Blades of Despair

-Chapter Seven-

The First Victim

When I woke up, the familiar pit in my stomach had all but returned as I realized that I had less than a day left to live. I was tempted to just stay in bed and wait for the time limit to end, but I knew that if I didn't show up to breakfast, the others would only come looking for me. Grumbling, I forced myself out of bed and remembered that I was still fully dressed – I quickly threw on a different set of slightly darker grey clothes and checked my appearance in the mirror. Still boring, Ori, I told myself. I tied my hair up into a ponytail, washed my face, brushed my teeth and put on a little makeup before deciding to head to the cafeteria. I retrieved my Seiko-pad and saw that I had woken up before seven, so I was likely the only one who was awake. I took a moment to look at the camera in my room, which was fixated on me as it had been every second of my time in the room – why were there only cameras in the bedrooms? I had no recollection of seeing them in the other parts of the school, so why invade my privacy in the one place I had any? Not wanting to remain under its silent gaze any longer, I left my room and headed to the cafeteria to have an early breakfast.

As I walked along the corridor, I found myself thinking about what would happen after today- would we really be executed, and were other teens like us going to be brought here and put through the same ordeal? It didn't make sense how successful this killing game had been, it was suspicious. And could we really believe everything that Monoworth and Monomenon had told us? They hadn't spoken to us yesterday; were they really organizing the next group of students? As an endless sea of questions washed over me, I mindlessly wandered into the kitchen and poured some cereal into a bowl. As I went to add milk to my miserable breakfast, I heard a stern voice behind me.

"What are you doing in here?" I turned to see Iowa standing in the doorway of the kitchen, who was as surprised to see me as I was her.

"I woke up early, so I decided to make myself breakfast. Is there a problem?"

"No, I'm just startled to see someone in the kitchen before me. I was about to start making breakfast for everyone – do you want me to make you something, even though you've got that cereal there?"

"I guess I may as well treat myself to a second breakfast," I sighed, "it'll be the last breakfast I ever have." Iowa was silent in response and merely nodded before getting to work. I helped her with ingredient collection, but she then asked to be alone with her thoughts and asked I request everyone come to the cafeteria, which I did on the Seiko-pad. Slowly, they all arrived looking as tired and depressed as I was – clearly the idea of today being our last alive weighed heavily on everyone's minds. Even Hatanaka and Ouji, who had spent the night together, couldn't even force a smile as they greeted us. Once we all sat down, Iowa silently served us all breakfast, but stopped as she reached the end of the table.

"We're missing someone," she whispered, but the room was so quiet everyone heard her, and we all immediately started looking frantically at who was missing.

"Where is Sanda?" asked Tokunaga worriedly. He was right, the Ultimate Vlogger was absent from breakfast. Where was she? She must have seen my message, and she had attended all the other breakfasts before, despite not wanting to talk to any of us.

"You don't think she's been-" squealed Mina, but she was cut off by Nishi.

"Don't say what I think you're about to say Mina. She's probably just sleeping, so let's be patient." And so, we all waited for Sanda to turn up. Ten minutes went by. Then twenty. Forty. A whole hour.

"Something's wrong. Even Sanda was never this late to breakfast," I said, and even Nishi couldn't refute me.

"We should go look for her, but not too many of us, in case we startle her," Saza stood up as she said this, "Ori and Morihei, you come with me, we'll go check on her. Everyone else should stay here and wait for us to come back." There was universal agreement to Saza's proposition and the three of us left the cafeteria and walked briskly to Sanda's room.