All My Friends Are Dead

[Applesintime]

"Good luck too."

Fumiyo didn't really have much more to say, so with that she turned and left.

((Fumiyo Fujiyoshi continued elsewhere))

[Ohm]

“Makes sense.” She answered that it was the best plan for now and one that had worked so far keeping them safe. Yumiko was good at ideas; she had always been better at coming up with them on the fly compared to Yukiko. That is why her eyes were glued to the tracker it was their lifeline and the biggest sign of her usefulness in the past few days.

With the ever-closing distance between them and their classmates slowly webbing them all in, this thing had been like a second set of eyes, more potent than those they actually had. Just knowing where anybody was so strong and useful and… Yukiko was glad that she got something like this over a gun or a sword.

She did not want to think what she would be like if she had that if she even would have made it this far if she had that instead of-

“One of them is moving.” She said in a hushed tone, her eyes still stuck to the tracker following the departing dot.

“Do you see them? Are they armed? A-are they one of the scary ones?”

[Kermit]

Yumiko squinted her eyes, watching a human figure in the distance as it moved away from the storage building. She could see.... they were wearing a girl's uniform, and their white blouse was all covered with a big dark splotch. It looked like maybe they were holding something in their hand, but she couldn't tell for sure. She couldn't really see their face, but they had shortish hair.

Sakura Ogawa, maybe? No. No, this person was too tall to be Ogawa. And also Ogawa was dead.

Hold on, okay, she could see them a little better now. Their hair was kind of... feathered?

Oh, right, she knew who it was. The nurse's aid.

"I think that's... Fumiyo Fujiyoshi who's leaving. I can't tell if she has a weapon, but... there's a lot of blood on her, and she doesn't look to be injured." She said quietly.

She pursed her lips for a second, took a step backwards, and glanced at the collar tracker. The other person near the storage building was still there.

"Maybe she killed that person, except they haven't died yet? Or, hmmm - Oh, there's," she cut herself off as she pointed her finger at a dot that had just appeared at the bottom of the screen, barrelling in their general direction at a seemingly superhuman speed.

"Behind us, behind us -- what is that?!"

[Primrosette]

Chisato was still staying where she was for a few moments after Fumiyo left. She knew that she should have been gone by now, but all she could think about now was Yoshio. She felt like she had to think and pray for him in her mind. She couldn't put the gun down as she didn't feel safe without it now.

"Okay, Chisato. You should just get-"

She suddenly heard a noise from somewhere. She didn't move from where she was as it was the only cover that she felt comfort in. She was now making sure to keep quiet. Maybe it was just an animal?

But what if...?

[Carrion Queen]

One autumn day, Yoshimi and Yoji bumped into each other at the mall and decided to go to a movie together.

That Christmas they ordered a strawberry shortcake at a café and split it, then kissed.

For New Year’s they dressed in long-sleeved kimonos for the first temple visit. The sacred lot she had drawn was only "fair luck" while his was "very good luck."

"Ah, of course," she said, looking at her lot, since she was used to such things. Afterall, she never won lotteries, not even a box of tissues.

Without a word and without hesitation, he traded with her.

"Here," he said with a smile. "You can have my luck."

Don’t think about them.

Don’t think about them.


Mitsuko.

A pin.

A knife.

((Yoshimi Yahagi continued from The Letter To Mitsuko))

She had gone to the residential area after first taking the truck, found a house, locked her car (of course), found some booze in the house, got drunk, rested. Got up, decided to take one last survey of the farm storage just in case. She was calmer now.

Yoshimi barreled back towards the farm storage with the bottle of sake on the seat next to her, along with the three bags and the gun. She brought the car to a stop on a small path near the forest before reaching the farm storage building itself.

She popped open the glove compartment and found some CDs, a car registration, and a partially crushed pack of Wild Seven cigarettes.

With the car lighter, she ignited one of the intact cigarettes and rolled down the window, blowing smoke out. With blank eyes she looked out at the foliage, shaking the tip of the cigarette to get rid of the ash.

Yoshimi took another drag of the cigarette, now noticing two people shapes in sailor suits among the greenery.

A puff of smoke slowly exhaled, clouding the area in front of her line of vision. She stared at them, taking hold of the gun on the seat near her without breaking her stare.

[Ohm]

Fumiyo was the one leaving, covered in blood... Yukiko had talked to her from time to time, a nice girl who was an aide to the nurse, but was that still true?

The other dot stayed put. Yumiko put forth the idea that they could be dying, which was morbid but made sense. Did that mean they shouldn't go over there? Maybe they needed help or something...

Something fast barreled into the area. A dot racing into view on the tracker. Panic started setting in as they tried to figure out what it was.

"I-I don't know!" She answered hastily; none of the dots had been like this so far. What made this one so different?

And almost as an answer, a truck drove past and pulled up near the farm building.

Yukiko held her right hand in front of her mouth in shock at the sight, to quell any noises she would have made. She wanted to scream in surprise, but the minute she would do so, she would have signed not just hers but Yumiko's death warrant.

Her left held the tracker that shook in it's place, a dot securely placed where the truck would be.

Was this one of her classmates? Did they get a truck running here? Or was it someone else, but who else could it be beside them? Troops wouldn't just use one of the trucks around here?

She stared at the car that had pulled up, almost squinting to see who was sitting inside of it.

[Kermit]

Of course, something like this had to happen right when it seemed like it might have been safe to come out of hiding.

Yumiko stared, eyes wide, head swooping around as the truck zoomed past and came to a stop right between them and the dot near the barn. She was glad that the driver hadn't accidentally driven through the bush she and Yukiko were hiding in and killed them.

She squinted, her eyes scanning the driver's side of the truck's blocky chassis. Certainly, it was graceful compared to the roaring excess of the American "pick up" trucks that she saw sometimes on her family's TV, whenever the news was reporting on the latest foreign contraband smuggling ring bust. She caught a puff of smoke from out the driver's window, obscuring their face from view.

She didn't really know that many people her age who smoked cigarettes. But most of the ones she did know were...

"Oh," she whispered, "I think they're a delinquent."

It didn't make them dangerous, but it meant... it meant that it became more likely, maybe. So she had to figure out who specifically they were.

She leaned her head forward to get a better view, looking at the steering wheel to try and see the driver's hands. They didn't seem to be holding the wheel anymore.

[Primrosette]

Chisato knew that she couldn't stay in her hiding spot forever. She really needed to get herself out of there as soon as she possibly could. She just needed to make sure that it was safe for her to go out in the open. She just didn't want to get herself shot for no reason and she didn't want things to end so abruptly. She needed to find Megumi as soon as she could. She needed to tell her that she never blamed her for what happened with Oda and Shinji. Chisato blamed herself for how it was a misunderstanding that ended up with two people dying because of their lack of communication.

Chisato gripped her gun tighter towards herself. The only thing that could really protect her right now.

She resisted a peek out in the open for a few seconds before pulling her head back into safety behind the tractor. It looked like whomever it was, was just sitting there in the truck, but she hadn't been able to see who was inside. So now she just had to take a risk. No more hesitating for now.

Chisato took a deep breath as if to prepare herself mentally. She then made a light jog-run towards the farm building, feeling herself focusing clearly on the goal at hand. She didn't want to resist sprinting as she knew that would just exhaust her too quickly and she didn't want to be out of breath if she had to get into a gunfight at some point.

She almost froze up when she got closer to the building, and she noticed that a body was just outside the door. Her eyes were threatening to tear up.

Haruka....

She couldn't stop. She ran right past the body, and she made a note in her head to mourn her best friend later on. She had to concentrate on surviving. She could apologize for not stopping later on.

She then slowed down when she saw another body that crushed her heart.

Yuko....

She was further inside of the place, and she stopped to look around at her surroundings, panting softly. She needed to find another exit fast.

[Carrion Queen]

The fingers of Yoshimi’s right hand curled around the barrel of the gun. She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and with her left hand, she popped open the door of the truck.

She landed on her feet, gun in one hand, and the cigarette dangling from her mouth. The front of her uniform was splotched with blood.

The figures were close together, huddled, and they were the girl’s uniforms like hers, or as hers had been. She moved her long waves behind her left ear and put her hand in a V shape with the cigarette in a middle, then clamped down with her fingers and pulled it out, exhaling. Yoshimi tiled her head and observed.

"I'll tell you a riddle," she said out to the figures. "You are friends. Every day before school, you wait outside your house for your friend to come by so you can walk to school together. At the start of the year, when you first meet, your friend greets you. She gives you a present. You love it. Eventually, instead she gives you a hug when she meets you in front of your house. It's nice. Time passes. Now she just smiles when she greets you in the morning. More time passes and the smiles become less wide until there's... there's nothing. She just arrives and you start to walk. Then, one day, she slaps you lightly on the shoulder as a greeting. She slaps you a little harder every day, until she punches you in the arm. Then....one day.... she greets you and pricks you with a needle. You know what will likely happen, and you know one day it will be a knife if you wait long enough. But up until now, you didn't do anything about it. What do you do? And why do you do it? And why did you endure getting punched?"

Yoshimi took a long drag from the cigarette and blew smoke rings out.

[Ohm]

"Huh?" Yukiko muffled out as she watched the suspicious girl tell this riddle to her and Yumiko... while covered in blood and holding, what looked to be, a gun.

It looked to be Yahagi who used to hang out with Shimizu and Souma. Yukiko had always kept her distance from those three as much as she could, too many bad stories and things she had seen herself, things that had been done to her classmates, and once or twice- maybe more, she tried not to remember this kind of thing too deeply - to her.

Yukiko reached a hand over to Yumiko's side and lightly gripped her shirt.

"Wh-what is this? Is this ok?"

She had no idea what any of this meant at that moment, what Yahagi was aiming for with this riddle or whether it was a false sense of security before she gunned them down. Yukiko wanted to move, but her legs were like logs stuck to the ground as she kept her eyes at her.

[Kermit]

Oh no.

The door of the truck popped open, and out stepped Yoshimi Yahagi, covered in blood and holding a gun. Yumiko's breath caught in her throat. It was only once the girl had finished her riddle that she remembered to take a new breath in.

So... Yahagi knew she and Yukiko were there, hiding. That was a fact; she was talking to them. And she was covered in blood and holding a gun, which was generally a bad sign. She looked like she was about to shoot them. And because she knew they were there, they couldn't run. But she was talking to them and not shooting them. So, maybe, maybe she wouldn't shoot them? Or maybe she was going to shoot them if they didn't answer her riddle? Or was she was just going to shoot them anyways after they answered?

Yumiko felt Yukiko's hand tugging at her shirt. She turned her head to her friend, failing to hide the worried look on her face.

...

If Yahagi was likely to shoot if they didn't respond, then they needed to respond. But there was also the possibility that Yahagi would shoot at wherever the response came from from. So...

...So, if only one of them stepped out from the bush and answered, if Yahagi fired, the other would at least have a chance to survive.

She frowned slightly.

So... one of them had to do that. And, well, she wasn't going to ask Yukiko to put herself in the line of fire.

It was better to die because you did the right thing than to get yourself and other people killed by doing nothing. That was something she strongly believed.

So, she guessed she was going to have to do what she had to do.

She looked down at Yukiko, and using the hand she wasn't holding her Derringer in, gently pried the smaller girl's hand from her shirt.

"You'll be okay." She said to her.

She nodded her head, took a deep, shaky breath, and turned her face away from Yukiko.

For a second, she tried to focus on what Yahagi had said; tried to think of something that was an answer to all three of the girl's questions. What do you do? And why do you do it? And why did you endure getting punched? There was a pang of empathy in her heart for Yahagi. It seemed obvious now that the girl, although she seemed intimidating, had been in a bad place for a long time.

She took a slow step forward and emerged out from the foliage, holding herself with her back straight.

"Hope?" She said.

[Primrosette]

And while the girls were busy with each other, Chisato made her own escape to go somewhere else.

Hopefully somewhere safer.

She needed to think some things over on her own without any interruptions.

((Chisato Matsui continued in The Worst Game in History))

[Carrion Queen]

Yoshimi looked down, not seeing where the response had come from.

"Hope," she said as loud as she could in a voice that cracked with pain.

Yoshimi clutched at her heart, letting the cigarette carelessly fall to the ground. The smoke trailed up delicately from the dirt, curling around her leg.

She was tired in a way where she felt the strain behind her eyes and she felt pain most acutely in her heart, in her chest.

"Hope that things can be the way that they were once. That's what keeps you coming back, keeps you debasing yourself, keeps you enduring. It's that way with a friend, and it's that way with this country -- with East Asia. It makes you kill with the hope of surviving so you can go back, and hope that things will be better in this hell we live in. A hell we endured because we remembered the good and hoped it would be good forever even when it was right in front of us that it wouldn't and never was. It's a fool's sentiment, but I'm a fool, too," she said, tears starting to mist over her vision.

She looked up and suddenly noticed the other girl had emerged, had moved, and held a gun like hers. It looked like she was going for it, that she was prepared. Or maybe she had only thought she'd seen that.

I can't die yet. I have some things to do still.

Yoshimi fired her gun wildly at the foliage and ran back to the truck.

[Ohm]

Hope. That was the answer that Yumiko gave to the riddle after a bit of waiting. Yukiko had no idea if that was the answer or not. Heck, she did not want to answer any riddles or stuff like that; she didn't like riddles to begin with, so why they were still here listening to this and even trying to answer was beyond her.

Especially when the other girl- who was covered in blood, mind you- decided to continue talking about hope just made the whole thing weird. That could not be what she wante-

She suddenly moved. Her gun was in air.

A shot rang out.

Yukiko let go of Yumiko's shirt.



The ground seemed really comfy all of a sudden.

[Kermit]

Yumiko stood silently as Yahagi responded to her answer.

...

It... it seemed like she'd given the right answer? The girl was still talking and seemed to actually be engaging with what she'd said. So, that was a good thing, she thought.

She adjusted her grip on the Derringer in her right hand, hanging loosely at her side.

Then, she took another step forward, further out of the foliage.

"...I -" she started to say, and then immediately, Yahagi started shooting.

Oh.

So... so that was what was really happening, then.

It was the loudest thing Yumiko had ever heard in her life. At this range, it was almost like the visual change between a gun being pointed at her and a gun being fired at her wasn't enough to really register. But the sound? It was just so much. It was too much. She could have sworn she felt the soundwaves crashing through her chest.

Something fell to the ground right behind her. Her eyes widened as she realized who it was, and then her eyebrows narrowed.

Yahagi had turned around. She was running back to the truck.

Yumiko took a few stumbling, dashing steps after her, raising the Derringer with her right hand in one swift motion.

Then, she lined the gun up with Yahagi's back, and made herself pull down on the trigger with enough force to fire.

It felt even louder than Yahagi's.