Chapter Text
You liked to think of your little life as a large sum of “before” and “after”s. Namely, before you died and got transported into your favorite manga, and after you died and got transported into your favorite manga. There was such a contrast between your life before and after that the lines seldom blurred. You see, upon waking up in what you’ve deemed your own fucked-up afterlife, it was quickly learned that everything—no matter how unrealistic—very much felt real.
The cold tip of a blade’s edge against the soft skin of your neck had you swallowing with unease. Your head was pounding—whether it was due to lack of sleep, dehydration or the fact that your body had been under an extreme case of psychosis for the past few days—you were unsure. It was most likely a gamble of all-of-the-above.
“Don’t struggle, and you’ll be fine.” The voice speaking to you is using fluent Japanese, and you can’t even begin to dive into how you understood what he said, because that promised an even worse migraine.
You nearly scoff, but reign it in. You had made a promise to yourself to stay as far away from any place scripted in the show as possible, no matter how badly you ached to get the confirmation that this world belonged to your beloved characters. See, here’s the thing—let’s say all of this is real and you’ve somehow been brought to the Borderlands in the afterlife. There’s no telling for sure that this is the same time frame that took place in the manga and TV series—it could be your brain’s messed-up way of creating something to latch onto in a final attempt to cope with the prospect of non-existence. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you’re in Alice in Borderland—just that you have a very specific hyperfixation on a certain made-up reality that you adapted as your own. Right?
So, despite formerly being very much American in the depths of a small town with no prior knowledge of Japanese urban design and geography—there has to be some sort of explanation other than that to describe how you’re currently neck-deep in a scarily-realistic looking Shibuya with an even more realistic blade pressing into your jugular. There just has to be.
“Uh, look, dude—“ you start, in English, because although you can understand Japanese—somehow—you are too fearful to try to speak it yourself. “I’m not trying to cause any trouble, I just wanted to find some food.”
The male chuckles, a low and scary sound, and doesn’t budge from his position behind you. It’s a consistent process of reminding yourself that although this isn’t your true reality, you can very well feel pain.
“Shit—did you even understand that?”
“I can understand you,” the man says in unsteady English. “Come with me.”
“I really don’t want to do that,” you stiffen, eyes darting around the convenience store for any sudden exit. There was only one entrance and one exit—the set of glass doors that you had come through—and you already checked the door to the back room which was locked. Unfortunately for you, your only weapon was a puny pocket knife and you weren’t under the impression that you could take on this man twice your size. (Look, it wasn’t easy to find weapons in a foreign country like Japan. The best you could find was a damn knife—it was no America. Finding a gun in America would have been as easy as breathing. Not so much here.)
“You’ve no choice, gaijin,” the man chuckles, shoving you towards the door. The sudden brute force makes you gasp in pain. Your body wasn’t exactly in-shape; before this mess of a reality your brain cooked up—in the before—you were just an ordinary retail worker at a clothing shop, working part-time whilst attending college. You lived at home with your parents and barely got by with enough money to eat—building muscle and hitting the gym were pretty far down on your to-do list, but you were sorely regretting it now. You grunted and let the dense man behind you push you out the glass doors, the knife occasionally digging slightly too deep into your neck for comfort. You were hesitant to do much more than swallow, much less try to reason with this creep.
“I’ve got us a foreigner!” He calls out in Japanese to the woman leaning against the car parked outside the shop. How you managed to pick the one empty shop in town that attracts kidnappers, you’ll never be certain. The man guiding—well, shoving—you sounds entirely too entertained at the prospect.
The woman leaning against the passenger door lets out a slightly maniacal laugh. “No way, seriously?”
They’re both still speaking Japanese, and they have no idea you can understand them. It’s a jolting realization that this may entirely be your only line of defense. You may not be strong enough to defend yourself physically, but the longer you can play dumb enough for them to deem you unnecessary weight, the better. It’s an easy decision to pretend to not understand a lick of what comes out of their mouths, intentionally widening your eyes and glancing around fearfully. The weaker you appear, the better, in this case.
“Get in the car,” the man says in English, finally releasing his hold on you. You breathe deeply, silently thanking the Universe for a full breath of air without the pinch of a blade pressing down on your throat. Without hesitation you climb into the backseat of the rumbling vehicle, not even complaining about the extreme lack of leg-room in the backseat. The woman slides into the passenger seat with a little laugh, slamming the door behind herself and causing your skin to crawl. Whoever these two are—they’re bad news. Both armed and having entirely too much fun in a world of death games.
The back of your brain nags you—of course you’ve already concluded where they’d come from if—and this is a ginormous if—you had actually been transported into the Alice in Borderland TV series. Obviously these two, armed with a working car, would be from the Beach resort. It would be pretty easy to just ask them if that’s where they’re taking you, but then that might confirm the elephant in the room you’ve been narrowly avoiding. It also might make them suspicious that you know far too much for some random foreigner, so you keep your lips sealed. Maybe it’s best to just let things play out organically, you reason.
Look, if the shoe fits, wear it. There’s a small part of you that’s too much a coward to come face-to-face with the people you’ve been ogling on a screen for a few years.
Also—if you let yourself get your hopes up, that there might be a hysterically joyous upside to dying—then you might be horribly let down when they aren’t there. For just a second, your heart backflips in your chest at the prospect of seeing them all, a nauseating rush of endorphins filling you up with a bunch of dangerous ideas. You try to shove it all down, shove down that annoying sensation of pure rapture at the thought of everything that could transpire had you been suddenly placed in front of your favorite characters—but you can’t. A nervous bubble of laughter leaves your lips, but you quickly choke it down with a cough, hoping the man who nearly killed you and his girlfriend—clearly, they were eye-fucking while he drove—didn’t hear.
They must be too doped up on their own endorphins, because neither of them pay you any mind. Your hand grips the leather of the backseat, nearly tearing into the creaking fabric as you allow your mind to run wild with ideas. If you didn’t, you might explode.
Finally, unable to contain yourself, you muster a fragile voice and say, in English, “Where are we going?”
You can’t help but notice they never tied you up or blindfolded you—they must deem you unthreatening because of being American. The realization nearly makes you smirk but you press the sleeve of your ink black jacket over your mouth and pray they can’t read how desperate you are to hide your excitement. Point blank period, you should not be this thrilled at being kidnapped, and you’re trying your damned hardest to remain cool and nonchalant—no, fearful and weak—fuck you can’t focus. How can anyone expect you to act any specific way after you’ve died and been teleported into a damn alternate reality?
“In English, how do you say…”
The woman leans back in her seat, tossing you a lazy, pink-lipped smirk. “Beach.”