Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can

“Then did Purple shoot and kill him? No, but White, you definitely said you shot him.”

Hong Jeonghoon couldn’t make sense of the situation because he was startled by my claim in the chat that I had killed him.

“Sorry for confusing you. I said it because I hoped Purple would confess on his own and stop. I thought if I claimed I did it, he would deny it and tell us the truth.”

I had sent that message while hoping Mafia Purple still had one last shred of conscience left. Then I might have at least been able to try to understand Purple. …Although it was already far too late.

“So Purple shot that guy to death?”

“Yeah. And I doubt he only killed that one. He probably killed more.”

Hong Jeonghoon drew in a trembling breath. Then he said something perfectly reasonable.

“How could anyone do that…?”

Exactly. Even if this game felt completely detached from reality, how could someone sell their soul for 10 billion won and kill the classmates they had talked and shared feelings with like insects on the side of the road?

I had wanted to save everyone if possible, but he had plunged the situation straight into a quagmire before I even had time to devise a proper strategy. Just what kind of person was Mafia Purple?

“Purple? White? What are those? Are you two really Mafia?”

“Why are you only revealing yourselves now? You’ve been hiding in the back and fucking killing everyone!”

“You fucking bastards, you killed all of them!”

The agitated kids interrupted my conversation with Hong Jeonghoon. There were only a few people left in the classroom, but it quickly became noisy again.

Bang!

“Sorry, guys. Please be quiet.”

To put an end to the commotion, I fired another shot toward the ceiling. I had no intention of shooting at anyone. To me, the gun wasn’t a weapon. It was merely a somewhat violent means of communication that made a loud noise.

“Do you remember the kids who died after you heard several gunshots? You don’t have to answer. Just nod.”

The kids nodded with bewildered expressions at my question.

“The Mafia members were given K5 pistols, and each gun had thirteen bullets.”

I lightly shook the gun up and down in a shooting grip, making it clack, clack, then continued with a simple explanation.

“Everyone who was executed by vote in the game died from a single gunshot wound to the head, but some of them died after being shot several times in the chest. Do you understand what that means?”

Some trembled as though they understood, while others tilted their heads to the side as though they still had no idea.

“It means someone was directly shooting and killing whoever they wanted instead of using the vote.”

“What…!”

Hong Jeonghoon started to respond, then seemed to realize his mistake and covered his mouth again. I gave him a slight smile to show that it was alright. At that, Hong Jeonghoon slowly lowered his hand and cleared his throat.

“Right, even the Mafia never thought about directly shooting the Townspeople to death.”

“R-Right… We… We didn’t kill our classmates because we wanted to either…”

Just like the Townspeople, the Mafia members had merely been dragged into a game they didn’t want to play. There was prize money at stake, but neither Hong Jeonghoon nor I was particularly interested in it. I wanted to clear the game, while Hong Jeonghoon simply wanted the situation to end.

“But things didn’t go the way we thought they would.”

Mafia Purple had appeared. A ruthless player whose sole objective was the prize money. And that player had twisted one of the rules, ‘No more than one person may be executed per round,’ to make the game progress in his favor.

“Did you know that if someone kills a person before the system carries out the execution, the turn ends there?”

“What? You can kill someone first?”

“Then… even without killing anyone through the vote…”

Right, even if no one was killed by the vote, the round advanced as long as someone died. Mafia Purple had exploited that. Amid the commotion, he killed whoever he wanted while disguising it as the system’s execution.

When I thought about it, it wasn’t impossible. The system had blindfolded the Townspeople and given the Mafia guns that weren’t needed for the executions. It almost seemed as though the system itself was encouraging this kind of play.

“Guys, do you really think Number 5 died?”

“Huh? The one who claimed to be Police, but turned out to be a Townsperson when he died?”

“Yeah.”

The kids quietly murmured among themselves as though trying to solve the question I had posed. Listening to their deductions, I approached the layered pile of corpses and began digging through it.

“Didn’t Number 5 die? I felt blood splatter. Someone definitely died… From the vote…?”

“Hey, we heard three gunshots when Number 5 died. There was only one gunshot when the others died.”

“Huh? So whenever we heard several gunshots, that meant a person killed them?”

The murmuring kids began reaching a conclusion on their own. It was the same conclusion I had reached. I didn’t know whether it was correct, but it was the most likely hypothesis.

“The system efficiently kills people by penetrating their heads with a single bullet. The corpses we heard several gunshots for were killed by being shot in the chest, which is relatively easier to hit than the head. If the system can kill someone with a single shot, there’s no reason for it to waste bullets, is there?”