Redemption Complex Arc

Prologue
[December 23rd]

“That’s all for today. Good work you two,” said Kaiba as he closed his textbook and put it in his bag. Kumiko and Hibiki stood up and made a bow.

“Thank you, as always, Mr. Kaiba,” Kumiko said.

“Yeah. Today’s lesson was interesting,” followed Hibiki.

Kaiba looked back at Hibiki. “Oh? So that means none of the other lessons are interesing?”

“Ah, n-no! I was just saying that this one was more fun than the others,” said Hibiki as she put her hands up.

Kaiba nodded. “I see. That’s good, then.” He put the rest of his teaching materials in his bag and headed for the door. Then suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, waited a moment, and said, “Have either of you seen my dice? You know, the ones I always roll around in my hands? I seem to have lost them someplace.”

The two girls shook their heads.

“I see. Well, I’ll see you two on the 25th for the Christmas party.”

Kumiko and Hibiki both waved goodbye to their teacher as he left the room, then walked up to the whiteboard and started wiping it clean. Kumiko stopped for a second, put her hand to her chin, then turned to her friend and spoke. “Hey, Hibiki.”

“What is it?” responded Hibiki, who also stopped.

“We should get Mr. Kaiba a present for Christmas.”

“Oh! That’s a great idea!”

“What should we get him, though?”

“Hm…I don’t know.”

“Should we go shopping tomorrow for one?”

“Yeah!”

Hibiki smiled at the thought. She hadn’t been to the mall with Kumiko in a long time, so she was very excited to go out with her friend.

[The next day]

Hibiki and Kumiko walked through the mall, looking at different stores and window-shopping at each one of them. It was a very large mall, with 4 floors and at least 100 different shops on each one. They were there in the morning, with the white snow of December falling lightly onto the cold ground. Kumiko and Hibiki kept warm by staying close together until they reached the temperature-controlled indoor mall. Since there weren’t many people, the two girls enjoyed wandering around the mall, trying on different products that took their fancy.

As time passed, more and more people started to appear, so Kumiko said to Hibiki. “Hey, take my hand so we don’t get lost.” Hibiki nodded and took her friend’s hand in her own. They continued to browse through the shops, searching for the perfect gift for their teacher, until it was about 5 in the afternoon. By that time, both of the girls were tired and were sitting down on a bench with smoothies in their hands.

Hibiki sighed. “We can’t find anything…”

Kumiko made a supportive smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll find something eventually.” “I hope you’re right,” Hibiki replied. “It’s getting late. We’ll have to go home soon.” Hibiki took a few sips from her smoothie, then thought hard about what her teacher would like. But it was useless. She couldn’t think of anything. So instead she looked around to find something that might inspire her. Her eyes darted around the area, examining the name of each store and its displayed objects. They rested on a store that said, “Tabletoppers”.

What were those again? Hibiki thought to herself. She started to remember piece by piece. That store sells old classic tabletop role-playing games, with game boards, pieces, rulebooks, guides, and dice. Then Hibiki had found her idea. ''Dice! Mr. Kaiba loves playing with dice!''

“Kumiko!” she suddenly shouted.

“Eh?! W-What is it?” Kumiko replied, surprised from the shout.

“Dice! We can get Mr. Kaiba dice!”

“Dice? Oh that’s right, he lost his old pair.”

“Yeah, except this time, we can go to that store!”

Hibiki pointed at Tabletoppers, leaving Kumiko confused.

“Tabletoppers…?”

“Yeah. Remember how in the first role-playing games, you had to play with rulebooks, guides, paper, and…”

“Dice!” they shouted simultaneously.

“Great idea, Hibiki! Let’s go!”

“Yeah!”

Kumiko and Hibiki got up from the bench and headed towards the store, then bought a pair of 36-sided die, meant as replacements for lost pieces. Hibiki held up one of the die and examined it in her hand. The die was very intricate, with several numbers engraved into the sides, along with other symbols, like one that said “skip” or another that had a black skull on it. Hibiki noticed that both die were exactly the same, and felt like it would’ve been cooler if they got two different pieces.

The two left the mall and went onto the sunset-lit streets. They were filled with tired businessmen and enthusiastic shoppers alike, and the sound of cars was reduced to a dull roar compared to the idle chatter of pedestrians on the sidewalk.

As Kumiko and Hibiki walked, the amount of people increased rather than lessened. After all, Japan looked truly alive at nighttime. Hibiki wanted to grab Kumiko’s hand to prevent them from getting lost, but she felt too shy and kept quiet about it. The number of people kept growing bigger and bigger, and Hibiki looked back to ask Kumiko if she had enough money to buy a cafe au lait, when she realized that her friend wasn’t behind her.

“Kumiko!” she shouted, and started running.

“Oh! My cellphone!” she realized.

Hibiki opened her flip-style cellphone, only to despair when she saw that it was out of battery. She cursed herself and decided to go find Kumiko the hard way. Hibiki searched the massive floods of people coming in from every direction, and became extremely worried.

“Kumiko! Kumiko! Where are you?!” she cried desperately.

Hibiki didn’t like large crowds in the first place, and always relied on her friend to guide her through. However, that friend was nowhere to be found, and Hibiki felt like she was having a panic attack. However, she knew that she couldn’t just stand there looking helpless, so she tried to think about it rationally.

''Maybe she went back to the store. Yeah, that could be it.''

Hibiki ran through the mess of people on the sidewalk, trying to get back to the place where they had bought the dice. She just had to cross one more street to get to the mall, and sprinted across, not acknowledging the bright red light on the other side of the crosswalk.

“Hibiki!”

Hibiki heard her name being called, felt a strong push, turned around, and saw her friend there. Then she heard the terrifying sound of a human body getting smashed by a 33000lb slab of metal at 45kph. A pair of dice had fallen on the ground in front of her. One had landed on a “skip.” The other had landed on a black skull.