♠ ♦ Alice in Borderland ♣ ♥

36

Yuki is casually leaning against the pillar with his arms folded, but his eyes show the unrest he feels. 'I don't feel good about this,' he sighs softly. When he bends his head a little closer to me to say his words in secret, the nerves start racing through my body. I share his opinion. It will definitely go downhill from now on. 'We can still run,' I say, trying to be funny. 'Let's go then,' is his reply. I can't tell from his voice whether he's serious or joking. It seems like he would like to, but we both know it's impossible.

'It's about to begin,' Soran says softly as he joins us. Yuki bows his head back and raises his gaze. At first there's nothing to see on the first floor, but then the militants come into view. I suppress an exasperated sigh when I see Niragi with that arrogant look standing in the centre. 'Beachers!' I curl the corners of my mouth slightly upwards when that doesn't immediately silence the crowd. 'Beachers!' he shouts again, to which it gradually becomes quieter. 'We have an important announcement,' Niragi continues. 'You all know that Hatter had to play a game. We are very sorry to inform you that he unfortunately didn't come back from this.'

The whole lobby turns into chaos. Bewildered cries echo through the room. 'I told you Hatter didn't come back from his game,' I hear a Beacher say. 'He died during the game...' In all the commotion, Niragi takes a moment to let his eyes glide across the room. I get a hunch that he might be looking for me, so I quickly look away. Besides all the executive members, he thinks Ringo and I are the only ones who know that Hatter did survive his game and that he died from something else.

'Don't worry,' Niragi quickly continues, 'the executive members are not dropping the Beach! We continue our mission to collect all the poker cards! From now on, all this will be led by Aguni.' The new number one comes into the picture. 'I have full control of the Beach from now on,' he says. 'Follow my orders. Live for me, die for me.' In our case it will be more likely to die because of him. 'I am convinced that we will all continue to do our best to collect the cards,' Niragi continues. 'We will now announce in which groups you will compete.'

Now I feel my breathing coming to a stop. Will it be tonight already? I run my eyes through the lobby and come to Ringo, who's standing on the side-lines, listening a little further on.

'Wow,' I suddenly hear Chichiro say next to me, 'Hatter is dead...' I turn my head and look at him. Suddenly I feel my body getting even colder. He knows absolutely nothing about all this. I'm sure he'll be shocked when Soran and I are called, but he's already so shocked. Fear is engraved in his eyes. It seems as if he thought Hatter was immortal and that the realization of his death has knocked him to the ground. If someone pretending to be immortal can die, what about the common people? I really want to tell him it's going to be okay, but I can't.

'The third car,' Niragi reads from his paper, after which he mentions names of unknown Beachers. Then I see a sly smile appear on his face, accompanied by an ominous twinkle in his eye. 'Unfortunately we have problems with a broken down car,' he says, 'so we had to merge the last two groups.' Soran and I look at each other intently. 'The fourth and final car will have the following Beachers: Kairi, Soran, Yuki, Ringo.' In the pause that follows, Chichiro lets out a surprised cry. 'What?!' He looks at me shocked. 'Are you going to play a game tonight?!' Apparently. 'They are accompanied by Reo, Yoshua...' With each name he takes a short pause to let the load of it come in to us. 'Kyo...' I feel Yuki stiffen next to me. Without thinking, I put my hand on his arm to let him know I'm there for him. 'And Chichiro,' Niragi concludes the groups.

My heart stops for a moment. My hand goes limp. Before it can slide off Yuki's arm, he puts his hand on it. His warmth keeps me from falling into a bottomless pit. Ringo was right: they want to dump us, and they use our tormentors to pull it off and Chichiro to torture me.