Alice in Borderland 3 - English Version

Episode 9

We kept on walking in silence and for a while I forgot I was in a Game.

I was too distracted by that new, heady feeling of holding Izumi's hand.

Suddenly, Izumi stopped and laughed.

"What's up?" I asked her, starting to laugh too.

"I don't think we're facing this Game the right way." And she stared at our hands, intertwined.

"Well, so far it seems to me that everything is going well." I smiled at her.

Izumi shook her head, then became serious.

"Yeah, why not? Let's enjoy a little of this light-heartedness, before everything changes."

She was right; probably everything would have changed when we'd found the Game Master, but for now we were alone and I didn't want to waste those moments.

Izumi made her way to the lifts, then we entered and went upstairs.

Once outside, we found ourselves in a kind of bar suspended on a round platform, with glass parapets, and here and there tables with chairs.

Izumi sat down at one of them.

"So..." I said, as I sat down in front of her. "Do you think we can talk about it?"

Izumi looked around. "Well, it seems to me we're relatively safe here and the Game Master is nowhere to be seen..." She then looked back at me. "So, I'd say we can."

"Um..." Suddenly, I didn't know what to say anymore and Izumi laughed.

"I gotta say, it's a pretty disastrous start." She smiled at me.

"I...I'm not good at this stuff." I said in a lower tone of voice.

"Welcome to the club." Izumi said ironically.

"Wait..." I looked at her surprised. "Are you telling me that you've never..."

"Been in a relationship? Exactly." Izumi said this with a shrug. "I told you, I'm fine on my own."

"Yes, well, I thought so too." I laughed.

"I think we've both discovered that maybe...we can be good...together?" Izumi burst out laughing and covered her face with her hands for a moment. "Oh my, we're really bad at this kind of thing."

"Yeah." I joined in her laughter.

I'd never seen that side of her, so carefree and even a little shy.

Now, she no longer looked like the mysterious warrior that she used to be, but simply a girl.

"Look, there's no need to-" Izumi was interrupted by the metallic voice.

Remaining time: 1 hour and 10 minutes.

"Wow, it's already been 20 minutes." She sat straighter on the chair. "Maybe, we really shouldn't be having this conversation right now."

"Wait." I told her. "Can I just ask you one thing?"

Izumi looked at me.

"Have you been betrayed in the past?"

"Huh?" Izumi was perplexed.

"Just before the Joker of Clubs, you said that Kuina and I were lucky to be allies and that I wouldn't betray her."

"Oh...that." Izumi seemed to understand.

"It's because you were betrayed instead, right?"

"You are really very smart, Chishiya." Izumi smiled at me. "And...yes I was betrayed by someone. But not here, it happened when I was about 9 and I was still in London."