[EPISODE 2] Daily's Reality Sims Squid Games

71 Kovazians continue on fighting in Squid Games, still only one will leave alive. Hope ya'll enjoy Episode 2! I've included a short section of dormitory updates before the game begins. -------------------------------------------- Remaining Cast: Layos Dimitra Lover Amandasings04 Arris Kimmie JessieKowalski theworldofjj CocoVanderbilt Rachellllll BIGBRYY99 Nora Christos hwest14 Hunter Jaded CasinoCheese Wyatt DK holly hausofkimchi Melodrama Nakime landobando Gabbes Luka camell22 Jaxx NaughtyNacho IceBeast Glinda biancabae Glacier sobriquet BRAT Hauntedwaves Davit dumblonde Spikedcurley Maris YanderTron21 lolicapolica guib Brad joeburrow randomize Juulpod CarltonRS venharim katheryn unfortunate Tisha Kodua bim TheScreama Cristi heatherleigh Stayc dailyicon Nittany023 Womanizer Nenalala MrsChloeKayCecci Paul LaMarrash muribolt bubba Dani Cherry Axel Bagel -------------------------------------------- The lights in the dormitory cut out at exactly ten o'clock. Seventy-one people lie in stacked bunks, staring at ceilings, listening to each other breathe. Nobody sleeps easily. Some don't sleep at all. Melodrama and YanderTron21 are the last two still whispering in the dark — tucked into adjacent bunks on the third tier, voices low. They had moved in sync through the field. They had both made it. The unspoken bond between them had calcified into something real during Red Light, Green Light, and now they formalize it quietly, in the dark, with no witnesses. "We stay together," Melodrama says. "We stay together," YanderTron21 agrees. On the other side of the dormitory, Maris is awake and working. They have been awake since the lights went out — cycling through faces, cataloguing relationships, mapping threat levels. By midnight, they have approached Womanizer, Dimitra, and NaughtyNacho individually, each conversation brief and surgical. The pitch is the same each time: "we are the people who think. Everyone else is just reacting." All three nod. All three mean it differently. BRAT watches Maris move through the room from the shadow of an upper bunk and says nothing. Near the water station, venharim sits alone on the cold floor, back against the wall, knees pulled to their chest. The weight of the field is still on them — the sounds of it, the smell of gunpowder on the air. Hauntedwaves notices and crosses the room silently, sitting down beside them without saying anything. They stay like that for nearly an hour. No words needed. Luka and Dani have claimed a corner bunk cluster and are in the middle of a surprisingly lively conversation about absolutely nothing — music, food, where they grew up. heatherleigh drifts over, then hausofkimchi, then Gabbes. The corner becomes the one pocket of warmth in the whole cold room. Kimmie finds Rachellllll and randomize in the corridor near the bathrooms, and the three of them exchange the kind of quiet, rapid-fire honesty that only emerges at two in the morning after surviving something traumatic together. By the time they go back to their bunks, something like an alliance exists — not named, not formal, just real. biancabae and Jaded are the opposite of subtle. They have been attached at the hip since the field, speaking openly — too openly, some feel — about who they trust and who they don't. joeburrow listens from one bunk over and stores every word. Christos, bubba, and Glacier form their own quiet cluster near the back of the room — three people who survived mostly through stillness and now find comfort in each other's company. There is no grand strategy discussed. Just presence. Just the acknowledgment that they are still here. CocoVanderbilt lies flat on their back on a lower bunk, eyes open, absolutely still, running calculations that nobody else in the room is running yet. They have clocked six separate social clusters already. They have identified four people they would trust with their life and eight they wouldn't trust with a spoon. They keep all of it behind a composed, unreadable expression. And in the far corner of the dormitory, alone by design, TheScreama stares out the small barred window at the facility's interior lights. They have barely spoken to anyone since the field. They are thinking about the thirty-four people who didn't make it through that door. They are thinking about what comes next. The lights flicker on at six. Another day begins. -------------------------------------------- Dalgona is a Korean street candy — a thin disc of honeycomb toffee pressed flat and stamped with a shape. In this game, each player receives a tin containing their dalgona disc and a single needle. The objective is to carve the stamped shape free from the surrounding candy without breaking it. If the shape cracks — elimination. Players may lick the candy to thin it, use the needle carefully, or attempt any technique they choose. There is a time limit. There are no second chances. Four shapes are available: the circle, the triangle, the star, and the umbrella. The shapes range in difficulty — the circle is the most forgiving, the umbrella the most punishing. -------------------------------------------- The 71 survivors file into a vast new arena — rows of individual booths stretching in all directions, each containing a single stool, a small table, and a sealed tin. At the front of each tin, a small tag. Players choose their shape before sitting down, and the choice is entirely their own. The selection is fast, instinctive, and in many cases — catastrophic. -------------------------------------------- 🔵 CIRCLE (18 players) Melodrama YanderTron21 Gabbes heatherleigh Luka hausofkimchi CarltonRS Juulpod Hunter IceBeast BIGBRYY99 hwest14 DK bim joeburrow Jaded Nenalala Nakime 🔺 TRIANGLE (18 players) camell22 Bagel JessieKowalski Spikedcurley Cristi muribolt biancabae Womanizer Dimitra BRAT Maris NaughtyNacho Rachellllll randomize Kimmie theworldofjj Arris Tisha ⭐ STAR (18 players) Cherry katheryn CocoVanderbilt Glacier Kodua Christos bubba Nora holly Dani dailyicon unfortunate Glinda Amandasings04 Axel Brad Wyatt sobriquet ☂️ UMBRELLA (17 players) CasinoCheese dumblonde MrsChloeKayCecci landobando Davit Stayc lolicapolica Nittany023 Jaxx guib Lover Layos Paul venharim LaMarrash Hauntedwaves TheScreama -------------------------------------------- A tone sounds. Seventy-one tins open at once. The smell of burnt sugar fills the arena. The game begins. Across the circle booths, the early mood is almost cautious optimism. The circle has a gentle curved edge and no sharp interior angles — most players figure this out within the first few minutes. Melodrama works with slow, deliberate needle strokes along the outer rim. YanderTron21 licks the underside methodically, thinning the candy before touching it with the needle at all. heatherleigh and Luka both settle into quiet, focused rhythms. hausofkimchi hums softly to themselves. Gabbes mouths something — maybe a prayer, maybe a count — with each delicate pass of the needle. In the triangle booths, the three sharp corners demand precision. Spikedcurley attacks the straight edges first, which is the right instinct. camell22 and Bagel both work slowly and carefully, burning through the time limit but staying in control. Maris doesn't seem nervous at all — each needle stroke unhurried, almost clinical. biancabae bites their lip but keeps their hand steady. Kimmie takes a long, slow breath before starting and doesn't look up once. In the star booths, it becomes clear quickly that the five inward points are the problem. Licking helps. Patience helps more. Cherry maps the shape with their eyes before touching the needle to it — a full sixty seconds of study before they make a single mark. CocoVanderbilt begins with the points, counterintuitively, reasoning that the most likely breaking points should be addressed while the candy is still whole. Glacier and Christos both adopt licking strategies immediately, fogging the candy with breath and saliva until the disc becomes almost translucent. In the umbrella booths, the silence is different. The umbrella has a long straight handle, a curved dome, and two sharp angled corners where the dome meets the sides. It is not impossible — but it demands total composure and a hand that doesn't shake. venharim steadies themselves with a long exhale before starting. Hauntedwaves grips the needle hard, then consciously loosens their fingers. TheScreama stares at the shape for a long time without moving. -------------------------------------------- Fifteen minutes in, the first murmurs of progress begin to spread through the circle section. DK lifts their nearly complete disc toward the light, checking the edges. IceBeast works steadily, making almost no errors. joeburrow has already licked an entire side of their circle smooth and is working the needle along the thinned edge with careful confidence. BIGBRYY99 is further along than almost anyone — moving quickly, not recklessly, with the kind of natural steadiness that looks almost unfair. In the triangle section, Womanizer nicks one corner and freezes — but the crack doesn't spread. They close their eyes for three seconds, then continue. Dimitra is working beautifully, each corner treated like surgery. theworldofjj and randomize are both locked in quiet focus. Rachellllll whispers something to themselves on every exhale — a rhythm, a mantra, something. Then — the first sound. A sharp, distinct crack. Everyone in the arena hears it. Heads don't turn. They don't dare. But every person feels it. In the circle section, Nenalala's disc has snapped — a clean break directly through the middle, nothing to be done. They stare at the two halves for a long moment, then set the needle down. The guards come. Quietly. Quickly. 71st — Nenalala. The booth is cleared. Not two minutes later, a second crack echoes through the circle section. Nakime had been making steady progress, but the final thin section near the bottom of the circle gave way under a slightly too-firm needle press. They look at the broken disc in their palm, take a breath, and don't fight it. 70th — Nakime. In the circle booths, the remaining sixteen press on with even greater care. bim has barely progressed — working almost painfully slowly — but the disc is intact. Juulpod licks the candy until it practically disappears and guides the needle through what remains almost effortlessly. CarltonRS and Hunter are both in good shape, methodical and controlled. -------------------------------------------- Over in the triangle section, the early clean work begins to fray at the edges — literally. Arris had reached the final corner — so close — but the angle proved too sharp for the amount of candy still remaining. The corner piece cracked away and took part of the triangle wall with it. A frustrated exhale. The guards approach. 69th — Arris. The triangle section tightens. Everyone slows down. BRAT presses their lips together and works the needle in half-millimeter increments. NaughtyNacho licks the underside again and again, refusing to use the needle until the disc is thin enough to see through. Minutes later — Tisha. Their triangle had been coming apart slowly — a hairline fracture that had been spreading since the thirty-minute mark, invisible until the moment it wasn't. The disc splits in three pieces simultaneously. 68th — Tisha. The remaining sixteen triangle players exhale collectively. Sixteen still in. And the booths go quiet again. -------------------------------------------- In the star section, the inward points are claiming their first victims. dailyicon had been working one of the inner angles too aggressively — the needle slipped and drove straight through. A clean puncture hole that rendered the shape unsalvageable. 67th — dailyicon. Then unfortunate — one of the inner points had been thinned too much during a licking pass. When the needle grazed it, it crumbled. 66th — unfortunate. The star section is visibly shaken now. Glinda works with excruciating slowness but the inner angles have been resistant to every technique tried. The disc finally gives at the worst possible moment — the very last point, nearly free. 65th — Glinda. Amandasings04 is next. Their star had come so far — all five outer edges free, only the inner connectors remaining. But the candy had dried and thinned unevenly, and the final connection point gave without warning. 64th — Amandasings04. Four gone from the star section in rapid succession. The remaining fourteen grip their needles tighter. Cherry works with such deliberate slowness that they look almost frozen. CocoVanderbilt doesn't change their pace at all — measured, architectural, point by point. Glacier and Christos both have significant portions of their stars free now, the licking strategy paying dividends. bubba and Nora are in the middle ground — plenty of work still to do, disc still intact. Then — Axel. A slip. A crack through the star's center that no technique could have prevented — the disc had simply dried unevenly and there was nothing to be done. 63rd — Axel. Brad follows within minutes — an inner angle punctured clean through by a needle press that landed three millimeters off target. 62nd — Brad. Wyatt holds on longer than most expect — their star is nearly complete when a small exterior chip sends a fracture racing inward. The disc breaks in two. 61st — Wyatt. And sobriquet — the last of the star section casualties — works all the way to the final outer edge before a piece simply falls away unprompted. They blink. Set the needle down. The guards come. 60th — sobriquet. Ten players remain in the star section. Cherry, katheryn, CocoVanderbilt, Glacier, Kodua, Christos, bubba, Nora, holly, and Dani — still working, still intact, pressing through the home stretch. -------------------------------------------- In the umbrella section, the toll begins. The umbrella is slow violence — it doesn't break you all at once. It chips and cracks and splinters until the shape simply ceases to exist. The handle is deceptively easy. The dome is manageable. It is the transition points — where curved meets straight, where dome becomes handle — that claim them one by one. MrsChloeKayCecci is the first to go. The left transition point of the dome cracked during a lateral needle stroke. Nothing dramatic. Just a quiet fracture that widened on its own. 59th — MrsChloeKayCecci. landobando — their handle snapped clean off. It had been the thinnest part of the disc and they had over-licked it without realizing. 58th — landobando. Davit — a piece of the dome broke inward when the needle caught an air bubble in the candy. They stared at it for a long time before setting everything down. 57th — Davit. Stayc — the right transition point. Gone in an instant. 56th — Stayc. lolicapolica — had been making beautiful progress on the dome, thinning it to near transparency, when the entire curved section detached from the handle in one piece. Technically a clean separation — but not the right one. 55th — lolicapolica. Nittany023 worked methodically and without panic all the way until the very final curve of the dome. The needle went through. 54th — Nittany023. Jaxx — their handle cracked at the midpoint, and the rest of the disc followed seconds later. 53rd — Jaxx. guib — both transition points gave simultaneously. The dome lifted off whole and then shattered on the table. 52nd — guib. The umbrella section is now in freefall. Eight gone. Nine remain — and among them the tension is almost physically visible. Needles trembling. Breaths held for thirty, forty seconds at a time. Lover — so close. The handle was free. The dome was nearly free. A single thin connection remained and the needle, in a moment of devastating bad luck, found it. 51st — Lover. Layos — their disc had been drying faster than the others. By the time the dome was thinned enough to work, the candy had become brittle. It fractured in four places at once. 50th — Layos. Paul — works all the way to the final minutes before the right transition point gives. They close their eyes. Exhale. The guards come. 49th — Paul. venharim — perhaps the most difficult elimination to watch. They had been working with a surgeon's precision, licking and carving in turns, and their umbrella had looked complete — had looked complete — until they lifted it and the handle separated from the dome mid-air. Two perfect pieces. Neither of them passing. 48th — venharim. LaMarrash — a deep breath, a steady hand, and then a crack that came from nowhere in the left dome section. Nothing could have predicted it. Nothing could have stopped it. 47th — LaMarrash. Three remain in the umbrella section. CasinoCheese, dumblonde, and Hauntedwaves. Hauntedwaves is the furthest along — but the dome's final curve is still attached, and the time is nearly gone. Their hands are shaking visibly now. The needle dips. Catches. The disc splits. 46th — Hauntedwaves. Two remain. CasinoCheese and dumblonde — the last two players standing in the umbrella section, in an arena where fifteen of their seventeen booth-mates have already been taken out. Both of them working in silence. Both of them still intact. Then — CasinoCheese lifts their umbrella whole. Clean. Perfect. Thirty seconds later, dumblonde does the same. The guards don't come for either of them. -------------------------------------------- Across the arena, the remaining survivors complete their shapes in ones and twos. The circle section nearly sweeps — Melodrama, YanderTron21, Gabbes, heatherleigh, Luka, hausofkimchi, CarltonRS, Juulpod, Hunter, IceBeast, BIGBRYY99, hwest14, DK, bim, joeburrow, and Jaded all advance. The triangle section closes out its final players — camell22, Bagel, JessieKowalski, Spikedcurley, Cristi, muribolt, biancabae, Womanizer, Dimitra, BRAT, Maris, NaughtyNacho, Rachellllll, randomize, Kimmie, and theworldofjj all carve through. And the survivors of the star section — Cherry, katheryn, CocoVanderbilt, Glacier, Kodua, Christos, bubba, Nora, holly, and Dani — all pass. The final tone sounds. Silence. Then a guard's voice over the intercom, flat and emotionless: "Players who have completed their shape — please proceed to the exit." Forty-four people stand up. Twenty-seven do not. -------------------------------------------- Remaining Cast: Kimmie hausofkimchi joeburrow holly heatherleigh theworldofjj muribolt Kodua CocoVanderbilt NaughtyNacho hwest14 JessieKowalski Melodrama CasinoCheese IceBeast Cherry Hunter Rachellllll DK Bagel dumblonde CarltonRS Spikedcurley Womanizer Dimitra BRAT Jaded Maris Cristi Dani katheryn bim Juulpod YanderTron21 randomize Nora biancabae bubba Luka Christos camell22 BIGBRYY99 Gabbes Glacier -------------------------------------------- If you've gotten this far, I hope you enjoyed this blog! Episode 3 will release Tuesday! Below are some important links such as the group where every season is archived, the directory that has easy blog access to every season, and a spreadsheet has a lot of details for chart lovers! Group: https://kovaze.com/group/15 Directory: https://kovaze.com/blog/92713. Spreadsheet: https://bit.ly/4bsRZgO That just about concludes this episode! Thank you everyone who has gotten this far, this was a ton of fun to run. If any of yall notice any mistakes please feel free to point out and I'll change it. Appreciate feedback as well I could use to improve simulations down the line as well!