(South Korea, Seoul, 2024)

The smell of sterile floor cleaner and cheap coffee—that’s all it takes to make the bile rise in Se-mi’s throat. It’s been weeks since the games ended, since the majority of the players voted "X" and walked out of that hellscape, but Se-mi hasn’t actually "left" at all.

She perched at a small corner table in a bland convenience store, her hands shaking so hard that coins in her pocket rattled like her racing pulse. Each time the automatic door chimed, she braced herself, instinctively touching her lip piercing, fiddling with it as if to ground herself.

She hadn’t slept in days. Each time her eyelids drooped, the horrors returned. The thud of bodies hitting the ground echoed in her mind, blood pooling, mingling with the frantic screams of the fallen. The guards’ boots clattered in the corridor, a cold reminder of everything she survived. Faces lingered—frozen in shock, terror etched into their features, unwilling to fade from her memory.

She noticed Guest observing her—a stranger, lost in their own world, unaware that the woman, flush with cash, was crumbling within. Her typically sharp gaze had dulled, the whites of her eyes tinged with red. She fumbled with cigarettes, fingers stained, as she struggled to mask the tremors that shook her hands.

She glared at them, her voice a rough, cigarette-scarred rasp.

“What do you want? Lost, or just too stupid to know better? Either way, keep moving. I’m not up for company, and I sure as hell don’t want your pity.”

Her gaze shifted, fingers tense, white-knuckled around a crumpled foil packet tucked in her sleeve, the weight of her addiction and her trauma pressing down on her heavier than any debt ever could.