Survival Game, Book 1: The Fool

Act Three: Chapter Sixteen

                    Act III, A Story of Sakura

"Satsuki Aramaki is nothing but a worthless bitch. She thinks she's better than everyone just because she got famous overnight. Someone should show her what's coming to her and prove she's nothing but a wannabe model." Those were the words typed onto the forum post. The post that earned Kris' placement in the Survival Game. She'd made the post back in April, soon after the school year began. It wasn't the first post she'd made about Satsuki, nor was it the last, but something about that specific one was what caught the attention of Azumi Kimura. The woman had called her in for a meeting the previous day, a few months since the post was made, and offered her the position. She accepted it, assuming she'd be arrested somehow otherwise, and was told she'd contact her when they were ready, around the next week from then. It was now July 15th and Kris assumed Azumi made fast work with the other candidates, finding every person she needed in only a week.
One of them must be Kawakami. She assumed, remembering how the boy severely injured a classmate before, and had his trial on July 12th. He hadn't been to school since. The other could be Nakahara, he's been absent a lot too. She didn't know the upperclassman, but she recalled him having been absent throughout most of June and a few days of July until July 7th. After that day, he carried perfect attendance, as if something had forced him into returning to school. I'll find out soon enough... She decided to dismiss the thought. Instead she focused on the present, where she currently sat on her bed, combing her recently washed hair. It was an easy task, considering she'd cut her hair short back in her third year of middle school, leaving only her long bangs and the two long strands of hair framing them. That was Satsuki's fault too. She remembered bitterly.
Satsuki was her older sister of 7 years—possibly the reason why they were so estranged—and the more superior sister in the eyes of their parents. She was top class throughout her school years, perfectly fluent in English, and a natural beauty in every way. She took most of her genes from her father, the same black hair and slender facial features, yet she got her mother's olive eyes and height, standing at 170 centimeters. Kris had the same eye color, though compared to Satsuki's, it seemed more like the color of a murky swamp than an olive. When Satsuki was hired by a modeling agency after a mere three months of freelancing, no one was surprised. Even now, after the news had grown fairly old, everyone in the neighborhood talked about her.
As for their parents, the cause of Satsuki's superiority, they were much mundane despite their famous daughter. Kentarou Aramaki was an office clerk for a formerly large company that was currently known for a fraud case 10 years ago. He had started his employment there a few years after the company downsized. Their mother, Cierra Aramaki, was an American woman who'd come to Japan to study abroad 25 years ago, where she met her husband. She moved there a few years later when she married Kentarou and then gave birth to Satsuki soon after. As far as Kris knew, Kentarou had named Satsuki after a relative of his, though she never cared to ask. All she had bothered to care about was the fact that Satsuki was given a name in their native language.
Meanwhile, Kris had taken her genetics almost entirely from Cierra to a point where others could hardly believe she was born and raised in Japan. Her name didn't help either. Cierra had given her an American name, so the parents could celebrate their native countries through their daughters. Though she'd now shortened it, Kris stood for Kristine, a rather feminine name that she wasn't fond of. Her name was also something she didn't consider much of until middle school. On the times her given name was addressed, it'd seem out of place and strange paired with her surname. She never wished to legally change it out of respect to the first Kristine, her mother's close friend who'd encouraged her desire to go to Japan, but it still bothered her. Maybe it wouldn't have if the name suited her or if it was close enough to a Japanese name that she could go by. Or maybe her envy towards Satsuki made her feel that way as well, like most of the things she disliked.
Just the remembrance of Satsuki made Kris glare towards the closet across from her bed. Stored in there, beyond the sea of dull colored clothes and baggy jackets that she much rather preferred, was an even larger sea of pink skirts and frilly dresses. One of those outfits in particular, a red and gold plaid blazer with a beige skirt to match the sweater underneath, was the one Kris hated the most. All of the clothes were previously Satsuki's, passed down to Kris over the years, but that one was the one she had actually wore back in the fall of her first year of middle school, before she'd cut her hair. She was certain that was the time her hatred for clothes like that began, and it only increased after Satsuki became a model. Her parents had requested her to wear the outfit for an event her father's company held, which she reluctantly obliged. She shuddered as she remembered the horrible thing, the sleeves too long to where she kept having to fold them up and the supposedly knee length skirt falling down to her calves instead. When she tried to express her irritance with the outfit, her mother merely replied, "Your sister was kind to give you such a lovely outfit, Kristine. You should be more grateful."
When Kris had entered high school, they tried to pass on Satsuki's old uniform to her as well, but she crammed it into the closet with the rest of Satsuki's wretched outfits and chose a different uniform. Both her parents and school had been displeased when she'd chosen a male school uniform, yet allowed it anyway. After all, the only difference in the uniforms were the black pants for boys and black skirt for girls. Both carried the same black blazer with the same beige sweater vest and white dress shirt underneath, the same black necktie, the same white socks and the same uwabaki, no matter which color the student had. Kris had never seen an issue with it.
Thinking back on it, she'd placed Satsuki's uniform right next to the blazer, right on top of the real purpose of her glare. Stacked underneath the outfits and hidden away, were every magazine Satsuki had graced her presence with on the cover. All 22 of them. Which led to the next thing her parents hated: the piercings. Every time Satsuki was on a magazine cover, their parents would buy several copies to show their friends and family, and give one to Kris so she could constantly be reminded how better Satsuki was. She honestly wasn't sure what spawned her to do something so bold, but something had taken over her each time, rather it was jealousy or annoyance. She never could handle pain well, which made her decision more bizarre, and yet the first day she saw Satsuki's face on a magazine, she grabbed a sewing needle from a kit her sister owned and stabbed it into one earlobe. The studs she'd wore came later on. She'd started with her right ear and then her left, and moved onto her lower lip after running out of room. Now she bore 22 piercings, and she was sure her 23rd one wasn't far away.
And she didn't deserve any of them... Kris thought to herself with bitter envy. By now she'd finished combing her hair, not even realizing she was still doing the task as she recalled her past hidden in Satsuki's shadow, and she laid the comb down onto her bedside table before standing up from her bed. She returned a few seconds later, picking up her laptop from her studying desk and placing it onto the bed. She joined the object shortly after, laying herself on the blue sheets and opening up the laptop. Though her parents never seemed invested enough to ask, and they'd be greatly upset if so, Kris did have something beyond her forum posts that she devoted her time to. It was a blog she created a few years ago, before she'd been in high school and joined the school newspaper, as a way to express her journalism. She was sure she may had told her mother about her desire to be a journalist once, but it didn't seem to interest her much. Maybe it was for her specific type of journalism topics, one more serious than Satsuki's dieting tips or fashion advice in magazines, but she never could tell. For Kris, her specific interests were topics related about crime.
Truthfully, it was another thing she was unsure of why she did what she did. She wasn't fond of blood or stories of tragedies, yet when reporting about crime, it seemed natural to her. She'd tried other things, especially now with the school newspaper club, but all of them seemed lackluster in comparison. She'd even built up a small following and had earned over 100 reads on her latest blog post covering a case from several decades ago about a failed robbery attempt. Now, she had begun a draft for her next topic, though still unsure what to write about. After the meeting with Kimura-san, I can't post about any serious cases... Maybe that's why she called me for the program in the first place. My blog must have made her think I'd kill Satsuki. She'd never even thought about the blog being the source until now. Of course... this might work. My placement there. The thought occurred to her as sudden as a flash of light. She'd considered covering the Grandmasters before, but there'd been no real information to write. Now, I'll be on the inside and I can tell the public what is going on. It'll help them relax about it, I'm sure. The more the idea formed, the more she wanted to write it. She instantly opened her draft and titled it, Survival Game: The Inside Story before saving it for later. Next week... once the program starts, I can begin my biggest report. And when that happens... I'll be bigger than Satsuki could ever be. She'll finally realize what it's like to be into the shadows where nobody cares.