"Notice how he didn’t even bother warning people to avoid killing each other?" Kenji said to Sami with a small smile as they walked down the street. "He skipped all that and went straight to ’burn the corpses.’"
Sami chuckled lightly.
In front of them, Momoka, who had been walking in a straight line with her gaze fixed on her legs as she counted her steps, suddenly blurted out, almost to herself, "By the way, who does he think he is to be giving orders to everyone? For some reason I don’t know, I don’t like his attitude."
Rather than answering her, Kenji leaned closer to Sami, rested an arm on his shoulder, and lowered his voice. "Hey, did you see that woman with him? Damn... I can’t get her out of my head. That’s definitely my type of woman."
Sami rolled his eyes at Kenji and said bluntly, "Those titties look fake."
Kenji frowned. "Yo, how do you even know?"
Sami smiled slyly. "Have you forgotten? I have a knack for spotting that kind of stuff from a mile away. Just trust me, bro."
Kenji opened his mouth to say, ’I don’t mind fake tits!’ but Momoka suddenly turned around and peered at them suspiciously. "What are you guys gossiping about?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing."
Both men answered at the exact same time without missing a beat.
Momoka narrowed her eyes, sweeping her intense gaze between them. Eventually, she let out a small sigh and turned toward the building they had arrived at. Her expression darkened slightly, and she asked quietly, "Do you think he’ll be in there?"
Neither of the boys replied. After a few seconds, Kenji sighed and walked up to her, placing his hand gently on her head. "Let’s go find out."
He led the way, and the trio went all the way up to the fourth-floor apartment where their friend Ren used to live.
Upon arrival, Kenji knocked on the door. For several seconds, no reply came, causing him to knock a few more times. Eventually, the door swung open and a young woman in her twenties came into view.
She had long silver hair and brown eyes with an unbothered, half-asleep expression. She was wearing only a white oversized shirt, but honestly, that barely covered much. The sight of her long, pale bare thighs caused both men, and even Momoka, to momentarily lose their composure.
’Wow. Those are some really nice legs,’ Sami almost whistled to himself.
When a few seconds passed and no one spoke, the woman crossed her arms and stared at them. "What?"
Everyone snapped out of it. Kenji cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Uh... pardon the intrusion, but if you don’t mind us asking, are you the landlord of this Shelter?"
The woman arched a brow. "Who’s asking?"
"Doesn’t matter," Kenji replied bluntly.
The woman was silent for a few seconds. Eventually, she sighed. "Yes."
Kenji arched a brow.
This was their friend’s apartment. The fact that a completely different person was living here made all of them uneasy.
Kenji was just about to ask another question when Momoka, with a deep frown, leaned forward slightly and asked, "What about the previous person who lived here?"
"What is this? An interrogation?" The woman was starting to look annoyed.
Momoka didn’t care and pressed further. "Answer."
The woman frowned, clicked her tongue, and moved to close the door. Seeing that, Sami finally spoke up. "Wait..."
He sighed softly and stepped forward. "Pardon us. We’re all just a bit anxious because the guy we’re looking for is our sibling."
He paused, glancing between her and Momoka before continuing. "Has red hair, looks like a nerd, wears thick glasses. Seen him?"
The woman stared at him for a few seconds before finally exhaling and scratching her head. "No."
She looked at them and explained halfheartedly, "Yes, I did fight someone to secure this place two days ago. But it wasn’t someone with that description. It wasn’t even a man, but a woman older than all of us. There. Is that all?"
None of the trio could say anything. It was obvious from their expressions that their minds were spinning.
The woman sighed. "Well, if that’s all you came for, then I’m excusing myself. I was busy."
Just then, a female voice from inside the apartment shouted, "Hurry up, Naomi! The bed is getting cold without you!"
The woman leaned back into the apartment and yelled, "Coming!"
Looking back at the trio, she gave them one last unbothered look and shut the door.
While Kenji and Momoka stood there blinking, Sami immediately turned and began walking away.
"Huh? Are you just leaving?" Momoka hurried after him, looking bewildered.
"Mm-hm," Sami nodded.
"But..." Momoka began to protest, but Kenji tapped her shoulder and asked, "What else do you want us to do?"
"I don’t know." She alternated anxious gazes between the two. "But... but don’t you think she could be lying?"
"Maybe." Kenji shrugged. "Although we have no way to tell that. It’s not as if any of us have a talent or skill on our card that lets us detect lies."
After saying that, he paused and snapped his gaze to Sami, who at some point had taken out a cigarette, then asked, "Wait. You can’t detect lies, right?"
Sami shook his head with a somber expression.
Momoka bit her lip. She trembled slightly before her voice cracked. "Do you think that maybe Ren is de— mmmph!"
She was still speaking when Sami reached out and grabbed her lips in his palm, stopping her from finishing the word. He forced a comforting smile and said, "Ren was the smartest out of us. There’s no way he got taken down so easily. Have a little faith."
For a moment, silence fell over them. Then, Momoka gave a small, hesitant nod.
Of course, Sami knew that Ren in fact could be dead. If he wasn’t, why hadn’t he come to find them? However, he decided that for once in his life, he was going to choose denial.
***
The days went by slowly.
During this time, Sami spent most of his free time scrolling through the forums. Aside from the usual noise and memes people posted, he was able to learn quite a lot about the new state of the world.
One of the major things he discovered was that their District had been completely cut off from the rest by some higher power. No one could move from city to city. According to people who had tried, an invisible barrier stopped anyone from leaving. The weird part was that people couldn’t even see past it. Whenever someone got close to where the border started, a dense fog would suddenly materialize out of nowhere, blocking all sight.
That was strange.
’Really strange...’
But that wasn’t even the weirdest part.
While walking around his sector one of these days, he had decided to check out a few local spots that used to sell food, starting with the convenience store where he had worked before things went crazy.
To his surprise, there were still items sitting on the shelves. Most of the packaged snacks and processed goods were gone, but raw food items like bananas, apples, and vegetables were still sitting in their crates. However, every single piece looked thoroughly rotten. It was almost as if months had passed for the organic produce while only days had passed for everything else.
This really gave him a lot of food for thought.
However, setting those aside...
Sami had always lived by the belief that ignorance was a sin. What was the point of having the power to bluff about his card if he didn’t know the exact details of the cards he wanted to fake beforehand?
He wasn’t one to leave his survival up to luck.
And so, Sami spent the week switching out cards and studying every single ability that his Joker let him use.
It took time because he had to rest at intervals to recover from the massive Prana drain of high-ranked cards, but by the sixth day, he had gone through all of them and gained a solid grasp on his full arsenal.