Heart of a survivor × Chishiya Shuntaro

Chapter Nine

The last two days had flown by for Takara, it barely felt like she'd had enough time to recover from her last game. Sure the games hadn't been too physically exhausting, but mentally? They had been really stressing her out.

Her main priority had been to take care of her arm, keeping it clean, and making it strong enough again to be ready for the next game. Her last two games had been using her brain, she had a feeling the next one would be a lot different. She wanted to survive, and having a weak spot on her arm wouldn't help those odds.

The wound had stopped oozing blood and had slowly started to close up and  some of the smaller cuts surrounding the larger one had started to scab over, yet she still covered it all with a bandage. An infection now would be a big problem.

On her last supply run the day before her next game, she had picked up a map of Tokyo. She had the idea that if she tried to locate a place where a game could be held, she had a better chance of predicting the genre of the game. The possibility of guessing was slim, but still, she wouldn't be going in completely blind.

The map she picked up had mostly tourist attractions highlighted that were dotted around the city. Clearing off her table in her apartment, she laid out the map in front of her, pencil in hand.

She didn't want to be travelling too far, she would be walking to the game and didn't want to exhaust herself before she had even got there. She also didn't want to be walking back in the pitch black afterwards.

After examining the map for a good ten minutes, she had circled three options that had a possibility of being a game arena. The list consisted of; a museum, a shopping centre, and a fairground. They were all within a reasonable distance, and by the size of the buildings, she guessed they would be more of a physical game.

"Museums are all history, that could make it a brainy one" Takara muttered to herself.

"It was never my strong suit in school either" Coming to a conclusion, she crossed out the museum.

Looking between her last two options, she twiddled with the pencil in her hand trying to come up with a decision.

"It has been a while since I've been to a fair, could be fun" She mused to herself, a child-like smile creeping into her face. She'd always been a big kid at heart.

Opting out of heading to the shopping centre, a large cross now running across the location on the map. She had made her decision.

It was starting to get late in the afternoon which meant Takara felt the need to start making preparations for tonight. She first did one last change of her bandages, securing them tightly onto her arm and tucking in any loose ends so they wouldn't get caught or snagged on anything while she was playing.

She started on braiding her hair into two french braids, she braided them down from the top of her head round to her front so that they finished just below her collarbone. She opted for this hairstyle as similarly to the bandage, it would minimize the chances of her hair getting in her way.

After finishing her hair she started to get dressed, she went with an all black look consisting of some cargos, a long sleeved top and some trainers. She chose not to bring anything to go over her top thinking that it would probably weigh her down too much.

Now ready, she headed for her door and out of the apartment building, her map from earlier still in her hands.

With the help of her map, it didn't take her long to find the fairground. There were already a few people standing at the gates ready to play, Takara counted five others, now six including her.

She walked up the stairs to the gates and made her way to what used to be the ticket office for the fair. Seeing all the phones laid out on the office counter, she picked up the one nearest to her. The screen lit up as soon as she held it to her face, the recognition process starting up to identify her.