Chapter Text
PRESENT
Chiyori crouches down behind a tree outside one of the city’s stadiums, where the lights are as bright as can be in the Borderlands, beckoning players from all over Tokyo to join. There are signs nearby to lead people into the venue. Having been a citizen for all her life and a child of two of the most ruthless Game Masters, Chiyori knows the usual haunts; where to avoid and where to flock.
As much as she likes to consider herself an independent woman (and she very much is a woman now, thank you very much!), she prefers being surrounded by people whether familiar or not. Those earlier years spent locked inside a library with only books and dust as friends truly did wonders for her touch starvation. Craving companionship, but knowing death could pry them away from her bloody fingers in a blink of an eye. Her eternal dilemma.
And that night, nearly a decade ago, a decade of murder and sin, death stole the ones who brought her to life. She who guided the fates’ scissors, who lured her parents into a game they had a hand in orchestrating.
Thus began her undoing.
She could never really recall the whole night, most of her memories were of after . Bits and pieces would flash to her mind at the most inopportune moments (resulting in many near-death experiences), and to this day she cannot say what events led to the single clear picture in her mind. Of blood, gushing like a geyser from her father’s headless neck; of his wide-eyed head with a mouth frozen in a silent scream, rolling to a still beneath the shaking legs of her mother as her pulsing entrails out of her with a katana stuck to her spine, like a sick version of a magician’s show but only nearly succeeding.
Countless deaths had she witnessed in her childhood alone, usually by the lasers that come to claim players with zero days left as she watched through her library windows while nibbling on biscuits. Yet, this was the one that had her hurling her guts, almost in tandem with her mother’s dripping entrails.
Chiyori couldn’t tell you when was the first time she witnessed death, but she remembered the first time her hands took away someone’s life.
In a bout of adrenaline, and because the rules of the game permitted her to do so (each weapon can only be used once by each player, to up the ante), Chiyori wrenched the katana her mother’s killer used and drove it straight to his heart.
Battle Royale Kill Count.
Pretty straightforward name. Like Battle Royale , except only the one with the most kills survived. It was unlike the fiction novels she had read in her little library home, not like The Hunger Games where it only mattered who survived until the end even if you barely killed anyone, or like The Lord of the Flies where an adult appears to save you in the end.
At first, no one wanted to harm her. A child in the Borderlands? Unheard of. But as the game went on, the timer ticking down, the number of players dwindling, she knew they would come for her.
So she had to come for them first.
The katana was of no use to her any longer, so she had left it on her parents’ killer’s chest as he laid facing the ceiling, like a crude cross marker for her two parents.
She spent half of the time left looking around for stray weapons, but most of what she found were close-range types. She didn’t want to risk revealing herself to the others, so she persisted in looking around.
In one of the many rooms there, she found tucked into the corner behind a pile of boxes a large jug of gasoline. Relief flooded through her body as she scrambled for it. It was perfect! She only needed to spread the gasoline around, and it would only take one match for the whole building to burn.
Speaking of matches… She smiled horrifically, her face a mess of tears and snot with blood dripping down her nose, finding a little box with a few matchsticks amidst the junk.
Chiyori ran on the tips of her toes to avoid attention, hefting the jug and pouring it everywhere she could. All of a sudden, someone violently pulled at her ponytail. The gasoline sloshed over her front and clung to her clothes as the jug crashed to the floor.
She screamed as she was dragged back by a man with desperate eyes. He held a small knife, which trembled in his hands. The man struggled to straddle her as she kicked frantically, keeping eye contact with her while seeming to be in an internal war with himself. He raised the knife up high with both hands, the dull glint of it invoking her to grasp for something, anything to defend herself with. Her fingers latched on a broken piece of wood, with splinters and nails at the other end.
With a guttural yell, akin to the sound of pigs being slaughtered, the man drops his knife to try and dislodge the wood from the side of his head. It squelched in his efforts, blood and bits of skin coating the nails. While he was distracted, she grabbed the knife and plunged it into his right eye and twisted .
Chiyori knew something was wrong with her when she relished in his pain.
He dropped to the ground as she pushed him off, taking the jug and what amount of gasoline it had left to dump it all over his writhing body. She grabbed the matchbox from her pockets. She took one stick and struck it to light.
For a moment, she stood there, transfixed in the tiny flame.
Then, she dropped it.
The man lit up in a manner of seconds, his screams reaching a crescendo as the flames enveloped him.
Vicious thoughts ran through her mind. Vengeful. Mournful.
Hysteria replaced them when the flames licked at her clothes and ignited her as well.
She tried to roll around, but the room was quickly filling up with smoke and grew with even more flames. Chiyori ran outside, flailing her arms to no avail as it only seemed to fan the fire. Finding a clear patch of floor, she dropped and rolled for what seemed like hours of agony but was probably only a few minutes until the fire was completely smothered.
Third degree burns covered her arms, part of her abdomen, and her left thigh. The clothes stuck to her skin. The smell of barbecued pork along with smoke made her dizzy.
She stood up with a pained cry and limped as fast as she could to the entrance of the game venue. From different rooms, she could hear the panic of the remaining players as they fought against the fire.
The screen that dictates the amount of kills per player chimed with each death, the only number to increase was under her name, as she lit the fire that killed them. Subsequently, the number of remaining players were slowly counting down. She kept her gaze locked onto that number. The only way the game would end was when everyone else died.
Smoke started seeping into her nostrils again. She knew it was only a matter of time until the flames were upon her once more.
Finally, the screen changed.
𝐑 𝐄 𝐌 𝐀 𝐈 𝐍 𝐈 𝐍 𝐆 𝐏 𝐋 𝐀 𝐘 𝐄 𝐑 𝐒 : 𝟎
𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 𝐂 𝐋 𝐄 𝐀 𝐑 𝐄 𝐃
𝐂 𝐎 𝐍 𝐆 𝐑 𝐀 𝐓 𝐔 𝐋 𝐀 𝐓 𝐈 𝐎 𝐍 𝐒
The phone she grabbed at the beginning chimed in one of her cargo shorts’ pockets. When she fishes it out, the screen lit up with the following message:
【 𝙶 𝙰 𝙼 𝙴 】
♤ ♤ ♤ ♤ ♤
♤ ♤ ♤ ♤ ♤
𝐖 𝐄 𝐖 𝐈 𝐋 𝐋 𝐒 𝐔 𝐏 𝐏 𝐋 𝐘 𝐀 𝐋 𝐋 𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 𝐒 𝐔 𝐑 𝐕 𝐈 𝐕 𝐎 𝐑 𝐒
𝐖 𝐈 𝐓 𝐇 𝐀 𝐓 𝐄 𝐍 - 𝐃 𝐀 𝐘 𝐕 𝐈 𝐒 𝐀
The irony of her father, the King of Spades, dying at a Ten of Spades game to protect her and her mother… Were it not for Chiyori, both of her parents would still be here right now. Maybe they would’ve trained her in preparation for the games that she wanted to play since she was a child.
But now?
She wondered why she ever wanted to play.
After that game, she immediately sought help from her parents’ fellow game masters, but after her wounds were cleaned and patched she holed up in her library home with the intent to let her visa run out by itself.
Only it didn’t. Not really.
She thought she lost her sense of time when the number stayed at zero for nearly a week, only to realize that the Borderlands didn’t want its single native citizen out of its clutches. Whichever god that rules this sinful place, if there ever is one, plays with her life almost daily with its cruel tribulations, but condemns her efforts to die outside of the games. It is almost as if they want her to play in order to die.
Chiyori isn’t particularly religious, but she has often read books about religion and philosophy. When one has questions, one seeks answers, but none of the books in any library in Tokyo have ever explained the nature and laws of this place.
With the games not being necessary to her life and being the only way to die, she needn’t participate. And for a while, she didn’t want to either.
Slowly, she began to open up to her parents’ friends, but the Borderlands only took them one by one as each cycle passed until she didn’t have anyone left but herself and her books. But even books couldn’t give her the happiness it gave when she was younger. By that time, she was thirteen, still a child but now numb to the death that surrounded her. She started participating in a few games a year, to a few games a month, now nearly everyday when she realized that those deadly games were the only things that made her feel alive anymore.
Sure, she meets friends along the way, but they only die in the end. Sometimes by her hand. Such is life in the Borderlands. The sooner you accept that, the better you’ll survive.
When a good amount of people have arrived at the game venue, she stands from her hiding place and nonchalantly walks over to join them, hands tucked into her denim jacket, the leathery scar on her left thigh visible as she only wore cycling shorts.
The clunk of her combat boots prompts several of them to glance at her entrance. She coolly raises an eyebrow and runs her eyes over everybody, reading them almost like her beloved books.
Chiyori runs a finger along the table of phones, choosing one with a sleek black case. After it scans her face, she saunters to a wall and leans back to continue her survey of the other players.
“Hey, are you new here?” A guy wearing a long-sleeved neon green shirt asks her. There’s a girl with a thankfully less bright top holding his hand. Both of them are looking at Chiyori worriedly.
She gazes distastefully at his shirt. With a scoff, she asks, “What makes you say that?”
“If I may, miss,” the girl interjects, “You look like you don’t realize how dangerous these things can get… We only wish to help educate you.”
Their familiarity with each other suggests that they knew each other before ending up at the borderlands. Both of them had dyed hair, the guy sporting blond tips while the girl had long pink hair. The fact that the girl had no roots showing tells Chiyori that they must’ve only been in the Borderlands for less than three weeks.
No, Chiyori decides after a peek of inked flesh on the guy’s bicep, about as big as the size of her palm. It still has a cling film wrapped around it, so it couldn’t have been more than three to five days.
The girl knew the games were dangerous, so they played at least one, not very hard if they’re already at another. This is probably their second or third game. Most likely the second.
In spite of herself, Chiyori smiles at them. They might end up betraying her later when the game starts, but she appreciates their concern. Not that she needed it.
“Thanks,” she says. “But I think I can manage. You guys worry about yourselves, you haven’t experienced real danger yet.”
The couple looks at her, at each other, then they shrug as if to say ‘Suit yourself.’
Chiyori’s gaze drops to their locked hands as they leave to go back to their corner. A twinge of longing cuts through her.
She thinks the game should start any minute now when a guy with black hair almost to his shoulders and a few face piercings walks in hesitantly, looking around in confusion as he taps his hand against an ear. Her eyebrows go up as she checks him out appreciatively.
“He’s new,” she remarks quietly to the couple. “You guys have been here only about a few days, I can tell.”
The girl whispers, “How’d you know?”
“You guys are pretty obvious, as is that guy. How?” Chiyori nods to the guy with piercings. “Look at his hands. He’s patting his pockets, and from the shape of it it’s a phone. Where he came from, it was loud, so he’s here to watch a game but when he entered the noise was gone. So he’s new new.”
Chiyori can tell that although they’re impressed, they’re unnerved by her. As most people are. So she pushes off the wall and saunters towards the guy who is now fiddling with his phone, trying to turn it on.
The way he hunches his shoulders tells her he is a private person, so she stops a respectable distance from him. “Hey.”
He lifts his head up to look at her, eyebrows furrowed. “What?” His voice snaps, almost defensively.
She doesn’t smile at him, thinking he seemed the type of person to think it was condescending. Instead, she points with her thumb to the table where only a few more cellphones were available. “Your phone is busted. Take one of those.”
He sneered at her and says, “Fuck off.”
Rolling her eyes, she says, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Take a phone or you’re disqualified and trust me, you don’t want to be disqualified.”
He still makes no move to the table, so she takes his busted phone with a quick movement and throws it to the entrance of the stadium. The other players watch them, not wanting to intervene.
“You bitch, what—?!” His enraged shout is cut off when a red laser beams down from the ceiling and puts a hole into the phone. “What the fuck?!”
Chiyori locks her eyes with his, smirking at the contempt that he displays for her. “You came here to watch a game, did you? Which teams are playing? Doesn’t matter. You’re not here to watch. You’re here to play. ” She shoves a new phone in his hands. “Humor me, would you?”
With a glare, he turns on the phone. Almost as soon as his face is done scanning, everybody’s phones start chiming.
“Let the games begin,” Chiyori says, her excitement evident.
𝐑 𝐄 𝐆 𝐈 𝐒 𝐓 𝐑 𝐀 𝐓 𝐈 𝐎 𝐍 𝐇 𝐀 𝐒 𝐂 𝐋 𝐎 𝐒 𝐄 𝐃
𝐓 𝐇 𝐄 𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 𝐖 𝐈 𝐋 𝐋 𝐍 𝐎 𝐖 𝐂 𝐎 𝐌 𝐌 𝐄 𝐍 𝐂 𝐄
𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 : 𝟐 𝟎 𝟎 𝐌 𝐄 𝐓 𝐄 𝐑 𝐑 𝐀 𝐂 𝐄
𝐃 𝐈 𝐅 𝐅 𝐈 𝐂 𝐔 𝐋 𝐓 𝐘 : 𝐓 𝐄 𝐍 𝐎 𝐅 𝐒 𝐏 𝐀 𝐃 𝐄 𝐒
When the difficulty level is announced, almost everyone starts cussing or panicking, apart from Chiyori and the guy with piercings.
She is momentarily breathless as memories of another Ten of Spades game come to her, but she shoves them at the back of her mind and turns her attention to the guy. Hostile he may be, something in her wants to help him. “This is the last time I’m gonna warn you. It’s kill or be killed, alright?”
He looks at her almost like a puppy, the angry facade he keeps up down for a moment.
“Welcome to the Borderlands,” she tells him.
They enter through another entrance to go into the arena itself. She hears the guy mutter in shock when he sees the arena. Like the rest of the Borderlands, the fauna is overgrown intermixed with other weeds and plants, except for a rectangular patch of land in the center where it was just plain dirt. Ostensibly 200 meters wide.
At the end closest to the entrance they came through is a long table full of weapons ranging from bows and arrows to javelins to throwing daggers. No guns. There are three people wearing grotesque halloween masks and nondescript clothes behind the table, waiting patiently for the game to start with hands clasped.
There were 21 participants in total. You know what they say: the more, the deadlier.
The guy in neon moved to grab a weapon off the table, but one of the dealers stopped him from doing so by brandishing a machete to his face. “Shit!” He squeaks. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing!”
The dealer with the machete brings one finger up to the lips of his mask, as if to sush him, then wags the finger like scolding a child. The other dealers gesture for them to wait for the rules.
Their phones chime once again. “ Rule: Players must race through 200 meters to get to the other side. Condition: Finish the race within ten minutes. ”
Chiyori smiles grimly, realizing what the weapons were for. She drops her denim jacket to the floor, revealing the burns on her arms, and readies herself.
“ Start. ”
She sprints ahead of everyone else, zigzagging and changing direction at random intervals. Screams start to rise. Behind her, the familiar squelch of someone being stabbed urges her to run faster. Someone manages to run even faster than her, even with her head start, but who said the game is about how quick you can finish the race?
A javelin goes through the head of the player.
Not even sparing them a glance, she jumps over the body - because that’s all the player is anymore, a body - and nearly collides with the guy from before. He looks like he wants her to die, but contradicts himself when he pushes her away from a flying arrow.
She barely gasps out a whisper of gratitude before they both continue their run. The timer loudly ticks down from the stadium’s screens.
They are only a few meters away from the finish line when she notices a small movement from behind the tall grass at the other end. She grabs the guy’s arm and pulls him while still keeping them in motion, albeit going back in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing?! The finish line’s right there!” He growls.
“Look again,” she snaps at him. “Someone’s waiting for us.”
He glances back and confirms it for himself. “What the fuck kind of dystopian shit is going on here?”
“These games are never simple,” she says.
By now, there were only about half of them still alive. A few have run past the two of them already, but Chiyori knew they would regret not thinking twice. She runs to a body that has a throwing axe deep into the side of her neck.
A glance at the starting line lets her know that the masked people only have a few weapons left to throw at them, but she still remains cautious in her running patterns as she runs to a few more bodies to collect more light throwing weapons. The guy follows her example, a bloody machete in hand.
They run back to the finish line, where a few of the others have begun to realize that there was one more masked person to torment them. Their weapon of choice? An actual roaring chainsaw.
“I should have stayed home!” The guy with piercings groans.
“Would’ve been the better choice,” she agrees.
The masked person slashed their chainsaw with reckless abandon at whoever dared to come close. One of the players was using someone’s lifeless body as a shield to get closer. Another player runs to the side of the race track, but a laser immediately comes for them.
Chiyori glances at the guy with piercings, locking eyes with him, darts her eyes to the masked person then back at him. He nods.
Holding her breath, she assumes a throwing stance. She brings the axe behind her head, then extends her arm forward while at the same time letting go of the weapon while keeping her wrist and elbow firm. It sinks into the masked person’s jugular.
Trusting that the guy would take over, she whips back to face the starting line and grabs the small throwing daggers she collected in each hand. Just in time to dodge a masked person’s forward slash. She drops to the floor and rolls over, kicking them on the head to dizzy them. She jumps on their back and uses another dagger to cut their throat open.
With her legs wrapped around their torso, she rolls both of them over just as several arrows lodge onto the masked person’s chest. Heart pounding at the close call, Chiyori throws her remaining daggers and knives in rapid succession towards where the arrows came from, hoping to buy time.
She crawls to the nearest body, who is rendered nearly headless by a curved blade. She pulls it out, spraying even more blood all over herself and the floor. When she looks up, she finds a masked person struggling to remove a knife embedded into their eye socket. Stopping for a second to marvel at her blind but successful aim, she puts them out of their misery with a swing of the blade.
Chiyori looks around for the third masked person, finding them grappling with another player. She turns her gaze to the guy with piercings, who seems to have successfully dispatched his opponent. He has his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting at her, but she is too far away to hear him clearly.
“... over here!”
“What?!” She screams.
The guy runs a hand through his hair in frustration, then points furiously at the stadium screens. She follows the direction of his finger, to find that there is only less than a minute left for her to cross about 100 meters to the finish line.
With no time to waste, she tightens her grip on the handle of the curved blade and runs for her life.
Chiyori is only a few feet away when a javelin twirls through the air and nicks her calf. She nearly drops at the pain, but perseveres and limps as fast as she can.
The guy with piercings picks up his opponent’s chainsaw and turns it on with a loud roar.
He sprints for the masked person making their way to Chiyori and slices them in half jaggedly.
With only twenty seconds left on the clock, he barks for the two other players in the finish line to help him drag Chiyori to safety, but only one actually does.
They cross the finish line with two seconds to spare.
Their phones chime in unison.
𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 𝐂 𝐋 𝐄 𝐀 𝐑 𝐄 𝐃
𝐂 𝐎 𝐍 𝐆 𝐑 𝐀 𝐓 𝐔 𝐋 𝐀 𝐓 𝐈 𝐎 𝐍 𝐒
They all pant in exhaustion, bodies slick with blood. Blood from the masked people, from the other players, from them. Chiyori can’t wait to go home and wash it all off, maybe take a week off from playing the games.
【 𝙶 𝙰 𝙼 𝙴 】
♤ ♤ ♤ ♤ ♤
♤ ♤ ♤ ♤ ♤
𝐖 𝐄 𝐖 𝐈 𝐋 𝐋 𝐒 𝐔 𝐏 𝐏 𝐋 𝐘 𝐀 𝐋 𝐋 𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 𝐒 𝐔 𝐑 𝐕 𝐈 𝐕 𝐎 𝐑 𝐒
𝐖 𝐈 𝐓 𝐇 𝐀 𝐓 𝐄 𝐍 - 𝐃 𝐀 𝐘 𝐕 𝐈 𝐒 𝐀
She struggles to stand, waving off any help offered to her.
Hand still gripping on the curved blade, she uses it to cut away at the long grass until she finds a small table with a single Ten of Spades card on it. Despite not having the need for it, she swipes it and hides it in her bra.
Chiyori limps back to where the others are. The guy with piercings has blood dripping down his nose, and a cut somewhere on his trunk causing the shirt he has on to cling to his form.
“Welcome to the Borderlands,” she repeats with a smile, referring to before the game started. “I’m Kuroba Chiyori. What’s your name?”
Warily, he considers the hand she offers for him to shake. He glances at her face, at her horrific smile, teeth stained with blood. He takes her small hand into his much larger one and slowly shakes it, feeling vaguely like he is making a deal with the devil.
“Niragi Suguru.”