♠ ♦ Alice in Borderland ♣ ♥

7 - ♥3

'I don't understand,' Yui mumbles reluctantly. 'Why do we need to go to that "arena"?' Her voice sounds scared and I can't blame her. No one wants to go through what we went through five days ago. 'Because otherwise, we'll die,' Reo jokes. 'Then, a laser beam comes through the air and goes right through your head.' He presses his index finger against Yui's forehead. Her body begins to tremble. Or is that because of the abstinence from the alcohol?

'Shut up,' Eymi says, glaring at Reo. 'Why should we all believe that anyway? Because madam "look at me, I'm so smart" says so?' she continues as she nods at me. I zip up my vest and don't look at her. 'You don't have to come, of course,' I say in general. Part of me hopes that they will indeed stay here, as the atmosphere hasn't gotten any better in the last few days, but if the theory Soran and I have come up with is really true, we'll all have to enter another arena to extend our visas and try to stay alive. We'll need each other for that. Still, I can't shake that night when that apartment building exploded and collapsed. Those guys had judged us to be a threat. They bet they could handle those girls over us, but apparently their guess had been wrong. Whatever that "clubs" means, it's clear they thought they needed us for that.

"We don't even know if we're going to have to help each other in this game or screw each other over," the boy had said. This implies that there are also games where we have to compete against each other. What will happen to us when we do? We barely manage to keep the group together as it is right now.

'Kairi and Soran are more immersed in this world than we are,' Chichiro says. He almost sounds guilty. 'And we have also seen how different places in Tokyo light up every night.' Nobody argues. Nice of them to notice that, despite the fact that they only seemed to be part of the world during the day. 'Indeed,' Yoshua agrees. 'We just can't afford to ignore it.' So, with a loud sigh from Eymi, we begin our journey to find one of the illuminated spots.

How ironic that we end up at a bar. 'What a great place for such a game, don't you think?' Reo ask enthusiastically as he walks to the entrance with a grin on his face. He's still trying to take that tough attitude, but he's still standing right in front of the entrance. He's now thinking about the transparent dividing line he's about to cross. Once we've entered the arena, we can't leave until the game is over. 'Come on,' he says, pretending to be light-hearted as he turns his head to us, 'let's have a drink.' Despite his words, he still doesn't move. He's probably waiting for us to follow him, because he doesn't seem to trust that we'll go after him when he crosses that dividing line. Like we have a choice. I walk forward without saying anything.

'Hopefully, it's a drinking game,' Eymi adds, as a line now almost seems to have formed in front of the entrance. She bumps my shoulder as she passes. 'Then we'll finally might have some fun with you.' I know she just meant it as a sneer, but I'm going to think about it anyway. What if I'm forced to drink? How far will I be driven to set aside my morality in order to live?

'Bartender,' Reo calls in, 'give us five shots!' As soon as we enter, we see that we're not alone. The boy and the girl are standing at the bar with their own phones in their hands and are immediately looking up because of our loud entrance. They quickly brush away the intimidated expression on their faces, but they can't avoid examining us quickly and thoroughly. There's something about that; they're not the first to do that here. As we approach to grab our own phones, I quickly scan the pair. They're close enough not to be strangers, but too far away to be friendly. When I finally arrive at the bar, I see that there's only one phone left. This means that this game can have a maximum of nine players.

I saw the boy looking at me before, but when the computer voice says my name after the facial recognition, his face immediately turns back to me. When our eyes meet, I can see a thoughtful expression on his face. It seems like he knows me, or at least my name, but I wouldn't know where from. I can say with certainty that I have never seen this boy with brown hair in my life before. The moment he averts his gaze again, I realize that this might be an opportunity to learn more about this world.