No Way Out (Squidgame s2 x child reader)

|18|

🌃🌃🌃

I woke to a sterile white light burning my eyes.

Cold. Too cold. The sheets clung to me like plastic, and the steady beep, beep, beep of a monitor somewhere to my left echoed through the quiet. My throat burned. My head ached. And the moment I tried to sit up, pain like a blade sliced through my leg.

I hissed, nearly blacking out again.

The brace around my knee clicked against the side of the bed. Plastic and steel—reminding me of what I already knew in my bones.

I'd been shot.

And not by just anyone.

Young-il. 

If that was his real name anymore.

The name felt like acid on my tongue. My heart pounded harder the more I thought about it, memories flooding a dam in the middle of a storm I couldn't hold back. His eyes, cold. His voice, indifferent. The betrayal in every word, every bullet.

"Try not to die," he'd said.

Like I was nothing. Like I was disposable. I could still hear his voice, his steps leaving me to bleed out. 

A scream built in my chest, but I swallowed it. My body trembled with rage, the monitor beside me beginning to spike erratically. I ripped the cords from my arm, ignoring the sting of needles tearing free. Somewhere, alarms started to wail, but I didn't care.

I had to get out.

I had to move.

My eyes scanned the room—a hospital. Windowless. Blank. Empty, except for a pair of crutches leaning mockingly against the wall.

I clenched my fists. They think I'll use those?

No.

Gritting my teeth, I swung my legs off the bed. My injured knee buckled immediately, and I crashed to the floor with a strangled cry. My vision swam, but I dragged myself up, clutching the edge of the bed. Every nerve screamed, but I didn't stop. I wouldn't stop.

Not until I made him pay.

I half-limped, half-staggered to the door and slammed my fist against it.

"LET ME OUT!" I shrieked. "You think this is going to hold me?!"

No answer. Just the cold silence of concrete walls.

"Do you hear me?! I'll kill him! I'll kill Young-il! I swear on my life, I'll—" My voice cracked, but I didn't stop screaming. "And Gi-hun, too! For lying to me! That snake—you're all the same! Every one of you!"

My fists thudded against the door, over and over, until the skin split and blood smeared the white. My leg gave again, and I dropped to the floor, heaving. Breathing like a wild animal. The pain was nothing compared to the fury roaring inside me.

They had killed them.

The others.

Jun-bae.

Innocent players.

Gone—just bodies left behind in that concrete tomb.

And I was supposed to lie here and recover?

Fuck no.

The door finally buzzed with a mechanical click, and it opened with a groan. I tensed, my fists ready to strike, but the person standing there wasn't a doctor. Or a soldier.