Once I regain consciousness, I have to blink multiple times to let my eyes adjust to the light. My groggy mind remembers the person in my room and a jerk upright.

There are two things I realized when I did that. One, I am already upright. Well, sitting in a chair. Two, I am tied to a chair.

Then it sinks in. I am tied to a chair! My arms and legs moving their own violation, trying and pushing and pulling, doing anything to get me out of the restraints.

"Stop! You're gonna hurt yourself!" The voice makes me jump, but then I recognize it, and I try to turn my head to see if it really is him. Yes!

"James! What's going on? Where are we? Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm tied up, but I'm fine. I don't know much, only that we are in a white and blue checkered room with the door that doesn't have a handle, and a large one-way mirror. Or I assume that's what it is."

"And we're tied to chairs. Why did they tie us to a chair? And why did they have to tie it so tight?!"

"I don't know. I'm close to getting out of this though. I've been collecting tiny water droplets in the air and putting them on a rope so it gets soft and able to break. I've almost got mine, and yours are close to."

I wait not–so–patiently, and keep trying to look over my shoulder to see how he's doing. I notice a difference in the rope, and continue trying to get loose. The material it's made of scrapes my skin, but I'll deal with that after. First, we have to get out of these stupid ropes.

A few minutes past and we're not closer to being out of here. Wherever "here" is. I've stopped trying to free my hands, which had only resulted in my wrists turning red from rubbing. I need to see how we can get out of the room, after we get out of the ropes, of course.

We could try to smash the window with the chairs, we could then try to pry open the door with the splinters of the chairs if that doesn't work. But if neither of those options successfully get us out, what then? There's practically nothing in the room, except for us, obviously. Other than that, nothing. Not a crumb.

I hear James grunt, and it snaps me from my not–actually–helpful thoughts. I feel his chair vibrate slightly as he tugs on his binds, and I do the same. I have a bone to pick with these ropes. The stupid ones I've been in for for what feels like hours. They rub my wrists raw, and now I want some good–old–fashioned revenge on an inanimate object.

With a burst of strength, I pull my arms up with a small grunt and the rope previously holding my wrist breaks. I hear James get it off at the same time, and we both untie our legs, immediately stretching our legs once they're free. Then we give each other a hug, reminding us we're in this together.

"What now?" He asks as I grab a chair for what looks like a mirror. I grunt with all my strength as I heave the chair into the direction of glass, careful not to get in the way of it if it rebounds, just like those tv shows always do. It looks as if it's flying in slow motion, both James and I nervously waiting for it to hit, and hopefully break, the designated object.

It harmlessly rebounds off, as if the glass is bulletproof, except for the tiny crack in the middle of the rectangle. The chair seems to have survived the crash, so James picks it up to try to throw it again. Meanwhile, I walk over to the door to examine it. As I get closer, I see each square on the door has four smaller squares of slightly different shades about blue and white.

Once I've noticed that, I then noticed none of the squares are the same color. All of them are different blues, though the whites are the same four repeating ones.

One square of blue squares catches my attention. The four squares are different sizes. The biggest one looks like it doesn't fit perfectly in the wall. I press on it and I hear a tiny click, and when I release it, it swings open like a door. I gasp in surprise as a tiny button comes into view.

The chair throwing stops  as James comes over, and I press it hoping and wishing for the door to open, but instead we hear a click, fainter, as if it came from farther away.

"There!" James cries in triumph as another tiny door opens, with another button, on the other side of the room. We walk over and click that one too. Another square opens, with another button. We go over, feeling stupid, and click that one.

The last tiny door opens, but instead of a tiny button, a folded piece of paper reads: Click all the buttons at the same time. The door will open long enough for one of you to get through. Don't try to get both. The door is made to close no matter what, or who, is in the way. Be careful, and make your choices wisely.

"There are three buttons!" James cries indignantly. "How are we supposed to hit them at the same time? They are far from the door, too, except for the one beside it."

"What if we try to use the chairs? Wait, that wouldn't work. It's not tall enough."

"Is it it is if we stack them."

"No! Then we can't both get through."

"I'll stay." We both say at the same time

We both start to say our argument when I hold up a finger and we both fall silent.

"I'm going to stay," I say. "You know better than I do about Glezentine, and about the trials. This is what you were going to tell me about yesterday, right? You knew this, or something like this, would happen?"

"Yes, but no. The past times this happened, there was always a surprise fourth challenge that involved all other competitions, in this case both Caroline's and Christopher's. It was always at random times between challenges, and this was the last time between them, but I thought it would be closer to the last challenge. Now you're caught up to all that I know. Now time for my argument. I need to stay because I have no idea how long the person in this room will be trapped, and I will last longer because I can collect water particles in the air. So you need to go."

He walks over to the button on the wall opposite the door and presses the button. The chairs stand up to push the second button, and the last one to press is by the door. I walk over, and look at James again.  "Are you sure? I don't like the idea of you being trapped in this sad room for a long time. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, not even my enemies. This is your last chance to tell me to stay and let you go, okay? "

"Yes, I'm sure. Just go, you scaredy cat," he said half jokingly. I could tell he was trying to cheer me up a bit, and I thought it was sweet of him. I look at him one last time as I push the button, stepping out of the doorway into freedom. The doors shut with a hiss, separating me from James.

It takes a second for me to drive to stir my surroundings, but I see a stark white hallway, reminding me of a hospital room. I sniff. Smells like one too.

I follow some arrows on the ground pointing and leading me in the direction of a set of double doors. Hesitantly, I push them open. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's certainly not what I see. There's a giant table inside an enormous room, think one of those tables from, what's it called, Harry Potter? Yeah.

As I look closer, I see it is actually a bunch of smaller tables, each with a chair on either side, and two name tags per table. As I go down the row, I recognize some names of people I went against. I find my name, and they spelled Scarlet with one "T", like it's supposed to be. The name on the other side of the table says "James". I only left him a few seconds ago, but I still feel a pang of guilt and sadness for leaving him there.

I take the name tag and put it on.

Now what?

I look around for any sign of life, and instead I see two regular-sized doors at the end of the tables. At the top, one says "Princess Caroline", and at the end of the other table on my side says "Prince Christopher".

I go through the latter and see a room with a window where a bunch of other contestants are standing. This reminds me of when the boys were taking the test for Caroline. The two rooms, connected by glass, a door to go into the room, and the questions getting asked.

At least, I think that's what's happening. It looks less like a quiz, more like an interview. Christopher asks the questions, and depending on the answer, the light turns either green or red. Truth or lie, I'm guessing.

"You're soon," says a voice behind me. I turned to see Coral. "I've already gone. It's in the order of who gets here. You're one of the last one. Either that means you took a while to find the buttons, or it means you took a while deciding who stays. Or, you know, you both took a very long time to wake up from being knocked out. So, who'd you get trapped with?"

I debate telling her. The only reason I hesitate is because of her fangirling over James. "It was James... Why do you ask?"

"I'm sorry, WHAT?! You left him there?! Why?! Oh, wait. He made you leave, didn't he? He's so sweet that way, sacrificing himself so you could leave. This just adds to his list of greatness! But seriously, if he dies in there I'll kill you. Sorry, that was a roller coaster. Anyway, I'm glad to see you're here."

"Really? Don't you wish it was James?"

"I mean I'm glad to see you passed the last test. I think everyone saw what you did to Chloe on those bars, which was, of course, spectacular!"

"Thanks. I didn't think I was going to get that big of an audience. If I did, I most likely would have made a huge fool of myself, like I normally do."

Before Coral could respond, someone called my name from a speaker. It was my turn. As I walk to the door, I hear Coral call from behind me, "Be honest!".

———-

Hey! I feel like I say this a lot, and I truly mean it, but sorry again for not posting basically at all. My summer is packed and I don't really have much time off! Though I will try to post, I'm not sure how well that's actually gonna go :|

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