We might die

Chapter 11

Yoongi knew the lake was a fucking bad idea.

But what other choice do they have? If he and Jimin faced off in the cave or the abandoned house, it wouldn't make sense for both to die. One would have to kill the other and end up the sole survivor of the game, which isn't what they wanted.

They have to both die, together. The lake is the best place to do it, since drowning is something that could potentially happen to two people at the same time.

So the lake it is. It is the only location they can use for the final act out of the three camera-less spots Namjoon told him about. But Yoongi still fucking thinks this is a bad idea. For one thing, the water is stupidly cold, and the lake is murky and it's so damned hard to see. For another, he really didn't anticipate that it would take that long to swim to the opening marked out in the notebook he found in the secret room in the abandoned house, the room he and Hoseok had nicknamed Namjoon's man-hole.

This sounds confusing, yeah. This whole thing is confusing, he supposes. They'd need some ridiculously good logic skills to explain everything to Jimin later, since he's the one who knows the least out of everyone right now. It's crazy how the boy just went along with the plan despite having no idea what was going on, but it was Taehyung who roped him in and of course Jimin trusted Taehyung. Yoongi is grateful for Jimin's ability to just unconditionally trust people, because otherwise he would have to make a new plan (and yes he would still be able to come up with another plan, because he's a genius, but it would take a lot of brainwork and he's glad he didn't have to).

First, he decides, he will have to tell Jimin about the recorded message he got from Namjoon. He swears he almost had a heart attack when he put his fucking useless weapon (an MP3 player, what the actual fucking fuck?) in his ear and the first thing he heard was Namjoon's deep, magnetic voice going "hyung, this is going to sound crazy but I need you to pretend that you're hearing the Agust D mixtape. That was what the soldiers chose as your weapon, but they're out drinking so I'm re-recording this shit. Now listen good, I've got a plan."

Yoongi listened good, as did Hoseok. Namjoon probably didn't factor in Yoongi letting Hoseok have one earbud too, but it was all right because Hoseok was possibly the one in Bangtan with the most common sense and followed along without flinching one bit.

Namjoon's recorded message wasn't very long, just enough to cover several important points.

One, that when he was exploring one of the houses on the island the day before, he tripped and literally crashed into a flimsy wall, creating a man-sized hole and landing in a secret room. He had no idea why the room was there, but apparently the former inhabitants hated the Government's guts (which made sense considering whoever they were had been evacuated from their freaking home) and decided to build a secret base for the future Battle Royale contestants to stumble upon.

Two, that Namjoon discovered a notebook in the room. It pointed out three specific ways where the secret base could be reached, without anyone being detected by the cameras. One was a cave by the beach. One was this room itself, which had a flight of stairs under a trapdoor. One was under the lake—swim far enough and an opening would appear, where you could climb up into a passage that led to the secret base. The notebook also contained a lot of other random useful information that the former inhabitants had lovingly accumulated (Namjoon hadn't had time to read the information closely, but Yoongi did. He kept the notebook with him and took it out to study in the cave at night, using the light from his mobile phone screen. There was a lot of cool stuff in it, including how to light a fire, how to filter rainwater, and most importantly a detailed map with the location of the island circled in red, which was really great because otherwise how the fuck were they going to get anywhere after they escaped the island if they had no idea where they were?)

Three, that the collars could be deactivated from the control room, which Namjoon would be in. He found that out by reading a user manual that the soldiers were stupid enough to leave around, thinking that their captives didn't understand enough English to try reading it anyway. Unfortunately for them Namjoon read everything he could get his hands on, had mad English skillz and an IQ of 148.

Four, but just randomly deactivating the collars would be fucking suspicious and would probably end with the soldiers storming the island and shooting everyone or something, so Namjoon wanted Yoongi to find a way to coordinate fake deaths. Once it was obvious enough onscreen that someone had "died", Namjoon would immediately deactivate the collars of whoever was fake-dead. The collars could be taken off easily once deactivated, with a screwdriver.

Five, that the soldiers would take a boat to the island and pick up the bodies once the game was over. Ideally no one, or very few, would be left on the boat, so the surviving members should just steal the boat and drive until they crossed the border into an ocean area that belonged to another country (according to the map, they didn't have to go that far). Then they would be under the protection of another nation and the Korean military would have no legal means to hurt them. If they could find a larger ship and ask to be brought to land, they should probably be fine. The neighboring countries knew about the Program (the games were broadcast all over the internet after all) and they all had a condemning stance towards it, so it wouldn't take much convincing for them to take the surviving members in and keep them safe.

Namjoon had said "surviving members" because he had asked Yoongi to try and fake-kill as many members as possible, not all the members, because he knew that realistically that was probably near impossible to achieve. But hey, Yoongi isn't one to settle for imperfection. Go big or go home, ya know?

So yes, he will have to explain all these to Jimin first thing, after they reach the fucking opening (why is it so fucking far) and get those stupid collars taken off. Or maybe he'd just get Seokjin-hyung to do the explaining. He goes to grad school, he would probably be good at explaining stuff. He could make whole powerpoint slides with cute little sushi bulletpoints to educate Jimin on the current situation while Yoongi rests or something, because damn he's tired. Out of the two-ish days on the island he had gotten no sleep whatsoever, and while he is a night owl tried and true, two days is still pushing it.

But there was no way he could have rested, not when there were things to do, stuff to plan, people to fake-kill. It was nice, at least, that after pretend-killing Hoseok and Jin-hyung (he did fire, but made sure to aim reasonably far from the supposed targets), Yoongi had them as partners-in-crime. Since they were fake-dead, they were free to hang out with Yoongi in the deeper parts of the cave, because if the cameras couldn't detect them and their collars were already taken off, they were pretty much non-existent to the system. They were also free to go check out the secret base and report to Yoongi what was inside.

There was a lot of stuff inside. A huge array of weapons which none of them could name, maps and plans and stationery and outfits and even a working shower, as well as a generous supply of fake blood (there had also been a few cans of those in the secret room behind Namjoon's man-hole, which SOPE had put to good use to solidify the impression that Hoseok was, in fact, dead). The item that was the most useful of all was probably the monitor, which showed all the current locations of the collars of living players on the island, as well as the positions of all the surveillance cameras.

There were also some less practical items installed, for example an oven out of all things, and therefore Seokjin decided to take the liberty to bake a few batches of muffins because if he wanted muffins he sure was going to make them and not even the fact that he was on an island and was supposed to be dead could stop him. They were good, Yoongi ate a couple when he had been hidden in the cave during some parts of the first night, discussing tactics with Seokjin and Hoseok. He couldn't stay there for very long, for he had to be onscreen most of the time—if he kept burrowing inside the cave and remaining invisible, surely the soldiers and the audience would get suspicious. But he was there long enough to somehow formulate a plan with the help of his first two "kills".

To get the three youngest ones to cooperate would not be easy in such a situation, they knew. Especially Jungkook. To fake-kill them wouldn't be as simple as fake-killing Hoseok and Seokjin, who already knew that something was up (Hoseok from sharing earphones with Yoongi, and Seokjin from a note stuck to the back of the huge mirror he had as his weapon, which literally said nothing but FIND THE CAVE AT THE BEACH AND STAY THERE AND AWAIT DEATH. TRUST ME -NJ). The younger members would have no reason to think that the older players were in any way not playing the twisted game according to the rules, and it would be difficult to get them to do as they were told.

Hoseok was the one who came up with the idea of using tons of Public Displays of Affection (which everyone in Bangtan was used to anyway) to spread the message. It wouldn't be hard to hide written notes inside their palms and pass them along, and it wouldn't be hard for the recipient to actually read the notes while not being seen by the cameras if two people were tangled in a hug in just the right angle. And Hoseok was a choreographer so he knew all about the right angles. He was also an expert at making sure the cameras captured his winks and heart gestures, which meant that he was equally as knowledgeable in how to make sure the cameras did not capture something that they didn't want them to capture.

Seokjin was the one who wrote the messages—the younger ones recognized his handwriting, and Yoongi figured that if they received messages written by Seokjin, who was supposedly dead, and realized that he was in fact not dead, they would be more trusting and go along with the plan much more willingly.
With the messages done, they were all set. Yoongi would be released into the wild and try to somehow get the maknae line to randomly die. Seokjin and Hoseok would retreat back to the secret base and practice using all the different weapons that were stashed in there because hey, they'd have to steal a boat from trained soldiers, and how would that even work out if they couldn't fight somewhat? So of course they'd have to practice.

Or maybe they just went and baked more muffins. Yoongi wouldn't know, he never returned to meet them inside the cave after the first night. For one thing if he disappeared too often it would be suspicious, for another he had to stay near the mouth of the cave, somewhat visible and somewhat not, since he wasn't sure when the maknaes were going to show up and he had to be there to fire the shots that would fake-kill them.

He wasn't sure who exactly he would be killing—the three maknaes all received the same message. It only relayed the basics, they trusted the three of them to figure out themselves how to coordinate their deaths so that only one of them would be left in the end. They couldn't all die, because that way Yoongi would be the last one standing and they didn't want anyone to be the last one standing. No one was supposed to win this game. Whoever did would be taken away by the soldiers, and once the soldiers figured out that they had been duped, they'd probably take it out on the unfortunate winner.

In a way Yoongi was glad that the maknaes planned their deaths the way they did, with Taehyung dying in a dramatic fashion (he figured he had enough practice in Hwarang) and Jungkook going nuts crying (the golden maknae was probably the only one in the group who could tear up at command, and he put his skills to good use). Yoongi felt almost like a proud parent when he dragged the two bodies into the cave out of sight, and pointed them the way to the secret base, where Hoseok and Seokjin would be waiting.

"You two did really good," he told a Taehyung who was grinning boxes and an embarrassed-looking Jungkook who huffed as he tried to wring the fake blood out of one of his many white shirts.

"Jimin says he's thinking around sunset, at the lake," Taehyung said. "That's what you want, right? A final death match at the lake, and then we'll all be together."

Yoongi nodded. "Yep, that's what we want. Sunset it is then."

"That's great," Taehyung exclaimed brightly. "We were so worried we got it wrong, you know? The note wasn't being very clear on exactly what was going on, Jin-hyung only wrote to follow your plan and come to the cave, while also having one of us stay behind and eventually meet up with you at the lake."

"Yeah." Yoongi rubbed his neck. "We couldn't fit everything in such a small note. If it were any bigger the cameras would see it, and if we did the writing any smaller you wouldn't be able to read it while hugging each other and that defeats the whole purpose. We're glad y'all still got everything right though." He felt himself positively glowing with pride.

"You should be glad we trust you so much, hyung," Jungkook muttered, impatiently wiping the black mascara lines off his face but only ending up smearing more fake blood on it. "Not everyone who receives super vague notes with confusing instructions would just say fuck it and go along with them."

Yoongi looked down. The cave was dark, but he still wouldn't want the younger ones to see the emotions in his eyes—he had a reputation to uphold, goddamn it. "I know," he said softly. "Believe me, I know."

"By the way, take my phone," Taehyung added before he and Jungkook headed deeper into the cave towards the base. "Since we couldn't discuss out loud and didn't have anything to write with, Jimin just typed his plans on my phone's Notes so that I could share the info with Jungkook while pretending to take selfies, and pass it on to you later." He stuck the small device into Yoongi's hand. "There's nothing that you don't already know, but you should keep it just in case you forget it's THE LAKE AT SUNSET."

Yoongi scowled. "Like I would forget something that important!"

He opened the Notes on Taehyung's phone anyway, after the two left. Jimin probably hadn't had time to type a lot—it was all very rushed and full of typos.

tae im gon poison ur water. dont rly drink itbut pretend to drunk.it and get kook to the cave. ill meet hyung at lake around sunset dont worry! we will b fine love u tae

There was also a message to Jungkook, detailing what the plan was and what he had to do. Underneath, Yoongi was surprised to find a message to him too.

hi Yoongi-hyung! thank u for trying to save us, im not very good at opening my eyes in water but we will b ok tonight! hwaiting!!

Yoongi couldn't help the small smile spreading across his face.

**

Author's Note

Do you guys prefer long chapters or short chapters?