Hello, everyone! I hope you like this one. Yes, it is shorter than I want it to be, but I doubt I can chug a decently sized chapter with how my schedule is these days. Regardless of length, I hope you enjoy!

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Chapter Thirteen: Message In The Mud

Ayaka took the first watch. She couldn't fall asleep if she tried. She glanced briefly at the moon, partially hidden by the stringy night clouds and Redrum corpse smoke, and wondered whether she'd truly die this time around.

Redrum Island had been featured so many times on the Arena's screens that she felt like she almost knew the place, in a strange, almost dream-like sort of way. Every year, the game masters would switch up the layouts so that nobody had any initial advantage, although many of the competing candidates were expert hunters and trackers who could outline a map within a day. So many people died here. For glory. To be crowned the Redrum King or Queen was like being crowned the deadliest person alive.

Come to think of it, she shouldn't have been surprised to know that Hisoka had been here all this time.

She glanced at the two sleeping kids behind her, particularly at her younger brother, the last remaining living contestant other than Hisoka. Do you remember that year when so many kids died? Ryuu had told her in the past. I was one of two who survived. Who would have thought that she would meet the other one too?

Ryuu was a lot bigger than the last time she had seen him. He was probably at least 6'10" by now. He grew that much in a matter of months; was his growth spurt ever going to end? But he looked haggard and tired of life, the tips of his banana blond hair tickling his broad, sunken shoulders. And that beard. He looked like an ageing man, not the 16-year-old he was supposed to be. Bryce was just as big, but in a different way. At 6'7", he wasn't quite as tall as Ryuu, but what he lacked in height he made up with beefy slabs of muscle meat all over his mammoth frame. While Ryuu was lanky and quick, Bryce was bulky and solid.

They were complete opposites who got along like identical twins.

So Ryuu had a friend all this time. But why was Bryce so… normal? He was just like any other teenager, living life carefree and liberated, while her younger brother was imprisoned like a criminal. Why? …WHY?

Bryce stirred inside the compact cave, tossing and turning before finally sitting up after a few minutes. "I can't sleep," he announced indifferently. "I can't seem to trust you." His words were as straightforward and curt as usual. "Then don't sleep," she replied in a similar manner. She was too mentally drained to mind her conduct anyway, so she was happy when he obliged immediately and sat down next to her, just outside of the cave. She could hear Ryuu's light snoring behind them. It was a bit awkward, she felt, to be talking to someone so closely other than Wing or Zushi. Besides, she hadn't forgotten how Bryce had blatantly attacked her because he wanted another victory under his belt. So petty.

"The game masters haven't discovered us yet," he said as he twisted his head around to scan the area. "So don't ruin it by stepping on a mine or native trap. There are plenty out there." Ayaka rolled her eyes at the insult. "They won't discover us unless we want them to," she countered matter-of-factly as she drew patterns on the dirt with her finger. "The island is self-sustaining. They literally just drop people off on ships and leave them here until the last person standing lets them know. I guess in this case… it's either Ryuu or Hisoka. And I'm not letting Ryuu die." Death never seemed so real until she said it out loud. A fight to the last breath.

"You seem to know a lot about the island," he challenged, to which she shrugged apathetically. "I watch a lot of TV." She felt his harsh olive eyes on her; they looked even darker under the half-moonlight, made more menacing by the shadows under them. After a long moment's hesitation, she took the opportunity to ask. "Ryuu's brain is messed up," she said nonchalantly, choosing her words carefully. "I was wondering if-"

"I have a similar defect?" He interrupted her without remorse. "Since I'm a victim of forced node opening too." Ayaka was startled by his plain sailing deduction, a bit embarrassed of her presumption that he would be unwilling to share anything remotely personal. She swallowed hard. "Well, do you?"

The silence marinated in the darkness before he even seemed to consider answering her. He scratched his stubbled chin thoughtfully. "Do you remember when we first met?" He asked his question ruefully, she noticed, like Pandora's box had just been ripped open and he was still deciding whether to allow this conversation to happen, but discerning that it was already a little too late to stop it. She nodded in response, recalling the day in the forest where he had shown off how well he could throw knives at a target. "I remember."

The silence dragged on for much longer this time and it made her uncomfortable. Was he playing some sort of guessing game, some sort of would-he-wouldn't-he type of scenario? She wasn't in the mood to play, not when Hisoka was quite literally lurking in the woods nearby. "Then, do you remember what I told you?" This made her roll her eyes again. "No. Sorry, I'm not one of your groupies. I don't cling onto everything you say or do." She bit and softened her voice a bit. "You didn't recognise me anyway, Bryce… considering how many times I delivered your dinner. You thanked me so kindly each time, but it's like… I guess you didn't really see me."

"That's probably because I'm blind."

Are you with me?

I am hugging this figure

Loving this body

But you've been dead

For so many years

It was difficult to believe. How could Bryce Copperopolis, the Floor Master, the resident of Room 251, the heir to the biggest corporation in the country, be blind? He walked like a champion, battled like a warrior. The boy had a cellphone! How could he exchange messages with her brother?

"I can see, you know," he said, shrugging like it was nothing new. "I can see that stupid look on your face right now." She was suddenly self-conscious as he looked at her. Or… at least turned his face to seem like he was looking at her. He was lying! He definitely was. Maybe that was his damage. Maybe he was a compulsive liar. "I can see that your hair is long, but I don't know what colour it is. I can see that you have no shoes on and that you have ten toes, but I don't know if they're painted a certain colour. Well, unless you just had a pedicure, which you usually do, in which case I can smell the varnish on your-"

"Let's not talk about what my feet smell like, please. You're suddenly very chatty."

Bryce ran his tongue against his bottom lip piercing and shrugged. "I didn't recognise you in the forest because you had your hair down. You usually have it in a ponytail, right?" She considered this for a moment. "And my voice? You couldn't recognise it?"

He pushed his raven hair back behind his ears and titled his head as if to show her something. She wasn't certain how she had missed it until now, but attached to the base of his tanned ear like an oversized earring was a glassy globe with a tiny battery floating inside. A hearing aid. "Both... both sides?" "Both."

She looked at the ground now, feeling bad about all the hasty judgment calls she had made about him the past few days. Well, he was still pretty unreasonable for wanting to fight her, a weak nen master wannabe, but he probably wanted to prove something to himself. What it was she wasn't quite sure, and she wasn't comfortable enough with him to ask.

"I didn't know it was you in the woods," he said for the second time, furrowing his brows deeper towards the center as he traced his lip piercing with his tongue again. A bad habit, she thought. "I knew you were a girl because of your high pitch, but nothing beyond that. You all sound like robots to me."

She nodded. She wondered if he could see her agreement, too.

They were silent for the rest of the night until Ayaka's shift finally ended. Bryce finally set himself down in the cave, resting on his side so that there was enough room for her. When Ryuu went to expel the contents of his bladder before beginning his watch, she stationed herself next to Bryce and closed her eyes. "Don't," he said briskly, almost angrily. "I can see that you're crying. You need to stop that right now."

She wiped the tears she didn't know he could see and let out and audible long SNIIIIFFFF. She bit her shaking lip. "Sorry," she uttered sadly, wiping her nose with her dirty shirt. "Sorry that happened to you."

He yawned. "No one's sorry but you."

By sunrise, they were all up and eating what remained of their share of breakfast. Ayaka was too hungry this time around to pass up the dead person's granola bar, which she finished in two bites. CRUNCH, CRUNCH, swallow. She had hoped there was water around to wash down the dry and grainy meal, but there was none available. "Is there a water source nearby?" She asked as she hoisted herself up a tree and looked around. "The layout in the last Redrum contest had a lake up north and a well down south, but I doubt it's still the same this year."

Bryce wiped his lips with the back of his hand as he finished his last bar. "Why don't you lead the way?" He suggested. "You found us quickly yesterday. Good tracking skills." She blinked at his compliment, remembering how she had managed to barely escape their clutches after thinking it was an ambush. "But I was just following your footprints, Bryce," she said flatly, refusing to accept his praise. She did not have any prior tracking experience, they knew that, and if not for the mud trail he had left her, she would have never found them.

But Bryce and Ryuu suddenly froze at what she had said. What? What did she say this time? They looked at each other cautiously, with panic-stricken eyes and thinly-lined lips that screamed something was very, very wrong. "Are you sure, Aya? Are you sure they were footprints?" Ryuu had hastily grabbed her elbow and pulled her against him, causing a flurry of suppressed disgust to pour out like an opened dam that was immediately dampened by unadulterated fear. Anger was strewn plain as day on his ashen face. "Yeah!" She blurted, unready for the outburst much unlike yesterday. "From the boat to you guys… They... They... They led the way."

She gritted her teeth and jerked herself free, swiftly taking a great number of steps back from where they stood as a cautionary measure. She bit her lip harder than she had intended, allowing a small line of blood to trickle down to the tip of her chin. "I thought Bryce left them so that I would know where to go." She tasted metal on her tongue, reminding her of Hisoka's flavor the day she had attacked him to save Zushi. Her mouth watered. Her mind fired.

Bryce wouldn't have left footprints, she realised. More appropriately, he was good at covering his tracks, which was why Ryuu had asked him to do just that when they first reunited the day before. Besides, it would have been too risky with Hisoka around like that. Why didn't she see it sooner? Of course those weren't Bryce's footprints! The reality hit her like a suicidal bullet to the mouth.

She croaked a few words, her own feeble statement shattering what little remained of her own self-confidence. "Someone else is here."

End of Chapter!

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