Chapter Text
“Player one.”
Niragi watched Chishiya with a condescending grin. He rambled something about how maybe either him or Kuina could land on ten to finish the game and that otherwise, they shouldn’t pick too large or small a number at this point to maximize the possible choices down the road.
“Physical,” the voice finally announced his pick.
Chishiya skimmed over the instructions, expression unreadable. He was quiet for a few moments.
“I’ll skip my turn,” he finally said.
Niragi felt his grin slip. “Hah?” he made.
“I’m supposed to gouge out your eye.” Chishiya shrugged, calm as ever. “I’d prefer not to do that.”
He blinked, completely dumbfounded. “…why?”
Chishiya, who didn’t really give a damn about anyone. Chishiya, who did everything with effortless calculation. Chishiya, who treated everything like a game, unfazed by even the worst of deaths. Chishiya, who hated him.
“I’d like to keep my hands clean, if possible,” he smiled.
What a stupid fucking excuse.
“Are you fucking-”
“Player one has skipped their turn,” the announcement interrupted him. “The piñata may now choose between the two punishment options provided. The associated points will be rewarded to player one.”
Niragi clicked his tongue, annoyed. “I have to choose?”
He should be overjoyed at an opportunity like this. Chishiya constantly pissed him off with everything he did. He was such a horrible person to be around, acting so infuriatingly superior all the time. It made him feel uneasy just to be in the same room as him. And here was the perfect opportunity to get back at him. So why the hell was his throat so tight?
“Physical,” the voice began to read out the options. “The player must break a bone of their choice. Reward: four points.”
“This is messed up,” Usagi muttered.
“Blades: The player must cut off a limb of their choice. Reward: two points.”
“What the fuck?” Kuina blurted out.
Chishiya let out an amused huff. “So the stakes keep rising. Interesting.”
Two points. Two points would move Chishiya up to ten. The second option would end the game. Niragi felt sick and he didn’t understand why because really, he should be laughing. This was hilarious, right? He had the chance to completely ruin Chishiya’s life and save himself in the process. What an incredibly wonderful opportunity. How beautifully twisted. And yet, for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing he wasn’t the one in control. Maybe Kuina had been right. It just wasn’t any fun like this.
Unable to keep up his facade of amusement, he turned to stare at the man at his mercy. Chishiya returned his gaze and he had the audacity to look bored. Like this didn’t concern him at all.
“I guess the choice should be obvious,” he smiled.
It should be. It wasn’t.
Niragi looked at the options described on the screen again, acutely aware of the way everyone was staring at him. Kuina looked about ready to jump up from her seat to rush to Chishiya’s aid once he was bleeding. Arisu seemed appalled, tightly gripping the edges of his table in something that wasn’t quite rage and not quite desperation. Usagi looked like she wanted to personally cut his throat, as if he’d already picked the second option.
Niragi took a deep breath.
“Option one. Breaking a bone or whatever.”
He felt disgusted with himself. A deafening silence filled the warehouse. The weight of his decision was lead in his lungs. It could have been over. What the fuck was he doing?
“Oh?” Chishiya hummed and Niragi couldn’t remember ever having seen him this genuinely surprised.
“You’re not a total asshole, after all,” Kuina said.
She was wrong. He was nothing but human trash, the worst of the worst. Someone who was never going to change. A twisted, fucked-up, appalling thing, worthy only of hate and fear. That was how he wanted it.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Niragi snarled. “I’d love to watch him bleed out. But he doesn’t get to die all heroic because he refused to do his turn for some reason. Got it?”
Chishiya essentially sacrificing himself for him was about the worst thing Niragi could imagine. He couldn’t let that happen. That was the only reason for his decision. It had to be.
A quiet snap echoed through the room. Niragi spun around just in time to see Chishiya sit up in his chair again. He had broken one of his toes against the edge of the steel table. There was barely any tension in his expression and for someone who had just snapped his own bone in half, he looked much too relaxed.
“Attack complete.”
“Let’s move on,” Chishiya suggested. There was the faintest strain to his voice, but aside from that, he showed absolutely no sign of being in pain.
The rest of the round was as uneventful as one of these games could be. Niragi was punched, kicked, sliced, had two of his fingers broken and by the time it was Usagi’s turn in the fourth round, he was beginning to feel like he had been hit by a truck. A pounding headache had settled into his skull. Every ragged breath painfully reminded him of his broken ribs and the various bruises around his upper body. The cuts on his arm and his fractured fingers burned and his chest felt like it was still on fire. There was a steady stream of blood dripping from the deep cut across his torso and the wound in his abdomen. The dagger was still embedded into his flesh, sending sharp jolts of pain through his side with every movement.
And slowly but steadily, everything was beginning to grow distant. Muffled, slow, unreal. Niragi knew what that meant. He’d experienced it more than enough in the real world. He didn’t have much more left in him.
“How long are you gonna keep staring at that?” he mocked, unfortunately too breathless to put any real bite into the provocation.
Usagi looked up from her tablet. Niragi was surprised to see regret shimmering in her eyes. So she was getting sick of beating him up, too.
“They want me to break your arm,” she said, something akin to worry giving her voice a strange edge. “Do you want me to ski-”
“Just fucking do it,” Niragi snapped.
Usagi blinked, taken aback. To his surprise, Chishiya was the one to come to his support.
“How many points?” he asked, his voice calm.
“Six,” she replied hesitantly. “That would move me to seventeen, just like Kuina.”
“And then both Arisu and I will have a chance to get there as well,” Chishiya completed her thought. “Do it, then. We should wrap this up soon, anyway.” He nodded towards the small pool of blood that had gathered by Niragi’s feet. “I don’t think he’s bleeding out, but… he’s not going to last much longer. I’m not sure what will happen if he passes out.” He tilted his head, a small smile on his lips as if this was somehow an amusing thought. “We might lose.”
Niragi hated the way he was analyzing the sorry state he was in. He hated the way those knowing eyes were burning holes into his skin, seeing right through every attempt at a facade. Maybe he should bleed out, just so that Chishiya and the others would lose the game and die as well.
For some reason, Usagi looked at Arisu for confirmation. When he nodded, she returned the gesture and moved towards the back of her table.
“Come here.”
Niragi rolled his eyes. “Stop giving me orders.”
Still, he did what she asked, a pained hiss escaping his lips when the blade twisted against his insides. With an exaggerated movement, he slammed his left forearm onto the table. Usagi didn’t even flinch.
“Have fun,” he sneered, voice dripping with sarcasm.
She gave him a weirdly concerned look, then instructed him to turn his back against the table and position himself so that his elbow was on the cold steel surface, the rest of his arm hanging off of the front. He used the opportunity to lean against the steel block as nonchalantly as he could, a smug smile on his lips as if he was just relaxing. Usagi grabbed his arm, one hand just below his elbow, the other above his wrist. Her fingers were digging into his skin as she pressed it against the hard surface.
“It won’t work like that,” Kuina interrupted from the other side of the square. “Niragi, pin your arm to the table yourself. Usagi, use both hands. And use your body weight, both of you.”
Niragi couldn’t help but chuckle at her comment. What a fucked-up, surreal situation. Getting advice from Kuina on how to assist Usagi in breaking his own arm was not something he had expected from this day.
“I bet you’re enjoying this, huh?” he laughed.
Kuina stared at him, her expression serious. “Shut up. I’m trying to help you.”
Rolling his eyes, Niragi shoved Usagi aside to take her place in pressing his own arm onto the cold steel surface, leaning onto it with his other elbow in order to use as much of his body weight as possible. She watched him for a second, then clasped her hands around the part of his arm that was in the air.
“Ready?” she asked, slightly nervous. What an insane question to ask.
“Sure,” Niragi said flatly.
Usagi took a deep breath, slightly bouncing on her toes. He felt his heartbeat accelerate, hammering against the inside of his chest like a panicked bird trying to escape its cage. The pressure he was putting on his forearm hurt against his muscles. For just a second, Usagi’s grip loosened.
She let out a short scream at the same time as she brought down her entire body weight in one rapid motion. There was a loud crack and for a split second, everything turned white. Then the pain set in and Niragi distantly realized that now, he was the one screaming. He stumbled forward, clutching his arm to his chest. The sharp throbbing shot all the way down to his hand and up into his shoulder. He gasped for air, cutting off his own scream with a strained breath. Fuck, he was so sick of this stupid fucking game.
Niragi clenched his jaw, forcing himself to stay quiet save for the occasional pained groan he was unable to bite back. He straightened his back, letting his ruined arm hang limply by his side. The movement only renewed the hot, pulsing pain. His vision blurred and for a moment, he felt horribly nauseous. But he steadied his breathing, stumbled back towards the center of the square and turned to face Arisu.
“Your turn,” Niragi rasped.
Arisu swallowed, staring at him for another moment as if to confirm that he wasn’t about to fold like a lawn chair. He looked about ready to throw up. But when he finally lowered his gaze to look at his options, his eyes widened. He blinked in disbelief, before quickly, relief flooded his expression. His shoulders visibly dropped as he breathed out.
“Two points,” Arisu smiled. “I can get seventeen. It’s over.”
“Thank fuck,” Kuina groaned.
Usagi breathed a sigh of relief and even Chishiya leaned back in his chair, the familiar relaxed demeanor that Niragi hadn’t noticed disappearing returning to his body.
“Other: taser,” the voice happily announced.
“Going out with a bang, huh?” Niragi chuckled.
Arisu grabbed the weapon from the table, the look on his face a strange mix between determined and apologetic. “Twenty seconds. I’m sorry about th-”
“Stop fucking apologizing,” Niragi interrupted him. “I told you I don’t want your damn pity, didn’t I? Now get this over with.”
Arisu nodded, slowly closing the distance between them.
“Abdomen, if it has to be the torso,” Chishiya raised his voice, helpful as ever. “That’s safest. You should try to catch him when he falls.”
The taser flickered to life with a quiet, continuous clicking sound. At least Arisu didn’t ask if he was ready. He just gave another nod, resolve taking over his expression, and jabbed the prongs into the side of Niragi’s abdomen that wasn’t equipped with a bleeding knife wound.
The pain was instant, the sharp sensation of a million needles stabbing into his flesh traveling through his entire body. All he could do was let out a choked yelp, then his jaw locked as every single one of his muscles cramped up. He felt each individual pulse of electricity like a jackhammer. His legs gave out and Arisu just barely blocked him from heading straight for the ground. His body twitched, his muscles contorted as the other man struggled to move them towards the floor together. A strained groan tore from his throat at the same time as their knees hit the concrete.
Unlike Chishiya, Arisu wasn’t counting out loud. Niragi had absolutely no idea how much time was left. The agony intensified, the burning way worse than that of the actual flame against his skin, overtaking his consciousness until it was all he could perceive. He wanted to scream, but the only sound that left his mouth was a strangled wheezing. His insides were on fire, his body completely useless.
And then it was over. Niragi instantly gasped for breath, the air painfully flooding his lungs. His face was involuntarily pressed into Arisu’s shoulder, his muscles still twitching from the shock. He choked on air, unable to regain control. But he couldn’t stay like this, pathetically being hugged by Arisu. Niragi twisted out of the loose grip around his back and pushed the other man away. He lost his balance instantly, his upper body tipping forwards without any strength to stay upright. He tried to catch himself with his intact arm, but the limb was just as useless as the rest of him. His face and chest hit the concrete. Distantly, he noticed that there was a hand pressed against his stomach, burning against the deep cut. Arisu had kept him from falling onto the push dagger still buried in his abdomen.
“Attack complete.”
It was quiet for a few long seconds, the only sound Niragi’s strained, shallow breaths.
“Three players have reached the same score. Game clear. Congratulations.”
There were no cheers, no happy exclamations. He rolled onto his back, his broken arm and ribs complaining with a sharp, pulsing pain. His entire front was slick with warm blood. The distant ceiling was blurry. Everything fucking hurt. How the hell had this happened?
Arisu’s face appeared above him, his dark hair messily hanging down, and he really shouldn’t look so concerned, because they despised each other. It should be good that he was suffering, right? Why did he have the audacity to seem worried? Utterly unable to process the absolute ridiculousness of this entire stupid situation, Niragi could do nothing but to start laughing, the sound ugly and hoarse.
“He’s finally lost it completely,” Kuina said somewhere further back.
Arisu disappeared into the periphery of his vision and the thought crossed Niragi’s mind that they could very well just leave him here. He would, if he were them. With a still trembling hand, he felt for the dagger.
“Don’t remove it.”
Chishiya. So they weren’t leaving. Huh. Niragi let his hand slide back to the ground. He didn’t reply, instead turning his head to try and find out where the bastard was. He found him to his right, walking towards him with a slight limp, the shirt he had discarded earlier in his hands. Chishiya squatted down next to him.
“If you do that, you might bleed to death after all,” he smiled.
Niragi blinked, his eyelids leaden. “Why do you care?”
“Hm,” Chishiya made with an unreadable expression. “Who knows?”
Niragi huffed out an amused breath and turned to stare at the ceiling again. In the corner of his view, he could see Kuina sit down somewhere to the left, her head tilted back. Usagi and Arisu joined her shortly after. To his right, Chishiya began to cut up his giraffe print shirt with a hunting knife that he’d probably gotten from Usagi. Nobody said a word.
“What’s with the shitty mood?” Niragi mocked.
Kuina audibly groaned. “You’re really irritating, you know that?”
He just chuckled in response. A sudden, sharp pain raced through his side and he felt warm hands and soft fabric against his skin. He tried to lift his head to catch a glimpse of what was happening, but his muscles refused to cooperate beyond a few inches.
“What are you doing?” Niragi rasped, unable to give his voice the bite he had been aiming for.
Chishiya hummed. “Saving your life, it seems.”
Niragi winced when he felt a burning pressure against his stab wound as something was tightly wrapped around the weapon and then around his midriff.
“I didn’t ask you to,” he squeezed out through clenched teeth.
“I guess not,” Chishiya replied, an almost thoughtful undertone to his voice. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I don’t like you one bit.” He paused and for a second Niragi thought that was all he was going to say. “But you’re… interesting, I think. Not as predictable as I thought. For now, I’d like to see how you shape this world. Down the line… who knows. I suppose that depends on what you do.”
Niragi laughed, but was quickly cut off when the pressure against his wound intensified.
“Yeah. I can’t fucking stand you either.”
Darkness was beginning to close in from the corners of his view. His eyelids fluttered as he struggled to keep them open, his aching body so heavy it felt like he was sinking through the floor.
“Niragi.” Chishiya’s voice was distant, muffled through the ringing in his ears. “You’re not going to pass out, are you?”
He weakly shook his head. “Just tired,” he muttered. “You try getting your ass kicked for half an hour.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Thought so,” he huffed.
They fell quiet again and finally, Niragi couldn’t physically keep his eyes open anymore. He hated the feeling, being so vulnerable when he was surrounded by people he didn’t trust at all, while Chishiya of all people was poking at his injuries. But there was nothing he could do now, anyway. He had no choice but to believe that for some reason, they wanted to bring him back with them. Alive.
In all fairness, it wasn’t all that unrealistic, either. Most of these weirdos, Chishiya being the clear exception, got off on acting like they gave a shit about who lived and died. It was probably their own version of self-gratification. Doing something they perceived as good, even if it was helping someone they hated, just so that they could feel better about themselves. Selfish in their own selflessness. It was fucking repulsive.
Chishiya moved away for a moment and Niragi despised himself for missing the strangely comforting warmth of his hands. This day was fucking awful. He needed to get away from here, back to the Beach to beat up some lowly idiot who had dared to question their authority or something. And then he would get blackout drunk at one of their never-ending parties and forget that any of this had ever happened.
“Usagi.” Niragi watched the darkness behind his closed eyes as he listened to Chishiya’s low voice. “I’ve seen you carry a bottle around. Do you have one with you?”
“Yes,” came her reply from somewhere to the left, before what he assumed to be her footsteps moved towards them.
“You’re overdoing it,” Niragi scoffed. “If you’re trying to make fun of me, fucking cut it out. Unless you wanna get shot.”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to make threats right now.” God, he hated how smug and self-assured Chishiya always sounded. “I’m just making sure you’re not too much trouble. It would be really annoying if you pass out on the way to the car.”
Making sure he wasn’t too much trouble. As if all of this was somehow his fault. Niragi really wished he had any strength left to beat that asshole over the head with his rifle.
A damp piece of cloth was pressed against his skin and he hissed when it burned against the cut Arisu had carved across his torso. With a surprising gentleness, Chishiya began to clean away the blood around the wound.
“Shouldn’t you be thanking me?” Niragi rasped, just to distract himself from the horrifying realization that it actually felt kind of nice to let someone else take care of his injuries for once. “You’d all be dead if I hadn’t volunteered.”
With a quiet chuckle, Chishiya moved on to wrap more cloth around his beat-up torso. Niragi couldn’t help but flinch, a quiet curse escaping his lips when the makeshift bandages touched against his broken ribs.
“Didn’t you only volunteer because you knew you would have been chosen, anyway?”
Niragi abruptly opened his eyes. He couldn’t properly see Kuina, Arisu or Usagi from his position on the ground, but he could feel their gazes prickling on his skin. A surge of rage-fueled adrenaline raced through his veins, but it wasn’t enough to do anything more than stare daggers into the side of Chishiya’s head.
“I should have made you cut off a limb,” he hissed.
Chishiya smiled. “You should have.”
One day he was seriously going to blow his fucking head off.
“You done soon?” Kuina interrupted from her spot across the room. “It’s getting late.”
“Is there something we can do?” Arisu added.
Niragi wanted to throw up. He did not need the pity of these goddamn people. With every ounce of strength he could muster, he pushed himself up onto his right elbow, making sure to keep his broken arm cradled against his abdomen. A wave of lightheadedness rushed over him as his various injuries flared up with fresh pain.
“We can go,” he said anyway, pretending that the strain in his voice wasn’t there.
Chishiya stared at him, expression unreadable as always. “If you want to help, Arisu, give me your jacket.” There was an uncharacteristic gravity to his usually aloof tone.
Arisu did as he was told and Chishiya began to tie the light gray piece of clothing into a loop. Without so much as asking, he moved right up into Niragi’s space to pull the improvised sling over his head. It took him every ounce of willpower to not flinch away and hadn’t his skull been pounding with a persistent ache, he would have rewarded the transgression with a headbutt.
“For your arm,” Chishiya simply stated, expectantly holding the cloth so that there was a hole for his limb to slip through.
Niragi didn’t trust himself to speak, so he simply pushed his horribly bent arm into the sling. The painful pressure tore an involuntary gasp from his throat and the black spots in his vision made a grandiose return. Everything tilted. He was half expecting the back of his head to hit the concrete, but there was a hand pressed against his spine, keeping him upright. Chishiya’s stupid, gentle, warm hand.
As soon as his vision began returning to normal and the ringing in his ears started to fade, Niragi jerked away from the touch. Chishiya raised his hands in a mockingly placating gesture, a condescending smile on his lips. Before Niragi could even think of a snarky remark, Usagi’s water bottle appeared in front of his face.
“Drink,” she said. Then, with a glance in Chishiya’s direction: “That helps with blood loss, right?”
“For now,” he replied. “It’s better than nothing.”
Niragi was completely and utterly done with letting these losers treat him like a helpless, wounded animal. But he also didn’t even want to imagine the embarrassment of blacking out as soon as he stood up, subsequently having to be carried by someone. So despite every instinct, he snatched the bottle from Usagi and drank. Annoyingly, the pleasantly cold water really did help to dissipate his dizziness at least a little, but there was no way in hell he was going to admit that.
“Let’s go,” he snarled, shoving the bottle back into Usagi’s hand as soon as he was done.
Arisu reached out to help him up. With an annoyed click of his tongue, Niragi slapped the outstretched hand out of his way and struggled to his feet on his own. He realized his mistake almost instantly when his knees buckled and he just barely managed to catch himself. Nausea tightened his throat as his mangled side pulsed with a sharp pain.
“Right, I’m gonna help you now,” Kuina said flatly.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Niragi hissed, but his voice was so miserably quiet and hoarse, it didn’t sound like a threat at all.
Kuina rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm and pulled it around her shoulders. “It’s gonna take ages otherwise. I’m tired.”
He tried to free his wrist, but her grip was too strong. “Fuck you.”
“No thanks,” Kuina laughed. “I like women.”
Niragi had no reply to that. Her arm snaked around his upper back before she started walking and he had no choice but to stumble along. Everything about this sucked.
The walk to the car was quiet and much too long for his liking. Every step, every little movement hurt like hell and he could feel everyone’s disgustingly worried looks on him the entire way. Niragi was pretty sure that he actually wouldn’t have made it without Kuina’s help, but he was the only person he was going to admit that to.
It was more than a relief when he could finally sink into the cushions of the back seat, having made it a point to climb into the car on his own. But the feeling quickly dissipated when Chishiya let himself drop into the middle seat next to him. Arisu offered to drive, so Usagi took the other front seat while Kuina squeezed into the back with them.
Niragi turned to face the window as they started. Without any working street lights, the abandoned buildings outside were eerily dark. He tilted his gaze up, catching a view of the breathtakingly bright stars. This world was so much more beautiful than the one they had left behind.
And then Arisu had to break the moment.
“Are you gonna be okay?”
Niragi rolled his eyes. “Yeah.” He would have left it at that, but he felt that he had to make it abundantly clear that this whole thing didn’t mean anything to him. “Don’t think for even a second that I’m gonna thank any of you for this. You owed me that much. And fucking leave me alone when we’re back.”
To his right, Kuina sighed. “Every time I start to think you’re not so bad after all, you just have to go and ruin it.”
“Stop trying to think, then.”
For a moment, everyone fell quiet. Niragi shifted in his seat, struggling to relieve some of the pressure against his injuries. The deep exhaustion that had settled into his bones was wearing him down, but he couldn’t close his eyes again just yet. All of this had been humiliating enough already, there was no way he was going to risk falling asleep in the car. He wasn’t going to rest until he was back in his room at the Beach, alone. Though, he would probably have to get one of the very few doctors there to set his broken arm before that. As for the dagger that was still very much stuck in his flesh, he was just going to stitch that wound up himself. He didn’t think he could handle much more vulnerability today without shooting someone in the face.
“Niragi…” He caught Arisu glancing at him through the rear view mirror. He swallowed, hesitating to continue for a second. “What made you like this?”
What a fucking question. One that they definitely didn’t deserve the answer to.
“Nothing,” Niragi scoffed. “You already know I’m scum. I’m just proving you right.”
Chishiya chuckled quietly and it just reminded him that they were way too close, crammed into the car like this. “That’s one way to lie to yourself.”
He was much too exhausted and in pain to put up with this bullshit. “And you know me so well?” he hissed.
There was a long pause and he almost dared to hope that that was the end of it. But of course, Chishiya wasn’t going to leave it at that.
“I’d say I do. Unfortunately, I think we’re quite alike in some aspects. And… we’re all outcasts, the five of us.” His reflection in the window looked lost in thought. “In our own ways, we-”
“I’m nothing like you fucking losers,” Niragi interrupted him, his voice raspy.
In the window, he could see Chishiya turn to look at him with a smug smile. “But you are. You think that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, don’t you? But would that really be so bad?”
Fucking asshole.
“Hah?” Niragi made.
“At the very least, it makes things a little more interesting.” For the first time ever since they had met, Chishiya’s smile looked almost genuine. “You still piss me off, but… I think it’s good that you’re different.”
He almost wanted to believe him.
“I don’t give a fuck what you think,” Niragi said instead.
He didn’t. He really didn’t. He wanted nothing to do with these people. He just needed to be hated and feared, to prove everyone right in thinking that he was a monster. He didn’t need someone to talk to, someone to share a drink and a laugh with, someone to tend to his wounds after a game. He didn’t need someone to tell him that he was okay.
Everything was fine the way it was. This was how he wanted it. This was all he deserved.
He didn’t mind feeling so goddamn lonely all the time.