Alice in Borderland

Chapter 11 - College Secret Room Party

I didn't get a single eye all night. That's probably why I slept half the day. Izumi knocked on my room door about ten minutes ago and woke me up because we were heading straight to the games and most of them had already gathered in the entrance hall. I try to hurry up and get ready as soon as possible. I opt for Nike's short sports pants and a white shirt, which I tie together on my stomach. There's no time to shower, so I tie my hair together into a simple high braid. I quickly take the pink rubber ball with me and then run to the lobby. The hatmaker is just making a speech and when Ann sees me coming, she hands me a note with a number on it.

About a hundred people stand there and listen carefully to the hatmaker. I turn to Izumi and smile again with gratitude. She just nods and looks up again. I let my ball bounce back to the ground to calm down a little bit. I think most of us here now have something to distract themselves from before the games, just in their own way. I wouldn't have believed it, but this little ball from a stranger's apartment seems to prepare me a little bit for these deadly games.

"So go and play!" I hear the hatmaker's closing words and, as if on command, everyone moves. They almost run towards the entrance and to the cars assigned to them. Izumi says goodbye with a mute look, while I stop in opposition to her and look at my papers again.

"Mhm, Good Luck"

I turn around and discover Chishiya behind me. As always, he has his hands in the pockets of his white vest and looks at me with his usual look. He nods only slightly and turns around to run calmly outside. At first I want to call him the same, but I can kind of imagine that he doesn't need it and would laugh about it. Niragi comes down from the gallery with his rifle over his shoulder.

"Then let's go," he says, leaning down to me as he walks by. I follow him with a little distance and just twist my eyes. I don't know, but in the last two days I don't know if I should be afraid of him or if I get sick of it. He's heading for a car and I'm glad someone else is waiting there. Suddenly Niragi stretches out my arm and I have to stop.

"Take this, for safety"

He holds me one of the knives from my sports bag that Ann confiscated. I take it hesitantly and he climbs into the driver's seat. I pinch the knife behind my back and get in at the back. Niragi starts the car and the passenger introduces himself as Yuudai. Unlike Niragi, who looks rigidly at the street, Yuudai is quite relaxed and talks continuously. He says that he has been in the beach for three weeks and that he still lived with his parents before all of this. He had just started his new job in the IT industry or something. He's actually quite nice, especially he makes jokes all the way. He processes all this with humour, which is perfectly fine. Unlike most in the hotel, he is sober and only complains that there is no proper meat to eat.

"What a good steak I would do? If I died today, my last meal would be a pile of rice and flour"

He laughs warmly, but in it I realize that he is worried. I guessed the whole car ride that he takes it all too loosely. It would have been a danger to the game. It was an inattentive moment, and we would all suffer.

"We're here," says Niragi, parking the car next to an old, run-down house. It looks like it's collapsing at any moment. The outer wall is peeled off and something hangs over the entrance, but it is not recognizable by traces of fire. We get out of the car and Yuudai doesn't say a word anymore. We walk to the entrance and as soon as we pass through the door, I hear this barely recognisable noise, which means that we have passed the light barrier. Now there is no going back.

We walk into the hallway, on a charred table in the entrance area there are six mobile phones. Each of us takes one and the facial scans begin. We seem to be the first, because no one else is here. There are still three mobile phones on the table, which means that there will not be many participants in this game. Maybe one of those heart games. Izumi said that the number of participants did not have to be very high. However, there were only four participants in this mirror cabinet. After five minutes came the first. We all just look around the area and pretend we don't know each other. After another two minutes, the last two come: a man around fifty years old and a muscular man in his mid-twenties. They take their phones, and the way they have their faces scanned, I notice that they know the procedure. The younger of the two looks up and looks at me before looking at his phone with a grin.