· 。ﾟ☆: *.☽
▎A F T E R D A R K   ▎

· 。ﾟ୧ ⋆. 𝗔 𝗦𝗜𝗠𝗣𝗟𝗘 '𝗡𝗢'. ₊˚.༄
ACT ONE  ━━━  CHAPTER NINE,
❝ whatever you say ❞

          𝓐fter the match, all players advanced back into the yellow transportation box. One of the men, player 244, was currently kneeling on the ground and praying to God.

"Oh, Lord, protect me."

"Hey, dude," 240 called. "Who do you think you're praying to, huh? To God?"

He ignored the young girl and continued mumbling a prayer.

"You think you made it out of there because of God, don't you?" She sighed and leaned down, "The reason you're still breathing and thanking that nice God of yours . . . is that old man there. And that guy, and partly that girl, over there who came up with that awesome last-minute trick."

The man, like before, ignored her and continued praying to God.

"You know if there's anybody that you should be thanking . . . it's them, not God."

At her statement, 244 lifted his head and finally stopped praying in the meantime. "You sad lost soul. What would you say about everybody who was nailed to the cross for our salvation today? They sacrificed themselves for us. We are here, thanks to their blood. I pray to the Lord on behalf of all us sinners. I gave thanks for their sacrifice. God made a decision to help our team win. That's why we're all here," He sneered.

Ji-Yoo furrowed her eyebrows at the man. If he was so against sinning, and everyone knows that killing people to win is a great sin, then why did he even come back if he knew that he would be sinning like crazy?

"Bullshit."

Ji-Yoo exhaled and shared a look with Sae-byeok, who also looked unamused.

"You killed those guys out there."

244's eyes widened at her statement and he began to pray once again, which made Ji-Yoo close her eyes from irritation.

240 saw how he immediately start to pray to God and decided to make a joke out of it. "Oh! If we say some prayers, do we all go to heaven? I should pray too if that's how easy it is."

She clasped her hands and formed them into a praying position, closing her eyes and looking up. "Our God who art in Heaven, we worked as a team to send people to your side. And we sent a bunch of them today. And please help us with a whole lot more to be with you. And I hope that from now on—"

"Be quiet!" Sae-byeok cut her 'praying' short.

The girl opened her eyes and dropped her hands, tilting her head to the taller girl beside her with a bored look. "Me? Or you mean that guy?"

"Both of you," Ji-Yoo answered before Sae-byeok could.

The door opened before the girl or anyone could say anything else. Ji-Yoo let out a relieved sigh, happy that she could finally leave the room with a shit ton of tension.

Ji-Yoo, Sae-byeok, and 240 were last to exit. "What are your names, huh?" 240 asked the two of them.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Why do you care about that?"

Ji-Yoo and Sae-byeok questioned at the same time.

"So I can use your names, duh!" 240 exclaimed the obvious.

"It doesn't matter."

240 chuckled, "So secretive."

Ji-Yoo tilted her head back for a moment to see Sae-byeok closing her eyes. "Listen, okay. Just leave us alone."

"Well, you're the one who asked me to join you guys."

The two girls didn't even bother to answer or acknowledge 240 after that, not having enough energy to deal with the girl.

          𝓣he moment they stepped inside the warehouse-looking room, all they received was shocked and looks of disbelief from Deok-su's team.

From the corner of her eye, Ji-Yoo saw Mi-nyeo, player 212, give her 'ex' and his team a smug smirk.

The brown-haired girl just ignored the group of boys and was quick to head to their spot and sit down, desperately wanting to rest after giving up all her strength in the last game.

Although, it seemed that Mi-nyeo had much better plans because she began to talk and talk.

"You know what? I really thought we were going to die out there. And then, as soon as we're all leaning back, I felt so powerful."

"Good for you," Ji-Yoo mumbled under her breath but the older woman didn't seem to hear her, thankfully.

"Like, "Whoa! It works. Is this real?" Hey, old man, how do you know that?" She looked at him with a curious look.

The old man chuckled, "As a kid, I would always—"

"Oh, you copied that one thing," Mi-nyeo cut him off. "From what movie. What's it called? The guy who dodges bullets like this," She began to perform a ridiculous move as she tried to imitate some character in a movie. "Right?"

"Matrix," Ali spoke up.

Mi-nyeo stopped and turned to him, giving him a slightly impressed look.

"Hey, when you got to Korea, is all you did watch movies?"

Ali did nothing at her insult but Ji-Yoo definitely did. The girl stopped eating her corn and glared at the curly-haired woman.

Mi-nyeo caught on her glare, glancing at her for a brief moment before her face dropped at how sharp Ji-Yoo's glare was. It didn't last long because her face lit up again when her eyes traveled to Sang-woo.

"And our man . . ." She began, making the man's cousin roll her eyes. "Everybody, three steps up when I signal," Mi-nyeo quoted his words from earlier and gasped in adoration. "Oh. My God, I can't believe how cool that was. How did you come up with it under all that pressure?"

"Earlier, you were the one who said no," Ali spoke up once again.

Mi-nyeo scoffed, "Yeah? Was that what you heard?"

"You cried and said, "But that's the edge! There's no way I'll go." Like that," He mocked and imitated Mi-nyeo, making a small amused smile form on Ji-Yoo's face.

The woman was starting to get pissed off by Ali as she leaned down to him.

"Hey, you. You got a visa? I bet you don't," She pointed her corn at him, "You're an illegal alien."

Mi-nyeo sighed and looked at the rest of the team, "Hey, boys, how about it? Why keep the strange foreigner when we could just ditch him? Our team's more secure that way, huh? Guess I'd be better do some major res—"

"Hey, guys, how about it? Why keep the annoying, talkative woman when we could just ditch her?" Ji-Yoo interrupted with a sarcastic tone.

Mi-nyeo's eye twitched at the younger girl in anger, tensing up when Ji-Yoo only smirked evilly at her.

Suddenly, Mi-nyeo's angered expression dropped and quickly formed into an innocent and victim-looking one when she turned to Sang-woo, who seemed unphased by the whole thing.

"Mr. Brains, you've got to do something!" She pulled an innocent look and pointed at Ji-Yoo, "Did you not see how she completely bullied and humiliated me? YA! You've been captain, right? Do something! Kick her out of the team!"

Sang-woo sighed in annoyance and frustration, turning to his cousin with a pointed look but the girl only pursed her lips.

"There's no captain. We're all equal here," He said. "And don't mind her, for your own good."

Mi-nyeo frowned when he didn't try to kick Ji-Yoo out in any way but acted like it was no big deal for the sake of her 'chance' with Sang-woo, which definitely won't happen.

"Ah! That's great. Building an egalitarian society! Damn, guys," Mi-nyeo turned to her ex's team, "I gotta say this is quite a change from that huge asshole who just bosses you around and pretend he's king."

"Oh, about that, grandma, why did you get kicked out?" Ji-Yoo continued to get on her nerves. "Or should I say, why and when did they finally realize that you were nothing to them?"

"Grandma?" She questioned in almost disbelief. "Don't you ever call me that, girl! Here, Han Mi-nyeo. Got it? Mi-nyeo. That's my name."

"And I didn't get kicked out. I made the decision to go, alright?"

"Whatever you say, grandma."

"Those crazy thugs there? You can't lock me in with that crew."

"They only got rid of you, then they only wound up with male players," Sang-woo pointed out, "Right before the game at that. You know, it's almost like they knew about it ahead of time."

Both Ji-Yoo and Gi-hun turned to him at his last sentence. They then turned to the group of males and saw how Deok-su suddenly became so close and buddy buddy with the supposed doctor, player 111.

However, before they could do anything, a tune played on the speakers and the woman on the PA spoke up once again.

"Players, your bedtime will begin in 30 minutes. Please return to your assigned beds and prepare for lights-out."

Sang-woo looked at his members, "Another fight could break out like last night. We should make a plan."

"What can we do, huh?" The irritating player questioned. "We've got three girls and old man and us. Our team is the weakest one in here."

"We should choose a weak team and go after them first," God's loyal child suggested.

240, who would soon be introduced as Ji-yeong, scoffed. "For a resident priest, you sure are bloodthirsty."

"I mean, everybody's hands are bloody," He tried to reason and defend himself. "We're all sinners, but we're still here, aren't we?"

Ji-yeong didn't reply, only tilting her head at him.

"Attacking is our best option. So I think that's our plan."

"During the fight last night, the man in the bed infront of us got killed," Sae-byeok gestured to herself and Ji-Yoo. "And the person he thought was on his side broke his neck. Do you trust me, or us, then?"

At this, everyone in the team stared at the two girls.

"I don't trust one person here," She said, side-eyeing the girl beside her to silently tell her that she wasn't part of that statement.

Gi-hun suddenly stood up, "Alright. I think let's still do something. Before the lights go out, let's create a barricade. It might be good to make sure that we have cover."

And they did just that.

For the remaining ten minutes, all of them began to use the beds to create a sort of fortress.

But would it work, though?

Fort or not, were they really safe enough to sleep peacefully at night?

Want to know Ji-Yoo's answer?

Simple. She said no.

word count: 1823

kara speaking . . .
ninth chapter, done! short chapter, sorry for not posting in a while, i lost motivation for this fanfic for a moment but i'm back. i should atleast finish this book so let's do this

literally no joon-ho in this but that's fine because we got to see some more sae-yoo action, even if it wasn't much

◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤

© -𝙶𝙾𝙳𝙳𝙴𝚂𝚂𝙾𝙵𝙻𝙾𝚅𝙴, 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟷