"Go on."

  Jacob was blocking the doorway. He wouldn't let Arata leave this room alive. That's what his eyes were telling him.

  "Dial the number."

  Arata was gripping the phone so tightly his knuckles had turned white. No one could snatch this phone from his hand. It was his only win condition. He absolutely needed to complete this call, or otherwise...

  Otherwise, things would become really, really complicated.

  Even if Jacob had explicitly told him to dial the number himself, Arata still couldn't stop his hands from shaking while clicking through the interface. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe Jacob was telling him to dial it as a way to learn Kaito's exact location. Besides, where was Kaito, and what was he doing right now? Arata hadn't really thought about it since entering the ship. There had been too much going on.

  This is not a time to overthink.

  Arata felt the anxiety grow inside of him like a living thing, coiling around his chest and squeezing. Then he shut it down completely. Forced it back through sheer willpower. What was he worried about? The only thing he had to do was dial the number and everything would be over. Victory was one phone call away.

  He started pressing the numbers, each touch measured despite the trembling in his fingers.

  090-...

  Jacob was standing still, arms crossed. He didn't seem nervous at all. His posture was relaxed, casual, like he was watching something mildly interesting rather than witnessing his entire operation falling apart.

  4782-...

  Still no reaction coming from him. Wasn't he worried about what would happen if Arata called outside help?

  6651.

  Too late.

  The phone connected. It started ringing.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  I won.

  Arata's smile widened, his lips pulling back to reveal teeth in an expression that had nothing to do with joy. It stretched too wide, looked almost feral in its intensity—the grin of a predator that had just caught its prey.

  Click.

  The line went dead.

  Arata was speechless, the smile dropping from his face like someone had cut the strings holding it in place.

  What had just happened? Why didn't the call go through?

  He quickly dialed the numbers again, this time without trembling. Anger was replacing confusion, burning away the uncertainty.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Click.

  "WHAT??"

  He dialed a third time, rage taking him over completely now. He was smashing the numbers on the screen, pressing so hard the phone's casing creaked under the pressure.

  Click.

  "WHY?? WHY ISN'T IT WORKING?!"

  Jacob was staring at Arata, who was clearly spiraling into desperation, without moving an inch. He was just watching with that same calm, almost sad expression.

  "Arata..."

  He walked past him, moving toward his father's desk chair. Beautiful leather. He sat down and put his feet up on the polished wood surface, settling into a comfortable position despite the weird tension filling the room.

  "Stepping inside this ship was a mistake."

  Arata was breathing heavily, trying to calm down after letting himself lose control. His chest heaved with each breath, excessive adrenaline flooding his system.

  "When you burst through the gate, you didn't realize that it was part of a trap."

  Wait.

  Arata's mind caught on that detail, processing the implications.

  How did he know about my intrusion? Did he really play me for a fool this whole time?

  "By stepping inside, my father—" Jacob paused, voice taking on a formal tone, "Alexander Thorne, the owner of the LeVIATHAN, had already trapped you inside this ship."

  His father?

  "Why? WHY ME? I don't even know him!"

  Arata slammed his fist down on the table. Random objects scattered—pens, papers, a decorative paperweight that rolled off the edge and hit the floor with a heavy thud. His emotions took control of him once more. He really couldn't calm himself this time. The situation was spiraling too far out of control.

  "Actually..." Jacob's voice was quiet, almost gentle. "It wasn't his decision. It was requested by someone else."

  Arata's eyes widened in shock.

  No.

  He'd definitely been played for a fool. He'd thought he was winning, thought he had the upper hand after securing Jacob's friendship and access to the top floor. Thought he was controlling the situation.

  But the Harbor Group was two steps ahead the entire time. The Boss had easily tricked him into exactly this position.

  "How is it possible..."

  This time he was whispering to himself, not expecting an answer. Simply trying to understand why he'd failed so miserably, where his calculations had gone wrong.

  Besides.

  Arata quickly stepped back, fighting stance ready, his aura flaring around him in defensive waves. Energy gathered instinctively, preparing for combat.

  That means Jacob is with them as well.

  Jacob stared at Arata's panicked movements while still sitting relaxed in the expensive leather chair. He really couldn't be bothered to move when sitting so comfortably.

  "Relax. I'm not involved in this." His voice carried genuine weariness, like he'd had this conversation before and was tired of it. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have told you all of this."

  The boy sounded way smarter than what Arata had originally expected. The drunk, cheerful persona was gone completely, replaced by someone calculated and aware.

  "Actually, it's quite the opposite..." Jacob leaned forward slightly, meeting Arata's eyes. "I'm on your side."

  Arata's eyes widened, this time not in terror, but in complete disbelief. He couldn't fully process what he was seeing.

  While saying his line, Jacob's Aura had flared around him. It wasn't standard reinforcement energy. It was golden. Pure, brilliant gold that radiated outward as if he were the center of the universe. The feeling was different from anything Arata had encountered before—it felt genuine, trustworthy, carrying a weight that transcended normal power displays, something even Arata's twisted mind was powerless against.

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  It felt honest. Fundamentally honest.

  Arata stepped back, lowering his guard despite the confusion. He adopted a more casual stance, though tension still coiled through his muscles, ready to react if this was another layer of deception.

  Why would he be against his own father? That doesn't make any sense.

  Jacob didn’t seem like the rebellious type to him.

  "Oh yeah?" Arata's voice carried skepticism, testing. "Then tell me. Why wasn't the phone working when I used it a minute ago?"

  That simple question would test his honesty, reveal whether this was a genuine alliance or just another manipulation.

  "You see... When I said that you were trapped..." Jacob took long pauses between his phrases, as if he couldn't find soft words to say what he'd been holding for so long. The suspense was really irritating Arata, making him want to grab Jacob and shake the information out of him faster. "I actually understated the situation. How do I say this... We are all trapped inside the ship and there is absolutely no way of escaping."

  He gestured toward the windows, where morning light streamed through.

  "You've probably noticed the high-grade barrier surrounding the ship."

  Arata had noticed it, of course he had. That ultra-sophisticated defensive layer he’d analyzed before breaching the gate. Even now, if he focused his senses, he could feel it humming just beyond the hull, energy so densely woven it made his teeth ache.

  The barrier glowed with golden light, covering every surface of the vessel without a single gap or weakness.

  Jacob retracted his feet from the desk and stood up. He walked toward the center of the room and raised both of his arms in a solemn gesture, his golden Aura radiating around him again with that same overwhelming presence.

  "Well, it isn't a protective barrier..." His voice was quiet, heavy with implications. "It's a cage."

  Arata's eyes widened once more, but this time, even wider than before. His pupils dilated as the full weight of that statement hit him.

  "A cage with the sole objective of keeping every single one of us inside."

  Silence filled the room for several minutes. Arata stayed still, replaying every word in his head, turning the exchange over from different angles, lingering on small details he might have missed, yet each time he circled back to the same conclusion: there was nothing obvious to tear apart.

  He needed a minute. He couldn't have anticipated this outcome. All his planning, all his preparation, and he'd walked straight into a trap that was bigger and more complete than anything he'd imagined.

  "Wait."

  He raised his arm, stopping Jacob from continuing.

  "How many times have you left the LeVIATHAN?"

  Jacob's expression saddened immediately. He was looking at the floor now, unable to meet Arata's eyes.

  Arata's ears weren't ready for the answer.

  "I've been here..." Jacob's voice cracked slightly. "Since the day I was born."

  The weight of that statement hung in the air like a physical presence.

  Since the day… he was born?

  Eighteen years. Maybe nineteen. However old Jacob was, he'd spent his entire life trapped inside this floating prison, unable to leave, watching the world pass by through windows he could never cross.

  Jacob began telling Arata about his past, the words coming slowly at first, then faster as the dam broke.

  This would help lighten the tension between them after the quick succession of revelations that had just happened. And Arata... Arata needed to understand who he was dealing with. Needed to know if this alliance was real or just another layer in an infinitely complex game.

  ***

  [Flashback — Jacob's POV]

  The LeVIATHAN was constructed in Italian shipyards and commissioned by my father fifteen years before I was born. It was a marvel of engineering even then, 1000 feet of luxury designed to host the world's elite in comfort while conducting business away from prying eyes and inconvenient jurisdictions.

  The ship cost more than most people would earn in a hundred lifetimes. Every surface was carefully considered, every detail optimized for displaying wealth while maintaining the kind of discretion that powerful people required.

  France. Italy. United Kingdom. Spain. Greece. Monaco.

  The ship traveled from coast to coast, stopping for multiple days or weeks between every destination. During all of this time, this perfect opportunity to explore and visit each country, my older brother and I couldn't go out like the other kids. We couldn't set foot on actual land or explore new environments and experience different cultures firsthand.

  The only place we'd visited, and that thousands of times, was the LeVIATHAN itself. We walked every corridor, entered every room, and memorized every deck and compartment through endless repetition because there was literally nowhere else to go.

  We didn't even know what country we were born in. My father didn't care enough to register it anywhere officially. Our mother died after delivering me, her life claimed by unexpected complications during childbirth that left the rest of us to navigate a world without her.

  Maybe that's what made my older brother distant and cold with me, blaming me for her death even though I had no choice in the matter and no say in being born or the circumstances that killed her.

  Inside the ship, loneliness came quickly. My brother often stayed with my father, leaving me on my own, as if keeping me aside was their way of coping with Mother’s death.

  The only thing that saved me was reading.

  I read everything. Anything I could lay my hands on. Books from the ship's library, documents left in my father's office, magazines that guests brought aboard and forgot when they departed. I learned about the world, about cultures, about people and places and ideas that existed beyond these walls.

  This was the only way I could truly see the world beyond those windows, which were no more than paintings to me.

  ***

  [Present]

  Arata thought about it deeply.

  How could a parent treat their child like this? How could someone restrain their own son, keep him stuck in this floating prison, completely alone except for whatever temporary company came aboard for business meetings?

  It was cruel in a way that went beyond simple neglect.

  But besides the boy's sad past, something else deeply intrigued Arata. He used his question as an opportunity to both satisfy his curiosity and hopefully cheer Jacob up.

  "So you've read all of the books in the library? I went there yesterday and I found some pretty weird shit."

  In fact, part of what Jacob had said wasn't very coherent with what Arata had observed. The library was old and dusty, as if no one had set foot inside in years. Decades, even. The accumulation of dust on surfaces, the undisturbed air, the complete absence of recent human presence—it all contradicted the idea of Jacob regularly visiting that space.

  "The library? Yeah, I used to go there a lot when I was younger."

  Arata stared at him, expecting to corner him on the inconsistency.

  "But I quickly got bored of it after reading every book in it."

  Every book?

  That's impossible.

  There were thousands of books in there. Tens of thousands, easily. How could anyone have read every single one of them? Some were even written in foreign languages no one understood anymore—archaic Latin, dead dialects, scripts that predated modern scholarship.

  Arata pushed the matter a bit more, testing.

  "You read every book?"

  "Yeah, why? You don't believe me because I look dumb?" Jacob's tone carried genuine confusion rather than offense.

  "No, it's just... There are so many books I can't even see how it's possible to read every single one of them."

  "So many books?" Jacob frowned, thinking. "Yeah, I mean, there were probably a couple hundred... so you could say it's a lot. But since I had nothing else to do for years, I just—”

  "A couple hundred?"

  Arata now had confirmation that there was something wrong with Jacob's story. The numbers didn't match. Not even close.

  "There were at least fifty thousand books in that library."

  "Hahahaha." Jacob laughed, the sound genuine and unbothered. "You're funny, Arata. I've lived here my whole life. If there was a library that size, believe me, I would be the first to know about it."

  Arata was confused now. Deeply confused.

  What the fuck is he saying?

  He could literally bring Jacob there right now and show him. Walk him down to that semi-circular room with the extremely high shelves and the books that were tormenting his mind. He could easily prove that the library existed exactly as he had described it.

  But Arata didn’t want to confront him about it. He sensed that Jacob's voice was trembling slightly, probably the emotions from bringing up such a sensitive topic about his isolated childhood. Arata took a more reassuring tone, trying to be gentle.

  "Jacob. If you want, I can sh—"

  "Arata." Jacob's voice cut through, suddenly sharp and focused. "Let's stop joking around and wasting time on nonsense. Don't you want to know more about my father's whereabouts?? You're in danger if I have to remind you! So please, let's focus here."

  If Arata was confused a minute ago, now he was really confused.

  He didn't sense even an ounce of humor or deflection in Jacob's tone. The boy was completely serious. He was genuinely refuting Arata's description of the library, wasn't playing games or avoiding the topic. He truly believed what he was saying—that the library was small, contained only a few hundred books, and certainly didn't match Arata's description.

  Which meant either Arata was wrong about what he'd seen, or Jacob's perception of the ship was fundamentally different from reality.

  Neither option made sense.

  Let's keep this matter for another time.

  Arata let it slide this time.

  Because Jacob was right. Right now, the priority was understanding the situation with his father and finding a way out of the LeVIATHAN. Arata knew by experience what happened when you stayed too long in places like this. The Harvesting Game had taught him that lesson in the worst way possible.

  "Fine." Arata forced himself to focus. "Tell me about your father. Where is he? What is he planning?"

  Jacob's expression shifted, relief mixing with something darker. Dread, maybe. Or resignation. He took a deep breath, then began to explain exactly how deep the trap really went.

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