Part 59: Blinking Light

_{content warning: emetophobia}

[BGM: No Escape from Here]


Only makes sense that a jail break involving three people would also have a puzzle involving three people, right? That said, there are obviously quite a few moving parts to this puzzle, but I'll be doing my best to show every possible outcome for all three (avoiding redundancies or Bad ends without anything interesting to show)



Let's get started.

[BGM: My World]


I choked the neck of the guard in front.
But I didn't want to kill either of them.
There was no reason to punish them. Besides, as long as I could get out of here, there would be nothing they could do about me.

But my fists were no match for a gun.
While I was struggling with the one guard, the other twin walked into the room.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

He pulled out his gun and shot me in my shoulder.
A staggering pain spread through my whole body from my shoulder.
I had to let go of his brother and stumbled back, leaning against the wall.

In the end, the other two were not able to escape, either.
The plan ended up being a total failure.



[BGM: No Escape from Here]


A syringe fell out of his hand.
It went through the grate, and somehow jabbed right into my shoulder!
I felt a chill spreading from the needle to my entire body.

I closed my eyes and opened them again.
I was lying in a clean but strange house.
Alicia was sitting by my bed, looking at me and caressing my hair.
Just like she used to do.
I had not seen her for 9 years. She still looked so beautiful, so young.

“Alicia, I miss you.”

Even though I knew it wasn't real, I still couldn't control myself from calling out to her.
That was how powerful the drug was.

When I came to my senses once again, I was lying in the medical room of the prison.
I finally realized that the plan had failed.





“Hold on one second...”

Morgan took out a syringe and aimed at his arm.
But the needle did not go into his arm, he dropped it.
Oh no! That was... oh God...

Just when Morgan was wondering where the syringe had gone, voices came out from under the window.
Carlos, you idiot... We were so screwed...



Moving on to the next one. (Regallion's guess for Pi results in this outcome.)



[BGM: My World]


I held my breath, pushed my back against the wall, and grabbed at the door lightly with my hands.
As soon as he took one more step, I would...

But the man stopped.
And then, I heard the sound of liquid dripping down on the ground.
And I saw a stream of something yellow through a crack in the door. It was painting a peculiar map on the ground, set to the guard's whistling.

This prison was a place that was filled with all kinds of perversion and the twisted mentality of society.
Some of the guards here eventually developed some nasty habits as coping mechanisms to relieve some of their stress.
Sometimes literally.

The foul smell from the “map” was making me dizzy.
My mind was trying its best to control myself at this crucial moment.
But my body betrayed me, and I simply could not stand the disgusting sight that I had just witnessed.

I threw up.
The undigested dinner was now mixed with the yellow puddle on the ground, turning it into a newer and bigger “map”.
It also ended our prison break.



[BGM: My Mexican Guitar Gently Weeps]


I put my hands through the grate and grabbed the ankles of the guard.

”Hotaru! Run!”
I didn't know what had come over me to do something like this.

The dark figure might have just been startled, or simply lost his balance.
He fell and sat on the ground.
But Hotaru didn't run. He screamed at the figure on the ground:
“No! Don't do it!”

He was trying to stop something.
And I immediately understood what it was.

I finally saw the other person's face in the moonlight.
Morgan, the guard from Britain, had drawn his gun and he was pointing it at my face under the grate.

I heard a gunshot.
Something red and warm was dripping onto my face.



“0, 7, 0... 9, 1... 2... 2... 0...”

Hotaru lay on the metal grate.
His breath was getting weaker and weaker.
He kept saying those numbers. Maybe they were the password to his bank account.

Damn it!
You shouldn't tell me!
You... You knew I was too dumb to remember it...



[BGM: No Escape from Here]


Morgan tumbled and fell to the ground.
I saw a pair of hands grabbing his right ankle.

“Run!”

I heard a mumbled voice come out from below. Carlos, you idiot!
But I still needed him alive.
If he died, I wouldn't be able to find that woman.
If it wasn't for that, there was no way I would have participated in this stupid escape.

Before I even realized it myself, I had blocked the window with my own body.
I heard a gunshot.

[BGM: Whispered Feeling]
Something warm was coming out of my chest.

The sisters used to say that people who smiled a lot would enjoy good fortune.
And they would always tell me that I had the prettiest smile in the okiya.
So I must be a very, very lucky person.
The only thing was... I had used up all my lifetime's share of luck... on the night when I met him.



There are a couple of Bad ends that you can only get if you have no pieces for that particular person, and they don't really connect to the other two people, so I'm going to show one of them now, specifically the Bad ending you get if Pi has no pieces...

[BGM: My World]


I held my breath and pushed my back against the wall.
The footsteps were getting closer and closer. I could even hear the bottom of their boots rubbing against the door frame.
I grabbed at the door lightly with my hands. As soon as he took one more step, I would...

But the man stopped.
The twins were deep in conversation at the door, and they didn't notice me at all, nor did they look like they were about to shut the door.
I listened more carefully. They seemed to be talking about a recent check of all of the prison's housing.

They mentioned that the check had found all kinds of weapons, gambling chips and drugs in the cells and public activity room. They even found a dance mat.
They lamented that ever since the new warden had been assigned here, Hong Kong Central Prison had become more and more “corrupted”.
Back when Warden Criss was in charge, everything in the prison had been running quite smoothly, even though Warden Criss was a strange man, too. These days, nobody here even cared about the inexplicable death of an inmate.
If one day something similar happened to some unlucky guard, the twins decided they would be ready to resign just for their own safety.

I was still listening when they suddenly stopped talking.
A hand appeared on the edge of the door and slowly pulled it open.
Then I saw a gun pointing right at me through the open door.

It should've been obvious, but yeah, this is the same prison that Alicia visited in a previous letter on one of her assassination missions. Surprise!

There is a new Bad ending for Carlos where he has no pieces, but it's basically the same one where he got stabbed with the syringe- it's just that his hallucination of Alicia is a little different, and he hallucinates them being grabbed by a crowd when the guards show up to restrain them. No reason to show it off. Hotaru, on the other hand...

[BGM: No Escape from Here]


“Let's go.”

I pulled him closer to me, and led him to a dark corner.
This way, Morgan would not notice the other two people climbing out of the window.
Besides, I had one last request before leaving.

“The photo that you showed me earlier, can I see it again?”

He stared blankly at me. It took him a while to understand what I was referring to.
He put his hand inside his jacket...

Then, a gunshot came from the monitor room.
It wasn't loud, but Morgan had clearly heard it.
What the hell were those two doing down there... We were so screwed...

Interesting! Wonder what that's about. Anyway, there's only a couple more Bad endings still worth showing, so let's get to it. (Regallion's guess for Carlos and Hotaru results in this ending.)





Damn it!
Thank god I had this hat on me, otherwise... ewwww.

The guard zipped his pants back up, put an arm around Hotaru's shoulder and said something to him.
However, I couldn't hear anything as he was too quiet.

Right at that moment I heard gunshots coming from the door of the monitor room...





“Hold on one second...”

Morgan unzipped his pants and started doing his thing without even turning away.
Oh no! That was... oh God...

My heart jumped up to my throat.
I didn't know how Carlos did it, but fortunately everything stayed quiet below the window.
Thank God.

Morgan zipped his pants back up.
I pulled him closer to me and led him to a dark corner.
This way, Morgan would not notice the other two people climbing out of the window.
Besides, I had one last request before leaving.

We had barely taken two steps when we heard a gunshot come from the monitor room.
It wasn't loud, but Morgan had clearly heard it.
What the hell were those two doing down there... We were so screwed...



Let's just get to the S ending for all three. If it wasn't obvious by now, this is one of those puzzles where the same input for one part can have a different outcome based on the others, so you have to get all three right to be able to get the S ending in the first place (they have to break out together or none of them will be able to do so). As for the actual solution, it's pretty straightforward:



'Held tightly' on Hotaru's side to have him pull Morgan away from the grate without anything distracting them, both 'cap' and 'unzipped pants' on Carlos' side to still have Morgan be the one taking a piss but Carlos using the cap to “divert the flow” away from himself so he doesn't make a noise, and 'drink?' and 'syringe' on Pi's side to keep the syringe away from Carlos (it functionally is taken out of the puzzle entirely, presumably being held by one of the guards) as well as the drink piece to have the brothers talk about grabbing drinks together...

[BGM: Misterio]


Damn it!
Thank god I had this hat on me, otherwise... ewwww.

The guard zipped his pants back up and left with Hotaru.
As soon as I couldn't hear them, I pushed open the grate and pulled myself up to the ground.

We... we were almost there!





“Hold on one second...”

Morgan unzipped his pants and started doing his thing without even turning away.
Oh no! That was... oh God...

My heart jumped up to my throat.
I didn't know how Carlos did it, but fortunately everything stayed quiet below the window.
Thank God.

Morgan zipped his pants back up.
I pulled him closer to me and led him to a dark corner.
This way, Morgan would not notice the other two people climbing out of the window.
Besides, I had one last request before leaving.

“The photo that you showed me earlier, can I see it again?”

He stared blankly at me. It took him a while to understand what I was referring to.
He put his hand inside his jacket...

The woman in the photo was wearing a leather jacket and a pair of jeans. She was walking out of a pharmacy and about to put on her sunglasses.
The brown face under her cap looked very cold.



I was honestly very grateful to Morgan. He had helped me a lot, including finding out the itinerary of my dear friend's last trip to Japan, and who he had met and been with during the trip.

That was how we found this woman.
I figured she was just an assassin, and the person that the housekeeper had mentioned must have paid her.

I swore I would not let either of them get away.

“Hehehe... you want more of me, don't you? If so... give me a kiss...”

I was good.
Half a month ago, Carlos confessed to me that the reason he wanted to escape was to find his sister.
He even showed me a picture of her.

I just wanted to confirm that it was the same person in both photos.
And now, I was 100% certain.



Morgan grabbed my shoulders.
The smell of alcohol and other odors were getting stronger and stronger, enough that it was making me sick.
His tall body was leaning towards me.
Closer.
And closer.
Then, he fell to the ground with a thud.

I saw a dagger in his back.
The blade had sunk deep into his body where his heart was.
Pi crouched down and wiped off the blood on his hands with Morgan's clothes, all while having a disgusted look on his face.

“Well... we shouldn't stay here for too long. Follow me.”
Carlos ran towards the storage shed in the corner of the yard. He had hidden some tools there to get over the walls.



I looked at Morgan one last time before I followed.
The photo was still stuck firmly in his hand.
I didn't need it anymore.

I would never forget that face...





I held my breath, pushed my back against the wall and grabbed at the door lightly with my hands.
As soon as he took one more step, I would...

But the man stopped.
I peeked through a crack in the door, and saw the guard in front turning back to his brother and ask,
“Which one?”

“It's the new bar on Bay Road. You haven't been there, have you?”
“No. Have you?”
“Of course not. I heard it from Morgan. He said the girls there were super hot, and...”
“Oh? That sounds like fun!”

The subject seemed to have excited the twins a lot.
Their footsteps continued again just outside the door.
Only this time they were going farther away from me.



After we got out of Hong Kong Central Prison, the three of us were all crammed into a car driven by a friend of Carlos. We were driving on roads that usually didn't have any cops, and talking about our plans.

Carlos intended to stay in Hong Kong. He had told me a long time ago that he was only escaping to go and look for his sister.
Hotaru was still playing with his phone, and he said that he was going to stay too.

I thought about it for a while, and finally decided to leave Hong Kong.

If I had to guess, the news of me breaking out of prison would soon be broadcast to the entire island.
I could imagine the lovely expressions on those evil people who thought they had escaped my judgment when they heard the news of my going to prison.
I had planted the seed of fear in them, and they would no longer require any extra care from me. The darkness inside humans' hearts would make sure that it kept growing and blossoming.
What I needed to do was to plant more seeds all around this vast world.



So I got out of the car somewhere near the port.

”My dear friends, farewell~”

With the sound of a ship's horn booming between the clouds and the ocean, I climbed up onto a cargo ship that was about to set off on its voyage. She would be taking me to my next destination.

I hoped that I would have more new and interesting encounters in a new and exciting world.

ッ



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