Rikuto was packed and ready to leave.Every item he needed was crammed into a battered suitcase now resting against his shin, and he paced by the door of his small apartment, checking his phone for the car's location.
Something wasn't right.
The map showed the car pinned in one spot, not moving at all.
Frowning, Rikuto tapped the screen harder, half hoping it was just a glitch — but the little blinking dot remained stubbornly still.Muttering under his breath, he canceled the ride and tried calling the driver.
No response.
Just the empty, endless ring.
Frustrated, he shoved his phone into his pocket, grabbed his suitcase, and started toward the stairs.
When he reached the ground floor, he slowed.
His neighbors — a motley group of tired faces he barely knew — were gathered there. Some sat on the cracked lobby chairs, others stood huddled near the walls, whispering with tight voices. Liora was among them, wearing a simple, casual outfit — a loose white T-shirt tucked into high-waisted faded jeans. Her dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, strands falling against her cheeks. She wasn't smiling.
At the exit, a strange sight froze Rikuto in place.
Thin red lines, like strips of light, stretched from one wall to the other, slicing across the exit as if sewing the pathway shut. The glow from the lines flickered, humming softly — an invisible warning.
Rikuto blinked, unsure if he was hallucinating.What the hell is going on?
He set his suitcase down with a dull thud. The noise turned every head toward him.
"Seems like even he wants to leave," a middle-aged woman muttered from near the wall. Rikuto didn't know her name, but now he recognized her as another resident of this crumbling apartment block — a place he hated more with every passing second.
Ignoring the stares, Rikuto began moving toward the exit.
"Wait!"
Liora's voice cut through the tense air. She jogged up to him, blocking his path.
"It's dangerous," she said, panting slightly. She added, voice softer now, "None of us can contact anyone outside. Every phone, every call… it's dead. And then this thing appeared."
She motioned toward the strange red barrier.
Rikuto stared at it, frowning. It looked fragile — thin and flimsy like ribbons — but something deep in his gut warned him otherwise.
Before he could say anything, a voice burst from the crowd.
"Enough!"
A man stormed forward — Mareth Vaine, Rikuto recognized him vaguely — the same angry driver from that chaotic car incident days ago.
"You're all afraid of a child's toy?" Mareth barked, waving his hand mockingly at the glowing strips.
Without hesitation, he swung his arm through one of the red lines.
There was a sickening shnick sound.
Mareth screamed — a raw, animal sound of pain — as his hand was severed cleanly at the wrist. Blood gushed in jets, spraying the cracked lobby tiles.
"MY HAND! MY HAND! AHHHH, FUCK!"
The crowd recoiled, stumbling backward in horror. Someone shrieked. Another person dropped to their knees, vomiting.
Rikuto's stomach churned, but he couldn't look away.
The red strips continued to hum — silent, indifferent to the violence they had caused.
And then —
A sharp, mechanical alarm blared overhead, making everyone flinch. The noise was metallic, like a siren twisted into something unnatural.
A voice, cold and inhuman, crackled through unseen speakers:
"All eleven players, make a square!"
Rikuto and Liora froze, exchanging quick, alarmed glances.
"Players?""Square?"
The residents' faces turned ghostly pale as realization dawned. This was no random accident. This was something planned.
Something deliberate.
Without knowing why, Rikuto instinctively stepped closer to Liora, both of them standing together amid the growing terror
Suddenly —
Without warning —
A new grid of deadly red beams materialized around them.The beams stretched horizontally and vertically, suspended just a few inches off the ground and a few feet apart — forming a perfect, glowing square across the entire ground floor.
The humming noise grew louder, like thousands of electric wires crackling in a storm.
Panic exploded.
Mareth, still clutching his bleeding stump, staggered toward the beams, desperate, wild-eyed. Blood splattered in his trail.
"No, no, no — I can't stay here —" he gasped.
He lunged through the barrier.
The instant his body touched a red line — it happened.
A sharp, slicing sound, almost too fast to hear.In one breath, Mareth's body was severed cleanly into two pieces — the top half sliding grotesquely off the bottom half and thudding onto the floor.
Someone screamed — a high, tearing sound.
One of the women bolted in blind terror toward the opposite wall —
"NO! I NEED TO GET OUT!" she shrieked —
— and within seconds, her legs crumpled under her. Her body collapsed in halves, a thin red mist filling the air where she had tried to run.
The rest froze where they stood, paralyzed by terror. No one dared move. No one dared even breathe wrong.
The smell of burnt flesh and blood filled the air, thick and metallic.
The mechanical voice returned —cold, emotionless, final:
"Leave this floor before you all die.The name of this game is: Strings of Death."
Whimpers and low sobs filled the lobby.
"What the hell is this?!" someone choked out.
"This isn't real—this isn't real!" another man muttered under his breath, hands clenching his hair.
A girl with trembling hands sobbed loudly, clutching herself. "I wanna go home! I didn't sign up for this!"
"My phone — why isn't anyone coming?!"
"Someone—help—!"
A younger boy whispered to no one, "We're trapped... we're trapped like rats..." his voice fading into despair.
The fear in the room was suffocating, thick enough to choke on.
Rikuto's eyes stayed locked on the red beams — glowing, pulsing lightly — surrounding them in an exact square.Like a cage.
He could see now: he, Liora, and three others were standing within the square, huddled near the center. Around them, other survivors stood paralyzed in the narrow spaces between the beams, too terrified to even breathe deeply, their bodies rigid with fear.
If even a fingertip crossed the lines, it would be over.
Rikuto tightened his fists, feeling the weight of the situation press down like a vise.
There was no time.There was no safety.Only survival.
And the strings of death were waiting.