SQUID GAME | last episode rewritten ✔︎

S1 : E9 "fair fight"

   The last two players were standing underneath the floating piggy bank. The high price of 45.6 billion Won waiting to be earned by the last man standing. The bunkbeds around the worn-out men were all still stumbled over from the cruel Lights-Out game that had left only the strongest and the smartest on their feet, yet all of whom were left after the second to last game, were player 456 and player 218, eager to kill each other. One driven by fear and want of money, and the other by fatal revenge.

   The sworn enemies had been forced to wear obsidian tuxedos instead of their signature teal track suits. A rather ravenous dinner meeting had occurred prior. It ended in yet another killing of player 067, a young, strong female that had been betrayed by the blade of a knife, held by player 218, his glasses worn slanted on his broken nose. The turned player had sworn it was to save her from the cruel game, but Gi-hun had his trust broken enough times already. It was his time to become the killer.

   The two men were asked whether to play offence, or defense. Of course, Gi-hun had chosen offence and dared to look at the killer before him.

   Sang-woo might have already been a killer, but he wasn't the guilty one in the room, no one was, not even the strangers wearing pink suits and shapes on their faces. They were also mislead by the estranged leader, a single, black coverage away from full exposure of their identity.

   The game had been explained to the two parties even though they had played the game in their childhood countless of times before; Squid game, or as Americans preferred to call it, Hopscotch. The game was simple; offence tags defense, but whoever had put them in this freakshow changed some rules. Offence kills defense. Whoever was left from the massacre had to sign an NDA and live their last years in rich filth—blood money taken from exactly 455 innocent lives that failed to fight in the murderous puzzle game.

   After both of their plays had been confirmed, the doors opened, revealing an all too familiar playground. The beach sand crunched from under their feet like harsh snow on a cold winter night. Gi-hun had wondered where the sand even came from. The players had no idea of their whereabouts or why the place where once the game had started, was now an emptied cemetery used as a battlefield. The stain of death however, never left.

   Higher up the two devastated players, was a room built into the walls where the weapons of the previous killings were supposed to be. Five rich Americans stood half-naked in front of tempered glass, hiding their identities in golden, animalistic masks, sipping from their tasteless cocktails, and toying around with pretty waiters and waitresses. They bet their money on numbered people like other wealthy men would do on horses, but they had grown too bored of life to care even the slightest about the blood that spilled or would spill by each red cent they spent. It had also been a mere excuse to fill in their sick fantasies of gory kinks.

   "I don't want to fight you, Gi-hun," Sang-woo said, his hands held high up as if he'd already lost.

   "How am I supposed to believe that? You're a murderer! You murdered Sae-byeok, asshole." Spit flew out his aggressed mouth.

   "She was going to die anyway." Sang-woo coughed as Gi-hun wreaked havoc on his face. A single tooth had flown out of his mouth, but that was the least the betrayer of a once upon a time childhood friend deserved.

   The wounded man lay across the sand, forming his body into a tiny ball. Gi-hun was desperate to hit him one last time, kicking at the sand, a manmade storm of chiseled rocks hitting its target, Sang-woo, in the eyes. Gi-hun turned on his heel and returned to the game. Sang-woo managed to open one eye and look at the pink guard who was merely standing there, hands hidden behind their postured back, unrepelled at Gi-hun's defiance.