Chapter Text
There’s a small playroom on the pediatrics floor, with brightly colored walls, toys, and shelves full of children's books. Good for the brats, but Niragi thinks the room could use some consoles. Kids these days should learn the joy of destroying each other at boxing in Wii Sports, even if it’s from the inside of hospital walls. Maybe having Matt humiliate them at tennis will bust their fighting instincts and turn them into men or whatever.
Being a sick kid trapped inside a hospital sounds terrible. But it sounds even worse if your only entertainment is reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the tenth time. The hospital could at least renew their choice of library, or maybe Niragi is growing soft enough to spare a thought to those brats.
“What are you doing here?”
Chishiya’s voice greets him the moment he pushes the door open, and Niragi finds himself surprised. That was quick. Usually Chishiya will just ignore him.
“Tomie and Riona told me where to find you. I think they’re starting to like me,” Niragi says, walking to Chishiya, who is standing next to a child who looks very close to going into a murder rage. “They were so happy about their dead Shuntaro getting a visit form his handsome, caring boyfriend. Good to see you too.”
The room is almost empty at this time of the afternoon. The only people apart from them in the games room are two girls sitting in fur puffs, playing some hand-clapping games and singing about a husband who ate his wife.
Cool.
“Let me repeat my question,” Chishiya says. “What are you doing here, again?”
“Annoy you, of course.”
“I’m working, Niragi,” and he points at the kid sitting at the small table, glaring daggers into Chishiya's back in a way that puts Niragi's hate into shame.
The brat tugs on Niragi's pants, and he looks down to meet the kid’s gaze. He’s small and drowning in his loose hospital pajamas. The frown on his little face looks too big for a kid that young. He seems busy with some paper sheets and a pack of crayons and very offended by Chishiya interrupting his playtime.
“He wants me to drink something nasty,” the boy says. “And eat stinky candy.”
“We’ve gone through this, Taro,” Chishiya puts the two plastic cups on the table with a sigh. “You need to take your meds, and you need to drink this so we can look at your heart.”
The blue liquid inside the plastic cup looks and smells disgusting, Niragi doesn’t blame the kid for gagging and pushing it away from him.
“You look cool,” the kid says. His attention shifts from the cup to Niragi in less than two seconds, and the frown is gone when he looks at him. “Are those real swords?”
“No buddy, they didn’t let me bring real swords to the hospital because they’re boring like that,” Niragi crouches down next to the table. He takes off the small dagger earring and shows it to the kid. “See? They don’t even sting.”
Chishiya seems surprised now. It’s not a daily occurrence seeing Niragi acting pretty normal around a kid. More like around anyone, no matter the age. He’s being nice even. The kid tries to poke his finger against the dagger, just to find a blunt edge.
“Do metal detectors beep when you go through them?” the kid asks, and Niragi's mouth twists into a smile. “Can you get in a plane?”
“Hey doc!” Niragi calls, and Chishiya looks back at him. “Can I go through metal detectors?”
“Piercings do not set off metal detectors,” Chishiya answers, all serious and stiff. “In general, a few piercings—even if grouped together—usually do not pose a threat of setting off an alarm.”
He’s giving Niragi the What are you doing? look, but he ignores him and turns back to face the kid.
“See? I didn’t know that,” he lies. “But the doc here knew it because doctors are very smart. So you should listen to him and take your meds.”
The kid, Taro, looks at Niragi and then at Chishiya. “He is smart?”
“Very smart. Doctors need to be smart,” Niragi tells the kid. “And smart people listen to other smart people.”
“I’m smart!”
“I’m sure you are, dude.” Slowly, Niragi pushes the cup closer to the kid. “Listen to the doctor then, he healed me a lot of times. He knows what he’s doing.”
Taro looks at Chishiya, big eyes wide open and full of childlike wonder.
“You heal adults too?”
“I do sometimes. My friend here tends to get in a lot of trouble, and I help him when he does.”
“He said he was your boyfriend.”
“It's complicated.”
“Does he take his meds when you heal him?”
“Yes, I do,” from one of the thousand pockets of his cargos. Niragi pulls out his pillbox and shakes it. There’s a rattle, rattle, rattle, and the kids laugh. “See? These are my medicines. I take them because I’m cool like that.”
More like because he’s obligated by law to do so, Chishiya seems to think. Chishiya rolls his eyes at his antics, but then he kneels on the floor next to them. He takes the medicines and drops three pills in his palm.
“Let’s make a deal. I know you can’t eat right now, but if you take this, I’ll tell the nurse to add a piece of cake to your dinner tray.”
Taro looks at Chishiya and then at Niragi, who offers him a wink.
“Come on, listen to Doc. I’m sure the cake is worth it.”
The kid's eyes narrow, and he looks all determined when he grabs the three small pills and swallows them down next to the blue liquid. The poor guy makes a disgusted face, and Chishiya ruffles his hair before calling for a nurse.
“Good job, brat,” Niragi says, offering the kid a fist bump. “Keep listening to my friend the doctor, okay?”
Taro nods, and then he runs out of the room.
Riona takes the kid with her, not without giving them a strange look. That leaves Niragi and Chishiya alone in the room. He hadn’t even noticed the two girls leaving at some point during the conversation.
“Your friend?”
“What was even that?” Niragi asks, ignoring Chishiya's question, as he goes back to his feet.
“Contrast for a CT scan,” Chishiya says, throwing the empty cup into the trash. “I don’t blame the kid. It does taste like shit, but radiologists tend to like to see things for some reason.”
Together they make their way to the door, but Chishiya stops him before he can exit the room.
“I thought you were going to scare him to death.”
“You offend me. I’m not that cruel,” Niragi leans against the wall. Chishiya looks far better than he did the past few days, more rested, less disheveled. “I save scaring kids for Halloween and special occasions like my birthday.”
After all, he had gotten his fair share of looking over brats in the past month.
He was the youngest member of the team, and, as such, his boss had thought it convenient that Niragi took care of supervising the kids they had signed in to test some games. A terrible idea, but he had gotten more or less used to having those small pests around in the past weeks.
Still not his thing, he would rather die than spend another day trapped with that tiny army of monsters, but if something proved that Mira had done a good job with him, it was the fact that none of those kids had walked out of the room crying.
Maybe she was right, and he could get fixed.
“But don’t tell anyone I can be nice. I don’t want Karube to turn us into babysitters once he starts having brats.”
Chishiya is already condemned to being the next generation doctor, and Niragi has no plans of getting involved in that, thank you. He doubts he will be stuck living with Chishiya by then, but better safe than sorry.
“What are you really doing here?”
“I have an appointment with Mira,” Niragi says, shoving his hands inside his pockets. “I was nervous as fuck, got here an hour early, and thought about annoying you to ignore the urge to throw up because, believe me, you don’t want to throw up with freshly made piercings in your mouth.”
Chishiya opens his mouth like he wants to say something and then closes it. He approaches Niragi; his eyes finally fall on his face, like he hadn’t been really looking at him before.
“Really? You got a piece of metal ripped out of your skin, and you still chose to reopen the wound?” Chishiya gets even closer, and suddenly his hand is on Niragi’s face. His hold is tight. He turns Niragi’s face around, and his eyes narrow in a thin line. “I almost had to sew your lip back together, Niragi.”
“Emphasis on almost,” Niragi says. He offers Chishiya a cheeky grin, and Chishiya wants to smack him. He should have sewn his mouth closed. Do the world a favor. “It’s not in the same place as the old one.”
There’s a faint scar on Niragi’s mouth now, where the small metal ring used to be. It’s unnoticeable if you don’t know where to look, but Chishiya is pretty familiar with it. Instead of reopening the wound, the new one rests in the center of his lip, a few centimeters away from the place where the skin broke. And there’s another addiction resting above his cupid's bow.
“Do you like it? Samura had a new piercer in the team. I think she’s better with needles than you.”
“I couldn’t care less about you poking holes in your face, Niragi,” but he tilts Niragi’s head to the side. The wound is pretty clean actually, not even red or swollen; whoever did this is pretty good with a needle, he’ll give them that. “Are you sure they’ll heal with how much you run your mouth?”
Niragi groans and rolls his eyes, like he’s not the one who searched him, and Chishiya's presence annoys him.
“I was going to offer you a ride, you know? I go to Mira. Then to the cafeteria, where I eat something while I pretend I haven’t been crying for the past hour. Wait for your shift to end and go home together, you know, the usual stuff.”
Their usual unsaid routine they never talk about.
One of many.
“But maybe I should remove my offer and leave you to take the overcrowded, smelly bus.”
“Oh no, what would I do if I needed to resort to the bus instead of your crazy driving?”
“Be home in an hour instead of fifteen minutes,” Niragi says, moving away from him. “Your choice.”
Chishiya pinches the bridge of his nose with a loud sigh and ignores the way Niragi laughs at him.
“My shift ends in two hours. I’ll go find you at the cafeteria.”
“We have a deal,” and with that, the door closes behind Niragi.
Maybe he should invest in a car so he stops being condemned to being driven around. But that’s a problem for future him.
When they make it home two and a half hours later and Chishiya opens the door, there are a lot of shoes in the genkan, and their friends’ heads snap to the door like a bunch of meerkats.
“One day I’ll call pest infection,” Niragi greets, kicking off his boots.
“The key was for emergencies, Kuina,” Chishiya adds, hanging his coat from the perch by the door. “You couldn’t wait until we got home?”
Sometimes he wonders why he’s friends with these people.
And then, he remembers that he didn’t really get the option to say no before getting dragged in the middle of the mess.
When he told them that they could resume the D&D campaign, he expected at least thirty minutes of being alone between coming back from home and their friends arriving, but it looks like he asked for too much.
After all, it’s been a while since they last played, and everyone seems pretty excited about reuniting again.
First, Niragi got stabbed.
Then Chishiya started to act strange and locked himself up inside his room for two weeks.
And then The Sology went on a small tour that would keep them away from Tokyo until Christmas is over.
So suddenly their campaign came to a break right in the middle of a game, which was not very convenient, and no one seemed happy about it.
Today it’s the first day everyone is free, so campaign time it is.
“We were excited about the campaign,” Arisu says, pointing to the table where everything is already set up for the afternoon. “Started getting everything ready while we waited for you.”
“How are we playing without Kyuma here?”
“We’re not finishing the King today,” Karube and Chota say at the same time. “We’re not on DM duty today, we’ll be playing.”
A door slams shut, and Heiya walks out of Niraigi’s room with a bunch of books in her hands, looking much better than she did last time he saw her.
“What were you doing in my room, brat?”
“Do girls want to kiss you when you taste like licking a fork?” she asks back, ignoring the question. She leaves the books on the table and turns around to face him. “What’s with all that metal?”
“Do I look interested in kissing girls?” Heiya avoids Niragi's attempt to kick her and bleeps at him. “Who the fuck invited the kid?”
“I went to the gym this morning and asked Aguni if he wanted to join us,” Kuina says. “He told me he’d rather die, but Heiya overheard us and told me she would do it instead.”
“And she needed some books for literature class,” Usagi adds. “Hatter told her to raid your book shelf.”
Niragi drops against one of the chairs, and Kuina punches his arm.
“Come on, don’t look so moody. I’m pretty sure lots of girls want to lick a fork,” and she pokes his cheek with a pointy nail. “Or guys.”
She adds without looking at anyone in particular.
“The only fork here is the one I’m going to stick inside a toaster,” one day these people will drive him crazy. “She doesn’t even have a character.”
“We’ve been making one for her,” Karube ruffles the kid’s hair, and she doesn’t complain. “Pretty cool one, by the way, but she won’t be using it today. Arisu has something else ready.”
And that can only mean one thing.
They’re about to experience the best game ever, cry their eyes out, or be traumatized by the end of the day.
It takes a while for everyone to be seated, but when they manage it, the arrangement is different from usual. Arisu and Chishiya take the heads of the table, and everyone else sits at the edges in no particular order.
“I’m the DM today,” Arisu announces, pulling out a binder from his bag. “I prepared a one-shot so Chishiya can play while we wait for The Sology to be back in town.”
He points at Chishiya, who looks around the table. “What? It’s not my fault none of you pulled me into a car. I’m on the other side of the map. It’s all on you.”
“Can’t he just magically appear next to us again?” Kuina asks before throwing a Dorito at Niragi, who just picks it from the table and eats it. “You allowed him to spawn in the King of Clubs.”
“Karube allowed him to spawn, not me,” Arisu shrugs before pulling another binder out of his bag and starting to pass new character sheets around. Karube and Chota high-five, still proud of the chaos that the King of Clubs is bringing to the team. “We’re doing something different today. You’ll play a random character, everyone except Chishiya, who will still be himself.”
Arisu is a bit nervous, he won’t lie.
He never plays the DM, and he doesn’t want his friends to know how excited he is about this, but he really believes he came up with a good game for a one-session campaign. They needed something to do until The Sology is back, and they can’t waste one of those weird days where everyone can join the party, so Chishiya’s plot it is.
“Pick one at random, check it, and ask me any questions about it. I’ll answer if it’s important for the character. All the other things are up to you to create and improvise.”
When Niragi grabs one of the papers, his face falls.
“So this is what you wanted the concept art from that stupid dating simulator for?” Niragi looks at his sheet and frowns. “Warn a man next time, I already have the rendered ones. These ones look like shit! You don’t go around showing another man unfinished designs, Arisu.”
But everyone ignores him.
Like they always do.
“Oki Yaba,” Kuina reads her own out loud. “This man looks straight out of one of those novels my mom reads.”
“Stop whining,” Arisu says, looking at Niragi first. “I only took the art, so don’t think you have any advantage. No one has the role or personality from the game,” and then he turns to Kuina. “And don’t introduce yourself yet.”
In each sheet, there’s an image of the character, what suit they’re a specialist in, and a small list of personality traits. Arisu gives everyone's characters a quick glance and then starts the game by turning around to face Usagi.
“Ready?”
Everyone nods, and Arisu starts to narrate.
“The game venue lights up in the middle of the night. A zeppelin floats over a big and old-looking penitentiary. The place is big, and the only lights mark up your way inside the building. You cross the metal doors and find a circular room with a table in the middle of it. On it there’s one collar left, next to a small sign that reads, Put on a collar and proceed to the second floor.”
“I grab the collar,” Usagi says, pretending to hold an object. “How does it look?”
“The collar is black and thin, made out of metal. Like a choker. At the back there’s a wider section with a small screen. You’re already inside the game venue. Do you put on the collar?”
Usagi looks at Arisu and then around the table. No one says anything. Arisu seems to be asking her and only her for a reason.
“I put the collar on.”
“Okay, you climb the stairs to the second floor then. You arrive at a wide room where all the other players are waiting. You were the last one to join them. The room is circular. One corridor leads to the cells. The other one leads to the bathrooms, and a third one leads to the old cafeteria. In the middle of the room there’s a skylight, and you can see the first floor.”
Arisu looks around the room, gesturing to all his friends.
“Everyone is here to play. All of the people around you wear the same black collar as you do. From left to right, you see an older woman wearing a cardigan, who looks shy and afraid. Next to her stand two younger women, who avoid looking at you. Next there’s a strange-looking girl, swirling around in her blue dress.” Niragi uses that as his cue to wave at Usagi, who tries not to laugh. “A woman who was sitting on the ground gets back to her feet now that the player limit is complete. There’s a shy-looking man at her side. Then, there’s a tall man wearing a pristine suit.” Kuina crosses her arms in front of her chest and winks at Usagi. “And a woman stands by his side, hiding behind him. She also wears a three-piece’ suit.”
By Kuina's side, Karube gives the table his best lady-killer smile and grabs her arm.
“Three more men. One looks like a nervous wreck, the other one looks lost, and the third one is looking at everyone like he’s trying to intimidate them. Then, you notice a guy wearing overalls and a brightly colored shirt.” Tatta is the one smiling this time. “A guy sits alone by the stairs,” Ann raises her head from the table, “ignoring the two men who stand close to him,” and looks down again.
And there it is, the evil scheming smile.
“The last person you notice is a young man in a white hoodie. He leans against a wall, and he looks like he’s observing everything around with a bored look on his face.”
The final cue.
“Chishiya, you observe the last player join the game from your corner. You arrived here sooner than most of the players. Anything to say?”
“Nah, I’m fine.”
And he leans back on his chair.
“Come on, man! We want to know what we’re playing!”
Arisu's attempt to kick Karube under the table hits Chota, who screams and throws an olive at Karube in a really aggressive way.
“Can I keep going?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“The player limit has been reached, the usual robotic voice announces. In front of you, a screen with the faces of all the twenty players lights up. Game: Solitary Confinement. Difficulty: Jack of Hearts.”
The first one to react is Niragi, who starts laughing like a hyena as Chishiya bolts up on his chair, no longer looking bored.
“Hearts? What am I doing in a hearts game? Arisu!”
One by one, the others join Niragi, and Chishiya feels the sudden urge to kick them all out of his house.
“Really?”
“Oh come on, don’t tell me you didn’t want a good challenge?” Arisu asks with a big evil smile. “Niragi is playing a team game. Don’t tell me you want to lose against him?”
Kuina pats his back, and Tatta offers him a very enthusiastic thumbs up.
“Is hearts bad?” Heiya asks. Karube and the others helped her catch up with the campaign, but she’s still a bit lost.
“Hearts is the worst,” Kuina complains. “No matter how you play with people you don’t give a shit about, they always make them tricky.”
“You never know what to expect.”
“Only that the worst thing you can imagine is not even close.”
Of course, Arisu has designed a hearts game. That’s his thing, being empathetic and getting people.
Chishiya, on the other hand, hates this suit of games with passion even if he only played one.
“Objective: Guess the suit of the card on the back of your collars,” Arisu says, tapping his neck. “You cannot see for yourself what your symbol is. You cannot try to use a reflective surface to see it or try to take off the collar. “
Around the table, everyone nods.
“Your time limit is one hour. In the final 5 minutes, all players must enter a cell and announce the mark that they think is on the back of their collar. It’s game clear if they’re correct. It’s game over if you fail or if you break one of the rules. Violence is allowed, but it’s forbidden to stop another player from saying their suit or entering their cell. Fine this far?”
Arisu asks.
Until now, it seems pretty simple.
“In each round the symbol will change, and the process of guessing it will start again.”
“So we just need to tell each other our symbols?” Tatta says, Beaming too much optimism for someone about to play a hearts game. Maybe it’s the confidence-killing someone from the King of Clubs team gives you. Maybe he’s just dumb or thinks too highly of Arisu. “It’s easy!”
“I don’t think so,” Chishiya finally speaks. “We still don’t know the clearing game condition. Don’t we game master?”
“Fuck!”
“This game is a trial of your trust,” Arisu says, ignoring Chishiya's question. “The Jack of Hearts hides among the players. You’ll guess your suit one time per hour until it’s Game Over for the Jack. You’ve been provided with food and water, and your visas are frozen as long as the game goes on. There’s no time limit.”
“So the game won’t end until we kill the Jack,” Chishiya leans against the table. It looks like the game finally got his interest. “If we don’t lie and find the Jack, we’ll be stuck here forever.”
“Wait, that’s actually a good solution,” Chota says. “No King of Spades, no other games, we can chill here.”
“Sure man, chill in jail with a face card lurking around, sounds safe,” Karube, who is still holding onto Kuina’s arm, gives his friend a weak smack on the back of the head. “That resolution is shit.”
“I like it,” Niragi says. “We get rid of Chishiya for the rest of the campaign. I like Chota’s plan.”
“You still have to make it alive out of the King of Clubs, Niragi,” but he just rolls his eyes at that. “Can we keep going?”
“Can you give us ten minutes before we keep gpong?" Kuina asks. “Pretty please?”
“Sure?”
Then she stands, grabs Niragi’s arm, and drags him into his room as he complains.
“What is she planning now?”
“If we’re lucky, lock him inside of the closet,” Chishiya says, reaching for one of the bags of cookies. “So at least this fucking game is enjoyable.”
But for some reason, Kuina walks out of the room wearing what must be Niragi’s only plain black dress shirts. In exchange, somehow, she has managed to tie his hair in two little buns and drape a baby blue shawl around his shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
Arisu only gets two smiles as an answer, and Kuina drops a plain black wig over Karube’s head, who seems to jump immediately into whatever this is. He puts on the wig and goes back to holding Kuina’s arm.
Arisu's only choice of action is to ignore them, so he keeps narrating.
“Okay, so the timer starts. You have one hour. You can go wherever you like within the game venue until there are just five minutes left. Around you, a man approaches another one, taps him on the shoulder, and asks him to tell him his suit. The guy agrees and—”
“In this game we need to kill each other and figure out who the Jack is,” Kuina interrupts in a deep voice. It’s the same tone she uses when she wants to make weird guys go away from her space. “And you’re really going to trust him?”
Karube leans closer against her, fluttering his eyes and smiling like an idiot. But before anyone can burst into laughter, Niragi jumps in.
“What if we make teams to tell each other our suit?” He claps his hands together, swirling in his chair. “We can’t lie if we do that.”
“I’m in!” Chota says, of course he would join Niragi’s side, he loves the chaos too much.
“Me too!” For everyone's surprise, Heiya does too. “Can I?”
“Of course!” Niragi adds in that bubbly voice. “The more, the merrier!”
His voice is all bubbly and high-pitched, lacking the usual deepness he tries to impose all the time. Kuina starts to laugh, and Niragi follows, and both of them start to cough their lungs out.
“And that’s what years of smoking does to you,” Chishiya says, rolling his eyes.
But there’s a small smile tugging at his lip, and everyone around the table laughs too.
Idiots.
Niragi kicks him under the table, and Chishiya kicks back with double strength.
Arisu is laughing too. There’s no way this game goes anywhere if they keep acting stupid. But he knows his friends, as soon as they start playing for real, everyone will take the game way too seriously and start getting really invested.
So he decides to ignore them to keep narrating.
“A rude-looking man starts to shove one of the guys against a wall, demanding he tell his suit. A small group goes downstairs to talk in a more private way. What are the rest of you doing?”
“I stay with my dear Kotoko,” Kuina says, patting Karube’s head. “I’ll protect you, dear.”
“Oh Yaba,” Karube does his best otome girl protagonist impression and hugs Kuina’s arm. “You are the best.”
“The others?”
“I turn around to look at him, because he talked to me earlier,” Tatta says, looking at Chishiya. Of course he’s the one with the guts to team with Chishiya. No one apart from Tatta would want to deal with him.
Well, an Niragi, but that’s for other reasons.
“I tell him that I can tell him his suit if he tells me mine! We can work together!”
Looking as indifferent as ever, Chishiya crosses his arms over his chest.
“You shouldn’t trust people that easily. I could be the Jack,” he says with a smile. “Everyone is already making teams. Look at those two, for example,” and he points at Kuina and Karube. “He got her grabbed by the neck.”
“Since he’s being annoying as fuck,” Niragi interrupts Chishiya's monologue and points at Tatta. “My group and I approach them. I talk to the one who doesn’t look like he’s bored. I ask him if he wants to join the group. Only if they want to, of course.”
And he winks at them with a sly smile.
Tatta looks at Chishiya. Around the table, everyone looks at him like he’s crazy. Is he really getting himself in the middle of those two? No one can be that dumb, not after years of knowing each other.
“Of course!” he says instead, and Arisu face plants into the table. “We’ll do it, right?”
And Chishiya stops looking bored for a moment to glare daggers at Niragi, “Yeah, let’s stick together with the weirdo. It would sure be a perfectly bulletproof plan.”
“Okay,” Arisu takes back the lead before it can escalate. “Yaba and Kotoko are a team. Urumi, Shinobu, Hiroshi, Ippei, and Chishiya, along with five other players, make a big team to eliminate the possibilities of lying to each other. There are a few pairs scattered around the prison. That leaves two players alone.”
“I stand from the stairs and follow him,” Ann says, pointing at Usagi. “Offer him to form a pair, since we’re the only ones left.”
Usagi looks at her, takes a look at the character drawn on the sheet, and tries to hide a laugh.
“I roast him about his emo looks, like, what’s with that fringe? It looks like shit,” and for a moment, it looks like Ann is also about to break her character. “But sure, let’s be friends!”
There are whispers and laughter around the table as Usagi and Ann shake hands, and Arisu looks around them.
This is a good start for what he has planned.
“So, everyone has a partner. Perfect, this is how we’ll do it. You’re going to close your eyes one by one, and I’ll show the rest of the table the symbol that character has. That information is for you to use, only you, in the way you prefer. You can investigate and do whatever you want until I call the time out to be over. You’ll tell me your symbol, and I’ll tell you if it’s Game Over or you’re still in the game, okay?”
Everyone nods, and Arisu can see the shift happening. His friends sit with their backs straight and seem to be getting serious now.
Kuina ties the shirt into a crop top, and Niragi undoes the stupid buns but keeps Kuina’s scrunchie around his wrist and the blue shawl. They keep their voice acting subtler, and around the table, everyone seems to get in character.
Karube pretends to play with his nonexistent long hair, ditching the wig after ten minutes. Tatta looks nervous—more than usual—and Usagi has a really scary smile on while Ann moves her hair so it covers part of her face, acting all shy. Chota seems disappointed by his quite normal character, and Arisu reassures him that he is still important, and the same goes for Heiya.
“The first round is over,” Arisu calls after ten minutes. “All of you have guessed your symbols correctly. It’s game clear for the twenty players.”
“What?” Niragi seems to be the most surprised one. “You didn’t kill me?”
“I’m not me,” Tatta says. “Tatta would have lied to you. Ippei is too good for that.”
“And it’s the first round,” Chishiya adds. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Ready for round two then? Okay,” Arisu goes back to making everyone close their eyes, telling each symbol to the table, and resuming the game. “Is everyone keeping the same strategy? The same groups?”
“We do,” Karube says after sharing a look with Kuina.
“We keep the group too,” Heiya says, even if she looks like she doesn’t agree very much with her own decision. Maybe she grabbed an easily manipulable character, and that’s why she doesn’t fight back.
“Around you everyone seems to do the same. The man from before, the bulky and rude-looking one, keeps pushing the guy he teamed up with before. He screams at him and shoves him to the ground, demanding that he tell him his suit. He kicks him to the ground. Anyone want to intervene?”
To everyone's surprise, Usagi is the one grabbing her dices, that weird smile still on her face.
“I go to his side, crouch down next to the guy. Everyone has seen that the man symbol is a diamond. Can I roll to convince the guy to tell the man that he has a club?”
There’s a gasp around the table, and even Arisu seems surprised as he nods and Usagi does the roll.
“Banda helps the guy up, and as he does, he whispers into his ear, 'Tell him he has a club'. The man keeps screaming as the guy is silent; he grabs the guy by the hair and is about to punch him when the guy screams, 'A club! Your symbol is a club!'”
Oh, the smile on Chishiya's face grows wider.
Now is when the real game begins.
With Usagi getting the first kill.
By round ten, Niragi’s group has been reduced to Chishiya, Tatta, Heiya, and himself, apart from two of the NPCs Arisu controls. He seems quite happy with his kill list being the bigger until now and, for a game designed for Chishiya, he’s not doing much but munching on snacks and complaining.
Chota has been out since round four, when he decided not to trust Niragi and ask Arisu for his suit instead. His head exploded with a bang, and now he sits on the couch playing with Morgana. Everyone else is still painfully alive.
But Arisu knows that he’s interested. Chishiya would have left if he wasn’t. He’s trying to figure out who has the role of the Jack, and until now he’s been quite safe with Tata’s character by his side. Somehow, Niragi hasn’t tried to off him yet, like a cat playing with its prey before eating it, but something tells Arisu that chaos is about to get worse.
“Okay, round ten starts. What are you guys doing?”
“Banda and I keep sticking together, ignoring the groups.”
“Same for Kotoko and me,” Kuina and Karube look around the table, if someone is going to bring chaos into the game, it is not them, at least not for now.
“Okay. Urumi group, what are you doing?”
“I look at the people who remain in my group, and I point to the old man who is walking ahead of us,” he says, pointing a pocky to Arisu. “You slipped for a second, tried to kill me, tried to tell me the wrong suit. So I look at my friends and tell them that it’s time for the grandpa to go down. We’re taking him this round.”
Chishiya can barely hide a laugh.
“What?”
“You’re playing too hard, like you’re making it too obvious that you’re not the Jack, but sure, why not? Let’s keep killing NPCs on a whim.
“Well, at least I am playing! The game was made for you, and you’re doing nothing!”
“I’m observing! This is a hearts game. I know it’s too much for your pea-sized brain, but you don’t win a game like this by killing everyone and being left alone with the Jack.”
Too invested in their fight, none of them notice Arisu and Heiya looking at each other.
She points her head at Niragi, mouths a Kill him, and Arisu nods. Niragi doesn’t notice, too busy trying to pull Chishiya's hair or push him from the chair.
Kuina is the one hitting her hand against the table, still in character, “Guys! Behave, please, ladies are present.”
And Karube almost chokes on his drink.
When the laughing fits subside, Arisu takes a deep breath and goes back to his role.
“Okay. Round ten. Motohiko asks for his symbol: what do you say?”
“Diamond,” Niragi says, still twirling his hair. “Now me! What is my symbol?”
“Spade,” Heiya doesn’t even hesitate. And maybe Niragi is still thinking about the fight with Chishiya, because he doesn’t seem to give it a second thought. “You have a spade.”
“Thank you, guys! I know I can trust you,” and he gives Chishiya a deadly look.
“The voice calls for everyone to enter their cells. You tell your symbols out loud, one by one. Motohiko goes down with an explosion and a broken neck, another victim of Urumi’s schemes.” After that, Arisu goes one by one, and everyone gets a Game Clear. Finally, he faces Niragi. “Urumi Akamaki, say your suit.”
Niragi smiles, leaning back against his chair, “Spade!”
The moment he takes a bite of the pocky, Arisu hits the table, “Boom! Wrong. You fall to the floor: you’re dead.”
“What!”
This time, Niragi’s chair is the thing making a loud sound when he stands and it crashes against the floor.
“You lying bitches!”
“Told you it was a stupid plan,” Chishiya says, munching some cookies. “I wish it had been me, but cheers to the kid!”
Chishiya high-fives Heiya, who is looking at Niragi all smug and proud of having taken him down in his own game.
“I took a knife to the guts for you!”
“And you’re fine now! And dead! Stop yapping. I want to know who the Jack is. There are only a few of us left.”
“Join me in the dead corner,” Chota calls from the couch, but Niragi just flips him, puts the chair back in place, and goes back to the table. “Rude.”
“Wait, can we have a roll call?” Kuina asks. She reaches for Niragi and pats his head, but her eyes keep going around the table. “How many of us left?”
“Banda, Matsushita, Yaba, Kotoko, Hiroshi, and Ippei are still alive,” he says, pointing to each player. “Of course, Chishiya, and one of my NPCs. That leaves eight players in the game after ten rounds. The Jack is still hiding among us.”
Everyone starts looking at each other.
Niragi is out of the game now, and Arisu wouldn’t make an NPC the Jack. Chishiya is also not an option, but that’s something they know, but their characters don’t. That leaves six possible options for the Jack, which is still a lot.
“Round eleven,” Arisu announces. “Enter your answers.”
Two hits in the table.
Heiya and Arisu last NPC kill each other, and Niragi grabs Heiya in a headlock and starts messing with her hair.
“You lasted one round more than me! What did you think was going to happen staying alone, eh? Idiot!”
An elbow to the recently closed stabbing wound shuts Niragi up, and Heiya does join Chota on the couch to play with the cat.
“Six players left for round twelve,” Arisu says, crossing two more names on his list. “Anything special you want to do this round?”
“Can I complain about how all of the players who teamed up with Niragi are idiots?” Kuina says. “Like, guys, did you really think he wouldn’t start killing you after five minutes?”
“We’re talking about Niragi,” Karube offers her a smile and a fist bump. “At least he did the job for us.”
“And the Jack’s work too,” Usagi says. “One of us is going to start to kill soon, or this won’t be over.”
“Everything will end soon, I think,” Ann adds. “This is going to become a mess.”
“This game is already a mess,” Tatta says. For the last few rounds, his character has been growing more and more desperate with each death. “I don’t want to keep playing.”
“Well, you have a diamond, so shut up and tell me my suit. We need to keep playing and stick together to defeat the Jack,” Chishiya tells him, as rude as ever, what a surprise. “You need to endure this for a bit more, and we’ll be out; it’s almost over.”
But of course Tatta has the power to even make Chishiya sound less rude.
“Round twelve ends with only one explosion. That marks the start of round thirteen,” Arisu calls fifteen minutes later. “You exit the cell. The other four players do the same, and they all look at you. Then you walk past Ippei’s, discovering that the explosion you heard was his collar going off. He’s dead, and now you’re the only one left without a partner. What do you do?”
“I’m fucked.”
That's all Chishiya says, slumping on his chair and making everyone else in the room burst into a fit of laughter.
A small bathroom/stretching-their-legs break later, they go back to the table. Even Heiya, Tatta, and Chota go back to their chairs, ready to witness the end of the first face card they’re playing in the campaign.
With the King of Clubs in a hiatus and looking really bad for the players, this would be the first one they really defeat.
“Okay. Round thirteen. What do you do?”
“I follow Matsushita into the cafeteria,” Chishiya says. His voice is strained, and it looks like now he’s really focused on the game. As much as he likes to say that he doesn’t care, he won’t have his character dying here. Not without a final confrontation with Niragi’s one. Or killing him if he’s lucky.
If he needs to play nice and be friendly for that, he’ll do it.
“I approach him, tell him that I’m alone now, and ask him very nicely if he could tell me my suit.”
Ann looks at Chishiya, eyebrow arched behind her bangs.
“Really?”
“There are five of us left. The Jack will start to play soon, and I’m pretty sure he’s your partner,” he says, pointing to Usagi, who ignores him to take a sip from her bottle of water. “Tell me my suit,” and, looking like it’s hard for him to do it, he adds, “please?”
Maybe the magic world will do it.
“The Jack trusts you. You can kill him,” he keeps going, sounding all nice and gentle. “Please, tell me my suit, and I’ll tell you yours. So you can check if he’s not lying to you.”
“And why should I trust you?”
“Because I always say the truth,” he lies. “Come on! You have a spade!” He’s starting to get desperate.
“We don’t have a deal,” Ann says, looking at her nails. “And let me repeat, I don’t trust you. I turn around and walk out of the caffeteria.”
“Please?”
Chishiya says again.
No one at this table has heard him say that word as often as in the past two minutes, and Arisu looks at Ann like he’s begging her to behave. They really can’t afford to lose Chishiya.
“You have a heart, happy?” and then she turns around to face Usagi. “I grab a white pack of cookies, exit the cafeteria, and go to Banda. I warn him about the guy in the hoodie being the Jack, about our chat in the cafeteria.”
“Usagi?”
“I just play along, tell him that I also suspected Chishiya. We stick together. We keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing for the past thirteen rounds.”
“Okay, Kuina and Karube?”
“I look at Kotoko and sigh. I tell her that they’re wrong. That we should suspect Banda instead, after all he was the one to lie in the game. The first kill was his, so he must be the Jack instead.”
“Good, good, something else?”
Karube is the one raising his hand sometimes.
“I’m hungry. I go to the cafeteria for another pack of cookies. I grab the blue ones and turn to leave—”
“Hello! Nice to meet you and all that,” Chishiya interrupts again. “Hi lady, could you spare me a moment?”
Karube holds back a laugh.
He could use this to get revenge for all the times Chishiya has been a little shit when he played the DM, but he chooses to indulge him for once.
“What do you want?”
“You must have noticed that I’m alone now. I lost my partner,” he says, glaring daggers at Tatta, who just hides a laugh behind his hand. “I had Matsushita telling me my suit, but I don’t know if I can trust him. But I can trust a beautiful, young lady like you, can’t I?”
“How can women fall for that?” Niragi asks, whispering to Heiya. “Like, why is half of the hospital in love with him?”
“Silver tongue,” she says with a shrug. “You both got one, just different kinds. It’s a miracle any of you get bitches.”
Niragi grabs her again, but Arisu interrupts, clearing his throat, “Can we keep going?”
“Yeah, whatever. I’m loving Chishiya using his nonexistent charisma skills.”
“I was talking with Kotoko. I was telling her that she seems honest. That if she tells me my suit, I’ll tell hers. I repeat that I never lie. Your suit is a heart, is mine a club?”
Karube looks at Chishiya, smiles, and flips him.
“I exit the cafeteria without telling him shit.”
“Your cookies are shit!”
He’s fucked, Chishiya is doomed, and everyone around him just starts laughing. He groans into his hands and ignores Kuina and Usagi having some random conversation.
He needs luck or for Arisu to have compassion for him, what, after the betrayal, Chishiya doubts will happen.
“Last five minutes,” Arisu calls, once everyone is done talking to each other. “To the cells, everyone.”
No one says a thing; this looks too much for a last round for anyone to joke now that the end is near.
“This time, you’ll give your answers, but I won’t say who is dead until the end.” One by one, they give Arisu their suits. He nods along, taking note and smiling. He also knows that this is over. “There’s a loud bang. Matsushita, you’re clear. Your door opens—”
“I win!” Ann asks. She looks surprised, looking around. “Wait, wait, wait, did I kill Chishiya?”
“Wait, you are the Jack?” Chota screams, pointing at Ann.
“Did you really miss that?” Karube says at the same time Heiya says, “Yeah dude, it was easy at the end.”
Chota ignores them, and everyone goes back to look at Arisu.
“Matsushita laughs, thinking he has won. But then, the other three doors open. Chishiya, Banda, and Yaba walk out of their cells. Kotoko doesn’t. She got a Game Over.”
“You liar! Fucking liar!” Karube screams, throwing his white pack of cookies at Ann. “We had a deal!”
Everything burst into chaos.
Kuina, Usagi, and Chishiya go into a strange loop of explaining things.
The girls look so proud and smug. They fist bump and make gestures for everyone to clap. This was their game in the end, since Chishiya just sat back.
“The trick for this game was being equal to each other,” Kuina says. “You took my girl away from me, man. That wasn’t cool! I told her the truth! I was in love!” She says, hugging Karube, “My poor Kotoko!”
“But that leaves a question,” Chishiya adds. “If Banda, who has been your partner all along, knew you were the Jack, why didn’t he kill him sooner?”
And that’s actually a real question.
Usagi didn’t have any trouble making the first move to kill. It was her role for the game, the heartless mass murderer.
There must be something else going on, something about her character Chishiya hasn’t realized, or that she has said while he wasn’t paying attention.
“Oh, easy!” she says, tapping her character sheet. “Banda has no interest in the games, you know? What he wants to know is who is behind them, who rules this world.”
“So lucky! Yaba does want that too!”
Oh.
Oh.
Chishiya smiles as Ann's face drops. She’s fucked.
Now, she’s the one in trouble.
“Round fourteen starts,” Arisu says. “What do you do now?”
Kuina and Usagi look at each other, shake hands, and turn to face Ann. “We’re going to have fun.”
“It’s game clear for Chishiya, Banda, and Yaba. The Jack said the wrong suit, killing himself after a few rounds of…” He looks at Usagi and Kuina. “Whatever that was. Chishiya walks out of the penitentiary as the zeppelin explodes in the sky and the Jack of Hearts goes down.”
Arisu says.
“The first of the twelve Face Card Games is Clear, and you walk out of it as free men with eleven more days in your Visas. Congratulations, players.”
Kuina grabs Ann and starts pampering her face with kisses in apology, and she starts to laugh too.
Around the table, everyone burst into laughter, applause, and cheers.
Even Niragi.
That was a good game.