Tiger 7:00 A.M. Fifth Day
When I went to check the familiar meeting place of the laundry room, I didn't find Snake there. Foregoing breakfast, I walked all around the hotel, checking every nook and cranny to find him, but he wasn't anywhere to be found. Hm…he's probably still in his room then.
The revelation of a death game was surely a shock to everyone. I guess even he was affected. When I thought of my new friend, I let a small smile curl at the side of my mouth. He's definitely the most interesting person here. Someone who seems so cold on the outside…but is completely the opposite on the inside.
"Ah, sorry." Someone had bumped into me while I was lost in thought. They apologized, but when they saw it was me, an expression of fear ran through their face. Rabbit was now cowering in place.
"No worries, you scared of something?" I ask, leaning into her personal space and watching with glee as she backs up even more.
"N-no, I just…" She trails off, eyes glancing around looking for an exit.
"Hey! What the fuck do you think you're doing, bullying a teenager." Rooster scolds. They were standing near the dining room and Rooster had just left it. She walks over with a quick pace and grabs Rabbit, pulling her behind herself.
"I wasn't bullying her, just a little teasing," I smirk, putting up my fingers and squishing them together.
"Hah! Look, everyone knows you're crazy person number one along with your friend, so don't even think about approaching us, let's go." She scoffs, dragging Rabbit away with her.
"Hm." I hum to myself. It doesn't seem like the others like me very much…not like I care. With nothing to do, I decided to make myself more productive, and interviewing some of the others seemed like the way to go.
The first person I go to find is Rat. She's the friendliest and most willing to talk to me. While I search for her, I can also try to find any secret weapons lying around. I wasn't thinking about killing anyone, not really. It would just be nice to know if there were weapons, considering it's a murder game.
I find her sitting in the lounge talking with Ox and Horse. These three are the most responsible in the group, besides maybe Dog, but he always hangs out with Boar. When I approach them, Ox looks at me warily, Horse glances at me before ignoring me, and Rat gives a strained smile.
I hop over one of the empty chairs and drape my legs over the edge. I look at each of them in turn and see how they all flinch away from my eyes. A small smile forces its way onto my face as I take them in with glee, this should be fun.
"Ahem, what are you doing here Tiger? Aren't you usually with Snake?" Rat questions.
"He's staying in his room to plan or something, so I'm here today to find out more information like you told me to. First question, what kind of job did you all have?" I ask them. Rat looks surprised while Ox and Horse shoot her a glare. She shrugs her shoulders in apology before turning back to me.
"Do we have to do this right now?" She says it lightly, like she's talking to a child. Ah, that doesn't make me feel good. I narrow my eyes at her as my expression shifts to a scowl.
"I'm in my twenties, you don't have to treat me like a child." I spit. She does a double take, Ox is glaring at me and probably would've approached me if it wasn't for Horse holding him back.
"Ah, you're right, sorry. I guess I did suggest that so it would be rude to not answer, I was a fitness trainer at a gym." She replies a little awkwardly, but her tone is much better so I relax my face back into a leisurely smile.
"What about you two?" I say, turning to Horse and Ox.
"As you already know, I work with the police as a police officer." Horse states. I let my eyes rest on Ox, he has a reluctant expression, but Horse nudges him and he reluctantly opens his mouth.
"I was a psychiatric aide at a psych ward." He answers. My eyes narrow for a fraction of a second, but I quickly wipe my face before anybody notices.
"Interesting, looks like we don't have much of a connection there," I mumble sadly.
"Connection?" Horse asks, looking slightly interested now.
"I just thought maybe they picked us based on something we have in common, whatever we signed up for must've been something pretty common or else we'd have read the terms and conditions more seriously, but maybe we were just randomly picked." I shrug after giving my hypothesis.
"...That's an interesting way of looking at it, you might be right." Horse mutters.
"What are you talking about?" Another voice suddenly cuts into our conversation. It's Snake, he still has that cold look on his face and the mood instantly drops again. The others having an awkward expression on their faces.
"Ah, I was just talking about how maybe we're all connected in some way, though I'm probably wrong," I tell him. Snake puts a finger on his chin, appearing to think about it as he sits down in a chair.
"Potentially." He eventually states.
"Well, you already heard about our jobs, what about your jobs?" Rat asks, keeping the conversation going.
"Unemployed!" I chirp, the others glance at me with a mix of pity and annoyance, trying to decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
"I've never had a job before," I add, making it more obvious. There we go, though Snake still has that cold uncaring look.
"I worked part-time at a flower shop, but I'm still in college." Snake replies. Rat nods her head at his answer.
"Were you guys serious…yesterday, when you asked about the weapons?" Ox asks, his eyes focus more on me than Snake.
"I mean, I didn't ask because I want to kill someone, I just wanted to know if there were any," I tell him. The concern doesn't leave his face, but his body relaxes slightly.
"Look, you can believe what you want, but I'm sure something will happen one day, so I thought it'd be better to clarify the rules beforehand." Snake looks into each of their eyes as he says this, a cold determination to his gaze.
"...I guess." Ox sighs. Everyone lapses into an awkward silence, even though we made a lot of progress in our conversation today, it seems it wasn't enough to make them completely trust us.
"Do you want to go get some food with me, there should be some left," Snake says, turning to me.
"Sure!" I exclaim, leaping out of my chair and heading straight toward the dining room. Snake follows behind me, a beat slower. I catch him glancing back with a worried expression, but when he turns back to me it turns cold again…scary.
The rest of the day passes without anything interesting happening, it's fun being here, but sometimes it's really boring. Especially since people are usually in the rec room by the time we get there, leaving nothing for us to do. After another awkward dinner that night, Snake stops me before he heads back to his room.
"You don't have to look for me in the morning anymore, I'll be doing some stuff in my own time." He tells me.
"Okay, just come get me when you want to eat lunch, I'm going to interro-ahem-interview the others," I reply.
"Have fun." He leisurely waves over his shoulder as he leaves. Really, what an interesting person. I wonder what makes him hide his feelings like that, it's very hard to tell. The small microexpressions and changes in his body language are the only things to tip me off. Though…he's not dumb either, he's probably noticed I already know…well…we'll see how it goes.
The next day I go after some targets that don't quite hate me yet. Namely Boar, Dog, and Monkey. I find Boar and Dog hanging out in the rec room, Boar is still a child, so he gets bored easily, so Dog brings him here to entertain him.
"You want to know what I did as a job before coming here?" Dog asks curiously.
"Mhm." I nod my head. I'm leaning against the wall as they put down the ping pong paddles they were holding.
"Well, I'm retired now, but I used to be in the military." Dog answers thoughtfully.
"Oho, no wonder you still look in shape," I respond, my eyes raking over his body thoughtfully. The old man had a lot of muscles, he could probably break my arm just by pulling on it.
"Indeed." He chuckles.
"I was in fifth grade!" Boar jumps into the conversation with excitement. I thought as much, I feel a bit bad for a kid getting stuck here, but there wasn't much I could do about it so my feelings ended there.
"May I ask what this is about?" Dog questions.
"Well, I thought it'd be better to get to know everyone, and maybe we'll get some hints about how to get out of this place," I explain.
"You sure you aren't doing it to pass the time?" He asks, a clever gleam in his eyes.
"Ah, you caught me old man. Don't tell the others though, I have plans to talk to the more interesting ones tomorrow." I say, giving him a wry smile. He waves goodbye as I leave the rec room, almost running face first into Snake.
"Hey," I call out to him.
"Hi, you want to go for lunch?" He asks. I easily agree, and as we're walking I take the time to watch him nervously fidget with his hands. He's biting his lip, but seems to realize just before it bleeds and lets go.
"You know, I can feel you watching me." He tells me.
"Oops, guess I wasn't that subtle." I chuckle. I have my arms up behind my head as I turn around to walk backwards, keeping an eye on his face as we continue walking.
"...I don't trust you." He tentatively says after a bout of silence.
"I don't expect you to," I answer simply.
"...But I don't want to stop being friends." As he says this he looks down at the ground, his expression morphing away from the cold look to one of vulnerability. What he said made me pause in surprise, my feet stopping as I almost stumbled. I didn't expect him to say that.
"Can you tell me, what I should do about that?" He asks as he glances up, there's unshed tears in the corner of his eyes and I almost want to reach out and wipe them away, but I bring my hands down and clench them at my sides instead.
"I-!" Before I can answer him, there's the sound of noise from down the hall. The vulnerable expression is wiped away in a second as he coldly looks over his shoulder.
"Let's go." He says as Rabbit and Rooster turn the corner and come into view. I don't know what I was about to say in that moment, maybe it would've changed something…or maybe nothing at all. But I can't help thinking back to that look, I dig my nails into my hands as I follow behind him, glaring at his back in frustration.
That night, after Snake went to bed, I stayed up to wander the halls a bit. I passed by Ox and Horse, it had only been a few days, but they were standing awfully close together. Dog was carrying a sleepy Boar to bed and Rooster was talking to Rabbit in the lobby. Monkey was in the kitchen when I entered, he waved at me when he saw me, taking a break from the pastry he was eating.
"I had a question for you, what kind of job did you have before all this?" I decided to get straight to the point, he always disappeared during the day, and I only see him at dinner when everyone else is there.
"Why do you want to know?" He asks curiously.
"Do I need to give you a reason?" I shoot back.
"Touche. I was in college, but I would've taken over my dad's business when I was done." He answers.
"I'm guessing you were in school for business then?" I shoot him a questioning glance.
"Bingo." He smirks.
"Well, if that's all, I'm going to go." He finishes what's left of the pastry in one bite and leaves the kitchen. As I turn around to leave as well, I spot a knife rack, there are five spots and four knives. Maybe I should take one and…I shake my head to clear my thoughts before quickly walking out of the kitchen, I'd better not. As I left the kitchen, I spotted Rat looking at something in her hand before she placed it in her pocket, she then stalked off with a tense expression.
The next morning, I decided to track down the remaining people to be interviewed. My mouth quirked up into an amused smile after I saw the scowl on Dragon's face when I tracked him down. He was sitting in the gym area with Horse and Ox when I found him.
"What. Do. You. Want." He gritted his teeth around every word.
"One thing, just tell me what job you had before all this," I tell him with an innocent smile.
"No." He says, ready to walk off. I grab onto his arm before he can run away.
"Please? It's just one thing, what, you're just going to run away without answering, you scared?" I tease.
"Urgh! Fine, I was a doctor, a surgeon. Is that enough?" He replies with annoyance.
"Yep!" I chirp, letting him go. The last two on my list were talking in the hallway…well…more like Rooster was talking at Rabbit in the hallway.
"So anyways, this guy approaches me and is totally trying to sleep with me, so I just told him off and he got humiliated in front of everyone at the party and-ugh." Rooster's expression morphs to one of disgust as I approach. Rabbit starts cowering in fear again.
"Just one question," I state.
"No." Rooster shuts me down.
"Please?"
"No."
"I'll go away and never talk to you again if you do."
"...Fine." She huffs.
"What was your job before all this?" I ask, blinking innocently at both of them.
"A model, I used to be well-known, but I'm a bit old now." She states the last part with displeasure.
"I-I was a high school student." Rabbit stutters out.
"Mhm, thanks!" I exclaim, skipping off down the hallway. It was pretty satisfying to get that out of everyone. I should think of more questions to ask them, I'll make it a game and see who answers me the most. I chuckle at the thought of approaching Rooster or Dragon again, those two would probably start shouting at me.
Snake is probably still doing whatever he's doing, so I go to find somewhere quiet to think for a bit. I had a lot to think about in regards to my new friend. For all accounts he's a completely ordinary person, more ordinary than the rest of the people in here at least.
Fears hidden behind a cold mask, distrustful. The others were far weirder in comparison, I mean, who wouldn't be frightened of something like a killing game after getting kidnapped. I chose the laundry room, our old meeting place, as my spot to get some peace.
I skipped toward the room whistling a short tune as I went. When I got to the room, I opened the door without hesitation and laid eyes on a sight that shouldn't have been there. Blood smeared on the floor in drag marks toward the washing machine. A body dangling out covered in blood, Rat's face twisted in horror. Her finger was covered in red blood, and on the ground was an upside-down message that read one word: SNAKE
"Oh shit," I mumble.