Alice in Borderland ~ Chishiya

42

'Okay, so what do we know now?' Chishiya looks around the group. It feels like we're in some action movie and that we have to go onto hiding, because we would be wanted by the mafia. I look at Raiden for a moment and think about another conversation I had with him, about what we wanted to do with our lives in the future, before we ended up in Borderland. He had said that he would like to do something with film. Directing or screenwriter, he didn't really care much, as long as it had to do with film. I think back to joking that we're now actors in this movie and smile lightly. I hope for him there's a possibility that he can return to the real world so that he can make his dream a reality.

'What is it?' Raiden asks when he realizes that I've been looking at him with a smile on my face for a while. I shrug. 'Being here in the dark, with all the curtains closed and a small battery lamp, really reminds me of some mafia movie.' I plop down on the couch next to him and look at him with a grin. 'Have you written this script, too?'

At first he looks at me with an incomprehensible look, as if he can't think of joking about this now, but then a smile slowly appears on his face. 'If I had,' he says with a growing smile, as he remembers, 'I wouldn't have sent a homicidal maniac after us who's trying to kill us all.' I can't hold back my laughter and neither can he. His laugh is far from carefree and cheerful, but it's a very good start.

'Very cute,' Chishiya mumbles in exasperation. 'If we can now focus on what's really important?' I turn my face his way. He's standing against the wall with his arms folded, with that exasperated look on his face. It reminds me of one of the meetings we had at the Beach. He was talking about the safe, but my mind was elsewhere as Raiden had to play a game that night.

'What we know,' Chishiya then begins to answer his own question, 'is that we have unlocked all available cards from the first stage, which has now moved us to the next one.' He walks towards a chair and sits down. 'This phase involves all the missing cards, all of which probably have one person in charge of the game. Just like the man who represents the king of spades.'

'The king of spades is a game of survival,' Kuina mumbles, 'and every player in Borderland automatically participates in it. We lose when everyone is killed and win when the king is killed.'

'So basically, we could be killed any minute,' Raiden says, raising his thumb, 'great.' He's right. The king of spades could, in theory, attack us at any moment. A few closed curtains won't protect us. What will protect us, is.. 'Except for when we're in another game, I suppose,' I say. 'Is it even possible to participate in a game if you're already participating in another?'

'Technically, none of us volunteered to play the king of spades,' I reply with a shrug, 'so we should still be able to join another game. I assume our days of visa are still passing by the day and this game could take a long time. It would be quite unfair if we couldn't make an attempt to renew our visas in the meantime.'

'As if Borderland has been fair so far,' Raiden mumbles, looking down at the ground. He's right about that: so far, we haven't been particularly warmly welcomed here. 'Somehow he knew where we were going,' Chishiya insists. 'Despite the fact that he couldn't actually know our location from that zeppelin. Yet he managed to attack that group of people. That makes me assume he can see our locations.'

'Like some kind of GPS?' Kuina asks. Chishiya shrugs and nods. 'I think so,' he agrees. For now, that's the most logical thing to start from. 'If so,' he continues, 'the most convenient thing we can do, is to avoid being in a large group.'

Is this the point where he suggests going on alone? I think he told me this morning that we should think about how we would do these games. We believed that we could better combine our strengths, but that we don't want to compete against each other. We didn't think we could know in advance what kind of game we would be playing, but now it turns out we can. The zeppelins indicate which difficulty level will be played. Would he still want to work together, or does his comment mean we should break up?