Can You Open Your Eyes? See The Blood on the Ground?

[Yugikun]

Death was real.

((Jonathan Meyers, continued from before the day is done, my prince is gonna come))

He’d seen it. He’d... caused it, maybe. There was no point in being shoulda coulda woulda about it but the fact was that he didn’t do anything about something he should’ve could’ve stopped. Maybe his trying would’ve done nothing, maybe it would’ve just ended with his body being the one bleeding on the jetty, but the whole point was trying anyway. Even if it wouldn’t result in any long term change, even if America’s president had full-on schoolyard cronies who wouldn’t listen to anything you said, the whole point of what Jiji had forced into him was to try and do the right thing anyway. And maybe that could ring true here. Maybe that was what he should’ve done, instead of standing around hoping that everything would work out alright. Maybe that would’ve changed things. Maybe it would’ve been for the better.

...There was no point in maybes. Chris was dead. That was the point.

And that was... new. Death was new. He knew of it he’d heard of it but it hadn’t been until now that it had struck, descended onto him. He was... probably different to others in that way, in addition to all the other ways that made normalcy the day-to-day challenge that it was. Death hadn’t really been a part of him. Like, maybe there’d been a parent when he was younger who’d kicked the bucket, but he wouldn’t really know; he would’ve been long since out of their house. He’d never had a pet die because he’d never had pets that long. He’d never had the inevitable grandparent or maybe even parent death because he’d never really had grandparents or proper parents other than Lily. Even if others he knew had been caressed by Death’s touch, he had yet to see it with his own eyes. He had yet to be taught that death was always around him, that death would always be final.

Well.

Until now.

And it wasn’t even as if it had struck him that hard. It wasn’t even as if-...no, saying that Chris wasn’t important would’ve been something stronger than a disservice. She was a human just like him, but her star was part of a different constellation than his. He just didn’t know her enough. She was maybe on the shortlist for people he’d want to get to know because she was cool (and way better at enforcing justice than he’d ever be) but the truth was that he’d never get to know her. She’d be someone he’d never talk to and then he’d spend the next few years maybe occasionally thinking of her at three A.M. as a person he could’ve been friends while she never thought of him again. It was just how things worked. It was just the way things were supposed to be.

And what had happened at the pier had ensured it, now more than ever. Chris was dead and he was deciding to make it all about himself and that...

Fuck.

He didn’t know.

He was walking through what the map he’d just taken out referred to as the rice paddies. The sun had gone, replaced with what he would’ve assumed would be the last night he’d ever see had he actually done something back there, back at the pier. He was just sorta walking across, heading in a direction that was maybe southwest but he didn’t know for sure, letting his shoes and his pants get wet because suddenly making sure your clothes kept clean didn’t seem like all that much of a priority anymore. Maybe it’d suck once he was out of here and had wet and really cold clothes but fuck, his head felt everywhere. He was just kinda stuck in here walking through the paddies with no ultimate destination and no real plan in sight.

...Well, there had been a plan.

But it didn’t seem all that good of one now, didn’t it? Like, okay, maybe he could still find someone good enough to spend what could possibly still be the last night of his life with and maybe when the sun came out tomorrow he still could die in a way he’d really rather prefer not to happen but the short of it was that there was no guarantee now. The last day of his life had now become the last two days of his life and with all likelihood it’d be more than that. He had a plan that was now obsolete and the best alternative he could think of was just to walk around aimlessly hoping that what he had could maybe become relevant again. That he could go back to the dream that he was going to have his head blown off at the next sunrise and that there’d be nothing he could do about it.

And hey, that... that could happen, right?

Like, hey, maybe it had only been Chris and Ty. Maybe everyone else had been able to hold on to their heads and hearts and stuff. Like, even if there were some real bad dudes in his grade who liked to beat up all the nerds and stuff he knew that there was nobody entirely evil. He knew that if that was true then everyone here would be able to stand up, say no and die with this game because that was the right thing to do. Maybe people were jerks, maybe they were people he’d rather never see again but he knew that killing people was a line and that people would not cross it. He’d heard that Tyrell was a little bit of a bad dude and sorta an outlier from everyone else but he knew that he still had a heart and that he’d just freak out and know that he’d never do what he did to Chris again. He knew that Chris could become this classes’ martyr. He knew that when only she had been announced dead, this class would unite around her, make sure nothing happened until the next morning when this game would be defeated. That was the only way things could happen. That was the only possible outcome, right?

Right?

...

He knew it wasn’t. He felt how anyone else would if he ever said any of that to them. He’d seen the blood on the pier and he’d heard Ty say where it had come from. It was impossible. This game had started and there was nobody here who could-

He’d been walking through the rice fields and something had caught on his foot and suddenly he wasn’t walking anymore. His body swung forward, fell past what he tripped on and kept going from the air to the water to the ground. There was cold there was water there was dirt there was grass there was mud there was whatever else was in the paddy and in what was maybe a second his head was up, breathing air again. There was water there was cold in places other than his shoes and ankles now but the adrenaline had made it unclear and he stood up, turned, looked at whatever had knocked him over. There was a blanket on the ground covering something and the few working parts in Jonathan’s brain had made him walk forward, grab the blanket, throw it off and see what was under it before he had properly thought that action throug-

...

It...

...

It was a guy he maybe knew from school. He was tall — not as tall as Jonathan, but still — with a lot of muscle and not a lot of other weight. His skin was pale, his hair was chestnut and it was cut short to his head, sorta like a crewcut but not actually a crewcut. His clothes were... normal. Nothing really special or noteworthy but nothing egregiously bad-looking either and that was maybe a pretty good metaphor for him. He’d seemed okay a person, and Jonathan was pretty sure that nothing bad had been said about him, but... He’d been just like Chris, in a way. Jonathan had never talked to him. Maybe they could’ve gotten it off well enough, but... yeah, like Chris. He was in a completely different constellation than Jonathan, and Jonathan was pretty sure that there were so many more light years between him and a chance of ever being able to talk to... Abel, his name was maybe.

He was also like Chris in the fact that a part of his head had been beaten in. His body was wet, his eyes were closed, and it was... clear that he was never going to move again, that there was no more life within him.

And that was...

...

That just...

That just proved things. Death was real. He’d seen it — maybe even caused it — twice now.

And...

He just stood there. Stared, for a few moments.

Didn’t notice the cameras all around him as he fell back into the water and cried.

---

Y’know, if Jonathan focused all his efforts on groaning about how uncomfortable sleeping in a stable had been, he could maybe kinda take his mind off of basically everything that had happened yesterday.

And that was... nice, he supposed. Like, sleeping on the ground was a really sucky experience but at least it was the type he could ultimately live with. Maybe laugh about, if he ever got the chance. Like, okay, it wasn’t really anything that funny, but, like ‘oh no, I had to sleep in a stable and there was hay everywhere and it ruined my second set of clothes’ was much more easy to comprehend than ‘oh god I’m on Survival of the Fittest and I just saw someone get their throat torn out right in front of me oh god oh god oh fuck I don’t wanna die I don’t-’

No, no, Jonathan could deal with this. He really had no other choice. This game had to be comprehendable. He had to understand it by one point or another. If he couldn’t deal, then he couldn’t do anything. If he wasn’t able to properly adjust, then he wouldn’t be able to do...

...

Do something. He didn’t really know. He’d based everything on the thought that he’d get his head blown off and even after he’d been proven wrong he hadn’t been able to think of anything since. It was... like writers block except it was more like ‘doing things’ block. Maybe he was waiting for everything to become, like, official official. Maybe there was a part of his head that still refused to believe that he saw Chris die on the pier and who was able to completely disregard both the corpses he found in the Rice Paddies. He didn’t know.

But he didn’t really need to. There was a sound all around him, screeching segueing into what seemed like an old radio tuned to a blank channel. The... announcement, or whatever, was starting.

He was about to find out just how many times he’d been wrong.

...

The first death was one Jonathan had already found out and he was really hoping that wouldn’t be the case. He knew by now that there was no way of telling just how many people had died before these announcements gave him the exact number but he also knew that his mind was going to make any excuse, take any opportunity to act as if that number wasn’t going to be all that large. The presence of Toby (killed by... Tirzah? god fuck it could be literally anyone, couldn’t it) had done work to abate but the presence of Chris had brought things back to square one because hey, that was sometime late in the afternoon, wasn’t it? If things made sense like they were supposed to everything would’ve happened in the morning. Maybe everything would’ve slowed down and stopped and the only other death could’ve been that other body he saw in the Rice paddies and this would be all so easy to-

Beryl. Felix. Yuko. Violet. Dante. Benedict, too.

And his chest felt hard. Constricted. It was like a rope was tightening around it and it was like something was inside trying to burst out of it and Jonathan didn’t even know why that was the case. Like, it wasn’t as if he really knew any of these people. Beryl was the exception and Beryl had been someone who was nice to him and also played guitar but really, how much did he know her? He was obviously one-hundredth-fiddle compared to all the people she had actual bonds with and there was no way he’d ever thought of her recently before now so why did she suddenly feel so important? Why was she the one attempting to tear out of his chest? Why was he finding it so hard to breathe right now?

...

Because it wasn’t just her. There were... eight? Eight other people who couldn’t hear this, who hadn’t made it to see sunrise again and really it wasn’t just them, either. There were eight more, eight in addition who had seen it fit to kill, to ruin any chance their fellow students had to try and beat this game for reasons that Jonathan could only make unknowing guesses towards. Tyrell had killed again, proved that what had happened at the jetty was not just an accident that could be fixed. Jonathan wasn’t really sure how much he had hoped for that to be the case, but... no. Death was real. There were people here killing other people, and unless they were stopped they would keep doing it because that was how things were now. These people would be set in their beliefs, unwilling to change, and any attempt on anyone’s part to try and get them to step down, change their ways wouldn’t result in anything.

Because that was how it worked. Not just here, but in the world itself. Any attempt for good would ring hollow, fade out amongst anything else. Any attempt for change would result in nothing because there was nothing that could be changed and...

God. Modern politics and Survival of the Fittest. What a fucking comparison.

So he stayed sat. Put his head down. Covered his eyes. He wasn’t crying this time — no point, really — but...

But...

But wasn’t the point of it all to keep trying anyway? When it seemed like the world was going to shit and that any attempt at fighting against that came to no fruition, wasn’t the point to just keep fighting? Doing nothing, giving up and just hoping that things were suddenly going to be alright only allowed the world to sink further and further. So he had to try. He had to fight. He had to push back and just hope that his efforts could make a difference.

That was what Jiji taught him, at the very least.

And maybe...

And maybe that could ring true here. Maybe trying to fight was what he should do, instead of standing around hoping that everything would work out alright. Maybe he could try and change things. Maybe he could do so for the better.

Because he knew he needed a plan for what happened after this.

And he knew that someone needed to try and stop the killers.

So why not him? Why not someone who could maybe do it? What about the guy who did nothing but watch Chris die and knew he could never make up for that but still wanted to try anyway? Jonathan knew that there were others thinking the same thing he was, he knew that nobody would just sit around and let one of the killers win but he knew that even then he still had to stand up himself, he still had to do something. This game had to be stopped and there was no way it could be stopped if there were people out there hellbent on murdering the friends they’d known for the past four years. There was a worry that he would have to go to whatever means in order to do it, there was a fear that he would become just as bad as them if he attempted to take them down, but...

He had to do something.

And someone had to try and stop this game.

And that was enough to get him to stand up, lean against the back wall of the stable as he did so. That was enough to convince him that he didn’t need to clutch his stomach anymore, that the force constricting and bursting out of his chest was gone. Because maybe if he were to be the one who stopped the bad things from happening he would have to do bad things himself. Maybe he would be the one who fought the monsters but maybe that would be for the best. Maybe if he put the blood onto his hands no-one else would have to put it on theirs. Maybe if he became their martyr then there was a chance that someone truly innocent in all of this could be the one to survive. That made sense, right? He could... he could maybe do that, right?

Well, maybe he didn’t have to.

Because maybe there was a chance that he could do it without making himself one of them. Maybe there was a chance that he could stop them without the need to spill their blood. It was a silly thought — the type of idealistic thinking that led him to believe yesterday that he’d be dead by now — but maybe he could make it happen. Maybe he could... talk whoever down. somehow stop them without killing them. He didn’t know. Maybe they really were the type of people who were irredeemable, maybe talking to them would only make himself vulnerable, but...

He had to try. They were people before this. Maybe they were still people now.

He had to try.

Do the right thing.

And maybe he could. There was no way of knowing until he tried. It seemed like a hard statement to believe, but he knew he had to. He knew he needed faith in himself. Maybe it’d cause him to be high and mighty, maybe it would just beg the universe to burn his wings and knock him down and get him to stop acting so cocky, but...

The death would stop.

He would see that. He would cause it.

Because he was... he was going to be like Christine. He was going to be a knight. The antlers — the two things he hadn’t realized he’d put into his hands until now — would be his sword. This stable was his castle, and the world outside it would be his battlefield. He’d changed his clothes, he’d found himself a plan, and he was maybe ready to act on it. Maybe ready to do the right thing.

Maybe things would have become worse during the time he was sleeping in his castle, but he knew he couldn’t let himself think that. He knew he couldn’t let the fall of everything he’d known bring him down.

Because the world had ended. Any chance this class had of beating this game had gone the moment the first person here had died, but... but maybe they could still be saved. Maybe there was still a chance the good guys could win.

Because... because the one thing Jonathan knew for certain was that he wouldn’t know unless he tried.

((Jonathan Meyers, continued elsewhere))