𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑳𝑬𝑺𝑺 • Shuntaro Chishiya

• 17 •

"Puddle of her own blood"

'I'm not a fucking coward. I'm not a fucking coward.' Sayaka kept repeating in her head.

She didn't want to accept her death.

The girl was lying in a puddle of her own blood and just sobbing with her eyes closed. This whole time, her hands were on her wound, trying to make the bleeding slower. But unfortunately it didn't help at all. She needed to do something else.

"You can do. You can do it." Sayaka whispered to herself.

Just a moment later she slowly unzipped her blouse and took it off. After breathing out, she kind of rolled the blouse and put it under her back, right under where her wound was. Afterwords the girl took the two ends of it and tied it around her body. Sayaka made a really strong knot, which made the blouse press her wound. The brown haired sighed with relief as she made a double knot.

After pushing herself away from the ground, she slowly helped herself up. The girl was now sitting with her back leaning against one of the four walls of the elevator. She then, again, put her hands on her wound and let out a small chuckle with eventually turned into sobbing.

"It's just pain." Sayaka exhaled slowly and turned her gaze to the buttons in the elevator.

She then stretched out her arm in order to press one of the but she just could reach it.

"Fucking fuck!" The girl cursed and pushed herself away from the wall, which caused her falling forward.

She quickly managed to press one of the buttons but still ended up lying on the ground with her face in her own blood.
Suddenly the elevator moved.

Sayaka lifted her face a little and looked in the direction of the buttons. A little light around the one to the ground floor turned on which meant that the elevator was now heading there.

•

"Kill them all." Aguni ordered.

He was standing in the middle of the lobby, surrounded by militants and other Beach members. The militants were all holding a gun that was pointing at the crowd of people standing in front of them.

"I- I can't do this anymore." Suddenly one of the militants stuttered.

"We've got no choice." Another one said while sobbing. "We'll never be the same again after killing so many people."

Aguni clearly wasn't happy with the man's words and kicked him making him fall to the ground.

"Did you hear me? Anyone who defies me here is the witch." He spoke callously before pointing his gun at the man's head.

"That's enough!" Suddenly a voice could be heard from the lobby.

Usagi, Arisu and Tatta walked in.

"You- you had me tied up the whole time." Arisu was breathing heavily. "When the murder happened, that's where I was. So that means that you know that I can't be the witch. And if you aren't the witch you don't need to kill me. Just work with me and we'll find the witch!"

Nobody said anything, including Aguni, who simply walked up to Arisu and started brutally hitting him.

"Stop it!" Usagi screamed and tried to defend her friend but unfortunately she wasn't strong enough. "I know everything!" She then shouted as Aguni aggressively attacked Arisu again. "You're going after Arisu even though you know he didn't do it. And that's because you're the witch!"

Aguni hit Arisu one last time before throwing him at Usagi.

Silence

"Is it true? Are you the witch?" A man from the crowd of Beach members shouted in Aguni's direction.

Silence again

"Yes. I am the witch." The militant finally admitted.

After these words, everyone immediately took a step back and the militants raised their hands and pointed their guns at their boss.

Aguni dropped his gun and slowly walked up to one of the militants.

"Go ahead. Do it!" He screamed right in his face.

"Well, shoot him!" Another man shouted nervously.

"Aguni is not the witch!" Arisu interrupted him. "This is a Ten of Hearts game! It plays with your feelings and your emotions! You're not going to win by killing Aguni. That's not the way this game works." He stopped the militants from shooting Aguni. "I know you're not the witch." He looked at the man. "So why then? You gotta have another reason."

"What are you saying?" Confused, Usagi asked her friend.

"The one that you killed wasn't Momoka. It was Hatter." Arisu explained.

"What?" People started murmuring with confusion.

"I could see it right away in your eyes. It was as if you lost all hope and just gave up. I had the same feeling..." Arisu stopped for a moment. "When I killed my friends. You're not dumb. But as soon as you took over, you wanted to kill everyone. And that's not like you. So you had to have another motive." He then slowly got up with the help of Usagi. "Ever since I came to the Beach, I couldn't quite figure it out. If you had possession of all these guns, why didn't the militant corps take over a long time ago? That never happened until now. Because in the end, you weren't against Hatter at all. Didn't you actually help each other out? You wanted to make sure that scary people like Niragi don't go ballistic. You tried to hold them back. I know how close you and Hatter were." Arisu slowly walked up to Aguni. "You were best friends, weren't you? Then, why did you kill him? I'll tell you why. Because you could never forgive him for what he did. You wanted it all to stop, but it was too late. You didn't recognize him anymore, isn't that right?"

Aguni didn't answer anything and just started to hit Arisu over and over again. Tatta and Usagi tried to stop him but he was clearly stronger.

The man took Arisu and looked him in the eyes.

"You know nothing."

"I know what it's like to see your friends die. To kill them, I see it."

•

After getting out of the elevator, Sayaka was crawling on the ground, only using her hands and arms to get forward. With every movement she did, the pain in her stomach became stronger and even more unbearable.

With every 'step' she did, she left more and more traces of blood behind her. Now she wasn't only bleeding out of her stomach and leg, but also out of her mouth.

The girl had to spit the blood out, every couple seconds, in order to not suffocate in her own blood.

"Throw Momoka in the fire!" She suddenly heard someone's voice.

It came from pretty far, probably the lobby.

'So Momoka is the witch?' Sayaka asked herself but quickly stopped thinking about it.

She was now concentrated and determined to get out of the Beach alive. And hopefully even stay alive afterwards which wasn't that probable.

She didn't study medicine, but her studies still had something to do with the human body, so she knew that the two bullets that hit her stomach, actually didn't hit any important organs.

But still, the blood loss made her chances of surviving drop to about 1%.

When she reached the lobby, nobody was inside anymore. Instead the whole place was burning.

"Fuck."

•
A.N.
This story has almost reached 10k reads!
Thank you so much, this makes me so
fu- (I won't curse, I'm an innocent and nice person) happy.
Love you,
Olivia

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