Alice in Borderland ~ Chishiya

47

'I'm starting to believe the pain will never stop,' I exhale, sighing for the umpteenth time. 'What?' Raiden grins. 'Sissy. I have no problems with anything anymore.' He gives me a tough look, at which we both start to laugh. Of course that isn't true. After three days, we still feel that burning pain in our muscles. 'If so, you can make tea this time,' I tell him. He sighs, but slowly gets to his feet. 'Grandpa,' I say with a grin as he holds onto everything in an attempt to get himself to the gas cylinder. 'If I'm lucky, I will be one day,' he replies.

I look at him for a while. 'Do you want that? To start a family and to have grandchildren someday?' He shrugs. 'I like the idea of finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life with.' He pours some water into a pan and then turns on the gas cylinder. He slowly drops to his knees and sits back on the chair. It takes him a lot of effort, but still he smiles. 'Then, the newest movie I worked on will come out and I'll take my wife to the premiere.'

'And then, she has to deal with dozens of fans moaning for your attention.' He shrugs. 'She will always be the one who gets the most attention.' I smile at him. It seems as if he already sees his life completely before him. All that remains to be done now, is to clear all the face cards so that he can return to the real world, if that's true at all. I think about that for a moment, so that I automatically come back to when I was pinned to the ground. There was nothing I could do except wait for it to end.

I was ready. I no longer had any doubts about reaching my end. I found out that there isn't much to expect in the real world. There's nothing I should go to. And yet, when Raiden came up with the rule bending and took over the weight of my backpack, I was touched again with the will to live. I still don't know if the real world is a goal of mine, but at least I know I want to stay alive.

'And you?' Raiden asks. 'May I send you an invitation to the premiere as well?' It shouldn't come as a surprise to me anymore that he's actually telling me that he still wants to see me in the real world. How could that even be possible? We have saved each other's lives here a number of times. But maybe I had some doubts about this. What if I thought it would stop here? It's good to see that that's not the case.

'Of course you may send one,' I reply. 'But would you come?' he asks. I don't know why he still has an uncertain tone in his voice. 'It depends,' I say with a smile, 'only if the movie is good. And if there's free food.' Raiden starts to grin. 'Should I send one or two?' He wiggles his eyebrows. 'Although I don't think he's eager to attend my success.' I don't have to ask who he's talking about, but I don't want to get into that. 'Such arrogance,' I reply with a grin, 'already assuming that his movie will be a success.' Raiden shrugs and I can see that hurts him a little. He slowly gets up again to see if the water is already boiling. When that's the case, he turns the gas cylinder off again and slowly begins the process of getting the water into the mugs.

'Thanks, Raiden,' I say, a bit out of the blue. 'I wouldn't have been here if it weren't for you.' He avoids my gaze as he puts the pan back down. 'Hm,' he tries to brush it off, but I want him to know how much it means to me. 'No "hm",' I tell him. 'You saved my life and I'm so grateful to you for that.'

'You saved my life several times, too,' he replies. 'That's not the point. I just wanted to thank you for that.' He hands me a mug and then nods. We choose a bag and then sit down for a while. Neither of us looks at what question we have, but I can think of one myself. 'How did you come up with it like that?' I ask him. Raiden looks down and shrugs. 'When you were lying on the ground and it hit me that you weren't going to get up to finish those push-ups, I panicked. I didn't know what to do. I just knew I couldn't bear to lose you.'

I try to put myself in his shoes and imagine watching your friend deteriorate and unable to get up.

'I was desperately trying to think of something to help you and I thought about the times you saved my life at a game. You dug deeper into the rules and worked around them to save me, so I did, too. I wasn't entirely sure about it, but I knew there must be some reason why those rules were so specific. I decided I had to try.'

'If it weren't allowed, you could've been dead.' He shrugs. 'I would've died anyway. If it wasn't because of one of those challenges, it would be afterwards. How could I have gone on without you?'

'How dramatic,' I say. 'You're acting like I'm such a big deal.' He looks at me sternly. 'That's because you are, Kimora. You are to me.'

A warm feeling spreads in my body. This is a feeling that I hadn't known for a long time. Something that only Hikaru managed to bring out in me. I avert my gaze to avoid tears in my eyes, but Raiden's taking it the wrong way. 'Don't worry,' he says with a short laugh, 'this isn't an attempt to hit on you or something. I definitely didn't mean it that way.'

'I know,' I reply with a slight smile. Yet I still feel my eyes go cloudy. 'I was just thinking about the last time I had a close friendship with someone..' He looks at me and nods. He seems to realize that I prefer not to talk about this. There's a short pause before he resumes talking about the game.

'So,' he says. 'Since luckily we still haven't been caught by that psycho and we have yet to recover from the game, we have to talk about it. Yumiya.' That name makes me sigh in exasperation. The past few days, I've been very busy thinking about her. I repeated the words she had spoken to me dozens of times in my head. Raiden's laugh breaks my thoughts. 'I hope I never get so annoyed when I get a fan,' he mumbles.

'I don't understand what was wrong with her,' I say. 'From the moment she saw me in the waiting room, she looked at me as if she expected something from me and was thrilled to see me there.'

'So she was one of the citizens who designed this game and participated in it. She said she followed you. Does that mean that all citizens were able to watch the games?'

'I think so,' I sigh. 'What did she say about hoping you would join them?' Raiden asks. 'She wasn't sure I'd join them, whatever that means, so she hoped she could see and speak to me in person, just in case.'

I'm still not sure what that means. She told me she hoped I would choose them. What could that mean?' Raiden shrugs. 'I have no idea,' he replies. 'She said it would be the end for her if we cleared the game, right?' I nod. 'The psycho is also done for if he's killed. Do you think every citizen dies when their game is cleared?' I nod again. Then, I sigh.

'She said "all the time I've lived here",' I say, 'but she didn't say how long that was and how there's a difference between being a citizen and a player, or what that means. Nor did she say what will happen when we've cleared all face cards.'

"You despise me. I don't blame you. I did that for a long time, before I finally understood it." Before she understood what? "Whatever you choose, I'm sure you'll be fine." Choose? What did she mean by that?

'Was she just some random citizen obsessed with your success in the games?' Raiden mumbles. 'Some psycho who was out of her mind and was enjoying the suffering being done here?' I shrug. 'Probably.' I take a sip of my tea and decide to stop thinking about it, because I'm not going to understand it. Raiden seems to be thinking the same. But a silence isn't what I need right now.

My body's tired, but my brain is still very much active. My thoughts go to Kuina and Chishiya, who were on their way to clear other games. Would they have succeeded? Would they still be alive? Couldn't they have cleared the game? Could they be defeated by the king of spades?

'I dare not imagine it,' Raiden mumbles, 'but I fear we'd better move tomorrow. If that guy really has a GPS tracker on him and sees that we've been hanging out in the same place for two days now, he might think he can easily take us out.' He wouldn't be wrong. We are an easy target right now. Still, Raiden's right: it's best not to hang out in one place for too long. 'I don't want to think about it,' I mumble, 'but should we make our way to the jack of spades?' Raiden seems just as reluctant to play the next physical game as I am, but he nods nonetheless. 'Let's do that, yes.'

I don't know when we'll recover from this tough challenge, but we'll have to move on if we want to unlock the face cards. I secretly hope that someone has already unlocked the jack of spades in the meantime, so that we don't have to do that anymore, but on the other hand I hope not. If we no longer have to do a physical game, we'll have to start with the other symbols.

It's a terrible thing to say, but when it comes to choosing between clubs or hearts, I choose hearts. I shouldn't be good at that at all, but those games still suit me more. I glance at Raiden and dare not mention it, but I'm sure he's working on it in his head, too. He also wonders what steps to take once the jack of spades is unlocked. He'd already heard me say I'd rather play a hearts game and I meant it.

But neither of us say anything about it and we drink our tea in silence.