We might die

Chapter 1

Namjoon glares at the monitors in front of him. There are over twenty of them, taking up a whole wall. Every ten seconds or so they blink, switching to showing another location of the island.

The island which his bandmates are on.

The island where they will fight to the death.

Namjoon could puke then and there, and it's not only because he's currently at sea. The boat he's on is one of many, a whole fleet of small vessels that remains a safe distance from the island that spells death for whoever is unfortunate enough to be abducted and thrown there.

At first the abductees were the politicians, the ones who vocally opposed the new Government. Then some of the more influential enterprises were taken. Then, just to show that they had the power to do whatever they wanted, the Government began putting the nation's favorite idol groups in the game. The Battle Royale Program, it's called. It was adapted from Japan, which had long ruled the running of such a program illegal after a few tries. Too expensive, the Japanese claimed. But in Korea it's still a thing, and the Government has lots of money on their hands.

The rules of the Program are simple enough. Place a group of people on an abandoned island, distribute random weapons to each participant, and send them out into the wild. The time limit is three days. Only the last one standing will be allowed to leave the island alive, and if more than one remain everyone explodes. To ensure that no one tries to trick the system, collars are installed on the necks of all players, and if anybody tries to rebel or go into a restricted zone, the collar will blow up and rip their heads straight off.

Namjoon shudders. He had watched a few of these games before, he had to—he had friends in other idol groups who were taken, and as much as he hated to see them suffer, he needed to know what happened to them. He needed to be with them, at least inside his head, root for them till their very last breath, pray that they would emerge victorious, that they would find a way to miraculously survive.

None of them survived. Out of all of Namjoon's friends who were taken, none came back. Perhaps it was a good thing, for those who did come back were forever changed. It didn't matter if they hadn't killed anyone, and only lived because the rest of the team sacrificed themselves. They see the world differently. The world sees them differently. If Namjoon were in such a situation, he doesn't think he would want to come back. He's a philosopher, and a quick death seems so much better than living with swarms of heavy thoughts plaguing his mind.

Now it's their turn. And he isn't in the game.

It had started with the more recent rounds—the Program would take one member out of the participating group, and have them make all the in-game broadcasts and commentaries. Read out the rules, announce the time (contestants wouldn't have access to watches), and make the nightly reports on who died and how many were left. They thought it made the situation more sadistic, having the bad news delivered to the players in their own bandmate's voice, and having the commenting member discuss the deaths of their teammates on national live broadcast.

It's their turn, and the one they've taken out of the game is Namjoon. Even though he would have given anything to be in the game, so that someone else could have his position. So that someone else would have the chance to go on living.

But it's him. He could cry and scream and fight, but it would still be him. So he doesn't cry, doesn't scream, doesn't fight. The Government soldiers that have him hostage like that. They don't seem to mind Namjoon's existence, nor care much really. This is one game out of many, and to put it plainly, the soldiers are bored and tired. As long as Namjoon isn't making trouble, they can't be bothered.

They showed him around the island the day before the game was supposed to begin, gave him a quick gist of where the cameras were located, let him check out some of the houses, abandoned by former inhabitants who were force-evacuated by the Government. It was a ritual started in recent games, to familiarize the member doing the announcing with the area, so that they could make the commentaries more exciting, hype up the audience. It didn't go that well the past few times, according to the soldier who herded Namjoon around while chewing on a cigarette stub. The chosen member almost always refused to cooperate. They didn't want to walk through an island knowing that hours later, their groupmates would be taking the exact same path as they fought for their lives. And they were supposed to just sit back and watch and make cold-blooded commentaries. They didn't want that, no one wanted that. They tried to bite, they tried to run. Once, the soldiers had to shoot one in the leg.

Namjoon didn't want to be shot in the leg, so he cooperated. The soldiers liked his meekness and overall sensible personality, and let him walk freely while they smoked, guffawing every time he accidentally crashed into something as he wandered around with characteristic clumsiness.

If he had left a message on the island to his bandmates, telling them how much he loved them, Namjoon thinks, the soldiers probably wouldn't even have noticed. They were just half-assing their jobs and Namjoon could be inconspicuous if he set his mind to it. He would probably have time to sneak away and write six whole letters full of love and emotional thoughts if he wanted. The soldiers gave zero fucks and wouldn't bat an eyelash.

But he hadn't written those six whole letters of love, and as he sits in front of the blinking monitoring screens, knowing that the game of life and death will start in seconds, he wishes with his whole being that he had, for one last time, told his bandmates that to him they mean the whole world.