The Horse halts, and I stop too—the Rabbit is now in command.

  “I’ll prove I’m a wolf,” she says, simply. She uses my shoulders to push herself up to her full height, then wrenches at the half-opened door. “Come, everyone.”

  As we walk down the hallway and climb down the steps, the Rabbit struggles with her long, cotton coat. Eventually she gives up, and drags its soft fabric behind her; it bunches up as it slithers down the steps, and I follow her wordlessly until we end up in the small closet belled MAINTENANCE once again.

  There used to be a toolbox here, but now it’s gone—I suspect it’s stored in the safe in the Ox’s hotel room. The space’s subdued fluorescent lighting bounces off the coarse concrete floor, along with metal machinery and a wide pipe that protrude from it and drives into the chamber’s back wall.

  “This room’s as empty as your argument,” I say pridefully, as the sleepy girl brushes past me to what seems to be the unit of AC. She taps the dial with her finger, thoughtful, and then slides her Card into a narrow slit underneath the box—suddenly, there’s a loud beeping.

  “This is my murder weapon,” the Rabbit murmurs.

  “H-huh?” Horse stammers back.

  “This is the murder weapon we used to kill everyone,” the Rabbit repeats drearily, ccking the “air conditioner’s” knob so its arrow points to a small snake icon “Every night, the Dragon and I would go here… and the person the dial points to would die. When we killed the Dog, we wanted to know what was happening in her suite, so the Dragon went upstairs and listened… we think puffs of toxic air went up from here through the pipes…”

  Ttt-ttt. Tttt-tt-t-t-t— I remember the heaving racket of a machine that covered the st gasps of the pyers at 2:00 AM, metal sts creaking open in every victim’s room.

  “A gas through the vents,” I mutter. “That makes sense. I probably heard noises from Lily’s room because she was trying to resist the posion’s effects; she’d resisted the kidnapper’s gas for a fairly long time as well, from what I’ve heard from her.”

  “Probably,” Rabbit says, frowning vacantly. “At any rate, even if anyone could figure out this murder method… only a wolf could have scanned their card…”

  Darn! I allowed her to distract me with this fresh information, and the Horse is already looking between the Rabbit and the machine, seemingly intimidated. Killing, death, killing, death, death, murder, I want the Rabbit “murdered” just like how she “murdered” Lily, so I know for certain that I’ve cleared this game.

  “She’s just making it up!” I speak. “She’s using the Goat’s Card to scan that AC instead of her own.”

  I want to hear Lily’s voice, see her smile. hold her hand. feel her lips, or just pin talk. I’m seized by a certainty that if I survive, I can run back into my Lily’s arms.

  Yet, if I fall here, I’m not sure what will happen. If the Horse and the Rabbit execute me, do I really believe in a life after death? Does that thought make sense? Are my perfectly-scheduled trains of thought actually tangled together in one giant pile-up? Maybe I really am going mad, but while I’m panicking on the inside the Rabbit presents a calm, steady exterior.

  “I can’t exactly show the Horse my card,” Rabbit slumps, as if she’s nodding off. “But if you’re a wolf, you should be able to scan it yourself, right?”

  “Huh?”

  Rabbit gently grabs my hand and pushes it into my skirt pock. She wraps my fingers around my Card, and maniputes my arm up so the device thuds against the scanner. After another painful, piercing beep… the dial’s still locked on the snake-like symbol. I scrabble at the knob’s coarse edges, hoping beyond hope that it’ll break and turn, and the Rabbit just smiles at my desperation.

  Damn it.

  The Horse walks out, forehead crinkled and with strange, abrupt pacing. I burst out of the closet to follow her, only to feel the Rabbit once again warmly wrap herself around my arm. She’s the opposite of the Dragon, in some ways—her affection towards me feels genuine, rather than merely performed.

  Step by heavy step, I still struggle into the musty hallway, dragging the Rabbit with me all the while. I see the back of the Horse’s track jacket as she disappears into the stairwell far ahead, and she might as well be running at a full-fledged sprint based on how likely I am to catch up. It feels like I’m drowning, both in the Rabbit’s body that brushes against me, and from the suffocating doom I feel in my heart.

  “You fought hard. I respect… people who fight,” Rabbit says, as I grapple with her surprisingly vigorous grip.

  “Come on… come on!” I say, finally breaking myself free from her as everything around me falls apart. “How can you say that when you’re someone who can barely bring themselves to speak?”

  Rabbit flops prone onto the rug, face against the dirty strands. It takes her at least fifteen seconds to roll over so she can look at me with her pretty, half-closed lids: “I fight too. It’s just that… I get… so tired….’

  I walk away. I walk away, yet before I do, her fingertips brush against my shoe, a zy stretch attempting to halt my advance. I could ignore them, and simply keep marching down the hall: it would be easy in the Rabbit’s moribund state.

  But she speaks again, quietly, and I can’t help but hear her.

  “Me being like this… has nothing to do with being a wolf, you know? All my life, I’ve just gotten more and more tired… and it’s been getting worse bit by bit.”

  She closes her eyes, her mouth hangs open, and her head lolls to the side. It’s a zy expression, as though she can’t even put in the bare minimum of effort needed to twitch up an emotion.

  It’s also an understandable one. I saw a version of that face every day in the mirror, in those endless days I spent trapped in my room, an expression of someone so crushed by an invisible, depressive force that it becomes impossible for them to take an interest in the outside world.

  “I also know what it’s like to be mentally fatigued like that,” I mutter. “Where it takes a heroic effort just do something average. You’ve been under a lot of stress too, haven’t you?’

  “No, it’s not that either… it’s just… that I might be sick.”

  She flops and rocks on the ground, like a shrimp that’s been turned upside-down on the shore. The Rabbit’s just a little too close to adulthood to call this helplessness “cute,” and I have just a little too much sympathy to call this state “pathetic” either, so instead I just watch and wait.

  Ultimately, she gives up and props up her head with both arms in a ‘V’, still on the floor. Her voice is determined and weak at the same time.

  “I’ll avenge everyone. Even if you’re dead… I’ll figure out what happened, til I’m also finished… I promise you that, Snake.”

  “Why do you think I care?” I angrily question back, and her eyes widen just a little bit.

  “You think you’re the protagonist here!?” I start to shout. “You think that you’re the one who has to survive? You wanted to kill me and Lily, so of course I’m gonna kill you too—and then Lily and I will run off into the sunset, no matter what?”

  “Huh…? Could you be even more… sick… than me?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve tallied the numbers, I’ve done the math, I’ve connected all the clues! The Rat’s relying on me, Lily’s relying on me, and my sanity’s relying on this too— everything I’ve worked toward can’t be overturned just cause of a barcode scanner on some stupid poison gas machine!

  Arrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Fueled by anger, I yank her upright. I drag her all the way to the kitchen, and pour her some milk and cereal. With my somewhat limited culinary repertoire, this is the best dish I can create, and I try to make sure that the crispy loops are at least arranged pleasantly inside the white, rippling liquid. Finally, I sit her down in one of the chairs and resist a sudden urge to repeatedly dunk her face into the bowl.

  “Stay right there and eat,” I order. “I’m going to talk to the Horse and ‘kill’ you, but everything is going to be okay. Got it?”

  “Okay…?” Rabbit looks up, dazed.

  “Good!” I bite back, as I hurry after the Horse.