The lost of both her parents as a child weigh on her, Seven was later taken in by her uncle's abusive family whom only agreed to take her in for the child support money. She was eventually accepted her fate as years went by, causing her self-esteem to shrink, afraid of being getting close to anyone or anything, she isolates herself for fear of being abandoned once again. Due to her situation, Seven has always tried to keep to herself at school, hoping to go through school unnoticed. However her introversion and quietness caught the eyes of the school bullies and thus began a series of unfortunate events.
Things took a turn when two peculiar students transferred to her class. Usually, Seven would never take much notice of anyone, trying to stay out of sight as usual, yet something about them made her turn eyes glance over. Was it because of their attractiveness and popularity? Was it because they greeted her in the hallway? Or their strangely familiar smile? She started taking interest in them for some reason, watching these two whose life seems to be the exact opposite of hers.
She was bracing herself for the bullies when the bell rang. She jumped when a hand touched her shoulder, she turned around it was one of the duo, his name… she can never remember, no one had a name or face in her mental vision, because none of them are important. They are all merely the spectators of the spectacle which is her life watching silently from the sidelines, laughing as her life gradually falls. No one had tried to enter her bubble. He walked past her after giving her knowing smile. She was forced into the corner after school once again that day.
The horizon was blood red the day as the bus full of school students was returning to school after what was supposedly the most exciting excursion. A sudden violent break snapped her back to reality, just as she looked up to find that they have ended in an abandoned warehouse. Voices of confusion and anger gradually turned to fear when two masked figures, guns in hand forcefully dragged the passengers into the run-down building. Fear consumed the group as they obeyed their new captor’s orders.
“I’ll seize you and crush you and wrench you apart, Though no one may gaze on my singular heart.”. Riddles. If the riddle isn’t solved in the next ten minute, one person will have to be killed. As confusion and fear blurred the minds of the hostages, they soon had to sacrifice one of them when the time was up. “You would like to die won’t you?”,”You have no one in this world anyways” said the familiar malicious voices. “It seems like you are chosen as the scapegoat” one of the masked man said in an odd robotic voice through the massive screen looking down at them, monitoring their every move. Her eyes shift pleadingly towards her teachers who quickly looked away. She froze as she was overcome with a flood of emotions, fear, anger betrayal, sadness and loneliness.
“It seems like you are lucky enough to get a ‘chance’ card” the loud noise broke the ringing silence in her ears. “You get to choose, to die or...”, “I want to live!” Seven blurted out, despite the state of her life, she wanted to live, to see herself escape one day. “...Or, to be an accomplice,...Very well then.” She was instructed to move towards the door before her, fearing the horrors behind it. As she proceeded, it was a simple stairwell that lead to what seemed like a monitoring room. She stood by the entry and eyes widened when she saw the two familiar faces smiling back at her. One of them turned back to the microphone, “Seven, will be the one to pick her replacement for the rules this time round”.
She was ushered to the microphone and she watched the expressions of the people who sent her out to be sacrificed through the screen, eyes widened with guilt and fear. One of the nameless who watched as she was bullied screamed “I never joined their games bullying you! I was the nice one!” followed by a chorus of other voices pleading and begging for forgiveness. A small smile crept up her lips as she spoke her next words...
The story revolved around the question of humanity, of Seven and the people around her. How people conform to the majority in order to survive the cruelty of this world. Is the protagonist a victim or the perpetrator of fear and the pressure of society, or is she both? As she smiled slightly before speaking, it might give a sense of direction of how she is enjoying the sudden turn of events, the switch of power and how the majority would submit to the new figure of power to maintain their status, conforming to the "popular" idea for fear of being alienated even if they might not agree to it.
The visuals, like the plot closely follows the state of mind of the protagonist. The two strange supporting character will only be depicted with a strange smile as that is the distinctive character trait that is seen by the protagonist. The bullies and the bystanders will also be depicted without basic features besides the one the protagonist take notice of. Characters who mean a lot to the protagonist or eventually got acknowledged by her will eventually regain their feature and thus begin to behave more independently, more "human-like". This is to show the lens which the Seven sees her reality and the prejudice and emotions towards things around her.
Until the identity of the two captors are revealed, they can be interpreted as her hidden personalities, the visualization of her inner self, spawned by the fear and hatred that built up throughout her life without anyone to turn to. The story attempt to question "humanity", nature and nurture, the choices we make are due to multiple influences, our upbringing, education and socio-cultural norms. People are often judged due to the choices they made. Were they merely bad choices made without considering their implications, did we just fail to take into consideration the options they had to choose from or were they merely attempting to justify their actions with ideals?
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