Chapter Text
The cross around his neck weighs heavy as he leaves the bathroom, the empty space beside him feeling like a missing limb despite being surrounded by people wearing the same blue patch as him. Once they get to the doors of the dormroom, he rushes to the front.
“Listen, Team O!” Nam-gyu shouts, waving his arms in the air. “We… When we were in the bathroom, those fucking X bastards tried to kill all of us! They killed some of us, including my friend—”
“Bullshit,” An X cuts him off. Fucking asshole. “You’re the ones who started it.”
“Damn it,” Nam-gyu mutters.
“They threatened one of the people on our side! They attacked us to win the second vote!” Each side continues to argue, but Nam-gyu barely hears them, merely looking at whoever’s screaming loudest. He’s pretty sure he’s hyperventilating but he doesn’t know if it’s because of the adrenaline from the fight or an oncoming panic attack from seeing Thanos’ corpse. Probably both.
Everyone starts to gather around that old guy—Player 100—and he follows. He’s thinks they’re doing a headcount, but all Nam-gyu wants to do is either hide in the corner that used to be his and Thanos’ or fucking kill someone. Mainly MG Coin, and Min-su for being a traitor, and Se-mi for being the reason Min-su betrayed them. When lights out is called he watches the three of them go back to their bunks, does his best to remember it while still feeling like there’s not enough air in his lungs. He collapses on Thanos’ bunk before readjusting to lean up against the wall. He watches the other players make their way to their beds before pulling out Thanos’ cross that he managed to snag when the fight died down. He managed to get one of the man’s rings as well but he keeps it in his pocket.
“Oh, Thanos, you fucking idiot,” He mumbles to the cross. He can almost feel it get offended at him. “You were a piece of shit, dude, you know that? Couldn’t get my name right,” If he focused on anything other than opening the cross—which he was struggling to do thanks to his shaky hands—he’d feel like the cross was responding to him. He’s pretty sure that if he focused on more than one thing, though, he’d start crying in earnest, instead of the consistent, low burn that’s been behind his eyes making his vision blurry since he left that bathroom.
He finally gets the cross open, popping a pill into his mouth. He sniffles and tries to wipe the blood off his face knowing it’s already dried. He takes another pill, just so he can be truly gone once lights out hits. He closes the cross before he can take all the remaining pills at once and just end it here. He shoves the cross into the same pocket as the ring before pulling out the fork he took from Thanos’ neck. He giggles, the pills already hitting him, as he spins the fork in his hands, staring at the drying blood.
The lights go out and Nam-gyu practically leaps out of his bed. Sure, he has his targets, but with the pills running through him, he’s ready to kill any X that he looks at. After all, if they had voted O, none of this would’ve happened. Thanos wouldn’t be dead. It’s their fault.
He leads the rest of the Os as they make their way to the X’s side. He stalks faster as he crosses the line, impatient, and once his shoes touch the glowing X he’s sprinting. He jumps for the first X he sees, some woman that he stabs in the chest more times than he can care to count. He makes his way to where he saw Se-mi and Min-su disappear to, killing anyone who gets in his way as he goes. Once he finally finds Se-mi he doesn’t see Min-su anywhere, but at this point he doesn’t care. It’ll be easier to kill them one by one instead of at the same time anyways. He stumbles a bit, trying to jump onto her before she’s cornered. He stands, covered in even more blood than before, and savours the fear on her face.
“Hey, Se-mi,” He laughs as he stalks closer. “You fucking cunt, come here!” A bottle falls in between them from somewhere above. Nam-gyu doesn’t doubt it was Min-su. He’ll get him next, the fucking traitor. Se-mi takes the neck of the bottle and lunges at him.
“Fuck you!” She yells, kicking him off of her. “You goddamn bastard!” She screams as she tries to stab him, but two other fighting players knock into her, and Nam-gyu is able to pin her down. He stabs her in the side of her neck and the top of her shoulder.
“You fucking whore!” He yells as he tackles her onto the floor. “Do I look like a fucking joke to you?!” He laughs again as he stabs her, again and again, until she stops moving. As he goes to climb the bunks and finally get Min-su, the guards rush in. Lucky asshole.
Everyone’s screaming as they come in, shooting at the ceiling and breaking up fights by threatening to add to the body count. Nam-gyu runs back to Thanos’ bunk, pocketing the fork. He listens as players—Nam-gyu doesn’t see who, and it all happens too fast anyways, but he’d bet one of them is the guy who claims to have been here before, it seems like the kind of thing he’d do—take the guards' guns and start killing them. Nam-gyu can’t find it in himself to care. Se-mi’s dead now, the only member left of their team other than himself is fucking Min-su, and for all he knows MG Coin is still alive and entitled to a share of the money that he and Thanos deserve.
Nam-gyu wishes he could claim Thanos’ share instead of it being divided up amongst people that wanted him dead. They don’t deserve it, but then again, why does he? He has no real claim over it, it’s not like Thanos had time to write Nam-gyu into his will. Even if he did, he wouldn’t, so why does it matter? Friends don’t get their friend’s money after they die.
The players leave and the gunshots start up again, farther away. Nam-gyu could technically go and kill Min-su right now, little fucker’s probably crying over Se-mi’s corpse, but he can’t find it in himself. He crashing, hard, and he can’t even focus on anything enough to take another pill.
Thanos is dead because of that stupid crypto fuck and he can’t do anything about it. He can’t go back, he can’t relive the day over and over again until he gets it right.
Despite the lights beaming down on the room, Nam-gyu feels like he could fall asleep. It’s a terrible idea, someone could easily kill him, but something makes him feel safe enough to slide down and lay on his side. He fishes the cross from his pocket again, not for more pills, just to hold close as he sleeps. He drifts off as the gunshots continue, and despite the fact that he’s shaking, he feels oddly warm.
He wakes up not even 20 minutes later to guards rushing in the players who left earlier. Everyone is told to put their head to the ground, but Nam-gyu knows the guards can’t see him from Thanos’ bunk, so he doesn’t move. Even if they could, he still wouldn’t. He could care less what happens to him. The lights go out again, and they don’t flash this time. No one tries to kill anyone else, at least not to Nam-gyu’s knowledge, but he doubts anyone would after everything that’s happened in the last half hour alone. He sits on Thanos’ bed staring at the cross instead of trying to go back to sleep. He doesn’t feel tired anymore, just exhausted. Someone clears their throat in front of him but he doesn’t look away. The only person that could possibly want to interact with him is Min-su but he doubts he actually would. He did just kill Min-su’s girlfriend or whatever. Whoever it is clears their throat again and Nam-gyu is torn between continuing to ignore them or stabbing them with the fork.
“C’mon, Nam-su, stop ignoring me!”
“It’s Nam- gyu, you—” Nam-gyu corrects the other man reflexively before realizing what’s just happened. There’s no way. He snaps his head up and sure enough, Thanos is sitting cross-legged across from him on the bunk. There’s dried blood on his neck, and he’s missing a ring and his cross, but other than that everything is the same. He’s the same. “Oh, my god, I’m hallucinating.”