Zhou's words stayed in my head. Not loud anymore. Just heavy.
(BTW, now we know who actually won the game. We saw the names in the screen. Zhou Jun lost and Zhou Kai won. So, he was Zhou Kai. But that is not important now...)
I knew it wasn't my fault. I knew Omar tried to help.
But knowing something and feeling it are not the same.
Part of me wanted to say sorry again. Another part of me felt angry. Not at Zhou… at the game.
This place turns good choices into bad endings. It makes helping feel like hurting.
I didn't push the skateboard to hurt him. I pushed it so Omar could live.
If that makes me a bad person here…Then maybe this world doesn't care about good or bad.
It only cares about who survives.
It was just me and Omar again. Zhou had left. We didn't stop him. For obvious reasons. He was hurt.
But so were we.
We never meant to kill anyone. The thought stayed with me. I felt bad—not only for Zhou, but also for Melissa. She had no one on her side in the game.
These games are changing us. They are teaching us to be selfish.
What scares me most is this: What if one day they force me and Omar to be apart?
He is not just an NPC anymore. He is my friend. He is my brother.
And in this place… that makes him the one person I can't afford to lose.
We were back at the stall. The small home we had built for ourselves.
The sky had returned, but the heat had too. The sun was high again, burning down on everything. The gas station was gone—just like the stadium before. It was as if it had never existed.
We went inside to rest. Our bodies were tired. Our minds even more.
That's when Omar started talking.
"What are they doing to us?" he asked quietly. "Who are they?" "Why are the games so violent?" "Do we even deserve this?" "How did we get here in the first place?"
He kept asking, one question after another.
I walked to the corner and grabbed the snacks, and soda bottles we had saved from the first day. I brought them back and put them between us.
I didn't answer him.
Not because I didn't care. But because I didn't know.
The more we thought about it, the heavier it felt. The questions had no answers. Only more questions.
I handed him a packet of chips and sat down beside him.
We didn't talk.
We just looked outside at the bright, empty world.
We were waiting for the next game.
"When do you think it will start?" I asked.
Omar shrugged. "The games seem to take a day. Maybe tomorrow."
"Maybe," I said. "The plane is gone too. We really don't know."
"For now, we should rest," I added.
Omar was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at me.
"We shouldn't stay here," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"If we stay in one place, we learn nothing," he continued. "We need to find out what this world is. How it works."
I sat up. "Go where?"
"Anywhere," Omar said. "This isn't our world. The only way to understand it is to move. Explore. Check everything."
I stared at him. I was shocked at first.
Then I slowly nodded.
He was right.
"So," Omar said, standing up, "get up. Let's go."
And for the first time, we weren't waiting for the game.
We were going to look for answers.
We didn't waste time.
Omar opened the small boxes we had collected. I checked the corners of the stall. We packed only what we could carry.
Snacks. Soda bottles. A few energy bars. I stuffed them into a small bag.
Omar took the tools. He checked each one like they actually mattered here.
I picked up the baseball bat. It felt familiar now. Heavy, but safe in my hands.
"You sure about this?" I asked.
"No," Omar said. "But staying is worse."
I nodded.
We zipped the bags. Slung them over our shoulders.
For the first time, we weren't preparing for a game.
We were preparing for the world outside.
And whatever was waiting for us in it.