THE SLEEPING CHAMBERS felt like a comfort Asuka couldn't believe she would ever crave, as though it was gradually becoming less of a holding room like a purgatory, and more of a college dorm with people she found herself somewhat familiar with because she recognised their faces, but not totally trusting of them. But it was the only form of normalcy within this facility she had, the only constant that never changed but being back here, in this room, just reminded her that she survived. She's still alive, and those who weren't were discarded into black boxes and taken to the bowels, never to be seen again. Entering into this dismal dorm meant she lived, and was forced to carry on, to endure more. But it didn't mean she trusted this room whole-heartedly. Not anymore.
Each room they entered to play was new and different, each bringing a new nightmare, a new brutal way to die — this room wasn't any different. But she yearned for the stiffness of a mattress underneath her sore back, and she yearned for that dreamless sleep to weed itself into the dried and cracked whorls of her overtired brain as she collapsed against the foam, and died for a few hours.
It felt wrong to be here, and the wrongness of the situation had a strong hold on Asuka who was taking a slow descent into the madness this world created to figure out why she's still alive. How much luck did she have? Or better yet — how much did she have left?
Guilt had wrapped an agonisingly tight hand around her throat, and she struggled to breathe past the sharp nails digging into the tender skin there, leaving her body trembling with unresolved anger and confusion. She had never felt so stunned before, like she had been blindsided by a stun grenade and she was left disoriented and unable to know where the fuck she was going. Even when her father walked out on her and her family, it was predictable. Heartbreaking, and destroying, but she saw it coming which made it less hurtful. But she could never foresee the act of a soldier keeping her alive.
The first thing she could take note of when she followed after the slow trickle of the herd back to where they lived, was how empty the room was now rather than what it had been when they first left to play the fourth game. The room had a distinct scent of bleach stinging the air as though they were standing in a hospital, and it didn't take long to realise that the floors were scrubbed clean of the days old blood and filth that had been left to fester there. All the beds that had been toppled over, and the broken bits of platform and pillars repurposed as barricades to protect themselves from each other had been reverted back to their natural state. They must have cleared this place out, and scrubbed it clean while they were out. How nice of them.
Though, due to the lack of survivalists left in the games, there were fewer beds set up for them, allowing the echo of their slow, cautious footsteps to reverberate off the tiled walls as they shuffled into the large, and almost barren room.
