Shuntarō Chishiya breathed out slowly and looked around one last time. Silence lingered on the tiny room with the killed woman, from whose pocket he had just pulled out a little piece of paper with a strange drawing on it. His eyes scanned the walls, soaked in blood, which had been white and clean before. In this room, there was nothing else to discover for him anymore, he thought, and stepped over the dead tagger on the ground and out of the apartment. Now, the 4th floor was empty. He leaned against the rim of the stone railing and looked into the yard of the building. The tall guy with the messy black hair, called 'Arisu' by his companion, was just leaving the Toei Sendagaya Apartment complex - together with said companion. Chishiya pulled the hood of his white jacket over his shoulder-length hair and a gust of wind played with the light strands, which usually covered half of his face. On the street southbound he saw the girl with the pink top running, the climber. Both of them had done quite well in this game, but how long would they actually survive?
The climber girl seemed to be a good player for spades games, but she was like a nervous rabbit. Always on the run, ready to get away from potential danger. That would not work on the long run, at some point you have to face the danger, Chishiya thought and squinted his left eye, barely noticeable. Arisu, on the other hand, carried way too much hope within his naive heart. His sense of cooperation and teamwork from the former world still hadn't left his mind. In his eyes Chishiya had read innocence and confusion. A sign of how lost he felt in the Borderland after all. His compassion might break his neck in the future. Determined, Chishiya dragged himself away from the railing and started walking without any haste. The apartment complex looked as if nothing special happened here, only the countless dead bodies on all of the floors destroyed the serene scene. With a tired sigh, Chishiya passed them and while looking down, he noticed the thin blood stains on his jacket. He rolled his eyes and left the building, now slightly annoyed. Now he had to get those red stains off his jacket, though he always tried to never dirty his hands in the first place...
Back at the Beach Chishiya crossed the big hall without making any sounds. Most of the players had returned as well, celebrating while wearing bathing suits again. A typical night. On his way to the elevators, he overheard someone mentioning Aguni and some injuries he suffered during the game. He wondered at this occurrence, as he hadn't seen Aguni at the apartment complex anymore after the game was cleared. He definitely had been the last person who left the building. Within seconds he decided this tiny mystery was not worth solving and entered the side wing to get to his room. As careful as a cat on a hunt he moved on the red carpet and nearly made it to his destination – the elevator. All of a sudden, a shadow appeared right in front of him. Niragi, the cretin. Out of all the people living here he had to run into the one he disliked the most. Wonderful.
"Chishiya..." the black-haired guy sounded just as thrilled as if he would have stepped into dog excrement.
Niragi stopped a few meters away from the elevator. His expression let Chishiya to the conclusion that he was in the mood for some arguing. To be fair, this was actually always the case when their paths crossed. The lunatic man with the rifle was just as likeable as an intestinal obstruction. According to his father, those surgeries were one of the nastiest and since he had met Niragi for the first time, Chishiya always associated one with another. He wasn't happy at all to encounter the ileus yet again.
"You were in a game this night, weren't you?' Niragi asked and tilted his head suspiciously. "I heard it was a rather bloody one... You were the only player coming back without any injuries. How did you do that?"
"Shouldn't you care for Aguni instead? I heard, he got hurt quite badly."
"And where do the blood stains on your jacket come from? From the taggers? Or from Aguni?"
Chishiya rolled his eyes and looked away. Niragi was getting on his nerves - as he always did. He just wanted to get to his room as fast as possible and wash those accursed blood stains out of his jacket before it was too late. This son of a bitch seemed to have a talent for the worst timing.
"You should really get a new shirt. Even without any blood stains it's only worth to be thrown away," he answered without flinching and Niragi got angrier and angrier.
Slowly, he placed his hand on the handle of his rifle, his long fingers leaving tiny click sounds on the black material.
"And you should really get yourself a new card. Your visa is going to expire soon, someone told me," the dark-haired guy hissed and licked over his grotesque smile with his tongue, the piercing flashed for the glimpse of an eye. This sound reminded Chishiya of a badly held scalpel, entering the stomach too deep and cutting a few organs on its way. A moist, disgusting sound he had heard during the beginning of his studies, coming from rather untalented fellow students during practice hours. Right now, he would have loved to trade those situations for the encounters with Niragi, whose face he absolutely despised. Maybe he should have teamed up with Ann instead of Kuina...
"I just did so. If you could excuse me right now..."
He squished himself into the elevator, which doors had opened just now and which was already crowded. Just before the silver doors closed, he looked at Niragi one last time. Condescendingly, smilingly, because he knew that it would drive Niragi nuts that he couldn't follow him anymore once the doors of the elevator had closed. Behind the doors, Niragis scream of pure anger got covered by the metallic sound of the elevator engines. Arrived at the correct floor, Chishiya left the elevator with a tired sigh and put the hood of his jacket down.
In front of his room Kuina leaned against the wall of the corridor. She was chewing on a straw, as she always did. The color of today's model was a quite aggressive neon green. Out of boredom, she wiggled on her tall flip-flops from one side to the other. Chishiya started approaching her and she nodded as a greeting.
"And? Had your fun?"
"Hah... Was okay. And you?"
"Everything relaxed," the slim girl answered, stopped the bored wiggling and stretched her body. "But it was a long game. Four of Hearts, my neck is aching."
Kuina squeezed her face and tried to massage her neck. "What was yours tonight?"
"Fives of Spades. Sadly, no Ten of Hearts was found anywhere," he replied and Kuina lips turned into a thin, unsatisfied line.
"But I found out something else," Chishiya muttered, after he made sure no other persons were crossing the corridor.
Then he opened the door to his room and implied that Kuina should follow him. He left for the bathroom, whereas Kuina sat down in one of the arm chairs right by the window. Looking down she noticed the swimming pool, still filled with people. She crossed her legs and observed a few girls. With pastel-colored bikinis, cute quilling on the skirts, they played around with water guns and run away from each other, their faces looking overly outraged. Looking at it from the outside, this could have been a happy scene straight out of a shojo anime and seemed way too carefree for the Borderland. Carefully, Kuina took the straw out of her mouth and put her lips around the thin plastic again, to trick her reward system and make it feel like smoking. After a few muffled sounds coming from the bathroom, she heard Chishiya cursing.
"Hey, what's the matter?"
"Two words," the answer echoed from the bathroom. "Blood and white fabric..."
"You need to take cold water, not hot water," Kuina answered and looked into the face of an unhappy Chishiya, who entered the room. Now without his jacket. "I thought you'd knew that. I mean, as a medical student..."
Chishiya ignored her and searched in his wardrobe for a pair of Bermudas. Then he got rid of his T-shirt and threw it on his bed without looking. Kuina had been relaxing on the arm chair, moving her left feet nervously, but now she sat perfectly still. From the corner of his eye Chishiya felt her eyes on him. Then the straw cracked a bit and Kuina took it out of her mouth again. Chishiya turned around and there she was, sitting on the arm chair like it was a throne, the straw in her hand like Winston Churchill used to hold his cigars, and a cheeky smile lingering in her big brown eyes, which quickly reached her lips. She was eyeballing him a bit too long for Chishiya's liking.
He clicked his tongue and commanded Kuina with a quick movement of his head that she was supposed to turn around. She withstood his cold, piercing eyes for a while and looked back just as provokingly, then her smile got wider. She shrugged her shoulder innocently, turned to the window and started examining the straw in her hand. Chishiya kept looking at her for a few seconds, triumphantly, then he started taking off his pants. It was not easy to stand up to his poker face with the determined cat eyes, not even for Niragi or Kuina. For a short moment he stood in the room completely naked, as he switched between casual clothing and the Bermudas, keeping an eye on Kuina the whole time. But she obeyed and didn't turn around once.
"So, tell me now, what did you find out?" Kuina asked, still with her head turned to the window. She had remembered why she followed the blonde-haired man into his room in the first place.
Without a word Chishiya came to her, sat in the second arm chair in front of her, and revealed the small sheet of paper he had found in the pocket of the tagger. A tangled web of lines, most likely drawn with a ballpoint pen, and one tiny hole, which had been pierced through the paper. They couldn't tell right now if this had been done accidently or on purpose.
"I found it in the pocket of one of the taggers. I'm still not able to put my finger on it," Chishiya whispered and leaned back into the arm chair.
Kuina examined the paper more closely. Chewing on her straw, she turned the paper around a few times, but seemed to be just as confused as Chishiya himself.
"It looks like a spiderweb... Do you really haven't any idea at all?"
Chishiya shrugged his shoulders and looked out of the window.
"It's a plan, I guess. But it's not a map of the city, for sure. There's only one thing I'm certain about: This pierced spot is the spider, most likely," he mumbled.
Kuina folded her arms and leaned her upper body onto the table, putting her head on top of her folded arms.
"If the spider is there, you have to move around really carefully. The moment you touch her web, she notices you and you're as good as dead."
"You got that right." Chishiya nodded and looked down to the group of girls too. They were still playing around in the pool with their water guns and had the best day of their lives. They laughed so loudly, Chishiya and Kuina could hear it even up in the room.
"Kuina, we have to be prepared. There aren't that many cards missing, but I cannot wait till the Ten of Hearts or a face card appears. Niragi and his brainless idiots will screw up Aguni soon, even he will lose control over them at some point. Not to mention the hatter. He's only a dark diamond at the top of the crown, losing its shimmer and starting to shake."
With a frown, he rested his elbows on his knees and placed his fingers against each other. It was obvious that there was something going on his brain, developing, trying to unravel some of the countless strings.
"At least this little guy did a good job for me today," he giggled while he looked at the bed and peeked at the self-made taser, which had fallen out of his pants there.
"But that's not enough anymore. We need something much bigger..."
Kuina, who had followed his eyes and started observing the girls again, looked back at him with big eyes.
"Are you thinking about actual guns? Well, if you don't want to be killed by Niragi, you shouldn't steal them from the militants. And even in casual clothing it's going to be difficult to smuggle them into the Beach from the outside. You can't even hide those in your hood."
Chishiya only nodded and looked at her with his typical, shadowy gaze.
"You're right about that too. We have to think bigger, but even more carefully than before. It would be the best if we take an object, whose disappearance won't even be noticed," he concluded and looked back at the pool again, now emphasizing his words with his gaze.
Kuina stared at him for a few seconds, uncomprehendingly, but then she understood what he was trying to say. A tiny laugh escaped her mouth. Chishiya turned around a little bit and looked at her. He saw that she, at least, got the gist of his idea and was on his side as she always was. Kuina was truly a loyal soul and devoted to him and his plan – to steal the whole deck of cards. But she herself wasn't dumb at all and most of the time, she connected the dots right after him. In the end, he was relieved he had teamed up with her and not with another member of the Beach or one of the executives.
"Fire, alcohol..." he began and tilted his head, trying to suggest Kuina that she was supposed to finish the sentence.
"Boom!" she completed and twitched her left eyebrow. Chishiya started nodding slowly and a smile of victory appeared on his lips. The silence afterwards formed their alliance once again, preparing for another plan they would execute together.
After that, Chishiya stood up placidly to look after his white jacket, which he had left to soak in the bathtub.
"No one can delude you that quickly, huh?" Kuina acknowledged and with his back turned at her Chishiya continued smiling, quite satisfied with himself.
"There's only one thing..." Kuina continued and when he noticed the amused tone of her voice, he turned around with an asking expression on his face. He stared at her while pulling up one of his eyebrows. In Kuinas eyes there was nothing but a mischievous gleam, glowing even brighter than the lights of the swimming pool in the yard.
"You're aware of the fact that windows also function as mirrors sometimes?" Kuina giggled and with an unmistakable expression on her face, she played with the straw in her hand teasingly.
For a moment, Chishiyas face got just as pale as his hair, then he disappeared into the bathroom without an answer. Only Kuinas laugh filled the bedroom, while he quickly closed the brown door behind him.