(8/23)

The dining room was exactly as the group had left it. That was no surprise, as nobody else was around. Upon entering the room, the maids loosened their grips around Yuki, likely out of relief from returning to a familiar place.

A familiar room. And nowhere inside was there a key.

“Guess it’s not here,” Kokuto said. “Come to think of it, we were sitting in here for so long, we would’ve noticed one. Sorry, this was a waste of time.”

“No, it was a good suggestion,” Yuki said. “This room was a blind spot.”

Under normal circumstances, that was a realization Yuki should have come to on her own. Because she was guiding a group of beginners for the first time, or perhaps because she was in high spirits from being hugged by the many maids, her perspective was more limited.

“While we’re here, we might as well take a break.”

Yuki approached the table, and the other girls fully detached themselves from her body. She felt a twinge of loneliness at the loss of human touch. She took a seat, and the other five followed suit.

They had spent no more than thirty or so minutes searching—at least according to Yuki’s estimate, as there were no clocks in the mansion. That scant amount of exertion hardly warranted a break, and although Yuki did feel nervous, her level of exhaustion barely registered at all. Nevertheless, considering that their lives were on the line and the other girls were unaccustomed to death games, the experience was likely taking a greater toll on the group than Yuki imagined. She herself had just made the mistake of overlooking the dining room as a place to search, so she wasn’t in peak condition, either. She had been the one to state that it was okay to be excessively cowardly. Now was the time to put her own words into practice.

Yuki reached for the large plate on the table. She had set her sights on a cookie, but before she could grab it, Kokuto snatched it away.

“Come on… Really?” Yuki sighed. “You’ve had so many by now, you should know these are safe. Knock it off and let me eat in peace.”

Yuki glared at Kokuto. However, the girl didn’t appear apologetic, nor did she retaliate with a scowl of her own. She kept her eyes fixed on the cookie, deep in contemplation.

“…A blind spot…,” Kokuto muttered.

She shifted her gaze to the plate, which was around the size of a large pizza. After putting back the cookie, she lifted the plate with both hands and moved it to another spot on the spacious rectangular table.

Beneath where the plate had been was a ring of golden keys.

“…Aha!”

The maids began to murmur.

Kokuto scooped up the keys. “This was in a real blind spot. Who knew we’d been reaching our hands over this all along?”

She showed the object to the others.

At that very moment, Yuki noticed something glimmering near the bottom of the ring—an extremely fine string, like the kind used for magic tricks.

Then, in an uncharacteristic act, she shot up out of her chair and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Kokuto! Get down!”

“Huh?”

A zwoosh cut through the air—

(9/23)

Three sounds rang out in rapid succession.

The first was the sound of a flying object lodging itself into Kokuto’s head, a noise so small and crisp that it defied all expectations of a human brain being pierced. The second was the thump of Kokuto falling over from the momentum of the blow to her head after being deprived of the ability to stand on her own. And the third was the jingle of the bunch of keys falling out of her hands onto the table.

Technically, there was also a fourth sound—that of Yuki’s chair toppling over. She had stood up with such vigor that she accidentally kicked it away. But that was all. Be it three sounds or four, there was nothing else as Kokuto’s life came to an end.

She breathed her last. The game had taken its first victim.

“—!”

A muted scream filled the air.

Momono curled up into a small ball, clutching her head. It was the kind of pose that suggested a wish to be absorbed back into her mother’s womb.

Hers was the most noteworthy reaction to the events that had unfolded, as none of the other maids flew into a panic. That was the only silver lining. But while they had avoided becoming hysterical, not a single one of them was not in shock. The color had drained from each of their faces.

Their expressions indicated they had fully come to accept that they were in a game of death.

“What was that?” After an unknown amount of time had passed, it was Kinko who first regained enough composure to speak. “Was that a trap?” The question betrayed that she still had holes in her understanding.

Yuki nodded. With an eye on Kokuto’s corpse, she explained, “This often happens, where there are particularly dangerous traps set up around important items. I should’ve made that clearer when I had the chance.”

Kokuto had been the only non-first-time player besides Yuki. Had she not known the golden rule for these escape games? Or was she aware but hadn’t internalized it? Either way, the truth had vanished with her dying breath.

Yuki regretted that she hadn’t been able to shout her instructions a second earlier. Even if it wasn’t possible to stop the trap from activating, Kokuto could have evaded it by ducking. If only Yuki had been slightly more in form, if only she had the experience of leading a group of beginners even once in the past, if only she had deduced the location of the key ring before Kokuto, if only she had realized the possibility of a trap and taken a moment to assess the situation, then Kokuto may have been spared her fate.

Yuki felt sorry for the girl but didn’t voice it out loud.

She left her place to examine Kokuto’s body, which had unmistakably turned into a corpse. The girl was dead as a doornail, beyond a shadow of a doubt. A sharp metal spike resembling an ice pick had penetrated her skull, from her right temple all the way through to her left. Although it looked as if she had donned one of those prank headbands, there was no denying the reality of the situation.

“So…what do we do with that?” The voice was Beniya’s. As if realizing the word that was inappropriate, she immediately reworded her question. “What do we do with her?”

“Nothing. We have no choice but to leave her like this,” Yuki answered in a nonchalant tone. “It’s not like there’s anywhere to bury her. The one thing we can do is clasp our hands in prayer, but I’d strongly advise against that.”

“How come?” Kinko asked.

“There may be situations coming up where we won’t even have the luxury to offer someone a prayer. If we pray for Kokuto but can’t do the same for someone else later, our hearts will grow weak, and that weakness may come back to bite us when the going gets tough. In this kind of game, emotional scars run far deeper than you think. That’s why I don’t stop to mourn when anyone dies. I do that all at once after the game is over.”

“…Right.”

Yuki turned her gaze to the table—or rather, to the bunch of keys resting on it. The thin wire that had set off the trap was still intact. It was possible that the trap could activate a second time, so she severed it with great caution.

Nothing happened.

Yuki took the key ring in her hands. “This should unlock that door from earlier.” She looked around at the group of maids, which was now one fewer in number. “Do you all have the will to continue?”