♠ ♦ Alice in Borderland ♣ ♥

11

'You'd better sit on the other side,' Sara grumbles angrily to Drabe as the two move toward the car. 'A car?' I mumble. 'How is that possibly? I thought there was no power or working IC chips outside the arenas.'

'The Beach,' Haruto exclaims. 'The what?' I hear myself mumble. 'The Beach,' Haruto repeats. 'The place where many players stay to join forces to collect all the cards so we can go home.' It sounds like he's entrusting us with important information, but apparently we have gained his trust by the outcome of the game. 'Does the Beach decide who can go home?' Soran asks. 'Yes and no...' Haruto replies vaguely. 'Hatter, the leader, beliefs that when a full set of poker cards has been collected, one person can go home.' He holds up his hand. Only now do I see that he's wearing a kind of wristband that you get at a swimming pool when you take a locker. The number "115" is on it. 'It will be a while before it's my turn,' he mumbles, lowering his eyes, 'but I'll keep playing.'

'Haruto!' the boy behind the wheel shouts. 'Come on, let's go!' Haruto looks at us, questioningly. 'I'm sure you can come to the Beach if I ask. We can really use you.' It's not just because of his last sentence that the idea really bothers me. I just get a weird feeling about it. I can't help thinking that going with them is a big mistake. 'Haruto, now! Or you can walk!'

'Thanks for the offer,' Soran says, 'but Kairi and I will stay together.' Visibly disappointed, Haruto nods. 'I wish you the best, then. Thanks for what you did during the game. Maybe I'll see you again.'

We watch as he struggles to move himself to the car. It takes a while, but then they drive away and the light disappears from the street. How come we've never seen it before? When I turn to look at Soran, I notice that the two girls are already gone. He stares in the direction the car has gone thoughtfully. 'So the Beach is kind of like an organization that has cars and who knows what else,' he mumbles. 'Still, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with whoever organizes the games. It sounded like they themselves aren't even sure yet whether it's possible to go home.'

'Do you know that after this game, I wonder even more who's behind this?' I exclaim. 'Who invents such games, where everyone is pitted against each other to commit violence?!' Soran doesn't seem to know either. He looks at the card in his hands. 'It was a game of clubs,' he says, 'yet there was more violence and betrayal than in a game of hearts.'

I'm beginning to understand more and more what Yuki meant when he expressed his expectations. The trio stays together at that "Beach" and seemed to be a real unit, but either that was a smokescreen to intimidate us, or they really are that easy to turn around when it comes to their own lives. I understand how terrifying it is to think you're going to die and I think when it comes to Soran's life, mine or anyone else's, I'd rather choose us, too. But these people turn themselves against each other when it's not even as a last resort.

'Thank you, Kairi,' Soran says after we quietly led ourselves to our residency. 'Thank you for sparing me from answering that question.' I think back to the moment when I had read the assignment where you had to name a death from the immediate vicinity. 'But I wish you hadn't,' he sighs. 'I'd much rather answer every question myself than see your pain in that one question.' He means this. He had wanted to take on all that pain himself to make sure I wouldn't suffer. I'm not at all concerned that Soran will betray me in a game. Neither of us would ever do that to the other. I'm just worried that I'm so sure of that. We would push ourselves aside if that means we can save the other person from something terrible. How much pain will we cause the other by giving everything to try to prevent that?

'I didn't expect it to hit me like this,' I say, feeling another lump rise in my throat. We enter the random house where we're staying and find the battery lamp. 'Asami and I weren't close at all. In fact, she's hardly ever been nice to me.'

'Still, it's shocking that she's gone,' Soran agrees. 'We have been so suddenly taken from our lives and subjected to change. We're not at all used to the concept of "death" being introduces into our lives in this way.' He's right about that. 'I wonder...' I mumble. 'Could it really be that we will change? That the games make us vicious and cause us to become individualistic? What if I become like Sara or Drabe?'

'Kairi, please tell me this isn't because of what that guy said to you, is it?' I don't know why he's suddenly so annoyed, but Soran's face is sullen. 'As if he knows everything.'

'Think about it,' I begin. 'In our first game, the clear condition was simply to stay alive at the end of the game. Those clowns had to hurt us to stay alive, not the other way around. We were never told to turn against them, too. In the bar we simply had to collectively drink all the liquids within fifteen minutes. It was never said that one person had to die from that poison. We just had to read a story and complete the assignment in it. In none of the games were we directly incited to physical or psychological violence.'

'"One of the players gets a black eye" doesn't sound very peaceful right now,' Soran mumbles. 'That's exactly what I mean,' I reply. 'It just sounds that way. They are simply told what needs to be done and we as players make it so that we have to achieve that by stabbing each other in the back. That's how it's implied by that computer voice, too, but there has been another solution. I won't stop trying to find it in every game, but I'm so afraid that there will come a game that I will change. I don't want that to happen.'

'I don't know if we can stop that,' Soran tells me honestly. 'Anyway, there will come a point where we either have to choose for ourselves or die for someone else.' I think he's right, but I don't want to accept that. That will mean that one day, I will be just like Reo and the others. I will resist that until my very last breath.

'What do we do now?' Soran changes the subject. 'We will train ourselves on days off and play games when we have to, but what is our further aim?' Looks like we both need a purpose or else we'll go crazy. 'All I can think of is to find out more information about that "Beach", the place where they apparently have working cars.'

'Then it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to turn down Haruto's offer to come along,' Soran sighs. I think otherwise. 'I think we did the right thing not to subject ourselves to an unfamiliar place like a headless chicken,' I say. 'He talked about it like it was important and like that place could use us. Maybe we should think about whether we can use that place first.'

'Do you think it's true what Haruto said about what that guy was thinking? That someone can go home when all the poker cards have been collected?'

'No,' I reply immediately, 'but I think that's a dangerous question to be dealing with. I understand why you would believe in such a thing, despite it being unproven. It gives you hope. Hope can be powerful, but it can also be destructive.'

Part of me doesn't think it's a good idea to delve into that Beach any more. What if it makes me wrongly believe in something I shouldn't believe in? What if it gives me hope and that hope will crush me when it turns out there's no way out of this place? I feel that things are already going in the wrong direction: I already have hope, hope that some answers can be found in that place.

Soran and I think exactly the same. When we look at each other I see the fear of hope in his eyes, but at the same time we know that this is the only way to move on. We are slowly gaining more information about the Beach to consider whether we should go there.

'What do we know about that Beach?' Soran asks. 'We know they were wearing swimming suits and wristbands,' I reply. 'We know they have at least one working car,' Soran continues, 'and they're driven by the theory that there's an opportunity to go home.'

'That was it. We don't have any more information.'

What if it will be a cult that we absolutely should not come close to? But what if this place will certainly provide redemption? I can't help it: by the day I'm getting more desperate to return to my parents. The commemoration of Kaito is in three weeks. Soran and I should be there in person, not in a photo. My cousin seems to feel exactly the same way. 'It's time we got more information then.'