The Pain of an Inferior: A Blistering Love Comedy That Begins After a Broken Heart - Chapter 54

“For now let’s sort out each other’s cards.”

Haruka and the other were sitting around a table in a room at an inn near the seaside.

The comfortable tatami mats and the peculiar smell of the tatami invited a slight sense of security.

If it were not under such circumstances, Haruka would like to soak in a hot spring and relax.

“I have the 3 of Spades. The clear condition is to have no one possessing the A of Spades card in the game.”

Sakurako held up her card and stated her clear condition.

“I have the 4 of Spades. My clear condition is that I must have at least four Spade cards in my posession.”

Haruka followed, fluently stated his clear condition.

“I have the 7 of Spades, and my clear condition is that I’m prohibited from killing anyone in the game and to have my intial card in my possession.”

Suzu placed her card on the table and spoke in a quiet but clear manner.

“J of Spades… The only condition to clear the game is to make a blackjack.”

Tsuyuri followed the example of the other players and showed her card.

“I-I have the 2 of Spades. The condition for clearing the game is that the total number of cards held by the survivors is less than thirteen…”

Senrei Madoka, the girl who had been working with Tsuyuri, revealed her clear condition at the end.

“If we meet the clear condition for everyone here, we have to kill almost all the other players, don’t we?”

Sakurako, with a faint smile on her face, told the others of this terrible fact.

Haruka nodded his head with a grim expression.

“Indeed, you’re right.”

“Is that so?”

Madoka looked at Haruka and the others with a puzzled expression. Haruka looked at Madoka with a blank stare and told her the truth.

“I’m not blaming you, but it’s not easy for Madoka-san to clear your condition. It’s very difficult if the initial holders of the 9, 10, and Q cards are still alive.”

“Haruka needs four cards, Nanasaki has no problem with zero cards, and Reizei has one card of her own… I only need two cards if I have the Ace card, but then I’ll be competing with Nanasaki’s clear condition, so I need at least three cards… Madoka doesn’t need any cards, so we have a total of eight cards.”

“So we can only allow five cards to other players.”

“Right.”

“I see…”

Madoka lowered her head with a sad expression on her face.

“For now, I think it’s safe for me and Madoka to give the cards to Haruka. Even if we keep it, it can only be used for negotiations.”

“Wait… Are you sure you can trust your precious card to a stranger you just met?”

Sakurako tried to hand over the card to Haruka, but Suzu leaned forward and objected.

“He’s all right. If you give him your card, he’ll definitely return the favor, right, Obi Haruka?”

“You’re overestimating me… but, I’ll try my best.”

While receiving Sakurako’s card, Haruka answered with an indescribable expression on his face.

“Then, I will give you mine. Please protect me too, Obi-san.”

Madoka, showing a mischievous smile, handed the card to Haruka.

At first she was wary of Haruka, but she let her guard down and her attitude softened as she watched Haruka’s interaction with the others.

“If they say it’s okay… then I won’t say anything…”

Suzu reluctantly withdrew and re-crossed her legs. She seemed to be saying that it was wrong to rely on others in an extreme environment, rather than being wary of Haruka.

“What are we going to do now? Haruka.”

“… Find enough weapons to defend ourselves and watch what the other players are doing?”

“Until something big happens, that’s fine.”

“I agree.”

Sakurako and Madoka agreed with him, and Tsuyuri nodded her head.

Suzu did not object this time, and silently expressed her agreement.

“Well, let’s take a short rest and then let’s go exploring at our leisure.”

Sakurako’s words relaxed the atmosphere, and each of them relaxed in their rooms.

Haruka stood up and looked out the window of his room.

“Haruka…”

“It’s funny that the only place we had a real conversation is not in the classroom, but in an environment like this.”

“Right… Fufu…”

Haruka watched the ripples of the sea for a while with Tsuyuri came to his side.

“Haruka, don’t die, okay?”

“I won’t die. All of us here will make it back alive. There’s a chance that all five of us here can survive.”

“Yeah…”

Though it was the first time for them to talk, Haruka was a little surprised by Tsuyuri’s friendly and familiar manner. He had never had the image of her showing her emotions in the classroom.

“There are so many things I really want to tell you, but… I’ll only tell you once we get back home alive otherwise you’ll just be confused.”

“Isn’t that called a flag?”

“I guess so… Fufu…”

The two of them laughed a little and looked out at the sea, talking slowly to each other.

After that, at Sakurako’s order, the five of them began their preparations.

?

“They’re cooperating, aren’t they?”

Haruka mutters to himself as he looked at the light spots on the map.

“I guess so. If they were at war, they would have been done so this past hour.”

Haruka and Sakurako are so close to each other that their cheeks are almost touching, and they both have difficult expressions on their faces.

They obtained a mod that displayed the player who has a Spade card every twenty minutes, and they immediately used it to check the other players’ positions.

Since Sakurako and Madoka’s cards are in Haruka’s possession, so only three light dots were displayed at their position: Haruka, Suzu, and Tsuyuri.

The problem was the position of the other players. Five light spots were in the same position.

The effect of the mod is to show the player who has the Spade card, not to show the position of the Spade card.

Therefore, the presence of five light spots means that there are five players in the same position.

“I wonder if their clear condition that would allow them to cooperate with each other?”

“The K and Q card holders can work together, but… It will be difficult others to cooperate.”

“Some of them probably don’t care about their clear condition… they may be acting with the desire to be with others…”

Tsuyuri remembered Sakuragi Yui and Koizumi Serie whom she had met in the first game.

Not all players can act rationally and reasonably. There may be some players who are acting together because they don’t want to be alone, even if their clear condition is conflicting with the others.

“That may be so. I don’t want to be alone either.”

“Really? I had an image of Reizei-san as a solitary person, so it’s surprising.”

“What kind of image do you have of me?”

“A high class girl, plain and simple.”

“Oh, I see. You’re just like you were in the beginning… a light-spoken flirt…”

“That’s terrible…”

“Oi, stop flirting while we’re talking.”

“I’m not!”

Sakurako poked Haruka, and Suzu stood up indignantly.

Tsuyuri was watching Haurka with a sullen look on her face.

She’s not amused by the fact that Haruka was talking with other girls.

In the previous game, no matter how much Kuzuryuu and Suzu talked to each other, she didn’t feel this way.

“All the rest of the players are a pair, aren’t they?”

Three lights indicating Haruka and the others, there were four other light spots in addition to the 5-man group, and they were scattered in two clusters.

“W-wait a minute, isn’t this strange?”

“Yeah, it’s strange…”

Madoka asked, raising her voice. Sakurako agreed with a cool expression.

Haruka, Tsuyuri, and Suzu didn’t know what was strange for a moment, but then the idea popped into their head before anyone could utter an answer.

“Is the joker faking it?”

“That’s what I think.”

Since no player was playing alone, the Joker must be in one of the groups.

“In any case, it’s troublesome to have them all stuck together like this.”

“We only have a taser.”

Haruka picked up the taser from the desk and waved it in the air.

Haruka and the others searched around at a slow pace for several hours, but found only knives, hammers, crowbars, and other melee weapons, and only taserguns as ranged weapons.

The taser is a gun that shoots electrodes to incapacitate the opponent, but it has a range of only ten meters. If the opponent is using melee weapons, it is manageable, but if they are using firearms, it’s a huge disadvantage.

Not knowing how many weapons other players have in their arsenal, there was a sense of uneasiness among the group.

“I read that weapons and mods become more powerful over time… The rest of the group should have pistols and crossbows at best…”

“I hope so.”

There was a moment of silence.

Sakurako opened her mouth and broke the silence.

“For now head off to bed. You guys can sleep. Haruka and I will watch over you.”

“I’ll do that… I’m tired from all the walking…”

At Sakurako’s words, the group began to get ready for bed.

They took out futons from the closet for the number of people in the group, and laid them out in the not very spacious room.

After taking a bath in a private house, the women lied down on their beds.

“I feel like I’m going to lose my sense of peace,” said one of the women.

“You’ll die if you do!”

“Suzu-san, do you have a real lover or something?”

“You’re too disjointed.”

As if to quell her fears, Madoka brought up a bunch of cheerful topics and happily chatted with Tsuyuri and Suzu.

Sakurako was watching them and looking out the window at the night sky.

Tense and tired, Suzu, Madoka, and Tsuyuri went to bed early.

Sakurako got up and walked out of the room stealthily so as not to wake the girls.

She quietly opened the door of the next room and sat down beside Haruka who was lying down.

“How is it?”

“They’re moving, that’s for sure. They’re coming straight toward me.”

“How fast are they walking?”

“I don’t know exactly, I get updates every 15 minutes, but they’ll probably get here before 11:00.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I wonder…”

?

Ono Masaru and Kijima Isao were walking along the road at night, aiming at the base where Haruka’s group was staying.

They had a detection mod that allowed them to know the location of the players every 30 minutes.

The map was updated slowly, but each player’s name was displayed on the map.

The following five players were the first to be detected by the mod: Obi Haruka, Reizei Suzu, Nanasaki Sakurako, Senrei Madoka, and Shirogane Tsuyuri.

They were about to commit a crime against the five of them because of the lawlessness of the area.

Ono, in particular, was over 180 years old and has muscles that were not in proportion to his age because of his training. He’s strong enough to overwhelm a woman or two.

Kijima, on the other hand, is an athletic sportsman with above-average strength, though not as strong as Ono. He could easily overpower a woman.

In addition, both of them had a pistol in their possession.

Bullets are precious. They fired their guns only once, so they had only eight rounds left. They have no extra magazines, but they are sure to be a more than strong enough threat.

Ono has the K of Spades.

While Kijima has the Q of Spades.

Their interests were aligned, and they trusted each other enough in a short period of time.

In the eighteen hours since the game began, their lives have never been in danger, but the unusual environment had stimulated their reproductive instincts to the point of disgust.

Imagining the r?a?pe? they were about to commit to them, they had to walk with their crotch on a rolling boil, leaning forward a little.

They abandoned up their conscience.

They were sure that a girl’s cries will bring them back to their senses, but they were also sure that they will soon become ruthless.

All that’s left was to do it.

If there were five of them, surely at least one of them will have a face they’ll like.

“Haa, Haa… How’s it going? Any movement?”

Ono, who was breathing hard with sweat on his forehead, asked Kijima who was holding the mod.

“Everyone is sleeping peacefully at night.”

Ono said so, but he displayed the map and looked at it. The destination is now within visual distance. They should know which house Haruka’s group are in.

As usual, the light spots are superimposed on each other. Five lines extend from the light spot, each displaying a name.

“It’s okay. They’re sleeping.”

“There’s no light on… Okay, let’s go.”

They arrived at their destination.

They entered the house stealthily.

The front door was open.

“You guys are so careless”

Ono licks his lips with a happy tone in his voice.

“Yeah, you really are.”

“?!”

The sudden sound of a woman’s voice startled them, and they turned around.

Sakurako pulled the trigger and fired the electrode from her taser.

Without giving Kijima time to avoid her, the electrode pierced his torso.

“Aaahhh?!”

Kijima’s throat shook and he slumped to the ground. His body jumped erratically, emitting a burning smell.

“B?a?s?t?a?r?d?!?”

Taking advantage of his superior physique, Ono charged towards Sakurako in an attempt to overpower her.

However, Ono’s intercepted by a shadow that suddenly appeared besides him.

The sudden impact, and the intense pain, sent Ono sprawling.

Ono struggled to regain his position, but his body was in a panic and he was unable to do so.

The crowbar, which had been swung with all its might, was visible in the moonlight.

That was the last thing Ono saw.