Always? Always ▪︎ {Squid Game} Sae-byeok x OC

S1 E4 - Stick to the Room {Part 1}

"What did I miss?"

Ji-ah had now calmed down a little and was fiddling with her fingers. Sae-byeok looked at the broken girl in her arms and replied.

"After the last game, 79 players were eliminated, so more money was put into the piggy bank. 7.9 billion won to be precise, which means that the total so far is 34.8 billion won."

Ji-ah blew a breath of disbelief and muttered a "jeez" in shock. Sae-byeok nodded, agreeing with Ji-ah and she was about to speak when the announcer spoke.

"Your mealtime begins now. All players please form a line in the center."

Everyone got themselves into two lines and Sae-byeok had to drag Ji-ah out of her bed as she didn't want to get up.

When Ji-ah got to the front of the line, a guard passed her a glass bottle of sparkling water and an egg. She looked at the egg and stated monotonously.

"Nothing says seeing your brother get shot in the head better than a cold egg afterwards. Lovely."

She left the line and trudged back to her bed, and as she was eating, she looked to the center of the room where 101 was beating someone up for accusing them of going in the line twice. Ji-ah rolled her eyes, but they then widened when she had found out that the guy had died from all the brute beatings.

Everyone looked at 101 in shock as he had just killed a man and got away with it, but Ji-ah knew that now since you can get away with killing someone, tonight is going to have a lot of chaos and deaths.

Everybody just stood around in shock at what had just happened, Ji-ah looked around and could tell that some players were making plans. And that unnerved her.

Now, most people were sat down, there was a clock counting down the minutes until lights out and Ji-ah was sat next to Sae-byeok tapping her foot in anticipation. Soon, Gi-hun came over.

"Hey, pickpocket, Lee Ji-ah."

The two girls lifted their head at the same time and looked at him, he smiled lightly and asked as he saw how tired they was and fed up.

"Will you be alright?"

He then spoke directly to Sae-byeok.

"It looked like you and that thug weren't on good terms."

Sae-byeok responded.

"So what?"

Gi-hun explained.

"If anything happens after lights-out, we're all meeting by my bed. You should both join us."

Ji-ah nodded, but Sae-byeok stated.

"I don't trust people, especially people who ended up in a place like this."

Gi-hun asked.

"Are you seriously saying that to me and to your best friend who's right next to you? You don't trust people because they're trustworthy, it's because you have nothing else to lean on."

He sighed and then walked off, Ji-ah was picking at her nails and kept quiet, a little hurt from what Sae-byeok said. But she understood why she said it.

■

With 30 seconds left until lights out, everyone got into their beds. Ji-ah layed down and held her pocket knife in her hand under the cover and steadied her breathing as the announcer began counting down.

"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

The lights shut off and everything was silent until a blood curdling scream was heard, and that was when everything went crazy.