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Yominiji - Rules

"Come on, I literally just showed you how to play Go Fish," Nikei sighed in the current hideout of the Children of Utsuro. "It's not that hard, you have to match the number or letters of the cards. Not the suit of the card."

"Suit? Right, those were the little shapes of the cards, right?" Iroha nervously questioned, fidgeting as she held her cards in one hand. "Right, so I just need to match things like the numbers together and the letters together. Ooh, that means I almost win then!" she exclaimed, setting down pairs of unmatching numbers and unmatching letters.

Nikei sighed and facepalmed at her stupidity. "No, Iroha. The same letter and the same number. As in, only queens can go with queens, only aces can go with aces, et cetera." He took all of their cards and began reshuffling them since he ended up seeing almost all their cards.

"B-But can't we play it that way? Or with the colours? That seems easier..." the painter whined.

"No. Stop making your own rules," the journalist scolded, beginning to deal out the cards again. "If you keep doing that, then one day, someone is going to screw you over with rules of their own." 

"Nikei, stop antagonizing her!" they heard Emma call from the makeshift kitchen. "If you can't get along over cards, I'll take them and burn them!"

"You're gonna burn one of our only sources of entertainment? Not very smart," Nikei remarked, but ended up putting the cards down and leaving anyway. Iroha whimpered to herself, then decided to go after him.

This happened a week before they were contacted by a man named Mikado Sannoji, at a point where their bonds were starting to fray. But after Mikado ended up usurping Nikei's position, their bonds and their minds were both breaking at the seams. They had learned that to bring back the man who had blessed them, they had to participate in a killing game and become murderers.

After watching Hajime and Emma murder and get executed against their agreement, then getting threatened by Mikado to kill after Iroha failed to kill the third island, Iroha went to Nikei to beg him to take her place. He refused and later confessed that he was a Void to everyone. The day after that, Iroha found him in the morning and spoke to him again.

"Y-You really outed yourself and left Void...are you going to find an exit?!" she asked, a hopeful note in her voice. "Please, take me with you when you find it!"

"I'm not looking for an exit at all, idiot. And if you want me to take you anyway, leave Mikado," the journalist replied. "After everything he's done, do you actually think that he'll keep you alive? No, he's going to kill you for his own goals."

Iroha nervously swallowed and found her words again. "But you said that he was going to come for you after you betrayed him, it's not safe unless you find a way to escape from him..."

"I'm not going to escape. I'm going to fight. The difference between us is whether you plan to grow a spine or not, while I'm ready to die if that's what it takes to kill Mikado Sannoji. If you betray him, his plans will start to crumble, even if Utsuro never comes back. I'll let you think on that."

Nikei left Iroha trembling and sniffling, and a passing Sora saw the state that the painter was in and was planning to go after Nikei before she was stopped.

A week passed, and Iroha ran from the trial room once more. Once the elevator closed and began to take her up, she collapsed on the ground and began to process what she had just witnessed.

Mikado had added a bizarre new rule to kill Nikei and keep her in line, and that meant the death of the journalist. She might have been stupid, but she knew that he was made into an example, a show of Mikado's power.

Knowing this, all she could do was sob. "Nikei... Nikeiiiii..." she bawled, curling up on the floor. "I made the wrong choice... I'm sorryyyy..."

When the elevator opened up, she sprinted back to her room and slammed the door behind her. She collapsed onto the bed and began crying into a pillow. Nikei had died, and so did her chance of escape. She just wanted to collapse into his coat and have him half-heartedly comfort her while telling her not to pull on his sleeve or it'll stretch.

After hours of crying, Iroha remembered that there was a phone line to where her dead teammates were, and she immediately reached for it. And while she hoped that she would get comforting words from Nikei, the phone was never picked up. 

She dropped the phone in despair and planned to stomp on it, but she heard the sound of Mikado teleporting into the room. "Good evening, Ms. Nijiue. Mind if we have a chat for a bit?"