Merle was browsing a forum for her favorite death-game visual novel when one thread caught her eye:

International Distributed Battle Royale Registration Thread ❤️🔪

Winner takes it all. Death game: last person alive and not arrested wins $10,000,000.

To register, post a clip of yourself waving in front of this thread.

Warning: Nothing and no one here is sacred, safe, or sane. You will die. Probably.

Below the text was a video clip of stacks of money in front of a flat screen TV displaying the thread.

Merle stared at the screen. She scrolled down the replies. People from all walks of life and ages were waving in front of their screens, mostly sitting at dark desks. A death game, huh? Could this be real? Who would spend ten million dollars on that? Merle leaned back in her gaming chair, staring at the ceiling. Some people had perverse amounts of money. There are probably sickos for whom spending ten million is like buying a pizza. But still... Merle went over the rules in her head again. If anyone had a chance at winning that thing, it was her. Being a teen in Greenland was usually death by boredom, but in this game, it was an advantage.

Two months later, Merle’s phone screen was full of notifications for her forum account @m123456:

“@m123456 stop being a coward, show your location.”

“I will come for you @m123456, you cannot hide forever.”

"@m123456 let’s finish this.”

She sighed. Could he stop already? The sender of the messages was Paul Allen, a crazed killer on the run and the current lead in the International Distributed Battle Royale. Well, he shared that place with Merle. Merle clicked the notification. The thread opened.

The last three posts were just Paul posing with a knife, a rope and a gun. And a gif of an animated rabbit doing the cut throat gesture.

Paul had eliminated every other player. Except Merle, of course. She laughed. Idiots. Why show your face in the registration video when you can wear a mask and not break the rules?

Even then: close your blinds, close your tabs, hide your bookmarks, censor your desk and keyboard, and for the love of God, use a VPN. Okay, there were smart people in the thread, but they either killed each other or they screwed up and got arrested.

Now, there were two ways this game could end.

Option 1: Paul gets arrested. Pretty probable. He did kill a lot of people and took a lot of risks, showing tremendous stupidity and arrogance.

Option 2: Paul is forty years old already. He will die a lot sooner than Merle. Merle is fifteen.

She silenced the thread and swiped back to TikTok.

Work smarter, not harder.