Chapter 7: The Accusation
The horrifying silence that followed Haruto's death was broken only by the ragged gasps and choked sobs of the remaining students.
Haruto lay motionless on the polished lobby floor, bloody mess.
The sweet, decaying floral scent was now overwhelmingly mixed with the metallic tang of fresh blood, making their stomachs churn.
The game had not chosen a name at random; it had chosen a victim.
And someone among them was responsible.
Their eyes, wide with unspeakable terror, darted from Haruto's still form to their phones, where the notification "HARUTO" still glowed.
The realization hit them with sickening force: if Haruto's name had appeared, it meant someone had played.
Someone had defied their pact.
"Who did it?" Sakura whispered, her voice raw with grief and a dawning fury.
Her eyes swept across the pale faces in the lobby, searching for a sign, a flicker of guilt.
"Who wrote a name?! We all agreed not to! We promised!"
A wave of frantic accusations and panicked denials erupted.
"It wasn't me!"
"I didn't touch my phone!"
"I swore I wouldn't! Why would I?!"
"Someone's lying!" Yui shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the group.
Her face was contorted with a mix of fear and desperate anger.
"Haruto is dead because one of you broke the rule! Stand up! Who did it?! Look at him! He's dead!"
No one moved.
The remaining students, about twenty-five of them, stood frozen, their fear now mixed with suspicion and a growing anger that threatened to boil over.
Each face was a mask of terror, but also a potential culprit, a silent accusation in every pair of eyes.
Kaito, his jaw tight, stepped forward.
"We're going to check. Everyone, put your phones on the ground, screen up. Now."
His voice was firm, leaving no room for argument.
The only way to find out was to see whose screen showed the 'Name Recorded' message, or whose app had been recently used.
A few students hesitated, their eyes darting nervously.
But the sheer weight of the moment, the undeniable horror of Haruto's bloody body, forced their compliance.
Phones were slowly, reluctantly, placed on the dusty carpet, their screens glowing with the ominous app notification.
Ren, however, remained standing, his phone still clutched tightly in his hand, his face a mask of defiant terror.
His eyes darted around, avoiding Kaito's gaze, avoiding everyone's gaze, like a cornered animal.
"Ren," Akari said, her voice dangerously quiet, cutting through the tense silence.
"Put your phone down. Now."
Ren's grip on his phone tightened, his knuckles white.
He shook his head, a single, desperate movement.
"No. I won't."
The silence that followed was deafening.
Every eye in the lobby snapped to Ren.
The realization, cold and undeniable, spread through the group like a poison.
It was him.
"You," Sakura breathed, her voice filled with a chilling disbelief that quickly morphed into raw fury.
"You wrote his name. You actually did it."
"You killed him!" Yui screamed, her face contorted with rage and grief, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"You're a murderer, Ren! You killed Haruto! How could you?!"
Accusations rained down on him, a torrent of angry, terrified voices.
"You promised! We all promised!"
"Why would you do that, Ren?!"
"You selfish idiot!"
Ren flinched under the onslaught, his shoulders hunching, as if trying to shrink into himself.
He finally looked up, his eyes wide and desperate, filled with a raw, desperate fear that mirrored their own, yet was entirely his own.
Tears welled in his eyes, tracking paths through the dust and sweat on his face.
"What was I supposed to do?!" Ren yelled back, his voice cracking, a desperate sob tearing from his throat.
He wasn't the cocky prankster anymore; he was a terrified boy, trembling uncontrollably.
"It said 'YOU MUST PLAY'! What if... what if no one played?! What if it just picked me?! Or one of you?!"
He gestured wildly at the group, his arm shaking.
"I thought... I thought if someone played, just one more person, it would be over! It would be satisfied!"
"I picked Haruto because... because he was quiet, he wouldn't be missed as much by anyone! I barely knew him!"
His voice broke into a desperate wail.
"I didn't want it to be me! I didn't want it to be any of you! I just wanted it to stop!"
His words hung in the air, a chilling echo of the selfishness that extreme fear could breed.
They stared at him, at the raw terror in his eyes, and a new, unsettling understanding began to dawn.
He hadn't meant to be cruel.
He had just been afraid.
Terribly, desperately afraid.
But his fear had cost Haruto his life.
"Afraid?!" Sakura shrieked, stepping forward, her voice rising to a furious crescendo.
"You were afraid?! So you decided to sacrifice someone else?! Someone who never hurt anyone?! You just decided his life was worth less than yours?!"
"You didn't even try to talk to us!" Yui interjected, her voice thick with tears and accusation.
"We made a pact! We said no one would play! You broke it! You betrayed us!"
"Do you know what you did, Ren?!" Daiki, who had been silent until now, his face pale with shock, finally spoke, his voice low and dangerous.
"You sent him to his death! You watched him die because you were scared!"
"I didn't know!" Ren wailed, collapsing to his knees, burying his face in his hands.
"I swear I didn't know it would do that! I thought... I thought it was just a game! A prank! I thought it would just stop! I thought I was saving us!"
"Saving us?!" Akari's voice was cold, devoid of emotion.
"By condemning an innocent person? What kind of 'saving' is that, Ren? You just proved the game right. You chose who to dislike the most. You played its twisted game for it!"
"So, what now?" Kaito asked, his voice low and strained, looking from Ren to the glowing phones on the floor.
"The game is still there. It's still demanding a name."
"What do you mean, 'what now'?!" Yui shrieked, her voice cracking with hysteria.
"We're going to die! One by one! Just like Hiroshi, and Daiki, and Emi, and Kenji, and now Haruto! This thing is going to kill us all!"
She buried her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
"We have to do something!" Sakura cried, her eyes wide and frantic.
"We can't just wait for it to pick someone else! What if it picks me next? Or you, Kaito?!"
"But what can we do?" Ren whimpered, his voice barely audible through his sobs.
"We can't leave! Our phones don't work! We're trapped!"
"There has to be a way!" Akari insisted, her mind racing, desperate for a solution.
"We need to understand it. Why is it doing this? What does it want?"
She looked from the phones to the old grandfather clock, then around the vast, silent lobby.
The sweet, decaying floral scent seemed to press in on them, a constant, sickening reminder.
"We can't let anyone else play," Akari stated, her voice firm, despite her trembling hands.
Her eyes scanned the group, then landed on the phones.
"We need to collect them. All of them. Put them somewhere safe, where no one can touch them."
"Good idea!" Sakura agreed, wiping tears from her eyes.
"We can put them in a plastic bag! Tie it up tight! No one will be able to write a name then!"
A few students nodded, a glimmer of desperate hope in their eyes.
But others flinched.
The memory of the app's rule, "YOU MUST PLAY," still echoed in their minds.
"But what if... what if it does pick someone if we don't play?" a timid girl named Mika whispered, her voice barely audible.
"What if it just... kills someone randomly? Like it did with Hiroshi, if he really wasn't a prank?"
Ren, still sobbing, looked up, his eyes wide with a fresh wave of terror.
"She's right! What if it just picks you, Mika? Or... or me again?!"
"So what are you saying, Ren?" Yui snapped, her eyes blazing with anger.
"Should we just write your name again?! Is that what you want?!"
The accusation hung heavy in the air.
Ren recoiled, shaking his head violently.
"No! No, I just... I don't know! I don't know what to do!"
Kaito stepped in, his voice cutting through the rising panic.
"Enough! We're not writing any more names. Mika, if it picks randomly, it picks randomly. But we are not choosing. We are not responsible for another death. We collect the phones. All of them. Now."
He looked directly at Ren.
"Even yours, Ren."
Ren hesitated for a moment, then slowly, reluctantly, handed his phone to Kaito.
The others, seeing Ren's compliance, quickly gathered their own devices.
Kaito found a large, clear plastic bag from the kitchen, the kind used for food storage.
With grim determination, he instructed everyone to drop their phones into it.
One by one, the glowing screens, the silent demands of the "Midnight Game," disappeared into the transparent bag.
Kaito then tied the bag in a tight, double knot, making it as secure as possible.
He placed it in the very center of the lobby, on the dusty, ornate rug, where everyone could see it.
No one could secretly access their phone now.
No one could secretly play the game.
They stood around the bag, a silent, terrified circle.
The sweet, decaying floral scent was still strong, and the whispers seemed to hum around them, a low, expectant sound.
They had defied the game.
They had refused to play.
But the horror of Haruto's death, the knowledge that someone had broken their trust, and the chilling uncertainty of what the game would do next, hung heavy in the air.
The night was far from over.