LET THE GAMES BEGIN • squid game

( 14 ) front man

N A R I

HERES ANOTHER ONE BEFORE I GO TO SCHOOL BECAUSE Y'ALL ARE UPSET AND I NEED TO FIX THAT

Sae-byeok hadn't got a wink of sleep that night. She stayed alert, knife in hand and eyes red and puffy. The silence was louder than it ever had been.

Nari was all she could think about. The poor, poor girl. She didn't deserve to be caught up in all of this. She was just a kid.

Gi-hun still sat beside her, hands still covered in blood. it went up his sleeves and was splattered on his face.

They'd stayed well away from Sangwoo. After the stunts he had pulled, he was not to be trusted. Sae-byeok never trusted him anyway. The man was a maniac. Later on, maybe she'd come to realise that he had reasons for what did. But as of now, all she saw was red.

The lights suddenly switched on, and the doors opened, revealing two guards. A circle and a square.

" Player 456, player 218. It is time to play the sixth game. Please swiftly make your way towards the game hall. Player 067, please follow me." Sae-byeok furrowed her brows, glancing at Gi-hun.

" Be careful." She nodded. He nodded back before leaving. The square guard moved to leave the room, and she followed him quietly.

She was being led to a place she wasn't familiar with. The decor of the elevator they were in was lavish and expensive, very different from what they had all grown accustomed to.

The elevator doors opened, and revealed an insanely decorated room, expensive fabric and gold sculptures all around. A man stood in the middle of all of it, turned away. He wore a black cloak.

When he turned, she saw that he wore a black mask also with the outline of a face. The guard walked away to stand in the corner of the room, and the cloaked man took down his hood.

He reached around the back of his head to unclip his mask, revealing an obviously unfamiliar man to Sae-Byeok.

" You don't know me." He started, putting his mask down on a side table and sitting down on a couch, in front of a large window.

" But you know someone who does." She furrowed her brows. What?

One night earlier

" Boss, player 455 is in critical condition." In ho glances down at his radio and pulls it out of his pocket, pressing the button.

" You take her to the medical room, and make sure she gets treated. She doesn't die, you got that?" He put down the radio and sat down in his chair, exhaling heavily.

455 was his little sister. He hasn't seen her in five years. So, he can't understand why on earth she's here.

She's been protected all the way through. Put in situations where she can't be eliminated.

All thanks to him. Now, they were never really that close. They had the typical sibling bond, but Nari was always closer to Junho than him.

That being said, he doesn't want to know what her reaction will be when she finds out that he's been shot dead. At his hands, nonetheless.

He looks up at his screen, which is linked to a camera in the bedroom. Now, only 3 beds sat in the room, and none of the three players left were asleep.

They just glared at each other, mostly player 067 and player 456 shooting daggers at player 218. He picked up his remote and backed up the footage to a few minutes before.

In-ho watched carefully as the girl cradled Nari's head in her lap and player 456 ran to the doors for help. 218 suddenly stomped over and shoved 067 off the bed, jabbing his knife into Nari's neck.

The lights switched on, and the guards marched in holding the signature black box with a pink bow on it. Then, he turned it off. He wasn't completely heartless, it hurt to watch.

It went back to real time footage. They still hadn't moved an inch.

end of flashback

" Nari." He clarified, shifting to get comfortable.

" She's not dead." Sae-byeok's brows furrowed. That's not possible. She watched her die.

" I can prove it to you if you want." He pressed a button on his remote, revealing a white room with two guards inside, and low and behold, Nari was lying on a stretcher, a bandage on the left side of her neck and her lower stomach as a heart monitor beeped.

" What-how..." She stuttered, shocked. The man only gestured to the chair beside him, and she sat down warily.

" I am Nari's eldest brother." He opened a glass bottle of scotch beside him and poured it into a glass over ice and held it in his gloved hands.

" She probably thinks I'm dead. I took part in the games 5 years ago, and won. They reported me as a missing person. Nothing was discovered." It was only now that Sae-byeok noticed the torn hole in his leather coat, by his shoulder. Streaks of blood surrounding it.

" Nari also has a brother younger than me, Jun-ho. They were the closest. At least until a few years ago." Sae-byeok felt like she was overstepping her boundaries, hearing Nari's secrets but they weren't coming from the girl.

" Kids bullied her in school, because we didn't have much money. It ruined her. She grew distant. That's what tore them apart." He said it so casually, she almost thought he was lying. Like it was no big deal.

" Since then, she's been home maybe twice. She doesn't want to face it. Now, she doesn't have to." He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a police ID, splattered with blood.

He handed it to her, and she took it carefully, examining it.

A picture of a man in a suit, who shared many resemblances with Nari, was laminated and slid into the leather, with the name Hwang Jun-ho underneath.

" He's dead."

" Why are you telling me all this?" She muttered, closing the ID and handing it back.

" Because, I can see you care about her. She's gonna need that."

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Y'ALL NEXT CHAPTER IS SO SAD I AM SHITTING BRICKS