¹ALICE IN BORDERLAND ▸ CHECKMATE

shuntaro chishiya x oc
The last King had ruled through paranoia, through the kind of weak-willed fear that saw threats in allies and let power slip through trembling fingers. The noise swelled, folding in on itself, growing larger than the sum of its parts. It was no longer sound; it was weight, crushing down on me, sinking into the marrow of my bones, pressing into hollow spaces of my mind. It tangled with my thoughts, wrapped around them like a vice until I couldn't tell where the shouting stopped and where my mind began. Some were composed, faces and expressions unreadable. I recognized it for what it was. Panic didn't always look like screaming, sometimes it was just the way someone swallowed hard, as if trying to keep it down. The wall bore the marks of time, not in cracks or stains, but in etchings of survival - a tally of days carved with a dagger. At first, I had carved them close together, expecting to leave before the space ran out. But as the marks stretched, as the numbers climbed, the gaps between each tally mark grew wider, as if denial could be traced in spacing, as if putting more distance between each stroke would make it less real. I ran my fingers over the final mark, the last one I was allowed. I focused on the way the air felt when no one else was breathing it. The visa was not an empty threat, nor an arbitrary limit designed to keep me playing - it was a fuse reminder that time did not stop simply because I had. I wondered why I wasn't so scared, but when you realize you're being controlled by fear, things stop being so scary.