𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘦 •sᴀᴇʙʏᴇᴏᴋ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ•

10

When you returned to the main room, you were met with the several eyes of Deok-su's team. Deok-su glared at the lot of you, upset that you didn't die like he had expected you to.

After some time, two more teams of ten returned, making the total number of players drop to 40.

Everyone received a corn on the cob and a bottle of water for dinner. The teams stuck together, sitting in their circles in each corner of the room.

"You know what? I really thought we were going to die out there." 212 stood in front of your group holding her corn, and explained her experience as though you all hadn't suffered through the same thing. "And then, as soon as we were all leaning back, I felt so powerful. Like, woah! It works. Is this real? Hey, old man, how did you know that?"

The old man chuckled. "As a kid, I would always-"

"Oh, you copied that one thing. From that movie. What's it called? The guy who dodged bullets like this." She leaned back and swung her arms in a backstroke motion to demonstrate.

"Matrix," Ali answered.

212 stopped her movements and smiled with her hands on her hips. "Hey, when you got to Korea, is all you did watch movies?"

Ali's light expression turned plain, as if someone had blown out the fire of his soul.

"And our man..." She looked at Sang-woo who was chewing on his corn. "Everybody, three steps up when I signal." She repeated what 218 had said earlier. "Oh. My god, I can't believe how cool that was. How did you come up with it under all that pressure?"

It wasn't that cool.

"Earlier, you were the one who said no." Ali looked up at 212 with confusion.

"Yeah?" She scoffed. "Was that what you heard?"

"You cried and said, But that's the edge. There's no way I'll go." Ali made a face you found quite funny, and raised the octave in his voice to mimic 212. "Like that."

"Hey, you. You got a visa? I bet you don't. You're an illegal alien." She spat back at Ali. Oh, how you hated her. "Hey, boys, how about it? Why keep the strange foreigner when we could just ditch him? Our team's more secure that way, huh?"

You sighed from the corner where you sat beside Ali. "Why keep the loudmouth whore when we could just ditch you? No one wanted you here, you just invited yourself. Maybe you should go back to your fat pig of a boyfriend." You nodded at Deok-su. "Our team is more secure that way. Oh, but wait. He doesn't want you either." At that, everyone fell silent.

She scoffed, and crossed her arms. "You really are a rude brat, huh?"

"Oh, about that grandma, why did you get kicked out?" Gi-hun asked. 212 pointed a deadly glare in his direction.

"Grandma?" She seemed to be more offended by this than loudmouth whore. "Don't you ever call me that!" She waved her corn around before placing a hand on her chest. "Here, Han Mi-nyeo. Got it? Mi-nyeo. That's my name. And I didn't get kicked out. I made the decision to go, all right?" She pointed that last part at you.
"Those crazy thugs there? You can't lock me in with that crew." She pointed at Deok-su's gang.

Sang-woo spoke up. "They only got rid of you, then they only wound up with male players. Right before the game at that. You know, it's almost like they knew about it ahead of time."