Chishiya

I sat on top of the Beach' roof, earbuds plugged in, listening to my favourite calming music. The sky was slowly turning a reddish orange as the crowd beneath me started growing and the music started getting louder.

As I sat there, my feet dangling twenty-like metres above the ground, I pondered about my life in the Borderlands so far.

In the beginning, I had done it fairly well on my own. I played a dozen of games and got better and better at it. Especially the diamonds ones. There were times that I almost lost, but I somehow always got away in the end.

After some time, I got the feeling that I was being watched. Every game, people with wristbands kept a close eye on me. Until they approached me and did an offer. They asked me to join their group and collect cards together. At first, I was sceptical. But I accepted their offer in the end; I had nothing to loose and I started to be bored anyway.

I was one of the first ten members of 'the Beach', a group led by the man named Hatter. We all had our forté: some were very strong, others were smart, others were masters of deception and so on. But our group grew very fast and they started accepting random people that had no value other than being cannon fodder during the games.

One evening, I was playing a very rough spades game. Luckily, I played together with some strong individuals. I hid in a tree almost immediately when the game started, so I could observe the other players. I recognized one of them: the strong and flexible girl that saved me a long time ago, when I was still on my own. She did so well during this game, but got shot and left for death.

I couldn't let her die there. I was a doctor after all and felt like I was indebted with her. So I took her to the Beach and secretly kept her in my room, healing her. It was Kuina. When she felt good enough to be on her own again, I let her decide: she could secretly run away and act like she never met me, or I could introduce her to the Beach and make her part of it. She chose the second option. Ever since, she sticked with me. I wouldn't call us 'friends', but our bond still has something... special.

'Chishiya? Shuntaro? What are you thinking about?' her voice brought me back to the present. She pinched one of my earbuds between her fingers and pulled it out of my ear when I turned around to give her a dirty look.

'What are you doing here?' I asked. I grabbed it out of her hand and put it away in my pocket, together with the other one.

She smiled: 'looking for you. I knew I would find you here. What were you thinking about? You seemed pretty far away from here.' She sat down next to me and gave me a pat on my shoulder.

I shoved her hand away and made some distance between us. 'I was actually thinking about you,' I said.

She pouted her lips at me and giggled: 'aww, is our friendship so important to you? How cute!'

'We aren't friends, Kuina', I replied.

She joined me: '... yet! Just you wait. I was looking for you to ask if you wanted to join me for dinner?' She smiled again, sincerely.

I realised I was hungry, nodded and stood up. I could really use some of her positivity anyway. We walked to the cafetaria and filled our platters with noodle soup and mochi before looking for a good spot to sit. We found an empty, badly lit table in the corner of the cafetaria. We sat down and I started eating my meal in silence.

'So, what were your hobby's in the real world?' she asked me.

I shrugged and didn't reply. Small talk seemed even more useless than in the real world. Why would I waste my time talking about something that's gone? I didn't really believe in going back to the real world. Though I agreed that the playing cards had a certain value. I just had to find out what value. I immediately saw Hatters idea of this utopia was fake, a lie. I popped that lie as it was a balloon. But I kept it a secret for the others. I had fun watching them being so foolish to believe there was a way out.

Kuina had started talking about her own past hobby's. How she used to be very good at martial arts and later at painting and drawing. I wasn't listening, but saw she felt joy talking about it. So I gave her this one.

Niragi

I glared at them from across the room while I was sitting on a table together with my militant squad. So Chishiya was befriended with that fucking ladyboy? What a damn loser. I grabbed the bowl of noodle soup and shugged the whole thing at once. I blurted out a big burp and we all started laughing.

In the meantime, I thought about earlier today. I really hoped that my message for Chishiya was clear and that he wouldn't ruin our next game for us. The pretentious brat. Luckily, I was sitting here with all my friends.

Oh, I loved this place. It was so much better than the real world. I never wanted to go back, that's for sure. Hatter thought that we were all stupid enough to believe that collecting all the cards was a ticket to the real world again. And fair enough, most of us were stupid enough. But I knew better. I knew that it was just a lie to give us hope.

And that's exactly the reason why I joined the Beach. I didn't want to go back to the real world. I just wanted to be surrounded by those happy, hopefull fools. Celebrate with them. The only difference? I celebrated because I would never have to go to the real world again. For me, thís was the real world. With my real friends. Or at least, I always told myself that a couple of times a day to act like it was real. As long as I made myself believe that I was their boss and friend, it was true enough at least.

With that thought, I jumped up the table and laughed out loud, like a madman, while firing some shots from my rifle in the air. I saw Chishiya looking at me with a dirty smirk on his face. He probably thought that I was insanely dumb. I let the idiot think that. The militants started cheering with me and we all went to the pool area to party all night long. Oh, I loved this life.

[End of chapter three]

_______________________________________

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are looking forward to reading more! Let me know what you think!

Photo from the Alice in Borderland series on Netflix