Chapter Text
All of Tokyo was dark.
All of Tokyo, except the park in front of her, which had lit up at sunset like a beacon. Val found herself attracted to it like a moth to flame on a hot summer’s night, and yet she lingered in the shadows across the street. Waiting. Making up her mind. Nothing about this made sense. Still, other people would have noticed, if there was anyone else alive in Tokyo at all. She hadn’t seen another soul since the world stopped making sense, despite wandering the empty streets for hours.
The thought of meeting other people wasn’t entirely comforting, though. She was a skinny thing - two years of PhD research didn’t do your body a whole lot of good - and a foreigner, and the gods only knew what kind of people roamed the streets of this other Tokyo. Wherever she was, it was not the city she’d woken up in barely twelve hours ago.
Well. She narrowed her eyes. A group of three - no, four - men strode towards the entrance of the park. The tallest was clad in cargo pants and heavy boots; the ones surrounding him seemed younger, dressed more casually, but with a practised agility that scared her. Val thanked her lucky stars they didn’t glance her way. There was no way in hell she was following those four into the park, on her own. Absolutely none.
As she debated the alternatives - go back to her hotel? Some place else? - another figure walked up to the park entrance. Huh. A middle aged woman in a pencil skirt, clutching an oversized purse like her life depended on it. The lady hesitated mid-step, right before the gates, but steeled herself and marched through. Then, a pair of teenagers in high school uniforms, holding hands. They sauntered into the park as though they didn’t have a care in world, but even from across the street Val saw the tension in those clasped hands. Waiting a few more moments, staring down the absurdly empty streets, she shook her head. Getting up, she stretched. She was not going in there. She’d go scout for a place to sleep while every one else was busy in the park. Maybe she could go back in the morning. See if she could find a clue.
Quick footsteps echoed down the street. Val cursed and dove down again.
‘Meiko!’ someone yelled. It sounded female. Young. ‘Wait up!’
‘It’s almost time!’ another girl yelled down the empty streets. ‘Hurry up, Hayu!’
‘My leg-’
‘Run through it,’ Meiko yelled back. ‘We’re going to die if we don’t make it to the game tonight!’
Despite her words, Meiko waited by the gate while Hayu limped into view. Val gasped. Hayu, twenty at most, wore a short skirt that showed off the impromptu bandage on her left thigh. Even in the yellow light of the park’s street lanterns, it was an uncomfortable, oozing red. Val took half a step forward, as if to help. Meiko noticed her, then, and Val saw pure, unbridled panic in her eyes. She froze. Meiko, long black hair in a shoddy pony tail and clad in a blouse that had once been white, opened her mouth and then clearly thought better of it. She dragged Hayu through the gates and didn’t look back.
Meiko’s words had stirred a sense of urgency in Val that she couldn’t place. She was halfway across the empty street before she’d really made the decision. Val prayed hard as she pushed her way through the metal gates. They were heavier than they should be, and a quiet but pronounced ping sounded as she stepped through. The people she had witnessed enter the park earlier stood waiting in the clearing behind the gates. They were all there - Combat Boots and his three admirers, Purse Lady, the couple, Meiko and Hayu - and another man Val would have sworn hadn’t entered the park. Had he been here before her? He slouched against a tree at the edge of the group, face cast into shadows by his hoodie, the very picture of disinterest.
Behind him, the trees stretched out, dark and foreboding.
In the middle of the clearing, a white plastic table sat with a single smartphone on top of it. Val hesitated. No one else was doing anything, but each person practically radiated tension.
‘Go on then!’ one of the boys with Combat Boots sneered. ‘Grab it!’
‘Shut it, Wakao,’ another one said, eyeing her. ‘There’s no way she speaks Japanese.’
Val pretended not to understand them as she walked towards the table. She’d been researching at Tokohu university for two years, but if they thought she didn’t speak Japanese, maybe she would overhear something useful.
The phone lit up the second she grabbed it.
‘Facial recognition in progress,’ it said, startling her. Her picture appeared on screen, apparently taken by an unseen surveillance camera, along with the others.
‘Game: Hide and Seek. Difficulty: Two of Hearts,’ it continued. The feminine voice was robotic, and artificially cheery. The sense of discomfort in her bones deepened.
‘Number of players: 11. Clear condition: be a Hider when the timer runs out. Seekers will receive a game over. Rules: Hiders get a three minute head start to hide. Seekers must touch a Hider to switch to the Hider role. The Hider then becomes a Seeker. Players may switch roles twice. The same two players may not switch roles twice in a row. Time limit: thirty minutes. Roles will now be assigned.’
A game of hide and seek? It was insane, but it was all the information she had, and thirty minutes wasn’t that long. She could ride it out. Look for answers later. Except- Looking around the circle of people, she locked eyes with Meiko, the injured girl.
‘Hey,’ she said, softly, ‘What does it mean to receive a game over?’
‘You speak Japanese!’ she exclaimed. Val hoped Combat Boots hadn’t heard that. Then Meiko’s voice dropped. ‘If you get a game over, you die.’
Their phones chose that moment to ping. Seeker, Val’s spelled out in helpful English. Meiko and Hayu took one glance at their own phones and took off into the woods, Meiko visibly limping.
Someone behind her screamed - the boy who’d been holding hands with a girl was urging her to run, he’d find someone to tag, they’d be safe. Val didn’t bother listening in. Her ears were still ringing from Meiko’s casual words.
If you get a game over, you die.
It was absurd. Insane. But it was all Val had to go on, so she’d suspend her disbelief. There’d be time for panic later. Hopefully.
She turned back towards the clearing. In the distance, she could still see the lady with the purse running over the widest path. She’d be the easiest to catch up, her brain cynically supplied. The boy from the couple still lingered in the clearing, although he was now crying, and off to the side one of Combat Boot’s fanboys refused to look at her.
If you get a game over, you die.
Val shook her head. She had to focus. She could only switch roles twice, so she had to tag someone and hide - if she became a seeker again, she’d lose. She dumped her bag on the ground. No use for hotel keys or strips of paracetamol or hand lotion now. Thankfully, she’d worn sneakers this morning. She stretched.
Her phone pinged. Seekers are now released.
She ran.
Beyond the clearing, the street lights hadn’t turned on. Trees had been planted at comfortable distances away from each other, no doubt to ensure pleasant Sunday strolls. It wouldn’t be hard to head into the growth at all. Still, she’d watched Purse Lady follow the path as she left the clearing, so Val did too. The moon was barely a sliver, shrouding the shrubs and trees beyond in darkness.
She rounded a corner, and abruptly the path split into three. Halting to catch her breath, she looked around. Which should she pick? One led out of the forested area, towards a pond with a decorative bridge across it, circled by another clearing. Hardly anywhere to hide there. The second path led further into the trees, and the third seemed to loop back towards the clearing at the beginning. Purse Lady probably wouldn’t risk that. Val started onto the second path, until her brain caught up to something her eyes had seen as she was scanning her surroundings.
Damn. She hadn’t been looking for her yet, so she hadn’t picked up on it the first time - but one of the thicker trees, just beyond the bend in the third path, had a wide lump on the bottom.
She swallowed. She could keep walking. If what Meiko had told her was true, she was dooming this lady to an uncertain end. Could she do that? Well. Not doing it was suicidal. And Val was very, very done with that whole can of worms.
So she backtracked a few steps, quiet on her feet, acting as though she was just indecisive. She walked a few meters onto the path towards the pond, and then backtracked again, finally settling onto the path that curved back towards the start. Glancing at the suspicious tree, any last doubts she had were wiped away. That was Purse Lady, barely hiding, thirty meters away from Val. She sat completely frozen on the ground, pressed against the tree, hopefully oblivious to the fact that she’d been seen.
She sneaked, her heart beating so loudly in her throat she feared Purse Lady could hear it. Her senses heightened - the gravel beneath her feet made her twitch every time it made the slightest noise. Nothing else was real. There was only the path, and the wind in the trees, and the lump that was Purse Lady getting closer with every careful step.
Then everything happened at once. She put a foot down wrong - something beneath it crunched - and Purse Lady shot up. She jumped to her feet - now without purse, Val’s brain supplied unhelpfully - and ran into the trees. Quicker than Val had assumed. Probably younger than she’d thought. Val broke into a sprint again. Her sneakers were better suited to the terrain than her opponent’s neat leather shoes. When she was a girl, she’d played games in the woods, always more ruthless than the other children, tearing through brambles to win a game of tag. She did so now, too, barely registering the pain as she closed in on Purse Lady and thorns dug into her flesh. Three paces between them, then two. She reached out. Something inside of her squealed with glee. She felt Purse Lady’s polyester blouse under her fingers.
Their phones chimed.
‘You’ve killed me,’ Purse Lady gasped as she crashed to her knees in the dirt.
‘I’m sorry,’ Val said, backing away, the gleeful thing inside of her shrinking into nothing.
‘You’ve killed me!’ Purse Lady yelled now.
Oh. Fuck. There were other seekers.
Val turned and ran.
Part of her wanted to loop back to the start of the game. It was a power move for sure, but then she remembered Combat Boots and his cocky band of fanboys and decided against it. One of them would come up with the same idea. As she jogged through the forest, looking through the eyes of a Hider, the game seemed a lot less easy. It was a well kept park, easy to see through; the trees were spaced far apart and she didn’t dare sit behind one and call herself safe.
Pausing for a moment, she looked around. In the distance, she heard more screaming, and then something that vaguely sounded like a gunshot. Oh, gods. This was real, wasn’t it? If she didn’t come up with something soon, that would be her.
The pond, her brain quietly supplied. Oh, that would suck. With the setting of the sun, a chill had crept onto her sweaty skin. But- if everyone else thought that way, she’d be safe. She turned, retracing her steps to the crossroads where she’d found Purse Lady, crouching in the shadows between the trees. Once, she saw movement in the distance, but she froze before the stranger noticed her move.
She hesitated for a moment at the treeline. There was a good fifty meters of grass between her and the pond, with zero cover. Anyone could see her. But the bridge over the pond provided so much shadow over the water, and half the pond was lined by bushes and trees that hid most of the water’s surface. Best of all, part of the pond was full of reeds. She quieted her breathing, and heard nothing except the wind in the trees.
Her heart in her throat, she crossed the grass. Suddenly she understood how zebras felt in documentaries, right before they were jumped by a lion. She allowed herself a relieved exhale when she reached the water’s edge.
Heavy footsteps from the park.
No, no no no no, she thought as she slipped into the water, forcing herself to do it calmly, quietly. Had they seen her? If anyone tagged her, she was dead. Real, actual dead. The water was cold enough to make her breath hitch. Forcing herself to move slowly, smoothly, she submerged herself beneath the freezing black surface. The pond was deep; the bottom nothing but mud as she dragged herself along it. Se forced her eyes open. It hurt. Of course it hurt. Turning on her back, Val swam until she was beneath the dark shadow of the bridge. One edge was overgrown with reeds. She got at far in between them as she dared - visions of swishing plants giving her away playing in her mind’s eye - and then finally came up for a breath.
Silence. No movement anywhere. She took deep, steady breaths, grateful as the oxygen melted into her blood. Prepared to sink below the surface again the moment she so much as heard another person. As the minutes crept by - slowly, slower than she’d thought possible - she began to shiver. She stuck her fingers in her armpits to keep them warm. With the phone in her pocket under the water, she had no way to tell the time, and as it progressed the adrenaline subsided from her bloodstream. A cloud swept in front of the moon. The park sank into further darkness, and Val had to bite her cheeks to keep her teeth from chattering. How much longer?
Had everyone gone? Could she come up, leave the park?
She almost considered it. Then, out of nowhere, someone came running from the forest. Heavy footsteps on the gravel, the wooden bridge, echoing in her ears. Had someone spotted her? No - a second set of footsteps, faster, sprinting after the first. The sudden fear in her veins was even colder than the water, and Val sank below the surface again, praying she wasn’t making any ripples, praying she was safe among the mud and the reeds and the fish.
Seconds ticked by. She couldn’t hear what was going on on the bridge. Was that wise? Her lungs began to complain in time. They’d be gone by now, right? They’d been running. She was useless without oxygen in her blood-
She came up again. On the bridge, someone was crying. Wailing.
‘Toshio!’ it was a woman’s voice. Or a girl’s. ‘I’m so sorry! I-’
A whack. A man’s voice, softer, menacing. ‘You’ll call the seekers to me, bitch-’
Another whack. The crying softened. Val stared at the bottom of the bridge, wide eyed. Should she help? No, her brain supplied, calmly, rationally. That was positively suicidal.
So she waited, while the girl on the bridge stopped crying altogether. Val was going to have nightmares if she ever got out of this pond. A chime sounded from the bridge.
‘Congratulations to all Hiders! Game clear!’
She exhaled. The girl on the bridge shrieked again. Then, a zap, and a thud.
Val didn’t get out of the pond until she heard the man’s footsteps recede from the bridge, onto the gravel, back to the treeline. She swam to the bank and dragged herself onto the mud. The phone in her pocket was bricked. Wringing the pond water out of her hair, she stumbled onto the bridge.
It was the teenage girl from the couple, and there was a singed hole through her head, her skull, her brain blackened and smoking. Streaks of mascara ran from her eyes, across her bruised cheeks. Her clothes were torn to shreds. Val took a deep breath.
‘Get out of here,’ she told herself quietly. ‘There’s time to panic later.’
She moved, but slowly. She passed Purse Lady’s corpse on the crossroads, close to where she’d tagged her not even twenty minutes ago. She’d learned from the girl on the bridge, and didn’t stare this time, swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat. Once, the sound of a bird startled her to the point she spend three minutes on the forest floor, waiting for her death.
She was the last to reach the clearing. Whoever else had survived had already left, and taken her bag with them. Fuck.
The metal gates were even heavier as she pushed them open this time. Outside of them sat another plastic table. The man in the hoodie, still spotless white, was stood next to it studying a piece of paper. He stared at her for a second, then cocked his head.
‘Huh,’ he said, with mild surprise. ‘You’re alive.’
‘Evidently,’ Val said. The stranger was far too calm. Panic later, Val. ‘Is it over?’
He shrugged. ‘For tonight. First game then?’
‘First?’
‘If you want to live? Join another one before your visa runs out.’
The spikes of terror were beginning to feel familiar now.
‘When’s that?’
He frowned. She elected to ignore the unimpressed look he gave her.
‘This game was a Two of Hearts,’ he said, slowly, as though he doubted her ability of speak Japanese, now, too. ‘So you get two days.’
He swiftly turned and walked off before Val recovered enough to ask anything else. She got the distinct impression he regretted talking to her at all. No matter. She tried to steady herself. Wipe the dead girl from her retinas. Once she deemed him far enough away, she headed off into the opposite direction, deeper into the dark city.
Deeper into whatever hell she’d stumbled into.
.
Val had that panic attack she’d been promising herself all evening once she had locked herself safely into a stranger’s apartment. The moment she shoved the heavy couch in front of the door, the ringing in her ears blocked out everything else. It made no sense. None of it made any sense, and yet it was real. She crumbled onto the floor, the floorboards hard under her knees. Outside the window, there was nothing but black, except for a single building that was still lit up a startling white. It was real. She wasn’t dreaming - she had bit the inside of her cheek until her mouth tasted of rust - and even though none of it made any sense, it was real.
She screamed her throat raw and prayed there was no one in the high rise to hear her. Even as she realised she was losing control of her breathing, the ringing in her ears increased in pitch until the whole world sounded fuzzy. Fuck. She forced her head in between her knees and cupped her hands, breathing into them. Black specks rimmed her vision.
Control yourself, Val, she yelled at herself, but her brain was full of wool and she couldn’t see anything and there was nothing but the screeching in her ears-
When she woke, she dragged herself towards the bedroom and slept.
Despite the absurdity, the sun still rose over the false Tokyo. Val’s clothes - office slacks and a plain blouse - stank of pond water, not to mention her hair. The stranger’s closet yielded nothing that remotely fit her, though, so she pulled them over her head again. Sleep had given her the strength to steel herself. She knew nothing of this new Japan, but she’d moved continents before. She’d survive here, too.
‘Hah,’ she said to herself, pushing open the apartment complex’s front door. ‘Like that’s remotely the same.’
She knew precious little. There were the games. And the games bought you days of life, based on the difficulty. And it stood to reason that, no matter how horrifying yesterday had been, almost every game would be worse. It had only been a two, after all.
She was already lost, so chose a random direction. If she assumed every other game was going to be worse, then she had to prepare. She wasn’t particularly strong, or particularly fast; she was too thin, and not very tall. But she’d been through bad things before, and if you can’t win fairly, you play dirty. She had two days to prepare. She just had to treat it like a particularly confusing science problem.
Val whistled a choppy tune to herself as she wandered the streets, until she found what she was looking for. The mall’s sliding doors remained motionless, but she tossed a brick through the window of the employees’ entrance and knocked the remaining shards out of the window frame with her hand wrapped in her shirt. Inside, she discarded the shirt on the floor. There was no one around, anyhow. How many people would there be in Other Tokyo? How many had disappeared? Was she one of the lucky ones, or were the lucky ones still in the Tokyo she’d woken up in just yesterday? Had she fallen into an alternate dimension?
Val shook her head. Theoretical physics had never been her strong suit.
The stores in the mall, though covered in a few weeks worth of dust, were untouched.
Even the supermarket was completely stocked, although the fruit was rotten and flies swarmed the meat isle. To Val’s annoyance, there were no outdoor or camping stores, but there was a store that stocked exercise equipment. She selected a halfway decent backpack, two sports bras in her size, and a large water bottle that clipped to the outside of the bag. And new sneakers. The old ones were covered in pond mud and worse.
Women’s jeans were useless. Too thin, too tight, no pockets. But there were cargo pants, with pocket space to carry essentials if she had to drop the bag and run, and a thick belt to keep the entire construct actually hanging off her hips. Raiding the men’s isle, she grabbed a few oversized shirts that hid her waistline. Hopefully, people would think she was male from a distance. She heaved the bag onto her shoulders. Now she just needed-
‘Jackpot.’ An entirely untouched store full of motorcycle accessories. She’d never learned to ride, but - a thick leather jacket was nearly armour. It wouldn’t save her from a gunshot, but it might help against others who armed themselves with supermarket knives like she’d been forced to. She shrugged one that was almost her size onto her shoulders, studying herself in the mirror. Huh. She looked like she’d wanted to look as a teenager.
A woman’s hair is her crowning glory.
‘Good point, dad.’ It had taken her years to be ready to grow it back out.
The drug store carried hair scissors, and a selection of black dyes for women unwilling to reveal their age. She tossed a package into her backpack. She’d miss the blonde. It’d turned out better than expected.
Her bag was growing heavy. Time to head home, wherever that might be. She pushed the panic down again. Treat it like a science problem, Val. What was safe?
The midday sun hung heavy in the sky, and soon she had to take her jacket off and knot it around her waist. Staying around the mall was out. Anyone would needed supplies could stumble on her there, and she had no desire to meet Combat Boots and his fanboys again. She could climb all the way to the top of a high rise, and pray no one else had the motivation to; but she’d have no escape routes, then. Hotels? Anything with an electronic key card system was out.
She found a hostel instead, hidden behind an unobtrusive little entranceway between a cheap restaurant and a bar. If she’d take a ladder and a screwdriver, she could take down the signage, too. There was a bar in the basement that doubled as reception desk, a wooden board with keys screwed into the wall behind it. Half of them were missing. Val took all the keys for good measure, and decided on a tiny room with four beds shoved into it on the fourth floor. The window opened. She was fairly confident she could jump the forty centimetre gap to the next roof if she absolutely had to. Adrenaline was a wonderful drug, after all.
Night fell while she was busy dragging cases of soda and bottled water from the bar to her room. Out the window she could see one building suddenly illuminate. She swallowed. A game. She didn’t have to join, not yet.
‘Go on, Val,’ she told herself. ‘You need more data.’
Biting back the fear, she shrugged on her leather jacket, and stalked outside, keeping to the shadows. Had Meiko or Hayu survived yesterday? She didn’t know. There’s been three Seekers, and she’d seen two bodies, but the gunshot… She cursed herself. She needed all the information she could get. It had been a day, and she still hardly knew what was going on.
The game venue was a children’s indoor playground. The cheery mascot, a beaver with a wide smile and a yellow cap, gave Val the shivers. She hid between the useless cars in the parking lot, and settled in to wait on the tarmac. Barely a dozen empty minutes ticked by before the first players arrived. Where did they hide all day? A pair of teenage girls in school uniforms, again, although they seemed more confused than scared. Val resisted the urge to jump up and explain. She’d wager a case of bottled water these two were new. Next, a businessman, who’d shed the jacket of his suit but was still wearing expensive leather shoes and slacks. A woman in a cardigan carrying what looked like a diaper bag, although she was alone. Then a ragtag band of five people in their early twenties, dressed in loose clothes and carrying makeshift weapons. One had actually bothered to drive nails through the end of a wooden bat. Did he think they were fighting football hooligans? Val shifted. Her leg was beginning to cramp, but she wanted to be able to jump and run if she needed to.
Oh. The man in the white hoodie from the park. Why was he playing? He had at least another day, just like she did. Was there another benefit to playing games she hadn’t yet figured out? Or did he enjoy them? As though he felt her eyes on him, he halted at the venue’s entrance, scanning the area, raised his eyebrows when he saw her. He waved at Val with a sarcastic little smile she chose to ignore. He didn’t spare her another glance before heading inside.
‘Do you think we’re still on time?’ a soft voice came from down the street. Two silhouettes, the smaller walking very close to the taller.
‘Course,’ the young man said. ‘We’ll be fine, Iyori.’
He wore a heavy black coat, down to his knees, and boots with a multitude of buckles. The girl, a few years younger, wore crisp new jeans that didn’t match with her frilly black blouse and choker. Huh. Goths. Once they entered the game venue, the door audibly locked behind them. Val sat back.
It was ten minutes before the screaming started. She drew her knees to her chest. Hadn’t been able to hear the game’s rules. Why had she come here? Gather more data? It was pointless. She’d be dead before she had enough to go off.
‘Don’t think like that, Val,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It’s positively suicidal.’
She waited, huddled on the street, bursts of wailing interrupting the silence. Twenty four hours, and then she’d be in a building like that, making noises like that.
The doors opened after thirty six minutes. She timed it. To her surprise, the lady with the diaper bag was the first out the door, apparently unharmed and practically running. Then three of the five from the group with the absurd weapons, although the boy with the bat was nowhere to be seen. Next was the man in the white hoodie, looking slightly worse for wear and very annoyed. He stalked off in the opposite direction from the others without glancing back at Val. Finally, the goth girl appeared, holding onto the railing for dear life as she walked down the stairs very, very slowly. Gods, but she was young. Sixteen, probably, and her crisp new jeans were stained a deep red.
You really shouldn’t, Val’s brain supplied, but she was already halfway across the street when the girl threatened to sink to her knees.
‘Hey,’ she said, catching her by one shoulder. ‘Iyori, right?’
‘Y-yes,’ the girl said, wide eyed. ‘How’d you know?’
‘Are you okay?’
‘My leg-’ she grimaced. ‘It was- laser tag. Literally.’
Val felt her heart grow cold. ‘Oh.’
‘Gomi, he-’ Iyori whispered, ‘He- what am I going to do?’
‘It’s okay,’ Val said, even though it wasn’t. ‘You can come with me.’