Did we win?
I asked myself silently, whispering the question only inside my head — as if saying it aloud might somehow alter reality itself.
But I stayed frozen in place, not a word spoken, not a muscle moved.
Not out of fear of celebrating too early… but out of dread of the doll.
That doll — unpredictable, even when it seemed we had triumphed.
I wasn't alone in this stillness; Cairo, too, sat beside me, breathing slowly, as if weighing every single breath entering his chest — terrified that even that might be mistaken as movement, as a loss.
Our eyes didn't meet, yet I felt him completely.
As though an invisible thread of silence and tension bound us together beneath the rule of this insane game.
And then, suddenly, her voice broke through my thoughts.
That same childish, monotone voice, void of any emotion:
"Mmm... well, you two have three points, and I have two."
She paused briefly, before adding with a faintly mocking tone:
"What a shame... but the game is not over yet."
The air froze in my lungs.
What? Not over yet?
I stared into the void before me, as if searching for an answer in the darkness.
It made no sense — the round was over, the points were clear, so why…?
The doll continued, her words dripping with eerie calm:
"There are still five minutes left until the end of the game... and during those five minutes, the rules remain the same: no speaking, no moving, no doing anything at all."
She went quiet for a moment, then spoke again — her tone like the announcement of some grim ritual:
"Oh... the minutes is nearly up. Then... in five seconds, the last five minutes begin."
And she began to count.
"One…"
(Is this real?)
"Two…"
(She isn't joking.)
"Three…"
(She doesn't have one last trick waiting in these final minutes… right?)
"Four…"
(Just five minutes… it's only five minutes. I can endure this.)
"Five…"
(But isn't this exactly what every story does? Isn't this the cliché we see over and over again?)
My head filled with questions far heavier than I could bear.
In anime, in manhwa, even in films — there's always that one character who survives everything… only to die at the very last moment.
As if the ending isn't complete without one final shock.
As if delayed death is the real price of survival.
Could it be that—
(No. That's ridiculous. This is real life, not some manhwa or TV series.)
But my mind kept spiraling:
Why does the character always die at the end after making it so far?
Why not just die at the beginning?
What sense is there in surviving every trap, every calamity… only to be struck down at the finish line?
Could that happen to us? To me… or to Cairo?
I wanted to convince myself with logic — that such an ending would make no sense.
But my heart, in that moment, was not logical.
My heart was afraid.
I felt as though something lurked within those last minutes…
That even though the end was close, it still concealed a hidden twist.
And all we could do… was stay silent.
Silent… for just five more minutes.
But would those minutes pass quietly?
Or would they turn into one last nightmare before waking?
…
And if we spoke… or moved… or even whispered…
Would that mean we'd lose?
Even after earning three points?
Would it mean we'd be erased completely — as though everything we had endured was nothing more than a cruel prologue to a cold, merciless ending?
The questions poured through my mind like relentless rain, hammering against the walls of my thoughts.
I couldn't silence them. Couldn't ignore them.
They moved like little ghosts in the corners of my awareness, whispering doubts only to deepen the tension.
Why?
The word echoed inside me again and again.
Why was the doll doing this to us?
What was the purpose of all this?
Did she only wish to inflict a kind of torture that required no blades, no blood?
Did she delight in watching us tremble inwardly, struggling to remain motionless and mute?
Or was it something deeper?
Was there a motive — a hidden reason behind those glassy eyes?
But how could dolls have motives?
How could they have a heart?
Truthfully… I didn't know.
And that not-knowing was what slowly killed me.
Ignorance…
A feeling I had always found bitter, painful, suffocating.
But today — for the first time — I realized that ignorance could sometimes be a mercy.
A mercy sparing me from truths too heavy to bear.
And perhaps, cruel as it was, ignorance was far kinder than knowledge.
---
Suddenly—
"Thud!"
The sound of something striking the ground nearby.
My heart lurched violently.
I almost screamed. Almost moved. Almost did anything to release the terror bursting inside me.
No — to be honest, I nearly had a real heart attack.
I felt my heartbeat hammering in my ears, as if it wanted to escape through my ribs.
But I forced myself still… with agonizing effort.
I clung to silence like someone dangling from the edge of a cliff.
Cairo too…
I heard his quick, ragged breaths beside me, like the whimper of someone in pain, or the desperate effort of a man fighting to stay upright against fear.
He was resisting, just as I was.
Holding out in place, though every cell in our bodies screamed for release.
I drew in a slow, deep breath.
I tried to steady myself, to push the sound away, or at least absorb it.
But the question burned in my mind:
What was it that fell?
And how?
And why now — in this exact, fragile moment?
Was it chance?
Or was chance itself nothing more than a lie in this place?
Then another thought struck me…
The doll.
I shifted only my eyes toward her — not my head.
She sat beside me, unchanged.
Motionless. Which in itself was terrifying.
I couldn't tell if she had been startled by the sound.
In fact, I couldn't tell if she was even capable of being startled.
But something whispered inside me:
Maybe it was her.
Maybe she was the one who dropped it, whether on purpose… or not.
And why not?
That's exactly what mysterious beings do in stories, in manhwas, in horror films, isn't it?
When something suddenly falls, when some unexpected noise pierces the silence — it's almost always "that thing."
That being we don't fully see, whose size and intent remain unknown.
And in our world…
That being, so far, was none other than the doll.
The doll whose eyes never blinked.
The doll whose face never changed.
The doll who crafted for us a world where reality and illusion blurred…
where silence itself became the game,
and where every passing second dripped with fear.
And so the moments dragged on…
Heavy, tense, like walking a thin rope above a volcano's mouth.
The five minutes were not over yet.
And in that space of dread, one truth remained:
Anything could still happen.
Anything… without exception.