Chapter Text
Ji-yeong remembers seeing somewhere that hearing is the last sense to leave a person’s body before they die.
Of course, that’s for people who die slowly. Sometimes, peacefully.
Getting shot in the head kind of cuts them all off at once.
Ji-yeong also remembers seeing somewhere that the first sense a person develops before birth is touch.
So maybe she’s being born again- if the splitting headache she’s developed over the course of the past 5 minutes has anything to say about it.
It’s the only thing she can feel. The pain of it all. Her head throbs and she can feel her heartbeat pulsating in every vein of her body, in the tips of her fingers, pounding in her eardrums, behind her eyes.
She’s on her back, as far as she can tell. She won’t move, not yet, fearing that if she does she’ll be met with a different type of pain shooting up her spine- but jeez, whatever she is laying on is uncomfortable.
As Ji-yeong focuses all of her thought on forming a coherent one, she realizes she can taste the blood in her mouth. The copper under her tongue brings her back to her original theory- she’s being born again. Taste, the second sense to develop in the womb.
But she can’t be, because she still remembers the last 27 years of her life. She remembers her childhood; she remembers prison and she remembers the game and the people and-
Oh. Oh, right. She’s dead. Yeah. Yeah, she’d forgotten. She’s dead and she must be in hell. Yeah.
She doesn’t care much for when her sense of smell returns to her, only heightening the perception of the dried blood in her mouth, probably covering a sizeable portion of the right side of her head. When she subconsciously checks over that scent, though, she also takes note of…brine, of something strong, fresh.
She’s got no time to mull over that though, because too soon her hearing returns and she’s met with the worst ringing she’s ever heard in her life. God, she wishes she was dead again. Through the piercing sound, she almost thinks she hears waves.
Okay. She’s going to open her eyes, now. She’s going to do it. Right now. She’s totally doing it right now.
Ji-yeong doesn’t move for an additional 5 minutes.
Finally, after going through every possible scenario as to what is happening right now (I’ve died and gone to heaven. I’ve died and gone to hell. I’m not dead and hallucinated the entire game. I’ve been abducted by aliens? That would be pretty cool) she takes a deep breath, holds it, and she opens her eyes.
And sees nothing.
She’s in the dark. Shit, she thinks. Is this what happens when you die? This is so…boring.
Ji-yeong blinks a few times, and eventually, she realizes no, she’s not in the forever void and cursed to stay there until the end of time. Her vision adjusts, just the slightest bit, and she can see the edges of her confinement.
She’s in a box. A fucking-
And now her breathing picks up, and her eyes dart back and forth hitting every corner of the space she’s been pressed into. She’s in a box and she needs to get out because she can’t stay in here, it’s small and it’s crowded and Ji-yeong suddenly feels like she’s folding in on herself. She’s on her back in a box and she hates small spaces but she can’t breathe because she thinks to herself what if this box is airtight? What if I’ve just wasted my last breaths, my last- am I- am I even breathing? She’s-
Ji-yeong kicks her foot out in a panic and the top of the box flies open.
Light immediately floods her vision and she twists her face away with a yelp, squeezing her eyes shut as she covers her face with her forearm.
The smell of the outside is much more prominent now- the ocean. She’s by the ocean. On a beach?
As Ji-yeong starts to sit up, she slowly removes her arm from over her eyes, taking care to look directly down. She blinks a few times at the bottom of the box, the one she’s laying in, when she looks to the side and sees the top of the box that she kicked off.
It’s donned with a pink ribbon.
Her grave, she realizes. The boxes they put the bodies in. She’s laying in her grave.
The afterlife works in weird fucking ways, I guess.
Ji-yeong then takes notice of her surroundings.
She is on a beach, the ocean behind her, and boxes litter the sand.
They have people in them, too. She begins to see box tops removed and people gingerly sitting up and looking around, just as confused as she might be. There are, what, 15? 16? She doesn’t bother to count.
For a moment, she debates just lying back down. She is dead, after all. Who cares if she showed up on some magical island? It’s not like she has anyone to spend her time with.
After a few more seconds of thought, she spots more people. They’re coming from further inland, their silhouettes cresting over a hill where the sand becomes grass. They look- happy. Excited?
It really doesn’t seem like her concern. Ji-yeong is content to sit back and watch everyone else figure out where they are and what they’re doing here, just like she did in the games. She decides to stay put, not one for conversing much, as it seems the other people from the boxes have started to talk to eachother. Criss -cross applesauce, just like she did before the rope game, and-
Wait, no, no that’s not what she did. She had pulled her knees up to her chest. The person who was sitting criss-cross was-
“Hey!”
It’s the people from inland; they’ve reached them, now, and they’re…more players. It seems that way, for some, anyways. Some of the inlanders are wearing the games’ uniform, though clean without tear or tatter.
Ji-yeong looks down and sees her uniform is splattered with dirt, and there is a sizeable patch of blood on her right shoulder that bled down the front of her shirt. It’s dry, now, she notes, as she runs her hand along the soaked fabric. Her hand continues up to the side of her head.
There, Ji-yeong feels a scarred patch of skin on her right temple, and small cuts surrounding the area traveling towards the opposite side of her head. She feels there, too. On her left temple, a slightly different shaped, yet matching scar mirrors the first. She’s not sure how to feel about it. A confirmation of her death.
The rest of the nearing group is dressed in what would be considered “normal” clothing- loungewear, business casual, like they’re on a vacation.
So that’s what eternity is? One big happy vacation?
The group finally reaches them, and a young man from the front speaks up. He’s wearing the games’ uniform, fitted with the number 250. He wears a small silver hoop in his right ear. The man who called to them earlier. Ji-yeong sees a shorter guy next to him, numbered 324, with short, unkempt bleached hair.
324 speaks up. “Next game’s over?” He claps his hands together as if greeting a tour group.
Ji-yeong watches as an older lady who’s just climbed out of her box collapse to the sand on her knees. Immediately, a group of the inlanders surround her in concern. The taller guy who called to them earlier, 250, turns to address the rest of the recently deceased. “Alright guys, welcome. Uh, we’ll try to answer all your questions-”
Ji-yeong immediately hears a flurry of panicked discussion break out.
“So we’re really dead?” a newcomer calls out.
“What are we doing here?” cries another.
“How long have you been here?”
“Are you players, too?”
Ji-yeong decides to throw one in, for the hell of it. “Hey, anyone think those boxes were really uncomfortable?”
Amid the chatter, a man nearest to her turns to look at her. “Right?” the man, bearing a number 196 says, exasperated.
Grateful to be understood but not expecting the attention, she turns back to the boy, who seems to be trying to keep everyone under control.
“Alright, Alright, everyone. Yeah, yeah you’re dead.”
“God rest your soul.” 324 adds gamesomely. 250 elbows him. Ji-yeong scoffs.
“We’re all dead,” 250 continues, gesturing behind him to his group. “the lot of us. There are tons more people, but they don’t always want to come. No, we don’t know why we’re here. No, we don’t know how we got here, and, I dunno, we’ve probably been here for like a week, or something.”
“We’re gonna keep a calendar,” 324 pipes up. “Every few days, more of you guys arrive. We’ve tried to figure out where you come from but we can’t ever catch the boxes before you hit the sand, and, you know- we’re assuming you guys just played a game, cause you all showed up at once.”
Murmurs are spread and looks are exchanged among the people Ji-yeong washed up with.
“We’re here to like, help you guys.” 250 finishes. “We know a lot of you are probably scared right now, so if you’d follow us, we’ll show you what we’ve been doing.”
“Yeah, come check it!” 324 waves everyone over and starts off from where they came.
Ji-yeong gives it a few moments, making sure everyone is turned away because she hates people looking.
She begrudgingly clambers out of her grave, and her feet hit the sand for the first time.