He finally walks through the doors, and I follow him, not from any wish I might have myself but from numb obedience to the Cat God’s trial rules.

  This chamber was once a regal conference room, but it’s already turned into a ruin. The bodies of the Goat and Monkey have vanished now, but red-brown stains splotch the table around the “Goat” chair, and a suspect radial smear still lies in the middle of the room. Meanwhile, a cold breeze flows through the broken skylight and sweeps over the Pig, the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Rabbit, the Dragon, and me, and the Horse zips up her track jacket as the Dragon starts to speak:

  “We now begin the third trial. It’s up to us to make sense of the death of the Dog,”

  He’s wrong. Absolutely wrong. Both him and the Rat are idiots; at any moment, Lily will arrive and then the game will truly begin. But the blood drains from my face when I see the voting pane.

  PICK A PLAYER

  ID

  Status

  ID

  Status

  Dragon

  IN

  X

  X

  Snake

  IN

  Pig

  IN

  Horse

  IN

  Rat

  IN

  X

  X

  Ox

  IN

  X

  X

  Tiger

  IN

  X

  X

  Rabbit

  IN

  The Rat is right: the life that I had in this game is gone. A vicious X sshes my hope and pierces through my heart.

  There’s still some part of me that half-believes this is a fairytale, where if I just have the patience to read to the end that there will be a ‘happily ever after,’ that somehow Lily will still be alive. But I know that even as my heart still clings onto the st vestiges of hope, I can’t stop my mind’s relentless reasoning… that even if the “Snake” can win this game, happy endings are impossible for the girl named Yuri Hirai.

  “Snake. Ya checked me st night, right? What did you find?” Tiger says, warmly.

  I always knew that the future was bleak. Though we like to think that we’re special, that we have a tent talent that no one else has, that someone will come to save us, or that dull oblivion can happen to them and not to us, I myself always understood that a sense of destiny isn’t hope but delusion.

  Snap, snap, snap. Crack, crack, crack. “Hello…? Tell everyone what you found! Tell ‘em that the Tiger’s town!”

  But I had thought that Lily was different. Generous, hard-working, sparks in her eyes, isn’t she everything the world would call special? How can someone like that, someone who deserves stars, just be cast aside like trash?

  “Hey! I’m getting mad! Is this some kind of power py, ignoring me like this?”

  “She’s probably just tired,” mutters a tall, bck-haired boy. “Gss breaking, loud noises throughout the night, of course she’d be fatigued.”

  The reason I left my school’s bleak dormitory wasn’t because I learned to have faith in myself: the dark creature was still wrapped soft and heavy around my heart. It was because I thought that even if I wasn’t talented, even if my future was colorless, then I at least could support someone else with the power to paint the world. Someone like the girl who day after day without fail, delivered her own meticulous notes to my door.

  “There’s drowsiness and then there’s this! C’mon, she’s awake, look—her hands are trembling.”

  “M-maybe,” the Pig says. “M-Maybe she doesn’t want to speak because she found out that the Tiger’s a wolf.”

  Yet Lily didn’t have the power to change her future, and neither did I, and even in this simple, game-driven world, our lives are toys for other, stronger, more powerful people. Like the Cat God who might watch over us, or the wolves who can kill us on a whim—we must either live for their amusement or die by their hand. And that’s all.

  “I’ll get her to talk even if I have to wrench the words out of her.”

  “Sit back down, Tiger.” The Dragon’s voice is a steady baritone.

  “We can’t fight now,” Ox says. “We’re not animals…! Please!”

  There’s some kind of hustle and bustle going on, between numerous voices and faces and bodies that I find hard to fully grasp. As for me, I don’t want to live in a way that supports people that I don’t care about. But nor do I want to give them the satisfaction of dying, either.

  So instead I decide to just breathe.

  In… out…

  In… out… the Tiger approaches me, with a clenched fist that’s also shaking.

  In…out… the scowling girl’s a mirage. If I just had the energy to lift my hand and wave it through her I’m sure that she’d disappear.

  In…

  She raises her fist—and then that scraggly boy steps in front of me.

  “The Snake told me she checked the Tiger earlier. You’re a vilger.”

  The Tiger swings anyway, but the Rat sidesteps the blow and catches her wrist with his non-dominant palm.

  ***

  The Ox gets between the Tiger and the Rat. People talk. The Tiger returns to her chair. The world’s colorless. Non-descriptive. Unfocusable. I am wordless. I am soulless. I am purely a vessel, through which the game continues to flow. The girl known as “Yuri Hirai’ is completely absent, curled up in some corner of her shell-like husk.

  The Rat stares at me. That despicable person, the Rat. I can understand him now, a little bit; and his expression’s a stew of dislike, thoughtfulness, pity. Yes, there’s a sort of kindness in his narrow eyes, like a father might give to a wayward son.

  After the second cmor dies down, the Rabbit then flops forward onto her desk, and she puts a finger on a pinkish lip. “Rat, we dunno whether you’re wolf or town. So why should you be her voice?”

  “If I say something she disagrees with, all Snake has to do is shake her head. Do you not trust me?” Rat says.

  There’s a long, awkward silence that follows.

  “I trust you!” The Horse smiles. “We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right?”

  There’s another long, uncomfortable quiet, as if the entire rest of the group had also gone temporarily mute. They must be waiting for someone reliable to take the lead. Someone like the Monkey, the Rooster, Lily, or me. Maybe I could step in, but I don’t really care. Besides, there’s still one other person who could take charge…

  The person in question straightens his tie and clears his throat. “Our first two trials were extremely chaotic, even counterproductive. We’ve had so many arguments about the voting process but little progress towards finding the two remaining wolves.

  I suggest we have someone make decisions on the group’s behalf. Perhaps then this trial would be more constructive.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re about to make yourself king,” the Tiger says. “If so, then I’ll take your crown and use it to bash in your skull!”

  At this, the Dragon can only shrug. “Then let’s say we all vote for someone randomly instead. What are the chances that we’ll vote for a wolf?

  Even though there’s four vacant seats between the Horse and the Pig, the game continues to move. All I can do is to hollowly observe their discussion, as though I’m simply a ghost.

  “You’re stealing my style,” the Rat compins casually to the Dragon, while the Horse to my left perks up at the Dragon’s message. She puts on a pair of rectangur lenses, as she breaks out a pencil and a scratchpad. They’re a handsome pair that matches her tracksuit, and now the “Horse” emblem stuck onto her colr looks more like a fashion logo than anything.

  “If three wolves are alive, it’s a three out of eight chance to vote for a wolf. If two are alive, it’s twenty-five percent. If no one votes for the Tiger, who we know must be a vilger, then it’s two or three out of seven!” Horse says.

  “That sounds correct, but the real odds are much worse,” observes the Rat. “The wolves will always vote as a bloc. If a few vilgers draw the wrong conclusion, then the wolves will vote alongside those people and we’ll execute someone innocent.”

  “But if even one person in the town is smart, they can do detective work and tip the scales,” the Horse replies. “They just need to go full Gagatha Christie or Herlock Sholmes!”

  “I haven’t heard of those detectives, but yeah, one perceptive vilger can be all it takes to catch a wolf. Let’s say it all cancels out then, and adds up to around twenty five or thirty percent,” the Rat finally concedes. He twitches, a little bit displeased, as the Horse finishes a sweeping stroke with her arm.

  “But what if we had a trial where the wolves can’t vote and therefore can’t influence the outcome. What would the odds be then?” the Dragon asks everyone once more.

  “M-much higher?” the Pig pips in, as the formal boy breaks into a beam.

  “If we have the Tiger dictate who to execute, we can do exactly that—strip all the wolves of their votes,” Dragon says, content. “The seer reports from me and the Snake prove that the Tiger is a vilger, so voting for whoever she wishes gives a vilger total control over the game.”

  The Rat’s voting screen casts a pale blue light across his face. Starting from the double doors, and rotating all the way back to the cat on the dispy, the Horse, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger, and Rabbit all sit in varying degrees of confusion; the Dragon, however, carries on with a superb confidence.

  “Therefore, we should all step away from our voting panels and allow the Tiger to cast our votes,” the Dragon says, as the room erupts into an uproar.

  “You’re saying this Tiger’s earned some stripes? Now that’s what I’m talking about!” calls out the girl herself. The Tiger’s eyes are bright as she rolls up her overcoat sleeves; her bzer’s wrinkled, and her posture has a dangerous snt. A subtle silver chain graces her neckline, cshing with a tacky ring from a discount store on her finger, and though the Tiger’s far from a princess she still nobly holds up her chin.

  The Dragon wants her to take charge. In Mafia, appointing a leader is actually a typical py: once a pyer is confirmed to be innocent, the vilge can just have them make all the big decisions while everyone else just pleads their case.

  This py is so common that there’s a phrase for it: “to give someone the hammer.”’ Someone who casts an important vote is said to have such a tool because their vote “hammers” the nail in the coffin for whoever they deem guilty. As, the only hammer I have right now is a hammering headache, and even in my dim consciousness, something feels just wrong.

  “As an older brother, it feels strange to let someone as young as the Tiger take the lead.” The Ox’s voice bursts in. “But if the Tiger takes full responsibility for what happens next, I guess that works for me. We said that the Monkey’s death was his own fault, but when I washed my hands to prepare food for everyone, they felt unclean no matter how much I scrubbed them.”

  “I’m short, not young!” the Tiger calls out, as the Horse chants something weakly: “G-g-go get ‘em, Tiger!”

  The others have markedly less eloquence. The Rabbit nods, though she barely lifts her head from the table. The Pig looks at the Tiger, frozen like a small prey animal, and the Rat gazes up at the ceiling, mumbling incoherently. As for me, my head’s simply swiveling between everyone before I also start to nod off. Our collective enthusiasm ranges from lukewarm to room temperature at best—

  “And that makes a unanimous yes! Long live the queen!” interrupts our self-appointed dictator. The Tiger then strolls into the circle’s center, cpping and pointing. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Which one will catch the Tiger’s boot, I dunno.”

  She grins, her shoulders out and her smug face glowing with power. She stalks past the Dragon and waves at the Rat, until a single accusatory finger finally nds on the Pig’s nervous frame. “That nerd’s suspicious, irritating, and said that I might be a wolf. I’ve been waiting for this! I think it’s gotta be her!”

  “But I don’t think that!” the Pig calls. “I don’t think anything anymore! Stop pointing at me!”

  The Rat, still mumbling, ignores the poor girl’s wailing and keeps his gaze on me. His expression has clouded, and his face stiffens as he takes a deep breath. Is he expecting me to say something? He of all people should know that I won’t do anything anymore.

  But, as he raises his voice to speak, his words aren’t directed towards me. In fact, he seems to be trying to address just about everyone except for the Snake.

  “Tiger, wouldn’t it be better for you to vote for someone who cims that they’re seer? We know for sure that between the Dragon and the Snake that one of them’s a wolf, so we shouldn’t don’t overcomplicate this,” Rat observes.

  “Then, if I had to choose between the two I’d probably pick Snake,” Tiger grumbles. “If she’s too frightened to talk, then she must have something to hide, though my gut’s still tellin’ me that it’s gotta be the Pig…”

  The Rat frowns and runs his hands through his mussed-up hair. His eyes always had circles underneath them, and they appear deeper and darker than ever in the courtroom’s harsh light. He turns towards me, and mouths six words.

  Are you still trying to win the game?

  And I just breathe.

  “Let’s vote for the Snake,” Rat then says, after reading my empty lips.

  Huh? Huh?

  “We’ll vote for the Snake, and then the Dragon can investigate me at night,” the Rat says again. “Too many people find me suspect.”

  Huh? Vote for me?

  Everything up until now has felt dark, dull, numb, and dimmed. Their voices feel unreal, the sight of the other seven’s expressive faces seeming like a gathering of dramatic masks. But my chest’s suffocating tension then sharply shifts into something else.

  What’s this feeling inside me? It’s not betrayal, or broken love. It feels as if the creature inside me is awakening, moving, loosening, and the heart that was once constricted now begins to beat again…

  “Tiger, you shouldn’t let others influence you so easily.” the Dragon shakes his head, between my churning thoughts. “Otherwise, this pn doesn’t work.”

  “You’re not my Papa! I’ll listen to whoever I want!” Tiger calls, and all their words, their protests, catch fire and bze through the haze that’s shrouding my mind. And suddenly I allow myself to think.

  Since the second day, I had always known that either the Rat or the Dragon had to be a wolf. For them to both be seer was impossible; I now hear the Rat’s scratched-up voice campaigning for my death, and the Dragon’s pleading otherwise, almost as if they were slowed.

  In this duel of words the Dragon fights calm, measured, and with a hint of poetry, like a samurai warrior retained by a noble lord. The Rat’s words, in contrast, are crude and insinuating, like those of a savage chief. But because the Rat’s words are so simple, they’re easy to believe and he’ll soon sicc the Cat God’s thunder upon me. I’m surely facing public execution…

  “Hehe.”

  “God bless you Snake,” the Dragon says politely. “Do you need a handkerchief?”

  “Hehehe.”

  Oh god, after such a long week, I can’t hold back any more.

  “What’s so funny?” asks the Rat, and I respond as coherently as I can—

  “Hehehe… bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!”

  When wild beasts are sick or injured, they act in predictable ways. Birds will pick at their feathers, cats crawl to their favorite hidey-holes, and dogs lick at bloody wounds. Humans too, have their own kinds of “pain responses,” whether it’s drinking or sleeping or sex. My own vice that makes my mind fly away is immersing myself wholly in Mafia: online, in person, or in my deranged imagination. That’s how I spent my lost year, after all.

  So, let’s solve the riddle of the Rat and the Dragon. Two teenagers, one slouched in a hoodie, the other sharp in a suit.

  (Is… is she okay?) (Just give her some space) (Snake? I want you to take a deep breath, please) (Get back, Horse, she might attack—)

  It’s a puzzle that already seems complete. The Rat has just finished throwing me under the bus even as the Dragon serves as my samurai-knight, though if I’m going with the vehicle analogy I suppose the suited boy’s more like a crossing guard.

  But the question is… am I viewing this puzzle “right-side up” or “upside down?”

  If the Dragon is seer, and thinks that I’m a wolf pretending to be seer, then why does he want me to survive?

  If the Rat is seer, and thinks I’m a vilger, then why does he want me to die?

  I wonder…

  (She’s clearly not right in the head anymore. Like I said, let’s get rid of the Snake, and have the Dragon check my role during the night) (Snake, wait!)

  Even as I sit askew in my chair, half-smiling, half-crying, my mind still carries on. Those useless neural circuits from my Mafia-binging days burst to life, and I understand everything. The Rat’s setting a trap, with myself as bait.

  When two people cim to be seer, the only way to know which one is telling the truth is by intuition. But there’s actually another way to know for sure.

  The Rat wants to bait the Dragon—as “seer”—into “checking” him during the night. If the Dragon ter cims that the Rat is innocent, then that would mean everyone should be able to trust the Rat—the seer said he was trustworthy, after all!

  Yet, if after all that, the Rat then reveals he’s the real seer… with the Dragon, as a “seer” having already promised that the Rat was a vilger… that would clearly expose the Dragon as a fraud. There’s no other way to resolve that logical contradiction.

  The Dragon would have just said that the Rat was trustworthy. In addition, there can’t be two Seers, and in a situation where the Dragon was the real Seer and the Rat was fake, the Dragon should have immediately found that the Rat was a wolf instead of saying he was a vilger. The elegant boy’s position would become completely untenable.

  So, I’m willing to bet the Rat, as seer, hopes to trick the Dragon into a blunder by killing me off. Since in the Dragon’s eyes the I, the “real seer” would be dead, he might be caught off guard by the Rat’s devious gambit.

  On the other hand, the Dragon wants me to survive, though from his perspective I could only be a wolf. While he might mean to soothe me, his assurances are so illogical that they make my hair stand on end.

  “Hahaha… ha… ha…”

  Even if Lily is dead, even if I’m adrift in a world that has nothing else for me, at least I can still py Mafia. This feeling that I hold in my heart, it’s not oblivion but joy. It’s just the empty life I return to afterwards that makes pying Mafia feel so punishing. With the Monkey, it wasn’t just protecting Lily that I loved; it was also the game itself, turning the town to my command.

  “Then it’s decided,” the Dragon says, his voice emerging through my tumultuous thoughts. “We won’t vote for Snake—not exactly. We’ll simply vote for ‘whoever the Tiger chooses.’”

  “I suppose that’s fine…” the Rat mutters, and I look at the Horse, Rabbit, Ox, and Pig.

  Although I fully grasp the psychology of the wolf’s py here, it’s not enough to convince people more familiar with TV crime procedurals than Mafia games. And when it comes to Lily’s death, I don’t even know the murder weapon, either—whether it’s a knife, a”‘wolf’s cws,” a baseball bat, a silenced gun, or a magical bolt from the blue.

  I don’t know what it was that emitted that sinister hiss, either. There’s no set of fingerprints I can dust for, no stray hairs that could be found. There’s no solid proof linking the culprit to the killings— it was as if my evidence was made from broken gss.

  Gss?

  Yes, any evidence that I have against the Dragon is surely made from gss.

  “Dragon, you said I didn’t sleep well because you heard the sound of gss shattering. Tell me. How did you know what I heard? Your room is far from hers,” I call out, pointing at his noble form. He holds one of his hands to his forehead, looking down at the desk to his front.

  “As the seer, I walk the halls and stop in front of the rooms of the people I want to investigate. You “checked” the Tiger st night, and I checked the Dog. The Dog must have been attacked when I was right outside her door—” Dragon says, and I cut him off.

  “No. Among other things, the rules clearly state that the wolves act after the seer, at 2AM. Were you in Lily’s room?”

  “Where does it say that the wolves visit the people they kill? Perhaps they go to the Trial Chamber, or perhaps even to MAINTENANCE—”

  “If you have hidden knowledge about the wolves’ behavior, feel free to tell us of it… and how you learned about it as well,” I say.

  The Dragon chokes the red serpentine emblem on his iron colr. His other hand slides gradually downwards, slipping inside his left breast pocket; he pulls out a white linen handkerchief, unfolds it, and wipes the sweat from his face. Afterwards, most of his anxiousness too, seems to have been wiped away.

  “Someone must have told me about that broken table. Who it was, I can’t recall. I’ve obviously got hippocampus damage from the kidnappers’ mystery drug.”

  “The only people who went to Dog’s room were me and the Rat. And I don’t remember talking to you,” the Horse interjects, wide-eyed.

  “No one talked about the Dog’s death during breakfast,” says the Ox , folding his arms.

  There’s a rustling. From the Rabbit’s pce two seats from my right, an inquisitive face emerges from a bnket—no, it’s not a bnket, just her wide fluffy jacket once again. I would say she looks like a turtle, ensconced in a pinkish shell, but her face is smooth and youthful rather than that of a reptile’s wrinkly head.

  “Is the Dragon saying he heard a bump in the night really a reason to kill him…? And the Horse could have forgotten that she said something to him… she’s not very reliable…” the Rabbit murmurs sleepily.

  “But there’s more. Dragon, when Rat said he was seer, you didn’t speak up to counter him. Did you hesitate because you knew, as a wolf, that the Rat’s report was fake?” I call.

  “Nonsense,” the Dragon says. “I’ve never pyed a game that encourages people to bully and lie, so I was simply confused”

  “And!” I shout over him, as all my tent thoughts tumble out. “And we both say that we’re seer! Why would you want someone who should be a wolf from your point of view to keep living on?”

  “Can it just be that I don’t want to be a killer, Snake? That I want as many people as possible to survive?”

  “Sure, by putting our survival in the Tiger’s cws…”

  “She’ll take responsibility.”

  “She’ll take responsibility, and lose!” I wildly sweep my arms.

  Despite my shouting, the Dragon remains expressionless, a monolith of pure self-belief. A faraway spectator wouldn’t think he was in an argument; rather, they’d see his curled bck brow and think that the young man was suffering from a very slight migraine.

  His discipline goes a long way to expining how everyone still looks at him with their eyes filled with faith. All pyers from the panicky Pig, to the displeased Ox at the other end, act as though they expect him any moment to win this debate with another twist of speech.

  “Calm down, Snake. And lower your voice,” he cautions.

  “But shouting isn’t against the rules… hm?” I stumble.

  When I reach for my pocket, his face twitches. It isn’t happiness, sadness, anger, or surprise that I’m seeing right now. It’s hard for me to recognize the slight tightness around his lips, but that emotion has to be fear.

  It’s as if to him, my pocket is a Pandora’s Box, but the only things there aside from lint and dust is a hand-sized hammer and my Card. Does he know about the hammer? Does he think I’m the kind of girl to bludgeon him to death with metal instead of words? This is a game of Mafia. And since it’s a “game,” of course I’d much rather “py” it than quit—what kind of person does he expect me to be?

  “I get it now,” I say softly. “The reason you want me to be alive even though you’re a wolf. Maybe you’re afraid that when I’m executed, I’ll show everyone this.”

  I pull out my Card, squishing its screen tight against my chest.

  “If everyone else learns that I’m the real seer, you’d die next, right? Is that why you want to save me? Cause you think I’d blow myself up?”

  “Just stop with the bluff and put it away. You wouldn’t be bold enough to try showing it to someone, anyway,” the Dragon sighs, and I nod fiercely in return.

  “That’s right… I’m a fighter, not someone who easily gives up. If you’re against voting for Dragon, please raise your hand!”

  “Against?”

  Horse, Dragon, Rabbit, Tiger, Ox, Rat, Pig, the seven are all present in a half-circle, by the side closest to the imposing set of double doors. Their faces seem more natural to me now, more real, as I try to scan them for hints of hesitation—all of these pyer seem to be under a great, invisible pressure.

  The Dragon holds his hand high. Then the Rabbit follows, and everyone else's hands are raised slowly as if they’ve pushing through an unseen ceiling. All except one’s.

  “I was just testing everyone’s reactions when I said to vote for the Snake. Actually, I’m also fine with voting for the Dragon too,” grins the Rat.

  One droplet, then another rolls down the Dragon’s face—not tears, but beads of sweat. The Horse also lowers her hand:

  “I trust the Dragon. But when I weigh the evidence, there’s none in favor of the Dragon and there’s three points for the Snake.”

  “Please wait!” the tall boy cps his hands. “I sincerely want as many people to survive as possible; I don’t know what to say to make everyone believe that. But if people want cold logic, there’s another reason I could want to live while still being seer.

  “Both the seer and a seer pretender are still alive. Normally, the wolves would try to murder the seer. But if the real seer is killed at night, then the town will vote for the ‘seer pretender’ during the day, therefore killing that wolf.

  “The wolves won’t murder me right now because when I die as the real seer, the vilge will then kill the Snake, who will have been ascertained to be a wolf pretending to be seer. When we execute her, the wolves will no longer have a reason to keep me alive, and if the Snake dies, so might I, and I want to live, so—”

  “I thought of that possibility. But it’s precisely because I believe you wish for everyone’s survival that I discarded it. You’re not a coward, Dragon,” I say.

  The evidence I’ve piled upon him, psychological, material, logical, and personal, finally shows its weight. The Dragon pulls on his red-and-white striped tie so hard that his pale face tinges blue, and stiff droplets waterfall forehead to chin; there are now far too many for him to dab away.

  I’ve won. I know I’ve won. Any outside observer would judge him GUILTY, capital punishment, capital G.

  But why does this atmosphere seem so strange? Are these twisted faces ones of people who’ve been convinced? Is everyone secretly eating lemons in the trial chamber? Don’t look at me like this!

  Horse has her eyes closed. Ox has his head practically vised between his forearms. Rabbit’s jacket-bnket hides her pink-tinted hair and her eyes like a shroud.

  “Why should we listen to your ramblings? They’re putting me to sleep…” She yawns. The others speak with their anxious gazes loud and clear.

  When I py Mafia, they’re normally games that st about a half-hour each. But this so-called ‘game’ sts for days, and between each trial people eat, socialize, and wander the halls.

  I spent all my time with Lily, and I don’t regret that choice, but the Dragon must have used that segue to build bonds with other pyers. Other pyers who will now protect him—there’s no greater tool for deception than the power of friendship, after all.

  “Listen! The Dragon’s our friend, right? So you must know that he’s acting strange,” I plead.

  “We had a good pn today… and you blew it up for no reason,” the Rabbit drones back.

  “That’s true! I was gonna be in charge!” the Tiger smiles.

  “And that’s what’s still going to happen,” the Dragon completes. He abandons his voting panel and steps away from the circle, a loud cp as his shoe hits the floor.

  “Time is running out. If you wish to let the Tiger vote in your pce, stand aside. Otherwise, please vote for the person you wish to murder.”

  The Ox quietly backs into the wall. The Rabbit moans (I’’m very comfortable here… can’t Tiger just slide her hands around me?) and the Dragon hauls her away. The luscious girl leans against the wall, gring, before once again closing her eyes.

  The Rat and the Pig remain at their stations, the former smugly collected and the tter seemingly losing her mind. For the Tiger to take control, at least four of us seven must consent, and just one girl seems on the fence—the fretful, frantic Horse.

  “Everything you said makes sense! Everything you said I understand, but…” Horse says, fidgeting with her brown ponytail. She trails off, looking at smear where the Goat’s corpse once was.

  “One. The Goat colpsed, for reasons we still don’t know. Two, we all voted for the Monkey, but he died when showed his Card. So, I don’t think we really killed him. Three, the Rooster, and four, the Dog, were both killed by the wolves.

  “Knowing that those bodies, those ooze stains, were once my friends makes me sick. Already, the only thing that keeps me together is treating them like numbers!” The Horse clutches her heart. “If I were to vote someone, that’d be the same as murder right? It’d be a wish for them to die.”

  “We’re forced to kill people to win,” Rat mutters, annoyed. “If you don’t, vote it’s as though you’ve witnessed a murder and did nothing to stop it.”

  “But if I have to choose between hurting someone by doing nothing, or hurting someone by doing something, I’d choose to do nothing.”

  She closes her eyes and steps slowly back, and the Tiger’s smiles wide.

  “I, on the other hand, don’t mind taking blood to survive. I am HUMBLED and HONORED that five of you chose me to ‘hold the knife.’”

  Fwip.

  The Tiger stalks the room’s outer rim, suddenly drawing a bde from her skirt’s waistband. She’s like a ceremonial priestess readying a human sacrifice… or a fifteen-year old girl trying her hardest to look cool. Still, the fact she’s drawn a weapon makes the blood rush to my head, and I squeeze the hammer in my pocket quite tight.

  “Oh, and one of the other knives in the kitchen is missing, too. So, I’m not a bad person—y’all are the reason I had to take this in the first pce,” Tiger smirks.

  WARN-NYAN TIME EXPIRING OUT. LOCK IN YOUR VOTES.

  WARN-NYAN. TIME EXPIRING. LOCK IN YOUR VOTES.

  WARN—

  SMACK. A crack swallows up the Cat God and zags across the rger screen as she pounds it with the bde’s handle. “Stop nagging, I get it, I get it. I know who to stab.”

  The Tiger hesitates, and finally, she sighs. She walks over to what should have been the Dragon’s seat and taps a vote on his behalf with the knife’s tip; the Dragon nods his head from where he leans against the wall.

  Beep.

  The Horse, Ox, and Rabbit also witness what the Tiger’s tapping from where they’re leaning on the columns and walls. The Horse looks up at the skylight, but even if she pretends not to understand what’s happening, she can’t escape the electronic sounds.

  “That panel…” Pig mutters.

  Beep. Beep.

  “That’s mine, right? The middle right, right?” She calls.

  “No, I could be voting for anyone.”

  The voting screen’s blue light casts Tiger’s face in an icy pallor.

  Beep.

  “Please! Don’t do this!”

  The Pig rushes over to the final panel under the knife-wielding delinquent's control, the Tiger’s own. Arms spread, eyes wet, she stops the other girl.

  “The rules say you can’t stop someone from voting, y’ know…” Tiger mutters.

  The Pig shakes her head, and holds her Magical Girl Mikarin keychain as if it were a lucky ward. The Tiger steps to the left, and the Pig steps left. The Tiger steps to the right, and the Pig steps right. The Tiger looks down at her bde.

  It gleams, and reflects back her tired eyes, her cracked drawn-down lips, and a face hardened from years of freezing it into a tough, impenetrable gre.

  “Guess I’m more of a thief than a killer…”

  Tiger tosses it away, bde protruding against the far wall. Then she simply circles past the Pig to the other side and taps on the upside down screen. Though the monitor that usually dispyed results is broken, we can still hear the intercom’s emotionless drone.

  Votes processing… done!

  “No, no, no…”

  Receiving 0 votes…

  Horse

  Rat

  Ox

  Rabbit

  “I didn’t ask for this! I just wanted to be left alone!”

  Receiving 3 votes from the Pig, Rat, and Snake…

  Dragon

  “I didn’t do anything… I didn’t do anything, but people still picked on me…”

  Receiving 4 votes from Dragon, Horse, Ox, and Tiger…

  Pig

  “I’m not just a Pig! I have a name!” She finishes her cry, spitting all over the Tiger and the monitor to her front. Her colr flickers with an ominous yellow light, changed from its customary red.

  “Yeah, your name’s not Pig. It’s dead meat,” Tiger says, grabbing the Pig’s blouse.

  Though she has a smaller frame, the Tiger still manages to lift the other girl on her tip-toes.

  “I’m tired of people who whine and compin. This is the kind of world we live in, a world where the strong eat the weak. Shoulda killed me at night if you wanted to live—don’t give me that pleading look!

  But the Pig hadn’t even looked at her, though Tiger’s face flushes as if this submissive aversion were still a dreadful insult. She drops the Pig onto the floor and suddenly strikes: cwing at her clothing, tearing her sleeves. “Where is it… I know it’s here… I’m not gonna wait….”

  “That hurts! Stop! Stop it—!”

  “Aha! I found where it was!”

  The Tiger produces something rectangur, electronic, familiar, and thin. Everyone is frozen, watching a natural disaster that’s just about to strike.

  “Tiger…! Give back that Card!”

  Dragon opens the Rooster’s old notebook and desperately flips its pages. He finds the writing he’s looking for and shows her the fold, as if a nicely-organized document like that would somehow serve to convince her.

  But the short blonde girl just gives a sadistic smirk. “Look, everyone! A rival to Herlock Sholmes, or Gagatha Christie, the incredible genius girl detective cracked the case. I caught us a bona fide wolf!”

  She shows everyone a glowing, cross-shaped symbol on the device, before showing it to herself. The Tiger’s face drains of color, while a pink tinge returns to the Pig’s cheeks, as her colr’s light pulses faster and faster. The Pig’s face, which had been twisted in horror and pain, settles into an almost morbid calm.

  “Y-you broke the rules,” she says, as the five of us slowly back away.

  Then she explodes: she being the Pig. Blood soaks the Tiger from head to toe to her fingertips, that are left clutching rags and soaked cloth-scraps. She then falls, not from the blow, but from her own shock.

  “The full rule as written is that they’d kill “pyers whose roles are shown.”’ I was wondering about that, actually,” Rat says. “Turns out if you force someone else to show their Card, they die and not you.”

  “I knew that. I knew that, but I didn’t think she’d be the healer! I-I-I…” The Tiger licks her blood-covered lips, then spits, and gags. “It was you! It was you guys! You guys let me make this mistake! You five!”

  “You can’t bme us! We trusted you!” The Ox bellows, and Horse stares with vacant eyes. I mutter quick prayer for the Pig, before swiftly following up with my own reasoning:

  “The Tiger’s right. The fault doesn’t lie with her—don’t look away over there; of course, I’m talking about you.”

  The boy in question is practically choking himself with his tie, surrounded by a grim aura.

  “The Tiger’s obviously unstable, and you knew since the end of day one that she had a grudge against the Pig. If she had things her way, she’d vote for that girl regardless of evidence… killing one of the vilgers instead of whoever your wolf-friends are.

  “So, in order to waste an execution, you created a situation where we’d follow whatever the Tiger said,” I accuse, gring into eyes of deep blue-green.

  “So you pretended you were seer and said the Tiger was a vilger. Then, you suggested I check the Tiger while you check the Dog, potentially proving the innocence of two people.

  “After that, you killed the Dog during the night, leaving the Tiger to be the only vilger confirmed innocent by us both, and used that fact to suggest we leave our votes in her hands—while knowing her grudge against the Pig would prevail above all else. The results of these past few days was all part of your grand pn.”

  “This trial’s been hard on us all. Don’t make it harder for us with your strange delusions,” the Dragon chokes out.

  “She’s crazy isn’t she?”

  Is that a hint of pride in the Rat’s voice? Or is that another one of my own “delusions?”

  But to be honest, I’m hardly crazy. No, no, no… I’m just logical in a world where everyone else is insane, surrounded by people who believe in things like “vibes” and “gut-feelings.” The only bit of madness I’ve maintained within me is a lingering hope that Lily is somehow still alive.

  I watch the Dragon as he leaves the room. His footsteps are heavy, but he gnces back and meets my eyes; and in them I catch a cold resolve.