Chapter Text
The air after the game was thick and cloying—it smelled of dust, gunpowder, and the coppery tang of spilled blood. "Now that was truly fun!" Niragi's voice, hoarse from recent screams, cut through the ringing silence like a blade. He relished the familiar weight of the weapon, slinging his assault rifle over his shoulder so the cold stock touched his bare neck. Goosebumps ran across his skin.
They walked back in a formation, drilled and merciless, like a squad of paratroopers after a successful raid. A new card for the Hatter sat heavily and pleasantly in Aguni's pocket—another step toward the coveted goal. Aguni himself was silent, and his silence was weightier than any words. He walked ahead, his massive figure casting a long shadow that swallowed the other two. On the right, following as relentlessly as a shadow, moved the Silent Samurai, Last Boss. His sheathed katana seemed harmless, but Niragi had seen how, just minutes ago, it had sliced through flesh and bone with a quiet whisper.
To the left of this grim pair, Niragi himself strode. He couldn't stay silent—adrenaline was still singing in his veins, demanding an outlet. "And why did they even drag him along with us?" he sneered, addressing the empty space. "Five minutes on the arena and he almost shit himself. The three of us carried the whole game, that deadweight just took up space." His words hung in the air, meeting no response, but he didn't need one. He liked the sound of his own voice, especially when it sowed a slight, almost intangible fear.
The silence of Tokyo's empty district was absolute, oppressive, as if the entire city was holding its breath. It was broken only by their own footsteps—heavy, measured, victorious. And then his own heavy boot caught on something soft.
"Damn it!" Niragi stumbled, barely keeping his balance. Irritation, sharp and instantaneous, flared within him. "What kind of trash is just lying here, getting in the way?" He wrinkled his nose in disgust, peering at the vague outlines in the twilight.
The Samurai, without uttering a sound, performed the only action: with the handle of his katana, he poked the figure lying on the asphalt. The movement was quick, precise, and utterly indifferent, as if he was checking for garbage. The body yielded limply to the push.
Zero reaction. Complete, lifeless pliability.
Aguni slowed his pace. His gaze, heavy and piercing, slid over the dirty jacket, the matted hair, and his own, secret conclusion was ready in a second. He recognized this guy. The one who had stood next to that defiant bastard with fire in his eyes. That one had been strong. And this one... this one was lying here alone. The conclusion was simple and merciless: the golden one was dead. Only the weakest had survived.
"So only the weakling survived," Aguni muttered under his breath, and his voice held something between contempt and weary disappointment.
"What? What did you say?" Niragi immediately perked up, like a jackal catching a whisper of prey. He leaned toward Aguni, his keen gaze trying to read an answer on the boss's impenetrable face.
"Nothing," Aguni cut him off, his voice becoming firm and brooking no argument. "He's just delaying us. Let's go." He didn't deign the lying body another glance, simply stepped over it as if it were a sewer grate, and strode forward toward the shining beacon of the Beach in the distance.
The Samurai, like his shadow, followed him silently. Niragi lingered for a second. A dirty, nagging curiosity made him turn around and peer into that pale, grime-smeared face. I wonder if he's still breathing? But Aguni's call was far more real. Snorting, Niragi rushed to catch up with the departing pair, his gait suddenly resembling that of a dog that had been momentarily distracted by a dead crow but now remembered its strict master.
"Hey, boss, why are we trudging on foot?" he caught up to Aguni, and his voice took on a whine again, this time with exaggerated, childish resentment. "I'm already tired of wandering around this damned Tokyo. My feet hurt."
"Walking builds discipline. And it's good for your health," Aguni replied without turning around. His back was more eloquent than any words: the conversation was over.
Niragi clicked his tongue sarcastically, shoving his hands into his pockets. He hated being ignored.
—
Three days had passed. Three days of aimless loitering around the Beach, three meals a day, watching the same drunken faces. The boredom was becoming physical, itching under his skin. And his brain, searching for entertainment, returned to that one strange blip from the last few days.
He sprawled luxuriously on the Samurai's perfectly made bed, throwing his legs over the metal headboard. The room's owner sat in a lotus position in the corner, meditating or just staring at the wall—Niragi could never tell.
"Hey, Samurai," Niragi tossed into the silence like a stone into a still pond. "Do you think that corpse on the road is still breathing?" He pictured it: crows had probably already pecked out his eyes.
The Samurai didn't move. A minute. Two. The silence in the room became thick, like syrup. Finally, without the slightest emotion, through almost unparted lips, he uttered: "No."
Niragi snorted. Of course not. It was stupid even to ask. But... "What if we went and checked?" he continued, just to annoy, to rattle that impenetrable calm. "A little outing. Stretch our bones."
This time, the Samurai moved. He slowly turned his head, and his dark, bottomless eyes fixed on Niragi. They held neither anger nor approval—only a cold, absolute warning. Silent and therefore even more weighty.
Niragi froze under that gaze, then demonstratively shrugged his shoulders, pretending it was of no interest to him. "Alright, alright, suit yourself." The idea was dead. They didn't go anywhere.
—
"Niragi, you'll go to this game alone." The order was given in the same tone used to announce a shift change.
Clicking his lighter, Niragi snorted sarcastically. "No problem. Do I look like some beginner who's afraid to get dirty?" He longed for action, for a surge of adrenaline to wash away this suffocating boredom. Solitude didn't scare him in the least—it meant freedom of action.
—
The car dropped him off at the tunnel entrance. The air here was still and stifling.
"I'll wait here. Don't be long," said the driver, one of the Hatter's low-ranking executors.
"Yeah," Niragi grunted, already turning away. His gaze slid over the graffiti covering the rusty walls. It caught on the bus, and especially on one word scrawled on its side in bright, poisonous pink paint: "TARGET." Ironic, flashed through his mind. He mentally noted it, though he knew he'd forget in a minute, dismissing it as part of the stupid scenery.
Inside, it smelled of dust, old plastic, and fear. Several people were already sitting inside, and he quickly, appraisingly scanned them. Three old men, one—with a bandaged leg, already a loser before even starting. And... him.
Niragi almost laughed out loud. Well, well, well.
The very same guy. The very same weakling. He looked, if possible, even worse than three days ago. His clothes hung on him in dirty rags, his hair was matted with sweat and grime, but the main thing was his eyes. They were empty. Completely, utterly empty, like two worn-out pieces of glass. There was no fear, no hope in them, only all-consuming, bottomless apathy. A real living corpse.
Suguru wrinkled his nose in disgust, let out a short, contemptuous sound, and settled down opposite, waiting for the show to begin. It didn't keep him waiting long.
The screen flickered to life, and a mechanical voice announced the rules, making the hair on the back of Niragi's neck stand on end. Four of Clubs. Not his forte. Teamwork, strategy... boring crap.
"So... we just have to run?" that question, uttered in a quiet, cracked whisper, made Niragi start. The weakling was looking at his phone with dull bewilderment, like a child at a complex puzzle.
Irritation boiled up in Niragi instantly. "I'm going," he announced, jumping up. He didn't give a damn about the team; he needed movement.
The distance to the goal on the phone screen was already zero. This was confusing. Could it really be that simple? His internal radar, tuned to tricks, screamed danger.
"But what is the goal? They didn't tell us anything..." the weakling whined again, getting stuck in place with his stupid questions.
And then the most annoying part began. One of the old men looked at his wounded friend with such a strained expression that Niragi almost vomited. "Takuma, what about you?" his voice trembled. "I can't just leave you!"
"Run without me..." the limping man tried to smile, and it was both pitiful and disgusting. "I'll... I'll manage somehow."
Niragi suppressed a gag reflex. Enough of this sentimental crap! Without looking at anyone else, he roughly shoved the door open and jumped out of the bus. The others, except for the limping man, trailed after him like a herd.
They had wasted precious, irreplaceable five minutes on these stupid goodbyes. Idiots.
—
The first meters of running came easily. Too easily. His muscles rejoiced at the familiar load, but very soon his throat grew scratchy, and a terrible, maddening thirst appeared. Every thousand meters was marked by an annoying click from the phone, which was starting to get on his nerves. Something was wrong. He felt it in his skin—he had missed something.
After the 5000-meter mark, a kind of oasis appeared ahead: a table with neatly arranged bottles of clear, temptingly cold water. And a sign: "Rest Area."
The weakling, Arisu, immediately reached for one of the bottles with a trembling, emaciated hand. The instinct of self-preservation had clearly died in him along with his friends.
"Hey, idiot!" Niragi's voice sounded sharp, with a venomous sneer. He himself swallowed a lump in his own dry throat. "How can you just drink something in a place like this? Have you lost your mind completely?" He moved closer, enjoying the moment. "What if it's poison? Huh? You wanna die just like that, stupidly and uselessly?"
Arisu froze, his hand twitched and dropped. A shadow of his former awareness flickered in his empty eyes. "You're right..." he whispered, and his voice held something akin to shame. He sighed deeply, hopelessly, and turned away.
"It's like the calm before the storm," one of the old men remarked grimly, and his words hung in the air, heavy and ominous.
And, as it turned out, he was damn right.
—
6000 meters.
They stumbled upon them suddenly: two large glowing circles painted on the asphalt, and a low, threatening rumble that had no place in this dead city.
And then She emerged from the darkness. A panther. Graceful, deadly, with eyes like coals and muscles rippling under smooth skin.
"FUCK!" Niragi's cry wasn't one of fear, but a furious, animalistic challenge.
The group exploded into chaos. The old men ran back, hell for leather. Niragi instinctively lunged forward, and a second later realized the weakling was running beside him, his hunted breath whistling in unison with his own. One of the old men didn't make it. Screams, the sound of claws tearing flesh, a wet crunch... and then silence, more terrible than any sound.
Now the predator was looking at them. Eyes like drills chose a new target.
"What do we do?! What do we do?!" Arisu was beside himself with a panicked whisper, his eyes alive again, but now only with horror.
Adrenaline hit his head like a sweet, familiar drug. Niragi stopped sharply, tearing the assault rifle from his shoulder. Tch, not many rounds left... But there was no choice. The beast prepared to pounce, muscles tensed.
Niragi raised the barrel, caught the dark head in his sights, and... fired. The shot exploded in the tunnel's silence, deafeningly loud. The panther jerked, took one more step, and collapsed on its side, still.
Niragi and Arisu stood frozen, their chests heaving in unison. The air rang with silence again, now sweet and intoxicating.
Niragi straightened up, brushing himself off, and caught Arisu's gaze on him. He was looking at him. Not with emptiness, not with fear. With something new. With shock? With disbelief? With... gratitude? It was laughable.
"The hell are you staring at, weakling?" Niragi drawled, putting his mask of contempt back on. "Like you've never seen a living person before."
"It's just..." the guy swallowed. "What's your name?"
The question was so unexpected and stupid that Niragi snorted. "Niragi. And you?" he asked this purely rhetorically, to continue the mockery.
"I... I'm Arisu."
Arisu. The name sounded strange and absurd in his head. What a girly name. "Arisu?" Niragi twisted his lips into a sarcastic grin. "Like Alice in Wonderland? How did that little girl from the fairy tale find her way into a dump like this?" He expected fear, tears, anything.
But Arisu just gave a nervous, youthful chuckle—a short, broken sound containing more pain than mirth. It was the first glimmer of something human, and it somehow got to Niragi more than he expected.
—
...After 7000 meters, the tunnel narrowed and drowned in darkness, turning into a claustrophobic cemetery of metal. The air grew thick with dust and a sweetish-putrid smell of decay ingrained in the car upholstery. Niragi, only slightly winded, slowed to a walk. The echo of his boots on the asphalt resonated in the silence like hammer blows. He lazily, with his usual predatory interest, scanned the rusty skeletons. Old cars, a few stripped-down scooters... and motorcycles.
The other participants had also slowed, their breathing whistling and wheezing in the oppressive, almost tangible silence. And then Arisu broke away from the group. He walked up to one of the motorcycles, frozen in eternal waiting, and his trembling fingers ran over the dusty gas tank.
"This motorcycle..." he muttered, and his words were almost swallowed by the silence. "It's a Royal Enfield!" His voice held a note Niragi hadn't heard from him before—something like recognition, excitement.
Niragi, interested, took a couple of steps toward him. "Cool piece of iron," he said carelessly, slapping the seat with his palm and raising a cloud of dust.
"This motorcycle... it runs on diesel," the man who had survived the panther unexpectedly joined the conversation. He stood a little ways off, still pale. "Not gasoline. Like that bus we came on."
And then it happened. Something remotely resembling a weak smile appeared on Arisu's dirty, gaunt face. And his eyes... his eyes, filled with nothing but terror just minutes ago, suddenly came alive, widened, a spark igniting in them—swift, feverish, almost insane. The spark of a plan.
Niragi understood everything at once, and it seemed so idiotic to him that he almost laughed. "Don't tell me," his voice sounded poisonous and slow, "you're planning to ride this motorcycle back for that limping old man. Time's running out, weakling. He's already dead, get over it."
But Arisu was no longer listening. "There's still time!" his voice suddenly grew stronger, steel appearing in it. "If I can start it and get there, I'll make it! I have to try! I won't let anyone else die!" He was already wrestling with the heavy motorcycle, trying to haul it off the truck bed it was perched on.
Niragi stared at him with frank, speechless bewilderment. His whole posture, every muscle in his face screamed: 'Have you completely lost your mind? You're a complete, hopeless, suicidal idiot!'
But Arisu, grunting with effort, was already rolling the bike in the opposite direction—back the way they had come, toward his own demise.
Niragi felt a strange, cold irritation somewhere in the pit of his stomach. He doesn't care. Absolutely doesn't care. Let this moron die in the stupidest way possible. It's even funny. This had nothing to do with him, right?
He looked at his phone. How much was left? This lack of understanding was starting to seriously piss him off. Time was flowing through his fingers like sand. He and the surviving man silently continued running forward—toward what they still believed was the goal... or toward their doom.
—
"And that's it? This is the goal?" the man's voice sounded choked, almost a whisper, full of despair.
They had run into a solid, impenetrable concrete wall. A dead end. A trap.
Niragi, finally allowing himself to show fatigue, was breathing heavily, leaning on his knees. His lungs were burning, his heart pounding somewhere in his throat. Damn, I should've smoked less... He raised his head, his gaze sliding over the wall, then falling to the phone. 12,000m. Twelve thousand meters from... from what?
He turned around sharply. There was only emptiness behind them. Arisu was nowhere to be seen.
Icy rage, mixed with a sudden, primitive premonition of disaster, tightened his throat. He regretted ever coming to this stupid game.
A deafening, terrifying CRACK sounded, as if a dam had burst. And from the direction of the dead end, from where it was least expected, a wall came rushing in. A wall of icy, murky, relentless water.
—
FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!
The thought hit him with the clarity of lightning: I should have gone back with him. I should have stopped that idiot and gone together!
The water was already splashing over his ankles, his knees. It was burning cold. The man next to him was already swept away, his scream choked by the currents. Niragi lunged backward, ran with all his might, but the water was rising too fast, squeezing his chest in an icy ring. His lungs, poisoned by cigarettes, burned and refused to work. This is the payback... He squeezed his eyes shut in despair, afraid that when he opened them, he would already be drowning.
And through the roar of the water and the pounding of his own heart, he heard another roar. A low, grumbling, mechanical roar. The roar of an engine.
His eyes flew open.
"NIRAGI!" A familiar voice, strained to the limit, cut through the watery hell.
It was him. Arisu. He was leaning out of the open door of the old, graffiti-covered bus, which, chugging on diesel, was fighting its way through the current. His thin, bony arm was stretched out toward him.
"ARISU!" Niragi wanted to scream, but only a hoarse, seemingly death-rattle groan escaped his throat.
The bus, driven by that very limping old man who now sat at the wheel with a face twisted in effort, drew level with him. Niragi made a final, desperate lunge. His fingers clamped around Arisu's wrist with the strength of a drowning man clutching at a straw. In the next second, he was pulled inside, landing heavily on the wet floor, choking and coughing up water.
And the light went out. His consciousness switched off, unable to endure any more.
Were they dead? Or was this death itself?
—
He came to because someone was poking him in the side. His whole body ached, his back responding with a sharp pain. He was lying in a puddle of icy water on the bus floor. Arisu sat opposite, leaning against a seat, staring into nothingness with his old, empty gaze, as if all the brief energy had left him.
Niragi kicked him with his boot—weakly, without malice, more mechanically. "Get up. It's over." His own voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar.
The man, Takuma, was sitting in the driver's seat. He looked completely exhausted, but a strange, almost enlightened smile was frozen on his face.
All three of them, staggering like drunks, got out of the bus. The air outside was still and quiet.
Arisu stood, looking at the bus, muttering something under his breath. "The goal..."
Like a click, everything fell into place in Niragi's head. He felt such a furious, humiliating wave of frustration that he wanted to scream. Am I really such an idiot?
"The bus..." Arisu continued, his voice a little louder, more confident. "It was always the target. The counter was measuring the distance from it. Not to the goal, but from the start."
Niragi furiously reached for his assault rifle, wanting to smash the butt on the ground in rage, but grabbed at empty air. Goddamn it, I lost it! Lost his main weapon in that stupid water. Yeah. It couldn't get any worse.
While they were collecting themselves, Takuma was already preparing to leave. "Where are you going?" Arisu asked him, and a shadow of concern appeared in his voice again.
"I don't know myself," the old man smiled his simple, tired smile. "If I survive—maybe we'll meet again." He didn't wait for an answer, turned around, and walked away, disappearing into the semi-darkness of the tunnel.
Arisu silently watched him go. Niragi just rolled his eyes in irritation. Sentiments. Together, they left the game zone, and the silence between them was thick and awkward.
"Listen..." Arisu broke the silence, falling into step with Niragi. "Maybe we should team up? It's easier to survive together."
Niragi snorted, and it was the most genuine sound in the entire conversation. "Pass," he cut him off. He needed this guy to leave so he could finally get into the car waiting for him with his driver.
Arisu was silent, digesting the rejection, then made another attempt. "And you... you haven't heard of a place around here called... the Beach?" he said the word with naive hope.
And this time Niragi couldn't contain himself. He let out a quiet, stifled sound, something between a cough and a choked chuckle. The idea was absurd beyond belief.
"Not a bit," he lied, looking Arisu straight in his naive, stupid eyes. How he adored brazenly lying to people's faces. It gave him a special, profound pleasure.
Arisu sighed, realizing he wouldn't get anywhere, and stopped. Without wasting another second, Niragi sharply turned the corner to a dark car with its engine running. The driver, one of the Beach people, was dozing at the wheel.
"Hey, idiot, don't sleep," Niragi said, roughly kicking the back of the driver's seat, venting all his accumulated anger and frustration on him.
The driver jerked, muttered something under his breath, and peeled away so fast that Niragi was thrown back into his seat.
The car sped through the deserted streets, but Niragi's thoughts remained back there, in the tunnel. They circled around one name, one image.
Arisu. Arisu. Arisu.
Strange. Annoying. Weak. Stupid. Naive. Idiot.
Strange boy.
He'd probably die soon. It was almost a pity.
So why was he thinking about him the whole way?