[day one; solo] 1230
update: lee jieun's corpse lies on the rocks on the east side of the lighthouse, with a dagger embedded in her neck.
status: graze gunshot wound to left upper arm. ~4 inch long cut on left mid-back/side.
location: c-10
full inventory: pistol (empty), stun baton, darts (6). cigarettes (1), pair of sunglasses, cell phone (45%), extra tank top, ballpoint pen. maps (2), compasses (2), bottles of water (one empty, one 100%), matches (36), cans of water chestnuts (1.5), cups of instant ramen (2), loaves of bread (1.5).
It's pure luck that keeps Baekho alive.
Just as Jieun pulls the trigger, a particularly jarring scream sounds off from not too far away. He can almost see her shift in slow motion, the minuscule twitch of her arm that jerks Baekho's chest out of the bullet's path. It grazes his left arm instead. Extremely painful, but the boy is alive. Instinct kicks in after that and in an instant, he's on his feet, wrestling the gun from his former alliance's grip.
She shoots again, wildly. Baekho doesn't hear the bullet hit anything, but more importantly, he doesn't hear the pistol reload itself. Jieun notices, too, that there are no bullets left, but she reacts faster. Releasing the gun frees her from Baekho, and she drops to the ground. The girl grabs the dagger first, but the boy's only half a step behind. He kicks the stun baton out of her reach before grabbing it off the floor.
He's bigger and stronger, but if there's one thing he's learned about fighting, it's that size doesn't always matter. It occurs to him that he might die here. He realized that back in the classroom watching Taemin and Dohee suffer, too, but the revelation multiplies tenfold now that he knows there's only a fifty-fifty chance that he'll live past the next few minutes. Everything he's ever accomplished, all his hopes and ambitions, gone, and his family might fall apart, and the gamemakers won't bat one eyelash. Fear turns to hopelessness turns to anger in a fraction of a second.
Baekho blinks and sees Jieun standing on the other side of the lighthouse deck. There's fear and anger in her eyes, too. Baekho almost feels a pang of sympathy, but his imminent death leaves no room for selflessness. He sure as hell won't go down without a fight – no, he corrects himself, he won't go down, period.
Baekho charges, crouched, at the slighter classmate, grabbing her around the waist and pushing hard. He aims to carry her all the way back to the lighthouse railing. She grunts at the impact and tries her best to land her dagger in the boy. It slices through his thin wifebeater and into the left side of his back. It's not a dangerously deep cut, but it extends halfway around his side.
He stumbles in pain and blindly swings the baton up, ideally to hit the face or neck region. Instinctively, Jieun throws an arm up to protect herself from the weapon, but skin is skin for a stun baton, so when it comes in contact with her hand, it still shoots painfully concentrated electricity through each sensitive nerve ending. Her arm spasms and she loses footing, falling onto the railing and supporting herself with her good arm, dazed. Baekho drops the baton and swings with his right arm, which is unaffected by the gash on his left side. His hand connects solidly with Jieun's jaw, disorienting her further. He then reaches for the dagger, which had fallen to the ground in the confusion. Jieun screams, begging mercy, but the high-pitched cries cut out into silence when Baekho drives the blade into her neck.
A sickening gurgling noise fills the abrupt quiet and there's blood, blood, blood spraying everywhere, blood in his mouth and staining his skin, clothes, hair; and Baekho throws a defeated Jieun over the railing. The screaming bounces off the metal lighthouse a few times, but that awful gurgle echoes in his mind for much longer. He exhales, mind spinning, sorry sorry sorry, but for what? Staying alive? Would his family even be proud, if he came home alive in the end, a so-called victor who killed his friends to save himself? Or would they rather take comfort knowing that he died with honor, refusing to play the government's game? Would there be a funeral? Would there be forty-one, one for each classmate?
The injuries pulse threateningly, coating his left side with crimson, but Baekho's so strung on adrenaline and confusion that the pain hasn't fully set in yet. In a daze, he reaches for his blood-spattered bag, pulling out one of the last cigarettes from his pack. His fingers are shaking too much to even light up, though, and he wastes one, two, three precious matches before the white paper catches. It's probably not the best idea to be inhaling toxins when he hasn't even caught his breath yet, but the familiarity relaxes him nonetheless. He just killed a girl and yet he's never felt so powerless.
