hear me out: alice in borderland BUT! they keep the equipment from every game they participate in - they survive and it just locks in place, doesn’t come off. sure, some people have others remove it - the game’s over, it’s deactivated, at this point it’s just dead weight. but others, others keep their battle scars, wear them as a mark of what this world has done to them, what they’ve had to do to survive.
imagine arisu. hide and seek, seven of hearts, is over. his friends are dead. his headset won’t come off. he claws at it until his nails break, until his fingers are too bloody to hold onto it without slipping. he feels like it’s suffocating him. he bashes his head against a wall. it does nothing. he screams.
imagine he hates it. it’s a reminder that his friends are gone, after all. a reminder that it’s his fault. imagine he fantasises about being rid of it, being free from the burden of memory. he screams himself to sleep with his hands around his neck, choking on metal and sobs.
but imagine also, later on, when things are worse and there’s no way out but through, that he grows with it. it turns from a reminder that he failed to a promise that he will succeed. the clinical murder of its original design morphs into the last thing he ever did with his friends, and a vessel to carry them with him through the rest of the games.
imagine that arisu stands before mira, anger in his eyes - eyes that are covered by a visor that represents everything he hates about the games, and everything he loves about the people who played them. imagine what mira must think in the moment when arisu approaches her, seeing the evidence of what the games can do to a person, and feeling something so human that words simply can’t describe it.
(imagine she runs a subtle hand over her own equipment, a bracelet, like the one on arisu’s wrist from the king of clubs game. she is only thankful that it is small, and easy to hide. she thinks that arisu is stronger than he knows, to be able to carry that burden through all of this.)
imagine, back in the real world, arisu feeling a phantom sensation around his neck; around his eyes, and not knowing what’s wrong - not even sure that something is wrong - but knowing that something has changed. imagine he wipes the sweat from his nose like he’s wearing glasses, even though he’s never needed them. imagine he feels his friends’ eyes in his skull, superimposed over his own, and the first time he looks in a mirror after waking up he cries. imagine.
