Transcendency: Chapter 19
Title: Transcendency
Pairing: OT5, Matsumiya
Genre: AU, Angst, Dark Fantasy
Disclaimer: Plot is mine, Arashi is not. Unfortunately.
Summary: Down the rabbit hole they fell.
Author's Note: Time for the return of a familiar face.
Confidence filled every step that carried Nino down the street towards his latest arena. He paid no mind to the sunset-coloured trees or the various playground equipment that lined the other side of the fence. There was not a doubt in his mind that the location he was about to enter would host a challenge of either the mind or the heart-either way, it would be a game he specialised in. He passed through the border of the tall gate without a second of hesitation and sauntered up to the doors of the building, his expression determined yet unreadable. It mattered not that he had plenty of days left on his visa; he was ready for another victory.
Following the signage, he worked his way through the corridors to one of the upstairs nursery rooms. The interior was as garish as it was childish, and exactly what one would expect to see in a kindergarten. Painted with an assortment of pastel hues, the room seemed bright beyond reason. It was like stepping inside a rainbow. The wallpaper had a hand-painted design of clouds, stars and crescent moons, all of different colours. Even the ground was vibrant. The floorboards had a sky-blue sheen and there were five identically sized square panels distributed across the ground. Each panel had a different image printed at its centre. In the middle of the room was a table with the phones.
With cool detachment, Nino passed by the ranks of the other players, never meeting their eyes. He took a phone for himself and registered for the game. He stood on the outer reaches of the group, observing his competition with a keen eye. There were seven players in total. All looked experienced enough and the way they collected their phones without delay assured Nino it was no one’s first time playing tonight, not that he was surprised by this. It had been some time since he last saw a new player, leaving him to believe everyone who was due to enter this new Tokyo had since arrived. Tonight’s players were a mixed bag in terms of age, gender, height and body type. Some appeared to be on his own like him, while others were friendly with each other, enough to suggest they had a connection prior to this evening. No one looked particularly threatening, nor were there any faces that Nino recognised.
His assessment of the other players was interrupted when registration closed. “Game: Roulette. Difficulty: Ace of Diamonds.”
Nino smirked inwardly at the confirmation of his reasoning. But while not at all discouraged by the suit he was expecting, the difficult certainly came as an unexpected surprise. Being supposedly the easiest level of the games was something he knew he ought to feel relieved by, and the old him would have gotten cocky about his ability to clear the game, but not anymore. He knew better than to get ahead of himself. Until he knew exactly what would be asked of them, he would not allow himself to jump the gun. Briefly glancing back at his competition, he saw he was the only one with such a sensible line of thinking. Everyone else looked at ease by the announcement of the difficulty despite the rules having yet to be explained.
Nino scoffed under his breath. While it might be his first ace game, he’d played enough games of two and three difficulty to know that, although straightforward, they were never easy. Being a diamonds game, he prepared to put his logic and common sense to good use.
“Rules: Players must choose one of the five marks on the floor on within two minutes. Clear condition: When the countdown ends, the trapdoors under each mark will open. Players who fail to choose the correct door will be eliminated by falling into sulfuric acid.”
A chorus of shocked gasps echoed through the nursery. The players’ alarmed gazes flickered between the five panels. Their countdown started and they moved with much haste to examine each one, hoping to find some clue that would help them identify which mark was the safe one. Nino remained in the centre of the room, keeping a steady face despite the chaos unfolding around him. His focus shifted from the other players to the panels and the photos embellishing each one. There was a sun, a lemon, a candle, a flower and a jellyfish. All were drawn with an overly cutesy anime design and had the same garish colour scheme as the rest of their surroundings.
“It has to be the sun, right?” one player deduced. “Look at the wallpaper. Moon, cloud, star…sun fits that theme, so it must be the safe choice.”
Despite his confident words, he still faltered a little when it came to actually stepping on the panel. He instead turned to the young girl with blonde-dyed hair by his side.
“What do you think, Rola?”
The girl pursed her lips in thought before pointing one of her manicured nails at the sun panel. “The sun? Okay!”
With a nasally giggle, she held her hand near her cheek, her thumb and forefinger pinched together in a gesture of acceptance. She capered over to the chosen panel with her companion close behind. There were a few nods of agreement from the other players, with a couple even heading over to join the pair on the mark. But not everyone was so easily swayed by their reasoning.
“No, it’s got to be the jellyfish,” another player objected. He pointed at the floor. “It’s obvious, check out the pattern. Every other option is inanimate; the jellyfish is the only living thing, so if we want to keep living, we should choose that.”
He was much more self-assured when it came to standing on his chosen mark. While some of the other players debated the flaws in his reasoning, others claimed it made perfect sense. Nino snorted in amusement when he noticed how fickle Rola in particular was about her options. Abandoning her companion without a moment’s thought, she jumped from the sun panel to the jellyfish one.
For Nino’s part, he wasn’t convinced with either option. While he certainly understood the rationale behind the proposed options so far, he felt unsettled by both. His gut instinct was telling him that they were wrong, though he couldn’t decide between the rest of the choices either, much to his frustration. The wording of the clear condition had him intrigued though. In all his experience in the games thus far, very rarely was it specified the way in which players would be eliminated. While Nino wouldn’t be surprised if it had been done in an effort to throw the players off their game-after all, who wouldn’t be put off by the notion of being dissolved alive-but he still felt like there was more to it than that. He wracked his brain, trying to figure out what he was missing.
In a moment of sought comfort, his hand unconsciously raised to touch his necklace. He immediately felt his nerves settle a little when he caressed the tendrils of the flower puzzle. Like a security blanket, it was something he’d come to seek refuge in when times were tough. It was not only a dear reminder of his friend but the simple action of stroking the metal, feeling the edges and curves of that flower bud, was something that soothed him immensely.
As he rolled the helical twines between his thumb and finger, everything fell into place. His eyes widened a little and his gaze shot straight to the panels. His other hand ghosted the length of his forearm. While the welts from the moon jellyfish had since healed, he could still feel where they once were, the mere memory of their burning sting enough to make him wince. It only confirmed his theory now though and as the clear condition replayed inside his head, he knew immediately that he’d solved the riddle.
“Thanks J,” he whispered under his breath, giving the flower a small squeeze.
Clasping the trinket for a moment longer as he cherished its familiar feel, he let it fall back over his heart. His attention drifted to the countdown. There was only thirty seconds remaining. Majority of the other players had settled on their final choice, with all but three crowded around the jellyfish and sun trapdoors. The remaining two players other than Nino were loitering back and forth between the remaining options, evidently hedging their bets that the answer could be something the others missed. While the woman eventually caved to group mentality and scampered over to the sun before time ended, the man settled on the candle, albeit still looked as confused as ever.
“Why the candle?” one player called out curiously.
The man shrugged. His response was merely that he didn’t know what the answer was, only that the game was called Roulette and he had a good feeling about the candle. The feeling was clearly not shared by the rest of the players, if the unconvinced looks they exchanged were any indication. Some of them looked worried while others appeared smug, as if knowing the man would die pointlessly.
Nino tried not to smirk at the irony. Some small voice inside was telling him to warn them that he knew the real answer and to save them before they all fell to their doom. But any time he so much as thought about speaking up, he was left with a sour taste in his mouth. He narrowed his eyes on the other players. They were alive; his friends were not. The unfairness of it had him remembering the very reason why he was there. He had no one left to lose. He was a ronin, fighting for himself and his own cause. As heartless as it may seem, he had no obligation to anyone else, least of all strangers. Acts of compassion led to caring, caring led to pain and loss, and that was not something he was willing to open his heart to again.
With ten seconds to go, Nino made his way swiftly to his chosen icon. His fellow players stared at him in bewilderment.
“The flower?” they questioned.
Nino nodded. “It’s simple logic, really. The rules state those who choose wrong will fall into acid,” he remarked. He rubbed his necklace again, ignoring his anxiety that was trying to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. “Besides the flower, every other icon has something in common with the terms of the game. Candles, jellyfish, lemons, the sun…”
As he listed off each mark, he watched, a little amused as one by one the faces around him fell in horror as they too came to the same conclusion. But while they may have wanted to change their minds to save themselves, it was too late. The countdown struck zero and the trapdoors swung open, plunging all seven of them into the vats a metre below.
Nino inhaled sharply when the ground beneath his feet suddenly vanished. For a heartbeat, he remained suspended in the air. Then gravity took its toll and he dropped through the floor with great and sudden speed. He felt the oxygen get knocked from his lungs as the shock of the fall caught him off guard. A second later, he was submerged up to his neck in a pit full of foam blocks. Anguished shrieking sounded all around him as the other players met a not so fortunate fate. He could hear the intense sizzling as the bodies in the four surrounding containers were dissolved down to their bloody skeletons. The smell of melting flesh and bone reached his nose and threatened to purge his stomach.
Stunned from his own fall, it took Nino a moment to haul himself out of his container. He was a little unsteady on his feet at first but soon recovered. He looked fleetingly to the decimated corpses in the other vats. He could only see three of the other players, or what was left of them as they floated near the top of the containers. There were no details left to distinguish them. A mutilated arm reached up from the once clear liquid, now roiling with murky waves of deep scarlet; a disfigured face bobbed on the surface in another vat, their jaw thrown open in a scream that no longer sounded.
“Choose an icon that burns, and you will too,” Nino said grimly to himself.
Despite cringing at the disgusting manner in which the six of them died, he felt surprisingly indifferent to their passing. He couldn’t bring himself to care for the wasted life of strangers, not when he had something much greater to focus his energy on. They were but collateral damage in his quest for vengeance and certainly nothing to shed tears over. His only true disappointment was that there were no cards to be found on their corpses.
His phone dinged. “Game Clear: Congratulations.”
The reward of his single visa day did little to discourage him when he found the ace of diamonds card sitting on a table near the door. He picked it up with a shrewd smile. One more game conquered, one step closer to his goal of avenging his friends.
---
Bunkered down in the small, abandoned izakaya that was his temporary accommodation, Nino studiously examined Sho’s map in front of him. His gaze moved over each hand drawn symbol scattered across the parchment before he brought his pen to the page and drew an X through the kindergarten and the ace drawn above it.
Inspired by the positional monitoring used in the nine of hearts game, he’d meticulously marked out the location of every arena he knew of so far. As night fell, he would climb onto the rooftop of neighbouring buildings and watch the horizon light up, pinpointing the exact locations of arenas he would go on to explore on foot the following day. He’d been everywhere from an apartment block and a highway entrance to a convenience store and even a shrine. While the specific games remained unknown to him, he was able to make educated guesses as to their suits based on the geography and remnants found at each place.
Nino believed he was close to cracking the algorithm behind which locations were chosen for which suits, though not nearly as close as he would have liked. Leaning back in his chair, he impatiently shuffled his accumulated trophies. Twelve games and a total of twenty-four cards. Feeling their light numbers, he pouted. It felt like he was still a long way from completing his collection and he was seriously regretting not picking up a few more freebies from the bodies of fallen players. It was not a mistake he planned on making again.
Since losing the last of his friends, he’d decided to revise his entire approach to this world. His patience to avenge them was wearing thin and playing games only when his visa was nearing its end was proving too frustrating to continue. It was why he was so dead set on figuring out the patten for the games, so that he could conquer them faster and ultimately track down the game master to take his revenge. Staying in one place wasn’t working for him either anymore for a number of reasons. As well as the hotel holding too many memories, he realised he needed to be more nomadic if he stood a chance at tracking down all the arenas. The idea of drifting from place to place, never knowing what his next shelter would be, hardly appealed to him but he knew it had to be done. Perhaps if they’d done that in the first place, they never would have fallen victim to the game master’s cruel trap that was the five of hearts.
Nino shook the unpleasant thoughts away and focused back on the cards in his hand. There was no point in lingering on the past; he would take inspiration from his losses and use it to drive his ambition forward, but he would not dwell on what happened. He couldn’t, lest he fall back into the despair he’d worked so hard to crawl out of. Not even his hallucinations had dared show themselves since he left the hotel.
His reluctance to so much as think about his friends other than in a vengeful context left him cold and unrelenting. Nino knew of this change within himself even before he’d chosen to let die those in his last games, but he refused to let guilt get the better of him. With nothing left to lose, he was on a warpath. Not even the lingering threat of his nightmares scared him anymore-and why should they when they had already come true? He was playing to win and he didn’t care what was required of him to do it. In games of the mind, he would outsmart everyone. In games of the body, he would cheat to save himself. In games of cooperation, he would charm. And in games of the heart, he would deceive, and he’d do so with a smile on his face.
With sunrise looming on the horizon, he put both the map and his cards away and settled himself down to get some rest.
---
THIS WAY TO THE GAME ARENA.
Nino stared at the entranceway to the station. Even without the huge characters scrawled across the monitor that should have displayed the train timetable, it was impossible to miss the arena across the street. All the windows of the surrounding shops were lit up not with their usual business signage but with arrows pointing towards the station.
When he set out that night to find a new challenge, he hadn’t thought twice about his visa or the potential danger he was walking into. He’d studied the landscape; he was confident he knew what to expect and was ready to face whatever was thrown his way, same as always.
Now that he was standing at the gate, however, he found himself hesitating. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to play; he just couldn’t shake this feeling of disquiet within him. That this was the very station he and his friends had walked back to that first night they arrived certainly didn’t help. The memories that came with being back in the place where it all began was overwhelming to say the least. Even now, he could picture the five of them emerging from the dark passageway, confused yet united in their search for answers.
Nino desperately tried to shake the memories away. He was already well aware of how damaging they could be and wasn’t prepared to face the depression that came with thinking about them again, especially not right before playing. He took a deep breath and honed his focus on the arena ahead of him. Registration could end at any minute. Knowing this, he readied himself to bite the bullet and cross the border, reminding himself that it was just one more game arena and nothing more.
When he went to cross the road, however, he nearly crashed into a young man who walked straight across his path. Nino jumped back to avoid the collision but as he stared after the stranger, he was struck by a sense of déjà vu.
“Zakiyama?” The nickname escaped him unconsciously.
Yamazaki paused and looked back. A smile formed when he too recognised Nino, but his expression soon marred with genuine confusion. “I’m Yamazaki.”
Nino paid no mind to the correction. His actual name was something he already knew but seeing him look so flustered by the apparent mistake only encouraged Nino to continue addressing him as such. But as much as he enjoyed teasing him, he couldn’t ignore his shock over seeing him again. So much had happened since their last encounter and despite the suspicions he’d had at the time, Nino had all but forgotten him in the chaos that had become of his life.
“You’re still alive,” he remarked, not bothering to hide his surprise. As impressive as Yamazaki’s luck seemed, after witnessing his airheaded nature during their game at the ryokan, Nino hadn’t envisioned him making it very far in the games on his own. He scoffed. “Score one for dumb luck.”
“I’ve got my talents,” Yamazaki replied.
“Airheads usually do,” said Nino offhandedly.
Rather than argue, the former only smiled inwardly at his comment. There was a small break of silence between them. Nino fully expected the conversation to take a turn as the young man brought up their previous time together, perhaps make some comment on Nino being by himself now. He didn’t; he just stood there, his gaze sparkling with such openness that it had Nino questioning if he was even thinking about anything at all.
Yamazaki’s expression wavered slightly when he looked past Nino to the arena he was standing in front of. “Playing tonight?”
Nino glanced over his shoulder at the station, his doubts returning as he found himself at odds over how to answer. Eventually, he nodded.
“These games won’t win themselves,” he muttered.
Although his smile tightened somewhat at his response, there was a sincerity in Yamazaki’s eyes that never changed. He bowed to Nino. When he raised himself again, his whole expression softened.
“Well then, good luck,” he said and flashed Nino his usual blithe grin.
Seeing it again made Nino uncomfortable. The image of Aiba’s smiling face appeared in his mind and for a split second, he could be fooled into thinking it was his dear friend standing in front of him. He didn’t even realise he was staring after Yamazaki until he disappeared around the corner.
Shaking off the encounter, Nino refocused himself and crossed the road. But just as he reached the stairs to the station, the signs went dark, signalling the end of registration. Despite already knowing his heart wasn’t fully in it tonight, he didn’t waste time assigning blame. He clicked his tongue in frustration and cast an irate glare over his shoulder despite Yamazaki no longer being there.
He let out a long sigh, the worst of his frustration turning to disappointment as he lamented his lost opportunity. With much reluctance, he turned away from the shut off arena and hauled himself down the street back the way he’d come, the faint scuffling of his dragging footsteps echoing in his mind like a taunting melody of his solitude.
---
The stadium lights were blinding yet familiar, the diamond pattern of the bases laid out across the grass alluring in ways it always had been. As Nino’s gaze moved over the rows of benches to the scoreboard at the end of the pitch, a nostalgic warmth consumed him as he was reminded of his years spent playing for his high school baseball team. It was the one form of exercise he not only didn’t mind but actually enjoyed, and while he knew it was unlikely that the game they played would have much connection to his favourite sport, he still felt the desire to come there tonight. It was exactly what he needed to restore his confidence after missing out on the last game.
Nino gazed around the dugout. Not knowing the exact details of the game didn’t stop him from strategizing. His sharp gaze analysed the capabilities of those around him and where he stood in the pecking order; he targeted those with more obvious physical prowess, already thinking up ways to use them to protect himself. Those who seemed weaker, on the other hand, provided him with a pleasant guarantee that he would be walking away with more than a single playing card that night.
As he looked to his phone to check the time remaining, a familiar face passed by in his peripheral vision and momentarily distracted him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath.
As he spoke, the man he was staring at lifted his gaze from his own phone, as if aware he was being watched. A wide smile split his face the moment he laid eyes on Nino.
“We meet again,” Yamazaki said jokingly, walking over to join him. “Playing another game so soon?”
Nino crossed his arms and frowned. “I didn’t play last night thanks to you.”
The young man was taken aback by his claim. “Eh? What did I do?”
“You distracted me,” Nino snapped. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have missed registration.”
“Sorry?” It sounded more like a sarcastic remark than a genuine apology, and only served to deepen Nino’s scowl. Yamazaki didn’t appear the least bit concerned by his glower, however, as his own expression remained as light as ever. “You’re here though, so it’s not like you were out of visa days or anything. No harm, no foul, right?”
Nino didn’t dignify him with a response. The events of last night had been playing on his mind all day and while he would never acknowledge his own fault in having missed the game, the other player proved a useful scapegoat. It was easier for Nino to tell himself that it was Yamazaki’s distraction that prevented him from playing last night, rather than admit to having hesitated over the sentimentality of the location.
Nino used the lull in their conversation to give him a second glance. He already knew that the other would be little more than a burden in terms of diamond and heart games, but he’d yet to see him perform in physical challenges. Nino couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed when further examination dashed his hopes that Yamazaki might balance out his own shortcomings. The man didn’t look particularly impressive compared to some of the other players. He had a skinny build, not dissimilar to himself, and didn’t appear to have much visible muscle. He looked neither strong nor fast, and Nino doubted that even his reflexes would be anything but average.
“Don’t get in my way tonight,” he warned.
Before Yamazaki could reply, the players came forward as the big screen on the adjacent side of the field switched on, its white glow illuminating the horizon like a full moon on a clear night. Their phone screens lit up at the same time.
“Game: Homerun Charade. Difficulty: Six of Clubs.”
Nino quirked an eyebrow, a little surprised to discover it was in fact a clubs game rather than spades. He remained certain of its physical component, however, even before the rules were explained.
“Rules: One player will mime words for their teammates to guess within a ninety-second countdown. Three seconds will be awarded for each word correctly guessed. The total number of seconds accumulated will provide the time limit for players to run around the bases. Clear condition: Players who make it back to the home base before time runs out will clear the game.”
Nino exhaled loudly, neither shocked nor relieved by the announcement of the game. While he was glad there was more than just the physical side to the challenge, he couldn’t help feeling worried. He didn’t like running but he was fast when he needed to be. He’d also run his fair share of homeruns during his years in the baseball club and was quite confident he could make it back to the home base quickly, but the unknown element of how much time they would have to do so scared him. He didn’t like entrusting his life to others and right now he felt cornered. There was so much that would be out of his control in this game, and he hated it.
“Who’s good at charades?” one player asked.
There were some indistinct mumbles from the group, no one braving to be the one to volunteer for the role. Nino chewed his bottom lip as he considered all options. He was decent at charades but there was a lot that could go wrong either way. What if he volunteered and they couldn’t guess correctly? What if he didn’t volunteer and the person who did the miming was terrible? The endless worst-case scenarios made his head spin.
As it turned out, their contemplation over the roles was in vain anyway. A spinning wheel appeared on the screen, with each fraction depicting a player’s name. It became a swirling vortex of various colours as it went round and round at high speed. It came to an eventual stop on one of the sectors.
“First up to the base…ID number: 1200376. Kano Eiko.”
Artificial cheering sounded through the speakers as the footage switched to show said man standing among them in the dugout. He looked around in shock as he was chosen for the task of miming, his wide gaze moving between those beside him and the screen that continued to film him close-up. He shuffled a few slow, half-steps towards the field. Nino and another few players gave him an insistent push towards the centre of the diamond to begin the game. Kano stumbled, his nervousness only growing even as he forced himself towards the pitcher’s base that was illuminated by a bright spotlight. The footage continued to track him the entire way. It provided the rest of the players a clear view of their teammate even after he walked too far from the dugout to be seen in much detail with the naked eye. There was no ignoring how pale his face was, or the beads of sweat that rolled down his brow as he stood waiting alone in the middle of the field in preparation for the first word.
Nino stood right at the forefront of the dugout; he felt a warmth by his side as the other players joined him. When Yamazaki wormed his way into the space beside him, Nino didn’t miss the excitable grin he wore. Seeing it made him want to question the young man on his unusual eagerness but Nino quickly remembered he had more important things to focus on. The players watched as Kano’s eyes tracked something unseen to them in the stands above. It took a moment after seeing it for him to react. He gasped to himself with the realisation that the ninety second countdown had begun. He turned sideways and raised his arms to his mid-torso, keeping his elbows sticking out from his body. He drew his arms back and forth in a rowing motion.
“Boat,” came the first attempt at an answer.
Kano shook his head.
“Rowing.”
He shook his head again and switched position, alternating his paddling between his left and right arms.
“Canoe,” Nino yelled, to which victory was awarded in the form of their phones dinging. Three stars appeared on the top of the big screen as additional confirmation of their seconds earned for the correct answer.
Not wasting a moment, Kano switched his position immediately as the next word appeared in his line of vision. He spun back around to face the rest of them head-on. He raised his hands above his head and clapped, his face twisting in an expression most comical and exaggerated. The answer of ‘Kabuki’ echoed through the arena as several players shouted at the same time.
For the next thirty seconds, they gained points repeatedly as easy answer after easy answer seemed to cross their path. Kano’s cross-armed approach of mimicking a rhythm made for an obvious answer of ‘drums’; ‘high-five’ was called out after seeing him raise a hand above his head and slap empty air with a smile on his face, while ‘boomerang’ came after seeing him whip a pretend projectile away from himself, which he then proceeded to imitate catching a second later. Watching him jump up and down while both his wrists made a quick rotating motion on either side of his hips, his teammates initial answer of skipping quickly gave way to ‘double jump’ when they saw him quicken his skipping pace.
Looking rather exhausted already, Kano glanced at the seats for the next word. He looked away for a moment, only to do a doubletake. While the rest of his teammates saw the action as genuine confusion over the unseen word, Yamazaki was unreserved about voicing his own opinion.
“Second glance!” he called.
Both Kano and those in the dugout did another doubletake as they all turned to stare at him in bewilderment for his answer to the word that had not yet been mimed. Nino scoffed in amusement at the young man who appeared completely baffled by all the strange looks he received.
Shaking off the response given before he’d even acted anything out, Kano resumed his role as mime. He glanced again at the stands before adjusting his stance. He bent over slightly, the fingers on his right hand positioned like chopsticks. A murmur of confusion swept through the dugout as the rest of the players watched him draw up an imaginary item with his fingers, seeming to slurp them like ramen. However, when they attempted to answer as such, they were met with a frustrated shake of Kano’s head. He took up the same position, this time waiting a moment before making a sweeping gesture with the same two fingers. He repeated this motion several times, slurping louder each time until finally one of his teammates connected the dots.
“Nagashi somen,” they answered.
With a relieved smile, Kano nodded. His relief at getting the word across was short-lived as the next one appeared before his eyes. He checked it over before assuming a new pose. He lifted both arms in front of him and hopped up and down on the spot.
“Jiangshi.” Almost everyone in the dugout answered at the same time, earning them all another three seconds to their tally.
Kano moved onto the next word quickly. He made a throwing action with his right arm.
“Baseball,” someone yelled. “Pitch.”
Kano shook his head, repeating the action again. He jumped at the same time he swung his arm out, this time keeping his fingers fully extended.
“Handball,” said Nino. Victory was his immediately.
A look of concern crossed Kano’s face for a second time that evening as he contemplated not which action to do that would best represent his next word, but the consequences of the action itself. Eventually, his fear of not winning the seconds won out over anything else. With a running start, he leapt into the air, extending his leg as he did as if to strike an invisible opponent. His inflexibility showed as his knee remained noticeably bent and he was barely able to raise his leg past hip height. He landed harshly on his side. Nino didn’t hide his amused grin at what he’d just watched and from the sniggers he heard beside him, he wasn’t the only one entertained. While a part of him yearned to withhold the answer just to see the man try it again, he knew time was against them.
“Drop kick,” he called out, still smiling.
Kano nodded, wincing even as he pulled himself up off the ground. His back was covered in dirt and he was holding his waist where he’d landed. He forced himself to push past the pain as his next charade appeared before him. He took a second to consider what he would do before acting. He put his fists on his hips, extending one leg at a time in a strange kind of dance. He bit his bottom lip as his facial expression twisted into one of an amusing nature.
Confusion filled the dugout as the other players endeavoured to read into his cryptic performance.
“Kosak dance?”
Their incorrect guess was remedied by Kano making an adjustment to the charade. He lowered one of his hands, assuming more of a teapot stance despite continuing his strange step-dance.
“Puppet?” his teammates questions.
While not shaking his head, Kano did change his approach yet again. His actions became more frantic when he heard the final seconds ticking down. He shuffled about on his heels, his hands waving in a rigid albeit hasty manner in front of his torso. His expression remained as ridiculous as ever.
“Clown,” Yamazaki answered with a laugh, bouncing up and down slightly on the balls of his feet at the amusing action in front of him. He grinned widely and looked keenly to those around him when three more stars flashed on the big screen.
Their time concluded and with his miraculous guess providing them with one last reward, their total of thirty-three seconds was announced. Looking exhausted, Kano jogged back over to join the rest of his teammates. The players clambered over the barrier of the dugout to enter the field. A few of them praised Kano for his efforts while everyone else readied themselves at home base for the second part of the challenge to commence.
Leaning forward on his dominant knee, Nino stared up at the screen and their total time accumulated. He felt torn about how they did in the initial round. The complete distance around the bases was a little over a hundred metres and while running that stretch in under thirty-three seconds normally wouldn’t be considered too hard, he knew the task was more challenging than it seemed. They wouldn’t be running in a straight line; Nino knew from past experience how harsh those sharp corners could be on one’s speed. Running as a group wasn’t going to make things any easier either. With all twelve of them being required to touch each base in order to clear the game, he was expecting carnage to occur once they were out there. All notion of cooperation and teamwork would surely vanish as the players pushed and shoved their way to victory.
Keeping this in mind, Nino made sure to position himself as near to the front of the pack as he could. There was no time to ensure he didn’t have anyone of particularly strong build on either side of him as their thirty-three seconds began counting down. Adrenaline raged through Nino’s veins as he shot forward, sprinting as fast as he could towards the first base. He wasn’t sure what was louder: the pounding of footsteps all around him or the pounding of blood in his ears. His heel striking hard against the base, he wasn’t even aware of his phone tracking his movements until it chimed, alerting him to his success at passing the first of four markers.
He skidded over the dirt as he made a tight ninety-degree turn around the diamond. It was with both frustration and concern that he saw several other players start to pull ahead of him. Much to his shock, a familiar face was among those who passed him. He could only stare as Yamazaki overtook him with apparent ease. Seeing him look as though he was barely even breaking a sweat, Nino felt incensed. He clenched his teeth and forced his body forward even faster.
As he was approaching the second base, a player on his right caught up to him in his blind spot. Nino sensed his presence and glanced over his shoulder fleetingly. Coming up on the inner side, the man attempted to nudge him out of the way. Nino held his ground, however, and shoved the guy right back. When he refused to budge, he changed tactics and quickened his pace in the hopes of reaching the marker first. But as they narrowed the distance, his rival threw out his elbow. It collided with Nino’s stomach and knocked the wind out of him.
Provoked by the attack, he pushed through the pain and extended his leg, deliberately entangling his foot with the other player. His ankle hooked around the guy’s left calf and with a strong yank, he managed to trip him right before they reached the base. While not powerful enough to completely throw him off balance, he did stumble far enough off course to miss the second marker entirely. Nino could feel his vicious glare burning into his back even as he continued to run, cradling his still sore stomach as he did.
It was a few seconds later that he felt a weight hit him from behind. The world turned upside-down in a dizzying whirlwind and he barely had time to realise he was on the ground. Shaking off his inexplicable tumble, he looked on through a haze of red as the same player he’d tripped ran on ahead, casting a smug look back over his shoulder. The handful of players behind overtook him, with a few glancing at Nino as they went but not one of them slowing their pace.
Dirt flew everywhere as Nino scrambled to his feet. He looked briefly to the timer as he attempted to make up the seconds lost. There was only eighteen seconds to go and halfway still to run. Ignoring the ache in his lungs and the throbbing of his lower body, he pushed himself to the brink. He had nearly reached the third base by the time he managed to catch up with the rest of them but rather than being a testament to his speed, he couldn’t help feeling that it was due to the other players’ lack thereof. Overtaking Kano in particular, he saw the man was visibly struggling. Despite his somewhat athletic build, he was moving much slower than expected. His left leg looked rather rigid and his pace was out of step, leaving Nino to ponder if his hip was still hurting from the drop-kick charade he attempted earlier. The way his face scrunched up in apparent pain certainly seemed to suggest as much.
Nino tried not to dwell on the other’s agony, or his own for that matter, as he persisted in the run. Even when he’d ran the bases during his high school tournaments, he couldn’t recall ever having pushed himself this hard-then again, his life had never depended on it. The sounds around him were starting to blur together, becoming a muffled mess of white noise. Feeling the third base come and go beneath his shoes, he dared to lift his gaze to spy the finish line. Most of the players were either already back at home base or close in front of him. The final ten second countdown on the big screen was glaring in his peripheral vision, reminding him of just how little time there was left. The distance remaining was only a couple of metres and yet it seemed immense. A flicker of doubt crossed his mind that he would make it in time.
Up ahead, standing just behind home base, he could see Yamazaki. He was jumping up and down like an excitable puppy, waving as he yelled encouragement. Whether it was for all the remaining players or him specifically, Nino couldn’t be sure but as the numbness in his ears faded and his hearing returned, the sound of the support was enough to keep pushing him onwards. Closing his eyes, he could fool himself into believing it was his friends cheering him on. With a final burst of adrenaline, he powered across the last few metres. He didn’t care about the bodies that slammed against his flank as he shot through the crowd, nor the ache in his calves that were screaming for him to stop. He just kept running.
Even after he felt his heel strike home base, he couldn’t slow down. He shot straight past, very nearly barrelling into the other players before coming to a staggering halt at the edge of the dugout. His arms flew out to catch himself before he crashed headfirst into the stands. Bent over the side of the barrier, he fought to catch his breath. His lungs were in agony, his limbs feeling as though they would fall off at any moment. His skin radiated with an intense heat as his blood raged through every vein in his body. In the back of his mind, he registered a hand rubbing his back and a kind voice telling him that it was okay to breathe now.
Nino cringed even as he forced himself to look up. “You beat me,” he panted in disbelief.
“I told you I had my talents,” Yamazaki replied.
Despite his cheery response, Nino still struggled to comprehend just how athletic the former turned out to be. He didn’t appear the least bit tired. But any chance to question him was lost when the sound of lasers drew their attention. Nino watched as Kano and another player desperately tried to cover the final two metres in the last second. They were both a half step from the goal when a beam of scarlet shot down from the heavens and cut them down. The momentum of the run hurled their lifeless bodies over the threshold, sending alarm ricocheting through the stadium.
As it turned out, not even some who did reach home base were in the clear. When the timer hit zero, there was a chorus of noises from their phones as the results of the race were compiled. Several players who’d neglected to heed the clear condition and run all four bases looked on in horror as failure was declared. The thick letters glared up at them from their individual screens, while the sound of simulated fireworks played from the speakers of the big screen in mockery of their defeat before they too were cut down by the laser. The man whom Nino had tripped was among those to fall.
Watching his lifeless body hit the dirt with a thud, Nino felt nothing. He hardly paid any attention to his own phone as it declared his success.
“They shouldn’t have died.”
When Nino looked over his shoulder at the young man who’d spoken, he saw all trace of joy had vanished. His smile was nowhere to be seen, replaced by sudden melancholy as he stared at the bodies littering the field.
“You made it so he missed the second base,” Yamazaki murmured. Turning to Nino, he held his gaze. There was no accusation present in his tone, only earnest. “He didn’t have to die.”
“Neither did a lot of people in this place,” said Nino, his voice monotone.
He could feel Yamazaki watching him even after he limped away, but he didn’t care. He had more important things to attend to than justifying his actions. As the other surviving players slowly made their way from the arena, Nino turned his attention to the fallen. He crouched by the nearest body and rifled through the man’s pockets. Upon finding they were empty, he frowned and moved onto the next. One by one, he checked each of the five corpses for any additional prize. It was with a flicker of satisfaction that he pulled the seven of spades from the body of the player he’d fought with.
“You’ve changed.”
Nino stopped what he was doing. Surprised to realise he was not as alone as he initially thought, he turned to face the one who’d spoken with narrowed eyes. Yamazaki was standing about a metre from him. They were the only living players still in the arena.
Despite his words being absent of any true malice, Nino’s throat still tightened at the accusation. “Excuse me?”
“I said you’ve changed,” Yamazaki repeated.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Nino growled.
Yamazaki shook his head, unaffected by the sharp edge of the former’s tone. “During the first game we played together, you didn’t go out of your way to hurt others. You worked with them to find the path to victory.” His gaze dropped, his expression turning wistful. “Now it seems you enjoy sabotaging other players.”
“That guy had it coming,” Nino replied sourly. “He pushed me first.”
“I saw, but that doesn’t mean you had to ruin his chances. He was just trying to survive, same as everyone.”
“He nearly got me killed.”
“So you killed him in return?” There was a level of resolve in Yamazaki’s tone that matched the challenging look in his eye as he stared Nino down. “That wasn’t your first time sabotaging another player, was it?”
He wasn’t really asking, not that Nino had any intention of replying anyway. He didn’t know who Yamazaki thought he was lecturing him on morals, but he was finished with this conversation. He rolled his eyes and turned away, intent on ignoring him should he choose to stay. He buried his hand in the pocket of another dead player as he fished for more trophies. Yamazaki hummed softly, as if taking Nino’s silence on the matter as an answer in itself.
“Like I said,” he murmured. “You’ve changed. You’re not the same person as when we met.”
“You’re right, I’m not,” Nino said darkly, unable to hold his tongue any longer. He didn’t bother turning around again and instead affixed his glare straight ahead. “I’ve learnt what it takes to truly survive in this place. Why should I let anyone get in my way of winning?”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Then it’s a good thing I want to be alone.”
The harsh silence that followed his remark seemed to say more than words could ever hope to. Nino didn’t say anything else either, feeling as though he’d said all that was needed to make his point. Still, he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance over his shoulder when he felt the presence beside him disappear. He watched Yamazaki leave, all the while trying to ignore the familiar ache that struck his chest.
Lost in the deafening quiet, Nino’s gaze drifted back to the bodies in front of him. To his horror, Jun’s face flashed in his mind when he went to reach for another corpse-the same appalled expression he’d seen from the younger when he admitted to taking Sawabe’s cards. He inhaled sharply and withdrew his hand from Kano’s pocket with such abruptness, it was as if he’d been shocked by an electric current. His own declaration echoed in his head.
Why should I let anyone get in my way of winning?
He struggled to even recognise his own voice with how savage it sounded. A wave of sudden revulsion hit him and he sat back on his heels, unable to bring himself to move. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut while the card he’d already taken weighed heavily in his pocket like a stone. His fingertips brushed against his necklace as he reached for it but not even its familiar coolness could relieve him of this sickening sensation that threatened to consume his entire being.
Pairing: OT5, Matsumiya
Genre: AU, Angst, Dark Fantasy
Disclaimer: Plot is mine, Arashi is not. Unfortunately.
Summary: Down the rabbit hole they fell.
Author's Note: Time for the return of a familiar face.
Confidence filled every step that carried Nino down the street towards his latest arena. He paid no mind to the sunset-coloured trees or the various playground equipment that lined the other side of the fence. There was not a doubt in his mind that the location he was about to enter would host a challenge of either the mind or the heart-either way, it would be a game he specialised in. He passed through the border of the tall gate without a second of hesitation and sauntered up to the doors of the building, his expression determined yet unreadable. It mattered not that he had plenty of days left on his visa; he was ready for another victory.
Following the signage, he worked his way through the corridors to one of the upstairs nursery rooms. The interior was as garish as it was childish, and exactly what one would expect to see in a kindergarten. Painted with an assortment of pastel hues, the room seemed bright beyond reason. It was like stepping inside a rainbow. The wallpaper had a hand-painted design of clouds, stars and crescent moons, all of different colours. Even the ground was vibrant. The floorboards had a sky-blue sheen and there were five identically sized square panels distributed across the ground. Each panel had a different image printed at its centre. In the middle of the room was a table with the phones.
With cool detachment, Nino passed by the ranks of the other players, never meeting their eyes. He took a phone for himself and registered for the game. He stood on the outer reaches of the group, observing his competition with a keen eye. There were seven players in total. All looked experienced enough and the way they collected their phones without delay assured Nino it was no one’s first time playing tonight, not that he was surprised by this. It had been some time since he last saw a new player, leaving him to believe everyone who was due to enter this new Tokyo had since arrived. Tonight’s players were a mixed bag in terms of age, gender, height and body type. Some appeared to be on his own like him, while others were friendly with each other, enough to suggest they had a connection prior to this evening. No one looked particularly threatening, nor were there any faces that Nino recognised.
His assessment of the other players was interrupted when registration closed. “Game: Roulette. Difficulty: Ace of Diamonds.”
Nino smirked inwardly at the confirmation of his reasoning. But while not at all discouraged by the suit he was expecting, the difficult certainly came as an unexpected surprise. Being supposedly the easiest level of the games was something he knew he ought to feel relieved by, and the old him would have gotten cocky about his ability to clear the game, but not anymore. He knew better than to get ahead of himself. Until he knew exactly what would be asked of them, he would not allow himself to jump the gun. Briefly glancing back at his competition, he saw he was the only one with such a sensible line of thinking. Everyone else looked at ease by the announcement of the difficulty despite the rules having yet to be explained.
Nino scoffed under his breath. While it might be his first ace game, he’d played enough games of two and three difficulty to know that, although straightforward, they were never easy. Being a diamonds game, he prepared to put his logic and common sense to good use.
“Rules: Players must choose one of the five marks on the floor on within two minutes. Clear condition: When the countdown ends, the trapdoors under each mark will open. Players who fail to choose the correct door will be eliminated by falling into sulfuric acid.”
A chorus of shocked gasps echoed through the nursery. The players’ alarmed gazes flickered between the five panels. Their countdown started and they moved with much haste to examine each one, hoping to find some clue that would help them identify which mark was the safe one. Nino remained in the centre of the room, keeping a steady face despite the chaos unfolding around him. His focus shifted from the other players to the panels and the photos embellishing each one. There was a sun, a lemon, a candle, a flower and a jellyfish. All were drawn with an overly cutesy anime design and had the same garish colour scheme as the rest of their surroundings.
“It has to be the sun, right?” one player deduced. “Look at the wallpaper. Moon, cloud, star…sun fits that theme, so it must be the safe choice.”
Despite his confident words, he still faltered a little when it came to actually stepping on the panel. He instead turned to the young girl with blonde-dyed hair by his side.
“What do you think, Rola?”
The girl pursed her lips in thought before pointing one of her manicured nails at the sun panel. “The sun? Okay!”
With a nasally giggle, she held her hand near her cheek, her thumb and forefinger pinched together in a gesture of acceptance. She capered over to the chosen panel with her companion close behind. There were a few nods of agreement from the other players, with a couple even heading over to join the pair on the mark. But not everyone was so easily swayed by their reasoning.
“No, it’s got to be the jellyfish,” another player objected. He pointed at the floor. “It’s obvious, check out the pattern. Every other option is inanimate; the jellyfish is the only living thing, so if we want to keep living, we should choose that.”
He was much more self-assured when it came to standing on his chosen mark. While some of the other players debated the flaws in his reasoning, others claimed it made perfect sense. Nino snorted in amusement when he noticed how fickle Rola in particular was about her options. Abandoning her companion without a moment’s thought, she jumped from the sun panel to the jellyfish one.
For Nino’s part, he wasn’t convinced with either option. While he certainly understood the rationale behind the proposed options so far, he felt unsettled by both. His gut instinct was telling him that they were wrong, though he couldn’t decide between the rest of the choices either, much to his frustration. The wording of the clear condition had him intrigued though. In all his experience in the games thus far, very rarely was it specified the way in which players would be eliminated. While Nino wouldn’t be surprised if it had been done in an effort to throw the players off their game-after all, who wouldn’t be put off by the notion of being dissolved alive-but he still felt like there was more to it than that. He wracked his brain, trying to figure out what he was missing.
In a moment of sought comfort, his hand unconsciously raised to touch his necklace. He immediately felt his nerves settle a little when he caressed the tendrils of the flower puzzle. Like a security blanket, it was something he’d come to seek refuge in when times were tough. It was not only a dear reminder of his friend but the simple action of stroking the metal, feeling the edges and curves of that flower bud, was something that soothed him immensely.
As he rolled the helical twines between his thumb and finger, everything fell into place. His eyes widened a little and his gaze shot straight to the panels. His other hand ghosted the length of his forearm. While the welts from the moon jellyfish had since healed, he could still feel where they once were, the mere memory of their burning sting enough to make him wince. It only confirmed his theory now though and as the clear condition replayed inside his head, he knew immediately that he’d solved the riddle.
“Thanks J,” he whispered under his breath, giving the flower a small squeeze.
Clasping the trinket for a moment longer as he cherished its familiar feel, he let it fall back over his heart. His attention drifted to the countdown. There was only thirty seconds remaining. Majority of the other players had settled on their final choice, with all but three crowded around the jellyfish and sun trapdoors. The remaining two players other than Nino were loitering back and forth between the remaining options, evidently hedging their bets that the answer could be something the others missed. While the woman eventually caved to group mentality and scampered over to the sun before time ended, the man settled on the candle, albeit still looked as confused as ever.
“Why the candle?” one player called out curiously.
The man shrugged. His response was merely that he didn’t know what the answer was, only that the game was called Roulette and he had a good feeling about the candle. The feeling was clearly not shared by the rest of the players, if the unconvinced looks they exchanged were any indication. Some of them looked worried while others appeared smug, as if knowing the man would die pointlessly.
Nino tried not to smirk at the irony. Some small voice inside was telling him to warn them that he knew the real answer and to save them before they all fell to their doom. But any time he so much as thought about speaking up, he was left with a sour taste in his mouth. He narrowed his eyes on the other players. They were alive; his friends were not. The unfairness of it had him remembering the very reason why he was there. He had no one left to lose. He was a ronin, fighting for himself and his own cause. As heartless as it may seem, he had no obligation to anyone else, least of all strangers. Acts of compassion led to caring, caring led to pain and loss, and that was not something he was willing to open his heart to again.
With ten seconds to go, Nino made his way swiftly to his chosen icon. His fellow players stared at him in bewilderment.
“The flower?” they questioned.
Nino nodded. “It’s simple logic, really. The rules state those who choose wrong will fall into acid,” he remarked. He rubbed his necklace again, ignoring his anxiety that was trying to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. “Besides the flower, every other icon has something in common with the terms of the game. Candles, jellyfish, lemons, the sun…”
As he listed off each mark, he watched, a little amused as one by one the faces around him fell in horror as they too came to the same conclusion. But while they may have wanted to change their minds to save themselves, it was too late. The countdown struck zero and the trapdoors swung open, plunging all seven of them into the vats a metre below.
Nino inhaled sharply when the ground beneath his feet suddenly vanished. For a heartbeat, he remained suspended in the air. Then gravity took its toll and he dropped through the floor with great and sudden speed. He felt the oxygen get knocked from his lungs as the shock of the fall caught him off guard. A second later, he was submerged up to his neck in a pit full of foam blocks. Anguished shrieking sounded all around him as the other players met a not so fortunate fate. He could hear the intense sizzling as the bodies in the four surrounding containers were dissolved down to their bloody skeletons. The smell of melting flesh and bone reached his nose and threatened to purge his stomach.
Stunned from his own fall, it took Nino a moment to haul himself out of his container. He was a little unsteady on his feet at first but soon recovered. He looked fleetingly to the decimated corpses in the other vats. He could only see three of the other players, or what was left of them as they floated near the top of the containers. There were no details left to distinguish them. A mutilated arm reached up from the once clear liquid, now roiling with murky waves of deep scarlet; a disfigured face bobbed on the surface in another vat, their jaw thrown open in a scream that no longer sounded.
“Choose an icon that burns, and you will too,” Nino said grimly to himself.
Despite cringing at the disgusting manner in which the six of them died, he felt surprisingly indifferent to their passing. He couldn’t bring himself to care for the wasted life of strangers, not when he had something much greater to focus his energy on. They were but collateral damage in his quest for vengeance and certainly nothing to shed tears over. His only true disappointment was that there were no cards to be found on their corpses.
His phone dinged. “Game Clear: Congratulations.”
The reward of his single visa day did little to discourage him when he found the ace of diamonds card sitting on a table near the door. He picked it up with a shrewd smile. One more game conquered, one step closer to his goal of avenging his friends.
---
Bunkered down in the small, abandoned izakaya that was his temporary accommodation, Nino studiously examined Sho’s map in front of him. His gaze moved over each hand drawn symbol scattered across the parchment before he brought his pen to the page and drew an X through the kindergarten and the ace drawn above it.
Inspired by the positional monitoring used in the nine of hearts game, he’d meticulously marked out the location of every arena he knew of so far. As night fell, he would climb onto the rooftop of neighbouring buildings and watch the horizon light up, pinpointing the exact locations of arenas he would go on to explore on foot the following day. He’d been everywhere from an apartment block and a highway entrance to a convenience store and even a shrine. While the specific games remained unknown to him, he was able to make educated guesses as to their suits based on the geography and remnants found at each place.
Nino believed he was close to cracking the algorithm behind which locations were chosen for which suits, though not nearly as close as he would have liked. Leaning back in his chair, he impatiently shuffled his accumulated trophies. Twelve games and a total of twenty-four cards. Feeling their light numbers, he pouted. It felt like he was still a long way from completing his collection and he was seriously regretting not picking up a few more freebies from the bodies of fallen players. It was not a mistake he planned on making again.
Since losing the last of his friends, he’d decided to revise his entire approach to this world. His patience to avenge them was wearing thin and playing games only when his visa was nearing its end was proving too frustrating to continue. It was why he was so dead set on figuring out the patten for the games, so that he could conquer them faster and ultimately track down the game master to take his revenge. Staying in one place wasn’t working for him either anymore for a number of reasons. As well as the hotel holding too many memories, he realised he needed to be more nomadic if he stood a chance at tracking down all the arenas. The idea of drifting from place to place, never knowing what his next shelter would be, hardly appealed to him but he knew it had to be done. Perhaps if they’d done that in the first place, they never would have fallen victim to the game master’s cruel trap that was the five of hearts.
Nino shook the unpleasant thoughts away and focused back on the cards in his hand. There was no point in lingering on the past; he would take inspiration from his losses and use it to drive his ambition forward, but he would not dwell on what happened. He couldn’t, lest he fall back into the despair he’d worked so hard to crawl out of. Not even his hallucinations had dared show themselves since he left the hotel.
His reluctance to so much as think about his friends other than in a vengeful context left him cold and unrelenting. Nino knew of this change within himself even before he’d chosen to let die those in his last games, but he refused to let guilt get the better of him. With nothing left to lose, he was on a warpath. Not even the lingering threat of his nightmares scared him anymore-and why should they when they had already come true? He was playing to win and he didn’t care what was required of him to do it. In games of the mind, he would outsmart everyone. In games of the body, he would cheat to save himself. In games of cooperation, he would charm. And in games of the heart, he would deceive, and he’d do so with a smile on his face.
With sunrise looming on the horizon, he put both the map and his cards away and settled himself down to get some rest.
---
THIS WAY TO THE GAME ARENA.
Nino stared at the entranceway to the station. Even without the huge characters scrawled across the monitor that should have displayed the train timetable, it was impossible to miss the arena across the street. All the windows of the surrounding shops were lit up not with their usual business signage but with arrows pointing towards the station.
When he set out that night to find a new challenge, he hadn’t thought twice about his visa or the potential danger he was walking into. He’d studied the landscape; he was confident he knew what to expect and was ready to face whatever was thrown his way, same as always.
Now that he was standing at the gate, however, he found himself hesitating. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to play; he just couldn’t shake this feeling of disquiet within him. That this was the very station he and his friends had walked back to that first night they arrived certainly didn’t help. The memories that came with being back in the place where it all began was overwhelming to say the least. Even now, he could picture the five of them emerging from the dark passageway, confused yet united in their search for answers.
Nino desperately tried to shake the memories away. He was already well aware of how damaging they could be and wasn’t prepared to face the depression that came with thinking about them again, especially not right before playing. He took a deep breath and honed his focus on the arena ahead of him. Registration could end at any minute. Knowing this, he readied himself to bite the bullet and cross the border, reminding himself that it was just one more game arena and nothing more.
When he went to cross the road, however, he nearly crashed into a young man who walked straight across his path. Nino jumped back to avoid the collision but as he stared after the stranger, he was struck by a sense of déjà vu.
“Zakiyama?” The nickname escaped him unconsciously.
Yamazaki paused and looked back. A smile formed when he too recognised Nino, but his expression soon marred with genuine confusion. “I’m Yamazaki.”
Nino paid no mind to the correction. His actual name was something he already knew but seeing him look so flustered by the apparent mistake only encouraged Nino to continue addressing him as such. But as much as he enjoyed teasing him, he couldn’t ignore his shock over seeing him again. So much had happened since their last encounter and despite the suspicions he’d had at the time, Nino had all but forgotten him in the chaos that had become of his life.
“You’re still alive,” he remarked, not bothering to hide his surprise. As impressive as Yamazaki’s luck seemed, after witnessing his airheaded nature during their game at the ryokan, Nino hadn’t envisioned him making it very far in the games on his own. He scoffed. “Score one for dumb luck.”
“I’ve got my talents,” Yamazaki replied.
“Airheads usually do,” said Nino offhandedly.
Rather than argue, the former only smiled inwardly at his comment. There was a small break of silence between them. Nino fully expected the conversation to take a turn as the young man brought up their previous time together, perhaps make some comment on Nino being by himself now. He didn’t; he just stood there, his gaze sparkling with such openness that it had Nino questioning if he was even thinking about anything at all.
Yamazaki’s expression wavered slightly when he looked past Nino to the arena he was standing in front of. “Playing tonight?”
Nino glanced over his shoulder at the station, his doubts returning as he found himself at odds over how to answer. Eventually, he nodded.
“These games won’t win themselves,” he muttered.
Although his smile tightened somewhat at his response, there was a sincerity in Yamazaki’s eyes that never changed. He bowed to Nino. When he raised himself again, his whole expression softened.
“Well then, good luck,” he said and flashed Nino his usual blithe grin.
Seeing it again made Nino uncomfortable. The image of Aiba’s smiling face appeared in his mind and for a split second, he could be fooled into thinking it was his dear friend standing in front of him. He didn’t even realise he was staring after Yamazaki until he disappeared around the corner.
Shaking off the encounter, Nino refocused himself and crossed the road. But just as he reached the stairs to the station, the signs went dark, signalling the end of registration. Despite already knowing his heart wasn’t fully in it tonight, he didn’t waste time assigning blame. He clicked his tongue in frustration and cast an irate glare over his shoulder despite Yamazaki no longer being there.
He let out a long sigh, the worst of his frustration turning to disappointment as he lamented his lost opportunity. With much reluctance, he turned away from the shut off arena and hauled himself down the street back the way he’d come, the faint scuffling of his dragging footsteps echoing in his mind like a taunting melody of his solitude.
---
The stadium lights were blinding yet familiar, the diamond pattern of the bases laid out across the grass alluring in ways it always had been. As Nino’s gaze moved over the rows of benches to the scoreboard at the end of the pitch, a nostalgic warmth consumed him as he was reminded of his years spent playing for his high school baseball team. It was the one form of exercise he not only didn’t mind but actually enjoyed, and while he knew it was unlikely that the game they played would have much connection to his favourite sport, he still felt the desire to come there tonight. It was exactly what he needed to restore his confidence after missing out on the last game.
Nino gazed around the dugout. Not knowing the exact details of the game didn’t stop him from strategizing. His sharp gaze analysed the capabilities of those around him and where he stood in the pecking order; he targeted those with more obvious physical prowess, already thinking up ways to use them to protect himself. Those who seemed weaker, on the other hand, provided him with a pleasant guarantee that he would be walking away with more than a single playing card that night.
As he looked to his phone to check the time remaining, a familiar face passed by in his peripheral vision and momentarily distracted him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath.
As he spoke, the man he was staring at lifted his gaze from his own phone, as if aware he was being watched. A wide smile split his face the moment he laid eyes on Nino.
“We meet again,” Yamazaki said jokingly, walking over to join him. “Playing another game so soon?”
Nino crossed his arms and frowned. “I didn’t play last night thanks to you.”
The young man was taken aback by his claim. “Eh? What did I do?”
“You distracted me,” Nino snapped. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have missed registration.”
“Sorry?” It sounded more like a sarcastic remark than a genuine apology, and only served to deepen Nino’s scowl. Yamazaki didn’t appear the least bit concerned by his glower, however, as his own expression remained as light as ever. “You’re here though, so it’s not like you were out of visa days or anything. No harm, no foul, right?”
Nino didn’t dignify him with a response. The events of last night had been playing on his mind all day and while he would never acknowledge his own fault in having missed the game, the other player proved a useful scapegoat. It was easier for Nino to tell himself that it was Yamazaki’s distraction that prevented him from playing last night, rather than admit to having hesitated over the sentimentality of the location.
Nino used the lull in their conversation to give him a second glance. He already knew that the other would be little more than a burden in terms of diamond and heart games, but he’d yet to see him perform in physical challenges. Nino couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed when further examination dashed his hopes that Yamazaki might balance out his own shortcomings. The man didn’t look particularly impressive compared to some of the other players. He had a skinny build, not dissimilar to himself, and didn’t appear to have much visible muscle. He looked neither strong nor fast, and Nino doubted that even his reflexes would be anything but average.
“Don’t get in my way tonight,” he warned.
Before Yamazaki could reply, the players came forward as the big screen on the adjacent side of the field switched on, its white glow illuminating the horizon like a full moon on a clear night. Their phone screens lit up at the same time.
“Game: Homerun Charade. Difficulty: Six of Clubs.”
Nino quirked an eyebrow, a little surprised to discover it was in fact a clubs game rather than spades. He remained certain of its physical component, however, even before the rules were explained.
“Rules: One player will mime words for their teammates to guess within a ninety-second countdown. Three seconds will be awarded for each word correctly guessed. The total number of seconds accumulated will provide the time limit for players to run around the bases. Clear condition: Players who make it back to the home base before time runs out will clear the game.”
Nino exhaled loudly, neither shocked nor relieved by the announcement of the game. While he was glad there was more than just the physical side to the challenge, he couldn’t help feeling worried. He didn’t like running but he was fast when he needed to be. He’d also run his fair share of homeruns during his years in the baseball club and was quite confident he could make it back to the home base quickly, but the unknown element of how much time they would have to do so scared him. He didn’t like entrusting his life to others and right now he felt cornered. There was so much that would be out of his control in this game, and he hated it.
“Who’s good at charades?” one player asked.
There were some indistinct mumbles from the group, no one braving to be the one to volunteer for the role. Nino chewed his bottom lip as he considered all options. He was decent at charades but there was a lot that could go wrong either way. What if he volunteered and they couldn’t guess correctly? What if he didn’t volunteer and the person who did the miming was terrible? The endless worst-case scenarios made his head spin.
As it turned out, their contemplation over the roles was in vain anyway. A spinning wheel appeared on the screen, with each fraction depicting a player’s name. It became a swirling vortex of various colours as it went round and round at high speed. It came to an eventual stop on one of the sectors.
“First up to the base…ID number: 1200376. Kano Eiko.”
Artificial cheering sounded through the speakers as the footage switched to show said man standing among them in the dugout. He looked around in shock as he was chosen for the task of miming, his wide gaze moving between those beside him and the screen that continued to film him close-up. He shuffled a few slow, half-steps towards the field. Nino and another few players gave him an insistent push towards the centre of the diamond to begin the game. Kano stumbled, his nervousness only growing even as he forced himself towards the pitcher’s base that was illuminated by a bright spotlight. The footage continued to track him the entire way. It provided the rest of the players a clear view of their teammate even after he walked too far from the dugout to be seen in much detail with the naked eye. There was no ignoring how pale his face was, or the beads of sweat that rolled down his brow as he stood waiting alone in the middle of the field in preparation for the first word.
Nino stood right at the forefront of the dugout; he felt a warmth by his side as the other players joined him. When Yamazaki wormed his way into the space beside him, Nino didn’t miss the excitable grin he wore. Seeing it made him want to question the young man on his unusual eagerness but Nino quickly remembered he had more important things to focus on. The players watched as Kano’s eyes tracked something unseen to them in the stands above. It took a moment after seeing it for him to react. He gasped to himself with the realisation that the ninety second countdown had begun. He turned sideways and raised his arms to his mid-torso, keeping his elbows sticking out from his body. He drew his arms back and forth in a rowing motion.
“Boat,” came the first attempt at an answer.
Kano shook his head.
“Rowing.”
He shook his head again and switched position, alternating his paddling between his left and right arms.
“Canoe,” Nino yelled, to which victory was awarded in the form of their phones dinging. Three stars appeared on the top of the big screen as additional confirmation of their seconds earned for the correct answer.
Not wasting a moment, Kano switched his position immediately as the next word appeared in his line of vision. He spun back around to face the rest of them head-on. He raised his hands above his head and clapped, his face twisting in an expression most comical and exaggerated. The answer of ‘Kabuki’ echoed through the arena as several players shouted at the same time.
For the next thirty seconds, they gained points repeatedly as easy answer after easy answer seemed to cross their path. Kano’s cross-armed approach of mimicking a rhythm made for an obvious answer of ‘drums’; ‘high-five’ was called out after seeing him raise a hand above his head and slap empty air with a smile on his face, while ‘boomerang’ came after seeing him whip a pretend projectile away from himself, which he then proceeded to imitate catching a second later. Watching him jump up and down while both his wrists made a quick rotating motion on either side of his hips, his teammates initial answer of skipping quickly gave way to ‘double jump’ when they saw him quicken his skipping pace.
Looking rather exhausted already, Kano glanced at the seats for the next word. He looked away for a moment, only to do a doubletake. While the rest of his teammates saw the action as genuine confusion over the unseen word, Yamazaki was unreserved about voicing his own opinion.
“Second glance!” he called.
Both Kano and those in the dugout did another doubletake as they all turned to stare at him in bewilderment for his answer to the word that had not yet been mimed. Nino scoffed in amusement at the young man who appeared completely baffled by all the strange looks he received.
Shaking off the response given before he’d even acted anything out, Kano resumed his role as mime. He glanced again at the stands before adjusting his stance. He bent over slightly, the fingers on his right hand positioned like chopsticks. A murmur of confusion swept through the dugout as the rest of the players watched him draw up an imaginary item with his fingers, seeming to slurp them like ramen. However, when they attempted to answer as such, they were met with a frustrated shake of Kano’s head. He took up the same position, this time waiting a moment before making a sweeping gesture with the same two fingers. He repeated this motion several times, slurping louder each time until finally one of his teammates connected the dots.
“Nagashi somen,” they answered.
With a relieved smile, Kano nodded. His relief at getting the word across was short-lived as the next one appeared before his eyes. He checked it over before assuming a new pose. He lifted both arms in front of him and hopped up and down on the spot.
“Jiangshi.” Almost everyone in the dugout answered at the same time, earning them all another three seconds to their tally.
Kano moved onto the next word quickly. He made a throwing action with his right arm.
“Baseball,” someone yelled. “Pitch.”
Kano shook his head, repeating the action again. He jumped at the same time he swung his arm out, this time keeping his fingers fully extended.
“Handball,” said Nino. Victory was his immediately.
A look of concern crossed Kano’s face for a second time that evening as he contemplated not which action to do that would best represent his next word, but the consequences of the action itself. Eventually, his fear of not winning the seconds won out over anything else. With a running start, he leapt into the air, extending his leg as he did as if to strike an invisible opponent. His inflexibility showed as his knee remained noticeably bent and he was barely able to raise his leg past hip height. He landed harshly on his side. Nino didn’t hide his amused grin at what he’d just watched and from the sniggers he heard beside him, he wasn’t the only one entertained. While a part of him yearned to withhold the answer just to see the man try it again, he knew time was against them.
“Drop kick,” he called out, still smiling.
Kano nodded, wincing even as he pulled himself up off the ground. His back was covered in dirt and he was holding his waist where he’d landed. He forced himself to push past the pain as his next charade appeared before him. He took a second to consider what he would do before acting. He put his fists on his hips, extending one leg at a time in a strange kind of dance. He bit his bottom lip as his facial expression twisted into one of an amusing nature.
Confusion filled the dugout as the other players endeavoured to read into his cryptic performance.
“Kosak dance?”
Their incorrect guess was remedied by Kano making an adjustment to the charade. He lowered one of his hands, assuming more of a teapot stance despite continuing his strange step-dance.
“Puppet?” his teammates questions.
While not shaking his head, Kano did change his approach yet again. His actions became more frantic when he heard the final seconds ticking down. He shuffled about on his heels, his hands waving in a rigid albeit hasty manner in front of his torso. His expression remained as ridiculous as ever.
“Clown,” Yamazaki answered with a laugh, bouncing up and down slightly on the balls of his feet at the amusing action in front of him. He grinned widely and looked keenly to those around him when three more stars flashed on the big screen.
Their time concluded and with his miraculous guess providing them with one last reward, their total of thirty-three seconds was announced. Looking exhausted, Kano jogged back over to join the rest of his teammates. The players clambered over the barrier of the dugout to enter the field. A few of them praised Kano for his efforts while everyone else readied themselves at home base for the second part of the challenge to commence.
Leaning forward on his dominant knee, Nino stared up at the screen and their total time accumulated. He felt torn about how they did in the initial round. The complete distance around the bases was a little over a hundred metres and while running that stretch in under thirty-three seconds normally wouldn’t be considered too hard, he knew the task was more challenging than it seemed. They wouldn’t be running in a straight line; Nino knew from past experience how harsh those sharp corners could be on one’s speed. Running as a group wasn’t going to make things any easier either. With all twelve of them being required to touch each base in order to clear the game, he was expecting carnage to occur once they were out there. All notion of cooperation and teamwork would surely vanish as the players pushed and shoved their way to victory.
Keeping this in mind, Nino made sure to position himself as near to the front of the pack as he could. There was no time to ensure he didn’t have anyone of particularly strong build on either side of him as their thirty-three seconds began counting down. Adrenaline raged through Nino’s veins as he shot forward, sprinting as fast as he could towards the first base. He wasn’t sure what was louder: the pounding of footsteps all around him or the pounding of blood in his ears. His heel striking hard against the base, he wasn’t even aware of his phone tracking his movements until it chimed, alerting him to his success at passing the first of four markers.
He skidded over the dirt as he made a tight ninety-degree turn around the diamond. It was with both frustration and concern that he saw several other players start to pull ahead of him. Much to his shock, a familiar face was among those who passed him. He could only stare as Yamazaki overtook him with apparent ease. Seeing him look as though he was barely even breaking a sweat, Nino felt incensed. He clenched his teeth and forced his body forward even faster.
As he was approaching the second base, a player on his right caught up to him in his blind spot. Nino sensed his presence and glanced over his shoulder fleetingly. Coming up on the inner side, the man attempted to nudge him out of the way. Nino held his ground, however, and shoved the guy right back. When he refused to budge, he changed tactics and quickened his pace in the hopes of reaching the marker first. But as they narrowed the distance, his rival threw out his elbow. It collided with Nino’s stomach and knocked the wind out of him.
Provoked by the attack, he pushed through the pain and extended his leg, deliberately entangling his foot with the other player. His ankle hooked around the guy’s left calf and with a strong yank, he managed to trip him right before they reached the base. While not powerful enough to completely throw him off balance, he did stumble far enough off course to miss the second marker entirely. Nino could feel his vicious glare burning into his back even as he continued to run, cradling his still sore stomach as he did.
It was a few seconds later that he felt a weight hit him from behind. The world turned upside-down in a dizzying whirlwind and he barely had time to realise he was on the ground. Shaking off his inexplicable tumble, he looked on through a haze of red as the same player he’d tripped ran on ahead, casting a smug look back over his shoulder. The handful of players behind overtook him, with a few glancing at Nino as they went but not one of them slowing their pace.
Dirt flew everywhere as Nino scrambled to his feet. He looked briefly to the timer as he attempted to make up the seconds lost. There was only eighteen seconds to go and halfway still to run. Ignoring the ache in his lungs and the throbbing of his lower body, he pushed himself to the brink. He had nearly reached the third base by the time he managed to catch up with the rest of them but rather than being a testament to his speed, he couldn’t help feeling that it was due to the other players’ lack thereof. Overtaking Kano in particular, he saw the man was visibly struggling. Despite his somewhat athletic build, he was moving much slower than expected. His left leg looked rather rigid and his pace was out of step, leaving Nino to ponder if his hip was still hurting from the drop-kick charade he attempted earlier. The way his face scrunched up in apparent pain certainly seemed to suggest as much.
Nino tried not to dwell on the other’s agony, or his own for that matter, as he persisted in the run. Even when he’d ran the bases during his high school tournaments, he couldn’t recall ever having pushed himself this hard-then again, his life had never depended on it. The sounds around him were starting to blur together, becoming a muffled mess of white noise. Feeling the third base come and go beneath his shoes, he dared to lift his gaze to spy the finish line. Most of the players were either already back at home base or close in front of him. The final ten second countdown on the big screen was glaring in his peripheral vision, reminding him of just how little time there was left. The distance remaining was only a couple of metres and yet it seemed immense. A flicker of doubt crossed his mind that he would make it in time.
Up ahead, standing just behind home base, he could see Yamazaki. He was jumping up and down like an excitable puppy, waving as he yelled encouragement. Whether it was for all the remaining players or him specifically, Nino couldn’t be sure but as the numbness in his ears faded and his hearing returned, the sound of the support was enough to keep pushing him onwards. Closing his eyes, he could fool himself into believing it was his friends cheering him on. With a final burst of adrenaline, he powered across the last few metres. He didn’t care about the bodies that slammed against his flank as he shot through the crowd, nor the ache in his calves that were screaming for him to stop. He just kept running.
Even after he felt his heel strike home base, he couldn’t slow down. He shot straight past, very nearly barrelling into the other players before coming to a staggering halt at the edge of the dugout. His arms flew out to catch himself before he crashed headfirst into the stands. Bent over the side of the barrier, he fought to catch his breath. His lungs were in agony, his limbs feeling as though they would fall off at any moment. His skin radiated with an intense heat as his blood raged through every vein in his body. In the back of his mind, he registered a hand rubbing his back and a kind voice telling him that it was okay to breathe now.
Nino cringed even as he forced himself to look up. “You beat me,” he panted in disbelief.
“I told you I had my talents,” Yamazaki replied.
Despite his cheery response, Nino still struggled to comprehend just how athletic the former turned out to be. He didn’t appear the least bit tired. But any chance to question him was lost when the sound of lasers drew their attention. Nino watched as Kano and another player desperately tried to cover the final two metres in the last second. They were both a half step from the goal when a beam of scarlet shot down from the heavens and cut them down. The momentum of the run hurled their lifeless bodies over the threshold, sending alarm ricocheting through the stadium.
As it turned out, not even some who did reach home base were in the clear. When the timer hit zero, there was a chorus of noises from their phones as the results of the race were compiled. Several players who’d neglected to heed the clear condition and run all four bases looked on in horror as failure was declared. The thick letters glared up at them from their individual screens, while the sound of simulated fireworks played from the speakers of the big screen in mockery of their defeat before they too were cut down by the laser. The man whom Nino had tripped was among those to fall.
Watching his lifeless body hit the dirt with a thud, Nino felt nothing. He hardly paid any attention to his own phone as it declared his success.
“They shouldn’t have died.”
When Nino looked over his shoulder at the young man who’d spoken, he saw all trace of joy had vanished. His smile was nowhere to be seen, replaced by sudden melancholy as he stared at the bodies littering the field.
“You made it so he missed the second base,” Yamazaki murmured. Turning to Nino, he held his gaze. There was no accusation present in his tone, only earnest. “He didn’t have to die.”
“Neither did a lot of people in this place,” said Nino, his voice monotone.
He could feel Yamazaki watching him even after he limped away, but he didn’t care. He had more important things to attend to than justifying his actions. As the other surviving players slowly made their way from the arena, Nino turned his attention to the fallen. He crouched by the nearest body and rifled through the man’s pockets. Upon finding they were empty, he frowned and moved onto the next. One by one, he checked each of the five corpses for any additional prize. It was with a flicker of satisfaction that he pulled the seven of spades from the body of the player he’d fought with.
“You’ve changed.”
Nino stopped what he was doing. Surprised to realise he was not as alone as he initially thought, he turned to face the one who’d spoken with narrowed eyes. Yamazaki was standing about a metre from him. They were the only living players still in the arena.
Despite his words being absent of any true malice, Nino’s throat still tightened at the accusation. “Excuse me?”
“I said you’ve changed,” Yamazaki repeated.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Nino growled.
Yamazaki shook his head, unaffected by the sharp edge of the former’s tone. “During the first game we played together, you didn’t go out of your way to hurt others. You worked with them to find the path to victory.” His gaze dropped, his expression turning wistful. “Now it seems you enjoy sabotaging other players.”
“That guy had it coming,” Nino replied sourly. “He pushed me first.”
“I saw, but that doesn’t mean you had to ruin his chances. He was just trying to survive, same as everyone.”
“He nearly got me killed.”
“So you killed him in return?” There was a level of resolve in Yamazaki’s tone that matched the challenging look in his eye as he stared Nino down. “That wasn’t your first time sabotaging another player, was it?”
He wasn’t really asking, not that Nino had any intention of replying anyway. He didn’t know who Yamazaki thought he was lecturing him on morals, but he was finished with this conversation. He rolled his eyes and turned away, intent on ignoring him should he choose to stay. He buried his hand in the pocket of another dead player as he fished for more trophies. Yamazaki hummed softly, as if taking Nino’s silence on the matter as an answer in itself.
“Like I said,” he murmured. “You’ve changed. You’re not the same person as when we met.”
“You’re right, I’m not,” Nino said darkly, unable to hold his tongue any longer. He didn’t bother turning around again and instead affixed his glare straight ahead. “I’ve learnt what it takes to truly survive in this place. Why should I let anyone get in my way of winning?”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Then it’s a good thing I want to be alone.”
The harsh silence that followed his remark seemed to say more than words could ever hope to. Nino didn’t say anything else either, feeling as though he’d said all that was needed to make his point. Still, he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance over his shoulder when he felt the presence beside him disappear. He watched Yamazaki leave, all the while trying to ignore the familiar ache that struck his chest.
Lost in the deafening quiet, Nino’s gaze drifted back to the bodies in front of him. To his horror, Jun’s face flashed in his mind when he went to reach for another corpse-the same appalled expression he’d seen from the younger when he admitted to taking Sawabe’s cards. He inhaled sharply and withdrew his hand from Kano’s pocket with such abruptness, it was as if he’d been shocked by an electric current. His own declaration echoed in his head.
Why should I let anyone get in my way of winning?
He struggled to even recognise his own voice with how savage it sounded. A wave of sudden revulsion hit him and he sat back on his heels, unable to bring himself to move. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut while the card he’d already taken weighed heavily in his pocket like a stone. His fingertips brushed against his necklace as he reached for it but not even its familiar coolness could relieve him of this sickening sensation that threatened to consume his entire being.