Lulled Heart | s. Chishiya

Five

Insecurities

"This is what happens when they don't listen to me.." Hikaru sighed as she stared at the dead bodies littering the ground, formed in a circle.

She had just cleared a 8 of hearts, musical chairs. There was a total of 7 rounds. It was a game that consisted of writing numbers on a paper and putting it on a chair. Before the music started you needed to put a blindfold on and grab the shoulders of the person next to you to not lose your place in the circle.

When the music would stop you would look at the piece of paper that was on the chair you ended the round with. The winner was determined from the number on your paper, the one closest to the number the game announced before the music started, would win. The rules were vague and said that the winner would gain immunity but with immunity came with having to choose the person to give a game over to. This resulted in two people dying every round, the person who got the lowest number and the person who was chosen. All of this was done in secret, so nobody would knew who the winner was.

The rules didn't permit talking at anytime, if you did talk then it would result in game over.

Hikaru noticed that the winner of the round was given immunity, meaning they can't die. She tested her theory and chose herself, she survived and only one person died. Everyone noticed how only one person died, and during the interval she wrote on a piece of paper and told everyone that the person with immunity needed to chose themselves. Some people looked at her like she was insane, basically not believing her and believing that the person who won had chose the same person who had the lowest number.  After the third round she had tried to help once again by telling people the that system was using composite numbers and using a negative scale going from 11, 23, 47, 59, 67, and 83 being the last one and if they all wrote the same numbers down then everyone would be safe.

People again ruled her out by writing back to her saying that her claim was unjustifiable because the first round chose the number 1. She came to the conclusion that these people were not smart and the hearts game once again took control over everybody.

The only reason she won safety every round after that is because she noticed how the blindfold had a different material on each side, she closely examined the blindfold and felt stitches on one of the horizontal edges and proceeded to feel the other side and felt nothing she tried lifting up the side that had no stitchings but it would only go so much because there was a tiny unnoticeable knot holding it in place. She didn't want to reveal what she had found so she didn't untie it until she saw everyone put their blindfolds on. When she untied the knot it revealed that one side of the blindfold was sheer, see through, the other side was a flap of cotton material.

she used this advantage of the blindfold to make it to the closest number every time. This was how she was going to live, at any cost it took she would never die.

She was the only survivor who made it to the last round. Her nerves were a little shaky because of the scenes of watching people die and yell in despair, she doesn't think she'll ever get used to that but it's inevitable and she'll push through. The adrenaline she would feel during the game would help her keep a straight face on, not revealing any emotion whatsoever.

She finally decided to walk out of the game venue, a sick place to make a game venue, really, it took place at a preschool. She was walking out until she saw a boy, he was talking into a walkie talkie, his voice sounded familiar but she couldn't exactly pinpoint where she heard his voice from. He was hiding behind some shrubs watching people from the beach get in a car and drive away. He immediately ran after the car following it. Interesting, seems like another person was going to get trapped in the beach.