Game of Mercy
game of mercy - part seven
synapse: barely holding himself together after playing marbles, jace makes it to the next game, glass bridge
pairing: player 067/kang sae-byeok x male oc
contains: grief, suicide, blood, death, angst, hurt/comfort
. . .
Jace walked back into the dormitory like his body had been told what to do and his mind had simply failed to object.
Other surviving players came in around him, some crying, some blank, some clutching their marble pouches like they were proof of something they no longer wanted to examine too closely. Their shoes scraped against the floor. Guards moved with their usual detached precision. The giant room received them the same way it received everything now: with too much space and too much light and no mercy at all.
Jace didn't look for anyone.
Didn't check faces. Didn't count bodies. Didn't search for Gi-hun or Sang-woo or Ali or 001 or even Sae-byeok.
He couldn't.
His face had dried into tightness, tear tracks cooling on his skin, but the grief inside him was still too raw, too swollen, too sharp to let anything else in. If he started looking for people he knew, he'd have to start realizing who wasn't there. And right now he could barely survive the one absence already tearing holes through him.
So he walked straight in and let his eyes lift only when the giant screen above the dormitory changed.
17 PLAYERS
Seventeen.
That was all.
The number sat there glowing in the center of the room while the piggy bank above them churned with more bundled stacks of won dropping into it in thick, ugly cascades. The sound of the money landing made his stomach turn.
All he could think was:
Ji-yeong is in there.
Not literally. He knew that. But it was worse in some ways that she wasn't. That she had been turned into a number, a payout, an increase in the total hanging over all of them. That the first real friend he'd had in years had become part of the money these people kept calling a prize.
The thought hit him so hard he almost doubled over.
His mouth went dry. His stomach twisted violently, the kind of deep, immediate nausea that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the body rejecting a truth the mind had no way to make bearable.
Jace looked away from the piggy bank fast, jaw clenched, breathing shallow through his nose.
He couldn't stand under it.
Couldn't stand near anyone. Couldn't listen to the room. Couldn't risk someone speaking to him and making him answer in a voice that would betray exactly how close he still was to coming apart again.
So he moved.
Not quickly. Not dramatically. Just with the quiet, stubborn aim of someone trying to get as far from the center of the room as possible without drawing notice. He crossed the dormitory to one of the far corners and picked a bed there, away from the others, away from the bunk area where small groups would naturally form, away from the piggy bank's shadow.
He sat down on the lower mattress and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his shoes.
His hands were empty now.
No marbles. No bottle. No corn. No stupid little thing to do with them.
Just the memory of Ji-yeong's voice saying thank you for playing with me, and the sound that came after.
The dormitory noise blurred at the edges. He heard it without really hearing it, metal creaking, players murmuring, someone crying, the speaker saying something about the prize total that he refused to process. His grief had gone past tears again and back into that colder stage where everything hurt too much to react to properly.
He stayed like that until he felt someone stop nearby.
At first he didn't look up.
Then he did.
Sae-byeok.
She had seen him break formation, seen him disappear toward the corner, and followed.
Of course she had.
She stood there for a moment, not speaking, her face unreadable in the same way it always was when she was feeling too much to let any of it show. The dormitory light caught the side of her face, the line of her jaw, the shadow beneath her eyes. She looked as tired as he felt.
Jace dropped his gaze again.
"Don't," he said quietly.
It wasn't sharp. Just worn thin.
Sae-byeok didn't leave.
After a second, she sat down beside him on the edge of the bed, not too close, but close enough that he could feel the presence of her there.
Jace laughed once under his breath, a dead little sound. "I said don't."
"You don't get to tell me what to do," she said.
Ordinarily that might have made him answer back. Might have pulled some sarcastic remark out of him on instinct.
Now all it did was make his throat tighten.
He pressed the heels of his hands briefly against his eyes, then dragged them back down over his face. "I can't do this."
Sae-byeok looked at him. "Do what?"
He let out a slow, shaking breath. "Carry it."
The words hung between them.
"She chose me," he said, staring down at the floor again. "She just—" His voice caught and he swallowed hard against it. "She decided. Like it was nothing. Like I was worth more."
Sae-byeok didn't interrupt.
Jace's mouth twisted. "And now she's..." He glanced upward once, toward the piggy bank, then away so fast it almost hurt. "Part of that."
His whole face tightened with revulsion.
Sae-byeok followed the flick of his eyes and understood immediately.
For a moment, she said nothing. Then, quietly, "She isn't."
Jace looked at her.
Sae-byeok's gaze stayed on the opposite side of the room. "That money isn't her."
He wanted to believe that.
Maybe a part of him did.
But the image was already there now, too fixed to shake. Ji-yeong turned into stacks of won, into a total on a screen, into part of the machinery that kept this place fed.
"She made me promise without saying it," he muttered. "Live. Get out. Remember her." A bitter, broken laugh almost escaped him. "That's a hell of a thing to leave someone with."
Sae-byeok was quiet long enough that he thought maybe she wouldn't answer.
Then she said, "It means she thought you would."
Jace looked over at her again.
There it was, the thing Sae-byeok did when she wasn't pretending not to care. Not softness, exactly. But truth, delivered plain.
"She thought you'd make it," Sae-byeok said. "So she gave you the chance."
That hurt too.
Because of course Ji-yeong had.
Because of course this was what friendship looked like here, ugly and impossible and final.
Jace stared at his hands for a long time after that.
Sae-byeok didn't try to fix it. Didn't tell him it would be okay. Didn't offer him the kind of comfort that would've sounded false in a room like this anyway.
She just stayed.
In the corner. On the edge of the bed. Beside him.
And somehow that, more than anything else, kept him from falling apart all over again.
. . .
Their meal came in silence.
A guard handed each remaining player one raw potato and a bottle of water, then moved on like that was a normal way to feed people who had just come back from killing the person closest to them. Jace took his without looking up and sat there in the corner with it in his lap for a while before he finally started eating.
The potato was cold and hard in his hand.
He bit into it anyway.
Sae-byeok stayed beside him.
She had never said she would. Had never asked permission to. She had simply remained there after following him to the corner, and now the quiet weight of her presence beside him felt like the only thing in the room not trying to tear him apart. She didn't push him to talk. Didn't offer sympathy he couldn't bear. Just sat with her own potato and water, eating in small, silent bites while he tried to breathe through the shape grief had hollowed into his chest.
It helped.
More than he would have admitted out loud.
Across the dormitory, one of the players stood up.
Jace barely looked at first. His attention was still somewhere between the floor and the memory of Ji-yeong's voice and the fact that Sae-byeok's shoulder was close enough to feel warm through the thin fabric of their tracksuits.
Then 069 started speaking.
"Let's end this."
The words cut through the room.
Jace's eyes lifted.
069 was crying openly, face wrecked, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for him to hold together. Everyone knew why. They had all seen enough by now to guess who he had lost in the marble game without needing to ask.
"I can't do this anymore," 069 cried. "We can stop if the majority just agrees. If just nine of us agree, we can get out of here."
His voice broke on the last words.
He looked around the dormitory at the remaining players, searching their faces with the desperation of someone who still believed other people might save him if he asked loudly enough.
"Doesn't anyone want to leave?" he shouted. "If you wish to leave with me, please stand up."
No one moved.
The silence that answered him was brutal.
069 cried harder. "How can you call yourselves human?! You really want to continue with this insanity? Because of that money!"
Jace went still.
Then came the sentence that hit him like a fist.
"You just killed the person you were closest to in this place because of that money."
The potato slipped from Jace's hand into his lap.
For a second, the whole room narrowed around that one line.
He felt it physically, grief returning sharp and immediate, digging under his ribs with claws. Ji-yeong's face. Ji-yeong's voice. The gunshot. The marbles. The fake alley. All of it surged back so fast he had to bend forward slightly, one hand flying up into his hair just to hold onto something.
He gripped hard enough to hurt.
Breathe.
He needed to breathe.
Across the room Sang-woo was saying something, sharp and impatient, probably telling 069 to sit down or stop embarrassing himself or some other practical cruelty Jace usually would have heard clearly.
He didn't hear any of it.
Because Sae-byeok had seen him.
And when he finally lowered his hand from his hair, she reached over and placed her hand on top of his.
Just that.
No words.
No hesitation.
Her palm was cool against the back of his hand, light enough that he could have pulled away if he'd wanted to. But the contact grounded him almost immediately. It gave his grief somewhere to go besides straight through his chest. Something real to focus on that wasn't the piggy bank or the memory of Ji-yeong's body hitting the ground.
Jace stared at their hands.
His breathing slowed.
Around them, the dormitory kept moving. 069 was still sobbing. Sang-woo's voice rose once, clipped and frustrated. Someone else muttered. A bed frame creaked. The lights buzzed overhead.
Jace blocked all of it out.
All he could feel was Sae-byeok's hand.
Comforting him.
Trying, in her own quiet, awkward, stubborn way, to keep him from drowning in it.
Slowly, he turned his hand beneath hers.
Palm up.
And with a care that felt almost fragile compared to everything else they'd survived together, he gently closed his fingers around her hand and held on.
. . .
Lights out came and went.
The dormitory fell dark in stages, the overhead lights cutting out until only scraps of dimness remained from the hall beyond, enough to turn the beds into black shapes and the people in them into breathing outlines. Nobody really slept. Not after today. Not after marbles. The room carried grief too openly for that.
Jace hadn't moved.
He was still sitting where he had been before the lights went out, back against the bed frame, the raw potato long forgotten beside him, his thoughts circling the same thing until they had worn a groove deep enough to fall into.
Ji-yeong should be here.
Not him.
Not after the way she had looked at him and decided.
Not after she had made his life into something she handed back to him with both hands while keeping none of it for herself.
Across the dormitory, 244 was praying out loud again.
Not quietly. Not to himself. Murmuring scripture and gratitude into the dark in that same steady, sanctimonious tone that now made Jace's jaw lock every time he heard it. All he could think about was Ji-yeong's voice in the alley. He was a pastor. All he could think about was the way she had said he prayed after the worst things. The way religion had sounded in her mouth like rot.
Jace stared in the direction of 244's voice until his eyes ached with it.
Then, slowly, he pushed himself to his feet.
He crossed the dormitory without looking at anyone else.
Sae-byeok was sitting on the floor by her bed, back against the frame, knees bent, one arm draped loosely over them. She looked up when he approached but didn't say anything as he lowered himself down beside her.
For a few seconds, they just sat there in the dark.
Then Jace said quietly, "I keep thinking it should've been me."
Sae-byeok didn't answer immediately.
Jace stared ahead, voice low and rough in the silence between 244's prayers.
"She had more right to stay alive than I do." He swallowed once. "She had less blood on her hands. Less... everything."
His fingers tightened around each other. "And she just decided. Like it was obvious. Like I mattered more."
Sae-byeok turned her head to look at him, but he kept his eyes forward.
"She should be sitting here," he said. "Still talking. Still calling me white boy. Still making fun of me for wanting tea." A bitter little breath escaped him. "Not me."
244's voice carried faintly across the room.
Jace's face hardened for a second at the sound of it. "And that bastard keeps praying like any of this means something."
That got the faintest shift from Sae-byeok, enough to say she understood exactly what he meant even if she hadn't heard Ji-yeong's full story.
Jace pressed the heel of one hand against his forehead and laughed once under his breath, a dead sound. "I'm alive because she wanted me to be. And all I can think is she picked wrong."
Sae-byeok was quiet long enough that he almost thought she wouldn't answer.
Then she said, softly and plainly, "She didn't."
Jace looked at her.
Even in the dark he could make out the shape of her face turned toward him, the seriousness in it.
"She chose you because you were worth choosing," Sae-byeok said.
Jace shook his head immediately. "You don't know that."
"I do."
"No, you don't."
Sae-byeok held his gaze. "I do."
The certainty in her voice stopped him colder than if she'd raised it.
He looked away first. "You don't have to say that."
"I know."
"Then why are you?"
Sae-byeok was still for a second.
Then, quieter, "Because I'm glad you're alive."
It wasn't dramatic. She didn't dress it up. Didn't soften it into something easier to wave off. And because it was her—because Kang Sae-byeok almost never said anything she didn't mean—it hit him harder than anything louder could have.
Jace turned back to her slowly.
Sae-byeok's eyes flicked away for only a moment before returning to his. "If it had been you," she said, "I would've hated her for it."
That pulled the breath right out of him.
The room around them seemed to fall farther away. 244's voice. The creak of bunks. The restless breathing of the few players left. All of it faded under the simple, impossible fact of what she had just admitted.
Jace stared at her in the dark like he wasn't sure he'd heard right.
Sae-byeok looked like she regretted saying it only in the sense that she wasn't used to saying things she couldn't take back. But she didn't take it back. She just sat there and let him look at her, let the truth of it settle between them.
He said her name very quietly.
"Sae-byeok..."
She didn't move away.
Neither did he.
The distance between them was small enough already. The kind of closeness people only noticed once it started to matter. Jace could feel the heat of her shoulder, see the slight part of her lips when she breathed in, the way her eyes searched his face like she was waiting to see whether he would make her regret being honest.
He lifted one hand.
Slowly enough for her to stop him if she wanted to.
His fingers touched her jaw, barely there at first, then settled gently against the side of her face. Sae-byeok's breath caught, just once. But she didn't pull back. If anything, she leaned the smallest amount into his hand, almost involuntarily, and that was enough to finish him.
Jace leaned in.
Not rushed. Not uncertain anymore. Just careful.
Their lips met softly.
The first kiss was nothing like the almost-kiss had been.
Not breathless. Not stolen in the last second before interruption. It was quieter than that. Sadder too. The kind of kiss born out of grief and relief and too many things left unsaid. Jace kissed her like he was afraid the world would take this too if he moved too fast. Sae-byeok kissed him back with the same restraint, one hand coming up to catch lightly at the front of his shirt as if to steady herself more than him.
It lasted only a few seconds.
Just enough to become real.
When they parted, neither of them went far. Their foreheads nearly touched. Jace's hand was still at her face. Sae-byeok's fingers were still gathered in his shirt.
He looked at her in the dark, breathing unevenly now for a completely different reason.
Sae-byeok's eyes stayed on his.
No sarcasm. No wall. No pretending.
Just her.
Jace let out a shaky breath and brushed his thumb once along her cheekbone.
This time, when he kissed her again, it was with all the quiet certainty the first one had made possible. And in the dark corner of the dormitory, while prayer murmured uselessly across the room and grief sat heavy in both of them, Kang Sae-byeok kissed him back like she was just as tired of pretending she didn't want him there beside her.
. . .
The music came back before Jace fully opened his eyes.
That same bright classical piece, too polished and too cheerful for the place it had been made to wake. The dormitory lights followed a second later, flooding the room in harsh white. Jace blinked against it, still half in the haze between sleep and memory—
Then he saw the box.
Black lacquer. Pink ribbon.
Four guards were carrying it in.
Jace sat up immediately.
His first instinct wasn't the box. It was Sae-byeok.
He turned fast, eyes searching through the beds and bodies and metal frames until he found her. Awake. Alive. Sitting up, looking in the same direction he was. The tightness in his chest eased by the smallest amount.
Then his gaze followed the line of everyone else's.
Player 069.
He hung from one of the high metal frames, a bed sheet knotted around his neck and tied overhead. His body had gone slack, head fallen forward, feet just off the rungs. In the full dormitory light, there was no mistaking it. He had done it sometime in the night, silently enough that no one had stopped him.
Jace stared.
Not shocked, exactly.
Just hollowed out by the sight of it.
After yesterday, after marbles, after the way 069 had cried and begged the others to vote to leave because he couldn't do it anymore... this should have been unsurprising. That didn't make it easier to look at. It only made it sadder. More final.
The guards didn't hurry.
Of course they didn't.
They moved with the same calm they brought to every other death in this place, carrying the ribboned box beneath the hanging body as if this were just another part of the morning routine. Around the dormitory, the remaining players had gone quiet in that particular way people do when horror has become too familiar to gasp at properly.
Jace looked up at the screen.
16 PLAYERS
Then the prize total changed.
Forty-four billion won.
More money.
Less people.
Ji-yeong was part of it. 069 was part of it now too.
The thought made Jace feel cold all over.
Somewhere beside him, Sae-byeok shifted. He glanced at her once, only briefly, but enough to catch that she was already looking at him rather than at 069. Checking him. Again.
Jace gave the smallest shake of his head, not because he was okay, but because there was nothing useful to say about it. Nothing either of them could do except keep breathing long enough to be summoned into the next room.
The speakers crackled overhead.
"The fifth game will begin momentarily."
No one reacted much.
They all knew by now that the games never waited for grief to finish. The room stayed bright. The music kept playing for one more unbearable stretch. The guards lowered 069's body into the black box and tied the pink ribbon over him like he was a gift ready for delivery.
Jace looked away before they closed the lid.
Sixteen players left.
And the fifth game was coming.
. . .
They were led once again into the white room.
Only this time, something about it was different immediately.
Jace slowed as soon as he stepped inside.
Rows of white mannequins stood spaced across the floor like frozen spectators, human-shaped but stripped of everything except the numbered pink jerseys stretched over their smooth, featureless torsos. No faces. No expressions. Just blank white forms wearing numbers from 1 to 16.
It made the whole room feel more wrong than usual.
The speaker came on overhead.
"Welcome to the fifth game. Before we begin the game, please choose one of the mannequins numbered from 1 through 16."
A murmur passed through the sixteen remaining players.
Jace's eyes moved over the jerseys automatically, searching for the trick before the explanation came. Numbers. Sequence. Order. There had to be a reason. There always was.
Players started moving one by one at first, cautious, uncertain. One approached a mannequin and peeled the jersey free. Then another.
Then the room shifted all at once.
The hesitation broke, and several players rushed forward together, grabbing numbers before someone else could. The middle numbers vanished first. Of course they did. Safe-looking. Neutral. The kind of choice people made when they were terrified of extremes and still believed moderation might save them.
Jace didn't move right away.
He watched the scramble with narrowed eyes.
Then the next announcement came.
"The numbers before you are the order in which you'll play in."
He almost scoffed under his breath.
He already knew.
Or close enough. Whatever the game was, order mattered. First would be bad. Last might be good. Or the opposite. But instinct told him middle-late was better than early, and the rest of the room clearly agreed—too late, because the middle was mostly gone already.
Jace looked over the numbers still left.
13. 14. 15. 16.
A few lower ones too, but not many.
He moved.
Not rushed, just decided.
He crossed to one of the mannequins and took 14, pulling the pink jersey from the white body and slipping it on. The fabric felt cheap, too bright, another costume in a place obsessed with assigning roles.
When he looked up again, Sae-byeok had chosen 15.
His chest tightened in a way he ignored.
A second later, Sang-woo took 13.
That left Gi-hun standing there with only 1 and 16.
Jace watched him hesitate.
Of course he did. Those were the worst choices left, and everyone in the room knew it. The first in line or the last. The one thrown into the unknown first or the one left to watch everyone else go before him.
Before Gi-hun could decide, Player 096 moved and grabbed 1.
Fast.
Like he'd rather control the danger than wait to be cornered by it.
Gi-hun stared after him for half a beat, then reached for 16.
Jace watched him pull it on.
One at the very front.
Sixteen at the very end.
And somehow, seeing their little group split across the late numbers made the room feel even more deliberate. Sang-woo at 13, him at 14, Sae-byeok at 15, Gi-hun forced into 16 by circumstance and timing. Close together. Near the end. Near whatever waited.
The last jerseys were taken.
The mannequins stood empty again, blank and useless, while the remaining players adjusted their pink numbers and looked around at one another with fresh unease.
Jace glanced once toward Sae-byeok.
15.
She caught him looking.
Just for a second.
Then both of them looked away as the white room waited to explain what the fifth game would make those numbers mean.
. . .
They were led through a pair of pink double doors and into the fifth game hall.
Jace stopped the moment he saw it.
For a second, the sight was almost beautiful.
It looked like a stage from some twisted circus act, strings of warm bulbs tracing the edges of the room, deep red curtains hanging in dramatic folds, spotlights cutting down from above. But the beauty ended where the bridge began.
Two narrow lanes of glass stretched out over a black drop so deep it swallowed the light. Eighteen pairs of panels. Left or right. Left or right. A path made of guesses.
The remaining players were lined up in the order of the pink jerseys they had chosen, and Jace was grateful for the people in front of him for the first time since the white room. Sang-woo stood ahead in 13. Jace in 14. Sae-byeok behind him in 15. Gi-hun last in 16.
Too close together to feel safe. Too far back to feel innocent.
The speaker echoed overhead.
"Players, welcome to the fifth game. The fifth game is Glass Stepping Stones."
No one said anything.
They just stared.
"Each stepping stone is made of one of two types of glass, tempered glass and normal glass. Tempered glass can even withstand the weight of two players. But normal glass will shatter just with one person. Players, you will decide which one of the two tiles is made of tempered glass and step on those as you pass through eighteen pairs of tiles. If you safely cross to the other side, you pass."
Jace's jaw tightened.
So that was it.
No skill. No pattern they knew yet. No fair way through.
Just luck.
His gaze flicked over the bridge, trying to see any difference at all between the tiles. The way the light hit them. The thickness. The shine. Anything. But from where he stood, the panels looked identical, glossy and dark and silent.
Player 096, wearing the 01 jersey, was already pale.
He stood at the front of the line, staring out at the bridge like his mind had failed to understand the instructions fast enough. Jace almost pitied him. Almost.
A timer blinked to life above the arch.
16:00
"You have 16 minutes to cross the bridge," the speaker announced. "Then let the game begin. Take your shoes off and go up on the bridge in order."
One by one, the players bent to remove their white slip-ons. Jace toed his off and felt the colder surface beneath his feet. The little gesture made the whole thing worse somehow, more intimate. More real.
The line shuffled forward.
Player 096 stepped up first and stopped at the edge of the bridge.
He didn't move.
The rest of them crowded behind one another on the platform, their numbered backs visible in a row, all looking past the man at the front to the two impossible choices waiting for him.
One minute passed.
Then another.
Still he stood there, frozen.
Jace glanced up at the timer again.
14:03
Players farther back in line began shouting.
"Pick one!"
"What are you waiting for?"
"Move!"
"Do something!"
The man flinched at every voice, but it didn't make him braver. It only made him more frantic. He looked left. Right. Down into the black beneath the bridge. Then back at the first pair of panels like maybe if he stared long enough the answer would appear.
Jace's hands curled at his sides.
He hated this already.
Hated that the people at the front had to be sacrificial. Hated that the people at the back would be forced to stand there and watch them die one by one before it became their turn to use the bodies as clues.
He felt Sae-byeok behind him, close enough that he was aware of every slight shift she made.
Up ahead, Player 096 finally sucked in a breath and jumped.
Left.
The glass held.
A rush of relieved noise broke from the players behind him. Not cheering exactly. More like the release of pressure from a room full of people who were all imagining themselves doing the same thing.
Safe.
For one step.
096 swayed on the tempered panel, eyes wide, clearly not comforted by surviving the first guess. He turned and looked back once, maybe for reassurance, maybe for witnesses.
No one gave him any.
"Go!" someone yelled.
He looked forward again.
Second pair.
Jace could see the man's legs shaking from where he stood.
Then 096 jumped forward.
And the panel beneath him exploded.
The sound was violent, glass shattering, a sharp, awful crash that tore through the room. For one horrible second the player was still visible in a spray of glittering fragments, arms flinging out, face twisted open in pure terror—
Then he was gone.
Falling into the black.
The scream was short.
Too short.
The players behind Jace recoiled as one. Someone swore. Someone else gasped so hard it sounded like choking. Jace felt his own stomach drop with the body, his heart kicking once hard against his ribs.
The safe first tile remained.
The broken second space yawned empty.
All around them, the bridge lights kept glowing.
The timer kept counting.
And the fifth game had truly begun.
Jace watched the bridge eat people one by one.
After 096 fell, the next player—002—stepped up with her whole body trembling. She climbed onto the safe left tile, feet close together, staring ahead at the gap where the second panel had shattered.
She chose left again.
The glass broke instantly beneath her.
She vanished with a scream that cut off somewhere below, leaving the first left tile confirmed and the next left gone.
Jace locked it into his head.
First pair: left.
Second pair: right.
He had to keep track.
He had to.
Player 003 went next. He held on the safe right tile for a while, frozen there like his brain had broken under the pressure. Players behind him shouted. The timer ticked. Then, as if panic had finally overridden everything else, he just ran.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right—
He made it across four tiles in a mad, desperate zigzag before one of them shattered and took him with it.
Jace flinched at the sound and kept the order in his head anyway.
More players followed, stepping only where the last person had proven safe, then guessing the next. One tile at a time. One death at a time. The pattern grew longer, but only by inches, and every time someone fell the scream tore through the hall hard enough to make the whole line behind them tense.
Jace kept counting.
Kept remembering.
Left.
Right.
Then whatever came after.
His turn moved closer and closer.
The line kept shrinking.
Ten minutes left.
The timer overhead glowed down at them with merciless calm, and Jace could feel his pulse climbing with every player lost. Each step forward in the line felt heavier than the one before it. Sang-woo was ahead of him now. Sae-byeok behind. The four of them from the back—13, 14, 15, 16—were drawing closer to the front exactly the way Jace had feared they would.
Then 244 stepped onto the bridge.
Of course it was him.
He made it onto a safe tile and then dropped to his knees right there on the glass, hands clasped, head bowed.
Praying.
Jace stared at him in disbelief.
Not now. Not here.
Players behind him shouted immediately.
"Move!"
"What are you doing?"
"Get up!"
244 didn't. He just kept praying louder, words tumbling over each other in frantic gratitude and surrender. The man behind him snapped first, jumping onto the same tile just to force him up. The glass held both of them for a second—tempered, just like the rules said—but the moment he reached for 244, 244 shoved him.
Hard.
The other player stumbled backward and went straight through the glass.
The crash echoed up through the line.
Jace's face twisted with disgust.
For one beat, 244 stayed kneeling there even after that.
Then, as if the death had answered whatever prayer he'd been muttering, he stood and jumped to the next safe tile.
Jace watched him and thought of Ji-yeong.
Of the way she'd looked at 244 in the elevator.
Of the things she'd told him about her father.
Of the ugly, pure temptation of just launching himself forward and shoving 244 clean through the wrong panel.
He didn't move.
Didn't need to.
Because the player behind 244 had apparently decided the same thing.
The moment 244 prayed again, the man behind him lunged and shoved him full-force onto the left tile ahead.
The panel shattered.
244 disappeared with one startled, unfinished cry, his prayers finally cut short by gravity and glass.
Jace let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
Then he looked up.
Sang-woo was on the bridge now.
Which meant Jace was next.
The line advanced.
Jace stepped onto the safe tile when it was his turn, the glass cool and horribly solid beneath his feet. He forced himself not to look down into the black below. Forced himself to focus only on what was ahead, on Sang-woo's back, on the sequence they'd all paid for with bodies.
Sang-woo moved.
Jace followed his path exactly, stepping where Sang-woo had stepped, feeling the narrowness of the bridge in his bones now. Each pane seemed smaller from up here. Each gap wider. The lights along the rails reflected off the glass in a way that made depth feel wrong, like he was walking on lit darkness instead of a real surface.
He took the next safe step.
Then another.
And then, because he couldn't stop himself, he glanced back.
Sae-byeok was on the tile behind him.
Alive. Still there. Watching her footing but close enough that he could see her face in the spill of stage light.
He held her gaze for one second, a quick check, the kind that said nothing and everything all at once.
You good?
Still with me?
Then he turned forward again, because Sang-woo was already moving and the bridge ahead of them still had too many pairs left before the other side.
Jace looked back at Sae-byeok and held her gaze for only a second before saying, low and quick, "Come here. Same tile."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, like she knew exactly what he was doing.
Not strategy.
Protection.
Still, she jumped.
She landed on the same tempered pane as him, a little too close to the edge on instinct, and Jace reacted immediately—one arm shooting out across her middle to keep her from tipping the wrong way as the glass shivered faintly under the added weight. She caught herself with one hand on his shoulder, breath sharp, then steadied.
For one second they stood there together on the same tile, too close, the bridge swaying subtly beneath their combined balance.
"You good?" he asked.
Sae-byeok gave the smallest nod.
Jace let his arm drop, but not all the way. He kept it half-raised, ready.
Ahead of them, more players fell.
The bridge kept claiming them in flashes of noise and breaking glass and cut-off screams, until suddenly the line had shortened again and again and again, and 101 was at the very front.
Of course he was.
Jace's mouth flattened.
101 stood there on the leading safe tile, chest heaving, looking ahead at the remaining pairs with that same ugly mix of calculation and brute force he brought to everything. He could jump first and risk it. He could keep moving. Instead, he turned partway and shouted back down the line.
"I'm not taking another step! If you want to go, you can go first!"
The rage that shot through Jace came fast and clean.
Of course he'd do that too. Let everyone else die testing the path while he stood there clogging the bridge like a coward.
"Move, you fucking pussy!" Jace shouted back.
His voice cracked across the glass and lights hard enough that Sae-byeok flinched beside him just slightly, more from the volume than the words.
Jace turned immediately, the anger draining just enough for him to mutter, quieter now, "Sorry."
Sae-byeok looked at him.
"For yelling in your ear."
Despite everything, despite the bridge, the dead below, 101 at the front being exactly the kind of bastard he always was, something in her expression shifted. Not quite amusement. But close enough to feel human.
Then both of them looked forward again.
Because the clock was still running.
Because 101 was still blocking the way.
And because the next step, one way or another, was coming.
"I'm not going to die for you to live!" 101 shouted down the bridge. "So come at me!"
His voice bounced off the lights and glass and red curtains, uglier somehow in the stage-bright glow of the room.
The timer overhead dropped.
05:00
Jace felt his chest tighten.
Five minutes.
Not enough time for 101 to stall. Not enough time for anyone behind him to keep arguing. Not enough time for fear to stay theoretical.
Then 212 moved.
She shoved past the player in front of Jace hard enough to make the whole line jolt. One second she was behind them, still loud and irritating and impossible; the next she was at the front stretch, forcing herself into the argument with 101 before anyone could stop her.
Jace leaned forward instinctively, hand half-lifting like he might grab her back if she came too close.
He couldn't hear what they were saying.
Not properly.
Only fragments swallowed by distance and tension and the hum of the lights.
But he saw it.
212 stepped onto the same glass panel as 101.
Too close. Inside his space. Inside his temper.
For a split second it looked like she was going to leap for the next tile herself. Her body turned as if to face forward.
Then she spun back toward him and wrapped both arms hard around his waist.
Jace froze.
Everyone did.
101 shouted something, angry, sharp, panicked now in a way he hadn't been before.
"Let go of me!" he yelled, trying to wrench himself free.
212 only held tighter.
She took one small step backward with him, dragging him off-balance.
Jace couldn't hear every word over the distance, over the timer, over the blood pounding in his own ears.
But he heard enough.
"I told you I'd kill you if you betrayed me."
101's face changed.
For the first time since Jace had known him, there was something close to real fear there.
He pleaded then. Quiet at first, like he thought lowering his voice would make her reasonable. Then louder, more frantic, snarling and begging all at once as he tried to shove her away without losing his own footing.
"Let me go!"
212 leaned closer.
Then, carrying clear enough across the bridge for all of them to hear, she said, "Deok-su."
A beat.
"You know what?"
Even Jace held still.
"You have a tiny fucking dick."
And then she threw herself backward.
Taking him with her.
The panel behind them exploded in a shower of glass and light. Their combined weight smashed through one tile and then another, both of them disappearing into the black while 101's scream ripped up through the hall, raw and furious and terrified all at once.
Then they were gone.
The whole bridge seemed to hold its breath.
Jace stared at the empty space where they had been, his own heart slamming against his ribs hard enough to hurt.
For one second, no one moved.
Then Jace turned his head toward Sae-byeok beside him, eyes still wide from what he'd just seen, and said with a kind of stunned, disbelieving reverence:
"I didn't like her..."
He shook his head once, still staring at the broken gap ahead.
"But she died badass."
Sae-byeok looked at the empty space too, then at him.
And though her face stayed mostly unreadable, he caught the smallest shift in it—something between disbelief and agreement.
Because whatever else 212 had been, annoying, loud, exhausting, impossible, she had taken 101 with her.
And on the glass bridge, with five minutes left and fewer players than ever, that counted for something.
Another player went through the glass.
The bridge swallowed him so fast that the scream barely had time to form before it was gone, taking the last of the bodies between Jace and the end. When the sound of shattering died, only a handful of them were left on the bridge.
Player 017 at the front.
Then Sang-woo.
Then Jace and Sae-byeok sharing the same tile, still keeping tight to one another whenever the path allowed it.
And Gi-hun behind them.
Jace could feel the timer now even when he wasn't looking at it. Every second seemed to land physically somewhere in his chest. The bridge had narrowed into a rhythm of breath, glass, and waiting for someone else to die first.
017 crouched low in front of Sang-woo, peering at the next pair of tiles.
Sang-woo's voice came sharp and impatient. "What are you doing? Stop stalling."
017 looked back over his shoulder, eyes wide but focused. "Hold on. I can tell them apart."
That got everyone's attention.
Jace leaned forward slightly.
017 pointed at the panels. "I worked in a glass factory for thirty years. Others can't see it, but if you look at the tempered glass from an angle under the light, you can see faint stain marks."
For a beat, no one spoke.
Then 017 jumped.
He landed safely.
Sang-woo followed right behind him, then Jace moved with Sae-byeok onto the same path, Gi-hun keeping close at their backs. The line compressed tighter now, all of them stacked on a handful of safe tiles with the finish platform finally visible just ahead.
017 crouched again at the next pair.
"Tempered glass is made at high temperatures," he said, eyes fixed on the light across the panel. "Above seven hundred degrees. If you tap it with a hammer, it rings clearer than normal glass."
Gi-hun, breathless behind them, said, "Why are you telling us now? If you had taken the lead—"
017 glanced back, something bitter flashing across his face. "Why should I? Those people tried to kill me every chance they had."
Jace almost laughed at the honesty of it, if the situation hadn't been so close to killing all of them.
"Fair point," he said. "Please continue."
017 looked back at the glass, chose, and jumped.
Safe again.
Now there was only one more panel between him and the final platform.
Hope rose so fast in Jace's throat it almost hurt.
Then the overhead lights dimmed.
Not completely at first. Just enough to throw the angles wrong. The stage glare that had made the tiles readable suddenly dropped into a murkier glow, and Jace saw 017 freeze almost instantly.
The man's posture changed.
"It's too dark to see..."
Jace looked up at the timer.
01:00
A minute.
That was all.
017 crouched lower, squinting, but the difference was gone now. Or close enough to gone to be useless.
"I need to listen to the sound," he said. "Do you have anything to throw?"
Gi-hun moved first, fumbling in his pocket and pulling out a marble.
He passed it to Jace.
Jace handed it to Sang-woo.
Sang-woo gave it to 017.
The man dropped it onto the left panel.
The little glass click echoed up through the bridge, too faint for Jace to trust, but 017 listened hard anyway, head tilted.
Then he whispered, "I need to test the right one now."
He turned back, hand out.
"I need another."
Sang-woo looked behind him.
Gi-hun checked his empty pocket and shook his head.
No more marbles.
The timer bled down.
00:20
Jace felt every second like a blade.
017 stayed crouched there, breathing faster now, eyes darting from one panel to the other, trying to see what the missing light had taken from him.
Sang-woo stepped quietly onto the same tile behind him.
So quietly Jace only noticed because the glass beneath both of them gave a faint vibration.
017 stood up a little, shaking. "I can't tell..."
Sang-woo's voice came low and flat.
"Then just go."
And before anyone could stop him, Sang-woo shoved him.
Hard.
017 stumbled forward onto the right panel.
The glass shattered.
His scream tore through the dark as he dropped straight down into nothing, and for one stunned beat the rest of them just stared after him.
Sang-woo didn't.
He jumped left immediately.
Safe.
He landed on the final solid panel before the platform and turned with that same terrible momentum of someone who had already accepted what he'd done and had no room left to hesitate over it.
Jace's shock lasted maybe half a second.
Then survival crushed it flat.
He jumped after Sang-woo.
The glass held.
He turned at once and held out his hand toward Sae-byeok, not enough to pull her, just enough to guide her space, while she made the leap herself. She landed hard beside him, breath catching, and then Gi-hun came after, barely making the distance as the timer overhead plunged toward its final numbers.
All four of them ran the last steps.
Jace's shoes hit the platform.
Then—
00:00
For a fraction of a second, the entire bridge seemed to hold still.
Then every remaining glass panel exploded.
The sound was enormous.
A chain reaction of shattering that tore down the bridge in both directions, blasting outward in a storm of glittering shards and noise. Jace twisted away on instinct, throwing up an arm too late as the glass burst behind them. Something sliced across his cheekbone. Another sharp cut bit into the side of his neck. Heat flared instantly there, bright and stinging.
He staggered but stayed upright.
Then the noise died.
Silence rushed in behind it.
Jace lowered his arm slowly and looked back.
The bridge was gone.
Nothing left but jagged edges, falling fragments, and the black void underneath swallowing the last drifting pieces of light.
He touched his cheek and his fingers came away bloodied.
But he was alive.
They all were.
Sang-woo.
Jace.
Sae-byeok.
Gi-hun.
Only the four of them.
The last players standing.
Jace looked at the others, chest heaving, blood warm against his skin, and the truth of it settled over all of them at once:
Everyone else was dead.
It was just them now.