. He was clad in his iconic hoodie, his breached blonde bangs hanging on both sides of his face as he strutted towards Mira with his hands in his pockets.
“Welcome, Chishiya! To the final game arena.” Mira declared with her bare arms stretched out.
“So you’re the Queen of Hearts, Mira. Just like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. And you dress like her too.”
Mira chuckled. “It’s rather unlike you to join a hearts game, however. I wonder what has brought you here.”
Chishiya stopped walking at once and paused to think, as if musing for a reasonable explanation. After a while, he said, “I’m not sure. Perhaps something I can’t see, some kind of force, like fate, has forced me here.”
“I never knew you believed in fate, or the supernatural, or superstitions.”
“There’s so little yet so much you can learn about me, my Queen.”
Mira chuckled again. He sure is a good one, Mira thought. I could play with him all day, and watch him break like every other human being. “Well, well. Since you have come here after all, let me tell you the rules of this game.”
“Rules? I thought the last game would be slightly more interesting.”
Mira looked at the smirking young man, amused. “So you don’t like rules? I thought you were a med student, an analyst, a practical person. Surely you do love rules.”
“That’s very stereotypical, my Queen. While I do like rules sometimes, other times I find the lack of rules more intriguing. Surely it is only your misinterpretation and wrong assumption of me that makes you think I like rules,” Chishiya said, smiling and looking at Mira.
Mira chuckled once more, feeling slightly embarrassed. “But if there are no rules, how do you know how to win the game?”
“How do you know I have come here to win the game?”
“Excuse me?” Mira questioned, now slightly annoyed by the fact that the young man standing before her, the confident young man, literally developed witty, quick-fire comebacks to all of her statements and questions on the spot.
“I have come to look for your company, my Queen.”
That took Mira aback a little. How...how did he know I was responsible for the last game? Wait...Mira took a deeper breath. Chishiya was no easy opponent. If anybody was the manipulator of this land, it would have been her...and Chishiya.
“Shall we start then, my Queen? You were talking about the rules?” Chishiya’s hands were still in his pockets, his eyes sharp and observative, his mind plotting and planning for his next moves. He looked around the game arena, the color white sickened him a little. It reminded him of the hospital he worked as an intern in, as well as his father and his loveless family. “What are these for?” Chishiya nodded towards the several coloured wooden balls that stood out from the green of the lawn, as well as a couple of hoops and mallets. “Croquets?”
“You are well-informed, my boy. So you do know what croquets are,” Mira said appreciatively. “They are for us to play, of course. Play three rounds of croquets with me without quitting and you’ll clear the game.”
“Are you sure they are not just decorations and ornaments for the real game?”
“No they’re not,” Mira replied. Suddenly she was aware that she was stating the truth, the pure, plain facts. In a game where she was supposed to be lying. “They are for our game.” She decided that it would be best to keep things straightforward at the very beginning. She had more tricks under her sleeve than that young, cunning man could imagine. She had everything under complete control. The only thing she had to do was to find the right time to strike and break him.
And so with this reply their first game of croquets began. The first game went on smoothly, Chishiya had somehow learnt the rules of croquets elsewhere, sparing Mira the effort to explain to him how to play the game. They talked so little during the first game, instead they watched as each other played, observing each other’s moves and predicting their thoughts. In a hearts game with Mira as an opponent, Chishiya thought, it is a game that requires us to break each other. And the one who breaks first loses.
“So, what do you think of this?” Mira asked after she won the first game. “Do you find it intriguing?”
Chishiya nodded, looking like he was in a jolly mood. “Certainly was enjoying myself, your Majesty. Despite losing, I did enjoy the game.”
“Have you played the croquets before?” Mira asked innocently.
So this is where your manipulation of me starts, thought Chishiya. “Well, I used to play it with my friends. Back in high school.”
“I see. You were close friends, weren’t you?”
“Sort of. We were inseparable.”
“But I suppose you drifted apart. Judging by your lonely appearance at the Beach, am I right to assume that you have given up the effort to seek friendship?”
That was partly true. In the past, Chishiya had never had any interest in seeking friendship. Born into a family that had nothing but money and social status, he had never understood the basics of platonic attraction, or human connection, or love. He was well aware of his own deficiency, and he had learnt better than to mend it or face this aspect of him. He was doing fine all alone, thank you, and he figured he did not need anybody to be his companion. In fact, the truth was that he never had any friends. Not anywhere, nor any time of his life.
But he did not give up seeking friendship. In truth, after going through everything in the Borderlands, he picked up the desire to seek friendship. Mira was wrong about him thinking that he used to like friendship but had given it up later in life. The truth was that he never understood friendship before. Instead of pushing him further away from human connection, the Borderlands somehow allowed him to confront this deficiency of his. He felt like making friends with honest people like Arisu and Kuina. At the Beach, he became Kuina’s ally. He suspected, with a hint of pride, that their relationship had become something more than just a simple alliance. Maybe she saw him as a friend. If she did so, maybe he would be willing to reciprocate and see her as a friend.
Just before the King of Spades game, Chishiya met Arisu again. “Yo!” He had called out. “Arisu, I knew you would survive until now.”
Arisu responded with a smile. “You too, Chishiya. You seem to have changed a lot.”
“Changed?” He had asked.
“Yeah, mellower. Nicer.” Arisu said with genuine sincerity. This was something that Mira did not know, if her impression of Chishiya remained to be that at the Beach. She had no idea how much Chishiya had changed, especially after his Diamond game with Kuzuryu. He was more hopeful now, and believed more in the goods of people. That was the reason why he refused to participate in the Battle Royale proposed by Niragi just before the King of Spades arrived. That was the reason why he agreed, in front of a wounded, hurt Arisu, that he would go to the final game arena and clear the game for the sake of everybody. He, as he reflected, was not as cold or heartless as before.
With a sly smile, Chishiya replied, “You thought so low of me, my Queen. We did drift apart, but not because our friendship did not work out. It was because my friends went overseas for their studies while I stayed in Japan. I seemed lonely at the Beach because my very best friends were lucky enough not to be sucked into this piece of land. Strategically, I thought it would be wise to keep myself away from deep connections from other humans, as you never know what could happen here. But the fact is, your Majesty, while I look lonely and reserved, I do have friends and allies here.” Chishiya ended his answer with a playful grin, as if he had just won a battle in this war of wit and psychological manipulation. If you think you can manipulate me on this aspect, Chishiya thought, then you are wrong, your Majesty. No matter how many games you have designed or how many people you have killed…
I will always be smarter than you.
~
The second game started shortly after the first. They played at the same pace as before, yet this time Mira spoke more than she did previously. She started to see the pattern in Chishiya’s responses. He spoke with immense confidence, beaming a great quality of self-belief and arrogance. He was self-entitled, believing himself to be superior. But why? He is just a spoiled boy who thinks highly of himself, she thought to herself, ego is going to be his tragic flaw. She contemplated deeply about it. But Chishiya had always been aware of the fact that he was cocky, so why did he keep this quality of his? Maybe it was something else...something more to him that he wanted to hide. Something inside him that he wanted to lock inside a box and bury it deep down the soil, masked by the facade of this cold, confident persona. It would be something she had to explore. A button to push, and he would eventually break.
Mira lost the second game.
“Well done, Chishiya. You have got talent in this.”
That’s an unusual compliment, Chishiya thought, what is she playing at this time? “Thanks,” Chishiya replied shortly.
“So I see that you have been quite successful in your life prior to the Borderlands, am I right? I mean, medical school. Just how many students you have to outsmart in order to get in. Your family must be very proud of you.” Mira delivered her compliment with perfect elegance, her eyes wide open and staring, as if trying to pierce through the flesh of this young, blonde man before her.
It is often said that every human being has a soft spot for something. An area of emotional weakness that everyone tries to avoid but eventually be forced to face on some unfortunate occasions. To Chishiya it was his loveless family, his father who barely even looked at him in the past twenty and more years. He knew it was something that hurt him, something a manipulator would so conveniently use to break him. He saw it coming. He knew Mira was going to discover and explore that side of him, to use it and destroy him until he begged to quit the game. He knew she would bring up the topic of family. He knew she would notice his hesitation before delivering an answer to her question. He knew she would eventually reach this ugly secret of his and smiled in a way as if she had found the shortcut of victory in this game of hearts.
It was pointless to lie. At this moment, Chishiya decided to tell Mira a bit of the truth. “They didn’t really care, actually. Never...never really care.”
“Oh,” Mira sighed with such beautiful sympathy. “What a pity.” She put down her mallet and pointed elegantly at the white pavilion at one end of the lawn. “Shall we bring this conversation over there? It is a tradition for gentlemen and ladies to drink a cup of tea mid-game.”
Both of them put down their mallets and went to the pavilion, where Mira, the Queen of Hearts, poured two tiny cups of English tea. One for herself, one for her opponent of the day. Then she stared at Chishiya with great intensity and curiosity. Chishiya weighed and held the cup in his hand. It was obviously a very suspicious offering, however, he wondered if drinking was a must for the Queen to continue the game. If it’s a must, then I will have to drink it. But it is very clearly drugged, otherwise the Queen would have drunk it in the first place. Chishiya thought carefully. It won’t work even if I ask Mira to drink first. She will so definitely refuse to do so, and as long as neither of us drinks, this game is never going to end. He looked at Mira, who was still staring. She is not going to say anything until I have taken a sip of the tea. If this situation lasts, this game does not end either. He took a deep breath. So I guess it is a must for me, or any unlucky player who happens to stumble upon this game, to get drugged and snap out of it before becoming broken by Mira’s words. This is the point of the game.
“You’re the Queen of Hearts, after all.” Chishiya said before taking a sip of the tea. The liquid went so powerfully down his throat. As he shivered slightly to the effect of the tea, he fumbled mentally through his medical books and all other medical journals he had ever read to look for the possible origin for this drug. It was probably a kind of drug similar to cocaine, amphetamines or LSD. Most probably LSD, Chishiya thought, lysergic acid diethylamide. Gives people powerful hallucinations and intensified thoughts, emotions and sensory perception. He recalled mentally. This is the perfect drug for this game if the Queen is trying to break anyone.
“Feeling better?” Mira smiled when she asked.
Chishiya began to feel a little light-headed. Just how concentrated can this tea be? He pondered as Mira began asking him questions again. “So...you were saying your parents didn’t care about you much?”
Chishiya felt a little frustrated for having to repeat the truth. “No, they were both doctors. Busy as hell. They had to work round the clock and only paid attention when I told them how much I needed for my tuition fee.”
Mira’s lips curled downwards, as if showing how sorry she felt for Chishiya’s horrible family situation. She observed her opponent again, who looked a little pale now. The tea did the job. No matter how mentally tough a person was, her words and the tea would be able to break him or her. “You must have felt really lonely in your real life. Your friends went away to study overseas. Your parents did not care anything about you. Did you ever try to talk to them?”
Chishiya looked at the Queen of Hearts. His mouth was becoming drier and drier, presumably one of the effects of the drug, so as to get him to drink more of the wicked tea. But he pushed the cup of tea away. “I did,” he said with a little bit of effort. “But they never cared. They were too busy to care.”
Mira smiled again. Finally, I have found the right button to push. She pretended to pause for a few seconds, then changed the subject of their conversation. “Can I tell you something?” Mira asked softly, her fingers circling on the round edge of her own tea cup. They were mesmerizing fingers. Soon they appeared to be dancing on the tea cup, bouncing with such elegance that no words could be used to describe them. Then they were tapping, jumping, swaying, serving, circling, smiling…
Wait, no! Chishiya forced himself to snap out of his hallucination of Mira’s fingers. This is just the beginning, I can’t be defeated so soon. The drug was getting to him quicker than he thought, and he was already suffering from the mental effect that this wicked substance caused. He tried concentrating on his surroundings, his tea cup, his hands, the white roses and then Mira. Mira, who was staring at him with great interest, asked again, “Can I tell you something?”
Without waiting for an answer, she began speaking. “You must have realized by now that all of us game masters of the face cards were players once. Like you people.” She sighed, looked sideways, then continued, “During the time when I was a player, I met a girl like you. She lived a wealthy life, sure, but one without somebody to truly like or love her. Her parents were business people, you see, they were away from home most of the time. Didn’t spend time with her or anything. Didn’t care.”
Suddenly pictures of his past popped up in Chishiya’s head. The time when he peeked into his father’s office, hoping that he would somehow notice his presence. The time his mother turned away when he showed her his first result card. The empty seats on his graduation days, the lack of celebration when he scored first in the national public examination, the lack of response when he told them he was moving away. Away from home...from the family he never even considered to have.
“I bet you must understand how she felt.”
“Felt?” Chishiya asked.
“She died here. Killed herself because she couldn’t bear the pressure of survival. She simply found no purpose to live anymore. In a world like this, with a life like that in the past. She thought that even if she could go back to the real world, she would still live miserably. To her,death was mercy. Death provided relief to all her troubles.”
She’s trying to make me surrender, Chishiya thought, it’s going to take a struggle, but if I don’t do anything soon I may as well die here with her lies. He stared into the surroundings even harder, trying to avoid feeling anything at all. He had been particularly expert in this aspect before entering the Borderlands, yet the Borderlands had somehow softened him. In certain ways. After the King of Diamonds game, he felt envious of Kuzuryu, and admired Arisu for his kindness. He sensed that it was a good change, but this change-for-the-better could possibly become his weakness in this vicious game of Hearts. With the effect of the drug growing inside him, he felt dragged along by the Queen, compelled to listen to whatever she said, even if it meant losing the game.
“So, What are you going to do afterwards? Even if you can clear this game, you may still be stuck here, forced to stay forever. Even if you can go back, there is nothing waiting for you.” Mira delivered her words carefully, making sure that now a half-hypnotized Chishiya could clearly receive the message she was trying to convey. Give up, Mira thought, you have not been trying to try hard anyways.
A memory from the Beach emerged from nowhere. Somehow, when Chishiya and Kuina were still working together, they once had a brief, frustrating fight over the idea of going back and the idea of what to look forward to if they could go back.
“My mother will be waiting for me. This I am very sure of,” Kuina had said.
“How do you know that things in the real world won’t change at all during the time when we are stuck here?” Chishiya had asked.
Kuina frowned, then shook her head. “I don’t know. But I do believe in things. And my mother is one of the things that I believe in. She loves me and I love her so much. She won’t disappear until I am able to go back to her.”
Chishiya had snickered. More precisely, sneered. He secretly hated it when people talked so well about their family. It made him a total asshole to have hatred for such a thing, but in truth it hurt him a little listening to others talk about their families. “I won’t be so optimistic.”
“That’s because you are a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care and never cares!” Kuina snapped at him, her voice trembled with anger. It was the first time Kuina ever yelled at Chishiya, and the last time before they parted ways at the Beach. They never mentioned anything about family anymore after this incident, but Chishiya remembered how he was slightly annoyed by the fact that Kuina called him a ‘cold-hearted jerk”, and the fact that she thought he did not care about his family, at all.
Well, he did. But after realizing his effort was futile he simply gave up trying to. He never understood why his parents gave birth to him, if they did not like him much. This made him wonder, very often, why he even existed in the first place. His value of existence was reduced to nearly zero, his living and breathing looked...meaningless.
“So...Chishiya, What is your purpose of continuing to live?”
Her voice echoed in the air. What is the purpose of living? This was the question that Chishiya always asked himself. Why live? What is the purpose of it all? Is there such a thing as a thing called living? After all, isn’t he just a shell without a soul? A product created to facilitate the image of a normal married couple? “Why try so hard though, after everything you have been through, haven’t you realized how futile human lives are, how fragile our will...how aimless people actually feel?”
If you have nobody to care about, not even yourself, the Queen seemed to suggest, why not just let it go?
“What do you propose?” Chishiya asked, in an unusually vague and absent tone.
Mira stared intensely at him, her eyes beaming with satisfaction. “Nothing more than a pat on your back.” With that being said, she pulled out a shotgun from under the table. It was no magic. She had stolen Chishiya’s shotgun which he brought with him to every single game. Somehow she had stolen it when he was still dreamy and stuck in his drug-induced trance. “You have always wanted to do this, haven’t you?”
Somehow the sight of his shotgun frightened Chishiya, it stirred up, once again, even more memories. When he thought he had firmly locked this fragment of his past inside a chest buried deeply underground, he was wrong. It was there, it had always been there. The pain and the sorrow was still there. He was ten then, home alone without anybody to talk to. His parents had been away for work for days in a row. He was standing in the middle of his sterile, quiet and empty house. Lonely, very lonely. Somehow the ten-year-old child wanted a friend. It was the last time, in retrospect, that he felt intense desire for a companion. He wondered why nobody really cared about him, why all the doctors who had visited his house never talked to him once. Was he too naughty? He did nothing but read silently in the corner of his kitchen. He wanted escape, a shelter from this traumatic silence. Something to protect him from the vision of abandonment and the fear of loneliness.
And somehow his young, unknowing mind jumped to the idea of death. Death. It was something that he had been reading a lot from different medical journals he had found in the house. He knew a lot more about death than his ten-year-old peers, thanks to his frequent visits to the hospital where his parents worked. He understood the physiology and psychology of it. The most painless way to die was to die in your sleep. However, not everyone could be so lucky. In a city like Tokyo, people died of freak accidents, fires, natural hazards, diseases, even murders. There were so many different ways for a person to die, but these all led to the same destination---an end to life. An end to everything that happened before death. Everything seemed to disappear after death, at least from the deceased person's perspective, they no longer felt the pain or the misery of living.
Could death really be mercy? The ten-year-old kid had asked himself. It was the first time he played with the concept of death. He pondered ways he could die in an instant. Painless and accurate. Short and clear. Somehow, in that ten-year-old mind of his, he wanted it to happen. Somehow he looked for death. He wanted to take his own life. The image of that young boy standing at the edge of the balcony of his house now replayed over and over again in Chishiya's head. That horrible thought of death. It was not the idea of death that frightened him, it was the idea that he once tried to actively end his own life that frightened him.
He was weak then. Very weak. Or perhaps…or perhaps he had been weak this whole time. It would be a lie if he claimed that the idea of killing himself had not popped up even once ever since that particular occasion. He had contemplated it, planned it through once or twice in his head. When he realized he had no purpose to live anymore, he wanted death to come, either by his own hands or by others'.
"Now I have come to realize…" Mira began slowly, "your ego and your confidence, are just masks for your sorrow. You have so many secrets, Chishiya, and they have almost entirely consumed you. Because you never face them or talk about them. You have always hidden them, deep deep down." She tapped at the shotgun again, pushing it forward so it was just within Chishiya's grasp. "This is your chance to change things. To escape from everything. The past, the pain, the lack of a promising future…"
"You just want to see people break, don't you?"
That was said so abruptly, so unexpectedly that it caused Mira to jerk backwards from her intense gaze at her opponent. "What? What did you say?"
"Your habit, or should I say your hobby? Is to watch people break, isn't it?"
“I don’t know what you mean.” Mira said affirmatively. Chishiya smiled knowingly, which perplexed her even more. He looked...sober. That vague, absent and bland tone of his disappeared, as if he had been struck by a magic spell which completely countered the effect of the drug. Now he was playing at her, trying to confuse her with his words like she had been doing. She had no idea how he was able to snap out of everything.
“You must be wondering, Mira, why I look so different now than a few seconds before,” began Chishiya, his cunning and sly smile creeping again. “You actually remind me of somebody. And in a few flash seconds just now, I was reminded of her. That snapped me out of everything you had been trying to put me through.”
Mira tilted her head, “Somebody?”
“Yeah,” Chishiya said, now becoming uncomfortably jolly and obviously less tense, “she used to be my psychiatrist.”
Mira almost laughed. What is he playing at? She thought. He could not have known...could he? No! I have never told anybody before.
As if seeing through what Mira was thinking, Chishiya replied, “It doesn’t take telling to know that you are a psychiatrist, Mira. Or you used to be a psychiatrist before you entered the Borderlands.”
Mira held her breath. Chishiya was right. She used to be a psychiatrist, and that was her past. But that did not mean she would break just because she was really a psychiatrist. Merely knowing she used to be a psychiatrist could not be enough for this weird, cunning young man to break her.
“Do you like it here, Mira?” Chishiya asked. He was speaking in a lighter tone now, as if it was just a casual tea conversation. “Do you like the Borderlands?”
Mira chuckled, “What do you mean if I like it here or not? I am the Queen of Hearts, and of course I have to like this place.”
“Then I suppose you chose to be the Queen of Hearts because you loved this place so much and you didn’t want to leave it, hmm?”
“Huh!” Mira exclaimed. He knows something, this Chishiya person. He knows about this land, does he not? Either he knows about this land or he is just making wild assumptions. “It seems to me you believe that there is a way out of this place.”
“I actually am not sure,” Chishiya shrugged, in a rather genuine way, “but from my observation of you players, I have begun to suspect something.”
“Suspect what?” Mira asked, secretly mourning for the complete loss of the tension she was trying to build up earlier. She was so close. Chishiya was so deep in his trance that she really thought, for a moment, that he would obediently pick up the gun and shoot himself to death. But now this guy looked as lively as ever in front of her. Who is he?
“I suspect that you players were given choices after completing all the face card games. To leave or to stay, probably. And some, like you and Kuzuryu, chose to stay. That’s why when I asked Kuzuryu if I could replace him once I beat him in the game, he said nothing. It was a kind of silent affirmation.”
“There is no way out of here, only despair.” Mira sighed, trying to deliver her statements as grimly as possible. “You are forever stuck once you enter this place.”
“Well, at least you chose to be the Queen of Hearts and not kill youself facing such a poor prospect,” Chishiya said. “This place must interest you so much.”
Mira sneered. “But it surely doesn’t interest you.”
“No it doesn’t. You interest me, my Queen.”
Mira was utterly taken aback. “How, in what ways?”
“Like I said. You remind me of my psychiatrist. She was a woman who loved to listen. She loved listening to people’s trauma, claiming that if we said and told enough everything would be okay.”
“Yet everything didn’t become okay.”
“Obviously not. But I often wondered why she would keep telling people to tell her things. I suspected that she liked listening to those mishaps that happened to people. Like stories to her. Pastime stories. And the emotions that paraded themselves on people’s faces, must have been beautiful in her eyes.”
Mira’s heart beat faster than ever. Pictures and scenes of her past flashed in her head. Having graduated with a degree in medicine, she continued to pursue a speciality in psychiatry. Sat inside a cramped, sterile office at a university hospital, she felt like God herself. She pried into patients’ darkest secrets, listened to them talk about their past, present and future. The absurd fantasies and realities they envisioned amused her, the tales of their mishaps intrigued her, the source of their misery...they became her source of delight. It was true that soon she found herself to be sinking, sinking into the feeling of being an omniscient God. She began to love secrets. She began to love listening to people talk about their regrets, to look at them melt down and to pity them, to soothe them, to console them.
She became morbid. She became twisted.
And she knew it.
Not only did she know it, but her husband, who was also a psychiatrist, realized her malicious change. He left her for that, and left her feeling utterly abandoned. She wanted escape, a kind of relief from her own pain. So she sunk even further into her dark pursuit. Her pursuit of other people’s pain. A daily reminder to herself that she was not alone in suffering, that there were other people more unfortunate, more unhappy and more sorrowful than her. Their sadness was her relief. It made her happy to see them break before her.
It was her darkest secret. The true reason why Mira chose to stay in the Borderlands after being offered the dual choice of going back or staying forever. She wanted the place. She needed it. She despised the real world, which failed to accept her and appreciate her for what she desired. She loved the Borderlands, a place where her darkest desires were perfectly satisfied.
“You love looking at me break down, don’t you? You just love seeing that, it is what has led you here. To this place, to become the Queen of Hearts.”
Mira would never understand how Chishiya figured that out. She avoided his glances and stares. But when she looked at him again, those bead-like, piercing eyes frightened her. They looked out of an abyss, an endless space of unresolved mysteries. Yet they stared directly into her soul, her deepest, darkest secrets. They seemed to stare better than she could, understood her better than she did herself, and soon a soft whisper echoed, ‘I am your greatest fear, your Majesty.’
“You are morbid.” Mira exclaimed with great distaste. This caused Chishiya to make a face.
“I have never said I ain’t morbid, your Majesty. However, it seems to me that I have discovered your biggest secret. And that, my Queen, makes you as morbid as I am.”
There was a subtle change of expression on Mira’s face. Her composure was tainted with a hint of sorrow. Perhaps she felt sad hearing what Chishiya had said. Perhaps she did not quite agree with him. Nobody could truly understand her, but at that moment, she might have felt a great sense of grief and guilt.
“You are a truly admirable player of the Hearts games.”
“I am never really suited for the Hearts, my Queen. But nonetheless, I am not here to threaten or frighten you. Nor am I here to judge you. Who am I to judge you honestly? When I used to be cold and heartless and morbid.” Chishiya laughed.
“Why, again, are you here then, Chishiya?”
“To look for your company, Mira, as I said at the very beginning. I think we are quite alike. We like manipulating people and using their feelings for our own purposes. But at the end of the day we are, in truth, just two pathetic souls who fail to understand the real world or anything good in it. We manipulate to feel superior. We take advantage of others to feel better. As if it actually worked.”
Mira teared up. The young man before her actually smiled genuinely when he told her he wanted her company and how they paralleled each other. She might have gone slightly mad in the real world, a little more mad in the Borderlands, but at the end of the day she was still human. Even as a game master, she felt warm, finally being wanted and understood by this particular player sitting before her. What is the point of all these? Suddenly she pondered the reason behind all the games held in the Borderlands. There seemed to be no point for them at all.
Then she laughed at herself. “I must have been mad,” Mira said.
“We are all mad, aren’t we? Both in the real world and here. But that isn’t our fault.” Chishiya said contemplatively. Then he stretched out his arms and offered his hand to Mira. “Shall we finish our last game, my Queen? As equals.”
Emotions burst inside Mira, the Queen of Hearts. She knew it was his strategy. She saw it coming. She had so carelessly allowed Chishiya to reach her secret and analyze her. She had allowed him to see through her and dissect her feelings like a mouse in the lab. She had, perhaps, made a mistake.
But it would be a lie to say that she did not intend to make such a mistake. Perhaps some part of her was compelled to let her guard down and listen to whatever Chishiya said. Perhaps ever since the moment Chishiya told her that he wanted her company, a part of her had begun to desire the same thing. She just wanted somebody to play the game with her, to enjoy their secrets, to see the end of everything.
Human emotions were the most complicated codes to fathom and decipher. Looking at Chishiya and his welcoming hands, Mira had the urge to hug and kiss him. It was, probably, one of the most unexpected and weird urges she had ever had. So instead of conforming to her desire, Mira simply accepted his offer and took his hand, which led her to their last game of croquet. The end of everything.
~~~
Arisu began to worry when Niragi started, for the tenth time, rambling about how he should be named the MVP of the Borderlands having given the King of Spades the headshot that killed him. Then, as dusk arrived, the blimp that belonged to the Queen of Hearts exploded and burned. The concerned expression on Arisu's face turned into one of relief.
The last game had been cleared. The last game out of all.