“Let’s play another game!”
Her eyes were bright, refusing to accept defeat. They were sitting in the park near school, cards scattered between them on the grass after Arata had won for the seventh time in a row.
“You always win,” she said, pouting but already gathering the cards back together. “But I don’t care. I’ll beat you eventually!”
Arata tilted his head, genuinely confused. “Why do you keep playing if you hate losing?”
“Because it’s fun!” She grinned, the kind of smile that made losing seem irrelevant. “Besides, games aren’t about winning. They’re about understanding people.”
“Understanding people?”
“Yeah! Like…” She tilted her head, thinking. “When you win, I learn how your brain works. I see which cards you play first, which ones you save for later, whether you take risks or play it safe. And when I lose, I learn what I need to get better at.”
“That’s just cope. You’re losing and pretending it means something.”
“No, really! My sister says people show who they are when they play games. Like, some people get angry when they lose, so you know they care too much about what others think. Some people cheat, so you know they’re scared of failing. Some people give up halfway, so you know they don’t actually care.”
Arata frowned. “What about people who win every time?”
“Hmm…” She studied him carefully. “People who always win either practiced a lot because they hate losing… or they’re just naturally good at games. Which one are you?”
“Both.”
She laughed. “See? Now I understand you better! You hate losing AND you’re good at games. That’s useful information.”
“Useful for what?”
“For being your friend, obviously! If I know you hate losing, I won’t feel bad when you’re mean about winning.” She started shuffling the cards again.
“That’s what losers say.”
“Maybe!” She shuffled the cards clumsily, then split the deck in half. “Okay, what about… Heartfall?”
“Heartfall?”
“Yeah! My sister taught me.” She started sorting through her half of the deck. “We each get twenty-six cards. Then we check who has the Queen of Hearts—that person goes first. King of Hearts goes second. My sister named it Heartfall because she thought it sounded romantic—a queen and king building something together, then watching it collapse.”
“That’s a terrible name.”
“Shut up and check your cards.”
Arata flipped through his half and found the Queen of Hearts near the middle. “I start.”
“Okay! So you put down your first card—the Queen of Hearts—face up. Then I put mine—the King of Hearts—parallel to yours, also face up. Then you put yours perpendicular on top, like a bridge, face up. We keep building like that, calling out each card as we place it, until all fifty-two cards are in the tower.”
“That’s it?”
“No! Once the tower’s complete, we flip it upside down. Now the Queen and King are on top, and everything we built is face-down. Then we take turns pulling cards from the top—only the top layer, whatever’s accessible. You have three seconds to grab a card and say what you think it is before you flip it. If you’re right, it goes in your right pile. If you’re wrong, wrong pile. If you take too long, your turn gets skipped.”
Arata frowned. “So I have to remember the entire build sequence?”
“Exactly! The tower gets flipped, so what was on the bottom is now in the top, and what was on top is now at the bottom. You have to track the whole structure in your head and remember where each card ended up after the flip.”
She grinned. “My sister says most people can only remember the first few cards and the last few cards. Everything in the middle gets fuzzy.”
Arata stared at her.
Then he smiled.
“Okay. Let’s play.”
He placed the Queen of Hearts face-up on the grass between them.
“Queen of Hearts.”
She placed the King of Hearts parallel to it, also face-up.
“King of Hearts!”
Arata placed his next card perpendicular across both, forming a bridge.
“Three of Clubs.”
“Seven of Diamonds!”
“Jack of Spades.”
“Two of Hearts!”
The tower grew quickly, their voices overlapping, cards slapping down in rapid succession. She called out her cards with theatrical flair, sometimes hesitating over which card to play next. Arata called his monotone, no emotion, just building.
When the final card was placed, the tower stood complete between them, twenty-six layers stacked carefully in the afternoon sun.
“Okay!” She carefully gripped the base of the tower with both hands. “Now we flip it!”
She turned the entire structure upside down in one smooth motion. The Queen and King of Hearts were now on top, everything else face-down beneath them.
“Deconstruction phase! You start since you had the Queen.”
Arata stared at the flipped tower, reconstructing the build sequence in his mind. He reached for the King of Hearts—her first card, now on top.
“King of Hearts.”
He pulled it out smoothly.
Flipped it.
King of Hearts.
“Right pile!” She announced cheerfully, even though she’d just lost a point.
Her turn. She reached for the Queen of Hearts without hesitation.
“Queen of Hearts!”
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She flipped it.
Queen of Hearts.
“Right pile for me too!”
The game continued.
Arata pulled card after card with mechanical precision, tracking the inverted structure perfectly in his head. His memory was flawless.
“Three of Clubs.”
Correct.
“Jack of Spades.”
Correct.
“Ace of Diamonds.”
Correct.
She pulled randomly, guessing wildly, laughing every time she got it wrong.
“You’re not even trying,” Arata said.
“I am! I’m just bad at remembering where things go after the flip.” She grinned as she pulled another card and got it wrong again. “Negative-five now! You’re destroying me.”
Arata pulled another card.
“Two of Hearts.”
Correct.
The game continued until all the cards were gone. Final score: Arata 23, Mika -2.
“See? You won again!” Mika gathered the cards, completely unbothered. “But I’m getting better.”
“You’re not getting better. You’re just guessing randomly.”
“Maybe!” She started shuffling for another round. “But I had fun. Didn’t you?”
Arata stared at the cards scattered between them.
He had.
***
“Wake up, Arata.”
The soft voice of a girl drifted through his consciousness, sounding both calming and comforting.
“Wake up, Arata. You’ll be late.”
The voice faded, soft and distant, like it was calling from somewhere he could never reach again.
“WAKE UP, YOU DUMB CRIMINAL!”
A metallic baton smashed against his cage and the barrier vibrated violently, the impact sending tremors through the golden-yellow structure. Arata slowly looked up, weak and disoriented. He was barely hearing anything—what woke him up was more the barrier’s shuddering resonance than the shout itself. His eyes were wet, his vision blurry as he put his hands on the dirt-cold ground to force himself into a sitting position.
Wait.
Wasn’t he supposed to be in a luxury cruise ship?
***
As he regained consciousness and his vision gradually cleared, Arata looked around and realized he was in a box—or, more accurately, a translucent cube constructed from the same golden-yellow energy that formed the barrier surrounding the ship. The walls pulsed faintly with a low-opacity glow, just solid enough to contain him, yet translucent enough for him to make out warped shapes beyond.
Arata stared at one of the sides and could barely make out his own reflection in the shimmering surface. Even with his blurry vision, he could see the wretched state he was in—lips cracked and bleeding, skin covered in grime, probably from the humid rocky ground beneath him. He passed his hands over his body and realized they’d even taken his clothes, leaving him in nothing but torn underwear.
His hearing slowly came back to him.
The first things he heard were men shouting, crew members moving hastily between the cages and barking orders as they woke up other prisoners the same way they'd woken him—slamming batons against barriers, kicking the bases of cages, screaming threats and insults. He wasn't alone in this place.
He slowly rubbed his eyes and looked around more carefully. Another barrier stood adjacent to his. Another one beyond that. And another. They were dozens—no, even hundreds—of the same cubic cages spreading as far as the eye could see in every direction. Arata looked around his cube and felt his stomach drop as he realized he was surrounded by them, an infinite geometric prison multiplying endlessly as he looked further and further into the distance.
***
The space itself was wrong.
The pattern repeated so uniformly, so perfectly, that his eyes hurt trying to track any single direction. He looked at the man in a cage adjacent to his, though “adjacent” felt like the wrong word when the room was so utterly fractal and disorienting that he couldn’t even tell what direction he was facing. Where was north? Where was anything beyond this endless repetition?
The man was barely standing upright, skeletal and pale with skin stretched tight over protruding bones like parchment pulled across a frame. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes hollow and glassy, and his limbs looked too thin to support his weight. He stood there like a zombie, swaying slightly, as if what he was waiting for would never come, as if he’d forgotten what hope felt like.
Crew members walked around between the cages, passing through the barely-adequate gaps between barriers. The space was perfectly optimized to trap as many people as possible with the minimum amount of wasted room.
As Arata continued looking around, a loud voice screamed through what sounded like full-volume speakers placed directly next to his ears. He dropped to his knees, covering his overly sensitive ears with both hands.
“As you all know, your presence on this ship isn’t a coincidence. No. You all have something in common. Every single one of you filthy rats is a criminal. Each of you has committed a major crime and is here to face the consequences of your actions.”
The words hit Arata like a revelation as memories slowly reassembled themselves in his fragmented mind.
“Arata Aoyama. In accordance with the Maritime Criminal Justice Accords, you are under arrest for the murder of Mika Hanazawa.”
The shock had hit him so hard that he hadn’t even resisted when they grabbed him.
They’d dragged him through hidden corridors of the ship, passing through restricted-access areas while deliberately blocking other passengers from seeing where they were taking him. Alexander Thorne had followed closely with a serious expression, constantly checking to make sure Arata didn’t suddenly rebel. Jacob had watched from afar, tears running down his face—yet again, he’d failed an ally. Thomas was right. He was a failure who could only sacrifice his allies for nothing.
The voice continued speaking as if this were a daily reminder, its words echoing through the cavernous space.
“By coming inside the LeVIATHAN, you despicable humans chose to run from your past, to run from the pain you’ve caused. You brought your families, told them you were going on a trip to Isla Solivante, hoping to become free and avoid the consequences of your crimes. All of you inside the Undercroft are the worst of the worst—the wealthy elite who believed money could save them from any crime, who thought influence could erase blood from their hands, who assumed power meant immunity.”
The speaker paused, clearing his throat and preparing his voice for what seemed to be the most important segment of his speech.
“By coming aboard this ship, you have made the best decision of your lives. You will finally have the privilege of facing the consequences of your actions. You will finally have the opportunity to repent.”
Another pause, deliberate and heavy.
"But today, we have a very special guest among us. This individual has accomplished something extraordinary, something unprecedented in the history of this vessel. He did something that not a single one of you has ever done, something none of you filthy criminals even dared to attempt."
Arata’s cage lit up in bright golden light that seared his eyes, forcing him to throw his arm in front of his face to block the sudden brightness. Everyone around him was staring at him now—their eyes were scary, hollow, empty, filled with something between hatred and envy.
"This young boy has committed a major crime. A sin. Inside this ship. While the rest of you brought your sins aboard, while you carried your guilt and your blood-stained hands into this sanctuary thinking you could escape judgment, this boy—this foolish, arrogant child—chose to commit his atrocity here, within these very walls, under our watch, desecrating the sacred order we have built."
Noises of surprise and shock rippled through the Undercroft as people whispered and stared at him with renewed intensity.
“He brought the devil inside this ship.”
Arata tried to comprehend the point of this man's accusations. What was he trying to gain from it? They'd already won—Arata was trapped inside this cage, powerless, probably awaiting a fate he wouldn't wish upon anyone. So why the theatrics? Why the speech? Who were they trying to convince?
The voice cut off, ending on that heavy accusation. Everything quickly became calmer—weirdly, unnaturally calm. The crew members stopped their hurried movements between cages. Arata looked around as people were already returning to whatever they were doing before the announcement, as if nothing had happened, as if this were routine.
He approached another barrier adjacent to his where a man was crouching, doing something Arata couldn't see clearly.
"Hey. Sorry to bother you. Do you know when the next meal is?"
His voice came out hoarse and cracked, each word scraping against his throat like sandpaper. The dehydration made his tongue feel swollen, too thick for his mouth, and his lips split further as he spoke.
The man didn't respond and kept doing whatever business occupied him.
Then Arata realized—the sound doesn't pass through this barrier. Jacob had warned him before: the creator of these cages controlled every wave going in or out, stopping any form of communication.
Then how come he'd heard the whispers earlier when people were staring at him?
Arata started banging on one of his cage's walls, trying to get the attention of the man crouching in front of him. He was genuinely intrigued about this man's situation and what he was doing, maybe he had food? He kept banging without thinking too much—his brain was operating in slow motion, probably caused by the lack of nutrients—otherwise he would have realized that there was a guard standing right in front of him with a furious expression as he continued pounding against the barrier.
