BITTERSWEET, squid game

chapter four

AMARA WOULD REMEMBER THIS PARTICULAR PROCEDURE HER WHOLE LIFE.

No one— and Amara meant literally no one in the huge room had decided to go back home and not play the games, which meant that everyone else was just as desperate for a chance to earn money as Amara was, which, looking at the amount of debt everyone had, was kind of unsurprising.

Upon receiving the affirmation from the crowd that yes, they all wanted to play the games, the pink men (Amara had decided that she would call them that) asked everyone to line up and a sign something, that said:

CLAUSE 1: A player is not allowed to voluntarily quit the games.

CLAUSE 2: A player who refuses to play will be eliminated.

CLAUSE 3: The games may be terminated upon a majority vote.

She signed under the three clauses, hands trembling around the fountain pen. A weird feeling came upon her (her brother had started calling it the 'Amara tingle' after he'd spent a full night binging all of the Spiderman movies), the same one that she had when she was the airport, leaving for Seoul, and when she generally had an intuition that things would go wrong. She brushed it off, reminding herself that they were just games, just like the ddakji. She could eat a full serving of spicy tteokbokki with broth; who knows, maybe she could earn more in these games and even finish paying off all of her loans?

They went through some stairs which Amara would give props to the architect for, and then to a photobooth sort of place where their faces were clicked. 

"One, two, three— smile!" a voice came from the camera, but Amara was too busy looking around to notice. She looked up at the camera just as it said smile, so the picture captured was of Amara looking into the camera with furrowed eyebrows and hair flying into her face. She saw a man with bleached hair making peace signs with his hands and looking into the camera with his tongue stuck-out. At least someone didn't look like they were about to be sent into Pennywise's cave or something.

Then they were led into a large arena sort of place, which definitely looked like some sort of cage, the prints on the walls and ceiling were so natural that Amara would've actually thought they were in broad daylight. 

The room— place, whatever, was huge. And by huge, Amara meant huge. Opposite to where they were all standing, a huge, fake tree stood, in front of which there was a huge doll. It was standing facing the tree, its right hand bent from the elbow which was resting on the tree, its head on top of the hand in a way that shielded its eyes from being able to see anything. It was the pose that the 'it' would stand when children played Red Light, Green Light. 

"Please stand behind the red line," a feminine voice announced. "The first game that you will be playing is Red Light, Green Light."

Amara didn't mind paying attention to the next part, because she knew how Red Light, Green Light was played. Or, rather, The Hibiscus Flowers Have Bloomed, like it was called in Korean.

☾

She should've payed attention to it.

Because the next thing she knew, people were getting shot. Did the feminine voice ever announce that the people who moved after the doll said Red Light would get killed? 

When the first round started, everyone surged forward. Then the doll looked back, which made everyone freeze in their place, just like how the rules in the game said. 

The player with the bleached hair moved. The doll's eyeballs landed on him.

"Player 324, eliminated."

Before Amara could think anything, a sound resembling a gunshot rang, and Player 324 fell face-first into the ground. When the doll started saying mungunghwa kkochi pieot seumnida for the second time, Player 250 went to check up on Player 324 and flipped him, the latter was covered in blood. In a split second, Player 250 was shot too, and everything else after that became chaos. 

A lot of emotions went through Amara at that moment. She regretted signing the paper. She felt anger towards the pink men. She was horrified, because this was the first time she'd ever seen someone being killed. But above all of that, she felt insanely scared. She was used to hearing reports about encounters from her ex, who was a cop, but seeing it actually happen in front of her wasn't something she could ever get used to. 

The players burst into panic and pandemonium. Everyone starting running towards the entry, banging on the doors and pleading to be let out. Gunshots rang across the arena. There was so much blood that Amara could've cried. She terribly wanted to sob and hide under a table, but she was too scared of her life being taken to do so. 

With firm determination, after following Player 001, she sprinted for her life (literally), doing her best to reach for the finish line. 

Whenever someone was shot, she closed her eyes tightly, and she would even admit about one or two tears rolling down her face, but she bottled up all of her courage and moved on. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ali holding up Player 456, and at that moment she prayed to the gods to keep him safe, too. 

She really, really regretted making that decision of joining these wretched games. 

☾

the games will be pretty brief, because after junho being introduced, i'll be focusing completely on the amara-junho dynamic. so if you've never actually seen squid game & are reading this (yuri i'm looking at you) this might be confusing.