Chapter III - Floor of Gluttony

As the prisoners stepped onto the second floor, an eerie emptiness stretched before them. The walls and ceiling were covered in massive LED screens, each playing endless mukbang videos. The exaggerated sounds of chewing, slurping, and swallowing echoed through the space, drilling into their minds.

Kyle de Guzman narrowed his eyes. His stomach twisted at the sight of the feast displayed on a long banquet table—golden-brown loaves of bread, steaming plates of meat, and perfectly arranged desserts. The air carried the illusion of freshly cooked meals, making the hunger set in almost instantly.

Then, Warden Patience stepped forward, his expression calm and detached.

"Welcome to the Floor of Gluttony," he announced. "For the next fifteen days, you may do as you wish—rest, talk, fight. Unlike the Floor of Sloth, where you were deprived of sleep, here you are free to close your eyes and recover."

A brief pause.

"Except for one thing: eating. Food will be served, but every single piece is poisoned. A single bite will result in death. Choose wisely."

With that, he turned, and the door behind them shut with a deafening clang.

The Hunger Games had begun.

Kyle sat against the cold wall, eyes scanning the room. MJ Rosalbon rested beside him, arms crossed, his jaw clenched. Missy, or Prisoner 002, sat apart from them, her gaze fixed on the untouched banquet.

MJ let out a humorless laugh. "Fifteen days without food? Hell, I might just take my chances with a bite."

Kyle exhaled through his nose. "Don't be stupid."

MJ smirked but said nothing.

Kyle stole a glance at Missy. She was unnervingly quiet, her hands clasped together. Unlike MJ, she wasn't complaining.

Something about her expression bothered him.

It wasn't just hunger. It was familiarity.

Like she had lived this before.

The hunger had grown unbearable as the time pass. Some prisoners lay on the floor, conserving energy. Others sat in a trance, eyes locked on the food, saliva pooling at the corners of their lips.

Then came the first death.

A man with a prisoner code 035 cracked first. He grabbed a loaf of bread and bit into it.

For a moment, bliss filled his face.

Then, his body stiffened. His throat convulsed. Foam bubbled from his lips.

He collapsed.

Dead.

Kyle turned away.

MJ whispered, voice dry. "We're all dead men walking."

Kyle didn't answer.

Beside him, Missy exhaled slowly. "I know this feeling."

Kyle turned to her. "What?"

She didn't meet his gaze. Instead, she stared at the food, her eyes distant. "Hunger. Real hunger. The kind that makes you see things. That makes you desperate."

MJ scoffed. "We all know hunger, Missy."

She shook her head. "Not like this."

For the first time, Kyle saw something in her expression.

Not fear.

Memory.

Missy sat cross-legged, her voice quieter than usual.

"When I was a kid, I lived on the streets," she said, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on the ground. "No home. No food. No one to care."

Kyle listened.

"I begged. I stole. I scavenged through garbage just to survive." She let out a dry laugh. "Once, I fought a stray dog for a piece of rotten chicken."

Kyle swallowed, his stomach twisting.

"I lost," she said simply.

Silence stretched between them.

A memory flashed—so vivid, so real that Missy could almost taste the rancid air of the alleyway again.

She was eight. Barefoot, her ribs pressing against her paper-thin skin. The world had always been cold, but that night, it was freezing.

She had been searching for something—anything—in the piles of garbage outside a rundown eatery. The stench was overwhelming, a mixture of rotting meat, spoiled vegetables, and something sickly sweet that made her gag.

Then she saw it.

A half-eaten piece of fried chicken, discarded on a grease-stained napkin. The meat was gray at the edges, barely clinging to the brittle bone, but it was food.

Her fingers twitched. She lunged forward—

A snarl.

The dog came from the shadows, ribs jutting out, its fur matted with filth. Its yellowed eyes locked onto the chicken.

Missy hesitated.

Then, hunger overruled fear.

She grabbed for the food, but so did the dog. Teeth snapped at her fingers, missing by inches. She swore, yanking her hand back, but she wasn't about to give up. She feinted left, then right, trying to outmaneuver the mutt.

It was just as desperate as she was.

A blur of motion. The dog lunged, and before she could react, pain exploded across her forearm.

Teeth.

She screamed, kicking wildly. The dog held on for a moment before tearing away—taking the chicken with it.

She collapsed to the ground, cradling her bleeding arm, her breath ragged. Tears burned at her eyes, but she refused to cry.

She watched as the dog devoured the food, tearing at it with the same desperation she had felt.

Her stomach clenched, and for the first time, she understood something cruel and absolute:

She had lost to hunger itself.

The memory faded, and she was back in the chamber, the suffocating scent of poisoned food filling her lungs.

Kyle was staring at her.

Missy clenched her hands into fists, nails digging into her palms.

"The worst part?" Her voice was hollow. "That wasn't the last time."

Kyle didn't speak. He didn't know what to say.

MJ shifted uncomfortably. He was always quick with a joke, a sarcastic remark—but not now.

A few feet away, another prisoner let out a strangled sob, rocking back and forth as he stared at the banquet table.

The hunger was winning.

It was only a matter of time before more of them cracked.

Kyle turned to Missy and asked, "What did you do to end up here? What sin brought you to the Tower of Sins?"

A memory of her sin flashed—one that haunted her more than the hunger ever did.

She wasn't always a starving child in the streets.

No, she had escaped that life. She had crawled her way up from the filth, learned how to survive not with fists or stolen scraps, but with words. With lies.

Missy had become a ghost—a whisper in the financial underworld. A name spoken in hushed tones by the desperate and the greedy alike.

She played people like chess pieces, weaving illusions of wealth and prosperity. Investments that never existed. Promises that held no weight. She built empires out of paper and ink, and by the time the ink dried, the money was already gone.

Families lost their homes. Businesses crumbled overnight. Dreams turned to dust.

She never stayed long enough to see the aftermath.

Until the night everything collapsed.

She had been in a penthouse—her latest hideout—when they came for her.

Not the police.

Not the government.

But the people she had destroyed.

Their faces were twisted with rage, with grief, with hunger—not the hunger for food, but the hunger for vengeance.

She barely had time to run.

Hands grabbed her, tore at her hair, her clothes. The first punch sent her reeling, the second knocked the air from her lungs. She tasted blood.

They would have torn her apart.

But the police arrived first.

The irony wasn't lost on her.

She had spent years outrunning the law, only to have it become her savior.

And now, here she was.

A prisoner of the Tower of Sins.

Missy blinked. The memory faded, but the weight of it lingered.

She turned her head slightly, seeing Kyle watching her, waiting for an answer she would never give.

Instead, she forced a bitter smile.

"Let's sleep," she murmured. "It'll help us bear the hunger."

She curled up on the cold stone floor, letting the silence swallow her whole.

Kyle didn't press her.

But as the chamber darkened, and the scent of poisoned food lingered in the air, Missy knew the truth:

No matter how much she tried to sleep, the hunger—the hunger for survival, for redemption, for something she couldn't name—would never let her rest.

On the other side, Kyle had never thought about what life was like for her before she came here.

Now, he wished he didn't know.

Suddenly, a prisoner with code number 045 snapped.

He lunged at another inmate—not to fight, but to bite.

Kyle barely reacted in time. He shoved the prisoner off, his own body weak from hunger.

Prisoner 045 panted, wild-eyed. "We're all just animals. You'll see soon enough."

MJ wiped sweat from his brow. "How much longer can we hold out, Kyle?"

Kyle didn't answer.

Missy, however, did.

"The hunger doesn't kill you." She looked at them, voice quiet. "It's what it turns you into that does."

In the thirteenth night, the room smelled of something worse than hunger now.

Blood.

Some prisoners had turned on each other. Some had eaten the poisoned food, choosing death over suffering.

Only a few of them were left.

Kyle, MJ, and Missy sat in silence.

Missy's eyes flickered toward Kyle. "I was nine the first time I stole a meal."

Kyle blinked. "What happened?"

She let out a breath. "I was caught. The vendor broke my arm."

Kyle tensed.

Missy flexed her fingers, as if remembering the pain. "After that, I learned to fight for my food. Even if it meant someone else went hungry."

She looked at him.

"That's what hunger does. It makes you selfish. It makes you cruel."

Kyle's stomach twisted, but this time, it wasn't because of hunger.

In the fifteenth day, the doors opened.

Warden Patience stepped inside, his gaze sweeping the room.

Bodies. The desperate. The broken. The ones who had given in.

His eyes landed on Kyle, MJ, and Missy—the last ones still standing.

"Congratulations," he said. "You may proceed."

Kyle pushed himself up, legs shaking.

MJ groaned but followed.

Missy stood last, steady, as if this was nothing new to her.

As they stepped forward, Kyle turned for one last look.

The untouched feast. The corpses. The madness.

Missy spoke, her voice barely a whisper.

"This was nothing."

Kyle didn't ask what she meant.

He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

The doors shut behind them.