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Say you make a mistake.
Say you find yourself ensnared in a game you had no choice but to play, with people you had no choice but to lead. It’s in your nature, after all. Say they didn’t want a leader.
Say they wanted a leader that was not you.
There are fourteen dull ones and a beautiful boy, tall and quiet, kind, but too kind. A boy that’s too kind might be the kind of boy to offer you kindness.
He does not.
You dream of him the first night, but that’s a lie. Dream implies this was out of your control, your subconscious grabbing the reins and yanking you along a distorted facsimile of real life. You think of him, really, you think and you don’t fall asleep. You say that this beautiful boy is asleep on your bed, chest rising and falling, and you’re awake being his bodyguard.
He’s too pretty, you see. Far too pretty to wound.
Far too pretty to die.
His rings clink together when he moves his hands, a barely audible sound.
That’s another lie. If they do, you’re never quite close enough to hear it.
The belts on your pant-straps clink, too. You wonder if they would make wonderful music together, your belts and his rings.
He eats fish and eggs for breakfast, and he likes to dip the fish into the runny yolks. A dribble of it is left on his chin, and you dream of sauntering up to him and licking it off.
He never stays.
You suppose he’s desperate to get out. So are you, but that’s a lie. You’re having quite a bit of fun, actually. You could stay here as long as it takes. Forever, even. You and that beautiful boy.
It would be more fun if you didn’t have the inkling that one day, he’d get so stir-crazy that he’d run right up to the border wall, clawing at it with a manic fervor only found in a scant few people, until the tips of his fingers were bloodied and raw, pulped with bone showing.
You could then swoop in and bandage him up, but you would much prefer if it didn’t happen at all.
“Come here often, stranger?”
You’re in the library, with him. You know the answer already, but this was a fun lie. Tongue-in-cheek, a declaration of disarmament— you know he does come here. You know what is here.
You trust him regardless.
“Ah, Ouma.” His voice purrs, smooth and soft and ever stagnant. You don’t mind that he kept his intonation strictly in the realm of calm niceties, with little variation. You could listen to his lies forever, as long as they sounded as sweet as they did.
“Y’know… you’re the only one out of everyone who’s actually doing any investigating. Did you notice that, hmm?”
He chuckles. It’s polite, restrained. Fake. It makes you feel warm regardless.
“Are you suspecting me?”
“I’d never, Amami-chan! I consider myself to be a good judge of character, you know.”
“Then you ought to suspect me just a bit more.”
“I don’t think so. Sure, you’re a little odd, but nothing I’ve seen means that’s untrustworthy.”
He smiles. It’s small, but sincere. You wonder if it’s the first time anyone’s seen a hint of true emotion from the boy.
You decide that it is, and it makes you feel special. It warms up your freezing, exhausted body.
“Thank you, Ouma.” It was the slightest of slight changes to his voice, but you can tell— for once, your beautiful boy is speaking from the heart.
He’s not used to trusting, it seems. Not used to being trusted.
You trust him with your life, but not his own.
“Wanna poke around together? Two heads are better than one, after all!”
He smiles at you, wider this time. You wonder if he thinks he might be making a mistake.
You’ve already made your mistake. You made it the moment you fell in love with a prisoner.
“That is what they say, after all.”
Your beautiful boy has lunch with you under the pergola.
He shows you how to make eggs so they’re just runny enough, a thick, goopy thing. He makes salt-grilled fish for the both of you. Not a traditional lunch by any means, but you have fun slurping up the egg-covered fish before all the yolk drips off.
You can taste it— salty and spiced, it melts on your tongue.
He must not taste very well, either. The only way your dulled tastebuds can do much of anything these days is if you overseason to the point of inducing nausea in anyone that isn’t you.
(You’re not allowed to cook for DICE, anymore, but Ka-chan always made sure your portion was triple-spiced.
You always complained that it was still dull. Still boring. What you wouldn’t give to taste it again.)
“So,” you say. “How d’ya stay so calm? I’m a live wire, Amami-chan!”
He looks at you, eyes flicking up and down, and you wonder if he thinks you’re lying.
“I don’t know,” he finally says. “I just am, I guess. Always have been.”
“Always?”
“As long as I can remember, at any rate.”
“Woooow, Amami-chan!” You make your eyes sparkle with childish enthusiasm, like he’s a novelty to behold and not a puzzle to be solved. “It’s like you don’t feel fear at all!”
He chuckles and holds up his hands. “I wouldn’t go that far, Ouma. I feel fear, sometimes, in bad situations.”
“You didn’t seem that scared when we woke up!”
“I was when the Exisals showed up. I was ready to bolt away, and only stop when I found a nice hiding spot.”
“But not before?”
He chuckled— fake— and rubbed the back of his neck. “I have a habit of waking up in weird places.”
“Ooh?” You lean in closer. “Like where?”
“Well, once I fell asleep in Sicily and woke up in the Amazon, on a research boat.”
“Oh?” You wonder what this beautiful boy’s life was like before this game, to be accustomed to such things. You wonder if it was freedom, or prison. “Well, you must’ve climbed on at port, right? Am I right?!”
You have a feeling you are not. A strong feeling.
He chuckles— real— and blushes faintly, of embarrassment. “Actually… apparently I’d wandered out of the forest, and they let me on the boat because I would’ve died otherwise. Going by the pictures I found on my phone when I woke up, I must’ve been wandering around the forest for…. four? Five days, before I wandered on that boat.”
He thinks it’s a funny story.
You wonder if he’ll think this game is a funny story, too, when it’s all over.
“There’s something wrong with me,” he says. You showed him your whiteboard and he showed you his notes. “You shouldn’t get close.”
He sits on your bed, your head on his lap.
I know, you want to say. I don’t care, you want to continue.
“You seem fine to me, Amami-chan,” is what comes out of your mouth. You feel him tense up.
“Appearances can be deceiving, Ouma.”
“I know!” You smile at him, a disgusting amalgamation of real and fake, truth and lies. “Didn’t I say I’m a very good judge of character? It comes with the talent, you know.”
“Didn’t I say you ought to suspect me a bit more? I mean, what if I was hiding something?”
“Everyone has their secrets, Amami-chan,” you say. You desperately wish he’d tell you, though— it would be much better for the game if he did.
That’s a lie.
You want to know all there is to know about him. To be let into his life by him. To know him deeply and truly, for him to tell you all there is to tell, for him to trust you wholly. To hold and be held by him, side-by-side in this game of nightmares and loneliness. You figure it’s the closest thing to marriage you can get in a place like this.
He shows you the second Monopad, with its map of the secret room.
It’s a trap.
You know it is, and he does, too. You know he does.
Your Amami-chan only felt fear in the worst of times, and even then, he loved the adrenaline rush it gave him.
He told you so himself, one night— he talked about the Amazon, and how he must’ve been terrified. How at age ten, he’d gotten lost in Aokigahara for a week’s time, and the terror he felt as his food dwindled and he went in circles and saw corpse after corpse was the strongest thing he’d ever felt.
How he craved more of it, and more still.
It flooded his nervous system and made his head spin with the intensity, when he timed it right. He described it as a sort-of edging— you get as close to death as possible, then at the last possible moment, heart pounding and nerves alight, you pull back and bask in the afterglow, trembling and on the floor from overwhelm.
You hope, then, that the last thing he ever felt was the wonderful rush of hormones one last time, finally able to reach completion.
They say he died instantly.
You figure that’s a lie. You have no proof, you just figure.
In your waking dreams, your beautiful Amami-chan felt fear creep inside him slower and slower, and once that shot made impact, time slowed down and he was able to bask in the tremendous rush, trembling in his afterglow in Heaven.
Or Hell.
Or nowhere.
You wonder where you’ll go after you die. You wonder if it’ll be the same place as him.