After the dinner fiasco which left many scrambling for answers, Ao returned to her room. Those who were at her table dispersed to their own rooms as well, the little appetite they had lost upon the bombshell dropped on them. 

Ao pushed the door open. There, in the middle of the room, was a girl changing. A crop top hung from her arms, exposing the supple, white skin on her bare back. Two small but angry wounds punctured her shoulder where the trapezius muscle is.

The girl turned. Their eyes met. Both of them froze. Not even a second later, the crop top went flying straight into Ao’s face, blinding her.

“Pervert! Get this pervert out of my room!”

Ao fumbled to remove the crop top. The hit stung more than she had expected. Once she got it off, she saw the girl reaching for a pillow on the bed, ready to launch it even harder in a flurry of embarrassment. “Wait wait, hold on!” Ao made sure to raise the pitch of her voice higher.

The girl dropped the pillow. “Oh, you’re a woman.” Then she scoffed loftily, scrutinising Ao from top to bottom while unclipping her lace balconette bra. “You don’t look like a woman. What’s with that ugly jacket? That rugged scowl on your face? Those muscles? It’s not womanly at all. And don’t get me started on that atrocious hairstyle. Did you cut it yourself? If it weren’t for your voice, I’d think you were just some disgusting creep. No boy would love you like that!”

What’s so wrong with my jacket? Ao fiddled with it as she climbed up the bunk bed, ignoring the incessant comments spewing from the girl’s yapping mouth.  She didn’t mind the rest of the insults as she was pretty used to those already, but the jacket was especially special to her. She received it when she was at her lowest. The person who gave it to her, she couldn’t remember his face and his voice more than an abstract idea at that point. But she remembered him saying the jacket matched her eyes. And as Ao wore it, she was warm. She found the jacket beautiful. Well whatever, who cares about the opinions of some random girl she just met. Ao tuned out the noise and reached the upper bunk.

There was something under the bed sheet. Ao pulled off the sheets. 

A pistol, with blood stains was underneath. Suddenly, pain coursed through her temples, knocking her down onto the mattress as she heaved from every sharp squeeze. The light brightened, filling her vision with nauseating white, amplifying her dizziness. Then there was the child’s voice again.

“No!” A deafening crack of a bullet pierced her skull. Ao gasped. The pain ceased.

Inhaling deeply to calm her heart down, Ao regained her senses. Think. Why’s there a pistol here? A self defence weapon issued to everyone? But then why is it stained? 

“Hey…” Ao called out to the girl. “...Woman.”

“What? And don’t you dare call me that ever again. It’s Eun.” Eun said as she put on another crop top. It looked like an exact copy of the previous one. 

“Is there anything on your bed?”

“Just a weird old teddy bear, why?” 

With that, Ao’s weapon theory just went out the window. She pondered about whether a pistol and a bear had any similarities or significance, when she noticed something else.

There was a timer on the wall beside her. A miniature version of the big timer in the main hall, and based on a rough estimate of how much time had passed, it seemed to be in sync too. “6:03:12”. Not even an hour had passed. 

Six hours. It could be a countdown to the “game”, like what Justice mentioned. Ao recollected his explanation of the situation. Games Inferno was the name of whatever this is and, apparently, they were supposed to play games. If you win, you get a prize, if not… torture. 

“The game of tag starts now!” Those words surged to the front of her mind and her stomach sank. The nightmare… Was it a taste of what would happen if she lost? Ao had no goals or desires. She killed herself exactly because of that, thus having her “greatest wish” granted meant shit to her. But the idea of losing and going through that nightmare torture again for an entire eternity was enough to make her break out into a cold sweat. 

As Ao lay on the bed, she swallowed the sticky saliva that had accumulated in her mouth and stared blankly at the ceiling, clutching the pistol. 

Ao had nothing to live for, but she knew she had to win. 

She had to survive. 

—

Exhaustion knocked her out right as she closed her eyes. The next moment, loud beeping and red flashing of lights startled her awake. She glanced at the timer — it had been six hours. “0:00:57”. Oh fuck.

Ao hopped off the bunk bed. Below, Eun groggily peeked out from under the blanket.

“What’s happening?”

“The timer’s counting down. We gotta hurry.”

“What happens if it reaches zero?” 

“Hell if I know! A game starts maybe?” Ao snatched the pistol from the bed, just in case. “I’m going to the main hall, better safe than sorry.”

“But… But I haven’t done my make-up!”

How does she have make-up?  “Not my problem.”

“Argh! I hate this so much, I shouldn’t have died!” Eun trotted out of the room, fussing with her bed-hair.

A stampede of people frantically dashed down the hallway, shoving past others and tripping over their own feet. On the intercom, Justice was adding fuel to the fire by counting down. “48, 47, 46…”

Hatsuharu came out of a bathroom. His hair was in a mess, his glasses were crooked, and his shirt and pants were sloppily worn, revealing the elastic band of a Calvin Klein boxer briefs. Ao didn’t need to see anything else to reluctantly come to a conclusion. 

“We’ll continue this later, ‘kay?” 

“Don’t forget.” Maya giggled, tipsy-sounding.

While Maya hugged and buried her face into Hatsuharu’s back, Hatsuharu waved lightly to Ao as she passed by. She pretended he didn’t exist and sped up.

But one minute wasn’t enough to reach the hall, even after sprinting as fast as her legs possibly could handle. She knew that, yet she ran.

“Five, four…” 

Ao weaved through the crowd, listening to Justice’s bastard voice enunciate the last few seconds with sadistic joy. 

“Three, two…”

The hallway stretched on and on. It was impossibly long. There was no hope left. It was useless to continue. Those around her had already dropped to their knees, giving in to their cramps and sores, bracing themselves for whatever was to come. Yet Ao ran.

“One.”

Smoke seeped into the hallway, creeping into every crevice and corner, descending upon them like a dense, suffocating fog. People blurred into ghostly shapes, then disappeared into the grey thickness. Ao could feel bitterness slither down her windpipe, into her lungs and unfurl itself as fatigue in her legs, and yet she ran even harder. She ran until she couldn’t physically bring herself to move and her eyes were forcing themselves shut. 

Then she passed out.