Alice in Borderland: The Cycle Continues

24.2) Side Story 1 - Five of Diamonds [2] ✮

===Tori Jakurin===

At the start of the fifth battle, the group broke off; there was nothing surprising about that–it was obligatory. However, the air in the room had shifted. The lighthearted conversation had just been denial of the inevitable: that by the end of this game, two of us would lay dead.

This time, I sought out the girl. She was sitting in a booth, staring hard into her tablet. I slid into the booth across from her. She looked up. "What's up?"

"I think we should team up. Strategize together. There's no way either of us can win alone. Not with him." I said, nodding my head towards his direction

"Who will you save if you win?" She asked.

"You. You're the youngest."

"Exactly. And I asked the man straight-up. He said he'd save me. The woman told me herself already during the second round that she'd save me should she win."

"I... Don't think you can trust that man. While the rules were explained, he literally said that the point of the alliance rule was to encourage scheming and secret collisions. Not to just reduce the casualty by one."

"Oh crap. You're right." She said, her eyes fixed to the table. "Do you think, perhaps, the man and woman are in a secret alliance?"

"Maybe they both told you that they'd save you to pacify you. If you thought you'd survive, you wouldn't play as hard, so then the two of them would only have one opponent to deal with."

"So what do we do?"

I pondered our next move, before shaking my head. "I don't know."

"So... Will you truly die if you get a Game Over?"

"Yup. That's the entire point of the Borderlands." Suddenly, a cold chill creeped down my back, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. My head turned, scanning the entire area we occupied.

"What?"

"Nothing. I... I just had the feeling that we were being watched."

The girl faltered, before tightening the window blinds at the end of the booth.

"If neither of us know what to do, should we just both choose zero until we come up with something?" I suggested.

"Hmm, I suppose so."

'She trusted the man so soon, then now she trusted me so soon. There's a certain friend her character reminds me of...' After some further deliberation, I chose zero. As the round ended, we both sat back down.

"Here are the results of the fifth battle."

Beach: 0   -   80
Maindo: 1   -   93
Butt: 0   -   69
Kingdom: 1   -   87

Beach: -4
Maindo: -3
Butt: -3
Kingdom: -4

"What the hell?" The girl shouted, jostling up from her seat the moment the locks released, accompanied by the battle six announcement. She turned to the other two, glaring at them with a dark sense of accusation. "How did you two know exactly what we were going to choose?"

"That must've been a coincidence." The man said. "Personally, I noticed the two of you sitting together, looking quite timid. So it was likely you two didn't know what to do, and would choose zero as a result."

"I just choose one out of instinct. I just got lucky, that's literally all." The woman said.

I turned back to where we sat, unable to ignore the feeling of having been watched. And there it was: a security camera pointed straight overhead of our table. Out of all the tables to choose, how did we end up at the one closest to the camera? The fight fizzled, and the two separated. The girl huffed, turning around, and I pointed out the camera to her at once.