The Ace (Stray Kids Kim Seungmin)

41

"I murdered her," Harri stated. "What do you mean how and why she died?"

"Harriet Beckham! I am literally three interruptions away from just killing you all here and now! Just let me explain what happened. This is why I told you to sit down. The longer you stand, the more impatient you get." He huffed, glaring at them all before continuing. "While we were figuring out the whole plan to kill Melody, we all quickly realised that I was the only one who actually wanted to kill anyone but for the plan to work we needed at least two murderers. That's when Aira suggested using Harri. Bare in mind, at this point we had all figured out that Mel wasn't a Joker and Aira just wanted her dead for her own reasons. Seungmin, Aaron and Kayleigh were all trying to find a way to get themselves out of it when we all got a message from the creators: there's no physical escape. Only one of us will have to survive for someone to escape and so we figured it would hurt us to kill Mel and all of the Hearts. But none of us wanted to do it so Aira suggested tricking Harri into doing it. Now, I should have figured out Aira was the other Joker at this point considering how experienced she was at manipulating Harri but I was too young and dumb to notice."

"I only suggested Harri because I knew she was the Joker and wanted her to prove it to the rest of you," Aira interrupted.

"Lies. Anyway, so devised a way to plant the idea of killing the Hearts into Harri's head. Every day for two months we would casually slip the words 'killing', 'death' and 'murder' into conversations and then we slowly began to add 'hearts', 'sing' and 'melody' in conversations as well. It's a skill we learnt from the creators. And then our next step was to make sure Harri trusted Aira enough to do anything and everything for her so we made sure Aira was always there at Harri's worst to cheer her up. The final detail was making sure Aira was the only one who remembered Harri's sixteenth birthday which also happened to be the day we invaded Pen 5A96. What a crazy day that was! That day, while Aira and Harri were talking to each other, Aira explained our plan to invade the Pen and nudged Harri a little to make her think of killing them. And Harri did eventually imply that was what she was going to do. To the naked eye, it seemed like our plan was a complete success but on closer inspection, you start to notice ulterior motives."

"To the naked eye?" Kayleigh asked. "Our plan was a complete success. Harri fell for it. That's why Mel died."

"I'm going to ignore that considering you only interrupted me to get me to give up on continuing the story. But our plan wasn't a complete success because the Hearts were already two steps ahead of us. You see, Harri didn't really want to kill anyone, especially not her teammates even though she didn't know them. This is because of the kind-hearted nature of Hearts. She quickly noticed how we began to incorporate specific words into every conversation and immediately understood what we were trying to do. She didn't want to involve herself with any of us anymore but, once again, because of her kind-hearted nature, she couldn't just ditch us so she began to arrive back at the cave later and sleep in longer to avoid us as best she could. Now, this is when things get a bit... confusing."

"Was the rest of this not supposed to be confusing?" Seungmin asked. "Wait, no ignore that. This is the third interruption."

"First interruption, actually. Kayleigh and Aira's don't count because they are doing it on purpose. You still have two more interruptions before I kill you all. So, as I was saying, this is where it gets slightly more confusing than the rest. While all of this was taking place, the Hearts remembered one key personality trait of Aira, she's persistent. So Mel began to get in contact with the creators, asking them questions about her until the Hearts were able to piece a puzzle together, a puzzle the creators never wanted anyone to figure out. They found a way to hack the escape." He paused, glancing around with a confident smile. "Tell me, Kayleigh, what are the diamonds' strengths?"