GAME RULES ━ ATEEZ

09.

It didn't fucking last. 

Seonghwa and San were on their asses, laughing their fucking sanity away, when the door slammed open, revealing a dirty Jongho, with tears streaming down his face. 

"You fucking psychopaths."

Seonghwa stood up. "Jongho. You're here too. What are you doing here?"

And he didn't get a response, because Jongho was flying towards them, pinning Seonghwa against the wall with a forearm, anger glowing in his eyes and mouth twisted into a crazed grin. 

"You think you can stand there and laugh while they're dead? I'll kill you myself." 

San stood up. "Jongho. It's just us! It's us! What's the matter with you?" 

Jongho turned to him, hair flying and eyes wide and unhinged. "I saw you all in that damned room. You won't get me this time." 

And then his hands were around Seonghwa's neck, and they were twisting and grappling and San was trying to pull him away but Jongho was too strong. 

Was this one of those spindly creatures? Was this their Jongho? Was this their lovely Jjong, with his bright smile and strong hands and soft singing? 

And San realized that it may have been, before this all started. This was their Jongho, only he wasn't Jongho anymore. Jongho was gone. 

That's what he told himself when he shoved Jongho and watched him trip and fall backward, banging his head on one of the bricks that had buried San's injured arm. That's what he told himself as he watched blood slowly pool under Jongho's head, and that's what he whispered when Jongho's breaths turned to heaves and heaves turned to sobs and sobs turned to nothing at all. 

Because Jongho was dead, and San killed him, and Seonghwa was unconscious, and a body appeared in the doorway. 

"Hello, Sannie." 

"Get away from me. You aren't Jongho. Jongho is dead." 

"Is he, now?" 

The body walked towards him. It shrank, going from spindly, gangly, and slender to the short, familiar shape of Jongho. If San didn't know that the real Jongho was lying next to him, dead by his hands, and if San didn't know that not-Jongho was going to be faceless when he reached up to touch him, San could've believed it. But he didn't. 

Not-Jongho seemed to realize this. His face rippled into what could have been a smirk. 

"San. My friend. It's your turn to play."

San knew it was his turn. It had been Yunho, and Mingi's and Jongho's, and now his. San was going to play, and San wasn't going to win. 

He was going to lose, and he knew, but he was going to fight like fucking hell before he did. He was going to fight for Mingi, and Yunho, and Seonghwa, and his Wooyoung, and Hyewon, and everyone he would never see again. He was going to lose, but he was going to lose like a fucking martyr. 

San smiled. 

"Let's fucking play." 

——

When Seonghwa peeled his eyes open, he was met by a nagging ache in the back of his head and a pool of liquid soaking his hair. 

At first, he thought it was his own. He steadily pulled himself into a sitting position, feeling the back of his head for any gaping wounds, but all he was met with was a tender spot from where it lay on the ground. This blood wasn't coming from his scalp. Whoever's it was, it wasn't his. 

He carefully stood, blood rushing to his head in one swift motion. Seonghwa didn't know how long he'd been on the ground, but it must have been a while. 

The room was still dark and putrid, covered in mildew and soaked in the blood of his friends. Seonghwa was angry, Seonghwa was heartbroken, and Seonghwa was more terrified than he had ever been in his fucking life. 

He took a step to the left and felt something under his toes. He stepped back and reached his hand down, meeting three long fingers, attached to a hand, attached to an arm—who's arm? He was about to graze his fingers over the face when the door slammed open, hitting the wall in a harsh smack. 

A figure stood in the doorway. Seonghwa couldn't see the face, but he saw the slender figure and the framing of pink hair in the faint light and he knew it was San. And the memories rushed back into his head, and he remembered San and his shattered wrist and dislocated shoulder, and he remembered Jongho's desperate hands around his neck, and he remembered falling to the ground and waking up here. 

And he knew that the fingers he stepped on were Jongho's, and the arm currently in his grip was Jongho's, and he knew Jongho was dead because San killed him because Jongho was gonna kill Seonghwa. 

"San..." Seonghwa's voice trailed off. "He's dead. You killed him."

San's voice was stilted when he spoke. "He was hurting you."

"You should have let him. He's dead because of me." 

San took a step forward. "Everyone is dead because of you." 

Seonghwa's brain came screeching to a halt. "What are you talking about?" 

"Aren't you the reason we're in this stupid house? You and Hongjoong's silly little plan to make us get along again?"

"No. No, I didn't know about that. Hongjoong told me on the way here. It isn't my fault." Seonghwa swallowed, tears building in his eyes. "It's not my fault. It isn't anyone's fault. It's this stupid house's fault. It isn't our fault. It isn't our fault."

San stepped forward again. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure, San! It's no one's fault. Come, help me move Jongho." Seonghwa sniffed. "He can be next to Mingi and Yunho. He always loved those two the most." 

San knelt next to Seonghwa, placing his hands under Jongho's body and lifting. Together, they moved him to the center of the room, lying in a row next to his best friends. Seongha gently closed Jongho's eyes and stood.  

"No one's fault?" San was standing behind him. "Not even Hongjoong's?"

Seonghwa turned around. "What are you talking about?"

San stepped forward. "Don't you remember the rules, Seonghwa?"

"San? What are you talking about? Which rule?" 

"I suppose the last guests didn't write this one down." San sounded like he was smiling. 

"San..." Something in Seonghwa's chest dropped into his feet. They had just carried Jongho. And San—"What happened to your wrist? And your shoulder?"

"You tell me, Seonghwa." 

Seonghwa tried to step back, but he tripped on Jongho's arm. He came crashing down onto the corpses of his friends. 

"You've figured it out, Seonghwa." San's voice came from behind him. Seonghwa whipped around, but no one was there. When he turned back to the front, San's face was inches away. But there was no face. It was skin, just skin.

"Rule #27, Seonghwa. It's a new one. When you die, you become a player. 

And It's your turn."