Chapter 9: The Reckoning
The morning after Haruto's gruesome death, the Grandview Hotel felt less like a grand old building and more like a tomb.
The sweet, decaying floral scent was a constant, sickening presence, a reminder of the horrors that had unfolded.
Haruto's body, now respectfully covered and moved to the basement, still cast a long shadow over their terrified group.
Their phones, collected and tied securely in a plastic bag, lay in the center of the lobby, a fragile shield against the unseen enemy.
"We have to keep searching," Kaito stated, his voice grim but resolute. "There has to be something in this hotel, some clue, some record of what happened here before. Why this game exists, why it's trapping us."
Akari nodded, her eyes sharp with a desperate intelligence. "The library. Old journals, anything about the Grimshaw Estate. There we might find something."
They spent the day meticulously combing through the hotel once more.
They revisited the library, pulling every dusty book from its shelf, sifting through ancient newspapers and forgotten pamphlets.
They explored the vast, unused ballroom, the dim, echoing dining hall, even the staff quarters, hoping to unearth a hidden passage, a forgotten message, anything that could explain their nightmare.
The sweet floral scent seemed to follow them, intensifying in the darker, more secluded areas, as if the hotel itself was watching their desperate search.
But they found nothing new.
No other hidden landline phones, no hidden exits from the property, no secret tunnels beneath the glowing white line.
The hotel remained a sealed, silent prison, its secrets locked away.
The outside world, beyond the unbroken circle, remained tantalizingly close yet utterly unreachable.
As evening descended, casting long, eerie shadows through the hotel's vast windows, a new wave of dread began to settle over the students.
Midnight was approaching again.
They gathered in the lobby, a smaller, more fractured group now, the memory of Haruto's death, and Ren's confession, still raw between them.
Ren himself sat apart, his face pale and withdrawn, avoiding eye contact.
They sat in a tense, terrified circle around the plastic bag of phones.
The grandfather clock at the end of the hallway seemed to tick louder than ever, each tick-tock a hammer blow against their strained nerves, counting down to the hour.
Tick. Tock.
The silence was deafening.
Every student held their breath.
Tick. Tock.
The minute hand on the grandfather clock slowly, agonizingly, crept towards the twelve.
Tick.
BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG.
Twelve strikes. Midnight.
They waited. And waited.
Nothing happened.
The plastic bag of phones remained still.
No new notifications buzzed.
The grandfather clock continued its steady tick-tock.
The sweet floral scent seemed to lessen, just a fraction, as if the unseen presence was holding its breath.
Five minutes crawled by.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
A collective, shaky sigh of relief swept through the group.
They had done it.
They had refused to play, and nothing had happened.
Maybe they were safe.
Maybe the game couldn't force them after all.
A few nervous smiles broke out.
Sakura even let out a small, weak chuckle, a sound of desperate hope.
"See? Told you! It's just a dumb app. It can't do anything if we don't play along. We just have to stick together."
Thirty minutes passed.
The tension in the lobby began to dissipate, replaced by a fragile, almost hysterical relief.
They started to talk, low and shaky at first, then growing louder, a desperate attempt to reclaim some semblance of normalcy.
They spoke of plans, of what they'd do when they got out, of how they'd explain this impossible nightmare.
But just as a fragile sense of hope began to bloom, at precisely 12:45 AM, the sweet, decaying floral scent suddenly intensified, pressing in on them, thick and suffocating.
The whispers returned, not faint this time, but a low, guttural hum that vibrated through the very floorboards.
Then, one by one, five students slowly, deliberately, began to stand up.
First, Mika, the timid girl who had worried about random selection.
Then Haruna, her face pale.
Next, Hiroki, followed by Taro and Jiro, the two boys who had tried to save Haruto.
They stood motionless, their backs ramrod straight, their heads tilted slightly to one side.
Their eyes were wide, unblinking, and completely black, like deep, empty holes that showed no light.
They stared straight ahead, seeing nothing, recognizing no one.
"Mika? Haruna? What are you doing?" Sakura whispered, her voice laced with a fresh wave of terror. "Hiroki? Taro? Jiro? Are you okay?!"
Kaito, his heart hammering, called out their names, desperate for a response.
"Hey! Can you hear me?! Snap out of it!"
But they didn't respond.
They didn't even flinch.
Their movements were stiff, unnatural, almost like puppets on strings.
The sweet floral scent was overpowering now, and the whispers were a frantic, desperate chorus, screaming their names, accusing them, condemning them.
Then, the horror began.
Mika, her blank eyes fixed on the grand staircase, slowly shuffled towards it.
She reached the bottom step, and with a sickening crunch, began to systematically, methodically, smash her fingers, one by one, against the hard, wooden banister.
Her face showed no pain, only that terrifying emptiness, as the bones in her fingers splintered and broke with each impact, blood blooming dark against the polished wood.
Haruna, meanwhile, stumbled towards one of the large, ornate mirrors in the lobby.
With a low, guttural moan, she began to claw at her own face, her nails tearing strips of flesh from her cheeks and forehead.
Blood welled up, mixing with tears that never fell, as she continued to rake her own skin, her reflection staring back with blank, black eyes.
Hiroki moved towards the heavy velvet curtains.
He pulled them back, revealing the large, unbroken window behind.
With terrifying, silent determination, he began to slam his head against the thick glass, a dull, sickening thud echoing with each impact.
The glass spiderwebbed, then slowly began to crack, but he didn't stop, his forehead a pulpy mess.
Taro, his body rigid, walked to the grandfather clock.
He reached out, and with a horrifying, deliberate motion, began to pull the large, sharp hands of the clock backward, against their mechanism.
The gears shrieked, metal grinding against metal, and then, with a wet rip, Taro's fingers, caught in the mechanism, were slowly, agonizingly, torn from his hand, one by one, as he continued to pull the hands backward, his face utterly blank.
And Jiro, the last, stumbled towards the center of the lobby, near the plastic bag of phones.
He dropped to his knees, and with a horrifying, wet gurgle, began to tear at his own throat with his bare hands, his fingers digging into his windpipe, slowly suffocating himself, his eyes bulging, but still empty.
A collective scream of pure, unadulterated horror erupted from the remaining students.
This was worse than anything they had seen before.
Five of their classmates, simultaneously, grotesquely, driven to self-destruction by an unseen force.
Just then, every phone in the plastic bag began to ring simultaneously, a deafening, chaotic symphony of shrill, insistent rings.
The bag itself seemed to vibrate, and through the clear plastic, they could see the screens glowing with the same stark, white text:
NAME THE PERSON YOU DISLIKE THE MOST. YOU MUST PLAY.
The ringing was relentless, piercing, demanding.
The screams and sickening sounds of their friends' self-torment filled the air, mixing with the insistent ringing and the overwhelming sweet floral scent.
"The phones!" Akari shrieked, her eyes wide with a desperate, new understanding. "It's not waiting! It's forcing us! It's going to kill us all if we don't play!"
Without a second thought, the remaining students, driven by a primal, desperate fear, lunged at the plastic bag.
They tore at it, ripping the plastic, scrambling to grab their phones.
The ringing was deafening, the screens flashing the terrifying prompt.
With trembling fingers, their faces contorted with horror and a desperate need for self-preservation, they began to type.
They typed names, any names, quickly, frantically, desperate to appease the unseen entity, to save themselves from the gruesome fate unfolding before their eyes.
Each tap of a screen was a desperate prayer, a silent sacrifice.
They hit 'submit' over and over, their fingers flying across the virtual keyboards.
The ringing continued for a few more agonizing seconds, then, as the last name was submitted, it abruptly ceased.
All the phone screens went black.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by their ragged breathing and the horrifying, wet sounds of their friends' ongoing torment.
They stood frozen, their phones clutched in their hands, their eyes fixed on the black screens.
Then, one by one, the screens flickered back to life.
And a single, stark name appeared in bold, white letters, chillingly clear on every device:
REN.
A collective gasp went through the group.
Ren, who had caused Haruto's death, was now chosen.
The horror was complete.
The game had found its next victim.
And it had found a way to play, even if they had tried to refuse.
The reckoning had truly begun.