Game 4
The fourth game began as all the others had, at that same merciless hour—eight o’clock sharp, if Mikoto had to hazard a guess, if the first game was anything to go by. They were shackled to routine, bound by some cruel architect’s design.
She had not slept well. How could she? It was as though something prowled at the edges of her consciousness, an apparition woven from every ill-fated choice, every misstep, every sin of omission that had led her here. Perhaps three, four hours at best. And it was all beginning to weigh upon her—the totality of it, the sheer, inexorable ruin. Oh, woe unto Mikoto, how the deprivation clawed at her: the filth that clung to her skin, the iron-stench of old blood, the gnawing hollowness where food should have been. How it ailed her. Should she have been embarrassed by the melodramatic, if not pretentious, current charging all her thoughts? For a moment, she felt like Mel Gibson’s Hamlet. One of the few American films she’d seen…
But she would not complain. Not strong, stoic Mikoto, who had spilled more tears before Misaki than she cared to admit. Misaki—the little honey bee who held her close each night, despite what a wretched thing she had become. Somehow, impossibly, she still smelled of sweetness, a nectar that never faded. It was calming. And then there were her eyes, twin galaxies filled with quiet constellations, always watching, always seeing her. Even half-lidded with exhaustion, they made Mikoto feel something unbearably soft, the kind of warmth one felt at the sight of a kitten curled up in the crook of a sunbeam.
Without her, Mikoto wasn’t sure she would have slept at all.
There was also the matter of her body against hers, the undeniable press of skin to skin. Mikoto tried not to think of it, to keep herself pure, but the thought remained, unbidden. The whisper of silk-soft thighs brushing against her own. The press of full, yielding warmth against her chest, molding to her in ways she dared not dwell upon. The phantom sensation of touch where touch had no right to be.
Gods help her.
“Ah!!! Wow!!!” Index chirped, her voice bright with awe as she took in the landscape before them.
Mikoto blinked. There was… a board game. A massive one. It sprawled before them, so enormous that she almost couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Towering candy canes, oversized cakes, gumdrops, and gleaming gingerbread decorated the paths, their surfaces shining like plastic under the artificial lights. It was all fake, of course, but the sheer scale of it was dizzying. Her gaze trailed further along the horizon—there were different sections, each with its own distinct theme. A forested area. A cityscape. And beyond that… she wasn’t sure.
“Good morning,” the stark, robotic voice of the intercom rang out overhead. “Welcome to Round Four: Life-Sized Sugoroku.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Mikoto said, rapping her knuckle against a candy cane. It was hollow.
“Players will be separated according to the patches awarded in the previous round,” the intercom crackled with a pause. “Please line up in accordance with the matching signs.”
Mikoto scanned the area, spotting one of the masked guards hoisting a sign emblazoned with a pink bunny. They stood in front of a gingerbread house to her left. For a moment, she wondered just how many people had actually completed the bunny origami—bunnigami. She snickered to herself for a moment. Aside from Misaki, only one other person stepped forward.
“My, my. I suppose I hadn’t noticed your patch, Short Circuit,” came a familiar, drawling voice.
Mikoto twitched, a thin spark crackling in the air as she turned to glare at Seria. But then—where was Misaki? She glanced around, scanning the crowd. She was nowhere to be seen. A cold prickle ran down her spine. They had woken up together. She had gone to the bathroom, and… Mikoto swallowed. She didn’t remember walking in with her.
“What’s wrong?” Seria’s voice was taunting, laced with amusement. “Feeling stranded without your little girlfriend?”
“You should shut up,” Mikoto said flatly, turning her back to her. “Your voice is irritating.”
“Tch.” Seria bit her lip before stepping around to face her again. “Still some fight in you yet, is there?”
Mikoto exhaled, rolling her neck until it popped. She cracked her knuckles next. “You’re the type that doesn’t want peace.” She met Seria’s gaze with a steady, unblinking stare. “You want problems. Always.”
Seria’s smirk wavered, just slightly. “Are you threatening me?”
“And if I am?” Mikoto’s voice was cold, electric energy curling at her fingertips.
Seria scoffed, but there was an edge of unease in her expression now. “You wouldn’t dare. You lost your shit over some fat bimbo getting her brains murked all over you.”
“At this point,” Mikoto said, stretching out her hand, the air around her growing thick with the scent of ozone, “what’s one more person?”
(In truth, ozone didn’t really have an odor. But the oxidization gave off a chlorine-like smell.)
Seria took a step back, coughing. “It’s against the rules.”
Mikoto tilted her head, her eyes a flash of static, humming with unspoken voltage. “I don’t remember hearing that one.” Her chin lifted slightly, the ionized air crackling between them.
Seria huffed, her expression tight, then quickly put distance between them, muttering under her breath as she walked away.
“I wouldn’t mind her,” came a soft, almost whimsical voice beside Mikoto.
She turned.
A girl stood there—petite, with shoulder-length plum-colored hair and matching eyes, her expression unreadable. A pink bunny patch was stuck to her chest, mirroring Mikoto’s own. Opposite it, a stark white ‘X.’
“It’s been a long time, Misaka-san,” the girl said with a wink.
Mikoto rubbed the back of her head. “Sorry, but…”
The girl shifted her weight slightly. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember me,” she said lightly. “My name’s Mitsuari Ayu. It’s a pleasure to reacquaint myself with you.” She bowed.
“I think… we crossed paths during that whole Indian Poker thing?” Mikoto mused, a small grin tugging at her lips. “And then again in high school.”
“Not bad, Misaka-san,” Ayu replied, flashing a genuine smile. “We were lab partners in 11th-grade chemistry. And we were in a few clubs together, too… what were they again?” She tapped a finger to her lips, as if in thought.
“Oh! Uh, the Asian Cinema Club!” Mikoto blurted out as the memory clicked.
“That’s right. You were the one I watched all those cop movies with,” Ayu said, stepping closer, her hands tucked behind her back, head tilted slightly. If Mikoto didn’t know any better, she’d think the girl was trying to look as cute as possible. As cute as someone could look with bloodstains darkening their shoes and pant legs.
“I wasn’t even that into Hong Kong films, honestly, but Kuroko invited me to the club, and then I got hooked for a while,” Mikoto admitted with a slight laugh.
“Your friend with the twin tails, right?” Ayu asked, batting her eyelashes.
“Yeah, her. She was always such a stickler for rules and procedures…” Mikoto trailed off, a faintly wistful look in her eyes.
“How is she these days?”
“That… is a good question,” Mikoto said, nodding slightly to herself.
“Oh, sorry…” Ayu’s smile faltered.
“No, it’s fine. I’ve just been away for so long,” Mikoto said, gesturing vaguely. “I don’t even know where I’ve been, really.”
“I understand. I was like that for a while,” Ayu admitted, looking momentarily crestfallen.
Mikoto gave her a melancholic smile, exhaling softly.
“I was sent to a reformatory after… an incident,” Ayu continued. “And I don’t think I ever really resolved why, truth be told.”
“What were you—” Mikoto began, but before she could finish, Ayu suddenly tripped over a small rock.
Reflex took over, and Mikoto lunged forward, catching her just before she hit the ground.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Ayu’s fingers had somehow found their way to Mikoto’s neck, her grip featherlight. Her eyes—deep, plum-colored gems—held a stillness like the quiet aftermath of a supernova. And her lips… soft, curved in a delicate “M” shape, like a whispered secret stretching from one eye to the other.
Mikoto’s cheeks burned.
“Comfortable, are we~?”
Misaki’s saccharine voice cut through the air like a sugar-coated blade.
Startled, Mikoto promptly dropped Ayu, who hit the ground with a dull thud. She turned, wide-eyed, to see the unmistakable figure of Shokuhou Misaki standing nearby, looking distinctly unamused despite her voice.
Once again, Mikoto could see past the fructose on her lips—the faintest flicker of irritation in her golden eyes. Did it look bad? Did she just do something she shouldn’t have? As though she were about to do something… unscrupulous?
“Well… well,” Ayu said, hoisting herself up, dusting off her pants. “If it isn’t Shokuhou Misaki.”
Her gaze met Misaki’s, and the air between them thickened with enmity.
Mikoto sighed. Who didn’t Misaki know at this point? It made sense—they all went to the same school, after all. But was Misaki ever really on the same page with anyone outside her clique?
“So what’s the dish?” Mikoto asked, placing a hand on her hip.
“Perceptive as ever, Misaka-san~,” Misaki purred, flipping her hair.
“You don’t even know my name, do you?” Ayu smirked.
There was a beat of silence. Misaki’s brow twitched.
“Perhaps not,” she admitted, folding her arms. “But I remember the problem all the same.”
“Couldn’t get inside my head, could you?” Ayu scoffed. “I guess some things really don’t change.”
“Eh?” Mikoto glanced between them, confused.
“I suppose not,” Misaki said, tilting her chin up. “Some girls never mature into women—whether physically or mentally~.”
“I hope that’s not projection I’m hearing, dear Misaki,” Ayu replied, her voice laden with irritating familiarity. “After all, I don’t think Touma will save you this time.”
A muscle in Misaki’s jaw tightened. She shifted her weight slightly, as if steadying herself.
“You know,” she began, her tone stark, “I only had a dalliance with the damned when I was dancing on the smooth edge.”
Mikoto groaned, kicking a rock. “Now it makes sense.”
“It’s a curious thing,” Misaki continued, twirling a lock of honey-blonde hair around her finger, “to have things held against me from when I was just a girl. It seems every apparition that haunts me here can’t let go of that quixotic vision of me.”
Her voice was charged with something unfamiliar to hear publicly—melancholy. And it made Mikoto’s chest throb dully.
“Oh? Have you truly moved on, then?” Ayu asked, tilting her head, this time with genuine curiosity.
“Sometimes, people can’t always live up to the ideas in our heads,” Misaki murmured, looking away. “When we get older, we realize that things are more complex than we ever could have imagined. And then, suddenly…” She turned back to Ayu, her golden eyes crisp. “You notice how one-dimensional your reasons and affections were in the end.”
Ayu blinked.
She wasn’t sure how to process this. Of course, people grew up. But Misaki had been so dead set on Touma. He was her motivation for everything. She had built her entire life around his existence—however unhealthy, however idiotic. And for what? Because he had saved her? Ayu had felt the same thing, once. But for her, it had been rooted in something darker—a hatred for Misaki, born from the resentment of the life stolen from her. A symptom of jealousy.
It had taken her time in the reformatory to understand—to realize how good she had actually had it. How privileged and special she truly was.
But Misaki…
“Misaki…” Mikoto murmured, watching her, lips slightly parted.
She could tell that even if Misaki had moved on, it wasn’t easy to confront the demons of her past. Some wounds would always sting—like salt in a paper cut.
“I’m fine,” Misaki said softly, offering Mikoto a small, genuine smile as she stepped closer.
And just like that, the tension between them lightened, like a storm dissipating into the breeze.
Ayu noticed.
“So that’s what it is,” she mumbled to herself, her expression darkening.
Mental Out wants the Railgun all to herself.
Her upper lip arched upward at the thought.
“Each game board will feature a variety of spaces,” came the maddeningly monotone voice from the intercom, its lifeless cadence a guillotine blade descending upon their fate. “You will roll a dice block to determine your movement, as well as the player order. Blue is safe, red is an event that may result in elimination. Green is the minigame space. A supervisor will read a card detailing the rules.” A calculated pause. “You will have thirty minutes to complete the board. Players who fail to do so will be eliminated.” The abrupt clack of a phone hanging up echoed before silence swallowed the chamber once more.
“This doesn’t seem so bad,” Mikoto mused, stretching as though this were some idle schoolyard diversion and not a grotesque facsimile of a game designed to thin the herd.
“What makes you say that?” Misaki asked, her expression neutral.
“Well, I can just manipulate the die to get us through easy.” A thumbs-up, almost playful.
Misaki attempted a smile in return, but it wavered, like a candle threatened by an unseen draft. “Let’s hope it’s that simple.”
A masked guard approached, a triangle insignia blank and pitiless upon their face, and wordlessly handed Mikoto a dice block the size of her head. She flexed her fingers around its unforgiving weight—at least eleven kilos, as if hewn from the bones of something ancient. Six sides, each etched with italicized Roman numerals. Her gaze flickered to the koi-fish group, where their die was monstrously distorted, bristling with additional sides. An advantage, or a cruel trick? Mikoto swallowed hard, her mind racing over the unexpressed differences between each board. The die wasn’t magnetic, but that hardly mattered. She could still conjure an electromagnetic gradient, bend it to her will, let it fall as she pleased through the induced magnetic and electrostatic fields.
A 6. She would go first, to test the waters.
Misaki barely managed to heft her die, straining as she shoved it forward. It tumbled unceremoniously, landing at a 5. There was something almost endearing in the attempt—that effort, that stubborn insistence against physical limitation. Mikoto could picture herself standing behind her, hands over hers, guiding her forward. A foolish thought. Best to push it away.
The other two? Mikoto hardly cared. They simply wouldn’t roll a 5 or a 6. Seria landed on a 3, Ayu on a 4.
“You may begin,” the guard declared, activating a timer on their watch. It unsettled Mikoto. The numbers were an indecipherable haze, obscured by a field stronger than she had expected. Subtle, but deliberate in shutting her out.
She exhaled briskly and turned her attention to the path. Cookie-like tiles stretched forward, dusted in a mockery of frosting, lollipop trees sprouting from plastic soil, their snowy accents an illusion of sweetness. The sixth space was blue. So she would roll a 6.
She landed on it without issue, but her stomach twisted at the sensation beneath her feet—a rubbery, concave surface that yielded, ever so slightly, as if waiting to consume her.
Misaki’s turn. The guard handed her the block. She strained again, her die teetering before finally settling on a 6. Jogging forward, a bead of sweat forming at her temple, she came to stand beside Mikoto, breathless.
“I’m not sure I would have volunteered for this if I knew it would be such a workout,” she laughed, bending to clutch her knees.
Mikoto melted at the sight of her smile. The world around them was an obscene carnival of synthetic nightmares, and yet, here she was, brushing a stray strand of golden hair from Misaki’s eye. They shimmered, those eyes, like twin stars against an artificial sky. For a moment, guilt seized her. She had stared at Ayu earlier, hadn’t she? Was that wrong? Misaki’s eyes were different. They weren’t just beautiful—they were cleansing, as if they were the remnant radiation of the Sun there to warm her.
A shrill scream split the air.
Seria.
A red space. A spike, grotesquely sudden, impaling her arm like a shard of glass through wet paper. Blood seeped into the mock-cookie ground, turning the pastel fantasy into a sickly smear of reality.
Mikoto’s body tensed, a step forward—halted by the guard’s voice.
“Players may not move from their spaces unless instructed or by way of the dice block.” A hand rested on their pistol grip.
Mikoto gritted her teeth, eyes flashing with fury. She caught the die as it was lobbed at her. Fine. Let’s get this over with.
Another blue space. Misaki followed.
“This seems poorly thought out given people’s abilities,” Misaki mumbled, rubbing her bottom lip.
“There’s always a catch,” Mikoto muttered, watching as Ayu landed on red.
But nothing happened. The girl trembled, then collapsed in relief. Not all red spaces bled.
Seria landed on green. The guard withdrew a card.
“Minigame,” they intoned, pressing a button on a remote. “You will each choose a creature to bet on in a race. The one whose creature finishes last will be punished.”
A screen flickered to life as it emerged from the ground. And there it was.
Gekota.
Holy shit, they even had Pyonko. And Keroyon. And Pyonkichi.
A reprieve from hell, a fleeting glimpse of paradise. Her heart stuttered. Somehow, Mikoto had stars in her eyes, but Misaki was nowhere near her mind.
“Earth to Miko,” Misaki’s voice cut through the daze, fingers waving before her eyes.
She flushed. “Gekota. Obviously.”
The guard pressed another button, and suddenly, the picture Mikoto had taken earlier appeared over Gekota’s head. Misaki raised an unimpressed eyebrow.
“You really should learn how to take better pictures~,” she chided, nudging her with an elbow.
Mikoto scoffed. “Of course you’d care about something so vain and stupid in a place like this.” She shrugged in exaggeration with arched brows and a smile.
Misaki smirked. “Speaking of stupid, which of these things should I pick?”
“Pyonko suits you.”
Silence. A blank stare.
“The girl,” Mikoto added quickly, looking away.
“You heard her,” Misaki sighed, arms crossed.
Misaki’s picture appeared above the pink frog. Mikoto was impressed. Despite being abducted and thrown into a bad situation, Misaki looked like a portrait caught in a moment where time itself hesitated to spoil her grace. Could such beauty ever be marred by a single angle?
“I’ll take the one on the right,” Ayu said with a sigh.
“The retarded one on the left, I guess,” Seria said, left no choice, still clutching her arm.
Retarded? Mikoto couldn’t believe she had the nerve, in a place like this, to call Gekota that. What was disabled about it? There were a million and one stupid things around them. But what did the cute little green frog and his friends do to deserve such ridicule? Such mockery? How dare she.
A bitcrushed gunshot signaled the race. At first, Pyonko surged ahead. Then Keroyon took the lead. The bastard. Mikoto had never wished for a frog to trip and break its legs so badly in her life.
Pyonko tripped and was overtaken. Dammit, Pyonkichi too? Gekota was in last. At least then, perhaps, she would be able to take whatever punishment came her way. But Mikoto thought too soon. In the blink of an eye, Gekota got a speed boost and crossed the finish line.
“Finish!” came the female announcer from the TV.
Misaki blinked, as if struggling to register the outcome. Mikoto turned toward her, as if in slow motion, but a soft mechanical whir cut through the moment. A slot in the gingerbread house beside them slid open.
Mikoto barely had time to react.
A cartoonish gloved hand swung out, a steel mallet gripped in its fingers. The strike landed squarely against Misaki’s right kneecap.
A sharp, wet crack. A scream, raw and visceral.
Mikoto lunged, catching her before she collapsed, her pulse hammering. Her hands trembled. The other women were staring, but she shielded Misaki from their view—she wouldn’t let them see anything more than they’d already heard.
“I’ll… Ah… be fine,” Misaki forced through clenched teeth, eyes shining with unshed tears.
She tried to stand, but the moment she put weight on her leg, she crumpled into Mikoto.
Mikoto winced, tightening her grip.
“I think it might be broken. I think I heard it break.”
The guard, with a languid flick of their wrist, tossed the dice block to Mikoto. Without sparing a glance at the object, she snatched it from the air with one hand, her eyes fixed resolutely on Misaki. She couldn’t afford to look away—not now.
“I’ll make it,” Misaki forced out a half-hearted smile, leaning heavily on Mikoto’s shoulder for support. Her injured leg, useless beneath her, remained still. “I’ll hop. It’s what bunnies do, right?” She attempted a magical girl pose, her fingers trembling weakly in front of her whitened face.
Mikoto’s heart sank, a bitter, gnawing sense of responsibility clutching at her insides. She’d done this to Misaki. If she hadn’t suggested the cute character because it—what was it? Mikoto slapped her thoughts away, the implications of them too much. Instead, she threw the dice block up into the air, watching it spin. It landed on a 6, of course. Before Mikoto walked toward the blue space, her hand extended to offer the dice block. Misaki nearly collapsed as she reached for it, the trembling die tumbling from her hand with barely enough force to roll it. Another 6. Of course, thanks to Mikoto’s manipulation.
Mikoto reached out and gripped Misaki’s delicate fingers, feeling the faint warmth of them against her own. Her breath stuttered in her chest as she placed her arm around Misaki’s lissome waist, lifting her in silent partnership. Without a word between them, they moved, step by careful step, toward their shared space.
Mikoto could feel the dread collecting in the pit of her stomach, a creeping shadow. What if the guard…? What if delaying was against the rules? But nothing was said as they made their way across the floor, and when they arrived, the guard’s voice rang out, indifferent. “Minigame.”
Mikoto exchanged an exasperated glance with Misaki. Another game? So soon? Their exhaustion weighed heavier than the rules themselves. Ayu, ever the anxious one, trembled in place, her eyes flicking toward the faceless guard with a strange desperation. No one had cracked the mask, and if Misaki couldn’t, how then could she?
“Please turn your attention to the chocolate cliffside,” the guard commanded, pointing to a pseudo-confectionery mountain standing just a few meters away. A screen, enormous and looming, unfurled before them. “The rules are simple. A photo of a player will appear momentarily and be distorted. You will use the touchscreen to make your own image match the distortion.”
Mikoto’s photo appeared on the screen. Slowly, her features were contorted—her ears stretched hideously out to the sides, her nose pinched upward, her chin pulled downward, her eyes shrunk, and her brows, oh gods, they were huge. It was such a fucking mockery. She looked like some kind of deformed Nosferatu imposter, a creature borne of ridicule.
Misaki laughed, her face scrunching in pain as she stifled it, but the laugh still broke through, light and too bright for the situation. It was almost cruel, but Mikoto could hardly bring herself to care.
“You would find this funny,” Mikoto muttered, glancing toward her. A faint, crooked smirk pressing at her lips despite herself.
“Better you than me,” Misaki replied, her eyes half-lidded, exhaustion setting into her features. Her skin had grown almost sickly pale, a ghostly pallor that Mikoto couldn’t ignore.
As they hobbled toward the screen, Mikoto’s original picture split into fourths. The timer then began its relentless countdown. Misaki, her leg trembling, grabbed a tree branch to steady herself. Mikoto’s gaze remained fixed on the screen, her finger hovering over the touchscreen as she dragged her ears into position. They stuck out, sharp and alien, just as the distortion had shown. “I’m not a damn vampire,” Mikoto grumbled under her breath.
“Good to know,” Misaki quipped without looking, a faint hint of amusement in her voice as she tugged Mikoto’s nose upward. “Though, my lithesome neck is practically begging for its blood to be taken,” she added with a dark giggle that made Mikoto’s chest tighten.
Mikoto felt the blush creep up her neck before she could stifle it. She bit her bottom lip, fighting the thoughts that swarmed into her mind. Misaki’s pale neck, smooth and unblemished, that curve of her throat—no. She cleared her mind and focused. Focused. It wasn’t the time for that. The time for what? The same crook she rested in after each game. Leading up to her ear where—cleared her mind. Yes she cleared her mind.
20 seconds left. Mikoto’s eyes peeked at Ayu’s version of the picture. The sight nearly made her gag. Ayu made her look like a troll. A goblin even—like the type of person that shits herself in public—Mikoto’s stomach churned. “What kind of psychological abuse is this?” she said to herself as her fingers worked clumsily to adjust her image.
Five seconds left. Panic gripped Mikoto.Oh shit! The eyebrows. The eyebrows! She frantically tried to drag them out, but only managed to enlarge one. Damnit.
A drumroll filled the silence, and Mikoto felt a strange chill down her spine. The timer ran out. A number popped up in her square—87. Mikoto stared at it, feeling a tight knot in her chest. Misaki, to her surprise, had gotten a perfect 100. Her brows furrowed. The ugly little miscreant matched the example perfectly.What the hell? Should she be impressed? Misaki turned to her, that familiar, enigmatic smile gracing her lips. Mikoto looked to her with a whimsical expression.
“I might know your face better than you do,” Misaki giggled, sweat forming on her cheeks.
Mikoto sighed, accepting her defeat with a graceful smile.
“You could’ve at least combed your hair, Railgun,” Seria’s voice interrupted, needlelike and biting. Mikoto didn’t respond, too tired to even consider it. Her mind was elsewhere—far away from Seria’s irritating quips.
But Ayu was different. Mikoto noticed the trembling figure as she collapsed to the ground, her face stricken with terror. The ugly monster on her screen won her a 42. She knew she wasn’t that fucking ugly.
A gunshot echoed through the air, and Mikoto’s thoughts went numb. Her eyes darted all around Ayu, who sat frozen for a moment before wincing, clutching her side. Ayu looked around, movements stuttering like a robot. Blood seeped through her fingers, dripping in a steady flow. The bullet had missed everything vital, from what she could see. But it didn’t matter, Ayu was far too panicked to assess it properly. Mikoto swallowed hard, the bitter taste of helplessness on her tongue.
The guard tossed the die at her. Mikoto caught it, her breath shallow.
“Please return to your spaces and proceed with the game,” the guard commanded, cold as ever.
With Misaki’s weight leaning on her, Mikoto moved toward their space, her thoughts clouded. Mikoto eyed the bend—she couldn’t see what was beyond it, but it ended with a red space. Shit. She would need to land on the red space to see ahead.Her hands curled into tight knots as the thought simmered in her mind. What if she destroyed the whole mountain? Launched the dice block like a bullet and shattered it all? The idea chewed at her.
But then the guard’s voice—predictably, unnervingly—spoke again, as if reading her very thoughts. “Destruction of the game board will result in player elimination.”
Mikoto clamped her eyes shut. This was such insufferable bullshit.
A deep breath steadied her, though it did nothing to quell the tempest raging within. With fingers taut around the die, she cast it forward as though flinging away her frustration.
6.
She would risk it. Let fate play its cruel hand. The red space was hers to claim. Handing the block to Misaki, she watched as the blonde rolled it forward with her delicate, deliberate touch. The result was a 5—just as planned. With Misaki left behind on the blue space, Mikoto inhaled acutely and leapt. The crimson tile greeted her like a bad fucking omen.
She landed, feet steady, poised for the worst. Her weight shifted forward onto her toes as her gaze flickered between the chocolate-slick mountainside, the lollipop stalks swaying in the artificial wind, and the cupcake bushes nestled in the distance. A sugar-coated landscape, sweet and deceptive bullshit. The chocolate might as well have been dog shit.
Then, without warning—a blade.
A razor-sharp lollipop whirred through the air, a confectionary guillotine meant for her throat. Instinct took over. Mikoto let her legs collapse beneath her, her body folding at an impossible angle. The spinning saw tore past her, a deathly whisper grazing her cheek, before embedding itself deep into the wall beside her. Exhaling aggressively, she turned, wondering what fate would be decreed if someone else landed there.
She turned—only to find Misaki frozen, her wide eyes brimming with unspoken terror. The blonde’s balance wavered, one hand clasped over trembling lips. That look. Mikoto knew it well.
Fear.
Fear for her.
The thought struck her like a bolt to the spine. Misaki, whose every word was poised, every movement elegant—shaken. The notion that Mikoto could have been erased from this world in an instant had never seemed to trouble her before. And yet, here she was, fragile in her distress, trembling under the idea of what could have been. She once said she’d forget about her in a week. Why that thought plagued her now, she knew not. It merely instigated bedlam in the sanctuary that was her mind.
Mikoto swallowed. Her own heart pounded against its bony cage, demanding to be acknowledged, but she shoved it down. Instead, she offered the only salve she knew—a grin, forced and foolish, accompanied by an exaggerated wave.
Misaki blinked, her lashes damp, before swiftly wiping the weakness from her cheeks. She nodded, an unconvincing smile gracing her lips. And just like that, the moment was buried, dismissed as though it had never been.
Ayu took her turn next, the dice determining her path forward. The board guided the lot of them through the maple-kissed valley, pistachio boulders lining their descent, a strawberry shortcake meadow stretching into the horizon. Seria landed on a red space, yet nothing came for her. The fates were fickle.
Then, another minigame. Another chance for suffering.
“Thanks, Seria,” Mikoto muttered, rolling her eyes as the familiar pang of irritation clawed at her skull, though she knew it wasn’t her fault.
“There is a cove behind the waterfall. Make your way there,” came the guard’s indifferent command. Their words, empty and metallic, carried the weight of the inevitable.
The cavern behind the cascade swallowed them whole, its darkness broken only by the eerie glow of a single, massive light bulb plugged into the ground. Around it, hammers—symbols resembling dog chew toys—lay scattered like offerings.
“Three of you will wield the hammers. One will carry the bulb. Your goal is to reach the socket at the end of the cavern,” the voice droned.
Ayu swallowed. “Why do we need hammers?”
“There will be ghouls,” the guard replied, flatly, as if reciting an immutable truth. “The hammers repel them. Fail, and you will be led back to the mother ghoul.”
Then, from the abyss, it emerged behind them.
“Players consumed by the mother ghoul will be eliminated. Make it to the end and place the bulb in the socket on the platform to proceed.”
The mother ghoul—a monstrous, amorphous specter, its presence thick and suffocating, as though it sought to invade the very marrow of their bones.
Mikoto’s breath caught. That wasn’t a ghost. No, this was something else entirely—an ability user’s creation. A foul, insidious trickery that masqueraded as the supernatural.
Misaki stood beside her, her breaths shallow, her shoe flooded crimson with her own blood to the point that each step sounded a slosh. A tremor ran through her fragile frame, betraying the fear she would never admit to.
“I’ll carry the bulb,” she murmured, barely above a whisper.
Mikoto exhaled, a feigned laugh escaping her lips. “Not like you could swing a hammer anyway.”
Misaki smiled, weary but amused. “Even if I were well.”
It was a frail thing, that exchange. A quiet understanding wrapped in jest, as though humor could conceal the undercurrent of fear pulling them ever downward.
The cavern stretched before them, the dim glow of the bulb barely piercing the consuming dark. The tiles beneath their feet, an attempt at shortbread imitation, did little to comfort.
They had to make it. Mikoto wouldn’t allow anything less. She smiled softly at the honey bee leaning into her before looking to the other two. Seria’s arm was not looking good. Though she put up a tough front, she was weak from the blood loss. Ayu had seemingly forgotten about her wound as she walked forward and picked up a hammer. This would be rough, but they could do it. The cavern was dark, but she could generate some electricity into the bulb while she acted as Misaki’s crutch.
Mikoto squinted and could, just barely, make out a platform in the distance.
“I could really go for something sweet right now,” Misaki said, her voice tied with nausea.
“When we get out of this,” Mikoto said, her eyes fixed forward, “I’ll take you to the best cake shop in Tokyo.”
Misaki clutched the bulb closer to her chest, her fingers pressing over its smooth surface. “It’s a date.”
Mikoto hesitated. A response teetered at the edge of her tongue, unspoken. Instead, she simply nodded, her grip tightening around Misaki’s waist, her oversized yellow mallet spinning in her free hand.
“Begin,” the guard intoned, followed by the distinct crack of a gunshot. The air seemed to thicken with anticipation as a shadow loomed. Slowly, the ominous cloud from behind them started to close in, creeping steadily toward their feet.
Mikoto’s pulse quickened, and her breath felt tight in her chest. Misaki, her injured leg dragging with every step, winced from the jolts of pain coursing through her. Ayu was cautious to their left, her footsteps faltering, while Seria took the lead, her face a mask of stoic determination.
For a fleeting moment, the world around them was quiet, but it didn’t last. Without warning, a shadow loomed over Seria.
“Move!” Mikoto barked, her heart launching from her chest.
Seria reacted instinctively, launching herself to the left with a desperate push, just as a giant strawberry crashed down onto the spot she had occupied moments before. The group collectively stared up into the abyss, a void where there was no way to predict what might fall from the endless darkness above.
Mikoto’s mind raced. Could she create an electrostatic field strong enough to repel or detect the falling objects? But no—time was slipping through her fingers, and there wasn’t a moment to spare.
“Ayu!” Mikoto shouted, her voice raw, noticing the foggy sphere forming in midair.
Ayu reacted without hesitation, slapping the orb away, sending it careening back through the wall from whence it came.
“What the hell was that!?” the plum-haired girl yelled, her voice laced with disbelief.
“Don’t think about it!” Mikoto snapped, her temper flaring, as another orb materialized from the shadows.
And then it happened—the first mistake. One of the orbs passed straight through Seria, and in an instant, her expression shifted. Her eyes, once clear with purpose, dulled, vacant. She moved as though in a trance, her body no longer her own. Mikoto’s stomach dropped like a stone.
“Hit her with the hammer!” Mikoto shouted in desperation, turning to Ayu. Misaki, struggling to remain steady on one leg, winced and nearly dropped the bulb she was holding.
Ayu hesitated, unsure, but then, with a swift motion, she smashed the hammer into Seria’s skull. The blow rang out, halting Seria's trance-like movements. She staggered, eyes wide in furious confusion.
“What the fuck was that for!?” Seria screamed, rubbing her head, her anger palpable.
“We don’t have time for this! Stop!” Misaki gasped, her voice breathless.
“Go!” Mikoto yelled, pushing them forward, her voice sharp and demanding, as if to cut through the haze of chaos.
Seria, her eyes resonating with something like understanding, grabbed her hammer and rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the fall of a massive metallic cherry. Another danger emerged—an abhorrent, ghastly figure slid from the darkened air, its shape almost too monstrous to comprehend.
Ayu reacted faster than thought, sprinting forward and smashing the thing back into the wall with the force of tornadic winds.
“Try to pick up the pace, princess…” Ayu muttered, sweat gleaming on her forehead, her breath coming in pointed bursts.
“After you,” Seria replied, managing a half-smile, though her brows remained furrowed, fatigue weighing her down like a millstone around her neck.
They pressed on through the perilous gauntlet, narrowly avoiding falling tiles, nails in the shape of colored dangos firing from the walls, a giant apple that fell from the ceiling, and more orbs—so many fucking orbs. Mikoto’s patience thinned, her nerves shot. She did her best to strike at the orbs with precision while still supporting Misaki, but the situation was beginning to take its toll.
They were so close—so close—only about 20 meters away from safety. But that hope shattered when, out of nowhere, Misaki was struck by an orb from the floor. She dropped the bulb, her vision dimming. Mikoto’s heart skipped a beat as she felt her own hammer slip from her fingers.
The light in Misaki’s eyes dimmed, like the fading stars of an evening sky—redshifting away from her in the expanding universe that was her pupils. Slowly, she turned, as if controlled by unseen strings. A pressure built in Mikoto’s chest, making it hard to breathe. No. She couldn’t let this happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. The bulb tumbled from her grasp.
Mikoto dropped her hammer by mistake. She reached for it, but the now possessed Seria kicked it away as she walked past her toward the mother ghoul. Ayu was too far away fighting off her own orbs.
“M-Miko…” Misaki gasped weakly, her breath ragged. “Grab the bulb... I can resist... just a little longer…”
Mikoto froze, her hands trembling. Misaki’s words tore through her like a cold wind, but her body was slow to react. Her mind screamed to move, to act, but each half second felt like an eternity where Mikoto couldn’t move, as if she was underwater in a dream, and there was no escape. She could only hope someone would wake her up.
“Grab it!” Misaki screamed, her voice breaking, the desperation clear.
And that was all it took—that woke her up—Mikoto’s body surged into motion. She snatched the bulb from the ground, with a force of will, launched herself into the air. Every muscle in her body screamed as she pushed herself harder, faster.
The air was thick with the stench of desperation, and Mikoto could feel every agonizing second slipping away from her.
She had only seconds. One, maybe two, before Seria was swallowed. Then another second before Misaki…
Every muscle burned. Every breath was fire in her lungs. The world blurred as she weaved through the spectral onslaught. The orbs came at her from every direction, but she bobbed and weaved between them, her electrical powers crackling, illuminating her in flashes of silver lightning. The ground felt like it was falling away beneath her, but she couldn't stop. She couldn’t—
Click.
The bulb was in place. The ghouls vanished. The sound of that click reverberated through the hall, like a breath held too long, finally exhaled.
Mikoto stood there for a moment, chest heaving, sweat dripping down her face. Then she turned around.
Misaki was lying on the floor, her body crumpled and pale, but she was breathing. Just barely—her breath a fragile, uneven thing. But she was there. Mikoto felt her heart slow its frantic pace, the tension bleeding out of her body. They had made it—by the skin of their teeth.
Ayu was taking in deep breaths while Seria was clenched up in a defensive position.
“Please return to your spaces,” the guard’s voice interrupted, cold and dispassionate, stepping out from the door behind the massive socket. They motioned for them to move through.
Ayu, panting and shaken, blurted out a question before Mikoto could even process the relief in her chest.
“Does the timer pause for minigames?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“No,” the guard replied, their tone clipped, devoid of any empathy.
Mikoto cringed. The thought of those massive dice blocks on the other boards made her stomach churn. If they kept landing on green spaces, the games would keep coming—and they weren’t getting any easier. Unless the minigames were quicker? Probably not. There were six games and this was meant to thin them out like farm animals.
Her thoughts raced as she bent down and scooped Misaki into her arms once more, cradling her bridal-style for a second time now. Misaki was still conscious, though barely. She was there—her soft breath against Mikoto’s chest, warm and steady. Relief hit her like a collapsing dam. She wished the walk to the board would last an eternity, the feeling of her curled up against her chest, her breaths tickling her collarbone… What was wrong with her?
As the duo returned to their space, Mikoto set Misaki down with a care so precise it bordered on reverence, as though the very fabric of the world would unravel should she falter. And yet, despite her gentleness, Misaki winced, a brief but searing betrayal of pain flashing across her features. Mikoto recoiled as if struck. It was unbearable—the proof of her inadequacy made manifest in a single moment of weakness.
“Hey,” she murmured, her voice raw, trying to steady the tremor in her chest. She reached out, steadying Misaki, gripping her as though she might vanish into the ether if she let go. “I need you to stay with me, okay?” There was something suffocating in the words, a truth she wasn’t ready to admit, a grief she buried beneath the brittle veneer of composure.
Misaki took a shuddering breath and nodded. But the pallor of her skin, the sheen of sweat on her brow, told Mikoto all she needed to know. She was slipping. And Mikoto was powerless to stop it. Then, as if to mock her, the ever-present hand of fate, cruel and indifferent, hurled the dice block at her feet. She caught it without thinking, her mind a dissonant stew of frustration and fear. With a flick of her wrist, she rolled.
A 2.
The path ahead was a graveyard of red spaces, what a cheap, twisted ploy.
Seria stepped forward, her own roll damning her to crimson fate. From somewhere beyond the saccharine treeline, an arrow hissed through the air, finding its mark in her abdomen. The impact sent her stumbling, her breath hitching as she coughed blood onto the collar of her jacket. She spat onto the pastel-hued ground, trying and failing to steady herself. With gritted teeth, she snapped the arrow’s shaft in half but left the cruel tip buried deep. To remove it would be to invite oblivion.
They trudged onward in silence, shadows stretching long in the artificial glow of this confectionary wasteland. Ayu railed against the masked overseer, demanding to know how much time remained, but the specter of authority remained as silent as the void, unyielding in its apathy. And so, they marched beneath the soda waterfalls, scaled the towering cliffs of birthday cake, and descended into a dome of vanilla ice cream, a world that transitioned into a neopolitan basin of nightmares. Beyond the cotton candy grove, it loomed—the great blue walls. The end. Holy shit, it’s almost over.
Almost there.
Misaki, pale as death, managed a fragile smile. A small, wavering thing, as if to say, See? We’re almost free. But the pain had turned her lips bloodless, her breath shallow. Mikoto tightened her grip around her waist, a useless gesture, but one she could not abandon. She whispered for her to breathe, to stay conscious, as though sheer willpower could defy reality. If only.
Her mind wandered in its desperation. Could she cauterize the wound? No, too dangerous. Set the leg? No, it was likely shattered. What could she do?
Nothing. And that truth twisted inside her like a poisoned knife.
Then, the dice rolled once more, and fate sneered.
Another minigame.
Mikoto let a hand drag down her face, exhaling.
“Over here, there is a stage,” the guard intoned, a deity of monotony presiding over their suffering. “Each of you will press down on a pump. One of them is rigged with an explosion. If all four players survive, a new batch will appear. The first to fail will be punished.”
Mikoto’s fingers locked into tight balls, the sharp sting of her nails piercing her palms. Sadistic, cruel, cowardly motherf—
Her thoughts snapped like a wire at the sudden tug on her collar. Misaki’s grip was weak, barely there, but it was enough to make Mikoto meet her gaze. The blonde’s voice was barely a whisper, but it cut sharper than any blade.
“If… you can manipulate the die for us…” she swallowed hard, every syllable an effort, “why haven’t you been doing it… for the others…? To a-avoid these games…?”
Mikoto froze. The words hit her like Ayu with a hammer to the skull, like a fist to her throat. Why hadn’t she? It had never even crossed her mind. But it should have. She should have been protecting them.
God. Gods.
A sharp, ugly laugh bubbled up, but she choked it down, settling instead for slamming the heel of her palm against her forehead.
“It’s o-okay…” Misaki murmured, her fingertips ghosting over Mikoto’s temple, brushing away strands of damp hair. “Let’s just… focus on h-here and n-now…”
Mikoto nodded, the motion jerky, mechanical. Not just a kick to the gut. A roundhouse to the goddamn ovaries.
But no more mistakes. No more lapses in judgment. Because if she failed again, if she let this cruel game take Misaki away from her—
No. She wouldn’t allow it.
The dice would fall as she commanded. The game would bow before her. And she would drag Misaki to the finish line herself, if that’s what it took.
No matter what.
Mikoto was first. The one who rolled the die first. She let Misaki stand, barely upright against a tree, sweat dripping from her porcelain skin. Even in this state, she could tell which pump was rigged and which wasn’t by tracing the electrical signal underneath each. It hardly mattered now. She was tired—soul-crushingly, bone-grindingly tired—of watching suffering unfold before her eyes, of being forced to witness the degradation of people she should hate but couldn’t. Even Seria. Even that real bitch—
Eck. That word felt vile in her mouth. Why did she even think it?
Mikoto shook her head, dispelling the stray thought before turning back to Misaki with a weary smile. The fatigued little honey bee tilted her head, a quizzical expression painting her exhausted face. Everyone was injured, barely clinging to their last threads of willpower. There was only one thing left to do. No more deliberation, no more hesitation.
She stepped onto the platform, her eyes falling upon the red pump.
Misaki’s voice reached her, desperate, cracking. “Mikoto!”
A lurch forward. A grasping hand.
Too late.
Mikoto pressed down.
A blinding flash—
BOOM.
The explosion’s force roared outward, an infernal breath scorching across the sweet battlefield. A storm of dust and debris clawed at the sky. The acrid stench of burning—flesh? wood? sulfur?—permeated the air, clawing its way into the lungs of the survivors. Misaki coughed violently, her vision a chaotic swirl of grey and brown, her ears ringing.
Mikoto.
Oh, God, Mikoto.
Her vision wavered, scrambled thoughts colliding in a panicked frenzy. No. No way. She couldn’t be—
Then the dust began to settle, and the silhouette emerged.
Misaka Mikoto stood there, a spectral figure draped in soot and blood, her burnt flesh a gruesome patchwork of agony. Her hair—somehow, impossibly—remained, though it was slicked back by the sheer force of the explosion. And yet, despite the torment carved into her being, she stood. Barely. Chest heaving, breath stuttering, each step a cruel testament to her unyielding will.
“M-Miko…” Misaki’s voice cracked, her tears slipping free, her body frozen in place.
Mikoto didn’t stop. She staggered forward, past the stunned faces of Ayu and Seria. Time was slipping through her fingers like sand, and the exit stood mere steps away. She forced her failing body to move, hoisting Misaki up, supporting her body weight. Pain ignited like wildfire through every nerve. Her arms, her back, her legs—they all screamed in misery. Even the corners of her mouth stung as she gritted her teeth.
Misaki wanted to vomit at the sight, her body frozen as Mikoto slowly moved the duo forward.
Every step was a battle.
The guard tossed a die block at Seria, and Mikoto forced herself to stand tall.
“This… time,” she wheezed, glancing at Misaki, her torn and battered face barely recognizable. “I won’t make the same mistake.”
Misaki turned away. “Please,” she rasped, her voice barely above a whisper. “Never do anything like that again.”
“I—”
A trembling finger pressed against her cracked lips.
“I don’t want t-to hear your selfless justifications,” Misaki murmured, her breath shallow.
Mikoto exhaled into a broken smile. The die came back to her. She rolled a 5. So close. Just five more spaces and it would be over.Index could heal them and—
Index. Oh God, Index. Was she okay? Her group had 12 people. Mikoto’s heart plummeted.
Ayu rolled. A 3.
Seria rolled. A 6.
Relief almost came. Almost.
And then her space turned green.
“What!?” Mikoto jerked, agony surging up her spine like molten lead.
“Spaces may change at random,” the guard droned, pulling out a new card.
The world spun. The exit—right there. So close. But of course, the game would cheat. Of course, the rules would twist like knives in their backs.
“They’re watching,” Misaki said under her breath, not even lifting her head. “They clearly didn’t like that.”
“Limbo. You will complete the limbo course to the right.”
As if conjured from the depths of Hell, a limbo course rose from the earth. 30 fucking meters long.
Misaki’s voice was quiet, but it slammed into Mikoto like a truck.
“I think this might be where I check out. It’s my… fault anyway for—”
Mikoto’s blood ran cold. “No,” she croaked. “No, you’re the last person who’d admit defeat.”
“I can’t do this.” Misaki peeled her arm off Mikoto’s shoulder.
“You have to.”
The world around them was a maelstrom of blurred figures and distant echoes, a fever dream painted in the colors of sweat, blood, and tormented anguish.
“Miko,” Misaki’s voice trembled, soft as a dying candle’s flame. Her face, pale as the ghosts that had hunted them, turned up toward Mikoto with a half-hearted smirk. “Do you really think I can limbo at a time like this?”
“Maybe I can…” Mikoto murmured, her vision swimming, her thoughts dissolving into a haze of exhaustion and agony.
“I’ll try my best,” Misaki said, voice thin as a whisper in a cathedral, “but I think it’s import…ant, that I’m honest with you.” Her knees buckled, and before she could plummet, Mikoto seized her, steadying her frail form against her own trembling frame.
“We’ll do our best,” Mikoto said, her lips quivering, her face swelling with unbidden grief. “Just… focus on the goal, okay?”
Misaki exhaled, a weak ghost of a chuckle escaping her lips as she turned her weary gaze ahead. “Looks like the others are already midway through.”
Mikoto followed her line of sight, eyes resting upon the crude wooden limbo sticks standing defiantly before them. “Then let’s focus… on us.”
Misaki hummed in response, a sound halfway between amusement and despair.
“I can provide a repelling force to your back,” Mikoto offered, peeling off her tattered jacket, now little more than a wretched collection of rags, “but it might hurt when you go down.” Her sweat-drenched shirt clung to her, the fabric a bloodied second skin soaked in struggle.
Misaki nodded, dragging herself to stand before the crimson limbo sticks. “I’ll do my best.”
Three. Two. One.
She arched her back, her left knee trembling as she shifted forward. But hesitation seized her—a fear not of failure, but of excruciation, of the shattered remnants of her kneecap screaming in defiance.
“You have to trust me,” Mikoto pleaded, her heels grinding into the earth as she summoned every ounce of strength to create the field beneath them. A fragile balance, a temporary salvation.
Misaki inhaled sharply. Her muscles tensed. She leaned back. And pain, excruciating and all-consuming, exploded through her body. She stifled a scream, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she willed herself to move.
“Just a little more,” Mikoto urged, biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper. Her heartbeat pounded against her skull, each throb a sickle striking bone.
Misaki hopped. One leg. Then another. The first limbo stick. Then the second. She had made it through, but the victory was fleeting. Ahead of them, the yellow sticks loomed lower, crueler. Misaki’s eyes clinched shut as she bent again, her body betraying her with sweat-drenched convulsions. A dry heave wracked her chest the moment she cleared them.
“I d-don’t…” Misaki stammered, her voice breaking. “I can’t!”
“Yes, you can!” Mikoto shot back, her words desperate. Her vision wavered, each heartbeat a thunderclap rattling her senses.
Misaki’s world narrowed to an abyssal blur. The pain eclipsed sight, eclipsed thought. She swayed, her body teetering on the precipice of collapse. And then, she fell. Mikoto reached out—but she was too slow.
The blue sticks crashed down beneath Misaki’s weight.
Mikoto’s breath vanished. A vacuum, an absence, a void. She could not move. Could not think. Could not comprehend. The world ceased to exist—save for Misaki and the yawning horror in her chest.
And then, a gunshot.
The sound ruptured her mind, rendering all things silent and absolute. A singular moment in time, stretching into eternity.
She turned. And there she was. Misaki. Blood pooling beneath her, a horrid bloom against the pale canvas of her skin. A scarlet aureole forming beneath her golden locks.
Mikoto reeled as though she herself had been struck, her vision twisting into a nightmare of scarlet and shadows. Her knees hit the cold ground, uncaring of the pain, as she crawled forward with the desperation of a drowning woman. Her trembling hands gathered Misaki into her arms, the warmth of her still-breathing body a fleeting mercy, stolen by the gaping wound that leaked the essence of her life onto Mikoto’s fingertips. But the blood, the blood, the blood. It would not stop.
There had been a time—fifteen long, unforgiving years—since she had last gazed upon this face, this wretchedly beautiful phantom of her past. Misaki. A name once spoken in passing, now an invocation of every sorrow, every unshed tear. There was a moment, fleeting and fragile as a candle’s final flicker, when Mikoto had dared to whisper the truth to herself: she had loved her. Had, perhaps, still did. That admission, confessed only once in the confines of her own aching heart, had been the catalyst for her undoing. The red pony incident—where it all had unraveled, where she had exiled herself from happiness.
Yet fate, cruel in its caprice, had seen fit to reunite them in this obscene contest. And in mere days, they had grown impossibly, unbearably close, the bonds of their souls entwining in a way that left Mikoto as breathless as she was confused. But had Misaki felt the same? Had she seen the unspoken words trembling on Mikoto’s lips, the longing buried beneath every sideways glance?
And then again—blood. A strangeblossom of crimson seeping from the right side of Misaki’s chest. How could Mikoto describe it as anything but strange? It did not belong.
No. No, no, no, no.
This was not real. It could not be real. Not Misaki. Take anyone else, take her instead—anything but this.
Mikoto’s breath came in shuddering gasps as she clung to the failing body in her arms, her tears falling in silent requiem upon Misaki’s graying skin. The rise and fall of her chest—so slow now, so fragile—was the only thing tethering Mikoto to sanity.
Then, a whisper. Barely more than a sigh.
“Miko…”
The name, spoken with such exhausted affection, shattered her.
A trembling hand rose from Misaki’s side and pressed weakly against Mikoto’s heart. Without thinking, Mikoto grasped it, her grip feverish, hopeless, unwilling to let go.
“I wish… I could have spent more time with you,” Misaki rasped, blood staining her lips in cruel contrast to the feeble smile she wore.
Mikoto’s world cracked apart.
“I…” The words came out in a choked sob, her entire being unraveling, undone by the unbearable weight of too little, too late. “I think I’m in love with you… Misa.”
The confession, wrenched from the depths of her soul, felt like her own bleeding out.
Misaki’s golden eyes, dulled by agony yet still burning with some flickering ember of emotion, widened slightly at the nickname. It was what she had been waiting for; her wounded heart fluttered as the darkness around them had become brighter and whiter, like a bird with only one wing trying to fly to its nest.
“I know,” she whispered. A wisp of a chuckle passed her lips, mingling with the blood that pooled in her mouth. “You’re… a cool persuader, you know that?”
The space between them became unbearably bright—no longer a void of death, but something softer, more forgiving.
Mikoto let out a broken laugh, her fingers brushing a streak of crimson from Misaki’s lips. “And you… you’re a dangerous angel, Shokuhou Misaki.”
Her lips—plump, decadent, and betraying a tenderness that should not belong in a moment so cruel—remained ever inviting, a siren’s call that lured her into the abyss. A promise unfulfilled, a temptation’s silent allure. If she did not act now, if she allowed hesitation to chain her limbs and doubt to smother her heart, she knew she would regret it for eternity. However brief that eternity might be.
So Mikoto leaned in, drawn by a force deeper than reason, and pressed her lips to Misaki’s.
The contact was a whisper, a fleeting collision of warmth against fading breath. For the barest instant, she felt it—Misaki’s response, weak and ephemeral, yet there. A whisper of pressure, so light it may have been imagined, but to Mikoto, it was everything. It was life, it was death, it was every dream she had once dared to indulge, now crumbling to dust in her hands.
And then she pulled away, and the world grew cold.
The warmth between them dissipated like the last glow of the setting sun, retreating beyond the horizon, leaving her stranded in a darkness vast and unfeeling. A chasm yawned in her chest, swallowing her whole.
“You… have to…”
The words, fragile and incomplete, ghosted from Misaki’s lips. Her breaths slowed, stilling.
Mikoto watched in helpless horror as those golden eyes, once so full of mischief and defiance, wavered closed. As if slipping into a peaceful slumber. As if this were not an ending.
But it was.
A terrible silence followed. The kind that suffocates, that drowns, that buries the soul beneath the weight of its own grief.
And then, as if to mock her agony, a voice cut through the air, sterile and mechanical.
“Player 333 has been eliminated.”
A guard shoved Mikoto aside as though she were nothing, as though she were no more than an obstacle in the way of routine. Another pair approached, their hands grasping at what was once warm, what was once living, what was once hers.
The coffin lay waiting, its lid gaping open like the maw of some merciless beast.
Mikoto did not move. Did not breathe. She could only watch.
Watched as the circle-masked monsters lifted Misaki’s body—so light, so terribly light, as though death had robbed her of substance itself.
Watched as golden locks poured over the edge, cascading like molten sunlight, an obscene contrast to the cruel, unyielding, black wood.
Watched as they sealed her away.
Gone.
She wanted to scream, to claw at the casket, to rip it from their hands and demand that the universe undo its cruelty, to rage at the heavens for allowing such a thing to pass. But no sound came from her throat. No movement stirred her limbs.
She simply sat there.
Helpless. Empty. She felt drained, as if her very soul had been emptied by the fangs of sorrow.
What was left?
What purpose remained, now that the single, fragile thread tethering her to this wretched existence had been severed? What cruel joke was it that she still drew breath while Misaki—brilliant, arrogant, infuriating, magnificent Misaki—did not?
She should have died in her place.
She would have given anything—her life, her soul, the very fabric of her being—to trade fates.
But Misaki had wanted her to keep moving.
The thought, distant yet insistent, clawed its way to the forefront of her mind. Keep moving.
A breath. A shudder. A fractured attempt at regaining herself. Maybe it was a dream and she would awaken to Misaki right next to her.
And then—pain.
To rise was agony, as though she was chained to the world and had to move it by her lonesome, were she as strong as Atlas, she shrugged the pain off her shoulders. Every step forward was an act of defiance against the torment threatening to consume her whole.
Still, she moved.
She stepped forward, dragging herself beneath the blue limbo sticks that the guards had reassembled, a passageway into some new, meaningless continuation of life.
At the threshold, figures awaited her.
Ayu stood frozen, horror carved into her wide, unblinking eyes. A silent witness to the tragedy, unable to comprehend its brutality.
Seria, ever the enigma, remained unemotional. Expressionless. But Mikoto could not tell if it was genuine indifference or simply the haze of her own failing vision that obscured the truth. The world was flickering, shifting between light and shadow, as though reality itself were unraveling at the edges.
The die.
She no longer had the strength to bend fate to her will. With fingers numb from that bitter, rueful, pain of regret, she tossed it.
6.
Her feet carried her forward, though she no longer commanded them. She stumbled across the goal, her body surrendering to the inevitable as she collapsed to the floor.
The last thing she heard was the dull, indifferent wail of the buzzer.
She could only hope she had made it in time.
But a part of her no longer cared.