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There was a cell, at least. He wasn’t aware of much else.
It wasn’t his, but likely of the man who sat against the back wall, grinning at him like a shark. Most inmates shared their cells, and given the two beds, this place also had another inhabitant. They weren’t present, however, and Kiryu wondered if they ever were—if they had found a resting place elsewhere.
Someone was speaking, but he only stared at the ceiling like he often did these evenings, only then he was usually wondering if the guard who had broken a few of his ribs would be back for more. The darkness looming around the Facility hid many worse things than other inmates.
His line of sight was broken when he was grabbed by the collar and shoved against the wall. He could finally register some words as being directed to him.
“Move it, you piece of—!”
“Let him go,” said the man at the back of the cell, his voice carrying more authority than that of the guards. He hadn’t moved. There were so many markers on his face that discerning the colour of his skin was near impossible in the already dim lighting.
Kiryu barely caught himself when he fell to the floor. His knees were weak these days.
When his eyes travelled to the man, he grinned and said, “Kiyosuke Kiryu. You’ve certainly caught the guards’ eyes.”
“…”
“Did you kill one?”
“…It was a cop, and he didn’t die,” Kiryu stated. “Someone interfered.”
The man nodded—though it barely counted as a gesture of any sort—with a hint of delight in his eye. He was curious of something, Kiryu wasn’t sure what, nor did he care. Curiosity wasn’t a trait he’d ever bothered with.
“Why do we—”
“Shut it, my business it with him only. Your business is to tell me if a guard is near, remember?”
Whoever had been speaking before quieted instantly. His voice had been nearby, but he wasn’t in Kiryu’s immediate field of view.
The leader-like man gestured to the floor in front of him. “Do come in, I’ve invited you for a reason.”
‘Invite’ was not the word Kiryu would have used, not after the abduction they’d pulled. It hardly mattered, however, so he joined the dirt and the dust on the floor, as well as his generous host.
It was then that he noticed an object in the man’s hand, its metallic barrel glinting in the faint light from the corridor. His heart rate sped up at the realisation that it was a revolver. Even the guards usually didn’t carry such things.
“This little thing?” the man asked, properly showing it off. “I come from a place where we use duel disks like these ones, so I just asked for a souvenir from my hometown.”
“…Sure,” Kiryu said monotonously.
“While its primary use is dueling, the revolver is very functional.” A sly smile played on his lips. Perhaps he’d sensed the tension in the room. “Unfortunately, I only have one bullet.”
“What a shame.”
“I’ve been searching for someone to play a game with me, and I wondered if you might be the one.”
The revolver was worn down, old and used, likely the best he could get for himself in such a place. Kiryu kept his eyes locked onto it, his mind racing with questions. What would the shot sound like? What would the kickback be like as he pulled the trigger? What would it feel like as it pierced his skull?
The man placed the revolver in between them; Kiryu could easily take it. “I take it I’ve caught your interest?”
What would the click of an empty barrel sound like? What would it invoke—perhaps relief, even slight disappointment?
“I don’t know the name of this game, I suppose it’s been forgotten. It is traditionally played with what we have here exactly—a six chamber revolver and one bullet.”
Kiryu tore his gaze away from the weapon, to the other’s face.
“The revolver is loaded, then the barrel spun to make the location of the bullet arbitrary.” He did exactly as he had explained. “We flip a coin to decide who goes first, then we shoot our own heads in turns.” He took something from his pocket. It glimmered in silver. “The survivor wins, of course.”
Kiryu nodded.
“Heads or tails?”
“Tails.”
The quietest clink rang in the cell as the coin flew in the air. When it was on Kiryu’s eye level, he felt time slow down. He could almost tell who won from the split second he saw it.
The sound was louder when it fell down on the floor. The man didn’t catch it, instead, he said, “Mind telling me what it is?”
Kiryu leant down to look. It made sense given that the coin had landed closer to him.
“Tails,” he said for the second time.
He hummed. “How fortunate. You go first.”
“I have good luck.”
“You do? Well, clearly it wasn’t good enough for you to dodge the bullet that landed you here.”
A spark lit inside his head. “That bullet had nothing to do with luck,” he snapped. “It backfired.”
A second of silence followed, and he realised how bad a nerve the man had struck. Something repulsive coursed through his body, filled his mind, dripped from his ears and mouth. He wanted the feeling to go—he wanted himself to go—so when he took the revolver, put it to his head, and pulled the trigger, he truly hoped it would kill him. A one in six chance wasn’t good enough.
The man closed his eyes, shrugging. “My turn,” he said and took the revolver, yet did nothing.
Kiryu lifted a brow.
Spinning it idly in his hand, he watched the revolver with an almost bored expression. “I might die this turn, y’know.”
“That is the point of the game, as far as I’ve understood.”
“Correct, but it does make me want to prolong our conversation,” he said. “Humans pathetically cling onto life.”
Kiryu had nothing to say. The sentence reminded him of something. It wasn’t his own, but he had clung onto a life before, hadn’t he? There had been a time when such an things had come to him naturally.
He sucked in a breath just a tad too sharply, and it hurt his chest. The wince on his face was not visible, but the man’s eyes trailed his body nonetheless.
“You have a lot of bruises—more than the others, actually,” he noted. “I guess that’s what opposing Security will do.”
“I guess.”
Kiryu spent his evenings staring at his ceiling, wondering if, this time, a shard of his broken ribs would pierce his lungs and kill him. Despite the fact that he knew the guards would always come back, always without fail, he still thought that a silent night must have existed in the Facility.
The man was quiet. He expected Kiryu to continue.
“I’ve been damned into coming here.” He cocked his head to the side, staring off at the corner with a faraway gaze. “Not that Satellite wasn’t its own type of hell.”
There was a brief pause, then the question, “Satellite?”
He shrugged lightly. “Security was the bane of my existence, yet it’s somehow even worse now.”
“You’re Satellite trash?” the man repeated, disdain leaking from his voice.
“I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” Kiryu mused.
“…I suppose I don’t, either, let’s continue.”
His demeanour changed in an instant. Calm unlike the guards on most days, he shot himself and didn’t die.
Kiryu lifted his gaze from the floor when he heard laughter. He recognised that sound from somewhere among the crowds of the Facility. It was one that drew the guards’ attention away from tormenting Kiryu to being troubled by someone else. Perhaps he ought to thank this person.
He took took the weapon, inspected it in his hand. “One thing before I pull this trigger.”
“What is it?”
“What’s the name of your hometown?”
The man chuckled, cold and dry. “You think you can take it?”
“I could. I won’t make it there, but I could.”
“Well, be sure to dream about a place called ‘Crash Town’ before these halls finally get to you.” He cocked his head back, a smirk on his lips. “I can tell it won’t be long until that, you’ve been unstable from the day you came.”
“From the day they took my deck away,” Kiryu corrected, actually felt something—satisfaction—at the way the man’s eyes widened, and pulled the trigger.
The silence made the click abnormally loud in the cell. It echoed in Kiryu’s mind as he placed the revolver between them, lifting his brow. “The fourth shot is yours,” he said. “The chance is now one in three.”
The man howled with laughter yet again, fearsome enough to scare his goons, loud enough to alert the guards. As the ones with their minds mostly intact ran away, Kiryu and the man kept their eyes strictly on one another even as he took the revolver and put it under his chin.
“A deck, huh… Perhaps you do have what it takes.” He smirked. “Let’s see how long your luck will last. There are two bullets in here.”
The last sentence rang in Kiryu’s head, but his jaw was left slack as guards broke into the cell. They took him harshly by the arms to drag him off, but to their horror, the other man pulled the trigger before they reached him.
He was smiling as the bullet pierced his head. Kiryu knew the way he was going to go, and though there were many similarities, he also knew that this would not be one of them. Yet there was still another bullet left in the revolver, and there might have been a way he could add another similarity.