I wait for the sound of the laser, but it doesn’t come. I open my eyes and see they’re totally fine and most important; still alive.

“Oh my god you guys. Don’t just assume it’s safe to go. The rule is to stick together and to not leave the room before the riddle is solved.” I shake my head and follow the remaining of our team to the next room.

“Sorry. We got lucky though, otherwise we’d be dead now.” Karube scratches the back of his head. “We’ll be more careful from now on.”

Kyuma grabs the card from the table in the middle of the room; this room resembled a library. Two walls filled with books from top till bottom. Two big lounge chairs with a glass coffee table in the middle of the room, and decoration fill the place once again.

“Okay, listen up:

‘You measure my life in hours and I serve you by expiring. I’m quick when I’m thin and slow when I’m thick.”

“Is that a quote from a book? Please don’t tell me we have to find the right book?” Chota sighs and looks at all the books stacked up till the ceiling, his eyes desperate. That would be time consuming.

“I don’t think it is from a book, books don’t really expire.. they get more fragile over time, but that’s it.” I look around the room, trying to find the answer somewhere.

“It’s a candle.” Chisiya speaks up. “Thin candles burn fast, but thick ones take a while. They can burn for hours, but eventually expire because you can’t light them anymore then.” He shrugs and picks up a candle near him. There’s a key taped to the bottom. But where is the keyhole to the next room? Or even better, the exit?

“It could be behind one of those walls covered in books.” Karube walks over and begins to throw the books off the shelves. We all walk over and start doing the same thing. But there’s nothing, well not on the parts we can reach.

Kyuma taps me on my shoulder. “I’ll give you a boost so you can stand on my shoulders. Then you can reach higher up.”

“Are you sure?” I ask and he simply nods. I then just nod back and he gives me a boost so I can stand on his shoulders.

“Please tell me if I need to come down.” I say as I begin to throw more books off the shelves. After a good 5 minutes of throwing off books I find the keyhole. “Got it! Chisiya, hand me the key.”

Chisiya hands the key to Kyuma, who then hands it to me.

“Can you move to the right a bit?” I ask. I couldn’t quite reach it without losing balance so I had to be more careful.

Kyuma moves to his right, but I forgot to tell him I meant my right.

“Sorry.. I meant my right. So your left. Sorry.” It must be difficult for him to move with me on his shoulders, but he’s doing great. I put the key in the keyhole and turn it. I hear a click and another door opens.

“Okay, I need to step forward so I can squat down.. be careful.” Kyuma calls out. He takes a step forward, but slips on one of the books; he loses balance and trips forward, which means I was falling backwards. I can’t hold onto anything as I can only reach out for air. I close my eyes and just brace myself for the impact with the floor.

The next thing I hear is glass shattering. I open my eyes and look around. I fell straight trough the glass table.

“Luna! Are you okay??!” Chisiya hurries over to me and grabs my arm to help me up. I Clench my teeth and just nod.

Kyuma follows after Chisiya. “I am SO sorry.” He grabs my other arm and helps me up as well. He looks at my back which came in contact with the table first and gasps. Chisiya raises an eyebrow and follows Kyuma’s eyes. There are a few pieces stuck in my back, and small red dots were appearing. But that wasn’t the worst thing.

I am still pretty much in a daze, but I notice just one thing. The sleeve of my shirt is getting red. I roll it up and see a big, deep cut that starts halfway on my upper arm and stops at the beginning of my forearm, just below the elbow. I whimper softly at the sight of it and take a deep shaky breath. There is no time for this. We are still in the middle of a game.

“Hello? Luna?” A hand waves before my eyes. It’s Chisiya’s. “We have to get you out of here. Can you walk?” He asks.

I nod. “Let’s finish the game and get out of here. I can manage. It has to be over soon.” I say and take another deep breath before slowly making my way to the door.

But soon I feel a hand around my waist and the other is thrown over someone’s shoulder; it’s Kyuma this time. It eases the pain a bit and we make our way to the, hopefully, last room; this one is outside.

We’re in the garden. Beautiful flowers are filled up the place, and in the middle there’s a pond with a small bridge over it. At the end of the bridge is the key, locked in a cage. This key is different from the other ones; could this be the last key?

Karube hurries over to the note and read it out loud:

“Last one: Four people arrive at a river with a narrow bridge that can only hold two people at a time. Its nighttime and they have one torch that has to be used when crossing the bridge. Person A can cross the bridge in 1 minute. Person B in 2 minutes, person C in 5 minutes and person D in 8 minutes. When two people cross the bridge together, they MUST move at the slower person’s pace. Can they all get across the bridge in 15 minutes or less?”

This is the last room! Thank god! But this is still not my strong suit so I look up at Kyuma.

“You knew the last one as well. Go over there and figure it out.”

He still looks a bit worried but nods and walks over to Karube.

Chota walks up and stands next to me. “Are you okay?”

I look at him and nod. “I think for now the endorphins is keeping it under control. I’ll be fine though”

I put my hand on the wound and apply pressure to it to stop it from bleeding more. Just a little while longer and I can fix this.

The other three guys were figuring out the puzzle.. and after some back and forth and some out loud thinking, it doesn’t just work for me, they walk back over.

“Chisiya you explain it.” Kyuma stands beside me again and looks at my arm. He frowns and takes out another tissue from his pocket. He takes my arm and wraps the tissue around the cut; tight enough to keep it from getting worse, and not too tight to cut off everything else.

Chisiya speaks up. “First ‘A’ and ‘B’ cross the bridge. ‘A’ brings back the torch. This takes up 3 minutes total. Next ‘C’ and ‘D’ cross, then ‘B’ brings back the torch. This takes 10 minutes, so a total of 13 minutes now. Finally, ‘A’ and ‘B’ cross again, which takes up 2 minutes. So they can all cross the bridge in 15 minutes.” He nods.

“So let’s walk over that bridge that exact same way, and hopefully the key will be unlocked and we can get out of here.”

Just then I hear something next to us. I look over and see the other team. They also made it to the final room, but it looks like they’ve just arrived. I know we’re going to win this, but I still feel bad. Those four won’t make it. Wait.. four? One of them died during the game? How? When?

But I shake the thought out of my head and walk with Kyuma to the bridge. There is no time to think about it, and at the moment I honestly don’t really care. I just want to sit down.

Chota is waiting on the other side already, since this is just about four people.

Chisiya and Karube go first. Chisiya comes back and Kyuma and I cross the bridge. Karube walks back, and crosses again with Chisiya.

The cage opens up and Chota grabs the key.

“We did it! Let’s open up the gate and get the hell out of here!”

We make our way to the gate and walk out.

Game clear. Congratulation team A.

Then the laser shows up and takes out the four remaining players on the other side of the garden.

I look at the phone and see that the days are added to my visa. Great, because I need some time to recover from this again.

And now I notice that the endorphins is slowly leaving my body, and my back begins to sting a little, and I feel my arm throbbing. I lost quite a bit of blood already and even become a bit dizzy.

“We have to go..” Chisiya says as he notices the dizziness. “I have to stitch up that arm.”

But Chota steps forward. “Can I come as well.. My leg isn’t doing all too well at the moment.”

“Let’s all go then. This way” Chisiya walks out in front of us. I try to keep up with Kyuma and I think that is going quite well despite everything. But then, without stopping and in one smooth motion, he picks me up and walks faster.