The final contestant pays their dues.
Without warning, the black marble beneath their feet thinned to fragile ice, spiderwebbing with cracks. The walls bled into a mist; the sky dissolved into shadow.
As if everything they knew of reality wasn't rapidly distorting, Hikashi calmly steps to the girl who had unquestioningly saved his very existence.
"Hey, girl. Don't expect to rely on me." He says in a voice as cold as the mist swallowing the room.
"Good," she replied lightly. "I didn't save you for that.
And for the record—" she added, smiling faintly, "I'm not 'girl.'"
The mist climbed higher. Their bodies, their faces, began vanishing into it, slowly consumed.
"My name is Val—"
Her voice was devoured by the swirling darkness, leaving only silence.
The mist cleared with a violent snap as curtains were yanked back by unseen hands.
Hikashi's floating shoes finally strike solid ground, a soft, smooth red carpet. The world crystallised into a vast, circular chamber. Tables stretched across the scarlet floor in perfect wooden rings, each with two red cushioned chairs opposite one another. A single pen lay upon each table menacingly.
Players stumbled to their feet, coughing, clutching at their chests as if they'd been strangled by the fall.
A figure began to materialise in the air above them, forming from the mist like a wound in the sky.
The masked devil.
His voice rolled over the players, cold and deliberate.
"Each of you has been loaned 10,000 Soulis.
A match begins when two players agree to face each other.
Both must wager a sum greater than 1,000 Soulis in physical cash. The amount you gamble cannot be withdrawn from your soul pocket into physical cash during or after a match. If the total wager exceeds 10,000, the winner will lose 25% of his earnings. Otherwise, the entire amount will automatically be added to your total.
Each will choose one of two cards: an Angel or a Demon."
"If both players choose Demon, you both lose half of the combined wager. If both players choose differing cards, the Demon steals every bit of soulis gambled by the angel as long as the stakes do not align alongside what they themselves had gambled. Two angels cause a stalemate."
His voice darkened, sinking into a low rumble. "Once all cards have been eliminated from your possession you can voluntarily choose to leave via walking through the exit." His eyes divert to the end of the room, where two dark, ghostly figures stand on either side of a double-door exit. High above them, suspended in a ceiling of shifting glass, a massive clock ticked backwards.
Five hours.
Noticing the heaviness of his pockets, Hikashi digs his hand inside. Miraculously, his hand holds 10 cards. 5 cards with a pitch-black demon with a wicked grin, horns and a sharp tail dancing in the flames, consuming the scene. The other five cards had a purely angelic face; her hands clasped together in prayer as her white feathers elegantly rested behind her golden hair, surrounded by a warm glow.
"Hey, what are the chances? It's loner!"
"You're allowed to call me loner, but I can't, girl?"
"Hey, I gave you my name; I'm still waiting for yours." Valeria cracks.
Hikashi crosses his arms in an action not intended to present anger or irritation but pure boredom. "I didn't get it, but I don't need it either-"
"My name's Valeria," she proclaims, her voice barging through.
"That's nice," Hikashi utters mundanely before swivelling around in the opposite direction.
Suddenly, a kind remark pounces between them, "Hey, miss, you look cute."
"Haha, don't think this is a very good place to be hitting on someone, but thanks." Valeria chuckles.
"Oh no, I just say things as I see them." The man wore a yellow sleeveless leather jacket with fur on the shoulders alongside jeans of the same colour. His hair a light blonde, "what I really want is to ask if you'd want to form an alliance?"
"An alliance?" Valeria questions.
"Yeah, it's the simplest and most foolproof way to make it through. We'll burn through each other's cards and make it through."
Infiltrating the conversation, Hikashi interrogates. "How many people are a part of this alliance?"
"Who the hell are you? Are you already together? Never mind shit then."
"Hey, what are you on about? I don't even know his name-"
Valeria takes a sharp turn towards Hikashi. "Hey! What'd you do that for?"
"Both people can't make it out with a permanent alliance between two people," Hikashi utters.
"Yes, I know it'd probably be hard to believe with your arrogance, but I'm not retarded."
Hikashi remains silent.
"But I'm not going to end a person's life intentionally; I'm going to find a way I can make it through and not harm anyone. I'll save as many people as possible, too."
"That'd be impossible; not everyone is as morally upstanding as you."
"I'll figure out a way," She powerfully proclaims.
Suddenly, a retching scream echoes from a table only a couple of feet away from Hikashi and Valeria.
"YOU LYING B*TCH, GIVE IT BACK!" The source of the bellow is a young girl with short red and yellow hair alongside an orange tracksuit, gripping both collars of the man in front of her, despite him being a head taller than her.
It was the same man who had offered an alliance to Valeria just a few moments ago.
Three faceless ghouls, formed purely of shadows, two white abysses representing their eyes, approach the commotion. "Unhand him." They utter in sync.
The woman takes a short gasp as if she had swallowed her own throat, "You don't understand this thief robbed me..." she mumbles painfully, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
The ushers maintained silence before dissipating into thin air just as quickly as they had appeared.
The woman plummets to her knees alongside her hope.
Looking up at the screen, a chibi version of the girl plummets to the bottom of the table, down with 6,000 S beside her name—every other character on the screen a clean 11,000 S.
100th place.
"How'd she go down a whole 5k?"
"That's the way the game is. Devour or become the devoured." Hikashi utters. "It's how it's always been."
With her heart in her teeth, Valeria shoots a step forward. "I'd prefer to feed and be fed." She retorts passionately.
"That's nice," Hikashi replies, painfully disinterested, his back towards Valeria, holding the last bit of attention in the conversation.
"Where are you going?"
Valeria stops walking, and although not her entire body, her head turns towards Hikashi, "Don't bother yourself. I'm not hungry." She had no belief in the concept of devouring another person; it was almost as if Valeria was rushing to chase something. "No worries though, just don't die before we talk again...Loner." She jokes, although not showing any sign of what you'd often expect alongside a joke within the grey tone of her voice and face.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hikashi leans against the wall in isolation, claiming a spot in the corner. After a couple of minutes, you wouldn't hesitate to believe he'd fallen asleep.
"Man, I envy you. You can snooze during a game like this. I'm terrified as hell." Hikashi grants the voice a disinterested eye. A somewhat chubby, soft-looking man stands before him, holding a smile across his ginger-bearded face, an identical colour to his curly hair. He wore an ordinary light blue V-neck shirt and dirt-brown jeans.
"You've barely moved the past 15 minutes. Honestly, I thought those demons could've turned you into some statue of an edgy teenager, his hands never leaving his pockets. But it's cause you felt it too, isn't it."
"I've been thinking." Not out of a curious need to know or intrigue, solely to move the conversation forward, Hikashi dully continues. "And what'd that feeling be?" Hikashi's hands remaining in his pockets unfazed.
"Even though your face doesn't show it. You're afraid of dying, too; we want to survive, right?" The man says the obvious question with a more than obvious answer. What good would it be to enter these games to die? Even the most idiotic person in the room would have a near-identical answer. "But we want to make money too." He continued, This answer a less common; although the purpose of the games is to obtain wealth, the power of death is far greater than desire over a person's actions, even the most greedy.
The man had finally managed to catch Hikashi's attention. Money is something he desired more than anything right now, even more than his own life, although in this scenario, death being the absolute erasure of your very existence. It didn't matter. "So what are you getting at?"
"Let me tell you, you don't have to think much longer," the man says, folding his arms with a prestigious smirk escaping his face. He couldn't hide how proud he would be of his next words. "I have a plan, but I need an ally, a friend. The name's Rollo."
Despite more interesting queries, Hikashi pulls out the weakest word to explore further, "Which one?" He sighs. Was Rollo more concerned with a friend or an ally?
"Wouldn't mind both, haha. The names are Rollo." Rollo pulls out a chair and stretches his arm out, opening his palm once at full extension, welcoming Hikashi's firmly. Although his right hand still submerged in his pocket, Hikashi's left arm soon follows suit, "Hikashi."
"Okay, now let me indulge you in my plan." Rollo interlocks his fingers and stretches his arms forward. "Remember that first guy? He's not been able to get a game since. He was the first game, the first villain," Rollo preaches. "Reputation is a vital part in this game, so what we've got to do is increase our reputation to the sky, with everyone's trust, we'll be able to play another game against an unsuspecting coward and make big. With vast amounts of money comes a vast amount of power over the game, then the next stage of the plan can begin."
Hikashi rests his head on his right palm, leaning on the table, "Mm, we need to make a game that people watch."
"One hundred per cent, you're getting what I'm getting at; that's why we'll gamble high amounts of nearly everything we have." The game is still within its early stages, where the timid air is still dominant. A high-stakes game will undoubtedly be the centre of attention. From what I've seen so far
Rollo places a card on the table; his voice echoes loud and clear in a way that could not be misheard, even in the slightest: "Eight thousand soulis."
Using his left hand Hikashi pushes his card to the centre of the table opposite Rollo's, "I stake eight thousand Soulis."