«The World as She Knows It»
—Prologue—
When the death game began, a little girl not yet the age of nine was trapped inside with her brother whom brought her into the game. Undaunted by either fear, despair or guilt, he set out to reclaim the life she had lost, but the girl remembers none of this. The girl does not know she is in game, does not know where her brother has gone and she has spent the last two weeks in the orphanage which her brother left her in.
The girl's small fingers flexed and contracted around a plush, pink toy, squeezing it as the corners of her lips turned toward her huge eyes. The toy flew up into the air, but what goes up must come down, and it lands on the girl's face, being pulled in even closer by her arms which barely reach the centre of its back. The toy muffles the giddy giggles from her mouth, while muffling the sounds of honks coming through the windows toward the girl's ears. But the honks get louder. And clearer. And louder and clearer until suddenly she sits right up, not in her bed, but on the floored mattress, awoken by the deafening screeching of nothing.
The shuffling of dusty feet on dusty floors, the ghoulish groans from the gaols of the adults' rooms and the subdued murmur of the other children — none of the usual soundtrack played in her ears. Like the sudden silence in a horror movie abattoir, broken only by the pianissimo tremolo of violins, the sense of foreboding was palpable in the air, so thick that it made her want to cough while simultaneously stifling the cough it engendered. In the utter silence her unblinking eyes swept over the room, the three other mattresses were all laid bare, their ragged sheets strewn in a pile where the mattresses met. Her small hands pushed against the stiff mattress which pushed right back, steadying her as she stood up. With a soft pit-pat she walked out the room through its ajar door and she saw no one in the room. She peered into the adults' room through the door, but still she saw nothing.
The main room was as bleak as the room she slept in, if only slightly less bare. The walls were made of grey stone that was slightly sickly green, the floor a grey concrete foundation, marbled by a light shades of dust. In the room was the rough wooden table with its accompaniment of hard-backed chairs. In the corner between the doors leading to the two bedrooms was a wardrobe. Across the adults' room was the toilet, and across their own room was the entrance. There was no kitchen and no clock, and any light came through dust-tinted windows or the currently unlit candle standing in the centre of the table.
Walking to the left, the girl opened the cupboard, its wooden doors surprisingly light to the girl who'd never had reason to open it before. Her eyes swept up and down, but the other children weren't found to be hiding inside. The only things which lay inside were the thick rough vests worn by the men who left and who brought them away. The vests came in different sizes, each a slightly different size as if they were tailor made. But which tailor would make such ugly, uncomfortable vests? The girl had always wondered why the men wore these, but she never understood, so she picked up one of the four small ones which looked to be her size and tried it on. It was stuffy but snug, not in the way that would lessen her desire to remove it, but it was a good fit that wasn't tight or loose, that didn't restrict the swinging of her arms yet didn't look like it was about to slip off her shoulders. She took it off and left it hanging on the closest chair.
She walked aft into the adults' room where two mattresses were pushed together to form a bigger one, leaving an unfilled gap between it and the small window, about the size of her head. She looked at the three pillows on the mattress and went over to pick them up, her lower lip folded in under her upper lip as she smiled slightly. She picked the one in the centre and hugged it against her body, falling backwards to lie on the mattress, somewhat forgetting how hard it was, but it didn't matter. She squeezed the off-white pillow in a tight hug that was met with disappointingly little resistance, it felt like a sack of flour that was less than half full. She laid it down on the mattress and beat down on it with the side of her fist a few times before something metallic caught her eye. She threw the pillow to the wall as it landed with a soft poof, and she walked over to the thing unapprehensively. She picked up the object that was no longer hidden under the pillow and turned its rectangular handle over in her hand. It was a knife about the length of her forearm, with the handle extending another three quarters of the blade's length. The handle was a rough, unvarnished wood, it looked like an old kitchen knife which you might find in a rural village, except she'd never seen a kitchen knife which was sharp on both sides before. Twice the number of sharp edges meant you could use the knife even after one side broke. But she didn't care. She put it back down and lifted the two pillows to find a second knife which she didn't bother to pick up.
She walked back into the living room, though it honestly shouldn't have been called that, and turned towards the exit. As she stepped down the landing, she realised there was a single pair of sandals placed there neatly. She never realised she had sandals, the memories of her immediate past an inconsequential blur juxtaposed against the ones which kept coming to her in dreams. She sat down and put on the sandals adjusting the straps so that they fit as well as the discarded vest. She wiggled her toes and then flexed and contracted all in synchrony, she stamped the ground a few times just to make sure they felt right under her dusty feet. Reaching for the fixed handle at eye level, she threw the door open and stepped out into the dusty alley.
The ground was plainly cobbled with equally plain buildings lining both sides of it. Each building had an unlit lamp on either side of its door and there was no adult, child or stray cat for as far as she could see down each side of the road. The only movement she could perceive were the vibrations in the air caused by the far-off sound of people hollering, as if they were all struggling to be heard from opposite sides of a quay. But of course, she didn't know they were vibrations. The distant clamour and her immediate surroundings were a complete mismatch to her. On one hand it felt as boring and still as the suburbs she used to go to when visiting her aunts, yet on the other hand the buildings themselves seemed to be stripped-down neon-less cousins of Hong Kong's grey, dilapidated shop houses and to add to the confusion the distant clamour was butting heads with the Tokyo humdrum she was so familiar with, consisting of a blur of footsteps and engine noise punctuated by occasional honks and accented by music or videos (or both) playing on large billboard screens. The whole place was a concoction of the familiar, a foreign contradiction.
Bleh, I don't need to need to think about this.
The girl looked left, right and left again before setting off in that direction, turning this way and that to draw closer to the wonderfully lively sound. As she turned down a doorless, windowless alley, the sound echoed off the walls on either side of her and the corners of her lips crept upwards. The bustling sounds offered a foreign familiarity to her, a welcome break from the soft thunks of wooden spoons on wooden bowls on wooden tables, the malarkey moans which grew from the gaols of the adults' room and the shrill shrieks of the other children. Urgh.
From the snaking alleyways she ran into a large road three times as wide as the one she first stepped foot in. Each side was crowded with alternating doors and stalls manned by vendors displaying their wares. Her cluelessness to the things on sale merely added to her fascination as owl-like sensory sweeps turned to wide-eyed wonder. For the first time that afternoon her mouth was agape, her dropped jaw elongating her full round face. The marketplace she stood in was fully wondrous to her, but this was not it. Turning down the left, she made for the epicentre of the glamourous clamour, running uninhibited in the wide open street; save for the stalls and their vendors it was nigh deserted.
After ten seconds' sprinting the walls on both sides of her fell away sharply, dispersing at right angles away from her, continuing on their tangential paths as she found herself slowing into a gigantic plaza — the distance to the opposite end seemed greater than the length of road she had just run through. Central to the plaza was a lowered landing that acted as a stage, rows of cement terraces doubled as stairs and seats in full circles around it. Filling the rest of the market place were more vendors with more elaborate stalls and at the circumference were numerous shops and restaurants, but hardly any patrons. In fact, there seemed to be very little else aside from the merchants, and there was absolutely nothing which shared their ecstatic behaviour or bright smiles. Except her.
Wordlessly, the girl inspected the wares of every stall, giving each product a passing glance without ever staying her foot. Around the inner theatre a ring of stalls was selling a plethora of goods from rough belts to bulky boots, from small knives to the kind of swords knights used in cartoons, double-edged and all. Continuing to circle around she came across a cart with elbow pads and kneepads and all sorts of things made from the same material as that uncomfortable vest, it made perfect sense to her why no one was at this stall. Moving to the outer edge of the plaza she peered through glass windows to see shields and other round metal objects in a store. One of them looked like a sunhat made for someone whose skull was awkwardly short at the top, so that a normal hat would blindfold them.
Something in a shop window had caught her eye and she sprinted past the next two shops to get a closer look at the shimmering red crystal. Upon reaching the display, she realised that it was actually a vial of water the colour of an apple and the consistency of wine. Entering the store, and this was the first time she'd stopped at any of the stores, she reached past the four digit price tag and grabbed the glass tilting it ninety degrees in all directions, flipping it over, rotating it between her thumb and index and shaking it to see what would happen. She raised the vial to the light, seeing the world outside the window through blood-tinted lenses. As she looked through the vial, small swirls of a lighter rose proliferated throughout the liquid. It was astonishing, like a — crash!
A man, or maybe a zombie, bumped into her in a hit and trudge, causing the bottle to slip out from between her fingers and smash into shards on the ground, its ruby contents spilling themselves over the stone floor. Before she said anything, the smiling shop owner came over and told her she would have to pay. But she didn't have anything on her person aside from the clothes and sandals she wore. The man who bumped into her was nowhere to be seen, but the shop owner kept smiling and told her, "500 Col has been deducted, thank you!" He then turned and left the girl whose head was still tilted sideways. Col? I can go now?
Seemingly let off the hook, the girl trudged out the store, her fascinating trinket smashed to pieces on the ground. As she moped along the circumference of the plaza, pure ecstasy found its way downwind and to her nose. It was the smell of something delicious. Immediately her stomach awoke from its slumber and growled out. Picking up her pace, she began to walk upwind in double time, her nose leading the way more than anything else. She walked through more market roads lined by more stalls, through more alleys inhabited by stray cats and the only movement she saw along the way was the dust which danced in the wind.
As the scent grew stronger and her mind grew blanker, the sun had sneakily crept down from its resting spot on the horizon. After one last alley, one last turn and one last sprint toward the ever-growing aroma, she found herself in front of a bakery and the smell of apple strudel smacked her upside down. She walked into the store, examining each bun and pastry with delight. Turning her back to the counter, she gently picked up a slice of pie, barely lukewarm, and hid it in front of her body. Without casting a single glance at the baker, she made for the door. "Miss, you have to pay". Not moving, not blinking not frowning the shopkeeper chimed out, his jovial smile matching the other shopkeeper's. After a half-second to recover from the shock, she pushed hard on the door, but it did not budge. It didn't feel like pushing against a locked door. It was like a solid wall with no moving parts whatsoever. Before she could hear him chime out another line, she put the pie back and stepped outside, eyeing something out of the corner of her eye.
Hiding just inside a nearby alley, she watched the door silently, crouching so as to become practically invisible, given her already small stature. Her unblinking eyes were peeled open and topped with furrowed brows as she watched the empty bakery. Over an hour had passed and they were now well into the night, when a group of grunts finally entered the store, each looking so dead that their need to eat could be called into question. And so the hunt began.
In under a minute the men were back out, walking down the road lined up perpendicular to their direction of motion. Now. Running with a soft pit-pat she approached the group from their 5 o'clock. Three meters behind them. She broke into dead sprint and slipped between the two farthest to the left. She reached up and snatched the grey buns right out of their hands, bolting straight into the next alley.
The dazed men were stunned as if a ghost had just run through them, but they quickly ran after the shadow with only the echo of a single footfall to be their guide. Running single file they chased after the girl through alley after alley, running across the occasional street whenever the girl found some pedestrians to help her lose her pursuers. Running through the alleys again the sound of pounding feet grew louder and the moans and groans of those with aching bones masked her footfalls, which at this point were less controlled, but still kept to a comfortable mezzo-piano. One man was still hot on her tail.
After another montage of alleys, a slide under a horse-drawn cart and a sharp having already broken the line of sight, she found herself at an open gateway whose three-storey tall arches towered over her. There's nowhere to hide! Out of options in that open space, she ran out the gates and into the grass fields outside. Immediately she took a hard right and left the dirt path, trampling on grass which scratched her Achilles tendons as they sprang back up.
Need to hide!
Running at a normal away from the wall, she made straight for the woods. Running at top speed into the shadows of the woods at night, the forest canopy blotted out the light. In the concealing dark she jumped over sprawling roots and swerved between thick trunks as best she could until a decisive strike by a low branch against her leg thwarted her. She fell straight to the ground with the buns clutched tightly to her chest, her arms wrapped around them as she tumbled a good few meters. When she finally lost momentum, she looked back at the way she had come from, or believed she had come from. The dizzying tumble and silhouetted trees screened even the gigantic arches she had only just run through. Looking around she found a small clearing where some light shone through the otherwise impeccable cedar canopy and made her way into it.
With her back rested firmly against a trunk, she gobbled down the first cold bun and started on the next one before noticing the cut in her right leg. Raising her bent knee, she brought the cut shin up to eye level and ran her eyes up and down its length while finishing off the last bun. The cut was not deep, and the bleeding had already slowed down, but she licked her thumb and rubbed over it anyway, trying to clean off some of the blood around the wound.
As she continued to work at it, a rustling in a bush ahead of her caught her attention, but it was too hard to see even as she squinted in the direction, her body motionless. A pair of tusks and red eyes charged out from the darkness, the rough silhouette of its body expanded rapidly in her field of vision. She kicked to her feet with her right leg and immediately made for the dark embrace of the woods, but sharp and blunt pains in her back sent her tumbling once again. She scraped the ground, pushed herself back up and entered a desperate flight.
She dove into the brambles, emerged the other side and jumped to grab a low branch. The beast came bursting after her, spearing her left leg with its tusk, recoiling a few meters away. With all her might she pulled one leg onto the branch, then another, before climbing onto a bigger one slightly higher. The beast continued to stalk her, encircling the tree persistently, awaiting her inevitable descent, but as she straddled the branch, bracing against it for dear life, the exhaustion of the day spent on the run had kicked in, and once again the world faded to black.