PART ONE

START GAME

42 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0

As the bus en­tered the pre­fec­tural cap­ital of Taka­mat­su, gar­den sub­urbs trans­formed in­to city streets of mul­ti­col­ored neon, head­lights of on­com­ing cars, and check­ered lights of of­fice build­ings. A group of well dressed men and wom­en stood talk­ing to each oth­er in front of a street­side restau­rant while they wait­ed for a taxi. Tired, squat­ting youths smoked in the clean park­ing lot of a con­ve­nience store. A work­er on his bi­cy­cle wait­ed for the lights to change at the cross­ing. It was chilly for a May evening, so the man had put on his worn out jack­et. Along with these oth­er drift­ing im­pres­sions, the work­er dis­ap­peared be­hind the bus win­dow, swal­lowed by the low en­gine rum­ble. The dig­ital dis­play above the bus driv­er's head changed to 8:57.

Shuya Nana­hara (Male Stu­dent No. 15, Third Year Class B, Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School, Shi­roi­wa Town, Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture) had been star­ing out­side, lean­ing over Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu (Male Stu­dent No. 7), who had the win­dow seat. As Yoshi­to­ki dug through his bag, Shuya stared at his own right foot, which was stick­ing out in the aisle, and stretched out his Keds sneak­ers with his toes. It used to be that Keds weren't hard to find, but now they were ex­treme­ly rare. The can­vas of Shuya's shoes were torn on the right heel, and the stray threads stuck out like cat's whiskers. The shoe com­pa­ny was Amer­ican, but the shoes them­selves were made in Colom­bia. At present, 1997, the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia hard­ly suf­fered from a short­age of goods. In fact it was rich with com­modi­ties, but im­ports were hard to come by late­ly. Well, it was on­ly to be ex­pect­ed in a coun­try with an of­fi­cial pol­icy of iso­la­tion­ism. Be­sides, Amer­ica-both the gov­ern­ment and the text­books called them "the Amer­ican Im­pe­ri­al­ists"-was an en­emy state.

From the back of the bus, Shuya watched his forty-​one class­mates, who were il­lu­mi­nat­ed by dull flu­ores­cent lights fixed in dingy ceil­ing pan­els. They were all in the same class from last year. They were all still ex­cit­ed and chat­ting away, since hard­ly an hour had passed since their de­par­ture from their home­town of Shi­roi­wa. Spend­ing the first night of a study trip on a bus seemed a lit­tle cheap. Worse yet, it felt like they were go­ing on a forced march. But ev­ery­one would calm down once the bus crossed the Se­to Bridge and got on the Sanyo High­way and head­ed to­wards their des­ti­na­tion, the is­land of Kyushu.

The loud stu­dents at the front who were sit­ting around their teach­er Mr. Hayashi­da were girls: Yukie Ut­su­mi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 2), the class rep­re­sen­ta­tive who looked good with braid­ed hair; Haru­ka Taniza­wa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 12), her vol­ley­ball team­mate who was ex­cep­tion­al­ly tall; Izu­mi Kanai (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 5), the prep­py whose fa­ther was a town rep­re­sen­ta­tive; Sato­mi No­da (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 17), the mod­el stu­dent who wore wire-​rimmed glass­es which suit­ed her calm, in­tel­li­gent face; and Chisato Mat­sui (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 19), who was al­ways qui­et and with­drawn. They were the main­stream girls. You could call them "the neu­trals." Girls tend­ed to form cliques, but there weren't any par­tic­ular groups that stuck out in Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School's Third Year Class B, so cat­ego­riz­ing them didn't seem right. If there was a group, it was the rebel or-to put it more blunt­ly-the delin­quent group led by Mit­suko Souma (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 11). Hi­rono Shimizu (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 10) and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 21) round­ed out that bunch. Shuya couldn't see them from where he was sit­ting.

The seats right be­hind the driv­er were slight­ly raised, and pop­ping up above them were the two heads of Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to (Male Stu­dent No. 21) and Saku­ra Ogawa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 4), the most in­ti­mate cou­ple in the class. Maybe they were laugh­ing, be­cause their heads shook slight­ly. They were so in­su­lar, the most triv­ial thing could have been en­ter­tain­ing them.

Clos­er to Shuya, ly­ing in the aisle, was a large school uni­form. It be­longed to Yoshio Aka­mat­su (Male Stu­dent No. 1). He was the biggest kid in the class, but he was the timid type, the kind of kid who'd al­ways end up the tar­get of pranks and in­sults. His big body was crouched over, and he was busy play­ing a hand­held video game.

Al­so in the aisle were the jocks Tat­sumichi Oki (Male Stu­dent No. 3, hand­ball team), Kazushi Nü­da (Male Stu­dent No. 16, soc­cer team), and Tadakat­su Hataga­mi (Male Stu­dent No. 18). They were all sit­ting to­geth­er. Shuya him­self had played Lit­tle League base­ball in el­emen­tary school and was known as a star short­stop. Ac­tu­al­ly he'd been friends with Tadakat­su, but they'd stopped hang­ing out. Part­ly this was be­cause Shuya had stopped play­ing base­ball, but it al­so had to do with the fact that Shuya had start­ed play­ing elec­tric gui­tar, which was con­sid­ered an "un­pa­tri­ot­ic" ac­tiv­ity. Tadakat­su's moth­er was up­tight about that sort of thing.

Yes, rock was out­lawed in this coun­try. (Of course there were loop­holes. Shuya's elec­tric gui­tar came with a gov­ern­ment-​ap­proved stick­er which read, "Deca­dent Mu­sic Is Strict­ly Pro­hib­it­ed." Deca­dent mu­sic was rock.)

Come to think of it, Shuya thought, I've changed my friends too.

He heard some­one laugh qui­et­ly be­hind big Yoshio Aka­mat­su. It was one of Shuya's new friends, Shin­ji Mimu­ra. Shin­ji had short hair and wore an in­tri­cate­ly de­signed ring on his left ear. By the time Shuya and Shin­ji be­came class­mates in their sec­ond year, Shuya had al­ready heard of him. Shin­ji was known as "The Third Man"-the team's first-​string shoot­ing guard. His ath­let­ic skill was equal to Shuya's, though Shin­ji would have said, "I'm bet­ter, bro." To­geth­er on the bas­ket­ball court for the first time in their sec­ond-​year class com­pe­ti­tion, they made for a dead­ly com­bo, so it was on­ly nat­ural they'd hit it off. There was a lot more to Shin­ji than sports, though. His grades in sub­jects oth­er than math and En­glish weren't great, but his breadth of re­al world knowl­edge was in­cred­ible, and his views were ma­ture, way be­yond his peers. He some­how had an an­swer for any ques­tion about over­seas in­for­ma­tion that couldn't be ob­tained in this coun­try. And he al­ways knew the best thing to say when you were down, like, "You know it, I'm the man." But he was nev­er ar­ro­gant. In­stead he'd smile and crack a joke. He was nev­er full of him­self. Ba­si­cal­ly Shin­ji Mimu­ra was a good guy.

Shin­ji ap­peared to be sit­ting next to his bud­dy from grade school, Yu­ta­ka Se­to (Male Stu­dent No. 12), the class clown. Yu­ta­ka must have cracked an­oth­er joke, be­cause Shin­ji was laugh­ing.

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11) sat be­hind them. His tall, lanky body bare­ly fit in­to the nar­row seat. He was read­ing a pa­per­back book. Hi­ro­ki was re­served and stud­ied mar­tial arts, so he pro­ject­ed tough­ness. He didn't hang out with the oth­er guys much, but once you got to know him a lit­tle he turned out to be nice. He was just shy. Shuya got along with him. Was he read­ing that book of Chi­nese po­et­ry he liked so much? (Chi­nese books in trans­la­tion were fair­ly easy to ob­tain, not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing the Re­pub­lic claimed Chi­na as "part of our home­land.")

Shuya once came across a line in an Amer­ican pa­per­back nov­el he'd dug out from a used book­store (he man­aged to get through it with a dic­tio­nary): friends come and then they go. Maybe that's how things were. Just as he and Tadakat­su were no longer friends, there might come a time when he wasn't friends with Shin­ji and Hi­ro­ki any­more.

Well, maybe not.

Shuya glanced at Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu, who was still dig­ging through his bag. Shuya had made it this far with Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu. And that would nev­er change. Af­ter all they were friends ev­er since they wet their beds at that Catholic in­sti­tu­tion with the bom­bas­tic name, "the Char­ity House"-where or­phans or oth­er chil­dren who, due to "cir­cum­stances," were no longer able to be with their par­ents. You could say they were al­most cursed to be friends.

Maybe we should cov­er re­li­gion while we're at it. In fact this coun­try, un­der a unique sys­tem of na­tion­al so­cial­ism ruled over by an ex­ec­utive au­thor­ity called "the Dic­ta­tor" (Shin­ji Mimu­ra once said with a gri­mace, "This is what they call 'suc­cess­ful fas­cism.' Where else in the world could you find some­thing so sin­is­ter?"), had no na­tion­al re­li­gion. The clos­est thing to re­li­gion was faith in the po­lit­ical sys­tem- but this wasn't paired up with any es­tab­lished re­li­gion. Re­li­gious prac­tice there­fore was per­mit­ted as long as it re­mained mod­er­ate and at the same time wasn't guar­an­teed. So it was on­ly prac­ticed in pri­vate by ded­icat­ed fol­low­ers. Shuya him­self nev­er re­al­ly had any re­li­gious in­cli­na­tions, but it was thanks to this par­tic­ular re­li­gion's in­sti­tu­tion that he man­aged to grow up rel­ative­ly un­scathed and nor­mal. He thought he should ap­pre­ci­ate that much. There were state or­phan­ages, but ap­par­ent­ly their ac­com­mo­da­tions and pro­grams were poor­ly run, and from what he heard they served as train­ing schools for Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers.

Shuya turned around and looked back. The group of delin­quents that in­clud­ed Ryuhei Sasagawa (Male Stu­dent No. 10) and Mit­su­ru Nu­mai (Male Stu­dent No. 17) was sit­ting on the wide seat at the back of the bus. There was...Shuya couldn't see his face, but he could see be­tween the seats the head with the odd­ly styled, slicked-​back, long hair pok­ing out by the right win­dow. Though on its left side (well, it seemed Ryuhei Sasagawa had left two seats open in be­tween) the oth­ers were talk­ing and laugh­ing over some­thing dirty, the head re­mained ab­so­lute­ly still. Per­haps he'd fall­en asleep. Or maybe like Shuya he was watch­ing the city lights.

Shuya was com­plete­ly baf­fled by the fact that this boy- Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6)-would ac­tu­al­ly par­tic­ipate in a child­ish ac­tiv­ity like a study trip.

Kiriya­ma was the lead­er of the thugs in their dis­trict, a group that in­clud­ed Ryuhei and Mit­su­ru. Kiriya­ma was by no means big. At best he was the same height as Shuya, but he could eas­ily pin down high school stu­dents and even take on lo­cal yakuza. His rep­uta­tion was leg­endary through­out the en­tire pre­fec­ture. And his fa­ther be­ing the pres­ident of a lead­ing cor­po­ra­tion didn't hurt. (There were ru­mors though that he was an il­le­git­imate child. Shuya wasn't in­ter­est­ed, so he nev­er both­ered to find out more.) Of course that wouldn't have been enough. He had a hand­some, in­tel­li­gent face, and his voice wasn't par­tic­ular­ly low, but there was some­thing in­tim­idat­ing about it. He was the top stu­dent in Class B, and the on­ly one who bare­ly kept up with him was Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi (Male Stu­dent No. 20), who stud­ied so hard he didn't get much sleep. In sports Kazuo was bet­ter and more grace­ful than al­most any­one else in the class. The on­ly ones at Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High who could com­pete with him se­ri­ous­ly were, yes, the for­mer star short­stop, Shuya, and the cur­rent star shoot­ing guard, Shin­ji Mimu­ra. So in ev­ery re­spect Kazuo Kiriya­ma was per­fect.

But then how could some­one this per­fect end up a lead­er of thugs? That was re­al­ly none of Shuya's busi­ness. But if there was one thing Shuya could tell, it was a sense, al­most tac­tile, that Kazuo was dif­fer­ent. Shuya couldn't say ex­act­ly how. Kazuo nev­er did any­thing bad in school. He'd nev­er bul­ly around some­one like Yoshio Aka­mat­su the way Ryuhei Sasagawa did. But there was some­thing so...re­mote about him. Was that it? At least that's how it felt.

He was ab­sent a lot. The idea of Kazuo "study­ing" was com­plete­ly ab­surd. In ev­ery class Kiriya­ma re­mained qui­et­ly seat­ed at his desk as if he were think­ing of some­thing that had noth­ing to do with class. Shuya thought, if the gov­ern­ment didn't have the pow­er to en­force com­pul­so­ry ed­uca­tion on us, he prob­ably wouldn't come to school at all. On the oth­er hand he might just show up on a whim. I don't know. In any case, Shuya thought, I ex­pect­ed Kazuo to skip some­thing as triv­ial as a study trip, but then he prompt­ly shows up. Was this on a whim too?

"Shuya." Shuya was star­ing at the ceil­ing pan­el lights won­der­ing about Kiriya­ma when a perky voice in­ter­rupt­ed his thoughts. From the seat across the aisle, Noriko Nak­agawa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 15) of­fered some­thing wrapped in crisp cel­lo­phane. The bag sparkled like wa­ter un­der the white light, and it was filled with light-​brown discs-cook­ies, prob­ably. On top was a bow tied with a gold rib­bon.

Noriko Nak­agawa was an­oth­er girl who was neu­tral like Yukie Ut­su­mi's group. Oth­er than her kind eyes, which were no­tice­ably dark, she had a round, girl­ish face and shoul­der-​length hair. She was pe­tite and play­ful. In short, she was an av­er­age girl. If there was some­thing par­tic­ular about her, it was prob­ably the fact that she wrote the best com­po­si­tions in lit­er­ature class. (This was how Shuya got to know Noriko. Shuya would spend break pe­ri­ods writ­ing lyrics for his songs in the mar­gins of his note­books, and Noriko would in­sist on read­ing them.) She usu­al­ly hung with Yukie's group, but be­cause she'd showed up late to­day, she had no oth­er choice but to take an open seat.

Shuya half-​ex­tend­ed his hand and raised his brow. For some rea­son Noriko be­came flus­tered and said, "They're left­overs from the ones my broth­er begged me to bake. They're best fresh, so I brought them for you and Mr. Nobu."

"Mr. Nobu" was Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's nick­name. Al­though he had bulging, friend­ly eyes, the nick­name seemed ap­pro­pri­ate for some­one who could be, odd­ly enough, ma­ture and wise. None of the girls called him by that name, but Noriko had no prob­lem call­ing the boys by their nick­names, and the fact that this hard­ly of­fend­ed any of them in­di­cat­ed how unique­ly dis­arm­ing she was. (Shuya had a sports-​re­lat­ed nick­name, the same name as a fa­mous cigarette brand, but in the same way that Shin­ji was re­ferred to as "The Third Man" no one called him by this to his face.) He'd al­ready no­ticed this be­fore, Shuya ob­served, but she's the on­ly girl who calls me by my first name.

Yoshi­to­ki, who'd been lis­ten­ing in on them, in­ter­rupt­ed. "Re­al­ly? For us? Thanks so much! If you made them, I bet they're de­li­cious."

Yoshi­to­ki snatched the bag from Shuya's hand, quick­ly un­tied the rib­bon, and took out a cook­ie.

"Wow, these are awe­some."

As Yoshi­to­ki praised Noriko, Shuya grinned. Could he be more ob­vi­ous? The mo­ment Noriko sat next to Shuya he'd been re­peat­ed­ly glanc­ing over at her, sit­ting up­right, com­plete­ly ner­vous.

It was a month and a half ago dur­ing spring va­ca­tion. Shuya and Yoshi­to­ki had gone fish­ing for black bass at the dam reser­voir that pro­vid­ed the city its wa­ter sup­ply. Yoshi­to­ki con­fessed to Shuya, "Hey Shuya, I got a crush on some­one."

"Huh. Who is it?"

"Nak­agawa."

"You mean from our class?"

"Yeah."

"Which one? There are two Nak­agawas. Yu­ka Nak­agawa?"

"Hey, un­like you, I'm not in­to fat girls."

"What the...? So you're say­ing Kazu­mi is fat? She's just a lit­tle plump."

"Sor­ry. Any­way, well, uh yeah, it's Noriko."

"Huh. Well, she's nice."

"Isn't she though? Isn't she?"

"All right, all right."

Yes, Yoshi­to­ki was to­tal­ly ob­vi­ous. But in spite of his be­hav­ior Noriko seemed obliv­ious to Yoshi­to­ki's feel­ings for her. Maybe she was slow with stuff like this or some­thing. It wasn't sur­pris­ing, giv­en her per­son­al­ity.

Shuya took a cook­ie from the bag still in Yoshi­to­ki's hand and ex­am­ined it. Then he looked over at Noriko.

"So they lose their fla­vor?"

"Uh huh," she nod­ded. Her eyes strained, odd­ly. "That's right."

"Which means you're sure they taste pret­ty good."

He might have learned this form of sar­casm from Shin­ji Mimu­ra. Shuya of­ten used it late­ly, to the dis­may of oth­er class­mates, but Noriko just emit­ted a hap­py laugh and said, "I guess so."

"Come on," Yoshi­to­ki in­ter­rupt­ed again. "I told you they were good, didn't I, Noriko?"

Noriko smiled. "Thanks. You're so nice."

Yoshi­to­ki all of a sud­den froze up as if he'd jammed his fin­ger in­to an elec­tric out­let and turned mute. Star­ing silent­ly in­to his lap, he pro­ceed­ed to de­vour his cook­ie.

Shuya grinned and ate the rest of his cook­ie. The warm, sweet taste and smell spread through his mouth.

"These are good," Shuya said.

Noriko, who'd been ob­serv­ing him all this time, ex­claimed, "Thank you!" He could be wrong, but some­how the tone of her voice was dif­fer­ent than when she thanked Yoshi­to­ki. Well, wait...true, she was star­ing at him while he was eat­ing the cook­ie. Were they re­al­ly left­overs from the batch she'd baked for her broth­er? Maybe she'd baked them for "some­one else." Or maybe he was just plain wrong.

Then for some rea­son Shuya thought of Kazu­mi. She was a year ahead, and a fel­low mu­sic club mem­ber un­til last year.

In the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia, rock mu­sic was strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed in school club ac­tiv­ities, but when their ad­vis­er Ms. Miy­ata was ab­sent, mu­sic club mem­bers would play rock on their own. That was the kind of mem­ber­ship the club at­tract­ed in the first place any­way. Kazu­mi Shin­tani was the best fe­male sax­ophone play­er. When it came to rock sax­ophone though, she was the best in the en­tire club. She was tall (al­most the same height as Shuya, who stood 170 cen­time­ters) and plump, but with her re­mark­ably ma­ture face and her hair bun­dled by her shoul­ders, she looked awe­some with her al­to sax­ophone. Shuya was thrilled by the sight. Then she taught Shuya how to play dif­fi­cult gui­tar chords. (She said, "I played a lit­tle be­fore I start­ed play­ing the sax­ophone.") From that point on Shuya spent ev­ery spare minute he had prac­tic­ing his gui­tar, and by his sec­ond year he was the best play­er in the club. It was all be­cause he want­ed Kazu­mi to hear him play.

Then one day, when the two of them hap­pened to be alone in the mu­sic room af­ter school, Shuya played and sang a ver­sion of "Sum­mer­time Blues" which im­pressed her. "That was so great, Shuya. That was so awe­some." That day Shuya bought a can of beer for the first time in his life and cel­ebrat­ed with a pri­vate toast. It tast­ed great. But three days lat­er when he asked her out, con­fess­ing, "Um, I re­al­ly like you," she re­spond­ed, "I'm sor­ry, I'm al­ready go­ing out with some­one." She grad­uat­ed and went to a high school with a mu­sic de­part­ment, along with her "boyfriend."

Which re­mind­ed Shuya of his con­ver­sa­tion with Yoshi­to­ki at the dam over spring break. Af­ter shar­ing his feel­ings for Noriko, Yoshi­to­ki asked him, "Are you still hung up on Kazu­mi?" Shuya an­swered, "Yeah, I think I'll be hung up over her the rest of my life." Yoshi­to­ki looked stumped. "But she has a boyfriend, right?" Throw­ing the sil­ver lure with all his might as if throw­ing a ball in from the out­field, he an­swered, "That doesn't mat­ter."

Shuya took the bag of cook­ies from Yoshi­to­ki, who was still star­ing down in­to his lap. "Aren't you go­ing to leave some for Noriko?"

"O-​oh yeah, I'm sor­ry."

Shuya re­turned the bag to Noriko. "Sor­ry about that."

"That's all right. I don't mind. You guys should take them all."

"Re­al­ly? But we shouldn't be the on­ly ones."

Shuya took his first glance at the guy sit­ting next to Noriko. Wrapped in his school uni­form, Shogo Kawa­da (Male Stu­dent No. 5) leaned against the win­dow with his arms crossed and his eyes closed. He might have been asleep. His hair was cropped so short he looked like a monk. His slight­ly stub­bled face re­mind­ed Shuya of a punk rack­eteer at a car­ni­val. Wow, fa­cial hair, ev­ery­one! Doesn't he look kind of old for a ju­nior high school stu­dent?

Well, there was one thing he knew. Al­though Class B con­sist­ed of the same stu­dents as it did last year, Shogo Kawa­da had trans­ferred last April from Kobe. And due to some cir­cum­stance, an in­jury or ill­ness (he didn't look like the bedrid­den type so it must have been an in­jury), Kawa­da had to stay be­hind a year be­cause he was un­able to at­tend school for over six months. In oth­er words he was one year old­er than Shuya and his class­mates. Shuya him­self nev­er told any­one this, but that was what Shuya had heard.

In fact he hadn't heard good things about Shogo. There was a ru­mor that he'd been a no­to­ri­ous thug at his last school and that his hos­pi­tal­iza­tion was a re­sult of a fight. To sup­port this ru­mor, his body was cov­ered with scars. A long scar from what ap­peared to be a knife wound ran over his left brow, and when they changed in the gym lock­ers (this was be­sides the point, but Kawa­da's body was built like a mid­dleweight box­er's), Shuya was shocked to find the same kind of scars cov­er­ing his arms and back. There were two round scars next to each oth­er on his left shoul­der. They looked like gun­shot wounds, but that was un­be­liev­able.

Ev­ery time he heard these ru­mors about Shogo, some­one would in­evitably sug­gest, "He's prob­ably go­ing to end up fight­ing Kazuo." Right af­ter Shogo trans­ferred to their school that fool Ryuhei Sasagawa tried to in­tim­idate Shogo. The ex­act de­tails of what fol­lowed were on­ly hearsay, but ap­par­ent­ly Ryuhei turned pale, re­treat­ed, and went cry­ing for help from Kazuo. Kazuo looked in­dif­fer­ent though, and on­ly glanced at Ryuhei. He didn't even say a word to Shogo. So at least for the time be­ing they'd man­aged to avoid a con­fronta­tion. Kazuo didn't seem in­ter­est­ed in Shogo. Shogo didn't seem in­ter­est­ed in Kazuo. As a re­sult Class B re­mained peace­ful. They lucked out.

Ev­ery­body avoid­ed Shogo be­cause of his age dif­fer­ence and the ru­mors. But Shuya didn't like judg­ing peo­ple on ru­mors. Some­one once said, if you could see for your­self then there'd be no need to lend an ear to what oth­ers said.

Shuya point­ed his chin past Noriko to­ward Shogo.

"I won­der if he's sleep­ing."

"Hmm..." She glanced over at Shogo.

"I didn't want to wake him up."

"He doesn't look like the type who's in­to cook­ies any­way."

Noriko chuck­led, and as Shuya was about to, they heard, "No thanks."

Shuya glanced back at Shogo.

The strong, low voice echoed in his head.

Al­though Shuya wasn't fa­mil­iar with the voice it ob­vi­ous­ly came from Shogo, who still kept his eyes closed, though he didn't seem asleep. Shuya all of a sud­den re­al­ized he'd rarely ev­er heard Shogo's voice, even though Shogo had trans­ferred to their school over a month ago.

Noriko glanced at Shogo and then looked at Shuya. Shuya shrugged in re­sponse and crammed an­oth­er cook­ie in­to his mouth.

He con­tin­ued chat­ting with Noriko and Yoshi­to­ki for awhile but...

It was al­most ten o'clock when Shuya no­ticed some­thing strange.

Some­thing weird was hap­pen­ing in­side the bus. Yoshi­to­ki, who was on his left, had sud­den­ly fall­en asleep and was soft­ly breath­ing. Shin­ji Mimu­ra's body was slouch­ing in­to the aisle. Noriko Nak­agawa was al­so asleep. No one seemed to be talk­ing. Ev­ery­one seemed to be asleep. Well yeah, any­one ex­ces­sive­ly health-​con­scious might be go­ing to bed now, but still, this was their long await­ed trip. Wasn't it a bit ear­ly to fall asleep right af­ter leav­ing? Why doesn't ev­ery­one sing or some­thing? Doesn't this bus have one of those atro­cious ma­chines Shuya hat­ed-karaoke?

Worst of all, Shuya him­self was over­come with drowsi­ness. He looked around in a daze...then he couldn't even move his head, which felt heavy. He slouched against the seat. His eyes drift­ed through the nar­row space to the rearview mir­ror at the cen­ter of the large wind­shield fad­ing in the dark___He man­aged to make out the tiny im­age of the driv­er's up­per body.

The driv­er's face was cov­ered with what ap­peared to be a mask. A hose­like tube ex­tend­ed down­ward from the mask. Thin straps were wrapped around his head, strapped above and be­low his ears. What was that? Ex­cept for the hose ex­tend­ing down­ward, it re­sem­bled an air­line emer­gen­cy oxy­gen mask.

So we can't breathe in­side this bus? Ladies and gen­tle­men, this bus will be mak­ing an emer­gen­cy land­ing due to en­gine trou­ble. Like, please fas­ten your seat belts, wear your oxy­gen masks, and fol­low crew mem­ber's in­struc­tions? Yeah, right.

He heard a scratch­ing sound on the right. Shuya had to strug­gle to catch a glimpse over there. His body felt so heavy. It was as if he were im­mersed in trans­par­ent jel­ly.

Shogo Kawa­da was stand­ing up and strug­gling to pry open a win­dow. But whether it was jammed shut from rust or a bro­ken lock, the win­dow re­fused to budge. Shogo slammed his left fist against the glass. He's try­ing to break the glass. Why all the fuss?

But the glass didn't break. The fist ready to strike the glass all of a sud­den went limp and clum­si­ly dropped. His body col­lapsed in­to the seat. Shuya thought he heard that low voice he'd on­ly re­cent­ly fa­mil­iar­ized him­self with faint­ly gasp, "Damn."

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly Shuya fell asleep too.

At ap­prox­imate­ly the same time, stu­dents' fam­ilies in Shi­roi­wa were vis­it­ed by men in black sedans. Alarmed by the late night vis­it, the par­ents must have been shocked when the vis­itors pre­sent­ed them with doc­uments stamped with the gov­ern­ment's of­fi­cial peach in­signia.

In most cas­es the par­ents would silent­ly nod as they thought of their chil­dren whom they most like­ly would nev­er see again, but there were those who fran­ti­cal­ly protest­ed, in which case they would be knocked out by an elec­troshock ba­ton, or in the worst case, be pum­meled by fresh bul­lets spat out from a sub­ma­chine gun, one step ahead of their chil­dren in de­part­ing from this world.

By then the bus as­signed to Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School's Third Year Class B's study trip had long since branched off from the rows of oth­er bus­es and tak­en a U-​turn to­wards the city of Taka­mat­su. Af­ter re­turn­ing to the city it wove its way through var­ious roads be­fore it fi­nal­ly stopped and qui­et­ly turned off its en­gine.

The man in his for­ties whose hair was pep­pered gray looked like a typ­ical nice bus driv­er. Still wear­ing the oxy­gen mask that was dig­ging in­to his slight­ly sag­ging chin, he turned to­wards the Class B stu­dents with a faint look of pity. But as soon as an­oth­er man ap­peared un­der the win­dow, his face stiff­ened. He gave the Re­pub­lic's id­iosyn­crat­ic salute. Then he pressed the switch to open the door. Shuya glanced out­side as the masked men in bat­tle gear came rush­ing in.

Un­der the moon­light, the bluish-​white con­crete pier gleamed like bone, and be­yond the pier the ship that would trans­port "the play­ers" was sway­ing slug­gish­ly in the wide open black sea.

42 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1

For a mo­ment Shuya thought he was in a fa­mil­iar class­room. It wasn't the usu­al Third Year Class B class­room of course, but there was a lectern, a worn out black­board, and on the left, a tall stand with a large tele­vi­sion. There were rows of desks and chairs made of ply­wood glued on­to steel tubes. On Shuya's desk some­one had carved an­ti-​gov­ern­ment graf­fi­ti in­to the cor­ner with a pen: "the Dic­ta­tor loves wom­en in uni­form." Then he no­ticed ev­ery­one at their desks, the boys clad in but­toned up school uni­forms and the girls in their sailor suit school uni­forms, all forty-​one class­mates who'd on­ly mo­ments ago (at least that's what it felt like) been rid­ing the bus to­geth­er. The on­ly thing was--

ei­ther sprawled over their desks or slouched back in their seats-they were all com­plete­ly asleep.

From be­side the frost­ed win­dow on the side of the hall (as­sum­ing this build­ing had the same lay­out as his school), Shuya sur­veyed the rest of the room. He seemed to be the on­ly one awake. In front of him to his left and to­wards the mid­dle of the room was Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu. Be­hind him was Noriko Nak­agawa, and be­yond Yoshi­to­ki was Shin­ji Mimu­ra. They were all sprawled on their desks, sleep­ing deeply. Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra sur­ren­dered his large body to his desk (that was when it fi­nal­ly dawned on Shuya that the seat­ing as­sign­ment was iden­ti­cal to the one they had at Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School) by the win­dows on the left side. That was al­so when he be­gan to re­al­ize why the place felt odd. The win­dows be­yond Hi­ro­ki's body ap­peared to be cov­ered with some kind of black board. Steel sheets? They pro­vid­ed an icy re­flec­tion of the dull light from the rows of flu­ores­cent lights hang­ing from the ceil­ing. The frost­ed glass win­dows on the side of the hall seemed to be draped in black. Maybe they were board­ed up too. It was im­pos­si­ble to de­ter­mine the time of day.

Shuya looked at his wrist­watch. It read one o'clock. In the morn­ing? In the af­ter­noon? The date read "Thurs/22," which meant that, un­less some­one had tam­pered with his watch, ei­ther three or fif­teen hours had passed since he had that strange at­tack of drowsi­ness. All right, let's just as­sume that's the case. Still...

Shuya looked at his class­mates.

Some­thing felt off. Of course the whole sit­ua­tion was strange. But there was some­thing in par­tic­ular that dis­turbed him.

Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized what it was. Face down on her desk, Noriko had above her col­lar a sil­ver met­al band wrapped snug­ly around her neck. Be­cause of his but­toned up col­lar Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's band was bare­ly vis­ible, but Shuya man­aged to see it. Shin­ji Mimu­ra, Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra, ev­ery­one had one on their necks.

Then the thought oc­curred to Shuya. He reached for his own neck with his right hand.

He felt some­thing hard and cold. The same thing must have been wrapped around his neck.

Shuya tugged at it a lit­tle but the fit was so tight it re­fused to budge. The mo­ment he be­came con­scious of it, he felt like he was suf­fo­cat­ing. Steel col­lars! Steel col­lars as if we're dogs, damn!

He fid­get­ed with it for a while with his fin­gers, but then gave up. He won­dered in­stead...

What hap­pened to the study trip? Shuya no­ticed his sports bag sit­ting by his feet on the floor. Last night he'd ca­su­al­ly tossed his clothes, tow­el, school field trip note­book, and a bour­bon flask in­to it. Ev­ery­one else al­so had their bags by their feet.

Sud­den­ly a loud noise erupt­ed from the front en­trance, and the door slid open. Shuya looked up.

A man came in.

He was stocky but well built. His legs were ex­treme­ly short, as if they served as a mere ap­pendage to his tor­so. He wore light-​beige slacks, a gray jack­et, a red neck­tie, and black loafers. They all looked worn out. A peach-​col­ored badge was pinned to the col­lar of his jack­et, in­di­cat­ing his af­fil­ia­tion with the gov­ern­ment. His cheeks were rosy. What stuck out most though was the man's hairstyle. He wore it down to his shoul­ders like a wom­an in her prime. It re­mind­ed Shuya of the grainy Xe­rox­ed tape cov­er of a Joan Baez tape he'd bought on the black mar­ket.

The man stood at the lectern and sur­veyed the class­room. His eyes stopped at Shuya, who was the on­ly one awake (as­sum­ing this wasn't a dream).

The two stared at each oth­er for at least a full minute. But per­haps be­cause the oth­er stu­dents were wak­ing up, with their ner­vous breath­ing grad­ual­ly spread­ing through the en­tire class­room, the man looked away from Shuya. Their voic­es woke up oth­er class­mates from their deep slum­ber.

Shuya looked at the rest of the class­room. As they woke up their eyes re­mained out of fo­cus. Ev­ery­one was clue­less. His eyes met Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's as his friend turned back. Shuya point­ed at his col­lar, tilt­ing his neck slight­ly. Yoshi­to­ki im­me­di­ate­ly touched his neck. He looked shocked. He shook his head left and right and turned to the lectern. Noriko Nak­agawa al­so looked at Shuya with a dazed look. Shuya could on­ly shrug in re­sponse.

As soon as ev­ery­one seemed awake the man spoke up in a cheer­ful voice, "All right, ev­ery­one awake? I hope you all slept well!"

No one replied. Even the class clowns, Yu­ta­ka Se­to and Yu­ka Nak­agawa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 16), were speech­less.

42 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2

Wear­ing a broad grin, the man with long hair con­tin­ued be­hind the lectern, "All right, all right. Then I shall pro­ceed with the in­tro­duc­tion. First of all, I am your new in­struc­tor, Kin­pat­su Sakamochi."

The man who in­tro­duced him­self as Sakamochi turned to­wards the black­board and wrote his name in large ver­ti­cal let­ters with the chalk. "Kin­pat­su Sakamochi"? Was this some kind of joke? Giv­en the sit­ua­tion, maybe it was a pseudonym.

Sud­den­ly the fe­male class rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Yukie Ut­su­mi, stood up and said, "I don't un­der­stand what's go­ing on here." Ev­ery­one looked over at Yukie. With her long hair neat­ly braid­ed in­to a pair of pony tails, she looked pret­ty wound up, but her voice re­mained as­sertive. Nonethe­less, Yukie prob­ably had to de­lude her­self in­to be­liev­ing they'd been through a traf­fic ac­ci­dent or some oth­er event that caused them all to lose con­scious­ness.

Yukie con­tin­ued, "What's go­ing on here? We were all in the mid­dle of our study trip. Right, ev­ery­one?"

She turned around and looked at ev­ery­one, set­ting off an avalanche of cries:

"Where are we?"

"Did you fall asleep too?"

"What time is it any­way?"

"Was ev­ery­one asleep?"

"Damn, I don't have a watch."

"Do you re­mem­ber get­ting off the bus, com­ing here?"

"Who the hell is he?"

"I don't re­mem­ber a thing."

"This is ter­ri­ble. What's go­ing on? I'm scared."

Af­ter ob­serv­ing Sakamochi qui­et­ly lis­ten­ing to them, Shuya slow­ly sur­veyed the room. There were sev­er­al oth­ers who re­mained silent.

The first one he no­ticed was sit­ting at an an­gle be­hind him in the back row in the mid­dle. It was Kazuo Kiriya­ma. Be­neath his slicked-​back hair his calm eyes were star­ing at the man at the lectern. His look was so calm, it didn't even re­sem­ble a glare. He paid no at­ten­tion to his cir­cle of fol­low­ers ad­dress­ing him: Ryuhei Sasagawa, Mit­su­ru Nu­mai, Hi­roshi Kuron­aga (Male Stu­dent No. 9), and Sho Tsukio­ka (Male Stu­dent No. 14).

Then there was Mit­suko Souma, sit­ting in the sec­ond row by the win­dow. She was the one who looked jad­ed. Her seat was sep­arat­ed from the rest of her "group," which con­sist­ed of Hi­rono Shimizu and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi. Of course none of the oth­er girls, nor boys for that mat­ter, would even at­tempt to talk to her. (On Shuya's left, Hi­rono and Yoshi­mi were speak­ing to each oth­er.) Even though Mit­suko had the gor­geous looks of a pop idol, she al­ways wore a strange, list­less ex­pres­sion on her face. She stared at Sakamochi with her arms fold­ed. (Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra sat right be­hind her, talk­ing to Tadakat­su Hataga­mi.)

Shogo Kawa­da sat at the sec­ond to last row by the win­dow. He was al­so silent­ly star­ing at Sakamochi. But he took out a piece of gum, then be­gan chew­ing it, con­tin­uing to stare at the teach­er as his jaw moved.

Shuya looked to the front of the class. Noriko Nak­agawa was still star­ing back at him. Her dark eyes were trem­bling ner­vous­ly. Shuya glanced over at Yoshi­to­ki, who was sit­ting in front of her, but Yoshi­to­ki was busy talk­ing to Shin­ji Mimu­ra. Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly glanced back at Noriko, tucked his chin in slight­ly, and nod­ded. It seemed to have a calm­ing ef­fect on her. Her eyes seemed to re­lax a lit­tle.

"All right, all right, please be qui­et." Sakamochi clapped his hands to­geth­er sev­er­al times to get their at­ten­tion. The clam­or sud­den­ly sub­sid­ed. "Let me ex­plain the sit­ua­tion. The rea­son why you're all here to­day then..."

Then he said: "...is to kill each oth­er."

Now no one re­spond­ed. Ev­ery­one re­mained frozen, like fig­ures in a still pho­to­graph. But-Shuya no­ticed-Shogo con­tin­ued chew­ing his gum. His ex­pres­sion hadn't changed. But Shuya thought he'd caught a glimpse of a faint grin flash across his face.

Sakamochi con­tin­ued smil­ing and re­sumed, "Your class has been se­lect­ed for this year's 'Pro­gram.' "

Some­one shrieked.

42 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3

Ev­ery ju­nior high school stu­dent in the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia knew what the Pro­gram was. It was even cov­ered in school text­books from the fourth grade on. Here we will quote from the more de­tailed Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia Com­pact En­cy­clo­pe­dia:

"Pro­gram n. 1. A list­ing of the or­der of events and oth­er in­for­ma­tion [...] 4. A bat­tle sim­ula­tion pro­gram con­duct­ed by our na­tion's ground de­fense forces, in­sti­tut­ed for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons. Of­fi­cial­ly known as Bat­tle Ex­per­iment No. 68 Pro­gram. The first pro­gram was held in 1947. Fifty third-​year ju­nior high school class­es are se­lect­ed an­nu­al­ly (pri­or to 1950, 47 class­es were se­lect­ed) to con­duct the Pro­gram for re­search pur­pos­es. Class­mates in each class are forced to fight un­til one sur­vivor is left. Re­sults from this ex­per­iment, in­clud­ing the elapsed time, are en­tered as da­ta. The fi­nal sur­vivor of each class (the win­ner) is pro­vid­ed with a life­time pen­sion and a card au­to­graphed by The Great Dic­ta­tor. In re­ac­tion to protests and ag­ita­tion caused by ex­trem­ists dur­ing the first year of its en­act­ment, the 317th Great Dic­ta­tor gave his fa­mous April Speech.' "

The "April Speech" is re­quired read­ing in the first year of ju­nior high school. Here are some ex­cerpts:

"My beloved com­rades work­ing for the Rev­olu­tion and build­ing our beloved na­tion. [Two-​minute in­ter­rup­tion for the 317th Great Dic­ta­tor due to ap­plause and cheers] Now then. [One-​minute in­ter­rup­tion] We still have shame­less im­pe­ri­al­ists prowl­ing our re­pub­lic, at­tempt­ing to sab­otage it. They have ex­ploit­ed the peo­ple of oth­er na­tions, na­tions that should have be­come our com­rades, be­tray­ing them, brain­wash­ing them, and turn­ing them in­to pawns for their own im­pe­ri­al­ist tac­tics, [unan­imous cry of in­dig­na­tion] And they would jump at the chance to in­vade the soil of our re­pub­lic, the most ad­vanced rev­olu­tion­ary state in the world, re­veal­ing its evil scheme to de­stroy our peo­ple. [An­gry shouts from the crowd] Giv­en this dire cir­cum­stance the No. 68 Pro­gram ex­per­iment is ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary for our na­tion. Of course, I grieve at the thought of thou­sands, tens of thou­sands of youths los­ing their lives at the ripe age of fif­teen. But if their lives serve to pro­tect our peo­ple's in­de­pen­dence, can we not claim then that the flesh and blood they shed shall merge with our beau­ti­ful soil passed down to us by our gods and live with us in eter­ni­ty? [Ap­plause, a surge of cheer­ing. One minute in­ter­rup­tion] As you are all aware, our na­tion has no con­scrip­tion sys­tem. The Army, Navy, and Air Spe­cial De­fense Forces, all con­sist of pa­tri­ot­ic souls, young vol­un­teers ev­ery one of them, pas­sion­ate fight­ers for the Rev­olu­tion and the build­ing of our na­tion. They are risk­ing their lives ev­ery day and night at the front­lines. I would like you to con­sid­er the Pro­gram as a con­scrip­tion sys­tem unique to this coun­try. In or­der to pro­tect our na­tion, etc..."

Enough al­ready. (Right out­side the train sta­tion the mid­dle-​aged Spe­cial Forces re­cruiter would ap­proach po­ten­tial can­di­dates with the catch phrase, "How about we go get some pork rice?") Shuya first heard about the Pro­gram be­fore be­com­ing a fourth grad­er. It was when he fi­nal­ly got used to the Char­ity House, where he was brought by a friend of his par­ents af­ter both of them died in a traf­fic ac­ci­dent. (All his rel­atives had re­fused to take him in. He heard it was be­cause his par­ents had been in­volved in an­ti-​gov­ern­ment ac­tiv­ities, but he nev­er con­firmed this sto­ry.) Shuya thought it was when he was five. He was watch­ing tele­vi­sion in the play room with Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu, who'd been at the Char­ity House be­fore Shuya. His fa­vorite robot ani­me show had just end­ed and the cur­rent su­per­in­ten­dent of the in­sti­tu­tion, Ms. Ryoko An­no (the daugh­ter of the for­mer su­per­in­ten­dent; at the time she was prob­ably still a high school stu­dent, but ev­ery­one who worked there was called Mr., Mrs., or Ms.) switched the chan­nel. Shuya was just gaz­ing at the screen, but as soon as he saw the man in a stiff suit ad­dress­ing him, he re­al­ized it was on­ly that bor­ing show called "The News," the pro­gram they showed on ev­ery chan­nel at var­ious times.

The man was read­ing from his script. Shuya couldn't re­mem­ber ex­act­ly what he said but it was al­ways the same and prob­ably went some­thing like this:

"We have re­ceived a re­port from the Spe­cial De­fense Forces and the gov­ern­ment that the Pro­gram in Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture end­ed yes­ter­day at 3:12 p.m. It has been three years since the last Pro­gram was con­duct­ed here. The sub­ject class was Third Year E Class from Zentsu­ji No. 4 Ju­nior High School. The undis­closed lo­ca­tion was Shi­daka­ji­ma Is­land, four kilo­me­ters away from Ta­dot­su-​cho. The win­ner emerged af­ter 3 days, 7 hours, and 43 min­utes. Fur­ther­more, with the re­trieval of the corpses and au­top­sies con­duct­ed to­day, the caus­es of deaths for all 38 stu­dents killed have been de­ter­mined: 17 from gun­shot wounds, 9 from knife or blade wounds, 5 from blunt weapons, and 3 choked to death..."

An im­age of what ap­peared to be "the win­ner," a girl clad in a tat­tered sailor suit uni­form came on the screen. Pressed be­tween two Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers, she looked back at the cam­era, her face twitch­ing. Un­der her long messy hair, some dark red sub­stance stuck to her right tem­ple. Shuya could still clear­ly re­call how her twitch­ing face oc­ca­sion­al­ly formed what ap­peared to be, strange­ly enough, a smile.

He re­al­ized now that this was the first time he had seen an in­sane per­son. But at the time he had no idea what was wrong with her. He on­ly felt in­ex­pli­ca­bly afraid, as if he'd seen a ghost.

Shuya be­lieved he had asked, "What is this, Ms. An­no?" Ms. An­no on­ly shook her head and replied, "Oh it's noth­ing." Ms. An­no turned away from Shuya slight­ly and whis­pered, "Poor girl." Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu had al­ready stopped watch­ing a while ago and was pre­oc­cu­pied with eat­ing his tan­ger­ine.

As Shuya grew old­er, this same lo­cal re­port, giv­en at the rate of once ev­ery two years at any time with­out any warn­ing, felt more and more omi­nous. From a pool of all third-​year ju­nior high school stu­dents, fifty class­es were is­sued an an­nu­al guar­an­teed death sen­tence. That was two thou­sand stu­dents if each class con­sist­ed of forty stu­dents, no, more ac­cu­rate­ly, that was 1,950 stu­dents killed. Worse yet, it wasn't sim­ply a mass ex­ecu­tion. The stu­dents had to kill each oth­er, com­pet­ing for the throne of sur­vivor. It was the most ter­ri­fy­ing ver­sion of mu­si­cal chairs imag­in­able.

But...it was im­pos­si­ble to op­pose the Pro­gram. It was im­pos­si­ble to protest any­thing the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia did.

So Shuya de­cid­ed to give in. That was how most of the third-​year "re­serves" from ju­nior high school dealt with it, right? Okay, our spe­cial con­scrip­tion sys­tem? The beau­ti­ful home­land of Vig­or­ous Rice Plants? How many ju­nior highs were there in the re­pub­lic? The birth rate might be de­clin­ing but your chances were still less than one in eight hun­dred. In Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture that meant on­ly one class ev­ery oth­er year would be "cho­sen." Put blunt­ly, you were just as like­ly to die in a traf­fic ac­ci­dent. Giv­en how Shuya nev­er had the luck of the draw, he fig­ured he wouldn't be cho­sen. Even in the lo­cal raf­fle he'd nev­er win more than a box of tis­sues. So he'd nev­er be cho­sen. So fuck off, man.

But then some­times when he heard some­one in class, par­tic­ular­ly a girl in tears, say­ing some­thing like, "My cousin was in the Pro­gram and..." that dark fear choked him up again. He was an­gry too. I mean, who had the right to ter­ri­fy that poor girl?

But with­in a mat­ter of days the same girl who'd been so gloomy would be­gin smil­ing. And Shuya's fear and anger would grad­ual­ly wane and dis­ap­pear too. But the vague dis­trust and pow­er­less­ness he felt to­wards the gov­ern­ment nonethe­less re­mained.

That's the way things went.

And when Shuya en­tered his third year in ju­nior high school this year, he along with his oth­er class­mates as­sumed they would be safe. Ac­tu­al­ly they re­al­ly had no choice but to as­sume this.

Un­til now.

"That can't be."

A chair fell as some­one stood up. The voice was shrill enough to make Shuya glance over at the desk be­hind Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. It was Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi, who was the male class rep­re­sen­ta­tive. His face was be­yond pale. It had turned gray, pro­vid­ing a sur­re­al con­trast to his sil­ver framed glass­es, re­sem­bling one of those silkscreen prints by Andy Warhol il­lus­trat­ed in their art text­books as "the deca­dent art of Amer­ican im­pe­ri­al­ists."

Some of his class­mates might have been hop­ing that Ky­oichi would pro­vide some ad­equate ra­tio­nal form of protest. Kill the friends you were hang­ing out with yes­ter­day? It was im­pos­si­ble. Some­one's mak­ing a mis­take here. Hey rep, can you take care of this one for us?

But Ky­oichi com­plete­ly let them down.

"M-​my fa­ther is a di­rec­tor of en­vi­ron­men­tal af­fairs in the pre­fec­tural gov­ern­ment. How could the class I'm in be se­lect­ed for th-​the Pro­gram?..."

Due to his shak­ing, his tense voice sound­ed even more wound up than usu­al.

The man who called him­self Sakamochi grinned and shook his head, his long hair swing­ing in the air. "Let's see. You're Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi, right?

"You must know what equal­ity means. Lis­ten up. All peo­ple are born equal. Your fa­ther's job in the pre­fec­tural gov­ern­ment doesn't en­ti­tle you to spe­cial priv­ileges. You are no dif­fer­ent. Lis­ten up, ev­ery­body. You all have your own dis­tinct per­son­al back­grounds. Of course some of you come from rich fam­ilies, some from poor fam­ilies. But cir­cum­stances be­yond your con­trol like that shouldn't de­ter­mine who you are. You must all re­al­ize what you're worth on your own. So Ky­oichi, let's not de­lude our­selves that you're some­how spe­cial-be­cause you're not!"

Sakamochi bawled this out so sud­den­ly, Ky­oichi fell back in­to this seat. Sakamochi glared at Ky­oichi for a while, but then his smile re­turned.

"Your class will be men­tioned in to­day's morn­ing news. Of course be­cause the Pro­gram must be con­duct­ed in se­cret, the de­tails will re­main undis­closed un­til the game ends. Now let's see, oh right, your par­ents have al­ready been no­ti­fied."

Ev­ery­one still seemed lost in a daze. Class­mates slaugh­ter­ing each oth­er? Im­pos­si­ble.

"You still don't be­lieve this is hap­pen­ing, do you?"

Sakamochi scratched his head with a trou­bled look. Then he turned to the en­trance and called out, "I need you guys to come in!"

In re­sponse the door slid open and three men came rush­ing in. They were all wear­ing cam­ou­flage fa­tigues and com­bat boots and tucked un­der their arms steel hel­mets bear­ing the peach in­signia. It was im­me­di­ate­ly ob­vi­ous they were Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers. They had as­sault ri­fles strapped over their shoul­ders, and Shuya could see au­to­mat­ic pis­tols hol­stered on­to their belts. One of the sol­diers was tall with strange­ly kinked hair, giv­ing the im­pres­sion of some­one frivolous, the oth­er was medi­um height, with a hand­some, boy­ish-​look­ing face, and the last one wore a slight grin, but was eclipsed by the charis­ma of the oth­er two. They were car­ry­ing a large, thick ny­lon sack re­sem­bling a black sleep­ing bag. Var­ious parts of the bag poked up as if it were stuffed with pineap­ples.

Sakamochi stood by the win­dow and the three men placed the bag on the lectern. Both sides of the bag pro­trud­ed over the lectern, par­tic­ular­ly the side fac­ing the win­dow, and dan­gled down, per­haps be­cause the con­tents in­side were soft.

Sakamochi an­nounced, "Let me in­tro­duce these men who will be as­sist­ing you for the Pro­gram. Mr. Tahara, Mr. Kon­do, and Mr. No­mu­ra. Now why don't you show them what's in­side?"

The frivolous one, Tahara, ap­proached the lectern from the side of the hall, placed his hand on the zip­per, and pulled the bag open. Some­thing drenched in red liq­uid...

"AIEEEEE!"

Be­fore it was ful­ly open, one of the girls in the front row screamed and was im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by the oth­ers. As the desks and chairs made a clat­ter­ing sound, oth­er voic­es asked, "Whaaat?" and a so­pra­no cho­rus swelled up.

Shuya held his breath.

He could see the body of the teach­er in charge of Class B, Masao Hayashi­da, in­side the half open bag. No, he was now their for­mer teach­er. Or in fact he was now the for­mer Mr. Hayashi­da.

His flim­sy blue-​gray suit was drenched in blood. On­ly half of his large black glass­es that earned him the nick­name "Drag­on­fly" re­mained. What could you ex­pect, on­ly the left half of his head re­mained. Un­der­neath the re­main­ing lens the mar­ble­like, crim­son eye­ball gazed ab­sent­ly at the ceil­ing. Gray jel­ly, what must have been his brains, clung to his re­main­ing hair. As if re­lieved to be re­leased, his left arm, still wear­ing a watch, poked out of the bag, dan­gling in front of the lectern. The ones sit­ting in front might have ac­tu­al­ly seen the sec­ond hand tick­ing away.

"All right, all right, all right, qui­et now. Be qui­et. Si­lence!"

Sakamochi clapped his hands, but the girls' shriek­ing wouldn't sub­side.

Sud­den­ly, the boy­ish look­ing sol­dier named Kon­do pulled out his pis­tol.

Shuya ex­pect­ed a warn­ing shot in­to the ceil­ing, but the sol­dier in­stead grabbed the bag con­tain­ing Hayashi­da with one of his hands, and dragged the bag down from the lectern. He snapped Hayashi­da's head up to his face. He looked like a hero in a sci-​fi flick fight­ing a gi­ant bag­worm.

The sol­dier pumped two bul­lets in­to Mr. Hayashi­da's head. The rest of Hayashi­da's head flew apart. The high pow­ered bul­lets tore apart his brains and bones which formed a bloody mist and splat­tered all over the faces and chests of the stu­dents in the front row.

The echoes from the gun­fire sub­sid­ed. There was hard­ly any trace of Hayashi­da's head.

The sol­dier tossed Hayashi­da's body to the side of the lectern. No one was scream­ing.

42 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4

Most of the stand­ing stu­dents timid­ly re­turned to their seats. The un­charis­mat­ic sol­dier on the far side dragged the bag con­tain­ing Hayashi­da's body to the cor­ner of the class­room, then joined the oth­er two stand­ing by the lectern. Sakamochi re­turned to his po­si­tion be­hind the lectern.

Once again the room turned silent, but that si­lence was soon bro­ken by the sound of some­one groan­ing in the back, fol­lowed by the damp splash of vom­it splat­ter­ing against the floor. Shuya could smell it.

"Lis­ten up ev­ery­one. As you can see, Mr. Hayashi­da ve­he­ment­ly op­posed your class' as­sign­ment to the Pro­gram," Sakamochi said, scratch­ing his hair. "Well, it was all so sud­den, we do feel bad about it, but..."

The room grew silent again. Ev­ery­one now knew. This was re­al. It was no mis­take, nor was it a prank. They were go­ing to be forced to kill each oth­er.

Shuya des­per­ate­ly tried to think clear­ly. The un­re­al sit­ua­tion had put him in a daze. His mind was spin­ning from the hor­ri­ble corpse of Hayashi­da and the role it played in this hor­ror show.

They had to es­cape. But how?...That's right...first he'd meet with Yoshi­to­ki...Shin­ji and Hi­ro­ki...but how was the Pro­gram ac­tu­al­ly con­duct­ed? The de­tails were nev­er pub­li­cized. Stu­dents were giv­en weapons to kill each oth­er. That much was known. But could they talk to each oth­er? How did the gov­ern­ment mon­itor the game?

"I...I..." Shuya's thoughts were in­ter­rupt­ed. He looked up and opened his eyes.

Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu half rose and gazed at Sakamochi, un­sure, it seemed, whether he should con­tin­ue. He looked as if his words were be­yond his con­trol. Shuya's body tensed up. Don't pro­voke them, Yoshi­to­ki!

"Yeeees? What is it? You can ask me any­thing."

Sakamochi of­fered a friend­ly smile, and like a pup­pet Yoshi­to­ki con­tin­ued, "I...don't have par­ents. So who did you con­tact?"

"Ah ha," Sakamochi nod­ded. "I re­mem­ber there was some­one from one of the wel­fare in­sti­tu­tions. So you must be Shuya Nana­hara? Let's see, ac­cord­ing to the school re­port you were the one with dan­ger­ous ideas. So..."

"I'm Shuya," Shuya in­ter­rupt­ed, rais­ing his voice. Sakamochi glanced at Shuya and then back at Yoshi­to­ki. Still in a daze, Yoshi­to­ki glanced back at Shuya.

"Oh, that's right. I'm so sor­ry. There was one more. So you must be Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu. Well, I con­tact­ed the su­per­in­ten­dent of the in­sti­tu­tion where you were both raised. That's right...she was very pret­ty," Sakamochi said and grinned. While his smile ap­peared to be cheer­ful, there was some­thing dis­turb­ing about it.

Shuya's face tensed up. "What the hell did you do to Ms. An­no?"

"Well, like Mr. Hayashi­da, she was very un­co­op­er­ative. They both didn't ac­cept your as­sign­ment, so in or­der to si­lence her, well, I had to..." Sakamochi con­tin­ued calm­ly, "...rape her. Oh, don't wor­ry. It's not like she's dead."

Shuya flushed red with anger and leaped up, but be­fore he could say any­thing, Yoshi­to­ki said, "I'll kill you!"

Yoshi­to­ki was stand­ing up. His ex­pres­sion had changed, though. He'd al­ways been so friend­ly to ev­ery­one. No mat­ter what hap­pened, it was im­pos­si­ble to imag­ine him get­ting an­gry. His ex­pres­sion now was some­thing he saved for those rare times he was tru­ly en­raged. No one else in class might have ev­er seen him like this, but Shuya had seen him this up­set twice. The first time was when they were fourth graders and a car ran over the Char­ity House's pet dog, Ed­die, right in front of the gate. Fran­ti­cal­ly, Yoshi­to­ki chased af­ter the flee­ing car. The sec­ond time was on­ly a year ago, when a man had been us­ing the school's debt as lever­age to come on to Ms. An­no. Af­ter she man­aged to pay back the mon­ey, and there­by re­ject­ed his ad­vances, the man cursed her out right in front of them, as if he want­ed all the Char­ity House's res­idents to hear him. If Shuya hadn't stopped Yoshi­to­ki, the man would have lost his front teeth, though Yoshi­to­ki would have al­so been severe­ly in­jured. Yoshi­to­ki was ex­treme­ly kind, and even when he was in­sult­ed or picked on he usu­al­ly laughed it off. But when some­one he tru­ly loved was hurt, his re­sponse was ex­treme. This was some­thing Shuya ad­mired about Yoshi­to­ki.

"I'll kill you, you bas­tard!" Yoshi­to­ki con­tin­ued, scream­ing, "I'll kill you and dump you in­to a pile of shit!"

"Hmm." Sakamochi looked amused. "Are you se­ri­ous, Yoshi­to­ki? You know one must be re­spon­si­ble for the things one says."

"Give me a break! I'm go­ing to kill you! Don't you for­get it!"

"Stop it, Yoshi­to­ki! Stop it!"

Yoshi­to­ki paid no at­ten­tion to Shuya's scream­ing.

Sakamochi spoke in a strange, kind voice, as if to ap­pease Yoshi­to­ki.

"Look, Yoshi­to­ki. What you're do­ing right now is voic­ing your op­po­si­tion to the gov­ern­ment."

"I'll kill you!" Yoshi­to­ki didn't stop. "I'll kill you I'll kill you I'll kill you!"

Shuya could no longer con­tain him­self and right when he was about to scream again, Sakamochi shook his head and waved his hand at the three Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers stand­ing by the lectern.

They re­sem­bled a cho­rus group, like the Four Fresh­men. The men in fa­tigues, Tahara, Kon­do, and No­mu­ra, all lift­ed their right hands in a dra­mat­ic, emo­tion­al­ly charged pose. But their hands were hold­ing guns. Now the cho­rus would have been some­thing like, "Ba­by please, ba­by please, spend this night with me-"

Shuya saw Yoshi­to­ki's bulging eyes open even wider.

The three au­to­mat­ic pis­tols ex­plod­ed all at once. Just as he was step­ping out in­to the aisle, Yoshi­to­ki's body shook as if danc­ing the booga­loo.

It hap­pened so quick­ly that Noriko Nak­agawa, who sat right be­hind Yoshi­to­ki, along with the rest of the class, didn't even have time to duck.

The gun­shot sounds hadn't even died down be­fore Yoshi­to­ki slow­ly tipped over to the right and crashed in be­tween his desk and Izu­mi Kanai's on the right. Izu­mi shrieked.

The three­some stood with their right hands ex­tend­ed. Thin smoke from each of their bar­rels si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly trailed up­ward. Shuya then saw in be­tween the legs of the desk the fa­mil­iar face turned to­wards him. The bulging eyes re­mained open, fixed on a point on the floor. A bright pud­dle of blood be­gan ooz­ing out on­to the floor. Yoshi­to­ki's right shoul­der be­gan twitch­ing down to his fin­gers.

Yoshi­to­ki!

Shuya stood up to run to him, but Noriko Nak­agawa, who was sit­ting clos­er, was quick­er. "Yoshi­to­ki!" she screamed and crouched down be­side him.

Now Tahara, the frivolous one, aimed his gun at Noriko and pulled the trig­ger. Noriko tum­bled for­ward as if she were swept off her feet and col­lapsed on top of Yoshi­to­ki, who con­tin­ued to twitch.

Tahara im­me­di­ate­ly point­ed his gun at Shuya. Shuya's mind was rac­ing now but his body was frozen. On­ly his eyes moved. He saw the blood spurt­ing out of Noriko's calf.

Sakamochi said to Noriko, "You will not leave your desk with­out my per­mis­sion." Then he looked over at Shuya, say­ing, "The same ap­plies to you, Shuya. Now sit down."

Shuya did his best to take his eyes away from Noriko's bloody leg and Yoshi­to­ki un­der­neath her. He looked Sakamochi di­rect­ly in the eye. His neck mus­cles had tensed up from the shock of the scene.

"What the hell is go­ing on here!?" Tahara still point­ed his gun at his fore­head. Shuya re­mained still, burst­ing out, "What the hell are you do­ing!? We have to get some help for Yoshi­to­ki...and Noriko..."

Sakamochi gri­maced and shook his head. Then he re­peat­ed, "For­get about it and sit down. You too, Noriko."

Noriko, com­plete­ly pale from look­ing at Yoshi­to­ki ly­ing un­der­neath her, slow­ly looked up at Sakamochi. She seemed over­whelmed with anger more than she was with the pain she must have been suf­fer­ing from. She raised her eyes and glared back at Sakamochi. "Please get some help." She spoke each word de­lib­er­ate­ly. "For Yoshi­to­ki."

Yoshi­to­ki's right arm con­tin­ued to twitch. But while they watched over him the twitch­ing sub­sid­ed. It was ev­ident his in­jury would be fa­tal un­less he was treat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

Sakamochi sighed deeply, then ad­dressed the frivolous one, "Then Mr. Tahara, will you please take care of this."

Be­fore they could fig­ure out what he meant, Tahara point­ed his gun down­ward and pulled the trig­ger. BLAMM. Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's head bounced up once, then some­thing from his head splashed on­to Noriko's face.

Dumb­struck, Noriko's mouth hung open. Her face was cov­ered with a dark red sub­stance.

Shuya re­al­ized his mouth was hang­ing open too.

Al­though part of his head had been blown away, Yoshi­to­ki's eyes still re­mained fo­cused on the same part of the floor. He was no longer twitch­ing, though. He was mo­tion­less.

"See?" Sakamochi said. "He was al­ready dy­ing. Now then, please re­turn to your seats."

"Oh..." Noriko looked down at Yoshi­to­ki's de­formed head, "...my..."

Shuya was al­so stunned. His eyes were glued to Yoshi­to­ki's face, ly­ing be­tween the legs of the desk. His thoughts were com­plete­ly par­alyzed, as if his own brains had been blown to bits. Mem­ories of Yoshi­to­ki flashed through his dazed mind. The lit­tle ad­ven­tures they took, camp­ing or walk­ing down the riv­er, a rainy day spent play­ing an old board game, mim­ick­ing "Jake and El­wood," the heroes who, like them­selves, were or­phans in the Amer­ican movie The Blues Broth­ers (amaz­ing­ly, it was a dubbed ver­sion, al­though the voice ac­tors were hor­ri­ble), which had be­come a black­mar­ket hit, and then just re­cent­ly, Yoshi­to­ki's face when he said, "Hey Shuya, I got a crush on some­one." And then...

"Are you two deaf?" Sakamochi re­peat­ed. Yes, Shuya was deaf to his words. He just stared at Yoshi­to­ki.

Noriko was no dif­fer­ent. If they hadn't moved, they would have fol­lowed in Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's foot­steps. Right be­side Sakamochi, Tahara point­ed his gun at Noriko, while the oth­er two point­ed theirs at Shuya.

But it was thanks to a calm, in fact light-​heart­ed voice call­ing out, "M-​m-​m-​mis­ter Sakamochi," that Shuya was brought back to his sens­es, at least enough to gaze numbly at the caller.

Be­yond Yoshi­to­ki's emp­ty seat, Shin­ji Mimu­ra had his hand raised. Noriko slow­ly looked at him too.

"Hm? Let's see. You must be Shin­ji Mimu­ra. What is it?"

Shin­ji put his hand down and spoke, "Noriko looks in­jured. I was won­der­ing if I could help her get back to her seat."

De­spite the ex­trem­ity of their sit­ua­tion, Shin­ji spoke in the usu­al voice of The Third Man.

Sakamochi raised his brow slight­ly, but then nod­ded.

"All right, go ahead. I re­al­ly want to get things mov­ing."

Shin­ji nod­ded, stood up, and walked to­wards Noriko. As he ap­proached her, he took out a neat­ly fold­ed hand­ker­chief out of his pock­et and leaned be­tween Yoshi­to­ki's corpse and Noriko. He first wiped Noriko's face, which was cov­ered with Yoshi­to­ki's blood. Noriko hard­ly re­act­ed. Then he said, "Stand up, Noriko," and put his hand un­der Noriko's right arm to help her get up.

Then, with his back fac­ing Sakamochi, Shin­ji looked at Shuya, who re­mained half-​stand­ing. Un­der his sharp, well de­fined brows, his eyes which al­ways had a mild­ly amused look were now dead se­ri­ous. He raised his right brow and moved his chin, shak­ing his head slight­ly. His left hand pushed down, as if he were mak­ing a press­ing mo­tion. Shuya didn't un­der­stand this sig­nal. Shin­ji made the same move again.

Al­though he was still dazed, Shuya fi­nal­ly un­der­stood that Shin­ji was telling him to calm down. He looked back at Shin­ji...and slow­ly eased his way back in­to his seat.

Shin­ji nod­ded. Af­ter re­turn­ing Noriko to her seat, he turned around and re­turned to his seat.

Noriko sat down. Blood poured out of the wound in her right leg dan­gling from her seat. Her white socks and sneak­ers were soaked in red, as if she were wear­ing San­ta Claus boots, but on­ly on her right foot.

Noriko was com­ing to her sens­es a lit­tle too. She seemed to be mak­ing a ges­ture to thank Shin­ji. But as if he could see out the back of his head Shin­ji shrugged his shoul­ders to stop her. Noriko with­drew and saw once again Yoshi­to­ki's body ly­ing be­low her right hand. She stared at him with­out a word but her eyes seemed to be brim­ming with tears.

Shuya al­so looked again at the corpse, his view part­ly ob­scured by the desks. Yes, it was a corpse. There was no doubt about it. It was hard to com­pre­hend, but Yoshi­to­ki had be­come a corpse, the corpse of some­one with whom he had shared ten years of his life.

As he looked at Yoshi­to­ki's gap­ing eyes, Shuya's anger be­came more pro­nounced and clear, like a throb­bing pulse. The anger rushed through his en­tire body so pow­er­ful­ly that it al­most made him shake. His feel­ings, which had been mut­ed by the ini­tial shock, were be­gin­ning to sur­face. Shuya turned and bared his teeth to­wards Sakamochi.

Sakamochi looked amused by Shuya. Shuya would nev­er for­give him for this. He was go­ing to kill the bas­tard.

Shuya had been on the verge of blow­ing up the way Yoshi­to­ki did. But then...

Shin­ji Mimu­ra had in­ter­vened at the cru­cial mo­ment, telling him to calm down__Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly re­called how he got the sig­nal from him on­ly mo­ments ago. That's right...of course if he blew up now he would end up like Yoshi­to­ki. And more im­por­tant­ly...now the girl whom Yoshi­to­ki adored so much was severe­ly in­jured. If he were to die now...what would hap­pen to Noriko Nak­agawa?

Shuya tried his best to tear his eyes away from Sakamochi. He looked down at his desk­top. He felt wretched, as if his heart were be­ing crushed from anger and sad­ness that had no out­let.

Sakamochi qui­et­ly laughed. He looked away from Shuya.

Shuya clenched both of his fists tight­ly un­der the desk in or­der to calm down his body which was shak­ing un­con­trol­lably. He clenched them tighter and tighter. It was no easy feat to con­trol his emo­tions though, with Yoshi­to­ki's corpse ly­ing right in front of him.

This was in­com­pre­hen­si­ble. How could it be? How could you lose some­one...some­one so close?

Yoshi­to­ki has al­ways been with me. It doesn't mat­ter how triv­ial our ex­pe­ri­ences were. What about the time we played in the riv­er, and I saved him from drown­ing? Or when we got our kicks col­lect­ing tons of grasshop­pers, stuff­ing them in­to a small box, and how they died as a re­sult? We both felt re­al­ly bad about that. Or when we fought for that dog Ed­die's at­ten­tion? Or when we pulled a prank in school and end­ed up hid­ing in the fac­ul­ty room at­tic? We al­most got caught, but af­ter we man­aged to es­cape, we had a good laugh___Yoshi­to­ki and I were al­ways to­geth­er. It was a fact.

He was with me.

So how could he be...gone now?

Shin­ji raised his hand again, "I have an­oth­er ques­tion, Mr. Sakamochi."

"You again? What is it?"

"Noriko is in­jured. I un­der­stand we will be par­tic­ipat­ing in the Pro­gram, but doesn't this make the game un­fair?"

Sakamochi looked amused.

"Well, per­haps, yes. So what is it?"

"Which means she should be treat­ed, which means the Pro­gram should be post­poned un­til her re­cov­ery, no?"

Shuya had bare­ly man­aged to hold back his anger, so he was amazed by the con­trast in Shin­ji Mimu­ra's calm con­duct. It was a bit strange that Shuya could ac­tu­al­ly af­ford to be im­pressed. Yes, Shin­ji Mimu­ra was a lot calmer than Shuya. Shin­ji was right. If Shin­ji's re­quest was grant­ed, that might buy them some ex­tra time. Then they might be able to es­cape.

Sakamochi's face con­tort­ed in­to laugh­ter.

"That's a very in­ter­est­ing sug­ges­tion, Shin­ji."

Sakamochi in­stead of­fered an al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tion, "Then shall we kill Noriko Nak­agawa now, and make the game equal?"

Noriko her­self along with the rest of class sud­den­ly froze up again. Shuya could see Shin­ji's back un­der­neath his school uni­form stiff­en as he im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed, "I take it back, I take it back. Come on, I was just kid­ding."

Sakamochi burst out laugh­ing again at Shin­ji's hu­mor­ous tone. Tahara, whose right hand had been on his hol­ster, quick­ly re­turned it to the strap of his ri­fle hang­ing off his shoul­der.

Sakamochi clapped his hands again.

"All right then, lis­ten up. First of all, each and ev­ery one of you dif­fer ac­cord­ing to your in­tel­li­gence, phys­ical dex­ter­ity, etc., etc. We're born un­equal. So we will not treat Noriko Nak­agawa-over there!! No whis­per­ing!" Sakamochi sud­den­ly yelled. He threw a white ob­ject where Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 18) was in the pro­cess of whis­per­ing some­thing to the fe­male class rep­re­sen­ta­tive Yukie Ut­su­mi, who was sit­ting next to her. Shuya won­dered whether it was chalk for a mo­ment, but of course that was ab­surd, giv­en the cir­cum­stances.

The ob­ject made the thump­ing sound of a nail be­ing pound­ed in­to a cof­fin. A thin knife was plant­ed in the mid­dle of Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi's wide, fair-​skinned fore­head.

Yukie stared at the sight, her eyes open wide. A stranger sight though was Fu­miyo her­self rais­ing her eyes, strug­gling to lo­cate the knife plant­ed in her fore­head. Her head arched back in this at­tempt.

Then she col­lapsed to the side. As she fell, her left tem­ple hit the cor­ner of Yukie's desk and nudged it.

Now there was no room for doubt. Who could sur­vive a knife plant­ed in one's fore­head?

No one moved. No one spoke a word. Yukie took a deep breath and stared down at Fu­miyo. Noriko was al­so gaz­ing at her. Shin­ji Mimu­ra kept his lips pursed as he looked at Fu­miyo col­lapsed be­tween the desks just like Yoshi­to­ki.

His throat dry, Shuya held his breath and thought, "He did that on a whim! A whim! Damn it! Our lives are to­tal­ly at the mer­cy of this ass­hole Sakamochi!"

"Oops, I did it. I'm so sor­ry. The in­struc­tor killing some­one, that's against the rules, huh?" Sakamochi closed his eyes and scratched his head. But his face be­came se­ri­ous again and he said, "I need your un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion. Im­pul­sive ac­tions are strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed. That means whis­per­ing will not be per­mit­ted. It's hard on me but if you whis­per, I'll toss an­oth­er knife at you!"

Shuya clenched his teeth. He told him­self to be pa­tient and re­peat­ed this over and over to him­self while two class­mates were sprawled dead on the floor.

Still, he was drawn to Yoshi­to­ki's face and couldn't help but look at him. He felt he was about to cry.

40 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5

"Al­low me to ex­plain the rules."

Sakamochi re­turned to his cheer­ful voice. The class­room be­gan to reek of Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's fresh blood, an odor en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent than that of the dried blood of their in­struc­tor, "Drag­on­fly" Hayashi­da. Shuya couldn't see Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi's face from his seat, but it seemed like there was very lit­tle blood com­ing out of her.

"I think you all know how this works. The rules are sim­ple. All you have to do is kill each oth­er. There are no vi­ola­tions. And," Sakamochi wore a wide grin, "the last re­main­ing sur­vivor can go home. You even get a nice card au­to­graphed by the Dic­ta­tor. Isn't that won­der­ful?"

In his mind, Shuya spat to his side.

"Now you may think this is a hor­ri­ble game. But in life the un­ex­pect­ed is bound to hap­pen. You must at all times main­tain self-​con­trol in or­der to re­spond prop­er­ly to ac­ci­dents. Con­sid­er this an ex­er­cise then. Al­so, men and wom­en will be treat­ed equal­ly. There will be no hand­icaps for ei­ther side. I do have good news for the girls, though. Ac­cord­ing to Pro­gram statis­tics, 49% of past win­ning sur­vivors have been girls. The mot­to here is, 'I'm just like the oth­ers and the oth­ers are like me.' There is noth­ing to be afraid of."

Sakamochi made a sig­nal. The cam­ou­flaged trio went in­to the hall and be­gan to haul in the large, black, ny­lon day packs. The packs formed a pile right be­side the body bag of Mr. Hayashi­da. Some of them were lop­sid­ed, as if they might con­tain a pole-​shaped ob­ject in­side try­ing to poke out.

"We will have you leave one by one. Each one of you will take one of these bags pri­or to de­par­ture. Each pack con­tains food, wa­ter, and a weapon. Let's see, as I said, ev­ery one of you dif­fers ac­cord­ing to abil­ity. So these weapons will add an­oth­er ran­dom el­ement. Well, that sounds com­pli­cat­ed. In oth­er words, it will make the game all the more un­pre­dictable. You will each end up with a ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed weapon. As you leave in or­der, you will take the pack on top of the pile. Each pack al­so con­tains a map of the is­land, a com­pass, and a watch. Are there any of you who don't have watch­es? You all do? Oh, I for­got to men­tion this, but we are on an is­land with an ap­prox­imate cir­cum­fer­ence of six kilo­me­ters. Its nev­er been used for the Pro­gram. We had the res­idents evac­uate the is­land. So there is ab­so­lute­ly no one else here. So..."

Sakamochi faced the black­board and grabbed a piece of chalk. He drew a rough di­amond shape next to where he had writ­ten his name, "Kin­pat­su Sakamochi." On the top-​right he drew an ar­row point­ing up­ward and the let­ter "N." He wrote an "X" in­side the di­amond, right of its cen­ter. With the chalk still pressed against the black­board, he turned to­wards the stu­dents.

"All right then. We're in the school on this is­land. This is a di­agram of the is­land, so this in­di­cates the school. Got that?" Sakamochi tapped the sym­bol with his chalk. "I'm go­ing to be stay­ing here. I'll be over­look­ing your ef­forts."

Sakamochi then drew four spin­dle shapes scat­tered to the north, south, east, and west sides of the di­amond.

"These are ships. They are there to kill any­one at­tempt­ing to es­cape by sea."

Then he drew par­al­lel ver­ti­cal and hor­izon­tal lines over the is­land. The di­amond shape in­di­cat­ing the is­land re­sem­bled a warped grill now. Start­ing from the top-​left, Sakamochi wrote mark­ers in each grid, "A=l," "A=2,"...in or­der. The next row read, "B=l," "B=2," etc.

"This is just a sim­pli­fied di­agram. The map in­side your packs will look some­thing like this." Sakamochi placed his chalk down and clapped his hands to clear off the dust.

"Once you leave the premis­es, you are free to go any­where. How­ev­er, an­nounce­ments will be made across the en­tire is­land at the hours of twelve and six, in the morn­ing and at night. That's four a day. I'll be re­fer­ring to this map when I an­nounce the lo­ca­tion of zones that will be for­bid­den af­ter a cer­tain time. You must ex­am­ine your maps close­ly and check your com­pass­es against them. If you are in a for­bid­den zone you must clear out of the area as soon as pos­si­ble. Be­cause..."

Sakamochi put his hands on the lectern and looked at ev­ery­one.

"...of the col­lars around your necks."

Un­til he had made this re­mark, sev­er­al stu­dents had failed to no­tice the col­lars. They touched their necks and looked shocked.

"That de­vice is the re­sult of the lat­est tech­nol­ogy de­vel­oped by our Re­pub­lic. It is 100% wa­ter­proof, an­ti­shock, and uh-​uh, no, no, it can't come off. It won't come off. If you try to pry it loose..." Sakamochi took a small breath, "...it will ex­plode."

Sev­er­al stu­dents who had been fin­ger­ing their col­lars im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased their hands.

Sakamochi grinned. "The col­lar mon­itors your pulse in or­der to ver­ify signs of life and trans­mits this in­for­ma­tion to the main­frame at this school. It al­so pin­points your ex­act po­si­tion on the is­land for us. Now, let's re­turn to the map."

Sakamochi swung his right arm back and point­ed to the map on the black­board.

"This same com­put­er will al­so ran­dom­ly se­lect for­bid­den zones. And if there are any stu­dents left in the zone af­ter the des­ig­nat­ed time-of course dead stu­dents won't mat­ter-the com­put­er will au­to­mat­ical­ly de­tect any­one alive and im­me­di­ate­ly send a sig­nal to his or her col­lar. Then..."

Shuya knew what he would say.

"That col­lar will ex­plode."

He was right.

Sakamochi paused for a mo­ment to ex­am­ine ev­ery­one. Then he con­tin­ued, "Why would we do this? Be­cause if ev­ery­one hud­dled up to­geth­er in one spot, the game wouldn't pro­ceed. So we will make you move. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the area you can move around in will shrink. Got that?"

Sakamochi called it a game. No won­der. It was fuck­ing out­ra­geous. No one said a word but ev­ery­one ap­peared to un­der­stand the rules.

"All right, so that means hid­ing in a build­ing will do you no good. Even if you hide in some hole you dug in the ground the trans­mis­sion will reach you. Oh and by the way, you are free to hide in any build­ing but you won't be able to use the phone. You won't be able to con­tact your par­ents. You have to fight on your own alone. But that's how the game of life is any­way. Now I did say that the game will be­gin with­out any for­bid­den zones, but there is one ex­cep­tion: this school. Twen­ty min­utes af­ter your de­par­ture this school will be­come a for­bid­den zone. So please first get out of this area. Let's see, you must be two hun­dred me­ters away. Got that? Now, in my an­nounce­ments I will al­so read off the names of those who have died in the past six hours. Each an­nounce­ment will be made reg­ular­ly at six-​hour in­ter­vals, but I'll al­so be con­tact­ing the last re­main­ing sur­vivor by an­nounce­ment as well. Oh...and one more thing. There is a time lim­it. Lis­ten up. A time lim­it. A lot of peo­ple die in the Pro­gram, but if no one dies with­in twen­ty-​four hours then your time's ex­pired, and it won't mat­ter how many stu­dents are left...."

Shuya knew what he would say.

"The com­put­er will det­onate the col­lars of the re­main­ing stu­dents. There will be no win­ner."

Again he was right.

Sakamochi stopped speak­ing. The en­tire class­room had be­come silent. The room was still reek­ing with the heavy stench of Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's blood. Ev­ery­one re­mained in their col­lec­tive daze. They were scared, but this sit­ua­tion, where they were about to be thrown in­to a killing game, seemed be­yond their com­pre­hen­sion.

As if re­spond­ing to their gen­er­al state of mind, Sakamochi clapped his hands. "Well, I've cov­ered all the te­dious de­tails. Now I have some­thing more im­por­tant to tell you. A piece of ad­vice. Some of you might be think­ing that mur­der­ing your class­mates is im­pos­si­ble. But don't for­get there are oth­ers will­ing to do it."

Shuya want­ed to scream, you're full of it! But with the Fu­miyo-​Fu­jiyoshi-​ex­ecut­ed-​for-​whis­per­ing in­ci­dent on­ly mo­ments in the past he could on­ly stay put.

Ev­ery­body re­mained silent, but some­thing had sud­den­ly changed and Shuya knew it.

Ev­ery­one was look­ing around, glanc­ing at the oth­ers' pale faces. When­ev­er any­one's gaze met, their eyes would ner­vous­ly turn to­ward Sakamochi. It on­ly hap­pened with­in a mat­ter of sec­onds, but their ex­pres­sions were ex­act­ly the same: they were tense and sus­pi­cious, won­der­ing who was al­ready ready to take part. On­ly a few, like Shin­ji Mimu­ra, re­mained calm.

Shuya clenched his teeth again. You're falling in­to their trap! Think about it, we're a group. There's no way we can kill each oth­er!

"All right then, I need to make sure you get my point. You'll find some pa­per and pen­cils in your desks."

Ev­ery­one timid­ly took out their pa­per and pen­cils. Shuya had no choice but to fol­low his in­struc­tions.

"Now then, I want you to write this down. To mem­orize some­thing, it's best to write it down. Write this. 'We will kill each oth­er.' Write it three times."

Shuya heard the pen­cils scrib­bling against the pa­per. Noriko too held her pen­cil, look­ing mo­rose. While Shuya wrote out this in­sane mot­to, he glanced at Yoshi­to­ki's body, which re­mained ly­ing be­tween the desks. He re­called Yoshi­to­ki's warm smile.

Sakamochi con­tin­ued, "Okay then. 'If I don't kill, I will be killed.' Write this down three times too."

Shuya al­so glanced over at Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi. Her white fin­gers pok­ing out of the cuffs of her sailor suit uni­form gen­tly formed a bowl. She was the nurse's aide. She was qui­et but very car­ing.

Then he looked up at Sakamochi.

Fuck­ing bas­tard, I'll stab you in the chest with this pen­cil!

40 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6

"Now then, let's see, ev­ery two min­utes one of you will be leav­ing the class­room. Once you go through this door and turn right down the hall you'll find the school ex­it. You are to leave im­me­di­ate­ly. Any­one loi­ter­ing in the hall will be im­me­di­ate­ly shot. Now, who do we start with? Ac­cord­ing to the Pro­gram rules, once we de­ter­mine the first per­son, the rest of the or­der will cor­re­spond to your class­room seat­ing as­sign­ments. Male, fe­male, male, fe­male, got it? Once we reach the last seat num­ber, we start over from the first num­ber. So..."

At this point, Shuya re­called that Noriko's seat­ing num­ber was 15. It was the same as his. Which meant that he and Noriko could leave al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly (un­less she was cho­sen first, which meant he would be the last one to leave).

But...could Noriko walk?

Sakamochi took out an en­ve­lope from his in­ner coat pock­et.

"The first stu­dent is se­lect­ed by lot­tery. Hold on a sec­ond..."

From his pock­et Sakamochi pro­duced a pink-​rib­boned pair of scis­sors and cer­emo­ni­ous­ly cut open the end of the en­ve­lope.

That was when Kazuo Kiriya­ma spoke up. Like Shin­ji Mimu­ra, he al­so sound­ed calm. But his voice sound­ed cold with a harsh ring. "I was won­der­ing when the game be­gins."

Ev­ery­one looked back to the last row, where Kiriya­ma was sit­ting. (Shogo Kawa­da was the on­ly who didn't turn. He just con­tin­ued to chew his gum.)

Sakamochi ges­tured with his hand, "As soon as you leave here. So you all might want to hide out to cook up your own strate­gies...since it's night right now."

Kazuo Kiriya­ma didn't re­spond. Shuya fi­nal­ly con­firmed it was mid­night, or 1 a.m.-no, it was al­ready near 1:30 a.m.

Af­ter cut­ting open the en­ve­lope Sakamochi pulled out from it a white sheet of pa­per, and he un­fold­ed it. His mouth formed an "O" and he re­marked, "What a co­in­ci­dence! It's stu­dent No. 1. Yoshio Aka­mat­su."

Hear­ing the an­nounce­ment, Yoshio Aka­mat­su, who sat at the front row of the col­umn near the win­dows (steel plates), looked shak­en. He was 180 cen­time­ters tall, weigh­ing 90 kilo­grams, so he was large, but he couldn't even catch a fly ball, nor could he run a full lap around the track. Yoshio was al­ways bum­bling through gym class. Now his lips were pale blue.

"Hur­ry up, Yoshio Aka­mat­su," Sakamochi said. Yoshio held the bag he'd packed for the study trip and stag­gered to his feet. He made his way for­ward and re­ceived his day pack from the cam­ou­flaged trio, who now held their ri­fles at their waists. He stood at the open door and faced the dark­ness. He looked back at ev­ery­one with a ter­ri­fied face, but then a mo­ment lat­er he van­ished be­yond the door. Two or three foot­steps turned in­to the pound­ing sound of his run­ning, which then fad­ed away. It sound­ed like he fell once but then it sound­ed like he dashed off again.

In the qui­et room sev­er­al stu­dents took a deep, re­strained breath.

"Now we will wait two min­utes. Then the next one will be Fe­male Stu­dent No. 1, Mizuho In­ada-"

This rou­tine con­tin­ued ruth­less­ly on and on like this.

But there was some­thing Shuya no­ticed when Fe­male Stu­dent No. 4 Saku­ra Ogawa got up to leave. Saku­ra sat two seats be­hind Shuya, in the very last row. As she made her way to the ex­it, she touched the desk of her boyfriend Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to and left a piece of pa­per be­hind for him. She might have dashed off a mes­sage on that sheet of pa­per on which they'd been in­struct­ed to write, "We will kill each oth­er."

Shuya might have been the on­ly one who saw this. At the very least Sakamochi didn't seem to no­tice. Kazuhiko snatched the scrap of pa­per and clenched it tight­ly un­der his desk. Shuya felt a wave of re­lief. They weren't all con­sumed by this in­san­ity yet. The bonds of love had yet to be sev­ered.

But...what was her mes­sage? Shuya won­dered as she left the class­room. Maybe-he glanced at the map Sakamochi had scrawled on the black­board-she'd des­ig­nat­ed one of the ar­eas for a meet­ing? But that map on the black­board was too crude, and there was no guar­an­tee at all it'd cor­re­spond to the maps they were giv­en. Maybe she in­di­cat­ed a gen­er­al di­rec­tion or dis­tance. Be­sides, the fact that they want­ed to se­cret­ly meet on­ly meant they didn't trust any­one else and they were cer­tain oth­ers would try to kill them. Which in the end meant they were falling in­to Sakamochi's trap.

Shuya thought, I have no idea what lies be­yond this room but I should at the very least be able to wait out­side and talk to the stu­dents af­ter me. None of Sakamochi's rules pro­hib­it me from do­ing this. Ev­ery­one might be pan­ick­ing from sus­pi­cion, but if we can just get to­geth­er and dis­cuss the sit­ua­tion then I'm sure we can come up with a plan. Plus, Noriko was the one who came im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter him (could she walk though?). Shin­ji Mimu­ra al­so came af­ter him. Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra would leave be­fore him though....

Shuya con­sid­ered pass­ing a note to Hi­ro­ki but his seat was too far. Be­sides, if he tried any­thing he could end up like Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi.

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was up next. His eyes met Shuya's briefly right be­fore he ex­it­ed the room's slid­ing door...but that was all. In his mind, Shuya sighed deeply. He could on­ly hope Hi­ro­ki had the same idea and would be wait­ing out­side. If he could talk the oth­ers in­to wait­ing too...

In front and be­hind him, the qui­et ones, Shogo Kawa­da, Kazuo Kiriya­ma, and Mit­suko Souma, left one by one.

Chew­ing his gum, Shogo ex­it­ed with an in­dif­fer­ent look on his face, com­plete­ly ig­nor­ing Sakamochi and the cam­ou­flaged trio. Kiriya­ma and Souma left the same way.

That's right. When Sakamochi said, "There are oth­ers will­ing to do it," the rest of the class must have im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pect­ed these three stu­dents. Be­cause they were "delin­quents." They might not think twice about killing the oth­ers in or­der to sur­vive....

But Shuya doubt­ed Kazuo Kiriya­ma would. Kazuo had his own gang. On top of that, his gang was a lot tighter than your typ­ical group of bud­dies. Hi­roshi Kuron­aga, Ryuhei Sasagawa, Sho Tsukio­ka, and Mit­su­ru Nu­mai. The rules of this game turned ev­ery­one else in­to your en­emy, but the five of them killing each oth­er was unimag­in­able. Be­sides- Shuya made a care­ful note of this-when he left, his boys looked dis­turbing­ly calm. That's right, Kazuo prob­ably passed around a note to the oth­ers. He's prob­ably plan­ning an es­cape for the five of them. Kazuo was more than ca­pa­ble of out-​ma­neu­ver­ing the gov­ern­ment. Of course, this al­so meant that Kazuo wouldn't trust any­one be­sides his gang.

Mit­suko Souma had a sim­ilar kind of group. Her seat was too far from the oth­ers, Hi­rono Shimizu and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi, for her to be able to pass them notes. But...Mit­suko Souma was a girl. There was no way she would play this game.

Shogo Kawa­da was the on­ly one who trou­bled Shuya. Shogo Kawa­da had no group. In fact he didn't even have a sin­gle friend. Ev­er since he trans­ferred to their school, he hard­ly spoke to any­one in the class. On top of that, there was some­thing elu­sive about Shogo. Even if he ig­nored the ru­mors, there were those wounds cov­er­ing his en­tire body...

Could it be that...Shogo might be the on­ly one will­ing to par­tic­ipate in this game? It was cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble.

But Shuya knew the mo­ment he turned sus­pi­cious he was giv­ing in­to the gov­ern­ment, so he im­me­di­ate­ly dis­missed the thought...though he had trou­ble dis­miss­ing the thought en­tire­ly.

Time passed.

Many of the girls were cry­ing as they left.

Al­though it felt in­cred­ibly short, an hour must have passed ac­cord­ing to his cal­cu­la­tions (of course with Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu the elapsed time was re­duced by two min­utes). Fe­male Stu­dent No. 14 Mayu­mi Ten­do van­ished in­to the hall, and Sakamochi called out, "Male Stu­dent No. 15, Shuya Nana­hara."

Shuya grabbed his bag and stood up. He thought, I did all I could be­fore leav­ing the class­room.

In­stead of head­ing di­rect­ly to the ex­it, he took the aisle on his left. Noriko turned around and watched Shuya ap­proach­ing her.

Sakamochi raised his voice, "Shuya," and his knife.

"Wrong di­rec­tion."

Shuya stopped. The three sol­diers had their ri­fles cocked. His throat stiff­ened. Then he said ner­vous­ly, "Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu was my friend. The least I could do is close his eyes. Ac­cord­ing to the Great Dic­ta­tor's ed­uca­tion pol­icy, we're sup­posed to re­spect the dead."

Sakamochi hes­itat­ed for a mo­ment, but then he grinned and put his knife down.

"You're so car­ing, Shuya. All right then."

Shuya took a small breath, then stepped for­ward. He stopped in front of Noriko's desk, where Yoshi­to­ki's corpse was ly­ing.

Al­though he'd de­mand­ed the right to close his friend's eyes, he couldn't help but freeze up.

Now that he was up close he saw, cour­tesy of the frivolous one, thin, red flesh and some­thing white in Yoshi­to­ki's blood-​stained short hair. He re­al­ized it was bone. Thanks to the bul­lets wedged in­side his head, Yoshi­to­ki's big eyes bulged out even fur­ther. He looked stu­pe­fied with the up­turned eyes of a starv­ing refugee wait­ing to be fed. Pink, slimy liq­uid con­sist­ing of blood and sali­va dripped out of his mouth, which opened slight­ly. Dark blood poured out of his nos­trils. It flowed down his chin and in­to the pool of blood pour­ing out of his chest. It was hor­ri­ble.

Shuya placed his bag near him and leaned over. He lift­ed Yoshi­to­ki's body, which was ly­ing down face first. As Shuya lift­ed him, blood came pour­ing out of the chest of his black­ened school uni­form, which was torn in three places, and splashed on­to the floor. His lanky body felt in­cred­ibly light. Was it be­cause all that blood had been drained out of him?

Hold­ing Yoshi­to­ki's light body, Shuya's head cooled down. More than sad­ness or fear, it was anger that over­whelmed him.

Yoshi­to­ki...I'm go­ing to avenge your death. I swear to you that I will.

There wasn't much time. He wiped the blood off Yoshi­to­ki's face with the palm of his hand, then gen­tly closed his eyes. He laid his body down and clasped his hands on his chest.

Then as he pre­tend­ed to fum­ble over pick­ing up his bag, he leaned over to Noriko as close as he could and quick­ly whis­pered, "Can you walk?"

That was enough to pro­voke the cam­ou­flaged trio to reach for their ri­fles, but Shuya man­aged to get a nod from Noriko. Shuya turned to Sakamochi and the trio, clenched his fist for Noriko to see, and point­ed his thumb to the ex­it to in­di­cate: I'll be wait­ing. I'll be wait­ing out­side.

Shuya didn't look back at Noriko, but out of the cor­ner of his eye he looked be­yond Yoshi­to­ki's desk, where Shin­ji Mimu­ra stared ahead, faint­ly smil­ing with his arms fold­ed. He might have seen Shuya's sig­nal. Shuya felt all the more re­lieved. It was Shin­ji. If Shin­ji's on our side, we can es­cape, no prob.

But... Shin­ji Mimu­ra may have been more aware of their sit­ua­tion than Shuya was. He might have been say­ing with that grin, "Well, this may be adios ami­gos, Shuya." The thought didn't oc­cur to Shuya at the time though.

He con­tin­ued to walk. He took a mo­ment to think be­fore he re­ceived his black day pack, and he did the same as he ap­proached Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi's corpse, shut­ting his eyes. He want­ed to re­move the knife from her fore­head, but de­cid­ed against it.

When he stepped out of the class­room, he felt a pang of re­gret, wish­ing he had re­moved it for her.

40 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7

The hall was un­lit. On­ly the light from the class­room shone on the floor planks. The win­dows on the side of the hall were al­so sealed with sheets of black steel. They pro­vid­ed pro­tec­tion against at­tacks from re­bel­lious stu­dents like Shuya who might de­cide to es­cape the game. Of course, as soon as they were off, this area would al­ready be for­bid­den.

He looked to his right. There was an­oth­er room, then an­oth­er, both iden­ti­cal to the room he'd just ex­it­ed. And then at the end of the dark hall there was what looked like a dou­ble-​door ex­it. At the end of the hall there was an­oth­er room on the left.

Was it the school's fac­ul­ty room? The door was open and the lights were on. Shuya looked be­yond the door, where a le­gion of Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers were sit­ting on steel fold­ing chairs be­hind a wide desk. Twen­ty or thir­ty? No, there were as many sol­diers as there were stu­dents.

In fact, Shuya was hop­ing that if his day pack came equipped with a gun (it was pos­si­ble-along with "knife wound" and "chok­ing," "gun­shot wound" was list­ed as a cause of death in the Pro­gram re­ports), or if some of the oth­ers wait­ing for him were equipped with guns, then they could use them against Sakamochi and his men be­fore ev­ery­one de­part­ed, in oth­er words, be­fore the school be­came a for­bid­den zone. But this hope was im­me­di­ate­ly ex­tin­guished. The three men with Sakamochi weren't the on­ly sol­diers ac­com­pa­ny­ing him. Of course, that wasn't at all sur­pris­ing.

One of the sol­diers tilt­ed his head and glanced up from the mug in his hand at Shuya. Like the faces of the trio in the class­room, his al­so lacked any ex­pres­sion.

Shuya took to his heels and hur­ried to the ex­it. He rushed im­pa­tient­ly. So now...now the on­ly thing they could do was unite. But...maybe there were sol­diers sta­tioned out­side to pre­vent them from wait­ing for each oth­er? Still...

Shuya quick­ly ran through the dark cor­ri­dor and went through the dou­ble doors. He de­scend­ed sev­er­al porch stairs.

Un­der the moon, an emp­ty ath­let­ic field the size of three ten­nis courts spread out be­yond the build­ing. There were woods be­yond the field. To his left was a small moun­tain. His field of vi­sion ex­pand­ed on the right. A pitch-​black dark­ness spread out-the sea. Small points of light twin­kled be­yond the ocean. It must be the main­land. The Pro­gram of­fi­cial­ly took place with­in the pre­fec­ture of the se­lect­ed ju­nior high school. Some­times the lo­ca­tion was a moun­tain sur­round­ed by high-​volt­age fences, or aban­doned prison hous­es that hadn't yet been de­mol­ished, but for Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture the Pro­gram was usu­al­ly held on an is­land. Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal news re­ports he'd seen (of course, in each case the lo­ca­tion would on­ly be an­nounced af­ter the game was over), ev­ery game in Ka­gawa took place on an is­land. This time was no ex­cep­tion. Sakamochi didn't men­tion the name of the is­land, but once Shuya checked its shape on the map he might be able to tell. Or maybe a build­ing would re­veal the name of the is­land.

The soft breeze blew in. He could smell the sea. It was cold for a May evening but it wasn't un­bear­able. He'd have to be care­ful when he slept not to tire him­self from ex­po­sure.

But first...

There was no one. There weren't any sol­diers, but Shuya was dis­ap­point­ed to find none of his class­mates there. As Sakamochi had an­tic­ipat­ed, ev­ery­one was hid­ing out. Even Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra wasn't there. On­ly the soft breeze mixed in with the smell of the sea came drift­ing through the ath­let­ic field.

Damn it. Shuya gri­maced. If we scat­ter like this, we'll fall in­to the gov­ern­ment's trap. It might be all right if you were form­ing groups with your friends. Saku­ra Ogawa and Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to might be meet­ing some­where, like­wise Kazuo Kiriya­ma's gang. But any­one hid­ing alone would even­tu­al­ly have to con­front some­one....Who knew what would re­sult from that kind of chaos? Wasn't chaos es­sen­tial to the progress of the game?

That's right. Well at least I'm go­ing to wait here for the oth­ers. First I have to wait for Noriko.

Shuya glanced back at the dark in­te­ri­or of the school build­ing. They were told any­one loi­ter­ing in the hall would be im­me­di­ate­ly shot, but the sol­diers in the room at the end of the cor­ri­dor didn't pay any par­tic­ular at­ten­tion to Shuya. They weren't ex­act­ly chat­ting up a storm. They just sat around, un­armed.

Shuya licked his lips and de­cid­ed it was best for him to move away from the door. He looked out­side again.

That's when he no­ticed it.

He didn't see it last time be­cause he was too pre­oc­cu­pied with the over­all view, but this time he saw some­thing that looked like a garbage bag ly­ing at his feet.

Shuya won­dered whether it was some­one's day pack, dropped by ac­ci­dent, but then his eyes widened.

It wasn't a garbage bag, nor was it some­one's day pack. There was hair grow­ing out of one end. Hu­man hair.

It was a hu­man be­ing. Wear­ing a sailor suit school uni­form. The body was in a V-​shape, ly­ing on its side, face down. The sin­gle pony tail tied with a wide rib­bon looked fa­mil­iar. No won­der. He'd just seen her off on­ly three min­utes ago. The stiff body be­longed to Fe­male Stu­dent No. 14, Mayu­mi Ten­do.

Right be­side her lob­ster-​shaped braid­ed hair, a dull, sil­ver, twen­ty-​cen­time­ter stick poked out of the back of her uni­form, di­ag­onal­ly, like a tran­sis­tor ra­dio an­ten­na. There were four tiny flaps re­sem­bling a fight­er plane's tail at the end of the stick.

What the...hell was this?

What he should have done was im­me­di­ate­ly seek cov­er. In­stead Shuya stood there, stunned.

He re­called Sakamochi's re­ply to Kiriya­ma, who asked when the game be­gan: "As soon as you leave here."

It was un­be­liev­able-who could have done this? Did some­one re­turn to kill Mayu­mi Ten­do just as she left the school?

Shuya stopped spec­ulat­ing and cau­tious­ly crouched down and checked the premis­es.

For some rea­son...there was no sign of the at­tack­er. No ar­rows had flown at him when he'd been stand­ing in a daze. Why? Sat­is­fied with killing on­ly Mayu­mi Ten­do, did the as­sailant leave the premis­es? Or...was this some en­gi­neered "provo­ca­tion"? Did the sol­diers at the end of the hall kill her to con­vince ev­ery­one that some of their class­mates were al­ready will­ing to play the game? But if that were the case...

All of sud­den Shuya re­al­ized Mayu­mi Ten­do might still be alive. She might be un­con­scious from the shock of her wound. In any case, he should look at her.

If he hadn't re­al­ized some­thing odd and re­strained him­self from tak­ing a step for­ward a split-​sec­ond lat­er, Shuya would have dropped out of the game ear­ly. In oth­er words...

A sil­ver ob­ject whizzed right by Shuya's eyes. Yes-it came di­rect­ly down, from above. An­oth­er an­ten­na was plant­ed in the ground.

Shuya shud­dered. If he hadn't been stand­ing at the ex­it, wait­ing for Noriko, he would have been im­me­di­ate­ly shot down. The as­sailant was on top of the build­ing.

Shuya clenched his teeth, snatched up the ar­row, and ran to his left. He moved im­pul­sive­ly but in an er­rat­ic way that elud­ed the as­sailant. He turned around and looked up. Un­der the dim moon­lit sky, a large, dark shad­ow loomed above the gabled roof of the sin­gle-​sto­ry school build­ing.

Could that be...not Shogo...

He had no time to think. The shad­ow point­ed its weapon at him.

Just to sur­prise him Shuya threw the ar­row at the shad­ow. But thanks to Shuya's gifts as a star short­stop, the ar­row flew at in­cred­ible speed and traced a fine arc right at the shad­ow. The shad­ow groaned, held its face, hunched over, and then be­gan to sway. Then it fell.

Shuya stepped back and watched the shad­ow fall from a height of at least three me­ters and land with a thud on the ground. The ob­ject in the as­sailant's hand fell with a metal­lic crash.

Light leaked through the build­ing ex­it. The large shad­ow was ly­ing face down, wear­ing a school uni­form. It was Yoshio Aka­mat­su. He was mo­tion­less now, per­haps be­cause he was un­con­scious. A hy­brid be­tween a bow and ri­fle-were they called bow guns?-was ly­ing by his hand. The day pack that had fall­en by Yoshio's feet was half open. Shuya saw a stack of sil­ver ar­rows in­side.

Shuya felt a sud­den chill. It was true. He was par­tic­ipat­ing! Yoshio Aka­mat­su was in on this game. Yoshio had tak­en his weapon, re­turned here, and killed Mayu­mi Ten­do!

Some­one was com­ing from be­hind.

Shuya turned around. It was Noriko, who'd tak­en the sit­ua­tion in as she held her breath in sur­prise. Shuya's eyes went from Noriko's face to Mayu­mi Ten­do-he ran over to Mayu­mi and touched her neck to check her pulse. She was dead. There was no doubt.

His brain felt like a fuse fiz­zling out. Oth­ers might be in the same state of mind as Yoshio. And one of them might just sud­den­ly re­turn this time, per­haps with a gun.

Shuya had no choice but to change his at­ti­tude to­ward the game now. So this was it. When Sakamochi said, "As soon as you leave here," this was what he'd meant.

Shuya stood up and ran to Noriko. He took her by the hand.

"We're run­ning! Do your best, you have to run!"

Shuya be­gan run­ning, half-​drag­ging Noriko, whose leg was in­jured. Which way though?

He couldn't af­ford to de­lib­er­ate over his de­ci­sions. He head­ed to­wards the grove. First they'd hide in the grove, then they could, no-he dis­missed the thought. Giv­en Noriko's con­di­tion, they were de­fense­less against any at­tack. Stay­ing near the area was too dan­ger­ous.

Wait­ing in front of the build­ing for the oth­ers was com­plete­ly out of the ques­tion. He rushed Noriko, and they en­tered the grove. Tall trees mixed in with short trees, and the ground was cov­ered with fern.

Shuya turned to yell some warn­ing to the re­main­ing eleven stu­dents com­ing out (in their class of twen­ty-​one pairs of boys and girls, there should have been twelve stu­dents fol­low­ing Shuya's and Noriko's seat num­bers, but Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi had to be count­ed out), but he gave up on the idea. Shuya reached the some­what forced con­clu­sion that they prob­ably weren't as fool­ish as he was, so they'd flee the mo­ment they emerged from the build­ing any­way, es­pe­cial­ly once they saw Mayu­mi Ten­do's corpse. For a mo­ment he thought of Shin­ji Mimu­ra-but he gave up on this idea too. Once again he forced him­self in­to be­liev­ing that there had to be some oth­er strat­egy, an­oth­er way for them to meet up. In any case, they had to leave.

Hold­ing Noriko Nak­agawa tight­ly, he hap­haz­ard­ly led their way in­to the grove. A bird cried out, "kaw kaw," and ruf­fled its wings as it flew away. He couldn't see it, but it didn't mat­ter. He had no time to ob­serve it any­way.

39 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8

Yoshio Aka­mat­su re­gained con­scious­ness al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, but be­cause he'd been knocked out cold by the blow to his head he felt as if he were com­ing out of a deep slum­ber.

He first no­ticed how his head was throb­bing. He felt out of it. What was it? Was it from play­ing video games yes­ter­day way past mid­night?...which meant that yes­ter­day was Sat­ur­day, or was it Sun­day?...then to­day must be Mon­day which means I have to be in school...but what time could it be...it's still dark, maybe...I can sleep a lit­tle more....

As he sat up, the sky and earth ro­tat­ing nine­ty de­grees, an emp­ty field un­ex­pect­ed­ly spread out in front of him. There was a moun­tain be­yond the field, shaped like a bow, dark­er than the night sky.

All of a sud­den, ev­ery­thing came back. Sakamochi, Mr. Hayashi­da's corpse, Yoshio's de­par­ture, dis­cov­er­ing the bow gun in his day pack once he found some shel­ter in a small shack, his re­turn­ing here, ob­serv­ing Takako Chi­gusa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 13) whose face was a lit­tle se­vere but beau­ti­ful, look­ing tense now as the track team's best run­ner dashed away at full speed, him strug­gling up the thin steel lad­der by the side of the build­ing in or­der to reach the roof. Then how, due to the trou­ble he had load­ing his bow gun with an ar­row, Sho Tsukio­ka (Male No. 14) al­so man­aged to es­cape his reach. And then...

He turned around and saw the girl in the sailor suit uni­form ly­ing there.

It didn't ex­act­ly come as a sur­prise to Yoshio. What he felt now in con­junc­tion with his mem­ory wasn't guilt over killing one of his class­mates so much as it was fear. It might have re­sem­bled a gi­gan­tic bill­board sign stand­ing in the mid­dle of a waste­land in­side his mind. On the sign were let­ters in blood that read, "I'm go­ing to kill you!" In the back­ground all his class­mates held weapons like ax­es and pis­tols, at­tack­ing Yoshio, who stood in front of the sign as if it were a 3D movie.

Of course killing your class­mates was wrong. And be­sides once the game time had ex­pired they were all go­ing to die any­way so it might have been ab­surd to fight at all. But that was just too ra­tio­nal. The fact was that Yoshio sim­ply did not want to die. He was pet­ri­fied by any of his class­mates who'd bare their teeth at him. Just think about it, you're sur­round­ed by a swarm of as­sas­sins.

And so his choice to re­duce "the en­emy" as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble wasn't mo­ti­vat­ed by ra­tio­nal thoughts but in­stead from a deep­er, pri­mal fear of death. There was no need to dis­cern your al­lies from your en­emies. Ev­ery­one had to be an en­emy. Af­ter all when Ryuhei Sasagawa used to pick on him, ev­ery­one looked the oth­er way.

Yoshio scram­bled to his feet. First, Shuya Nana­hara, who'd been in front of him. Where did he go?... The bow gun. I have to get the bow gun. Where did it?...

Yoshio felt a blow against his neck as if he were struck by a club.

He fell for­ward with thud. His body twist­ed in­to the shape of a V, and his face scraped against the moist soil. The skin of his fore­head and cheeks peeled away, but this no longer mat­tered to him. He was al­ready dead by the time he had fall­en.

The same kind of sil­ver ar­row which he had shot Mayu­mi Ten­do with was now plant­ed in the back of his neck.

38 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9

Kazushi Nü­da (Male Stu­dent No. 16) emerged from the build­ing two min­utes af­ter Noriko Nak­agawa. He stood at the ex­it for a while, shak­ing. The bow gun ly­ing next to Yoshio Aka­mat­su's body was still load­ed with an ar­row. Al­though Kazushi had picked it up, he had no in­ten­tion of shoot­ing Yoshio. But the mo­ment Yoshio stood up, he re­flex­ive­ly pulled the trig­ger.

Kazushi did his best to over­come his pan­ic. That's right, the first thing was to get out of here. That was the pri­or­ity. What he should have done in the first place was ig­nore Yoshio Aka­mat­su and Mayu­mi Ten­do com­plete­ly and run away. Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, he had no oth­er choice but to kill Yoshio. Yoshio Aka­mat­su had ob­vi­ous­ly killed Mayu­mi Ten­do. So Kazushi hadn't done any­thing wrong.

Kazushi was very good at mak­ing ex­cus­es. Once he thought like this, the numb­ness in his head be­gan to wane.

As he low­ered the bow gun, he au­to­mat­ical­ly grabbed Yoshio's day pack, which was load­ed with ar­rows. Right be­fore he moved on though, he stopped and picked up Mayu­mi Ten­do's day pack too. Then he hur­ried off.

38 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10

Had they been run­ning for ten min­utes now? With his arm still wrapped around Noriko, he sig­naled they should be still, and they both stopped. Un­der the hazy moon­light shin­ing through the branch­es over­head, Noriko looked up at him. Their heavy breath­ing echoed like a gi­ant wall of sound, but Shuya tried his best to lis­ten be­yond the wall for oth­er sounds in the area en­veloped in dark­ness.

No one seemed to be chas­ing them. They were too short of breath to sigh, but they could re­lax a lit­tle now.

As he dropped his bags, a sharp pain ran through his right shoul­der. He was in poor shape. An elec­tric gui­tar was heav­ier than a bat, but it wasn't some­thing you swung around. Af­ter putting the bags down, he placed his hands on his thighs and tried to rest.

Shuya urged Noriko to sit in the dark grove. Af­ter he checked again for any oth­er sus­pi­cious sounds, he sat down next to her. The thick grass un­der­neath them made a crunch­ing sound.

He felt as if they'd cov­ered a good dis­tance, but giv­en how they'd been zigzag­ging, and how they'd lost all sense of di­rec­tion climb­ing the moun­tain, they might have on­ly been a few hun­dred me­ters away from the school. At least the light leak­ing out of the build­ing was no longer vis­ible. This might have just been due to the thick­ness of the grove or the gen­tle slopes, though. Any­way it felt safer deep in­side the dark grove. His de­ci­sion was im­pul­sive, but he was cer­tain it was safer than the wide open sea­side.

Shuya looked over at Noriko and whis­pered, "Are you all right?"

Noriko mur­mured, "Yes." She nod­ded slight­ly.

Shuya felt the urge to stay here for a while, but that wasn't an op­tion. First he opened up the day pack. He dug in­to it, grop­ing around, and found an ob­ject that felt like a bot­tle of wa­ter.

Shuya pulled it out. The sheath felt like leather and a leather grip poked out of it. It was an army knife. Sakamochi said that the day pack was equipped with a weapon. Was this it? He searched the bag a lit­tle more, but noth­ing else in­side re­sem­bled a weapon. On­ly a bag that seemed to con­tain bread and a flash­light.

He un­fas­tened the sheath and re­moved the knife. The blade was ap­prox­imate­ly fif­teen cen­time­ters long, and af­ter check­ing it he re­turned it to the sheath and tucked it un­der his school uni­form belt. He un­fas­tened the low­est but­ton on his uni­form to make the grip im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

Shuya grabbed Noriko's day pack and opened the zip­per. He knew he wasn't sup­posed to go through a girl's things, but Noriko didn't pack this bag.

He found some­thing strange. It was a curved stick ap­prox­imate­ly forty cen­time­ters long. It had the tex­ture of smooth, hard wood. Was this what they called a boomerang? A weapon used for fight­ing and hunt­ing in prim­itive tribes. An abo­rig­inal vil­lage hunt­ing hero might be able to knock down an ail­ing, slug­gish kan­ga­roo with this thing, but what use could it pos­si­bly have for them? Shuya sighed and re­turned it to Noriko's day pack.

They fi­nal­ly stopped heav­ing like drown vic­tims gasp­ing for air.

"You want some wa­ter?" Shuya asked.

Noriko nod­ded and said, "Just a lit­tle."

Shuya took out the plas­tic bot­tle from his day pack, broke the seal of the twist-​off top, and sniffed the con­tents. He spilled some on his hand and licked it cau­tious­ly. Then af­ter tak­ing a sip, mak­ing sure he had no ab­nor­mal re­ac­tion, he hand­ed it over to Noriko. Noriko took the bot­tle and on­ly swal­lowed a small mouth­ful. She prob­ably knew that wa­ter was pre­cious. Each bot­tle on­ly con­tained ap­prox­imate­ly one liter, and they'd on­ly have two. Sakamochi said they had no ac­cess to tele­phones, but what about the wa­ter sys­tem?

"Let me take a look at your leg."

Noriko nod­ded to Shuya's re­quest and stretched out her right leg, which had been tucked in un­der her skirt. Shuya took out the flash­light from his day pack. He cupped it care­ful­ly with the palm of his hand to pre­vent its light from leak­ing out and point­ed it at her leg wound.

The wound was on the out­er calf. A sec­tion of flesh ap­prox­imate­ly four cen­time­ters long and one cen­time­ter deep had been scraped off. A thin stream of blood still flowed out of the ends of the pink­ish flesh wound. It looked like she need­ed stitch­es.

Shuya quick­ly turned off his flash­light and grabbed his sports bag in­stead of his day pack. He grabbed the bour­bon flask and two clean ban­dan­nas he'd packed for the trip. He un­capped the flask.

"This is go­ing to hurt."

"I'll be okay," Noriko said, but once Shuya tilt­ed the flask and poured the bour­bon to dis­in­fect her wound, she let out a small hiss. Shuya pressed one fold­ed ban­dan­na on­to her wound. He opened up the oth­er one, fold­ed it, then be­gan wrap­ping it around her leg tight­ly like a ban­dage. This would stop the bleed­ing for now.

Af­ter wrap­ping her leg, he pulled at both ends of the ban­dage tight­ly, tied them to­geth­er, and mum­bled, "Damn..."

Noriko whis­pered, "You mean Nobu?"

"Yoshi­to­ki, Yoshio. Ev­ery­one and ev­ery­thing. I'm not in­to this. I am so not in­to this."

As he moved his hands Shuya glanced at Noriko. Then he looked down and fin­ished ty­ing his knot. Noriko thanked him and tucked her leg in.

"So Yoshio was the one who killed..." her voice was trem­bling, "...Mayu­mi?"

"That's right. He was above the ex­it door. I threw the ar­row at him and he fell."

Now that he thought about it, Shuya sud­den­ly re­al­ized he hadn't tak­en care of Yoshio. He'd in­stinc­tive­ly as­sumed Yoshio would re­main un­con­scious for a while, but for all he knew Yoshio might have wo­ken up im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­wards.

Which meant he might have tak­en his bow gun, climbed up on the roof, and con­tin­ued his slaugh­ter.

Was I be­ing too naive again? Should I have just killed him over there?

With this thought Shuya checked his watch un­der the moon­light. The old, do­mes­ti­cal­ly man­ufac­tured Hat­tori Han­zo lim­it­ed-​edi­tion div­er's watch (along with most of his be­long­ings, it had been do­nat­ed to Shuya through the or­phan­age) read 2:40. Ev­ery­one might have left by now. At most there were on­ly two or three stu­dents left, re­gard­less of Yoshio Aka­mat­su's state. Shin­ji Mimu­ra had al­ready...Shuya was near­ly cer­tain Shin­ji could eas­ily es­cape Yoshio...By now he'd al­ready left too.

Shuya shook his head. Now he felt fool­ish be­liev­ing they could unite against their sit­ua­tion.

"I nev­er thought some­one like him would ac­tu­al­ly try to kill ev­ery­one else to sur­vive. I un­der­stand the rules, but I didn't think any­one would ac­tu­al­ly par­tic­ipate."

"You might be wrong about that though," Noriko said.

"Huh?" Shuya looked in­to Noriko's face, too dark to dis­cern un­der the moon­light.

Noriko con­tin­ued, "You know how Yoshio was al­ways timid. I think he was scared. That must've been it. I mean you have no idea who might turn against you. He might have been con­vinced ev­ery­one was com­ing af­ter him. I think he was re­al­ly scared. And that if he didn't do any­thing he would end up be­ing...killed..."

Shuya sat down against the near­est tree trunk and stretched his legs out.

The ones who were ter­ri­fied might try to kill each oth­er...The same idea had oc­curred to Shuya, but he had al­so thought the ones who were scared would ba­si­cal­ly hide out. But if they were ter­ri­fied out of their wits, they might ac­tu­al­ly take their own ini­tia­tive.

"I get it."

I get it.

"Yes," Noriko nod­ded. "It's still hor­ri­ble that he start­ed killing in­dis­crim­inate­ly."

They re­mained silent for a while. Then Shuya came up with an idea. "Hey, you think if he'd seen the two of us to­geth­er he wouldn't have at­tacked us? Wouldn't it prove we're not play­ing the game?"

"Well yes, maybe."

Shuya start­ed think­ing. If as Noriko said Yoshio had just been over­whelmed by para­noia...

That mo­ment back there was when he first re­al­ized some­one was will­ing to play. That was why he fled. But maybe that was wrong. How could they pos­si­bly kill each oth­er? It was out­ra­geous. Then should he have wait­ed for the oth­ers, leav­ing aside what he should have done with Yoshio?

Ei­ther way, it was too late now. Ev­ery­one would be gone by now even if they went back. Be­sides, did Yoshio do that sim­ply out of fear?

He was get­ting con­fused.

"Hey, Noriko."

Noriko lift­ed her face.

"What do you think? I fled from the school grounds the mo­ment I re­al­ized there might be oth­ers like Yoshio. But...if he re­al­ly did it out fear...in oth­er words, do you re­al­ly think any of us would ac­tu­al­ly par­tic­ipate? What I mean is that... I'm think­ing of gath­er­ing ev­ery­one to­geth­er to es­cape from this game. What do you think?"

"Ev­ery­one?"

Noriko fell silent and tucked her knees un­der her skirt. Then she said, "Maybe I'm not as gen­er­ous."

"Huh?"

"I couldn't han­dle some of them. I could trust my friends...." Noriko men­tioned the name of their class rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Yukie Ut­su­mi. Shuya knew Yukie since el­emen­tary school.

"Like Yukie. But I don't think I could trust the oth­er girls. There's no way I could be with them. Don't you think? I have no idea what was go­ing through Yoshio's mind, but I'm afraid of ev­ery­one else too. I mean...I just re­al­ized I don't know a thing about ev­ery­one else. I don't know what they're re­al­ly like. I mean...you can't see in­to some­one's mind."

I don't know a thing about ev­ery­one else.

She was right, Shuya thought. What do I know about this group that I spend the day with at school? He sud­den­ly felt like there was an en­emy out there.

Noriko con­tin­ued, "So I-I'd be sus­pi­cious. Un­less it was some­one I re­al­ly trust­ed, I'd be sus­pi­cious of them. I'd be afraid they might want to kill me."

Shuya sighed. The game was hor­ri­ble. But it al­so seemed flaw­less. In the end, it was a bad idea to in­vite ev­ery­one in­dis­crim­inate­ly to form a group un­less you were cer­tain about them. What if-let's just say what if-they be­trayed you? It wasn't just his life but Noriko's too he'd be en­dan­ger­ing. Yes-it was on­ly nat­ural the oth­ers be­fore him had im­me­di­ate­ly fled the premis­es. That was more re­al­is­tic.

"Hold on a sec," Shuya said. Noriko glanced up at Shuya. "Then that means us be­ing to­geth­er won't nec­es­sar­ily prove we're harm­less. The oth­ers might sus­pect that I plan on killing you even­tu­al­ly."

Noriko nod­ded. "Yes, I'll be sus­pect­ed too, just like you. A class­mate might avoid us once they see us to­geth­er, but I al­so think any­one we in­vite will turn away. I mean it would de­pend on each per­son."

Shuya held his breath. "It would be scary."

"Yes, it's re­al­ly scary."

So the ones who fled from the school premis­es might have been right. But what mat­tered to him was pro­tect­ing Noriko Nak­agawa, the girl Yoshi­to­ki adored. Maybe he should have been con­tent with the fact that at the very least Noriko Nak­agawa was safe by his side now. He had done the safest thing. But...

"But," he said, "at the very least I want­ed Shin­ji to join us. I think he'd come up with a re­al­ly good plan. You'd be okay with Shin­ji, right?"

Noriko nod­ded and said, "Of course." Giv­en the amount of time she spoke with Shuya at school, she had many oc­ca­sions to talk to Shin­ji Mimu­ra___Be­sides...

Shuya re­called how Shin­ji had helped her up and how he'd sig­naled him to calm down. He re­al­ized now that if Shin­ji hadn't done those things, he and Noriko would have re­mained dazed and been shot down like Yoshi­to­ki.

As if she were think­ing along the same lines that led to the in­evitable, she looked down and qui­et­ly said, "So Nobu's gone."

"Yeah," Shuya an­swered qui­et­ly, as if it were a bizarre fact, "I guess so."

Then they fell silent again. They could rem­inisce but now was not the time. Be­sides, Shuya couldn't bring him­self to take a stroll down mem­ory lane over Yoshi­to­ki. It was too heavy.

"I won­der what we should do."

Noriko stiff­ened her mouth and nod­ded with­out a word.

"I won­der if there might be a way to gath­er the ones we trust to­geth­er."

"That's..." Noriko con­sid­ered it, then be­came silent once again. It was true-there was no way. At least for now.

Shuya sighed deeply once again.

He looked up and saw through the twigs the gray night sky dim­ly glow­ing un­der the moon­light. So this was what it meant to be in a "no-​win sit­ua­tion." If they sim­ply want­ed ev­ery­one to join, all they had to do was walk around and shout. But that would be an open in­vi­ta­tion to get them­selves killed by any of their op­po­nents. Of course he hoped there weren't any op­po­nents but...in the end, he had to ad­mit he was scared too.

The thought led to an idea, though. Shuya turned to her and asked, "But you're not afraid of me?"

"What?"

"Didn't you won­der whether I'd try to kill you?"

Un­der the moon­light, he couldn't see well, but Noriko's eyes seemed to widen a lit­tle. "You would nev­er do some­thing so hor­ri­ble."

Shuya thought a lit­tle more. Then he said, "But you can't know what some­one's think­ing. You said your­self."

"No," Noriko shook her head. "I just know that you would nev­er do that."

Shuya looked at her face di­rect­ly. He prob­ably looked dazed. "You can...tell?"

"Yes...I can. I..." She hes­itat­ed, but then con­tin­ued, "I've been watch­ing you for so long now." She might have de­liv­ered these words more stiffly in a nor­mal sit­ua­tion, or at least one that was a lit­tle more ro­man­tic.

That was how Shuya re­called the anony­mous love let­ter he'd re­ceived writ­ten on light blue sta­tion­ary. Some­one had put it in­side his desk one day in April. This wasn't the first love let­ter the for­mer star short­stop and cur­rent self-​pro­claimed (some­times by oth­ers as well) rock and roll star of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High had re­ceived, but it made enough of an im­pres­sion on Shuya for him to hold on­to it. There was a po­et­ic qual­ity to the let­ter that touched him.

It read, "Even if it's a lie, even if it's a dream, please turn to me. Your smile on a cer­tain day isn't a lie, it's not a dream. But hav­ing it turn to me might be my lie, my dream. But the day you call my name, it won't be a lie, it won't be a dream." And then, "It's nev­er been a lie, it's nev­er been a dream that I love you."

Was Noriko the one who sent that let­ter? He re­mem­bered ob­serv­ing how the writ­ing re­sem­bled hers, and how the po­et­ic style seemed sim­ilar too....So then...

Shuya thought of ask­ing her about the let­ter, but de­cid­ed not to. This wasn't the right time. Be­sides, he had no right to bring it up. Af­ter all he was so hung up over an­oth­er girl, Kazu­mi Shin­tani, who would nev­er, to take the phrase from that love let­ter, "turn to him," oth­er girls and that love let­ter were of lit­tle con­cern to him in com­par­ison. The most im­por­tant thing now for him was to pro­tect "the girl Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu adored," not to find out "who had a crush on him."

Then he re­called the bash­ful look Yoshi­to­ki gave him when they had that talk. "Hey Shuya, I got a crush on some­one."

Noriko asked him, "What about you, Shuya? Aren't you afraid of me? No, wait, why then did you help me?"

"Well..." Shuya thought of telling her about Yoshi­to­ki. Come on, my best friend had a crush on you. So if I'm go­ing to help any­one, it's got to be you, no mat­ter what. I mean, re­al­ly, come on.

He de­cid­ed against this too. They were bet­ter off dis­cussing this lat­er, hope­ful­ly when they could take the time to, as­sum­ing that is, there would be any time lat­er.

"You were in­jured. I couldn't just leave you alone. And be­sides, I trust you. I'll be damned if I didn't trust some­one cute as you."

Noriko broke in­to a slight grin. Shuya did his best to re­turn the smile. They were in a hor­ri­ble sit­ua­tion, but he felt slight re­lief in form­ing a smile.

Shuya said, "In any case, we're lucky. At least we're to­geth­er."

Noriko nod­ded. "Yes."

But...what were they sup­posed to do now?

Shuya be­gan pack­ing his bag. If they were go­ing to rest in or­der to come up with a strat­egy, they need­ed to find a place that of­fered vis­ibil­ity. Again, they had no idea what the oth­ers were up to. At the very least they had to be ex­treme­ly cau­tious. That was what it meant to be re­al­is­tic in the face of hor­rif­ic cir­cum­stances.

He kept the map, com­pass, and flash­light by his side. This was the world's worst ori­en­teer­ing game.

"Can you still walk?"

"I'm all right."

"Then let's move on a lit­tle more. We have to find a place to rest."

38 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11

Mit­su­ru Nu­mai (Male Stu­dent No. 17) pro­ceed­ed cau­tious­ly be­tween the grove and the nar­row moon­lit beach that was ap­prox­imate­ly ten me­ters wide. He was car­ry­ing his is­sued day pack and his own bag on his shoul­der. He held a small au­to­mat­ic pis­tol in his right hand. (It was a Walther PPK 9mm. Com­pared to the oth­er weapons that had been is­sued in this game, this one ranked high. Along with most of the guns used in this pro­gram, this mass-​pro­duced mod­el was im­port­ed cheap­ly from Third World coun­tries that had re­mained neu­tral to­wards both the na­tions of the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia and the Amer­ican Em­pire and its al­lies.) Mit­su­ru was fa­mil­iar with a mod­el-​gun ver­sion of the pis­tol, so he didn't need the ac­com­pa­ny­ing man­ual. He even knew there was no need to cock the pis­tol be­fore pulling the trig­ger. It came with a car­tridge of am­mu­ni­tion which he'd since load­ed in­to the gun.

The gun in his hand made him feel some­what se­cure, but he held some­thing even more im­por­tant in his left hand, the sup­plied com­pass. It was the same cheap tin mod­el Shuya had, but it did the job. Forty min­utes pri­or to his de­par­ture from the class­room, his great lead­er, Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6) had passed him this note: "If we're re­al­ly on an is­land, then I'll be wait­ing at the south­ern tip."

Of course...ev­ery­one was an en­emy in this game. That was the fun­da­men­tal rule. But the bond in the "Kiriya­ma Fam­ily" was ab­so­lute. It didn't mat­ter that they were la­beled thugs. They were thick as thieves.

Fur­ther­more, the bond be­tween Mit­su­ru Nu­mai and Kazuo Kiriya­ma was spe­cial. Be­cause...in a way it was Mit­su­ru who made Kazuo Kiriya­ma in­to what he was now. If there was one thing he knew, that the oth­er more square stu­dents like Shuya Nana­hara didn't, it was the fact that as far as Mit­su­ru knew, Kazuo Kiriya­ma, at least un­til ju­nior high, was no "delin­quent."

Mit­su­ru's mem­ory of his first en­counter with Kazuo Kiriya­ma was so vivid it re­mained un­for­get­table.

Mit­su­ru had been a bul­ly ev­er since el­emen­tary school. But he was nev­er need­less­ly cru­el. Brought up in a gener­ic fam­ily, he wasn't par­tic­ular­ly bright, nor did he dis­play any oth­er gifts. Fight­ing was the best way he could prove him­self. "Strength" was the on­ly stan­dard he had, and he nev­er fell short of it.

So it was on­ly in­evitable, on his first day in ju­nior high, he'd do his best to dis­cour­age any com­peti­tors com­ing from oth­er el­emen­tary schools in his dis­trict. Of course, judg­ing from the strength of kids he'd en­coun­tered in the lo­cal hang-​outs, he knew the kids from the oth­er el­emen­tary schools hard­ly pre­sent­ed a threat. Not ev­ery­one might have heard of him, though. There should be on­ly one king- that was the best way to main­tain or­der. Of course he wouldn't have thought to put it this way, but he knew this was what was go­ing on.

As ex­pect­ed, there were two or three com­peti­tors. It all hap­pened af­ter the en­trance cer­emo­ny and class in­tro­duc­tion, af­ter school, when he was in the pro­cess of tak­ing care of the last one.

In the de­sert­ed hall by the art class­room, Mit­su­ru grabbed the kid by the lapels and shoved him against the wall. The kid was al­ready bruised above the eye. His eyes were brim­ming with tears. It was a cinch. It'd on­ly tak­en two punch­es.

"Got it? So you don't mess around with me."

The kid nod­ded his head fran­ti­cal­ly. He was prob­ably just beg­ging to be re­leased, but Mit­su­ru want­ed ver­bal con­fir­ma­tion.

"I'm ask­ing you! Did you get that!?"

He thrust the kid's body up with his left arm. "An­swer me. Am I the bad­dest guy in his school? Am I?"

Mit­su­ru be­came ir­ri­tat­ed be­cause his op­po­nent wasn't re­spond­ing. He lift­ed him up high­er, when he sud­den­ly felt those eyes on him.

He let go of the kid and turned around. The kid fell to the floor and scram­bled away, but there was no way Mit­su­ru could go af­ter him now any­way.

He was sur­round­ed by four guys much taller than him. The badges on their worn out col­lars in­di­cat­ed they were third-​year stu­dents. You could im­me­di­ate­ly tell what they were. They were just like him.

"Hey, kid," the pim­ply faced one who had a creepy grin said. "You shouldn't pick on the weak."

An­oth­er one with or­ange-​tint­ed hair down to his shoul­ders pursed his ab­nor­mal­ly thick lips and con­tin­ued, "You've been naughty." His "fag­goty" voice made the four of them crack up, laugh­ing, "HEEEE," as if they were all in­sane.

"We'll have to teach you a les­son." "Yes, we must."

Then they screeched again, "Hee hee!"

Mit­su­ru tried a sur­prise kick at the pim­ply faced one in front of him, but he was im­me­di­ate­ly tripped by the one on his left.

As soon as he fell back, the pim­ply one kicked him in the face, knock­ing out his front teeth. The back of his head pound­ed against the wall that he'd been busy us­ing on his class­mate. He felt dizzy. Some­thing hot oozed down the back of his head. Mit­su­ru tried to get up on all fours, but then the one on his right kicked him in the stom­ach. Mit­su­ru groaned and puked. One of them said, "What a fuck­ing mess."

Damn, he thought. Bas­tards...fuck­ing cow­ards...I could take on any of them if it was just one on one....

But there was noth­ing he could do now. Af­ter all, he'd been the one who de­lib­er­ate­ly chose a de­sert­ed place to in­tim­idate his class­mate. There wasn't a chance a teach­er would ap­pear.

They pressed his right wrist against the floor. One of them care­ful­ly pried Mit­su­ru's in­dex fin­ger back and tucked it un­der his leather shoe. For the first time in his life Mit­su­ru ex­pe­ri­enced re­al fear.

No...this can't be.

It was. The sole of the shoe came down as Mit­su­ru's fin­ger made a hor­ri­ble crack­ing sound. Mit­su­ru shrieked. He'd nev­er been in such pain. They kept laugh­ing, "Hee hee hee!"

Mit­su­ru thought. These bas­tards...they're in­sane...they're not at all like me...they're crazy...

They were prepar­ing his mid­dle fin­ger.

"S-​stop..."

With­out an ounce of pride left, Mit­su­ru begged for mer­cy, but they ig­nored his pleas. The same crack­ing noise came. Mit­su­ru's mid­dle fin­ger was ru­ined now. Mit­su­ru screamed again.

"Let's have one more then."

That's when it hap­pened.

The door to the art class­room sud­den­ly slid open.

"Can you guys keep it down?" The voice was qui­et, though.

For a mo­ment Mit­su­ru won­dered if it was a teach­er. But a teach­er would have in­ter­vened a lot soon­er, and be­sides, a re­quest to keep it down would have been strange.

With his back still pressed to the floor Mit­su­ru glanced over at the door.

He wasn't too big, but he was in­cred­ibly good look­ing. He was hold­ing a paint brush.

He'd seen him at the class in­tro­duc­tion. He was one of Mit­su­ru's class­mates. His fam­ily seemed to have re­cent­ly moved here. No one knew who he was, but since he was qui­et and ap­peared obe­di­ent Mit­su­ru didn't pay much at­ten­tion to him. Giv­en how his looks were so re­fined, he prob­ably came from a nice fam­ily. Some­one like him would do his best to avoid fights, so he was noth­ing to wor­ry about.

But what was he do­ing in the art class­room? Prob­ably paint­ing, but wasn't that a lit­tle strange on the first day of school?

The pim­ply guy went up to the boy. "Who the fuck are you?" He stood in front of the boy. "Who the fuck are you? First year? What the fuck are you do­ing here? Huh? What was that you said?"

He knocked the paint brush out of the boy's hand, and the dark blue paint from the brush splat­tered against the floor.

The boy slow­ly looked up at the pim­ply guy.

The rest need­ed lit­tle ex­pla­na­tion. The small boy beat up the four third-​year stu­dents. (They were all ly­ing on the floor, com­plete­ly par­alyzed.)

The boy ap­proached Mit­su­ru. Af­ter look­ing him over he on­ly said, "You should have your hand ex­am­ined at a hos­pi­tal." Then he went back in­side the class­room.

Mit­su­ru gazed at the four bod­ies ly­ing on the floor. He was com­plete­ly stunned by some­thing so com­plete­ly un­prece­dent­ed. He felt in awe of the boy, like a rook­ie box­er doomed to medi­ocrity up­on sud­den­ly en­coun­ter­ing a world cham­pi­on. Mit­su­ru saw ge­nius.

From that point on Mit­su­ru served that boy-Kazuo Kiriya­ma. He had no need to ac­knowl­edge it. Kazuo Kiriya­ma had beat­en up four guys at once when Mit­su­ru could have on­ly tak­en them on one on one. There should on­ly be one king, and those who weren't should serve un­der him. He reached this con­clu­sion a long time ago. The idea prob­ably came from his fa­vorite boys' man­ga mag­azine.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma was a mys­tery.

When Mit­su­ru asked how he man­aged to learn how to fight so vi­cious­ly, he'd on­ly re­spond, "I just learned." Kazuo would on­ly ig­nore any fur­ther at­tempts to find out more. Mit­su­ru would then try to coax more out of him by sug­gest­ing he must have had a rep­uta­tion in el­emen­tary school, but Kazuo on­ly de­nied it. Then maybe he'd been a cham­pi­on in karate or some­thing? Kazuo de­nied this too. An­oth­er odd point, Mit­su­ru learned lat­er, was the fact that Kazuo had bro­ken in­to the art class­room to paint the day they met. When Mit­su­ru asked why he did that, Kazuo on­ly replied, "I just felt like it." This was how Kazuo's strange per­sona con­tribut­ed to Mit­su­ru's at­trac­tion to him. (Fur­ther­more, the qual­ity of the paint­ing de­pict­ing a view from the class­room of the emp­ty court­yard far ex­ceed­ed the first-​year ju­nior high lev­el, but Mit­su­ru nev­er got to see this paint­ing, be­cause Kazuo had tossed it in­to the trash af­ter com­plet­ing it.)

Mit­su­ru showed Kazuo around. The small town, in­clud­ing the cafe where his friends hung out, the place he stashed stolen goods, the shady deal­er who pro­vid­ed il­le­gal goods. Mit­su­ru's tal­ents were in fight­ing, but he did his best to show him ev­ery place. he knew. Kazuo al­ways ap­peared calm. He came along maybe out of cu­rios­ity. Even­tu­al­ly he took on up­per class stu­dents be­sides the ones he'd beat­en up, bul­lies from oth­er schools, or some­times high school stu­dents.

With­out ex­cep­tion Kazuo had them in­stant­ly writhing on the ground. Mit­su­ru was crazy about Kazuo. It was per­haps no dif­fer­ent from the joy a train­er feels in train­ing a cham­pi­on box­er.

Kazuo wasn't on­ly strong, though. He was ex­treme­ly smart. Quite sim­ply, he ex­celled at ev­ery­thing. When they broke in­to the liquor store's ware­house, it was Kazuo who came up with the bril­liant plan. Kazuo saved Mit­su­ru from nu­mer­ous jams he got him­self in­to. (Since he got in­volved with Kazuo, he nev­er got ar­rest­ed by the po­lice.) Fur­ther­more, his fa­ther was sup­pos­ed­ly the pres­ident of a lead­ing cor­po­ra­tion in the pre­fec­ture-no, the en­tire re­gion of Chugoku and Shikoku. He was fear­less. Mit­su­ru be­lieved some peo­ple were des­tined for great­ness. He thought, this guy is go­ing to be some­one so ex­traor­di­nary 1 can't even imag­ine what he'll be­come.

Mit­su­ru made him the lead­er of his gang, which con­tin­ued to stir up trou­ble. Mit­su­ru on­ly won­dered once whether it was right to get Kazuo in­volved. Kazuo strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed (he nev­er said so, but that was the vibe he gave off) Mit­su­ru and the oth­ers from vis­it­ing his house (in fact it was a man­sion), so Mit­su­ru had no way of telling whether Kazuo's par­ents were aware of their son's ac­tiv­ities. He was con­cerned his gang might be a bad in­flu­ence on Kazuo, who was so ob­vi­ous­ly well bred. Af­ter think­ing about it a lot, Mit­su­ru fi­nal­ly shared his con­cerns with Kazuo.

But Kazuo on­ly said, "I don't care. This is fun too." Mit­su­ru de­cid­ed it was all right then.

And so, he and Kazuo had been through a lot to­geth­er. The king and his loy­al ad­vi­sor.

Even though they were now in an ex­treme sit­ua­tion, this was why, while killing oth­er class­mates was pos­si­ble, it was out of the ques­tion when it came to the mem­bers of the Kiriya­ma Fam­ily. Af­ter all, Kazuo him­self had passed them notes. Mit­su­ru was cer­tain Kazuo had al­ready planned out a strat­egy to deal with this sit­ua­tion. He'd out­wit Sakamochi, and then es­cape. If he re­al­ly want­ed to, Kazuo Kiriya­ma could take on the en­tire gov­ern­ment, no prob.

These were Mit­su­ru's thoughts as he left the school and walked ap­prox­imate­ly twen­ty-​five min­utes south­ward. He saw on­ly one per­son the whole time. The fig­ure who van­ished in­to the res­iden­tial area south­east of the school was prob­ably Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to (Male Stu­dent No. 8). That made Mit­su­ru ner­vous, of course. He'd al­ready en­coun­tered the corpses of Mayu­mi Ten­do and Yoshio Aka­mat­su ly­ing out­side the school when he left. The game was well on its way.

Mit­su­ru's pri­or­ity was to get to the place as­signed by Kazuo as soon as pos­si­ble. The oth­ers were ir­rel­evant. What mat­tered was how his group would es­cape from here.

As he moved south, Mit­su­ru be­came in­creas­ing­ly tense as any shel­ter he could hide be­hind grew sparse. Un­der­neath his school uni­form, his en­tire body was drenched in cold sweat. Sweat oozed out of his short, permed hair and dripped down his fore­head.

A lit­tle bit fur­ther ahead the coast curved right and left, and some­where in the mid­dle of this curve a rugged reef ex­tend­ed east­ward from the hill and sank in­to the ocean like a buried di­nosaur on­ly re­veal­ing its back. The reef was much taller than Mit­su­ru, block­ing his vi­sion be­yond it. Glanc­ing at the sea, he saw is­lands and oth­er small lights that in­di­cat­ed a larg­er piece of land be­yond the dark, vast, hor­izon­tal ex­panse of wa­ter. This had to be an is­land in the Se­to In­land Sea. That much was cer­tain.

Once he sur­veyed the area, Mit­su­ru crossed the bor­der be­tween beach and woods. Ex­pos­ing him­self un­der moon­light, he walked to­ward the reef. He clung to the steep rock and be­gan climb­ing. The rock was cold and smooth and with his right hand hold­ing a gun and his bags strapped around his shoul­ders it wasn't an easy climb. Af­ter the climb, he found the reef was ap­prox­imate­ly three me­ters wide, and the beach spread out be­yond the rocks. As he pre­pared to climb down the oth­er side of the reef, a voice all of a sud­den ad­dressed him: "Mit­su­ru." Mit­su­ru al­most jumped. He turned around and raised his pis­tol.

He sighed with re­lief. Then he low­ered his gun.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma was in the shad­ow of a bulging boul­der. He was sit­ting on a pro­trud­ing rock. "Boss..." Mit­su­ru said with re­lief.

But...

Mit­su­ru no­ticed three lumps ly­ing at Kazuo's feet.

His eyes squint­ed in the dark... but then they im­me­di­ate­ly widened.

The lumps were hu­mans.

The one fac­ing up, glar­ing at the sky, was Ryuhei Sasagawa (Male Stu­dent No. 10). The one ly­ing on his side, scrunched up, was Hi­roshi Kuron­aga (Male Stu­dent No. 9). It was un­doubt­ed­ly them, the oth­er mem­bers of the Kiriya­ma Fam­ily. The third one was wear­ing a sailor suit uni­form, and be­cause she was face down it was hard to tell, but she looked like Izu­mi Kanai (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 5). And...there was a pud­dle un­der their bod­ies. It looked black, but Mit­su­ru knew of course what it was. If the sun were shin­ing on them now, the col­or of this pud­dle would have been iden­ti­cal to the col­or of the na­tion­al flag of the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia-crim­son red.

Com­plete­ly con­fused, Mit­su­ru be­gan to shiv­er. What was...what was this?...

"This is the south­ern tip." Un­der his slicked-​back hair, the per­pet­ual­ly calm eyes of Kazuo looked up at Mit­su­ru. He wore his coat over his shoul­ders like a box­er draped in his robe af­ter a fight.

"Wh-​wh-​wh-​what-" Mit­su­ru's trem­bling jaw made his voice shake. "What's go­ing on here-"

"You mean this?" Kazuo nudged Ryuhei Sasagawa's body with the tip of his plain (but nice) straight-​tip leather shoe. Ryuhei's right el­bow, which had been rest­ing on his chest, traced an arc and splashed in­to the pud­dle. His pinkie and ring fin­ger dis­ap­peared in­to the pud­dle.

"They all tried to kill me. Kuron­aga and Sasagawa...both. So I...killed them."

That can't be...

Mit­su­ru couldn't be­lieve it. Hi­roshi Kuron­aga was a no­body who tagged along with the group, so he was all the more loy­al to Kazuo. Ryuhei Sasagawa was more ar­ro­gant, al­ways putting up a front (some­times it got to be a has­sle to stop him from pick­ing on Yoshio Aka­mat­su), but Ryuhei had been ex­treme­ly grate­ful ev­er since Kazuo pulled some strings to stop the cops from ar­rest­ing his younger broth­er for steal­ing. These two would have nev­er be­trayed Kazuo....

Mit­su­ru caught a whiff in the air. It was blood. The smell of blood. The odor was far more in­tense than the smell of Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's blood back in the class­room. The dif­fer­ence was in the quan­ti­ty. There was enough blood splashed around here to fill a bath­tub.

Crushed by the smell, Mit­su­ru's trem­bling chin dropped. Come to think of it...it was im­pos­si­ble to know what some­one's true thoughts were. Maybe Hi­roshi and Ryuhei were so afraid of be­ing killed that they went nuts. In oth­er words, they just couldn't deal with the pres­sure. They showed up here at the as­signed lo­ca­tion, but they tried to am­bush Kazuo.

But...Mit­su­ru's eyes were glued to the oth­er corpse. Izu­mi Kanai, who was ly­ing face down, was a cute, pe­tite girl. She was the daugh­ter of a town of­fi­cial (of course in this kind of ul­tra-​cen­tral­ized, bu­reau­cra­tized so­ci­ety, be­ing a town of­fi­cial or coun­cil per­son was just an hon­orary post with­out any in­flu­ence), and al­though she wasn't in the same league as Kazuo she prob­ably came from one of the five rich­est fam­ilies in town. She wasn't stuck up at all, though, and Mit­su­ru thought she was kind of cute. Of course, giv­en how dif­fer­ent their back­grounds were, he wasn't stupid enough to get hung up over her.

And now she was-

Mit­su­ru some­how man­aged to say some­thing. "S-​so boss, Izu­mi... how about..."

Kazuo's calm, cold eyes stared at him. In­tim­idat­ed by the look he gave him, Mit­su­ru searched for an an­swer on his own. "So I-​Izu­mi tried to kill you...too?"

Kazuo nod­ded.

"She just hap­pened to be here."

Mit­su­ru hes­itat­ed, but then forced him­self to be­lieve what he said. Well, maybe it was pos­si­ble. I mean, that's what the boss said. He spat out, "I-I'm all right. I would nev­er think of killing my boss. Th-​this game is bull­shit. We're go­ing to take on Sakamochi and those bas­tards from the Spe­cial De­fense Forces, right? I'm to­tal­ly up for it-"

Of course they couldn't ap­proach the school now, be­cause it was a for­bid­den zone. That's what Sakamochi said. But know­ing Kazuo, Mit­su­ru was sure Kazuo had al­ready come up with a plan.

He stopped speak­ing. He no­ticed Kazuo was shak­ing his head. Mit­su­ru moved his tongue, which had now turned gooey, and con­tin­ued, "Then we're es­cap­ing? All right then, we'll find a boat-"

Kazuo said, "Lis­ten." Mit­su­ru stopped again.

Kazuo went on, "I'm fine ei­ther way."

Al­though Mit­su­ru clear­ly heard him, he kept on blink­ing. He didn't un­der­stand what Kazuo meant. He tried to read Kazuo's thoughts from the ex­pres­sion in his eyes, but they just calm­ly shone in the shad­ow over his face.

"Wh-​what do you mean, you're fine ei­ther way?"

Kazuo lift­ed and point­ed his chin at the night sky, as if he were stretch­ing out his neck. The moon shone bright­ly and cast a gloomy shad­ow on Kazuo's well-​de­fined face. He kept this pose and said, "I some­times lose track of what's right and wrong."

Mit­su­ru was even more con­fused. That was when an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent thought oc­curred to him. Some­thing was miss­ing.

And then he re­al­ized what it was.

The Kiriya­ma Fam­ily con­sist­ed of Mit­su­ru, and Ryuhei and Hi­roshi, whose bod­ies were ly­ing there, plus Sho Tsukio­ka, who was miss­ing. He'd left be­fore Mit­su­ru. So then why...

Of course Sho Tsukio­ka might have lost his way. Or he might have been killed by some­one else. But...Mit­su­ru felt the truth was more omi­nous than that.

Kazuo went on, "Like now. I just don't know." The sight of Kazuo go­ing on like this seemed, strange­ly enough, sad.

"Any­way." Kazuo looked back at Mit­su­ru. Then, as if he were fol­low­ing a mu­si­cal score that had sud­den­ly switched to al­le­gro, he be­gan speak­ing rapid­ly, as if it were be­yond his con­trol.

"I came here. Izu­mi was here. Izu­mi tried to es­cape. I held her back."

Mit­su­ru held his breath.

"That's when I tossed a coin. If it came up heads I'd take on Sakamochi and-"

Mit­su­ru fi­nal­ly un­der­stood, be­fore Kazuo fin­ished talk­ing.

No...it can't be...

He didn't want to be­lieve it. It was un­be­liev­able. Kazuo was the king and he was his loy­al ad­vi­sor. It was sup­posed to be about ab­so­lute, eter­nal loy­al­ty and ser­vice. That's right- even Kazuo's hairstyle. Right around the time Mit­su­ru's bro­ken fin­gers healed up, he'd been the one who in­sist­ed on it to Kazuo. "It looks good. You look so bad, boss." Kazuo kept the hairstyle af­ter that. It was a sil­ly lit­tle de­tail, but for Mit­su­ru it sym­bol­ized how close they were.

But...Mit­su­ru fi­nal­ly re­al­ized, maybe it was too much of a has­sle for Kazuo to change his hairstyle. He might have been too pre­oc­cu­pied with oth­er stuff to fuss over his hair. Then there were oth­er things he re­al­ized. Mit­su­ru had firm­ly be­lieved his re­la­tion­ship with Kazuo cen­tered around a sa­cred team spir­it, when in fact Kazuo might have just been in it for kicks or just "just"-that's right, just an ex­pe­ri­ence, just an ex­pe­ri­ence to be had, no feel­ings at­tached to it what­so­ev­er. Kazuo him­self had once said, "This is fun too."

All of a sud­den the one thing that had dis­turbed Mit­su­ru from ear­ly on re­turned with full force. Mit­su­ru thought it wasn't such a big deal, so he'd done his best to ig­nore it all this time: Kazuo Kiriya­ma nev­er smiled.

Mit­su­ru's next thought might have been touch­ing on the truth: and it al­ways seemed like a lot was go­ing on in his head. Which was prob­ably the case. But maybe there's some­thing in­cred­ibly dark go­ing on in Kazuo's mind, some­thing so dark it's be­yond my imag­ina­tion? Maybe it isn't even some­thing dark, maybe it's just an ab­sence, a kind of black hole-

And maybe Sho Tsukio­ka had al­ready sensed this about Kazuo.

Mit­su­ru had no more time to think. He was com­plete­ly fo­cused on his in­dex fin­ger (that's right, one of the fin­gers bro­ken that fate­ful day) on the trig­ger of the Walther PPK in his right hand.

A sea breeze blew in, mixed in with the odor ris­ing from the pud­dle of blood. The waves kept crash­ing in.

The Walther PPK in Mit­su­ru's hand quiv­ered slight­ly- but the school coat draped over Kazuo's back was al­ready mov­ing by then.

There was a mild­ly pleas­ant rat­tling sound. Sure, it was dif­fer­ent, but some­thing about the pulse of 950 bul­lets ig­nit­ed ev­ery minute re­sem­bled the tap­ping of an old man­ual type­writ­er you'd find in an an­tique store. Izu­mi Kanai, Ryuhei Sasagawa, and Hi­roshi Kuron­aga were all stabbed, so these were the first gun­shots to echo through the is­land since the game be­gan.

Mit­su­ru was still stand­ing. He couldn't see un­der his school uni­form very clear­ly, but there were four fin­ger-​sized holes run­ning from his chest down to his stom­ach. His back for some rea­son had two large can-​sized holes. His right hand hold­ing the Walther PPK was trem­bling by his waist. His eyes were star­ing up to­wards the North Star. But giv­en how bright the moon was tonight, the star prob­ably wasn't vis­ible.

Kazuo held a crude lump of met­al re­sem­bling a tin dessert box with a han­dle. It was an In­gram M10 sub­ma­chine gun. He said, "If the coin came up tails, I de­cid­ed I'd take part in the game."

As if he'd been an­tic­ipat­ing these words, Mit­su­ru crashed for­ward. As he fell, his head hit the rock and bounced back up five cen­time­ters on­ly once.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma sat still for a while. Then he got up and ap­proached Mit­su­ru Nu­mai's corpse. He gen­tly touched the bul­let rid­den body with his left hand, as if check­ing for some­thing.

This was no emo­tion­al re­sponse. He didn't feel any­thing, no guilt, no grief, no pity-not a sin­gle emo­tion.

He sim­ply want­ed to know how a hu­man body re­act­ed af­ter it was shot. No, he mere­ly thought, "It might not be such a bad idea to know."

He re­moved his hand and touched his left tem­ple-to be more ac­cu­rate, a lit­tle fur­ther be­hind his tem­ple. Any stranger would have thought he was mere­ly straight­en­ing out his hair.

But that wasn't it. He did it be­cause of a strange feel­ing he had-not pain, not an itch, but some­thing elu­sive and in­fre­quent, oc­cur­ring on­ly sev­er­al times a year, when he'd re­flex­ive­ly touch the spot which, along with the feel­ing, be­came quite fa­mil­iar to Kazuo.

Kazuo's "par­ents" had pro­vid­ed him with a spe­cial ed­uca­tion. But in spite of learn­ing what there was to know about the world at such a young age, Kazuo him­self had no idea what caused this feel­ing. It was in­evitable. Any trace of the dam­age had al­most com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared by the time he was old enough to rec­og­nize him­self in the mir­ror. In oth­er words, he knew noth­ing: the fact that he'd al­most died from a freak ac­ci­dent which caused the dam­age when he was still in­side his moth­er's womb, of course, the fact that his moth­er was killed by the ac­ci­dent, the con­ver­sa­tion his fa­ther and a high­ly re­put­ed doc­tor had con­cern­ing the splin­ter dig­ging in­to his skull right be­fore his birth, the fact that nei­ther his fa­ther nor the doc­tor who boast­ed the op­er­ation was a suc­cess knew that the splin­ter had gouged out a clus­ter of very fine nerve cells. Ev­ery one of these facts were from an­oth­er time. The doc­tor died from liv­er fail­ure, the fa­ther, or more ac­cu­rate­ly, "his re­al fa­ther," al­so died from com­pli­ca­tions. So there was no one left to share these facts with Kazuo.

One thing was ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain-it was a giv­en for Kazuo. Al­though he might not have par­tic­ular­ly re­al­ized it, or more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, per­haps be­cause he was in­ca­pable of com­ing to such a re­al­iza­tion, this was what it came down to: he, Kazuo Kiriya­ma, felt no emo­tion, no guilt, no sor­row, no pity, to­wards the four corpses, in­clud­ing Mit­su­ru's-and that ev­er since the day he was dropped in­to this world the way he was, he had nev­er once felt a sin­gle emo­tion.

34 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12

On the north­ern side of the is­land, op­po­site from where Kazuo and the oth­ers were, a steep cliff hung over the sea. It was over twen­ty me­ters high. On the cliff was a small field with a crown of wild grass. The waves crashed against the cliff and ex­plod­ed in­to mist that drift­ed in­to the mild wind.

Saku­ra Ogawa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 4) and Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to (Male Stu­dent No. 21) sat to­geth­er at the edge of this cliff. Their legs hung over the edge. Saku­ra's right hand gen­tly held Kazuhiko's left hand.

Their day packs and bags, along with their com­pass­es, were scat­tered around them. Just as Kazuo had as­signed the oth­ers to meet at the south­ern tip of the is­land, Saku­ra had scrib­bled "at the north­ern tip" on the piece of pa­per (right be­side "We shall kill each oth­er") she passed on to Kazuhiko. At least they were lucky enough to meet some­where that didn't co­in­cide with Kazuo's meet­ing place. De­spite their cir­cum­stances, they were lucky enough to spend some time alone. There was a Colt .357 Mag­num tucked in­to Kazuhiko's belt, but he al­ready knew he wouldn't be us­ing it.

"It's qui­et," Saku­ra mur­mured. Be­neath her hair, which was cut short for a girl, her pret­ty pro­file, be­gin­ning with her wide fore­head, seemed to be form­ing a smile. She was tall, so she looked slim, and as al­ways, she sat up straight. Kazuhiko had on­ly re­cent­ly ar­rived. As they hugged each oth­er, her body trem­bled slight­ly like a wound­ed lit­tle bird.

"Yeah, it is," Kazuhiko said. Aside from the bridge of his nose, which was slight­ly wide, he was good look­ing. He turned away from her to look at the view. The dark sea spread out un­der the moon­light, the black out­lines of the is­lands scat­tered, and be­yond them there was land. The lights were shin­ing bright­ly on the is­lands and what ap­peared to be the Hon­shu main­land in the dis­tance. It was a lit­tle be­fore 3:30 a.m. In be­tween those lights float­ing in the dark most peo­ple were sleep­ing peace­ful­ly. Or maybe there were kids like him study­ing late in­to the night for their high school en­trance ex­ams. It didn't look ter­ri­bly far, but it was a world be­yond their reach now.

Kazuhiko con­firmed the ex­is­tence of the small black dot ap­prox­imate­ly two hun­dred me­ters out at sea. It ap­peared to be one of the ships "there to kill any­one at­tempt­ing to es­cape by sea" that Sakamochi had men­tioned. Al­though the Se­to In­land Sea was al­ways busy with boat traf­fic, even at night, not a sin­gle ship passed by to send out its lights. The gov­ern­ment pro­hib­it­ed all traf­fic here.

It was chill­ing. Kazuhiko peeled his eyes off the black dot. He'd seen the corpses of Mayu­mi Ten­do and Yoshio Aka­mat­su when he left the school. He al­so heard the sound of gun­shots in the dis­tance be­fore he ar­rived here. The game had be­gun, and it would con­tin­ue un­til the end. He and Saku­ra had al­ready ob­served this, and this too no longer seemed to mat­ter any­more.

"Thank you so much for this." Saku­ra was look­ing at the tiny bou­quet of flow­ers in her left hand. On his way over here Kazuhiko had found sev­er­al clover-​like flow­ers which he then bun­dled to­geth­er. At the top of the long, thin stems, the small petals were bunched to­geth­er like a cheer­lead­er's pom poms. They weren't the most im­pres­sive set of flow­ers, but this was all he could find.

Kazuhiko did his best to smile. "Oh, you're very wel­come."

Saku­ra looked down at the small bou­quet, then fi­nal­ly said, "So we'll nev­er be able to go home to­geth­er. We won't be able spend time to­geth­er walk­ing around town, eat­ing ice cream, and do­ing any­thing else any­more."

"Well..."

Saku­ra in­ter­rupt­ed Kazuhiko. "It's fu­tile to re­sist. I should know. I heard my fa­ther was against the gov­ern­ment, and then one day..."

Kazuhiko could tell from her hand that she was trem­bling.

"The po­lice came and killed my fa­ther. No war­rant, noth­ing. They just came in with­out a word and shot him dead. I can still re­mem­ber it clear­ly. We were in the kitchen. I was still small. I was sit­ting at the ta­ble. My moth­er held me tight. Then I grew up and ate my meals at the same ta­ble."

Saku­ra turned to Kazuhiko "It's no use re­sist­ing."

It was the first time she had ev­er told him about the in­ci­dent, even though they'd been go­ing out for two years. The first time they slept to­geth­er, just a month ago at her house, she hadn't men­tioned it.

Kazuhiko felt there must be some­thing else to say, but all he could muster up struck him as in­cred­ibly trite. "Wow, that must have been hard."

But Saku­ra broke in­to a smile. "You're so kind, Kazuhiko. You're so kind. That's what I like about you."

"I like you too. I love you so much."

If he weren't so inar­tic­ulate, Kazuhiko could have said so much more. How much her ex­pres­sions, her words, her gen­tle man­ner, and un­taint­ed pure soul meant to him.

How im­por­tant, in short, her ex­is­tence was to him. But he wasn't able to put it in words. He was on­ly a third-​year stu­dent in ju­nior high, and worse yet, com­po­si­tion was one of his worst sub­jects.

"Well." Saku­ra closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, as if a lit­tle re­lieved. Then she breathed out. "I re­al­ly want­ed to make sure I saw you."

Then she went on. "Hor­ri­ble things are go­ing to hap­pen. No-ac­cord­ing to what you said, they've al­ready be­gun. Just yes­ter­day we were all friends-and now we're go­ing to kill each oth­er." Putting this thought in­to words, she trem­bled again. Again Kazuhiko could tell from her hand.

Saku­ra gave him a weary smile that be­trayed fear along with the ter­ri­ble irony of the fate await­ing them. "I couldn't take that."

Of course not. Saku­ra was kind. Kazuhiko didn't know any­one else kinder.

"Be­sides..." Saku­ra spoke again, "we can't go back to­geth­er. Even if by some mir­acle one of us could go back, we still wouldn't be to­geth­er. Even if...even if I were to sur­vive...I couldn't bear be­ing with­out you. So..."

Saku­ra stopped. Kazuhiko un­der­stood what she was get­ting at. So I'm go­ing to kill my­self here. Be­fore any­one gets me. Right in front of you.

In­stead of fin­ish­ing what she had to say, she said, "But you have to live."

Kazuhiko smiled grim­ly, then squeezed her hand tight­ly and shook his head. "No way. I'm with you. Even if I were to sur­vive, I couldn't stand be­ing with­out you. Don't leave me alone."

Tears came stream­ing out of Saku­ra's eyes which were fixed on Kazuhiko's eyes.

Saku­ra turned away from Kazuhiko. Wip­ing her eyes with her left hand that was hold­ing the bou­quet of clovers, all of a sud­den she blurt­ed out, "Did you see the fi­nal episode of Tonight, at the Same Place, which airs ev­ery Thurs­day night at nine?"

Kazuhiko nod­ded. It was a TV dra­ma broad­cast by the na­tion­al DBS net­work. It was a su­per­flu­ous love sto­ry pro­duced by the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia Tele­vi­sion Net­work, but it was quite good, top­ping TV rat­ings for the last sev­er­al years.

"Yeah, I saw it. You want­ed me to watch it."

"Yes, I did. So what I was think­ing..."

As she spoke, Kazuhiko thought, this is ex­act­ly how we'd al­ways talk. It was al­ways about some­thing re­al­ly or­di­nary and mean­ing­less, but there was some­thing so bliss­ful about these con­ver­sa­tions they had. Saku­ra wants us to stay the way we've al­ways been.

The thought sud­den­ly made Kazuhiko want to cry.

"Well, I was all right about the two main char­ac­ters end­ing up to­geth­er. That's how it's sup­posed to be. But I don't know about Mi­ki's friend Mizue, the one played by An­na Kita­gawa. How could Mizue have giv­en up on the guy she loved? I know I would have gone af­ter him."

Kazuhiko grinned. "I knew you'd say that."

Saku­ra laughed bash­ful­ly. "I can't hide any­thing from you." Then she said hap­pi­ly, "I still re­mem­ber when we be­came class­mates in ju­nior high. You were tall and good look­ing, sure, but the thing that re­al­ly got me was how I thought, 'This guy would un­der­stand me, he would un­der­stand me down to the core of my heart.' "

"I don't know how to say this very well but," Kazuhiko twist­ed his tongue a lit­tle and thought for a mo­ment, then con­tin­ued, "I think I felt the same way."

He said it well.

Then he leaned over a lit­tle, to­wards Saku­ra. With his left hand still clutch­ing her right hand, he wrapped his oth­er hand around her shoul­der.

They hugged in this po­si­tion and ex­changed kiss­es. Was it just a few sec­onds? Was it a minute? Or was it eter­ni­ty?

In any case, the kiss end­ed. They heard a rustling sound. They sensed some­one in the bush­es be­hind them. That was their sig­nal: all aboard. The train is de­part­ing, so you bet­ter get on board.

They had noth­ing left to say. They could have fought against the in­trud­er. He could have tak­en his gun and aimed it at the per­son be­hind them. But she wouldn't want that. What she want­ed was to leave this world qui­et­ly be­fore they got sucked in­to this hor­ri­ble mas­sacre. Noth­ing was more im­por­tant to him than her. There was no room for com­pro­mise. If this was what her trem­bling soul want­ed, then he would fol­low her. Had he been more elo­quent he might have de­scribed his feel­ings as some­thing like, "I'm go­ing to die for her hon­or."

Their two bod­ies danced in the air be­yond the cliff, the black sea in the back­ground, their hands still clasped to­geth­er.

Yukie Ut­su­mi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 2) poked her head out from the bush­es a lit­tle. She held her breath and watched them. She had no in­ten­tion what­so­ev­er of harm­ing any­one, so she had no idea that the noise she made sig­naled their de­par­ture. She was sim­ply stunned by the sight of the No. 1 cou­ple in class van­ish­ing be­yond the grassy cliff. The sound of waves qui­et­ly brush­ing up against the sheer rock face con­tin­ued and the small clovers Saku­ra dropped re­mained ly­ing on the grass.

Even when Haru­ka Taniza­wa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 12) ap­proached her from be­hind and asked her, "What's wrong, Yukie?" Yukie just stood there trem­bling.

32 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

13

Megu­mi Eto (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 3) sat in the dark, hug­ging her knees while her small body shook vi­olent­ly. She was in­side a house slight­ly re­moved from the is­land's most pop­ulat­ed area on the east­ern shore. The lights might have worked, but Megu­mi didn't dare try them. The moon­light com­ing through the win­dow didn't reach un­der the worn out kitchen ta­ble she was hid­ing un­der. It was al­most pitch black, so she couldn't check her watch, but two hours had prob­ably passed since she sat down here. It was prob­ably al­most 4 a.m. Was it one hour since she heard that dis­tant, faint sound that sound­ed like fire­crack­ers? No, Megu­mi didn't even want to think about what that re­al­ly was.

She raised her face and saw, sil­hou­et­ted against the moon­light, the cup­board and ket­tle right above the sink. She was aware the gov­ern­ment prob­ably re­lo­cat­ed the is­land's res­idents to some tem­po­rary hous­ing units, but the re­main­ing traces of some­one's life in this house was un­nat­ural and creepy. It re­mind­ed her of the ghost sto­ry she'd heard as a child, about the ship Marie Ce­leste whose en­tire crew sud­den­ly van­ished in­to thin air, leav­ing be­hind their meals and pos­ses­sions in mid-​use. She be­came even more ter­ri­fied.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter her de­par­ture she had no idea where she was head­ed. Next thing she knew she was in the mid­dle of this res­iden­tial area. The first thought that oc­curred to her was that there weren't too many stu­dents out yet. She was the sixth to leave the school. Five were al­ready out...but on­ly five. There were fifty or six­ty hous­es in this area, so the chances of en­coun­ter­ing one of them were close to nil. And as long as she locked the door and kept the place to her­self... then she would be safe at least un­til she had to move. The col­lar that would ex­plode if she re­mained in one of the for­bid­den zones was op­pres­sive, but there was noth­ing she could do about it. Sakamochi had warned that, "If you try to pry it loose, it will ex­plode." In any case, the im­por­tant thing was to make sure she could hear Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment of the time and lo­ca­tion of each for­bid­den zone.

So Megu­mi had tried to en­ter a house, but the first one was locked. So was the sec­ond one. She went to the back­yard of the third one and broke the sash win­dow with a rock she found on the ground. It made such a huge sound, she ducked un­der the ve­ran­da. No one seemed to be in the area, though. She en­tered. There was no use lock­ing the sash now. She had to la­bo­ri­ous­ly close the storm door. Once it was shut, the in­side turned pitch black, and she felt as if she'd wan­dered in­to a haunt­ed house. She man­aged to pull out her flash­light though and searched the house. She took two fish­ing poles and used them to jam the storm door shut.

And now she was un­der the kitchen ta­ble. Killing each oth­er was out of the ques­tion. But what if... just what if this area (check­ing the map, she found the whole area was al­most com­plete­ly in­side sec­tor H=8) nev­er turned in­to a for­bid­den zone, then she might end up sur­viv­ing.

But...Megu­mi con­tin­ued shak­ing as she con­tin­ued to think. That was ter­ri­ble. Of course...ac­cord­ing to the rules of the game, ev­ery­one was your en­emy so you couldn't trust any­one. That's why she was shak­ing right now...but, but even if the game end­ed and she turned out to be the sole sur­vivor, then that would al­so mean ev­ery­one else had died: her friends (like Mizuho In­ada and Kaori Mi­na­mi), as well as Shuya Nana­hara, who made her heart flut­ter ev­ery time she thought of him.

Megu­mi pulled her knees in and thought of Shuya in the dark. What she re­al­ly loved about him was his voice. That slight rasp that was nei­ther too high nor too low. He ap­par­ent­ly loved cen­sored mu­sic called "rock," so he al­ways looked re­al­ly un­hap­py in mu­sic class when they had to sing songs prais­ing the gov­ern­ment and the Dic­ta­tor, but he sang in­cred­ibly. The sound from his gui­tar when he played im­pro­vised pas­sages was su­perb. Its un­fa­mil­iar rhythm made you want to dance. And yet there was al­so some­thing grace­ful about the sound, not un­like the sound of bells chim­ing in a beau­ti­ful church. And then there was his longish permed hair (Shuya once said, "I'm im­itat­ing Bruce Spring­steen," but Megu­mi had no idea what he was talk­ing about), not to men­tion his slight­ly drowsy look­ing, kind eyes with dou­ble eye­lids. Al­so he moved so grace­ful­ly since he'd been a star Lit­tle League play­er ev­er since el­emen­tary school.

Her shak­ing sub­sid­ed a lit­tle when she thought of Shuya's face and voice. Oh, if on­ly Shuya Nana­hara were with me right now, it would be so won­der­ful...

So then...so then why didn't she ev­er tell Shuya how she felt about him? By love let­ter? Or by send­ing some­one to bring him, so she could con­fess to him di­rect­ly? Or by phone? Now she'd nev­er get the chance.

That's when it oc­curred to her.

The phone.

That's right. Sakamochi said we wouldn't be able to use phones in the hous­es. But...

Megu­mi grabbed her ny­lon bag, which was ly­ing next to her sup­plied day pack. She pulled open the zip­per and shoved aside her clothes and per­son­al ef­fects.

She touched a hard square ob­ject and grabbed it.

It was a cell phone. Her moth­er bought it for her for this trip in case some­thing (well, this wasn't just some­thing) hap­pened dur­ing her trip. It was true she'd been en­vi­ous of the oth­er one or two class­mates who owned one, and there was some­thing thrilling about the feel­ing of hav­ing your own pri­vate link, but Megu­mi al­so thought her par­ents were be­ing over­pro­tec­tive, and that her moth­er was neu­rot­ic. She won­dered, "Why would a ju­nior high school kid need this?" when she put the shiny phone in­to her bag. She'd com­plete­ly for­got­ten about it un­til this very mo­ment.

Megu­mi flipped open the phone with her trem­bling hands.

The phone au­to­mat­ical­ly switched from re­ceive mode to send mode and the small LCD pan­el and di­al but­tons lit up with a green glow. Her knees un­der her skirt and bags were now vis­ible. But more im­por­tant­ly, there, with­out a doubt, was the an­ten­na and air wave sym­bols light­ing up on the dis­play pan­el, in­di­cat­ing it was ready for a phone call!

"Oh...God..."

Megu­mi fran­ti­cal­ly pressed the di­al but­tons, the num­bers for her home in Shi­roi­wa-​cho. 0, 8, 7, 9, 2...

Af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence, the phone on the oth­er end be­gan to ring in her ear, and her chest filled with hope.

One, two, three rings. Please an­swer it. Dad, Mom. I might be call­ing at an un­rea­son­able hour, but you must be aware your daugh­ter is in an emer­gen­cy sit­ua­tion. Hur­ry...

The ring­ing was in­ter­rupt­ed by a voice an­swer­ing, "Hel­lo."

"Oh Dad!" In her cramped po­si­tion Megu­mi closed her eyes. She thought she would go crazy from re­lief. I'm go­ing to be saved. Saved! "Dad, it's me! Megu­mi! Oh Dad! Please help me! Please, save me from here!" She shout­ed in­to the phone in a fren­zy, but she came to her­self be­cause there was no re­sponse. Some­thing...was wrong. What...why won't Dad...no, this was...

Fi­nal­ly, the voice at the oth­er end spoke, "I'm not your dad, Megu­mi. This is Sakamochi. I told you the phones wouldn't work, Megu­mi."

Megu­mi shrieked and tossed the phone to the floor. Then she hur­ried­ly slammed the "End" but­ton.

Her heart thumped fran­ti­cal­ly. Once again Megu­mi was over­come with de­spair. Oh, no...so it failed...so I am go­ing to die here... I'm go­ing to die___

But then Megu­mi's heart leaped.

...it was a shat­ter­ing sound.

The sound of bro­ken glass.

Megu­mi turned to­wards the ori­gin of the sound. It came from the sit­ting room which she had checked to make sure it was locked. Some­one was com­ing. Some­one. Why, though? Of all the hous­es here, why this one?

Megu­mi pan­icked and closed the cell phone pan­el, which had been still glow­ing green. She put it in her pock­et, took the weapon from her day pack, and pulled the dou­ble-​blad­ed div­er's knife from its plas­tic sheath. She gripped it tight­ly. She had to es­cape as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

But her body was frozen and she couldn't move. Megu­mi slowed her breath­ing. Please, please, please God, make sure they can't hear my pound­ing heart.

She heard the sound of a win­dow open­ing, then clos­ing, then the sound of care­ful, qui­et foot­steps. They seemed to be mov­ing around the house, but then they head­ed di­rect­ly to­wards the kitchen and Megu­mi. Megu­mi's heart pound­ed even loud­er.

A thin ray of light shot through the kitchen. The ray glid­ed over the ket­tle and cup­board above the sink.

Some­one sighed with re­lief and said to her­self, "Good, there's no one here."

The foot­steps en­tered the kitchen. As soon as Megu­mi heard the voice, though, Megu­mi was aghast. Any mi­nus­cule hope that she could work some­thing out in case the in­trud­er turned out to be a friend had been com­plete­ly shat­tered. Be­cause...it was the voice of her, Mit­suko Souma (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 11), the mean­est girl in the en­tire school. Even though she had the cutest, most an­gel­ic face, a sin­gle glance from her was enough to in­tim­idate any teach­er.

Mit­suko Souma was more fright­en­ing to Megu­mi than any of the ill-​re­put­ed boys, Kazuo Kiriya­ma and Shogo Kawa­da. It might have been be­cause, like Megu­mi, Mit­suko Souma was a girl, and al­so, yes of course, be­cause Megu­mi her­self had been ha­rassed by Hi­rono Shimizu, who was in Mit­suko's gang, when they first be­came class­mates in sec­ond-​year. If they were in the same hall, Hi­rono would trip her or slash her skirt with a ra­zor. Late­ly, maybe be­cause she'd sim­ply lost in­ter­est in Megu­mi, Hi­rono had stopped ha­rass­ing her. (She was still dis­ap­point­ed though when she learned that her third-​year class was to be the same as her sec­ond-​year class.) Mit­suko her­self didn't pick on Megu­mi, but Mit­suko was some­one even Hi­rono couldn't de­fy.

That's right...Mit­suko Souma would rel­ish killing some­one like her.

Megu­mi's body be­gan trem­bling again. Oh...please no, don't shake...if she hears me...Megu­mi wrapped her body tight­ly with her arms to keep her arms from shak­ing.

From be­neath the ta­ble Megu­mi could see Mit­suko's hand hold­ing a flash­light and the belt of her skirt glow­ing be­hind it. She heard the sound of Mit­suko ri­fling through the draw­ers of the sink.

Please hur­ry...hur­ry up and get out of here. If you could at least just get out of this room...that's right, then I could go to the bath­room. I could lock it from in­side and es­cape through the win­dow. Please hur­ry...

BR­RRRI­ING. The elec­tron­ic sig­nal rang, and Megu­mi felt her heart leap out of her mouth.

Mit­suko Souma al­so seemed to quiver, slight­ly. The beam from her flash­light sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared along with the belt. She seemed to be ap­proach­ing the cor­ner of the room.

Megu­mi re­al­ized the sound was com­ing from her pock­et.

She fran­ti­cal­ly pulled out the cel­lu­lar. Her mind went blank and she au­to­mat­ical­ly flipped it open and ran­dom­ly pressed the but­tons.

A voice leaked out, "Hey, it's Sakamochi again. I just want­ed to re­mind you, Megu­mi, to turn off your cell phone. Oth­er­wise, if I call you like this, ev­ery­one will know where you are, right? So..."

Megu­mi's fin­gers found the "End" but­ton, cut­ting off Sakamochi's voice.

The suf­fo­cat­ing si­lence con­tin­ued for a while. Then she heard Mit­suko's voice, "Megu­mi?" She asked, "Megu­mi? Is that you?"

Mit­suko seemed to be in the cor­ner of the dark kitchen. Megu­mi care­ful­ly placed her cell phone on the floor. The on­ly thing in her hands now was her knife. Her hands were shak­ing even more, and the knife felt like a fish wig­gling loose, but she gripped it as tight as she could.

Mit­suko was taller than Megu­mi, but she couldn't have been much stronger. Mit­suko's weapon-could it pos­si­bly be a gun?-no, then Mit­suko would have aimed it over here and fired. If Mit­suko didn't have a gun-then Megu­mi might have a chance. That's right, she had to kill. If she didn't kill, Mit­suko would sure­ly kill her.

She had to kill.

There was a click­ing sound, and once again the flash­light beam ap­peared. It lit up the bot­tom of the ta­ble, and Megu­mi squint­ed for an in­stant. Now was the time-all she had to do was get up, run to­ward the source of the light with her knife out.

But Megu­mi's in­ten­tions were about to be abrupt­ly un­der­mined by an un­ex­pect­ed turn of events.

The flash­light beam fell on a low­er spot, and Mit­suko Souma sank down on the floor in­to the light, star­ing at Megu­mi. Tears were stream­ing down Mit­suko's cheeks.

"I'm so glad..." her trem­bling lips fi­nal­ly part­ed, and she man­aged to say in a fee­ble voice, "I'm...I'm...I'm so scared...."

Mit­suko's voice was half shriek­ing. She thrust both of her hands for­ward as if seek­ing Megu­mi's pro­tec­tion. Her hands were emp­ty.

Then she con­tin­ued, "I can trust you, right? I can trust you. You wouldn't think of killing me, would you? You'll stay with me, won't you?"

Megu­mi was stunned. This was Mit­suko Souma cry­ing. She's ask­ing for my help...

Oh...as the shak­ing in her body sub­sid­ed, Megu­mi felt an in­de­scrib­able emo­tion well up in­side her.

That's right. So that's how it was. It didn't mat­ter how bad her rep­uta­tion was, Mit­suko Souma was just an­oth­er third-​year ju­nior high school stu­dent like her. Even Mit­suko Souma couldn't take part in some­thing as hor­ri­ble as killing oth­er class­mates. She was just lone­ly and scared out of her wits.

And...oh, how ter­ri­ble, I'd ac­tu­al­ly con­sid­ered it. I thought of killing her.

I'm so...I'm so hor­ri­ble.

Megu­mi burst in­to tears, over­whelmed by self-​loathing along with the se­cu­ri­ty that she now felt she was no longer alone, she was with some­one.

The knife slipped through Megu­mi's hands. She crawled on the floor, emerged from un­der the ta­ble, and held Mit­suko's of­fered hands. As if a dam in­side her were burst­ing, she blurt­ed out, "Mit­suko! Mit­suko!"

She knew she was shak­ing this time from a dif­fer­ent kind of emo­tion. It didn't mat­ter. She was...she was...

"It's all right. I'll stay with you. We'll stay to­geth­er."

"Uh-​huh." Mit­suko scrunched up her tear-​stained face and squeezed Megu­mi's hands in re­turn, nod­ding and re­peat­ing, "Uh-​huh, uh-​huh."

Megu­mi held Mit­suko like this on the kitchen floor. She felt the warmth of Mit­suko's body and she felt all the more guilty as her arms felt Mit­suko's body trem­bling help­less­ly.

I-I was re­al­ly think­ing of do­ing some­thing hor­ri­ble...so hor­ri­ble...I was ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to kill this girl...

"Hey..." Megu­mi be­gan to blurt out, "I-I..."

"Hm?" Mit­suko lift­ed her teary eyes up to Megu­mi.

Megu­mi pursed her lips tight­ly to sti­fle a shriek and shook her head. "I-I'm so ashamed of my­self. For a mo­ment, I was try­ing to kill you. I thought of killing you. Be­cause I was...1 was so scared."

Mit­suko's eyes widened when she heard this-but she didn't get up­set. All she did was slight­ly nod her face which had been scrunched up from cry­ing hys­ter­ical­ly. Then she of­fered a warm smile. "That's okay. Re­al­ly. Don't get too up­set. It's on­ly to be ex­pect­ed. In this aw­ful sit­ua­tion. Re­al­ly, don't get up­set. Okay? Just stay with me, please?"

Af­ter Mit­suko said this, she gen­tly held Megu­mi's face with her left hand and pressed her left cheek against Megu­mi's cheek. Megu­mi could feel Mit­suko's tears.

Oh. Megu­mi thought, I was so wrong about her. It turned out Mit­suko Souma was an in­cred­ibly kind girl. She man­aged to for­give some­one who tried to kill her with such a kind re­sponse, "It's okay." Didn't our teach­er, Mr. Hayashi­da, who's al­ready been killed, warn us how wrong it is to judge peo­ple just by their rep­uta­tions?

With these thoughts, Megu­mi felt some­thing well up in­side her again. She held Mit­suko's body even more tight­ly. That was all she could do for now. I'm so sor­ry, I'm so sor­ry, I am such a hor­ri­ble per­son, I am re­al­ly-

The slash­ing sound Megu­mi heard sound­ed like a lemon be­ing cut.

It was a nice sound. The knife must have been re­al­ly sharp and the lemon fresh, the way they are on tele­vi­sion cook­ing shows, as in, "To­day, we'll be cook­ing lemon salmon."

It took her a few sec­onds to re­al­ize what had oc­curred.

Megu­mi saw Mit­suko's right hand. On the left side un­der her chin. Her hand held a gen­tly curved, ba­nana-​shaped blade that re­flect­ed dul­ly against the flash­light beam. It was a sick­le-the kind used to har­vest rice. And now its tip was stuck in Megu­mi's throat.....

Her left hand clutch­ing the back of Megu­mi's head, Mit­suko dug the sick­le in fur­ther. It made an­oth­er crunch­ing noise.

Megu­mi's throat be­gan to burn, but it didn't last very long. She couldn't say a word and lost con­scious­ness as her chest warmed over with blood. She ex­pired, un­able to form any idea of what it meant ex­act­ly to have a blade stuck in her throat. Be­trayed in the arms of Mit­suko, she died with­out any thoughts con­cern­ing Shuya Nana­hara or her fam­ily.

Mit­suko let go of Megu­mi, who col­lapsed on­to the floor right be­side her.

Mit­suko quick­ly turned off her flash­light and stood up. She wiped away the an­noy­ing tears (which she could pro­duce any time. It was in fact one of her spe­cial tal­ents). Hold­ing the sick­le in her right hand up to the moon­light, she whipped the blood off on­to the floor. The blood drops made a splat­ter­ing sound against the floor.

Not bad for starters, Mit­suko thought. She was hop­ing for a knife that was eas­ier to use, but it turned out a sick­le wasn't so bad. She hadn't been care­ful enough though in en­ter­ing a house that might al­ready be oc­cu­pied. From now on I'll have to be more care­ful....

Look­ing down at Megu­mi's corpse, she spoke slow­ly and qui­et­ly, "I'm sor­ry. I was al­so try­ing to kill you."

31 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART TWO

MID­DLE STAGE

31 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

14

Their first night broke in­to a bright dawn.

Shuya Nana­hara looked up and watched the blue sky grad­ual­ly turn­ing white through the thick­et. The branch­es and leaves of oak, camel­lia, some kind of cher­ry, and oth­er kinds of trees wove an in­tri­cate net around them and hid them.

Shuya re­al­ized sev­er­al things as he re­ex­am­ined the map. The is­land was rough­ly di­amond shaped. The hills rose up­ward on the south and north end of the is­land. They were now lo­cat­ed at the south side of the north­ern moun­tain, near the slope on its west side. Ac­cord­ing to the map co­or­di­nates, the lo­ca­tion seemed to be in sec­tor C=4. Along with con­tour lines, the map was de­tailed, in­clud­ing the res­iden­tial area and oth­er hous­es (in­di­cat­ed by light blue dots), var­ious build­ings (there wasn't much be­sides sym­bols in­di­cat­ing a med­ical clin­ic, a fire sta­tion, and a light­house-and then a town hall, a fish­er­men's coop, that was about it), and roads small and large, al­low­ing him to check where each area was ac­cord­ing to the po­si­tions of land for­ma­tions, roads, and scat­tered hous­es.

At night he'd al­ready con­firmed as soon as they were high­er up the hill that the map faith­ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed this is­land. Sil­hou­ettes of is­lands, large and small, were scat­tered across the black sea-and as Sakamochi had said, there was (al­most ex­act­ly west of the is­land) the sil­hou­ette of what ap­peared to be a guard ship with its lights turned off.

Im­me­di­ate­ly west of where Shuya and Noriko were, the grove end­ed abrupt­ly and was re­placed by a steep slope. There was a small field be­low, and be­yond it the slope con­tin­ued on to­ward the ocean. There was a small shack with a raised floor in the mid­dle of the field that they had passed through last night. See­ing the worn out wood­en Shin­to arch­way ten me­ters away from the shack, Shuya as­sumed it was a shrine (which was al­so marked on the map).

The front door was open, and there was no one in­side.

Just as he had with the oth­er hous­es, Shuya de­cid­ed against hid­ing in this shrine. There might be oth­ers do­ing the same thing...and giv­en how there was on­ly one en­trance, they'd be trapped the mo­ment they were found.

Shuya set­tled on a place sur­round­ed by shrub­bery rel­ative­ly near the sea, where they could lie down and rest. High­er up the hill the shrub­bery seemed thick­er, but he thought that would al­so at­tract oth­ers, and in case they met some­one who turned out to be an en­emy, he thought they were bet­ter off some­where not too steep, where it was hard to run. Af­ter all Noriko's leg was in­jured.

Shuya sat down against a tree, which was ap­prox­imate­ly ten cen­time­ters wide. Noriko sat im­me­di­ate­ly to his left. She leaned against the tree, her in­jured right leg limply stretched out. They were com­plete­ly ex­haust­ed by now. Noriko slow­ly closed her eyes.

Shuya dis­cussed their course of ac­tion with Noriko, but they couldn't come up with much.

He first thought of find­ing a boat to es­cape from the is­land. But he im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized how fu­tile that'd be. There was a guard ship out at sea and fur­ther­more-

Shuya slow­ly reached for his neck and touched the cold sur­face of "that thing." He'd got­ten used to the sen­sa­tion, but it felt heavy, as if it were their in­escapable fate it­self, chok­ing out their ex­is­tence.

Yes-that col­lar.

Once a spe­cial sig­nal is trans­mit­ted from the school, the bomb in­side the col­lar ex­plodes. Ac­cord­ing to rules this would hap­pen to any­one caught in a for­bid­den zone, but of course the same would ap­ply to any­one at­tempt­ing to es­cape by sea. In fact these col­lars ren­dered those guard ships un­nec­es­sary. Even if they man­aged to find a boat, it was im­pos­si­ble for them to es­cape as long as these col­lars were on their necks.

Then-the on­ly way out was for them to at­tack Sakamochi at the school and dis­able the col­lar locks. But even with that, the G=7 sec­tor where the school was lo­cat­ed had be­come a for­bid­den zone since the game start­ed, so it was im­pos­si­ble to ap­proach it. Be­sides, their lo­ca­tions were con­stant­ly be­ing mon­itored.

He con­tin­ued to think this through while the area was lit up by morn­ing. It would be dan­ger­ous for them to move in the sun­light. He thought they should wait again for night­fall.

But here again there was an­oth­er prob­lem, the time lim­it. "If no one dies with­in twen­ty-​four hours." The last time Shuya saw some­one die was when he left the school, which was over three hours ago. If ev­ery­one re­mained alive, in a lit­tle more than twen­ty hours ev­ery­one would be dead. Even if they made an at­tempt to es­cape, by night­fall it might be too late to get their act to­geth­er. Iron­ical­ly, more class­mates dy­ing would buy them more time to sur­vive. Shuya tried to shake this thought off.

They were trapped.

Shuya kept on wish­ing, if on­ly they could meet up with Shin­ji Mimu­ra. With his wide range of knowl­edge and ac­com­pa­ny­ing broad ex­per­tise to ap­ply it, a guy like Shin­ji could come up with a so­lu­tion to their sit­ua­tion.

He al­so kept on re­gret­ting not tak­ing the risk of wait­ing for Shin­ji af­ter Yoshio Aka­mat­su's at­tack. Did I re­al­ly do the right thing? Would I have been at­tacked as an en­emy there? Maybe Yoshio Aka­mat­su had been the on­ly ex­cep­tion.

No...that wasn't nec­es­sar­ily true. There might be a lot more "en­emies." It was im­pos­si­ble to de­ter­mine who your en­emy was in the first place. Who was still nor­mal and who wasn't any­more? But-maybe we're the ones who aren't be­ing nor­mal any­more? Maybe we're in­sane?

He felt like he was go­ing crazy.

In the end we have no choice but to sit here and see what'll hap­pen. But will we come up with a so­lu­tion? If that doesn't work, we can wait un­til night to look for Shin­ji Mimu­ra-but will we even be able to do that? Even though the is­land was small, with a di­am­eter of six kilo­me­ters, find­ing some­one un­der these con­di­tions wouldn't be easy. Be­sides, will we even have enough time be­tween night­fall and the "ex­pi­ra­tion time"?

Fur­ther­more-let's as­sume by some stroke of luck (what an ex­pres­sion) we end up hook­ing up with Shin­ji, or it's just the two of us, and we some­how man­age to es­cape , we would be con­sid­ered fugi­tives. Un­less we em­igrate some­where, we'll spend the rest of our lives as fugi­tives. And then one day we'll end up be­ing as­sas­si­nat­ed by a gov­ern­ment agent in some aban­doned al­ley, leav­ing our bod­ies for the fat mice that come out and nib­ble at our fin­gers-

In the end...you might be bet­ter off go­ing crazy.

Shuya thought of Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu. He was shak­en by Yoshi­to­ki's death, but maybe Yoshi­to­ki was bet­ter off in­so­far as he didn't have to ex­pe­ri­ence this in­san­ity. This sit­ua­tion that seemed ab­so­lute­ly hope­less.

We might be bet­ter off com­mit­ting sui­cide. Would Noriko agree to killing our­selves?

Shuya glanced over at her and for the first time close­ly ob­served Noriko's pro­file in the peace­ful, dawn­ing light.

She had well de­fined eye­brows, eye­lash­es soft against her closed eyes, a cute nose with its flat tip, and full lips. She was a very cute girl. He could see why Yoshi­to­ki had a crush on her.

Now there was sand stuck to her face, and her hair hang­ing slight­ly past her shoul­ders was frayed. And-of course the col­lar. The gaudy sil­ver col­lar wrapped around her neck as if she were a slave from an­cient times.

This damn game was tak­ing away all her at­trac­tive qual­ities.

Shuya then sud­den­ly felt a surge of in­cred­ible anger. And with it, he came to his sens­es.

We won't lose. We'll sur­vive. Not on­ly that, we'll fight back. It won't be some lame-​ass counter-​punch. They come with a straight right punch, and I'll wail back at them with a base­ball bat.

Noriko opened her eyes. Their eyes met and they stared at each oth­er. Then Noriko qui­et­ly said, "What's wrong?"

"Noth­ing...well, I was think­ing."

Shuya was em­bar­rassed, be­cause he'd been star­ing at Noriko, and she'd caught him do­ing this, so he just blurt­ed out, "I know this sounds weird, but I just hope you're not think­ing of com­mit­ting sui­cide."

Noriko looked down, her face am­bigu­ous, form­ing what might have been a smile. Then she said, "No way...al­though..."

"Al­though what?"

Noriko thought for a mo­ment. Then she con­tin­ued, "I might want to com­mit sui­cide if we were the on­ly ones left. Then at least you would be..."

As­ton­ished, Shuya shook his head. He shook it fran­ti­cal­ly. He had men­tioned the idea ran­dom­ly. He didn't ex­pect her to re­spond like this.

"Don't be ab­surd. Don't you even think of it. Look, you and me, we're to­geth­er to the very end. No mat­ter what. All right?"

Noriko smiled a lit­tle, of­fered her right hand, and touched Shuya's left hand. "Thanks," she said.

"Look, we're go­ing to make it. Don't even think of dy­ing."

Noriko smiled a lit­tle again. Then she said, "You haven't giv­en up then, Shuya?"

Shuya nod­ded with some force. "Of course not."

Noriko nod­ded and said, "I've al­ways thought this, but you've al­ways had this pos­itive force."

"Pos­itive force?"

Noriko smiled. "I don't know how to say this but you have this pos­itive at­ti­tude about liv­ing. Like right now you're to­tal­ly de­ter­mined to live. And..." She still had a faint smile on her face as she looked di­rect­ly at him. "That's what I re­al­ly like about you."

Shuya felt a tinge of em­bar­rass­ment and replied, "That's be­cause I'm an id­iot."

Then he said, "Even if we could es­cape, you know, I mean it wouldn't mat­ter to me, be­cause I don't have any par­ents. But, you...you won't be able to see your moth­er or your fa­ther-or your broth­er. Would you be all right with that?"

Noriko smiled a lit­tle again. "I can deal with that-I made up my mind ev­er since...this game be­gan." She paused, then added, "What about you?"

"What do you mean?"

Noriko con­tin­ued, "You won't be able to see her any­more..."

Shuya hes­itat­ed. It was true, Noriko knew a lot about Shuya. As Noriko her­self said, "I've been watch­ing you for so long now."

He'd be ly­ing if he said it didn't mat­ter. He'd been so in­to Kazu­mi Shin­tani-all this time. The thought of nev­er see­ing her again was-

But Shuya shook his head, "It's not a big deal."

He thought of adding, "It was just a one-​way crush any­way," but he was in­ter­rupt­ed by the sud­den blare of Sakamochi's voice ring­ing through the air.

31 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

15

"Good morn­ing ev­ery­one."

It was Sakamochi's voice. The speak­ers were im­pos­si­ble to lo­cate, but his voice came through loud and clear, aside from some metal­lic dis­tor­tion. The speak­ers were prob­ably in­stalled not on­ly in the school but al­so all over the is­land.

"This is your in­struc­tor Sakamochi. It is now 6 a.m. How are you all do­ing?"

Be­fore he could gri­mace, Shuya's jaw dropped, as­ton­ished by Sakamochi's cheer­ful tone.

"Well then, I will now an­nounce the names of your dead friends. First, Yoshio Aka­mat­su."

Shuya's cheeks stiff­ened. Yes, it was an­oth­er death, but the an­nounce­ment of Yoshio's name al­so meant more to Shuya.

Yoshio Aka­mat­su wasn't dead at that mo­ment. Then- was he killed in an at­tempt to kill some­one else? Or, no, did he re­main un­con­scious, ly­ing there...and then blown to bits by this nice col­lar we're wear­ing be­cause the school was now a "for­bid­den zone"?

Re­gard­less, the fact that Shuya had knocked him out didn't make him feel very good.

This line of thought im­me­di­ate­ly evap­orat­ed though, with the an­nounce­ment of oth­er names of the dead.

"Next, No. 9 Hi­roshi Kuron­aga, No. 10 Ryuhei Sasagawa, No. 17 Mit­su­ru Nu­mai, No. 21 Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to. And then, let's see, the girls. No. 3 Megu­mi Eto, No. 4 Saku­ra Ogawa, No. 5 Izu­mi Kanai, No. 14 Mayu­mi Ten­do."

This list of names meant that their chances of sur­vival were slight­ly in­creased, but this thought didn't even oc­cur to Shuya. He felt dizzy. The faces of his dead class­mates drift­ed through his head and dis­ap­peared. They were all killed, which meant that there were killers out there. That's right, un­less some of them had com­mit­ted sui­cide.

"It" was con­tin­uing. The game was un­de­ni­ably in progress. A long fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion, a crowd of peo­ple wear­ing black. A man in a black suit with a somber know-​it-​all face ad­dressed them, "Oh, Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa? You two, that's right, you're a lit­tle ear­ly. But you did just pass by your own graves right here. We carved in the num­ber you two share, No. 15. Don't wor­ry, we're of­fer­ing a spe­cial bonus."

"Good go­ing ev­ery­one. I'm very im­pressed. Now then, the for­bid­den zones. I will an­nounce their ar­eas and times. Take out your maps and mark them."

Still shocked by the num­ber of dead class­mates and an­gered by Sakamochi's tone of voice, Shuya nonethe­less re­luc­tant­ly pulled out his map.

"First, an hour from now. At sev­en. 7 a.m. in sec­tor J=2. Get out of J=2 by 7 a.m. Got that?"

J=2 was slight­ly to the west of the south­ern tip of the is­land.

"Next, in three hours, F=l at 9 a.m."

F=l was on the west shore of the is­land, but it was a re­mote area in the south.

"Next, five hours lat­er. H=8 at 11 a.m."

Most of the res­iden­tial area on the east­ern shore was in H=8.

"That's all for now. Now then, I want you all to do your best to­day-"

Shuya and Noriko's lo­ca­tion wasn't in Sakamochi's for­bid­den zones. Sakamochi claimed the zones were ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed. In any case, they'd made the right move avoid­ing the res­iden­tial area. But their lo­ca­tion could be in­clud­ed in the next an­nounce­ment.

"Saku­ra and..." As Noriko spoke, Shuya turned to her. "Saku­ra and Kazuhiko's names were men­tioned."

"Yeah..." Shuya moaned deep down in his throat. "I won­der if...they killed them­selves."

Noriko looked down at her feet. "I don't know. But they must have been to­geth­er, know­ing those two, un­til the very end. They some­how man­aged to meet each oth­er."

Shuya had seen Saku­ra pass a note to Kazuhiko. He and Noriko were on­ly mak­ing hope­ful ob­ser­va­tions, though. For all they knew, the two might have been killed sep­arate­ly, in sep­arate places by in­sane class­mates.

Dis­miss­ing the im­age of her slip­ping the note to him as their hands touched, Shuya pulled out his stu­dent list from his pock­et. It came with the map in the day pack. It was in bad taste, but he had to mark the in­for­ma­tion down. He took out his pen, and then as he was about to cross out the names-he de­cid­ed not to. It was just too...it was just too aw­ful.

In­stead he en­tered a small check mark by the names. He al­so in­clud­ed Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu and Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi. Shuya felt like he was turn­ing in­to the man in the black suit from the vi­sion he just had. "Let's see, you, and al­so you. And you. What's your cof­fin size? It's a tight fit, but we can of­fer our pop­ular No. 8 mod­el to you at a spe­cial­ly re­duced price."

Enough. In any case, three out of four of Kazuo Kiriya­ma's gang are dead. Hi­roshi Kuron­aga, Ryuhei Sasagawa, and Mit­su­ru Nu­mai. The on­ly ones who weren't men­tioned were Sho Tsukio­ka-nick­named "Zu­ki." He was a lit­tle weird. And Kazuo Kiriya­ma him­self.

He re­called Mit­su­ru Nu­mai's smug face when Kazuo Kiriya­ma left the class­room. Shuya had as­sumed Kazuo would or­ga­nize his gang and at­tempt an es­cape. So what did these re­sults mean? Maybe, even though they'd agreed to meet some­where, they turned sus­pi­cious and turned against each oth­er? Then Sho Tsukio­ka and Kazuo man­aged to es­cape-would that mean Sho Tsukio­ka and Kazuo were still to­geth­er? No, some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent might have hap­pened. Shuya had no idea.

Then he re­called the faint sound of guns go­ing off. He'd on­ly heard it once. If that had been gun­fire-then which one of these ten did it kill?

His thoughts were in­ter­rupt­ed all of a sud­den by a rustling sound. Noriko's face stiff­ened. Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly stuck the pen and list in­to his pock­et.

Shuya lis­tened close­ly. The sound con­tin­ued. In fact-it was ap­proach­ing them.

He whis­pered to Noriko, "Be qui­et."

Shuya grabbed his day pack. They had to be able to move at any mo­ment, so he'd put ev­ery­thing he need­ed in it. He left some of his clothes in his sports bag, but it wasn't a big deal to toss it. Noriko had al­so packed her bags the same way.

He hoist­ed the two day packs on his left shoul­der. He of­fered Noriko his hands to help her up. They wait­ed in a crouched po­si­tion.

Shuya pulled out his knife. His right hand held it in a re­verse grip. I might know how to use a gui­tar pick, he thought, but I don't know a thing about how to use this.

The rustling be­came in­creas­ing­ly loud­er. It was prob­ably on­ly a few me­ters away.

He was over­whelmed by the same ten­sion he felt out­side the school. He held Noriko's shoul­der with his left hand and pulled her back. He stood up and stepped back. The soon­er the bet­ter. As soon as pos­si­ble!

They made their way through the bush­es and came out on­to a foot trail. It wind­ed up the hill. Trees loomed above them, branch­es bunched to­geth­er, and the sky was blue.

Still hold­ing Noriko, Shuya tread­ed back­wards with her for sev­er­al me­ters along the trail. The rustling sound con­tin­ued in the bush­es they'd just left. The sound grew and then-

Shuya's eyes widened.

A white cat jumped out of the bush­es and land­ed on the trail. It was scrag­gly, and its hair was frayed, but in any case, that's what it was-a cat.

Shuya and Noriko looked at each oth­er. "It's a cat," she said and broke in­to a smile. Shuya al­so grinned. Then the cat turned to them as if it had fi­nal­ly no­ticed them.

It stared at them for a while and then ran up to them.

Shuya re­turned his knife in­to the sheath while Noriko crouched, cau­tious­ly bent her in­jured leg, and of­fered her hands to the cat. The cat jumped in­to her hands and nuz­zled her feet. Noriko slipped her hands un­der the cat's front feet and hugged it to­wards her.

"Poor kit­ty. Look how thin it is." Noriko said as she pursed her lips to­wards the cat as if to kiss it. The cat re­spond­ed en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, purring, me­ow.

"It must be a do­mes­tic cat. It's so friend­ly."

"I don't know."

The gov­ern­ment had re­lo­cat­ed all the res­idents of this is­land for the sake of this game. (Be­cause the Pro­gram was a se­cret op­er­ation un­til it was over, they must not have been in­formed.) As Noriko said, maybe this cat had been owned by some­one here and aban­doned af­ter its own­er left. There weren't any hous­es in the area, so did it get lost in the hills? Shuya won­dered as he ca­su­al­ly looked away from Noriko. He turned...

...in shock.

There was some­one wear­ing a school coat ten me­ters away, stand­ing on the trail as if his feet were glued to it. Al­though he was of medi­um height, like Shuya, he had a sol­id build from his train­ing on the hand­ball team. His skin was tanned, and he had a buzz cut. His hair stood up at the front. It was Tat­sumichi Oki (Male Stu­dent No. 3).

31 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

16

Noriko fol­lowed Shuya's eyes and turned around. Her face sud­den­ly grew tense. That's right...what was go­ing on with Tat­sumichi? Was he an en­emy or not?

Tat­sumichi Oki stood there, star­ing at them. Shuya felt his field of vi­sion grow nar­row from the ten­sion-the way it might in a speed­ing car-but in the cor­ner of his eye he could still make out the large hatch­et in Tat­sumichi's right hand.

Shuya re­flex­ive­ly raised his hand to the knife tucked in his belt.

That set it off. Tat­sumichi's hand, the one hold­ing the hatch­et, twitched, and then he be­gan run­ning to­wards them.

Shuya shoved Noriko, who was still hold­ing the cat, in­to the bush­es.

Tat­sumichi was al­ready right in front of him.

Shuya quick­ly lift­ed up his day pack. The hatch­et went right in­to it, split­ting it open so its con­tents spilled to the ground. Wa­ter sprayed out of the bag from the bro­ken wa­ter bot­tle. The blade reached Shuya's arm. A sear­ing pain ran un­der his skin.

He tossed down the torn day pack and leaped back to gain some dis­tance. Tat­sumichi's face was so wound up the whites of his eyes formed cir­cles around his pupils.

Shuya couldn't be­lieve it. Yes, they were in a dire sit­ua­tion, and Shuya had been for a mo­ment sus­pi­cious too, but how could he?...How could that cheer­ful, nice guy, Tat­sumichi, do such a thing?

Tat­sumichi quick­ly glanced over to where Noriko was, in the bush­es. Fol­low­ing his gaze, Shuya looked over at Noriko too. Noriko's face and lips froze at Tat­sumichi's glance. The cat had al­ready gone off else­where.

Sud­den­ly Tat­sumichi turned to Shuya and swung his hatch­et side­ways.

Shuya met the blow with the knife he'd pulled out from his belt. Un­for­tu­nate­ly it was still in­side its leather sheath, but in any case, there was a lock­ing sound. He man­aged to stop the blow about five cen­time­ters away from his cheek. Shuya could see the blue rip­ple on the hatch­et blade, prob­ably formed when it had been forged.

Be­fore Tat­sumichi could swing back, Shuya tossed his knife out and grabbed Tat­sumichi's right arm, which was hold­ing the hatch­et. But Tat­sumichi forced a swing, which al­though slow man­aged to hit the right side of Shuya's head. Some of the slight­ly wavy long hair above his right ear fell, and a sharp tear ran through his ear­lobe. It didn't hurt much. A sil­ly, in­ap­pro­pri­ate thought crossed his mind: well, it's no big deal, Shin­ji had his pierced, af­ter all.

Tat­sumichi switched the hatch­et from his right hand to his left but be­fore he could swing at Shuya again, Shuya swept his left leg un­der Tat­sumichi's feet. Tat­sumichi's legs swayed, all right now, fall!

But he man­aged to stay up, teetered, and then spun around. He fell on top of Shuya. Shuya moved back in­to the shrub­bery. The sound of crushed branch­es sur­round­ed them.

Shuya con­tin­ued mov­ing back. Forced by Tat­sumichi's awe­some strength, he was now prac­ti­cal­ly run­ning back­wards. Noriko's face was van­ish­ing from his sight. In this un­re­al sit­ua­tion, an­oth­er ab­surd thought crossed his mind. He re­called Lit­tle League prac­tice. Shuya Nana­hara, back­wards-​run­ning cham­pi­on, yeah!

Then his feet felt fun­ny.

He sud­den­ly re­called how there was a steep slope to­wards the field with the shrine.

I'm falling!

The two of them tum­bled down the slope cov­ered with shrub­bery. The clear ear­ly morn­ing sky and green­ery spun around and around. But he still man­aged to hold on­to Tat­sumichi's wrist.

He felt as if they'd fall­en from a great height, but it was prob­ably on­ly ten me­ters or so. Their bod­ies crashed with a loud thump, and they were still. The area was bathed in sun­light. They'd fall­en in­to the field.

Shuya was crushed un­der Tat­sumichi. He had to get up be­fore Tat­sumichi could!

But that was when Shuya felt some­thing strange. Al­though Tat­sumichi had come at him with the force of an air com­pres­sor, the strength in his arms had com­plete­ly gone. They'd gone limp.

His face un­der the low­er part of Tat­sumichi's chest, Shuya saw why, as he looked up.

Right above him, the hatch­et was lodged in­to Tat­sumichi's face. Half of the blade stuck out from his face like the top lay­er of choco­late on a Christ­mas cake. The hatch­et had land­ed on his fore­head, neat­ly split open the left eye­ball (a gooey liq­uid leaked out with his blood), and a pale blue light re­flect­ed off the blade in­side his mouth.

Tat­sumichi still held on­to the hatch­et, but Shuya was the one hold­ing his wrists. Shuya felt a hor­ri­ble sen­sa­tion run­ning at the speed of light from Tat­sumichi's face to his wrists.

As if trac­ing the course of this sen­sa­tion, blood slid down the blade, flow­ing from Tat­sumichi on­to Shuya's hands hold­ing Tat­sumichi's wrists. Shuya let out a low groan, re­leased his hands, and got out from un­der­neath Tat­sumichi's body. Tat­sumichi's body rolled over, face up, his hor­rif­ic dead face thrust in­to the morn­ing light.

Huff­ing and puff­ing, Shuya felt a numb urge to vom­it.

The in­com­pa­ra­ble hor­ror of Tat­sumichi's face wasn't a triv­ial mat­ter, but for Shuya some­thing even more im­por­tant con­cerned him­self. Yes. He had killed some­one. Worse yet, a fel­low class­mate.

It was no use con­vinc­ing him­self it was an ac­ci­dent. Af­ter all-he had done ev­ery­thing he could to de­flect the blade, and there­fore di­rect it to­wards Tat­sumichi by twist­ing Tat­sumichi's wrists as far back as pos­si­ble.

He felt in­cred­ibly nau­seous.

But Shuya gulped and held back the urge to vom­it. He lift­ed his head and looked up at the slope he'd just tum­bled down.

He couldn't see be­yond the shrub­bery cov­er­ing the slope. He'd left Noriko alone. That's right, the im­por­tant thing now was to pro­tect Noriko. He had no time to puke. He had to hur­ry back to Noriko, Shuya told him­self as if these thoughts would calm him down. He stood up and stared down at Tat­sumichi's face and the hatch­et for a while.

He hes­itat­ed but then pursed his lips to­geth­er and pried Tat­sumichi's fin­gers loose from the han­dle of the hatch­et that split his face. He couldn't just leave Tat­sumichi like this. Of course he couldn't bury him-but Tat­sumichi's hatch­et face was just too much. He couldn't bear it. He grabbed the han­dle and tried to pull the hatch­et out of Tat­sumichi's face.

Tat­sumichi's face was stuck to it though as it came up with the hatch­et. The hatch­et was lodged in so deeply, it was stuck.

Shuya took a deep breath. Oh God.

Then he thought about it. No. What's this about God? Ms. An­no was a de­vot­ed Chris­tian but no thanks to her faith in God she end­ed up get­ting raped by Sakamochi. Ah, praise the Lord.

Shuya felt an­oth­er surge of anger.

He clenched his teeth and knelt be­side Tat­sumichi's head and put his trem­bling left hand on his class­mate's fore­head. With his right hand he pulled on the hatch­et, which made a hor­ri­ble spurt­ing sound as blood sprayed out of Tat­sumichi's face, and the hatch­et came loose.

He felt as if he were in a night­mare. Cracked in the mid­dle, Tat­sumichi's head was now asym­met­ri­cal. It looked too un­re­al. It looked like a plas­tic fake. Shuya re­al­ized for the first time in his life how mal­leable and frag­ile the hu­man body was.

He gave up try­ing to close Tat­sumichi's eyes. His left eye­ball and eye­lid was split, the eye­lid shriv­eled and swollen so bad­ly it couldn't be shut. His right eye was prob­ably man­age­able, but who'd want a wink­ing corpse? It was in bad taste giv­en the cir­cum­stances.

He felt sick again.

But he stood up again and turned around. To get back to Noriko he'd have to take the long way around up the foot trail.

Shuya's eyes opened wide again though now be­cause...

...there was a boy wear­ing glass­es and a school coat in the mid­dle of the field-the male class rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi.

And this rep­re­sen­ta­tive was hold­ing a pis­tol.

30 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

17

Be­hind his sil­ver-​framed glass­es, the class rep­re­sen­ta­tive's eyes met Shuya's. His hair that was al­ways so neat­ly part­ed at a 7:3 ra­tio was now a com­plete mess. The lens­es of his glass­es looked smudged, and the eyes be­hind them were blood­shot and wide open the way Tat­sumichi's eyes were. His face was in­cred­ibly pale, as it was in­side the class­room, once again re­sem­bling a Warhol print. It didn't look hu­man any­more.

As the gun flinched, Shuya twist­ed his body and ducked back­wards. With an ex­plo­sive pop, the gun set off a small flame. Some­thing hot grazed the top of his head. Of course he might have just imag­ined it. Any­way, the bul­let missed him.

Still on his back, Shuya didn't have time to think. He just tried to re­treat. The tall grass made a rustling sound un­der his back.

He was too close. He couldn't es­cape. Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi was on­ly sev­er­al me­ters away from Shuya, aim­ing di­rect­ly at his chest.

Shuya's face grew as stiff as a plas­ter sculp­ture. More than pro­tect­ing Noriko, more than any­thing, it was re­al fear that caught him now, welling up in­side. The next tiny lead bul­let that gun spits out will kill me...kill...me!

"Stop it!" An­oth­er voice yelled.

Ky­oichi sud­den­ly turned in a di­ag­onal di­rec­tion. Shuya al­so fol­lowed Ky­oichi's glance-

A large fig­ure stood in the shade of the shrine. Buzzed hair, no, the head was prac­ti­cal­ly bald, the promi­nent scars above his brows, the tough face of a thug. It was Shogo Kawa­da (Male Stu­dent No. 5). He held a pump-​ac­tion shot­gun (a sawed-​off Rem­ing­ton M31).

With­out any warn­ing Ky­oichi shot at Shogo. Shuya saw Shogo quick­ly duck. As he heard the ex­plo­sion from the shot­gun that Shogo held in his kneel­ing po­si­tion, sparks flew from the muz­zle like a flame throw­er, and the next mo­ment Ky­oichi's right arm was gone. Bloody mist shot in­to the air. Ky­oichi gazed blankly at the half-​sleeve of his school uni­form. The rest of his sleeve, from his el­bow to the hand that was hold­ing the gun, was now ly­ing on the grass. Shogo quick­ly pumped the shot­gun and load­ed the next shot. A red plas­tic shell flew out to the side af­ter spit­ting out its pel­lets.

"AIEEEE!"

Ky­oichi screamed like an an­imal as he sud­den­ly re­al­ized what had hap­pened. Shuya thought he would fall to his knees.

But he didn't. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­stead ran for his arm. He pried the gun loose from his right hand with his left hand. Like a one-​man ba­ton re­lay. Great. Shuya once again felt like he was watch­ing a bad hor­ror flick. Or bet­ter yet, read­ing a bad hor­ror nov­el.

Damn, this was bad.

"Stop it!" Shogo shout­ed, but Ky­oichi re­fused and point­ed his gun at Shogo.

Shogo shot again. Ky­oichi's body bent over in­to a tri­an­gle shape, with his waist point­ing out like a long jumper, but blown back­wards. He land­ed feet first, and as if in time-​lapse pho­tog­ra­phy the next mo­ment he was falling on the ground face up. He sank in­to the over­grown grass and re­mained still.

Shuya scram­bled to his feet.

He could see Ky­oichi's body be­tween the blades of grass. There was a gap­ing hole in the stom­ach of the school coat, and the con­tents in­side looked like a trash bin in a sausage fac­to­ry.

Shogo hard­ly paid any at­ten­tion to the corpse and quick­ly ap­proached Shuya with his shot­gun. He pumped the shot­gun again and eject­ed the emp­ty shell.

Shuya was over­whelmed by the quick suc­ces­sion of events and the hor­rif­ic deaths of Tat­sumichi and Ky­oichi, but he man­aged to say be­tween heavy breaths, "Hold on, I'm-"

Shogo stopped be­hind Ky­oichi's body and said, "Don't move. Drop your weapon." Shuya fi­nal­ly re­al­ized he was still hold­ing the hatch­et.

He did as he was told. The blood-​drenched hatch­et fell to the ground with a thud.

That was when Noriko ap­peared, stand­ing where the trail nose dived. Drag­ging her leg, she had made her way through the thick­et, fol­low­ing Tat­sumichi and Shuya af­ter they tum­bled down the slope. (Shuya then re­al­ized that less than a minute had elapsed since his con­fronta­tion with Tat­sumichi Oki.) She'd turned pale from the gun­fire, but now she was hold­ing her breath at the sight of the sprawled out corpses of Tat­sumichi and Ky­oichi while Shogo and Shuya faced each oth­er.

Shogo im­me­di­ate­ly no­ticed Noriko and point­ed his shot­gun at her. Noriko's body stiff­ened. "Stop it!" Shuya shout­ed. "Noriko is with me! We don't want to fight at all!"

Shogo turned slow­ly to Shuya. He had a strange, blank look.

Shuya shout­ed at Noriko, "Noriko! Shogo saved me. Shogo isn't an en­emy!"

Shogo looked at Noriko and then re­turned his gaze to Shuya. Then he low­ered the muz­zle.

Af­ter re­main­ing frozen for a while, Noriko raised her hand to in­di­cate her hands were emp­ty, then near­ly slid down the steep trail. She stag­gered, drag­ging her right leg, and as she drew her­self up next to Shuya they both looked at Shogo.

Shogo stared back at them as if they were a pair of Ar­madil­lo twins. Shuya no­ticed that the stub­ble on his cheek and chin had grown a lit­tle.

"First, let me ex­plain," Shogo fi­nal­ly said, "I had no choice but to shoot Ky­oichi. You un­der­stand?"

Look­ing over at Ky­oichi's body, Shuya con­sid­ered Shogo's words and re­al­ized that maybe, maybe the rep­re­sen­ta­tive had to­tal­ly lost con­trol. He might have seen me beat Tat­sumichi Oki and got­ten the wrong im­pres­sion. Noriko wasn't around so it would have been nat­ural.

As Shogo said, Shuya had no right to fault Shogo for his ac­tions. If Shogo didn't kill Ky­oichi, then Ky­oichi would have killed Shuya. Af­ter all-he had al­so killed some­one. Tat­sumichi Oki.

He looked back at Shogo.

"Yeah, I know. Thanks. You saved me."

Shogo shrugged. "I was just try­ing to stop Ky­oichi, but I guess I end­ed up do­ing that as well."

Adrenaline was still rush­ing through his body, but Shuya man­aged to blurt out, "I'm so glad. I'm so re­lieved we've met some­one else who's nor­mal."

In fact Shuya was sur­prised. Back in the class­room he thought if any­one was go­ing to play the game it'd be Shogo. But not on­ly was he not play­ing along, he'd man­aged to save Shuya's life.

Shogo stared at them for a while, as if he were think­ing through some­thing. Then he said, "So you two are to­geth­er?"

Shuya raised his brow. "That's what I said."

Then Shogo asked, "Why are you two to­geth­er?"

Shuya and Noriko looked at each oth­er. Then they looked at Shogo. Shuya was in the mid­dle of say­ing, "What do you mean..." but then stopped as Noriko asked the same ques­tion, but she stopped in mid-​sen­tence too, re­al­iz­ing Shuya was ask­ing the same thing. Shuya and Noriko looked at each oth­er again. Shuya thought Noriko was giv­ing him the green light to speak first, but then as soon as he be­gan speak­ing, his words over­lapped with hers, "That's be­cause..." Once again Shuya and Noriko ex­changed glances. They end­ed up fac­ing Shogo with­out say­ing a word.

A quick grin ran across Shogo's face. If he was smil­ing, it was the first time Shuya had ev­er seen him smile.

Shogo said, "All right, all right. In any case, we have to hide out. We don't want to be stand­ing out here in the open."

29 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

18

Yuko Saka­ki (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 9) was wad­ing through the thick­et. It was dan­ger­ous for her to run so reck­less­ly, but she had to es­cape. That was her pri­or­ity.

She played back the scene she had just wit­nessed in her head. The in­ci­dent she saw from the bush­es. Tat­sumichi Oki's head split wide open. Shuya Nana­hara yank­ing out the hatch­et from his head.

She was hor­ri­fied. Shuya Nana­hara had killed Tat­sumichi Oki. He did it flaw­less­ly.

Un­til Shuya pulled out the hatch­et from Tat­sumichi's head, Yuko was so trans­fixed she couldn't take her eyes off the scene. But as soon as she saw the red on the hatch­et, fear took over. She grabbed her day pack and held her mouth shut be­cause it would have shrieked on its own. Tears welled up in her eyes.

The sound of gun­fire fol­lowed be­hind her, but she could hard­ly hear it giv­en the state she was in.

29 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

19

Af­ter Shuya and Noriko re­turned to the thick­et where they'd set­tled last night and picked up their bags, Shogo re­marked their view was no good here. Shuya thought he'd been thor­ough choos­ing this lo­ca­tion, but Shogo seemed ab­nor­mal­ly adept in this en­vi­ron­ment, so they did as he said and moved to­wards the moun­tain. The dirty cat was gone.

"Hold on. I'm go­ing to find Ky­oichi's and Tat­sumichi's bags."

Shogo left them in the near­by shrubs. Noriko sat down to rest, and Shuya sat next to her. He was hold­ing the re­volver (Smith & Wes­son .38 Chief's Spe­cial) Shogo had giv­en him af­ter re­triev­ing it from Ky­oichi's body. It made him feel un­com­fort­able, and he didn't want to car­ry it- he'd seen that grotesque one-​man ba­ton hand off-but he man­aged to hold it.

"Shuya, here."

She held out a pink band-​aid. She must have found it in the day pack Tat­sumichi Oki's hatch­et had torn through. Shuya touched his right ear with his left hand. The bleed­ing seemed to have stopped, but he felt a sting­ing pain.

"Hold still." Noriko drew near him and opened the band-​aid seal.

As she care­ful­ly wrapped it around his ear­lobe, she said, "I won­der why so many of us came here. Five stu­dents, if we in­clude Shogo and us."

Shuya looked back at Noriko. The thought didn't even oc­cur to him thanks to all those ac­tion scenes, but she was right.

He shook his head.

"I don't know. We came here to get as far away as pos­si­ble, right? We avoid­ed climb­ing the hill and avoid­ed the shore, where there's too much vis­ibil­ity. Maybe we were all think­ing the same thing and end­ed up at the same place, think­ing we'd be safe here, in­clud­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tive- and Tat­sumichi."

The mo­ment he men­tioned Tat­sumichi, he felt a nau­seous pain in his stom­ach again. His face split down the mid­dle, left and right out of align­ment like a peanut. And this corpse was ly­ing right near­by. Ladies and gen­tle­men, the mag­nif­icent Peanut Man....

Along with the nau­sea, Shuya's thoughts which had been numbed by the adrenaline rush of fight­ing fi­nal­ly grew clear­er and the sen­sa­tion of numb­ness fi­nal­ly sub­sid­ed. He was com­ing back to his sens­es.

"Shuya. You're pale. Are you okay?" Noriko asked, but Shuya couldn't re­spond. A shiv­er ran through his body, and he be­gan to trem­ble. His body shook as if it were vi­brat­ing. His teeth chat­tered un­con­trol­lably as if danc­ing a crazy tap dance.

"What's wrong?" Noriko put her hand on his shoul­der.

Shuya an­swered, his teeth still chat­ter­ing, "I'm scared."

Shuya twist­ed his neck to the left and looked at Noriko. She glanced back at him with a look of con­cern.

"I'm scared. I'm scared shit­less. I just killed some­one."

Noriko looked in­to Shuya's eyes for a while, then she cau­tious­ly moved her in­jured right leg and sat di­ag­onal­ly in front of Shuya with her knees bent. Then she gen­tly opened her arms and wrapped them around Shuya's shoul­ders. Her cheek touched his trem­bling cheeks. He felt her warmth, and his nos­trils which had been over­whelmed with the smell of blood could de­tect a slight whiff of some­thing like cologne or sham­poo.

Shuya was sur­prised, but he was grate­ful for the com­fort­ing warmth and smell and sat still, hug­ging his knees.

It re­mind­ed him of the time his moth­er hugged him as a child be­fore she died. As he looked at the col­lar of Noriko's sailor suit, he had a fleet­ing im­age of his moth­er. She spoke clear­ly, al­ways so full of en­er­gy. Even as a child he thought she was a stylish moth­er. Her face, oh man, looked a lot like Kazu­mi Shin­tani's. She was al­ways ex­chang­ing smiles with his fa­ther who, with his mus­tache, didn't seem like your typ­ical salary­man. (Wrapped in her arms, he would hear her say, "Your fa­ther works in law and helps peo­ple in trou­ble. It's a very im­por­tant job in this coun­try.") Some day I'm go­ing to mar­ry some­one like my mom and then I'll be smil­ing all the time the way Mom and Dad are. Their smiles made him feel that way.

The trem­bling grad­ual­ly sub­sid­ed and dis­ap­peared.

"Are you all right?" Noriko asked.

"I think so. Thanks."

Noriko slow­ly let him go.

Af­ter a while, Shuya said, "You smell nice."

Noriko smiled bash­ful­ly. "Oh God, I didn't take a bath yes­ter­day."

"No, you re­al­ly do smell nice."

A smile flashed across Noriko's face again, when the bush­es rus­tled. Shuya shield­ed her with his left arm and held the Smith & Wes­son.

"Don't shoot. It's me."

Part­ing the thick bush­es, Shogo en­tered. Shuya low­ered the gun.

Shogo car­ried two day packs along with the shot­gun slung over his shoul­der on a sling. He took out a small card­board box and tossed it over to Shuya.

He caught it in mid-​air and opened it. The gold­en bot­toms of bul­lets in neat rows. Five bul­lets were miss­ing like cav­ities.

"Bul­lets for your gun. Load it," Shogo said, then put his shot­gun by his side and pulled at some worn out fish­ing wire. He pulled at one end tight­ly and Shuya saw how the wire went straight in­to the deep end of the bush­es. Shogo then took out a small knife from his pock­et and snapped the blade out of its han­dle. Shogo's sup­plied weapon was a shot­gun, so, Shuya fig­ured, the knife he must have brought on his own.

Shogo made a notch with the knife in­to a near­by tree trunk no thick­er than a can of Coke. Then he fit the taught wire snug­ly in­to the notch and cut off the ex­cess. He tied the re­main­ing wire around the tree trunk in the same man­ner.

"What are you do­ing?" Shuya asked.

"This?" Shogo put away his knife and an­swered, "You might call it a prim­itive alarm sys­tem. We're at the cen­ter. The wire runs around us in a cir­cle with a twen­ty me­ter ra­dius. The wire's dou­bled. The mo­ment it catch­es some­one, this will be pulled and fall from the tree. Don't wor­ry, the in­trud­er won't even no­tice. It'll pro­vide us with a warn­ing."

"Where did you find that wire?"

Shogo tilt­ed his head slight­ly.

"There was a lit­tle gen­er­al sup­ply store. I want­ed to get my hands on some things, so that was my first des­ti­na­tion. That's where I found it."

Shuya looked as­ton­ished. Of course. No mat­ter how small this is­land was there had to be at least one sup­ply store. But the thought nev­er even crossed his mind. Of course it wouldn't have been pos­si­ble for him to wan­der around giv­en how he had to look af­ter Noriko.

Shogo sat down where he could face both Shuya and Noriko. He be­gan sort­ing through a day pack that be­longed ei­ther to Tat­sumichi or Ky­oichi. Tak­ing out a bot­tle of wa­ter and some bread rolls, he said, "How about some break­fast?"

Still hug­ging his knees, Shuya shook his head. He had no ap­petite what­so­ev­er.

"What's wrong? You feel nau­seous from killing Tat­sumichi?"

Shogo ex­am­ined Shuya's face and said ca­su­al­ly, "Don't let it get to you. Let's say each per­son kills one per­son. The game's like a tour­na­ment. It's forty-​two, no, forty stu­dents, so if you kill five or six, then you'll be the win­ner. Four or five more, that's all you'll need."

Shuya knew he was jok­ing, but no, it was all the more of­fen­sive be­cause he was jok­ing. He glared at Shogo.

Sens­ing Shuya's anger, Shogo drew back.

"Sor­ry man, I was just kid­ding."

Shuya asked in a hos­tile tone, "So you don't feel nau­seous? Or did you al­ready kill some­one be­fore Ky­oichi?"

Shogo mere­ly shrugged.

"Well, this time, it was my first."

It was a strange way to put it, Shuya thought, but he had no idea what was so odd about it. He felt con­fused. If Shogo was the ru­mored delin­quent he was said to be then he might be bold in a way Shuya could nev­er be.

Shuya shook his head and changed the sub­ject. "You know, there's some­thing I don't get."

Shogo raised his brow. The ug­ly scar above his left brow moved with it. "What's that?"

"The rep­re­sen­ta­tive... Ky­oichi..."

"Hey." Shogo point­ed his chin up at him to cut him off. "I thought you un­der­stood. I didn't have any choice. Are you say­ing I should have let him kill me? I'm not Je­sus Christ, okay? Be­sides, I can't be res­ur­rect­ed, al­though I've nev­er tried it out...."

"No, that's not what I meant."

As Shuya con­tin­ued, he won­dered whether Shogo was kid­ding again. Was Shogo Kawa­da the jok­ing type?

"I think the rea­son Ky­oichi tried to shoot me was that he saw me kill...Tat­sumichi up close. I killed Tat­sumichi. And that was be­cause he at­tacked me-"

Shogo gave a light nod.

"So it was on­ly nat­ural that Ky­oichi would try to kill me."

"That's true. Maybe. But even so I-"

"No," Shuya in­ter­rupt­ed Shogo. "For­get about that. What I mean is that Tat­sumichi...Tat­sumichi came af­ter me even though I didn't do a thing. And be­sides, I was with Noriko. Why did he have to at­tack us?"

Shogo shrugged and put his wa­ter bot­tle and bread by his feet.

"Tat­sumichi was up for it. That's all. What's to un­der­stand?"

"No, well...the­oret­ical­ly, yes, but...I just don't get it. How Tat­sumichi could-"

Shogo cut off Shuya's hes­itant words, "There's no need to un­der­stand."

"Huh?"

Shogo's lips twist­ed slight­ly as if grin­ning, then he went on, "I'm on­ly a trans­fer stu­dent, so I don't know much about you and your class­mates. But what do you know about Tat­sumichi? Maybe there's some­one re­al­ly ill in his fam­ily, so he felt he had to sur­vive. Or maybe he was just be­ing self­ish. Or maybe he went in­sane from fear and lost his ca­pac­ity for rea­son. Or there's even this pos­si­bil­ity: you were with her. He might have thought you teamed up with her. How can he tell whether he's in­vit­ed? You and her might have de­cid­ed he's a threat. Or if you were ac­tu­al­ly play­ing the game, then you could use this same ex­cuse to kill him. Hey, did you pro­voke him at all?"

"No..." Shuya stopped, re­call­ing how he'd re­flex­ive­ly touched his knife when he faced Tat­sumichi. Shuya him­self had al­so been afraid. He'd been afraid of Tat­sumichi.

"Was there some­thing?"

"I touched my knife." He looked at Shogo. "But that's not enough to-"

Shogo shook his head. "Oh yeah it is, Shuya. Tat­sumichi might have thought, I have to beat you, since you're hold­ing a weapon. Ev­ery­one's fuse in this game is pret­ty short."

He said, as if to con­clude the top­ic, "But in the end Tat­sumichi was up for it. That's the best way to un­der­stand it. Look, there's no need to un­der­stand. What it comes down to is this. Once your op­po­nent at­tacks you with a weapon, you don't hes­itate. Oth­er­wise you'll die. You can't af­ford to think about it. The first thing you do is an­tic­ipate your op­po­nent. You shouldn't trust peo­ple too much in this game."

Shuya took a deep breath. Did Tat­sumichi re­al­ly want to kill me? Then again, as Shogo said, it might be point­less to think too much about it.

Shuya looked up at Shogo again.

"That's right."

"What?"

"That's what I for­got to ask."

"So what is it? Come on."

Shuya con­tin­ued, "Why are you here with us?"

Shogo raised his eye­brows. He licked his lips.

"Good point. I might be against you too."

"That's not what I mean." Shuya shook his head. "You saved me. No, you al­so risked your life try­ing to stop Ky­oichi. I'm not sus­pect­ing you."

"Well, you got it wrong, Shuya. You don't seem to un­der­stand this game yet."

"...what do you mean?"

Shogo con­tin­ued, "In or­der to sur­vive, be­ing in a group gives you an ad­van­tage this game."

Shuya con­sid­ered this, then nod­ded. He was right. You could take turns be­ing on the look­out, and you were stronger in case of an at­tack.

"So?"

"Think about it." Shogo nudged the shot­gun rest­ing on his knees with his hand. "Do you think I was risk­ing much to stop Ky­oichi? Do you think or­der­ing him to stop would have ac­tu­al­ly stopped him? Maybe I was al­ready plan­ning on killing Ky­oichi. Did I re­al­ly have to kill him? Ky­oichi nev­er struck me as the type who'd at­tract a group, but maybe I or­dered him to stop just to put on an act for you guys to join me. Wouldn't it be in my best in­ter­ests to join you guys and then kill you off lat­er?"

Shuya stared at Shogo's face, sur­prised by this se­ries of clear and log­ical ex­pla­na­tions. It was true Shogo was a year old­er than them. But he talked like an adult-a wise, ma­ture adult. In this sense he re­sem­bled Shin­ji Mimu­ra.

Shuya shook his head.

"There'll be no end to it if I start get­ting sus­pi­cious. You're not against us." He glanced over at Noriko "That's what I think."

"Me too." Noriko nod­ded. "If we can't trust any­one we'll lose."

"That's a no­ble thought, girl," Shogo nod­ded. "If that's the way you want it. I'm just telling you that you got to be care­ful in this game." Then he asked, "So what is it?"

Shuya all of a sud­den re­mem­bered he was the one with the ques­tions. "That's right. You. Why do you trust us? Team­ing up with you doesn't nec­es­sar­ily rule out that one or both of us is against you. You said so your­self. You have no rea­son to trust us."

"I see," Shogo re­spond­ed, as if amused. "An ap­plied ques­tion. You're get­ting the hang of it, Shuya."

"Come on, I want an an­swer."

Shuya waved his hand still hold­ing the re­volver. Shogo drew back as if to warn him it was dan­ger­ous.

"Well?" Shuya in­sist­ed. Shogo raised his brow again. Then he re­vealed that faint smile on his face. He looked up at the branch­es loom­ing above them and then looked back at Shuya and Noriko. He looked se­ri­ous.

"First of all-"

Shuya saw some­thing in­tense run across Shogo's calm eyes. He didn't know what it meant but it was in­tense.

"I have my rea­sons. I have a prob­lem with the rules. No, the game it­self."

Shogo stopped for a mo­ment and then con­tin­ued, "You're ab­so­lute­ly right, but...you see, I'm em­bar­rassed to ad­mit this, but I've al­ways based my de­ci­sions on my con­science. So-"

Shogo grabbed the bar­rel of his shot­gun stand­ing be­tween his knees as if it were a cane and looked at them. A bird was chirp­ing deep in the woods. Shogo looked solemn. Shuya lis­tened ner­vous­ly.

"You two make a nice cou­ple. That's what I thought when I saw you this morn­ing, and I still think so now."

Shuya stared at him, his mouth agape.

Cou­ple?

Noriko spoke first. Her cheeks were bright red. "You have it all wrong. We're not. I'm not-"

Shogo looked at Shuya and Noriko and grinned. Then he broke out laugh­ing. It was an un­ex­pect­ed, friend­ly laugh. He con­tin­ued chuck­ling.

"That's why I trust you. Be­sides, you just said so your­selves. There's no end once you start get­ting sus­pi­cious. Isn't that enough?"

Shuya fi­nal­ly grinned. Then he said sin­cere­ly, "Thanks. I'm so glad you trust us."

Shogo con­tin­ued smil­ing, "Oh no, the hon­or's mine."

"I knew you were an in­di­vid­ual­ist the day you trans­ferred to our school."

"Easy with the fan­cy ter­mi­nol­ogy. Sor­ry but I was born with these looks. I can't help it if I don't look friend­ly."

Noriko gave him a warm smile and said, "I'm so glad. Now we have one more on our side."

Re­spond­ing to Noriko, Shogo rubbed his fin­ger against the stub­ble un­der his nose and made an un­ex­pect­ed ges­ture. He turned to Shuya and of­fered his right hand. "I'm glad too...now that I'm not alone."

Shuya squeezed his hand. Shogo's palms were thick. In keep­ing with his ap­pear­ance, it felt like the hand of a ful­ly ma­ture man.

Shogo stretched, passed Shuya, and of­fered his hand to Noriko. "You too."

Noriko squeezed his hand.

Then he looked down at Noriko's leg wrapped in ban­dan­nas and re­marked, "I'd for­got­ten about this. Show me your leg wound first, then we'll talk about our plans."

29 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20

The sun­light re­flect­ing off the opaque win­dow with the de­tailed pat­terns be­gan to turn white. As sun­light came di­rect­ly through the top of the win­dow in­to the build­ing where Yu­miko Kusa­ka (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 7) was sit­ting against a wall, she squint­ed her eyes. She was re­mem­ber­ing the trite phrase re­peat­ed in the ser­mons giv­en by the lo­cal priest of the Ha­lo Church which her par­ents and she (be­fore her name was even reg­is­tered) at­tend­ed, "The sun will come ev­ery day, bless­ing ev­ery one of us with joy."

Oh yeah, I am so blessed to be part of such a won­der­ful game, ha ha ha.

Yu­miko light­ly shook her short, boy­ish hair with a sar­cas­tic smile. She looked over at Yukiko Ki­tano (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 6), who was sit­ting near her, al­so against the wall. Yukiko re­mained in a daze, star­ing at the wood­en floor bathed in light. Even though it had the bom­bas­tic name "Ok­ishi­ma Is­land Tourist As­so­ci­ation" the build­ing re­sem­bled a plain town coun­cil hall. Down by the low­er en­trance, there was an of­fice desk, a chair, and a rusty file cab­inet. The desk had a phone (she'd tried us­ing it, but of course, as Sakamochi had warned, there was no di­al tone). In­side the file cab­inet they on­ly found some unattrac­tive tourist fly­ers.

Yu­miko and Yukiko had been friends ev­er since nurs­ery school. At nurs­ery school they were in sep­arate class­es and lived in dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hoods too. They met thanks, once again, to the Ha­lo Church where their par­ents took them. When they met it was Yu­miko's third vis­it, but for Yukiko it seemed like it was her first, and she looked in­tim­idat­ed by ev­ery­thing there in­clud­ing the gong ring­ing with ev­ery chant and the gen­er­al at­mo­sphere of the heav­ily dec­orat­ed church. So Yu­miko ap­proached the qui­et girl left alone by her who were pre­oc­cu­pied with some oth­er task and said, "Don't you think this is all so stupid?"

The girl looked a lit­tle shocked, but then...she smiled. They were friends ev­er since.

Al­though their names sound­ed sim­ilar, they were very dif­fer­ent from each oth­er. Yu­miko was en­er­get­ic and got la­beled a tomboy. Even now (al­though the chances of that "now" re­turn­ing were very, very low) she bat­ted fourth on the soft­ball team. Yukiko was do­mes­tic and baked cakes for Yu­miko. Yu­miko was now fif­teen cen­time­ters taller than Yukiko. Yukiko of­ten said she en­vied Yu­miko's height and her well de­fined face, but Yu­miko was in fact more en­vi­ous of Yukiko for her pe­tite body and round cheeks. That's right, they were to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent, but they were still best friends. That didn't change.

For­tu­nate­ly (well, that's putting it harsh­ly), the death of Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu (Male Stu­dent No. 7) be­fore his sched­uled de­par­ture en­abled their own de­par­tures to be on­ly two min­utes apart from each oth­er. Af­ter Yu­miko left the class­room, she hid be­hind a pole and wait­ed for Yukiko, whose face had turned white. They left to­geth­er (twen­ty min­utes lat­er Yoshio Aka­mat­su re­turned to be­gin killing, but they were un­aware of this) and head­ed north far be­yond the res­iden­tial area, fol­low­ing the road on the east­ern shore. A lit­tle ways up the north­ern moun­tain they found a sin­gle build­ing stand­ing alone on a hill. They locked them­selves in­side here.

...over four hours had passed since then. They were ex­haust­ed from the ex­treme ten­sion and re­mained sit­ting next to each oth­er as time flew by.

Yu­miko looked away from Yukiko and along with her stared at the floor.

Even though she was in a daze, she con­tin­ued to think. What in the world were they sup­posed to do now?

Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment was au­di­ble even in­side this build­ing. Aside from Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu and Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi, nine class­mates were al­ready dead. Aside from Saku­ra Ogawa and Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to...the oth­ers couldn't have been sui­cides. Some­one was killing some­one else. Right now some­one might have been dy­ing. In fact she thought she'd heard gun­fire right af­ter the 6 a.m. an­nounce­ment.

How could you kill your class­mates? Of course those were the rules, but she couldn't be­lieve there could be peo­ple who'd ac­tu­al­ly fol­low them. But...

But if some­one tried to kill her... if she could as­sume that much, then she would prob­ably fight back. Yes.

If so, then...

Yu­miko looked at the mega­phone ly­ing in the cor­ner of the room. Could she use that? If she could...

Wasn't there some­thing she could do? She was sim­ply afraid of do­ing it, though. Not just of do­ing it. Be­cause while she couldn't be­lieve any­one was play­ing the game, she al­so couldn't rid her­self of this over­whelm­ing fear. That's what made her seek shel­ter here with Yukiko. What if...what if some­one re­al­ly did...

But-

She re­called some­thing from when she was in el­emen­tary school, the face of her best friend. It wasn't Yukiko. The friend was cry­ing. For some rea­son, the on­ly clothes she could re­mem­ber on her friend was her pink sneak­ers.

"Yu­mi," Yukiko said and in­ter­rupt­ed Yu­miko's thoughts. She faced Yukiko.

"Let's eat our bread rolls. We won't come up with any good ideas if we don't eat." Yukiko pro­vid­ed a kind smile. It felt slight­ly forced, but it was still her usu­al smile.

"Okay?" Yukiko re­peat­ed and Yu­miko re­turned her smile and nod­ded.

"All right."

They took out their bread rolls and wa­ter from their day packs. Yu­miko looked at the two cans in­side. The cans were a green­ish sil­ver, and at the top a cigar-​sized stick stuck out, at­tached to a lever and a met­al ring ap­prox­imate­ly three cen­time­ters in di­am­eter. She as­sumed it was a "hand grenade." (Yukiko's "weapon" was a set of darts. It must have been some kind of joke. It even came with a wood­en tar­get board.)

Af­ter she fin­ished half of her roll and took a sip of her wa­ter, Yu­miko said, "You feel a lit­tle bet­ter now, Yukiko?"

As Yukiko chewed on her bread, her round eyes grew wider.

"You've been shak­ing all this time."

"Oh," Yukiko broke in­to a smile. "I think I'm fine now. I mean with you by my side."

Yu­miko smiled and nod­ded. She won­dered whether she should bring up "what they should do" while they ate...but de­cid­ed against it. She just wasn't feel­ing con­fi­dent enough about her idea. It could be ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous. To go through with it wouldn't on­ly en­dan­ger her­self but Yukiko as well. But on the oth­er hand, it was this kind of dan­ger that was forc­ing ev­ery­one to pan­ic over the dead­line. What was the right thing to do?-Yu­miko just wasn't sure yet.

They re­mained qui­et for a while. Then Yukiko all of a sud­den said, "Hey, Yu­miko."

"Hm? What?"

"You might think this sounds stupid but..." Yukiko light­ly bit on her small but full lips.

"What is it?"

Yukiko hes­itat­ed but then fi­nal­ly let it out, "Did you have a crush on any­one in our class?"

Yu­miko's eyes sud­den­ly grew wide.

Wow. This was ex­act­ly the kind of top­ic you dis­cussed at night when you're on a study trip. Af­ter go­ing through the rit­uals of play­ing cards, pil­low fight­ing, and check­ing out the inn, late at night you could bitch about your teach­ers, or talk about the fu­ture, but none of those were in the same league as this top­ic. It was the holy top­ic. And of course she'd ex­pect­ed to have this kind of con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing their study trip, un­til they'd fall­en asleep on the bus.

"You mean, a guy?"

"Yes."

Yukiko's down­cast eyes bash­ful­ly looked over at Yu­miko.

"Hmm." Yu­miko hes­itat­ed a lit­tle but then replied hon­est­ly, "Yes, I did."

"I see." Yukiko looked down at the knees of her pleat­ed skirt and said, "I'm sor­ry I nev­er told you, but I like...Shuya."

Yu­miko nod­ded with­out say­ing a word. She al­ready had a hunch.

In her mind Yu­miko pulled out her file on Shuya Nana­hara. He was 171 cen­time­ters tall, weighed 58 kilo­grams, his eye­sight was 1.2 in the right eye, 1.5 in the left, and al­though he was thin he was mus­cu­lar. In el­emen­tary school he was a Lit­tle League short­stop and bat­ted first, but he quit and now pre­ferred play­ing mu­sic. He was an ex­cel­lent singer and gui­tarist. Be­cause of his sta­tus as the team's best play­er dur­ing his Lit­tle League days, com­bined with the fact that the first kan­ji char­ac­ter to his last name meant "sev­en," he had the base­ball nick­name of "Wild Sev­en," just like the cigarette brand. His blood type was B, and he was born, just as the first char­ac­ter of his first name in­di­cat­ed, in the fall. He lost his par­ents when he was young, and now he lived in a Catholic or­phan­age called the Char­ity House. He was best friends with Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu (oh God and now he was dead) who al­so lived in the Char­ity House...His strongest sub­jects were in the hu­man­ities, lit­er­ature, and En­glish, so he was a de­cent stu­dent. He had a unique face, his lips were slight­ly curved, but his dou­ble eye­lids were sharply de­fined and kind look­ing, so he wasn't bad look­ing at all. His hair was slight­ly wavy and long, cov­er­ing his neck and touch­ing his shoul­ders.

That's right. Yu­miko's file on Shuya Nana­hara was filled to burst­ing (she was pret­ty con­fi­dent hers was more thor­ough than Yukiko's). One of the more im­por­tant sub­jects in the file was his height. Be­cause, she thought, if Shuya didn't grow any taller then she wouldn't be able to wear high heels with him, be­cause that would make her taller than him if they walked to­geth­er.

But now that she was sure about Yukiko, she wouldn't be able to share these thoughts with her.

"Huh." Yu­miko tried to look as calm as pos­si­ble. "Re­al­ly?"

"Yes."

"Hm."

Yukiko looked down. Then she made the point she'd want­ed to make all along, "I re­al­ly want to see him. I won­der what he's do­ing."

As she sat with her hands glued to her thighs, she burst in­to tears.

Yu­miko gen­tly touched Yukiko on the shoul­der. "Don't wor­ry. Know­ing Shuya, no mat­ter what hap­pens-" Re­al­iz­ing though that this might have sound­ed fun­ny, she im­me­di­ate­ly added, ner­vous­ly, "You know how ath­let­ic he is, plus he seems re­al­ly gut­sy. I mean I don't re­al­ly know but..."

Yukiko wiped away her tears and nod­ded, "Uh huh." Then as if she felt bet­ter, she asked, "So who do you like, Yu­miko?"

Yu­miko could on­ly look up at the ceil­ing and force a moan, "Hmm," as she thought it through. She was in trou­ble. Maybe I'll just ran­dom­ly pick some­one just to avoid the is­sue.

Tat­sumichi Oki was a star play­er on the hand­ball team. Even though his face was kind of coarse he seemed like a nice guy. Ev­ery­one called Shin­ji Mimu­ra a ge­nius bas­ket­ball play­er, and he knew so much. He even had a "fol­low­ing" of girls who were in­to him. (They weren't from their class, maybe be­cause his gen­er­al rep­uta­tion among the Class B girls was that he was a play­boy.) Mit­su­ru Nu­mai act­ed like he was a badass, but he didn't re­al­ly seem so bad. He was kind to girls (oh God but he's dead too now). Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra seemed to have a brood­ing qual­ity that was kind of cool. Some girls were afraid of him be­cause he prac­ticed mar­tial arts, but to Yu­miko that was at­trac­tive. But he was close to Takako Chi­gusa. Takako would get on my back if she ev­er found out, she can be so harsh. But she's a good girl. Come to think of it, ev­ery­one was, both boys and girls.

I'm back to the same ques­tion. Should I not trust them?

"So who is it?" Yukiko asked again.

Yu­miko faced Yukiko again.

She hes­itat­ed again-but then she de­cid­ed to let it out. At the very least, she should bring it up. Af­ter all, Yu­miko was the ide­al com­pan­ion she could share her thoughts with.

"Can I ask you some­thing?"

Yukiko tilt­ed her head, puz­zled.

Yu­miko fold­ed her arms to con­cen­trate. Then she asked, "Do you re­al­ly think there are peo­ple who want to kill oth­ers...in our class?"

Yukiko knit her brows slight­ly.

"Well...I mean the fact is that...they di-" As she pro­nounced the word "died" her voice trem­bled, "...died. All of them. It was an­nounced this morn­ing. Nine stu­dents have al­ready been killed since our de­par­ture. They couldn't have all been sui­cides...Be­sides, didn't we just hear gun­fire a lit­tle while ago?"

Yu­miko tilt­ed her head as she looked at Yukiko. She spread out her hands. She no­ticed for the first time that her left cuff was slight­ly torn.

"Now look. You see how ter­ri­fied we are here. The two of us, right?"

"Uh huh."

"And I think the oth­ers are in the same state. Ev­ery­one must be ter­ri­fied. Don't you think so?"

Yukiko seemed to mull over her point. Then she said, "Yes, maybe. I've been so pre­oc­cu­pied with my own fear, that thought didn't even oc­cur to me."

Yu­miko nod­ded once and con­tin­ued, "And be­cause we were lucky enough to end up to­geth­er it's prob­ably nowhere near as bad as be­ing alone, which I'm sure would be ab­so­lute­ly ter­ri­fy­ing."

"Yeah, you're right."

"And what would hap­pen if you en­coun­tered some­one in that state of fear, Yukiko?"

"I'd run away."

"What if you couldn't?"

Yukiko seemed to con­sid­er the sit­ua­tion care­ful­ly. Then she spoke slow­ly, "I-​I-​I just might fight. If I had some­thing I might throw it... or if I had some­thing like a gun I might, I just might shoot it...Of course, I'd try to talk. But if it hap­pened quick­ly and I didn't have any choice.

Yu­miko nod­ded.

"Ex­act­ly. That's why I think no one here re­al­ly wants to kill any­one. I think it's be­cause we're so ter­ri­fied we be­come de­lud­ed that ev­ery­one else is out to kill us and so we re­sort to fight­ing. And in that state even if no one at­tacked, we might even end up at­tack­ing oth­ers on our own." She in­ter­rupt­ed her­self, un­fold­ed her arms, put her hands on the floor, and con­tin­ued, "I think ev­ery­one's just ter­ri­fied."

Yukiko pursed her small, full lips to­geth­er. Af­ter a while, she looked down at the floor and said in a halt­ing voice, "I don't know. I just can't trust some of them, like Mit­suko Souma's gang...and Kazuo Kiriya­ma's-"

Yu­miko forced a smile and moved her sit­ting po­si­tion by shift­ing her legs un­der her pleat­ed skirt. "I'll tell you what I think, Yukiko."

"Hm"

"We're go­ing to die the way things are go­ing. Time lim­it? If no one dies in the next twen­ty-​four hours? Even if we sur­vive that long, we'll still end up get­ting killed."

Yukiko nod­ded. She looked scared again. "That's... that's true."

"So the on­ly thing we can do is have ev­ery­one co­op­er­ate to find some way out of here, right?"

"Well...yes but-"

"I have to tell you some­thing..." Yu­miko in­ter­rupt­ed Yukiko and then tilt­ed her head slight­ly.

"I once had a hor­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause I didn't trust some­one. I was in el­emen­tary school."

Yukiko stared at Yu­miko "What hap­pened?"

Yu­miko glanced up at the ceil­ing. She re­called the face of her friend cry­ing. And the pink sneak­ers.

Yukiko looked back at Yu­miko.

"Do you re­mem­ber the Egg Cats? They were such a big fad. Ev­ery­body loved them."

"Yeah, they were char­ac­ter fig­ures. I had a cel­lu­loid board with them on it."

"And I had an Egg Cats tri-​tip ball­point pen. The lim­it­ed edi­tion. I mean it seems like such a sil­ly thing now, but at the time I ab­so­lute­ly adored it."

"Uh huh."

"Well, it dis­ap­peared..." Yu­miko looked down. "I sus­pect­ed my friend of steal­ing it. She want­ed it so bad­ly. On top of that, I re­al­ized it was gone af­ter first pe­ri­od gym class and she'd ex­cused her­self from gym be­cause she wasn't feel­ing well and re­turned to our class­room. And, this is re­al­ly aw­ful, she didn't have a fa­ther and her moth­er worked at a bar, so she didn't have a good rep­uta­tion."

Yukiko nod­ded slow­ly. "Uh huh."

"I bom­bard­ed her with ques­tions, but she said she didn't know. And I even told the teach­er about it. Our teach­er, come to think of it, the teach­er must have been bi­ased too. The teach­er told her to tell the truth. But she just cried and said she knew noth­ing about it."

Yu­miko looked back at Yukiko.

"When I came home, I found the pen on my desk."

Yukiko re­mained silent and con­tin­ued lis­ten­ing.

"I apol­ogized to her. She said it was all right. But it just turned out all awk­ward and she end­ed up-I think her moth­er end­ed up re­mar­ry­ing-trans­fer­ring schools and that was it. We were such good friends, as close as you and me. But in the end I wasn't able to trust her."

Yu­miko shrugged and then con­tin­ued.

"So ev­er since that in­ci­dent I've been do­ing my best to trust peo­ple. I want to trust peo­ple. If I can't then ev­ery­thing falls apart. This is dif­fer­ent from what the folks at that stupid Ha­lo Church preach. This is my be­lief. I hope you un­der­stand."

"I do."

"So let's con­sid­er this sit­ua­tion now. Well yeah, Mit­suko Souma does seem dan­ger­ous. That's her rep­uta­tion. But I doubt she's so bad she'd ac­tu­al­ly get off on killing peo­ple. She can't be that bad. No one in our class could be that bad. Don't you think?"

Sev­er­al mo­ments lat­er Yukiko nod­ded and replied, "Yes."

"So..." Yu­miko con­tin­ued, "...if we could just con­tact ev­ery­one ap­pro­pri­ate­ly then the fight­ing would stop. Then we could fig­ure out to­geth­er how to deal with the cir­cum­stances. No, even if we couldn't do any­thing, at the very least we could avoid killing each oth­er. Don't you think?"

"Yes..."

Yukiko nod­ded, but she sound­ed hes­itant. A lit­tle worn out from talk­ing, Yu­miko took a deep breath and shift­ed her legs again.

"In any case, that's my opin­ion. Now let me hear yours. If you're against it, then I won't do it."

Yukiko looked down at the floor in con­tem­pla­tion.

Af­ter two full min­utes she mum­bled, "Re­mem­ber how you once told me that I'm al­ways too wor­ried about oth­er peo­ple's opin­ions?"

"Hm?...Did I say that?"

Yu­miko ex­am­ined Yukiko's face. Yukiko looked up and their eyes met.

Yukiko smiled gen­tly. "I think you're ab­so­lute­ly right. That's my opin­ion."

Yu­miko smiled back at her and said, "Thanks." She felt grate­ful to­wards Yukiko for se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing the idea on her own be­fore shar­ing her thoughts. And now it seemed that her re­sponse con­firmed the va­lid­ity of her idea.

That's right. We have to do this. I don't want to die with­out putting up a fight. If there's a chance then let's go for it. That's right. Just as I said to Yukiko, I want to trust peo­ple. Let's try it.

Then Yukiko asked, "But how are we go­ing to do this? How can we con­tact ev­ery­one?"

Yu­miko point­ed at the mega­phone ly­ing in the cor­ner of the room. "We have to fig­ure out how to use that."

Yukiko gave sev­er­al small nods and looked up at the ceil­ing. Then she ut­tered, "If all goes well, I'll be able to see Shuya."

Yu­miko nod­ded. "Yes, I'm sure we will," she said hope­ful­ly this time.

29 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

21

"All right."

Shogo tossed the nee­dle and thread on­to the day pack be­side him and said to Shuya, "I need the whiskey again."

Noriko's bent right leg rest­ed on its side. The wound on her calf was sewn up with coarse cot­ton thread. Shogo had man­aged to stitch it up. Of course they had no anes­thet­ic, but Noriko man­aged not to cry dur­ing the ten-​minute op­er­ation.

Shuya of­fered the flask to Shogo. Next to them was a small rock pit. The emp­ty can rest­ed on top of the char­coal, and the wa­ter in­side was boil­ing. (Shogo had ex­plained how he'd found the char­coal along with the nee­dle and thread at the sup­ply store.) He dis­in­fect­ed the nee­dle and thread with the boil­ing wa­ter, but ap­ply­ing it di­rect­ly to her wound was out of the ques­tion. Shogo had al­ready soaked her wound with whiskey be­fore he be­gan stitch­ing. He was go­ing to dis­in­fect again. Noriko, who'd man­aged to re­lax a lit­tle, now gri­maced again.

Shuya looked at his watch. Be­cause of the time it took to boil the wa­ter, it was al­ready past 8 a.m.

"Okay," Shogo said as he pressed the dis­in­fect­ed ban­dan­na on her wound. Then he quick­ly wrapped an­oth­er ban­dan­na around Noriko's leg. "We're done."

He added with a note of con­cern, "I hope the wound hasn't been in­fect­ed."

Noriko tucked in her leg and showed her grat­itude to Shogo, "Thank you. That was im­pres­sive."

"Well, I'm good at play­ing doc­tor," Shogo said as he took out a Wild Sev­en cigarette from his pock­et, put it be­tween his lips, and lit it with a dis­pos­able lighter. Did he get those from the store, or did he bring them along for the trip? Like Buster and hi-​night, they were a pop­ular brand.

Shuya gazed at the pack­age, il­lus­trat­ed with sil­hou­ettes of mo­tor­cy­cle rid­ers. He had no idea what they were re­fer­ring to. The cigarettes piqued his cu­rios­ity, be­cause Shuya's base­ball nick­name was the same as this cigarette brand. The name came nat­ural­ly. Shuya was the star play­er of his Lit­tle League team. He was a great clutch hit­ter with men in scor­ing po­si­tion, and once he was on base, and no one else could get any hits, he could cre­ate his own scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties by steal­ing a base (he held the im­pres­sive record of steal­ing home three times in one sea­son). When the bases were load­ed, and their pitch­er was in a pinch, he'd make the play to get them out of the jam, and if the pitch­er was too tired, he'd switch from short­stop to pitch­er. "Wild Card Nana (Sev­en)" hara. That's right.

In his sec­ond year of ju­nior high he be­came class­mates with the star shoot­ing guard of the bas­ket­ball team, Shin­ji Mimu­ra. Shin­ji's nick­name was "The Third Man," which he got dur­ing his first year when he sat on the bench as the sec­ond back­up guard. But with five min­utes left and their team trail­ing by twen­ty in the dis­trict fi­nals, this third man came on­to the court and sin­gle-​hand­ed­ly brought his team to vic­to­ry. Ev­er since then Shin­ji was a fix­ture in the start­ing line­up, and Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High turned in­to one of the pre­fec­ture's top-​ranked bas­ket­ball teams. But be­cause of that game, and be­cause of the kan­ji char­ac­ter of "three" in his last name, the "Third Man" name stuck.

For this year's class games, the girls as a joke made a pair of uni­forms stitched with the num­bers 7 and 3. Shuya and Shin­ji wore these uni­forms dur­ing the games. It felt like a re­mote world. Shuya won­dered again where Shin­ji was. Shin­ji would have been a big help.

As if the thought sud­den­ly oc­curred to him, Shogo searched his pock­ets and pulled out a small leather pouch.

He took out a sheet of white pills wrapped in alu­minum foil and plas­tic and gave it to Noriko.

"Pain re­liev­ers. You should take some."

Noriko blinked. But then she took the pills.

Shuya said to Shogo, "Hey..."

"What?" Shogo slow­ly blew smoke out his mouth and looked at Shuya. "Don't stare at me. It's not that un­com­mon to see a ju­nior high kid smok­ing. Any­way I'm old enough to be in high school. And you're the one who brought your own sup­ply of whiskey."

So high school stu­dents are al­lowed to smoke? Well, that wasn't his point any­way. Shuya shook his head, "That's not what I meant. Did you find those pills at the store too?"

Shogo shrugged. "Well yeah. It wasn't ex­act­ly mer­chan­dise. I took it out of the first aid kit be­hind the cash reg­is­ter. It's not a big deal. Just some as­pirin called Gomez. What an ob­nox­ious name for as­pirin, huh? Any­way it'll stop the pain."

Shuya pursed his lips. Well, he might be telling the truth, but... "I don't get how you can be so well pre­pared. And where'd you learn to stitch up a wound?"

Shogo's mouth broke in­to a wide grin. He shrugged and replied, "My dad was a doc­tor."

"What?"

"He ran a small dump, a clin­ic in the slums of Kobe. I've seen him sew peo­ple up ev­er since I was a kid. In fact I was a pret­ty good nurse. I even did some work my­self. My dad couldn't even af­ford to hire a nurse."

Shuya was speech­less. Was he telling the truth?

Shogo held up the cigarette be­tween his fin­gers, as if to cut off Shuya's re­sponse. "It's true. Just think about it and you'll see how im­por­tant medicine is in these cir­cum­stances."

Shuya kept qui­et for a mo­ment, but then re­called some­thing else that puz­zled him.

"Oh yeah..."

"What?"

"You mind if I ask-"

"Skip the for­mal­ities, Shuya. We're in this to­geth­er."

Shuya shrugged once and then rephrased what he had to say. "Back on the bus, you were try­ing to open the win­dow. You must have re­al­ized there was sleep­ing gas."

Hear­ing this, Noriko gave Shogo a puz­zled look.

This time Shogo shrugged.

"So you saw me? You should have lent me a hand."

"I couldn't. How did you know what was go­ing on, though? I mean there was no smell or any­thing-"

"Oh yeah there was," Shogo replied and rubbed his half fin­ished cigarette in­to the ground. "It was faint, but if you've smelled it once you'd rec­og­nize it."

"How did you rec­og­nize it?" This time Noriko asked.

"My un­cle ac­tu­al­ly worked at a state chem­ical lab and-"

"Come on," Shuya in­ter­rupt­ed him.

Shogo gri­maced and said, "If I have to, I'll ex­plain it lat­er. As far as I'm con­cerned I blew it big time. I Should've no­ticed soon­er. And I cer­tain­ly didn't ex­pect this to hap­pen...but we should be fo­cused on the present. Do you have any plans?"

If I have to, I'll ex­plain lat­er? That state­ment both­ered Shuya, but Shogo was right. Their pri­or­ity was to come up with a plan for their es­cape. He put his ques­tions on hold and said, "We're plan­ning on es­cap­ing."

Shogo lit an­oth­er cigarette and nod­ded. Then as if sud­den­ly re­mem­ber­ing what he had to do, he tossed dirt on­to the char­coal in­side the rock pit. Shuya heard the sound of Noriko swal­low­ing a pill with wa­ter.

Shuya con­tin­ued. "How hard do you think it'll be?"

Shogo shook his head. "The ques­tion is whether it's pos­si­ble at all. My an­swer would be 'ex­treme­ly re­mote.' So what then?"

"Well even if we es­caped..." Shuya lift­ed his hand up to his neck, to the ob­ject that was wrapped around Shogo's and Noriko's necks as well, "...we'd be im­me­di­ate­ly dis­cov­ered be­cause of these col­lars."

"Yep."

"And we can't get near that school."

Sakamochi had said that "twen­ty min­utes af­ter your de­par­ture this school will be­come a for­bid­den zone." Bas­tard, "True."

"But maybe there's a way to lure him out here? Then we take Sakamochi hostage. That's how we get them to dis­able the col­lars."

Shogo raised his brow. "And?"

Shuya licked his lips and con­tin­ued, "Be­fore do­ing that we lo­cate a ship and es­cape by tak­ing Sakamochi with us." Even as he was say­ing it, Shuya knew his plan was hope­less. He hadn't even fig­ured out how they were go­ing to lure Sakamochi out from the school. No, you couldn't even call it a plan, just an "idea."

"That's it?" Shogo asked. Shuya could on­ly nod.

Shogo once again puffed on his cigarette. Then he said, "First of all, there aren't any ships."

Shuya bit his lip. "You nev­er know."

Shogo briefly smiled and blew out more smoke. "I told you how I went to that sup­ply store by the har­bor. There weren't any boats. Not one. Not even dam­aged ones left on the shore. Ev­ery sin­gle boat's been tak­en away. I mean, they were ab­surd­ly thor­ough."

"Then...the guard ship will do. As long as we can hold Sakamochi hostage."

"That's im­pos­si­ble, Shuya," Shogo in­ter­rupt­ed him. "You saw how many Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers they had. Be­sides..." Shogo point­ed to the sil­ver col­lar around his neck. "They should be able to send the com­mand to ig­nite these at any time re­gard­less of what zone we're in. Any­time, any­where. The odds are stacked against us. Even if we man­aged to cap­ture Sakamochi, I'm sure as far as the gov­ern­ment's con­cerned, he's ex­pend­able."

Shuya fell silent again.

"Do you have any oth­er ideas?" Shogo asked him.

Shuya shook his head. "No. What about you, Noriko?"

Noriko al­so shook her head. But she had some­thing else to say.

"That's why I sug­gest­ed we gath­er as many peo­ple as we can, even if they're on­ly the ones we trust, to come up with a plan to­geth­er. I thought if we met to­geth­er as a group we might come up with a good idea...."

That's right, Shuya thought. That's what I for­got to say.

Shogo on­ly raised his scarred left brow. "And who are the ones you trust?"

Shuya replied en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, "There's Shin­ji Mimu­ra. Then there's Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. Let's see, as far as the girls go, there's our class rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Yukie Ut­su­mi. Shin­ji is re­al­ly amaz­ing. He knows a lot. He knows so many dif­fer­ent things. He's good with ma­chines too. He'd come up with some­thing."

Shogo rubbed his stub­bly chin with his left hand as he stared at Shuya. Then he said, "Shin­ji, huh..."

Shuya looked sur­prised. "What's wrong?"

"Well..." Shogo seemed hes­itant but con­tin­ued, "I saw Shin­ji...."

"What!? Where!?" Shuya raised his voice. He ex­changed looks with Noriko. "Where? Where did you see him?"

Shogo point­ed his chin to the east. "It was at night. West of the school. He seemed to be search­ing for some­thing in­side a house___He had a gun, and I think he no­ticed me."

"Why didn't you call out to him?" Shuya raised his voice scorn­ful­ly. Shogo gave Shuya a puz­zled look.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, come on, he helped Noriko get back to her seat in the class­room. You saw that? Be­sides-"

Shogo pre­dict­ed the rest, "He tried to have the game post­poned for Noriko's in­jury, right? So that there'd be a chance for ev­ery­one to es­cape?"

Ex­act­ly. Shuya nod­ded.

Shogo shook his head. "You ex­pect me to trust him on ac­count of those acts? No way. Be­sides, he might have been try­ing to con ev­ery­one in­to be­liev­ing he was a trust­wor­thy guy. It'd suit him fine if he planned on get­ting rid of ev­ery­one lat­er."

"That's ridicu­lous!" Shuya raised his voice. "How cyn­ical can you get? He's not that kind of guy. He's-"

Shogo silent­ly ex­tend­ed both of his palms for­ward and Shuya fell silent. He was right. Rais­ing your voice was not a good idea. In fact it was a very bad idea.

Then Shogo said, "Cut me some slack. I don't know Shin­ji. Like I said be­fore, the rule is to sus­pect, not trust, ev­ery­one in this game. And you have to be all the more sus­pi­cious of some­one who's smart. Be­sides, even if I in­vit­ed him to join me, he prob­ably would've re­fused."

Shuya was about to say some­thing, but then ex­haled and de­cid­ed against it. Shogo had a point. In fact, it was odd how Shogo could trust him and Noriko at all. Shogo did say though that it was be­cause they made "a nice cou­ple."

"Well then..." Shuya con­tin­ued, "we should at least go where you saw Shin­ji. We can def­inite­ly trust him. I guar­an­tee it. He'd come up with a good idea. He's-" But once again he was in­ter­rupt­ed.

Shogo shook his head and said, "If Shin­ji is so smart then do you think he'd stay where I saw him?"

He was right.

Shuya sighed. It was a very long, deep sigh.

"Hey..." Noriko spoke up, "Shogo, I was won­der­ing if there was any way we can con­tact oth­ers like Shin­ji."

Shogo shook loose an­oth­er cigarette and shook his head. "I doubt it. If we were try­ing to reach a gen­er­al, un­spec­ified num­ber of peo­ple, well maybe, but con­tact­ing a par­tic­ular par­ty or per­son would be dif­fi­cult."

They fell silent for a while. Shuya stared at Shogo, who had his cigarette stuck be­tween his lips. The tip of the Wild Sev­en crack­led and grew short­er.

"Then..." Shuya said, near­ly speech­less, "there's noth­ing we can do."

Shogo re­spond­ed flat­ly, "Oh but there is."

"What?"

"I have a plan."

Shuya stared again at Shogo's face wrapped in a cloud of smoke. Then he sud­den­ly be­came ex­cit­ed and asked, "What do you mean? Is there a way out?"

Shogo looked over at Shuya and Noriko. Then he looked up at the sky in con­tem­pla­tion, his cigarette still dan­gling from his lips. His right hand touched the smooth sur­face of the col­lar around his neck, as if it an­noyed him. The smoke slow­ly drift­ed by.

Shogo said, "There might be a way." Then he con­tin­ued, "On one con­di­tion, though."

"What's that?"

Shogo shook his head slight­ly and then brought his cigarette clos­er to his lips. "We have to be the on­ly sur­vivors."

Shuya knit his brows. He didn't un­der­stand. "What do you... mean?"

"It should be ob­vi­ous." Shogo looked back at them. "Mean­ing the three of us have to be the on­ly ones alive. The oth­ers would have to be dead."

"But..." Noriko im­me­di­ate­ly raised her voice. "That's too much! So we're just look­ing af­ter our­selves?"

Shogo held his cigarette held be­tween his fin­gers over his crossed legs and raised his brow, "Shuya's es­cape plan would amount to the same thing, though."

"No," Shuya in­ter­vened. "That's not what Noriko's say­ing. She's ask­ing you whether our sur­vival comes at the cost of ev­ery­one else. Right, Noriko? That would just be...hor­ri­ble."

"Hold on guy." Shogo waved his hand. He crushed his cigarette against the ground. "I'm not against our group ex­pand­ing, as long as we can trust them. But whether we find oth­ers or not, ev­ery­one be­sides the ones in our group will have to die."

"If that's the case," Shuya said en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, "We could in­form ev­ery­one. If you have the most re­li­able plan then no one will op­pose it. Then ev­ery­one would be saved? Right?"

Shogo pursed his lips in re­sponse to Shuya. Then he asked in a slight­ly ir­ri­tat­ed tone, "What if we're at­tacked be­fore we even man­age to get a word in?"

Shuya took a deep breath.

"Un­less you're ac­tive­ly out to kill peo­ple, then, rel­ative­ly speak­ing that is, the smartest way to sur­vive would be to stay put and hide. That's the rea­son why," Shogo point­ed to his col­lar, "the gov­ern­ment is us­ing this to force us to move. That's one of the ba­sic tenets of this game. Don't for­get that. You move around aim­less­ly, and you're a walk­ing tar­get for some­one lurk­ing in the shad­ows. With Noriko in­jured like this, we're prime tar­gets."

He was right.

"Be­sides, when you in­sist ev­ery­one has to be saved, that on­ly means we might not get killed here. But what if we end up as fugi­tives? We'll be chased by the gov­ern­ment, and the prob­abil­ity that we'll get killed in the end is ex­treme­ly high. I doubt any­one would sub­mit to a plan like that. Don't for­get. You don't know who your en­emies are in this game. Blind­ly ac­cept­ing ev­ery­one could ru­in ev­ery­thing for you."

"But no one's..."

"That bad? Can you re­al­ly say that, Shuya?" Shogo's eyes grew stern. "It'd be won­der­ful if ev­ery­one in this class were good. But if we're go­ing to be re­al­is­tic, we have to be care­ful. Think about it, you your­self were at­tacked by Yoshio Aka­mat­su and Tat­sumichi Oki."

Shuya had told Shogo about Yoshio's as­sault when Shogo was stitch­ing Noriko's leg. Shogo was ab­so­lute­ly right. He had no idea what Yoshio Aka­mat­su was think­ing. He might have been try­ing to kill Shuya.

Shuya sighed. His shoul­ders drooped down as he fee­bly mum­bled, "Then...then we're go­ing to let most of our class­mates, the good ones, just die. That's what this means, right?"

Shogo moved his chin up and down slight­ly, nod­ding. "It's not easy, but yes. I don't know if it's go­ing to be most of the class, though."

They fell silent for a while. Shogo lit an­oth­er cigarette. He smoked too much. And he was a mi­nor.

Then Noriko said, "Hey wait." Shuya looked back at Noriko. "You said we might es­cape if ev­ery­one else dies, but we could al­so run out of time, if no one dies for twen­ty-​four hours..."

"Yeah," Shogo nod­ded. "That's cor­rect."

"In that case, I guess your plan wouldn't work."

"That's right. But I high­ly doubt that'll hap­pen. Be­sides, if ev­ery­one can re­al­ly get along and agree to my plan then they're to­tal­ly wel­come. But I doubt that'll hap­pen. So there's re­al­ly no need to wor­ry about it. Ap­par­ent­ly on­ly 0.5% of the na­tion­al Pro­grams have end­ed due to time ex­pi­ra­tion."

Shuya blurt­ed out,"'Ap­par­ent­ly'? How would you know?"

"Hold on." Shogo again made a push­ing ges­ture with his hands to stop Shuya. "We have more ur­gent mat­ters at hand. You haven't asked me what my plan is."

Shuya fell silent. Then he asked, "What is it?"

Shogo shrugged. Through the cor­ner of his mouth, which was still hold­ing the cigarette, he curt­ly replied, "I can't tell you."

Shuya knit his brows. "What?"

"Not yet."

"Why?"

"I just can't."

"What do you mean, 'not yet'? Then when do you plan on telling us?"

"I sup­pose when it's just the three of us left. Let me just tell you one thing, though. My plan won't work if any­one tries to in­ter­vene. So my plan can't start un­til we're the on­ly ones left."

Shuya fell silent again. He stared at Shogo, who con­tin­ued smok­ing, but then Shuya heard a voice whis­per­ing some­thing in­side his head. It was faint, but he could hear it.

As if he could hear this voice, Shogo grinned.

"I know what you're think­ing, Shuya. There might be some­thing else go­ing on here. I might be join­ing you just as a means for my own sur­vival. In fact, I might not have a plan at all. Once we're down to three, I might kill you two and win the game. That would work out nice­ly for me, right?"

Shuya was slight­ly in­tim­idat­ed. "That's not..."

"No?"

Shuya held his tongue and glanced over at Noriko. Noriko re­mained silent, star­ing at Shogo.

Shuya looked back at Shogo.

"That's not it. It's just that-" Shuya stopped all of a sud­den.

It was some­one's voice. It was very dis­tant, but he could tell it was elec­tron­ical­ly dis­tort­ed. A voice call­ing, "Hey, ev­ery­one-"

29 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

22

The voice con­tin­ued. "Lis­ten up, ev­ery­one-" It was a girl's voice.

Noriko said, "It's Yu­miko." She was re­fer­ring to Yu­miko Kusa­ka (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 7). She was a tall, en­er­get­ic girl who bat­ted fourth on the girls' Soft­ball team.

"I'm go­ing to go check this out." Shogo's face stiff­ened. He took his shot­gun and stood up. He be­gan walk­ing east in­to the thick­et to­wards the voice.

"We'll go with you."

They weren't done talk­ing, but Shuya tucked his Smith & Wes­son in front and of­fered his shoul­der to help Noriko up. Shogo glanced back at them, but said noth­ing and be­gan walk­ing.

Once they reached the end of the thick­et, Shogo stood still. Shuya and Noriko too stopped walk­ing.

With his back to­wards them, Shogo ex­claimed, "Why they're..."

Shuya walked up right be­hind Shogo, and like Shogo he and Noriko poked their heads out of the thick­et.

It was a moun­tain peak. There was a view­ing plat­form be­tween the trees scat­tered on the peak. It was prob­ably five or six hun­dred me­ters away from the foot of the moun­tain, where they were. But they could still see it clear­ly. The plat­form was a crude con­struc­tion, re­sem­bling a shack with a miss­ing wall. There were two fig­ures stand­ing un­der its roof. Shuya's eyes widened.

The voice reached them. "Ev­ery­one. Stop fight­ing and come here-"

Shuya saw an ob­ject held in front of the taller fig­ure's face-it was prob­ably Yu­miko's. Was it a mega­phone? The one cops use to ad­dress crim­inals cooped up in­side build­ings un­der siege? It felt slight­ly ab­surd ("Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up"), but he could see how her voice could reach not on­ly them but the rest of the is­land.

"And the oth­er one?" Shuya whis­pered.

Noriko replied, "It's Yukiko. Yukiko Ki­tano. They're re­al­ly close."

"This is re­al­ly bad," Shogo said with a gri­mace. "They'll get them­selves killed to­tal­ly ex­posed like that."

Shuya bit his low­er lip. Ba­si­cal­ly Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano were at­tempt­ing to con­vince ev­ery­one they should stop fight­ing. They were do­ing what Shuya had con­sid­ered but gave up on af­ter he was at­tacked by Yoshio Aka­mat­su. They firm­ly be­lieved no one re­al­ly want to play the game. They chose that spot to be as vis­ible as pos­si­ble. Or maybe they were al­ready near that lo­ca­tion.

"I'm sure no one wants to fight like this. So let's get to­geth­er here-"

Shuya hes­itat­ed. He need­ed more time to pro­cess the sit­ua­tion-plus the con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing hadn't been re­solved. What if-it was un­like­ly-but what if Shogo was against them?

In the end Shuya spoke to Shogo, "Can you look af­ter Noriko, Shogo?"

Shogo turned around. "What are you go­ing to do?"

"I'm go­ing over there."

Shogo knit his brows and said, "What are you, stupid?"

His put­down an­gered Shuya, but he sim­ply an­swered, "What do you mean? They're risk­ing their lives do­ing this. They have no in­ten­tion to play the game. They re­al­ly don't. So they can join us. Be­sides, you just said they were en­dan­ger­ing them­selves."

"That's not what I meant." Shogo bared his teeth. It was an odd thing to no­tice, but they looked re­mark­ably healthy. "I just told you. It's best to stay put in this game. How far do you think that spot is from here? You have no idea who you'll en­counter on the way."

"I know that!" Shuya shot back.

"No, you don't get it. Ev­ery­one knows about those two now. If any­one at­tacks them, then the en­emy's go­ing to wait for oth­ers of­fer­ing them­selves up like you. With more tar­gets-"

What gave Shuya the creeps wasn't so much Shogo's warn­ing but his calm tone of voice.

"Please-ev­ery­one come here. We're alone here-we're not fight­ing!"

Shuya slid his shoul­der loose from Noriko's right arm.

"I'm go­ing."

He gripped the Smith & Wes­son and walked out of the bush­es, but Shogo tugged on Shuya's left arm.

"Stop it!"

"Why!?" Shuya's voice grew loud­er. "You want me to just sit back and watch them get killed?" He raised his voice un­con­trol­lably and blurt­ed out, "Or is my leav­ing go­ing to de­crease your chances of sur­vival? Is that it? Is that what's go­ing on? Are you our en­emy?"

"Shuya, stop it..." Noriko moaned, but Shuya wasn't fin­ished-then he saw how calm Shogo looked even as he still held on­to his arm.

Al­though they hard­ly re­sem­bled each oth­er, Shogo's com­po­sure re­mind­ed Shuya of the for­mer su­per­in­ten­dent of the Char­ity House, Ms. An­no's el­der­ly fa­ther. Af­ter his par­ents died when he was still a kid, this man, who was the on­ly au­thor­ity fig­ure and guardian he knew, sat down with him. He al­so wore the same kind of ex­pres­sion.

Shogo said, "It's none of my busi­ness if you want to die, but if you go now and don't re­turn, then you'll dras­ti­cal­ly de­crease Noriko's chances of sur­vival. Have you for­got­ten that?"

Shuya took a deep breath. Once again Shogo was right.

"But-"

Shogo calm­ly con­tin­ued, "I'm sure you must know this, Shuya...but lov­ing some­one al­ways re­quires you to not love oth­ers. If you care about Noriko, don't go."

"But..." Shuya felt like cry­ing. "So what are you sug­gest­ing? We just let them get killed?"

"I didn't say that."

Shogo re­leased Shuya and turned to­wards the peak where Yu­miko con­tin­ued her shout­ing. He held his shot­gun.

"We'll be de­creas­ing our chances of sur­vival slight­ly. On­ly slight­ly." Shogo point­ed the shot­gun in­to the air and pulled the trig­ger. The gun­pow­der blast was ear-​shat­ter­ing. Shuya thought his eardrums had been blown out for a mo­ment. The sound re­ver­ber­at­ed against the side of the moun­tain. Shogo's left hand pumped the shot­gun, eject­ing the spent car­tridge. He fol­lowed with an­oth­er shot. The sound rip­pled through the air.

I get it___The gun­fire will scare off Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano, forc­ing them to stop and go hide in­stead.

Yu­miko's voice, am­pli­fied by the mega­phone, stopped. It felt as if Yu­miko and Yukiko were look­ing down where they were. But we're hid­den by the bush­es, so they prob­ably can't tell who we are.

"Come on! Shoot some more!"

Shuya was riled up, but Shogo re­fused, "No. Some­one might have al­ready fig­ured out our lo­ca­tion with those two shots. Any more could be fa­tal for us."

Shuya con­sid­ered it. Then he tried to point his Smith & Wes­son in­to the air.

Shogo once again tugged at his arm.

"Stop it! How many times do I have to tell you?"

"But-"

"We can on­ly hope they've hid­den them­selves now."

Shuya looked over at the peak. Then he heard it again. Once again, Yu­miko Kusa­ka's voice shout­ed, "Stop it! I know none of us want to fight-"

Shuya shook off Shogo's grip. He couldn't take it any­more. He want­ed them to hide some­where safe no mat­ter what. He had his fin­gers on the trig­ger of the Smith & Wes­son when-

All of a sud­den they heard a dis­tant, rat­tling sound like that of rapid type­writ­er tap­ping. Then Yu­miko's shriek, "Urgh-" reached them. Of course her cry was al­so am­pli­fied by the mega­phone. Af­ter a mo­ment's pause, "AIEEE-" a scream that sound­ed like it came from Yukiko Ki­tano. This too reached them cour­tesy of the cheap mega­phone. Un­der the plat­form roof on the moun­tain peak, a tall fig­ure ap­peared to col­lapse and Yukiko's scream­ing con­tin­ued, "Yu­miko!" fol­lowed by a loud thud, the sound of the mega­phone hit­ting the ground. Shuya heard the rat­tling sound again but this time it was much qui­eter. Shuya re­al­ized the mega­phone had al­so been pick­ing up this sound as well. Once the mega­phone was bro­ken, the sound was dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced. And now the fig­ure of Yukiko al­so col­lapsed in­to the shad­ows of the short trees, dis­ap­pear­ing along with Yu­miko from their sight.

Shuya and Noriko's faces turned white.

29 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

23

Yukiko Ki­tano was crawl­ing on the con­crete floor of the view­ing plat­form to­wards Yu­miko Kusa­ka. Her stom­ach was burn­ing, and she felt par­alyzed, but some­how she man­aged to crawl to­wards her. Yukiko left a trail of red on the con­crete, which was now a can­vas of vi­olent brush­strokes.

"Yu­miko!" Yukiko let out a shriek that tore through her stom­ach, but she didn't care. Her best friend had fall­en and was now mo­tion­less. That was what mat­tered to her now.

Yu­miko had fall­en for­ward, fac­ing Yukiko, but her eyes were closed. A gooey red pond be­gan to ooze out from un­der her body.

Once Yukiko reached Yu­miko, she strug­gled to lift her for­ward. Then she shook her by the shoul­ders.

"Yu­miko! Yu­miko!"

As she shout­ed, a red mist sprayed in­to Yu­miko's face, but Yukiko didn't even re­al­ize it was com­ing from her mouth.

Yu­miko slow­ly opened her eyes and gasped, "Yukiko..."

"Yu­miko! Wake up!"

Yu­miko gri­maced. Then she fi­nal­ly man­aged to ut­ter, "I'm so sor­ry, Yukiko. I was stupid...you should...hur­ry...and es­cape."

"No!" Yukiko cried and shook her head. "We have to go to­geth­er! Come on!"

Yukiko fran­ti­cal­ly looked around. There was no trace of the as­sailant. They were prob­ably shot at from a dis­tance.

"Hur­ry!"

She tried to raise Yu­miko's body, but it was im­pos­si­ble. She im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized she could bare­ly sup­port her own body. The pain was much worse now, at­tack­ing her stom­ach as she shrieked and fell for­ward again. She still man­aged to face Yu­miko.

Yu­miko's face was right in front of her eyes. Her glazed eyes stared at Yukiko. She asked in a fee­ble voice, "You can't move, Yukiko?"

"Nope," Yukiko did her best to form a smile. "I guess not."

"I'm so sor­ry," Yu­miko qui­et­ly apol­ogized again.

"That's all right. We...we did what we had to...right? Yu­miko?"

Now she could tell Yu­miko was about to cry. Al­though Yukiko thought she wasn't se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, she was now be­gin­ning to rapid­ly fade. Her eye­lids grew heavy.

"Yukiko?"

Yukiko was brought back by Yu­miko's voice.

"Whaaat?"

"There's some­thing I didn't tell you when we were talk­ing."

Yu­miko smiled a lit­tle. "I al­so had a crush on Shuya."

For a mo­ment Yukiko didn't un­der­stand what Yu­miko was talk­ing about. She couldn't tell whether this was be­cause it was so un­ex­pect­ed or be­cause she was fad­ing.

Fi­nal­ly though Yu­miko's words knocked at the door of Yukiko's heart and en­tered. So...that's how it was.

Then as her mind sank in­to the mist, Yukiko re­mem­bered a scene. She and Yu­miko had gone shop­ping to­geth­er. It was a cheap ¥3,000 bar­gain-​sale item, but they'd found a pair of beau­ti­ful ear­rings, and al­though they hard­ly ev­er shared the same tastes-they end­ed up fuss­ing over who re­al­ly de­served these ear­rings. Fi­nal­ly they agreed to split the cost so that both of them would end up with one ear­ring each. That was the first time they ac­tu­al­ly bought jew­el­ry. And now, as al­ways, that ear­ring was tucked away in the draw­er of her desk at home lo­cat­ed near the bor­der be­tween Shi­roi­wa and the neigh­bor­ing town.

For some rea­son, Yukiko felt in­cred­ibly con­tent. It was strange, giv­en how she was dy­ing.

"Re­al­ly..." Yukiko said. "Re­al­ly..."

Yu­miko again smiled faint­ly. Yukiko opened her mouth just once more. She could say one last thing. That's right, she wasn't sure about re­li­gion, but if the Ha­lo Church had ev­er of­fered her some­thing beau­ti­ful it was Yu­miko. We met at the church, and we've been to­geth­er ev­er since.

"Yu­mi...ko. I'm so hap­py that we've been..."

As Yukiko was about to say "friends," Yu­miko's head shook with the sound of a bang. A red hole formed in her right tem­ple-and now Yu­miko mere­ly gawked at her. The far­away look she had might have been un­in­ten­tion­al­ly ap­pro­pri­ate giv­en their lo­ca­tion, the view­ing plat­form.

Yukiko opened her mouth in shock and hor­ror when she heard an­oth­er pop, this time ac­com­pa­nied by a blow to her head. It was the last sen­sa­tion she ev­er felt.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6) re­mained crouched so no one out­side the plat­form could see him. He low­ered the Walther PPK that had be­longed to Mit­su­ru Nu­mai and picked up the girls' day packs.

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

24

Af­ter the two shots were fired, Shuya and Noriko re­mained frozen. Above them, a hawk cried.

Af­ter check­ing the premis­es, Shogo turned back and said to them, "It's over. Let's go back."

As Shuya held up Noriko by her arm, he looked at Shogo stand­ing above them. His lips trem­bled un­con­trol­lably.

"What do you mean, 'It's over'? You could be a lit­tle more con­sid­er­ate."

Shogo shrugged his shoul­ders.

"Look, this is the way I talk. I'm not good at ex­press­ing my­self. In any case, now you see, right? Some of our class­mates are re­al­ly up to the task. And let me just add that this wasn't some­thing Sakamochi and his crew cooked up. They don't want to die ei­ther, so they're cooped up in that school."

Shuya still want­ed to say some­thing back, but he man­aged to re­strain him­self and be­gan walk­ing, hold­ing Noriko's arm.

As they walked, Noriko said in a hoarse voice, "It's so ter­ri­ble....How aw­ful can it get?"

Once they reached their lo­ca­tion Shogo said, "We have to get ready, just in case. We're go­ing to move about a hun­dred me­ters."

"I thought you said it was best to stay put-"

Shogo puck­ered his lips and shook his head. "You saw what hap­pened. Who­ev­er it was, that bas­tard is mer­ci­less. On top of that, he has a ma­chine gun. He prob­ably fig­ured out where we are. If he does, then we're bet­ter off mov­ing away from here." He added, "Just a lit­tle. We'll move over just a lit­tle."

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

25

Yu­ta­ka Se­to (Male Stu­dent No. 12) was run­ning fran­ti­cal­ly down the slope. He was on his hands and knees, so he was ac­tu­al­ly crawl­ing through the bush­es. His size-​S black school coat cov­er­ing his small body had near­ly turned white from dirt. His large eyes had a child­ish in­no­cence to them, but right now the class clown's face was con­tort­ed with fear. Af­ter he'd left the school build­ing and up un­til a few mo­ments ago, Yu­ta­ka Se­to had been hid­ing out in the bush­es near the north­ern peak, in oth­er words ap­prox­imate­ly fifty me­ters be­low from where Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano were call­ing to ev­ery­one with their mega­phone.

Al­though he was at an an­gle from them, Yu­ta­ka could see them clear­ly. He kept on hes­itat­ing, de­lib­er­at­ing over what he should do, but fi­nal­ly right when he de­cid­ed to join them, he heard the sound of dis­tant gun­fire. He thought he could see the two look in the op­po­site di­rec­tion from him. Then as he hes­itat­ed over whether he should go check it out, with­in a mat­ter of ten or twen­ty sec­onds he heard the sound of rapid-​type­writ­er-​rat­tling gun­fire and Yu­miko Kusa­ka's am­pli­fied shriek. He saw her fall. Then Yukiko Ki­tano was al­so shot down.

They were prob­ably still alive at that point. But Yu­ta­ka just could not bring him­self to come out and res­cue them. Af­ter all-he was a born jokester, fight­ing was just not his thing, and on top of that, his sup­plied weapon turned out to be a fork, the nor­mal kind you would use to eat spaghet­ti. Then he heard a gun be­ing fired twice, some­where be­yond his sight. He knew then that the as­sailant had fin­ished off Yu­miko and Yukiko.

The mo­ment he re­al­ized this he took his bags and slid down the side of the moun­tain. I'm the next tar­get! I know it! Af­ter all I'm the near­est one!

All of a sud­den Yu­ta­ka re­al­ized he had cre­at­ed a cloud of dust all around him. Oh no! No! This sucks! This blows more than your ma­ma! Hey, now's not the time to come up with stupid jokes!

Yu­ta­ka then changed his ap­proach, keep­ing his palms (his right hand held the fork, so it was clenched) and shoe soles on the ground to make sure his body wouldn't slide down the slope. He felt the skin of his hands scrap­ing away, but he didn't care. Damn, if some­one saw me now they'd think it was fun­ny. Ladies and gen­tle­men, the Hu­man Bee­tle.

Af­ter mov­ing for­ward like this for sev­er­al min­utes Yu­ta­ka fi­nal­ly stopped. Slow­ly he turned around. Through the trees he could make out the sum­mit where Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano had been killed, but it seemed far. Ev­ery­thing was still. He strained his ears. There was no sound.

Did I es­cape? Am I safe now?

As if an­swer­ing his own ques­tion, some­thing dug in­to his shoul­der.

Yu­ta­ka froze up with fear and shrieked, "Aieee!"

"You fool!" Some­one hissed as the grip on his shoul­der re­laxed and in­stead a clam­my hand cov­ered Yu­ta­ka's mouth. But Yu­ta­ka was com­plete­ly obliv­ious to this voice, ut­ter­ly con­vinced he was caught by the killer, and swung the fork in his hand in a fit of fear.

The fork made a clack­ing sound and stopped there...For some rea­son, noth­ing hap­pened. Yu­ta­ka ner­vous­ly opened his eyes.

The fig­ure in front of him was wear­ing a school coat. He'd blocked the fork with his large au­to­mat­ic pis­tol (Beretta M92F). He held the gun in his left hand. Giv­en their re­spec­tive po­si­tions, and the fact that he had his right hand over Yu­ta­ka's mouth, Yu­ta­ka's fork would have stabbed him pret­ty deep if he were right hand­ed. But this guy was left hand­ed. And there was on­ly one left hand­ed guy in Class B.

"That was dan­ger­ous, Yu­ta­ka."

The front of his wet-​look­ing hair was styled with gel. His eye­brows rose at a sharp an­gle, and be­neath them were his pierc­ing but hu­mor­ous eyes. Fi­nal­ly there was the ear­ring in his left ear. It was Yu­ta­ka's best friend, "The Third Man," Shin­ji Mimu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 19), grin­ning at him and gen­tly re­mov­ing his hand from his mouth. Stu­pe­fied, Yu­ta­ka low­ered his fork. Then he fi­nal­ly yelled out, "Shin­ji! It's you Shin­ji!"

"You id­iot!" Shin­ji Mimu­ra hissed at Yu­ta­ka, and once again shut Yu­ta­ka's mouth while he shout­ed from re­lief. Then he let go and said, "This way. Don't say a word. Just fol­low me," and walked ahead of him in­to the low bush­es.

As Yu­ta­ka fol­lowed him, dazed, he grad­ual­ly saw how he had de­scend­ed from the top of the moun­tain to the more lev­el area be­low. With­in a mat­ter of min­utes he'd cov­ered a good dis­tance.

Yu­ta­ka then glanced at Shin­ji Mimu­ra's back. But then he was sud­den­ly over­whelmed by a hor­ri­ble idea and felt weak in the knees.

Maybe Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano were killed by...Shin­ji? Then the killer chas­ing Yu­ta­ka would be him! But then why hasn't he killed me yet? I mean, come on, I al­ways thought of him as my best friend, and Shin­ji knows that. If we're to­geth­er, Shin­ji could, for in­stance, have me keep watch and help him in­crease his chances of sur­vival. Then, when we're the last two left, Shin­ji could kill me. Wow, what a great idea! If this was a video game, that's what I'd do.

You jerk! What are you think­ing!?

Yu­ta­ka shook off the thought. Shin­ji didn't have a ma­chine gun-and noth­ing else could have made that sound. He was cer­tain he didn't have one, and be­sides, most of all, this was Shin­ji. He was his best friend. He would nev­er kill those girls off like that, as if they were flies.

"What's wrong, Yu­ta­ka?" Shin­ji turned around and whis­pered. "Hur­ry up."

Once again Yu­ta­ka fol­lowed Shin­ji in a daze.

Shin­ji con­tin­ued to walk care­ful­ly. Once they cov­ered a dis­tance of ap­prox­imate­ly fifty me­ters he stopped. With his gun in his right hand, he point­ed down to­ward his feet. "You have to step over this here," he warned Yu­ta­ka. Yu­ta­ka nar­rowed his eyes and no­ticed a thin, dull piece of thread stretched tight­ly be­tween the trees.

"Is this..."

"It's not a trap," Shin­ji said af­ter step­ping over the thread. "There's an emp­ty can tied to it over there. Once it's tugged, we can hear it fall."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded, eyes opened wide. Shin­ji had been hid­ing out. And this was a kind of trip­wire alarm. Im­pres­sive. The Third Man was more than just a star ath­lete.

Yu­ta­ka stepped over the thread.

They reached a thick­et twen­ty me­ters away. Shin­ji stopped walk­ing. He said to Yu­ta­ka, "Let's sit down."

Yu­ta­ka sat down, fac­ing Shin­ji. He re­al­ized he was still hold­ing his fork. He put it on the ground when all of a sud­den he felt a sting­ing pain from his left palm and right fist. The skin had peeled off, re­veal­ing red flesh on his knuck­les.

See­ing this, Shin­ji put down his gun and pulled out what ap­peared to be a day pack from a near­by bush. He took out his wa­ter bot­tle and tow­el, doused one end with wa­ter, and said, "Give me your hands, Yu­ta­ka." Yu­ta­ka held them out, and Shin­ji wiped them thor­ough­ly, but gen­tly. Then he tore the dry part of the tow­el in­to thin shreds and wrapped them around Yu­ta­ka's hands.

Yu­ta­ka said, "Thank you." Then he asked, "So you've been hid­ing here?"

"Yeah," Shin­ji smiled and nod­ded. "I caught a glimpse of you from here mov­ing around in the bush­es. You were pret­ty far away, but I could tell it was you. So even though it was a lit­tle risky, I went in your di­rec­tion."

Yu­ta­ka choked up. Shin­ji risked his life for my sake.

"It's dan­ger­ous if you don't move care­ful­ly."

"Uh huh." Yu­ta­ka was about to cry.

"Thanks so much, Shin­ji."

"I'm glad..." Shin­ji ex­haled. "Even if I die, I want­ed to make sure I got to see you."

Now Yu­ta­ka's eyes were wa­ter­ing. He held his tears back though and changed the sub­ject, "I was.. -right near Yu­miko and Yukiko. I-I wasn't able to help them."

"Yeah," Shin­ji nod­ded. "I saw that too-that's how I found you. Don't let it get you down. I wasn't able to do any­thing for them ei­ther."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded. Re­call­ing how Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano were killed on­ly mo­ments ago, he trem­bled.

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

26

They end­ed up mov­ing ap­prox­imate­ly one hun­dred me­ters south­west of their pre­vi­ous po­si­tion. By the time Shogo was done ty­ing the wire around the bush­es again, it was al­ready 9 a.m. The sun was high in the sky, and the air smelled like a for­est in May. The sea, which was vis­ible as they moved through the trees, glis­tened a bril­liant blue. Is­lands were scat­tered across the Se­to In­land Sea. If they were hik­ing...this would have been a prime spot.

But they weren't. Ev­ery sin­gle boat that passed by cir­cled around the is­land at a great dis­tance, tiny as dots, and the near­est one was the gray guard ship in charge of the west­ern re­gion. Even that ship was pret­ty far, but you could see the ma­chine gun in­stalled at its head.

Af­ter Shogo was done set­ting the wire, he took a deep breath and sat down in front of Shuya and Noriko. Once again he placed his shot­gun be­tween his feet.

"What's wrong? You're both so qui­et now," Shogo asked.

Shuya looked up at Shogo. He hes­itat­ed-and then asked,

"What made them do that?"

Shogo lift­ed his brows. "You mean Yu­miko and Yukiko?"

Shuya nod­ded. Af­ter hes­itat­ing, he said, "I mean it should have been ob­vi­ous. They could have an­tic­ipat­ed that. I mean, ac­cord­ing to the rules of this game..." he sighed, "we're sup­posed to kill each oth­er."

Shogo put an­oth­er cigarette be­tween his lips and lit it with his dis­pos­able lighter. "They seemed close. Weren't they in some re­li­gious group?"

Shuya nod­ded. They were very nor­mal girls, but there was al­ways some­thing that sep­arat­ed them from the oth­er girls, like Noriko and the neu­tral fac­tion that in­clud­ed Yukie Ut­su­mi and her friends. He thought it was be­cause of their re­li­gion. "They were part of some Shin­to re­li­gious group called the Ha­lo Church. They have a church lo­cat­ed on the Yo­do Riv­er bank, off the state high­way when you're head­ing south."

Shogo ex­haled and sug­gest­ed, "Maybe that was part of it. You know, 'Love thy neigh­bor.' "

"No, I don't think so," Noriko said. "They weren't- es­pe­cial­ly Yu­miko-very com­mit­ted. They said they didn't re­al­ly get it, that it was just a so­cial thing."

Shogo mum­bled, "I see," and looked down. Then he con­tin­ued, "Well, the good aren't al­ways saved, and this game is no ex­cep­tion. It can be the ir­re­spon­si­ble ones that end up mak­ing it. But I re­spect any­one who stands by their con­science, even at the risk of fail­ing and be­ing re­ject­ed by ev­ery­one." He stared back at them. "They tried to be­lieve in their class­mates. They must have be­lieved, if we could all get to­geth­er, then we might end up be­ing saved. We should com­mend them for that. We couldn't do that."

Shuya took a deep breath. Then he agreed, "Yeah." Af­ter a while, Shuya looked up at Shogo again. "I don't think...you're an en­emy. So I want to trust you."

Noriko joined in, "Me too. I don't think you're a bad per­son."

Shogo shook his head and grinned. "I have to tell you, I have no tal­ent cheat­ing girls."

Shuya grinned back. Then he said, "So why won't you tell us? No, if you can't tell us how we're es­cap­ing, that's fine. But why not? Is it in case we meet up with oth­er peo­ple and tell them too much? Is it be­cause the oth­ers can't be trust­ed? Or that you can't trust them?"

"Hold off on the in­ter­ro­ga­tion. I'm not that smart."

"I don't be­lieve you."

Shogo rest­ed his el­bows against his knees, held his chin, and looked to his side in con­tem­pla­tion. Then he looked back at them. "Shuya. You're right. I don't want the oth­ers to find out about my plan, and even if you two didn't tell them, I wouldn't want the oth­ers to even know that you two knew what it was. So I can't tell you."

Af­ter Shuya thought about it, he ex­changed glances with Noriko and nod­ded. "Okay then, I un­der­stand. We'll trust you. But-"

"Some­thing else bugs you?"

Shuya shook his head. "It just seems like there's no way out of this sit­ua­tion. So I'm-"

"Per­plexed?"

Shuya nod­ded.

Shogo blew out some smoke and rubbed his cigarette in­to the ground. He ran his hand through his short hair and said, "Noth­ing is per­fect. Most things have flaws."

"Flaws?"

"Yeah, a weak spot. I'm go­ing to aim for that weak spot."

Shuya didn't un­der­stand. He squint­ed his eyes.

Shogo con­tin­ued, "I know this game bet­ter than you two do."

"How's that?" Noriko asked.

"Don't stare at me with those big eyes, girl. I'm shy."

Noriko gave a blank stare and then smiled a lit­tle, ask­ing again, "How?"

Fi­nal­ly Shogo said, "Do you know what hap­pens to the sur­vivor of this game?"

Shuya and Noriko looked at each oth­er and shook their heads. That's right, there was one sur­vivor in the Pro­gram. Af­ter you man­age to make it through this ab­surd game, the Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers shove you in front of the news cam­eras so they can have an im­age of the vic­tor ("Smile. You must smile."). But they had no idea what hap­pened to the sur­vivor af­ter that.

Shogo looked at Shuya and Noriko and con­tin­ued, "The win­ner's forced to trans­fer to an­oth­er school where he or she is or­dered not to men­tion the game and is in­struct­ed in­stead to lead a nor­mal life. That's all."

Shuya felt his chest well up in­side and his face froze. He stared at Shogo and re­al­ized that Noriko was hold­ing her breath.

Shogo said, "I was a stu­dent in Third Year Class C, Sec­ond Dis­trict, Kobe, Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture." He added, "I sur­vived the Pro­gram held in Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture last year."

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

27

Shogo's face soft­ened as he con­tin­ued, "They even gave me a card au­to­graphed by the Dic­ta­tor. What an hon­or that was. It looked like some kid scrib­bled on it, though I can't re­mem­ber the de­tails, since I tossed it in­to re­cy­cling."

In sharp con­trast to Shogo's cheery voice, Shuya took a deep breath. It was true any third-​year ju­nior high school stu­dent could get thrown in­to the Pro­gram, but...how could you end up in it twice? Of course if he didn't have to stay back, it would nev­er have hap­pened, but even so the chances were as slim as win­ning the lot­tery. But now it all made sense how Shogo was so fa­mil­iar with the game, how he no­ticed the sleep­ing gas, and of course, the scars all over his body...but if it was true-it was com­plete­ly out­ra­geous!

"That's..." Shuya said, "that's out­ra­geous."

Shogo shrugged. "The game was in Ju­ly, but be­cause I suf­fered heavy in­juries, I was hos­pi­tal­ized for a long time. It gave me time though to study a bunch of things in­clud­ing stuff about this coun­try-but on­ly while ly­ing in bed. The nurs­es and staff were re­al­ly gen­er­ous and brought me books from the li­brary. I guess the hos­pi­tal was my school. In any case, that was how I end­ed up re­peat­ing third year all over again. But..."

Shogo looked at them.

"...I have to say, even I didn't ex­pect I'd be in this game again."

That's right. Shuya re­called their re­cent-ac­tu­al­ly it was al­ready three hours ago-con­ver­sa­tion. When Shuya asked, "Did you al­ready kill some­one be­fore Ky­oichi?" and Shogo had an­swered, "Well, this time, it was my first."

Noriko then asked. "So those who've been se­lect­ed..." She rephrased the ques­tion, per­haps think­ing that it sound­ed too much like win­ning a sweep­stakes prize, "So the ones who've been in it al­ready aren't ex­empt?"

Shogo grinned. "I sup­pose not, since I'm here. From what we're told, class­es are cho­sen ran­dom­ly by com­put­er, right? My ex­pe­ri­ence gives me the up­per hand, but I guess the com­put­er doesn't ex­clude me. So here's an­oth­er case of per­vert­ed equal­ity."

Shogo cupped his hands around the lighter and lit an­oth­er cigarette.

"Now you un­der­stand how I de­tect­ed the gas odor. Not to men­tion..." he point­ed at the scar above his left brow, "this scar."

"How could they?" Noriko said as if she were about to cry. "It's too aw­ful."

"Come on, Noriko." Shogo broke in­to a smile. "Now I get the chance to save you guys."

Shuya of­fered his hand to Shogo.

"What's this? I can't read your palm."

Shuya smiled and shook his head. Then he said, "I'm sor­ry I sus­pect­ed you. A hand­shake. We're stick­ing to­geth­er till the very end."

Shogo replied, "All right." He gripped Shuya's hand and shook it. Noriko smiled in re­lief.

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

28

Kin­pat­su Sakamochi (su­per­vi­sor) was sit­ting at his fac­ul­ty desk, rum­mag­ing through some scat­tered doc­uments. To the north and south of him, a Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­dier stood by steel-​plat­ed win­dows equipped with gun ports. The lights in­side stayed on be­cause the build­ing let hard­ly any sun­light in. Five or six sol­diers were sit­ting at a desk fac­ing Sakamochi, star­ing at a row of desk­top com­put­er mon­itors. An­oth­er three sol­diers were wear­ing head­phones con­nect­ed to an­oth­er ma­chine that wasn't a com­put­er. On the west wall was a large gen­er­ator pow­er­ing the lights, com­put­ers and oth­er equip­ment. The gen­er­ator's low hum filled up the room over the sound in­su­la­tion. The oth­er sol­diers were tak­ing a break in the room the stu­dents had been in.

"Now then, Yu­miko Kusa­ka died at 8:42 a.m. and, uh huh, Yukiko Ki­tano, she al­so died at forty-​two min­utes af­ter the hour." He combed his long hair back be­hind his ears. "Ahh-I'm so busy!"

The old black phone on the desk rang, and with his pen still in hand, Sakamochi dis­tract­ed­ly picked up the re­ceiv­er.

"Yes, this is Ok­ishi­ma Is­land School, Third Year Class B, Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School Pro­gram Head­quar­ters," Sakamochi an­swered hap­haz­ard­ly, when all of a sud­den he stood up straight, cradling the re­ceiv­er with both hands.

"Yes sir. This is Sakamochi, Su­per­in­ten­dent. I ap­pre­ci­ate all you've re­cent­ly done for us. Yes sir. My sec­ond kid just turned two. Yes, and the wife's get­ting big­ger by the day with the third. Oh, no. Well, we just want to con­tribute to our na­tion, join­ing the fight against its dwin­dling youth pop­ula­tion. And how can I help you, sir?"

Sakamochi lis­tened for a while, and then smiled, "Ah ha. My oh my. So you've got your mon­ey on Shogo Kawa­da? I'm bet­ting on Kazuo Kiriya­ma. I have my mon­ey on him. Well, yes, Shogo Kawa­da is se­ri­ous com­pe­ti­tion. He has ex­pe­ri­ence, which is al­most un­heard of. Of course he's still alive. And how are you, sir? My, that's im­pres­sive. Ex­cuse me? The cur­rent sta­tus? I be­lieve you have ac­cess to it on the mon­itor. The cen­tral gov­ern­ment's top se­cret web­site-oh, you're not good with com­put­ers? Uh, well sir, then yes, if you could just hold on a mo­ment, sir."

Sakamochi put down his re­ceiv­er for a mo­ment and then called on a tough look­ing sol­dier sit­ting in front of the mon­itors, "Hey, Ka­to. Is Kawa­da still with those two?"

The sol­dier named Ka­to tapped silent­ly on his key­board and curt­ly replied, "He is."

The radar in the stu­dents' col­lars en­abled them to plot out each stu­dent's lo­ca­tion on a map on the mon­itor. Sakamochi was about to frown at Ka­to's gruff at­ti­tude, but then re­al­ized how Ka­to was on­ly one of the many prob­lem stu­dents he'd had ev­er since he was a ju­nior high school teach­er, so it was noth­ing new. He picked up the re­ceiv­er.

"Sor­ry to keep you wait­ing, sir. Let's see. Shogo Kawa­da is pro­ceed­ing with two oth­er stu­dents. That's Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa. Let's see. Well, they're ac­tu­al­ly talk­ing about es­cap­ing to­geth­er. Would you like to hear our record­ing of their con­ver­sa­tions? Oh yes, sir. Hmm, I'm not sure if he is sin­cere. I mean it's hard to say, but I'd say it's a bluff. Prob­ably. I mean it's im­pos­si­ble to es­cape. Oh, and yes, hold on, one mo­ment, sir. Doc­uments, doc­uments. Yes, Shogo Kawa­da, right? He didn't ap­pear to have been the con­tro­ver­sial type at his pre­vi­ous school. No an­ti-​gov­ern­ment ac­tions or state­ments. Yes. His fa­ther died dur­ing the pre­vi­ous game. Looks like his fa­ther got drunk and pro­voked the gov­ern­ment...but ap­par­ent­ly Kawa­da him­self said, 'Good rid­dance. He was a bas­tard any­way.' Hm­mm, they prob­ably didn't get along. Maybe his fa­ther in­sist­ed on some com­pen­sa­tion. Yessir. If that's so, then he's bet­ter off with those two than fight­ing alone. Shuya Nana­hara is an ex­cel­lent ath­lete, so he'll be use­ful. Al­though Noriko Nak­agawa is in­jured. Yes, our Tahara shot her. Yes, of course. They to­tal­ly trust Shogo Kawa­da. Help­ing an in­jured girl, I mean, how bril­liant. His con­ver­sa­tion has been most im­pres­sive."

Of­fer­ing a sub­servient smile, Sakamochi raised his brow in re­sponse to his caller. He combed back the hair over his right ear with his free right hand.

"Whaaat?" he replied. "That can't be. I mean that oc­curred in March. I did re­ceive the re­port. But if that's true, then right now...yessir. The cen­tral gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are al­ways prone to ex­ag­ger­ation. Be­sides, these are ju­nior high school kids. Then they would have known we were lis­ten­ing in on them. Right now there are no signs that any of these stu­dents know this. Yessir. So...yes, yes, yessir. Very well then. Oh no, please, I couldn't pos­si­bly ac­cept...well, if you must in­sist then, thank you very much, sir. Yes, yes. Well then, good­bye."

Sakamochi took a deep breath and hung up the phone. He held up his pen again and ex­claimed, "I'm so busy!" He combed back his hair and be­gan to write fran­ti­cal­ly on his doc­uments, as if he were cling­ing to them.

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

29

When Shin­ji first found Yu­ta­ka Se­to, he seemed on edge from the shock of wit­ness­ing the deaths of Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano, but af­ter a while he seemed to calm down. In a spot be­yond the thick branch­es, where the warm sun­light poured in, Shin­ji Mimu­ra was lis­ten­ing close­ly again. There didn't seem to be any­one else around. On­ly the sound of a lit­tle bird chirp­ing. Who­ev­er killed Yu­miko and Yukiko didn't seem to have no­ticed Yu­ta­ka and Shin­ji. Still, he had to be care­ful.

"Re­lax when you have to. But al­so be on your toes when you have to. The point is, make no er­rors of judg­ment."

His un­cle had told him this. He was the one who taught him ev­ery­thing. Start­ing with bas­ket­ball, he was the man most re­spon­si­ble for the ed­uca­tion of the boy known as The Third Man. His un­cle had al­so taught him com­put­er ba­sics. When his un­cle showed him how to ac­cess for­eign in­ter­net con­nec­tions, he warned Shin­ji, you can nev­er be too care­ful. And now was one of those times he had to be on his toes. That much was cer­tain.

"Hey, Shin­ji." Shin­ji looked back at Yu­ta­ka. Yu­ta­ka was lean­ing against a tree, hug­ging his knees, star­ing be­tween them. "Come to think of it, I should have been wait­ing for you in front of the school. Then we could have been to­geth­er from the start." He looked up at Shin­ji. "But I was too scared..."

Shin­ji crossed his arms with his Beretta in his left hand.

"I don't know about that. That might have been dan­ger­ous."

That's right, Shin­ji re­al­ized, Yu­ta­ka prob­ably didn't know that Mayu­mi Ten­do and Yoshio Aka­mat­su were killed in front of the school. Be­sides-

That was when he re­al­ized Yu­ta­ka was cry­ing. His eyes were filled with tears which be­gan to flow down his cheeks, trac­ing two thin, white lines down his dirty face.

"What's wrong?" Shin­ji asked kind­ly.

"I..." Yu­ta­ka lift­ed his wound­ed fist and wiped his eyes with a strip from the tow­el Shin­ji had wrapped around his hand. "I'm so pa­thet­ic. I-I'm a fool and a cow­ard-" He stopped and then said as if spit­ting up some­thing stuck in his throat, "I wasn't able to save her."

Shin­ji lift­ed his brow and glanced at his friend. This was some­thing he didn't bring up, but since Yu­ta­ka did...

Shin­ji said slow­ly, "You mean Izu­mi Kanai."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded, still hunched over.

Shin­ji re­mem­bered be­ing in Yu­ta­ka's room when Yu­ta­ka told him, with a mix of pride and em­bar­rass­ment, "I like Izu­mi Kanai." And Izu­mi Kanai end­ed up be­ing one of the first to die. They were in­formed of her death by the 6 a.m. an­nounce­ment. He had no idea where she died. He on­ly knew she died some­where on the is­land.

"There wasn't...any­thing you could do, though," Shin­ji said, "Izu­mi left be­fore you did."

"But I..." Yu­ta­ka con­tin­ued, his head still hunched over. "I couldn't even find Izu­mi...1 was so scared...1 thought, no, it couldn't hap­pen to her, she's all right...I tried con­vinc­ing my­self. Then at six o'clock she was al­ready..."

Shin­ji lis­tened with­out say­ing a word. He heard the chirp­ing again up in the tree­tops. There might have been an­oth­er bird. The chirp­ing over­lapped, as if the birds were talk­ing to each oth­er.

Sud­den­ly Yu­ta­ka looked up at Shin­ji. "I made up my mind," he said.

"About?"

His eyes still wet, he di­rect­ly looked at Shin­ji. "Re­venge. I'm gonna kill that bas­tard Sakamochi and the rest of the fuck­ing gov­ern­ment."

Shin­ji was sur­prised. He stared at Yu­ta­ka.

Of course he was al­so to­tal­ly pissed off at this game and the gov­ern­ment that ran it. He didn't re­al­ly know Shuya Nana­hara's best friend Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu very well-he was a lit­tle too laid back for Shin­ji-but he was a nice guy. And the gov­ern­ment bru­tal­ly mur­dered him. Then Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi, and now as Yu­ta­ka said, Izu­mi Kanai, and then oth­ers like Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano, killed right be­fore their eyes, and then more class­mates. But-

"But...you might as well be com­mit­ting sui­cide."

"I don't care if I die. What else can I do for Izu­mi now?" Yu­ta­ka stopped and looked at Shin­ji. "Is it ridicu­lous for a wimp like me to be say­ing this?"

"No..." Shin­ji paused a bit and then shook his head. "Not at all, Yu­ta­ka."

Shin­ji stared back at Yu­ta­ka and then looked up at the clus­ter of branch­es above them. He wasn't sur­prised by Yu­ta­ka's sud­den emo­tion­al out­burst, though it wasn't part of with his clown­ish per­sona. Here was an­oth­er side of Yu­ta­ka. That's why they'd been friends for so long. But-

"I don't care if I die. What else can I do for Izu­mi now?"

I won­der what it's like to feel that way about a girl, Shin­ji won­dered as he stared at the olive-​col­ored lay­er of tree leaves shin­ing bril­liant­ly in the di­rect sun­light. He had dat­ed girls and slept with three in fact (not bad for a ju­nior high kid, huh?), but he'd nev­er felt that way about a girl the way Yu­ta­ka did.

Maybe it had some­thing to do with his par­ents not get­ting along. His fa­ther saw an­oth­er wom­an. (Ap­par­ent­ly he was an ex­cel­lent bu­reau­crat, but though it might have been pre­sump­tu­ous for his kid to be say­ing this, he was a vile man. It was un­be­liev­able he could be the broth­er of Shin­ji's un­cle, who ra­di­at­ed bril­liance.) His moth­er couldn't hold any­thing against his fa­ther, and so whether it was flow­er ar­range­ment or a wom­en's group, she went from one hob­by to an­oth­er, lost in her own world. They had nor­mal con­ver­sa­tions. They did what was nec­es­sary. But they didn't trust each oth­er, and they didn't help each oth­er. Their mu­tu­al dis­gust ac­cu­mu­lat­ed as they grew old­er....Well maybe that was what most par­ents were like.

Mean­while...ev­er since Shin­ji Mimu­ra be­came his school's star bas­ket­ball play­er, he got pop­ular with the girls- so go­ing out with them was easy. Kiss­ing them was easy. Then af­ter a while sleep­ing with them was easy too. But...he nev­er fell in love with any­one.

Re­gret­tably he had no op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring this up with his un­cle who al­ways had the right an­swer for ev­ery­thing. It on­ly con­cerned him re­cent­ly, and it was al­ready two years since his un­cle's death.

The ear­ring on Shin­ji's left ear came from him. His un­cle al­ways had it with him. He told Shin­ji, "The wom­an I loved wore this. She died a long time ago though." It was one of Shin­ji's prized pos­ses­sions. Af­ter his un­cle's death, he took it as a keep­sake with­out any­one's per­mis­sion. He could hear his un­cle say­ing, "You'll end up be­com­ing jad­ed at that rate. It's not a bad thing to love some­one and be loved by some­one. Hur­ry up and find your­self a nice girl."

But he still nev­er found some­one he could re­al­ly fall for.

He re­mem­bered how his pre­co­cious sis­ter, Iku­mi, who was three years younger than him, asked, "Do you want a ro­man­tic mar­riage or an ar­ranged mar­riage?" and how he'd an­swered, "I may end up not get­ting mar­ried at all."

Iku­mi. Shin­ji thought of his sis­ter. I hope you fall in love with some­one nice and have a good mar­riage. I might end up dy­ing with­out know­ing what it's like to be in love.

Shin­ji looked back at Yu­ta­ka. "Can I ask you some­thing, Yu­ta­ka? I'll apol­ogize in ad­vance if it sounds of­fen­sive."

Yu­ta­ka looked blankly at him. "What is it?"

"What was so great about Izu­mi?"

Yu­ta­ka stared at Shin­ji and then his tear-​drenched face broke in­to a smile. Maybe this would be his way of of­fer­ing his bou­quet of flow­ers to the dead.

"I don't know how to say it, but she was so pret­ty."

"Pret­ty?" Shin­ji re­peat­ed, then quick­ly added, "I mean, I'm not say­ing she wasn't."

Izu­mi Kanai, well, she wasn't a dog for sure, but as far as pret­ty girls went, there was Takako Chi­gusa (oh, I guess she's my type), Saku­ra Ogawa (well, she had Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to, and those two are gone), and Mit­suko Souma (well, she's out of the ques­tion, no mat­ter how pret­ty she is).

Yu­ta­ka then smiled a lit­tle again and said, "When she looked drowsy and rest­ed her cheeks on her hands, she was pret­ty."

And then he con­tin­ued, "When she was wa­ter­ing flow­ers by the class­room win­dow, the way she touched the leaves, she was pret­ty."

"When she dropped the ba­ton at the an­nu­al field day and burst in­to tears af­ter­wards, she was pret­ty."

"When she was hang­ing out dur­ing our breaks, lis­ten­ing to Yu­ka Nak­agawa, hold­ing her stom­ach as she burst out laugh­ing, she was so pret­ty."

Ah.

As he lis­tened to these ob­ser­va­tions, Shin­ji sud­den­ly felt like he to­tal­ly un­der­stood. Yu­ta­ka's ob­ser­va­tions didn't ex­plain any­thing, but it felt right. Hey Un­cle, I think I ac­tu­al­ly might be­gin to un­der­stand what this is all about.

When Yu­ta­ka was done speak­ing he looked at Shin­ji.

Shin­ji looked at him kind­ly and tilt­ed his head slight­ly. Then he grinned.

"I thought you'd be­come a co­me­di­an when you grew up but now I think you could be a po­et."

Yu­ta­ka smiled too.

Then Shin­ji said, "Hey."

"What?"

"I don't know how to say this, but I think Izu­mi's re­al­ly hap­py to know that some­one loves her that much. She's prob­ably cry­ing right now up there in heav­en."

Com­pared to Yu­ta­ka's po­et­ic ob­ser­va­tions, his words sound­ed cheap, but he had to say it. But now Yu­ta­ka's eyes be­gan to well up with tears again. The tears flowed down his cheeks again. They formed sev­er­al white stripes on his cheeks.

"You think?" Yu­ta­ka replied, all choked up.

Shin­ji ex­tend­ed his right hand to­ward Yu­ta­ka's shoul­der and gen­tly shook it. "Of course." Shin­ji took in a breath and con­tin­ued, "And as for your re­venge, I'm in."

Still filled with tears, Yu­ta­ka's eyes opened wide. "Re­al­ly?"

"Yep." Shin­ji nod­ded.

Yes, it was some­thing he'd been won­der­ing about. No, not the stuff about girls. He won­dered about his fu­ture in this shit­ty Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia.

He'd brought this kind of thing up with Yu­ta­ka once be­fore. Yu­ta­ka said some­thing like, "I don't have a clue," and then added, "At the very least I'll prob­ably be­come a co­me­di­an." Shin­ji had laughed at Yu­ta­ka's face­tious re­ply. But it was a se­ri­ous con­cern for him. Ac­tu­al­ly, it must have been se­ri­ous for Yu­ta­ka too. It was just that Yu­ta­ka chose not to bring it up. What it came down to was, as he had once said to Shuya Nana­hara, "This is what they call 'suc­cess­ful fas­cism.' Where else in the world could you find some­thing so sin­is­ter?" This coun­try was in­sane. Not just this stupid game, but any­one who showed even the slight­est bit of re­sis­tance to the gov­ern­ment was im­me­di­ate­ly dis­card­ed. The gov­ern­ment couldn't care less even if you were in­no­cent, and con­tin­ued to cast an in­tim­idat­ing shad­ow over the lives of ev­ery­one who had no oth­er choice but to obey its poli­cies and who found con­so­la­tion on­ly in the small things that life had to of­fer. And even when their sources of hap­pi­ness were tak­en away, well you just had to bow down and put up with it.

But Shin­ji be­gan to be­lieve this was wrong, no mat­ter what. No, ev­ery­one must have been think­ing what he was think­ing. But no one would come out with it. Even Shuya Nana­hara let off steam by lis­ten­ing to that il­le­gal­ly im­port­ed rock mu­sic-it nev­er went be­yond that though. Shin­ji be­gan to think he should protest, even if it was dan­ger­ous. The more he learned about the world, the more he be­gan to hold this con­vic­tion.

Then it hap­pened, two years ago. His un­cle's death. Of­fi­cial­ly it was re­port­ed as an ac­ci­dent. As they asked his fam­ily to claim his body, the po­lice in­formed them he'd been elec­tro­cut­ed while work­ing alone at night at his com­pa­ny's fac­to­ry. But some­thing had seemed wrong with his un­cle for a while. His un­cle seemed pre­oc­cu­pied, which was un­usu­al for him-as usu­al, Shin­ji tapped on his un­cle's com­put­er, and then asked, "Is there some­thing wrong?" His un­cle was in the mid­dle of re­ply­ing, "One of my old mates..." but re­strained him­self and grew eva­sive,

"Oh no, it's re­al­ly noth­ing."

Old mates.

His un­cle hard­ly ev­er talked about the past. He'd al­ways change the sub­ject, and Shin­ji, re­al­iz­ing his un­cle avoid­ed talk­ing about it, de­cid­ed not to dig in­to his un­cle's past any­more. (When he asked his fa­ther, who was his un­cle's old­er broth­er, about it, he on­ly replied that it was some­thing Shin­ji didn't need to know.) Nev­er­the­less, at the core of his wide range of knowl­edge that went be­yond mak­ing le­gal and il­le­gal dis­tinc­tions, at the core of ev­ery ex­pla­na­tion his un­cle pro­vid­ed about the world or so­ci­ety, Shin­ji de­tect­ed a pro­found dis­gust if not ha­tred to­wards their na­tion. And al­so...a shad­ow-​like pres­ence. Shin­ji had once told him, "You're so great." His un­cle on­ly gri­maced and replied, "No, you're wrong. I'm not at all. You couldn't sur­vive in this coun­try if you re­al­ly want­ed to be good. I'd be dead if I were re­al­ly a good per­son." That was what led Shin­ji to be­lieve his un­cle had fought against the gov­ern­ment. But for some rea­son he stopped. That was what Shin­ji sus­pect­ed.

That was al­so why Shin­ji was dis­turbed when he heard his un­cle men­tion his "old mates." But this was his un­cle, so he'd be fine, he as­sured him­self and de­cid­ed not to bom­bard him with ques­tions.

But his con­cern turned out to be right on the mark. Shin­ji had sus­pect­ed his un­cle's "old mates," with whom he'd lost touch, had got­ten back in con­tact him. And though his un­cle had prob­ably hes­itat­ed, he de­cid­ed to take on an as­sign­ment. And as a re­sult...some­thing hap­pened. It was true that the po­lice in this coun­try had the right to ex­ecute civil­ians with­out any tri­al, so usu­al­ly it wouldn't mat­ter whether they shot you in an al­ley or at work. But when the per­son in­volved was re­lat­ed to some­one im­por­tant, then it wasn't un­like­ly they'd con­spire to kill you in the form of an "ac­ci­dent." Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Shin­ji's fa­ther was a di­rec­tor at a well known firm (in oth­er words, he was a first-​class work­er ac­cord­ing to the Re­pub­lic's em­ploy­ment rank­ing sys­tem- with the ex­cep­tion of a top-​lev­el gov­ern­ment bu­reau­crat, it was the high­est rank), and what was even more up­set­ting was that if this were true, then that worth­less fa­ther of his had as­sist­ed, how­ev­er in­di­rect­ly, the gov­ern­ment in "tak­ing care of" his un­cle like that.

It couldn't have been ac­ci­den­tal. His un­cle would nev­er die from elec­tro­cu­tion. That was just too lame!

The orig­inal own­er of his ear­ring was prob­ably linked to that part of his un­cle's past. Out­raged over his un­cle's mur­der, Shin­ji swore he'd nev­er bow down to this coun­try.

Of course he knew that his un­cle's state­ment, "You couldn't sur­vive if you re­al­ly want­ed to be good," was al­so a warn­ing, which turned out to be true in the case of his un­cle's own death. Af­ter all you've taught me, Shin­ji thought, I'm go­ing to fig­ure out how to do what you gave up on a long time ago. I...want to be good. That's what I learned from you af­ter all.

But he had no clear ideas and he hadn't re­al­ly tak­en any ac­tion. He had heard of an­ti-​gov­ern­ment groups but he had no idea how to con­tact them. Be­sides, his un­cle told him, "It's best not to trust groups and move­ments. They're not very re­li­able." He al­so thought he was a lit­tle too young. And above all he was scared.

But now even if he were lucky enough to es­cape this stupid game he'd be­come a fugi­tive. Then-he came to the iron­ic con­clu­sion-didn't that mean he could do as he pleased? Whether he did it in a group or on his own wouldn't mat­ter. What mat­tered was that he could give all he had against this gov­ern­ment now-this de­ter­mi­na­tion welled up in­side him.

And now, af­ter talk­ing to Yu­ta­ka, he was ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain of it.

Leav­ing aside this com­pli­cat­ed stuff for the mo­ment though, he de­cid­ed to share his hon­est feel­ings on the oth­er top­ic with Yu­ta­ka.

"I re­al­ly en­vy you for be­ing in love with some­one like that. So if you're go­ing for it, I'm on your side."

Yu­ta­ka's lips be­gan to trem­ble. "Damn, re­al­ly? You re­al­ly will?"

"Yeah, I will." Shin­ji touched Yu­ta­ka's shoul­der and added, "But our first pri­or­ity is to es­cape. Killing that bas­tard Sakamochi wouldn't even put a dent in the gov­ern­ment. If we're go­ing to go for it, we have to aim as high as we can, right?"

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded. Then he wiped his eyes.

Shin­ji asked him, "Did you see any­one oth­er than Yukiko and Yu­miko?"

His eyes red from rub­bing, Yu­ta­ka looked at Shin­ji and shook his head, "Nope. I... ran out of the school... and kept on run­ning___Did you see any­one, Shin­ji?"

Shin­ji nod­ded. "When I first left-you prob­ably don't know this but-Mayu­mi and Yoshio were killed in front of the school."

Yu­ta­ka's eyes opened wide. "Re­al­ly?"

"Yeah. Mayu­mi was prob­ably killed right as she was leav­ing."

"...and Yoshio?"

Shin­ji an­swered with his arms fold­ed, "I think Yoshio was the one who killed Mayu­mi."

Yu­ta­ka's face stiff­ened again, "...re­al­ly?"

"Yeah. Why else would Yoshio, the first one out, be there? Yoshio came back. Then, hid­ing in the shad­ows, he prob­ably shot Mayu­mi....Since they both had ar­rows in their bod­ies, he must have tried to get rid of the next one... but in­stead his weapon- prob­ably a bow gun, giv­en those ar­rows-must have been tak­en by some­one else, who then shot him. That's the most like­ly sce­nario."

"Who was the next one though?..."

"Shuya."

Yu­ta­ka's eyes widened again. "Shuya? Shuya killed Yoshio?"

Shin­ji shook his head. "I don't know. The on­ly thing we know is that Yoshio wasn't able to kill Shuya. So it was prob­ably Shuya. But maybe Shuya just knocked Yoshio out. He's got a soft spot af­ter all. And then Yoshio might have been killed by some­one who came out lat­er." Shin­ji thought about it and added, "Be­sides, Shuya must have left with Noriko Nak­agawa. He might not have had time to fin­ish off Yoshio."

"Noriko? That's right, Noriko was shot. And you..."

"Yeah," Shin­ji grinned wry­ly. "Get­ting the game de­layed would have helped. I knew it was im­pos­si­ble but it was worth try­ing. Noriko came af­ter Shuya. Shuya gave a clear sig­nal to Noriko be­fore he left. I could tell be­cause I was near him."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded. "That's right. Noriko got shot so Shuya..."

"And giv­en what hap­pened to Yoshi­to­ki..."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded sev­er­al times. He com­plete­ly un­der­stood. "I get it...Nobu had a crush on Noriko, right? So Shuya had to take care of Noriko."

"Yeah. Well, even if that wasn't the case, giv­en Shuya's per­son­al­ity, he'd prob­ably planned on gath­er­ing ev­ery­one who came out af­ter him. But af­ter Yoshio's at­tack it was out of the ques­tion. Noriko was in­jured too. So he prob­ably just took off with Noriko as his on­ly part­ner."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded again. Then he looked down. "I won­der where Shuya is. We'd be so strong if Shuya and you were to­geth­er."

Shin­ji raised his brow. Yu­ta­ka might have been re­call­ing their pow­er­ful com­bi­na­tions when they were paired up in class games. It was true, Shin­ji al­so thought, Shuya Nana­hara would be a great part­ner. It wasn't just his ath­let­ic tal­ent. Just like Shin­ji, Shuya was dar­ing and fear­less, with the abil­ity to re­spond un­der pres­sure. He was one of the few class­mates he could re­ly on in this sit­ua­tion. An hon­est guy like him (and as far as Shin­ji was con­cerned a lit­tle too spacey) could nev­er kill his class­mates.

Shin­ji placed his right on Yu­ta­ka's shoul­der. Yu­ta­ka lift­ed his face. "I'm just glad I'm with you. I'm so glad we're to­geth­er."

Yu­ta­ka was once again on the verge of burst­ing in­to tears. Shin­ji gave him a re­as­sur­ing smile. Yu­ta­ka held back his tears and smiled.

Shin­ji con­tin­ued, "Enough about the dead. I no­ticed some­thing. You know how the woods are right in front of the school ath­let­ic field?"

"Yeah."

"There was some­one there. A group of stu­dents."

"...re­al­ly?"

"Yeah. I think they were wait­ing for some­one. Of course, there were on­ly five stu­dents left af­ter me. Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi, Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to, Chisato Mat­sui, Kaori Mi­na­mi, and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi. Any­way, they didn't make any at­tempts to call out to me. It was a group, so I doubt they would have been hos­tile right off, but I didn't have any par­tic­ular rea­son to seek them out and join them, ei­ther. You just said you should have wait­ed...but un­der the cir­cum­stances that would have been im­pos­si­ble. The fact is that Yoshio prob­ably came back and killed Mayu­mi. I was think­ing that if some­one came back there and found that group in the woods they'd be fin­ished. Of course, they might have been armed. Any­way, I booked out of there."

Shin­ji stopped. Af­ter moist­en­ing his lips with the tip of his tongue, he went on, "I al­so saw two oth­er stu­dents."

Yu­ta­ka's eyes opened wide again. "Re­al­ly?"

Shin­ji nod­ded. "I moved around a lot last night. And...one of them was a girl. You know she has that weird hair that stands up...so I think it was Hi­rono. While I was check­ing out the foot of the moun­tain, I saw her mov­ing be­yond those bush­es."

"You didn't call out to her?"

Shin­ji shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I'm prej­udiced against her. I just don't trust Mit­suko's friends."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded.

"The oth­er one I saw was Shogo Kawa­da."

Yu­ta­ka opened his mouth as if to say, wow. He ex­claimed, "Shogo-​san, huh." Just like his class­mates Yu­ta­ka po­lite­ly re­ferred to Shogo as "Shogo-​san." "He's a lit­tle in­tim­idat­ing so..."

"Yeah, well, that's why I avoid­ed him. But..." Shin­ji glanced up at the sky. Then he looked back at Yu­ta­ka. "He seemed to no­tice me. I'd just left a house where I was search­ing for some stuff. He was there, around the house, but he im­me­di­ate­ly took cov­er in the path be­tween the fields. I think he was car­ry­ing a shot­gun. I hid be­hind the door...I think he was check­ing me out for a while. But then he dis­ap­peared. He didn't try to at­tack me at all."

Yu­ta­ka re­spond­ed, "Huh. Then that means he's not an en­emy."

Shin­ji shook his head. "Not nec­es­sar­ily. He might have seen my gun and de­cid­ed he was bet­ter off not at­tack­ing me. In any case, I de­cid­ed not to fol­low him."

"I see..." Yu­ta­ka nod­ded, but then looked up as if he'd re­al­ized some­thing. "I know I haven't seen any­one, but I could've sworn I heard an­oth­er gun go off be­fore Yu­miko and Yukiko were shot."

Shin­ji nod­ded. "I heard it too."

"It wasn't a ma­chine gun. Do you think it was aimed at them too?"

"No," Shin­ji shook his head. "I don't think so. I think who­ev­er fired it did it to stop them. It was so ob­vi­ous what they were do­ing was risky. The shoot­er want­ed to scare them with the gun­fire so they'd run and hide."

Yu­ta­ka leaned for­ward ex­cit­ed­ly, "Then...then that shoot­er isn't an en­emy."

"Yeah well, we don't have any way to hook up. Even though I have a rough idea where the gun­shot came from___The shoot­er's prob­ably al­ready on the move since the ma­chine gun shoot­er knows where he is too."

Dis­ap­point­ed, Yu­ta­ka drew back. They fell silent while Shin­ji con­tin­ued think­ing, his arms fold­ed. Shin­ji want­ed to know if Yu­ta­ka had seen any­one they could trust. He thought they could hook up with a class­mate if he or she hadn't moved, but come to think of it, he'd trust any­one Yu­ta­ka would trust, so if Yu­ta­ka had seen oth­ers who were trust­wor­thy Yu­ta­ka would have been with them by now. But Yu­ta­ka was alone. So the ques­tion was point­less.

But...in any case, who could he trust? Shuya...and then maybe Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra? The rest were...girls. He could prob­ably trust the class rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Yukie Ut­su­mi, and her friends...but he didn't have a good rep­uta­tion with the girls in his class, prob­ably be­cause he slept around. Ah well. Hey Un­cle, I should have found a steady girl­friend, huh?

But how lucky was he to hook up with Yu­ta­ka? He could ab­so­lute­ly trust him.

Yu­ta­ka asked him, "Hey Shin­ji. You said you were look­ing for some­thing."

Shin­ji nod­ded. "I did."

"What was it? What were you look­ing for? A weapon? I was too scared. It nev­er even crossed my mind."

Shin­ji looked down at his watch. It should be done by now. An hour had elapsed since the ma­chine be­gan its pass­word search.

Shin­ji got up and tucked his gun in front. "Yu­ta­ka, can you move over?" Yu­ta­ka moved away from the tree he was lean­ing against. Be­yond it, there were bush­es spread­ing out over the ground, form­ing a thick­et.

Shin­ji walked over there and stuck his arms in­to the bush­es. Care­ful­ly he pulled out the ac­ces­sories and ca­bles to­geth­er.

Yu­ta­ka looked as­ton­ished.

Shin­ji had pulled out a car bat­tery (the pow­er source), a par­tial­ly dis­as­sem­bled cell phone, and a lap­top com­put­er. They were all con­nect­ed by a patch of red and white ca­bles.

The liq­uid crys­tal mon­itor dis­play had been left on, with the com­put­er screen dis­play turned off.

Which meant...Shin­ji puck­ered his lips and whis­tled qui­et­ly, press­ing down on the space bar. The com­put­er, con­serv­ing its en­er­gy in sleep mode, turned on with the sound of its hard drive spin­ning and the grayscale dis­play light­ing up on the screen.

Af­ter search­ing for the fi­nal line in the tiny win­dow on the screen, Shin­ji's eyes twin­kled mis­chievous­ly. "Geez. Just a switch of vow­els. Too sim­ple for me to guess on my own," he said.

"Hey, Shin­ji, is this-" Yu­ta­ka fi­nal­ly blurt­ed out in amaze­ment. Shin­ji closed and opened his fists as he al­ways did be­fore tap­ping away on the key­board. Then he grinned at Yu­ta­ka.

"It's a Mac­in­tosh Power­Book 150. I didn't ex­pect to find such a good ma­chine on this lousy is­land."

27 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

30

Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 21) wait­ed un­til her watch read 10 a.m. and then cau­tious­ly looked out the rear en­trance of the house. It was on the south­ern end of the res­iden­tial area of the is­land, so it was far from the house where Megu­mi Eto was killed, but Yoshi­mi had no idea Megu­mi had died there any­way. She just heard her name in this morn­ing's an­nounce­ment.

She was more pre­oc­cu­pied with the for­bid­den zone an­nounced this morn­ing. At 11 a.m. all col­lars in sec­tor H=8, which in­clud­ed the hous­es here, would ex­plode. The com­put­er would not re­spond to pleas for it to wait.

The rear en­trance faced a nar­row al­ley that ran be­tween the hous­es. Yoshi­mi held the heavy au­to­mat­ic pis­tol (Colt Gov­ern­ment Mod­el .45) with both hands, pulling back the tight ham­mer with her right thumb. She quick­ly checked the premis­es. There was no one in the al­ley in ei­ther di­rec­tion.

Even though as a mem­ber of Mit­suko Souma's gang she was con­sid­ered a "delin­quent," her round face had a child­ish qual­ity. Right now though, it was break­ing out in a cold sweat. It was on­ly an hour or two ago that she saw from the sec­ond floor win­dow Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano call­ing on ev­ery­one to join them. Then the rat­tling ma­chine gun. No doubt about it. The killing was con­tin­uing. Not ev­ery­one was hid­ing out like she was. There were oth­ers will­ing­ly killing their class­mates. And it was im­pos­si­ble to know where they might show up.

She stepped out and cau­tious­ly tip­toed to her right with her back pinned up against the wall of the house where she had been hid­ing. She turned south at the cor­ner and saw a field ex­tend up a gen­tle slope. The mild slope was cov­ered with patch­es of green and head­ed up to the south­ern moun­tain. The hous­es there weren't as crowd­ed to­geth­er as they were here. She de­cid­ed it was best for her to reach the south­ern moun­tain. Then she'd be safe for the time be­ing.

Yoshi­mi shoul­dered her day pack, checked around again, then ran out to the small thick­et by the field.

She reached it in a mat­ter of sec­onds. Hold­ing her gun with both hands, she point­ed it left and right, but no one was there.

Yoshi­mi was al­ready pant­ing af­ter that brief ex­cur­sion. She had fur­ther to go, though, to get out of sec­tor H=8. She ac­tu­al­ly might be be­yond the bor­der, but it wasn't as if there was a white line run­ning on the ground. It was best to err on the side of cau­tion. Oth­er­wise she'd go nuts. There were blue dots on the map in­di­cat­ing hous­es and the group of hous­es where she was was clut­tered up with so many dots she had no idea ex­act­ly where she was. The sec­tor bor­der was at the edge of this clut­ter.

Yoshi­mi felt like cry­ing. If...if she wasn't in Mit­suko Souma's gang then she'd have prob­ably found some­one, yes, some nice girl she could trust, and joined up with her. But no one trust­ed her. Well, she'd done some bad things with Mit­suko Souma and Hi­rono Shimizu. Steal­ing from, even at times ter­ror­iz­ing her class­mates. No one would be­lieve her even if she in­sist­ed she meant no harm. They might at­tack her on sight.

Be­fore she hid in the house last night she saw an­oth­er girl head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. She was leav­ing the res­iden­tial area. Was it Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 8)? Maybe she'd first hid in the res­iden­tial area but then de­cid­ed against it and moved on. (Her de­ci­sion proved a good one, since the area be­came the game's first for­bid­den zone.) It was a per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tact some­one, giv­en the tim­ing and prox­im­ity, but Yoshi­mi just couldn't bring her­self to do it.

And what about Mit­suko Souma and Hi­rono Shimizu? It was true they were bad...but they were her friends af­ter all. If she could find them...would they trust her? And...could she trust them? No...she prob­ably couldn't.

Over­whelmed by de­spair, she thought of a cer­tain boy's face again. It was the same face she'd been think­ing of ev­er since the game be­gan. The one who said he didn't care she was with Mit­suko Souma, he still liked her. He kissed her gen­tly on the bed and kind­ly warned her, "Stay out of trou­ble." The boy who made her be­lieve she could ac­tu­al­ly change.

When she left the school build­ing...she thought he might be wait­ing for her. But of course there was no one there. Of course there wouldn't be. There were the corpses of Mayu­mi Ten­do and Yoshio Aka­mat­su ly­ing on the ground, though. Chances were if you stuck around you'd end up like them. (She had no idea where their killer had gone.)

Where could he pos­si­bly be right now? Or...or was it too late...

She felt her chest tight­en. Her eyes filled with tears.

She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sailor suit and moved through the thick­et to­wards its edge. She had to move a lit­tle fur­ther ahead.

Still hold­ing the gun, she looked for her next source of shel­ter. Now there were sev­er­al tall trees bunched to­geth­er on her right with dense, tall weeds all over.

She ran across the field again. Her face was scratched by a small branch as she slid in­to the edge of the thick­et. She got up slow­ly and looked around. She couldn't see com­plete­ly through the thick green shrub­bery, but no one was in sight.

Yoshi­mi still kept low as she crept for­ward in the thick­et. It was all right, it was all right, no one was in the area.

She reached the edge of the thick­et. Now the green­ery of the south­ern moun­tain was right in front of her. Large and small trees and al­so a dense grove of what looked like bam­boo. It looked like there were plen­ty of places to hide there. All right...all right...then I just have to get there___

Sud­den­ly, she heard a rustling sound be­hind her. Her heart leaped.

Yoshi­mi low­ered her­self, hold­ing the Colt .45 in her hands, and slow­ly turned around. The hair on the back of her neck was stand­ing straight up.

She caught a glimpse of a black school coat mov­ing be­tween the trees ap­prox­imate­ly ten me­ters away. Her eyes opened wide with fear. Some­one was over there. Some­one!

She clenched her teeth to con­tain her fear and low­ered her head. Her heart was pound­ing.

She heard an­oth­er rustling sound.

There wasn't any­one in the thick­et just a mo­ment ago. Some­one had come here af­ter her. Why? Was this per­son af­ter her?

Yoshi­mi turned pale.

No, not nec­es­sar­ily. The stu­dent might just be on the move like her. That's right. If she'd been no­ticed, he or she would have come right af­ter her. She hadn't been no­ticed yet. Then...then it was best to let him pass. Don't move. Just don't move.

There was the rustling sound again. The per­son was mov­ing again. Crouch­ing, Yoshi­mi could see be­tween the dense leaves the fig­ure mov­ing through the woods. Re­veal­ing its pro­file, it moved from Yoshi­mi's right to her left. Oh yes!

He's not head­ed to­wards me....

As she sighed though, she sud­den­ly did a dou­ble take.

The fig­ure was too far in­to the trees to see. The rustling sound grad­ual­ly be­came dis­tant.

She couldn't be wrong. Was she just hal­lu­ci­nat­ing out of pan­ic? No, that couldn't be.

Yoshi­mi stood up, hunched over, and pro­ceed­ed to fol­low the sound. Mov­ing sev­er­al me­ters ahead, she looked to­ward the source of sound in the shade of the dense leaves. In her nar­row field of vi­sion she was able to make out the school coat.

Yoshi­mi put both of her hands on her chest. Had it not been for the gun she held in her hands, she would have looked like she was pray­ing.

But Yoshi­mi was pray­ing, no doubt. If there were a god who could bring about such a mirac­ulous turn of events, then she was thank­ing it. She held no par­tic­ular re­li­gious be­liefs, but it didn't mat­ter which god it was. She was grate­ful. Oh God thank you! I love you!

Yoshi­mi blurt­ed out as she stood up, "Yo­ji!"

Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to (Male Stu­dent No. 8) trem­bled for a mo­ment, but then turned around slow­ly. His face had a Latin look. His thick-​lashed eyes opened wide and then re­turned to their nor­mal size. For a split sec­ond his face seemed to turn blank, but she was con­vinced it was just her mind play­ing tricks on her. The face then formed a smile. The smile of the boy who loved her more than any­one else.

"Yoshi­mi-"

"Yo­ji!"

Hold­ing her day pack and Colt .45 in her right hand, Yoshi­mi ran to­ward Yo­ji. Her eyes filled with tears.

Yo­ji held Yoshi­mi in his arms, gen­tly, but al­so with re­as­sur­ance in the tiny space of the thick­et.

Then with­out say­ing a word Yo­ji kissed her on the lips.

He kissed her eye­lids. The tip of her nose too. It was how Yo­ji al­ways kissed her. It might not have been ap­pro­pri­ate, giv­en the cir­cum­stances, but she was ec­stat­ic.

Af­ter kiss­ing her he looked in­to her eyes and said, "So you were safe. I was wor­ried about you."

Re­main­ing in each oth­er's arms, Yoshi­mi re­spond­ed, "Me too, me too." Tears came rolling out of the cor­ners of her eyes and down her cheeks.

When Yo­ji left the class­room be­fore her, he took a glance at Yoshi­mi, who was on the verge of cry­ing as she watched him leave. She had left too, and dawn came. And she had been ter­ri­fied ev­ery sin­gle mo­ment un­til now. But now she was with some­one she thought she'd nev­er see alive again.

"I-​it's a mir­acle," Yo­ji said, some­what be­lat­ed­ly, as if he were in shock.

"It re­al­ly is. I can't be­lieve it. I thought we'd nev­er see each oth­er again. In this...hor­ri­ble..."

Yo­ji gen­tly brushed his hands through Yoshi­mi's hair while she cried. "It's go­ing to be all right now. We'll stay to­geth­er no mat­ter what hap­pens."

Yo­ji's words sound­ed re­as­sur­ing and tears came gush­ing out from her eyes. The rules on­ly al­lowed one sur­vivor, but I get to be with the one I love most. There was some­thing about a time lim­it, but we'll just stay to­geth­er un­til time runs out. If some­one at­tacks us, Yo­ji will pro­tect us. Oh God tell me I'm not dream­ing.

Yoshi­mi re­mem­bered ev­ery­thing that hap­pened be­tween them since she met Yo­ji in their sec­ond year, when they end­ed up class­mates. That spe­cial au­tumn day, when they bumped in­to each oth­er on the street and de­cid­ed to go to a movie to­geth­er, then Christ­mas, then the straw­ber­ry short­cake they or­dered and split at the cafe, that night's kiss, New Year's, dress­ing up in a long-​sleeved ki­mono for the first tem­ple vis­it (the sa­cred lot she drew was on­ly "fair luck." while his was "very good luck," and he gave her his), and the un­for­get­table Sat­ur­day, Jan­uary 18th, the night she spent at Yo­ji's house.

"Where have you been?" Yoshi­mi asked.

Yo­ji point­ed to the group of hous­es. "In a house over there. But you know this col­lar...if I stay there, it's sup­posed to ex­plode. So..."

Yo­ji looked se­ri­ous, but Yoshi­mi thought it was fun­ny. They were right near each oth­er! She'd been won­der­ing ev­er since the game be­gan where could he be, on­ly to find out he was right near­by...

"What's up?"

"I was hid­ing in one of those hous­es too. We were prob­ably right next door to each oth­er."

They laughed. Yoshi­mi re­al­ized how won­der­ful it was to share a laugh with some­one you loved. It might be con­sid­ered triv­ial, but no, it was es­sen­tial. And now it was hers once again.

Yo­ji slow­ly let go of Yoshi­mi. His eyes sud­den­ly fell on her right hand. Re­al­iz­ing she was still hold­ing the gun, she burst out, "Ha ha ha. I for­got..."

Yo­ji al­so smiled. "Nice weapon. Look what I end­ed up with."

He showed her what he'd been hold­ing. She hadn't no­ticed it at all. On clos­er look, she saw that it was a dag­ger, the kind you might see in an an­tique store. The strip of thread wrapped around the grip was worn out, the oval-​shaped guard had turned green­ish blue, and as Yo­ji re­vealed by pulling the dag­ger out of its sheath, the blade was spot­ted with rust. Yo­ji re­turned the blade to its sheath and tucked it in his belt.

"Hey, let me check that out," Yo­ji said.

She of­fered the gun to him. "You hold on­to it. I doubt I can do much with it..."

Yo­ji nod­ded and took the Colt .45. He held the grip and checked the safe­ty. He pulled the slide, re­veal­ing the first bul­let in the cham­ber. The ham­mer was still cocked.

"You have bul­lets for this?"

The gun's car­tridge was ful­ly load­ed. Yoshi­mi nod­ded, took the box of bul­lets out of her day pack, and hand­ed it over to him. Yo­ji took it with one hand, open­ing it up with his thumb to check the con­tents. Then he tucked it in­to his uni­form pock­et.

All of a sud­den...Yoshi­mi couldn't be­lieve her eyes. She was com­plete­ly clue­less as to what was go­ing on-as if she were watch­ing some baf­fling mag­ic trick-as she looked at Yo­ji's hands.

Yo­ji was point­ing the Colt .45 at her.

"Yo­ji?..."

Af­ter re­peat­ing his name, she saw how Yo­ji had be­come a dif­fer­ent per­son.

His face was con­tort­ed. The thick-​lashed eyes, the large hooked nose, his wide lips, each part of his face looked the same as be­fore, but she'd nev­er seen this ex­pres­sion with its twist­ed mouth, re­veal­ing its teeth.

The con­tort­ed mouth spat out these words, "Go away. Get out of here!"

Yoshi­mi didn't un­der­stand what he meant.

Yo­ji sound­ed ir­ri­tat­ed. "I said get away from me!"

Still in a daze, her lips quiv­ered, "Why?"

As if fed up with her, Yo­ji cried out, "You ex­pect me to be with a bitch like you!? Get out of here, bitch!"

Some­thing in­side of Yoshi­mi be­gan to crum­ble, first slow­ly, then quick­ly.

"Why?" Yoshi­mi's voice trem­bled. "Did I...did I do some­thing wrong?"

The gun was still aimed at her. Yo­ji spat to his side.

"Give me a break. Even I know you're a slut. I know you've been ar­rest­ed by the cops__On top of that you slept with a guy old enough to be your dad. I know that too! You ex­pect me to trust a bitch like you!?"

Yoshi­mi's jaw dropped as she stared at Yo­ji's face.

It was...true. She'd been ar­rest­ed sev­er­al times for steal­ing, and the po­lice had tak­en her in once for black­mail­ing a high school stu­dent. And then there was...pros­ti­tu­tion. A while ago Yoshi­mi had slept with some mid­dle-​aged men Mit­suko Souma had in­tro­duced her to. The mon­ey was good, she wasn't the on­ly one do­ing it, and at that time of her life she was get­ting so fed up with ev­ery­thing. So wear­ing make­up she'd nev­er worn, act­ing like an adult, and be­ing with men who seemed in their own way gen­er­ous didn't seem like a bad thing. Yoshi­mi as­sumed Yo­ji had known all this about her.

Ev­er since she start­ed dat­ing Yo­ji that au­tumn day, she had put an end to all of that. Of course she con­tin­ued be­ing friends with Mit­suko Souma and Hi­rono Shimizu. It wasn't like she was sud­den­ly a star pupil, but she did stop pros­ti­tut­ing her­self, and she did her best to keep her­self out of trou­ble. And she'd be­lieved Yo­ji for­gave her and loved her any­way.

... that's what I be­lieved all along.

A tear rolled down Yoshi­mi's cheek.

"I-I stopped do­ing that." Dif­fer­ent tears be­gan stream­ing down her cheeks. "I want­ed to be...I want­ed to be good to you, Yo­ji."

Yo­ji stared at Yoshi­mi as if her words had com­plete­ly shak­en him up.

But then his ex­pres­sion re­turned.

"You liar! Stop pre­tend­ing to cry!"

Yoshi­mi stared at Yo­ji with her wet eyes. Words came tum­bling out, "Then...then why did you go out with me?"

Yo­ji im­me­di­ate­ly replied, "Come on, I thought a slut like you'd be easy! Get out of here! Bitch!"

Sud­den­ly prompt­ed by some force, Yoshi­mi ran to­wards Yo­ji. It might have been be­cause she couldn't bear lis­ten­ing to Yo­ji any­more, or maybe it was be­cause she couldn't deal with the fact that Yo­ji was point­ing a gun at her. "Stop it! Please stop it!" she cried and tried to grab the gun from his hand.

Yo­ji quick­ly dodged her and shoved her. The day pack slid off her shoul­der down to her left hand, and Yoshi­mi fell back on the grass.

Yo­ji pinned Yoshi­mi down.

"What the hell are you do­ing!? Bitch! You tried to kill me! I'll kill you, bitch!"

Yo­ji point­ed his gun at her while Yoshi­mi fran­ti­cal­ly grabbed his right wrist with both her hands. Yo­ji im­me­di­ate­ly shift­ed the gun from his right hand to his left. Yo­ji's hand moved slow­ly down­ward. To her fore­head! Yoshi­mi felt her heart pound­ing.

Yoshi­mi stuck out her hands and cried in des­per­ation.

"Yo­ji! Please! Please stop it, Yo­ji!"

Yo­ji said noth­ing. His blood­shot eyes glared down at her. His arm came down me­thod­ical­ly, like a ma­chine. Five more cen­time­ters...four...three...the bul­let could now brush her hair. Two more cen­time­ters, and...

Though she was torn up with sad­ness and fear, a thought sud­den­ly oc­curred to her.

She un­der­stood ev­ery­thing now. She didn't want to, but it turned out the per­son she adored was on­ly an il­lu­sion. Still...

Still, it was a won­der­ful il­lu­sion. With Yo­ji, she thought she could start over. It was Yo­ji who gave her that il­lu­sion. With­out Yo­ji she would nev­er have be­lieved it could hap­pen.

Oh, that time we ate ice cream at the on­ly burg­er joint in Shi­roi­wa...she had ice cream on her nose and Yo­ji said, "You are so cute." Even now she be­lieved he'd been sin­cere.

I loved you.

Yoshi­mi sud­den­ly re­laxed her arms. Yo­ji cocked the gun and placed it against her fore­head. His fin­ger was ready to pull the trig­ger.

Yoshi­mi stared back at Yo­ji and qui­et­ly said, "Thank you, Yo­ji. I was so hap­py be­ing with you."

Yo­ji's eyes opened wide and re­mained frozen, as if he'd sud­den­ly re­al­ized some­thing im­por­tant.

"Go ahead...shoot me."

Yoshi­mi smiled warm­ly and closed her eyes.

Point­ing the gun at her, Yo­ji be­gan to trem­ble.

Yoshi­mi wait­ed for the burn­ing bul­let to pierce her head, but the gun wouldn't fire.

In­stead she heard his hoarse voice, "Yoshi­mi..."

Yoshi­mi slow­ly opened her eyes again.

They met Yo­ji's. Through the thin film of her tears, she saw how his eyes were now those of her beloved Yo­ji. They were even filled with re­morse and self-​re­proach.

Ah-

So he un­der­stands-Yo­ji-is it true?

TUNK! It was a pleas­ant but some­what strange, damp sound.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Yo­ji's right fin­ger pulled the trig­ger. But it was on ac­ci­dent, the re­sult of his fin­ger's re­flex. The gun­shot ex­plod­ed like a fire­crack­er and made her shriek, but the muz­zle had al­ready been point­ed away from her, and the bul­let lodged in­to the patch of grass above her head. A tiny cloud of dirt rose in the air.

Yo­ji's life­less body fell on top of Yoshi­mi. He re­mained mo­tion­less.

As she tried to pry her­self loose, she saw some­one smile over the shoul­ders of Yo­ji's black school coat. It was her old part­ner in crime, Mit­suko Souma.

Yoshi­mi had no idea what was go­ing on. She on­ly knew that the smile on this an­gel­ic, adorable, beau­ti­ful face ab­so­lute­ly ter­ri­fied her.

Mit­suko asked Yoshi­mi if she was all right as she grabbed her hand and pulled her out from un­der Yo­ji's body.

Yoshi­mi stag­gered to her feet in the bush­es and looked down. An ex­treme­ly sharp sick­le (a sick­le! as one of the more ur­ban girls in Shi­roi­wa, Yoshi­mi had nev­er seen one be­fore) was plant­ed in the back of Yo­ji's head.

Leav­ing aside the sick­le for now, Mit­suko im­me­di­ate­ly went for the Colt .45 in Yo­ji's right hand. His mus­cles had tight­ened, so she had to pry each stiff fin­ger loose. The gun was fi­nal­ly in her hands, and she grinned.

Yoshi­mi looked down at Yo­ji's life­less body, trem­bling. She was trem­bling vi­olent­ly. Un­con­trol­lably. In one flour­ish she had just lost some­one in­cred­ibly im­por­tant to her. It was like the sen­sa­tion she had when a pre­cious glass or­na­ment she had as a child ac­ci­den­tal­ly fell and shat­tered on the floor. But...this was far more pre­cious.

Yoshi­mi came to her sens­es and looked at Mit­suko (of course she had been look­ing at her all this time, but she was too in­ca­pac­itat­ed to pro­cess this vi­su­al in­for­ma­tion), who pro­ceed­ed to wres­tle with the sick­le to dis­lodge it from the back of Yo­ji's head. She gripped the han­dle with both hands and tried shak­ing it loose, swing­ing Yo­ji's head along with it.

"No!..."

Yoshi­mi screamed and shoved Mit­suko aside. Mit­suko fell back on­to the grass, ex­pos­ing her well formed legs, from the hem of her pleat­ed skirt up to her thighs.

Yoshi­mi shield­ed Yo­ji's body. The sick­le was still plant­ed in his skull. Her tears fell on­to his body. The sick­le was telling her: shak­ing me won't re­vive me, don't shake me, there's a sick­le stuck in me, man, that hurts.

Her chest tight­ened with waves of re­morse. She felt as if she were drown­ing, as if the world were com­ing to an end.

She thought of the cause be­hind all of this, and her tearstained eyes glared fierce­ly at Mit­suko. If looks could kill, her glare would have. Yoshi­mi couldn't care less now what kind of game this was or who her en­emies and al­lies were. That's right. If any­one was her worst en­emy, it was Mit­suko Souma, who'd killed her love.

"Why'd you kill him!?"

The words sound­ed emp­ty to Yoshi­mi. She felt as if she had be­come a hol­low bag in a hu­man shape. But the words came pour­ing out. The hu­man body could do strange things.

"Why! Why'd you kill him!? It's hor­ri­ble! It's just too aw­ful! You're evil! Why'd you have to kill him!? Why!?"

Mit­suko con­tort­ed her mouth in an ex­pres­sion of dis­sat­is­fac­tion. "You were about to get killed. I saved you."

"No! I got Yo­ji to un­der­stand me! You're so evil! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! Yo­ji un­der­stood me!"

Mit­suko shook her head and shrugged, point­ing the .45 at her. Yoshi­mi's eyes opened wide.

And so Yoshi­mi heard the dry pop one more time. Her fore­head felt as if it were be­ing crushed by a car. That was all.

Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi fell on­to the corpse of her beloved Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to and re­mained mo­tion­less. The .45 cal­iber bul­let had de­mol­ished the back of her head. But her mouth re­mained open as if she were scream­ing and blood came flow­ing out from its side. It soaked Yo­ji's school coat, ooz­ing out in­to a dark patch.

Mit­suko low­ered the smok­ing Colt .45 and shrugged again. She'd planned on us­ing Yoshi­mi to shield her from bul­lets.

She leaned over and whis­pered in­to the ear of Yoshi­mi's half-​de­stroyed head, "I'm sure he un­der­stood." There was a strange top­ping of gray jel­ly brains and blood on her ear­lobe. "I killed him be­cause it looked like he wasn't go­ing to kill you af­ter all."

Then, once again, she pro­ceed­ed to pry loose the sick­le from Yo­ji's head.

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

31

The faint sound reached Shuya and the oth­ers. Shuya looked up. Then they heard it again. They wait­ed, but that was it. They on­ly heard the rustling sound of tree­tops deep in­side the thick­et shak­ing in the wind.

Shuya looked at Shogo, who was sit­ting next to him.

"Was that a gun­shot?"

"That was a gun­shot."

"Then some­one's al­ready..." Noriko be­gan to speak, but Shogo shook his head and re­spond­ed, "We don't know for sure."

They had all re­mained silent for sev­er­al min­utes, but the gun­fire prompt­ed dis­cus­sion.

Shogo spoke up, "Look, as long as you trust me, it's cool but...like I said be­fore, we have to sur­vive till the very end. So I just want to make sure." Shogo looked over at Shuya. "Are you will­ing to be mer­ci­less against the en­emy, Shuya?"

Shuya swal­lowed deeply. "You mean the gov­ern­ment?"

"In­clud­ing them, yeah." Shogo con­tin­ued, "As well as your oth­er class­mates, if and when they at­tack us."

Shuya nod­ded slight­ly and then an­swered, "If that's what it comes down to, I will." His voice sound­ed fee­ble, though.

"Even if the class­mate was fe­male?"

Shuya's lips tight­ened as he looked back at Shogo. He looked down again. "If I have to I will."

"All right then. As long as we're on com­mon ground." Shogo nod­ded and grabbed the shot­gun rest­ing on his crossed legs. Then he added, "Some­one else will fin­ish you off if you get too hung up on ev­ery per­son you kill."

Shuya was about to say some­thing but hes­itat­ed. He de­cid­ed it was best not ask, but couldn't stop him­self from blurt­ing out, "So you were mer­ci­less a year ago?"

Shogo shrugged. "I killed. You want to hear the de­tails? How many guys I killed? How many girls I killed un­til I won?"

Noriko crossed her arms over her chest and brought in her el­bows.

"No...for­get it." Shuya shook his head. "That's point­less."

They fell silent again. Then Shogo said, as if of­fer­ing an ex­pla­na­tion, "I had no choice. Some of them lost their minds...and then some were will­ing­ly killing as many as they could__Most of my friends died pret­ty quick­ly, and I didn't have any time to hook up with any­one. And IT just couldn't of­fer my­self up and get killed by some­one." He paused and added, "I al­so had some­thing I had to do, so I couldn't die."

Shuya lift­ed his face. "What's that?"

"Come on, it's so ob­vi­ous." Shogo smiled a lit­tle, but his eyes glim­mered fierce­ly all of a sud­den. "I was go­ing to tear up this fucked up coun­try, this coun­try that toss­es us in­to this fucked up game."

Watch­ing Shogo's lips trem­ble in anger, Shuya thought, he's just like me. He wants to bring down these ass­holes in charge of this game, these ass­holes who won't think twice about mak­ing us play this fucked up game of mu­si­cal chairs, this game of mu­tu­al fear and loathing. He wants to send them to hell just like me.

Or maybe...Shogo men­tioned in pass­ing he'd lost his friends ear­ly on, but I bet he lost some­one equal­ly im­por­tant as Yoshi­to­ki was to me.

Shuya thought of ask­ing him about this, but didn't.

In­stead he asked, "You said you'd done a lot of study­ing...so that was for this pur­pose?"

Shogo nod­ded, "That's right. I would have done some­thing against this coun­try even­tu­al­ly."

"Like what?"

Shogo on­ly gri­maced. "I won­der." He shook his head. "It's not so easy bring­ing down a sys­tem that's al­ready built up. But I would have done some­thing. Well no, I'm still go­ing to. That's why I have to sur­vive this time too."

Shuya looked down at the re­volver and looked up. An­oth­er ques­tion had oc­curred to him.

"Can you tell me some­thing?"

"What?"

"What's the pur­pose of this game? How could this serve any use­ful pur­pose?"

Shogo's eyes widened...but then he looked down and be­gan to chuck­le. He found it fun­ny. Then he fi­nal­ly said, "There is no pur­pose."

Noriko raised her voice. "But they in­sist it has some mil­itary pur­pose."

Shogo kept on smil­ing and shook his head. "That's just crazy non­sense. Of course this whole coun­try's in­sane, so maybe it's com­plete­ly ra­tio­nal."

Shuya felt a rush of anger once again as he spoke, "Then how could this go on for so long?"

"That's easy. Be­cause there's no one speak­ing out against it. That's why it's still go­ing on."

See­ing how Shuya and Noriko were at a loss for words, Shogo added, "Look, this coun­try's run by a bunch of id­iot bu­reau­crats. In fact you have to be an id­iot to be a bu­reau­crat. My guess is that when this love­ly game was first pro­posed-some crazy mil­itary strate­gist prob­ably came up with it-there was no op­po­si­tion. You don't want to stir things up by ques­tion­ing the spe­cial­ists. And it's ter­ri­bly dif­fi­cult to end some­thing that's al­ready been es­tab­lished. You in­ter­fere, and you're out of a job. No, worse yet, you might be sent to a forced la­bor camp for ide­olog­ical de­vi­ation. Even if ev­ery­one were against it, no one could say it out loud. That's why noth­ing changes. There are a lot of screwed up things in this coun­try but they all boil down to the same thing-fas­cism."

Shogo looked at Noriko and Shuya. He added, "You two, and the same ap­plies to me, we cant say any­thing. Even if you think some­thing's wrong, your life is too pre­cious to risk it by protest­ing, right?"

Shuya couldn't say any­thing back. His hot flash of anger all of a sud­den went cold.

"It's shame­ful," Noriko said.

Shuya looked at Noriko. Noriko looked down sad­ly. He agreed. He felt the same way.

"Did you know there was a coun­try called the South Ko­re­an Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic?" Shogo asked. Shuya looked at Shogo, who was star­ing at a pink aza­lea flow­er on a tree branch right in front of them.

It seemed ir­rel­evant, but Shuya an­swered any­way, "Yeah, it was the south­ern half of the cur­rent Demo­crat­ic Na­tion of the Ko­re­an Penin­su­la, right?"

You could learn about what was known as the South Ko­re­an Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic and the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion of the Ko­re­an Penin­su­la-and the civ­il strife be­tween the two Ko­re­an na­tions im­me­di­ate­ly west of the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia's in­land sea-in a text­book: "Al­though our re­la­tions with SKPR were cor­dial, due to con­spir­acies con­coct­ed by the im­pe­ri­al­ists of the Unit­ed States and the DNKP, the SKPR was an­nexed by the DNKP." (Of course, fol­low­ing this ex­pla­na­tion, the sum­ma­ry would con­tin­ue, "Our na­tion must im­me­di­ate­ly oust the Ko­re­an Penin­su­la im­pe­ri­al­ists and an­nex this coun­try not on­ly for the free­dom and democ­ra­cy of the Ko­re­an peo­ple, but in or­der to progress to­wards our goal in at­tain­ing the co-​ex­is­tence of Greater East Asia peo­ples."

"That's right," Shogo nod­ded. "That coun­try was just like ours. An op­pres­sive gov­ern­ment and dic­ta­tor, ide­olog­ical pro­pa­gan­da, iso­la­tion­ism, and in­for­ma­tion con­trol. And sup­port for snitch­ing. It failed though af­ter forty years. But the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia is do­ing quite well. Why do you think that is?"

Shuya thought about it. He hadn't re­al­ly giv­en it much thought, but the text­books ex­plained South Ko­rea's de­feat as "a cun­ning con­spir­acy in­sti­gat­ed by the im­pe­ri­al­ists in­clud­ing the Amer­ican im­pe­ri­al­ists" (The vo­cab­ulary em­ployed in these text­book ex­pla­na­tions was be­yond ju­nior high lev­el.) But then why was the cur­rent Greater East Asia still pros­per­ous? Of course the SKPR was ge­ograph­ical­ly lo­cat­ed right next to the DNKP but...

He shook his head. "I don't know."

Shogo looked at Shuya and nod­ded. "First of all, it's a ques­tion of bal­ance."

"Bal­ance?"

"That's right. While the SKPR was to­tal­itar­ian-of course, this coun­try is es­sen­tial­ly to­tal­itar­ian. But it em­ploys a sub­tle, well, this just might have been a for­tu­nate re­sult, but it skill­ful­ly man­aged to leave lit­tle bits of free­dom in­tact. By pro­vid­ing this kind of can­dy, they can pro­claim, 'Of course, ev­ery cit­izen has the right to free­dom. How­ev­er, free­dom must be con­trolled for the sake of the pub­lic good.' The claim ac­tu­al­ly sounds le­git, huh?"

Shuya and Noriko silent­ly wait­ed for Shogo to con­tin­ue.

"That was how the coun­try be­came this way. Sev­en­ty-​five years ago."

Noriko in­ter­rupt­ed him, "Sev­en­ty-​five years ago?" Hug­ging her knees un­der her pleat­ed skirt, Noriko tilt­ed her head with a puz­zled look on her face.

Noriko then looked over at Shuya. Shuya nod­ded and then looked back at Shogo. "I heard some­thing about how the his­to­ry they teach us is a big lie and that the cur­rent Dic­ta­tor is hard­ly the 325th Dic­ta­tor. In fact, he's on­ly sup­posed to be the twelfth one, right?"

Shin­ji Mimu­ra had told him this. Noriko wouldn't know. It would nev­er be taught at school and most adults kept their mouths shut about it (maybe they didn't even know), and even Shuya was ap­palled when he first heard it from Shin­ji. Af­ter all, this meant that be­fore the ap­pear­ance of the First Dic­ta­tor less than eighty years ago-in oth­er words, be­fore the Great Rev­olu­tion-the name of the coun­try and sys­tem of gov­ern­ment had been to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. (Shin­ji had claimed, "Ap­par­ent­ly, it was a feu­dal so­ci­ety. Peo­ple wore these psychedel­ic hair styles called chon­mage, and there was a caste sys­tem. But to be blunt, it was bet­ter than what we have to­day")

Shuya glanced at Noriko's sur­prised face, but when he heard Shogo's next state­ment, "Well, even that might not be true," he raised his brow.

"What do you mean?"

Shogo smiled and said, "There is no Dic­ta­tor. He doesn't ex­ist. He's just made up. That's what I heard."

"What?"

"That can't be..." Noriko said hoarse­ly, "but we see him on the news...and on New Year's he makes an ap­pear­ance in front of ev­ery­one at his palace..."

"Right." Shogo grinned. "But who is this 'ev­ery­one at the palace'? Have you ev­er met some­one who was ac­tu­al­ly there? What if they were ac­tors too, just like the Dic­ta­tor?"

Shuya con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­ity... It made him nau­seous. Noth­ing but lies, there was no truth. Ev­ery­thing felt un­cer­tain.

"Is that re­al­ly true?" he asked de­spon­dent­ly.

"I don't know. It's just some­thing I heard. But it seems like­ly to me."

"Where did you get that in­for­ma­tion? By com­put­er on that thing called the Net?"

Shuya thought of Shin­ji Mimu­ra when he asked him this, but Shogo on­ly grinned again.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I'm no good with com­put­ers, but there are ways to find out if you want to. It seems like­ly, be­cause that would al­low the gov­ern­ment to have no supreme au­thor­ity. That way ev­ery­one at the cen­ter of the gov­ern­ment would be equal. They would have equal free­dom. Which means that their re­spon­si­bil­ities are al­so equal. There would be no in­equal­ity. There'd be no ob­jec­tions. The on­ly thing is that there has to be some sub­tle trick go­ing on...The whole cha­rade has to be kept se­cret from the gen­er­al pub­lic. The lead­er fig­ure just has to play a charis­mat­ic role."

Shogo took a deep breath and con­tin­ued, "Any­way, that's nei­ther here nor there. To get back to what I was say­ing, the coun­try im­ple­ment­ed this sys­tem, and it just kept on suc­cess­ful­ly evolv­ing. What I mean by 'suc­cess' is that it suc­ceed­ed as an in­dus­tri­al­ized na­tion. Even though the coun­try stuck to iso­la­tion­ism, it trad­ed with oth­er coun­tries that re­mained neu­tral, not on­ly to us but to Amer­ica as well, and im­port­ed raw ma­te­ri­als from them and sold prod­ucts to them. The prod­ucts sold well. Of course they would. Their qual­ity is re­al­ly high. Se­ri­ous com­pe­ti­tion against the U.S. The on­ly things this coun­try lags be­hind in are space tech­nol­ogy and com­put­ers. But the high qual­ity comes as a re­sult of the in­di­vid­ual's sub­servience to the group and an op­pres­sive gov­ern­ment. Still..." he stopped. He shook his head and con­tin­ued, "I have a feel­ing that once we've reached this lev­el of suc­cess even the peo­ple them­selves are afraid of chang­ing the sys­tem. With this kind of suc­cess, and this high stan­dard of liv­ing, they won't be will­ing to make a few sac­ri­fices, even if there may be a few lit­tle prob­lems. And over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment would be out of the ques­tion."

Shogo looked over at Shuya again and gave him a sar­cas­tic smile. "And one of the 'few lit­tle prob­lems'? This won­der­ful game. Of course the stu­dents and their fam­ilies might have been dealt a bad hand, but they're a small mi­nor­ity. Even the fam­ilies even­tu­al­ly let it go. Sor­row pass­es with time."

Shogo's wind­ing ex­pla­na­tion fi­nal­ly re­turned to this stupid game, the pride of the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia. Per­haps it was Shuya's grim frown that made Shogo ask, "What's up?"

Shuya replied, "I feel like puk­ing." He fi­nal­ly be­gan to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what Shin­ji Mimu­ra meant when he said, "This is what they call 'suc­cess­ful fas­cism.' Where else in the world could you find some­thing so sin­is­ter?" Shin­ji must have known and un­der­stood long ago ev­ery­thing Shuya had just learned.

"Ha! Wait till you hear this one. It'll make you sick." Shogo al­most looked as if he were rel­ish­ing this as he con­tin­ued, "I think that the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence be­tween the SKPR and this coun­try is eth­nic."

"Eth­nic?"

Shogo nod­ded. "Yeah. In oth­er words, I think that this sys­tem is tai­lor-​made to fit the peo­ple of this coun­try. In oth­er words, their sub­servience to su­pe­ri­ors. Blind sub­mis­sion. De­pen­dence on oth­ers and group men­tal­ity. Con­ser­vatism and pas­sive ac­cep­tance. Once they're taught some­thing's sup­pos­ed­ly a no­ble cause by serv­ing the pub­lic good, they can re­as­sure them­selves they've done some­thing good, even if it means snitch­ing. It's pa­thet­ic. There's no room for pride, and you can for­get about be­ing ra­tio­nal. They can't think for them­selves. Any­thing com­pli­cat­ed enough sends their heads reel­ing. Makes me want to puke."

He was ex­act­ly right. It was com­plete­ly re­volt­ing. Shuya felt his stom­ach turn.

That was when Noriko in­ter­rupt­ed Shogo, "I don't agree at all."

Shuya and Shogo looked at Noriko. The way she was hug­ging her knees and hunched over, Shuya thought she was tired out. But she looked at both of them and spoke clear­ly, "I didn't know about this. This is the first time I've ev­er heard any of this. But if what you just said is re­al­ly true, and if ev­ery­body were re­al­ly in­formed, I don't think they would sit still__It's be­cause no one knows about this that we've end­ed up in this sit­ua­tion. You say we've al­ways been like this, but I refuse to be­lieve that. I'm not say­ing we're es­pe­cial­ly no­ble, but I think we're just as ca­pa­ble as any oth­er peo­ple on this plan­et of dunk­ing re­spon­si­bly."

Shogo re­spond­ed with a sur­pris­ing­ly kind and gen­tle smile. "I like what you just said."

Shuya mean­while all of a sud­den saw Noriko in a dif­fer­ent light. She didn't re­al­ly stick out in class, nor was she so out­spo­ken she'd ex­press her opin­ions the way she had just done now. It was odd, but ev­er since this game be­gan he was see­ing an­oth­er side of Noriko. And maybe-it might on­ly mean Shuya had been to­tal­ly ig­no­rant-Yoshi­to­ki had per­ceived this side of her long ago.

Any­way it was a much more ad­mirable re­sponse than his knee-​jerk "It makes me want to puke." Once again she was ab­so­lute­ly right. No mat­ter what, this was their coun­try, the place where they were born and grew up (al­though he wasn't so sure how much more grow­ing up was left for them). The U.S., a.k.a. the Amer­ican Em­pire, might lib­er­ate this coun­try some time in the fu­ture, but the fact was that this was their deal. They shouldn't, and in the end they couldn't, re­ly on oth­ers.

Shuya looked over at Shogo and asked him, "Hey Shogo. Do you think we can change this coun­try?"

Much to Shuya's dis­ap­point­ment Shogo shook his head. He thought that, giv­en his pledge to "tear up this fucked up coun­try," he would re­ply af­fir­ma­tive­ly, that they would change it.

Shuya said some­what clum­si­ly, "But you just said you'd tear up this coun­try."

Shogo lit a cigarette, which he hadn't done in a while, and then fold­ed his arms. "I'll tell you what I think." He un­fold­ed his arms, re­moved the cigarette from his lips, and ex­haled a cloud of smoke. "I think his­to­ry comes in waves."

Shuya didn't un­der­stand, but be­fore he could ask what he meant, Shogo con­tin­ued, "At some point in time, when the sit­ua­tion is ripe, this coun­try will change. I don't know whether it will hap­pen in the form of a war or a rev­olu­tion. And I have no idea when the time will come. For all I know it may nev­er hap­pen."

Shogo took an­oth­er drag and then ex­haled. "In any case, right now I don't think it's pos­si­ble. Just like I said, this coun­try is in­sane, but it's al­so well run. Ex­treme­ly well run." Shogo point­ed at them, the cigarette be­tween his fin­gers. "Now here we have a rot­ten na­tion. If you can't stand it, then the wis­est thing to do would be to aban­don it and go some­where else. There are ways to es­cape this coun­try. Then you can avoid the stench. You might get home­sick once in a while, but life out­side would be grand...but I'm not do­ing that."

Shuya rubbed his hand against his thigh. He was hop­ing Shogo's state­ment would cor­re­spond with his thoughts: I want to do some­thing here be­cause in the end this is my coun­try. Didn't Bob Mar­ley sing, "Get up, stand up...you can't fool all the peo­ple all the time"?

But Shogo's re­sponse fell short of this ex­pec­ta­tion.

"I'm do­ing this for my­self. I want re­venge... even if it's for my self-​sat­is­fac­tion...I want to strike against this coun­try. That's all. I re­al­ly doubt it'll ac­tu­al­ly lead to change in this coun­try in the long run."

Shuya took a short breath... then ut­tered, "This sounds hope­less."

"It is hope­less," Shogo replied.

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

32

When they heard the two dis­tant shots, Yu­ta­ka cringed. Shin­ji stopped typ­ing on the key­board.

"Hey-"

Shin­ji nod­ded. "An­oth­er gun­shot."

He quick­ly re­turned to his com­put­er, though. It seemed harsh, but he couldn't af­ford to be con­cerned with oth­ers.

Yu­ta­ka looked down at Shin­ji's fin­gers. He was hold­ing the Beretta. Shin­ji had hand­ed it to his tow­el-​ban­daged hand and re­quest­ed he keep watch.

"Hey, Shin­ji. What are you try­ing to find on that lap­top? Won't you tell me now?" Af­ter Shin­ji had boot­ed up the com­mu­ni­ca­tions soft­ware and di­aled up with the cel­lu­lar phone, he kept typ­ing away at that key­board, on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly ex­claim­ing "Bin­go! Bin­go! Bin­go!" or "Oh damn, oh yeah, right," with­out giv­ing Yu­ta­ka a sin­gle ex­pla­na­tion.

"Hold on a sec. I'm al­most there."

Shin­ji was typ­ing again. At the cen­ter of the gray screen, En­glish sen­tences in­ter­spersed with "%" and "#" char­ac­ters streamed by. Shin­ji seemed to be re­spond­ing to them.

"All right."

Shin­ji stopped typ­ing af­ter the re­quest­ed da­ta be­gan to down­load. The ba­sic op­er­ation was Unix, but he'd set up a sep­arate graph­ics win­dow to in­di­cate the down­load sta­tus in Mac for­mat. Shin­ji stretched his arms over his head. Now he'd just have to wait for the down­load to be com­plet­ed (of course once it was he'd have to rewrite the log en­try to erase all traces of his op­er­ation). Then he had to come up with a strat­egy based on the da­ta he re­ceived. He'd ei­ther have to rewrite the da­ta or come up with his own pro­gram to de­ceive his op­po­nents. The lat­ter would be a has­sle, but he prob­ably wouldn't need more than half a day to do the job.

"Shin­ji, tell me what's go­ing on," Yu­ta­ka in­sist­ed.

Shin­ji smiled, moved back from the lap­top, and leaned against the tree again. He had to ad­mit, this was ex­cit­ing. He took a deep breath to calm him­self down. It was on­ly nat­ural, though. Al­though he wasn't sure when he told Yu­ta­ka, "It's a Power­Book 150," now he was now cer­tain- they were go­ing to win.

He spoke slow­ly, "I've been try­ing to fig­ure out how to es­cape."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded.

"And so..." Shin­ji point­ed to his neck. He him­self couldn't see it, but he as­sumed Yu­ta­ka could see the sil­ver col­lar wrapped around his neck, the same one Yu­ta­ka had on his neck. "The first thing I want­ed was to get rid of this. This is giv­ing our po­si­tions away to that bas­tard Sakamochi. For ex­am­ple, the fact that we're to­geth­er. Thanks to this de­vice, even if we try to es­cape, they'll lo­cate us, or worse yet, they can just send a sig­nal to blow up the col­lars and kill us. So I need­ed to fig­ure out how to get rid of this col­lar."

Shin­ji opened up his hand. Then he shrugged. "But I gave up. You can't pry it loose with­out know­ing how it's built. Sakamochi said it would ex­plode if you took it apart, and I doubt he was bluff­ing. The out­er cas­ing must be load­ed with a fuse wire for the de­vice. It's prob­ably set to ig­nite once you cut it. It's too dan­ger­ous to cross that bridge. I thought of in­sert­ing a met­al plate in­side the band, but it would be too thin to pro­tect my neck from be­ing blown to bits."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded again.

"That's how I came up with the idea of con­trol­ling the school com­put­er that's track­ing us and con­trol­ling the ig­ni­tion sig­nal. Get it?"

It was of course his un­cle who'd taught him the ba­sics of com­put­er pro­gram­ming, but ev­er since his death Shin­ji was as pas­sion­ate about im­prov­ing his skills on his un­cle's com­put­er as he was about bas­ket­ball. As a re­sult he be­came ex­treme­ly adept. He learned how to tap in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al line that was strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed by the gov­ern­ment and ob­tain even high­er lev­els of com­put­er skills and new in­for­ma­tion on the en­tire world through the re­al in­ter­net. (What the na­tion called "the in­ter­net" was re­al­ly a joke, a closed net re­ferred to as "Greater East Asia Net.") While he might not be ex­ecut­ed for these ac­tions, they were il­le­gal enough to send him away for a two-​year stint at a ju­ve­nile prison for ide­olog­ical of­fens­es. That was how he ac­quired the skill to es­cape de­tec­tion. Of course he nev­er told any­one about it, but he'd shown some web­sites to Yu­ta­ka (most­ly porno­graph­ic ones, come on, gimme a break). In short, Shin­ji was good at com­put­er hack­ing.

"I looked for a per­son­al com­put­er. I al­ready had a cell. I guess you're al­lowed to keep your stuff in this stupid game. I should have brought my notes, but I can't com­plain, since I found this lap­top. Now all I need­ed was elec­tric­ity. I yanked that bat­tery out of a car. I had to ad­just the volt­age, but that was pret­ty easy."

As Shin­ji ex­plained, Yu­ta­ka fi­nal­ly be­gan to grasp how the Power­Book and cell phone func­tioned to­geth­er. But then a thought sud­den­ly oc­curred to him and he said, "Hey, but didn't Sakamochi say we couldn't use phones? So cell phones are an ex­cep­tion?"

Shin­ji shook his head. "No, they won't work. I tried the num­ber for the weath­er re­port and Sakamochi's voice chimed in, 'A beau­ti­ful day at the Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High Pro­gram Head­quar­ters.' I was so pissed I im­me­di­ate­ly hung up. So they're con­trol­ling the near­est cel­lu­lar trans­mit­ter. My guess is none of the phone com­pa­nies will work here."

"Then..."

Shin­ji lift­ed his fin­ger, in­ter­rupt­ing Yu­ta­ka. "Think about it. Their com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem has to reach be­yond this is­land. I mean, their com­put­ers must be linked to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment's for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es. Then how would they do that? It's sim­ple. They've se­lec­tive­ly em­ployed num­bers for mil­itary pur­pos­es from the cel­lu­lar phone lines."

"So that means..."

Shin­ji in­ter­rupt­ed Yu­ta­ka again and grinned. "But even if that were the case, I thought...they must have at least made some min­imal ef­fort to pro­tect them­selves from any­one at the tele­phone com­pa­ny tam­per­ing with their lines."

Shin­ji reached out for the cell phone on the ground. Then he said, "I didn't tell you, but my cell is a cus­tom mod­el. It has two types of ROM mem­ory for phone num­bers and pass­words. You can't tell look­ing at it, but you can switch the oth­er one on by turn­ing this screw nine­ty de­grees. And this oth­er num­ber is some­thing I came up with just for fun to make free calls..." He let go of his phone and con­tin­ued,

"It's the cel­lu­lar num­ber used by phone com­pa­ny tech­ni­cians to test phone lines."

"Then... that means..."

Shin­ji winked. "That's right. Bin­go! The rest is sim­ple. It was a bit of a pain to hook up the phone mo­dem to the cel­lu­lar. It's not like they came with tools. But I man­aged to do it. So that's how I got my line. Then I ac­cessed my com­put­er at home. I can't hack with your av­er­age com­mu­ni­ca­tions soft­ware, so I down­load­ed my spe­cial tools-like code­break­ing soft­ware. Then I went for the pre­fec­tural gov­ern­ment's site. The cen­tral gov­ern­ment's op­er­ations must have high qual­ity se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems, but I fig­ured the pre­fec­tural gov­ern­ment's sys­tems would be easy to break in­to. My hunch turned out to be right. Even though this game is di­rect­ly man­aged by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, it must have some con­tact with the gov­ern­ment branch of the pre­fec­ture where the game's tak­ing place. I was right about that too. There were a lot of un­fa­mil­iar ad­dress­es in their com­mu­ni­ca­tions log files. Go­ing through e-​mails I found one to the su­per­in­ten­dent, no­ti­fy­ing him of the game's com­mence­ment. I broke in­to the sender's web­site, in oth­er words, the tem­po­rary serv­er for the school build­ing on this is­land. It took some work, but as I poked around as much as I could with­out get­ting caught, I found an op­er­ation back­up file they'd com­plete­ly spaced out on. So I took that. In oth­er words, I found a strange code that seemed im­por­tant. I've been hav­ing the Mac break the code be­fore I hooked up with you. So that's what I was up to."

Shin­ji reached out for the Power­Book as it con­tin­ued to down­load da­ta, opened up an­oth­er memo file, and showed the im­mense 24-point dis­play. Yu­ta­ka took a look. "Kin­pati Sakamo­cho."

"Sakamo­cho?..."

"Yeah. I think it's Span­ish. So the pass­word was a bit com­plex due to this sil­ly change in vow­els. That's what the pass­word for this sys­tem is. That's how I got free ac­cess. I was check­ing out as much as I could. I com­plete­ly down­load­ed the en­tire da­ta con­tents of the school's com­put­er. I'm go­ing to al­ter the da­ta, go back in­to that sys­tem, and dis­able these col­lars. By mak­ing the school premis­es a for­bid­den zone, they think they're to­tal­ly safe against us, but now we'll be able to at­tack them by sur­prise. We'll have a chance. And once we con­trol the school, we should be able to help out the oth­ers. Even if that's not pos­si­ble, we can fal­si­fy the da­ta to claim we're dead and then es­cape this is­land for good."

With this brief but in­tense sum­ma­ry, Shin­ji took a deep breath and grinned. "What do you think?"

Yu­ta­ka looked as­ton­ished. "It's amaz­ing."

Tick­led by his friends re­sponse, Shin­ji smiled. Thanks, Yu­ta­ka. It's al­ways nice to be ad­mired for your tal­ents.

"Shin­ji..." Yu­ta­ka asked, still look­ing as­ton­ished.

Shin­ji raised his brow. "What is it? You have a ques­tion?"

"No." Yu­ta­ka shook his head. "IT was just won­der­ing."

"What is it?"

Yu­ta­ka looked down and stared down at the Beretta in his hand. Then he looked up. "I was won­der­ing why you're friends with some­one like me."

Shin­ji had no idea what Yu­ta­ka was talk­ing about. His mouth hung open. Then he asked, "What are you talk­ing about?"

Yu­ta­ka looked down again. Then he said, "It's just that...1 mean you're so awe­some. I can see how you'd be friends with some­one like Shuya. Shuya's as ath­let­ic as you are, and he's a great gui­tar play­er. But...but I'm noth­ing. So...I was just won­der­ing why you're friends with me."

Shin­ji stared at Yu­ta­ka, who kept look­ing down. Then he be­gan to speak, "That's ridicu­lous, Yu­ta­ka."

Hear­ing Shin­ji's gen­tle voice, Yu­ta­ka looked up.

Shin­ji con­tin­ued, "I am who I am. And you're you. Even if I'm pret­ty good at bas­ket­ball or com­put­ers, or pop­ular with the girls, that's doesn't make me a bet­ter per­son. You can make peo­ple laugh and you're kind. When you're se­ri­ous, you're a lot more sin­cere than I am. Like with girls. I'm not re­sort­ing to that cheap cliche about ev­ery­one hav­ing some­thing to of­fer, but I am say­ing there are a lot of things I ad­mire about you." He shrugged and then smiled. "I like you. We've al­ways been bud­dies. You're an im­por­tant friend. My best friend."

He saw Yu­ta­ka's eyes brim­ming with tears again. Then, just as be­fore, he said, "Damn, thanks, Shin­ji. Thanks so much." Then he wiped away his tears and laughed, "But if you stick around with a cry­ba­by like me you'll end up drown­ing be­fore we es­cape."

Shin­ji start­ed to laugh but then-he heard a ring.

He knit his brows and sat up. It was the Mac­in­tosh's stan­dard warn­ing sound.

Shin­ji knelt in front of the Power­Book and stared at the screen.

His eyes opened wide. A mes­sage in­formed him the line had been dis­con­nect­ed and the down­load abort­ed.

"Why?"

Shin­ji moaned. He be­gan typ­ing rapid­ly on the key­board, but he couldn't save the con­nec­tion. He quit the Unix com­mu­ni­ca­tions soft­ware and be­gan work­ing on di­al­ing up the mo­dem with an­oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion ap­pli­ca­tion.

A mes­sage ap­peared, read­ing, "The num­ber you have di­aled is no longer in ser­vice." He re­ceived the same mes­sage no mat­ter how many times he tried. The con­nec­tion be­tween the mo­dem and phone ap­peared to be fine. Just to make sure though, he dis­con­nect­ed the phone from the mo­dem and pressed the dig­its on the phone di­rect­ly. He tried the weath­er re­port once again.

The cell phone had no sig­nal at all now. Which meant...no, the bat­tery was still ful­ly charged....

That can't be....Hold­ing the cell phone, Shin­ji gaped at the Power­Book screen, which was no longer op­er­at­ing. His hack­ing was un­de­tectable. That's why it was called hack­ing. And Shin­ji had the tech­nique.

"Shin­ji? What's wrong, Shin­ji?"

Yu­ta­ka called out to him, but Shin­ji re­mained speech­less.

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

33

Af­ter the star icon ap­peared at the edge of the small liq­uid crys­tal screen, Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11) kept close watch. It was the same icon as the one in the cen­ter of the screen that had been there ev­er since he'd turned on this hand­held de­vice.

He was in the res­iden­tial area on the is­land's east­ern shore. It was go­ing to be­come a for­bid­den zone soon. He'd been care­ful­ly but quick­ly mov­ing be­tween the hous­es, and fi­nal­ly he saw a change in the de­vice. He'd found the de­vice in his day pack. It looked like one of those mo­bile da­ta ter­mi­nals salary­men use. The change was the first re­sponse the de­vice gave ev­er since he turned it on at 6 a.m., af­ter he went through the man­ual. His pri­or­ity was to sweep the soon-​to-​be for­bid­den zones, but the de­vice re­spond­ed in none of those ar­eas-sec­tor J=2 on the south shore, sec­tor F=l in the west-and from there he moved here to sec­tor H=8.

Tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, it wasn't re­al­ly a weapon. But right now, de­pend­ing on how he used it, it could prove more use­ful than any weapon. He wasn't sure whether he was ac­tu­al­ly us­ing it prop­er­ly, though.

Hi­ro­ki gripped his stick again with his oth­er hand. (It came off a mop he found in­side a shack at the north end of the res­iden­tial area. If he want­ed to he could have tak­en a large blade, but this was more use­ful for him, since he'd been study­ing mar­tial arts ev­er since he was in el­emen­tary school.) He pro­ceed­ed to move di­ag­onal­ly away from the wood-​sid­ed wall he'd been pressed up against. He had a large frame, over 180 cm tall, but he moved dex­ter­ous­ly as he pinned him­self against the wall of the next house. The star icon was ap­proach­ing the sim­ilar icon in the cen­ter.

He re­mem­bered the man­ual ex­plain­ing the dis­play sys­tem and turned his head. It was this house...in­side this house.

Hi­ro­ki put the de­vice in his pock­et and moved around to the house's back­yard.

There was a fam­ily gar­den in the small yard with toma­to stalks up to his waist, yams plant­ed in the ground, and green onions. Next to them pan­sies and chrysan­the­mums in dif­fer­ent col­ors were in bloom. In front of the gar­den was a child's tri­cy­cle. Its chrome han­dle­bars sparkled in the noon­time light.

The ve­ran­da's storm doors were shut. Open­ing them might make a big noise. Hi­ro­ki cir­cled over to the right.

There was a win­dow. It was bro­ken. He was cer­tain now. There was some­one in­side. And if he'd read the radar's man­ual right then he or she was still there.

Since this area would soon be in a for­bid­den zone, no one should be here now. So most like­ly it was a corpse in­side. But...he had to know for sure.

Hi­ro­ki slow­ly lift­ed his face to the win­dow and looked in. It was a guest room with tata­mi floor­mats.

He slid the win­dow open. It made no sound. He grabbed the win­dow frame and swift­ly leaped up like a cat and en­tered the house.

The room had an al­cove. At the cen­ter was a low ta­ble and a large TV in the cor­ner by the win­dow on Hi­ro­ki's side. There was noth­ing else. Hi­ro­ki tip­toed out of the room.

In the hall he smelled some­thing odd, as if he'd caught a whiff of rusty met­al.

He quick­ly moved down the hall. The smell be­came stronger.

It came from the kitchen. From in­side the shad­ow of a col­umn, Hi­ro­ki peeped in.

He saw a pair of white sneak­ers and a pair of socks on the floor be­yond the ta­ble. He could see the legs up to their calves.

Hi­ro­ki's eyes opened wide. He ran over to the ta­ble.

A girl in a sailor suit was ly­ing face down. Her face looked away from Hi­ro­ki. She was small with short hair, and un­der her face a pud­dle of blood formed on the floor. There was a lot, but the sur­face was al­ready con­geal­ing in­to a dark red.

She was def­inite­ly dead. The ques­tion was-

Small body. Short hair.

She looked like one of the two girls he was look­ing for. They were both equal­ly im­por­tant to him. She re­sem­bled one of them. He couldn't re­mem­ber whether she was wear­ing sneak­ers like these, though.

Hi­ro­ki put aside his stick and day pack and knelt down be­side the corpse. He touched the girl's shoul­der with his trem­bling hand. Af­ter a mo­ment's hes­ita­tion, he clenched his teeth and turned the body over. The shiny red blood that hadn't con­gealed yet gave off a strong odor.

It was a hor­ri­ble sight. There was a deep gash in her thin throat right above the neck band (which was what in fact led him here). The wound gaped open like a hole, per­haps due to her blood be­ing com­plete­ly de­plet­ed. It re­sem­bled an in­fant's mouth, still with­out teeth. The blood had flowed down from the wound, sul­ly­ing the sil­ver col­lar then down her chest. Her mouth, nose, and left cheek were all im­mersed in a pool of blood. He de­duced, this must have oc­curred af­ter she fell. Drops of blood had formed on the tips of her eye­lash­es above and be­low her glazed eyes. They had hard­ened as well.

It was Megu­mi Eto (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 3).

It wasn't her.

While the hor­rif­ic state of the corpse had shocked him, he was still re­lieved. He closed his eyes for a while and took a deep breath. Then he felt guilty for feel­ing re­lieved. He gen­tly lift­ed Megu­mi's body, re­moved her from the pool of blood, and placed her face up. Rig­or mor­tis was set­ting in, so she felt like a doll. Af­ter do­ing this he closed her eyes. Af­ter some thought he tried to fold her arms over her chest, but her body was too stiff now, so he fi­nal­ly gave up.

He grabbed his stick and day pack and stood up. Af­ter briefly look­ing over Megu­mi's body, he head­ed to­wards the guest room he had en­tered. It was al­most 11 a.m.

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

34

Time qui­et­ly passed. Shogo con­tin­ued to smoke with­out ut­ter­ing a word. Noriko kept qui­et too. In the thick­et lit­tle birds chirped away, and the branch­es above them rus­tled in the breeze, let­ting in a web of light that moved back and forth like a pen­du­lum. You could hear the sound of ocean waves if you lis­tened hard enough. Now that they were set­tled in the woods, it al­most felt as if they were lead­ing a peace­ful life.

This par­tial­ly came from the hope Shuya now had af­ter talk­ing to Shogo. They could es­cape. And if that was what they want­ed, they were best off ly­ing low and wait­ing. De­spite Noriko's in­juries, they were safe as long as they kept a close watch. Af­ter all, there were three of them, and two of them had guns.

But Shuya couldn't stop think­ing about the dis­tant gun­shots they heard an hour ago.

Had some­one else been killed? It could have meant...he didn't even want to con­sid­er it...but it could have been Shin­ji Mimu­ra or Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. Even if it was nei­ther of them, it could have been an­oth­er in­no­cent class­mate. Shuya and Noriko might be saved thanks to Shogo, but the oth­ers were liv­ing in ter­ror of be­ing killed at any mo­ment.

That was enough to dis­turb Shuya. Yes, yes, he'd al­ready dis­cussed it with Shogo. Shogo told him it was best to sit still.

He was ab­so­lute­ly right. He al­so said as long as Noriko was in­jured, they'd be prime tar­gets. Again he was right. But...but was it right for them to sit back like this? Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano kept their faith in the oth­ers even though they knew they didn't have a chance of es­cap­ing. On the oth­er hand, with Shogo's help, he and Noriko had a good chance. But did that mean they shouldn't be risk­ing their lives?

It was clear some­one was a mur­der­er-some­one was "in­ten­tion­al­ly mur­der­ing" oth­ers. They'd wit­nessed Yu­miko's and Yukiko's deaths. And there might be oth­er mur­der­ers. In fact the stu­dents he'd con­front­ed-Yoshio Aka­mat­su, Tat­sumichi Oki, and Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi-might have all been try­ing to kill him. He doubt­ed any­one like that would vol­un­tar­ily join them. No, some­one like that would on­ly join them just to be­tray and kill them when the time was right.

But shouldn't we at the very least be look­ing for oth­ers we can trust?

Even if we try though, there's no way to tell them apart from the oth­ers. If we tried to help ev­ery­one, an "en­emy" would even­tu­al­ly sneak in­to our group, and that would mean cer­tain death. Noriko and Shogo would get killed too.

Shuya let out a deep sigh. He racked his brains. No mat­ter how many times he went over it, he came to the same con­clu­sion. There was noth­ing they could do. He could on­ly hope they'd some­how come across Shin­ji Mimu­ra and Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. But what were the chances that would hap­pen?

"Hey," Shogo said as he lit an­oth­er cigarette. Shuya looked at him.

"Stop think­ing too much. It's no use. Just con­cen­trate on your­self and Noriko."

Shuya lift­ed his brow. "Are you psy­chic?"

"Some­times. Es­pe­cial­ly when the weath­er's this nice." Shogo took an­oth­er drag. Then, as if the thought had sud­den­ly oc­curred to him, he added, "Is it true?"

"What?"

"What Sakamochi said about you. That you have dan­ger­ous ideas."

"Oh, that." Shuya looked down and nod­ded.

"What'd you do?" Shogo looked at him mis­chievous­ly. Shuya re­turned the look.

There were two things he'd done. The first was how he quit the base­ball team. That's right, when he en­tered ju­nior high school, he joined both the base­ball team and the mu­sic club, but he was turned off by the base­ball team's mil­itary-​style dis­ci­pline and win-​at-​all-​costs at­ti­tude. (It wasn't sur­pris­ing. Base­ball was the na­tion­al pas­time. It was the sport the na­tion en­dorsed for in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, base­ball was al­so pop­ular with the Amer­ican im­pe­ri­al­ists, so if the na­tion­al team lost to them in the Olympics, the Base­ball Fed­er­ation di­rec­tors would all have to com­mit harakiri.) On top of that, the team's coach, Mr. Mi­na­to, would get on the case of play­ers who weren't very good, even if they loved the game. So by the sec­ond week, Shuya was com­plete­ly fed up and an­nounced he was quit­ting in a four-​let­ter di­atribe against Mr. Mi­na­to and the Base­ball Fed­er­ation. And that was how the gold­en rook­ie of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School em­barked on a dif­fer­ent path to­wards be­com­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of star (ac­cord­ing to him)-a rock 'n' roll star. At any rate, this in­ci­dent didn't look so good on his school record. But Sakamochi was prob­ably re­fer­ring to the oth­er thing....

"Noth­ing," Shuya replied. "Sakamochi was prob­ably re­fer­ring to my lis­ten­ing to rock. He was has­sling me for be­ing in the mu­sic club."

"Ah," Shogo nod­ded, want­ing to know more. "You play gui­tar, right? Is that how you start­ed lis­ten­ing to rock?"

"No. I heard rock, and that was how I start­ed play­ing gui­tar. I was at the or­phan­age..."

Shuya re­called the mid­dle-​aged handy­man who worked at the Char­ity House. He was up­beat and his thin­ning hair was slicked back, stick­ing up at the nape of his neck. ("It's called a duck's tail.") Now he was in a forced la­bor camp on Sakhalin Is­land. None of the kids at the or­phan­age, in­clud­ing Shuya and Yoshi­to­ki, knew the de­tails. When he said good­bye to them, he didn't of­fer an ex­pla­na­tion and on­ly said, "I'll be back, Shuya, Yoshi­to­ki. For a while though, I'll be swing­ing a pick­axe and belt­ing out 'Jail­house Rock.'" Then he gave his old au­to-​wind­ing wrist­watch to Yoshi­to­ki and Gib­son elec­tric gui­tar to Shuya. It was Shuya's first gui­tar. Was he do­ing all right now? He heard that work­ers at the forced la­bor camps of­ten died from over­work and mal­nu­tri­tion.

"Some­one gave me a tape. He al­so gave me his elec­tric gui­tar."

"Hmm." Shogo nod­ded.

"Who do you like? Dy­lan? Lennon? Or Lou Reed?"

Shuya stared back at Shogo. He was tak­en aback. "I'm im­pressed."

It wasn't easy get­ting your hands on rock in the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia. For­eign mu­sic was strict­ly mon­itored by an or­ga­ni­za­tion called the Pop­ular Mu­sic Ju­di­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, and any kind of mu­sic that re­mote­ly re­sem­bled rock would nev­er make it through cus­toms. It was treat­ed like an il­le­gal drug. (He'd even seen a poster in the pre­fec­tural civ­il of­fice with the same red-​cir­cle-​and-​di­ag­onal-​line pat­tern placed over a pho­to of a sleazy-​look­ing long­haired rock­er. It read, "Stop Rock." Great.) Ba­si­cal­ly, the Re­pub­lic didn't like the mu­sic's rhythms, not to men­tion the lyrics, which might ag­itate the peo­ple. Bob Mar­ley was one of them, but an ob­vi­ous ex­am­ple would be Lennon's lines, "You may say I'm a dream­er/But I'm not the on­ly one/I hope some day you'll join us and the world will be as one." How could the na­tion not con­sid­er that a threat?

The on­ly mu­sic you could find at record stores was do­mes­tic, most­ly trite idol pop. The most ex­treme im­port­ed mu­sic Shuya came across was prob­ably Frank Sina­tra. (Al­though "My Way" might have been ap­pro­pri­ate song for this coun­try.)

For a while Shuya thought the handy­man with the duck's tail hair­do was sent to the camps for this, so Shuya thought there was some­thing scary about the tapes and gui­tar the man had left be­hind. Ap­par­ent­ly he was wrong, though. Once he en­tered ju­nior high, he found out there were plen­ty of oth­ers who were in­to rock and owned elec­tric gui­tars. (Of course Kazu­mi Shin­tani was al­so a huge rock fan!) It was through this group he was able to get dubbed copies of "The Times They Are A-​Changin'" and "Stand!"

But that was on­ly with­in a close knit group. If there had been a sur­vey of the num­ber of stu­dents who'd nev­er heard rock, over 90% would have said they hadn't. (Even those who had would say they hadn't, so the ac­tu­al re­sult would be 100%.) Giv­en how broad Shogo's knowl­edge seemed to be, it wasn't that strange for him to be ex­posed to it, but Dy­lan and Lennon were pret­ty ex­treme artists.

"Don't look so freaked out," Shogo said. "I'm a city kid from Kobe. I'm not a bump­kin like you guys from Ka­gawa. I know some­thing about rock."

Shuya broke in­to a slight grin. His guard­ed­ness lift­ed. Then he told Shogo, "My fa­vorite's Spring­steen. I like Van Mor­ri­son too, though."

" 'Born to Run' is great. I like Van Mor­ri­son's 'When­ev­er God Shines His Light.' "

Shuya gawked and then broke in­to a grin. "You know a lot!"

Shogo grinned back. "I told you. I'm a city kid."

Shuya no­ticed how Noriko stayed silent. He was wor­ried she might feel ex­clud­ed.

"Noriko, did you say you've nev­er lis­tened to rock?"

Noriko gave him a smile and shook her head. "I've nev­er re­al­ly heard it. What's it like?"

Shuya smiled. "The lyrics are re­al­ly some­thing. I don't know how to de­scribe it well, but it's mu­sic that re­al­ly ex­press­es peo­ple's prob­lems. Of course, songs can be about love, but at times they can be about pol­itics or so­ci­ety, or the way we live our lives, and life it­self. Along with the words, the melody and beat help get the mes­sage across. Like Spring­steen singing, 'Born to Run'..." Shuya recked the end of the song, "To­geth­er Wendy we can live with the sad­ness/I'll love you with all the mad­ness in my soul/Some­day girl I don't know when we're gonna get to that place where we re­al­ly want to go/And we'll walk in the sun..."

He con­tin­ued by singing the last line soft­ly, "...but tramps like us, ba­by we were born to run."

He said to Noriko, "We'll def­inite­ly lis­ten to it some time."

Noriko opened her eyes and nod­ded. Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances her face might have lit up, but she on­ly re­spond­ed with a weak smile. Shuya was too tired to no­tice though.

He told Shogo, "If ev­ery­one lis­tened more to rock then this coun­try would come crum­bling down."

That's right...just like Noriko said, "It's be­cause no one knows about this..." Shuya thought rock mu­sic re­vealed ev­ery­thing that was es­sen­tial. That was why it was banned by the gov­ern­ment.

Shogo rubbed his stub­by Wild Sev­en cigarette in­to the ground. He lit an­oth­er. Then he said, "Shuya."

"What?"

"Do you re­al­ly think rock has that kind of pow­er?"

Shuya nod­ded en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. "Of course it does."

Shogo stared at Shuya and looked away. "I don't know. It might just serve as an out­let for our frus­tra­tions, a con­ve­nient way to let off steam. It might be banned, but if you re­al­ly want to lis­ten to rock, you can. So it al­so serves as an out­let. That's what I mean. This coun­try is very clever. Who knows, it might end up pro­mot­ing rock and roll as a na­tion­al re­source."

Shuya felt as if he'd been dealt a blow. Rock was his re­li­gion, mu­sic sheets were the pages of his bible, Spring­steen, Van Mor­ri­son, and his oth­er heroes were the equiv­alent of the twelve dis­ci­ples. Of course he was get­ting used to be­ing shocked, what with his class­mates dy­ing around him, so rel­ative­ly speak­ing, it wasn't that shock­ing.

Shuya calmed him­self down and slow­ly replied, "I don't know about that."

Shogo nod­ded sev­er­al times. "I do. In any case, it's not about be­ing banned or pro­mot­ed. That's not what rock's about. Any­one who wants to hear it should be able to when they want to. That's what it comes down to, right?"

Shuya thought about this. Then he said, "I nev­er thought about it like that. But I see where you're com­ing from." Then he added, "In­cred­ible. I didn't re­al­ize how per­cep­tive you are."

Shogo shrugged.

They fell silent for a while.

Then Shuya said, "But...1 still do be­lieve rock is pow­er­ful. It's a pos­itive force."

Which was what Noriko had said about Shuya.

Shogo un­wrapped a new pack of cigarettes while he looked at Shuya. Shogo grinned. He lit the cigarette dan­gling from his mouth. Then he said, "To be hon­est, I agree with you."

Shuya smiled back at him.

"It's iron­ic that we're re­al­ly in that sit­ua­tion though,"

Shogo ob­served.

Shuya was puz­zled, "What do you mean?"

"The on­ly thing we can do now is run," Shogo replied.

"We were born to run"

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

35

Kaori Mi­na­mi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 20) got up when she heard the faint rustling sound. It came from the grove at the foot of the hill to the north, slight­ly to the east of the is­land's cen­tral re­gion. On the map it was des­ig­nat­ed sec­tor F=8.

She held tight­ly on­to her gun. The gun was a small SIG-​Sauer P230 9mm Short au­to­mat­ic pis­tol. It felt large in Kaori's small hands.

With­out know­ing it, Kaori bit her lip. She'd been hear­ing the same sound over and over once the game be­gan and up un­til now, while she hid her­self here. And ev­ery time she was re­lieved to find out it was on­ly caused by the wind or some small an­imal (a stray cat?). But that didn't stop her ter­ror. She bit down and cut open her lip, which was now cov­ered with cuts that had be­come scabs. This time...it might be an en­emy. An en­emy...that's right. One of her class­mates would at­tack her. The im­ages of the corpses of Yoshio Aka­mat­su and Mayu­mi Ten­do vivid­ly came to mind.

And when she'd left the school, she'd heard a voice com­ing from the woods in front of her. It was the voice of the school rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Yukie Ut­su­mi. Then she saw oth­er fig­ures with Yukie in the dark grove. Call­ing out from the dark, Yukie spoke in a hushed but clear voice, "Kaori! Come join us! It's just girls! You're safe with us!"

But...how could she? How could she trust any­one un­der these cir­cum­stances? If she stayed with them, she would have had to con­stant­ly watch her back. Kaori ran away from Ut­su­mi's in­vi­ta­tion and in the op­po­site di­rec­tion...and now she was here. And now...was that the sound of an en­emy ap­proach­ing?

She wait­ed for a while, hold­ing the gun with both hands, but the sound dis­ap­peared.

She wait­ed a lit­tle more. The sound was gone.

Kaori let out a sigh of re­lief. She got down on her knees and crouched down in the shrubs. The crooked leaves touch­ing her cheeks an­noyed her, so she changed her po­si­tion. With the palm of her hands she kept on rub­bing her face where the leaves had touched her. Her pim­ples had giv­en her enough grief. She didn't want her face to swell up from some poi­son ivy. Even if she was go­ing to die soon, she didn't want that.

She felt a chill run down her spine. Die? Am I go­ing to do die? Am I re­al­ly go­ing to die?

The thought alone was enough to make her heart beat faster. She felt like she was go­ing to have a seizure.

Am I go­ing to die? Am I go­ing to die? Like a crum­my CD play­er un­able to ig­nore a scratch on the disc the ring­ing words skipped over and over deep in­side her head. Am I go­ing to die?

Kaori snatched des­per­ate­ly at the brass lock­et she wore around her neck un­der­neath her uni­form. It popped open, and a bright, cheer­ful face with long hair smiled at Kaori.

As she con­cen­trat­ed on it, Kaori's pulse fi­nal­ly man­aged to slow down and re­turn to its nor­mal pace.

It was a pho­to of Jun­ya Ken­za­ki of the pop group Flip Side. He was the most pop­ular mem­ber with girls. This spe­cial lock­et was on­ly avail­able to fan club mem­bers. Kaori was proud to know she was the on­ly stu­dent in her school who had one. (Of course most girls nowa­days could care less. Be­sides, lock­ets were passe. But Kaori didn't think so.)

Oh...Jun­ya. I'm all right, right? You'll pro­tect me, right?

She thought Jun­ya Ken­za­ki was telling her, "It's all right. Of course you're all right. Shall I sing your fa­vorite song, 'Galaxy Mag­num'?" Kaori's breath­ing calmed down a bit. Then she asked the pho­to:

"Say, Jun­ya. Should I have joined Yukie? I won­der if that would have saved me? No, that can't be."

A tear came rolling down Kaori's cheeks.

How could this be hap­pen­ing? She want­ed to see her mom. She want­ed to see her dad. She want­ed to see her sis­ter and her kind grand­ma and grand­pa. She want­ed to take a bath, rub cream on her pim­ples, sit on the com­fort­able couch in the liv­ing room, and sip on a cup of co­coa while she watched a video of Flip Side's TV show. (Al­though she'd seen this episode many, many times al­ready.)

"Jun­ya, help me. Please...I feel like I'm go­ing crazy."

The mo­ment she ac­tu­al­ly heard her voice say this out loud, Kaori felt as if she were re­al­ly go­ing in­sane. It freaked her out. Nau­sea welled up to her chest. She was cry­ing fran­ti­cal­ly now.

She sud­den­ly heard a rustling sound be­hind her, and her body flinched. It was much loud­er than the pre­vi­ous sound.

Her eyes bleary with tears, she turned around.

A boy was look­ing at her through the shrubs. It was Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11). He'd snuck up be­hind her!

Kaori was com­plete­ly ter­ri­fied and too numb to think as she lift­ed the gun and pulled the trig­ger. Her wrists jerked back with the pop­ping sound. A gold shell flew out, and the sun's rays re­flect­ed off it as it shone through the branch­es.

Hi­ro­ki had al­ready dis­ap­peared deep in­side the thick­et.

The rustling con­tin­ued and al­so dis­ap­peared.

Kaori was trem­bling. She was still hold­ing the gun. Then she snatched her be­long­ings and ran in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. As she ran, her ag­itat­ed mind raced with thoughts. She was sure Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was try­ing to kill her. Why else would he have snuck up be­hind her with­out say­ing any­thing? Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra prob­ably didn't have a gun. He saw that I did and ran away in a pan­ic. If I hadn't no­ticed him-and shot at him-then Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra would prob­ably have stabbed my chest with a knife or some­thing. A knife! I have to be care­ful. I have to shoot any­one I come across. No mer­cy. Oth­er­wise, I'll end up get­ting killed...killed!

Oh no...I can't stand this any­more. I want to go home. Take a bath. Pim­ple cream. Co­coa! Video. Flip Side. Jun­ya. No mer­cy. Shoot. Shoot! Co­coa. Jun­ya. Cream! For my pim­ples! No mer­cy, Jun­ya.

Tears came stream­ing down Kaori's cheeks. The lid on the lock­et on her chest re­mained open and Jun­ya Ken­za­ki's cheer­ful face swung vi­olent­ly left and right, up and down.

No mer­cy. Jun­ya. I'm go­ing to be killed! Shoot. Mom. Sis­ter! Dad. Shoot! Shoot! The new record re­lease!

Kaori was los­ing her mind.

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

36

"All right then, here's the body count."

Sakamochi's voice con­tin­ued. It was the noon an­nounce­ment.

New mem­bers on the wait­ing list for fu­ner­als were Tat­sumichi Oki, Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi, and of course Yukiko Ki­tano and Yu­miko Kusa­ka. The oth­er ones were Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi.

"I will an­nounce the for­bid­den zones for this af­ter­noon. Now, I want you to take notes. Get your note­books out."

Once again, Shuya pulled out his map and pen from his pock­et. Shogo al­so had his map out.

"At 1 p.m., J=5. At 3 p.m., H=3. At 5 p.m., D=8. Got that?"

J=5 was the south­east shore of the is­land. H=3 was near the top of the south­ern moun­tain. D=8 was the hilly area on the south­east side of the north­ern moun­tain peak. Their zone, C=3, wasn't an­nounced. That meant they wouldn't have to move.

"It may be rough los­ing your friends, but cheer up. You're all so young, you've got so much ahead of you! Over and out."

With this se­ries of hap­py-​go-​lucky plat­itudes, Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment came to an end.

Shuya sighed. He put away the map and ex­am­ined the stu­dent list, which was now rid­den with check marks. "We're down to twen­ty-​five stu­dents. Damn."

Shogo cupped his hand as he lit an­oth­er cigarette. Then he said, "It's like I said. The num­bers are steadi­ly dwin­dling."

Shuya looked up at Shogo. He got Shogo's point. The more class­mates that died the clos­er they were to es­cap­ing. But...

"That was un­called for."

Shogo on­ly shrugged. He shift­ed his eyes and then said, "Hey, I'm sor­ry."

Shuya want­ed to say more, but he tore his eyes away from Shogo's face. He pulled in his knees and stared down be­tween them. There were sev­er­al tiny yel­low flow­ers pok­ing out from the grass, and an ant was crawl­ing up one of the stems.

This was the is­sue. Shuya had felt like they'd be­come bud­dies when they talked about rock, but in the end there was still some­thing about Shogo that both­ered him. Was it sim­ply that there was a cold side to Shogo?

He took in a small breath...and then thought of some­thing else. Of the six deaths Sakamochi had an­nounced, Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi were the on­ly ones Shuya didn't wit­ness. He was pret­ty sure they were go­ing out. Did that mean they were to­geth­er? And the two gun­shots they heard af­ter 10 p.m...was that them? If so, who could have...

He re­mem­bered the sound of the ma­chine gun slaugh­ter­ing Yukiko Ki­tano and Yu­miko Kusa­ka. Did the same per­son kill them too? Or...

"Shuya," Shogo said. He looked up. "You haven't had break­fast, right? This gov­ern­ment-​sup­plied bread sucks, but I found some cof­fee and straw­ber­ry jam at the sup­ply store. Let's eat."

Shogo took out a jar and a slim can (200g) of canned cof­fee. The jar's la­bel was il­lus­trat­ed with straw­ber­ries, and he could see the shiny, thick, red con­tents in­side the glass. Shuya as­sumed Shogo was go­ing to toss the cof­fee in­to a pot of boil­ing wa­ter on the fire. Shogo al­so pulled out a bag of plas­tic cups.

"You load­ed up."

"Yep," Shogo nod­ded. Then he pro­ceed­ed to pull out a long, thin box. "Look at this. An en­tire car­ton of Wild Sev­ens."

Shuya de­cid­ed to cheer up. He smiled, nod­ding. He took out the bread in his day pack and of­fered one to Noriko.

"Noriko, we should eat."

Noriko looked up, still hug­ging her knees. "I'm...all right. I'm not hun­gry."

"What's wrong? Is your ap­petite..."

Shuya re­al­ized as she looked down again how pale her face had be­come. He'd sud­den­ly re­al­ized how qui­et she'd been.

"Noriko?"

Shuya ap­proached her. Shogo ob­served them as he opened the lid of the cof­fee can.

"Noriko."

Shuya touched her on the shoul­der. Noriko clenched her hands to­geth­er. Her lips were tight­ly shut, form­ing a straight line across her pale face. On­ly now did Shuya fi­nal­ly re­al­ize that air was painful­ly hiss­ing through her lips. She was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing. She closed her eyes, re­leased her hands, put them on his arm, and leaned against him.

Her body tem­per­ature, which he sensed from her hands and through the shoul­der area of the sailor suit, felt ab­nor­mal­ly high, as if she were nurs­ing a chick un­der­neath her clothes. Shuya brushed off the hair on her fore­head and felt her fore­head.

It was in­cred­ibly hot. The cold sweat on her fore­head drenched the palm of his hand.

Pan­ick­ing, he turned to Shogo.

"She's got a fever! Shogo!"

"I'm...fine," Noriko said weak­ly.

Shogo put down the can of cof­fee and got up. He ex­changed po­si­tions with Shuya and touched her fore­head. He rubbed his chin and then held her wrist. He seemed to be tak­ing her pulse as he checked his wrist­watch.

"I'm sor­ry about this," he said as he put the fin­gers of his right hand to her lips and had her open her mouth. Then he pressed the skin un­der her eyes down­ward and looked un­der her low­er eye­lids.

"You must feel cold."

Nar­row­ing her eyes, Noriko nod­ded, "Yeah...a lit­tle..."

"How is she?" Shuya asked ner­vous­ly. He'd been hold­ing his breath.

"Just give me your coat," Shogo said as he re­moved his own school coat. Shuya quick­ly re­moved his too and gave it to Shogo. Shogo care­ful­ly wrapped the two coats around Noriko's body.

"Bread. I need the jam and wa­ter too," Shogo in­struct­ed, and Shuya swift­ly snatched the bread and wa­ter he'd of­fered to Noriko as well as the jam left on top of Shogo's day pack. Shogo hasti­ly dipped the bread in­to the jar, cov­er­ing it with red jam. He of­fered it to Noriko.

"You have to eat this, Noriko."

"I know...but..."

"Just eat it. Even a lit­tle will help," Shogo's in­sist­ed. Noriko hes­itant­ly took the bread and nib­bled on the bread a cou­ple times. She made an ef­fort to swal­low it. Then she re­turned the rest of the bread to Shogo.

"No more, huh?"

Noriko bare­ly shook her head. Even shak­ing her head seemed to ex­haust her.

Shogo want­ed her to eat more, but then he set the bread aside and once again pulled out the small pouch of medicine from his pock­et.

"It's cold medicine," he said and gave her a cap­sule that was dif­fer­ent from the pain re­liev­er he'd giv­en her be­fore. Noriko nod­ded. With Shogo's help she man­aged to swal­low it down with wa­ter from the bot­tle. Wa­ter came stream­ing from her mouth, but Shogo gen­tly wiped it away.

"Okay, now lie down."

Noriko nod­ded obe­di­ent­ly and lay down on the grass, still wrapped up in the two coats.

"What's go­ing on, Shogo? Is she gonna be right?" Shuya asked.

Shogo shook his head. "I don't know for sure yet. It may just be a fever. But she might be in­fect­ed from the wound."

"What..."

With Noriko ly­ing down, Shuya looked down at the ban­dan­na ban­dage wrapped around her right calf.

"But...I thought we cleaned out her wound."

Shogo shook his head again. "She moved around the woods a lot af­ter she was shot, right? She might have been in­fect­ed be­fore we treat­ed her."

Shuya stared at Shogo for a while and then knelt down be­side Noriko. He reached his hand out to Noriko's fore­head.

"Noriko..."

Noriko opened her eyes. She smiled fee­bly.

"I'm all right...I'm just a lit­tle tired. Don't wor­ry."

But her breath­ing hard­ly in­di­cat­ed she was all right.

Shuya looked over at Shogo again. He re­strained him­self from sound­ing over­ly ag­itat­ed and said, "Shogo. We can't stay here. We have to move. We should at least find a house where she can get warm-"

Shogo cut him off, "Just hold on. Let's just wait and see for now." He tight­ly wrapped the makeshift blan­ket-​coats around Noriko's body.

"But..."

"It's too dan­ger­ous for us to move. I told you."

Noriko faint­ly opened her eyes. She looked over at Shuya and said, "I'm so sor­ry...Shuya..." Then she said to Shogo, "I'm sor­ry," and closed her eyes.

Shuya's lips tight­ened as he looked down at Noriko's pale face.

25 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

37

Takako Chi­gusa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 13) stuck her head out from un­der the shad­ow of a tree trunk. She was halfway up the east­ern side of the is­land's south­ern moun­tain. Ac­cord­ing to the map she was some­where near the bor­der be­tween H=4 and H=5. There was a grove full of trees that grew short­er as she head­ed up the moun­tain.

Takako gripped her weapon, an ice pick, and looked back.

The house she'd been hid­ing in­side was ob­scured by trees and no longer vis­ible. It was de­crepit and over­run by tall grass and seemed like it'd been aban­doned even be­fore the is­land had been evac­uat­ed. She re­mem­bered some­thing like a chick­en shack was con­nect­ed to the main build­ing. Now she couldn't even see the rusty tin roof. How far had she come? Two hun­dred me­ters? One hun­dred me­ters? Takako was the girls' track team's best short-​dis­tance sprint­er (she held the pre­fect's all-​time sec­ond-​place ju­nior-​high record for the 200-me­ter), so she had a good sense of run­ning dis­tances, but she wasn't sure now-main­ly be­cause of the hills and bush­es, not to men­tion the ten­sion she was feel­ing.

Af­ter eat­ing aw­ful bread and wa­ter for break­fast, Takako de­cid­ed to wait un­til 1 p.m. to leave the house. She'd been hear­ing what sound­ed like gun­shots ev­er since the game start­ed and hid in a cor­ner of the aban­doned house, but now she thought stay­ing cooped up like that wouldn't do any good. She had to join up with some­one-at least a friend she could trust-and pro­ceed.

Of course it was pos­si­ble friends she trust­ed wouldn't trust her. But...

Takako was a beau­ti­ful girl. Her up­ward-​curv­ing eyes were a lit­tle fierce-​look­ing, but they matched with her sharp chin, well formed mouth, and nice­ly de­fined nose, all of which gave her an "aris­to­crat­ic" look. Her long hair was dyed with or­ange streaks, which might look odd at first, but with her jew­el­ry-which in­clud­ed ear­rings, two in her left ear, one in her right, de­sign­er rings on the mid­dle and ring fin­gers of her left hand, a to­tal of five bracelets on her wrists, and a pen­dant made from a for­eign coin-she man­aged to as­sert her own look that made her all the more at­trac­tive. Her teach­ers didn't re­al­ly ap­prove of her hair and gaudy jew­el­ry, but she got good grades and be­cause she was the track team's star sprint­er, she nev­er got di­rect­ly crit­icized. Ba­si­cal­ly Takako was very proud. She wasn't go­ing to be bound by the sil­ly school rules that the oth­er girls fol­lowed.

Whether it was-un­for­tu­nate­ly enough-be­cause of her beau­ty, or her pride, or whether it was be­cause she was sim­ply shy, Takako didn't have many close friends in her class. Her best friend was Ka­ho­ru Ki­taza­wa, whom she'd known ev­er since el­emen­tary school, but she was in an­oth­er class.

But...

But there was some­one in her class whom Takako could trust. The stu­dent wasn't a girl, though. She'd known him since they were kids.

And with him in mind, she couldn't help be­ing pre­oc­cu­pied by some­thing.

When she left the school build­ing Takako thought some­one who'd left be­fore her might come back. In that case, she'd have to leave with ex­treme cau­tion. And it was best to leave the school by foil­ing the as­sailant's ex­pec­ta­tions.

When she came in­to the hall, she peeked out­side through the ex­it door. There were woods in front of her, and a hill on the left. The area to her right was rel­ative­ly open. The as­sailant, if there was one, would have to be hid­ing in the woods or in the hill.

Takako stayed down as she left the build­ing and dashed to her right, stay­ing close to the school build­ing wall. The track star let her mighty legs cut loose. She didn't even have to think about it. She ran down the street through a clus­ter of hous­es and in­to a nar­row al­ley. Then she ran to­ward the base of the south­ern moun­tain. All her en­er­gy was fo­cused on get­ting away from the school and find­ing some­where to hide.

But...

What if there had been some­one in the woods or in the hill in front of the school who had no in­ten­tion of at­tack­ing her? In oth­er words...what if..."he," who'd left be­fore her, had hid in the woods or the moun­tain, had been wait­ing for her? Maybe she'd lost her chance by run­ning out of there at full speed?

No.

She didn't think so. What else could she have done? Any­one hang­ing around the school was jeop­ar­diz­ing his or her life. They had known each oth­er since they were kids- it was noth­ing more than that. They had re­mained de­cent friends through all these years. She thought it was pre­sump­tu­ous of her to think that he-Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11)-would risk his life wait­ing for her.

The im­por­tant thing was find­ing some­one now. Find­ing Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra would be ide­al, but she knew that was too op­ti­mistic. She'd set­tle for the school rep­re­sen­ta­tive Yukie Ut­su­mi or some av­er­age girl. As long as she was care­ful not to get shot, she could calm them down___If they were calm al­ready, that would be even bet­ter (al­though the thought of some­one calm un­der these cir­cum­stances was a bit scary too). To find that some­one...that was all she could do for now.

The one thing she knew not to do was to raise her voice. She had proof of that, now. From the aban­doned house Takako had al­so seen Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano die on top of the north­ern moun­tain.

So Takako de­cid­ed to leave the aban­doned shack where she was hid­ing and climb up to the peak of the south­ern moun­tain. Once she was there, she'd de­scend the slope by cir­cling the moun­tain, check­ing for any­one hid­ing in the bush­es. She could throw peb­bles at the bush­es just as she'd been do­ing ev­er since she left the shack. Once she fig­ured out who it was she could de­cide whether or not to ap­proach that per­son. At noon Sakamochi had an­nounced that the area around the peak of the south­ern moun­tain would be­come a for­bid­den zone at 3 p.m., but as long as she didn't run in­to any prob­lems she'd be able to com­plete­ly sur­vey the area be­fore then. Al­so, if there was any­one in the area then he or she would have to be out of there by 3 p.m. She'd have a bet­ter chance lo­cat­ing some­one on the move.

Takako checked her sup­plied wrist­watch. It was 1:20 p.m. She usu­al­ly wore bracelets so she nev­er wore a watch, but she couldn't af­ford that lux­ury now. Then she touched her col­lar.

"If you try to pry it loose it will ex­plode."

It was suf­fo­cat­ing-not on­ly the way it dug in­to her neck, but its mere pres­ence. The chain of her pen­dant light­ly tapped against the band.

Takako de­cid­ed to ig­nore it and gripped her ice pick (what good was this weapon though?) with her left hand. With her right she grabbed some peb­bles and tossed them out in front of her to her left and right.

They made a rustling sound in the grove.

She wait­ed for a while. No re­sponse. She moved for­ward. She took a deep breath, ready to run up the open ground be­tween the bush­es.

Sud­den­ly she heard a rustling sound. Some­one's head popped out of the bush­es, ap­prox­imate­ly ten me­ters to her left. She could see the back of his coat and the back of his head. Its hair was slight­ly di­sheveled but still smooth. His head turned left and right check­ing the area.

Takako froze. She was in trou­ble. It was a guy. Guys were trou­ble. She had no par­tic­ular rea­son to think so, but she had a hunch any­one be­sides Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was trou­ble. And she could im­me­di­ate­ly tell this guy was not him.

Takako held her breath and slow­ly stepped back in­to the thick­et be­hind her. She knew this would hap­pen, but that didn't stop her from trem­bling.

Sud­den­ly the boy turned around. Their eyes met. The face, which had an ex­pres­sion of ut­ter as­ton­ish­ment, be­longed to Kazushi Nü­da (Male Stu­dent No. 16).

Oh man, why did I have to bump in­to this jerk? What mat­tered now was that she was to­tal­ly ex­posed and how dan­ger­ous that was. She turned around and start­ed run­ning back the way she came.

"Wait!"

She heard Kazushi's voice. The sound of him wad­ed through the thick­et, com­ing af­ter her.

"Wait!" Now he was shout­ing. "Wait!"

Ugh-What an id­iot-

Takako hes­itat­ed for a few mo­ments and then stopped. She looked back. If Kazushi had a gun and want­ed to shoot her he'd have done that by now. More trou­bling was his shout­ing. It en­dan­gered not on­ly his life but hers. Just as it was mo­ments ago there didn't seem to be any­one in the area.

Slow­ing down, Kazushi de­scend­ed the slope.

Takako re­al­ized Kazushi held a ri­fle load­ed with an ar­row in his right hand. It wasn't point­ed at Takako right now-but if it was, could she dodge it and run away? Should she have stopped?

No. Takako re­as­sured her­self, she'd done the right thing. Kazushi Nü­da was a for­ward on the soc­cer team. Top ath­letes like him were as fast if not faster than track run­ners. Even though Takako was a star track run­ner, he'd have even­tu­al­ly caught up with her.

Ei­ther way it was too late.

Kazushi stopped sev­er­al me­ters away from her. He had wide shoul­ders and was rel­ative­ly tall and well built. His smooth hair was long, which was the cur­rent fash­ion with soc­cer play­ers, but now it was di­sheveled, as if he'd been play­ing in a close match that had gone in­to over­time. A smile emerged on his face, which was pret­ty good look­ing ex­cept for his bad teeth.

What does he want? Takako thought as he ob­served his face.

He might not have any harm­ful in­ten­tions. He might ac­tu­al­ly be think­ing he fi­nal­ly found some­one he could trust.

But Takako didn't have a very good im­pres­sion of Kazushi Nü­da. To put it blunt­ly, she couldn't stand his kind of chum­mi­ness. She al­so couldn't stand his ar­ro­gance. They'd been class­mates ev­er since their first year in ju­nior high. (Hi­ro­ki be­came her class­mate in sec­ond-​year.) With­out putting much ef­fort in­to them, Kazushi was above av­er­age in grades and sports, but in spite of that-or maybe it had noth­ing to do with that-his im­ma­tu­ri­ty re­al­ly stuck out. He tried to im­press oth­ers, and when he'd screw up he'd come up with some lame-​ass ex­cuse. Fur­ther­more, and this was re­al­ly stupid, but when they were first-​year stu­dents, there were ru­mors that she and Kazushi were go­ing out. (Ju­nior high kids don't have any­thing bet­ter to do. Well, let them say what they want.) Ev­ery time the ru­mors got go­ing again he'd go to her desk and touch her on the shoul­der (how dare he) and tell her, "There's a ru­mor float­ing around about us." Takako would turn away and brush his hand off with the re­ply, "Oh, I'm so hon­ored." She let it slide, scoff­ing at him on the in­side ("Go away you lit­tle brat. You've got some nerve"), but now...she wasn't in the po­si­tion to do the same thing.

Takako spoke cau­tious­ly. She had to get away from him as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. That's what it came down to.

"Don't shout, you id­iot!"

"I'm sor­ry," Kazushi an­swered. "But you were the one who took off."

Takako didn't mess around with her re­sponse. Get to the point, cut to the chase. Her best fea­tures. "The fact is, I don't want to be with you." She looked at Kazushi and man­aged to shrug her tense shoul­ders.

Kazushi's gri­maced. "Why?"

Be­cause you act like you're such a goody-​goody, she thought.

"Look, we both know why. Okay, lat­er," Takako said as she got ready to run. Still, she felt her­self hes­itat­ing as her feet trem­bled.

She stopped.

Be­cause out of the cor­ner of her eye she saw the weapon in Kazushi's right hand point­ed at her.

Takako slow­ly turned around, keep­ing a close eye on his fin­gers on the trig­ger of his bow gun.

"What's this?" she asked.

She ca­su­al­ly slid the day pack off her left shoul­der and caught its strap. Would it be able to shield her from the force of the bow gun?

"I don't want to re­sort to this," Kazushi said. This was ex­act­ly what she couldn't stand about him. He was mak­ing ex­cus­es, but in fact he was try­ing to gain the up­per hand. "So you bet­ter stay with me."

That pissed her off. But that was al­so when she no­ticed some­thing. When she was hid­ing in the shack her uni­form skirt got caught on a bro­ken door. The tear re­sem­bled the slit up a Chi­nese dress, and now Kazushi was look­ing down at it. His eyes were strange­ly glazed over. It gave her the creeps.

Takako quick­ly moved her legs to cov­er them as much as pos­si­ble. Then she said, "Give me a break. You ex­pect me to join you with that stuck in my face?"

"So you promise not to run away?" Kazushi spoke in his usu­al ar­ro­gant voice. He didn't low­er the bow gun.

Takako had to put up with him. "Just put that down."

"So you won't run?"

"Are you deaf?" Takako said sharply, and Kazushi re­luc­tant­ly low­ered his weapon.

Then he as­sumed a smug tone as he said, "I've al­ways thought you were fine."

Takako raised her well de­fined, el­egant­ly arched eye­brows.

She was ex­as­per­at­ed. Af­ter threat­en­ing her life like this, he has the nerve to say I'm fine!

Kazushi's eyes fell on her legs again. He made no ef­fort to be sub­tle, and his eyes were locked on­to them now.

Takako lift­ed her chin slight­ly. "So?"

"So I won't kill you. Just stay with me."

Takako shrugged again. Any hes­ita­tion she might have had was now wiped out by anger. "I told you I don't want to," she spat out. "Lat­er."

Takako turned to...no, this time she be­gan mov­ing back­wards and star­ing back at Kazushi. Kazushi lift­ed his bow gun again. His face had the ex­pres­sion of a kid beg­ging for a toy at a de­part­ment store. Mom, I want it, I want it!...I see now.

Takako qui­et­ly said, "Stop this."

"Then...stay with me," Kazushi re­peat­ed. The way he tilt­ed his head re­vealed how fran­tic he was try­ing to calm his nerves.

Takako re­peat­ed, "I told you, no."

Kazushi didn't low­er the gun. They glared at each oth­er.

Takako couldn't bear it any­more. "You know...what do you want? Say it. You're not killing me off. I tell you, I don't want to be with you, but you in­sist. I don't get it."

"I..." Kazushi stared at Takako with that leer in his eyes and said, "I'm say­ing I'll pro­tect you. So...just stay with me. We're safer to­geth­er, right?"

"You've got­ta be jok­ing. You have the nerve to threat­en me like that and say you'll pro­tect me? I can't trust you. Get it? Can I go now? I'm go­ing."

Kazushi replied, "If you move I'll shoot you." He aimed the bow gun di­rect­ly at her chest.

By open­ly threat­en­ing her like this Kazushi lost any chance he had of keep­ing to a civ­ilized code of con­duct (not that he had much of sense of that to be­gin with). He stood still and said, "You bet­ter obey me, girl. A wom­an obeys his man."

Takako was fu­ri­ous. Then he had the nerve to say, "You're a vir­gin, aren't you?" in a ca­su­al tone, as if he were on­ly con­firm­ing her blood type (B).

Takako was at a loss for words.

What...did this ass­hole say?

"Am I wrong? Hi­ro­ki wouldn't have the guts to sleep with a girl."

Kazushi said this be­cause prob­ably he, along with many of her oth­er class­mates, had the mis­tak­en as­sump­tion that she was go­ing out with Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. She had two rea­sons to be es­pe­cial­ly an­noyed, though. First of all, her re­la­tion­ship with Hi­ro­ki was none of their busi­ness. Sec­ond, Kazushi's mak­ing fun of Hi­ro­ki pissed her off.

Takako broke in­to a grin. She'd re­al­ized a long time ago how she could al­ways grin when she was ab­so­lute­ly fu­ri­ous.

So she grinned like this at Kazushi and said, "What's it got to do with you?"

Kazushi might have mis­in­ter­pret­ed Takako's grin. Kazushi grinned back. "So I'm right."

Still smil­ing, Takako glared back at him. Yes, in fact you are right. I might look a lit­tle flashy, but just as you said, I'm a vir­gin. An in­no­cent 15-year-​old girl. How­ev­er...

It's none of your busi­ness, ass­hole!

Kazushi con­tin­ued, "We're gonna die any­way. Don't you want to try it once be­fore you die? I'd be a good part­ner."

Al­though Takako had nev­er felt so an­gry in her life, she couldn't help but gawk back at him in amaze­ment. Her mouth might have even hung open. His ex­as­per­at­ing, out­ra­geous be­hav­ior was bad enough, but now it was so out of con­trol it was like he was from an­oth­er world. Cap­tain Colum­bus, that is San Sal­vador Is­land. Okay, they're bar­bar­ians. Be­ware of the bar­bar­ians.

Takako looked down-and burst out in laugh­ter. It was in­cred­ibly fun­ny. This sit­com would have been a hit.

She lift­ed her face. She must have been glar­ing at Kazushi, but she'd still give him one last chance.

"This is my last of­fer. I don't want to be with you. Just put that down and leave me alone. Oth­er­wise, I'll take it that you're go­ing to kill me. All right?"

Kazushi didn't move his bow gun. In­stead he raised it up to his shoul­ders and threat­ened her, "This is my last warn­ing. You bet­ter obey me, Takako."

The fact that Takako felt a thrill at this ex­change, which was in some ways the turn­ing point of their en­counter, may have been in­dica­tive of her per­son­al­ity. And from here on...she couldn't be held re­spon­si­ble for what would hap­pen.

Takako took a step for­ward to put an end to this con­ver­sa­tion with this ass­hole.

"I see. So you just want to rape me. Right? You think dy­ing gives you the right to do any­thing?"

Kazushi glared back at her. "That's not what I said..."

What's the dif­fer­ence? She laughed at him in­side. Let me guess what you'll say next. I don't want to rape you, but you bet­ter take off your clothes?

Takako con­tin­ued grin­ning as she calm­ly tilt­ed her head. She said, "Right now, you might want to wor­ry more about your life than about your lame-​ass dick."

Kazushi's face sud­den­ly flushed. His mouth twist­ed as he spout­ed off, "Shut up! You re­al­ly want to get raped?"

Takako grinned and an­swered, "So the truth comes out."

"I told you to shut up!" Kazushi re­peat­ed. "I can kill you if I want, you know!"

He made her sick. She re­mem­bered how he tried to coax her in­to it just mo­ments ago, say­ing, "I won't kill you."

Kazushi paused and then boast­ed, "I al­ready killed Yoshio."

Takako was a lit­tle shocked, but she mere­ly lift­ed her brow and re­marked, "Huh." Even if it were true...giv­en how he'd been hid­ing, he'd prob­ably been ter­ri­fied, then some­how bumped in­to Yoshio Aka­mat­su and end­ed up killing him by ac­ci­dent. Af­ter that, too scared of any­one stronger than him, he prob­ably spent this whole time hid­ing. But know­ing him, she knew that if he end­ed up sur­viv­ing by hid­ing un­til he had one weak­er fi­nal op­po­nent, he'd say some­thing like, "I have no choice" and kill him or her with­out hes­ita­tion.

"I was think­ing," Kazushi con­tin­ued, con­firm­ing Takako's sus­pi­cion. "I de­cid­ed this is a game. So I'm not go­ing to pull any punch­es."

Takako con­tin­ued star­ing at Kazushi, still wear­ing that grin.

Ah ha. I un­der­stand now. So whether it was by con­sent or by rap­ing me you were go­ing to fuck me and then kill me. As long as you could sur­vive by hav­ing ev­ery­one else in­clud­ing my­self die? I see. Did you cal­cu­late how many times you could fuck me too?

Her spine tin­gled with dis­gust and fury.

"A game?" she re­peat­ed af­ter him and then gave a big smile. "But aren't you ashamed do­ing this to a girl?"

Kazushi looked shocked, but then his face be­came sulky again. His cold eyes shone. "You want to die?"

"Go ahead, shoot me."

Kazushi hes­itat­ed. It was her chance. Takako threw the peb­bles she'd cau­tious­ly tak­en out of her pock­et at his face. As Kazushi cov­ered his face to shield him­self, she quick­ly turned around, dropped the day pack, and dashed back the way she came, all the while hold­ing on­to the ice pick.

She thought she could hear him curse be­hind her. With a good run­ner's sprint she'd cov­et­ed fif­teen me­ters when sud­den­ly she felt a blow against her right leg and fell face for­ward. Her cheek got cut as it scraped against a tree root pok­ing out of the ground. She was more up­set over this wound on her face than she was over the sharp pain in her leg. That ass­hole cut my face!

Takako twist­ed her body around. A sil­ver ar­row pierced her skirt and was plant­ed in the back of her right thigh. Blood dripped down her well toned leg mus­cles.

Kazushi caught up with her. See­ing her sit­ting there, he tossed aside the bow gun and took out a pair of short sticks chained to­geth­er-nun­chaku-from un­der his belt and held them in his right hand. The chain rat­tled (this weapon, by the way, had been in Mayu­mi Ten­do's day pack, which Kazushi then took af­ter killing Yoshio Aka­mat­su). (His own weapon for some bizarre rea­son was a plain shamisen ban­jo that was com­plete­ly use­less. Of course, this had noth­ing to do with Takako.)

Takako glanced at the bow gun on the ground and thought, you'll re­gret you put that down.

"It's your fault," Kazushi said, pant­ing. "You pro­voked me."

Still seat­ed, Takako glared up at Kazushi. The bas­tard was still mak­ing ex­cus­es. She couldn't be­lieve she'd ac­tu­al­ly been class­mates with this id­iot for over two years.

"Wait," Takako said. As Kazushi knit his brows she got on her knees and twist­ed her right shoul­der around, pulling out the ar­row in one swift mo­tion as she clenched her teeth. She could feel the flesh tear, fol­lowed by a gush of blood. Her skirt was torn again. So now her skirt had two slits.

She tossed the ar­row aside and stood up, glar­ing at Kazushi. She was all right. The pain was in­cred­ible but she could take it. She shift­ed the ice pick over to her right hand.

"Don't do it," Kazushi said. "It's no use."

She tilt­ed the ice pick side­ways, point­ing it at his chest.

"You said this was a game, right? Fine. I'll be your op­po­nent. I won't lose against an ass­hole like you. I'll give ev­ery­thing I have to erase your ex­is­tence. Got it? Do you un­der­stand? Or are you too stupid?"

But Kazushi still seemed at ease. He was prob­ably think­ing how she was a girl, and what's more, in­jured, so he couldn't lose against her.

"I'll say it again," she con­tin­ued, "Don't even think of rap­ing me af­ter beat­ing me to a pulp. Look, lit­tle kid, you should wor­ry more about your life than your dick."

Kazushi's face con­tort­ed, and he raised the nunchucks up to his face.

Takako gripped her ice pick. The ten­sion be­tween them mount­ed.

He was prob­ably fif­teen cen­time­ters taller, twen­ty kilo­grams heav­ier. Takako was prob­ably the num­ber one fe­male ath­lete in her class but she had lit­tle chance of win­ning. On top of this, her right leg was pret­ty bad­ly in­jured. But...she couldn't lose, no mat­ter what.

Sud­den­ly, Kazushi made a move. He came for­ward, swing­ing the nunchucks down!

Takako blocked them with her right arm. One of her two bracelets flew in­to the air (it was made by South Amer­ican In­di­ans, it was a fa­vorite, damn). She felt a sting run up her arm up to the cen­ter of her skull. De­spite the sting though, she thrust the ice pick up­ward. Kazushi gri­maced as he stepped back, dodg­ing it. Once again they were two me­ters apart.

Takako's left arm was sting­ing now. But she was all right, noth­ing was bro­ken.

He re­sumed his at­tack. This time he swung the nunchucks with the mo­tion of a back­hand ten­nis swing.

Takako dodged them by crouch­ing down. The nunchucks skimmed her long, streaked hair-sev­er­al strands flew in­to the air. Takako quick­ly swung her ice pick at his right wrist. She felt it wound him slight­ly as Kazushi groaned a lit­tle and stepped back.

They were apart again. Kazushi's wrist, the hand hold­ing the nunchucks, was red. But the cut didn't seem se­vere.

The wound on her right leg was throb­bing. She could tell the en­tire leg be­low her thigh was cov­ered with blood. She wouldn't last much longer like this. She al­so no­ticed a pant­ing sound. It came from her lips.

Kazushi once again swung his nunchucks. She could see he was aim­ing at the left side of her head and her shoul­der.

Takako stepped for­ward. She sud­den­ly re­called some­thing Hi­ro­ki, who was a mar­tial arts ex­pert, had taught her, "You can de­feat your op­po­nent by throw­ing his tim­ing off. Some­times, tak­ing a bold step for­ward can be cru­cial."

The nunchucks hit her shoul­der, but just as Hi­ro­ki had said, it was on­ly the chain, which hard­ly hurt her. Takako leaped in­to his chest. Kazushi's face, his eyes wide open in dis­may, was right in front of hers. She thrust the ice pick up­ward.

Kazushi shoved Takako away with his emp­ty left hand. Takako lost her bal­ance from her wound­ed right leg and fell for­ward.

Bare­ly es­cap­ing her stab, Kazushi rubbed his un­harmed chest with his left hand. "You're re­al­ly some­thing," he said.

Kazushi quick­ly swung his nunchucks down at Takako, who was slow get­ting up. This time he was aim­ing at her face!

Takako blocked the blow with her ice pick. Along with the metal­lic clang, the ice pick flew in­to the air and land­ed in the dirt. The on­ly thing left in her hand now was in­tense pain.

Takako bit her lip. She glared at him as she stepped back.

Kazushi grinned and slow­ly came for­ward. Un­doubt­ed­ly this guy was men­tal­ly dis­turbed. He had no qualms about beat­ing a girl to death. In fact, he was en­joy­ing it!

Kazushi swung his nunchucks again. She dodged them by bend­ing back-but the nunchucks fol­lowed her in­stead. Per­haps he'd got­ten used to them. This time Kazushi man­aged to ex­tend his reach.

She felt a sharp thud against the left side of her head. She be­gan to sway. A warm liq­uid came flow­ing out her left nos­tril.

She was on the verge of falling. Kazushi must have looked like he was sure he'd won.

Still sway­ing, Takako's pret­ty, sharply curved eyes squint­ed.

As she fell, she stretched out her long legs and with all her might kicked Kazushi's left knee from the right side. Kazushi let out a painful moan and fell on his left knee. His body floun­dered and ro­tat­ed halfway on his knee. Now she saw his back.

Had she tried to take the ice pick, Takako might have lost. But that wasn't what she did.

She leaped on­to Kazushi's back.

She clutched on­to his head as if rid­ing on his shoul­ders. Her weight forced him to fall for­ward.

If a thought oc­curred to her it was in choos­ing which fin­gers she should use. Her in­dex and mid­dle...no...the strongest com­bi­na­tion would be her mid­dle fin­ger and thumb. And...Takako had al­ways tak­en good care of her nails. No mat­ter how many times her team coach Mr. Ta­da scold­ed her about them she re­fused to short­en her nails.

Hang­ing on­to Kazushi, Takako grabbed hold of his hair and yanked his head back. She could tell where they were.

Kazushi must have sud­den­ly re­al­ized her in­ten­tions. She saw him shut his eyes.

It was use­less though. Takako's right mid­dle fin­ger and thumb tore through his eye­lids and dug in­to his eye sock­ets.

"AIEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Kazushi screamed. He fell on his arms, got up on his knees, dropped his nunchucks, and tried to brush off her hands. His body moved fran­ti­cal­ly as he tried to get rid of her.

Takako held tight­ly on­to Kazushi and re­fused to let go. She pushed her fin­gers in fur­ther. Her thumb and mid­dle fin­ger dug in up to their sec­ond joints. As she dug in, she felt some­thing pop and re­al­ized it was his eye­balls. She didn't ex­pect eye sock­ets to be this small. Takako didn't hes­itate to bend her sharp fin­gers in­ward. Blood and a se­mi-​trans­par­ent slimy liq­uid came ooz­ing down his cheeks like weird tears.

"AR­RRRGH," Kazushi cried as he got up and swung his arms around fran­ti­cal­ly. He tried to pry her right hand loose from his head with both of his hands and pulled at Takako's hair.

Takako leaped off Kazushi, who end­ed up with what felt like sev­er­al strands or even a bun­dle of hair. Well, she couldn't be wor­ried about that now.

She looked for her ice pick and found it. She snatched it up.

Kazushi moaned and swung his arms at the (lit­er­al­ly) un­seen en­emy. Then he fell back on his rear end. His eyes were open, but his eyes were com­plete­ly im­mersed in a sea of red. He re­sem­bled an al­bi­no mon­key now. Takako dragged her right leg and limped to­ward him. She lift­ed her wound­ed right leg and stomped down on­to his un­pro­tect­ed crotch. The pur­ple-​striped white track sneak­er was now red, soaked with Takako's own blood. Un­der­neath its sole she felt a squash­ing sen­sa­tion as if she were crush­ing a ro­dent. "URGH," Kazushi moaned. He held his crotch and turned on his side, balled up like a fe­tus. Now Takako be­gan step­ping on his throat with her left leg. She put her weight on it. Kazushi reached out, try­ing to move her foot, hit­ting it fee­bly, try­ing to free him­self.

"Hel..." Kazushi ut­tered. It sound­ed like a tiny draft of air be­cause his throat had been crushed.

"Help..."

Yeah right, Takako thought. She could tell her mouth was break­ing in­to a grin. She re­al­ized she wasn't an­gry any­more. She was ac­tu­al­ly en­joy­ing this. She was sure about it. So what? She nev­er claimed to be Pope John Paul II or the 14th Dalai Lama.

On her knees now, she thrust the ice pick in­to his mouth (she saw sev­er­al cav­ity fill­ings). His arms which were strug­gling to pull at her leg sud­den­ly froze. Takako pushed fur­ther. It sunk in­to his throat with­out much re­sis­tance. Kazushi's en­tire body, from his chest down to his toes, then went in­to con­vul­sions as if swim­ming the sub­mariner. Then it stopped. The al­bi­no eyes still re­mained open, sur­round­ed by a spi­der's web pat­tern of gooey blood like run­ning paint.

She felt a sud­den surge of pain in her right leg and fell on her back by his head. She was pant­ing now the way she did af­ter do­ing the 200-me­ter dash twice for phys­ical tests.

She'd won. But she al­so felt emp­ty. The ac­tu­al fight might have last­ed less than thir­ty sec­onds. She wouldn't have sur­vived a longer fight. In any case...she won. That's what mat­tered.

Takako held her blood-​soaked right leg as she looked down at the corpse of Kazushi, who re­sem­bled a trav­el­ing ma­gi­cian at­tempt­ing to spit out an ice pick from his throat. Now ladies and gen­tle­men, I shall spit out what I just swal­lowed-

"Takako."

The voice came from be­hind her. Still seat­ed, Takako turned around. She reached out and pulled out the ice pick from Kazushi's mouth (which re­sult­ed in Kazushi's head ris­ing a lit­tle and then falling to the ground).

Mit­suko Souma (Fe­male Stu­dent No. II) was look­ing down at Takako.

Takako quick­ly looked over at Mit­suko's right hand. Her small hand was hold­ing a large au­to­mat­ic pis­tol.

She had no idea what her in­ten­tions were. But...if like Kazushi Nü­da she in­tend­ed to kill her (it was like­ly, this af­ter all was Mit­suko Souma), Takako had no chance of win­ning. Mit­suko had a gun.

She had to es­cape. She had to. Takako pulled at her right leg in pain and tried to get up.

"Are you all right?" Mit­suko asked. Her voice sound­ed ter­ri­bly kind. She didn't point the gun at her.

But Takako had to be cau­tious. She moved back and fi­nal­ly man­aged to get up by hold­ing on­to a tree near­by. Her right leg felt in­cred­ibly heavy.

She an­swered, "Well, I sup­pose."

Mit­suko looked over Kazushi's corpse. Then she looked at the ice pick in Takako's hands.

"You killed him with that? I have to say I'm im­pressed. Speak­ing as one girl to an­oth­er."

She re­al­ly sound­ed like she was im­pressed. It al­most sound­ed cheer­ful. Her an­gel­ic face was beam­ing.

"I guess," Takako re­spond­ed. She felt as if her body were off bal­ance. Per­haps it was from the heavy loss of blood from her right leg.

"Say," Mit­suko said. "You nev­er went out of your way to im­press me."

Still un­able to tell what Mit­suko's in­ten­tions were, Takako stared at her. (The two most beau­ti­ful girls in Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High were star­ing at each oth­er. Nice jew­el­ry and a boy's corpse. Oh, you're so pret­ty.)

Mit­suko was ab­so­lute­ly right. Takako couldn't stand suck­ing up to any­one, so she was nev­er in­tim­idat­ed like the oth­er girls when Mit­suko talked to her. She was too proud and be­sides, she wasn't scared of Mit­suko.

Then she re­mem­bered some­thing an old­er stu­dent she had a crush on a while ago (ac­tu­al­ly, it end­ed on­ly a cou­ple months ago) used to say. Where­as her feel­ings for Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra were vague, she def­inite­ly had a crush on this guy. Af­ter get­ting in­volved in one of his friend's fights, he showed up all beat up at the team room be­fore one of their meets and said in his unique voice, "There's noth­ing to be afraid of. Noth­ing to fear."

Be strong and beau­ti­ful....Takako had her eye on this guy ev­er since she en­tered ju­nior high and it seemed he'd had a pro­found ef­fect on her per­son­al­ity. But he al­so had a girl­friend. Some­one very el­egant, yes, some­one like Saku­ra Ogawa...some­one calm as a serene lake hid­den deep in­side a for­est....Well that was all in the past.

But-she thought-the fact that she sud­den­ly re­called his words which hadn't oc­curred to her even when she was fight­ing Kazushi Nü­da just mo­ments ago....Did that mean that...she was...in fact...afraid of Mit­suko?

"I was al­ways a lit­tle en­vi­ous," Mit­suko con­tin­ued. "You were so pret­ty, and you were a bet­ter girl than me."

Takako lis­tened qui­et­ly. She im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized there was some­thing wrong. Why was Mit­suko re­fer­ring to her in the past tense?

"But..." Mit­suko's eyes twin­kled play­ful­ly. Now she was back to the present tense. "I re­al­ly like girls like you. Maybe I'm a bit of a dyke. So it's..."

Takako's eyes opened wide. She turned around and be­gan run­ning. Her right leg dragged a lit­tle, but it was still a re­spectable sprint for the track star. So its...

Mit­suko lift­ed the .45. She pulled the trig­ger three times in a row. Takako had man­aged to run down the hill and through the woods, cov­er­ing a quick twen­ty me­ters when three holes ap­peared in the back of her uni­form. She fell for­ward as if div­ing in a head-​first slide. Face down, she slid across the ground, and her legs con­trast­ed against each oth­er, the left one white and the right one red as they flew in­to the air, her skirt flut­ter­ing against them. She was ly­ing on the ground.

Mit­suko put down the gun and said, "It's too bad."

24 play­ers re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

38

Noriko's breath­ing grew heav­ier. Shogo's medicine didn't seem to be hav­ing much ef­fect. It was close to 2 p.m. All of a sud­den Noriko's cheeks ap­peared sunk in. Shuya used up a wa­ter bot­tle to moist­en Noriko's hand­ker­chief, and wiped her sweaty face, and then placed it on her fore­head. Noriko kept her eyes closed, but nod­ded as if to thank him.

Shuya looked back at Shogo. Shogo re­mained in the same po­si­tion, lean­ing against a tree all this time, smok­ing with his legs crossed. His right hand gen­tly touched the grip of the Rem­ing­ton shot­gun rest­ing in his lap.

"Shogo."

"What?"

"Let's go."

Shogo raised his brows. "Where?"

Shuya's lips tight­ened. "I can't stand it any­more." He point­ed to Noriko. "She's get­ting worse ev­ery sec­ond."

Shogo glanced at Noriko, who was ly­ing down with her eyes closed. "If it's from sep­ticemia, warm­ing her up and let­ting her rest won't cure her."

Shuya did his best to re­strain his im­pa­tience. "Ac­cord­ing to the map, there's a med­ical clin­ic on the is­land. We might be able to find some bet­ter medicine for her there, right? It's way north of the res­iden­tial area, and it's not in any of the for­bid­den zones."

"Oh yeah." Shogo ex­haled smoke from the cor­ner of his mouth. "That's true."

"Let's go there."

Shogo tilt­ed his head. He took an­oth­er drag and then rubbed out the cigarette. "That fa­cil­ity is at least one and a half kilo­me­ters away. It's too dan­ger­ous to go there now. We have to wait un­til dark."

Shuya clenched his teeth. "We can't wait un­til dark. What if that area be­comes a for­bid­den zone?"

Shogo didn't re­ply.

"Hey," Shuya said. He wasn't sure whether it was from im­pa­tience or the mere thought of hav­ing to risk falling out with Shogo, but he was be­gin­ning to stut­ter a lit­tle. He had to say it though. "I-I won't say you're try­ing to get us killed. But why are you so afraid of tak­ing any risks? Your life that pre­cious?"

Shuya looked him in the eye. Shogo didn't change his calm ex­pres­sion.

"Shuya..."

Shuya heard Noriko's voice be­hind him and turned around. Noriko had her head turned to­ward him. The hand­ker­chief on her fore­head was ly­ing on the ground.

"Stop it. We won't make it with­out Shogo," she man­aged to say in be­tween heavy breaths.

"Noriko." Shuya shook his head. "Don't you see how weak you're get­ting? You can't die be­fore we can make it out of here." Shuya turned to Shogo again. "If you say you're not com­ing, I'll take Noriko with me on my own. You can for­get about our deal. You're on your own." That was his part­ing re­mark as he got ready to get their bags.

"Hold on," Shogo said. He slow­ly got up, ap­proached Noriko, and checked the pulse of her right wrist. It was what he did ev­ery twen­ty min­utes. He rubbed his in­creas­ing­ly stub­bly chin again and looked at them. "You won't know what medicine to use." He tilt­ed his head slight­ly, looked at Shuya, and said, "All right. I'm com­ing with you."

24 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

39

Al­though over half an hour had passed since she'd been shot in the back three times and though she'd lost a large quan­ti­ty of blood from the ar­row wound in her leg, Takako Chi­gusa was still alive. Mit­suko Souma had dis­ap­peared, but Takako couldn't care less about that.

She was half doz­ing, half dream­ing. Her fam­ily...her fa­ther, moth­er, and younger sis­ter were all wav­ing at Takako from the front gate of their house.

She could tell her sis­ter Ayako, who was two years younger, was cry­ing. She was say­ing, "Good­bye, Takako, good­bye." Her hand­some fa­ther, from whom Takako had in­her­it­ed most of her fea­tures and her moth­er who shared her looks more with Ayako, were both silent, look­ing very sad. Their pet dog, Hanako, drooped her head and wagged her tail. Takako had tak­en care of Hanako, smart fe­male dog, ev­er since she was a pup­py.

Oh shit, Takako thought in her dream, how aw­ful. I've on­ly lived fif­teen years. Hey Ayako, look af­ter Mom and Dad, okay? You're so spoiled, so learn from your old­er sis­ter a lit­tle, huh?

Then she saw Ka­ho­ru Ki­taza­wa. Her one re­al­ly close friend, the pe­tite girl she'd been bud­dies with for sev­en years now.

Time to say good­bye to you too, Ka­ho­ru. That's right. You were the one who said that noth­ing, not even hell, could scare you as long as you gave it your best shot. That's right, I'm not afraid. But...it's still kin­da hard, dy­ing alone like this....

Then Ka­ho­ru seemed to be shout­ing. But she couldn't hear her well. It sound­ed like, "What about him?"

Him?

Then the scene changed to her track team lock­er room. She knew it was the sum­mer of her sec­ond year be­cause this room had been torn down last fall, re­placed by a new club­house.

Hey, this is no dream. This ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened. This...

An old­er team­mate. His buzz-​cut hair stood up in front, and he wore a white T-​shirt with the words "FUCK OFF!" on it and green track shorts with black lines. Play­ful but gen­tle-​look­ing eyes. He was the guy she had a crush on. He was good at run­ning hur­dles. Now he was con­cen­trat­ing on tap­ing up his knee which he'd in­jured a while ago. There was no one else be­sides them. Takako said, "You have a beau­ti­ful girl­friend. You two make a great cou­ple."

Ah well, when it comes to him, I turn in­to an av­er­age girl. How lame.

"Yeah?" he lift­ed his face and smiled. "You're pret­ti­er than her."

Takako smiled, but felt a lit­tle odd. She was hap­py to hear him praise her looks for the first time...but the fact he could tell an­oth­er girl she was pret­ti­er al­so in­di­cat­ed how strong his re­la­tion­ship with his girl­friend was.

"Don't you have a boyfriend, Takako?" he asked, smil­ing.

The scene changed again.

She was at the park, but ev­ery­thing ap­peared very low.

Oh, this must be from my child­hood. I must have been in the sec­ond or third grade.

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was cry­ing in front of her. He wasn't tall the way he was now. In fact back then Takako was taller. A bul­ly had tak­en away his brand new com­ic book.

"Come on, boys don't cry. Don't be such a wuss. Be strong. Come on. Our dog just had pup­pies. You wan­na see them?"

"Okay..." Hi­ro­ki wiped his tears and tagged along.

Come to think of it, Hi­ro­ki start­ed mar­tial arts school the year af­ter that. He al­so went through a growth spurt around then and even­tu­al­ly end­ed up taller than her.

Up un­til the end of el­emen­tary school they of­ten vis­it­ed each oth­er. Once, when she seemed pre­oc­cu­pied, Hi­ro­ki asked her, "What's wrong, Takako? Some­thing wrong?"

Takako thought about it and then said what was on her mind. "Hey, Hi­ro­ki, what would you do if some­one said they liked you?"

"Hmm. I don't know, since it's nev­er hap­pened to me."

"...don't you have a crush on some­one?"

"Hmm. Nope. Not at this mo­ment."

Takako then thought, so I'm not even in the run­ning?

What­ev­er. She con­tin­ued, "Oh, re­al­ly. Well you should find some­one you can con­fess to."

"I'm too chick­en. I don't think so."

The scene changed. Ju­nior high school again. They be­came class­mates in their sec­ond year. They were talk­ing on the first day of class. At some point, Hi­ro­ki asked, "So I heard there's this sup­pos­ed­ly hot guy on the track team." Al­though he didn't di­rect­ly say it, he was im­ply­ing she had a crush on him.

"Who told you?"

"Just heard. So how's it go­ing?"

"No hope. He has a girl­friend. What about you? You still don't have a girl­friend?"

"Leave me alone."

...we were al­ways on the verge of be­ing close. We both had a thing for each oth­er but...or am I just imag­in­ing things? At least I liked you. I mean, it was dif­fer­ent from how I felt about my track team­mate. You know what I mean?

Hi­ro­ki's face ap­peared. He was cry­ing.

"Takako. Don't die."

Come on guy, be a man. Boys don't cry. You might be big­ger now, but you haven't made much progress.

Was it by the grace of God? Takako came to her sens­es once more. She opened her eyes.

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was look­ing down at her in the soft af­ter­noon light. Be­yond Hi­ro­ki she saw the tree­tops, and in be­tween them frag­ments of the blue sky formed com­plex pat­terns like those in a Rorschach Test.

The first thing she re­al­ized was that Hi­ro­ki wasn't cry­ing.

Then she start­ed won­der­ing, "How did you..."

As she tried to form words with her mouth, she felt as if she were forc­ing open a rusty door. She re­al­ized she didn't have too long to live.

"...get here?"

All Hi­ro­ki said was, "I man­aged." He knelt down be­side her and gen­tly lift­ed up her head. She'd fall­en face for­ward, but now for some rea­son she was fac­ing up. The palm of her left hand (her left hand...no, the en­tire left side of her body was numb now, so she couldn't feel any­thing...it might have been from Kazushi Nü­da's blow to the side of her head) felt the sen­sa­tion of weeds un­der­neath-had he car­ried her here?

Hi­ro­ki then asked qui­et­ly, "Who got you?"

That's right. It was im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion.

"Mit­suko," Takako an­swered. She didn't give a damn about Kazushi Nü­da any­more. "Be care­ful."

Hi­ro­ki nod­ded. Then he said, "I'm sor­ry."

Takako didn't un­der­stand. She stared at Hi­ro­ki.

"I was hid­ing out­side the school...wait­ing for you." Hi­ro­ki said and then tight­ened his lips as if hold­ing some­thing back.

"But...then Yoshio came back. I...I got dis­tract­ed for a split sec­ond. Then...you know how you ran at full speed...1 lost you. I ran in your di­rec­tion, call­ing af­ter you, but...you were too far off by then."

Oh no, Takako thought. So it was true. Af­ter she ran away from the school in­to the woods she thought she'd heard a dis­tant voice. But she was so fran­tic she thought it was just her imag­ina­tion-and if it wasn't, then it meant there was some­one-so she con­tin­ued run­ning at full speed.

Oh-

Hi­ro­ki had wait­ed for her. Just as she'd sus­pect­ed, he'd been wait­ing for her, risk­ing his life. And when he said, "I man­aged," he prob­ably meant that he'd been look­ing for her all this time.

The thought made her want to cry.

In­stead she did her best to form a smile on her face.

"Re­al­ly? Thanks."

Takako knew that she couldn't talk much any­more. She tried to come up with the best thing to say, but then an odd ques­tion oc­curred to her and she blurt­ed it out, "Do you have a crush on some­one?"

Hi­ro­ki's brows moved and then he gen­tly said, "I do."

"Don't say it's me."

Still look­ing sad, Hi­ro­ki faint­ly smiled.

"No, its not."

"Well then..."

Takako took a deep breath. She felt as if poi­son were spread­ing through her body which strange­ly felt both chilly and at the same time in­cred­ibly hot. "Could you just...hold me tight? It'll be...over soon."

Hi­ro­ki tight­ened his lips and raised her up, hug­ging her tight­ly to his body with both his arms. Her head was on the verge of falling back but Hi­ro­ki held it up.

She felt like she could say one more thing.

"You have to sur­vive, Hi­ro­ki."

Dear God, can I have one more word?

Takako looked in­to Hi­ro­ki's eyes and grinned.

"You've be­come quite a stud."

Hi­ro­ki said, "And...you're the most stylin' girl in the world."

Takako smiled faint­ly. She want­ed to thank him, but she was out of breath. She just stared at Hi­ro­ki's eyes. She was grate­ful. At least she wasn't go­ing to die alone. The last per­son to stay with her end­ed up be­ing Hi­ro­ki. And she was grate­ful. She re­al­ly was.

Ka­ho­ru...thanks, I heard you.

Takako Chi­gusa re­mained in this po­si­tion as she died ap­prox­imate­ly two min­utes lat­er. Her eyes re­mained open. Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra held her limp, life­less body and wept.

23 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

40

"Get down," Shogo said. He care­ful­ly sur­veyed the area while hold­ing on to his shot­gun.

Car­ry­ing Noriko on his back, Shuya obeyed Shogo. The area was shad­ed by a large elm tree. They must have cov­ered two-​thirds the dis­tance to the med­ical fa­cil­ity by now. They should be in the vicin­ity of sec­tor F=6 or F=7. If they were head­ed in the right di­rec­tion (Shogo was lead­ing them, so they couldn't be far off), the school build­ing should soon ap­pear be­low them to their right.

Mov­ing along the shore, they first passed through C=4. Then they moved east along the foot of the north­ern moun­tain. Mov­ing in broad day­light did turn out to be dif­fi­cult. They would move a lit­tle, qui­et down their breath­ing, and when they had to get through thick veg­eta­tion Shogo would throw sev­er­al peb­bles ahead to make sure no one was there. It'd al­ready tak­en them half an hour just to get this far.

Noriko con­tin­ued to breathe heav­ily.

Shuya tilt­ed his head back the way moth­ers do with their in­fants and told her, "We're al­most there, Noriko."

"Uh huh..." she an­swered.

"All right, let's go," Shogo said. "We're go­ing for that tree over there."

"Got it."

Shuya got up and pro­ceed­ed through the soft, grassy soil that must have been a farm field. Shogo was right next to them, hold­ing their be­long­ings with his left hand and his shot­gun in his right, in­di­cat­ing di­rec­tions with the mo­tion of his head. The muz­zle of the shot­gun would point in the same di­rec­tion as his head.

They reached a thin tree and stopped. Shuya took a deep breath.

"Are you all right, Shuya?"

Shuya gave him a smile. "Noriko's light."

"We can take a break."

"No," Shuya shook his head. "I want to get there as soon as pos­si­ble."

"All right," Shogo said, but Shuya felt un­cer­tain. Maybe he was be­ing an id­iot. He was al­ways jump­ing to wrong con­clu­sions, fail­ing to check the im­por­tant de­tails.

"Shogo."

"What?"

"Does that mark on the map re­al­ly in­di­cate a clin­ic?"

Shogo snick­ered. "I be­lieve you were the one who claimed it was."

"No, that was-"

Shuya was em­bar­rassed, but Shogo im­me­di­ate­ly said,

"Don't wor­ry, it is. I checked it."

"Re­al­ly?"

"Yeah, I walked around the is­land last night un­til I met you guys. I should have had the fore­sight to take some more medicine. I didn't think I'd need it."

Shuya let out a sigh of re­lief. Then he re­proached him­self. He had to get his act to­geth­er. Oth­er­wise, he'd end up not on­ly get­ting him­self killed but Noriko as well.

Even as they talked, Shogo was search­ing for their next spot.

"All right-"

Then they heard the gun­fire. Shogo froze. He ner­vous­ly crouched down and sur­veyed the area. So...had Shuya been too op­ti­mistic, hop­ing they could reach the med­ical fa­cil­ity with­out any ob­sta­cles?

But there was no one in sight.

Shuya looked over at Shogo, who stretched out his left arm as if to shield them and looked ahead to­ward their left, where they were head­ed. There was a gen­tle slope lead­ing up to rows of tall pine trees ap­prox­imate­ly ten me­ters away, cut­ting off their view. Did he mean they were go­ing through there?

Shuya fi­nal­ly let out the breath he'd been hold­ing.

"It's all right," Shogo said in a hushed voice. "We're not the tar­gets."

Shuya de­cid­ed against pulling out his gun and, still car­ry­ing Noriko, said, "It's close."

Shogo nod­ded silent­ly. Then the gun­fire con­tin­ued. Two, then three shots. The third one some­how seemed loud­er than the first two shots. Then an­oth­er shot. It was a small­er sound.

"A gun fight," Shogo mum­bled. "They're pret­ty pumped up."

Now that he knew they were safe, Shuya felt re­lieved, but he kept on bit­ing his lip.

Who­ev­er they were, his class­mates were try­ing to kill each oth­er again. In fact, it was hap­pen­ing right near them. And he was just try­ing to stay qui­et, wait­ing for it to end. That was just...

The im­age of the men in black crossed his mind. Now then, you're next, and you. For­tu­nate­ly, Mr. Nana­hara, your time still hasn't come.

His back fac­ing him, Shogo said, as if he could read Shuya's thoughts (didn't he say some­thing sil­ly about read­ing his mind on a clear day?), "I hope you're not think­ing of stop­ping them, Shuya."

Shuya held his breath and then mum­bled, "No..." That's right. His pri­or­ity was to take Noriko to the med­ical fa­cil­ity. If they got mixed up with some­one else's fight they'd end up risk­ing their own lives.

Then Noriko sud­den­ly said from be­hind, "Shuya." Her fever was so high, he could even feel it through his back. She was prac­ti­cal­ly whis­per­ing.

Shuya turned his head around. He saw Noriko's eyes squint­ing right be­hind his shoul­der.

"Let me...stand..." she fi­nal­ly ut­tered and con­tin­ued, "We have to see...make sure...who­ev­er it is..."

Her words were cut off by her heavy breath­ing, but he knew what she was get­ting at. What if some­one who didn't want to par­tic­ipate, in oth­er words, some­one in­no­cent, was about to get killed right now? In fact that could be the case with both par­ties ex­chang­ing bul­lets right now.

The area they were in was a di­rect south­ward de­scent from the north­ern peak where Yukiko Ki­tano and Yu­miko Kusa­ka were killed. But they weren't hear­ing a ma­chine gun now. There­fore, nei­ther of the fight­ing par­ties right now had killed Yukiko and Yu­miko. But what if...Yukiko and Yu­miko's killer heard this gun­fire? He could show up at any mo­ment.

More gun­fire was ex­changed. And then si­lence again.

Shuya clenched his teeth. He quick­ly let Noriko down. He had her rest against the tree trunk where they were hid­ing.

Shogo turned around. "Hey, you're not..."

Shuya ig­nored him and said to Noriko, "I'll go check it out." He pulled out his Smith & Wes­son and said to Shogo, "Look af­ter Noriko."

"H-​hey..."

He heard Shogo, but he was al­ready on his way.

He climbed the slope care­ful­ly, keep­ing an eye on all sides, and made his way through the conif­er­ous trees.

There was thick veg­eta­tion be­yond the trees. Shuya made his way in­to it. He got down on the ground and pro­ceed­ed to make his way through the long, sharp nee­dles prick­ing at him from both sides.

More gun­shots. Shuya fi­nal­ly reached the edge of the grove and slow­ly poked his head out.

There was a house. It was an old wood­en, sin­gle-​sto­ry build­ing with a tri­an­gu­lar roof. A typ­ical farm­house. On his left was an un­paved en­trance road. The moun­tain es­carp­ment sur­round­ed the prop­er­ty fur­ther down. The area above was cov­ered in deep for­est. And even fur­ther up, you could see the view­ing plat­form on the north­ern moun­tain where Yu­miko and Yukiko had been killed.

The farm­house was on his left side. Hi­rono Shimizu (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 10) was crouched against the wall in front of the build­ing. Hi­rono was look­ing be­yond the yard at what ap­peared to be a shack for farm equip­ment right be­side the en­trance road. He could make out the fig­ure of a girl be­side the en­trance. The girl looked up, and that was when he re­al­ized it was Kaori Mi­na­mi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 20). And both of them were hold­ing guns. They were less than fif­teen me­ters apart from each oth­er.

He had no idea how they end­ed up shoot­ing at each oth­er. It was pos­si­ble one of them was out to get the oth­er girl, but Shuya could tell this wasn't the case. They prob­ably stum­bled in­to each oth­er, and be­cause nei­ther of them could trust the oth­er, they end­ed up shoot­ing at each oth­er....

This guess might have just been based on his own fa­vor­able opin­ion of girls, but in any case he couldn't just sit back and let this hap­pen. He had to stop them.

As Shuya tried to grasp the sit­ua­tion, Kaori stuck her head out from the shack's en­trance and fired at Hi­rono. She han­dled the gun like a kid play­ing with a wa­ter pis­tol, but un­like a wa­ter pis­tol the gun ex­plod­ed, and a small brass shell flew in­to the air. Hi­rono fired two shots back. She ac­tu­al­ly han­dled the gun well, and her shells didn't fly out. One of her bul­lets hit the post of the shack, which shat­tered in­to saw­dust. Kaori quick­ly tucked her head in.

Hi­rono's body was al­most en­tire­ly vis­ible from where Shuya was stand­ing, and he saw her open the cylin­der of her re­volver to ex­tract the shells. Her left hand was soaked crim­son. Her arm might have been wound­ed by Kaori. But she man­aged to reload her gun quick­ly with that hand. She aimed her gun at Kaori again.

All of this hap­pened in a mat­ter of sec­onds, but right be­fore he was about to act Shuya was once again over­whelmed by the sen­sa­tion of be­ing in a night­mare. Kaori Mi­na­mi loved pop idols, so she'd of­ten talk about her fa­vorite stars with her friends, or share a pho­to tak­en in per­son that thrilled her to no end. Then there was Hi­rono Shimizu, who hung out with Mit­suko Souma, so there was some­thing jad­ed about her. But they were both third-​year stu­dents in ju­nior high, they both had charm­ing qual­ities. Now these two...were shoot­ing at each oth­er. Se­ri­ous­ly, with re­al bul­lets. Ob­vi­ous­ly.

I have to do some­thing now.

Shuya stood up and fifed his Smith & Wes­son in­to the air. Oh great, so now I'm play­ing the sher­iff, he thought for a mo­ment. But with­out hes­itat­ing, he shout­ed, "Stop it!"

Hi­rono and Kaori froze, and then to­geth­er looked over at Shuya.

Shuya con­tin­ued, "Stop it! I'm with Noriko Nak­agawa!" He thought it was best not to men­tion Shogo's name for now. "You can trust me!"

As he said this, he re­al­ized how lame his words sound­ed. But he had no oth­er way to put it.

Hi­rono was the first to move her eyes away from Shuya to Kaori. And...Kaori was gaz­ing at Shuya.

Shuya re­al­ized at that mo­ment how half of Kaori's body was ex­posed be­yond the en­trance-she was in the open now.

What hap­pened next re­mind­ed him of a traf­fic ac­ci­dent he once wit­nessed. It hap­pened on an au­tumn evening be­fore he turned eleven. Maybe the driv­er had fall­en asleep or some­thing. His truck lost con­trol, rammed through the guardrail, rode up on­to the side­walk, and hit a young girl walk­ing home from school, just like Shuya, who was be­hind her. It was un­be­liev­able but her back­pack came off her shoul­ders and flew in­to the air, trac­ing a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry from the girl's body. The girl land­ed on the side­walk be­fore the back­pack did, falling on her shoul­der. Ob­struct­ed by the way­side con­crete wall she slid along the edge of the side­walk and then stopped still. Blood came flow­ing out, leav­ing a trail on the bot­tom edge of the con­crete wall over one me­ter long.

It all looked like-from the time the truck swung off the road and crashed in­to the girl-as if it was hap­pen­ing in slow mo­tion. Any­one there could tell what was go­ing to hap­pen, but there was noth­ing any­one could do. That's what it felt like.

Hi­rono aimed and fired at Kaori, who'd com­plete­ly let her guard down. Two shots in a row. The first one hit Kaori in the shoul­der, mak­ing her spin halfway to the right. The sec­ond shot hit her in the head. Shuya saw a part of her head-from the top down to her left tem­ple-ex­plode.

Kaori col­lapsed by the front door of the shack.

Hi­rono glanced over at Shuya.

Then she turned and ran to his left, west­ward, where Shuya's group came from. She ran in­to the bush­es and dis­ap­peared from sight.

"Damn!"

Shuya moaned. Af­ter some hes­ita­tion he ran to the shack where Kaori had col­lapsed.

Kaori was ly­ing down, legs jut­ting out from in­side the shack that on­ly housed a de­crepit trac­tor. Her body re­mained twist­ed as blood came flow­ing out the cor­ner of her mouth, mixed with the blood from her head and shoul­der wounds, turn­ing in­to a pud­dle on the shack's con­crete floor. Tiny dust par­ti­cles from the floor were float­ing on the sur­face of the pud­dle. Her eyes stared out at the sky. A thin gold chain hung down from her sailor suit on­to the floor, and the gold­en lock­et at­tached to it looked like an is­land in a lake of blood. A fa­mous male idol singer was smil­ing cheer­ful­ly from it.

Shuya was shak­ing as he knelt down be­side her.

Oh, man...what the...so this girl...can't gos­sip about pop idols any­more, she can't go to their con­certs any­more. If he had been more care­ful...maybe she wouldn't have been killed?

He heard a sound and turned around. It was Shogo, hold­ing Noriko with one of his arms as they looked out from the woods.

Shogo left Noriko there and trot­ted over to Shuya.

Shogo's ex­pres­sion seemed to be say­ing, "See, what'd I tell you?" but he didn't say a word. He just calm­ly picked up Kaori's gun and day pack, and then as if it oc­curred to him as an af­terthought, he crouched down and shut her eyes with his right thumb. Then he told Shuya, "We're go­ing. Hur­ry up."

He knew it was dan­ger­ous. Any­one-es­pe­cial­ly the killer with the ma­chine gun-could have heard the gun­fire and might be show­ing up now.

Still, Shuya's eyes were glued to Kaori's corpse un­til Shogo tugged his arm back.

22 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

41

The med­ical clin­ic was an old, small, sin­gle-​sto­ry build­ing. The wood walls had turned black, and the black-​tiled roof was so worn out with age that the cor­ners had turned white. Like the shack where Kaori Mi­na­mi had died, it was lo­cat­ed in front of the north­ern moun­tain at the end of a nar­row un­paved road. They'd made their way through the moun­tain, but they could tell the nar­row en­trance road led down to the paved road along the is­land's east­ern shore. There was a white mini­van parked in front of the fa­cil­ity. Maybe the doc­tor had used it. Be­yond the mini­van they could see the ocean.

The af­ter­noon sun was shin­ing on the sea. The col­or of the ocean was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the murky wa­ter that lapped against the con­crete sea walls in Shi­roi­wa har­bor. It was a won­der­ful­ly bril­liant blue tinged with green. There were hard­ly any waves, and the sparkling dots of light on its sur­face be­came in­creas­ing­ly dense in the dis­tance. Oth­er is­lands float­ing in the Se­to In­land Sea looked re­mark­ably close, but this was prob­ably due, as he was once told, to the op­ti­cal il­lu­sion of re­duced dis­tance when ob­jects were ab­sent. So they must have been at least four or five kilo­me­ters away.

In any case...they were here. It was a mir­acle they got here with­out get­ting hurt. They'd im­me­di­ate­ly left the area where Kaori died. No ma­chine gun shots came af­ter them. Ac­cord­ing to the map they'd trav­eled a dis­tance of less than two kilo­me­ters, but Shuya, who'd been car­ry­ing Noriko, ac­com­pa­nied by the pres­sure of a pos­si­ble at­tack, was in­cred­ibly tired. He want­ed to check to make sure no one was in the area of the clin­ic as soon as pos­si­ble, so that not on­ly Noriko but he too could get some rest.

But some­thing caught Shuya's at­ten­tion.

A ship was float­ing on the peace­ful sea. It was prob­ably the guard ship Sakamochi had men­tioned. But...for some rea­son there were three ships in a row. Sakamochi said there would be one ship on all sides-north, south, east, and west-and on the west side they had on­ly seen one. So what was this?

Still car­ry­ing Noriko, Shuya poked his face out from the leaves and asked Shogo, "There're three ships."

"Yeah," Shogo replied. "The small one is a guard ship. The huge one is the ship that will trans­port the sol­diers who were in the school build­ing back to their base. The one in the mid­dle is for the win­ner of the game. The win­ner rides that boat. It's the same mod­el as the one from last year."

"So...the Pro­gram in Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture was al­so held on an is­land like this one?"

"Yep," Shogo nod­ded. "Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture al­so shares the Se­to In­land Sea. It seems like Pro­grams held in pre­fec­tures along the Se­to In­land Sea coast are al­ways held on is­lands. I mean, there are at least a thou­sand is­lands in this small ocean."

Shogo then told him to wait and de­scend­ed the slope to­ward the clin­ic with his shot­gun cocked. He crouched down and first ex­am­ined the mini­van. Then he snuck up to the build­ing and cir­cled it. When he re­turned he ex­am­ined the slid­ing door en­trance. It seemed to be locked, so Shogo flipped his shot­gun and shat­tered the frost­ed glass win­dow with the sawed off gun stock. Then he stuck his hand in­to the V-​shaped open­ing, un­locked the door, and en­tered the build­ing.

Af­ter watch­ing him do this, Shuya tilt­ed his head back to Noriko, whose head was rest­ing against his back.

"Noriko, we're here." Shuya said, but Noriko could on­ly moan, "Huh..." Her heavy breath­ing con­tin­ued.

Af­ter five full min­utes, Shogo poked his head out of the en­trance and sig­naled Shuya to join him. Shuya cau­tious­ly de­scend­ed the two me­ter drop so he wouldn't lose his bal­ance and ap­proached the clin­ic.

A thick, grimy wood­en sign with the traces of weath­er­worn let­ters that read, "Ok­ishi­ma Is­land Med­ical Clin­ic" hung right be­side the en­trance. Shuya slipped by Shogo, who kept watch, hold­ing his shot­gun. He en­tered, fol­lowed by Shogo, who shut the door tight­ly.

Right near the en­trance, there was a small wait­ing room. On the left there was a long green couch with a white cov­er on the worn out cream-​col­ored car­pet. The wall clock made a tick­ing sound as it ap­proached three o'clock. The right side ap­peared to be the ex­am­ina­tion room.

Shogo jammed the door shut with a broom and then sig­naled Shuya, "Over here."

Al­though they were sup­posed to take their shoes off, Shuya stepped up with his sneak­ers on and en­tered the room on the right. There was a wood­en desk in front of the win­dow, and what ap­peared to be a doc­tor's black leather chair. There was a green vinyl stool in front of it. Even though the clin­ic was small, it still had the ster­ile odor of dis­in­fec­tant.

There were two beds be­yond a thin green cur­tain hang­ing from met­al pipes. Shuya car­ried Noriko to the bed in front and gen­tly put her down there. He thought of hav­ing her take off his school coat, but then de­cid­ed against it.

Af­ter Shogo quick­ly pulled the cur­tains shut, he said, "blan­kets," and gave him two thin brown blan­kets fold­ed in small squares. Shuya took them and af­ter some thought spread one of them on the oth­er bed. Then he moved Noriko there and spread the oth­er blan­ket over her. He made sure the blan­ket went up to her shoul­ders. Shogo was rum­mag­ing through a gray of­fice cab­inet that was prob­ably the medicine cab­inet.

Shuya crouched down by Noriko's head and combed the sweaty hair against her cheeks back to her ears. She seemed dazed. Her eyes were closed, and she con­tin­ued to breathe heav­ily.

"Damn it," Shuya mut­tered. "Noriko, are you all right?"

Noriko squint­ed, her eyes glazed at him as she said, "Uh huh..." She might be faint from the high fever, but her mind was clear enough to re­spond.

"How about some wa­ter?"

Noriko bare­ly nod­ded. Shuya took out a new bot­tle of wa­ter from the day pack Shogo had tossed on­to the floor and tore off the seal. He held her up and helped her drink it. Shuya wiped off the wa­ter spilling from the side of her mouth with the back of his hand.

"Is that enough?" Shuya asked and Noriko nod­ded. Then he lay her down and waved to Shogo. "Any medicine?"

"Hold on," Shogo replied. He rum­maged through an­oth­er, low­er cab­inet and pulled out a card­board box. He opened it and read the di­rec­tions. It seemed to be what he was af­ter. He ex­tract­ed what looked like a small bot­tle and an am­poule. The bot­tle was filled with white pow­der.

"Do you swal­low that?" Shuya asked.

Shogo an­swered, "No, it's for in­jec­tions."

Shuya was a lit­tle shocked. "You know how to use that?"

Shogo turned on the faucet in the back of the room. No wa­ter came out, as ex­pect­ed, and Shogo clicked his tongue. He pulled out his wa­ter bot­tle from his day pack and washed his hands. Then he set a nee­dle on a sy­ringe and ex­tract­ed the con­tents of the am­poule. "Don't wor­ry, I've done this be­fore."

"...re­al­ly?" Shuya felt like he was con­stant­ly re­peat­ing this phrase to Shogo.

Shogo broke the seal of the small bot­tle and in­ject­ed it with the sy­ringe, fill­ing it up with the liq­uid from the am­poule. Af­ter re­mov­ing the sy­ringe, he held the bot­tle and shook it vig­or­ous­ly. Then he in­ject­ed the sy­ringe again to ex­tract the liq­uid mix­ture.

Af­ter prepar­ing an­oth­er sy­ringe like this, he fi­nal­ly ap­proached them.

"Is she go­ing to be all right?" Shuya asked again. "What about side ef­fects or shock?"

"That's what I'm go­ing to check for now. Just do as I say. Pull out Noriko's arm."

Un­sure of the sit­ua­tion, Shuya lift­ed the side of the blan­ket and rolled up both the sleeves of his school coat and her sailor suit. Her arm was very thin and her healthy look­ing dark skin had now be­come ex­cru­ci­at­ing­ly white.

"Noriko," Shogo asked her, "have you ev­er had any al­ler­gic re­ac­tions to any medicine?"

Noriko opened her eyes again in a daze.

Shogo re­peat­ed, "Are you al­ler­gic to any medicine?"

Noriko shook her head slight­ly.

"Good. I'm go­ing to test you first though."

Shogo held her arm out with her palm up, then took a cot­ton swab soaked with dis­in­fec­tant and wiped the area be­tween her wrist and el­bow. He slow­ly in­sert­ed the nee­dle, in­ject­ing on­ly a small amount of the liq­uid. A slight bump formed on this area of her skin. Shogo took out an­oth­er sy­ringe and per­formed an­oth­er in­jec­tion.

"What are you do­ing?" Shuya asked.

"One of them is re­al medicine. If she's in the same con­di­tion fif­teen min­utes lat­er, we won't have to wor­ry about side ef­fects. It means we can prob­ably use the medicine. But..."

"But?"

Shogo quick­ly took out an­oth­er larg­er bot­tle from the card­board box. He placed it on the small desk near­by, pre­pared an­oth­er sy­ringe, and looked over at Shuya. "It's not easy to di­ag­nose sep­ticemia. To be hon­est I can't tell whether this is from sep­ticemia or just a cold. An­tibi­otics are pret­ty po­tent, and that's why we're test­ing this on her, but the fact is my ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge is pret­ty lim­it­ed, so in­ject­ing her with this sy­ringe could be pret­ty dicey. On the oth­er hand..."

Hold­ing Noriko's hand, Shuya wait­ed for him to con­tin­ue.

Shogo took a breath and con­tin­ued, "If she is suf­fer­ing from sep­ticemia, then we have to treat her as soon as pos­si­ble. Oth­er­wise, it'll be too late."

Fif­teen min­utes passed by quick­ly. In the mean­time, Shogo checked her pulse again and took her tem­per­ature. The ther­mome­ter read 39 de­grees Cel­sius. No won­der she could bare­ly stand.

Shuya couldn't tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two ad­ja­cent marks from the sy­ringes. Shogo al­so ap­peared to reach the same con­clu­sion and took the larg­er sy­ringe.

Crouch­ing down slight­ly, Shogo asked, "Noriko. Are you awake?"

Noriko an­swered with her eyes shut, "Uh huh..."

"I'll be hon­est. I don't know if you're suf­fer­ing from sep­ticemia or not. I think you prob­ably are."

Noriko nod­ded slight­ly. She must have been able to fol­low Shuya and Shogo's con­ver­sa­tion mo­ments ago.

"It's all right...go ahead."

Shogo nod­ded and in­sert­ed the sy­ringe, this time deeply.

He in­ject­ed the liq­uid and re­moved the nee­dle. Then he wiped her arm with the cot­ton and told Shuya, "Hold this."

Shogo took the emp­ty sy­ringe and walked over to the sink to toss it away. Then he came back.

"Now she's got to sleep. You look af­ter her for a while. If she looks thirsty, you can use the whole bot­tle."

Shuya said, "But that's-"

Shuya shook his head.

"Don't wor­ry. I found a well be­hind the build­ing. As long as we boil the wa­ter we can drink it." Shogo left the room. Shuya turned to­wards the bed. With his right hand press­ing the cot­ton swab and his left hand gen­tly hold­ing Noriko's hand, he watched over her.

22 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

42

Noriko fell asleep al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. Shuya checked to make sure she wasn't bleed­ing from the shot, then he tossed the cot­ton swab, tucked her arm un­der the blan­ket, and left the room.

The doc­tor's liv­ing quar­ters was be­yond the wait­ing room next door. There was a kitchen at the end of the hall on the right. Shogo was in there. The gas stove next to the sink wasn't op­er­at­ing, but on it was a large pot filled with wa­ter, and un­der it a pile of char­coal was glow­ing red.

Shogo was stand­ing on a ta­ble, look­ing through a built-​in ceil­ing cab­inet across from the sink. That's when Shuya no­ticed for the first time that Shogo was wear­ing New Bal­ance sneak­ers. He'd as­sumed they were some do­mes­tic brand like Mizu­mo or Kage­boshi. New Bal­ance! He'd nev­er seen them be­fore!

What­ev­er. "What are you do­ing?" he asked.

"I'm look­ing for food. I found some rice and miso, but noth­ing else. The veg­eta­bles in the fridge are rot­ten."

Shuya shook his head. "You're steal­ing."

"Of course I am," Shogo said dry­ly and then added while he con­tin­ued rum­mag­ing, "For­get about it. Just be ready. Any­one could show up at any mo­ment. If the ma­chine gun shoot­er shows up, we'll be dead. So be ready."

Shuya replied, "Yeah, all right."

Shogo jumped off the ta­ble. The New Bal­ance shoes squeaked against the floor.

"Is she asleep?" he asked.

Shuya nod­ded.

Shogo pulled out an­oth­er pot from un­der the sink, walked up to the plas­tic rice con­tain­er in the cor­ner, and poured rice in­to the pot.

"So you're boil­ing rice."

"That's right. Noriko won't re­cov­er eat­ing that ter­ri­ble bread." Shogo scooped up a bowl of wa­ter from the buck­et on the floor and poured it in­to the pot. He combed through the rice and on­ly changed the wa­ter once. Next to the boil­ing wa­ter, he placed sev­er­al pieces of char­coal from his day pack on­to the oth­er burn­er, then took out a pack of cigarettes and emp­tied them in­to his pock­et. Then he crum­pled the pack, lit it with his lighter, and stuck it in­to the char­coal. Once the char­coal was lit, he put the lid­ded pot of rice on the burn­er. It was an im­pres­sive sight.

"Damn," Shuya said.

Shogo took a break as he lit up a cigarette and looked at Shuya.

"You're so good at ev­ery­thing."

"Yeah?" Shogo an­swered light­ly. But some­thing else flashed through Shuya's mind. The mo­ment Kaori Mi­na­mi was mur­dered...you know what's go­ing to hap­pen but there's noth­ing you can do to stop it. Slow mo­tion. Kaori spins around and the left side of her head's blown off. It was blown away, did you see that?...If it had been Shogo in­stead of Shuya, the out­come wouldn't have been so hor­ri­ble.

"Are you still bummed about Kaori?" Shogo said. Once again, Shogo's psy­chic pow­ers were on. The sun­light doesn't reach this far in­side, but that didn't seem to af­fect him.

Shogo shook his head. "Don't let it get to you. It was a bad sit­ua­tion. You did your best."

Shogo's voice was kind, but Shuya looked down. The corpse of Kaori Mi­na­mi, col­lapsed on her side in­side a grimy farm equip­ment shack. The pool of blood grad­ual­ly spread­ing, ooz­ing out­ward. By now, be­gin­ning to con­geal. But the body would just stay there, with no cer­emo­ny, just left there like a dis­posed man­nequin sprawled in­side that shack. Of course in that sense she was no ex­cep­tion to Tat­sumichi Oki, Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi, Yukiko Ki­tano, and Yu­miko Kusa­ka. That's right, ev­ery­one else was in the same boat.

He felt like puk­ing. They were all ly­ing there, on the ground. Al­ready close to twen­ty of them.

"Shogo." The words spilled out.

In re­sponse Shogo tilt­ed his head and slight­ly moved his hand that was hold­ing the cigarette.

"What hap­pens to the dead...their bod­ies?" Shuya asked. "Are they left there un­til this stupid game is over? So they just start rot­ting while the game is go­ing on?"

Shogo an­swered as if it were an of­fi­cial mat­ter. "That's right. Once it's over, the fol­low­ing day a clean-​up crew is hired to take care of them."

"...clean-​up crew?" Shuya bared his teeth.

"Yep. I heard about it from some­one who works for the sub­con­trac­tor, so I'm sure it's true. Self De­fense Forces sol­diers are too proud to per­form such me­nial tasks. Of course, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ac­com­pa­ny the crew to col­lect the col­lars and ex­am­ine the bod­ies. You know, so the news me­dia can re­port the num­ber of deaths by stran­gu­la­tion, all that stuff."

Shuya was pissed. He re­called that fi­nal part of the news re­port. The mean­ing­less caus­es of deaths and item­iza­tion of each stu­dent.

But he al­so re­al­ized some­thing and knit his brows.

Shogo saw this and asked, "What's up?"

"Well...that doesn't make sense. I mean these..." Shuya raised his hand up to his neck. His fin­gers touched the col­lar's cold sur­face, its sen­sa­tion no longer so strange. "I thought these were a se­cret. Shouldn't they col­lect them be­fore the hired hands come in?"

Shogo shrugged. "The clean­ing crew have no idea what they're for. They prob­ably just as­sume they're used as mark­ers. The guy I talked to didn't even re­mem­ber them un­til I asked him about them. So there's no rush. They can deal with the col­lars af­ter the clean-​up crew's col­lect­ed the bod­ies, right?"

It was true. But even so, some­thing else bugged him.

"Hold on. What if one of these is de­fec­tive? Let's say it breaks down and some­one who's alive is as­sumed to be dead. Couldn't that stu­dent es­cape? Shouldn't they con­firm all the dead right af­ter the game?"

Shogo raised his brows. "You talk like you work for the gov­ern­ment."

"No..." he stam­mered. "It's just that-"

"I doubt they could ev­er be de­fec­tive. Think about it. If they ac­tu­al­ly could break down, this game couldn't pro­ceed smooth­ly. Be­sides, if a stu­dent equipped with weapons turned out to be alive, they couldn't even af­ford to check the bod­ies. It'd turn in­to an­oth­er bat­tle." Shogo took a drag as he con­sid­ered it more thor­ough­ly. "This is just my guess, but I think each col­lar is load­ed with mul­ti­ple sys­tems, so that if one breaks down, an­oth­er gets switched on. Even if one sys­tem be­came de­fec­tive-the chances of that be­ing at least less than one in a hun­dred-if the sys­tems were com­bined the prob­abil­ity would prac­ti­cal­ly be re­duced to ze­ro. In oth­er words," he said, look­ing at Shuya, "it would be im­pos­si­ble for us to es­cape that way."

Shuya un­der­stood. He saw no rea­son not to ob­ject. (Once again, he couldn't help but be im­pressed by Shogo's in­tel­li­gence.)

But then-

The ques­tion he promised not to ask crossed his mind. Which was:

How did Shogo plan to beat a per­fect, es­cape-​proof sys­tem?

Be­fore he could con­sid­er it, Shogo said, "Any­way, look, I have to apol­ogize."

"About what?"

"About Noriko. I was wrong. We should have treat­ed her soon­er."

"No..." Shuya shook his head. "It's okay. Thanks. I would have been use­less on my own."

Shogo ex­haled and fixed his gaze on a part of the wall. "We'll just have to wait and see. If it's just a cold, then her fever will go down as soon as she gets some rest. And if it turns out it's from sep­ticemia then the medicine should kick in."

Shuya nod­ded. He was grate­ful they had Shogo. With­out Shogo, he would have been help­less, doomed to watch Noriko de­te­ri­orate. He was al­so sor­ry for say­ing to Shogo, "You can for­get about our deal," and head­ing off here. It was im­ma­ture. Shogo must have made his de­ci­sion af­ter care­ful­ly weigh­ing the risk of mov­ing dur­ing the day against Noriko's con­di­tion.

Shuya de­cid­ed he should apol­ogize. "Hey, I'm sor­ry. Say­ing you were on your own and all. I just got so ex­cit­ed-"

Still look­ing away from Shuya, Shogo shook his head and smiled. "No. You made the right de­ci­sion. End of con­ver­sa­tion."

Shuya took a breath and de­cid­ed to let it go. Then he asked, "Is your fa­ther still a prac­tic­ing doc­tor?"

Shogo shook his head as he took a drag. "No."

"What's he do­ing? Is he still in Kobe?"

"No. He died." Shogo said it ca­su­al­ly.

Shuya's eyes opened wide. "When?"

"Last year, while I was play­ing this game. By the time I got back he was dead. He prob­ably got in a scuf­fle with the gov­ern­ment."

Shuya's face stiff­ened. He was be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the glim­mer in Shogo's eyes when he'd said, "I'm go­ing to tear up this fuck­ing coun­try." The mo­ment Shogo end­ed up in the Pro­gram, Shogo's fa­ther must have tried some kind of protest. Which must have been met with a show­er of bul­lets.

It oc­curred to Shuya that the par­ents of some of his class­mates might have end­ed up the same way.

"I'm sor­ry. I didn't mean to pry."

"Don't wor­ry about it."

Shuya paused and then asked an­oth­er ques­tion, "Then you moved to Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture with your moth­er?"

Shogo shook his head and again replied, "No. My mom died when I was a kid. I was sev­en. She died from ill­ness. My dad used to cry over the fact that he couldn't even save her. But my dad spe­cial­ized in surgery, like abor­tions. Ner­vous dis­or­ders were out of his field."

Shuya apol­ogized again, "I'm sor­ry."

Shogo chuck­led. "Hey, it's all right. We both don't have par­ents, right? And it's true about get­ting a life­time pen­sion. I've got enough to live on. Al­though they don't give you as much as they say they do."

Bub­bles be­gan to form at the bot­tom of the first large pot. The char­coal un­der the rice pot was still most­ly black, but the char­coal un­der the large pot was flam­ing red. The heat reached the ta­ble where Shuya and Shogo were stand­ing next to each oth­er. Shuya sat up on the ta­ble, which was cov­ered with a flow­er-​pat­tern vinyl table­cloth.

With­out warn­ing, Shogo sud­den­ly said, "You were good friends with Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu."

Shuya looked over at Shogo and looked at his pro­file. Then he looked ahead. It felt like a while since he'd last thought of Yoshi­to­ki. He felt a lit­tle guilty about it.

"Yeah," he an­swered. "We've known each oth­er for­ev­er." Af­ter hes­itat­ing a lit­tle, Shuya con­tin­ued, "Yoshi­to­ki had a crush on Noriko."

Shogo con­tin­ued smok­ing, lis­ten­ing.

Shuya won­dered whether he should con­tin­ue with what he was about to say. It had noth­ing to do with Shogo. But he de­cid­ed to tell him any­way. Shogo was a friend now. It was all right for him to know, and be­sides, they had time to kill right now.

"Yoshi­to­ki and I were at this or­phan­age called the Char­ity House-"

"I know."

Shuya nod­ded and con­tin­ued, "There're all kinds of kids there. I end­ed up there when I was five. My par­ents were killed in a car ac­ci­dent. But that's un­usu­al. Most of them-"

Shogo un­der­stood. "They end up there be­cause of 'do­mes­tic' prob­lems. They're il­le­git­imate chil­dren."

Shuya nod­ded. "So you know."

"A lit­tle."

He took a deep breath. "Well, Yoshi­to­ki was il­le­git­imate. Of course, no one at the or­phan­age told him, but there are ways to find out. He was con­ceived from an 'il­lic­it af­fair' and both sides re­fused to take him in. So..."

The wa­ter made a gur­gling sound.

"I re­mem­ber some­thing Yoshi­to­ki once said to me. It was a long time ago, prob­ably when we were still in el­emen­tary school."

Shuya re­called that mo­ment. They were in the cor­ner of the school play­ground, rock­ing back and forth on a big swing made of a wood­en log and wire rope.

"Hey, Shuya. I was think­ing-"

"What?"

Shuya re­spond­ed in his usu­al ca­su­al voice, kick­ing at the ground to rock the log. Yoshi­to­ki didn't put much ef­fort in­to it, let­ting his legs dan­gle from both sides of the log.

"Well...uh..."

"What is it? Spit it out."

"Well...do you have a crush on any­one?"

"Oh, please," Shuya grinned. He knew it was some­thing about girls. "So that's it? What's the mat­ter? You have a crush on some­one, huh?"

"Well..." Yoshi­to­ki evad­ed the ques­tion and once again asked, "Well, do you?"

Shuya thought about it and then moaned, "Hm­mm."

By then he was "Wild Sev­en." So he'd got­ten sev­er­al love let­ters. But at the time he nev­er fell head over heels for any­one in par­tic­ular. As it turned out, he wouldn't un­til he met Kazu­mi Shin­tani.

He an­swered, "Well, I think there're some cool girls..."

Yoshi­to­ki didn't say any­thing back so he as­sumed he want­ed to hear more. He con­tin­ued speak­ing in a light tone, "Ko­mo­to's not bad. She ac­tu­al­ly wrote me a love let­ter. I haven't, uh, re­spond­ed though. Then there's Ut­su­mi, who's on the vol­ley­ball team. She's pret­ty cool. That's my type. You know, re­al out­go­ing."

Yoshi­to­ki looked pen­sive.

"What is it? I told you, now you tell me. Who is it?"

But Yoshi­to­ki on­ly said, "No, that's not it."

Shuya knit his brows.

"What is it then?"

Yoshi­to­ki seemed quite hes­itant, but then he said, "You see, I nev­er re­al­ly un­der­stood."

"?"

"I mean..." His legs dan­gled pas­sive­ly as he con­tin­ued, "I think if you re­al­ly loved some­one you'd mar­ry her, right?"

"Uh, yeah." Shuya replied with an id­iot­ic look on his face. "Yeah. If...if I loved some­one, I'd want to mar­ry her...I mean I don't feel that way about any­one."

"Right?" Yoshi­to­ki said, as if it were on­ly nat­ural. Then he asked, "So let's say you just can't get mar­ried for some rea­son. If you end­ed up hav­ing a kid with her, wouldn't you still want to raise the kid?"

Shuya felt a lit­tle un­com­fort­able. He'd just be­gun to get the idea of how ba­bies were made.

"Hav­ing a kid? Hey, you're still a kid. That's dirty stuff. You know I heard that that's-"

That was when Shuya fi­nal­ly re­mem­bered Yoshi­to­ki was born as a re­sult of an il­lic­it af­fair and that nei­ther of his par­ents want­ed him. Star­tled, he held back what he was about to say.

Yoshi­to­ki was star­ing at the log be­tween his thighs. Then he mum­bled, "My par­ents weren't like that."

Shuya sud­den­ly felt re­al­ly bad for him.

"H-​hey, Yoshi-" He looked up at Shuya and said some­what force­ful­ly, "So I-I just don't know. Lov­ing some­one. I don't feel like I can trust that sort of thing."

Shuya con­tin­ued push­ing with his legs, but he had no choice but to stare back at Yoshi­to­ki. He felt as if he were be­ing ad­dressed in a lan­guage from an­oth­er plan­et. At the same time, it sound­ed like a dread­ful prophe­cy.

"I think-"

His hands by his waist, Shuya gripped the cor­ners of the ta­ble cov­ered with the vinyl table­cloth. Shogo con­tin­ued smok­ing, squint­ing his eyes.

"I think Yoshi­to­ki was a lot more ma­ture at that point al­ready. I was just a sil­ly kid. And ev­er since then, Yoshi­to­ki, even since we en­tered ju­nior high, and I fell for some­one," this was Kazu­mi Shin­tani, "he nev­er brought it up. That kind of wor­ried me."

An­oth­er gur­gling sound.

"But then one day he told me he liked Noriko. I act­ed like it wasn't a big deal...but I was so hap­py for him. And that was, that was..."

Shuya looked away from Shogo. He knew he was about to cry.

Once he man­aged to hold back his tears, he said with­out look­ing at Shogo and con­tin­ued, "That was on­ly two months ago."

Shogo re­mained silent.

Shuya looked at Shogo again.

"So you see, I have to pro­tect Noriko to the very end."

Af­ter star­ing back at Shuya for a while, Shogo on­ly said, "I see," and rubbed out his cigarette out against the table­cloth.

"Don't tell Noriko. I'll tell her about Yoshi­to­ki once we've got­ten out of this game."

Shogo nod­ded and replied, "All right."

22 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

43

Five hours had passed since the Mac­in­tosh Power­Book 150's con­nec­tion to the in­ter­net had been cut off with a warn­ing beep. Shin­ji Mimu­ra scrolled through a doc­ument in one of the win­dows on the dis­play mon­itor of the 150 that was now re­duced to a word pro­ces­sor.

He'd worked on the phone, checked the con­nec­tions, and re­boot­ed over and over but the gray mon­itor re­spond­ed with the same mes­sage. Fi­nal­ly, af­ter dis­con­nect­ing all the mo­dem and phone cords, he came to the con­clu­sion his cell phone had com­plete­ly broke down. With­out a phone line he couldn't even ac­cess his home com­put­er. And of course, call­ing all the girls he'd ev­er gone with and sob­bing over how he was, "About to die, but I loved you the most," was out of the ques­tion. He still be­lieved he could get to the bot­tom of this and con­sid­ered tak­ing apart his cell phone-but then stopped.

A chill ran down his spine.

It was ob­vi­ous now why he wasn't able to di­al in any­more. The gov­ern­ment had man­aged to lo­cate the line test num­ber used by the DTT tech­ni­cian, the num­ber used for the spe­cial phone with the coun­ter­feit "Sec­ond ROM" he'd painstak­ing­ly built. They'd cut off all con­nec­tions in­clud­ing this one. The ques­tion was...how had they man­aged to do this? His hack­ing had been flaw­less. He knew that much.

The on­ly way he could imag­ine the gov­ern­ment dis­cov­er­ing his hack­ing was through some method out­side their com­put­er's in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, their warn­ing sys­tem, and oth­er man­ual mon­itor­ing sys­tems. And now that they knew-

The mo­ment Shin­ji re­al­ized what it was, his hand went for the col­lar around his neck.

Now that the gov­ern­ment knew, it wouldn't be all that sur­pris­ing if the bomb went off, would it? They prob­ably wouldn't spare Yu­ta­ka ei­ther.

Thanks to this re­al­iza­tion, the gov­ern­ment-​sup­plied wa­ter and bread they had for lunch tast­ed even worse.

Af­ter Yu­ta­ka saw Shin­ji turn off the lap­top, he asked for an ex­pla­na­tion. Shin­ji on­ly replied, "It's no good. I don't know why, but it's not work­ing. Maybe the phone's bro­ken."

Ev­er since then Yu­ta­ka's mood be­came gloomy, and he slouched back to the way he'd been ear­li­er that morn­ing. Oth­er than the oc­ca­sion­al gun­shots and brief ex­changes it re­mained silent. Shin­ji's great es­cape plan that mes­mer­ized Yu­ta­ka had com­plete­ly fall­en apart.

But-

I'll still make them re­gret they didn't kill me right away. No mat­ter what.

He thought a lit­tle, then dug in­to his pants pock­et and pulled out an old pock­etknife he car­ried around with him ev­er since he was a kid. There was a small tube tied to the keyring on the knife. Shin­ji ex­am­ined the scratched up tube.

His un­cle had giv­en him the knife a long time ago. And the tube was, that's right, like the ear­ring on his left ear, an­oth­er me­men­to from his un­cle. Like Shin­ji, his un­cle had kept it chained to a small knife and al­ways car­ried it around.

The thumb-​sized tube, with its rub­ber ring un­der the cap, was a wa­ter­proof case used by sol­diers. It was nor­mal­ly used to hold a doc­ument with name, blood type, and his­to­ry of ill­ness in case of in­jury. Oth­ers used it as a match­box. Un­til his death, Shin­ji as­sumed his un­cle kept that sort of thing in it too. But af­ter he died, when he opened the tube, Shin­ji found some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent in­side. In fact the tube's cas­ing it­self was carved out of a spe­cial al­loy and con­tained two small­er cylin­ders in­side. Shin­ji took out the two cylin­ders. He had no idea what they were. The on­ly thing he could tell was that their con­tents were sup­posed to be mixed.

The thread of the screw from one of the cylin­ders fit per­fect­ly in­to the oth­er one. The rea­son why they were kept apart was that it was risky to con­nect them. And once he found out what they were for, af­ter some re­search (no won­der they were sep­arate-oth­er­wise, you couldn't car­ry those cas­es around), he still had no idea why his un­cle car­ried this around wher­ev­er he went. It served no par­tic­ular pur­pose. Or maybe like the ear­ring Shin­ji wore, his un­cle had mere­ly held on­to it to re­mind him­self of some­one. Any­way, it was an­oth­er piece of ev­idence from his un­cle's past for Shin­ji to pon­der over.

Shin­ji turned the squeaky cap and opened it. He hadn't opened it since his un­cle died. He dropped the two cylin­ders in­to the palm of his hand. Then he opened the seal of the small­er cylin­der.

It had been stuffed with cot­ton to make it shock­proof. There was the dull yel­low of brass un­der­neath the cot­ton.

Af­ter ex­am­in­ing it, he re­turned both cylin­ders back in­to the larg­er con­tain­er and screwed the cap back on. He'd thought that if he ev­er had to use this, it would be af­ter they es­caped the is­land, or af­ter mess­ing up the school com­put­er. It might have been handy af­ter they equipped them­selves and at­tacked Sakamochi and the oth­ers-but now this was all they had.

He flipped out the blade from his pock­etknife. The sun had moved west, and the bush­es re­flect­ing against the sil­ver steel were dark yel­low. Then he pulled out a pen­cil from his school coat pock­et. It was the pen­cil they all used to write the phrase, "We will kill," be­fore the game be­gan. Be­cause he'd used it to mark the for­bid­den zones and check off the names of dead class­mates, its point was now blunt. Shin­ji sharp­ened the pen­cil with his knife. Then he pulled out his map from an­oth­er pock­et and turned it over. It was blank.

"Yu­ta­ka."

Yu­ta­ka had been hug­ging his knees and gaz­ing at the ground. He looked up. His eyes were shin­ing. "Did you come up with some­thing?" he asked.

Shin­ji wasn't ex­act­ly sure why Yu­ta­ka's re­sponse ticked him off. It might have been the tone of his voice, or maybe the words. Shin­ji felt like say­ing, what the hell-here I am bang­ing my head against the wall try­ing to come up with an es­cape plan and all you've been do­ing is sit­ting on your ass! You swore you were go­ing to get back at them for Izu­mi Kanai, but you haven't done squat. You think this is a fast food restau­rant where I'm work­ing the reg­is­ter? You want some fries with that?

But Shin­ji re­strained him­self.

Yu­ta­ka's round cheeks were sunken and his cheek­bones stuck out. It was on­ly nat­ural. He must have been worn out by the pres­sure of this game that could end at any mo­ment for them.

Ev­er since he was a kid Shin­ji was al­ways the best ath­lete in the class. (Al­though this changed in his sec­ond year in ju­nior high, when he was joined by Shuya Nana­hara and Kazuo Kiriya­ma. He could beat them in bas­ket­ball, but he wasn't sure about oth­er sports.) His un­cle had tak­en him moun­tain climb­ing ev­er since he was a kid, and he was con­fi­dent in any com­pe­ti­tion that re­quired stami­na. But not ev­ery­one was built like The Third Man. Yu­ta­ka was a poor ath­lete, and when the cold sea­son came he was of­ten ab­sent. Fa­tigue must have been over­whelm­ing him, and it might be numb­ing his think­ing too.

That was when Shin­ji re­al­ized some­thing im­por­tant. Wasn't the fact that he was even a lit­tle up­set at Yu­ta­ka an in­di­ca­tion of his own fa­tigue? Of course, giv­en how their chances of sur­vival were close to nil, it would have been much stranger not to be worn out.

No.

I have to be care­ful. If this were a bas­ket­ball game, you'd just feel bad about los­ing-but in this game you end up dead.

Shin­ji shook his head.

"What's wrong?" Yu­ta­ka asked.

Shin­ji looked up at him, forc­ing a smile. "Noth­ing. Hey, I just want to take a look at the map. Okay?"

Yu­ta­ka came over to Shin­ji.

"Hey," Shin­ji raised his voice. "There's a bug on your neck!"

Yu­ta­ka touched his neck.

"I'll get it," Shin­ji stopped him and ap­proached Yu­ta­ka. He fixed his eyes on the nape of Yu­ta­ka's neck-but he was search­ing for some­thing else.

"Oh, it's moved," he said and got be­hind him. Shin­ji ex­am­ined his neck again.

"Did you get it?"

As he lis­tened to Yu­ta­ka's shrill, ter­ri­fied voice, Shin­ji took a clos­er look.

Then he light­ly brushed away the nape of Yu­ta­ka's neck. He crushed the imag­inary bug with the sole of his sneak­ers and (pre­tend­ing) he picked it up and (pre­tend­ing once again) tossed it out.

"I got it," he said. He was now fac­ing Yu­ta­ka and added, "Looked like a lit­tle cen­tipede."

"Oh man," Yu­ta­ka rubbed the nape of his neck and looked over where Shuya had (ap­par­ent­ly) tossed it, gri­mac­ing.

Shin­ji broke in­to a slight grin and said, "Come on, let's look at the map."

Yu­ta­ka looked over, then knit his brows when he saw that it was turned over.

Shin­ji waved his in­dex fin­ger to get his at­ten­tion and scrib­bled on the back of the map. His writ­ing wasn't very neat. Sev­er­al scrawled let­ters ap­peared at the edge of the pa­per.

They can hear us.

Yu­ta­ka's face twitched and asked, "Re­al­ly? How can you tell?" Shin­ji quick­ly put his hand over Yu­ta­ka's mouth. Yu­ta­ka un­der­stood and nod­ded.

Shin­ji re­leased his hand and said, "I just know. I know a lot about in­sects. That one wasn't poi­sonous." Then just to be sure, he scrib­bled again, Pre­tend to check map. Don't say any­thing to make them sus­pi­cious.

"Well, now that the com­put­er's failed, there's noth­ing we can do," Shin­ji said, pro­vid­ing some fake com­men­tary. Then he wrote: They heard my ex­pla­na­tion and cut the Mac con­nec­tion. I screwed up. They know some of us are go­ing to re­sist so they're mon­itor­ing our con­ver­sa­tion. Should have known.

Yu­ta­ka took out his pen­cil from his pock­et and wrote un­der Shin­ji's scrawled let­ters. His writ­ing was much neater than Shin­ji's.

How can they use a mon­itor­ing de­vise on such a big is­land? He had copied Shin­ji's spelling for mon­itor­ing, but "de­vice" was spelled in­cor­rect­ly. What­ev­er. This wasn't com­po­si­tion class.

"So I think we should look for oth­ers. We can't do much on our own. So..." Shin­ji said as he light­ly tapped on his col­lar with his fin­ger. Yu­ta­ka's eyes widened as he nod­ded.

Shin­ji then scrib­bled again: I checked your col­lar. It doesn't seem to have a cam­era. On­ly lis­ten­ing de­vice. I don't think they're any cam­eras in the area. Maybe sa­tal­lites, but the woods are cov­er­ing us. They can't see what we're do­ing now. Spelling wasn't Shin­ji's strongest suit ei­ther.

Yu­ta­ka's eyes widened again, and he glanced up­ward. The branch­es were sway­ing, cut­ting them off com­plete­ly from the blue sky.

Yu­ta­ka's face then stiff­ened sud­den­ly as if he'd re­al­ized some­thing. He gripped his pen­cil and wrote on the back of the map: Mac stopped work­ing be­cause you told me about it. If not for me, you would have suc­ceed­ed!

Shin­ji poked Yu­ta­ka's shoul­der with the in­dex fin­ger of his left hand and smiled at him. Then he scrib­bled: Don't sweat it. Should have been more care­ful. Col­lars could have gone off the mo­ment they heard, but they're "mer­ci­ful­ly" let­ting us live.

Yu­ta­ka touched the nape of his neck, eyes wide. He stared at Shin­ji and then tight­ened his lips and nod­ded. Shin­ji nod­ded back at him.

"I won­der where they're hid­ing out-"

I'm writ­ing my plan here. Fake our con­ver­sa­tion. Just go with the flow.

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded and then quick­ly re­spond­ed, "Hmm, but I'm not sure we can trust any­one."

Good go­ing. Shin­ji grinned. Yu­ta­ka grinned back.

"That's true. I think we can trust Shuya. I want to hook up with Shuya."

If comp worked we could have saved oth­ers but now we can on­ly wor­ry about sav­ing our­selves. All right with that?

Yu­ta­ka con­sid­ered it and then wrote, Not look­ing for Shuya?

Right. Can't af­ford to wor­ry about oth­ers any­more.

Yu­ta­ka bit his lip, but fi­nal­ly nod­ded.

Shin­ji nod­ded back. If this works out, game will get held up. Might give oth­ers chance to es­cape.

Yu­ta­ka gave two small nods.

"You think ev­ery­one's hid­ing in the moun­tain like us? Maybe some of them are hid­ing in hous­es?"

"Maybe..."

Shin­ji was de­lib­er­at­ing over what to write next when Yu­ta­ka wrote, What's the plan?

Shin­ji nod­ded and gripped his pen­cil. I've been wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen since morn­ing. Yu­ta­ka tilt­ed his head, his pen­cil down. An­nounce­ment that game has been canseled. I'm still wait­ing.

Yu­ta­ka looked sur­prised and tilt­ed his head in be­wil­der­ment. Shin­ji grinned at him.

When I got ac­cess to school comp, I found all back­up files. And file search apps. Then be­fore I down­load­ed, I in­fect­ed them all with virus.

Yu­ta­ka silent­ly formed the word "virus?" with his mouth. Hey, Yu­ta­ka, how about writ­ing it out?

Shin­ji wrote, Virus would en­ter school comp sys­tem if they search files or back­ups. Would wreak hav­oc on the sys­tem and freeze game.

Im­pressed, Yu­ta­ka gave sev­er­al brief nods. Shin­ji knew it was a waste of time, but wrote it out any­way, I de­signed virus. It's cool. It's like get­ting ath­lete's foot, but 100x worse.

Yu­ta­ka held back the urge to laugh, but gave a broad grin.

It'll de­stroy all da­ta and play "The Star Span­gled Ban­ner" on re­peat. It'll drive em crazy.

Yu­ta­ka held his stom­ach, do­ing his best not to laugh, and pressed his hand against his mouth. Shin­ji al­so did his best not to burst out laugh­ing.

Now they've dis­cov­ered me, maybe they won't get those files. Then game will have to stop. But it hasn't. So they've on­ly done ru­ti­ne checks. I didn't go through any main files.

"Why don't we go find them then?"

"Isn't that dan­ger­ous?"

"Yeah, but we have a gun."

My plan: make them get files. Will ac­ti­vate virus.

Shin­ji pulled his lap­top over and showed Yu­ta­ka the doc­ument he'd been look­ing over. It was a 42-line text file.

The da­ta down­load had been in­ter­rupt­ed, but of all the copied files this was the most im­por­tant one. The hor­izon­tal text. Each row be­gan with a list­ing on the left, from "M01″ to "M21," fol­lowed by "F01″ to "F21," in suc­ces­sion. Each list­ing was ac­com­pa­nied by a ten-​dig­it num­ber re­sem­bling a phone num­ber, all in suc­ces­sion as well. Fi­nal­ly there were what ap­peared to be ran­dom six­teen-​dig­it num­bers. A small com­ma was in­sert­ed be­tween these three list­ings. The file name at the head­ing was cryp­tic.

"guadal­canal-​shi­roi­wa3b"

What's this? Yu­ta­ka wrote.

Shin­ji nod­ded. These are the #'s as­signed to our col­lars.

Yu­ta­ka gave a huge nod as if to say, Oh. So "M01″ was Male Stu­dent No. 1 (Yoshio Aka­mat­su), and "F01″ was Fe­male Stu­dent No. 1 (Mizuho In­ada, that weird girl).

Col­lars are like cell phones. Each band has a num­ber and pass­word. Use num­bers to set them off. So

Shin­ji stopped and looked at Yu­ta­ka. Then he con­tin­ued If da­ta's in­fect­ed with virus we won't have to wor­ry about col­lars blow­ing us up. Virus will keep spread­ing. If they have back­up files they can't stop it. If they re­pro­gram to stop virus we'll be in trou­ble, but it will still buy us time.

"How about toss­ing peb­bles at cer­tain places to see if some­one comes run­ning out?"

"Wait, what if it's a girl? She might scream. That could be dan­ger­ous, not just to us, but the girl. I mean, as­sum­ing she's not 'bad.' "

"Huh."

How will you make them do it?

Out­side school build­ing did you see room for SDF?

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded.

Com­put­ers in there, re­mem­ber?

Yu­ta­ka's eyes opened wide again as he shook his head. /

couldn't af­ford to.

Shin­ji chuck­led a lit­tle. I got a good look. They have a row of desk­top com­put­ers and large serv­er. Some­one stuck out though. It was an en­sine. Or was it "en­sign"? For­get it. He had a pin on his uni­form. He was the tech. A com­put­er runs this whole game. All we have to do is at­tack the school so they think we might ugh, an­oth­er word I can't spell aniyu­late their da­ta. We need to get ma­te­ri­als we can ac­tu­al­ly blow up the en­tire com­put­er. So

Shin­ji stopped writ­ing. He spread his hands with the ex­ag­ger­at­ed mo­tion of a ma­gi­cian. Then he wrote on the map BOMB THE SCHOOL ES­CAPE BY SEA

Yu­ta­ka's eyes were now bulging. He mouthed the word "Bomb?"

Shin­ji grinned.

"Maybe we should look for some weapons though. That fork is pret­ty use­less."

"Uh huh. Yeah."

We need gaso­line. There's a gas sta­tion at the har­bor, but we can't get there. There are sev­er­al cars here though. Maybe have fu­el? Worst case use oil. We al­so need fer­til­iz­er.

Yu­ta­ka knit his brows, puz­zled. Fer­til­iz­er?

Shin­ji nod­ded and tried to write out the name of the fer­til­iz­er com­pound, but he didn't know how to spell it. He was a ca­su­al­ty of spellcheck. Any­way, what mat­tered was the molec­ular for­mu­la.

Amoniem ni­trate. If we find it, we can make bomb with gaso­line.

Shin­ji pulled out his knife and the tube tied to it. He showed it to Yu­ta­ka.

This is a det­onater. Too com­pli­cat­ed to ex­plain why I have one. I just do.

Yu­ta­ka looked thought­ful. Then he wrote That un­cle?

Shin­ji grinned and nod­ded. Yu­ta­ka knew be­cause Shin­ji was al­ways go­ing on and on about his un­cle.

Yu­ta­ka wrote

How are we go­ing to bomb the school? We can't get near it. Make a gi­ant sling with trees?

Ah ha. Shin­ji smiled. No. Not pre­cise enough. Too bad we don't have a bunch of bombs. But we have on­ly one det­onater, so we have on­ly 1 chance. Rope and pul­ley.

Yu­ta­ka opened his mouth as if to say, Oh.

Can't get near school, but can go to moun­tain area and area on oth­er side of school.

Shin­ji flipped over the map and in­di­cat­ed the ar­eas to Yu­ta­ka. Then he flipped it back over.

Tie rope from flats to moun­tain. About 300 m. Stretch it tight so we can slide bomb down on pu­ley. Then cut rope when it's on top of school. My spe­cial SLAM DUNK.

Once again im­pressed, Yu­ta­ka nod­ded en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

"It might be best to find weapons dur­ing the day."

"Yeah, I think so too. It'll be eas­ier than find­ing some­one."

Let's get to work. There's a pul­ley by a well L saw. Get gas from cars. Fer­til­iz­er and rope? L don't know. Can we find rope that long?

They fell silent, but then Yu­ta­ka quick­ly wrote

Let's go for it.

Shin­ji nod­ded and con­tin­ued

We might kill Sakamochi and sol­diers. But all we have to do is make them think da­ta's dam­aged. Then he point­ed at his neck­band these can't kill us.

Then es­cape by sea?

Shin­ji nod­ded.

But I can't swim he looked at Shin­ji war­ily.

Shin­ji in­ter­rupt­ed Yu­ta­ka's writ­ing and wrote Full moon tonight. Use tide cur­rent. Ac­cord­ing to my cal­cu­la­tions tide will car­ry us at 6-7 kph. If we swim fast it will take <20 min. to

reach next is­land.

Yu­ta­ka's ad­mi­ra­tion burst be­yond the ex­pres­sion in his eyes as he shook his head vig­or­ous­ly.

What about guard ship?

Shin­ji nod­ded.

They might find us but be­cause game's run by com­put­ers my guess is they will be lax. One ship for each di­rec­tion is kin­da lame. Their weak­ness. Once com­put­ers down they won't know where we are. Guard ship will on­ly be able to chase us on their own. If they have sa­tal­lites, cam­eras can't see at night. We don't have to wor­ry about our heads blow­ing up. We have chance to es­cape.

It won't be easy.

I have an­oth­er idea.

Shin­ji dug in­to the day pack and pulled out a small transceiv­er. This was an­oth­er item he found in some­one's house.

/ can in­crease out­put by cus­tomiz­ing. Not hard. At sea I'll send out an SOS.

Yu­ta­ka's face beamed. Some ship will pick us up.

Shin­ji shook his head. No. Gov­ern­ment will come at us so we give them false lo­ca­tion. We es­cape in op­po­site di­rec­tion.

Yu­ta­ka shook his head. Then he wrote out

SHIN­JI YOUR AWE­SOME

Shin­ji shook his head and smiled.

"All right, then." He looked at his watch. It was al­ready 4 p.m.

"We'll take off in five min­utes."

"Uh huh."

Shin­ji felt worn out from all the hand­writ­ing, which he didn't do very of­ten. He tossed his pen­cil. Like a PC com­mu­ni­ca­tion log file, the back of the map was filled with let­ters. (He would have pre­ferred to com­mu­ni­cate by lap­top, but Yu­ta­ka didn't know how to type.)

Then he grabbed the pen­cil and added

Not a great plan. Our chances are slim. This is all I can think of He shrugged and looked at Yu­ta­ka. Yu­ta­ka gave him a cheer­ful smile and wrote Let's go for it!

22 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

44

On the south­ern side of the north­ern moun­tain, a boy sat on a spot on a slope cov­ered with thick veg­eta­tion. He was look­ing at him­self with a mir­ror he held in his left hand, neat­ly ar­rang­ing his pom­padour with the comb in his right. Ev­er since the game be­gan he might have been the on­ly stu­dent in class, in­clud­ing the girls, who felt like he could af­ford to take good care of his hair. But that was on­ly nat­ural. Al­though he had a thug­gish-​look­ing face, he paid an in­or­di­nate amount of at­ten­tion to his per­son­al ap­pear­ance, and al­though no one knew ex­act­ly why, this boy was known, or no, had been known un­til now as "Zu­lu," he was in any case...

Queer.

As for his lo­ca­tion, he was at a hor­izon­tal dis­tance di­rect­ly two hun­dred me­ters west of where Shin­ji Mimu­ra and Yu­ta­ka Se­to were hid­ing. He was al­so ap­prox­imate­ly six hun­dred me­ters north­west of the med­ical fa­cil­ity where Shuya's trio was. In oth­er words, he was right above the farm­house where Shuya Nana­hara had wit­nessed Kaori Mi­na­mi get shot by Hi­rono Shimizu. If he looked up he would have had a clear view of the plat­form where the bod­ies of Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano were still ly­ing, bathed in the light of the set­ting sun.

This stu­dent ar­rang­ing his hair had seen the corpses of Yu­miko Kusa­ka, Yukiko Ki­tano, as well as that of Kaori Mi­na­mi. He had ac­tu­al­ly seen more. Kaori Mi­na­mi's was the sev­enth corpse he'd seen.

Ugh, yuck. Leaves stuck in my hair again! Ev­ery time I lie down, this hap­pens.

With the pinky of his right hand, the boy brushed the blade of grass from his hair and then looked be­yond his own face in the mir­ror to the woods ap­prox­imate­ly twen­ty me­ters be­low him.

Ka. Zu. O. Are you asleep?

The boy's thick lips twist­ed in­to a smile.

Aren't you be­ing care­less? Well, even you could prob­ably nev­er guess that af­ter you'd failed to kill me I'd be fol­low­ing you.

Yes, this queer boy who was hold­ing a mir­ror and comb was the on­ly mem­ber of the "Kiriya­ma fam­ily" who'd es­caped Kazuo's mas­sacre by not show­ing up at the as­signed meet­ing place. And now he, Sho Tsukio­ka (Male Stu­dent No. 14), was the on­ly sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Kiriya­ma fam­ily. In the shrub­bery was Kazuo Kiriya­ma him­self, who'd al­ready fin­ished off six stu­dents. For the last two hours Kazuo had re­mained still, though.

Sho looked back at him­self in the mir­ror, this time check­ing his com­plex­ion as he re­called how Mit­su­ru would al­ways warn him against re­fer­ring to Kazuo as "Kazuo-​kun." Mit­su­ru would say some­thing like, "Hey Sho, you have to call the boss, boss." But even bold Mit­su­ru seemed to have a hard time with a "fem­inine guy," so as soon as Sho would re­spond with a ca­su­al side­long glance, say­ing, "Oh, give me a break. Don't be so picky, it's not very man­ly," and Mit­su­ru would just gri­mace, mum­bling and let­ting it go at that.

Call him boss, huh? Sho thought as he looked over each of his eyes in the mir­ror. But you end­ed up get­ting killed by that so-​called boss. You're a fool.

It was true. Sho Tsukio­ka had been more cau­tious than Mit­su­ru. It wasn't as if he had a clear sense of Kazuo the way Mit­su­ru had imag­ined right be­fore his death, but Sho had al­ways held the ba­sic be­lief that be­tray­als hap­pen all the time. That's how the world is. One could say that, com­pared to Mit­su­ru, who was just a good fight­er, Sho, who'd seen more of the adult world as a re­sult of go­ing in and out of the gay bar his fa­ther ran ev­er since he was a kid, was more so­phis­ti­cat­ed.

In­stead of head­ing straight to the south­ern tip of the is­land, as Kazuo had re­quest­ed, Sho moved in­ward from the coast, weav­ing his way through the woods. This end­ed up be­ing a has­sle, but it prob­ably on­ly cost him ten more min­utes.

He end­ed up see­ing it all from the woods along the beach. Three bod­ies, two wear­ing coats and one in her sailor suit, sprawled on the rock stretch­ing out in­to the ocean across the beach. There was Kazuo Kiriya­ma, stand­ing qui­et­ly in the crevice of the rock, hid­den in shad­ows from the moon­light.

Mit­su­ru Nu­mai ap­peared al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. Af­ter a brief ex­change, he was pum­meled by ma­chine gun bul­lets and left on the rock that was drenched with blood now (its stench even reached Sho)....

Oh my, Sho thought. This is trou­ble.

By the time he be­gan fol­low­ing Kazuo Kiriya­ma walk­ing away from the scene, Sho had al­ready de­cid­ed on his course of ac­tion.

To as­sist him in this course of ac­tion, the top can­di­date was un­doubt­ed­ly Kazuo Kiriya­ma. He couldn't hear what Kazuo and Mit­su­ru were say­ing to each oth­er, but giv­en how Kazuo had de­cid­ed to play the game, he was sure Kazuo would be the best. Fur­ther­more, at the very least, Kazuo car­ried not on­ly a ma­chine gun (was that his sup­plied weapon or did it be­long to one of the three stu­dents he had killed?) but al­so Mit­su­ru's pis­tol. No one could win in a di­rect con­fronta­tion with Kazuo now.

Sho had one ad­van­tage though, some­thing he knew he was ex­treme­ly good at. He had a tal­ent for sneak­ing in­to places and steal­ing when no one was look­ing and was al­so good at fol­low­ing peo­ple. (When he found a boy he liked, he could stalk him end­less­ly.) A tal­ent to be sneaky-what do you mean sneaky, how dare you?-in all re­spects. As for the weapon he found in his day pack, it was a Der­ringer .22 Dou­ble High Stan­dard. The car­tridge was a mag­num, lethal at close range, but not the best gun for a shootout.

So Sho thought, even if Kazuo Kiriya­ma was go­ing to emerge vic­to­ri­ous, he'd have to take on tough guys like Shogo Kawa­da and Shin­ji Mimu­ra (def­inite­ly my type) who, if they had guns, would prob­ably end up in­jur­ing him. And all that fight­ing should wear him out.

Then...I'll just fol­low him un­til the end. At the very end I can just shoot him from be­hind. The mo­ment he thinks he's fin­ished off the last one, he'll let his guard down and that's when I'll shoot him. Even Kazuo would nev­er sus­pect some­one would be fol­low­ing him, es­pe­cial­ly me, since I blew him off last night.

That way Sho wouldn't have to sul­ly his hands in this game where you had to kill your class­mates off one by one. It wasn't that he felt a strong moral ob­jec­tion to killing them, it was just that, he thought, I don't want to kill in­no­cent kids, it's so vul­gar. Kazuo's go­ing to do the killing. I'm just go­ing to stay be­hind him. He might be killing some­one right in front of me, but it's not like I can in­ter­fere, that's too dan­ger­ous. And so at the very end, I'm go­ing to kill him out of self-​de­fense. I mean, if I don't kill him, he'll kill me. That was his line of think­ing.

There was an­oth­er ad­van­tage he had in fol­low­ing Kazuo. If he stayed close to Kazuo, then he wouldn't have to wor­ry much about be­ing at­tacked. And on the off chance that he was, as long as he dodged the first at­tack Kazuo would have to re­spond. All Sho would have to do is flee the scene and Kazuo would take care of the rest. Of course, that would al­so mean los­ing track of Kazuo, bring­ing his plan to an end, so he want­ed to avoid this sce­nario as much as pos­si­ble.

He de­cid­ed to main­tain a ba­sic dis­tance of twen­ty me­ters be­hind Kazuo. He'd move for­ward when Kazuo did and stop when Kazuo stopped. There was al­so the is­sue of the for­bid­den zones. Kazuo must have al­so been con­sid­er­ing it, so he'd prob­ably keep a good dis­tance away from the zones. As long as Sho main­tained his dis­tance, he should be safe from en­ter­ing the zones. When Kazuo stopped, he'd check the map to make sure he wasn't in a for­bid­den zone.

Ev­ery­thing had pro­ceed­ed ac­cord­ing to plan.

Kazuo left the south­ern tip of the is­land and af­ter en­ter­ing sev­er­al hous­es in the res­iden­tial area (prob­ably find­ing what he was look­ing for), he de­cid­ed to head to the north­ern moun­tain for some rea­son and then sat down. In the morn­ing, when he heard the dis­tant gun­fire, he looked over there, but de­cid­ed not to move, per­haps be­cause of the dis­tance. But then a lit­tle while lat­er when Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano be­gan call­ing from the peak of the moun­tain with their mega­phone he moved quick­ly and af­ter mak­ing sure no one was re­spond­ing to their call (now wasn't there an­oth­er gun­shot? Sho be­lieved there was, urg­ing Yu­miko and Yukiko to hide. Wow, how won­der­ful, so there's a re­al hu­man­itar­ian out there. He was moved, but not enough to al­ter his plans) he shot them dead. Then he de­scend­ed the north­ern slope. There was an­oth­er dis­tant gun­shot, but he stayed put on this one too. Then, this just hap­pened, just be­fore 3 p.m. he be­gan mov­ing af­ter hear­ing gun­fire on this side of the moun­tain. But what he (and Sho) found at the source was the dead body of Kaori Mi­na­mi, ly­ing in­side a farm equip­ment stor­age shack. Kazuo went down to check the body, prob­ably to go through her be­long­ings, but it looked like some­one else had got­ten there be­fore them. Then he pro­ceed­ed to move on-

And now he's in the woods right un­der me.

Kazuo's plan seemed sim­ple, at least for now. Once he knew where some­one was, he'd go there and shoot away. Sho was ex­as­per­at­ed by the mer­ci­less way he'd killed Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano (Kazuo, you have such a plain name but your ac­tions are out of con­trol. And yet my name sounds like a celebri­ty's, Sho Tsukio­ka, but I'm just a Plain Jane), but it was point­less to fret over these de­tails. For now he should be hap­py that Kazuo was com­plete­ly clue­less about his pres­ence.

Kazuo ap­peared to be rest­ing qui­et­ly. He might have been sleep­ing.

On the oth­er hand Sho couldn't sleep at all, but he felt he was strong in that de­part­ment as well. Nat­ural­ly. Girls had more stami­na than guys. That's what I read in one of those pop­ular books.

What turned out to be a re­al drag in­stead was that he was a heavy smok­er. The smell of cigarette smoke, de­pend­ing on the wind di­rec­tion, would give him away to Kazuo. No, the sound of his elec­tron­ic lighter flick­ing open could be even more fa­tal.

Sho pulled out his pack of im­port­ed Vir­ginia Slims Men­thol cigarettes (he liked the name, though of course it was hard to get them in this coun­try, but there were places that car­ried them, and all he had to do was steal them. He had piles of box­es in his room) and care­ful­ly placed the thin cigarette be­tween his lips. He caught a whiff of the faint smell of to­bac­co leaves and that unique men­thol odor and felt mild re­lief from his with­draw­al. He want­ed to fill his lungs with smoke-but some­how man­aged to sup­press the urge.

I sim­ply can­not die. There's too much fun wait­ing for me in my prime.

To dis­tract him­self, he lift­ed the mir­ror in his left hand and caught a view of his face with the cigarette in his mouth. He tilt­ed his head slight­ly and ex­am­ined his side­long glance.

I am so pret­ty. On top of that, I'm so smart. It's in­evitable I should be the win­ner of this game. On­ly the beau­ti­ful sur­vive. That's God's-

Out of the cor­ner of his eye, the bush­es rus­tled slight­ly.

Sho quick­ly re­moved the cigarette from his mouth and put it in­to his pock­et, along with his mir­ror. Then he gripped the Der­ringer and grabbed his day pack with his left hand.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma's slicked-​back head ap­peared on the edge of the bush­es. He looked to his left and right and then north­ward-di­rect­ly to the left of Sho-up the slope.

In the shade of the aza­lea tree cov­ered in pink leaves, Sho raised his brow slight­ly.

What's he do­ing?

He heard no gun­fire. No strange noise at all. Was there some­thing over there?

Sho looked over there, but saw no move­ment.

Kazuo emerged from shrubs. He had his day pack on his left shoul­der and the ma­chine gun slung over his right shoul­der with his hand on its grip. He be­gan climb­ing the slope, weav­ing his way in be­tween the trees. He quick­ly reached Sho's high­er po­si­tion and moved on up. Sho then stood up and be­gan fol­low­ing him.

Not at all in keep­ing with his large frame, 117 cen­time­ters tall, Sho moved grace­ful­ly, like a cat. He care­ful­ly main­tained the twen­ty me­ters be­hind Kazuo's black school coat that in­ter­mit­tent­ly flashed be­tween the trees. Sho's con­fi­dence was jus­ti­fied when it came to this sort of thing.

Kazuo's move­ment was al­so very pre­cise and quick. He'd stop in the shade of a tree, check ahead, and where the veg­eta­tion got thick, would get on his knees and check un­der­neath be­fore pro­ceed­ing. The on­ly trou­ble be­ing that...

...your back's wide open, Kazuo.

They must have cov­ered a hun­dred me­ters. The ob­ser­va­to­ry was on the top left. Kazuo stopped there.

The rows of trees in front of him were in­ter­rupt­ed by a nar­row, un­paved road. It was less than two me­ters wide, just wide enough for a car.

Oh...this was the path lead­ing up to the peak. We crossed it right be­fore we saw Kaori Mi­na­mi's body.

On Kazuo's right, where he was look­ing, there was a space with a bench and a beige pre­fab toi­let. Maybe it was a rest­ing area for climbers on the way to the peak.

Kazuo sur­veyed the area and then looked be­hind Sho, but Sho of course had hid­den him­self away in the shade. Kazuo stepped on­to the path and ran up to the toi­let. He opened the door and went in. He stuck his head out and looked around again be­fore he closed the door. He left it slight­ly ajar, maybe just in case he had to es­cape if some­thing hap­pened.

Oh my. Sho brought his hand to his lips. Oh my. Sho re­mained crouched, try­ing hard not to burst in­to a fit of laugh­ter.

It was true, since Sho had start­ed fol­low­ing him, Kazuo hadn't gone to the bath­room even once. He might have used the toi­let in one of the hous­es he en­tered be­fore sun­rise, but in any case, it'd be im­pos­si­ble to hold it an en­tire day, so Sho as­sumed he took care of busi­ness hid­den in the bush­es. (Any­way, that's what Sho did. It was a pain not to make any sound though.) But turned out he was wrong. Af­ter all, Kazuo Kiriya­ma came from a wealthy fam­ily. Maybe the thought of go­ing any­where be­sides a re­al toi­let was out of the ques­tion. He must have re­mem­bered see­ing this toi­let when he passed through here a while ago. That's why he came back here.

That's it, I'm sure. Even Kazuo Kiriya­ma has to pee. How cute.

He was piss­ing against the bowl now. Sho could hear it splash­ing against the bowl. Tee hee. Once again Sho tried hard not to laugh.

Then he re­mem­bered some­thing and flipped his wrist over to check his watch. They were near sec­tor D=8, which Sakamochi had an­nounced would turn in­to a for­bid­den zone at 5 p.m.

The el­egant ital­ic nu­mer­als on the wom­en's watch in­di­cat­ed 4:57 p.m. (He'd set his watch to Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment, so it was ac­cu­rate.) Sho took out his map and ex­am­ined the north­ern moun­tain area. The moun­tain road was on­ly marked by a dot­ted line on the map, and the rest area and pub­lic toi­let wasn't marked in or out­side the lines mark­ing off D=8.

Sho sud­den­ly be­came tense and un­con­scious­ly lift­ed his hand up to his metal­lic col­lar. He sud­den­ly felt the urge to re­turn the way he'd come but-

He looked over at toi­let, where the sprin­kling sound con­tin­ued. He shrugged and ex­haled light­ly.

We're talk­ing about Kazuo Kiriya­ma here, af­ter all. Even if na­ture called, he would have checked his po­si­tion. The rea­son why he cau­tious­ly looked over here be­fore mov­ing out of the bush­es where he was hid­ing was to de­ter­mine whether the toi­let was in D=8 or not. And Sho's po­si­tion was ap­prox­imate­ly thir­ty me­ters west of the toi­let. Kazuo was clos­er to the zone than he was, so the fact that Kazuo was over there, in oth­er words, meant that he was safe too. That's right. He mustn't lose Kazuo by suc­cumb­ing to ir­ra­tional fear. That would ru­in his plan.

Sho pulled out the Vir­ginia Slims he'd tak­en out a mo­ment ago and put it be­tween his lips. Then he looked at the dim­ming sky. At this time of year, it'd still be an­oth­er two hours be­fore sun­down, but the dark­en­ing sky was now tinged with or­ange from the west, and the tips of sev­er­al tiny clouds had be­come bright or­ange. It was beau­ti­ful. Just like me.

The sprin­kling con­tin­ued. Sho grinned again. You must have held it for a long time, Kazuo.

It still con­tin­ued.

Oh, I re­al­ly need a smoke. I'd like to take a show­er, pol­ish my nails, and mix my fa­vorite screw­driv­er, and as I sip this drink I'd have a nice re­lax­ing...

It still went on.

Oh geez, I wish he'd stop. Hey, let's wrap it up, come on and let's get to work.

But...it still con­tin­ued.

That was when Sho fi­nal­ly knit his droop­ing, thick brows. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and quick­ly got up. He ap­proached the toi­let, mov­ing along the shrubs, and squint­ed his eyes

The sprin­kling sound con­tin­ued. And the door was left slight­ly ajar.

Just then a sud­den wind blew by, open­ing the squeaky door. What bril­liant tim­ing.

Sho's eyes opened wide.

In­side the toi­let a gov­ern­ment-​sup­plied wa­ter bot­tle was hang­ing from the ceil­ing as it swung in the wind. Kazuo had prob­ably pierced it with a blade be­cause there was a very thin stream of wa­ter trick­ling out, flut­ter­ing with the wind.

Sho pan­icked.

Then he saw the back of a school coat be­low, weav­ing its way through the trees. He saw the unique slicked-​back hairstyle which he could rec­og­nize even from be­hind this far away.

Wh-​wh-​what? Kazuo? But then...hey, but I'm...

As Kazuo dis­ap­peared be­yond the shrubs, Sho heard a thud. It re­sem­bled the sound of a si­lencer, or a gun­shot in­to a pil­low. It was im­pos­si­ble to say whether the sound came from the bomb it­self in the gov­ern­ment's cus­tom Pro­gram col­lar or from the vi­bra­tion it made through his body.

Over one hun­dred me­ters be­low, Kazuo Kiriya­ma didn't even look back as he glanced down at his watch.

Sev­en sec­onds past five.

21 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

45

With a brief stir Noriko opened her eyes. It was past 7 p.m. She gazed at the ceil­ing of the room, now turned dark. Then she looked at Shuya be­side her.

Shuya got up a from his seat and re­moved the damp tow­el on her fore­head. He touched it. Just as it was when he checked last time, her fever was al­most gone. Shuya felt a wave of re­lief. Great. Re­al­ly.

"Shuya." Noriko's voice was still dazed, "...what time is it?"

"It's past sev­en. You slept well."

"I..."

Shuya nod­ded. "Your fever's gone down. Shogo said it prob­ably wasn't from sep­ticemia. It was just a re­al­ly bad cold. Prob­ably from fa­tigue."

"I see..." Noriko nod­ded slow­ly as if she were al­so re­lieved. Then she turned to Shuya. "I'm sor­ry for all this trou­ble."

"What are you talk­ing about?" Shuya shook his head. "It's not your fault at all." Then he asked, "Can you eat? We have rice."

Noriko's eyes opened wide. "Rice?"

"Yeah, just hold on. Shogo cooked some." Shuya left the room.

Shogo was sit­ting on the chair by the win­dow by the kitchen door. The last traces of light, more like par­ti­cles of blue, clos­er to in­di­go, en­tered the win­dow, but where Shogo was sit­ting it was al­most com­plete­ly pitch black.

"Noriko's up?"

Shuya nod­ded.

"How about her fever?"

"She's fine. It seems to be gone."

Shogo gave him a slight nod, then stood up, hold­ing the shot­gun as usu­al. He opened the lid of the pot on the gas stove. Shuya and Shogo had al­ready had their share of cooked rice and miso soup. The miso soup base came from some strange leaves grow­ing in the back of the build­ing.

"Is the food cold?" Shuya asked.

Shogo gave him a brief re­ply, "Wait five or ten min­utes. I'll bring it over."

"Thanks." Shuya re­turned to the ex­am­ina­tion room. He sat down by the bed and gave Noriko a small nod. "Wait a lit­tle. Shogo's go­ing to bring some re­al rice."

Noriko nod­ded. Then she asked, "Is there a bath­room here?"

"Uh...yeah. Over here."

Shuya helped Noriko out of the bed. Sup­port­ing her with his arm, he showed her to the bath­room be­yond the wait­ing room. She was still stag­ger­ing, but she'd def­inite­ly re­cov­ered from the ter­ri­ble con­di­tion she was in be­fore.

Shuya helped Noriko re­turn to her bed. As Noriko sat down on the edge of the bed, Shuya wrapped her shoul­ders with the blan­ket the way Ms. An­no had done for him at the Char­ity House when he was a kid.

"Once you've eat­en," Shuya said as he pulled at the edges of the blan­ket, "I think you should get some more sleep. We're go­ing to have to leave this place by 11 p.m."

Noriko stared at Shuya. Her eyes still looked slight­ly un­fo­cused. "You mean-"

Shuya nod­ded. "Yeah, this zone's go­ing to be for­bid­den at eleven."

It was part of the an­nounce­ment Sakamochi gave at 6 p.m. Oth­er zones in­clud­ed G=l at 7 p.m. and I=3 at 9 p.m. That meant the south­west bor­der and the south­ern slope of the south­ern moun­tain. Since it was hard to tell ex­act­ly where the bor­der of the for­bid­den zone was, the south­west shore area was all off lim­its now.

Noriko looked down at her kneecaps and touched her fore­head un­der her bangs. "I was sleep­ing like an id­iot."

Shuya reached out and touched Noriko on the shoul­der. "Don't be ridicu­lous. You were bet­ter off sleep­ing. You need to rest more. Take it easy."

But Noriko glanced up and asked, "Did any­one else- be­sides Kaori-die?"

Shuya tight­ened his lips. Then he nod­ded. "Takako...and Sho and Kazushi."

Ac­cord­ing to Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment, these four had died dur­ing the six hours af­ter twelve o'clock. Now there were on­ly twen­ty-​one stu­dents left. On­ly eigh­teen hours had passed since the game be­gan, yet Third Year Class B of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High had been re­duced to half its size.

"And one more thing," Sakamochi had said en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. "Sho Tsukio­ka was caught in a for­bid­den zone. So I want you all to be care­ful."

Sakamochi didn't say where Sho had died, and Shuya couldn't re­mem­ber hear­ing a big ex­plo­sion in the af­ter­noon. At the same time he couldn't see any rea­son Sakamochi would lie. That big, boor­ish-​look­ing guy who odd­ly enough act­ed re­al­ly fem­inine, "Zu­ki" of the Kiriya­ma fam­ily, had got­ten him­self caught in a zone. As a re­sult, his head was blown off. Be­sides their boss then, the en­tire Kiriya­ma fam­ily was dec­imat­ed.

Shuya thought of telling Noriko about this, but af­ter see­ing how trou­bled she looked, he de­cid­ed not to. He doubt­ed that shar­ing any news about a guy's head get­ting blown off would have a good ef­fect on Noriko's re­cov­ery.

"I see..." Noriko said qui­et­ly and then added, "Thanks for this," and be­gan tak­ing off the coat she'd been wear­ing.

"Keep it."

"No, I'm all right now."

Shuya took the coat and draped the blan­ket over her shoul­der again.

Shogo came in af­ter a while. Like a wait­er, he car­ried a round tray full of bowls on one hand. Steam rose from the bowls. As he low­ered the tray he said, "Here you are, madame."

Shuya chuck­led. "So she gets room ser­vice?"

"Well, the food isn't ex­act­ly first class. I hope it tastes all right though." Shogo put the en­tire tray on the bed and placed the bowls next to her.

Noriko looked down and asked, "Soup?"

"Yes ma'am," Shogo replied in En­glish, which sound­ed pret­ty flu­ent to Shuya's ears.

"Thanks," Noriko said and took the spoon. She brought the bowl to her lips and swal­lowed a mouth­ful. "It's de­li­cious." She raised her voice. "There's egg in it."

Shuya then looked at Shogo.

"It's our spe­cial, ma'am."

"Where'd you find that?" Shuya asked. All the fresh food in the re­frig­er­ator was rot­ten, prob­ably be­cause the gov­ern­ment had moved the civil­ians out a while ago. All the oth­er hous­es were prob­ably in the same con­di­tion.

Shogo looked at Shuya out of the cor­ner of his eye and grinned. "I found a house that kept a hen. It looked like it hadn't been fed in a while and looked pret­ty weak."

Shuya ex­ag­ger­at­ed­ly shook his head. "When we ate I didn't no­tice any eggs."

Shogo lift­ed his brows. "I on­ly found one. Sor­ry. I'm nicer to girls. That's just how I am."

Shuya laughed, snig­ger­ing.

Shogo re­turned to the kitchen and brought over some tea. Shuya and Shogo drank tea while Noriko ate her meal. The tea had a mild sweet­ness and a pleas­ant, nos­tal­gic odor.

"Damn," Shuya groaned. "I feel like ev­ery­thing's fine, the three of us sit­ting around like this."

Shogo smiled and said, "I'll make some cof­fee lat­er. Would you pre­fer tea, Noriko?"

Her spoon still in her mouth, Noriko smiled and nod­ded.

"Hey, Shogo." Shuya had more to say. Of course the fact was that they were still in this killing game, but now that Noriko seemed to be re­cov­er­ing, he was feel­ing a lit­tle gushy. "Some day the three of us, let's all get to­geth­er for some tea. We'll sit on the ve­ran­da and en­joy the cher­ry blos­soms."

It was high­ly un­like­ly. Nonethe­less Shogo shrugged his shoul­ders and said, "I thought you were a rock­er. You sound like an old man."

"I know. You're not the first one to tell me that."

Shogo chuck­led. Shuya laughed, and so did Noriko.

Noriko fin­ished her meal and said, "Thank you." Shogo gath­ered her bowls. He sig­naled with his oth­er hand for Shuya's cup, which Shuya hand­ed over.

"Shogo," Noriko said, "I feel to­tal­ly fine now. Thank you so much. And I'm so sor­ry for all the trou­ble I've caused."

Shogo smiled and replied, "You're wel­come," in En­glish. "But it looks like the an­tibi­ot­ic wasn't nec­es­sary."

"No. I know this sounds weird, but I think it made me feel se­cure enough to fall asleep."

Shogo smiled again and added, "Well, you could still be suf­fer­ing from sep­ticemia. In any case, you should rest a lit­tle more. Take it easy." Shogo then said to Shuya, "Do you mind if I catch some sleep?"

Shuya nod­ded. "You tired?"

"No, not re­al­ly, but it's best to sleep when you can. Once we leave here, I'll stay up through the night. Is that all right?"

"Yeah sure, that's fine."

Shogo nod­ded, took the tray, and head­ed to­wards the hall.

"Shogo, you should sleep here," Noriko said, sig­nal­ing to­wards the bed next to hers.

Shogo glanced back at her from the door and smiled as if say­ing, no thank you. "I don't want to in­trude on you two. I'll sleep on the so­fa in this room." He tilt­ed his head in that di­rec­tion and added, "Please be con­sid­er­ate to your neigh­bors though if you get in­ti­mate."

In the dim room Shuya could see Noriko's face flush.

Shogo then left the room. Be­yond the half opened door, Shuya heard him walk out of the kitchen and in­to the wait­ing room. It be­came qui­et.

Noriko broke in­to a smile and said, "Shogo's so fun­ny."

Per­haps it was be­cause of the meal, her face seemed more an­imat­ed.

"Yeah, he is," Shuya smiled too. "I'd nev­er talked to him un­til now, but he kind of re­minds me of Shin­ji."

They didn't re­sem­ble each oth­er at all phys­ical­ly, but Shogo's crude and blunt speech and his abil­ity to still be hu­mor­ous through it all re­sem­bled The Third Man. Not to men­tion the way he was the an­ti-​mod­el stu­dent and yet man­aged to be in­cred­ibly smart and re­li­able.

Noriko nod­ded. "You know you're right. To­tal­ly." Then Noriko ut­tered, "I won­der where Shin­ji is."

Shuya took a deep breath. He'd been won­der­ing whether there was any way to con­tact him, but giv­en Noriko's con­di­tion he couldn't af­ford to do any­thing.

"Yeah, if he were on­ly with us..."

With Shin­ji along and with Shogo on their side, Shuya thought they couldn't be de­feat­ed. And if Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra were with them they would be fear­less and in­vin­ci­ble.

"I still re­mem­ber the class match," Noriko said as she glanced up at the ceil­ing. "Not this year's, but last year's...the fi­nals. Shin­ji was on his own against Class D, who had four stu­dents on the bas­ket­ball team. We were thir­ty points be­hind, but then you rushed over af­ter your soft­ball game, and to­geth­er you two guys start­ed an in­cred­ible come­back."

"Yeah." Shuya nod­ded. He no­ticed how Noriko was be­com­ing talkative. That was a good sign. "I guess that's what hap­pened."

"I was cheer­ing you guys on. When we won Yukie was on her feet shriek­ing."

"Yeah."

Shuya re­mem­bered too. Be­cause Noriko, who was al­ways re­served, was cheer­ing the loud­est. And al­though he wasn't as un­co­or­di­nat­ed as Yoshio Aka­mat­su, the unath­let­ic Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu was stand­ing apart from Noriko and the oth­ers. Shuya saw Yoshi­to­ki, his hands wav­ing and mak­ing dev­il signs. It was a hum­ble ges­ture, but Yoshi­to­ki's dis­play of sup­port moved Shuya more than Noriko and the oth­er girls' scream­ing ral­ly.

Yoshi­to­ki...

Shuya gazed back at Noriko, and then re­al­ized that Noriko was cry­ing. He reached over to Noriko, touch­ing her shoul­der, and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Uh..." Noriko hic­cuped slight­ly. "I was telling my­self not to cry, but...then I was think­ing how won­der­ful our class was..."

Shuya nod­ded. It might have been from the still lin­ger­ing fever, or it might have been from the drugs, but Noriko seemed to be in an emo­tion­al state. He kept his hand on her shoul­der un­til she stopped cry­ing.

Even­tu­al­ly Noriko said, "I'm sor­ry," and wiped her eyes. Then she said, "I didn't tell you be­cause it might end up dis­turb­ing you."

"What do you mean?"

Noriko looked in­to Shuya's eyes. "Did you know a lot of girls have a crush on you?"

The top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion was so un­ex­pect­ed Shuya couldn't help gri­mac­ing. "What are you talk­ing about?"

But Noriko con­tin­ued, her face dead se­ri­ous. "Megu­mi...and Yukiko too, I think."

Shuya tilt­ed his head as if puz­zled. Megu­mi Eto and Yukiko Ki­tano. Two of the play­ers no longer in the run­ning in this game.

"Those..." Was it prop­er to call them "those"? "What about those two?"

Noriko looked up at Shuya and said qui­et­ly, "They both had a crush on you."

Shuya's face stiff­ened. He hes­itat­ed and then mum­bled, "...re­al­ly?"

"Uh huh." Noriko looked away from Shuya and nod­ded. "It's easy to tell with girls. I just...want­ed you to have fond thoughts for them." She added, "I am in no po­si­tion to be telling you this now, giv­en the sit­ua­tion I'm in."

Shuya had a dim im­age of the faces of Megu­mi Eto and Yukiko Ki­tano. Just a lit­tle though. Like, two tea­spoons each. "Wow..." He ex­haled. Then he said, "I wish you'd told me af­ter we es­caped."

"I'm sor­ry. Did it shock you?"

"Yeah, a lit­tle."

Noriko tilt­ed her head again, "But...I thought you should know in case I die."

Shuya looked up. His right hand squeezed her left wrist. "Look, please don't as­sume that. We're in this to­geth­er till the end. We're go­ing to sur­vive to­geth­er."

Noriko was tak­en aback by Shuya's sud­den in­ten­si­ty. "I'm sor­ry."

"Hey."

"Hm?"

"I ac­tu­al­ly know some­one who's got a crush on you."

Now it was Noriko's turn to open her eyes wide. "Re­al­ly? Why me?" She said this in­no­cent­ly, but the ex­pres­sion on her face van­ished quick­ly. Shuya saw the fad­ing light from the win­dow re­flect­ed as an ob­scure rect­an­gle in her pupils. She asked, "Is he a class­mate?"

Shuya slow­ly shook his head. As he re­called those warm, bulging eyes, he thought, damn, how nice and peace­ful it would have been just to be able to get wor­ried over a ro­man­tic tri­an­gle in­volv­ing a long­time friend. But that would nev­er hap­pen. No siree. It just won't.

"No."

Noriko looked some­what re­lieved as she looked down at the knees of her skirt and on­ly mum­bled, "I see." Then she looked up and said, "So who could it be? I wasn't in any clubs or teams. And I don't have friends in any of the oth­er class­es."

Shuya shook his head. "I'm not telling. I'll tell you once we're out of here."

Noriko looked slight­ly skep­ti­cal, but didn't pur­sue the mat­ter.

Af­ter they fell silent for a while Shuya looked up at the ceil­ing. Even though tidi­ness was manda­to­ry in a clin­ic, the flu­ores­cent light hang­ing here had dusty cov­ers. The lights didn't work. They couldn't turn them on any­way even if they did.

"Megu­mi-​san..." he said. He added the po­lite "san" to her name. Boys can be so fick­le, "...and Yukiko-​san. If it's true...what could they have pos­si­bly liked about me?"

It was be­com­ing pitch black, but Noriko ap­peared to be smil­ing a lit­tle. "You mind if I share my opin­ion?"

"Sure."

Noriko tilt­ed her head. "Ev­ery­thing about you."

Shuya chuck­led and shook his head, "What do you mean?"

"That's what it means to love some­one." Noriko's sud­den­ly sound­ed se­ri­ous. "Isn't that how you feel about that girl?"

Shuya thought of Kazu­mi Shin­tani's face. He thought about it. He hes­itat­ed, but thought he should be hon­est. "Yeah. Some­thing like that."

"If it's not, then it's not re­al," Noriko said as if she were amused and then let out a qui­et laugh.

"What?"

"I'm jeal­ous. Even in this sit­ua­tion, it's still hard."

Shuya looked at her face that was no longer dis­cernible in the dark and hes­itat­ed whether he should tell her, but then de­cid­ed he should be hon­est with her.

"I can re­late to the guy who had a crush on you though."

Noriko looked up at Shuya. Her well-​de­fined brows seemed to quiver slight­ly. Her lips seemed to be form­ing a slight­ly melan­cholic smile.

"You're so won­der­ful," Shuya said.

"That's nice to hear even if it's not true."

"But it is."

"Can I ask you a fa­vor?"

Shuya opened his eyes wide as if ask­ing, "What is it?" but he wasn't sure whether Noriko could see his re­ac­tion. Noriko then leaned over slight­ly and gen­tly put both of her hands on Shuya's up­per arms, putting her head against his shoul­der. Her shoul­der-​length short hair brushed up against Shuya's cheeks and ears.

They re­mained like this for quite some time un­til the dim­ness out­side the win­dow turned in­to moon­light.

21 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

46

Be­fore the dusk turned to dark­ness, Hi­rono Shimizu (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 10) emerged from the thick­et she'd been hid­ing in and pro­ceed­ed west. It was un­bear­able. Her body was on fire as if she were walk­ing in a desert un­der a burn­ing sun.

Wa­ter.

She need­ed wa­ter.

Kaori Mi­na­mi had shot her in the up­per left arm. Af­ter tear­ing open the sleeve of her sailor suit drenched in blood, she dis­cov­ered the bul­let had pen­etrat­ed her arm. The skin on the ex­it wound was torn up bad­ly. It seemed the bul­let had bare­ly missed the ma­jor blood ves­sels. The torn sleeve she wrapped around her arm as a ban­dage seemed to have stopped the bleed­ing for a while. But then...the wound start­ed to burn and the sen­sa­tion spread all over her body. The ini­tial chill was re­placed by a numb­ing heat. By the time Sakamochi made his an­nounce­ment at 6 p.m. Hi­rono had fin­ished off her en­tire sup­ply of wa­ter. Af­ter she killed Kaori she ran ap­prox­imate­ly two hun­dred me­ters away from Shuya and hid in the thick­et, but she end­ed up us­ing a lot of wa­ter in her at­tempt to clean her wound (which she end­ed up deeply re­gret­ting).

Al­most two hours had passed since then. For a while she'd been sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly un­der­neath her uni­form, but now she wasn't sweat­ing at all. Most like­ly she was ap­proach­ing de­hy­dra­tion. In oth­er words, un­like Noriko Nak­agawa, Hi­rono was ac­tu­al­ly suf­fer­ing from sep­ticemia. And be­cause she hadn't dis­in­fect­ed her wound, it came on quick­ly. Of course she had no way of know­ing any of this.

The on­ly thing she knew was that she need­ed...wa­ter.

As she cau­tious­ly moved through the green woods of the moun­tain, Hi­rono's head spun with thoughts of ha­tred to­wards Kaori Mi­na­mi. Her burn­ing body and thirst on­ly in­ten­si­fied these thoughts.

Hi­rono Shimizu had no in­ten­tion of trust­ing any­one in this game. Of course she'd been tight with Mit­suko Souma for­ev­er, and ac­cord­ing to stu­dent num­ber she im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ed Mit­suko. So if she'd man­aged to avoid Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra, who came in be­tween their de­par­tures, she could have met up with Mit­suko, but she chose not to. Be­cause she knew how ter­ri­fy­ing Mit­suko re­al­ly was. That's right...like when Mit­suko took on a bad-​girl lead­er from an­oth­er school (who'd by then be­come the mis­tress of a yakuza gang­ster). That girl end­ed up get­ting run over by a car. The in­jury was near­ly fa­tal. Mit­suko didn't say any­thing about it, but Hi­rono knew Mit­suko had some guy do it. There were plen­ty of guys will­ing to do any­thing for Mit­suko___

If Hi­rono had de­cid­ed to meet up with Mit­suko, Mit­suko would have prob­ably used her as much as pos­si­ble on­ly to fi­nal­ly shoot her in the back. Even though she was part of the group too, the some­what clue­less Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi might trust Mit­suko (which re­mind­ed her of how Yoshi­mi was dead, and Hi­rono had a hunch that Mit­suko was the one who killed her), but Hi­rono was hav­ing none of that.

She couldn't imag­ine trust­ing any­one else in her class. The ones who act­ed nice were the ones that wouldn't think twice about killing the oth­ers now. She might have on­ly been fif­teen years old, but those fif­teen years had taught her that much.

At the same time though she wasn't too thrilled about killing off her class­mates. She'd done pros­ti­tu­tion and drugs, and she con­stant­ly fought with her par­ents who treat­ed her like a lost cause, but mur­der was taboo. Of course the rules of the game per­mit­ted it, so it wasn't a crime here-but while she'd done some bad things, they were nev­er all that harm­ful to­wards oth­ers. Even though she'd pros­ti­tut­ed her­self, com­pared to oth­er girls who pre­tend­ed to be prop­er at the same time that they "phone-​dat­ed" (she knew Mayu­mi Ten­do was one of those), at least she went the whole nine yards work­ing with pro­fes­sion­als through her con­nec­tion with Mit­suko Souma. As for drugs, what was wrong with as­sert­ing her in­di­vid­ual free­dom to choose? And it wasn't like she was putting the mall's cos­met­ics de­part­ment out of busi­ness by steal­ing stuff from there. They have huge cap­ital back­ing any­way___Yes, she bul­lied oth­ers around, but they de­served it. And as far as her fights with stu­dents from oth­er schools, they all knew they were out to hurt each oth­er and what they were in for. I mean, come on, grow up. In any case, she was...

...not the kind of girl who'd go around mur­der­ing peo­ple. She knew that much.

But, but...

...it was dif­fer­ent if she had to de­fend her­self. And if she end­ed up sur­viv­ing in this game...then she'd open a bot­tle of cham­pagne to cel­ebrate. Or if time ran out and she died then...her thoughts weren't very clear on this mat­ter...any­way there was noth­ing she could do about that.

So she end­ed up hid­ing out in that house where she lat­er had that shootout with Kaori Mi­na­mi.

Once she'd checked it out and saw no one was there, she stayed there. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly she'd look out the win­dow, and once, much to her dis­may, she caught a glimpse of some­one in the shack across from the build­ing where she was stay­ing.

Af­ter sev­er­al min­utes she de­cid­ed to leave the house (she was good at leav­ing home). She couldn't stand the thought of some­one be­ing near her. There was no back en­trance, so she climbed out the win­dow fur­thest from the shack when...

Kaori was look­ing out the door of the shack. She sud­den­ly fired at Hi­rono, who'd done noth­ing. Kaori's shot hit Hi­rono's arm, and Hi­rono near­ly rolled out­side on­to the ground. She some­how man­aged to get on her feet, and for the first time aimed her pis­tol and fired back. Then as she re­mained glued to the wall of the edge of the house...that was when Shuya Nana­hara ap­peared.

That bitch. She was al­ways act­ing so in­no­cent with her blind de­vo­tion to idol groups, and then all of a sud­den she has the nerve to pull the trig­ger on me. Well, I was able to fin­ish her off. (In self de­fense. The ju­ry's ver­dict would have been 12-0, no prob.) And if the oth­ers are any­thing like her then I'll have to be mer­ci­less, I think.

Then Hi­rono thought of Shuya Nana­hara. At least Shuya didn't point his gun at her (which en­abled her to shoot at Kaori). He al­so claimed he was with Noriko.

Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa. Were they go­ing out? Nev­er seemed that way. Are they go­ing to try to es­cape?

Hi­rono au­to­mat­ical­ly shook her head.

Ridicu­lous. Noth­ing could be more risky than be­ing with some­one un­der these cir­cum­stances. If you're in a group, well then, that's just your own fault if you get shot in the back. Be­sides, it was im­pos­si­ble to es­cape any­way.

Hi­rono didn't see Noriko Nak­agawa, but if he was telling her the truth, then Shuya Nana­hara would soon be killing Noriko Nak­agawa. Or per­haps Noriko Nak­agawa would be killing Shuya Nana­hara. If one of them end­ed up sur­viv­ing...then Hi­rono might end up hav­ing to kill one of them. But right now that didn't mat­ter com­pared to her...

...thirst.

Be­fore she knew it she had cov­ered a fair dis­tance. The dim sun­light in the west­ern sky was gone. The sky up above was now jet black and the full moon just like last night when the game be­gan shone eeri­ly, cast­ing a pale blue light on this is­land.

She held on­to the re­volver that had killed Kaori Mi­na­mi, a Smith & Wes­son Mil­itary & Po­lice .38, and ran through the bush­es. She held her head low with bat­ed breath. Then she slow­ly peered out of the bush­es. There was a house stand­ing be­yond a nar­row farm. Hi­rono was near the north­ern moun­tain. There was a foothill on the oth­er side of the house. On the left there were sev­er­al farms and fur­ther be­yond two more sim­ilar hous­es. Then the land sloped up­ward to the south­ern moun­tain. Ac­cord­ing to the map, in front of that moun­tain there was sup­posed to be a rel­ative­ly wide lon­gi­tu­di­nal road that tra­versed the is­land. So giv­en the po­si­tion of the moun­tains Hi­rono was prob­ably near the is­land's west­ern shore. Just as she had done be­fore mov­ing, she checked her po­si­tion and was pret­ty cer­tain she wasn't in a for­bid­den zone.

Hi­rono did her best to for­get about her thirst and ob­served the house in front. The area was com­plete­ly still and silent.

She re­mained crouched and crossed the farm. The area around the house seemed slight­ly el­evat­ed above the farm. Hi­rono stopped at the edge of the farm and af­ter look­ing back she ob­served the house again. It was your av­er­age, old, sin­gle-​sto­ry farm­house. But un­like the pre­vi­ous house she'd hid in­side, the roof was tiled. An un­paved road came in from the left side of the farm. There was a light truck parked in front of the house. She al­so saw a moped and bi­cy­cle.

The wa­ter at the first house Hi­rono hid in wasn't run­ning.

This one was prob­ably no dif­fer­ent. Hi­rono looked to her right and left...

...and found a well at the far end of the area from the en­trance road. It even had a beam hold­ing a buck­et. There were thin tan­ger­ine trees with plen­ty of leaves sur­round­ing the well. Their branch­es were high, so she could tell there was no one hid­ing un­der the trees.

Since she couldn't use her left hand, she tucked her gun in the front. Then she groped around the farm soil un­der the moon­light. She found a fist-​sized rock.

She tossed it up­ward. Trac­ing an arc, the rock crashed against the roof. It rat­tled down the rows of tiles and fell off the edge on­to the ground with a thud.

Hi­rono gripped the gun and wait­ed. She checked her watch. Then she wait­ed again.

Five min­utes passed. No one ap­peared at the win­dows or en­trance. Hi­rono quick­ly stepped up to the prop­er­ty and ran to­ward the well. Her head was spin­ning from thirst and fever.

The well was a con­crete tube ap­prox­imate­ly eighty cen­time­ters high. Hi­rono clutched the brim of the well.

In­side it, the moon­light re­vealed a small cir­cle six to sev­en me­ters down. Her own shad­ow was al­so re­flect­ed in­side the cir­cle.

It was wa­ter. Ah, it wasn't dry.

Once again Hi­rono tucked her re­volver in­to her skirt and re­moved her day pack from her aching left shoul­der with her right hand. It land­ed on the dirt. Then she held the worn out rope hang­ing from the buck­et beam.

As she pulled the rope, a small buck­et ap­peared on the sur­face of the wa­ter. Hi­rono fran­ti­cal­ly tugged at the rope. The buck­et beam was equipped with what looked like an an­cient pul­ley which al­lowed you to re­trieve wa­ter with two buck­ets. Her left arm was too numb to move, but with ev­ery pull she held the rope against the con­crete edge of the well with her el­bow and man­aged to pull the buck­et up­ward.

The buck­et fi­nal­ly reached the edge of the well. She held the rope with her el­bow once more, grabbed the han­dle of the buck­et, and placed it on the edge of the well. It was wa­ter. The buck­et was brim­ming with wa­ter. She didn't care if it end­ed up mak­ing her sick. Her body need­ed wa­ter now.

But then she dis­cov­ered some­thing and let out a small shriek.

There was a tiny fin­ger­nail-​sized frog swim­ming in the wa­ter. In the moon­light she saw its small, gross eyes and its glis­ten­ing back. (In broad day­light, their col­or would have been an dis­gust­ing flu­ores­cent green, or a dirty brown.) It was her least fa­vorite an­imal, and the mere sight of one with its slimy skin was enough to send chills down her spine.

But Hi­rono did her best to quell her dis­gust. She didn't have the strength to pull the buck­et up again. Her thirst was un­bear­able now. She would have to get rid of that frog, and then-

The frog climbed on­to the edge of the buck­et and leapt on­to Hi­rono. Hi­rono let out a small shriek and twist­ed her body. So what if this was a mat­ter of life or death. She just couldn't stand frogs. She some­how man­aged to dodge the frog-but her right hand let go of the buck­et, which sud­den­ly fell back in­to the well with a splash-and that was that.

Hi­rono groaned and looked over in the di­rec­tion of the frog. I'll kill it. I'll kill that fuck­ing frog!

But then...some­thing else caught her eye.

She saw a black fig­ure in a stu­dent coat stop a mere four or five me­ters in front of her.

Hi­rono's back had been fac­ing the house. Now she saw the back door be­hind the fig­ure was ajar.

With the fig­ure frozen in its foot­steps, Hi­rono sud­den­ly re­called a child­hood mem­ory-the game where you have to freeze when the per­son who was "it" turns around-but that was ir­rel­evant. The is­sue at stake was that this thin, short, ug­ly boy-come to think of it, he al­so re­sem­bled a frog-Toshi­nori Oda (Male Stu­dent No. 4) was hold­ing a thin, rib­bon­like ob­ject with both hands. Hi­rono re­al­ized it was a belt.

Now look at this. Toshi­nori Oda, the priv­ileged son of a com­pa­ny pres­ident whose house was lo­cat­ed in the town's wealthy dis­trict. He was sup­posed to be good at vi­olin (ap­par­ent­ly he'd won some com­pe­ti­tion). A pre­ten­tious, well bred, qui­et boy. And this kid was now...

... try­ing to kill me!

As if the pause on a frozen video im­age had been sud­den­ly re­leased, Toshi­nori moved, swung his belt up, and at­tacked her. The large buck­le sparkled in the moon­light. It could eas­ily gouge out some flesh on im­pact. The dis­tance be­tween them was on­ly four me­ters...

Enough.

Hi­rono's right hand went for her gun. She felt the grip, by now a fa­mil­iar sen­sa­tion.

Toshi­nori was right in front of her. She fired. She fired three times in a row.

All the shots land­ed in his stom­ach. She saw his school coat in­stan­ta­neous­ly rip apart.

Toshi­nori spun around and fell face for­ward. Dust flew up in­to the air and he re­mained mo­tion­less.

Hi­rono tucked the re­volver in­to her skirt again. The hot bar­rel burned against her stom­ach, but she couldn't be con­cerned about that. Right now the im­por­tant thing was... wa­ter.

She picked up her day pack and en­tered the house. She'd been fool­ish ex­pos­ing her back to the house, but now she no longer had to make sure it was un­oc­cu­pied. And she could drink Toshi­nori's wa­ter.

She de­lib­er­at­ed over whether to use her flash­light, but Toshi­nori's day pack turned out to be lo­cat­ed right be­hind the back door. Hi­rono crouched down and opened the zip­per with her right hand.

There were wa­ter bot­tles. One of them hadn't been opened and the oth­er was still half full. She felt a wave of re­lief.

Still on her knees, Hi­rono opened the lid of the half filled bot­tle and pressed her lips against it, suck­ing on it as she tilt­ed the bot­tle back. Hmm. Was this an in­di­rect kiss with the boy who had tried to kill her-who was, on top of that, dead? Didn't mat­ter. Con­cerns like that were now as re­mote as the trop­ics or the north pole. Or the moon. This is Arm­strong. One small step for a man...

She guz­zled the wa­ter down. It was de­li­cious. No doubt about that. Wa­ter nev­er tast­ed this good. Even though the wa­ter was luke­warm, as it gushed down her throat and in­to her stom­ach it felt like ice wa­ter. It was so good.

She emp­tied the bot­tle al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. She took a deep breath.

Some­thing wrapped around her throat. Right above the met­al col­lar. She went in­to a cough­ing fit and a mist of wa­ter sprayed out be­tween her lips.

As she strug­gled with her func­tion­ing right hand to free her­self from the ob­ject dig­ging in un­der her throat, she twist­ed her head around. Im­me­di­ate­ly to the right of her face she saw the boy's tense face...which be­longed to Toshi­nori Oda, the boy who just died!

Her throat was get­ting choked. It took her sev­er­al sec­onds to re­al­ize what was wrapped around her neck. It was Toshi­nori's belt.

How how how-how could this guy be alive?

The dark in­te­ri­or of the house was fad­ing in­to red. She tried to pry the belt loose with her right hand as her fin­ger­nails tore off. Blood dripped out of her fin­gers.

That's right, my gun.

Hi­rono reached for her gun tucked in the front of her skirt.

But her arm was kicked by the foot of an ex­pen­sive leather shoe, mak­ing a crack­ing sound. Along with her left arm, her right one went numb too. The belt slack­ened for a mo­ment-but then it tight­ened again. She couldn't hold the belt any­more and in­stead she swung her twist­ed arm around in a bizarre look­ing man­ner.

It was on­ly a mat­ter of sec­onds. Her arm hung limply. Al­though she wasn't in the same rank as Takako Chi­gusa or Mit­suko Souma, she was still quite at­trac­tive and she had the ap­peal­ing, ma­ture look of a high school or col­lege stu­dent. But now her face was puffed up from blood con­ges­tion, and her tongue was now twice its nor­mal size and hung out from the mid­dle of her mouth.

Nonethe­less, Toshi­nori Oda con­tin­ued chok­ing Hi­rono's throat. (Of course he didn't for­get to check around oc­ca­sion­al­ly.)

Af­ter five min­utes or so, Toshi­nori fi­nal­ly re­leased the belt from Hi­rono's neck. The breath­less Hi­rono fell for­ward on­to the raised floor. There was a muf­fled crack­ing sound. Maybe part of Hi­rono's face had cracked. Her punk­ish hair that stood straight up was now go­ing in all di­rec­tions and fad­ing in­to the dark­ness. The nape of her neck above the col­lar of her sailor suit and her left arm with the torn sleeve were the on­ly parts glim­mer­ing white.

Toshi­nori Oda breathed heav­ily for a while as he stood still in a daze. His stom­ach was still in pain, but it wasn't too bad now. When he first opened his day pack he had no idea what this cum­ber­some strange gray vest was, but it did ex­act­ly what the man­ual said it would. Amaz­ing...

...what a bul­let­proof vest can do.

20 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

47

The area was pitch black by now, but thanks to the near­ly full moon, the cliff ex­tend­ing from the foot of the north­ern moun­tain of­fered a wide open view of the ocean. The Se­to In­land Sea Is­lands float­ed in the black sea, but there were ab­so­lute­ly no ship lights near­by due to the gov­ern­ments pro­hi­bi­tion on traf­fic in the area. The guard ships were al­so out of sight, prob­ably be­cause they were moored with their lights off.

He'd seen this view be­fore, but from a low­er po­si­tion. That's right, when he left the school build­ing. Of course, this was nei­ther the time nor place to call it a nice view.

"All right then, over here," Shin­ji said. He tucked his gun in­to his belt, and was the first to climb up on the rock. Then he of­fered his hand to Yu­ta­ka. Yu­ta­ka was out of breath due to the climb up the moun­tain as well as from the loom­ing threat of be­ing at­tacked in the dark, but he man­aged to grip on­to Shin­ji's hand and strug­gled up the rock.

They stayed flat on their stom­achs and looked down the cliff The black­ened rows of woods spread out be­neath them, and fur­ther be­yond there was a glim­mer of light. It came from the school build­ing where Sakamochi was. It hard­ly emit­ted any light be­cause the win­dows had been sealed off with those steel sheets. It was ap­prox­imate­ly one hun­dred me­ters away. The school's sec­tor, G=7, was al­ready for­bid­den, so they'd im­me­di­ate­ly get killed if they en­tered it, but they were a safe dis­tance away now. By us­ing cross-​bear­ing nav­iga­tion with his com­pass and map be­fore the sun went down, Shin­ji man­aged to fig­ure out pre­cise­ly the zone lay­out. The school, in sec­tor G=7, was near­er the bor­der of F=7, where Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka were now, and ac­cord­ing to the map the short­est dis­tance to the bor­der was ap­prox­imate­ly eighty me­ters. Fur­ther­more, with the 6 p.m. an­nounce­ment of for­bid­den zones, nei­ther F=7 nor H=7, which sur­round­ed the school, were in­clud­ed.

Which re­mind­ed him of Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment that Sho Tsukio­ka had got­ten caught in a for­bid­den zone. He was an an­noy­ing, queer kid ("Shin­ji, let's go out on a date"), and right now Shin­ji re­al­ly couldn't be both­ered by oth­ers, but he felt a lit­tle sor­ry for Sho whose head had prob­ably been blown off by a bomb. He won­dered where it hap­pened.

He al­so felt a pang of re­morse over the death of Takako Chi­gusa. She was the pret­ti­est girl in the class (ac­cord­ing to Shin­ji's taste, any­way), and what's more, she was child­hood friends with Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. Con­trary to what most of the class thought-that they were a cou­ple-Hi­ro­ki and Takako weren't go­ing out (Hi­ro­ki him­self told Shin­ji). Still, it must have come as a shock to Hi­ro­ki.

Hi­ro­ki-where the hell are you?

Shin­ji de­cid­ed to con­cen­trate on the present. He ob­served the school be­low and its sur­round­ing ge­og­ra­phy close­ly. They would have to stretch a rope from here, over the school, and then over to the oth­er side of the zone. Now that he ac­tu­al­ly had a view of the area, he re­al­ized how much dis­tance they'd have to cov­er.

Gaz­ing at the gen­tle light leak­ing out the steel-​plat­ed win­dows, Shin­ji thought, damn. That was where Sakamochi and his men were. It was din­ner time. For all he knew they could be eat­ing fried udon. (He thought of fried udon be­cause it was his fa­vorite ev­er since his un­cle made it sev­er­al times for him when he had him over at his small sin­gle-​bed­room house and that was what Shin­ji want­ed so bad­ly to eat right now.) Bas­tards.

Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka al­ready had what they need­ed.

Al­though it wasn't in­di­cat­ed on the map (which marked it as just an­oth­er blue dot), Shin­ji man­aged to find a farm coop near the lon­gi­tu­di­nal road slight­ly south of the school. The build­ing with slat­ed roof and walls bore a sign that read

"North­ern Taka­mat­su Agri­cul­tur­al Co­op­er­ative As­so­ci­ation, Ok­ishi­ma Is­land Branch." (Al­though Shin­ji al­ready knew they were on Ok­ishi­ma Is­land in the Taka­mat­su-​shi Sound, Yu­ta­ka was im­pressed.) It wasn't your typ­ical farm coop. It had no re­al of­fice, nor were there any ATMs. There was on­ly a trac­tor, com­bine har­vester, and thresh­ing ma­chine scat­tered in­side the ware­house-​like space. The on­ly oth­er equip­ment they found was an of­fice desk tak­ing up one of the cor­ners. Any­way, that was where they found the am­mo­ni­um ni­trate. For­tu­nate­ly it was fresh, not at all damp. On top of that, they didn't have to col­lect gas from cars. They found plen­ty in the gas con­tain­ers.

The pul­ley they took from the well next to the house where Shin­ji had found the Mac­in­tosh Power­Book 150, slight­ly east of the coop.

The oth­er sig­nif­icant item was rope. If they were go­ing to stretch rope across sec­tor G=7 they would need at least three hun­dred me­ters of it. Fur­ther­more, they would have to roll it out with plen­ty of slack to es­cape de­tec­tion by Sakamochi and his men so they need­ed even more. It wasn't go­ing to be easy find­ing rope that long. The farm coop had rope but all to­geth­er it was at most two hun­dred me­ters long and- maybe it was used for a green­house or some­thing-too thin at a di­am­eter of less than three mil­lime­ters to be re­li­able.

For­tu­nate­ly though, they man­aged to find what ap­peared to be a pri­vate fish­ing-​equip­ment ware­house along the shore south from the har­bor, which was now for­bid­den along with the res­iden­tial area. In spite of the fish­ing rope be­ing weath­ered out from ex­po­sure, in spite of its heavy weight and size, giv­en how it was over three hun­dred me­ters long, Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka man­aged to di­vide it up, trans­port it, and hide it in the farm coop.

Leav­ing these re­sources be­hind, they came up here.

Shin­ji stared in­to the dark. The foot of the north­ern moun­tain, where they were now, spread out around this side of the school, in oth­er words, the north side, and his right, the west side. To the left of the school, the woods on the east ex­tend­ed up to the north­ern side of the res­iden­tial area and the seashore. Be­yond the school there were pad­dy fields. There were clus­ters of trees here and there, and be­tween them he could see some hous­es. Be­yond the hous­es, Shin­ji could bare­ly make out the farm coop ware­house where they had left all their equip­ment. Im­me­di­ate­ly to the left the area be­came grad­ual­ly crowd­ed with rows of roofs that ex­tend­ed over the bor­der of the for­bid­den zone in­to the res­iden­tial area.

Yu­ta­ka tapped him on the shoul­der. Shin­ji looked to Yu­ta­ka, who was on his right. Yu­ta­ka pulled out his stu­dent notepad and be­gan writ­ing some­thing.

That's right, be­fore they start­ed mov­ing, Shin­ji had warned Yu­ta­ka with an­oth­er mes­sage that they mustn't give any­thing away by talk­ing. Af­ter all, if Sakamochi and his men found out they were up to no good again, this time Shin­ji was sure they wouldn't hes­itate to blow their heads off by re­mote con­trol.

He'd al­ready gone over why Sakamochi chose not to ig­nite Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka's col­lars. It was prob­ably be­cause it was best for the game if the stu­dents fought each oth­er as much as pos­si­ble. Shin­ji had some the­ories about this. It had to do with a ru­mor he'd heard that high-​rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials placed bets on this game. If that was true, then he was sure the star shoot­ing guard of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High, The Third Man, must have been the top seed. All the more rea­son why Sakamochi couldn't just fin­ish him off. That was Shin­ji's hy­poth­esis. Mean­while Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu and Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi were ir­rel­evant play­ers. Or, to be blunt, no one had placed any bets on them.

Still, even if that were true (what a bas­tard that "Kin­pati Sakamo­cho" was), as long as Sakamochi was in charge of this game, he could blow their heads off at any time. Shin­ji could on­ly pray that wouldn't hap­pen un­til they man­aged to bomb the school. Of course Shin­ji found the idea de­spi­ca­ble. The thought of some­one else hav­ing so much con­trol over him was en­tire­ly re­volt­ing to Shin­ji, who learned from his un­cle how to be to­tal­ly self-​re­liant for ev­ery­thing in his life.

As he looked down at the light from the school though, he shook his head. That was nei­ther here nor there.

He re­called his un­cle once telling him, "Don't wor­ry about stuff you can't do any­thing about. You do what you can even if your chances of suc­cess are less than one per­cent."

Yu­ta­ka seemed done writ­ing his mes­sage and tapped his shoul­der. Shin­ji turned away from the view and ex­am­ined the note un­der the moon­light.

There's no way we can toss that enor­mous rope over there. Be­sides we left the rope be­hind. What are we go­ing to do?

That's right. He hadn't ex­plained that yet. They'd been too fran­tic in their search for the equip­ment. Shin­ji nod­ded, took out his pen­cil, and wrote on the stu­dent notepad Wire. I brought some. We'll reel out the wire down to the oth­er side and tie it to the rope. Then we'll draw in the rope by pulling the wire right be­fore we ex­ecute our plan.

He hand­ed the pad over to Yu­ta­ka. Af­ter read­ing the note, he looked at Shin­ji and nod­ded, as if sat­is­fied. Then he wrote You're go­ing to tie a rock to the wire and throw it over there?

Shin­ji shook his head. Yu­ta­ka opened his eyes, sur­prised. Then af­ter some thought he wrote again Are you go­ing to make a bow and ar­row and shoot the wire across?

Shin­ji shook his head again. He took the pad and be­gan scrib­bling That might work. But even I can't throw a rock 300m away. And I can't af­ford to miss. If the rock hits the school we're done. And if the wire gets caught some­where and we end up break­ing it...I have a bet­ter plan.

Yu­ta­ka didn't take up his pen­cil this time and on­ly gazed back at Shin­ji as if say­ing, "?" Shin­ji took the pad and con­tin­ued First, tie the wire to a tree here. Then go down the moun­tain with the oth­er end of wire. Stretch it taut when we're on the oth­er side.

Yu­ta­ka read this but then al­most im­me­di­ate­ly knit his brows skep­ti­cal­ly. He wrote quick­ly, You can't do that his note read It'll get caught in the trees. Some­where in the mid­dle.

Shin­ji grinned.

He couldn't blame Yu­ta­ka for doubt­ing him. The path they'd tak­en here was cov­ered with trees, both large and small. Even if they man­aged to drag the wire out while avoid­ing G=7 and tugged on it lat­er, the wire might get caught. It would make for an odd-​look­ing piece of out­door con­tem­po­rary art. "This in­stal­la­tion piece is gi­gan­tic, but five me­ters away it turns ob­scure. The piece ad­dress­es the del­icate bal­ance be­tween na­ture and hu­mans..." On top of that, sec­tor G=7 was filled with dense forestry bor­der­ing up to the school. Un­less you were a 100-me­ter-​tall gi­ant (wasn't there a video his un­cle had shown him, an old spe­cial-​ef­fects movie where the su­per­hero saves the world by fight­ing against mon­sters as they com­plete­ly tear up the city? They don't make movies like that any­more) you'd have to cut down all the trees if you want­ed to put the wire near the school. It was so ob­vi­ous. And that was why Yu­ta­ka in­sist­ed it was im­pos­si­ble.

But Shin­ji el­egant­ly spread his arms out (giv­en how they were on their stom­achs though, the ef­fect wasn't so im­pres­sive) and wrote How about launch­ing an ad bal­loon, huh, Yu­ta­ka'?

Yu­ta­ka read the note and knit his brows. Shin­ji sig­naled Yu­ta­ka to get off the cliff rock and fol­low him. Once they sat un­der the rock, he rum­maged through his day pack. He pulled out the con­tents and lined them up on the ground.

A half dozen gas can­is­ters, sev­er­al hun­dred-​me­ter reels of thin fish­ing wire (that was all he found at the farm coop), plas­tic tape, and a box of black plas­tic garbage bags.

Shin­ji took one of the can­is­ters and showed it to Yu­ta­ka. It was paint­ed blue with bright red let­ters which read "VOICE CHANG­ER" (un­der­neath the ad copy read, "Now you'll be the life of the par­ty!" huh!), and un­der that there was an il­lus­tra­tion of a duck-Shin­ji rec­og­nized where it came from-based on a "Walt Dis­ney" char­ac­ter. A whistle­like ob­ject poked out of the can­is­ter.

Shin­ji wrote I re­mem­bered see­ing these at the house where I found the Power­Book. You know what this is?

Be­fore tak­ing the pul­ley, Shin­ji had gone in­to the near­by house to re­trieve these can­is­ters. What in the world would the oc­cu­pant of that house do with all these things, though? The files left on the Power­Book's hard drive of­fered a clue. Giv­en how they had names like "5th Grade Sci­ence" or "Third Term Re­port Card Drafts," the own­er of the ma­chine must have been an el­emen­tary school teach­er. Yes, he was prob­ably one of the re­al teach­ers at that school.

Yu­ta­ka touched his throat and opened his mouth. Shin­ji nod­ded.

Right. It makes you sound like a duck! It's he­li­um. And this one's a de­fect. So it's still load­ed with gas.

Yu­ta­ka still seemed un­con­vinced. Shin­ji thought an ac­tu­al demon­stra­tion would get his point across quick­er so he tore open the pack of garbage bags and pulled out a bag. He opened it up, in­sert­ed the can­is­ter valve (which was sup­posed to be sucked) in­to it, and taped it to the bag with the plas­tic tape. He sealed the edge of the bag with more tape. Then he pressed the valve but­ton and the bag be­gan to in­flate.

With his fin­ger on the but­ton, Shin­ji thought, this would be a lot more en­ter­tain­ing with con­doms. But even if they had con­doms they would have been a lit­tle too small. Huh?

Do I have some on me? Well, I mean, come on, this was sup­posed to be a study trip. Any­thing can hap­pen, right? You tossed your clothes, but you're still hold­ing on­to these? Yeah, I dun­no, I do still have them. Well, you nev­er know when they might come in handy. Let's not go in­to de­tails.

Af­ter fill­ing up the bag, Shin­ji twist­ed the edge right above the can­is­ter and sealed it with tape. He took a reel of fish­ing wire and tied its end to the end of the bag. Then he re­moved the tape be­low to re­lease it from the can­is­ter. Just to be sure, he fold­ed the edge over again, seal­ing it again with more tape.

The garbage bag float­ed up­ward. It rose un­til the wire was taut to the point where it al­most seemed to lift the reel-but it stopped right at Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka's heads.

"See?" Shin­ji said out loud. Yu­ta­ka had prob­ably re­al­ized what was go­ing on while Shin­ji was work­ing on the can­is­ter. He'd al­ready nod­ded sev­er­al times.

Shin­ji tied an­oth­er piece of wire from an­oth­er reel to the wire stretch­ing un­der the bal­loon. Just to be sure, he se­cured this to the bal­loon with tape. With the pair of wires in both of his hands, he moved the bal­loon as if it were walk­ing on a pair of legs. Then he point­ed to a near­by tree. He moved the string. Yes, in oth­er words, these were the legs of the gi­ant. They were too frail to crush a city and right now they're short­er than me, but...

Yu­ta­ka seemed to un­der­stand com­plete­ly. He gave two huge nods. Then he moved his lips with­out say­ing any­thing. It looked like he was say­ing, "Awe­some, Shin­ji." Or maybe it was, "Enough al­ready." What­ev­er, it didn't mat­ter.

Shin­ji took the memo pad and wrote, We make one or two more bal­loons and at­tach them to each oth­er. But I still don't know how far up the wire can be stretched. There's al­so the wind. Let's just go for it.

Yu­ta­ka read this and nod­ded.

Shin­ji glanced up at the sky. The bags were black, so even un­der the moon, Sakamochi and his men wouldn't see them. Right now there wasn't much wind ei­ther. But he had no idea what it was like fur­ther up there in the sky.

Then he said, "Let's hur­ry."

Shin­ji sig­naled Yu­ta­ka to hold on­to the first bal­loon and pro­ceed­ed to pull out an­oth­er garbage bag.

20 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

48

Shogo rose a lit­tle af­ter 10 p.m.

Shuya had been look­ing af­ter Noriko, who re­mained rest­ing in bed. Shuya groped through the near­ly pitch black room and en­tered the wait­ing room.

"I'll make some cof­fee," Shogo said as he looked up at Shuya. Then he walked down the hall. He seemed to have good night vi­sion.

Shuya re­turned to the beds, where he found Noriko up with­out her blan­ket.

"You should rest a lit­tle more," Shuya said.

Noriko nod­ded, "Uh huh..." Then she mum­bled, "Could you ask Shogo...if he's go­ing to boil some more wa­ter if I can get an ex­tra cup?" Noriko was sit­ting on the edge of the bed with her hands by her thighs. Moon­light spilled in over the cur­tain from the win­dow. She kept her chin tucked in as she looked over to her side.

"Sure...but what for?"

Noriko hes­itat­ed and then an­swered, "I sweat­ed so much...I just want­ed to wipe my body...maybe it's too much to ask for."

"Oh no," Shuya replied and quick­ly nod­ded. "No prob. I'll go tell him." He left the room.

Shogo was boil­ing wa­ter in the dark kitchen. The tip of the cigarette be­tween his mouth glowed red, and the char­coal flame un­der the pot re­sem­bled a strange fire­fly stir­ring to life.

"Shogo," Shuya said. Shogo turned around. The af­ter­im­age of his cigarette traced a thick line be­fore van­ish­ing. "Noriko was won­der­ing if she could have some hot wa­ter. She said one cup was enough-"

"Ah." Shogo didn't let him con­tin­ue. He re­moved his cigarette from his mouth. Shuya could see Shogo was smil­ing in the dim moon­light com­ing through the win­dow. "Sure. A cup or an en­tire buck­et, fine with me."

As he moved he scooped up wa­ter with the bowl from the buck­et and added it to the pot. He re­peat­ed this five times. He kept a low char­coal flame go­ing to keep the wa­ter in the pot boil­ing. Shuya felt some steam drift by.

"She's a girl," Shogo said.

It turned out Shogo wasn't as slow as Shuya was. He knew why Noriko asked for hot wa­ter.

Shuya was silent and Shogo un­ex­pect­ed­ly con­tin­ued on his own.

"She wants to stay pret­ty cause she's with you."

Then he ex­haled some smoke.

Shuya re­mained qui­et, but then asked, "Can I help you?"

"No." Shogo seemed to be shak­ing his head. Squint­ing his eyes, Shuya could see three cups and a cof­fee drip­per al­ready load­ed with a fil­ter on the ta­ble. There was al­so a tea bag for Noriko.

"Hey," Shogo called him.

Shuya lift­ed his brow, "What is it? All of a sud­den you're so chat­ty."

Shogo chuck­led. Then he con­tin­ued, "I un­der­stand how you feel about Yoshi­to­ki, but don't for­get about Noriko's feel­ings."

Shuya fell silent again. The he spoke. For some rea­son, there was a hint of dis­sat­is­fac­tion in his tone of voice. "I know."

"You have a girl­friend?" Shogo pro­ceed­ed to ask.

Shuya shrugged. "Nope."

"Then what's the prob­lem?"

Shogo con­tin­ued to look at the win­dow, smok­ing his cigarette. "It's not a bad thing to be loved."

Shuya shrugged again. Then he asked, "Don't you have some­one?"

His cigarette glowed bright­ly. He didn't say any­thing. The smoke drift­ed slow­ly through the dark.

"A se­cret, huh?"

"No..." Shogo be­gan to speak, but then he re­moved the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it in­to the buck­et of wa­ter. "Get down, Shuya," he whis­pered and crouched down.

Shuya ner­vous­ly obeyed him. Was some­one go­ing to at­tack? He grew tense.

"Get Noriko. Be qui­et though," Shogo whis­pered again. Shuya was al­ready on his way to the ex­am­ina­tion room, where Noriko was.

Noriko was still sit­ting in a daze on the edge of the bed. Shuya sig­naled her to duck down. She must have im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­stood be­cause she got off the bed, hold­ing her breath. Shuya of­fered her his hand for sup­port as they moved to the kitchen. He looked over to the en­trance on the way there, but there was no one be­yond the glass door.

Shogo had al­ready gath­ered their day packs which he'd packed with re­filled wa­ter bot­tles and oth­er items, and now he was on his knees by the back door, hold­ing his shot­gun.

"What is it?" Shuya asked in a hushed voice. Shogo lift­ed his left hand to si­lence him. Shuya didn't say an­oth­er word.

"Some­one's out­side," Shogo whis­pered. "We'll ex­it through whichev­er door they don't en­ter."

The on­ly thing vis­ible in the dark was the bright char­coal flame un­der the pot. Giv­en the lo­ca­tion of the sink, it couldn't be seen from out­side.

Shuya heard a tap­ping sound. It came from the en­trance. The door wouldn't open be­cause of the stick jam­ming it. The glass was bro­ken, so the per­son out­side must have re­al­ized that some­one had en­tered the build­ing and that it was prob­ably still oc­cu­pied.

There was a clack­ing sound, but then it stopped. It sound­ed like the per­son had giv­en up.

Shogo groaned. "Damn, we'll be in trou­ble if this one tries to set this place on fire."

They re­mained qui­et, but there was still no sound. Then Shogo sig­naled for them to move to­wards the en­trance. He might have heard a slight sound.

They were near­ly crawl­ing down the hall.

As they made their way, Shogo, be­hind the oth­er two, reached out to Shuya who was lead­ing. They stopped. Shuya turned around and looked over his shoul­der at Shogo.

"He's cir­cling back to the front." He waved his hand to the back. "Let's go out the back."

So they went to­wards the kitchen down the hall.

Shogo stopped again be­fore they en­tered the kitchen.

"Damn, why?" he mut­tered.

...the per­son out­side was now com­ing round to the back door again.

The si­lence con­tin­ued. Shogo held on­to his shot­gun. With Noriko be­tween him and Shogo, Shuya al­so gripped the SIG-​Sauer that had once be­longed to Kaori Mi­na­mi. (He'd giv­en the Smith & Wes­son to Shogo. Shuya de­cid­ed to hold on­to the gun that had more bul­lets.)

But the si­lence was sud­den­ly bro­ken. A voice called from out­side the kitchen win­dow. "It's Hi­ro­ki," he said. "I'm not fight­ing. Re­spond, you three. Who are you?"

It was un­doubt­ed­ly the voice of Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11), who along with Shin­ji Mimu­ra was one of the few class­mates Shuya could trust.

"What the?..." Shuya moaned. "That's in­cred­ible..."

It was a stroke of luck. He nev­er thought they'd see Hi­ro­ki. Shuya and Noriko looked at each oth­er. Noriko looked re­lieved.

Shogo stopped Shuya as he tried to get up.

"What?"

"Shh. Don't raise your voice."

Shuya stared at Shogo's se­ri­ous ex­pres­sion and then re­spond­ed with an ex­ag­ger­at­ed shrug and smiled. "Don't wor­ry. I'll vouch for him. We can to­tal­ly trust him."

Shogo shook his head and said, "How did he know there were three of us?"

That thought hadn't oc­curred to Shuya. He thought it over while look­ing at Shogo. But he had no idea. That didn't mat­ter though. The im­por­tant thing was that Hi­ro­ki was here. He just want­ed to see Hi­ro­ki's face now.

"Maybe he saw us go in here, from far away. That's why he didn't know who we were."

"What took him so long to get here then?"

Shuya thought again. "He prob­ably de­lib­er­at­ed over whether he should find out who was here or not__In any case, we can trust Hi­ro­ki. I'll vouch for him."

Shuya ig­nored Shogo, who looked like he wasn't sat­is­fied. He raised his voice and di­rect­ed it be­yond the win­dow. "It's Shuya, Hi­ro­ki. I'm with Shogo Kawa­da and Noriko Nak­agawa."

"Shuya!..." a re­lieved voice replied. "Let me in. Where should I come in?"

Be­fore Shuya could an­swer, Shogo raised his voice, "This is Shogo. Go to the front en­trance. Keep your hands be­hind your head and do not move. Got that?"

"Shogo..." Shuya was about to protest, but Hi­ro­ki im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed, "Got it." What looked like the up­per body of Hi­ro­ki crossed the frost­ed glass win­dow.

Shogo bent down to look out of the cracks in the glass. Hold­ing on­to his shot­gun, he yanked out the ob­struct­ing stick and opened the door.

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was stand­ing with his hands be­hind his neck. He was slight­ly taller than Shogo, but more slen­der. His hair, wavy like Shuya's, went down the mid­dle of his fore­head. His day pack was by his feet and for some rea­son there was a 1.5-me­ter stick on the ground.

It was true. Shuya shift­ed his eyes, as if it were a mir­acle. Shuya's face made Hi­ro­ki grin.

"I have to do a body check."

"Shogo, come on..."

Shogo paid no at­ten­tion to Shuya's protest and moved for­ward, hold­ing on­to his shot­gun. He went be­hind Hi­ro­ki and first checked his hands be­hind his neck. Then he rubbed his left hand over Hi­ro­ki's school coat.

His hand stopped at a pock­et.

"What the hell's this?"

"Go ahead and pull it out," Hi­ro­ki said with his hands held to­geth­er. "But give it back to me."

Shogo pulled it out. It was the size and shape of a thick notepad, but it was made of plas­tic or steel. The cov­er pan­el re­flect­ed the moon­light. Af­ter fid­dling around with it, Shogo said, "Ah ha." He moved his body with the ob­ject in his hands and then looked down at the cov­er pan­el against the moon­light. He nod­ded and re­turned it to Hi­ro­ki's pock­et. Then he thor­ough­ly searched Hi­ro­ki down to his pant cuffs. He al­so checked his day pack and fi­nal­ly an­nounced, "Okay. Sor­ry about that. You can put your hands down."

Hi­ro­ki un­locked his hands and picked up his day pack and stick. The stick ap­peared to be his weapon.

"Hi­ro­ki." Shuya broke in­to a smile. "Come on in. We have cof­fee. You want some?"

Hi­ro­ki nod­ded some­what hes­itant­ly as he went through the en­trance. Shogo looked out­side and then shut the door.

Hi­ro­ki stood still. With his back to the shoe cab­inet that was filled with slip­pers, Shogo stared at Hi­ro­ki. The Rem­ing­ton muz­zle was point­ed down, but Shuya no­ticed Shogo's fin­ger still on the trig­ger and felt slight­ly an­noyed. He did his best not to let it get to him, though.

Hi­ro­ki looked at Shuya and Noriko again, and then glanced over at Shogo. That was when Shuya re­al­ized that Hi­ro­ki was trou­bled not so much by him and Noriko as he was by them hook­ing up with Shogo.

Shogo ad­dressed the is­sue. "Shuya, Hi­ro­ki seems to want to ask whether it's all right for you guys to be with me."

Hi­ro­ki smiled slight­ly and looked over at Shogo, and said, "No...I just thought it was an odd com­bi­na­tion." Still smil­ing, he con­tin­ued, "Shuya would nev­er be with you if you were hos­tile. Shuya can be pret­ty stupid when it comes to cer­tain things, but he's not that stupid."

Shogo re­spond­ed with a grin. He still kept his fin­ger on the trig­ger though. In any case, for now Hi­ro­ki and Shogo were fin­ished in­tro­duc­ing them­selves.

"Ah, come on, Hi­ro­ki," Shuya gave him a smile.

Then Noriko said, "Come on in. It's not our house, so I can't apol­ogize for its messi­ness."

Then Hi­ro­ki smiled, but he stayed at the en­trance. Shuya sup­port­ed Noriko with his left hand and then point­ed at the hall.

"Come on in. We'll have to get go­ing soon, but we have a lit­tle time. We'll throw you a wel­com­ing par­ty."

But Hi­ro­ki stood still there. Shuya re­al­ized how he'd for­got­ten to share an im­por­tant de­tail. Hi­ro­ki might have been ap­palled Shuya was us­ing the word "par­ty" in this sit­ua­tion.

"Hi­ro­ki, we can get out of here. Shogo is go­ing to help us."

Hi­ro­ki's eyes widened a lit­tle. "Re­al­ly?"

Shuya nod­ded. But then Hi­ro­ki looked down. Then he looked up again.

"Thing is..." he said and shook his head, "there's some­thing I have to take care of."

"Some­thing?" Shuya knit his brows. "Why don't you first come on in-"

In­stead of tak­ing Shuya up on his in­vi­ta­tion, he asked, "Have you three been to­geth­er all this time?"

Shuya thought it over and then shook his head. "No...me and Noriko were. And then..."

Then he re­mem­bered what hap­pened this morn­ing. It'd been a while since the im­age of Tat­sumichi Oki's skull split open as­sault­ed him, and once again he felt a chill run down his spine.

"...yeah. A lot of stuff hap­pened, and we end­ed up join­ing Shogo."

"I see." Hi­ro­ki nod­ded and then said. "Hey, have you guys seen Ko­to­hi­ki?"

"Ko­to­hi­ki?" Shuya re­peat­ed. Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 8)? The one who, in spite of be­ing in­to tea cer­emo­ny, seemed more play­ful than el­egant?

"No..." Shuya shook his head. "We haven't but..." He thought of Shogo and looked over at him, but he al­so shook his head, say­ing, "I haven't seen her ei­ther."

Of course Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki had to be on this is­land. As long as her name wasn't an­nounced yet in Sakamochi's an­nounce­ments, she had to be alive. That's right-un­less she was killed af­ter 6 p.m.

Once again he re­al­ized how he was let­ting most of his class­mates die and felt aw­ful.

"What about Ko­to­hi­ki?" Noriko asked.

"Oh..." Hi­ro­ki shook his head. "It's no big deal. Thanks. Sor­ry, but I have to get go­ing." He gave Shuya a part­ing glance and turned to go.

"Hold on, Hi­ro­ki!" Shuya stopped him. "Where are you go­ing? I told you we're safe with us, didn't I?"

Hi­ro­ki looked back at Shuya. There was a sad look in his eyes, but they still gave away that hu­mor­ous trace of irony. It might have been a look all his close friends shared. Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu (de­ceased, damn), and of course Shin­ji Mimu­ra, and-now it seemed-Shogo Kawa­da.

"I have to see Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki about some­thing. So I have to go."

Some­thing. What could that pos­si­bly be in this sit­ua­tion where mov­ing around would on­ly in­crease your chances of dy­ing? Fi­nal­ly Shuya said, "Hold on. You can't go...not with any re­al weapons. It's too risky. And how are you go­ing to find her?"

Hi­ro­ki bit his low­er lip. Then he pulled out that ob­ject re­sem­bling a mo­bile da­ta ter­mi­nal from his pock­et and showed it to Shuya. "This is the 'weapon' I got in my day pack. Pro­fes­sor Kawa­da over there could ex­plain." He point­ed at his neck while his hand held the de­vice. The sil­ver col­lars around the necks of Shuya, Noriko, and Shogo were all shin­ing. "Looks like this de­vice de­tects any­one wear­ing these col­lars. Once some­one's in the vicin­ity, they show up on the screen. But you can't tell whose col­lar it is."

Shuya fi­nal­ly fig­ured out the an­swer to Shogo's ques­tions. It was thanks to this de­vice Hi­ro­ki had been able to an­nounce there were three of them and de­tect their move­ments. Like the com­put­er at the school mon­itor­ing their po­si­tions, it could de­tect the po­si­tion of any­one wear­ing a col­lar, even if, as Hi­ro­ki said, you couldn't tell who it was.

Hi­ro­ki put the de­vice back in­to the pock­et. "See you-" He was ready to go when he sud­den­ly stopped, "That's right...be­ware of Mit­suko Souma," he added. He gave Shuya and then Shogo a stern look. "She's play­ing the game. I don't know about the oth­ers, but I know for sure she is."

"Did you fight her?" Shogo asked.

Hi­ro­ki shook his head. "No. I didn't, but Takako...Takako Chi­gusa said so be­fore she died. Mit­suko killed Takako."

Shuya sud­den­ly re­called how Takako was al­ready dead. Af­ter hear­ing Sakamochi an­nounce her death, he'd been con­cerned about its ef­fect on Hi­ro­ki, but he was so hap­py to see him he'd for­got­ten this dread­ful fact.

That's right, Hi­ro­ki and Takako Chi­gusa were close. For a while, Shuya ac­tu­al­ly thought they were go­ing out. But when he'd ca­su­al­ly asked him about it, Hi­ro­ki chuck­led and said, "She's in a dif­fer­ent class. We've known each oth­er since we were kids. You know hide-​and-​seek, that kind of thing. When we used to fight, I'd be the one cry­ing." That sound­ed (of course Takako Chi­gusa was an amaz­ing ath­lete, and pret­ty ag­gres­sive, but her tak­ing on Hi­ro­ki, who was now over 180 cen­time­ters tall and ranked in mar­tial arts-a while back, that's right, the on­ly time he vis­it­ed his house, Hi­ro­ki re­luc­tant­ly showed him how he could split a piece of pine wood with the palm of his hand) pre­pos­ter­ous­ly fun­ny.

But now Takako Chi­gusa was dead. And...giv­en the way Hi­ro­ki had just de­scribed it, he was there when she died.

"So you were with her?" Noriko asked qui­et­ly.

Hi­ro­ki shook his head. "Just the very end. I...when we left, I hid in front of the school, wait­ing for her... but then Yoshio came back, and I got too dis­tract­ed, so I lost Takako... then... as I looked for Takako I end­ed up los­ing my chance to join you, Shuya, and Shin­ji."

Shuya nod­ded sev­er­al times. So Hi­ro­ki was in front of the school un­til Yoshio Aka­mat­su re­turned. He prob­ably hid in the woods. It was dan­ger­ous, of course. But that on­ly showed how im­por­tant Takako was to Hi­ro­ki.

"But..." Hi­ro­ki con­tin­ued, "I found Takako...I was...too late though." Say­ing this much, Hi­ro­ki looked down. He shook his head sev­er­al times. With­out be­ing told, Shuya un­der­stood that by the time Hi­ro­ki had found Takako she was dy­ing from be­ing at­tacked by Mit­suko.

Shuya thought of telling him how Yoshio Aka­mat­su had killed Mayu­mi Ten­do, and how he had al­most killed Shuya as well, but...it was ir­rel­evant now. Yoshio Aka­mat­su was dead now too.

"I don't know what to say, but...I'm so sor­ry," Noriko said.

Hi­ro­ki smiled a lit­tle and nod­ded. "Thanks."

"In any case," Shuya said, "Come on in. Let's talk it over, what's the-"

He meant to say, rush, but re­frained. If Hi­ro­ki want­ed to see Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki while they were both still alive, what else could he do but rush? While Hi­ro­ki's con­nec­tion to Takako Chi­gusa was clear, Shuya had no idea why it was so im­por­tant for him to find Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki. But in any case, as they sat here talk­ing, she could be fight­ing some­one, or she might even be dy­ing.

Hi­ro­ki grinned. It seemed he knew what Shuya was think­ing.

Shuya licked his lips. He glanced over at Shogo and then said, "If you in­sist..." He looked at Hi­ro­ki and con­tin­ued, "We'll find her with you."

But Hi­ro­ki flat­ly re­fused. He point­ed his chin at Noriko. "Noriko's in­jured. It's too dan­ger­ous. No."

Shuya found the sit­ua­tion un­bear­able. "But you could be saved with us__How are we go­ing to meet again if you leave?..." That's right. Once they sep­arat­ed it would be near­ly im­pos­si­ble for them to meet again.

"Hi­ro­ki." It was Shogo. He still held the shot­gun, but his fin­ger wasn't on the trig­ger any­more. Hi­ro­ki looked over at him, and Shogo pulled out some­thing small from his pock­et with his open hand. He lift­ed it to his mouth and bit on its met­al end, twist­ing it. It made the chirp­ing sound of a bird. It was a loud, bril­liant, and play­ful sound. Like a robin or chick­adee.

Shogo re­leased his hand from his mouth, and Shuya re­al­ized that it was Shogo's de­vice-a bird call? For­get why he would have one in the first place...it was one of those things that mim­icked the sound of birds chirp­ing.

"Whether you meet Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki or not," Shogo said, "if you want to see us, make a fire some­where and burn raw wood to get some smoke go­ing. Make two fires. Of course, leave as soon as you make them be­cause you'll on­ly at­tract at­ten­tion. And make sure you don't cause a fire. Once we see that we'll make this call ev­ery fif­teen min­utes, say, for fif­teen sec­onds. Try to find us by fol­low­ing this sound."

He point­ed to the bird call.

"This sound is your tick­et out of here. If you're up for it, you can come aboard our train."

Hi­ro­ki nod­ded. "Okay. I will, thanks."

Shogo took out his map. He un­fold­ed it and hand­ed the map and his pen­cil over to Hi­ro­ki. "Al­so, I'm sor­ry for keep­ing you, but I need you to mark where Takako was killed. If you saw any­one else, I need to know those lo­ca­tions too."

Hi­ro­ki lift­ed his brow slight­ly as he took the map. He spread the map out on the shoe cab­inet, un­der the moon­lit win­dow, and held the pen­cil.

"Give me your map. I'll write in the lo­ca­tions of the bod­ies we know," Shogo said. Hi­ro­ki stopped writ­ing and hand­ed over his map. The two be­gan mark­ing the maps side by side.

"I'll bring some cof­fee over," Noriko said and left Shuya's arm. She limped down the hall, us­ing the wall as sup­port.

"Did Takako say whether Mit­suko had a ma­chine gun?" Shogo asked as he wrote.

"No," Hi­ro­ki an­swered with­out lift­ing his eyes, "She didn't say any­thing about that. I do know that she was shot sev­er­al times. It wasn't a sin­gle bul­let." I see.

As the two pro­ceed­ed, Shuya ex­plained the fates of Yoshio Aka­mat­su, Tat­sumichi Oki, and Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi. Hi­ro­ki nod­ded as he con­tin­ued to write.

Shogo was done mark­ing Hi­ro­ki's map. He point­ed at it and ex­plained, "This is where Kaori Mi­na­mi was killed. Shuya saw Hi­rono Shimizu es­cape. She might have done it in self-​de­fense. But ei­ther way, you should be care­ful."

Hi­ro­ki nod­ded. Then un­ex­pect­ed­ly he said, "I saw Kaori too," and point­ed at the map. "Be­fore noon. She fired at me, but I think she was in a pan­ic."

Shogo nod­ded and ex­changed Hi­ro­ki's map with his.

Noriko came out in­to the hall, hold­ing a cup. Shuya went down the hall and took it from Noriko, who walked un­steadi­ly. He of­fered it to Hi­ro­ki, who took a sniff, whis­tled light­ly, and then held it. "Thanks," he said and took a sip. Then he put the cup on the raised en­trance floor. It was near­ly full.

"I'll see ya."

"Hold on." Shuya pulled out his SIG-​Sauer from un­der his belt. With its grip point­ed at Hi­ro­ki, he of­fered it to him. He al­so pulled out an ex­tra car­tridge from his pock­et. "If you still in­sist on go­ing take these, okay? We have a shot­gun and one more gun."

The first gun was Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi's, and the Smith & Wes­son was now with Shogo. Shuya's hand­ing over the SIG-

Sauer gun would de­crease their fight­ing ca­pac­ity, but Shogo didn't in­ter­vene.

But Hi­ro­ki shook his head. "You need that, Shuya. You bet­ter pro­tect Noriko all right. I can't take that. Even if some­one at­tacks me, I just can't do it." He tilt­ed his head and then ex­am­ined both Shuya and Noriko. He broke in­to a slight grin and then added, "I al­ways won­dered why you two weren't go­ing out." Then he nod­ded at each of them and qui­et­ly opened the en­trance door.

"Hi­ro­ki," Noriko called. Her voice was qui­et. "Be care­ful."

"I will. Hey, thanks. And best of luck to you guys."

"Hi­ro­ki..." Shuya was get­ting choked up, but man­aged to say, "We'll meet again. That's a promise."

Hi­ro­ki nod­ded and left. Shuya held Noriko and stepped through the front en­trance, watch­ing Hi­ro­ki as he quick­ly as­cend­ed the moun­tain.

With­out a word, Shogo ges­tured to Shuya and Noriko to move back and close the door.

Shuya took a deep breath and turned around. He could bare­ly see the steam still ris­ing from the cup Hi­ro­ki had left on the floor.

20 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

49

The moon was high in the cen­ter of the sky. There wasn't a sin­gle cloud. The white light from the near­ly full moon cast a thin film over the rest of the sky, ob­scur­ing the stars.

Shogo, who was lead­ing, stopped. Shuya, who was sup­port­ing Noriko with his shoul­der, stopped too.

"Are you all right?" Shuya asked Noriko.

She nod­ded. "I'm fine." But Shuya could tell she was still un­steady.

Shuya looked at his watch. It was past 11 p.m. now, but they'd al­ready left G=9, which was now a for­bid­den zone. They had to find an­oth­er place to set­tle down.

They were trac­ing their way back along the foot of the north­ern moun­tain. The area was scat­tered with trees. A lit­tle fur­ther down and they'd be near where Kaori Mi­na­mi was killed. Im­me­di­ate­ly to their left, Shuya saw a flat, nar­row area that ex­tend­ed from the is­land's res­iden­tial area on the east­ern shore. The flat land spot­ted with hous­es then be­came in­creas­ing­ly nar­row, like a tri­an­gle. The road travers­ing the is­land sup­pos­ed­ly passed through this piv­ot and head­ed to the west­ern shore.

Shogo turned around. "Now what do we do?" Noriko's blan­ket was tied to the top of the day pack on his shoul­der.

"Can we stop at a house, like we did just now?"

"A house, huh." Shogo looked away from Shuya and squint­ed. "It's re­al­ly not a good idea. As the num­ber of zones de­crease so do the num­ber of hous­es. The mo­ment some­one needs some­thing, they'll want to en­ter a house. Whether it's to eat or what­ev­er."

"Hey, if you're wor­ried about me, I'm fine now. Even out­side," Noriko said.

Shogo flashed a smile and then silent­ly looked over the flat land. He looked as if he was tak­ing Hi­ro­ki's marks on his map in­to con­sid­er­ation as he took in the view.

Along with the bod­ies he'd seen, Hi­ro­ki had giv­en de­tailed ex­pla­na­tions of how they had died. The body of Kazushi Nü­da was right near where Takako Chi­gusa had died. Along with his eyes be­ing gouged out (!), his throat had been stabbed. In the res­iden­tial area that was now for­bid­den was Megu­mi Eto. Her throat had been slashed by a blade. (Shuya felt a pang in his chest over this one, since Noriko had told him how Megu­mi had a crush on him.) To the east, Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to and Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi were killed where the east­ern shore's res­iden­tial area met the south­ern moun­tain. Yo­ji was stabbed in the head, and Yoshi­mi had been shot. At the south­ern tip, Izu­mi Kanai, Hi­roshi Kuron­aga, Ryuhei Sasagawa, and Mit­su­ru Nu­mai were all found dead to­geth­er. Mit­su­ru Nu­mai was shot sev­er­al times, while the oth­ers' throats were slashed. Three of Kiriya­ma's group had died to­geth­er, the on­ly ex­cep­tion be­ing Sho Tsukio­ka, who got caught in a for­bid­den zone.

"Shogo," Shuya said. Shogo looked back. "Do you think Mit­suko Souma killed Yukiko and Yu­miko?"

Even now, as he asked this, it all felt so un­re­al. He didn't be­lieve a girl could do such hor­ri­ble things. Of course he had no doubt, since it was Hi­ro­ki who'd in­formed them, but he still couldn't re­strain the urge to dis­miss it all as a delu­sion.

"No," Shogo shook his head. "I don't think so. Af­ter Yukiko and Yu­miko got killed by that ma­chine gun, you know how we heard pis­tols go­ing off? That was to fin­ish them off. But Hi­ro­ki said Takako was alive af­ter be­ing shot when he found her. Which means her killer wasn't as thor­ough. Of course she might have let Takako go, know­ing she was go­ing to die any­way. But giv­en the times and lo­ca­tions, I just don't think Mit­suko Souma's the one with the ma­chine gun."

Shuya re­called the ma­chine gun fire he heard be­fore 9 a.m. The killer was still roam­ing around the is­land. And the dis­tant gun­fire they heard a lit­tle af­ter­wards...was that Mit­suko Souma?

"Even­tu­al­ly we'll..." Shogo forced a grin and shook his head, "...meet him or her. Then we'll know for sure."

Shuya re­called some­thing else that had been bug­ging him. "When Hi­ro­ki showed us his radar, I was think­ing how Sakamochi must know we're to­geth­er and our po­si­tions as well."

Shogo an­swered as he sur­veyed the flat land, "That's right."

Shuya moved his shoul­der to give Noriko bet­ter sup­port. "Won't that hin­der our es­cape?"

Shogo chuck­led with his back to Shuya. "Nope. Not at all. Don't wor­ry." Shogo looked over the flat land again and said, "Let's go back to where we were."

He con­tin­ued, "A com­mon strat­egy play­ers in this game take is to show up any­where they hear some ac­tion. That's be­cause of the 24-hour dead­line. Be­cause of that lim­ita­tion, they kill when they can. And the fact that they're on a killing spree means they're on their own, so they can't af­ford to sleep much. So the match has to be kept short. If some­thing hap­pens near them, they go there, and if there's a fight al­ready go­ing on, they sit back and then they fin­ish off any sur­vivors. That's why we should stay some­where we can avoid con­fronta­tions. If we get mixed up with some­one who's pan­ick­ing then one of the top play­ers is bound to show up. If we go back where we were it's un­like­ly we'll meet any­one. Since Tat­sumichi Old and Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi, who'd been hid­ing there, are no longer around, that area is pret­ty much un­in­hab­it­ed."

"But Hi­rono ran in that di­rec­tion."

"No, I doubt she's gone that far. It wouldn't be nec­es­sary." Shogo point­ed to the flat land with his thumb. "But we'll avoid this moun­tain where she might be hid­ing. We'll take a dif­fer­ent route."

Shuya lift­ed his brow. "Is it safe for us to move through the flat land?"

Shogo smiled and shook his head. "The moon may be shin­ing, but this isn't day­light. I think we're safer there than in the moun­tain, where there's too much cov­er."

Shuya nod­ded. Shogo took the lead and be­gan de­scend­ing the slope. Shuya held the SIG-​Sauer tight­ly in his right hand and fol­lowed Shogo as he sup­port­ed Noriko.

The trees turned in­to a field of short grass. The first farm they came across had a field full of squash­es. Be­yond this field there was a wheat field. This is­land was so small these prob­ably weren't for do­mes­tic con­sump­tion. Of course the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia was in­ces­sant­ly is­su­ing or­ders to pro­mote na­tion­al self-​re­liance, so even a small farm like this might con­tribute a lit­tle to the ef­fort. As they moved along the edge of the farm, the soil un­der their sneak­ers felt dry. Maybe it was be­cause sev­er­al days had passed since the area had been evac­uat­ed. Still, Shuya was struck by the pleas­ant, rich odor of wheat drift­ing through the evening air, an­tic­ipat­ing the sum­mer.

It was a nice smell. Es­pe­cial­ly af­ter hav­ing smelled so much blood.

There was a trac­tor to their left. Be­yond the ve­hi­cle there was a house.

It was an or­di­nary, two-​sto­ry house and ap­peared rel­ative­ly new. It was prob­ably one of those cheap, mass pro­duced build­ings re­sem­bling Ba­nana Homes or Ver­te­brae Hous­es. Even though it was in the mid­dle of the farm, it was en­closed by a con­crete wall.

Shuya looked at Shogo's back as he moved for­ward.

Some­thing irked him.

He looked back. Noriko was lean­ing on his left shoul­der as she walked, but he no­ticed some­thing high above her head in the mid­dle of the sky. Some­thing flash­ing in the moon­light, trac­ing an arc. This ob­ject came fly­ing at them.

20 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

50

What made Shuya such a star ath­lete in his Lit­tle League days was his in­cred­ible abil­ity to per­ceive ob­jects in mo­tion. Even in this dim light Shuya could tell that the ob­ject fly­ing to­wards them right now re­sem­bled a can. Of course, they were in the serene Se­to In­land Sea re­gion, so it couldn't pos­si­bly be an emp­ty can falling from the sky from a hur­ri­cane. There was no way it was an emp­ty can.

No.

Shuya sud­den­ly re­leased his shoul­der, which was tucked un­der Noriko's right armpit. He couldn't even af­ford to call on Shogo, who must have re­al­ized some­thing odd though, be­cause he al­so sud­den­ly turned around, while Noriko tot­tered with­out Shuya's sup­port.

Shuya dashed out. His jump­ing abil­ity was quite ex­traor­di­nary. Just as in the past, dur­ing the Lit­tle League pre­fec­tural semi­fi­nals, he could make the ul­ti­mate play from any giv­en po­si­tion, steal­ing the op­po­nents' win­ning home run in the bot­tom of the eleventh in­ning.

Shuya caught the ball-no, the can-in mid-​air with his left hand. He put it in his right hand, and as he came down he twist­ed his body and threw it as far as he could.

Be­fore Shuya land­ed a bright light shined through the night.

He felt the air burst as a son­ic boom tore through his eardrums. The bomb blast blew him away be­fore he could land, and he fell sprawl­ing on­to the ground. If he'd wait­ed for the hand grenade to fall, he, Noriko, and Shogo would have all been mince­meat now. Al­though Sakamochi's crew might have re­duced the grenade's ex­plo­sive pow­er so that it couldn't be used against the school, it was more than ca­pa­ble of killing hu­man be­ings.

He raised his head. He re­al­ized, he heard noth­ing. His ears were screwed up. In this state of si­lence, Shuya saw Noriko col­lapsed on his left. Then he lift­ed his face to look back at Shogo and saw...an­oth­er can fly­ing at them.

An­oth­er one! I have to...but it was too late now.

His dis­abled ears all of a sud­den heard a def­inite but muf­fled bang, al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fol­lowed by an­oth­er ex­plo­sion in the air. This sound was al­so muf­fled, but this time it felt a lit­tle fur­ther off and Shuya wasn't blown away. Right be­side him Shogo was on one knee, hold­ing his shot­gun. He had shot the hand grenade, as if he were skeet shoot­ing, blow­ing it to bits be­fore it man­aged to ex­plode.

Shuya ran over to Noriko and held her up. She was gri­mac­ing. She seemed to be moan­ing, but he couldn't hear her.

"Shuya, get back!"

Shogo waved his hand and fired his shot­gun with his right hand. Shuya then heard a dif­fer­ent sound, rat­tling gun­fire, and the wheat heads right in front of him scat­tered in­to the air. Shogo fired an­oth­er two shots. In a state of con­fu­sion, Shuya pulled Noriko in­to the shade of the ridge mark­ing off the farm. He got down. Shogo slid to his side, fir­ing sev­er­al shots as he went. The rat­tling con­tin­ued, and the ridge soil blew up, grains fly­ing in­to his eyes.

Shuya pulled out his SIG-​Sauer and looked out from the shade of the ridge. He fired blind­ly in the di­rec­tion Shogo was fir­ing.

Then he saw him. Less than thir­ty me­ters away, the unique slicked-​back hair be­hind the break in the house's con­crete wall.

It was Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6). And al­though Shuya's hear­ing was im­paired, he could re­call the sound of the rat­tling gun­fire. It was the same sound he heard from far away when Yu­miko and Yukiko fell at the north­ern moun­tain peak. Of course he might not have been the on­ly one with a ma­chine gun, but even so, Kazuo, who was right in front of their very own eyes, had just tried to kill them with­out warn­ing, with of all things a hand grenade!

Shuya was cer­tain Kazuo was the one who'd mur­dered Yu­miko and Yukiko. He thought of how they were killed and felt a flash of rage.

"What the...what's the hell's he do­ing!?"

"Stop shout­ing, just shoot!" Shogo hand­ed the Smith & Wes­son to Shuya and reload­ed his shot­gun.

Shuya held a gun in each hand and be­gan shoot­ing at the con­crete wall. (Two-​hand shoot­er! This is crazy!) First the Smith & Wes­son, then the SIG-​Sauer ran out of bul­lets. He had to reload!

Hav­ing wait­ed for this mo­ment, Kazuo got up. BR­RRRAT­TA. Sparks flew out from him. Shuya ducked, and Kazuo re­vealed part of his body that was be­hind the wall.

Shogo blast­ed his shot­gun away. Kazuo's body once again van­ished. The swarm of shot­gun pel­lets blew off part of the wall.

Shuya eject­ed the emp­ty mag­azine from his SIG-​Sauer and pulled out a load­ed mag­azine from his pock­et. He opened the Smith & Wes­son cylin­der and pushed the rod in the cen­ter of the cylin­der to re­lease its spent shells, puffed up from the ex­plo­sions. One of the shells near­ly singed part of his right thumb. It didn't mat­ter. He quick­ly load­ed the .38 cal­iber bul­lets Shogo had rolled over his way. Then he aimed at Kazuo's house.

Shogo shot again, blow­ing off an­oth­er part of the wall. Shuya al­so fired sev­er­al shots in­to it with his SIG-​Sauer.

"Noriko! Are you all right!?" Shuya yelled. Right next to him, Noriko an­swered, "I'm okay." He could make out her re­sponse, which made Shuya re­al­ize his hear­ing was back. He saw her in the cor­ner of his eye reload­ing 9mm Short bul­lets in­to the SIG-​Sauer's emp­ty mag­azine. Of all the things he'd seen since the game be­gan this one re­al­ly sent his head reel­ing. How could a girl like Noriko be par­tic­ipat­ing in a bat­tle like this...

A hand ap­peared from the oth­er side of the wall. The hand was hold­ing a ma­chine gun. It rat­tled again. Shuya and Shogo ducked.

Kazuo got up. As he con­tin­ued shoot­ing, he came for­ward. Then he ran be­hind the trac­tor. The dis­tance be­tween them was shrink­ing.

Shogo fired a shot, blow­ing off the trac­tor's driv­ing pan­el.

"Shogo," Shuya called, af­ter shoot­ing twice.

"What?" Shogo an­swered as he reload­ed his shot­gun.

"How fast can you run the hun­dred-​me­ter dash?"

Shogo took an­oth­er shot (an­ni­hi­lat­ing the trac­tor's rear light) and an­swered, "I'm pret­ty slow. Maybe thir­teen sec­onds. My back's strong though. What?"

Sud­den­ly Kazuo's arm stuck out from be­hind the trac­tor. Sparks flew as Kazuo re­vealed his head, but as Shuya and Shogo fired back, he ducked again.

"We can on­ly re­treat in­to the moun­tain, right?" Shuya spoke quick­ly. "I can run a hun­dred me­ters in al­most less than eleven sec­onds. You and Noriko go ahead. I'll keep Kazuo there."

Shogo glanced at Shuya. That was all. He un­der­stood.

"At the place we were, Shuya. The place where we talked about rock," Shogo said quick­ly. He gave Shuya his shot­gun and re­treat­ed in­to a duck­ing po­si­tion. He moved around over to Noriko.

Shuya took a deep breath and shot three times in­to the trac­tor with the shot­gun, prompt­ing Shogo to lift Noriko and run in the di­rec­tion they'd come from. Noriko's eyes flashed by Shuya's for a mo­ment.

Kazuo's up­per body ap­peared from be­hind the trac­tor. Shuya fired his shot­gun sev­er­al times. Kazuo, who had his gun point­ed at Shogo and Noriko, ducked. Shuya re­al­ized he was out of shot­gun shells so he picked up the Smith & Wes­son in­stead and be­gan shoot­ing again. He im­me­di­ate­ly used up five bul­lets. He opened the SIG-​Sauer and load­ed the ex­tra mag­azine Noriko had load­ed with bul­lets and be­gan shoot­ing again. It was cru­cial he keep on shoot­ing.

He saw Shogo and Noriko dis­ap­pear in­to the moun­tain.

The SIG-​Sauer was emp­ty, and there were no more ex­tra mag­azines. He could on­ly reload bul­lets....

But then this time Kazuo's arm ap­peared from be­hind the trac­tor's blade. The In­gram ma­chine gun rat­tled away. Just like be­fore. Kazuo was run­ning to­wards him!

Shuya had to get out of this gun­fight. He held on­to on­ly the emp­ty SIG-​Sauer (he still had sev­en more in­di­vid­ual 9mm Short bul­lets), turned around, and ran. If he could reach the moun­tain where there was plen­ty of cov­er, Kazuo wouldn't be able to get too close to him. Shuya de­cid­ed to head east. Noriko and Shogo would be head­ed west to get where they were yes­ter­day. He want­ed to lead Kazuo as far away from them as he could.

It all came down to his sprint­ing speed. He had to get as far away from Kazuo as pos­si­ble in a short span of time. A ma­chine gun ba­si­cal­ly of­fered a show­er of bul­lets so it was im­pos­si­ble to dodge at a close dis­tance. What mat­tered was how far he could get.

Shuya ran. As the fastest run­ner in the class (at least he thought so. He was even a frac­tion of a sec­ond faster than Shin­ji Mimu­ra, un­less, that is, if Kazuo wasn't re­al­ly try­ing dur­ing his test), he could on­ly re­ly on his speed.

Right when he thought he was five me­ters away from a tree he heard a rat­tling sound. He felt a se­vere blow against the left side of his stom­ach.

Shuya groaned as he be­gan los­ing his bal­ance, but he kept on run­ning. He ran in­to a row of tall trees and made his way up the slope. The rat­tling re­sumed and this time his left arm re­flex­ive­ly flinched up. He re­al­ized he'd been shot right above his el­bow.

But he still ran. He con­tin­ued east-hey, yo, that's a for­bid­den zone-and moved north. More rat­tling. A thin tree to his right crack­led and burst in­to match­stick-​sized splin­ters.

More rat­tling. This time he wasn't hit. Or maybe he was. He couldn't tell any­more. He on­ly knew he was be­ing chased. At least he was buy­ing time for Noriko and Shogo.

He made his way through the trees and veg­eta­tion, climbed a hill, and then de­scend­ed it. He couldn't even af­ford to wor­ry that there might be some­one else hid­ing in the dark, wait­ing to at­tack him. He had no idea how far he'd got­ten. He wasn't even sure which di­rec­tion he was run­ning. Some­times it seemed like he could hear-some­times it seemed like he couldn't-the rat­tling sound. He couldn't tell maybe be­cause his hear­ing had been im­paired by that ex­plo­sion. In any case now was not the time to be re­lieved. Far­ther. He had to get far­ther.

Sud­den­ly Shuya slipped. He'd some­how reached a cliff, and all of a sud­den re­al­ized that the slope just dropped off. Just as he'd done when fight­ing Tat­sumichi Oki, he tum­bled down the steep slope.

He land­ed with a thud. He was no longer hold­ing the SIG-​Sauer. And as he tried to stand up...

He re­al­ized he couldn't. He won­dered, in a daze, am I deliri­ous from blood loss? Or...did I hit my head?

Im­pos­si­ble. I'm not in­jured so bad­ly I can't stand up...I have to get back to Noriko and Shogo...I have to pro­tect Noriko, I promised Noriko...

As he tried to get up though, he fell for­ward...

...and lost con­scious­ness.

20 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

51

It was al­most pitch dark, but be­side the dim­ly moon­lit win­dow Shin­ji tossed the item in his hand once again on­to the floor. The sound of it hit­ting the floor was muf­fled by the thick fold­ed blan­ket, but there was a pop­ping sound along with a ring.

Shin­ji im­me­di­ate­ly picked it up off the floor and then tucked the small plas­tic item in­side the blan­ket. The sound stopped.

"Come on, let's go," Yu­ta­ka said. He'd been watch­ing over Shin­ji, but Shin­ji sig­naled him to calm down. He re­peat­ed the test again.

Pop, zing. It made the same sounds. Shin­ji picked it up, and it stopped.

Was it all right? But if this mal­func­tioned, then all the care­ful prepa­ra­tions they'd made would come to noth­ing. One more try-

"We have to hur­ry..." Yu­ta­ka said again, and Shin­ji's face was about to flush with anger-but he man­aged to sup­press it. Al­though he wasn't en­tire­ly sat­is­fied he said, "All right," and con­clud­ed his test. He un­hooked the lead wire con­nect­ing the bat­tery and mi­ni-​mo­tor which was used for the test and be­gan peel­ing off the plas­tic tape at­tach­ing the mo­tor unit to the bat­tery.

Shuya and Yu­ta­ka were back at the "North­ern Taka­mat­su Agri­cul­tur­al Co­op­er­ative As­so­ci­ation, Ok­ishi­ma Is­land Branch."

Along with the school and har­bor fish­ery coop, it might have been one of the largest build­ings on the is­land. The space, un­lit of course and en­veloped in dark­ness, was the size of a bas­ket­ball court, and there was farm­ing equip­ment strewn all over the area, in­clud­ing a trac­tor and com­bine har­vester. There was al­so a light truck with a miss­ing wheel lift­ed on a jack, prob­ably to be re­paired. Then in the cor­ner were piles of sacks of var­ious kinds of fer­til­iz­er. (And haz­ardous am­mo­ni­um ni­trate was fur­ther be­yond them, stored in a large cab­inet with a pro­vi­sion­al lock that Shin­ji had bust­ed open.) The slate walls were at least five me­ters high, and there was an up­per floor at­tached along the north wall where more fer­til­iz­er, in­sec­ti­cide, and oth­er sup­plies had been stored. On the op­po­site, or east, wall was a steel stair­case di­ag­onal­ly de­scend­ing from the sec­ond floor, and un­der­neath the stairs was a large slid­ing ware­house door. Next to this slid­ing door, in front of the stairs in the south­east cor­ner, was an of­fice­like space made up of par­ti­tion walls. Be­yond its open door he could make out of­fice equip­ment, in­clud­ing the out­lines of a desk and fax ma­chine.

Set­ting the wire across sec­tor G=7 where the school was turned out to be a has­sle. First, Shin­ji tied the end of the wire to the tip of a tall tree be­hind the rock they'd climbed on. Then he took the oth­er end and be­gan walk­ing be­tween the trees, but then a gust in the up­per re­gion of the sky act­ed up, so guid­ing the garbage-​bag bal­loons proved to be dif­fi­cult. There were at least ten oc­ca­sions where he had to climb up a tree to loosen the wire. On top of that, giv­en how the en­emy could be any­where in the dark, he had to wor­ry about Yu­ta­ka, so the en­deav­or end­ed up ex­haust­ing him.

But he'd man­aged to set the wire af­ter a full three hours, when he heard the gun­fight. It was past 11 p.m. He heard an ex­plo­sion as well, but he couldn't af­ford to get in­volved, so he hur­ried back to the farm coop with Yu­ta­ka. By then the gun­fire had ceased.

Fi­nal­ly Shin­ji be­gan build­ing the elec­tric det­ona­tor, but this al­so turned out to be dif­fi­cult. He didn't have the prop­er tools, and fur­ther­more the de­vice re­quired a del­icate bal­ance. Elec­tric cur­rent had to run through the de­vice at the mo­ment of im­pact against the school, but at the same time he had to make sure it wasn't so sen­si­tive it'd be ig­nit­ed in the mid­dle of the rope ca­ble by, say, a bump or knot in the rope.

But some­how he man­aged to build it, us­ing a mo­tor (which he re­moved from an elec­tric ra­zor) in­stead of the det­ona­tor for the test. It was right when he be­gan test­ing, in oth­er words, on­ly mo­ments ago, that the mid­night an­nounce­ment was made. The on­ly one who died was Hi­rono Shimizu (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 10), whom Shin­ji saw im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the game be­gan. He thought it might have been a re­sult of that in­tense gun bat­tle, but in any case Sakamochi had an­nounced some­thing far more ur­gent, at least to him and Yu­ta­ka. Sec­tor F=7, which in­clud­ed the cliff rock they'd climbed up on to sur­vey the school, was des­ig­nat­ed to be a for­bid­den zone as of 1 a.m.

No won­der Yu­ta­ka was so im­pa­tient. If they couldn't en­ter that area then all their prepa­ra­tions would amount to noth­ing. It would be the end for them. He didn't want to be in the sit­ua­tion of, af­ter a clever play, be­ing just one move away from check­mate on­ly to fall in­to a fa­tal trap.

Shin­ji quick­ly pulled out the elec­tric det­ona­tor from the tube chained to his knife. He con­nect­ed the two cylin­ders- their dull metal­lic ex­te­ri­or shone in the dark-and peeled off the in­su­la­tion from the lead wire. Then us­ing tape, he first se­cured the small plas­tic spring serv­ing as the elec­tri­cal switch, then took the end of the lead wire ex­tend­ing from the det­ona­tor and tied it to the wire from the charge de­vice. He taped the con­nec­tion over and over so it would be com­plete­ly se­cure. Then next to the bat­tery he in­stalled a con­denser cir­cuit board tak­en from the flash com­po­nent of a cam­era. In or­der for the det­ona­tor to be ab­so­lute­ly re­li­able, he need­ed a high volt­age out­put. He con­nect­ed the wires to this de­vice as well. To pre­vent any ac­ci­den­tal det­ona­tion, he de­cid­ed he would work on the re­main­ing wire from the elec­tric det­ona­tor at the top of the moun­tain, tap­ing the ex­posed end of the wire to the side of the bat­tery.

"All right."

Shin­ji stood up, and then put the com­plet­ed det­ona­tion de­vice in his pock­et.

"Let's hur­ry. It's time."

Yu­ta­ka nod­ded. Just in case, Shin­ji tossed his equip­ment, in­clud­ing the elec­tri­cal pli­ers and ex­tra lead wire in­to his day pack, and then lift­ed sev­er­al piles of rope they had di­vid­ed up on­to his shoul­der. He looked down. There was a gas can filled up with a mix­ture of gaso­line and am­mo­ni­um ni­trate. To add oxy­gen, he stuffed in in­su­la­tion ma­te­ri­al filled with air and fold­ed in pleats. The open­ing was shut with the lid, but next to it an­oth­er rub­ber lid func­tion­ing as the det­ona­tor hold­er was tied to it with a plas­tic cord dan­gling from the han­dle.

Then he looked at his watch. It was 12:09. They had plen­ty of time.

Okay then. He was trem­bling from ex­cite­ment. It took a lot of ef­fort, but now they had ev­ery­thing they need­ed. They would con­nect all the ropes they had, ty­ing one end to a tree in H=7. Then they would tie the oth­er end of the rope to the end of the fish­ing wire se­cured by the weight of a rock. They would un­rav­el the rope and leave it there and then go around the school, go­ing up the moun­tain in­to F=7. He would take the wire tied to the top of the tree and reel it in im­me­di­ate­ly. The rope stuck to the wire would then come to them. He would pro­ceed to at­tach the pul­ley to the gas-​can gon­do­la with the det­ona­tion de­vice and thread the rope through it. Then he would stretch the rope taut with one swift mo­tion and se­cure it to a tree. Then the rest is...par­ty time, dude. Have fun! Here we go! Make it hap­pen!

Once they had done some dam­age to the school's com­put­er, or its elec­tri­cal cur­rent or wiring, Sakamochi's staff would sus­pect a sys­tem fail­ure, no, giv­en the pow­er of ex­plo­sives here once the en­tire com­put­er, no, in fact half the school was blown up, then they would take the tire tubes they'd al­ready hid­den be­hind the rock in F=7 and run to­wards the west­ern shore, es­cap­ing by sea as planned. If they could mis­lead the gov­ern­ment by send­ing a false SOS sig­nal us­ing their tran­sis­tor ra­dio and get to the next is­land, Toyoshi­ma, in less than a half an hour as cal­cu­lat­ed, then they would take a boat. (He had ex­pe­ri­ence with a mo­tor boat. He was re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ing all the wis­dom his late un­cle had im­part­ed.) Then they would prob­ably es­cape in­to Okaya­ma, hope­ful­ly land­ing on an ob­scure shore, and then they'd be fine. They could take a freight train head­ing to the coun­try­side. Or they would fur­nish them­selves with a car pass­ing by. Af­ter all, he had a gun. Car­jack. Nice.

Shin­ji looked down at the Beretta M92F tucked in­to his belt. He was plan­ning on slip­ping through by mis­lead­ing the gov­ern­ment, but just in case they were found at sea, he'd filled sev­er­al Coke bot­tles with his spe­cial am­mo­ni­um ni­trate-​gaso­line mix­ture and stuffed them in­to his day pack. But with­out a det­ona­tor they were ba­si­cal­ly just Molo­tov cock­tails. If they were de­tect­ed, it would be best to swim to­ward the guard ship and get on board to fight. If all went well they could get their hands on the en­emy's weapons, and if they could op­er­ate the ship, it could pro­vide their means of es­cape. But he would have to be a good shot to ac­com­plish this.

He was a lit­tle...con­cerned. He'd been run­ning all over the is­land with his Beretta, but come to think of it, he hadn't fired it once. And even his un­cle didn't have a gun, so he'd nev­er learned how to use one.

But Shin­ji shook his head. The Third Man, Shin­ji Mimu­ra. No prob. The first time he held a heavy bas­ket­ball and tossed a free throw, the ball swooped right through the bas­ket.

"Shin­ji." Yu­ta­ka called him.

Shin­ji looked up. "Are you ready?"

"No..." Yu­ta­ka said piti­ful­ly. And then he ner­vous­ly wrote some­thing on the memo pad.

Shin­ji read it un­der the moon­light by the win­dow. It read, I can't find the pul­ley.

He glanced at Yu­ta­ka. For all he knew he might look re­al­ly mad. Yu­ta­ka sud­den­ly drew back.

Yu­ta­ka was in charge of half of the rope sup­ply and the pul­ley. Ev­er since Shin­ji took the pul­ley from the well, Yu­ta­ka had been in charge of it, bring­ing it over here and putting it some­where.

Shin­ji put his bun­dles of rope and day pack down again. He be­gan search­ing the area on his knees. Yu­ta­ka did the same.

They groped in the dark, look­ing be­yond the trac­tor and be­low the work desk, but they couldn't find it. Shin­ji stood up and checked his watch again. In­stead of 12:10, it was ap­proach­ing 12:15.

Fi­nal­ly, he de­cid­ed to take out the flash­light from his day pack. He cupped the bulb area with his hands and turned it on.

He did his best not to let any light leak out, but the in­te­ri­or of the ware­house­like pseu­do farm coop glowed a faint yel­low. Shin­ji saw Yu­ta­ka's wor­ried face and then be­yond his shoul­der, he eas­ily lo­cat­ed the pul­ley, ly­ing be­yond the moon­light from the win­dow on the floor by the plain wall be­hind the desk. It was less than a me­ter away from Yu­ta­ka's day pack on the floor.

Shin­ji sig­naled Yu­ta­ka and quick­ly turned off the flash­light. Yu­ta­ka snatched up the pul­ley.

"I'm sor­ry, Shin­ji," Yu­ta­ka said apolo­get­ical­ly.

Shin­ji forced a grin, "Get it to­geth­er, Yu­ta­ka."

Then he shoul­dered the day pack and rope once again. He lift­ed the gas can. He was con­fi­dent about his strength, but two of these items were pret­ty heavy. Car­ry­ing the rope would on­ly be part­way, but he would have to car­ry the twen­ty-​kilo­gram gas can to the top of the moun­tain. And they had to hur­ry too.

Yu­ta­ka car­ried his bun­dle of rope (the heavy load made him look like a tor­toise weighed down by its shell. Well, Shin­ji looked no dif­fer­ent), and they walked to the slid­ing door on the east side of the build­ing. The door had been opened ap­prox­imate­ly ten cen­time­ters, let­ting in a thin ray of pale blue moon­light.

"I'm so sor­ry, Shin­ji," Yu­ta­ka said again.

"It's all right. Don't wor­ry. Let's just make sure we get it right from here on."

Shin­ji shift­ed the gas can to his left hand, put his right hand on the heavy steel door, and slid it open. The pale light spread out.

Out­side there was an un­paved park­ing lot. Its en­trance was on the right. The farm coop faced a nar­row road. Near its en­trance was a sta­tion wag­on. The wide lon­gi­tu­di­nal road travers­ing the is­land was slight­ly south of this road.

In front of the door, east of the park­ing lot, was a farm made up of sev­er­al hous­es. Be­yond that area was an­oth­er clus­ter of hous­es, and even in the dark you could see them.

To his left Shin­ji saw a small stor­age shack at the end of the prop­er­ty, and fur­ther on up was the school, and above it, as if it were em­brac­ing it, the cliff. There were some trees right by a two-​sto­ry house in front of the school. They were plan­ning on ty­ing the rope to the tallest tree there. They had se­cured the wire near the farm's wa­ter­way im­me­di­ate­ly left of the tree. So the wire went by the school and di­rect­ly up in­to the cen­ter of the moun­tain, where the over­look­ing rock was, cov­er­ing an amaz­ing dis­tance of three hun­dred me­ters.

I can't be­lieve I came up with this plan. I won­der though, whether that wire will re­al­ly lift the rope up to the moun­tain with­out get­ting cut?

Shin­ji took a breath and then af­ter con­sid­er­ing it, he de­cid­ed to say some­thing. It wouldn't mat­ter whether they heard him say this.

"Yu­ta­ka."

Yu­ta­ka looked up at Shin­ji. "What?"

"We might die. Are you pre­pared for that?"

For a mo­ment Yu­ta­ka fell silent. But then he an­swered im­me­di­ate­ly, "Yeah, I'm ready."

"Okay."

Shin­ji gripped the han­dle of the gas can again and was about to form a smile...

...that froze when he saw some­thing in the cor­ner of his eye.

Some­one's head emerged from the farm east of the park­ing lot.

"Yu­ta­ka!"

Shin­ji grabbed Yu­ta­ka's arm and ran back be­hind the slid­ing door in­to the slate-​walled farm coop build­ing. Yu­ta­ka teetered for a mo­ment, par­tial­ly due to the heavy rope, but man­aged to fol­low him. By the time they were crouched over be­hind the slid­ing door, Shin­ji al­ready had his gun aimed at the fig­ure.

The fig­ure shrieked, "D-​don't shoot! Shin­ji! Please don't shoot! It's me! Kei­ta!"

Shin­ji re­al­ized it was Kei­ta Iiji­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 2). Kei­ta, rel­ative­ly speak­ing, was friend­ly and got along with Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka (af­ter all they'd been class­mates since their first year), but Shin­ji wasn't re­lieved some­one was join­ing them. No, he felt like this meant trou­ble. That's when he re­al­ized he hadn't giv­en much thought to the pos­si­bil­ity of oth­ers join­ing them un­til now. Damn, why now!

"It's Kei­ta, Shin­ji. Come on, it's Kei­ta."

Shin­ji thought Yu­ta­ka's ex­cit­ed voice sound­ed a lit­tle in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

Kei­ta slow­ly stood up and pro­ceed­ed to­ward the farm coop premis­es. He held his day pack in his left hand and what looked like a kitchen knife in his right. He spoke cau­tious­ly.

"I saw the light."

Shin­ji clenched his teeth. It must have come from the flash­light he'd used just that one time to find the pul­ley. Shin­ji chid­ed him­self, how could he have screwed up like that, rush­ing to use that flash­light?

Kei­ta con­tin­ued, "So I came here and saw that it was you guys...what are you do­ing? What were you car­ry­ing? Rope? Let me...let me join you guys."

Know­ing how their con­ver­sa­tions were mon­itored, Yu­ta­ka knit his brow and looked over at Shin­ji, his eyes opened wide, re­al­iz­ing how Shin­ji hadn't low­ered his gun.

"Sh-​Shin­ji, what's go­ing on?"

Shin­ji moved his open right hand and sig­naled Yu­ta­ka not to move for­ward. "Yu­ta­ka. Don't move."

"Hey," Kei­ta said. His voice was shak­ing. "Why are you point­ing that at me?"

Shin­ji took a deep breath and said to Kei­ta, "Don't move." He could tell Yu­ta­ka was get­ting tense.

Kei­ta Iiji­ma's piti­ful face was vis­ible in the moon­light as he took a step for­ward.

"Why? Why won't you let me? Have you for­got­ten who I am, Shin­ji? Let me join you guys."

Shin­ji cocked his gun with a click. Kei­ta Iiji­ma stopped. They still had plen­ty of dis­tance, sev­en or eight me­ters.

"Don't come near us," Shin­ji slow­ly re­peat­ed. "I can't let you join."

Yu­ta­ka whined right be­side him, "Why, Shin­ji? We can trust Kei­ta."

Shin­ji shook his head. Then he thought, that's right, there's some­thing you don't know about us, Yu­ta­ka.

It wasn't a big deal. In fact it was a triv­ial in­ci­dent.

It hap­pened dur­ing their sec­ond year near the end of the term in March. Shin­ji went to Taka­mat­su to see a movie (there was no movie the­ater in Shi­roi­wa) with Kei­ta Iiji­ma. Yu­ta­ka was sup­posed to go too, but he had a cold that day.

That was how Shin­ji en­coun­tered three tough-​look­ing high school stu­dents in a back al­ley off the main street near the shop­ping ar­cade. Shin­ji and Kei­ta had al­ready seen the movie, and once they were done check­ing out the book and record stores (Shin­ji bought im­port­ed com­put­er books. They were lucky finds. Even though they were tech­ni­cal books, the gov­ern­ment strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed books from the West so they were dif­fi­cult to come by), they were head­ing over to the train sta­tion when Kei­ta re­al­ized he'd for­got to buy a com­ic book and went back to the book­store alone.

"Hey, you got any dough?" one of the high school stu­dents asked. This guy was at least ten cen­time­ters taller than Shin­ji, who at 172 me­ters was short for a bas­ket­ball play­er.

Shin­ji shrugged. "I think I have 2,571 yen."

The in­ter­roga­tor looked at the oth­er two as if say­ing, how lame. Then he leaned over by Shin­ji's ear. Shin­ji was an­noyed. Maybe it was from get­ting wast­ed on paint thin­ner or some wacky drug that was hip these days, in any case the guy's gums were re­ced­ing, and the smell of his breath com­ing be­tween his teeth reeked. Brush your teeth, man.

The guy said, "Give it up. Come on, now."

Shin­ji gave an ex­ag­ger­at­ed look of sur­prise and said, "Oh, so you guys are home­less! You know you should be con­tent with twen­ty yen then. I ac­tu­al­ly might give you some­thing if you get on your knees and beg for for­give­ness."

The guy with a gap in his teeth looked sur­prised while the oth­er two grinned.

"You still in ju­nior high, right? You should learn to re­spect your el­ders," the guy said and grabbed Shin­ji by the shoul­der. He kneed Shin­ji in the stom­ach. Shin­ji tight­ened his stom­ach mus­cles to take the blow. It didn't hurt that much. It was just a threat­en­ing knee kick. These guys could nev­er take on some­one their own age.

Shin­ji calm­ly pushed the high school stu­dent away. Then he said, "What was that? A Rus­sian hug?"

The guys prob­ably didn't even know where Rus­sia was. But the guy with the gap in his teeth seemed irked by Shin­ji's tone of voice, and his thin, ug­ly face con­tort­ed.

"That's it." He punched Shin­ji in the face. This al­so didn't hurt much, though the in­side of Shin­ji's mouth got cut.

Shin­ji stuck his fin­gers in his mouth to check the wound. It stung a lit­tle. He pulled out his fin­gers and found blood on them. It was noth­ing.

"Come on, give us your wal­let."

Still look­ing down, Shin­ji broke in­to a grin. He looked up. When their eyes met the guy with the gap in his teeth looked in­tim­idat­ed.

Shin­ji said play­ful­ly, "You made the first move," and then with the mo­tion of a short hook punch he swung the hard­cov­er im­port­ed book in his hand in­to the guy's filthy mouth. He felt the guy's teeth break, his head fly back.

It took ten sec­onds for the fight to end. Of course his un­cle's teach­ings had in­clud­ed fight­ing lessons too. It was triv­ial.

What wasn't triv­ial was some­thing else.

As he glared at the passers by who were star­ing at the high school stu­dents on the ground, Shin­ji head­ed back to the book store and found Kei­ta in the comics sec­tion. The book he went back for was al­ready in a shop­ping bag. He seemed to be brows­ing aim­less­ly, and when Shin­ji called on him, he said, "I'm sor­ry. I re­mem­bered there was an­oth­er book I want­ed..." Then his eyes opened wide and he asked him, "What hap­pened to your mouth?"

Shin­ji shrugged and said, "Let's go home." He knew though that Kei­ta had ac­tu­al­ly turned the street cor­ner for a split sec­ond and ducked back when he saw Shin­ji sur­round­ed by three high school stu­dents. Shin­ji had thought Kei­ta might have gone to call the po­lice. (Well, giv­en how they were so oc­cu­pied with the sup­pres­sion of civil­ians in­stead of crim­inals they weren't all that de­pend­able any­way.) Oh, so there was an­oth­er book you want­ed. I see.

Thanks to this in­ci­dent, the train ride back to Shi­roi­wa-​cho wasn't much fun.

Kei­ta prob­ably thought Shin­ji could take on three high school stu­dents with­out any prob­lem. And he was right. Kei­ta prob­ably didn't want to get hurt by get­ting in­volved in the fight. And okay, Shin­ji could un­der­stand how the high school stu­dents might take note of Kei­ta's face if he'd called the cops. Uh huh. And Kei­ta had no in­ten­tion of apol­ogiz­ing to Shin­ji. Some­times you need to lie to make the world go around.

These things hap­pen. As his un­cle of­ten used to say, cow­ards can't be fault­ed for be­ing sly. They can't be held re­spon­si­ble for ev­ery­thing.

But the cov­er was torn on the tech­ni­cal book Shin­ji bought. On top of that, the edge was stained with the guy's sali­va and dent­ed by his teeth. That re­al­ly got Shin­ji. Ev­ery time he'd open that book he'd have to re­call that an­noy­ing face. On top of that, and he might be called anal re­ten­tive for this, but he hat­ed it when his books were torn or dirty. He al­ways put cov­ers on them when he read them.

His un­cle al­so said this. When you can't ac­cept the re­sults, then you have to pun­ish who­ev­er was re­spon­si­ble for them. Even the score.

So from then on as a form of pun­ish­ment Shin­ji de­cid­ed to keep his dis­tance from Kei­ta. It wasn't such a se­vere pun­ish­ment. Af­ter all, it wasn't like he de­cid­ed they were en­emies. They were both bet­ter off this way.

So it was a triv­ial sto­ry. And he'd nev­er shared the in­ci­dent with Yu­ta­ka.

But maybe triv­ial­iz­ing a sto­ry like that one could get you killed in this game. This isn't re­venge, Un­cle. This is what you'd call the re­al world. I sim­ply can't be friends with him.

"That's right." In re­sponse to Yu­ta­ka's state­ment, Kei­ta Iiji­ma spread his arms. The kitchen knife in his right hand re­flect­ed the moon­light. "I thought we were friends."

Shin­ji still re­fused to low­er the muz­zle of his gun.

See­ing how adamant Shin­ji was, Kei­ta looked like he was about to burst in­to tears. He threw the kitchen knife on­to the ground. "See? I don't want to fight. Do you see now?"

Shin­ji shook his head. "No. Scram."

Kei­ta's face flushed with anger. "Why? Why won't you trust me?"

"Shin­ji-"

"Shut up, Yu­ta­ka."

Kei­ta's face froze. He turned qui­et...and then said, his voice trem­bling, "Is it be­cause of what I did that time, Shin­ji? When I ran off? Is that why you don't trust me, Shin­ji?"

Shin­ji aimed the gun at him with­out a word.

"Shin­ji..." Kei­ta's voice once again turned pa­thet­ic. He was prac­ti­cal­ly sob­bing, "I'm sor­ry about that Shin­ji. I'm so sor­ry, Shin­ji-"

Shin­ji's lips tight­ened. He won­dered whether Kei­ta was be­ing sin­cere or whether he putting on an act. But then he dis­missed the thought. I'm not alone. I can't risk Yu­ta­ka's life too. There was an apho­rism he'd heard claimed by a De­fense Min­is­ter of some na­tion, "We must de­fend our­selves ac­cord­ing to our op­po­nents' abil­ity, not their in­ten­tions." They were ap­proach­ing 1 a.m.

"Shin­ji, what is go­ing on-"

Shin­ji held Yu­ta­ka back with his right hand.

Kei­ta pro­ceed­ed for­ward. "Please. I'm so scared. Please let me join."

"Don't come any clos­er!" Shin­ji shout­ed.

Kei­ta Iiji­ma shook his sad face left and right and stepped out. He was ap­proach­ing Shin­ji and Yu­ta­ka.

Shin­ji point­ed the gun down­ward and pulled the trig­ger for the first time. The shell pop­ping out of the Beretta traced a pale white arc in the moon­light and a cloud of dust rose in front Kei­ta's feet. Kei­ta stared at it as if it were some rare chem­istry ex­per­iment.

But then he start­ed walk­ing again.

"Stop! Just stop!"

"Please let me join. Please."

Like a wind-​up doll Kei­ta stepped for­ward. Right, left, right.

Shin­ji clenched his teeth. If Kei­ta was go­ing to pull out some­thing be­sides his knife, it would have to come from his right arm.

Can you aim well? This time it won't be a threat. Ac­cu­rate­ly?

Of course.

There was no time left. Shin­ji pulled the trig­ger again.

He felt his fin­ger slip.

A split sec­ond be­fore the pop­ping sound, Shin­ji sud­den­ly re­al­ized that he was sweat­ing. He was sweat­ing from the ten­sion.

It hap­pened so sud­den­ly. Kei­ta Iiji­ma bent over as if his up­per body had been punched in. He spread out his arms like a shot­put­ter does right be­fore throw­ing a shot, then bent his knees and fell on his back. Even in the dark Shin­ji could clear­ly see the blood spurt­ing out of the hole in the right side of his chest like a small foun­tain. This was al­so in­stan­ta­neous.

"Shin­ji! What'd you do!" Yu­ta­ka screamed and ran to Kei­ta. He knelt be­side him and put his hands on Kei­ta's body, his mouth agape. Then af­ter hes­itat­ing for a mo­ment he touched his neck. His face went pale. "He's dead...."

Shin­ji re­mained frozen, still hold­ing on­to his gun. He felt like he wasn't think­ing, but he was. How lame, the voice echoed in his head. Al­though it was ir­rel­evant, the voice echoed the way it does when you talk to your­self in the show­er.

How lame. I thought you were sup­posed to be The Third Man, Shin­ji Mimu­ra, who nev­er missed a shot. The star shoot­ing guard of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High, Shin­ji Mimu­ra, right?

Shin­ji stood up and be­gan to walk for­ward. As if he'd sud­den­ly turned in­to a cy­borg, his body felt heavy. One day Shin­ji Mimu­ra woke up to find out that he had be­come the Ter­mi­na­tor. Great.

He slow­ly walked over to Kei­ta Iiji­ma's body.

Yu­ta­ka glared back at Shin­ji.

"Why, Shin­ji! Why'd you kill him!?"

Stand­ing mo­tion­less, Shin­ji an­swered, "I thought we'd be in trou­ble if Kei­ta had an­oth­er weapon be­sides the knife. I aimed for his arm. I didn't mean to kill him."

Hear­ing this, Yu­ta­ka checked Kei­ta Iiji­ma's body. As if to make a point, he looked through Kei­ta's day pack too. Then he said, "He had noth­ing! How could you, Shin­ji!? Why didn't you trust him!?"

Shin­ji sud­den­ly felt hol­low. But...it was nec­es­sary. Hey, Un­cle, I didn't do any­thing wrong, did I? Right?

Shin­ji looked down at Yu­ta­ka with­out say­ing a word. But-that's right-they had to hur­ry. They couldn't let their mis­takes drag them down.

Right be­fore he was about to say this, some­thing changed in Yu­ta­ka's face.

His lips trem­bled. He said, "Oh no, Shin­ji, don't tell me you-"

Shin­ji had no idea what he was re­fer­ring to. He asked, "What?"

Yu­ta­ka quick­ly stepped back. He dis­tanced him­self from Shin­ji.

Yu­ta­ka spoke through his trem­bling lips, "Shin­ji, you didn't do that on pur­pose-"

Shin­ji's lips tight­ened. He gripped the Beretta in his left hand.

"You're say­ing I shot Kei­ta to buy us time? That's..."

Yu­ta­ka fran­ti­cal­ly shook his head. Then he slow­ly re­treat­ed. "No...no...this whole plan-"

Shin­ji knit his brows and stared at Yu­ta­ka. Yu­ta­ka, what is it you're get­ting at?

"This whole thing about our es­cape, that was just, that was-"

Yu­ta­ka still didn't make any sense, but Shin­ji whose brain's CPU was amaz­ing­ly fast fi­nal­ly had un­der­stood what Yu­ta­ka was think­ing.

No, it can't be-

But what else could it be?

Yu­ta­ka was ac­cus­ing Shin­ji of hav­ing no in­ten­tion what­so­ev­er to es­cape, that he had been plan­ning all along to "play" this game. That's why he shot Kei­ta.

Shin­ji's face gave a look of ab­so­lute dis­may. His mouth might have been hang­ing open for all he knew.

Then he shout­ed, "Don't be stupid! Why the hell would I be with you then!?"

Yu­ta­ka was trem­bling, shak­ing his head. "That's... that's..."

Yu­ta­ka didn't say any­more, but Shin­ji un­der­stood that too. He prob­ably want­ed to say that Shin­ji was us­ing him to sur­vive, for in­stance by hav­ing him keep watch so Shin­ji could sleep. But wait­asec here, I used the lap­top to take on Sakamochi, and even af­ter that failed, I came up with this oth­er plan. So you're say­ing since I'm smart I was play­ing around with the cell phone and lap­top to gain your trust and that my hid­den in­ten­tion was to use the gaso­line and fer­til­iz­er to pro­tect my­self and win the game. That since I on­ly had one gun, a spe­cial ex­plo­sive would come in handy to sur­vive in this game? That right be­fore ex­ecut­ing the plan to bomb the school I was go­ing to say, "Nah, let's not"? Just like how I'd said, "It's not work­ing" when I was com­put­er hack­ing? Look, wait­asec though, what about that wire we in­stalled by the school? Are you say­ing I want­ed to start a wire-​can phone busi­ness on this is­land where all the phone cir­cuits have been shut off? Or you're just say­ing that was an­oth­er act? Or that I had some plan you couldn't even con­ceive of?

When I said I'd help out af­ter you told me you were go­ing to avenge Izu­mi Kanai's death, you cried. So my re­sponse was an­oth­er de­cep­tion?

That's too much, Yu­ta­ka. I mean there's no end to sus­pi­cion once you get go­ing. But you're go­ing too far. This is ab­surd. Re­al­ly, it's hi­lar­ious. Fun­nier than your jokes. Maybe you're los­ing it from fa­tigue.

That's what Shin­ji thought on a ra­tio­nal lev­el. And if he could have gone through each ex­pla­na­tion step by step then Yu­ta­ka would have re­al­ized how fool­ish ev­ery one of his sus­pi­cions were. In fact, ev­ery­thing Shin­ji could come up with might not have cor­re­spond­ed to Yu­ta­ka's sus­pi­cions. It might have been a sim­ple case of fa­tigue com­bined with the shock of wit­ness­ing his close friend die sud­den­ly giv­ing way to a sus­pi­cion lurk­ing some­where in the back of Yu­ta­ka's mind. But...it came to sur­face be­cause it had been there in the first place, his sus­pi­cion to­wards Shin­ji. And the thought of sus­pect­ing Yu­ta­ka had nev­er even oc­curred to Shin­ji.

All of a sud­den, the ex­haus­tion he felt was over­pow­er­ing. A hor­izon­tal twelve-​cylin­der tur­bo en­gine. This lev­el of ex­haus­tion is top-​class, yessir, it re­al­ly is a steal, sir.

Shin­ji un­cocked the Beretta and tossed it over to Yu­ta­ka. Yu­ta­ka hes­itat­ed but re­ceived it.

Emp­tied out, Shin­ji threw his hands on­to his knees.

"If you don't trust me then shoot me, Yu­ta­ka. I don't care, just shoot me." Crouch­ing, Shin­ji con­tin­ued, "I shot Kei­ta to pro­tect you, Yu­ta­ka. Damn."

Yu­ta­ka sud­den­ly looked at him blankly. Then ready to burst in­to tears, he ut­tered, "Oh...oh..." He ran to Shin­ji.

Yu­ta­ka put his hand on Shin­ji's shoul­der and be­gan sob­bing out loud. Shin­ji stared down at the ground with his hands on his knees. He re­al­ized his eyes too were filled with tears.

Some­where in the back of his mind, he was telling him­self, hey hey, don't you have more ur­gent mat­ters to at­tend to? Look how vul­ner­able you guys are bick­er­ing like this. Have you for­got­ten, you're sur­round­ed by en­emies? Look at your watch for cry­ing out loud, you're out of time...the voice re­sem­bled his un­cle's.

But Shin­ji's nerves were too worn out, his body too tired, and emo­tions too rat­tled from Yu­ta­ka's sus­pi­cion against him to take heed of this warn­ing.

He mere­ly cried. Yu­ta­ka. I was try­ing to pro­tect you. How could you sus­pect me? I trust­ed you...but then again, maybe Kei­ta Iiji­ma felt the same way. How hor­ri­ble to be sus­pect­ed by some­one you trust. I did an aw­ful thing.

Amidst these worn out emo­tions of sad­ness, ex­haus­tion, and re­gret, Shin­ji heard a rat­tling that sound­ed like the tap­ping of an old type­writ­er.

A split sec­ond lat­er, he felt as if burnt tongs were pok­ing through his body.

The wounds were fa­tal by then, but the pain made Shin­ji come to his sens­es. Yu­ta­ka, who had his hand on Shin­ji's shoul­der, fell to the ground. Over at the far end of the farm coop park­ing lot was a fig­ure in a school coat. He held a gun-some­thing big­ger than a pis­tol. It looked more like a tin box. Shin­ji re­al­ized he'd been shot-of course with bul­lets, damn-with bul­lets that had ex­it­ed through Yu­ta­ka's body.

His body felt hot and stiff (the guy just lanced me with lead bul­lets, duh), but Shin­ji re­flex­ive­ly fell to his left and picked up the Beretta Yu­ta­ka had tak­en and dropped. He aimed it at the fig­ure, Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6) and fired sev­er­al times at his stom­ach.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma shift­ed to the right be­fore the shots got to him, though. Then along with the rat­tling sound, the tips of his hands flashed like out-​of-​sea­son fire­works.

The blows he felt in the right side of his stom­ach, his left shoul­der, and chest were much worse than the one he'd just felt a mo­ment ago. The Beretta fell from his hand.

But by then Shin­ji had al­ready be­gun run­ning to­ward the farm coop. He stag­gered for a mo­ment, but then crouched down and dashed off, leap­ing through the slid­ing door head first. A stream of bul­lets chased af­ter him and right when Shin­ji thought he'd es­caped them, it man­aged to blow off the tip of his right foot's bas­ket­ball sneak­er. This time Shin­ji gri­maced in agony from the pain shoot­ing through his body.

But he had no time to rest. He grabbed the gas can in the shad­ow of the slid­ing door and re­treat­ed through the dark where the trac­tor and com­bine har­vester were, prac­ti­cal­ly crawl­ing on his left arm and left leg. He dragged the gas can with his right hand.

Blood was pour­ing out of his mouth. There were at least ten bul­lets in his body. And de­spite the sharp pain that shot up from his right foot he man­aged to glance at the van­ished tip of his bas­ket­ball shoes and thought, I guess I can't play ball any­more. Im­pos­si­ble now. Even if I could I'll nev­er be in the start­ing line­up. So much for my bas­ket­ball ca­reer.

But Shin­ji was more con­cerned about Yu­ta­ka. Could he still be alive?

Kazuo-Shin­ji coughed up blood as he clenched his teeth-so you've de­cid­ed to play the game, you bas­tard. Then come af­ter me. Yu­ta­ka can't move, but I can. You can take care of Yu­ta­ka lat­er. First come af­ter me. Come on, come af­ter me.

As if re­spond­ing to his wish, Shin­ji could see from un­der­neath the trac­tor a fig­ure in the blue pale belt of light com­ing in through the slid­ing door.

Then along with the rat­tling sound, lights flashed like cam­era flash­es, and bul­lets scat­tered across the build­ing. A part of some farm equip­ment was blown to bits, and the win­dow across from him was smashed in­to frag­ments.

It stopped. He was out of bul­lets. But Kazuo would reload an­oth­er mag­azine.

Shin­ji grabbed a screw­driv­er near him and tossed it to his left. It made a clang­ing sound and tapped on­to the floor.

He thought Kazuo would shoot over there, but in­stead he scat­tered bul­lets across in an arc around the screw­driv­er. Shin­ji ducked, pray­ing he wouldn't be hit. The shoot­ing stopped again. Shin­ji looked up.

Now...he could tell Kazuo was in­side the build­ing.

That's right, Shin­ji's blood-​drenched lips formed a smile. I'm over here. Come over here-

Shin­ji lift­ed the gas can with his right hand and placed it on his stom­ach. He moved back again with his left arm and left leg, try­ing his best not to make any sound. His back hit a hard, box­like ob­ject, and he slid around it as he con­tin­ued to re­treat. His move­ments weren't com­plete­ly silent. Kazuo al­ready knew he was hid­ing some­where in the dark here. The blood drip­ping out of him was a dead give­away.

Kazuo crouched down and checked un­der var­ious farm tools and the pick­up truck as he ap­proached Shin­ji.

Shin­ji sur­veyed the area. He could bare­ly make out the out­line of the up­per floor on the op­po­site side of the build­ing as well as the steel stairs that led up there from the door. If his body was in ad­equate con­di­tion he could have jumped on him from up there. But that wasn't pos­si­ble any­more.

There was a cart on the east wall. It was a push­cart with four small wheels used to car­ry equip­ment. The of­fice in the cor­ner with par­ti­tions was be­yond the push­cart and next to it was an ex­it. The slid­ing door, if ful­ly opened, was large enough for a car, but this one was on­ly for peo­ple. The door was shut.

That door...1 locked it along with the oth­er win­dows and ev­ery oth­er door. How long would it take me to un­lock it?

He had no time to think it over. Shin­ji dragged his body over to the push­cart. Once he was there he placed the gas can on it. He opened its lid. He pushed in the rub­ber ob­ject dan­gling from a plas­tic cord.

He took out the det­ona­tion de­vice in his pock­et. His fin­gers were clum­sy-prob­ably due to his wounds-but they fi­nal­ly man­aged to peel off the tape on the side of the bat­tery, re­veal­ing an ex­posed wire dan­gling from the det­ona­tor tube. Shin­ji con­nect­ed it to the wire tip of the con­denser cir­cuit. He pulled off the in­su­la­tion of the bat­tery case. As he heard a faint, high hum from the rapid charge of the con­denser, he quick­ly peeled off the tape on the charge de­vice switch and shoved the det­ona­tor tube deep in­side the gas can's rub­ber cap. He left the rest of the unit, in­clud­ing the charge de­vice, the bat­tery case, and cir­cuit, on top of the gas can. He had no time to se­cure it. He could see Kazuo's feet to the right of the thresh­ing ma­chine.

His chances were slim. But now that Yu­ta­ka and me are in­jured there's no way we'll ev­er make it up the moun­tain. So...

...here's a spe­cial some­thing for you, Kazuo.

Shin­ji kicked the push­cart with his left leg as hard as he could. As the cart skimmed by the oth­er equip­ment, Shin­ji leaped for the ex­it door with­out even check­ing to see if the cart was head­ing to­wards Kazuo.

He un­locked it in 0.2 sec­onds. He even uti­lized his right leg with its miss­ing foot tip to crash through the door and leap out of the build­ing.

The slate walls of the farm coop be­hind him sud­den­ly burst with an ex­plo­sion that shook the en­tire dark is­land. The sound of Kazuo's hand grenade that had tem­porar­ily dis­abled Shuya's hear­ing was noth­ing com­pared to this ex­plo­sion. Shin­ji re­al­ized, whoa, there go my eardrums.

His body slid on the ground from the blast of the ex­plo­sion, scrap­ing off the skin on his fore­head. Frag­ments and scraps blew by. Still, Shin­ji man­aged to look back quick­ly and see, right where the build­ing's wall should be, the light truck float­ing in the air up­side down. Prob­ably due to its raised po­si­tion from the jack, the blast had slammed it with in­cred­ible pres­sure, blow­ing it up­wards. It spun around slow­ly in air filled with frag­ments of glass, slate, and con­crete (he felt as if they were al­so stuck in­to his body too, but the ones he saw now didn't come fly­ing out di­rect­ly, but were blown up in­to the sky), traced an ex­ag­ger­at­ed arc, and crashed on its side in the mid­dle of the park­ing lot. It rolled over an­oth­er nine­ty de­grees and stopped, com­plete­ly up­side down. The back car­riage was near­ly torn off, twist­ed up like a wrung out rag, and the wheel with a miss­ing tire some­how man­aged to still spin around and around.

Frag­ments con­tin­ued show­er­ing down. Im­mersed in clouds of smoke the farm coop was now re­duced to on­ly its frame. The on­ly wall re­main­ing was part of the one on the north side, along with the up­per floor. But the up­per floor was com­plete­ly ex­posed be­hind the smoke. The south side of the roof was com­plete­ly blown away, and the ma­chines, in­clud­ing the farm equip­ment, were scat­tered around on their sides. Even in the dark Shin­ji could tell they were burnt black. He saw sev­er­al bright flames. Maybe some­thing was on fire. The side ex­it Shin­ji used to es­cape through was bare­ly con­nect­ed to the re­mains of the wall by the bot­tom hinges, bent over his way, as if bow­ing. The of­fice with par­ti­tions had com­plete­ly van­ished with­out a trace. Well, ac­tu­al­ly there was the of­fice desk still hang­ing on, glued to the part of the wall that es­caped de­struc­tion, pushed from be­hind by the com­bine har­vester that was al­so prob­ably blown away by the ex­plo­sion.

Some­thing must have been blown up high in the sky be­cause, com­plete­ly out of sync with the oth­er de­bris, it was fi­nal­ly land­ing some­where in the smoke with a high metal­lic ring. Al­though Shin­ji could hard­ly hear it.

Next thing he knew, Shin­ji was strug­gling to get up from the de­bris of wall and oth­er ma­te­ri­als, star­ing at the ru­ins of the build­ing. He gasped.

Yes, the hand­made gaso­line can bomb was well made. With that kind of de­struc­tive force it would have cer­tain­ly an­ni­hi­lat­ed the school.

But that was all over now. The im­por­tant thing now was that he'd de­feat­ed the en­emy com­ing af­ter him. And even more ur­gent was-

"Yu­ta­ka..."

He mum­bled as he fi­nal­ly got up, kneel­ing on his right knee on the de­bris. The mo­ment he opened his mouth, blood came gush­ing out be­tween his teeth, and he felt an in­cred­ible surge of pain run­ning from his chest down to his stom­ach. It was a mir­acle he was still alive. But he stretched out his arms and put his right leg down on its heel and then stretched out his left leg and some­how man­aged to stand up. Shin­ji looked over to the edge of the park­ing lot where Yu­ta­ka was ly­ing...

...when he saw the over­turned light truck's door-it must have been bust­ed-open with a dull creak­ing sound. (He could hear it faint­ly. Some of his hear­ing seemed to be com­ing back.)

Kazuo Kiriya­ma stepped down on­to the ground. He held the tin-​box-​like ma­chine gun in his right hand as if noth­ing had hap­pened.

Hey-

Shin­ji felt like he should burst out laugh­ing. For all he knew his blood-​soaked lips might have even formed a smile.

You got­ta be kid­ding.

By then Kazuo fired. Shin­ji this time met a full frontal parabol­ic show­er of 9mm bul­lets and stag­gered back in­to the ground cov­ered with de­bris. Some­thing was press­ing in­to his back. As of now there re­al­ly was no need to check it, but he thought it was the front of the parked sta­tion wag­on. The sta­tion wag­on had al­so been blown up by the blast, its back stuck in­to a wood­en tele­phone pole now lop­sid­ed from the im­pact. An­oth­er ob­ject seemed to have smashed in­to its wind­shield, which re­sem­bled a spi­der's web.

Sur­round­ed by the bright flames burn­ing in the build­ing, Kazuo calm­ly stood still. Then be­yond him Shin­ji saw Yu­ta­ka ly­ing on his face, half buried in the de­bris. Right near him was Kei­ta Iiji­ma ly­ing on his back, his face star­ing at Shin­ji.

He thought, Kazuo, damn, so I end­ed up los­ing to you.

He thought, I'm sor­ry Yu­ta­ka, I let my guard down for a mo­ment.

He thought, Un­cle, how lame, huh?

He thought, Iku­mi, fall in love and be hap­py. Looks like I won't be able to...looks like...

Kazuo Kiriya­ma's In­gram burst out once again and Shin­ji's thoughts came to an end. The bul­lets had torn apart his cere­bral cor­tex. Near his head, the cracked front wind­shield was now shat­tered, most of its frag­ments slid­ing in­to the car, but some of the fin­er mist­like par­ti­cles fell on Shin­ji's body al­ready cov­ered with dust and de­bris.

Shin­ji slow­ly fell for­ward on his face. De­bris bounced up on im­pact. It took less than thir­ty sec­onds for the rest of his body be­sides his brain to die. The me­men­to of his beloved un­cle-the ear­ring worn by the wom­an he loved-was now stained in blood run­ning down Shin­ji's left ear, re­flect­ing the glow from the build­ing now con­sumed in red flames.

And so the boy known as The Third Man, Shin­ji Mimu­ra, was now dead.

17 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART THREE

FI­NAL STAGE

17 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

52

In the bush­es with her blan­ket over her shoul­ders, Noriko hugged her knees and stared at the ground. It was still very dark and in­sects were hum­ming the way a flu­ores­cent light sput­ters out be­fore it dies.

Sakamochi's mid­night an­nounce­ment came on right af­ter they reached this area. He an­nounced the death of Hi­rono Shimizu (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 10), who had-al­though Noriko her­self didn't see it-killed Kaori Mi­na­mi and fled from Shuya, fol­lowed by the ad­di­tion of three for­bid­den zones. At 1 a.m. F=7, at 3 a.m. G=3, and at 5 a.m. E=4. Noriko and Shogo's sec­tor, C=3, was still safe. Shuya's name wasn't men­tioned, but...

Ten to twen­ty min­utes lat­er, there was dis­tant gun­fire again and then the sound of that ma­chine gun. Noriko's heart froze. The sound con­tin­ued.

She couldn't for­get it. It was un­mis­tak­able-the sound of Kazuo Kiriya­ma's ma­chine gun. Un­less some­one else had the same gun. Re­gard­less, the sound was enough to make her won­der whether Kazuo had fi­nal­ly caught up to Shuya.

Be­fore Noriko could men­tion this to Shogo though, there was an in­cred­ible ex­plo­sion. The hand grenade they en­coun­tered when they were fight­ing Kiriya­ma was noth­ing com­pared to this. And then there was the faint sound of the ma­chine gun, once or twice. Af­ter that the is­land re­turned to si­lence.

Even Shogo seemed sur­prised by the sound. He was carv­ing an ar­row-​like ob­ject with his knife when he sud­den­ly stopped and said, "I'm go­ing to go have a look. Don't move," and walked out of the bush­es. He came back im­me­di­ate­ly and told her, "A build­ing's on fire on the east side."

Noriko start­ed to ask, "Could it be?..." but Shogo shook his head and said, "It's quite a ways south from where Kiriya­ma was. Shuya es­caped in­to the moun­tain­side, so it can't be him. Let's wait for him here."

Noriko felt re­lieved for the time be­ing. But near­ly an en­tire hour had passed since then. Shuya still hadn't re­turned.

Noriko held her wrist un­der the coin-​sized moon­light com­ing through the branch­es and checked her watch. It was 1:12 a.m. She'd been re­peat­ing this ges­ture as if it were a mag­ical rit­ual.

Then she buried her head be­tween her knees.

A hor­ri­ble im­age flashed by in her thoughts. Shuya's face. His mouth half-​open and eyes look­ing off in­to the dis­tance, the way he looked singing a song called "Imag­ine" (Shuya said it was a rock stan­dard) dur­ing one of their breaks in the mu­sic room, out of the teach­er's sight. But this face had a large, black dot sim­ilar to one worn by a Hin­du wor­ship­per. With­out warn­ing, red liq­uid came ooz­ing out of the dot. The large dot was in fact a very dark and deep hole. The blood poured out from his brain, cov­er­ing his face...like cracks run­ning through a piece of glass__

Noriko shiv­ered and shook her head, dis­miss­ing the thought. She looked up at Shogo, who was lean­ing against a tree trunk, smok­ing a cigarette. There was a hand­made bow next to him and sev­er­al ar­rows stuck in the ground.

"Shogo."

He looked like a sil­hou­ette in the dark. He re­moved the cigarette from his mouth and rest­ed his right wrist on his up­right knee.

"What is it?"

"Shuya should be here by now."

He put his cigarette in his mouth again. Its tip red­dened, faint­ly light­ing up his calm face. Noriko felt im­pa­tient. His face dark­ened again and smoke drift­ed out of his mouth.

"Yeah."

His calm tone al­so ir­ri­tat­ed her. But then she re­mind­ed her­self how he'd saved her and Shuya sev­er­al times over, so she re­strained her­self.

"Some­thing must have...hap­pened."

"Prob­ably."

"What do you mean, 'prob­ably'?"

His sil­hou­ette raised its arms. The lit cigarette moved. "Calm down. That was def­inite­ly Kazuo's ma­chine gun. Un­less they sup­plied an iden­ti­cal ma­chine gun to some­one else. And giv­en how the ex­plo­sion oc­curred over there, it means that Kazuo was fight­ing some­one be­sides Shuya. Shuya es­caped from Kazuo. I know that much."

"But then why isn't he-"

He in­ter­rupt­ed, "He's prob­ably hid­ing some­where. Or he might have got­ten lost."

She shook her head. "He might be hurt. Or even worse..."

She felt a chill run down her spine. She couldn't con­tin­ue. The im­age of Shuya with the red spi­der-​web face and half-​open mouth flashed by again. Shuya might have es­caped from Kazuo, but he might have been severe­ly wound­ed, he might be dy­ing right now. Even if that wasn't the case, what if he was at­tacked by some­one while he was run­ning through the moun­tains... or what if he fell un­con­scious some­where, and what if that was in a for­bid­den zone, then Shuya would end up dead. That's right...Shuya might have run in­to the base of the north­ern moun­tain which was in sec­tor F=7, di­rect­ly north of the school, sec­tor F=7 which was a for­bid­den zone as of 1 a.m. And now it was past 1 a.m. Which meant...

She shook her head again. That couldn't be. Shuya couldn't die. Be­cause...Shuya was like a holy man with a gui­tar. He was al­ways kind to ev­ery­one, he was al­ways so sym­pa­thet­ic to the sor­rows of oth­ers, but he would nev­er lose that pow­er­ful smile, he was so up­right and trans­par­ent and in­no­cent but al­so tough. He's like my guardian an­gel. How could some­one like that die? There's no way he could...but still...

Shogo qui­et­ly said, "He might be, he might not be."

She turned her wrist and ner­vous­ly checked her watch again. She moved her leg painful­ly and si­dled up to Shogo. She squeezed Shogo's left hand, which was on his knees, with both hands.

"Please. Can't we go...can't we go look for him? Will you come with me? I can't do this on my own. Please."

Shogo said noth­ing. He on­ly lift­ed his left hand slow­ly, re­turn­ing Noriko's hands to her thighs, and tapped them light­ly. "We can't. Even if you in­sist on go­ing alone, I won't let you. Shuya want­ed me to look af­ter you. He took a big risk mak­ing us leave be­fore him. I don't want to jeop­ar­dize all he did for us."

She bit her low­er lip and stared at him.

"Don't give me that look. You're mak­ing this hard on me." Shogo scratched his head with his hand hold­ing his cigarette and said, "You care about Shuya, right?"

She nod­ded. She didn't hes­itate.

He nod­ded back and said, "Then let's re­spect his wish­es."

She bit her lip again, but then looked down and nod­ded. "All right. We can on­ly wait, right?"

"That's right." He nod­ded.

They were silent for a while but then he asked, "Do you be­lieve in sixth sense?"

The top­ic was so un­ex­pect­ed Noriko widened her eyes. Was he try­ing to dis­tract her?

"Well...a lit­tle. I don't re­al­ly know though," she re­spond­ed. "Do you?"

He crushed his cigarette in­to the ground. Then he said, "Ab­so­lute­ly not...well, I don't think it mat­ters ei­ther way. All that stuff about ghosts, the af­ter­life, cos­mic pow­er, sixth sense, for­tune telling, psy­chic pow­ers, that's just the talk of fools who can on­ly deal with re­al­ity by avoid­ing it. I'm sor­ry. You said you be­lieved a lit­tle. That's just my opin­ion. But..."

She looked at his eyes. "But?"

"But some­times with­out any ap­par­ent rea­son I'm cer­tain about things I can't know for sure. And for some rea­son I've nev­er been wrong when this hap­pens."

She re­mained silent and stared at him.

He said, "Shuya's still alive. He'll be back. I know it."

Her face sud­den­ly re­laxed. He might have been mak­ing this up on the spot, but even so she was touched he made the ef­fort.

"Thanks," she said, "You're kind, Shogo."

He shrugged. "I'm just telling you how I feel." Then he said, "Shuya's a lucky guy."

She looked over at him. "Hm?"

"Lucky that some­one loves him this much."

She smiled just a lit­tle. "You got it wrong."

"What?"

"It's un­re­quit­ed. Shuya likes some­one else. I'm noth­ing com­pared to her."

"...re­al­ly?"

She looked down and nod­ded. "She's re­al­ly awe­some. I don't know how to de­scribe her. She's so strong and beau­ti­ful. I'm jeal­ous, but I can un­der­stand why he's at­tract­ed to her."

He tilt­ed his head and said, "I don't know." He flicked his lighter sev­er­al times and lit an­oth­er cigarette and added, "I think Shuya cares about you now."

She shook her head. "Oh no."

"When he comes back," he smiled, "you should let him have it, call him a jerk for mak­ing you wor­ry like this."

She smiled a lit­tle again.

He blew out smoke. "Now lie down. You haven't ful­ly re­cov­ered yet. Once you're drowsy, get some sleep. I'll stay up all night. If Shuya shows up, I'll tell him to wake the princess with a kiss."

"Uh huh." She smiled and nod­ded. "Thanks."

She still sat up an­oth­er ten min­utes. Then she wrapped her­self in the blan­ket and lay down.

She still couldn't sleep though.

17 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

53

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra was get­ting ex­haust­ed. He'd been walk­ing with­out stop­ping ev­er since the game be­gan, so it was on­ly nat­ural. But ev­ery time he heard Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment, his lev­el of ex­haus­tion rose as if he were climb­ing a stair­case. Now on­ly twen­ty were left...no, as far as Hi­ro­ki knew, the num­ber was down to sev­en­teen. It was hard to be­lieve, but Shin­ji Mimu­ra was dead, along with Yu­ta­ka Se­to and Kei­ta Iiji­ma.

Af­ter he left Shuya's group at the clin­ic, Hi­ro­ki head­ed to­wards the is­land's north­west shore, which he'd nev­er checked out. Then a lit­tle past 11 p.m. he heard heavy gun­fire and moved back east of the is­land's cen­tral area in pur­suit of the sound. But the noise stopped be­fore he got there, so he couldn't find any­thing. Then the mid­night an­nounce­ment came, and the ad­di­tion­al for­bid­den zones were an­nounced. Hi­ro­ki de­cid­ed to comb through each of those zones. As he was en­ter­ing the north side of the school, sec­tor F=7, which would be for­bid­den at 1 a.m., he heard a gun­shot and then...that ma­chine gun sound.

Be­cause he was in the moun­tain, look­ing over the flat area, Hi­ro­ki saw a re­peat­ing flash, what seemed like a muz­zle flash­ing in the farm im­me­di­ate­ly west of the hous­ing area. As he de­scend­ed the slope he heard an ear-​shat­ter­ing ex­plo­sion. The night sky above the trees lit up. Then he heard the rat­tling sound again.

As he left the foot of the moun­tain, he saw a build­ing on fire where the light had been flash­ing. Hi­ro­ki thought the as­sailant with the ma­chine gun might still be there, but as he'd done with Megu­mi Eto, he had to find out what hap­pened. He cau­tious­ly wove his way through the farm, ap­proach­ing the area where...

...he found the body of Shin­ji Mimu­ra. The area was flick­er­ing with flames. The ware­house build­ing-that must have been what ex­plod­ed-was blown apart. Large and small de­bris were scat­tered all over what ap­peared to be a park­ing lot. Shin­ji was ly­ing face down in front of a sta­tion wag­on in the lot. His body was rid­dled with bul­lets. Lat­er Hi­ro­ki found the bod­ies of Yu­ta­ka Se­to and Kei­ta Iiji­ma in the de­bris.

There was no trace of the as­sailant with the ma­chine gun, but Hi­ro­ki thought it was like­ly some­one who was "play­ing the game" would show up soon, so he quick­ly left the area.

It was on­ly af­ter he'd crossed the is­land's lat­itu­di­nal road and en­tered the base of the south­ern moun­tain that he thought about Shin­ji, the death of the Shin­ji Mimu­ra. There was some­thing un­be­liev­able about it, since Hi­ro­ki knew him pret­ty well. It sound­ed of­fen­sive now, but he'd al­ways thought Shin­ji was im­mor­tal. Hi­ro­ki went to the town mar­tial arts school and learned mar­tial arts, but that in the end was just a mat­ter of tech­nique. It was noth­ing against Shin­ji's in­born ath­let­ic prowess. Even if they'd fought ac­cord­ing to mar­tial arts rules, and even though Hi­ro­ki was ten cen­time­ters taller, Shin­ji would have eas­ily de­feat­ed him in a match. Be­sides, Shin­ji was much smarter than him. Even if Shin­ji couldn't es­cape the game (al­though it was like­ly he'd con­sid­ered it), Hi­ro­ki firm­ly be­lieved no one else would be able to kill Shin­ji. And yet the ma­chine gun shoot­er some­how man­aged to do just that.

He couldn't af­ford to mourn over Shin­ji, though. What mat­tered now was find­ing Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki. He had to find her soon-if the ma­chine gun shoot­er found her, some­one like Ko­to­hi­ki would get in­stant­ly killed.

Since sec­tor G=3, for­bid­den at 3 a.m., was on the north­ern side of the south­ern moun­tain peak, Hi­ro­ki de­cid­ed to head over there.

He'd al­ready en­tered this moun­tain sev­er­al times now. Takako Chi­gusa's body was still ly­ing in sec­tor H=4 in the re­gion right be­fore sec­tor G=3. He couldn't even bury her body. He'd on­ly man­aged to close her eyes and cross her arms over her chest. Her body was still out­side the for­bid­den zone.

As he cau­tious­ly moved for­ward through the dark­ness, Hi­ro­ki thought, I'm so aw­ful. He wasn't even able to stay by his clos­est child­hood friend. He'd prob­ably be walk­ing by her as he head­ed to­wards sec­tor G=3.

I'm so sor­ry, Takako. I still need to take care of some­thing. Right now I just have to see Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki. Please for­give me...

Then some­thing else oc­curred to him. It con­cerned Yu­ta­ka Se­to.

Yu­ta­ka's seat­ing num­ber im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed his, so Yu­ta­ka had ex­it­ed right af­ter Hi­ro­ki. But Hi­ro­ki was still in the mid­dle of check­ing out the premis­es, fran­ti­cal­ly search­ing for a hid­ing place that gave him a clear look at the school ex­it, so Yu­ta­ka was gone by the time he could af­ford to look back. Hi­ro­ki de­cid­ed Takako would be his pri­or­ity, and so he let Haru­ka Taniza­wa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 12) and Yuichi­ro Takiguchi (Male Stu­dent No. 13) pass by. (But in spite of his ex­treme cau­tion, Yoshio Aka­mat­su's sur­prise ap­pear­ance had made him pan­ic enough to lose Takako.) Yu­ta­ka had man­aged to join up with his friends Shin­ji Mimu­ra and Kei­ta Iiji­ma. But Yu­ta­ka was now dead along with Shin­ji.

I have to hur­ry, he thought. I can't let Ko­to­hi­ki die.

He stopped by a bare tree and checked the radar in his left hand again. With the moon pro­vid­ing the on­ly source of light, the un­lit liq­uid crys­tal dis­play was dif­fi­cult to read, but by squint­ing his eyes he found he could make out faint traces of the crys­tal par­ti­cles.

Noth­ing changed on the screen, though. There was on­ly the star mark in­di­cat­ing his po­si­tion. Hi­ro­ki sighed.

Maybe he should just shout for Ko­to­hi­ki. Hi­ro­ki had con­sid­ered do­ing this sev­er­al times, but then de­cid­ed against it. When he found Takako, it had been too late. He didn't want that to hap­pen again.

No. It wouldn't work. He couldn't. First of all, Ko­to­hi­ki wouldn't nec­es­sar­ily re­spond to his call. In fact, she might run away. Fur­ther­more, al­though he didn't care about some­one com­ing af­ter him once he called for her, if Ko­to­hi­ki were to come at the same time she might end up get­ting at­tacked.

In the end, he could on­ly re­ly on the gov­ern­ment-​sup­plied radar. And with­out this equip­ment, he would have been even worse off. He ab­so­lute­ly de­spised the gov­ern­ment for throw­ing them in­to this stupid game, but he had to ad­mit he ben­efit­ed from his equip­ment. What's this called? A stroke of luck in hard times? Or more like, a light in a tun­nel of fury?

He went up and down a low cliff cov­ered in bush­es and came out on­to a gen­tle slope scat­tered with trees. He knew he was en­ter­ing sec­tor H=4, where Takako was rest­ing in peace. Hi­ro­ki raised the radar, mov­ing it slight­ly to catch the moon­light on the crys­tal dis­play.

He saw a blurred dou­ble im­age of the star mark in­di­cat­ing his po­si­tion at the cen­ter of the dis­play. Oh no, I'm get­ting tired. Even my vi­sion's go­ing now.

Hi­ro­ki was still look­ing down when he re­al­ized he was wrong. At the same time, he turned around and swung his stick in his right hand. Fol­low­ing the mar­tial arts tech­nique he had learned so thor­ough­ly, his el­egant swing traced a grace­ful arc.

The stick im­pres­sive­ly land­ed on the arm of the fig­ure stand­ing be­hind him. The per­son groaned and dropped the ob­ject, a gun, in their hand. Some­one had snuck up be­hind him when his guard was down for that brief mo­ment.

The fig­ure made a dash for the gun on the ground. Hi­ro­ki thrust the stick out in front of him. The fig­ure froze and then stag­gered back-

Hi­ro­ki saw it. First, it was on­ly the sailor suit. Then the beau­ti­ful face, bright­ly lit by the moon-an­gel­ic-it was un­mis­tak­ably hers. It was right af­ter he left the school, when he still hadn't man­aged to find a hid­ing place___Hi­ro­ki had been lurk­ing in the cor­ner of the ath­let­ic field when he saw the face of Mit­suko Souma (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 11) as she emerged from the school build­ing af­ter him.

Mit­suko lift­ed both of her hands and stepped back. "Please don't kill me! Please don't kill me!" she shout­ed. She stag­gered and fell on her be­hind, re­veal­ing her white legs up be­yond her thighs un­der her pleat­ed skirt. She con­tin­ued co­quet­tish­ly to move back in the pale blue moon­light.

"Please! I was just try­ing to talk to you! I wouldn't think of killing any­one! Please help me! Help me!"

Hi­ro­ki looked down at her with­out say­ing a word.

Maybe she'd tak­en his si­lence to be a sign he meant no harm. Mit­suko slow­ly low­ered her hands. Her eyes had the in­tim­idat­ed look of a ter­ri­fied mouse, and tears were gleam­ing in them.

"You be­lieve me, don't you?" she said. A ray of moon­light fell on her tearstained face. Her eyes were faint­ly smil­ing. Of course, it wasn't the proud vic­to­ri­ous smile of de­cep­tion, but a smile brim­ming with re­lief that she felt deep in her heart.

"I...I..." she said but then pulled on her skirt with her left hand as if she'd fi­nal­ly re­al­ized her thighs were ex­posed. "I thought I could trust you...so...I've been so scared...all alone...this is so aw­ful...I'm just so ter­ri­fied..."

With­out say­ing a word, Hi­ro­ki picked up the gun Mit­suko had dropped. He saw it was cocked, so he un­cocked the ham­mer with one hand and walked over to Mit­suko. He of­fered her the han­dle of the gun.

"Th-​thanky­ou..." Mit­suko reached out.

But the gun froze.

Hi­ro­ki flipped it around with his hand. Now the muz­zle was point­ed right be­tween her brows.

"Wh-​what are you do­ing, Hi­ro­ki?"

Mit­suko's face was twist­ed with dis­may and hor­ror-at the very least it looked con­tort­ed. She was price­less. It wouldn't mat­ter how many sor­did ru­mors you heard about Mit­suko Souma, most peo­ple (par­tic­ular­ly guys) would have to be­lieve her once this an­gel­ic face of hers plead­ed for mer­cy. No, even if you didn't be­lieve her, you'd still end up do­ing any­thing you could for her. By no means was Hi­ro­ki an ex­cep­tion. Still, he had spe­cial cir­cum­stances.

"For­get it, Mit­suko," Hi­ro­ki said. He held the gun and stood up­right. "I saw Takako right be­fore she died."

"Oh..."

She looked up at him, her per­fect­ly shaped eyes trem­bling. Even if in­side she was re­gret­ting not hav­ing fin­ished Takako off, she gave no in­di­ca­tion what­so­ev­er of any re­gret. She just main­tained that ter­ri­fied look...a look seek­ing un­der­stand­ing and pro­tec­tion.

"N-​no! That was an ac­ci­dent. Sure, I saw some of the oth­ers. But...when I en­coun­tered Takako...it was her... she... she tried to kill me... that gun's re­al­ly Takako's...so...so I..."

Hi­ro­ki re­cocked the Colt .45 with a click. Mit­suko's eyes squint­ed.

"I know Takako. Takako would nev­er try to kill some­one, nor would she ev­er pan­ic and go on a shoot­ing spree. Even in this stupid game," Hi­ro­ki said.

Mit­suko tucked in her chin. She looked up at Hi­ro­ki and formed a smile. While it sent chills down his spine, it was pre­cise­ly then that Mit­suko looked even more beau­ti­ful.

Ha, she faint­ly laughed. "I thought she died in­stant­ly," she said.

Hi­ro­ki didn't re­spond and kept point­ing the gun at her.

Still sit­ting, Mit­suko pinched the edge of her skirt with her left thumb and in­dex fin­ger, pulling it back slow­ly, once again re­veal­ing those en­tic­ing legs.

Hi­ro­ki looked up.

"How about it? If you help me, you can do what you like with me. I'm not bad, you know."

Hi­ro­ki re­mained frozen, hold­ing the gun. He ex­am­ined her face.

"I guess not," Mit­suko said. She said light­ly, "Of course not. I mean I'd kill you the mo­ment you let down your guard. Be­sides, how could you sleep with the girl who killed your girl­friend-"

"She's not my girl­friend."

Mit­suko looked at Hi­ro­ki.

Hi­ro­ki con­tin­ued, "But she was my best friend."

"Oh re­al­ly?" Mit­suko raised her brow. Then she asked, "Why won't you shoot me then? Is it be­cause you're some kind of fem­inist? Can't shoot wom­en?"

Her supreme­ly con­fi­dent face was still beau­ti­ful. It was to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from Takako's, who, that's right, had the grace­ful beau­ty of a war god­dess in Greek or Ro­man myth. Here we had a teenage sor­cer­ess. She's charm­ing, in­no­cent, an­gel­ic, yet com­plete­ly frigid. Un­der the moon­light, her eyes were like gleam­ing ice. Hi­ro­ki felt dizzy.

"How..." He could tell his voice was hoarse. "How could you kill some­one so eas­ily?"

"You fool," Mit­suko said. She sound­ed as if she could care less about the gun point­ed at her fore­head. "Those are the rules."

Hi­ro­ki squint­ed and shook his head. "Not ev­ery­one's play­ing by them."

Mit­suko tilt­ed her head again. Then she said, still smil­ing warm­ly, "Hi­ro­ki." It sound­ed so plain and friend­ly, the way a girl who end­ed up sit­ting next to her crush would call him, look­ing for some top­ic to bring up be­fore home­room be­gan.

"You're prob­ably a good per­son, Hi­ro­ki," she said.

Hi­ro­ki didn't un­der­stand and knit his brows. His mouth might have been open.

Mit­suko con­tin­ued, light­ly, as she were singing, "Good peo­ple are good. In some re­spects. But even those good peo­ple can turn bad. Or maybe they end up be­ing good their en­tire lives. Maybe you're one of those peo­ple."

Mit­suko looked away from Hi­ro­ki and then shook her head.

"No, that's be­side the point. I just de­cid­ed to take in­stead of be­ing tak­en. It's not a ques­tion of good or bad, wrong or right. It's just what I want to do."

Hi­ro­ki's lips trem­bled. They were twitch­ing un­con­trol­lably.

"...why though?"

Mit­suko smiled again. "I don't know. But if I have to come up with some ex­pla­na­tion. Well, for starters..." She looked in­to Hi­ro­ki's eyes and then said, "I was raped when I was nine years old. Three guys tak­ing turns, three times each, oh, wait, one of them might have done it four times. One of you did it. Al­though they were mid­dle-​aged men. I was just a skin­ny kid back then, my chest was flat, and my legs were like sticks, but that's what they want­ed. And when I start­ed scream­ing that on­ly ex­cit­ed them more. So even now when I'm with per­vert­ed men like that I still pre­tend to cry."

Hi­ro­ki stood frozen as he stared at Mit­suko who'd just re­vealed so much but con­tin­ued wear­ing her pleas­ant smile. He was shocked by this dev­as­tat­ing sto­ry.

It was-

Hi­ro­ki might have been on the verge of say­ing some­thing. But be­fore he could, a sil­ver light flashed out of Mit­suko's hands. Hi­ro­ki re­al­ized Mit­suko had man­aged to reach be­hind her back with her right hand, but by then the dou­ble-​blad­ed div­er's knife (this used to be Megu­mi Eto's weapon) was al­ready plant­ed in his right shoul­der. Hi­ro­ki let out a groan, and al­though he still held the gun, he stag­gered back in pain.

Mit­suko in­stant­ly got up, ran past Hi­ro­ki, and in­to the woods be­hind him.

Hi­ro­ki quick­ly looked back and caught a glimpse of her...as she van­ished in­to the dark.

He knew if he didn't kill Mit­suko Souma now then Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki might be the next one to fall in­to her trap. But Hi­ro­ki couldn't bring him­self to do it. In­stead, he pressed his left hand against his right shoul­der where the blood from the knife wound be­gan to soak through his school coat. He stared in­to the dark where Mit­suko had dis­ap­peared.

Of course...Mit­suko might have made up that sto­ry to stall him. But Hi­ro­ki couldn't buy that. Mit­suko told him the truth. And he'd on­ly heard...part of it. Hi­ro­ki had been puz­zled over how a third-​year ju­nior high school girl his age could be so mer­ci­less. It turned out she had ac­quired the psy­che of a grown adult a long time ago. A twist­ed adult's, no, maybe it was more ac­cu­rate to say a twist­ed child's psy­che?

The blood oozed down his sleeve then down the Colt .45 and be­gan drip­ping from the tip in a thin line, land­ing on­to a pile of moldy leaves by his feet with­out a sound.

17 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

54

Slight­ly past 3:30 a.m., Toshi­nori Oda (Male Stu­dent No. 4) left the house he was hid­ing in. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he hid there, he sur­mised it was in­side sec­tor E=4. Sakamochi had an­nounced the sec­tor would be for­bid­den at 5 a.m.

Be­fore he opened the back door to leave, he glanced over at Hi­rono Shimizu's body, which he'd dragged in­to the cor­ner. All he did was glance at the body ly­ing face down. He didn't feel par­tic­ular­ly sor­ry for her. Af­ter all this was a se­ri­ous com­pe­ti­tion. You get what you de­serve. Hi­rono Shimizu didn't even think twice about shoot­ing him the mo­ment she saw him. Of course, he'd been the one who snuck&nb­sp;up be­hind Hi­rono to choke her.

Al­though he wasn't sure where his next rest­ing spot should be, Toshi­nori fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to move east to­wards the res­iden­tial area. The area on the map was ap­prox­imate­ly two hun­dred square me­ters. Ac­cord­ing to the map, the nar­row flat land ex­tend­ing out­ward from the res­iden­tial area turned in­to farm fields spot­ted with hous­es. Once he was well be­yond this zone then all he had to do was hide in one of these hous­es. Af­ter all, he came from a priv­ileged fam­ily and lived in what was prob­ably the nicest house in the pre­fec­ture (Kazuo Kiriya­ma's house was prob­ably the nicest, but Toshi­nori would nev­er ad­mit this). Hid­ing in bush­es was be­neath him. En­ter­ing a house was dan­ger­ous, giv­en how some­one might al­ready be hid­ing there, but he wasn't wor­ried. Now he not on­ly had a bul­let­proof vest (with a cer­tifi­cate of high qual­ity) but the re­volver he'd tak­en from Hi­rono. Fur­ther­more...

...he was now wear­ing a full-​face mo­tor­cy­cle hel­met he'd found in­side the house.

A thin cloud ap­peared in the sky. Its tip was al­ready slow­ly be­gin­ning to cross the low full moon. Af­ter check­ing the chin guard of his su­perdeluxe hel­met, he crossed the yard and made his way down the edge of the nar­row field next to it.

He could see the flat land con­tin­uing down to the east­ern shore. It wasn't com­plete­ly flat, though. It went up and down. Most of the area was cov­ered with farms vis­ible by their var­ious moon­lit shades. On the left, a hun­dred me­ters away, was a house by the base of the north­ern moun­tain. There was an­oth­er house an­oth­er hun­dred me­ters to its right. Fur­ther left were two more hous­es. There were no oth­er hous­es in the vicin­ity. Three to four hun­dred me­ters away were farms spot­ted with hous­es. He couldn't see very well be­cause his view was blocked by a hill and the woods, but this ge­og­ra­phy seemed to con­tin­ue out to the res­iden­tial area on the is­land's east side. The flames from the in­tense ex­plo­sion that came im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Sakamochi's mid­night an­nounce­ment were lo­cat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to the right of the hill. But the flames must have gone out, be­cause now the area sank back in­to dark­ness.

On the south side, to his right, were two ad­ja­cent hous­es.

But this was-if you as­sumed the blue dots in­di­cat­ed res­iden­tial hous­es-on the bor­der­line be­tween sec­tors E=4 and F=4. Be­hind him the north­ern and south­ern moun­tains were con­nect­ed-or to be more ac­cu­rate, the base of the north­ern moun­tain stretched out like a cliff along the west­ern shore with­out any hous­es in sight. Ac­cord­ing to the map though, there were sup­posed to be a cou­ple hous­es up in the moun­tain.

Un­less he'd mis­read the map, he'd be out­side the for­bid­den zone if he got to the third or fourth house to the east. But if he found out they were dumps, then he might have to con­sid­er mov­ing fur­ther on. First of all, he couldn't stand dirty hous­es, and sec­ond of all, he was cer­tain a vul­gar place would on­ly at­tract vul­gar peo­ple.

Toshi­nori de­cid­ed to move over there.

He crouched down and walked cau­tious­ly along the field ridge of the farm. But he was ap­palled at the sen­sa­tion of dirty soil. The dull pain he felt from Hi­rono Shimizu's shot in the stom­ach area of his bul­let­proof vest on­ly in­fu­ri­at­ed him more. Why did he have to be thrown in­to this coarse game and writhe around on the ground with the "vul­gar mass­es"? (This was an ex­pres­sion his fa­ther, who ran the largest food com­pa­ny in the east­ern part of the pre­fec­ture, of­ten used at home, but it was a fa­vorite phrase Toshi­nori him­self used to ex­press his scorn for the "vul­gar mass­es." Of course, he was well bred, so he could nev­er say it out loud.)

Whether he had a right to claim it or not, it was true he pos­sessed a unique gift, unique even among his tal­ent­ed class­mates who ranged from be­ing star play­ers of their teams and clubs to be­ing lead­ing delin­quents, or even be­ing queer (this one was dead now, he was a very vul­gar queer too). In fact, it was unique to the en­tire school.

He'd start­ed pri­vate vi­olin lessons when he was four years old, and now he was one of the lead­ing ju­nior high school play­ers in the en­tire pre­fec­ture. He wasn't a ge­nius, but he wasn't mediocre ei­ther. Ar­range­ments were made for him to en­ter a high­ly dis­tin­guished high school in Tokyo that had its own mu­sic de­part­ment. As for his fu­ture ca­reer, he thought he'd at the very least be­come the pre­fec­tural gov­ern­ment sym­pho­ny con­duc­tor.

This gave him-so he be­lieved-all the more rea­son not to die. He would at­tain the sta­tus of con­duc­tor, mar­ry a beau­ti­ful, re­fined wom­an, and min­gle with rich, el­egant peo­ple. (His old­er broth­er Tadanori was go­ing to in­her­it the com­pa­ny. Of course, the thought of mak­ing a lot of mon­ey as pres­ident was at­trac­tive, but I don't need to deal with food prod­ucts, yuck. I'll let my vul­gar broth­er deal with that.) He was dif­fer­ent from his los­er class­mates. Their deaths wouldn't mean a thing, but he was gift­ed. He was pre­cious. And even in bi­olog­ical terms, the su­pe­ri­or species was des­tined to sur­vive, right?

At first he on­ly had this bul­let­proof vest, odd­ly sup­plied as a weapon, so all he could do was sneak away and hide, but now he had a gun. He was go­ing to be mer­ci­less. What's this about the no­ble soul of a mu­sic lover? That's to­tal­ly naive! It was true he was on­ly fif­teen, and he hadn't seen much of the world, but he knew what the mu­sic world was like. For those who weren't ge­nius­es it was all about mon­ey and con­nec­tions. It was all about crush­ing oth­er com­peti­tors to sur­vive.

Whether this was ob­jec­tive­ly true or not, this was what Toshi­nori Oda be­lieved.

Of course, he had no close friends in Third Year Class B that was filled with the vul­gar mass­es. In fact, he de­spised his vul­gar class­mates. Es­pe­cial­ly Shuya Nana­hara.

Toshi­nori did not take part in the Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High Mu­sic Club, which was filled with vul­gar mass­es who were es­pe­cial­ly vul­gar. All those losers played was pop­ular mu­sic (ap­par­ent­ly the club of­fice was clut­tered with mu­sic sheets of il­le­gal for­eign mu­sic). That's right. Es­pe­cial­ly Shuya Nana­hara.

Toshi­nori was vast­ly su­pe­ri­or to him in term of mu­sic abil­ity, giv­en his ear train­ing and un­der­stand­ing of mu­sic the­ory. And yet, in spite of that, the vul­gar bitch­es in his class would scream out in­de­cent­ly at the sound of Shuya Nana­hara pluck­ing out kinder­garten-​lev­el chords on his gui­tar (I mean come on those bitch­es who lis­ten to Shuya Nana­hara play­ing dur­ing the short break be­fore mu­sic class, they might as well have print­ed on their fore­heads in thick Goth­ic font: "Oh, Shuya, do me now, right here"). In con­trast, they'd on­ly po­lite­ly ap­plaud when Toshi­nori fin­ished play­ing an el­egant pas­sage from an opera at the mu­sic teach­er's re­quest.

For one thing, those los­er bitch­es could nev­er ap­pre­ci­ate clas­si­cal mu­sic, and for an­oth­er, it was on­ly be­cause Shuya Nana­hara was good-​look­ing (al­though Toshi­nori would nev­er ad­mit it, deep down in­side he couldn't stand his own ug­ly face).

Fine. That's what wom­en are like any­way. They're just a dif­fer­ent species. Just a tool to pro­duce chil­dren (and of course to pro­vide plea­sure for men when they need it), and if they were good-​look­ing then they were just or­na­ments to place be­side suc­cess­ful men. Yes, it all came down to...mon­ey and con­nec­tions. And my tal­ent is worth the in­vest­ment of mon­ey and con­nec­tions. There­fore...

...1 de­serve to be the sur­vivor.

He heard gun­fire at times through­out the night, and there was that amaz­ing ex­plo­sion to top it all off, but now the is­land was im­mersed in dark­ness and si­lence. Toshi­nori quick­ly cir­cled the first house, passed it, and ap­proached the sec­ond one. He could tell it was pret­ty old even though he could on­ly make out its sil­hou­ette. The house was sur­round­ed by a cir­cle of trees, and on the west side in front was an ex­treme­ly large broadleaf tree, its branch­es spread out. Its cir­cum­fer­ence was four to five me­ters, and it was sev­en to eight me­ters tall.

There shouldn't be any­one...here.

Toshi­nori gripped his gun and slow­ly moved for­ward, cau­tious­ly check­ing the house as well as the tree. Of course he didn't for­get to stop and look in all di­rec­tions. You nev­er knew where the vul­gar mass­es might show up. Just like cock­roach­es.

Af­ter spend­ing a full five min­utes pass­ing by the side of the house, he looked over his shoul­der and checked the house, which was sur­round­ed by trees of var­ious sizes. There were no sus­pi­cious move­ments that he could see through his open hel­met's square win­dow.

All right.

He could see the third house, the one he want­ed, near­by.

Toshi­nori turned around one more time.

He thought some­thing round and black stirred near the ground be­tween the trees sur­round­ing the house. It was...

...some­one's head, he re­al­ized, but by then he was aim­ing his gun over there. But this one was wan­der­ing in an area that would be­come a for­bid­den zone soon. Who could it pos­si­bly be?...

It didn't mat­ter.

He pulled the trig­ger. Hold­ing the Smith & Wes­son Mil­itary & Po­lice's wood­en grip, he felt a sud­den jerk in the palm of his hand. The gun popped with an or­ange flash, send­ing a sting down Toshi­nori's spine. Al­though he de­spised the ig­no­rant, vul­gar mass­es, he had a hob­by that wasn't so re­fined, much less re­fined than play­ing the vi­olin. He still had his mod­el gun col­lec­tion. His fa­ther owned sev­er­al hunt­ing ri­fles, but he was nev­er al­lowed to han­dle them, so this was the first time he'd ev­er pulled the trig­ger of a re­al gun. It was re­al. Damn, I'm shoot­ing a re­al gun!

Toshi­nori shot twice and his op­po­nent crouched down, un­able to move, it seemed. The per­son didn't shoot back ei­ther. Of course not, if he had a gun he would have shot me from be­hind. That's what let me pull the trig­ger in the first place.

Toshi­nori slow­ly ap­proached the fig­ure. It shout­ed, "Stop!"

He could tell from his voice it was Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11). That tall guy (Toshi­nori by the way hat­ed tall guys too. His height was on­ly 162 cen­time­ters and next to Yu­ta­ka Se­to he was the short­est guy in their class. He couldn't stand: [a] good look­ing guys, [b] tall guys, and [c] all-​around vul­gar guys) who prac­ticed that vul­gar karate-​like sport. He was sup­pos­ed­ly go­ing out with Takako Chi­gusa who taste­less­ly dyed her hair and wore all that gaudy jew­el­ry-oh, that's right, she was al­so dead now. She wasn't bad look­ing though.

Hi­ro­ki con­tin­ued, "I'm not fight­ing this game! Who are you? Yuichi­ro?"

Hi­ro­ki had guessed it was Yuichi­ro Takiguchi (Male Stu­dent No. 13), who was the next short­est guy to Toshi­nori. Yes, since Hi­roshi Kuron­aga had died a while ago, the on­ly ones left alive who were his height were Yuichi­ro and Yu­ta­ka. In any case, Toshi­nori won­dered for a mo­ment, what's this about not fight­ing? Im­pos­si­ble. Not play­ing this game would be tan­ta­mount to com­mit­ting sui­cide. Is he try­ing to fool me? Even if he was, as long as he doesn't have a gun...

Toshi­nori changed his course of ac­tion. He low­ered his gun.

With his left hand he pulled down on the chin guard of the hel­met and said, "It's Toshi­nori." Then he thought, oh, I should prob­ably stut­ter a lit­tle. "S-​sor­ry I did that. A-​are you hurt?"

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra slow­ly got up, re­veal­ing his large frame.

Like Toshi­nori he had his day pack on his right shoul­der. His right hand held a stick. His right sleeve was miss­ing, maybe it was torn or maybe he'd torn it off. His shirt was miss­ing un­der­neath and his right arm was bare. A white cloth was wrapped around the shoul­der. With his bare right arm hold­ing the stick he re­sem­bled a naked prim­itive tribesman. A vul­gar naked tribe.

"I'm all right." Then he asked, look­ing at Toshi­nori's head, "Is that a hel­met?"

"U-​uh yes." As he an­swered, Toshi­nori came for­ward, step­ping on­to the farm soil. All right, three more steps.

"I-I've been so scaaaared." Be­fore he fin­ished say­ing "scared" Toshi­nori raised his right hand. Five me­ters away, he couldn't miss.

Hi­ro­ki's eyes opened wide. Too late, too late, you vul­gar karate bas­tard. You're go­ing to die a vul­gar death, end up in a vul­gar grave, and I'll of­fer you the most vul­gar flow­ers I can find.

But Hi­ro­ki wasn't there at the end of the muz­zle of the ex­plod­ing Smith & Wes­son. A split sec­ond be­fore the shot, Hi­ro­ki had un­ex­pect­ed­ly ducked to his left-Toshi­nori's right. Toshi­nori of course had no idea Hi­ro­ki had used a mar­tial arts move, but in any case...he was in­cred­ibly fast.

From this crouched po­si­tion, Hi­ro­ki held up, in­stead of the stick in his left hand, a gun in his left hand (Toshi­nori al­so had no way of know­ing that-al­though, in con­trast to Shin­ji Mimu­ra, he had "fixed" it-Hi­ro­ki was orig­inal­ly in fact left-​hand­ed). So he al­ready had a gun...then why didn't the fool use it in the first place? Be­fore this thought bare­ly crossed his mind a small flame ex­plod­ed.

The gun was sud­den­ly gone from his right hand. The next mo­ment he felt a sear­ing pain and his right ring fin­ger ex­plod­ed. Toshi­nori shrieked. He fell on both his knees and held the painful stump with his left hand...and re­al­ized his ring fin­ger was gone. Blood spurt­ed out. He might have been wear­ing a bul­let­proof vest and a hel­met, but his fin­gers were un­pro­tect­ed.

Argh...that bas­tard...my fin­ger...my right fin­ger that el­egant­ly guides the vi­olin bow is!...that can't be...in the movies fin­gers nev­er get blown away in gun fights!

Hi­ro­ki ap­proached him, gun in hand. Toshi­nori held his right hand and gazed at it, his eyes in­side his hel­met ter­ri­fied and deliri­ous. His face was get­ting clam­my from the sweat break­ing out un­der his hel­met.

Hi­ro­ki said, "So you're to­tal­ly up for this. I don't want to shoot...but I have no choice. I have to."

Toshi­nori had no idea what Hi­ro­ki meant at all, and al­though he was in ter­ri­ble pain, he still felt con­fi­dent. Be­cause...the gun was point­ed at his chest. Of course, it would be. He wore the hel­met not so much be­cause it was bul­let­proof but be­cause it would force his en­emy to aim at his body in­stead. And un­der his school coat he was wear­ing the bul­let­proof vest. As long as his vest stopped the bul­let, then all he would have to do is wait for a chance to re­trieve his gun and then-since his in­dex fin­ger was still work­ing- he could pull the trig­ger and win.

His gun was by his feet.

With Toshi­nori glar­ing at him, Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra still paused a few mo­ments...but Hi­ro­ki pursed his lips tight­ly and calm­ly squeezed the trig­ger. Toshi­nori re­called his fight against Hi­rono Shimizu and con­sid­ered how he should play "dead."

But it end­ed much more than abrupt­ly than he'd ex­pect­ed. Hi­ro­ki's gun on­ly made a small metal­lic click.

Hi­ro­ki looked con­fused. He ner­vous­ly cocked the gun and pulled the trig­ger. Again, click.

Toshi­nori's lips twist­ed in­to a smile hid­den un­der the hel­met. Karate bas­tard. That was a dud. With that au­to­mat­ic you'll have to pull the breech­block and reload the cham­ber.

Toshi­nori went for his gun by his feet. Hi­ro­ki im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed with the stick in his right hand but in­stead-maybe he thought it was too far-he turned around and ran to­ward the moun­tain be­yond the house.

Toshi­nori picked up the gun. His crip­pled hand ached, but he still man­aged to hold it. He fired. Be­cause his hold on the grip wasn't tight he couldn't fix his aim on Hi­ro­ki, but he could tell he hit him in the thigh, right near his butt. Did it on­ly scrape him? In any case, Hi­ro­ki sud­den­ly tot­tered, but he didn't fall. He con­tin­ued tun­ning. Toshi­nori al­so start­ed run­ning and fired an­oth­er shot. This time he missed. The re­coil of the gun so plea­sur­able on­ly mo­ments ago now sent a sharp pain through his in­jured hand which in­fu­ri­at­ed Toshi­nori. He shot again. He missed again. In spite of be­ing shot in the leg, Hi­ro­ki was faster than him.

Hi­ro­ki dis­ap­peared in­to the woods at the foot of the moun­tain.

Damn it!

Toshi­nori de­lib­er­at­ed whether he should chase him-and de­cid­ed not to. His op­po­nent was in­jured but so was he. The gun grip was slip­pery from the blood pour­ing from the stump of his for­mer ring fin­ger. Be­sides, if he en­tered the moun­tains now, Hi­ro­ki would reload his gun and shoot back. In that sit­ua­tion, it'd be too dan­ger­ous to ex­pose him­self like that with noth­ing to hide be­hind. He ner­vous­ly crouched down.

He had to get to the first house-the house he'd de­cid­ed to en­ter. And he had to make sure Hi­ro­ki wouldn't see him en­ter it.

Toshi­nori clutched his right hand, which was still hold­ing the gun, and stag­gered over there, en­dur­ing the pain. As he trav­eled down the foot­path the pain be­came more and more ex­cru­ci­at­ing. He felt dizzy. First thing was his hand. He had to treat it. He had to come up with a dif­fer­ent strat­egy. Oh, but, damn, even if he were able to play the vi­olin af­ter re­ha­bil­ita­tion this crip­pled hand would stick out dur­ing a per­for­mance, es­pe­cial­ly if they tele­vise it and zoom in. So now I'm go­ing to be join­ing that lame group-the dis­abled. What a nice melody, how he's over­come his dis­abil­ity. How lame!

He was ap­proach­ing the house. Toshi­nori looked over his shoul­der again. He looked close­ly, but didn't see any sign of Hi­ro­ki. He was safe now. Hi­ro­ki wasn't com­ing af­ter him.

Toshi­nori looked back at the house.

He saw a guy stand­ing on the farm field six to sev­en me­ters away, right in front of the house he want­ed. The guy had ap­peared sud­den­ly out of nowhere. He had slicked-​back hair that reached a lit­tle too far be­hind his neck and cold, gleam­ing eyes.

By the time he re­al­ized it was Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6) (an­oth­er guy he couldn't stand, cat­ego­ry [a] good look­ing), a heavy burst of fire came out of his hands along with a rat­tling sound, slam­ming against Toshi­nori's tor­so. Toshi­nori was blown back and fell back­ward. Be­cause his grip on the gun had loos­ened from the pain he'd been feel­ing in his right hand, he dropped it and heard it knock against some­thing. His back scraped against the dirt. His head wear­ing the hel­met hit the ground.

The echo­ing gun­fire fad­ed in­to the night air. All was qui­et once again.

But of course Toshi­nori Oda wasn't dead. He held his breath and lay down, frozen, try­ing his best to re­strain his urge to snick­er. Now that he was over­whelmed by this wicked plea­sure, the ag­oniz­ing pain from his right hand, not to men­tion his anger at let­ting Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra es­cape, or his anger at be­ing sud­den­ly at­tacked by a guy in cat­ego­ry (a), his emo­tion­al fac­ul­ties were a com­plete mess, but his body (with the ex­cep­tion of his right ring fin­ger), just as it had been with Hi­rono Shimizu, was com­plete­ly in­tact. So he was right to wear the hel­met. Kazuo had aimed at Toshi­nori's tor­so, which was pro­tect­ed by the bul­let­proof vest. Just as Hi­ro­ki had done, Kazuo prob­ably as­sumed Toshi­nori was dead.

His eye­lids near­ly shut, his field of vi­sion re­sem­bled a widescreen movie. He could see at the far end of his field of vi­sion the S&W flash faint­ly against the moon­light. And now he could feel the stiff shape of the kitchen knife (which he found in the house where he'd killed Hi­rono Shimizu) he had tucked in back. It would take less than a sec­ond to un­wrap the cloth around it.

As he con­tin­ued to sweat, which was the one thing he couldn't hold back, Toshi­nori thought, all right, now pick up that gun ly­ing over there. Then I'll slash that vul­gar wind­pipe of yours. Or will you turn around and leave? Then I'll pick up the gun and dig a nice tun­nel through that vul­gar skull of yours. Come on. Make your choice. Just hur­ry up and choose.

But for some rea­son, in­stead of ap­proach­ing the gun, Kazuo came straight at Toshi­nori.

He was com­ing straight at him. Star­ing at him with those cold eyes.

Why? Toshi­nori won­dered. I'm sup­posed to be dead. Look how good I am at play­ing dead.

Kazuo didn't stop. He kept on ap­proach­ing. One step, two...

But I'm sup­posed to be dead! Why!?

The faint sound of his steps on the soil be­came loud­er and his field of vi­sion was now filled with the fig­ure of Kazuo.

!...

Sud­den­ly over­come with pan­ic and fear, Toshi­nori fran­ti­cal­ly opened his eyes.

Kazuo's In­gram once again let out a burst of fire in­to Toshi­nori's shield­ed head. Some of the point-​blank shots turned in­to col­or­ful sparks from scrap­ing against the re­in­forced plas­tic shell of the hel­met while oth­ers, af­ter ex­it­ing Toshi­nori's skull, ric­ocheted in­side his hel­met, rat­tling Toshi­nori's head along with the hel­met (his body was danc­ing a strange boo­gie. Toshi­nori him­self would have been ir­ri­tat­ed by this kind of vul­gar danc­ing). And of course by the time it was all over...Toshi­nori's head was crushed in­side his hel­met.

Toshi­nori no longer played dead. He re­mained frozen. Blood dripped out from un­der the hel­met, which re­sem­bled a bowl of sauce.

And so this boy who de­spised the ig­no­rant, vul­gar mass­es, fool­ish Toshi­nori Oda, had over­es­ti­mat­ed the val­ue of his bul­let­proof vest and un­der­es­ti­mat­ed Kazuo Kiriya­ma's calm ac­tions. As a re­sult he died eas­ily. If he'd thought about how Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano had died yes­ter­day morn­ing, he would have re­al­ized that his as­sailant would have fol­lowed up on his en­emy to de­liv­er a coup de grace, but he wasn't so per­cep­tive. Fur­ther­more-it was quite ir­rel­evant now-he had no idea his killer, Kazuo Kiriya­ma, had, in his man­sion that was much larg­er than Toshi­nori's home in Shi­roi­wa-​cho, mas­tered the vi­olin at a lev­el far su­pe­ri­or to Toshi­nori's a long time ago (and then tossed his vi­olin in­to the trash).

16 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

55

Some chat­ting. The sound of some­one mov­ing. She'd even set­tle for the faint sound of some­one des­per­ate­ly try­ing to hold his or her breath. In­stead, Mit­suko Souma (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 11) end­ed up hear­ing the sound of liq­uid run­ning through grass. She could tell it was some­one piss­ing in the grove near­by (un­less there was a dog on the is­land). Dawn was ap­proach­ing. She glanced up and saw a faint blue be­gin­ning emerge in the dark sky.

Af­ter en­coun­ter­ing Hi­ro­ki and some­how man­ag­ing to es­cape him, Mit­suko first de­cid­ed she need­ed a gun. She'd ac­ci­den­tal­ly come across Megu­mi Eto and, up­on hear­ing Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi and Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to in the mid­dle of their fight, she'd killed them and man­aged to get her hands on a gun (if she'd had a gun in the first place she would have gone back to the school and killed off ev­ery­one that came out one by one). Once she had a gun she could con­fi­dent­ly move around the is­land, so it was easy to kill Takako Chi­gusa, who'd just fin­ished fight­ing Kazushi Nü­da. (She should have fin­ished her off though. She'd have to be more care­ful next time.)

But now she was un­armed. She had used Megu­mi Eto's knife, and the on­ly thing in her hand now was her orig­inal sick­le from the be­gin­ning of the game. She had to get a gun be­cause she wasn't the on­ly one who chose to play this game. There was the ma­chine gun shoot­er who killed Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano. She had just heard it go off again on­ly thir­ty min­utes ago.

Of course, thanks to the shoot­er, she didn't have to kill off as many of her class­mates. She could just let the as­sailant take care of that. She'd on­ly kill when it came easy. In fact, af­ter mid­night, when she heard the ma­chine gun's rapid gun­fire along with the ex­plo­sion af­ter­wards, she de­cid­ed it was best to avoid that area. A hand­gun against a ma­chine gun, she'd be out­matched. So she de­cid­ed to move some­where she could view the area from a dis­tance, and that was how she end­ed up find­ing and fol­low­ing Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. And that was sup­posed to be an easy kill but...

It was high­ly like­ly she'd end up hav­ing to take on this ma­chine gun shoot­er. Not hav­ing a gun would be a ma­jor dis­ad­van­tage. For­get about gun against ma­chine gun, it'd be hope­less with a sick­le against a ma­chine gun.

Of course, she could have pur­sued Hi­ro­ki, but she thought it'd be too much trou­ble to get the gun back from him. His back­ground in mar­tial arts or what­ev­er it was was no joke. Her right hand still stung from his blow. And this time, if he saw her, he'd be mer­ci­less and shoot her.

So Mit­suko moved west along the lon­gi­tu­di­nal road and then en­tered the north­ern moun­tain, try­ing to find some­one else. Ap­prox­imate­ly three hours had passed.

And now she fi­nal­ly heard some­one mak­ing noise.

Mit­suko made her way through the thick­et and moved for­ward, cau­tious­ly though. She mustn't be heard.

The thick­et end­ed. There was a small, open, mat-​sized space in the mid­dle of the bush­es. The grove con­tin­ued on and be­yond her right. And to the left as well-in the cor­ner of the space, a boy in his school coat had his back to­ward her. He ner­vous­ly looked to his right and left as the drip­ping sound against the leaves con­tin­ued.

He was prob­ably scared he might be at­tacked by some­one. She could tell it was Tadakat­su Hataga­mi (Male Stu­dent No. 18). He was on the base­ball team. Noth­ing ex­cep­tion­al, just an av­er­age guy. He was tall and well-​built, and his face was av­er­age. His hob­bies were...ac­tu­al­ly she had no idea, and be­sides there was no point ask­ing now.

The cru­cial thing was that, as Tadakat­su was at­tend­ing to his busi­ness, Mit­suko re­al­ized he held some­thing tight­ly in his right hand.

It was a gun. It was a fair­ly large mod­el, a re­volver. She once again broke in­to that fall­en an­gel's grin.

Tadakat­su still wasn't done. He might have been hold­ing it in for quite a while. He con­tin­ued to look left and right while he emp­tied his blad­der.

Mit­suko qui­et­ly but quick­ly took out her sick­le with her right hand. Tadakat­su would have to use both of his hands to zip up his pants. Even if he tried us­ing one hand, he'd be vul­ner­able.

It looks like this'll be the end of you. Didn't some­one in a de­tec­tive show get killed this way?

The drips be­came spo­radic. It stopped...and then an­oth­er drip, and then it stopped com­plete­ly. Tadakat­su once again looked around and then quick­ly moved his hands to the front.

By then Mit­suko had al­ready snuck up be­hind him. The back of his head, with short spiked hair, was right in front of her. She raised the sick­le.

She heard some­one from be­hind say, "Whoa," and Tadakat­su sud­den­ly turned around, along with Mit­suko. She (of course) put the sick­le down and looked back at the speak­er be­hind her.

It was Yuichi­ro Takiguchi (Male Stu­dent No. 13). He was short­er than Tadakat­su and had a cute, boy­ish face. He held what ap­peared to be his weapon, an alu­minum bat, in his right hand and stared at Mit­suko, his mouth agape.

Tadakat­su saw Mit­suko and al­so said, "Whoa," and then mut­tered, "Damn," and point­ed the gun at her. See­ing how Yuichi­ro's ap­pear­ance didn't sur­prise him, Mit­suko re­al­ized they were to­geth­er. Mit­suko cursed her­self. Tadakat­su had left Yuichi­ro just to take a piss. How stupid could I have been not to check! Come on, you're both boys, can't you just pee next to each oth­er!?

This wasn't the time or place to lec­ture them. Tadakat­su's re­volver (which, al­though it hard­ly mat­tered, was a Smith & Wes­son M19 .357 Mag­num) was point­ed di­rect­ly at Mit­suko's chest.

"Tadakat­su! Stop it!" Yuichi­ro said, his voice trem­bling, prob­ably from her sud­den ap­pear­ance and his fear of see­ing some­one get killed in front of his very own eyes. Tadakat­su looked like he was ready to pull the trig­ger at any mo­ment, but his fin­ger on the trig­ger stopped a frac­tion of a mil­lime­ter be­fore the ham­mer fell.

His gun still point­ed at Mit­suko, Tadakat­su looked over at Yuichi­ro.

"Why!? She just tried to kill me! Look! A sick­le! She's hold­ing a sick­le!"

"N-​no." Mit­suko croaked as if her words were stuck in her throat. She made sure her voice was high-​pitched and trem­bling, and of course, she didn't for­get to flinch her body back. Once again, the star ac­tress had a chance to show off her tal­ents. Watch me now.

"I-I..."

She thought of drop­ping the sick­le, but de­cid­ed not to, since it would look more nat­ural hold­ing it.

"I was just try­ing to call you. Then I-I re­al­ized you were pee­ing, so I..." Mit­suko looked down and made her face blush. "So..."

Tadakat­su didn't low­er the gun. "You're ly­ing! You were try­ing to kill me!" His hand hold­ing the gun was trem­bling. He'd re­strained him­self from shoot­ing her be­cause he'd nev­er shot some­one. The mo­ment he saw her he prob­ably would have fired re­flex­ive­ly, but now that Yuichi­ro had in­ter­vened he had time to think and hes­itate. And that meant...

...he would lose.

"Stop it, Tadakat­su," Yuichi­ro plead­ed with him, "Didn't I al­ready say how we have to join up with oth­ers-"

"You got to be kid­ding." Tadakat­su shook his head. "There's no way I can be with this bitch. Don't you know who we're deal­ing with? She might have been the one...who killed Yu­miko and Yukiko."

"N-​no...I would nev­er..." Mit­suko made her eyes brim with tears.

Yuichi­ro said fran­ti­cal­ly, "Mit­suko isn't car­ry­ing a ma­chine gun. She doesn't even have a gun."

"We can't know for sure! She might have tossed them once she ran out of bul­lets!!"

Yuichi­ro fell silent for a while, but then said, "Tadakat­su, you shouldn't raise your voice." His voice sound­ed dif­fer­ent from be­fore. It was calm and kind. Tadakat­su opened his mouth slight­ly as if he'd been caught off guard.

Mit­suko was al­so a bit sur­prised. Yuichi­ro Takiguchi was in­to ani­me. He was the otaku of their class, but now he sound­ed quite dig­ni­fied.

Yuichi­ro shook his head. "You shouldn't be so in­dis­crim­inate­ly sus­pi­cious," he con­tin­ued as if ad­mon­ish­ing Tadakat­su. "Think about it. Mit­suko might have sought you out be­cause she re­al­ly trust­ed you."

"But then..." Tadakat­su knit his brows. His gun was still point­ed at Mit­suko, but the ten­sion of his fin­gers on the trig­ger seemed to wane. "Then what do you sug­gest we do?"

"If you in­sist she can't be trust­ed, then we can take turns keep­ing an eye on her. I mean, even if we were to tell her to leave, you'd still be wor­ried she might at­tack you lat­er when she has the chance."

Well, I'll say, I'm im­pressed. He's sharp and ar­tic­ulate. I mean, putting aside whether he's mak­ing a good call (which in fact would be to shoot me now).

Tadakat­su then licked his lips a lit­tle.

"Come on. We need more peo­ple on our side. And then we have to fig­ure out a way to get out of here. Once we spend some time with her we'll see whether we can trust her, right?" Yuichi­ro in­sist­ed and fi­nal­ly Tadakat­su nod­ded, still eye­ing her sus­pi­cious­ly. He said in a tired voice, "Well, all right."

Mak­ing her­self look re­lieved, she let her body un­wind. She rubbed her left hand against her eyes de­lib­er­ate­ly filled with tears. Yuichi­ro let out a sigh of re­lief too.

"Get rid of that sick­le," Tadakat­su said, and Mit­suko im­me­di­ate­ly tossed it to the ground. Then she ner­vous­ly al­ter­nat­ed glances at Tadakat­su and Yuichi­ro.

Tadakat­su said, "Search her, Yuichi­ro." Mit­suko looked back at Tadakat­su, her eyes opened wide as if she didn't un­der­stand. Then she looked at Yuichi­ro who stood still in as­ton­ish­ment. Tadakat­su re­peat­ed him­self. He aimed the gun at her. "Hur­ry up. Don't be so bash­ful. This is a mat­ter of life and death. You know that."

"Okay...all right." Yuichi­ro put his bat down and re­luc­tant­ly came for­ward. He stood right be­side Mit­suko.

"Hur­ry," Tadakat­su in­sist­ed.

"Uh huh."

His dig­ni­fied man­ner was gone now. He'd gone back to be­ing his usu­al weak otaku self.

"But-"

"Hur­ry!"

Yuichi­ro said, "U-​uh, Mit­suko, I'm re­al­ly sor­ry. I re­al­ly don't want to do this, but I have to," and he ran his hands light­ly over her body. Even in the dim light at dawn, she could tell his face had turned bright red. How cute. Of course, she didn't for­get to act all em­bar­rassed too.

Af­ter he was done search­ing, he lift­ed his hands. Tadakat­su said, "Look un­der her skirt too."

"Tadakat­su-" Yuichi­ro protest­ed, but Tadakat­su shook his head.

"I'm not try­ing to get my rocks off. I just don't want to die."

So Yuichi­ro blushed even more and said, "U-​uh, I was won­der­ing, could you lift your skirt up a lit­tle?"

Oh my, let's not have a heart at­tack here, lit­tle boy.

But Mit­suko on­ly an­swered in a meek voice, "O-​okay," and lift­ed her skirt bash­ful­ly again up to where her un­der­wear was near­ly vis­ible. Geez, this was turn­ing in­to one of those adult videos ti­tled Fetish Spe­cial! Star­ring Re­al Ju­nior High School Girls!

I've ac­tu­al­ly been in them.

Af­ter mak­ing sure Mit­suko had noth­ing to hide, Yuichi­ro said, "I-I'm done."

Tadakat­su nod­ded and said, "All right. Yuichi­ro, I want you to tie up her hands with your belt."

Yuichi­ro gave Tadakat­su an­oth­er re­luc­tant look, but Tadakat­su re­fused to give in, aim­ing his gun at her.

"Those are my con­di­tions. If you can't ac­cept them, then I'll shoot her now."

Yuichi­ro looked at Mit­suko, then at Tadakat­su, and licked his lips. Then Mit­suko said to Yuichi­ro, "Yuichi­ro, go ahead. It's all right."

Yuichi­ro looked at Mit­suko, but then nod­ded, pulled out his belt, and held Mit­suko's hands. "I'm sor­ry, Mit­suko," he said.

Tadakat­su still point­ed his gun at her, and said, "You don't have to be so po­lite with her," but Yuichi­ro seemed to ig­nore his warn­ing as he gen­tly wrapped the belt around her wrists with­out say­ing an­oth­er word.

As she in­no­cent­ly of­fered her hands, Mit­suko was think­ing how lucky, in spite of the sit­ua­tion, she was to have been dis­cov­ered right be­fore lift­ing her sick­le. (She had al­so wiped the blood off the sick­le ear­li­er. Now that's luck.)

Now then, what's my next move?

16 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

56

"So that's how I thought we had to seek oth­er class­mates," Yuichi­ro said and stopped, glanc­ing at Mit­suko. Dawn had al­ready bro­ken, and she could see how his face was grimy with dirt.

They were sit­ting next to each oth­er in the shrubs. Of course, Mit­suko's hands were tied up with the belt, and her sick­le was tucked in the back of Yuichi­ro's pants. Tadakat­su Hataga­mi was in a deep sleep. He still held on­to his gun which he had in fact tied to his hand with a hand­ker­chief.

Af­ter she end­ed up with this duo, Tadakat­su was the one who in­sist­ed on tak­ing turns sleep­ing.

"I agree we have to find oth­ers, but let's get some sleep. We've been up all this time. We'll lose our abil­ity to make sound judg­ments." Once Yuichi­ro agreed Tadakat­su said, "First, it's go­ing to be Yuichi­ro or me. Then Mit­suko can sleep af­ter us," and Yuichi­ro re­spond­ed, "I can sleep lat­er," so the or­der was de­cid­ed. Hold­ing his gun (which should have been hand­ed over to Yuichi­ro who was keep­ing watch, but Tadakat­su didn't even men­tion it, nor did Yuichi­ro protest), Tadakat­su lay down and fell asleep with­in a mat­ter of sec­onds.

Mit­suko had an idea how they hooked up. Tadakat­su hadn't slept at all un­til he met Yuichi­ro, and he prob­ably couldn't sleep af­ter join­ing him. Why? Be­cause he was prob­ably afraid Yuichi­ro might at­tack him by sur­prise. And even though Mit­suko might be much more threat­en­ing than Yuichi­ro, now that she was with them, even if Tadakat­su slept, Mit­suko and Yuichi­ro would have to keep an eye on each oth­er so long as he held on­to his gun and re­mained cau­tious. He could still get some sleep. (Of course, Mit­suko hadn't slept at all ei­ther, but it was noth­ing to her. She was much tougher than your av­er­age wimpy ju­nior high school kid.)

Yuichi­ro and Mit­suko re­mained silent for a while, but then Yuichi­ro told her how he'd end­ed up join­ing Tadakat­su.

It turned out that Yuichi­ro al­so didn't move at all dur­ing the day, but then as­sum­ing he was safer at night (of course, Mit­suko thought, it could go ei­ther way. You could es­cape de­tec­tion at night, but that al­so meant it was hard to de­tect your op­po­nent too. But of course, if you were in a tight spot and had to run away, night was bet­ter), he cau­tious­ly be­gan to move and en­coun­tered Tadakat­su on­ly two hours be­fore Mit­suko en­coun­tered them. The two tried to con­coct an es­cape plan but came up with noth­ing...and so Tadakat­su stepped out to pee, but be­cause he was tak­ing so long Yuichi­ro got wor­ried and checked on him. And that was how he found Mit­suko.

"I was so scared at first, I thought I couldn't trust any­body. But then I re­al­ized most of us prob­ably just want to es­cape."

Yuichi­ro stopped and glanced at Mit­suko. The otaku of Class B, Yuichi­ro Takiguchi avoid­ed di­rect eye con­tact in his con­ver­sa­tions. He al­ways looked down. Still, from the way he talked to her, Yuichi­ro didn't seem to be all that cau­tious to­wards her. For some rea­son.

And so Mit­suko pre­tend­ed to look some­what re­lieved and asked him, "So Tadakat­su had that gun."

Yuichi­ro nod­ded. "That's right."

"Weren't you scared of Tadakat­su?" Okay, now act even more re­laxed and a lit­tle more in­ti­mate. "No, I mean even now. He won't let go of it."

Tadakat­su grinned. "Well, first of all, Tadakat­su didn't shoot at me or any­thing. He did point his gun at me. I was class­mates with him in el­emen­tary school. So I know him pret­ty well."

"But..." Mit­suko made her face look slight­ly pale. "You saw how Yu­miko...Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano died. Some of us are play­ing this game. How can you be sure Tadakat­su isn't one of them?" She nod­ded and then said, "...he even sus­pects me."

Yuichi­ro tight­ened his lips and nod­ded sev­er­al times. "That's true. But if we just sit still we'll end up dy­ing. It's best to try. I can't be like Yu­miko and Yukiko, but I was think­ing how we could get oth­ers to join us grad­ual­ly."

He glanced in­to Mit­suko's eyes for a mo­ment and then looked down. He seemed even more with­drawn than usu­al, maybe be­cause he wasn't used to look­ing at a girl's face so close up. (She was prob­ably right on the mark, and on top of that, he was deal­ing with the most beau­ti­ful girl in the class.)

"You can't blame Tadakat­su for hold­ing on­to that gun. He's scared out of his wits."

Mit­suko tilt­ed her head and forced a smile. "You're so good."

Yuichi­ro glanced at her out of the cor­ner of his eye.

Still wear­ing her smile, Mit­suko con­tin­ued, "You have to be brave to be like that, to be able to em­pathize with oth­ers like that."

Yuichi­ro looked down bash­ful­ly again and ner­vous­ly ran his right hand through his messy hair and said, "I don't think so." Then with­out look­ing at her, he said, "So...could you cut him some slack for sus­pect­ing you? I think he's re­al­ly scared. He trusts no one."

Trust no one. The phrase re­al­ly tick­led her and she grinned.

Then she said as if sigh­ing, "I guess he can't help it. I have a rep­uta­tion. You prob­ably don't trust me ei­ther."

Yuichi­ro paused and then turned to Mit­suko. This time he looked at her a lit­tle longer. Then he said, "No." He looked down at the ground af­ter say­ing this, and con­tin­ued, "Well, I mean, I'm even sus­pi­cious of Tadakat­su when it comes down to it. I mean..." He pulled out some grass by his feet. Then he tore the grass that was moist with morn­ing dew in­to small strands. "I mean, yeah, I haven't heard great things about you. But that's so ir­rel­evant in this sit­ua­tion. I mean, some­times it's the re­spectable ones who end up break­ing up un­der stress." He tossed the torn grass by his feet. Then he looked up at Mit­suko. "I don't think you're such a bad per­son."

Mit­suko tilt­ed her head. "Why?"

Maybe it was be­cause she was star­ing at her, Yuichi­ro ner­vous­ly looked away again. Then he said, "Well...it's your eyes."

"Eyes?"

Still look­ing down, Yuichi­ro be­gan tear­ing out more grass. "You al­ways had a scary look in your eyes."

Mit­suko forced a smile. She tried to shrug her shoul­ders, but it didn't work be­cause of the belt around her wrists. "I guess."

"But..." The grass was torn in­to quar­ters, then eighths. "But some­times your eyes look re­al­ly sad and kind."

Mit­suko stared at the side of his face and lis­tened with­out re­spond­ing.

"So," he tossed the grass again and con­tin­ued, "I've al­ways thought you weren't as bad as ev­ery­one said you were. Even if you'd done bad things, I was pret­ty sure you did them be­cause you couldn't help it, be­cause there was some rea­son be­hind it that wasn't your fault."

He was stut­ter­ing, his voice in­cred­ibly shy and tense as if he were con­fess­ing his love to a girl. Then he added, "I just don't want to be so fool­ish I couldn't un­der­stand that rea­son."

Mit­suko sighed in­side. Of course, she was think­ing, boy, you are naive, Yuichi­ro. But then...

...she smiled and said warm­ly, "Thank you." Even she was sur­prised by the kind­ness in her voice. Of course, it was de­lib­er­ate, but maybe the rea­son it sound­ed too re­al to be an act was that there was a lit­tle bit of true feel­ing in her words.

But...that's all it was.

Yuichi­ro then asked, "What about you, Mit­suko? What were you do­ing till now?"

Mit­suko replied, "Well..." She moved a lit­tle and felt the morn­ing dew on the grass soak­ing through her skirt. "I've been run­ning away. You know, away from the gun­fire. That's why...that's why when I saw Tadakat­su I was so scared...but I was al­so so tired and scared of be­ing alone and I thought of call­ing out to him...I thought maybe he'd un­der­stand...but I just couldn't tell whether it was the right thing to do or not...I just didn't know..."

Yuichi­ro nod­ded again. He glanced at her again and looked down. "I think you did the right thing."

Mit­suko smiled and said, "I think so too." Their eyes met and they smiled at each oth­er.

"That's right," Yuichi­ro said, "I'm sor­ry. I for­got. You must be thirsty. You lost your bag, right? You prob­ably haven't had any wa­ter in a while."

She had left her day pack be­hind when she fought Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. She was ac­tu­al­ly pret­ty thirsty. She nod­ded. "Could I...could I have some wa­ter?"

Look­ing away from her, Yuichi­ro nod­ded back, reached out for the day pack and picked it up. He pulled out two wa­ter bot­tles and af­ter com­par­ing them he chose the sealed bot­tle and tucked away the oth­er one. He broke the seal off the new bot­tle.

Mit­suko put up her belt-​bound hands. Yuichi­ro was about to hand over the bot­tle to her...but then stopped. He glanced over at Tadakat­su who still seemed sound sleep, then looked down at the plas­tic bot­tle in his hand.

Then he put the bot­tle down by his leg.

Hey there, aren't you go­ing to let me have a drink? You de­cid­ed not to spoil the pris­on­er be­cause that might up­set tough Sergeant Hataga­mi?

Yuichi­ro took her hands with­out a word in­stead, had her raise them, and fin­gered the belt around her wrists. He be­gan to un­fas­ten it.

"Yuichi­ro..." Mit­suko said as if sur­prised (which in fact she was), "...are you sure this is okay? Tadakat­su will be re­al­ly mad."

Con­cen­trat­ing on her wrists, Yuichi­ro an­swered, "It's all right. I have your weapon. Be­sides, how can you drink with your hands bound like that?" Yuichi­ro glanced up at Mit­suko again.

She smiled warm­ly and said, "Thank you," mak­ing her cheeks blush as she looked down.

The belt came loose. Mit­suko rubbed each of her wrists. Be­cause the belt wasn't tight they were fine.

Yuichi­ro of­fered his bot­tle to Mit­suko. Mit­suko grabbed it and took two brief, del­icate sips. She re­turned the bot­tle.

"That's all?" he asked and stopped wrap­ping his belt around his waist. "You can drink more. If we run out, we can al­ways get more from some house with a well."

Mit­suko shook her head. "Oh no, I'm fine."

"Okay."

Yuichi­ro took the bot­tle. Af­ter he stuffed it in­to his day pack, he buck­led his belt around his waist.

Mit­suko said to Yuichi­ro, "Yuichi­ro." He looked up.

Mit­suko quick­ly reached out her free hands and gen­tly held his right hand. Yuichi­ro ap­peared to tense up, not be­cause he sus­pect­ed her of some ul­te­ri­or mo­tive, but more sim­ply be­cause a girl was hold­ing his hand.

"Wh-​what?"

Mit­suko smiled warm­ly. She opened her nice­ly shaped lips and gen­tly spoke, "I'm so glad I'm with some­one like you. I was so scared I've been shak­ing all this time...but now I'm safe."

Yuichi­ro seemed to break in­to a grin. His tense mouth quiv­ered and he fi­nal­ly man­aged to blurt out, "You're safe." It seemed like he want­ed to take his right hand back, but Mit­suko re­fused to let go, clutch­ing on­to it. Yuichi­ro had a hard time speak­ing and his voice sound­ed ner­vous, but then he man­aged to ut­ter, "I'll pro­tect you, Mit­suko."

He added, "We have Tadakat­su too. He's pret­ty worked up right now, but once he calms down, he'll see you couldn't pos­si­bly be our en­emy. Then the three of us can work on find­ing the rest of the class. Then we'll come up with some way of es­cap­ing."

Mit­suko gave a warm smile. "Thank you. I'm so re­lieved."

She squeezed her grip on Yuichi­ro's hand. Yuichi­ro blushed even more and glanced away again. He said, "U-​uh, Mit­suko. Y-​you know, you're re­al­ly p-​pret­ty."

Mit­suko raised her brow. "No...re­al­ly?"

Yuichi­ro nod­ded re­peat­ed­ly. Rather than nod­ding, he seemed to be trem­bling from the un­bear­able ten­sion. This made Mit­suko smile and she re­al­ized this smile had no ul­te­ri­or mo­tive.

Well, al­most none.

16 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

57

Sakamochi's 6 a.m. an­nounce­ment woke up Tadakat­su. He hadn't even slept two hours, but in­sist­ed it was enough and un­tied the hand­ker­chief from his wrist to get a good grip on the gun. Then he sat by Mit­suko and Yuichi­ro. Yuichi­ro in­sist­ed on her sleep­ing be­fore him, but Mit­suko ab­stained, so Yuichi­ro end­ed up ly­ing down. (By this time, they had learned that four stu­dents-Kei­ta Iiji­ma, Toshi­nori Oda,

Yu­ta­ka Se­to, and Shin­ji Mimu­ra-had re­cent­ly died. The new for­bid­den zones were not in their vicin­ity.)

Tadakat­su was dis­mayed to find out the belt on Mit­suko's wrists had been un­fas­tened, but Yuichi­ro man­aged to con­vince him it would be okay. Of course, even if Yuichi­ro hadn't un­fas­tened the belt, Mit­suko had plans to have it un­fas­tened any­way...us­ing Tadakat­su.

Now then.

She couldn't re­al­ly af­ford to take her time. If Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra showed up he'd com­plete­ly blow her cov­er. (She won­dered, what is he do­ing wan­der­ing around like that any­way? Is he, like Yuichi­ro and Tadakat­su, try­ing to find oth­ers to hook up with?) And there was...that ma­chine gun shoot­er.

Al­though Yuichi­ro had said to Mit­suko with a smile, "I might not be able to sleep," he went out like a light in five min­utes. Giv­en how he was an otaku boy, he couldn't have much stami­na. He must be tired. Un­like Tadakat­su who snored, Yuichi­ro fell in­to the hushed deep sleep of a lit­tle ba­by.

Tadakat­su kept a good dis­tance of three me­ters on her left, sit­ting against a tree. He had short, cropped hair and light ac­ne above his cheek­bones. And the eyes above them...were cau­tious­ly watch­ing Mit­suko. The re­volver in his right hand was no longer point­ed at her, but his fin­ger was def­inite­ly on the trig­ger, as if to in­di­cate he could shoot her at any mo­ment.

Mit­suko wait­ed an­oth­er half hour...and then af­ter mak­ing sure Yuichi­ro, whose back faced them, was still asleep, she turned to Tadakat­su and qui­et­ly said, "You don't have to look at me like that. I'm harm­less."

Tadakat­su gri­maced. "You nev­er know."

As if re­spond­ing to Tadakat­su's re­tort, Yuichi­ro's body stirred a lit­tle. For a while Mit­suko and Tadakat­su looked at Yuichi­ro's back. His deep breath­ing re­sumed, though.

With­out look­ing over at Tadakat­su, Mit­suko took a deep breath to in­di­cate her fa­tigue. Then she moved her legs, putting her right knee down on the ground and bring­ing her left knee up.

Her pleat­ed skirt smooth­ly slid down, re­veal­ing most of her white thighs, but Mit­suko just looked around, pre­tend­ing not to no­tice.

She could tell Tadakat­su had tensed up. Ha. Maybe you can see my panties? They're hot pink silk.

Mit­suko stayed in this po­si­tion. Then she slow­ly looked over at Tadakat­su.

Tadakat­su ner­vous­ly looked up. Of course...un­til then his eyes had been glued to her thighs.

But Mit­suko still act­ed as if she were clue­less and said, "Hey, Tadakat­su."

"What?"

Tadakat­su seemed to be do­ing his best to main­tain his in­tim­idat­ing stance, but now there was a slight trem­ble in his voice.

"I am so scared."

She thought Tadakat­su would say some­thing nasty again, but he didn't re­spond and on­ly stared at her.

"Aren't you scared?"

Tadakat­su's brow moved a lit­tle, but then he said, "Of course, I am. That's why I'm be­ing so care­ful with you."

Mit­suko looked sad­ly away from Tadakat­su. "So you still won't trust me."

"Don't hold it against me," Tadakat­su said, but his tone of voice wasn't even half as hos­tile as it had been. "I know I'm re­peat­ing my­self, but I just don't want to die."

Mit­suko quick­ly looked back at Tadakat­su. She said a lit­tle em­phat­ical­ly, "I'm in the same boat too. I don't want to die. But if you don't trust me, then we'll nev­er be able to co­op­er­ate and find a way to save our­selves."

"Uh, well..." Tadakat­su nod­ded as if re­lent­ing. "Well...I know that but..."

Mit­suko smiled warm­ly. She looked in­to her op­po­nent's eyes and her well-​formed, red lips smiled___It was dif­fer­ent from the one she wore dur­ing her some­what idyl­lic con­ver­sa­tion with Yuichi­ro. This one was Mit­suko Souma's spe­cial fall­en an­gel's smile. Tadakat­su's eyes were glazed, se­duced.

"Hey, Tadakat­su," she con­tin­ued as she re­turned to her ter­ri­fied-​girl face. This con­stant switch be­tween ex­pres­sions, the vir­gin and the whore, day and night. Wow. Sounds like a movie ti­tle.

"Wh-​what?"

"I know I keep on say­ing this, but I'm just so scared."

"U-​uh huh."

"So..." She looked at him di­rect­ly again.

"So?"

Any trace of an­tag­onism and sus­pi­cion was now gone from Tadakat­su's voice and face.

Mit­suko tilt­ed her head slight­ly and asked, "Can we talk a lit­tle?"

"...talk?" He knit his brows. "Aren't we do­ing that right now?..."

Mit­suko hissed, "Don't be stupid. Do I have to spell it out?" Her eyes glued on Tadakat­su, she point­ed her chin at Yuichi­ro. "Not here, okay? I want to talk to you, but not with Yuichi­ro here."

His mouth slight­ly open, Tadakat­su gazed over at Yuichi­ro...and then looked back at Mit­suko.

"Okay?" Mit­suko said. She got up, looked around, and de­cid­ed the thick­et be­hind Tadakat­su would be best. She walked over to Tadakat­su, tilt­ed her head slight­ly, and then pro­ceed­ed for­ward. She wasn't sure whether he would take the bait...but then af­ter a while she could tell he was nib­bling.

Mit­suko stopped ap­prox­imate­ly twen­ty me­ters away from where Yuichi­ro slept. Just like the pre­vi­ous area, it was a small open­ing sur­round­ed by bush­es.

When she turned around, Tadakat­su ap­peared, wad­ing through the thick­et. His eyes were glazed. But maybe it was sub­con­scious___He still kept a tight grip on his gun.

Mit­suko im­me­di­ate­ly pulled down the side zip­per of her skirt. Her pleat­ed skirt fell to the ground, ex­pos­ing her thighs in the dull morn­ing light. She could tell he was hold­ing his breath.

Then she re­moved her scarf and un­dressed. Un­like the oth­er girls she'd nev­er be so square as to wear an un­der­shirt, so she on­ly had her un­der­wear on now. Oh right, she had to take off her shoes. Af­ter she took them off, she stared at Tadakat­su with her fall­en an­gel's smile.

"M-​Mit­suko..." Tadakat­su bare­ly man­aged to ut­ter.

Mit­suko de­cid­ed to make sure. "I'm so scared, Tadakat­su. So..."

Tadakat­su awk­ward­ly ap­proached Mit­suko.

Mit­suko looked down at his right hand, pre­tend­ing to sud­den­ly no­tice the gun, and said, "Put that thing some­where else."

Tadakat­su lift­ed his hand, as if he sud­den­ly be­came aware of its ex­is­tence, and gazed at it. Then he put it down, away from them.

He ap­proached her again.

Mit­suko gave a nice smile, spread out her arms, and wrapped her hands around his neck. His body trem­bled but the mo­ment Mit­suko of­fered her lips, he im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan suck­ing on them. Mit­suko re­ceived him by breath­ing heav­ily.

Af­ter a while their lips sep­arat­ed.

Mit­suko looked up at Tadakat­su's eyes and said, "This is your first time, huh?"

"So what?" Tadakat­su said, his voice trem­bling.

They fell down on the grass, Mit­suko un­der­neath.

Tadakat­su im­me­di­ate­ly went for her breasts.

You id­iot, you're sup­posed to make out for a while be­fore you do that, Mit­suko thought. In­stead she moaned, "Ahh..." Tadakat­su's rough hands slipped off her bra and clutched at her well-​en­dowed breasts, now ex­posed. Then his face went down there.

"Ahh...ahh..."

She con­tin­ued pre­tend­ing to be turned on (in ex­ag­ger­at­ed porn-​video style), but mean­while her right hand was reach­ing down to her panties....

Her fin­ger­tips touched a hard, thin ob­ject.

Gang girls prob­ably didn't use such cheap, clunky weapons any­more. But it'd been Mit­suko's weapon of choice for a long time now. The most use­ful weapon right now for her was in fact some­thing she could hide in her panties.

Tadakat­su was pre­oc­cu­pied with kiss­ing Mit­suko's breasts. His left hand reached be­tween her legs. Mit­suko then let out a moan...but Tadakat­su's eyes were con­cen­trat­ing on her breasts. His scalp was ex­posed.

Mit­suko slow­ly moved her right hand near his neck.

Sor­ry, Tadakat­su. But at least you get to go out with a nice mem­ory, so you can for­give me, right? Too bad we won't go all the way, though.

Mit­suko's right ring fin­ger gen­tly touched Tadakat­su's neck. The ob­ject was be­tween her in­dex and mid­dle fin­ger.

Kaw kaw, a bird cried, un­for­tu­nate­ly, to her right.

Tadakat­su raised his head re­flex­ive­ly and glanced over in that di­rec­tion.

It was on­ly the sound of a bird cry­ing. What re­al­ly made Tadakat­su's eyes open wide was of course...

...the ra­zor blade in Mit­suko's hand right in front of his face.

Damn it!

How bad can my tim­ing be, the thought sort of crossed her mind, but Mit­suko didn't care as she au­to­mat­ical­ly swung the blade.

He groaned and pulled away from Mit­suko. The blade skimmed his neck, but the cut was way too shal­low to be fa­tal. My oh my, good re­flex­es. That's right, you're a base­ball jock.

Tadakat­su stood up, his eyes open wide, star­ing down at Mit­suko, her body half raised. He ap­peared to be on the verge of say­ing some­thing but seemed at a loss for words.

She could care less about Tadakat­su's state. She leaped up and made a dash for the re­volver im­me­di­ate­ly to her right.

But Tadakat­su's body flew in front of her in a head-​first slide. He scooped the gun from the ground, rolled over, and got up on his knees. Ev­er since el­emen­tary school Tadakat­su played the short­stop po­si­tion for­mer­ly oc­cu­pied by Shuya Nana­hara (even though she and Shuya went to dif­fer­ent schools Shuya's rep­uta­tion as a star play­er in Lit­tle League was so widespread even Mit­suko had heard of him), so the Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School base­ball team is in good hands, huh? Well, at least you didn't take off your pants. You would have looked pret­ty pa­thet­ic naked.

That was be­sides the point, though. Once Mit­suko re­al­ized Tadakat­su would get the gun be­fore she did, she changed course. She heard gun­shots be­hind her, but they missed as she ran in­to the thick­et.

She could hear Tadakat­su chas­ing her. He would catch up. That was for sure.

She got out of the thick­et. There was Yuichi­ro Takiguchi. He looked like he'd heard the gun­fire, got up, and then re­al­iz­ing Mit­suko and Tadakat­su were gone, was look­ing around, but the mo­ment his eyes found her, they opened wide. (Of course. She was half naked. What a bonus! Mit­suko Souma's One Night Show. Oh wait, but it's morn­ing.)

"Yuichi­ro!" Mit­suko raised her voice and ran to­wards Yuichi­ro. She didn't for­get to crum­ple up her face.

"Wh-​what hap­pened, Mit­suko?"

By the time Tadakat­su Hataga­mi made his way through the bush­es, Mit­suko was be­hind Yuichi­ro's back. Be­cause Yuichi­ro was on­ly four or five cen­time­ters taller than her, she couldn't re­al­ly hide be­hind him, but oh well.

"Yuichi­ro!" Tadakat­su stopped and held his gun, groan­ing. "Get out of my way!"

"H-​hold on." His face still drowsy, Yuichi­ro spoke quick­ly per­haps be­cause he didn't ful­ly grasp the sit­ua­tion. Mit­suko grabbed his shoul­ders from be­hind and pressed her half naked body against his back.

Yuichi­ro said, "What is wrong with you?"

"Mit­suko tried to kill me! I told you, man!"

Still hid­ing be­hind Yuichi­ro, Mit­suko said in a fee­ble voice, "Th-​that's not true. Tadakat­su tried to force me to...he threat­ened me with that gun. Please, help me, Yuichi­ro!"

Tadakat­su's face con­tort­ed in dis­may. "I-​it's not true, Yuichi­ro! Th-​that's right. Look!" Tadakat­su point­ed at his neck with the fin­gers of his emp­ty left hand. The nar­row cut had a slight blood stain. "She went at me with a ra­zor blade!"

Yuichi­ro turned around and looked at Mit­suko out of the cor­ner of his eye. Mit­suko shook her head (as cute­ly as pos­si­ble, as if ter­ri­fied, now she was play­ing the vir­gin).

"I was so des­per­ate...I had to use my nails on him. Then...Tadakat­su got mad...and tried to shoot me..."

She had al­ready got­ten rid of the ra­zor blade in the shrubs. Even if she were forced to take off all her clothes (she was near­ly naked any­way now) for a body search, they'd find no ev­idence.

Now Tadakat­su's face flushed red with anger.

"Move, Yuichi­ro!" he shout­ed. "I'm shoot­ing her!"

"Hold on," Yuichi­ro said, try­ing his best to sound calm, "I...that's right...I can't tell who's telling the truth."

"What!?" Tadakat­su raised his voice, but Yuichi­ro wasn't in­tim­idat­ed. He reached out his right hand to Tadakat­su.

"Give me your gun. Then we'll see who's telling the truth."

Tadakat­su's face con­tort­ed as if he were on the verge of cry­ing out of mis­ery. And wear­ing this face he screamed at Yuichi­ro, "We can't af­ford to take our time here! You're go­ing to get killed too if we don't get rid of her now!"

Mit­suko cried out, "That's aw­ful. I would nev­er do that. Help me, Yuichi­ro." She squeezed his shoul­ders tight­ly.

Yuichi­ro pa­tient­ly ex­tend­ed his hand. "Give it to me, Tadakat­su if you're telling the truth."

Tadakat­su gri­maced again.

But even­tu­al­ly, af­ter tak­ing a long, deep breath, let­ting his shoul­ders down, he ex­haled and low­ered his gun. He put his fin­ger on the trig­ger guard, flipped the gun grip for­ward, and of­fered it to Yuichi­ro as if he had no choice.

Of course she still wore her weepy face... but there was a faint glim­mer in her eyes. The key mo­ment would be when the gun was in Yuichi­ro's hands. It should be easy to take away from him. The ques­tion was how.

Yuichi­ro nod­ded and came for­ward.

But then...

It was a move that was al­most iden­ti­cal to the one Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra had made with the Colt Gov­ern­ment against her. Like a mag­ic trick, the gun flipped over in his hand. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Tadakat­su got down on his right knee and leaned side­ways. The gun was point­ed di­rect­ly at Mit­suko, its line of fire pass­ing right by Yuichi­ro's left shoul­der. Now that she wasn't cling­ing to Yuichi­ro's back Mit­suko was com­plete­ly ex­posed.

Yuichi­ro fol­lowed the gun's tar­get and quick­ly looked back at Mit­suko.

Mit­suko's eyes opened wide.

I'm dead now-

With­out hes­itat­ing, Tadakat­su pulled the trig­ger.

Gun­fire. Two shots.

Yuichi­ro's body fell down slow­ly as if in slow mo­tion right in front of her.

Be­yond it was the fright­ened face of Tadakat­su.

By then Mit­suko had picked up the sick­le Yuichi­ro had be­side him when he went to sleep.

She threw it. It spun through the air. Its ba­nana-​shaped blade lodged in­to Tadakat­su's right shoul­der. He groaned and dropped his gun.

Mit­suko didn't waste a sin­gle mo­ment. She picked up the bat and dashed for­ward. She leapt over Yuichi­ro, who was ly­ing face down, ran to­wards Tadakat­su, and with this for­ward mo­men­tum took a full swing at his head as he stag­gered, clutch­ing his right shoul­der.

Hey there. Here's some­thing fa­mil­iar, a bat. Hope you like it.

Thud. The end of the bat land­ed in the cen­ter of his face. She'd crushed in his nose car­ti­lage and cheek­bones, tear­ing out sev­er­al of his teeth.

Tadakat­su faint­ed. Mit­suko swung at his fore­head. KRAK! His fore­head caved in. His eyes bulged out and his hands balled up in­to fists. One more swing, this time she aimed at the bridge of his nose. Mit­suko Souma's Spe­cial Train­ing for One Thou­sand Catch­es. Come on, come on, this next one's go­ing in­to cen­ter field.

Blood burst out of Tadakat­su's nos­trils with this blow.

Mit­suko put the bat down. Tadakat­su's en­tire face was im­mersed in blood. He was dead by now. Thick streams of blood came drip­ping out of his ears and his de­formed nose.

Mit­suko tossed the bat and picked up the pis­tol ly­ing to her left.

Then she walked over to Yuichi­ro who was ly­ing down on his face.

The blood stain spread all over the grass un­der­neath.

He had shield­ed Mit­suko. That one in­stant.

Mit­suko slow­ly knelt down by Yuichi­ro. She could tell he was still breath­ing as she bent over.

Af­ter some con­sid­er­ation, Mit­suko moved over to block Yuichi­ro's view of Tadakat­su's corpse. Then she grabbed his shoul­der to turn him over.

Yuichi­ro moaned, "Urgh," and opened his eyes in a daze. His school coat had two holes, one in the left chest and the oth­er in his side. Blood came pour­ing out, ab­sorbed by the black fab­ric. Mit­suko held Yuichi­ro up.

His eyes wan­dered around for a while. Then he looked at Mit­suko. His short breaths came in­ter­mit­tent­ly, match­ing his heart­beat. "M-​Mit­suko..." he said, "wh-​what about Tadakat­su?"

Mit­suko shook her head. "He pan­icked af­ter he shot you and just ran away."

Tadakat­su had tried to kill Mit­suko so this ex­pla­na­tion didn't make much sense. But...maybe he couldn't think much any­more. Yuichi­ro seemed to nod slight­ly.

"R-​re­al­ly..." His eyes seemed out of fo­cus. He might on­ly have a par­tial im­age of Mit­suko now. "Y-​you didn't get hurt, I hope?"

"I'm fine." She nod­ded. And then said, "You saved me."

Yuichi­ro seemed to form a slight grin. "I-I'm so sor­ry. I-I don't think I can pro­tect you any­more. I-I can't m-​m-​move..."

Foams of blood came burst­ing out the sides of his mouth. His lungs must have been punc­tured.

"I know." She leaned over and gen­tly hugged his body.

Mit­suko's long black hair fell on­to his chest, its ends stained by the blood pour­ing out of his wounds. Be­fore she pressed her lips against his, Yuichi­ro's eyes moved slight­ly but then they shut.

This kiss was dif­fer­ent from the whore's kiss she gave to Tadakat­su mo­ments ago. It was soft, warm, and kind even though it might have been mixed with the taste of blood.

Their lips part­ed. Yuichi­ro opened his eyes again in a se­mi-​daze.

"I-I'm sor­ry..." he said, "it looks like..."

Mit­suko smiled. "I know."

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! With these dull gun­shots Yuichi­ro's eyes opened wide.

Star­ing up at Mit­suko's face, and prob­ably hav­ing no idea what had just hap­pened, Yuichi­ro Takiguchi was now dead.

Mit­suko slow­ly re­moved the smok­ing re­volver from Yuichi­ro's stom­ach and held Yuichi­ro's body again. She looked in­to his now va­cant eyes.

"You were pret­ty cool. You even made me a lit­tle hap­py. I won't for­get you."

She closed her eyes. Al­most re­morse­ful­ly, she once again gen­tly pressed her lips against Yuichi­ro's. His lips were still warm.

The sun­light was fi­nal­ly shin­ing on the west­ern slope of the north­ern moun­tain. Un­der Mit­suko's head, block­ing this light, Yuichi­ro's pupils di­lat­ed rapid­ly.

14 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

58

Shuya Nana­hara (Male Stu­dent No. 15) sud­den­ly woke up. He saw the blue sky framed by bril­liant green grass.

He got up. Be­yond the grass sur­round­ing him, there was the fa­mil­iar sight of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School in the pleas­ant sun­light.

Sev­er­al stu­dents were on the school field in their gym gear. Maybe they were play­ing Soft­ball for gym class. He could hear their cheer­ing.

He was in the gar­den at the edge of the court­yard. He saw the large leaves of the phoenix tree loom­ing above him. This was where he took a nap some­times, ei­ther dur­ing lunch or when he cut class.

He stood up and checked his body.

He had no wounds at all. Flakes of grass were stuck to his coat. He brushed them off.

A dream...

Shuya shook his head, still in a daze. Then he knew for cer­tain.

It was all a dream. All of it.

He wiped his neck with his hand. It was moist with sweat. He was drenched in sweat as if he'd had a night­mare.

What...what a hor­ri­ble dream! Killing game? We were se­lect­ed for that "Pro­gram"!

Then he re­al­ized. The ones in the field...gym class?

He checked his watch. Af­ter­noon class­es had start­ed. He'd over­slept!

He quick­ly left the gar­den and trot­ted over to the school build­ing. To­day...to­day was...he checked his watch while run­ning and saw it was Thurs­day.

The first Thurs­day af­ter­noon pe­ri­od was lit­er­ature. He felt re­lieved. He liked lit­er­ature, and he did pret­ty well in that class. Plus his teach­er, Kazuko Okaza­ki, liked him. So all he'd have to do is bow apolo­get­ical­ly.

Lit­er­ature. Fa­vorite sub­ject. Grades. Ms. Okaza­ki.

These words pass­ing through his mind trig­gered a nos­tal­gic feel­ing.

Shuya re­al­ly did like lit­er­ature. Even if the sto­ries and es­says in the text­books were in­un­dat­ed with slo­gans in praise of the Re­pub­lic or some sil­ly "ide­ol­ogy," Shuya man­aged to dis­cov­er words he liked. Words were just as im­por­tant to him as mu­sic. Be­cause rock couldn't do with­out lyrics.

Speak­ing of words... the top stu­dent in lit­er­ature, Noriko Nak­agawa, wrote beau­ti­ful po­et­ry. Com­pared to the song lyrics he strug­gled to come up with, her words were so much more con­cise and bril­liant...they could be open and gen­tle on the one hand and harsh and strong on the oth­er...he thought they rep­re­sent­ed the na­ture of girls in gen­er­al. Sure, Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu had a crush on Noriko, but what re­al­ly struck Shuya was this part of her.

Which made Shuya re­al­ize, oh, that means Yoshi­to­ki is alive. Re­al­iz­ing how sil­ly the whole or­deal was, he was about to cry from re­lief as he trot­ted over. How sil­ly. I can't be­lieve I could dream of Yoshi­to­ki dy­ing.

And how did I end up with Noriko?...Hey wait, since when did I stop call­ing her "Noriko-​san"? How pre­sump­tu­ous...in that stupid dream, he thought. They were linked to­geth­er in the dream...so does that mean I have some feel­ings for her be­yond ad­mir­ing her po­et­ry? Uh oh, that means I'll end up fight­ing with Yoshi­to­ki. That's trou­ble.

Still, this idle thought made him grin.

Shuya en­tered the school build­ing, now hushed be­cause class­es were in ses­sion. He ran up the stairs. Third Year Class B was on the third floor. He skipped ev­ery oth­er step.

He reached the third floor and turned right in­to the hall. The sec­ond class­room was Class B.

Shuya stopped by the door for a mo­ment, try­ing to come up with an ex­cuse for Ms. Okaza­ki. He was feel­ing sick...no, he had a dizzy spell. So he had to lie down and rest. Would she be­lieve him, giv­en how he was al­ways in per­fect health? Yoshi­to­ki would give an ex­ag­ger­at­ed shrug, and some­one like Yu­ta­ka Se­to would say some­thing like, "I bet you were sleep­ing," Shin­ji Mimu­ra would snick­er, and Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra, his arms fold­ed, would look mild­ly amused. Noriko would smile at Shuya as he scratched his head. All right, that's what I'll go with. So what if it's em­bar­rass­ing.

Shuya put his hand on the door, made him­self look as apolo­get­ic as pos­si­ble, and gen­tly slid it open.

Right be­fore he looked up from the for­mal pos­ture he as­sumed, a stench as­sault­ed him.

He looked up. He slid the door open with all his might.

The first thing he saw was some­one ly­ing by the lectern.

Ms. Okaza­ki...

It wasn't Ms. Okaza­ki. It was their head in­struc­tor, Masao Hayashi­da. And...

His head was miss­ing. There was a pud­dle where it was sup­posed to be. On­ly half of his eye­glass frames were ly­ing be­side him.

Shuya tore his eyes off of Mr. Hayashi­da's corpse and ex­am­ined the rest of the class.

There were desks and chairs lined up as usu­al.

The strange thing was that his fa­mil­iar class­mates were all sprawled over their desks. And...

The floor was cov­ered with blood. An in­tense stench waft­ed up.

Af­ter stand­ing still for a mo­ment, he quick­ly reached out for Mayu­mi Ten­do-and re­al­ized that an an­ten­na-​like sil­ver ar­row was plant­ed in her back. Its tip was pok­ing out of her stom­ach while blood dripped down and off her skirt on­to the floor.

Shuya moved for­ward. He shook Kazushi Nü­da's body. Kazushi's body tilt­ed with a jerk, re­veal­ing its face.

Shuya felt a chill run up his spine. Kazushi's eyes were now two dark-​red holes. Blood and a slimy egg-​white-​like sub­stance oozed out of them. Then... there was a gim­let-​like ob­ject with a thick han­dle stabbed in­to his mouth.

Shuya screamed and ran to Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's seat. There were three holes in his back, each one bloom­ing with flow­ers of blood. As he held him up, Yoshi­to­ki's head slumped over on­to his shoul­der. His bulging eyes gazed up at the ceil­ing.

Yoshi­to­ki!...

Shuya raised his voice. Then he looked around fran­ti­cal­ly.

Ev­ery­one was ei­ther slouched back in their chairs or ly­ing on the floor.

Megu­mi Eto's throat was slashed like sliced wa­ter­mel­on. A sick­le was plant­ed in Yo­ji Ku­ramo­to's head. Saku­ra Ogawa's head was split open like an over­ripe fruit. On­ly half of Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi's head ex­ist­ed. An axe was plant­ed in Tat­sumichi Oki's head, his face cracked down the mid­dle, left and right out of align­ment like a split peanut. Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi's stom­ach looked like a sausage-​fac­to­ry trash bin. Tadakat­su Hataga­mi's face was com­plete­ly crushed and cov­ered in blood. Hi­rono Shimizu's face was swollen black, and her sea-​slug-​sized tongue dan­gled out from the side of her wide open mouth. The body of The Third Man, Shin­ji Mimu­ra, was cov­ered with bul­lets.

Ba­si­cal­ly, ev­ery­one...was dead.

Some­thing caught Shuya's eye. Shogo Kawa­da-that stand­off­ish trans­fer stu­dent with the bad rep­uta­tion-had deep stab wounds all over his chest. His eyes were half-​open and look­ing down at the floor...they were out of fo­cus.

Shuya took a deep breath and looked over at Noriko Nak­agawa's seat. It was right be­hind Yoshi­to­ki's, so he could have no­ticed ear­li­er. For some rea­son though, it felt as if his class­mates' seats were swirling around with the corpses. He fi­nal­ly man­aged to lo­cate Noriko.

She was still sprawled on top of her desk.

Shuya ran to her and held her up.

THUD. Her head fell off. Leav­ing be­hind her body, it land­ed with a thud on the floor and rolled around in a pool of blood...and then looked up at Shuya. With eyes full of re­sent­ment. I thought you said you would save me, Shuya. But I end­ed up dy­ing. I re­al­ly loved you, too. I re­al­ly did.

His eyes glued to Noriko's face, Shuya held his head and opened his mouth. He felt he was go­ing crazy.

He could tell a scream was welling up in­side.

Sud­den­ly, he saw some­thing white.

As he be­came phys­ical­ly aware that his body was in fact hor­izon­tal, his vi­sion came in­to fo­cus, and Shuya fi­nal­ly re­al­ized it was the ceil­ing. On the left side he saw a flu­ores­cent light.

Some­one gen­tly touched his chest.

He re­al­ized how heavy he was breath­ing. His eyes fol­lowed the hand up to the arm, the arm up to the shoul­der, and fi­nal­ly dis­cerned a sailor-​suit fig­ure with braid­ed hair- fe­male class rep­re­sen­ta­tive Yukie Ut­su­mi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 2), smil­ing warm­ly.

"Looks like you're up. What a re­lief," she said.

14 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

59

Shuya tried get­ting up, but the pain all over his body im­me­di­ate­ly as­sault­ed him, and he fell back. He re­al­ized then he was ly­ing on a soft bed with fresh sheets.

Yukie gen­tly touched Shuya's chest again, then lift­ed the puffy blan­ket up to his neck. "Don't ex­ert your­self. You're in­jured pret­ty bad­ly...You seemed to be hav­ing a bad night­mare. Do you feel okay?"

Shuya wasn't able to re­spond co­her­ent­ly. In­stead he sur­veyed the room. It was small. There was cheap fab­ric wall­pa­per on the left wall, and on the right be­hind Yukie was an­oth­er bed, but be­sides that there wasn't much else. There was a door near the foot of the bed, but it was closed. The wood­en frame gave it an old look. There seemed to be a win­dow above his head let­ting in a dull light which il­lu­mi­nat­ed the room. Giv­en how dull the light was it seemed cloudy out­side. But...where was he?

"I don't get it," Shuya said. He re­al­ized he could speak now. "I don't re­mem­ber check­ing in­to a ho­tel with the stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive."

He was still in a half daze, but Yukie gave a sigh of re­lief. Then her full lips erupt­ed in­to a soft chuck­le. "You would say that, wouldn't you? I'm so re­lieved you're all right though." Look­ing at Shuya, she added, "You were out for quite some time. Let see...it's been," she looked down at her watch on her left wrist, "about thir­teen hours."

Thir­teen hours? Thir­teen hours. Thir­teen hours ago I was-

Shuya's eyes opened wide. His mem­ory and the present locked in. He was ful­ly awake now.

There was some­thing he need­ed to find out. Right away.

"What about Noriko, Noriko Nak­agawa? And Shogo Kawa­da?"

Shuya said this and took a deep breath. Were they still alive?

Yukie gave him a fun­ny look and then said, "I think Noriko...and Shogo are still alive. We just heard the af­ter­noon an­nounce­ment but their names weren't an­nounced."

Shuya let out a deep breath. Noriko and Shogo had man­aged to es­cape. Kazuo had chased af­ter him and end­ed up los­ing Noriko and Shogo. Kazuo was-

Shuya then looked up at Yukie.

"Kazuo. It's Kazuo!" His voice was half pan­ick­ing. "Where are we? Are you alone here? We have to be care­ful!"

Yukie gen­tly touched Shuya's right hand, which was stick­ing out from un­der his blan­ket. "Calm down." Then she asked, "Did Kazuo do this to you?"

Shuya nod­ded. "He's the one who's been at­tack­ing us. He's to­tal­ly up for this."

"Re­al­ly..." Yukie nod­ded and con­tin­ued, "We're safe here. They're six of us here, not in­clud­ing you. Ev­ery­one else is keep­ing watch, so don't wor­ry. They're all close friends of mine."

Shuya raised his brow. Six?

"Who?"

"Yu­ka Nak­agawa," Yukie men­tioned the cheery girl who had the same last name as Noriko. Then she con­tin­ued, "Sato­mi No­da and Chisato Mat­sui. Haru­ka Taniza­wa. And Yuko Saka­ki."

Shuya licked his lips. Yukie saw the ex­pres­sion on his face and asked, "What? You can't trust them? Which one? Ev­ery­one?"

"No..." Shuya shook his head. "If they're your friends I trust them."

But how did six girls, all good friends with each oth­er, man­age to get to­geth­er?

Yukie smiled and squeezed his hand. "Good. I'm glad to hear that from you, Shuya."

Shuya smiled too. But his smile re­ced­ed al­most in­stant­ly. There were oth­er things he had to know. He'd al­ready missed three-the mid­night, 6 a.m., and noon an­nounce­ments.

"Who...died?" he asked. "I-I mean, at mid­night, 6 a.m., and noon, there were three an­nounce­ments, right? Did any­one else...die?"

Yukie's mouth stiff­ened. She took some pa­per from the small side ta­ble right be­side them. It was a map and stu­dent list. The folds and mud stains looked fa­mil­iar. He re­al­ized it was the one he'd kept in his school coat pock­et.

Yukie looked over the list and said, "Hi­rono Shimizu. And then Kei­ta Iiji­ma, Toshi­nori Oda, Yu­ta­ka Se­to, Yuichi­ro Takiguchi, Tadakat­su Hataga­mi, and Shin­ji Mimu­ra."

Shuya's mouth hung open. Of course the game had pro­ceed­ed, but he was shocked it now left on­ly lit­tle more than a dozen stu­dents. Plus he'd been team­mates with Tadakat­su Hataga­mi in Lit­tle League, but what re­al­ly took him by sur­prise was...

"Shin­ji's..."

The Third Man, Shin­ji Mimu­ra, had died. It was hard to be­lieve. He thought if any­one could sur­vive it would have been Shin­ji.

Yukie nod­ded silent­ly.

At the same time Shuya was struck by how he wasn't all that shak­en up. He'd got­ten used to it. That must have been it. Still, he re­mem­bered Shin­ji's spe­cial grin. Then he re­called that se­ri­ous ex­pres­sion Shin­ji wore as he sent him a sig­nal, warn­ing him to calm down when they were back in the school build­ing.

So we're nev­er go­ing to see the awe­some play of The Third Man, Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High's star shoot­ing guard, again, he thought, and felt a pang of sor­row.

"When was Shin­ji's name an­nounced?"

"In the morn­ing," Yukie an­swered. "Kei­ta Iiji­ma and Yu­ta­ka Se­to were al­so in the morn­ing. They might have been to­geth­er. They were such good friends."

"I see..."

Shin­ji had still been alive at mid­night. And as Yukie said, he might have been with Yu­ta­ka Se­to and Kei­ta Iiji­ma.

Yukie added, "There was an in­cred­ible ex­plo­sion last night. And a lot of gun­fire. That's where it might have come from."

"Ex­plo­sion?"

Shuya re­called the hand grenade Kazuo threw at them. "That was...Kazuo ac­tu­al­ly used a hand grenade. Maybe that's what you heard."

Yukie raised her brow. "So...that's what that was. That was a lit­tle past eleven, right? No, the one I'm talk­ing about ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened af­ter we brought you here. It was past mid­night. It was much worse than the one we heard around eleven. The one who kept watch said the en­tire cen­ter of the is­land just lit up."

Shuya pursed his lips, but then he re­al­ized he still hadn't man­aged to find out ex­act­ly where they were.

Be­fore he could ask though, Yukie hand­ed him the map and stu­dent list. "This is yours. I marked off the map too."

As he took it, Shuya re­al­ized, yes, there were more for­bid­den zones. He spread the map out.

"The place where we talked about rock."

That place, sec­tor C=3, near the west­ern shore, was crossed out with a pen­cil along with sev­er­al oth­er sec­tors. The small writ­ing, "23rd, 11 a.m." meant that it was for­bid­den as of this morn­ing at eleven, while Shuya had been asleep.

Shuya pursed his lips. Noriko and Shogo weren't there any­more-his thoughts were fi­nal­ly get­ting clear­er-if they haven't died be­tween noon and now. Of course they were alive...but then he re­called how he'd seen Shogo and Noriko dead along with Yoshi­to­ki and Shin­ji in his dream. He felt a chill run down his spine.

But in any case they should be alive. All he could do was be­lieve they were all right. But how in the world would he find them?

Shuya put the map down on his chest. He couldn't af­ford to waste any time de­lib­er­at­ing, un­der these cir­cum­stances. The first thing was in­for­ma­tion.

And since he wasn't alone there might be a way.

He looked up at Yukie. "Where are we any­way? How did I end up in this bed?"

Yukie looked up at the win­dow and said, "This is a light­house."

"Light­house?"

"That's right. On the north­east end of the is­land. It's marked on the map. We've been stay­ing here ev­er since the game start­ed."

Shuya looked at his map again. Just as Yukie said, the light­house was lo­cat­ed in sec­tor C=10, jut­ting out from the north­east side of the is­land. The area was prac­ti­cal­ly de­void of for­bid­den zones.

"So Shuya, about last night. The front of this light­house is a cliff, and that's where you fell. The per­son keep­ing watch found you...and took you in. You were in­jured pret­ty bad­ly. Cov­ered with blood. I thought you were go­ing to die."

Shuya fi­nal­ly re­al­ized his tor­so was naked and that his throb­bing left shoul­der was ban­daged. (Giv­en how it felt, he de­duced the bul­let shat­tered his shoul­der blade and was now lodged in there.) The right side of his neck-he felt a burn­ing sen­sa­tion right be­low his col­lar where there was an­oth­er ban­dage (but this bul­let wound must have been a mi­nor scrape). And then on top of his left el­bow. (It felt heavy. The bul­let had most like­ly ex­it­ed, but per­haps be­cause the bone or ten­don was torn off, it felt par­alyzed.) Al­so his left side. (The bul­let had pierced it, but it seemed to have missed his vi­tal or­gans.) Shuya awk­ward­ly moved his un­scathed right arm and lift­ed his blan­ket, con­firm­ing he was in­deed cov­ered with ban­dages.

He re­turned the blan­ket and asked, "So you treat­ed me."

"Yes," Yukie nod­ded. "We found an emer­gen­cy first-​aid kit in the light­house. We stitched your wounds a lit­tle. Not a great job, since we didn't know what we were do­ing and we could on­ly use the string and nee­dle from a sewing set. It looks like the bul­let in your shoul­der...is lodged in there. We couldn't do much. I thought what you re­al­ly need­ed was a blood trans­fu­sion. You were bleed­ing so bad­ly."

"Thanks a lot."

"Oh no," Yukie smiled kind­ly. "I can't be­lieve I got to touch a guy's body! I even got to take off your clothes."

Shuya chuck­led. While she was both very smart and con­sid­er­ate, she could al­so say bold stuff like that. That's right, she'd been like that ev­er since he got to know her on a rainy day in the el­emen­tary school gym, ne­go­ti­at­ing the space al­lo­cat­ed for Lit­tle League prac­tice and girls' vol­ley­ball. And that's right, at the time he'd said to Yoshi­to­ki, "Then there's Ut­su­mi, who's on the vol­ley­ball team. She's pret­ty cool. That's my type. You know, re­al out­go­ing."

Of course right now he wasn't sup­posed to be in­dulging in idle emo­tions. But when Yukie said, "Oh, yeah, here," and of­fered him a cup of wa­ter, Shuya couldn't re­sist whistling. He was in fact re­al­ly thirsty. The cup was al­ready there, on the side ta­ble be­yond his field of vi­sion.

He thought, how im­pres­sive, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. You'll be a won­der­ful wife some day, no, a won­der­ful wom­an. No, you might in fact be a won­der­ful wom­an now. I've ac­tu­al­ly thought that for a while.

He took the cup, raised his head, and drank. His neck wound hurt as he swal­lowed and gri­maced. But he drank it all.

"I might be ask­ing for too much," he said, re­turn­ing the cup, "but I think I should drink a lot more. And al­so...do you have any kind of painkiller? Any­thing. It'll help me."

Yukie nod­ded. "Sure. I'll go get some."

Shuya wiped his lips and then said, "It's amaz­ing your friends ac­cept­ed me. I mean, I could be an en­emy."

Yukie shook her head. "We couldn't just let some­one die. Be­sides..." She stared in­to Shuya's eyes and smiled play­ful­ly. "It was you, Shuya. I'm lead­ing this group, so I forced ev­ery­one to agree."

Did that mean that...she al­so thought there was some­thing spe­cial about them ev­er since that time at the el­emen­tary school gym?

Shuya probed fur­ther. "Which means...that some of them were re­luc­tant. I knew it."

"Well, come on. Giv­en the cir­cum­stances." Yukie looked down. "Don't take it the wrong way. Ev­ery­one's very ag­itat­ed."

"Yeah." Shuya nod­ded. "I know."

"But I con­vinced them." She looked up and smiled again. "So you should be thank­ful."

Shuya was nod­ding when he no­ticed Yukie, who'd just been smil­ing, was now for some rea­son sud­den­ly on the verge of tears.

She stared at him and said, "I was wor­ried sick. I thought you might die, Shuya."

Shuya was tak­en by sur­prise and looked at her.

Yukie con­tin­ued, "I just wouldn't know what to do if you died."

Her voice was now sob­bing.

"...do you un­der­stand what I'm say­ing? Do you see why I had to save you, no mat­ter what?"

Shuya stared at Yukie's tear­ful eyes and slow­ly nod­ded. Then he thought, geez, I can't be­lieve how pop­ular I am.

Of course...this might have been a psy­cho­log­ical re­sult of their con­fine­ment. Un­der these cir­cum­stances, they were prob­ably go­ing to die soon (no, ac­cord­ing to the rules, they were def­inite­ly go­ing to die. He'd nev­er heard of some­one else be­sides the win­ner sur­viv­ing the hellish Pro­gram), and now that the sur­vivors were be­com­ing few­er and few­er, maybe a boy that you liked "a lit­tle" ev­er since hav­ing an ex­change in the cor­ner of an el­emen­tary school gym might turn in­to some­body you'd "die for."

No, that prob­ably wasn't the case. She couldn't have op­posed her friends un­less she re­al­ly cared for him. Be­sides, how else could she have trust­ed him?

"I un­der­stand. Thanks," he said.

Yukie wiped her tears with the low­er palm of her right hand. Then she said, "Tell me. You asked about Noriko and Shogo. You said, 'we.' Does that mean you were with them?"

Shuya nod­ded.

Yukie knit her brows. "I get Noriko...but don't tell me you were re­al­ly with Shogo."

Shuya knew what she was get­ting at. "Shogo's not a bad guy," he said. "He saved me. Noriko and me sur­vived thanks to him. I'm sure Shogo's pro­tect­ing Noriko right now...That's right. There's some­thing more ur­gent," he con­tin­ued en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. "I for­got. We can be saved, Yukie."

"Saved?"

Shuya nod­ded em­phat­ical­ly. "Shogo's go­ing to save us. He knows a way out of here."

Yukie opened her eyes wide. "Re­al­ly? Re­al­ly? What is it?"

Shuya stopped sud­den­ly. Shogo had told him, I can't tell you till the end.

Come to think of it...Shuya had noth­ing to sup­port it. He trust­ed Shogo, but he wasn't so sure his ex­pla­na­tion would per­suade Yukie, who hadn't been with Shogo. As Shogo him­self con­stant­ly re­mind­ed him, she might sus­pect Shogo was us­ing Shuya and the oth­ers.

Shuya de­cid­ed though to ex­plain ev­ery­thing from the be­gin­ning.

He told her how he'd been at­tacked by Yoshio Aka­mat­su from the very be­gin­ning, how he'd been with Noriko ev­er since then, how he'd fought Tat­sumichi Oki, and how, while Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi was shoot­ing at him, Shogo had saved him and how the three were to­geth­er ev­er since. He told her about the es­cape plan, how Shogo was a sur­viv­ot of the Pro­gram last year, how Noriko had a fever, and how they went over to the clin­ic. That's right, and then about Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. How Hi­ro­ki told them that Mit­suko Souma was dan­ger­ous. And then how they were at­tacked by Kazuo Kiriya­ma while they were on the move.

"So Tat­sumichi..." Af­ter he was done she brought up Tat­sumichi Old first for some rea­son, "...that was an ac­ci­dent?"

"That's right. Just as I de­scribed it," he replied and knit his brows, look­ing at her. "What about it?"

Yukie shook her head. She said, "It's noth­ing," and changed the sub­ject, "I'm sor­ry for be­ing so blunt, but I can't just all of a sud­den trust Shogo. I mean, that there's a way out of here."

Shuya still didn't un­der­stand why Yukie had asked him about Tat­sumichi, but he fig­ured it couldn't be all that im­por­tant so he let it pass and ac­cept­ed Yukie's skep­ti­cism.

"I don't blame you. But I think we can trust Shogo. It's hard to ex­plain, but he's good," he im­pa­tient­ly waved his un­in­jured right hand by his face. "You'd un­der­stand if you were with him."

Yukie pressed her right fin­gers against her lips and said, "All right. It sounds like we should at least hear him out. I mean it's not like we have any oth­er op­tion."

Shuya looked at her. "What were you plan­ning on do­ing?"

Yukie shrugged. "I thought it was hope­less. We were just dis­cussing whether we were bet­ter off try­ing to es­cape or stay­ing here a lit­tle longer. But we haven't made any de­ci­sions."

Shuya then re­al­ized he'd for­got­ten to ask some­thing else he'd for­got­ten. "How did you guys get to­geth­er? All six of you?"

"Oh," Yukie nod­ded. "I went back to the school, and I called on ev­ery­one."

Shuya was sur­prised. "When?"

"That would have to be right af­ter you and Noriko ran away. Ac­tu­al­ly, I saw Kazushi Nü­da run...I re­al­ly want­ed to get back in time to con­tact you, but any­way, that's how I saw...those two dead right in front of the school en­trance."

Shuya raised his brow. "Yoshio was on­ly un­con­scious, right?"

Yukie shook her head. "I wasn't able to get a close look...but he looked dead at that point. There was an ar­row...stuck in his neck."

"Then Kazushi-"

Yukie nod­ded. "I think so."

Shuya then asked, "Weren't you scared there'd be oth­ers like Yoshio?"

"Of course the thought oc­curred to me...but I just couldn't come up with any oth­er op­tion oth­er than form­ing a group. So I went to the woods in front. I fig­ured if I hid there I wouldn't be seen. And if I was, then that was just too bad."

Shuya was deeply moved. He had to look af­ter Noriko, who was in­jured, but still, he'd passed on the oth­ers and ran away. Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra said he'd wait­ed for Takako Chi­gusa, but he was a guy, and he al­so prac­ticed mar­tial arts.

"Wow. I'm amazed, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive."

Yukie smiled.

"You call Noriko by her name, but with me it's 'Rep­re­sen­ta­tive,' huh?"

Shuya didn't know what to say. "Oh well-"

"Don't wor­ry, it's all right."

A smile flashed across her face. Then she con­tin­ued a lit­tle sad­ly, "Then Yu­ka Nak­agawa came out...and I called her."

"Were you able to con­vince her right away? Don't get me wrong-I think you have a good rep­uta­tion."

"Oh, well." Yukie nod­ded. "I didn't come back alone. I was re­al­ly shak­en up at first, but I just had to come back, and on the way back, I to­tal­ly lucked out, I found Haru­ka. You know how Haru­ka and I are best friends.

Shuya nod­ded. Haru­ka Taniza­wa and Yukie were both on the vol­ley­ball team.

"I talked to Haru­ka. When I told her we should go back she re­sist­ed at first, but we had weapons. I had a pis­tol in my pack. When Yu­ka heard the two of us call she man­aged to trust us."

Af­ter some con­sid­er­ation, Shuya men­tioned that "rule": "But...you can't nec­es­sar­ily trust some­one who's paired up in this game."

Yukie nod­ded. "Yes, that turned out to be true."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we de­cid­ed not to have boys...sor­ry...we dis­cussed it and de­cid­ed boys could mean trou­ble. So we let them go, and then there was Fu­miyo-" Yukie stopped. Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 18) had died be­fore their de­par­ture. "Af­ter her came Chisato. So there were five of us. We al­so called on Kaori Mi­na­mi but..."

Shuya filled in the rest, "She ran away."

"Yes, she did."

Shuya re­al­ized he hadn't told her that he'd seen her die. He thought of telling her-but de­cid­ed not to. Now that Kaori's killer Hi­rono Shimizu was al­so dead, it didn't seem rel­evant and be­sides, it wasn't a pleas­ant mem­ory. Al­so, as aw­ful as it sound­ed, he couldn't af­ford to waste any more time talk­ing about the dead.

"So Yoshi­mi re­act­ed the same way as Kaori?" Shuya ut­tered the name of the last fe­male stu­dent seat num­ber, Yoshi­mi Ya­ha­gi, along with Kaori's and sud­den­ly felt a chill run down his spine. Names of the dead. Both of them. Both... of...them. Je­sus. The smil­ing face of the man in the black suit made a sud­den ap­pear­ance in Shuya's mind. It'd been a while. Hey there, Shuya. So you're still alive? You're a tough one.

"Well..." Yukie looked away from Shuya and pursed her lips. She squint­ed. "That was dif­fer­ent."

"How so?"

Yukie took a deep breath. "I said we should call on her. But some of the girls protest­ed. You know Yoshi­mi was friends with Mit­suko. They couldn't trust her."

Shuya fell silent.

Yukie said look­ing away. "So she's dead. We let her die."

Shuya said, "No, you're wrong."

Yukie looked back at Shuya.

"It was be­yond your con­trol. It's no one's fault."

He knew it didn't sound very con­vinc­ing, but that's all he could say .

Yukie grinned wry­ly and sighed. "You're kind. You've al­ways been so nice."

They near­ly fell silent, but then Shuya had to say some­thing, "You should have called on Shin­ji." Yukie's group could have at least called on Shin­ji Mimu­ra, who was at the tail end of the stu­dent list. "He could have been trust­ed."

Yukie sighed again. "I thought so too...but Shin­ji didn't have a very good rep­uta­tion...among the girls. You know, he was kind of a play­boy. And his in­tel­li­gence was kind of in­tim­idat­ing. You know how he in­ter­vened when Noriko was in­jured? One of the girls said that might have been cal­cu­lat­ed."

It was the same ex­pla­na­tion Shogo gave when he men­tioned he'd seen Shin­ji.

"Be­fore we could de­cide, Shin­ji was gone." Yukie shrugged. "In any case, we'd de­cid­ed against boys. So we didn't call on Kazuhiko ei­ther."

That's right. Kazuhiko Ya­mamo­to, who went out with Saku­ra Ogawa, who de­spite his good looks was kind and un­pre­ten­tious, and there­fore must have been pop­ular with the girls. Yukie's group de­cid­ed against con­tact­ing him too, though. And giv­en this pol­icy, it was on­ly to be ex­pect­ed there'd be some fric­tion over tak­ing in Shuya here.

Shuya re­al­ized Yukie on­ly ac­count­ed for five of them. She hadn't men­tioned Yuko Saka­ki (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 9).

"What about Yuko? You haven't men­tioned her."

Yukie nod­ded and looked back at Shuya. "That was luck too. We came here yes­ter­day morn­ing...Nice fortress huh? Last night, I think it was around 8 p.m., Yuko just stum­bled by here. She was to­tal­ly ter­ri­fied."

Yukie stopped as if she had some­thing else to say. Shuya was about to ask her what was wrong, but Yukie con­tin­ued, "...in any case, ev­ery­one knows Yuko. So it wasn't a prob­lem."

That summed up her ac­count. Shuya thought of ask­ing more about Yuko Saka­ki but de­cid­ed not to. If she'd been alone un­til last night then she might have en­coun­tered some­thing hor­ri­ble. Did she sur­vive some­one's at­tack, or did she see stu­dents killings each oth­er, or did she come across a corpse torn up from fight­ing?...

Shuya nod­ded slight­ly sev­er­al times. "I get it now."

"There's one thing I don't get," Yukie said. "It's not a big deal but...Hi­ro­ki was say­ing he need­ed to see Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki, right? And that was why he didn't join your group."

Shuya was wor­ried about him ev­er since he sum­ma­rized his sit­ua­tion to Yukie. Hi­ro­ki was still alive and so was Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki. Did he man­age to find her?

"He had to see her. I won­der why."

Shuya shook his head. "We didn't ask. He was in a hur­ry. We were won­der­ing too-"

As he spoke Shuya couldn't help but won­der, did Hi­ro­ki man­age to find Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki? If he did then-

Shogo's voice sud­den­ly re­turned: "This sound is your tick­et out of here. If you're up for it, you can come aboard our train."

Shuya opened his eyes wide and ex­claimed, "The bird call."

"What?"

Shuya looked over at Yukie. "I know a way we can join Noriko and Shogo."

"Re­al­ly?"

Shuya nod­ded. Then he strug­gled to move his body. He could ex­plain lat­er. "I have to con­tact him now. I have to get go­ing."

"Hold on," Yukie stopped him. "You need to rest."

"I can't. The more I lie around-"

"I said hold on. You might want to lis­ten to the girl who's in love with you." She man­aged to say this as she blushed a lit­tle with a play­ful smile. "We took you in here be­cause even if you woke up you wouldn't be able to move. Your sud­den burst of en­er­gy might ter­ri­fy some of the girls."

Shuya's eyes opened wide. But then again it made sense. That was prob­ably why the oth­er girls let Yukie stay with him alone here.

Yukie con­tin­ued, "In any case, just stay put for a while. I'll tell them ev­ery­thing you told me. I'll in­sist you and Shogo can be trust­ed and con­vince them. As for con­tact­ing him and Noriko, I can't let you do that alone. That's just too dan­ger­ous. I'll dis­cuss that with them too. So you just stay here." Then she asked him, "Can you eat?"

"Yeah."

In fact he was fam­ished. He was wor­ried about Noriko and Shogo, but he thought he should eat first. It would help his im­mune sys­tem fight against his gun­shot wounds.

"If you have any food to spare I'd re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it. I do feel pret­ty weak."

Yukie smiled. "We're prepar­ing lunch right now. I'll bring you some. I think it's some­thing like stew. Is that all right?"

"Stew?"

"Yeah, this place is load­ed with food even though it's all just pre­served canned food and re­tort food. But we found wa­ter and sol­id fu­el, so we were able to cook it."

"Awe­some. That's great."

Yukie's hand left the edge of the bed. She walked over to the door and said, "I'm re­al­ly sor­ry but I'm go­ing to have to lock the door."

"Huh?"

"I'm sor­ry. There's some­one who's ter­ri­fied. So please, just wait," Yukie said. She smiled kind­ly as she opened the door and went out. Her two braids of hair swung like some mys­te­ri­ous an­imal's tail, and he caught a glimpse of a gun stuck in the back of her skirt.

There was a clack­ing sound from be­yond the door. It might have been bolt­ed shut. Was that how they locked him up?

Shuya man­aged to raise his up­per body with his right el­bow and looked up at the win­dow above his head. The win­dow was sealed with wood­en planks and light leaked in through the gaps. This was done to keep in­trud­ers out-but right now it al­so served as an ide­al place to lock him up.

The fin­gers of his near par­alyzed left arm re­flex­ive­ly formed gui­tar chords un­der the blan­ket. The chords from that hit tune sung by the rock star the mid­dle-​aged man, the one who gave him his gui­tar, wor­shipped, "Jail­house Rock."

Shuya took a deep breath and lay down on his bed. The slight move­ment was enough to send sharp pain through the wound in his side.

14 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

60

The Ok­ishi­ma Is­land light­house was old but durable. It faced north with a tow­er sev­en­teen me­ters high, and the liv­ing quar­ters, a sin­gle-​sto­ry brick build­ing, had been built as an an­nex to the tow­er on its south side. The din­ing-​kitchen-​liv­ing room was im­me­di­ate­ly south of the tow­er, and fur­ther south was the stor­age room and bath­room. Fur­ther down were two bed­rooms, one large, the oth­er small, along with an­oth­er stor­age room right near the front en­trance. The hall run­ning on the west side of the build­ing con­nect­ed these rooms. (Shuya was rest­ing in the small bed­room by the en­trance.)

In the cor­ner of the kitchen-​liv­ing room, which was at least as large as a class­room, was a small ta­ble that looked out of place. Yuko Saka­ki (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 9) was sit­ting on one of the stools around the ta­ble, slumped over the white table­top as if she were doz­ing off. Un­like the oth­er five girls, she had wan­dered around the is­land for hours on end, so a sin­gle night here had hard­ly al­le­vi­at­ed her fa­tigue. No won­der. She had a rea­son for not sleep­ing at all last night.

Yukie Ut­su­mi's team used this room as their liv­ing quar­ters and slept here too. Some­one had to keep watch at the top of the tow­er, but oth­er­wise Yukie de­cid­ed that ev­ery­one should stick to­geth­er.

Right be­hind Yuko, Haru­ka Taniza­wa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 12) and Chisato Mat­sui (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 19) were busi­ly prepar­ing the pre­served food in front of the stove, where sol­id fu­el was lit up in place of the shut-​off gas. At 172 cen­time­ters tall, Haru­ka was an at­tack­er on the vol­ley­ball team. She and Yukie, who was a set­ter, formed a great duo. She had short hair, so next to the long-​haired, pe­tit Chisato they al­most looked like a cou­ple. The meal was a re­tort stew mixed with canned veg­eta­bles. Above them were planks of wood they found in the stor­age room and hasti­ly ham­mered in­to the frost­ed glass win­dow, which let in the dull light of the cloudy sky. The planks were there to keep in­trud­ers out. As soon as they had ar­rived Yukie and the girls im­me­di­ate­ly sealed off ev­ery en­trance and ex­it from the in­side of the build­ing. (The front en­trance was des­ig­nat­ed as their pri­ma­ry en­trance-​ex­it, which was where they took Yuko in, but now it was bar­ri­cad­ed with desks and lock­ers.)

Yuko had a clear view of the oth­er side of the room where there was a writ­ing desk with a fax ma­chine and com­put­er. To the left of it, Sato­mi No­da (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 17) was sit­ting on a so­fa placed against the wall, while the ta­ble that had been in front of it was now used to bar­ri­cade the front en­trance. Along with Yukie, Sato­mi was a mod­el stu­dent, and al­though she al­ways seemed a lit­tle frigid, now she looked pret­ty ex­haust­ed as she raised her wire-​rimmed glass­es and drowsi­ly rubbed her eyes.

To the left of the so­fa, the kitchen's side door con­nect­ed to the hall that led to the front en­trance. On Yuko's right, the far door on the oth­er side led to the bot­tom of the tow­er, and the first sev­er­al steel stairs lead­ing up to the lantern room were vis­ible. Yu­ka Nak­agawa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 16) was up there, sup­pos­ed­ly keep­ing watch. Yuko hadn't kept watch yet, but Yukie had told her that since the light­house faced the ocean, and since there was on­ly one nar­row path from the har­bor be­hind the build­ing, the rest of the area sur­round­ed by moun­tains, it wasn't very dif­fi­cult to keep watch. Yukie was now in the room right by the en­trance where they'd kept Shuya Nana­hara.

Shuya Nana­hara.

Yuko felt the tremor of fear re­turn­ing. Along with it the im­age that was burnt in­to her mem­ory. The cracked head. The bloody axe re­moved from it. And the boy who held this axe.

It was a chill­ing mem­ory. And this boy-Shuya Nana­hara-was now in the light­house, the same build­ing she was in. That was-

No, it's all right. It's all right.

Try­ing to keep her­self from trem­bling, she stared at the white table­top and re­mind­ed her­self, that's right, he's dy­ing, he can't pos­si­bly wake up af­ter so many in­juries and so much bleed­ing.

Some­one tapped her on the shoul­der and she looked up.

As Haru­ka Taniza­wa sat down next to her, she stared at Yuko and asked, "Did you get any sleep?" She was tak­ing a break from cook­ing. Chisato Mat­sui seemed to be check­ing the cook­ing in­struc­tions, ex­am­in­ing the pack­age of pre­served food. (Chisato had in fact been qui­et­ly weep­ing this morn­ing. Haru­ka Taniza­wa had whis­pered to her it was be­cause of the 6 a.m. an­nounce­ment of Shin­ji Mimu­ra's death. Un­til then Yuko hard­ly knew Chisato had a crush on Shin­ji Mimu­ra. Her eyes were still red.)

Yuko forced a smile and an­swered, "Yeah, a lit­tle." It was all right. As long as she was with these oth­er five friends she was all right. She was safe here. Even if that safe­ty would ex­pire when their time ran out. Still-

Haru­ka brought up the mat­ter. "What you said about yes­ter­day."

"Oh..." Yuko smiled. "It's all right now."

That's right. It was fine now. She didn't even want to think about it. Just the mem­ory sent chills down her spine. But...in any case...

Shuya Nana­hara wasn't go­ing to wake up again. Then it was all right. Just fine.

Haru­ka smiled am­biva­lent­ly. "Well then, okay."

That's right...When Shuya Nana­hara was dis­cov­ered un­con­scious in front of the light­house yes­ter­day, Yuko had ve­he­ment­ly op­posed tak­ing him in. She had ex­plained (she was shout­ing rather than ex­plain­ing) what she'd seen, Tat­sumichi Oki's split-​open skull, how Shuya Nana­hara had re­moved the axe, how dan­ger­ous he was, and how he would try to kill them if they let him live.

Yuko and Yukie were on the verge of fight­ing, but then Haru­ka and the oth­ers in­sist­ed they couldn't just let some­one die, so they brought Shuya in. Yuko looked on, face ashen, keep­ing her dis­tance, while the oth­ers car­ried the blood-​drenched Shuya. It was as if they were wel­com­ing a strange, scary mon­ster that haunt­ed you in your child­hood dreams in­to your house. No, that's ex­act­ly what it was like.

But...as time passed Yuko con­vinced her­self Shuya was dy­ing. Af­ter all, he couldn't pos­si­bly sur­vive those wounds. Know­ing he would die of course was un­ap­peal­ing, but in any case she man­aged to hold her­self back. The one con­di­tion she in­sist­ed on, though, was that his room be locked.

Haru­ka con­tin­ued. It was the same ques­tion they had asked sev­er­al times yes­ter­day. "You say you saw Shuya kill Tat­sumichi, but it might have been in self-​de­fense, right?"

That was true. She'd been hid­ing in the bush­es when she heard the thud­ding sound. By the time she looked, the on­ly part she re­al­ly wit­nessed was Shuya re­mov­ing the axe from Tat­sumichi Oki's head. Then she im­me­di­ate­ly ran away.

In oth­er words, as Haru­ka said (which was based on Yuko's own de­scrip­tion), Yuko had on­ly seen the af­ter­math. It was pos­si­ble he had done it in self-​de­fense. How­ev­er...

...no mat­ter how many times Haru­ka and Yukie said this to her, Yuko just couldn't see it that way. No, she sim­ply re­ject­ed the idea.

What do you mean, "pos­si­ble"? I saw that cracked skull. I saw Shuya Nana­hara hold­ing that axe. The bloody axe. The drip­ping blood.

Her thoughts re­volved around this scene now. Yuko couldn't be ra­tio­nal about Shuya Nana­hara any­more. It was like a nat­ural dis­as­ter, like a flood or tor­na­do. The mo­ment Yuko be­gan think­ing about Shuya, that scene and her fear would just wash it all away. The on­ly thing left was an ax­iom that was near­ly vis­cer­al- that Shuya Nana­hara was dan­ger­ous.

Yuko had her rea­sons. She ab­horred vi­olence. She couldn't stand it. Hear­ing a friend talk about a splat­ter film in Class B (was it Yu­ka Nak­agawa? "Of course, it was fun­ny, but, it wasn't a big deal, it should have more gory, ha ha ha") she felt sick enough to be tak­en to the school nurse.

It was prob­ably re­lat­ed to her mem­ory of her fa­ther. Even though he wasn't a step­fa­ther-he was her re­al fa­ther-he drank heav­ily and abused her moth­er, her old­er broth­er, and Yuko her­self. She was too young back then...so Yuko didn't un­der­stand why. She was nev­er able to ask her moth­er why he was like that. She didn't even want to re­mem­ber it. Well, maybe there were no rea­sons at all. She didn't know. In any case, when her fa­ther was stabbed to death by a yakuza over some gam­bling dis­pute-Yuko was still in first grade-she felt more re­lieved than be­reaved. Ev­er since then she, her moth­er, and broth­er led a peace­ful life. They could in­vite friends over. They fi­nal­ly felt safe with the dis­ap­pear­ance of their fa­ther.

But she still some­times had dreams about him. Her bleed­ing moth­er be­ing beat­en with a golf club (even though they were poor, this was the one ex­pen­sive item in their home). Her broth­er be­ing beat­en with an ash­tray, near­ly los­ing his sight. And...her­self, suf­fer­ing cigarette burns, par­alyzed with fear (her moth­er who tried to in­ter­vene would then be beat­en again).

Maybe all of that was re­lat­ed, maybe not. In any case, Yuko was ab­so­lute­ly con­vinced Shuya Nana­hara was dan­ger­ous.

"Right?" She heard Haru­ka say that em­phat­ical­ly, but her words didn't reg­is­ter. A chill ran through her body, ac­com­pa­nied by a vi­sion. Ev­ery­one in­clud­ing her­self, the six of them ly­ing on the floor, their skulls cracked open, and Shuya Nana­hara grin­ning with an axe in his hand...

No, no. It's go­ing to be over. Shuya Nana­hara won't be around for long.

"Yes." She looked up and nod­ded. In fact, she had no idea what Haru­ka was talk­ing about. But in any case as long as Shuya couldn't re­cov­er there was no rea­son to throw the team off bal­ance. Haru­ka seemed to be seek­ing some in­di­ca­tion she was con­vinced.

"Y-​yes. It was just me. I was so tired too."

This seemed to put Haru­ka at ease. She said, "Shuya's a good guy. They're aren't too many around like him."

Yuko looked at Haru­ka as if she were a mum­my ex­hib­it­ed in a mu­se­um. She had thought so too, un­til re­cent­ly. Shuya seemed strange, but all in all there was some­thing very lik­able about him. In fact, she'd even thought he was kind of cool.

But any mem­ory of this feel­ing had com­plete­ly fall­en by the way­side now. Maybe it was more ac­cu­rate to say the cracked-​skull scene had smoth­ered out all her oth­er mem­ories.

What? What are you say­ing, Haru­ka? That he's good? What are you talk­ing about?

Haru­ka looked in­to Yuko's eyes du­bi­ous­ly, but added, "So even if he gets up, don't pro­voke him, okay?"

Yuko was hor­ri­fied. There was no way he was go­ing to wake up. If...if that ev­er hap­pened...

But a por­tion of her ra­tio­nal fac­ul­ties were still in­tact enough for her to nod and say, "I'm fine. No prob­lem."

"Good. I feel much bet­ter."

Haru­ka nod­ded back, turned to­wards Chisato with­out get­ting up, and said, "Smells good."

Along with the steam, the smell of the stew came drift­ing from the stove pot.

Chisato turned her head around and said in her qui­et, thin voice, "Yes, it looks pret­ty good. It might be bet­ter than yes­ter­day's soup."

She had been cry­ing over Shin­ji Mimu­ra for a long time, but she seemed all right for the time be­ing. Even Yuko could see that.

Right then, the door to the hall opened up. It was Yukie Ut­su­mi. As usu­al she main­tained her per­fect pos­ture and walked for­ward con­fi­dent­ly. Af­ter Yuko's ar­rival, Yukie still did a good job lead­ing the group, but she seemed a lit­tle tired. Ev­er since they took in Shuya she looked even more dis­tressed. (It was in fact be­cause she was on the one hand hap­py to see Shuya, but on the oth­er wor­ried his wounds might prove to be fa­tal, but this was be­yond the scope of Yuko's per­cep­tion.) Yuko felt like it'd been a while since she last saw Yukie so en­er­get­ic, but now her face was beam­ing.

Yuko felt as if a cater­pil­lar was crawl­ing up her spine. She had a bad feel­ing about this.

Yukie stopped, put her hands on her waists, and looked around at ev­ery­one. Then she com­ical­ly cupped her hands against her mouth in the shape of a mega­phone.

Then she said, "Shuya Nana­hara has arisen."

Haru­ka and Chisato cried out with joy while Sato­mi got up from her so­fa, but next to her...

...Yuko turned pale.

14 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

61

"Re­al­ly? Can he speak?" Haru­ka asked.

"Uh huh. He says he's hun­gry too." Yukie nod­ded and then looked over at Yuko and said, "It's all right. I locked the door to his room so you wouldn't have to wor­ry."

She wasn't be­ing sar­cas­tic. It sound­ed more like she was do­ing what she should do as the lead­er.

But that wasn't the point, Yuko thought. No, ac­tu­al­ly she had con­sid­ered it over and over last night. While she was cer­tain he would nev­er re­cov­er, what if he did? Then how would she deal with it? And...then the odor drift­ed by.

What tim­ing. They were about to eat. Be­sides...it wouldn't be that odd for a guy in crit­ical con­di­tion to die sud­den­ly, would it?

Yuko forced a smile (in­deed, it was im­pec­ca­ble) and shook her head. "I'm not wor­ried," she con­tin­ued, "I'm sor­ry. I was all screwed up yes­ter­day. I won't hold any­thing against Shuya any­more."

This seemed to re­lieve Yukie. She took a deep breath.

"Well then, I guess I didn't need to lock the door." She smiled at Yuko and added, "What hap­pened with Tat­sumichi Oki was an ac­ci­dent. That's what Shuya said."

Hear­ing Tat­sumichi's name, Yuko had a flash­back of that scene which sent an­oth­er chill down her spine, but she man­aged to keep her smile and nod­ded. An ac­ci­dent. Well, I sup­pose it was quite an ac­ci­dent for Tat­sumichi Oki.

Yukie then said to Haru­ka, "Hey, Haru­ka, can you go get Yu­ka? There's some­thing I need to dis­cuss."

Haru­ka asked back, "Shouldn't she be keep­ing watch?"

"It's all right," Yukie nod­ded. "The build­ing is sealed, so we're fine. It'll be brief."

Haru­ka nod­ded and en­tered the room lead­ing up to the lantern room. You could hear foot­steps clang up the steel stairs.

While Sato­mi and Chisato asked in suc­ces­sion, "How is he?" and "Can he eat the same stuff we're eat­ing?" Yuko qui­et­ly stood up from her chair and walked over to the sink.

There was a stack of sev­er­al deep dish­es right be­side the steam­ing stew pot. Chisato and Haru­ka had tak­en them out of the dish cab­inet.

Yuko dug her hand in­to her skirt pock­et and touched the ob­ject in­side. The weapon she found in her day pack was a tele­scop­ing spring ba­ton, but what she now held was this item la­beled "spe­cial bonus," the item she had thought was use­less. Even af­ter she was wel­comed here she didn't think there was much point in men­tion­ing it. But when Shuya Nana­hara showed up she came up with this idea, so she kept it a se­cret.

In the past...her fa­ther's vi­olence, his ter­ror­iza­tion of the rest of her fam­ily, end­ed un­ex­pect­ed­ly. That was how her fam­ily fi­nal­ly at­tained peace.

Now there was an­oth­er threat. She had to put a stop to it. Once she did...she would be safe again. She wouldn't have to be ter­ri­fied any­more.

She felt no hes­ita­tion. Odd­ly enough, she was calm.

She re­moved the cork lid of the tiny bot­tle in­side her pock­et with one hand.

14 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

62

"Hey," Yuko called over to Yukie. Yukie, who was speak­ing to Sato­mi and Chisato, looked over at her.

Yuko con­tin­ued, "Maybe we should bring Shuya his meal first?"

Yukie beamed a smile at her. "That's a good idea. Let's do that."

Yuko then added very ca­su­al­ly, "The stew looks ready, so how about I start serv­ing it up?"

She held the dish. The dish.

"Sure-oh that's right," Yukie said as if she sud­den­ly re­mem­bered. "You know, there's a medicine kit in the desk draw­er over there. I think it has some painkillers. I should bring Shuya some painkillers with his meal."

"...sure." Yuko then let go of the dish. It clicked against the sink. "Okay. Hold on."

The writ­ing desk, equipped with a com­put­er and phone, was across from the sink, in the cor­ner of the room. Yuko made her way around the ta­ble to get there.

Clang­ing foot­steps de­scend­ed the steel stairs. Haru­ka and Yu­ka Nak­agawa en­tered the room. Yu­ka Nak­agawa had a short-​bar­reled gun re­sem­bling an ex­pand­ed au­to­mat­ic gun with an ex­tend­ed stock slung over her shoul­der. (It was an Uzi 9mm sub­ma­chine gun. It was Sato­mi No­da's sup­plied weapon, but be­cause it seemed like the most pow­er­ful weapon they had, who­ev­er keep­ing watch held on­to it.)

"I heard Shuya's up!" Yu­ka said in her usu­al cheer­ful voice, plac­ing the Uzi on the ta­ble. A lit­tle chub­by and, thanks to her ten­nis team prac­tice in the out­door courts, tan, Yu­ka some­how man­aged to stay cheer­ful even in these dire cir­cum­stances.

"Yes." Yukie nod­ded hap­pi­ly.

"Well, you must be re­lieved, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive," Yu­ka teased her.

Yukie blushed a lit­tle. "What are you say­ing?"

"Oh, come on. You're beam­ing."

Yukie frowned and then shook her head. Sud­den­ly re­al­iz­ing some­thing, Yu­ka looked over at Chisato and fell silent. Chisato had lost Shin­ji Mimu­ra, the boy she loved, and now she stared down at the floor.

Yuko hard­ly paid at­ten­tion to this ex­change as she took the wood­en med­ical kit she found in the desk draw­er. She placed it on the desk and opened it up. It was stuffed with var­ious kinds of med­ical sup­plies, gauze, poul­tices. The on­ly things miss­ing were the ban­dages, since they were al­most en­tire­ly used up to treat Shuya Nana­hara.

Painkillers... which one were the painkillers? Of course, it didn't mat­ter. It didn't mat­ter be­cause...

"Wow, it smells great," she heard Yu­ka say, try­ing to change the mood. But she hard­ly paid no­ticed to that ei­ther.

Painkillers... ah, here we go. Right here. For headaches, men­stru­al cramps, toothaches...oh...come to think of it, my stom­ach's been aching. I'll take some lat­er. Af­ter things set­tle down a lit­tle. That's right, once things calm down.

"So what is it?" Sato­mi asked Yukie in her slight­ly husky voice.

"That's right. What is it?" Haru­ka asked.

"Oh, right. Let's see, where do I be­gin?" Yukie said.

It was on­ly when Yu­ka said, "Let's have a taste then," that Yuko sud­den­ly looked up.

She turned around...and saw Yu­ka lift the dish and put it against her mouth. She should have used the la­dle if she want­ed a taste. In­stead she had to put her mouth against that dish, the one she'd sprin­kled with the half-​trans­par­ent pow­der.

Yuko turned pale. She was about to raise her voice...but it hap­pened too fast.

Yu­ka dropped the dish and the stew splashed against the floor with a crash­ing sound. Ev­ery­one looked over at her.

Yu­ka held on­to her throat and coughed out the stew she had just swal­lowed. Then she coughed more vi­olent­ly on­to the white ta­ble. Now the sub­stance was bright red. The red splat­tered out in a cir­cle against the white ta­ble and re­sem­bled the na­tion­al flag of the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia. And then she crashed on­to the floor cov­ered with stew.

"Yu­ka!"

Ev­ery­one - be­sides Yuko, who was speech­less - cried out and ran to Yu­ka.

Yu­ka balled up on her side and coughed up blood again. Her tan face be­came more and more pale. Red foam spilled out the side of her mouth.

"Yu­ka! Yu­ka! What hap­pened!?"

Yukie shook her body, but the dark-​red foam on­ly con­tin­ued to spill out the side of her mouth. Her eyes were open as wide as pos­si­ble, as if on the verge of pop­ping out, but now even the whites of her eyes were turn­ing red. For some rea­son-in­flam­ma­tion or bro­ken cap­il­lar­ies-dark-​red and black spots be­gan ap­pear­ing all over her blue face, trans­form­ing it in­to the mask of some grotesque mon­ster.

But be­sides this, there was some­thing else that was in­dis­putable. It was ob­vi­ous.

Yu­ka had stopped breath­ing.

Ev­ery­one fell silent. Yukie's trem­bling hand touched Yu­ka's throat. She said, "She's dead..."

Be­hind Yukie, who crouched down be­side Yu­ka and Haru­ka, Yuko stood still, her face com­plete­ly pale. She was shak­ing. (Of course it was very pos­si­ble the oth­er four were al­so in the same state.)

Oh, how could... how could this... this is all a mis­take... mis­take... how could... you on­ly had a mouth­ful...how could it be this strong...I didn't...this is a mis­take... I killed her... by mis­take... it was a mis­take... I didn't mean to...1 want­ed to get rid of-

"It couldn't have been from food poi­son­ing...could it?" Yukie con­tin­ued, her voice trem­bling.

Chisato re­spond­ed, "I... just tast­ed it. Noth­ing hap­pened... this... this... could this be..."

Haru­ka fol­lowed up, "...poi­son?"

That sparked it off. Ev­ery­one (to be more ac­cu­rate, it was ev­ery­one be­sides Yuko, but the oth­er four didn't re­al­ize this) looked at each oth­er.

There was a thump. Sato­mi No­da had grabbed the Uzi and was now aim­ing it at the oth­ers. The oth­er four, in­clud­ing Yuko, re­flex­ive­ly moved to the side or backed away from Yu­ka's corpse.

Sato­mi screamed. Her eyes be­hind her glass­es were wide open with fear. "Who!? Who did it!? Who poi­soned this stew! Who's the one try­ing to kill us!?"

"Stop it!" Yukie yelled.

Yuko saw her hand reach for the gun (Brown­ing High Pow­er 9mm. This was Yukie's sup­plied weapon and be­cause she was the team lead­er she held on­to it) tucked in the back of her skirt. Yukie was about to move for­ward but stopped and stepped back. "Put your gun down. That can't be."

"Oh yes it can," Sato­mi shook her head. Sato­mi who al­ways seemed so calm had com­plete­ly lost con­trol. "The last an­nounce­ment said there were on­ly four­teen of us left. It's get­ting down to the wire. So our en­emy's fi­nal­ly rear­ing its ug­ly head." Then she looked over at Haru­ka and said, "You were the one cook­ing."

Haru­ka shook her head vi­olent­ly. "I wasn't the on­ly one. Chisato al­so..."

"That's hor­ri­ble," Chisato said. "I would nev­er do such a hor­ri­ble thing! Be­sides..." She seemed to hes­itate, but then she said, "Sato­mi and Yuko al­so had plen­ty of chances to poi­son the food."

"...that's right," Haru­ka turned back to Sato­mi, then hissed at her, "Aren't you get­ting a lit­tle too up­set?"

"Haru­ka!" Yukie stopped her, but it was too late. Sato­mi was now com­plete­ly up­set.

"What was that?"

"That's right," Haru­ka con­tin­ued, "First of all, you've hard­ly slept. I know. When I got up in the mid­dle of the night, you were up. Doesn't that mean you don't trust us? That's proof, right there!"

"Please, stop it, Haru­ka!" Yukie plead­ed. She was near­ly shriek­ing now. "Sato­mi! Put down the gun!"

"Oh, please." Sato­mi point­ed the Uzi at Yukie now. "Stop pre­tend­ing you're the lead­er. So this is the act you put on af­ter your plan to poi­son ev­ery­one goes awry? Is that it?"

"Sato­mi..." Yukie said des­per­ate­ly.

Yuko raised her hand up to her mouth and stepped back in a daze. Her body was numb from the sud­den turn of events. But...she had to say it, she had to ex­plain the truth...or else this...some­thing ter­ri­ble was go­ing to hap­pen.

Sud­den­ly, Chisato moved...to the side ta­ble against the wall on the right side of the sink. There was the re­main­ing gun-a Czechoslo­vakian CZ75. (It was in fact Yu­ka's weapon.)

The rat­tling sound echoed through the room. Chisato was shot in the back three times as she crashed against the side ta­ble, slid down, clutched on­to its edge, and fell face for­ward on­to the floor. There was no need to check___She was dead.

"Sato­mi! What are you do­ing!?" Yukie's eyes opened wide as she screamed. Her voice was break­ing.

"Oh, please." Sato­mi held her smok­ing Uzi and glared at Yukie. "She went for the gun. Be­cause she was guilty."

"So did you though!" Haru­ka screamed. "Yukie! Shoot Sato­mi!"

With a click­ing sound, Sato­mi point­ed the Uzi at Haru­ka. Her face dark­ened. She seemed ready to shoot Haru­ka at any mo­ment.

Yukie looked an­guished. At that mo­ment she had her hand on the Brown­ing in the back of her skirt. Af­ter hes­itat­ing, she must have...in­tend­ed to shoot Sato­mi's arm or some oth­er part of her body.

Sato­mi then quick­ly shift­ed the Uzi and fired...at Yukie.

Yukie was blown back with the rat­tling sound. Blood burst out of the holes in her chest and she fell back­wards.

Haru­ka stood still for on­ly a mo­ment and then made a dash for the Brown­ing Yukie had dropped. Sato­mi's Uzi fol­lowed her body and burst out, blow­ing off Haru­ka's side along with the fab­ric of her uni­form. Her body slid against the floor.

The ta­ble was in be­tween them now. Sato­mi point­ed the Uzi at Yuko. She said, "What about you?...You're dif­fer­ent, right?"

Yuko could on­ly trem­ble. As she trem­bled, her eyes were fixed on Sato­mi's face.

There was a pop. There was a hole on the left side of Sato­mi's fore­head. She opened her mouth...and looked down at her left hand. Blood burst out of the hole in her fore­head, splash­ing against the in­side of her glass­es. Then it con­tin­ued to drip down­ward.

Yuko's neck moved stiffly like some gad­get as she fol­lowed Sato­mi's eyes and found Haru­ka, her tor­so raised in pain from her fall­en po­si­tion, some­how still hold­ing the Brown­ing.

Sato­mi's Uzi burst out. It wasn't clear whether she pulled the trig­ger in­ten­tion­al­ly or whether it was from her nerves twitch­ing. Rows of bul­lets tore along the floor and pierced Haru­ka's body which got tossed over and back. A bloody mist burst up­ward, near­ly tear­ing off Haru­ka's neck above her met­al col­lar.

Sato­mi's body fell for­ward slow­ly and land­ed with a thud over Yu­ka Nak­agawa's corpse. She re­mained ab­so­lute­ly still.

Com­plete­ly alone in the room, Yuko just kept on trem­bling. Her body was stiff as a rock. With the look of a child wan­der­ing in­to a freak­ish mu­se­um ex­hi­bi­tion, she gazed at the floor cov­ered with the corpses of five of her class­mates.

9 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

63

When he heard the shat­ter­ing sound, Shuya just thought, oh, one of those clum­sy girls must have dropped a dish, but when the sound was fol­lowed by an ar­gu­ment, he got up from his bed.

He felt a sharp pain run through the left side of his stom­ach and his shoul­der blade. Shuya groaned, but us­ing his right arm he man­aged to get out of the bed and stepped on­to the floor with his bare feet. He was on­ly wear­ing his school uni­form pants. The heat­ed ar­gu­ment con­tin­ued. He thought he heard Yukie shout­ing.

Shuya walked over to the door and put his hand on the door­knob. The knob turned and as he pushed...the door seemed blocked. Through the one-​cen­time­ter gap he could see a wood­en plank di­ag­onal­ly set against the door. As Yukie had warned him, they had con­struct­ed a makeshift bolt lock.

Shuya grabbed the door­knob and shook it vig­or­ous­ly sev­er­al times, but the door wouldn't budge. He poked his fin­gers through the gap, but the plank, set against the door, re­fused to move.

On the verge of giv­ing up, he took a deep breath when he heard the all-​too-​fa­mil­iar rat­tling sound through the gap. There were sev­er­al screams.

Shuya turned pale. Were they be­ing at­tacked...but if that was...in any case, some­thing was wrong!

Shuya man­aged to keep his in­jured body from tot­ter­ing over. He raised his right foot and kicked the door with the heel of his bare foot, us­ing the front kick tech­nique he'd learned from Hi­ro­ki. But the door eas­ily spurned his kick, throw­ing him off bal­ance. He fell back on­to the floor and felt a sear­ing pain go up his side. He al­so re­al­ized he need­ed to pee, but that would have to wait.

BR­RAT­TA. More rat­tling. And then more BR­RAT­TA.

Shuya turned back to the bed, stood up, and lift­ed the edge of the bed that was made of steel pipes with his right hand. The bed land­ed on its side with a thud and the blan­ket and sheets slid off.

Shuya dragged the bed, pressed one end against the door, and went around to the oth­er end. He then shoved it against the door with all his might. The door made a crack­ing sound. One more shove.

Bang. Gun­fire. This time, one shot.

The bed pum­meled in­to the wood­en door. The door bent in half with a crack and opened in­to the hall. Shuya yanked the bed from the front of the door with his right hand and let it fall against the floor.

The type­writ­er-​like rat­tling gun­fire was now clear­ly au­di­ble through the open door.

Shuya came out in­to the hall. The shades were drawn on the win­dows that had been nailed shut with wood­en planks so the un­lit hall was dim. The en­trance was on his left. There were three doors down the hall on his right. The far door was slight­ly ajar, and light leaked in­to the hall, form­ing what looked like a cold pud­dle of light.

Shuya picked up one of the longer pieces of bro­ken planks in front of the door, ap­prox­imate­ly one me­ter long. He dragged his aching body down the hall. It was com­plete­ly qui­et now. What the hell hap­pened? Did some­one at­tack, or...

Shuya cau­tious­ly ap­proached the door. He peeked through the gap and saw the room with kitchen equip­ment where Yukie Ut­su­mi and Haru­ka Taniza­wa were sprawled out by the cen­ter ta­ble. Be­yond them was Yu­ka Nak­agawa (what's up with that face!). Chisato Mat­sui was against the wall on the right. Some­one was ly­ing face down in the shad­ow of the ta­ble. That some­one had to be Sato­mi No­da, be­cause the rel­ative­ly thin body stand­ing still with her back to­wards him and silky, straight, shoul­der-​length hair be­longed to-un­less Shuya was mis­tak­en-Yuko Saka­ki.

There were sev­er­al guns scat­tered around the col­lapsed bod­ies of Yukie's group. He was as­sault­ed by the stench of blood splat­tered across the floor.

Shuya froze in shock. That over­whelm­ing numb­ness was iden­ti­cal to the way he felt when he saw Mayu­mi Ten­do's body right in front of the school.

What hap­pened? How could this have hap­pened? Yukie who had just said to him, "You might want to lis­ten to the girl who's in love with you," was ly­ing over there. Four oth­ers had fall­en too. Were they dead? Did they die?

Yuko, her back fac­ing Shuya, didn't have a gun. She was just stand­ing still like a Venu­sian sud­den­ly dropped on­to Plu­to.

Shuya was in a daze as he slow­ly clutched the door­knob, opened the door, and stepped in­to the room.

Yuko turn around. She gazed at Shuya with blood­shot eyes, but then went for the gun ly­ing on the floor be­tween Yukie and Haru­ka.

Shuya al­so came out of his daze. He tossed the plank he'd been hold­ing with his un­in­jured arm the way he'd pitch a per­fect fast­ball in Lit­tle League. (He wasn't sure any­more whether such a game ex­ist­ed on earth. It seemed to take place on a dis­tant plan­et in the re­mote An­drome­da Galaxy where the in­hab­itants played this game us­ing three arms out of five, al­though the use of one's tail was per­mit­ted in the fi­nal in­ning.)

His body sud­den­ly ached all over, and he gri­maced. The plank hit the floor right in front of Yuko and bounced up. Yuko stopped as she shield­ed her face with her hand and fell back on­to the bloody floor.

Shuya dashed for the gun. He knew that in this chaos Yuko hold­ing a gun would on­ly make mat­ters worse.

Yuko shrieked and re­treat­ed. She got up, turned around, and ran to the oth­er side of the room. She passed by the ta­ble and dis­ap­peared through an open door fur­ther down. There was a metal­lic clang. Were they...stairs?

Shuya gazed over there for a mo­ment af­ter she dis­ap­peared. But then he dashed over to Yukie and knelt down be­side her.

He could tell her chest was rid­den with holes. The blood was ooz­ing out un­der her body al­ready, and her eyes were shut peace­ful­ly as if she were sleep­ing. Her mouth was bare­ly open-

She wasn't breath­ing any­more.

"Ahh," Shuya cried. He reached out his un­in­jured right hand to her peace­ful face. He felt tears welling up for the first time ev­er since the game be­gan. Was it be­cause they'd just talked min­utes ago? Or was it be­cause of what she'd said:

"I just wouldn't know what to do if you died....Do you un­der­stand what I'm say­ing? Do you?"

Her tear­ful but re­lieved face. Her melan­cholic face. And now her odd­ly peace­ful face right be­side him.

He looked around. There was no need to check. Yu­ka Nak­agawa's face had changed col­or. A bloody foam dripped from her mouth. Sato­mi No­da lay face down, a pud­dle of blood un­der her head. Chisato Mat­sui's back was cov­ered with bul­let holes, and Haru­ka Taniza­wa...her neck was near­ly torn off.

How could...how could this be...

Shuya looked back at Yukie. His near­ly par­alyzed left arm sup­port­ed his right arm so he could hold her up. It might have been a mean­ing­less ges­ture. But Shuya had to do it.

As he held her body, he heard the blood drip­ping on­to the floor from the holes in her chest. Her head hung back and her braid­ed hair touched his arm.

"Do you un­der­stand what I'm say­ing?"

Shuya burst in­to tears as they fell on­to her uni­form.

"Ungh," Shuya bit his lip and gen­tly let her down on­to the floor. He picked up the Brown­ing Yuko had at­tempt­ed to grab. He walked to the door at the far end of the room where Yuko had gone. His body felt in­cred­ibly heavy. It wasn't just be­cause he was in­jured. He wiped his eyes with his bare right arm, which was al­so hold­ing the Brown­ing.

He en­tered. It was a cylin­dri­cal space made of bare con­crete. The tow­er. This was the light­house. There was a thick steel col­umn in the cen­ter and a spi­ral steel stair­case wind­ing around it. There were no win­dows, on­ly a sliv­er of light from above.

"Yuko!" Shuya yelled. He be­gan climb­ing the stairs as he yelled, "What hap­pened, Yuko!?"

Yuko wasn't there at the top of the stairs. But...he heard the sound of her scream "AIEEE" echo through the cylin­dri­cal space of the tow­er. Shuya knit his brows...and be­gan quick­ly climb­ing the stairs. The wound in his side be­gan to ache. He thought he might be bleed­ing be­cause his ban­dages now felt damp.

9 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

64

Yuko Saka­ki ran out of breath as she climbed up the stairs to the top of the light­house. The Cy­clops-​like Fres­nel lens was at the cen­ter of the land­ing, and there was enough space to move around it. She saw the cloudy sky be­yond the wind­proof win­dows of the lantern room. On her left was a low door that led to a nar­row bal­cony, and fran­ti­cal­ly she opened it. She was out­side now.

Maybe it was the height, but the wind was stronger than she'd ex­pect­ed. She caught a strong whiff of the sea breeze.

The ocean was right there in front of her. Re­flect­ing the cloudy sky, the sea was dull in­di­go, and the white waves were wo­ven in­to it like some fab­ric. Yuko edged over to the right. The north­ern moun­tain was right in front of her. There was a small, open lot in front of the light­house build­ing. On her left an un­paved road stretched out around the foot of the moun­tain, and there was a white light truck right by a bare­ly func­tion­al gate in front of the road.

Yuko held on­to the steel handrail­ing around the bal­cony. The room she was in­side on­ly mo­ments ago was down be­low. She saw the roof of the sin­gle-​sto­ry build­ing an­nex. Fol­low­ing the rail­ing, she con­tin­ued cir­cling the lantern room, but didn't find what she thought she would-a steel lad­der. Yuko nev­er had the chance to keep watch so she didn't know the ex­te­ri­or of the light­house. There was no way out. She was stand­ing, fac­ing the sky. She was trapped now. Re­al­iz­ing this, she was about to pan­ic, but she clenched her teeth and held her­self to­geth­er. If there was no lad­der... then she'd have to jump.

She was pant­ing. She end­ed up re­turn­ing to her pre­vi­ous po­si­tion. She looked down again.

It was high. It wasn't as bad as leap­ing to the ground, but it was still high. In fact, it might have been im­pos­si­ble to jump at this height, but be­fore she could make a ra­tio­nal choice the im­age flashed across her mind again. This time it was her head, alone, split open. Blood spray­ing up. Shuya's face cov­ered with its blood. She had to es­cape. No mat­ter what. She just had to es­cape. She had no time to lose.

Yuko crouched down and slid be­tween the hap­haz­ard­ly in­stalled steel fence. Its bars were wide­ly spaced. She got through. Hold­ing on­to the rail­ing from out­side, she cau­tious­ly stood on the edge of the bal­cony bare­ly ten cen­time­ters wide, but...

...the view be­low her feet made her dizzy. It was way too high...jump­ing down was out of the ques­tion...it was just way too high...

Her view sud­den­ly shook. Her feet slipped. The side of her shin hit the con­crete edge of the bal­cony (she felt her skin scrap­ing off), and Yuko's body flew out in­to the sky. "AIEEE," Yuko shrieked. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, her hands groped around and man­aged to grab a thin steel bar from the steel fence. Yuko's body hung from the edge of the bal­cony.

Hold­ing on­to the rail­ing, Yuko was pant­ing. She near­ly...near­ly died.

How­ev­er, she took a deep breath and put all her might in­to her hands. First, that's right, first she had to lift her body up and get back to the oth­er side of the rail­ing. Then she would have to fig­ure out some way to fight Shuya Nana­hara. That was the on­ly-

The strong wind whis­tled by and shook her body. She shrieked, "AIEEE," but it didn't do much. Her hands clutch­ing on­to the steel bar slipped, and now the palms of her hands bare­ly man­aged to hold on­to the edge of the bal­cony. Now she couldn't even reach for the steel bars.

She was ap­palled to find her palms were ooz­ing sweat. She was over­come with fear and pan­ic. How, how, how, how could she be sweat­ing now? Her hands...her hands were slip­ping___

Her right pinky slipped off the edge of the bal­cony.

"No!" Yuko screamed. Then her ring fin­ger. Then her en­tire right hand fell off the rail­ing (she felt the nail of her in­dex fin­ger catch, but it peeled off and that was that). Her body swung, her left hand now the ful­crum. And now her left hand too...

"Ah­hh­hhh-" As she screamed, Yuko was over­whelmed with a dream­like sen­sa­tion that she was falling.

But then she felt an im­pact run down her arm to her shoul­der. Her fall came to a halt less than half a me­ter be­low.

Swing­ing like a pen­du­lum on her left arm, Yuko gazed up...and then saw Shuya Nana­hara be­yond the rail­ing ex­tend­ing his body, stretch­ing his right arm out, hold­ing her wrist.

For an in­stant Yuko gazed at Shuya's face, but then the next mo­ment she screamed, "No-!"

Of course if she let go she would die, but it was Shuya Nana­hara hold­ing her hand!

"No! No!"

Her eyes wide open, her hair tossed around, Yuko con­tin­ued scream­ing as she won­dered, why? Why are you try­ing to save me? Is it be­cause you want to use me to sur­vive? Or, oh, I get it. You want to kill me with your very own hands!

"No! Let me go!" Yuko screamed. Any trace of ra­tio­nal thought had all but dis­ap­peared. "No! I'd rather die here than let you kill me! Let me go! Let me go!"

What­ev­er he thought in re­ac­tion, or maybe he wasn't think­ing at all, in any case, his ex­pres­sion stayed the same, and he yelled, "Don't move!"

Yuko gazed up at Shuya again...and re­al­ized the ban­dage un­der the sil­ver col­lar cov­er­ing his neck wound oozed with blood now drip­ping down his bare shoul­der.

The blood dripped down his arm and reached her left hand.

"Ugh," Shuya moaned. He gripped Yuko's hand tighter. His face was break­ing in­to a sweat. That's right, it wasn't just his neck, his en­tire body was cov­ered with se­vere wounds. Giv­en how he was not on­ly hold­ing her en­tire weight with his right arm but at­tempt­ing to pull her up, he had to be in in­cred­ible pain.

Yuko's jaw dropped. Why? Why would you try to save me when you're in so much pain? That's-

Strange­ly enough, it sud­den­ly all came to her. The black mist cloud­ing her thoughts sud­den­ly cleared as if blown away by the sea breeze blow­ing against her body. The im­age of Shuya hold­ing the blood-​soaked axe, look­ing down at Tat­sumichi Oki's corpse, sud­den­ly van­ished as if shred­ded by the wind, and all her pre­vi­ous (al­though it was on­ly two days ago) mem­ories of the Third Year Class B class­room along with the cheer­ful ex­pres­sions of Shuya Nana­hara came back to her. How he joked around with his friends Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu and Shin­ji Mimu­ra, how he looked so se­ri­ous re­peat­ing a dif­fi­cult gui­tar line while prac­tic­ing in the mu­sic room, how he posed tri­umphant­ly at sec­ond base af­ter mak­ing a per­fect hit down the third base line dur­ing gym class, which she man­aged to see from the gym where she was play­ing vol­ley­ball. And then when she was pale from men­stru­al cramps, how he'd gen­tly said to her, "What's wrong, Yuko? You look pale," in­ter­rupt­ed their En­glish teach­er Mr. Ya­mamo­to, and called on the nurse's as­sis­tant, Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi. How he looked so con­cerned then.

Oh no. Yuko fi­nal­ly un­der­stood the sit­ua­tion. This is Shuya. Shuya is try­ing to save me. I...why? Why did I have to think I had to kill Shuya? Why did I be­lieve that? It's Shuya. And I al­ways thought he was kind of cool...that he was re­al­ly nice but no-

Then a dif­fer­ent thought oc­curred to her. The ac­tion she took and its re­sults. Yuko once again turned pale.

I...my mind was all screwed up...and...and that's how I end­ed up-

Yuko burst in­to tears. Shuya saw this and looked puz­zled.

"Shuya!" she screamed. "I-​it was me! I tried to kill you!"

Shuya looked sur­prised as Yuko looked up with de­spon­dent tears in her eyes.

Yuko con­tin­ued. "I-​I-​I thought you'd killed Tat­sumichi...! saw you two...and I was scared. I was so scared. So I tried poi­son­ing your food...but Yu­ka end­ed up eat­ing it...and then ev­ery­one...ev­ery­one..."

Shuya then un­der­stood ev­ery­thing. Hid­ing in a near­by bush, Yuko had seen him ex­tract the axe from Tat­sumichi Oki's head af­ter fight­ing him. She didn't see how Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi and Shogo ap­peared af­ter­wards. She'd on­ly wit­nessed that one mo­ment. She could have in­ter­pret­ed it as an act of self de­fense on Shuya's part or as an ac­ci­dent, but Yuko was too fright­ened to trust Shuya. And so she poi­soned the food to kill him, but Yu­ka ate this by mis­take...and ev­ery­one pan­icked with sus­pi­cion. The cul­prit, Yuko, end­ed up be­ing the on­ly sur­vivor...

"It's all right!" Shuya shout­ed. "It's all right, just don't move! I'll pull you up!"

Shuya was near­ly ly­ing flat on the bal­cony, his body jut­ting out be­tween the bars, but be­cause his left arm was use­less, he couldn't grab on­to the rail­ing. Still, he twist­ed his body, and fi­nal­ly man­aged to tuck his right knee up to his body so he could re­ly on his back. He did his best to hold on­to Yuko's wrist. The pain from the wounds all over his body, his side, his left shoul­der, and the right side of his neck was mount­ing. But...

Her face soaked with tears, Yuko shook her head. "No. No. It was my fault ev­ery­one...ev­ery­one..." she said, and sud­den­ly her hand be­gan to pry his fin­gers loose. The tight grip he'd fi­nal­ly man­aged to get on her came loose. Shuya gripped tighter in re­sponse, but...the blood drip­ping down from his neck sud­den­ly made his hand slip.

Yuko's hand left Shuya's. The weight on Shuya's arm sud­den­ly van­ished.

Yuko's face look­ing up at Shuya re­ced­ed-

With a thud, Yuko fell on her back on­to the roof of the sin­gle-​sto­ry build­ing be­low. In­stead of slip­ping from his hand, she seemed to have ap­peared there sud­den­ly via time-​lapse pho­tog­ra­phy.

Her body wrapped in her sailor shirt and pleat­ed skirt was sprawled out...and her neck was crooked, which made her head look odd­ly dis­joined from the rest of her body. The top-​right side of her head spurt­ed out a red sub­stance in the shape of a shriv­eled up maple leaf.

"Ah..."

Shuya stared down at her, his right arm still hang­ing over the bal­cony.

8 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

65

Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11) took a deep breath.

He'd heard the rapid gun­fire ap­prox­imate­ly ten min­utes ago. He'd been wan­der­ing around the north­ern moun­tain, but he quick­ly head­ed east to­ward the shots. Then...by the time he ar­rived it was al­ready qui­et at the light­house. He knew it was there from the map, but he as­sumed Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki would nev­er hide there alone in such a con­spic­uous lo­ca­tion, so he'd ig­nored it un­til now. He wasn't sure whether this was where the gun­fire oc­curred. He looked down from the cliff over the light­house and saw a girl ly­ing on the roof of the brick an­nex by the light­house. Even from a dis­tance he could make out the red col­or...and see that she was dead. The short hair and pe­tite body re­sem­bled Ko­to­hi­ki, as Megu­mi Eto's corpse did when he dis­cov­ered it.

He slid down the edge of the cliff. As he de­scend­ed, the corpse on the roof dis­ap­peared from view. He reached the front en­trance of the light­house. There was a pile of chairs and desks be­yond the open door. Some­one had formed a bar­ri­cade, but for some rea­son this bar­ri­cade was al­so torn down. He looked at the win­dow that was sealed shut with planks and cau­tious­ly walked down the hall. (There was a room with a bed right by the en­trance, and for some rea­son its door had been knocked down.) His de­tec­tor re­spond­ed. Six. Hi­ro­ki pro­ceed­ed cau­tious­ly-

And stood frozen in the room splat­tered with blood.

The bod­ies of five girls were scat­tered all over what ap­peared to be a kitchen. There was the fe­male stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive Yukie Ut­su­mi on her back by the cen­ter ta­ble. To her right was Haru­ka Taniza­wa, her head near­ly torn off (!). And fur­ther down Yu­ka Nak­agawa, whose face had turned near­ly black. Chisato Mat­sui was ly­ing face down in front of the side ta­ble to his right, her pale blue face turned his way. And then one more girl was ly­ing face down be­hind the ta­ble, cov­ered in blood.

The four girls, in­clud­ing Yukie, were clear­ly dead. But this one whose face he couldn't see was...

Hi­ro­ki cau­tious­ly checked the room once again. He lis­tened for any sounds be­yond the opened door on the oth­er side of the room. There didn't seem to be any­one else hid­ing.

He tucked the gun in his left hand in back, walked be­tween the bod­ies of Yukie Ut­su­mi and Haru­ka Taniza­wa, passed by Yu­ka Nak­agawa's body, and walked around the ta­ble. The soles of his shoes splashed against the blood all over the floor. He crouched down be­side the girl ly­ing face down, put aside the stick in his right hand, and lift­ed her body. He felt a sharp pain from the wound in his right shoul­der where Mit­suko Souma had struck him. The gun­shot wound Toshi­nori Oda had in­flict­ed on his thigh though was on­ly a scrape, so there wasn't much bleed­ing or pain there. Hi­ro­ki tried to ig­nore the pain, in any case. He turned over the body.

It was Sato­mi No­da. There was a red hole in the left side of her fore­head, and her glass­es, though crooked, man­aged to stay on her face. The left lens prob­ably shat­tered when she fell. Of course she was dead.

Hi­ro­ki put her down and looked over at the opened door on the far side of the room. That was where the tow­er was. That led up to the lantern room.

The oth­er per­son on the de­tec­tor was that girl on the roof. She was no doubt dead as well, but he had to check and make sure...as long as she re­sem­bled Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki.

Hi­ro­ki took his gun and en­tered through the door. There was a steel stair­case. He quick­ly climbed them with hushed foot­steps. Some­one might still be up there. He held the stick and radar in his right hand, check­ing it as he went up.

There were no new re­spons­es as he came out in­to the lantern room. Hi­ro­ki put the radar in his pock­et, tucked his gun al­so in back, and came out on­to the bal­cony around the lantern room.

He put his hand on the steel rail­ing. He took a deep breath, leaned over the rail­ing, and looked down.

There was the corpse in the sailor suit. Her neck was twist­ed in an odd way and blood spread out from un­der her head but the corpse...wasn't Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki's. It was Yuko Saka­ki.

Still...

He gazed at the sea. There was a strong breeze. Six girls had all died here at once. There were no guns in the room, but giv­en how they were wound­ed and how the walls and floors were rid­den with bul­let holes, he was cer­tain the gun­shots he'd heard had oc­curred here. The most log­ical sce­nario was that...the girls some­how got to­geth­er and cooped them­selves up here, but then some­one at­tacked them. The five girls were shot down there first, and then Yuko Saka­ki man­aged to get this far and fell to her death with­out be­ing at­tacked by the as­sailant. Then the as­sailant left be­fore Hi­ro­ki got here....

But giv­en how they'd formed a bar­ri­cade at the en­trance-the planks nailed over the win­dows, ev­ery en­try point prob­ably sealed-why would they tear the bar­ri­cade down? Did the as­sailant shove it away as he left? But then how could he or she have en­tered in the first place? Could it be...there were sev­en of them? And one of them had sud­den­ly be­trayed the rest-no, re­vealed his or her true in­ten­tions? No, that can't be...The oth­er thing was that Yu­ka Nak­agawa didn't look like she died from gun­shots. She looked like...she'd been choked. The blood splat­tered all over the ta­ble al­so didn't make any sense. How could that large amount of blood end up there? There was more. The door to that room right next to the en­trance. Why was it torn down?

There was no use try­ing to fig­ure it out. Hi­ro­ki shook his head, checked the roof of the build­ing, and re­turned to the lantern room.

As he de­scend­ed the steel spi­ral stair­case in the dim tow­er and gazed at the in­ner walls of the light­house, Hi­ro­ki felt a light sen­sa­tion of ver­ti­go as if the spi­ral move­ment of the stairs were in­ter­nal­ized. It might have been from fa­tigue, but still...

So now there were six stu­dents less. Sakamochi said there were four­teen stu­dents left, as of the noon an­nounce­ment. Then there were at most eight stu­dents left now.

Was Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki still alive? Wasn't it pos­si­ble she might have died be­tween noon and now in some area he didn't know about?

No, Hi­ro­ki thought, she has to be alive.

Even though he could hard­ly jus­ti­fy it, for some rea­son he was near­ly cer­tain. Eight stu­dents re­main­ing, pos­si­bly even less. But I'm alive, and so must be Ko­to­hi­ki. This is tak­ing too much time. It's been a day and a half since the game be­gan, and I still haven't man­aged to find Ko­to­hi­ki. But...I will even­tu­al­ly. Once again he was near­ly cer­tain.

Then he thought of Shuya's trio. None of their three names had been an­nounced. Shogo Kawa­da had said, "If you're up for it, you can come aboard our train."

...was there re­al­ly a way out? And would he re­al­ly be able to reach that sta­tion with Ko­to­hi­ki? He wasn't sure. But at the very least he want­ed Ko­to­hi­ki to board that train.

Shall I of­fer you a hand then, made­moi­selle?

It sound­ed like some­thing Shin­ji Mimu­ra would have said. Now he saw how Shin­ji could be good friends with Yu­ta­ka Se­to. Shin­ji liked to kid around. The jokes were dif­fer­ent from Yu­ta­ka's, of course. They were more sar­cas­tic and at times bit­ing. Shin­ji seemed to val­ue "the im­por­tance of laugh­ing it off." At the clos­ing cer­emo­ny be­fore New Year's, when they were in their sec­ond year, dur­ing the re­gion­al ed­uca­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive's dull speech, Shin­ji said, "My un­cle once said laugh­ter is es­sen­tial to main­tain har­mo­ny, and that that might be our on­ly re­lease. Do you un­der­stand that, Hi­ro­ki? I still can't quite get it."

Al­though he could re­late to it a lit­tle, he al­so felt he didn't ful­ly get it. It might have been be­cause he was young. But in any case Shin­ji Mimu­ra and Yu­ta­ka Se­to were both dead now. He could no longer give Shin­ji a re­ply.

As he pon­dered these thoughts, soon enough he was back in the kitchen filled with five bod­ies. Once again Hi­ro­ki looked over the room cov­ered in blood.

He hadn't no­ticed be­cause of the stench, but now he saw the gas stove pot and caught a whiff of the ap­pe­tiz­ing odor. There was no gas of course, so they were prob­ably in the mid­dle of cook­ing us­ing sol­id fu­el. He went to take a look. The flame un­der the pot was out, but there was still steam ris­ing from what looked like stew.

Ev­er since the game be­gan he'd on­ly had the bread the gov­ern­ment had sup­plied (when he ran out of wa­ter he re­trieved some from a house well), so he was fam­ished, but he shook his head and peeled his eyes off the pot. He just couldn't bring him­self to eat it. Not in this ter­ri­ble room. Be­sides, he had to hur­ry...and find Ko­to­hi­ki. Hur­ry up...and leave.

He stag­gered out in­to the hall. Not hav­ing slept at all, he was feel­ing dizzy.

Some­one was stand­ing at the en­trance at the far end of the long cor­ri­dor. Be­cause the hall was dim, this per­son looked like a sil­hou­ette out­lined from be­hind by the light.

Hi­ro­ki leaped to his side be­fore his eyes could even open wide and crashed his way in­to the kitchen. All at the same time, flames came burst­ing from the sil­hou­ette's hands. A row of bul­lets raced past the tips of Hi­ro­ki's feet fly­ing out of the hall.

Hi­ro­ki gri­maced from the sud­den sur­prise. He got up, crouched, and then closed the door and locked it.

The gun­fire sound­ed fa­mil­iar. It was the sound he'd heard be­fore and af­ter that in­cred­ible ex­plo­sion. Af­ter he es­caped Toshi­nori Oda, he heard the sound of gun­fire be­hind him...in oth­er words it was what­ev­er killed Toshi­nori Oda. It was al­so the gun­fire he'd heard when Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano were killed. He'd heard the gun­fire sev­er­al oth­er times. It all came from "that class­mate." Like Hi­ro­ki, the as­sailant had prob­ably come here af­ter hear­ing gun­fire. Or maybe the stu­dent was here to kill the as­sailant who'd killed Yukie Ut­su­mi's group. Or maybe-the as­sailant him­self was re­turn­ing.

Kneel­ing down on the floor, Hi­ro­ki reached around his back and gripped his gun with his left hand. He'd found the bul­lets in the day pack Mit­suko left be­hind, so it was now ful­ly load­ed, but he couldn't find an ex­tra mag­azine. Maybe Mit­suko had put it in her pock­et. Colt Gov­ern­ment .45 Sin­gle-​Ac­tion Au­to­mat­ic. Sev­en rounds in the mag­azine, plus one in the cham­ber. He couldn't af­ford to reload the bul­lets in­di­vid­ual­ly. The mo­ment he did he'd be wast­ed by the as­sailant's ma­chine gun or any oth­er gun on him or her.

His back against the wall, Hi­ro­ki looked at the kitchen where the girls' corpses were. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the win­dows were sealed with planks from the in­side. It would take too much time to tear them off and es­cape. He looked over at the door lead­ing to the tow­er. No, that was im­pos­si­ble. It was too high for him to jump off the top of the light­house. It would be in­sane. He'd end up sun bathing right next to Yuko Saka­ki. No, wait...what was this "some­one" try­ing to do? Was he tip­toe­ing be­hind the door, ap­proach­ing, or was he tak­ing his time wait­ing for Hi­ro­ki to come out? No, he had to be in a rush too. He had to get rid of Hi­ro­ki be­fore he might be shot from be­hind by some­one else ar­riv­ing as a re­sult of the gun­fire-

Hi­ro­ki was right. The wood around the door­knob was blown to bits. (In fact, sev­er­al of the bul­lets ex­it­ing the door tore off the shoul­der and side of Chisato Mat­sui, who was ly­ing di­rect­ly in front of the door.)

The door crashed open.

The dark fig­ure leaped in­to the room.

As it tum­bled over once and got up, Hi­ro­ki re­al­ized it was Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6). Ig­nor­ing the corpses in the room, he point­ed his ma­chine gun to the side of the door which was his blind spot, and im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan fir­ing away.

Af­ter five or six bul­lets tore through the wall...the gun­fire stopped...be­cause he saw no one there.

Now was his chance. Hi­ro­ki swung his stick up and leaped on­to Kazuo Kiriya­ma from above. At the last in­stant he'd de­cid­ed to climb to the top of the high shelf in­stalled be­side the door. He'd de­cid­ed against us­ing the gun since he wasn't used to it and had tucked it away again. The im­por­tant thing was to stop the as­sailant-who turned out to be Kazuo Kiriya­ma-from shoot­ing any­more.

Kazuo re­spond­ed by look­ing up. He lift­ed the muz­zle of his ma­chine gun, but the han­dle of the broom Hi­ro­ki held struck Kazuo's wrist. The In­gram M10 9mm crashed on­to the floor, slid, and stopped be­yond the ta­ble where Sato­mi No­da was.

Kazuo tried to pull out an­oth­er gun (it was a large au­to­mat­ic pis­tol, dif­fer­ent from the re­volver Toshi­nori Oda had), but Hi­ro­ki, who'd land­ed and bal­anced him­self, quick­ly swung the tip of his stick and struck this gun down too.

A rapid as­sault! I'll strike him down!

The stick came swing­ing down, but Kazuo quick­ly bent back and som­er­sault­ed back­wards. He leaped over Yukie Ut­su­mi's body with the grace of a kung fu mas­ter, and af­ter tum­bling once he was stand­ing in front of the cen­ter ta­ble. By the time he was stand­ing he had a re­volver in his right hand, the one that be­longed to Toshi­nori Oda.

But even Kazuo couldn't have fore­seen Hi­ro­ki's agili­ty. He'd im­me­di­ate­ly moved with­in eighty cen­time­ters of Kazuo.

"Yahh!" Hi­ro­ki swung his stick, strik­ing the gun in Kazuo's hand three times. It flew in­to the air. Be­fore it land­ed on the floor, the oth­er end of Hi­ro­ki's stick swung at Kazuo's face. There was a ta­ble be­hind Kazuo. He couldn't re­treat any­more.

But-the stick stopped sev­er­al cen­time­ters be­fore hit­ting Kazuo's face. A third of the stick flew by Kazuo's face. Strange­ly enough, he on­ly heard it crack lat­er. Kazuo had chopped off the stick with his left hand.

The next mo­ment, Kazuo formed a spear fist with his right hand to strike Hi­ro­ki in the face. He was aim­ing for Hi­ro­ki's eyes.

It was a mir­acle he man­aged to duck and dodge it. That was how fast Kazuo's fist was.

But Hi­ro­ki had man­aged to dodge it. When he dodged it, he grabbed Kazuo's wrist with his hand that had dropped the stick. The next mo­ment, he twist­ed his wrist back. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, he kneed Kazuo in the stom­ach with all his might. The ab­so­lute­ly calm Kazuo gasped slight­ly.

With his left hand re­strain­ing Kazuo's arm, Hi­ro­ki pulled out his gun and cocked the ham­mer back. He pressed the gun against Kazuo's stom­ach and pulled the trig­ger.

He kept on pulling the trig­ger un­til he used up all his bul­lets. With ev­ery shot Kazuo's body flinched.

When the gun's breech­block held up, the eighth shell fell on­to the floor with a clink, rolled, and then clicked against an­oth­er shell.

He could feel Kazuo's right arm and the rest of his body slow­ly go­ing limp. His slicked-​back hair and the rest of his head fell for­ward. Once Hi­ro­ki let go, Kazuo's body would slide against cor­ner of the ta­ble and fall on­to the floor.

But right now Hi­ro­ki stood still fac­ing Kazuo as if danc­ing a strange dance, pant­ing, his chest heav­ing.

I won.

He won against the Kazuo Kiriya­ma. The Kazuo Kiriya­ma whose ath­let­ic prowess was prob­ably su­pe­ri­or to Shin­ji Mimu­ra or Shuya Nana­hara's, who'd nev­er lost a fight as far as he knew. He'd de­feat­ed him.

I de­feat­ed-

Sud­den­ly a sharp pain pierced the right side of Hi­ro­ki's stom­ach. He groaned, gasped...then opened his eyes wide.

Kazuo was look­ing up at Hi­ro­ki. And in his left hand...was a knife dig­ging in­to Hi­ro­ki's stom­ach.

Hi­ro­ki slow­ly shift­ed his eyes from this hand over to Kazuo's face. Kazuo stared back with eyes that were as al­ways beau­ti­ful and cold.

How...could he still be alive?

Of course it was be­cause Kazuo Kiriya­ma was wear­ing Toshi­nori Oda's bul­let­proof vest, but Hi­ro­ki couldn't have known, and right now there wasn't much point try­ing to fig­ure this out.

Kazuo twist­ed the knife and Hi­ro­ki moaned. His left hand's grip on Kazuo's right wrist was loos­en­ing.

Oh no, this is not good...at all.

But Hi­ro­ki man­aged to squeeze some strength out in­to his arm. He swung down his right hand that was still hold­ing the emp­tied gun.

His bent right el­bow struck Kazuo's low­er chin.

Kazuo flew back and slid across the white ta­ble cov­ered with blood. The blood stain that re­sem­bled the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia's na­tion­al flag now looked more like the stripes of the Amer­ican flag. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the knife in Hi­ro­ki's stom­ach, af­ter tear­ing off ap­prox­imate­ly thir­ty grams of Hi­ro­ki's flesh, was torn out. Blood came burst­ing out. Hi­ro­ki gasped, but im­me­di­ate­ly turned on his heel and ran to the door lead­ing out to the hall.

Right as he was en­ter­ing it he heard gun­fire, and the door frame cracked open. Kazuo didn't have any time to pick up the guns scat­tered on the floor. So he must have had a fourth gun (prob­ably at­tached un­der his pants, tied to his an­kle or some­thing).

Hi­ro­ki ran, ig­nor­ing the gun­fire.

He leaped over the scat­tered pile of chairs and desks. Right be­fore he emerged out­side he heard that all-​too-​fa­mil­iar ma­chine gun fire, but the shots missed him be­cause he was crouched over.

The sky was cloudy enough to ex­pect rain, but for some rea­son it looked bright to him.

Hi­ro­ki ran as fast as he could in­to the grove be­yond the gate where the light truck was parked. He left be­hind a trail of red spots on the white sand.

He heard the ma­chine gun rat­tle again, but by then he'd leaped in­to the grove.

Of course he couldn't af­ford to rest now.

8 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

66

It be­gan to driz­zle. Rain washed over the bush­es cov­er­ing the is­land, and in the dim light a dark sheen fell through the drops of wa­ter and thick clouds.

Shuya slow­ly wove his way through the bush­es. The area to his right was open and of­fered him a view of the sea, which was dull gray be­hind the white cur­tain of rain.

He now wore his shirt, school coat, and sneak­ers, which he found in the room where Yukie's group was. Rain­drops falling off tree branch­es dripped on­to his coat. He had the Uzi slung over his shoul­der, his right hand on the grip, and kept the CZ75 tucked in front. The Brown­ing and the bul­lets he'd col­lect­ed were in­side the day pack on his shoul­der.

Shuya left the light­house im­me­di­ate­ly, and as he'd ex­pect­ed fif­teen min­utes lat­er, right when he be­gan col­lect­ing wood to build a fire on a cliff near the north­ern tip of the is­land, he heard gun­fire com­ing from the light­house. De­spite the fact that the mas­sacre of Yukie's group had oc­curred in­side the light­house, he sur­mised at least two stu­dents had ar­rived up­on hear­ing the shots and end­ed up fight­ing.

Af­ter some hes­ita­tion, Shuya start­ed head­ing back to the light­house. It sound­ed like the all-​too-​fa­mil­iar gun­fire of Kazuo Kiriya­ma's ma­chine gun. He doubt­ed Noriko and Shogo would go out of their way to fol­low the gun­fire, but there weren't too many stu­dents left. Sup­pos­ing one was Kazuo, there was a good chance the oth­er was Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. Of course, it al­so could have been Mit­suko Souma.

But the gun­fire ceased im­me­di­ate­ly. Shuya stopped. He de­cid­ed not to re­turn to the light­house af­ter all. Even if he went back, there wouldn't be any­one there. Or at best there might be an­oth­er corpse in ad­di­tion to the bod­ies of Yukie's group.

It be­gan rain­ing when Shuya had fin­ished prepar­ing two fires on the cliff rock. He found a lighter in the light­house, but it was dif­fi­cult to get the fire go­ing be­cause of the rain.

The rain grew heavy, so Shuya gave up and left the area. Noriko and Shogo prob­ably hadn't moved much. C=3 was for­bid­den, but the ad­ja­cent D=3 and C=4 were still safe. They were prob­ably in that area, so he could make an­oth­er fire once he was in the vicin­ity.

With this thought in mind he be­gan walk­ing. That was when we heard the dis­tant chirp­ing sound of a bird as he turned west­ward on the north shore of the is­land around 2:30 p.m. Shuya lis­tened close­ly...and quick­ly glanced down at his watch. The sec­onds hand moved sev­en de­grees, and the faint chirp­ing stopped. Shogo had said fif­teen sec­onds. Giv­en the time it took for him to look at his watch, its du­ra­tion cor­re­spond­ed to that length of time. Be­sides, he doubt­ed there were many birds chirp­ing in the rain. And he heard none of those lit­tle birds that he'd heard dur­ing the day ev­er since the game be­gan.

Shuya con­tin­ued along the north­west shore of the is­land-and once again heard the same chirp­ing. This time it was clear. Ex­act­ly fif­teen min­utes had elapsed since the last one-and it stopped ex­act­ly fif­teen sec­onds lat­er. It was Shogo. There was no need for the smoke sig­nal. Shogo was us­ing the bird call.

The third fake chirp­ing oc­curred on­ly three min­utes ago. It sound­ed close. Ac­cord­ing to the map, Shuya was mov­ing from B=6 to B=5.

Shuya rest­ed a lit­tle, tucked the Uzi's bar­rel un­der his left wrist, and lift­ed his left arm. It was eas­ier that way be­cause he didn't have to ex­ert his mus­cles. The watch hands, out of fo­cus from the rain­drops against the glass, in­di­cat­ed it was 3:05 p.m.

The chirp­ing sound­ed clos­er to the moun­tain than it was to the sea. Shuya glanced at the sea, then moved to­wards and then up the gen­tle slope. As he looked up, he no­ticed that the north­ern moun­tain in front of him looked dif­fer­ent, which made him re­al­ize he'd been mov­ing along the foot of the moun­tain and was now ap­proach­ing the west­ern shore.

Just a lit­tle more. He'd bare­ly cov­ered 1.5 kilo­me­ters, but he still felt woozy from all the blood he'd lost. The pain in his body was so se­vere he felt like throw­ing up (he re­al­ly had to stop and rest). But he was al­most there. Al­most.

He made his way through the grove and his fa­tigue be­came over­whelm­ing. Of course...he could be at­tacked at any point from the bush­es. But he couldn't af­ford to wor­ry about that. If that hap­pened...he would just have to pull the trig­ger of the Uzi.

The low bush­es be­came sparse and then were cut off. Shuya stood still. It wasn't as if there was some­one hold­ing a gun... but there was some­thing strange in this nar­row open­ing.

At first it looked like two stiff gray clumps to Shuya. On top of that, they seemed to be mov­ing. He stared at them. There were black pants and sneak­ers pok­ing out of these two clumps.

He re­al­ized they were corpses. Two boys had died here.

A flash of red col­or flew up from the stiff gray clump and cried, "KAW!" It was a large heron-​sized bird, its head drenched in red. The birds were feed­ing on the corpses!

Shuya re­flex­ive­ly raised his Uzi at them. He put his fin­ger against the trig­ger-but de­cid­ed against it. He walked over.

The birds flapped their wings and flew away from the two corpses.

Shuya stood still in the rain by them...and lift­ed his right hand up to his mouth. He felt a sud­den urge to vom­it.

It was a chill­ing sight. The birds had picked away at their ex­posed faces. Their red flesh broke out of their skin. They were cov­ered in blood.

Shuya held back his nau­sea and some­how man­aged to look at them. He saw they were prob­ably Tadakat­su Hataga­mi and Yuichi­ro Takiguchi. Then he no­ticed some­thing about Tadakat­su's face, which was in worse con­di­tion than Yuichi­ro's. The birds weren't re­spon­si­ble for his de­formed skull. His nose, un­harmed by the birds, was al­so crushed.

He looked around and found a bat ly­ing on the grass. Even though it was washed by the rain, the tip of the bat was still tinged with red. Giv­en the state of Tadakat­su's face, he was most like­ly beat­en to death. With the gear of his sport- a base­ball bat.

Com­pared to him, Yuichi­ro's face was in rel­ative­ly good shape. Of course... Shuya had a feel­ing his lips and eye­balls were gone by now.

One of the birds land­ed on top of Tadakat­su's face. Then sev­er­al more birds came by. Giv­en how Shuya re­mained frozen, they prob­ably as­sumed they were safe.

Safe? You got to be kid­ding!

Shuya once again put his fin­ger on the trig­ger of the Uzi...but re­strained him­self. The im­por­tant thing was for him to get back to Shogo and Noriko.

More birds reap­peared.

Were they feed­ing on the oth­er bod­ies sprawled all over the is­land? Or was it just be­cause they were near the sea?

Peel­ing his eyes off the two corpses, Shuya stag­gered around them and en­tered the bush­es ahead. He heard the birds cry, "KAW!"

As he moved, he felt the urge to vom­it once again. By now he was get­ting used to peo­ple dy­ing, but the thought of these birds, these sky rats, feed­ing on them...I'll nev­er sit on the beach and gaze peace­ful­ly at seag­ulls again. Even if I write my own songs, I'll nev­er ev­er sing about birds. I might not even be able to eat chick­en for a while. Man, birds... suck.

But then he heard that chirp­ing sound again. He looked up. Large rain­drops hit his face.

Ah-birds suck but...I guess a lit­tle bird's all right, huh?

An­oth­er full fif­teen sec­onds passed and the chirp­ing ceased. This time it sound­ed re­al­ly close.

Shuya looked around. The bush­es con­tin­ued along the gen­tle slope. It must be...around here. They had to be some­where near here. But...where?

Be­fore he could think, the nau­sea he'd held back surged up. The two corpses, their faces messed up. And their soft flesh would be the birds' af­ter­noon snack. Yum­my.

I can't puke. I'm weak enough as it is...but...

Shuya knelt down on the ground and vom­it­ed. Be­cause he hadn't had any­thing to eat, it was all gas­tric juices. There was a sharp, acidic stench.

Shuya threw up more. A pink­ish sub­stance was mixed in­to the yel­low liq­uid like a drop of paint. For all he knew, his stom­ach might be screwed up by now.

"Shuya."

He looked up. Re­flex­ive­ly, he point­ed the Uzi over there. But the muz­zle fell again.

Be­tween the shrubs he saw that thug­gish face. It was Shogo. In his left hand, Shogo held a bow which seemed to be carved out of wood, and in his right hand he was about to put down the ar­row fixed to the bow. That was when Shuya re­al­ized, oh, I get it, I must have got­ten caught on Shogo's trip­wire.

"Hang­over, huh?" Shogo said. His hu­mor­ous re­mark was tinged with kind­ness.

There was a rustling sound. Noriko ap­peared be­hind Shogo. She gazed at Shuya through her rain-​drenched hair, her eyes and mouth trem­bling.

Push­ing Shogo aside, Noriko dragged her leg as she ran to him.

Shuya wiped his mouth and stag­gered up. He re­leased the Uzi and ex­tend­ed on­ly his right hand, hug­ging Noriko. On im­pact Noriko's body sent a jolt of pain through his side, but he didn't care. They were hav­ing their re­union right above some fresh puke, but that didn't mat­ter ei­ther. Her body against him felt warm in the cold rain.

Noriko looked up. "Shuya...Shuya...I'm so glad...I'm so glad..." She was cry­ing. Tears came stream­ing out of the cor­ners of her eyes along with the rain­drops falling against her face.

Shuya gen­tly smiled. Then he re­al­ized he was on the verge of cry­ing too. Too many peo­ple have died...too many peo­ple have died in this game, but how won­der­ful, how in­cred­ibly won­der­ful these two were still alive.

Shogo came up to him and of­fered his right hand. For a mo­ment Shuya was puz­zled by the ges­ture...but then he un­der­stood. He reached out his hand over Noriko's shoul­der and held it. It was, as al­ways, a large, sol­id hand.

"Wel­come back," Shogo said warm­ly.

8 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

67

Ex­posed rocks ap­peared where the woods head­ed to­ward the sea. Now a low wall for­ma­tion of those rocks faced the sea. Shogo seemed to have worked on it with his knife. Two large branch­es had been stuck in­to the rock wall, and on top of them were leafy branch­es serv­ing as a roof to block the rain. Rain­drops came flow­ing off the branch tips.

Af­ter he was giv­en strong painkillers that Shogo had brought from the med­ical clin­ic, Shuya told him about the light­house. Shogo boiled wa­ter in a can with char­coal, and its gur­gling sound over­lapped with the sound of pour­ing rain.

When Shuya was done, Shogo said, "I see." He took a deep breath, and put an­oth­er Wild Sev­en in­to his mouth. He held the Uzi in his lap. They de­cid­ed it was best Shogo hold on­to it. Shuya held the CZ75, and Noriko had the Brown­ing.

Shuya shook his head fee­bly. "It was aw­ful."

Shogo blew out some smoke and re­moved the cigarette from his mouth. "Yukie form­ing such a large group end­ed up back­fir­ing."

Shuya nod­ded bit­ter­ly. "It's so hard to...trust some­one."

"Yes, it is." Shogo looked down. "It's very hard." He con­tin­ued smok­ing and ap­peared pen­sive. Then he said, "In any case, I'm glad you made it."

Shuya re­called Yukie's face. He was alive. He was alive thanks to Yukie's group, but they were gone now.

Shuya looked at Noriko, on his left. Hear­ing about the deaths of her friends Yukie Ut­su­mi and Haru­ka Taniza­wa must have been hard on her. Once she saw the wa­ter was boil­ing, she took out some dried bouil­lon Shogo must have found and tossed two cubes in­to the can. The smell of broth came drift­ing up.

"Can you eat, Shuya?" Noriko asked.

Shuya looked at Noriko and raised his brow. He knew he had to eat, but he had just thrown up-and be­sides the im­ages of the stiff gray lumps around Tadakat­su Hataga­mi and Yuichi­ro Takiguchi still flashed through his mind. (He hadn't told them about that. The "lumps" were at work on­ly a hun­dred me­ters or so away from them__He on­ly said that he threw up from the pain of his wounds.) He couldn't work up an ap­petite.

"Eat, Shuya. Noriko and I al­ready had lunch," Shogo said, cigarette in mouth. His stub­ble had thick­ened. He grabbed the edge of the can with a hand­ker­chief, poured the soup in­to a plas­tic cup, and of­fered it to Shuya.

Shuya took it and slow­ly put it against his mouth. The taste of broth spread through his mouth. Then the warm liq­uid slid down his throat and in­to his stom­ach. It wasn't as bad as he'd ex­pect­ed.

Noriko of­fered him bread. Shuya took a bite. Once he start­ed chew­ing, he was sur­prised to find he could eat. He end­ed up eat­ing it all in­stant­ly. Re­gard­less of the men­tal state he was in...his body had been starv­ing.

"Would you like more?" Noriko asked and Shuya nod­ded. "A lit­tle more soup." He raised the emp­ty cup. Noriko re­filled it this time.

Tak­ing the cup, Shuya said, "Noriko."

She looked up at him. "What is it?"

"Are you feel­ing all right now?"

"Uh huh." She smiled. "I've been tak­ing cold medicine. I'm fine."

Shuya looked at the side of Shogo's face. Shogo nod­ded, cigarette dan­gling be­tween lips. He'd tak­en an­oth­er an­tibi­ot­ic sy­ringe kit from the med­ical clin­ic, but it turned out that was un­nec­es­sary.

Shuya turned around to Noriko again and smiled back at her. "That's great."

Then she asked the same ques­tion she'd been re­peat­ing over and over. "Shuya, are you re­al­ly all right?"

Shuya nod­ded. "I'm fine."

In fact, he wasn't, but what else could he say? He could see over his cuffs how his left hand had grown pale com­pared to his right hand. He wasn't sure whether it was due to his shoul­der wound or el­bow wound. Or it might sim­ply be be­cause the ban­dage was too tight around his el­bow. He felt his left arm get stiffer and stiffer.

He had an­oth­er sip of the soup and put the cup down by his feet. Then he called Shogo.

Shogo, who was check­ing the Uzi, raised his brow and looked at Shuya. "What is it?"

"It's about Kazuo."

That's right. As he con­tem­plat­ed the events that had oc­curred since yes­ter­day, the ques­tion that had been oc­cu­py­ing him right be­fore he split up with Shogo and Noriko sud­den­ly came back to him. The gun­fire he'd heard right af­ter he left the light­house al­so re­mind­ed him. In oth­er words-as he'd yelled out be­fore, "What's the hell's he do­ing!?"-mean­ing, what kind of per­son was Kazuo Kiriya­ma?

As far as he could tell, Kazuo wasn't the on­ly one will­ing to par­tic­ipate. Tat­sumichi Oki, whom Shuya had fought, pos­si­bly Yoshio Aka­mat­su, and if Hi­ro­ki was right, Mit­suko Souma might al­so be in the same cat­ego­ry. But...Kazuo was ab­so­lute­ly mer­ci­less. His cold­ness and calm­ness. The strange vibe he al­ways got from Kazuo sud­den­ly ex­plod­ed in this game and as­sault­ed them. Shuya once again re­called the flames erupt­ing from the ma­chine gun, and the cold eyes be­hind them. He felt a chill run down his spine.

Shogo re­mained silent, so Shuya con­tin­ued, "What...what's up with him? I just don't get it."

Shogo looked down and tin­kered around with the Uzi's safe­ty de­vice, equipped with a full-​au­to/se­mi-​au­to switch.

Didn't Shogo say there was no need to un­der­stand? Shuya won­dered whether Shogo would give him the same re­ply.

But Shogo had a dif­fer­ent re­sponse this time.

He looked up. "I've seen peo­ple like him be­fore."

"In the pre­vi­ous game?"

"No." Shogo shook his head. "Not there. To­tal­ly out­side of this game. You see a lot of things when you're the son of a doc­tor work­ing in the slums." Shogo took out an­oth­er cigarette and lit it. He ex­haled and said, "A hol­low man."

"Hol­low?" Noriko asked.

"That's right," Shogo nod­ded. "There's no place in his heart for log­ic or love, no. For any kind of val­ues. That kind of per­son. On top of that...there's no rea­son for the way he is."

No rea­son, Shuya thought, or did he mean he was just born that way? That's-

Shogo took a puff and ex­haled. "Hi­ro­ki warned us about Mit­suko Souma, right?"

Shuya and Noriko nod­ded.

"We still haven't seen for our­selves whether Mit­suko's re­al­ly up for this game. But from what lit­tle I've seen at school, I think Mit­suko and Kazuo are sim­ilar. The on­ly dif­fer­ence is that Mit­suko's aban­doned all rea­son and love. There was prob­ably some­thing be­hind that. I have no idea what it was. But Kazuo doesn't have any cause. The dif­fer­ence is cru­cial. There's no ex­pla­na­tion be­hind Kazuo."

Shuya stared at Shogo and mum­bled, "That's scary."

"Yeah, it's scary," Shogo agreed. "Just think about it. It's prob­ably not even his fault. Of course you can say that about any­one. But in his case he prob­ably could nev­er grasp 'an un­known fu­ture.' Noth­ing could be more ter­ri­fy­ing than to be born that way."

Shogo then con­tin­ued, "What I mean is that, even a dumb ass like me can think ev­ery­thing's point­less. Why do I get up and eat? It all ends up shit any­way. Why am I go­ing to school and study­ing? Even if I hap­pen to suc­ceed I'm go­ing to die any­way. You wear nice clothes, you seek re­spect, you make a lot of mon­ey, but what's the point? It's all point­less. Of course, this kind of mean­ing­less­ness might suit this crap­py na­tion. But...but, you see, we still have emo­tions like joy and hap­pi­ness, right? They may not amount to much. But they fill up our empti­ness. That's the on­ly ex­pla­na­tion I have. So...these emo­tions are prob­ably miss­ing from Kazuo. He's got no foun­da­tion for val­ues. So he mere­ly choos­es. He doesn't have a sol­id foun­da­tion. He just choos­es as he goes___Like for this game he might just as well have cho­sen not to par­tic­ipate. But he de­cid­ed to. That's my lit­tle the­ory."

He said all of this at once and then con­clud­ed, "Yeah, it is scary that some­one could live a life like that...and that we have to take on some­one like that right now."

They fell silent. Shogo took one more drag from his short­ened cigarette and then rubbed it out against the ground. Shuya took an­oth­er sip from his cup of soup. Then he looked up at the cloudy sky over the edge of Shogo's thatched roof.

"I won­der if Hi­ro­ki is all right."

He'd men­tioned the gun­fire he heard af­ter he left the light­house. He was still wor­ried about it.

"I'm sure he's all right," Noriko said.

Shuya looked at Shogo. "I won­der if we'll be able to see any smoke."

Shogo nod­ded. "Don't wor­ry. We can see smoke com­ing from any­where on this is­land. I'll check pe­ri­od­ical­ly."

Shuya then re­mem­bered the bird call. It led him to them. But why did Shogo have such an odd thing to be­gin with? He was about to ask him when Noriko said, "I won­der if Hi­ro­ki met up with Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki."

"If he did, we'd be see­ing smoke," Shogo an­swered.

Noriko nod­ded and then mum­bled, "I won­der why he had to see Ko­to­hi­ki."

This came up when they were in the med­ical clin­ic. Shuya's re­sponse was the same. "Beats me."

"They didn't seem all that close."

But then Noriko said, "Oh..." as if she'd re­al­ized some­thing.

Shuya looked up. "What?"

"I don't know for sure." Noriko shook her head. "But maybe..." She em­pha­sized her last vow­el. Shuya knit his brows.

"Maybe what?"

"That would be..."

Shogo in­ter­rupt­ed them. Shuya looked over at him. Shogo was tear­ing the seal off a new pack of cigarettes and con­tin­ued, his eyes glued to the pack, "...too corny...in this fuck­ing game."

"But..." Noriko con­tin­ued, "...it's Hi­ro­ki, so..."

Shuya looked back and forth at them, ut­ter­ly per­plexed.

8 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

68

Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 8) was hug­ging her knees in the bush­es. She was on the south­ern slope of the north­ern moun­tain, in sec­tor E=7.

Evening was ap­proach­ing, but the light com­ing through the bush­es didn't change much. It just stayed dark. In the af­ter­noon, the area was cov­ered with thick clouds, and just two hours ago it fi­nal­ly be­gan rain­ing.

Kayoko wrapped a hand­ker­chief around her head to shield her­self from the rain. Thanks to the branch­es over her, the rain didn't hit her di­rect­ly, but her shoul­ders were drenched. She was cold. And of course more im­por­tant­ly...she was ter­ri­fied.

Kayoko had first hid­den on the east­ern side of the north­ern moun­tain peak, in sec­tor C=8. So of course she wit­nessed Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano get­ting killed in front of her very own eyes. She held her breath. She knew that their killer was near, but she in­stinc­tive­ly thought she would be risk­ing more by mov­ing. She stayed ab­so­lute­ly qui­et. As noon and then night passed, she man­aged to avoid any at­tacks.

She moved twice in ac­cor­dance to the for­bid­den zone an­nounce­ments. The sec­ond time she moved was im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter noon to­day, be­cause the south­ern side of the peak, sec­tor D=7, was go­ing to be­come for­bid­den at 1 p.m. So the north­ern moun­tain peak was now sur­round­ed by three for­bid­den zones. Her al­lo­cat­ed area was def­inite­ly shrink­ing.

She hadn't met any­one yet. She heard a lot of gun­fire, some­times in the dis­tance, some­times near. She even heard an ex­plo­sion, but she just re­mained still and ab­so­lute­ly qui­et. The an­nounce­ment ev­ery six hours made it clear though, the num­ber of her class­mates was steadi­ly di­min­ish­ing.

At noon there were sup­pos­ed­ly four­teen re­main­ing. And then there was more gun­fire. Was it now just twelve? Or ten?

Kayoko put the heavy gun (Smith & Wes­son M59 Au­to­mat­ic, man­ual in­clud­ed, but Kayoko of course could care less about the gun's name) down by her feet and mas­saged her right-​hand fin­gers with her left hand. She'd been hold­ing the gun all this time, and now the mus­cles in her fin­gers had gone numb. The palm of her hand was flushed red and im­print­ed with the gun-​grip pat­tern.

She was com­plete­ly ex­haust­ed, both from sleep de­pri­va­tion and the threat of at­tack. Be­cause she was too scared to en­ter a house that might be oc­cu­pied, the on­ly food she ate was the bread and wa­ter that came sup­plied with her day pack. She was hun­gry and thirsty. Her wa­ter in­take was gross­ly in­ad­equate. She did her best to save the sup­plied wa­ter and on­ly drank over a liter since the game be­gan. If there was one good thing about the rain, it was that she could col­lect wa­ter by putting the re­cent­ly emp­tied wa­ter bot­tle un­der a drip­ping branch, but it wasn't even a third full. She would in­ter­mit­tent­ly re­move the hand­ker­chief from her head and wet her dry lips with it, but of course this did noth­ing to re­lieve her de­hy­dra­tion.

Kayoko let out a long, weary breath, combed back her short, shoul­der-​length hair, and took up the M59 again. She was in a daze.

As she sat, dazed, she thought of that face again. She kept on think­ing of that face ev­er since the game be­gan. He wasn't as fa­mil­iar as her par­ents and old­er sis­ter, whom she thought of as well, but he was very im­por­tant to her.

She just be­gan learn­ing tea cer­emo­ny when she first saw "him" at an event con­duct­ed by the school where she at­tend­ed tea cer­emo­ny class. It was the fall of her first year in ju­nior high.

Spon­sored by a gov­ern­ment park for an au­tumn hol­iday, the tea cer­emo­ny was held out­doors for tourists. The ac­tu­al prac­ti­tion­ers per­form­ing that day were all adults, so Kayoko and oth­er stu­dents her age took care of me­nial tasks, like ar­rang­ing out­door seat­ing and prepar­ing bis­cuits. "He" was one of the mas­ters of the tea cer­emo­ny.

He ar­rived around noon, much lat­er that day. He was good look­ing, but he still looked boy­ish, as if he were still a col­lege stu­dent. Kayoko thought, oh, this guy must be help­ing out too. But he ad­dressed Kayoko's teach­er (a 42-year-​old wom­an) at her seat, "I'm sor­ry I'm late," took her place, and pre­pared the tea.

His prepa­ra­tion was very im­pres­sive. He han­dled the tea whisk and bowl in­cred­ibly grace­ful­ly, and his pos­ture was im­pec­ca­ble. De­spite his age, he didn't look odd in tra­di­tion­al clothes.

Kayoko put her tasks on hold and was gaz­ing at him when some­one tapped her on the shoul­der. She turned around and saw her se­nior in the Tea Cer­emo­ny Club at Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High, the one who'd in­vit­ed her to at­tend the tea cer­emo­ny school.

"He's pret­ty hot, huh? He's the grand­son of the head­mas­ter. Well, to be more ac­cu­rate, he's the mas­ter's mis­tress' grand­son. I'm a fan too. I mean, ba­si­cal­ly I've been go­ing to tea cer­emo­ny class just to meet him."

The se­nior in­formed her how he was nine­teen years old, and how af­ter grad­uat­ing from high school he was al­ready ranked as an "in­struc­tor" with many dis­ci­ples. Kayoko's on­ly re­ac­tion at the time was, Oh, he's from an­oth­er world, so there're peo­ple like him. That was all but then...

She be­gan spend­ing more hours in front of the mir­ror when­ev­er there was a tea cer­emo­ny school event, or when­ev­er she knew he would be ap­pear­ing as a guest in her class. Giv­en her age she didn't use make­up, but she did wear her tra­di­tion­al ki­mono im­mac­ulate­ly, kept a comb in her hair, and care­ful­ly in­sert­ed her fa­vorite dark-​blue hair clip. Her flow­ing brows, and al­though not very large, curved eyes, and al­though short, well-​shaped nose, wide lips, nice­ly shaped at the cen­ter, she thought, sure, I might not be stun­ning, but I do look pret­ty ma­ture....

The rea­son she fell head over heels for this man adored by ado­les­cent girls to mid­dle-​aged wom­en alike may have been pret­ty sim­ple. Af­ter all, he was hand­some and in­tel­li­gent, cheer­ful and con­sid­er­ate, ba­si­cal­ly the kind of ide­al man you hard­ly be­lieved ex­ist­ed. On top of that, he ap­par­ent­ly didn't even have a girl­friend.

Kayoko had two im­por­tant en­coun­ters with this man (al­though from some­one else's per­spec­tive they might not have seemed all that spe­cial).

The first one oc­curred at the tea school's demon­stra­tion cer­emo­ny the spring she be­came a sec­ond-​year ju­nior high school stu­dent. The cer­emo­ny was held at the head­mas­ter's home in Shi­do-​cho near Shi­roi­wa-​cho. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the event be­gan, there was a prob­lem. A spe­cial guest, the cen­tral gov­ern­ment's re­gion­al cul­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive, sud­den­ly be­gan com­plain­ing about the tea cer­emo­ny. It wasn't the first time. They were gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who an­nounced their "ab­so­lute loy­al­ty to pre­serve the na­tion's ab­so­lute sanc­ti­ty," but many of them in fact abused their pow­er. Some would even re­quest kick­backs in re­turn for ar­rang­ing in­creased na­tion­al tra­di­tion­al arts fund­ing which the head­mas­ter would po­lite­ly refuse, so this could have been a way to get back at them by stir­ring up trou­ble.

The prob­lem was that the head­mas­ter was ab­sent be­cause he was hos­pi­tal­ized. The heir who sub­sti­tut­ed for the head­mas­ter and his heir were both so com­plete­ly in­tim­idat­ed their in­com­pe­tence could have led to the school be­ing shut down. But the nine­teen-​year-​old mas­ter saved the day. He took the bel­liger­ent of­fi­cial to an­oth­er room, then re­turned alone and said, "The of­fi­cial has left. He seems sat­is­fied now, so there's no need to wor­ry, ev­ery­one."

He said no more, and the at­tend­ing es­tab­lished mem­bers of the school al­so re­frained from in­quir­ing any fur­ther. As a re­sult the rest of the cer­emo­ny pro­ceed­ed smooth­ly. But Kayoko was con­cerned. Know­ing him, he could very well have as­sumed full re­spon­si­bil­ity, say­ing some­thing like, "I am in charge of to­day's cer­emo­ny," and if that were true then the of­fi­cial could get back at him by con­coct­ing a re­port and ar­rang­ing his ar­rest for be­ing a ma­lign in­flu­ence against the gov­ern­ment (and as a re­sult send­ing him to one of those "reed­uca­tion camps").

Af­ter the cer­emo­ny came to an end with no fur­ther in­ter­rup­tions, they be­gan to clean up the area, and she wait­ed for him to be alone. When he went to move the seat cush­ions, she de­cid­ed to call on him. Sir...

He stopped, still hold­ing the cush­ions, and el­egant­ly turned around to­wards Kayoko. His sad eyes made Kayoko's heart race, but she man­aged to con­tin­ue, "Is ev­ery­thing all right, sir?"

He seemed to un­der­stand what she was get­ting at and broke in­to a smile. Then he said, "I ap­pre­ci­ate your con­cern. It's all right though." Her con­cern was sud­den­ly eclipsed by the thrill she felt in hav­ing her first re­al con­ver­sa­tion with him.

Then she asked, "But...but that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial looked so mean, what if?..."

But he stopped Kayoko and said some­thing so­phis­ti­cat­ed, as if ad­mon­ish­ing her. "That of­fi­cial doesn't nec­es­sar­ily get a kick out of do­ing what he does. I'm sure this kind of thing hap­pens all over the world...but the way this coun­try is...it twists peo­ple...We're sup­posed to strive for har­mo­ny and that's what the art of tea is sup­posed to ac­com­plish... but it is very, very dif­fi­cult to achieve in this coun­try." Near the end, he al­most seemed to be ad­dress­ing him­self. Then he looked back at Kayoko and con­tin­ued, "Tea cer­emo­ny is pow­er­less. But it's al­so not such a bad thing ei­ther. You should en­joy it while you can." He smiled kind­ly, turned, and pro­ceed­ed to walk away.

Kayoko was in a daze and stood still for a while. The un­pre­ten­tious way he talked made her feel at ease...and even though she didn't com­plete­ly un­der­stand what he was say­ing, it im­pressed her, and she thought, wow, he's so ma­ture.

In any case, she might have made an im­pres­sion on him be­cause ev­er since that en­counter he would al­ways give her a warm smile when­ev­er they met.

The cru­cial en­counter oc­curred dur­ing the win­ter of her sec­ond year. Kayoko came out in­to the old tem­ple gar­den of an­oth­er tea cer­emo­ny and gazed at the camel­lia flow­ers there. (In fact, she was think­ing about him again.) Sud­den­ly she heard sud­den­ly some­one from be­hind say, "They're beau­ti­ful," in a trans­par­ent voice now fa­mil­iar to her. At first she thought she'd imag­ined it, but when she turned around she couldn't be­lieve he was there...smil­ing at her. It was the first time he ad­dressed her with­out any ref­er­ence to teach­ing tea cer­emo­ny or of­fi­cial du­ties.

And so they had a con­ver­sa­tion.

"So you find tea cer­emo­ny in­ter­est­ing?"

"Yes, I love it. But I'm not very good."

"Re­al­ly? I've been im­pressed with your ex­cel­lent pos­ture dur­ing your prepa­ra­tion. It's not just that your back is up­right. There's a kind of in­ten­si­ty."

"Oh, no, I'm re­al­ly no good at all...."

With his hands tucked in­side his sleeves, he still wore his kind smile and glanced up at the camel­lia. "No, I re­al­ly do mean it. Yes...just like those flow­ers. There's some­thing strained...but there's beau­ty in that. Some­thing like that."

Of course, she was still just a child, and he might have on­ly been com­pli­ment­ing a hob­by­ist dab­bling in the school's tea cer­emo­ny. But that didn't stop her from get­ting ex­cit­ed. Right on! (She snapped her fin­gers on­ly lat­er in the bath­room.)

From that point on Kayoko be­gan to prac­tice tea cer­emo­ny more se­ri­ous­ly. She thought, I can do it. Of course, I'm still just a kid, but once I'm eigh­teen he'll be twen­ty-​four. That would to­tal­ly work....

And so that was her mem­ory of him.

Kayoko buried her face in­to her skirt. A warm liq­uid which wasn't rain oozed in­to the area cov­er­ing her kneecaps. Kayoko re­al­ized she was cry­ing. Her hand hold­ing the gun trem­bled. How could all this be hap­pen­ing?

She want­ed so bad­ly to see him now. Sure, she was still a kid. But in her own ado­les­cent way, she re­al­ly did love him. This was the first time she ev­er had se­ri­ous feel­ings for some­one. She want­ed a sin­gle mo­ment with him so she could tell him this much. She want­ed to tell this per­son- kind enough to de­scribe her as "beau­ti­ful" even if it was on­ly re­fer­ring to her tea cer­emo­ny skills-"I'm still a kid, so I may not un­der­stand what it re­al­ly means to be in love. But I think I am in love with you. I re­al­ly love you." Some­thing like that.

Some­thing rus­tled in the bush­es. Kayoko looked up. She wiped her eyes with her left hand and got up. Her feet moved au­to­mat­ical­ly and took a step back from the source of the sound.

A boy in a school coat-Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra (Male Stu­dent No. 11). His face and tor­so emerged from the bush­es. The sleeves of his coat and shirt were torn off, re­veal­ing his right arm. The white cloth wrapped around his shoul­der was stained with blood and-per­haps it was be­cause of the rain-it oozed pink. And his hand was hold­ing...a gun.

Hi­ro­ki's jaw dropped, but what re­al­ly caught her at­ten­tion when she saw his grimy face were his eyes. They were gleam­ing.

Kayoko felt a sud­den surge of fear. How could she have not no­ticed soon­er be­fore he got this close, how-

"Ko­to­hi­ki-"

Kayoko let out a shriek and turned on her heels. She en­tered the bush­es. She didn't care about the branch­es scrap­ing against her face and hair, or get­ting drenched in the rain. She just want­ed to es­cape. If I don't... I'll get killed!

She made her way through the bush­es. There was a twist­ing path ap­prox­imate­ly two me­ters wide. Kayoko in­stinc­tive­ly de­cid­ed to run down there. If she ran up­hill, he would catch up, but if she ran down then maybe...

She heard a rustling sound be­hind her. "Ko­to­hi­ki!" It was Hi­ro­ki's voice. He's com­ing af­ter me!

Kayoko sum­moned all her strength from her tired body and ran as fast as she could. I can't be­lieve this, I should have been jog­ging in­stead of learn­ing tea cer­emo­ny if I'd known this was go­ing to hap­pen.

"Ko­to­hi­ki! Stop! Ko­to­hi­ki!"

If she had been calmer-that is, if this were a scene in a movie and she were in the the­ater watch­ing the ac­tor per­form­ing as she munched on some pop­corn-then it would have been ob­vi­ous he was plead­ing with her. But right now it sound­ed like he was say­ing: "Ko­to­hi­ki! You bet­ter stop! I'm gonna kill you!"

She wasn't go­ing to stop. The path forked. She took the left one.

The area opened up on her left. Rows of tan­ger­ine trees spread out in the dull light com­ing through the silky rain. Be­yond them was a thick­et of short trees. If she could en­ter that area-

It's im­pos­si­ble, she thought. She had at least fifty more me­ters to get there. It was hope­less. While she strug­gled through the un­even rows of tan­ger­ine trees, Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra would catch up to her and shoot her from be­hind with his gun.

Kayoko clenched her teeth. She didn't want to, but she had to. Af­ter all, he was try­ing to kill her.

She stopped on her right foot and spun around to her left.

By the time she had turned around the gun was in her hands. That thing called the safe­ty had been re­leased ev­er since she'd read the man­ual. The man­ual said you didn't have to raise the ham­mer, all you had to do was pull the trig­ger. The rest was...up to her.

Less than ten me­ters away, Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra stood still on the slope, his eyes wide open.

It's too late. You think I won't shoot?

Kayoko ex­tend­ed her arms and squeezed the trig­ger. With a pop, a small flame ex­plod­ed from the muz­zle, and her arms jerked back from the re­coil.

Hi­ro­ki's large frame spun around as if he were hit. He fell back.

Kayoko ran over to him. She had to fin­ish him off, fin­ish him off! So he wouldn't get back up again!

Kayoko stopped ap­prox­imate­ly two me­ters away from him. There was a small hole in the left side of his chest (she'd ac­tu­al­ly aimed at his stom­ach), and the fab­ric around it had turned dark black. But his sprawled right hand still held his gun. He still might raise it. The head. I have to aim for his head.

Hi­ro­ki turned his head around and looked at Kayoko. Kayoko point­ed the gun and pulled the trig-

She stopped...be­cause Hi­ro­ki had tossed his gun aside. If he'd had that kind of strength he could have pulled the trig­ger. What was go­ing on?

The gun spun around once and land­ed on its side.

Huh?

Kayoko stood still, hold­ing the gun, her short hair drenched in the rain.

"Now lis­ten." He lay on the messy path rid­den now with pud­dles as he said painful­ly, some­how fix­ing his eyes on Kayoko, "You have to burn some fresh wood. Build...two fires. I have a lighter in my pock­et. Use that...then you'll hear a bird call."

Kayoko heard him, but she had no idea what he was talk­ing about. She had no idea what was go­ing on.

Hi­ro­ki con­tin­ued. "Fol­low that bird call. Then you'll find Shuya Nana­hara...Noriko Nak­agawa, and Shogo Kawa­da. They'll help you. You got that?"

"Wh-​what?"

Hi­ro­ki seemed to be smil­ing. He re­peat­ed pa­tient­ly,

"Build two fires. Then find the bird call."

He awk­ward­ly moved his right arm, pulled out a small lighter from his school coat pock­et, and tossed it over to Kayoko. Then he painful­ly closed his eyes.

"Okay, now go."

"Whaaaat?"

Hi­ro­ki sud­den­ly opened his eyes wide and yelled, "Go now! Some­one might have heard the shot. Go!"

Then as if fit­ting the pieces of a com­plex jig­saw puz­zle in­to place, Kayoko fi­nal­ly man­aged to get it. This time she got it right.

"Oh...oh..."

She dropped the gun and fell on her knees be­side him. She scraped her knees but she didn't care.

"Hi­ro­ki! Hi­ro­ki! I...I can't be­lieve...I can't be­lieve I did this to you!..."

She burst in­to tears. Sure, there was some­thing in­tim­idat­ing about Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. He seemed tough since he stud­ied mar­tial arts, plus he didn't talk much, and when he did he was al­ways gruff. When he spoke to oth­er boys, like Shin­ji Mimu­ra and Shuya Nana­hara, he would smile but oth­er­wise he looked grumpy. She al­so heard he was go­ing out with Takako Chi­gusa, and they looked so close. Kayoko on­ly thought, I don't get Takako's taste, I won­der maybe if you're that pret­ty, you're at­tract­ed to some­one in­tim­idat­ing. In any case...that was her im­pres­sion of him. So in this sit­ua­tion where her class­mates were be­ing killed off one by one she was ab­so­lute­ly ter­ri­fied of Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra. But then...it turned out...

He closed his eyes again and said, "It's all right." He was smil­ing. He looked con­tent. "I was go­ing to die soon any­way."

Kayoko then fi­nal­ly no­ticed he had an­oth­er wound on his side, soaked in liq­uid that wasn't rain.

"So...go now. Please."

Kayoko sobbed con­vul­sive­ly and touched his neck gen­tly. "Let's go to­geth­er. Okay? Stand."

Hi­ro­ki opened his eyes and looked at her. He seemed to be smil­ing. "For­get about me," he said. "I'm just glad I got to see you."

"What?" Kayoko opened her tear-​stained eyes wide. What? What did you just say? "What...what do you mean..." Her voice was trem­bling.

Hi­ro­ki ex­haled deeply, as if to bear the pain, or maybe it was a long sigh. "If I tell you, will you go?"

"What? I don't get it. What do you mean?"

Hi­ro­ki said with­out hes­itat­ing, "I love you, Ko­to­hi­ki. I've loved you for a re­al long time."

Kayoko once again didn't un­der­stand Hi­ro­ki. What's he talk­ing about?

Hi­ro­ki con­tin­ued. He was look­ing up at the sky rain­ing down on them. "That's all I want­ed to tell you. Now...go."

Kayoko then ut­tered, "But I thought...you and Takako..."

Hi­ro­ki looked in­to her eyes again. He said, "You're the one."

She fi­nal­ly got it. She was blown away as if struck by a huge wreck­ing ball swing­ing from a de­mo­li­tion crane.

Love, me? You want­ed to tell me...don't tell me you were try­ing to find me? Is that true? If so...then what did I just do?

Her breath was raspy. She kept on get­ting choked up, but fi­nal­ly she man­aged to cry out, "Hi­ro­ki...Hi­ro­ki!"

"Hur­ry," Hi­ro­ki said and coughed out a mist of blood, spray­ing Kayoko's face. Hi­ro­ki opened his eyes again.

"Hi­ro­ki...I...I...I..."

Her body was sup­pos­ed­ly de­hy­drat­ed from lack of wa­ter, but the tears kept on gush­ing out.

"It's all right," Hi­ro­ki said kind­ly. He closed his eyes slow­ly. "Kayoko..." he called her by her first name as if it were a pre­cious trea­sure. It was prob­ably the first time he had ev­er called her by her first name. "I don't mind at all.. -dy­ing be­cause of you. So please, please go. Or else..."

Kayoko kept on cry­ing, wait­ing for Hi­ro­ki to con­tin­ue. "Or else"?

Hi­ro­ki didn't say any­thing. Kayoko slow­ly reached out for him. She held his shoul­ders and shook them. "Hi­ro­ki! Hi­ro­ki!"

In a TV dra­ma when some­one died their words would be cut off, like, "Or el-" but Hi­ro­ki man­aged to say in a painful but clear voice, "Or else." So there had to be more. Or else?...

"Hi­ro­ki! Hey, Hi­ro­ki!"

Kayoko shook his body one more time. Then she fi­nal­ly re­al­ized he was dead.

Once she re­al­ized this, the dam re­strain­ing her tor­rent of emo­tions sud­den­ly col­lapsed. A shriek was welling up in­side.

"AH­HH!" On her knees, Kayoko fell over Hi­ro­ki's body and cried.

He loved me...he loved me so much he sought me out at the risk of be­ing at­tacked. Any en­counter could have led to an at­tack on him. In fact, the wound in his side...the wound on his shoul­der... came as a re­sult of him try­ing to find me.

No...there's more. Kayoko stopped sob­bing for a mo­ment.

I was the one who at­tacked Hi­ro­ki. At the very end, when Hi­ro­ki man­aged to achieve his goal.

Kayoko shut her eyes and cried again.

He loved me...just like I want­ed to tell "that guy" how I felt about him, Hi­ro­ki was think­ing the same thing about me, look­ing for me. Some­one in my class cared for me that much. And yet...and yet___

Sud­den­ly, Kayoko re­called a scene. It was when they were do­ing their clean­ing tasks. Kayoko was wip­ing the black­board with a wet rag and when she couldn't reach the top, Hi­ro­ki, who had been slack­ing off, rest­ed his chin against his hands that were hold­ing the up­right broom as if it were a cane, and said, "You're too short, Ko­to­hi­ki." He took the rag from her and wiped the area she couldn't reach.

The scene came back to her.

Why...why didn't I see how kind he was? How could I not no­tice how some­one loved me so much? If I'd thought about it, I would have re­al­ized if Hi­ro­ki want­ed to kill me he could have im­me­di­ate­ly shot me with his gun. But I couldn't tell. I wasn't able to un­der­stand. I am so stupid. I-

An­oth­er mem­ory came flash­ing by.

When she was telling some of her class­mate friends about "that guy," Hi­ro­ki, who was near­by look­ing out the win­dow, mut­tered, "You're be­ing fool­ish, get­ting so worked up like that." It made her mad at the time, but in fact he was right, she was be­ing fool­ish. And yet...and yet Hi­ro­ki told her he'd cher­ished this fool.

She sim­ply couldn't stop cry­ing. She pressed her cheek against his warm cheek and con­tin­ued to sob. Hi­ro­ki told her to go, but she couldn't bring her­self to do that. I'm go­ing to keep on cry­ing, I'm go­ing to cry over the ded­ica­tion (it was ir­re­place­able) of this boy who loved me and my fool­ish­ness (I was such a kid think­ing I was ac­tu­al­ly in the run­ning for "that guy"), I'm go­ing to keep on cry­ing. Even if it was sui­ci­dal in this game.

You plan on dy­ing with him? A voice whis­pered to her in her thoughts.

That's right, yes, I'm go­ing to die with him. I'm go­ing to die for the sake of Hi­ro­ki's love for me and my fool­ish­ness.

"Then why...don't you go ahead?" the voice said.

Kayoko sud­den­ly trem­bled and turned around. She saw the long, beau­ti­ful, rain-​drenched hair of Mit­suko Souma (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 11), gaz­ing down at her, gun in hand.

BAM BAM, two dry pops formed two holes in Kayoko's right tem­ple. Kayoko's body then land­ed on Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra's body.

Blood slow­ly be­gan flow­ing out of the holes in her head. The blood con­tin­ued flow­ing down her face against the rain wash­ing it away.

Mit­suko low­ered the Smith & Wes­son M19 .357 Mag­num and said, "You re­al­ly were a fool. You should have un­der­stood him."

Then she looked over at Hi­ro­ki's face.

"Long time no see, Hi­ro­ki. Are you glad you got to die with your beloved?"

She shook her head, dis­gust­ed, and pro­ceed­ed to walk for­ward to pick up the Smith & Wes­son M59 Kayoko dropped and the Colt Gov­ern­ment .45 (which had been Mit­suko's) Hi­ro­ki had tossed aside.

She looked down at the in­ter­twined bod­ies and put her fin­ger against her lips.

"Now what was that about...build­ing a fire?"

Then she shook her head. With her foot she brushed away Kayoko's skirt cov­er­ing part of the M59 and reached for the blue gun, when she sud­den­ly heard the rat­tling sound of an old type­writ­er.

6 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

69

Her back was pum­meled, re­peat­ed­ly. Her chest burst open with blood. She stag­gered...and she felt some­thing hot ex­pand in­side her, like burn­ing em­bers.

She didn't feel so much the painful shock as she felt dis­mayed. How could she not have heard some­one sneak­ing up be­hind her in this mud?

The bul­lets had done enough dam­age, but Mit­suko man­aged to turn around.

There was a boy in a school coat. The unique slicked-​back hair, the well-​de­fined face, the gleam­ing, frigid eyes. It was Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6).

Mit­suko squeezed her right hand hold­ing the Ml9. Her mus­cles were near­ly dis­abled, but she sum­moned all her re­main­ing strength and at­tempt­ed to raise the gun.

Sud­den­ly Mit­suko's thoughts-de­spite the fact that she was in a life-​or-​death con­fronta­tion-slipped in­to an­oth­er di­men­sion. It on­ly last­ed for a split sec­ond.

When I spoke to Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra I said:

"I just de­cid­ed to take in­stead of be­ing tak­en."

That's what I said.

When did I...be­come like that? Was it af­ter the time I told Hi­ro­ki about, when I was raped by three men? That day I was raped by those men with the video cam­era in a run­down apart­ment room in the shab­by out­skirts of town? Or maybe the mo­ment my drunk­en moth­er (I nev­er had a fa­ther) left the room when she re­ceived the thick en­ve­lope (it couldn't have been that thick) af­ter tak­ing me to that room be­fore "it" hap­pened? From then on? Or...was it af­ter my el­emen­tary school teach­er, the one per­son I thought I could trust, kind­ly ad­dressed me, near­ly numb from trau­ma, and I fi­nal­ly told him ex­act­ly what hap­pened, when the look on his face changed, and it hap­pened again? From that point on? In that small, dark read­ing room af­ter school? Or af­ter my best friend saw it (at least part of it) and in­stead of of­fer­ing con­so­la­tion, spread a ru­mor (which led to the teach­er leav­ing the school)? Or was it three months lat­er when I re­sist­ed my moth­er, who was try­ing to take me to do "it" again and ac­ci­den­tal­ly end­ed up killing her? Af­ter get­ting rid of all the ev­idence and do­ing ev­ery­thing to make it look like a break-​in, I sat on a swing in the park. From that point on? Or af­ter be­ing tak­en in by dis­tant rel­atives, I was re­peat­ed­ly ha­rassed by their kid, and when the kid ac­ci­den­tal­ly fell from the roof, the moth­er ac­cused me of killing her since I was with her? From that point on? The fa­ther in­ter­vened and de­fend­ed me, but then af­ter a while, this fa­ther start­ed fool­ing around with me. From that point on? Or...

Lit­tle by lit­tle, no, more like in big chunks, ev­ery­one took from Mit­suko. No one gave Mit­suko any­thing. And so Mit­suko end­ed up an emp­ty shell. But...

... that didn't mat­ter.

I am right. I will not lose.

Her arms were sud­den­ly strength­ened, and she lift­ed the gun. The ten­dons in her wrist rose up, re­sem­bling vi­olin strings. Then she pulled the-

The rat­tling In­gram M10 in Kazuo Kiriya­ma's hands fired away a row of four holes that ran from her chest up to the mid­dle of her head. Blood sprayed out of Mit­suko's mouth. Her up­per lip tore. She bent back­wards.

Still Mit­suko man­aged to smile. She re­gained her foot­ing and pulled the trig­ger. Over and over.

The four bul­lets from the cham­ber struck Kazuo Kiriya­ma's chest.

But...Kazuo re­mained calm as he stag­gered on­ly slight­ly. Mit­suko didn't un­der­stand why. Kazuo's In­gram then fired away again.

Mit­suko's face, once so beau­ti­ful, was torn up as if a straw­ber­ry pie had been flung in­to her face. This time her body was blown back-and the next mo­ment she fell back on­to the wet ground. By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Phys­ical­ly, sev­er­al sec­onds ago, men­tal­ly, ages ago.

Kazuo Kiriya­ma walked up to her slow­ly, and then calm­ly re­moved the gun from her hand. He al­so picked up the Colt Gov­ern­ment .45 ly­ing by Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra's hand and the M59 Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki had tossed aside. He didn't even both­er glanc­ing at the three rain-​drenched bod­ies.

5 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

70

Mizuho In­ada (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 1) cau­tious­ly looked out from the shade of the bush­es. Due to the re­lent­less rain her neat­ly cropped hair stuck to her fore­head.

Be­yond the bush­es there was a nar­row farm field, and through the light sheet of rain she saw the back side of a school coat in the mid­dle of the field. His slicked-​back hair was al­so wet from the rain. It was Kazuo Kiriya­ma (Male Stu­dent No. 6).

Kazuo Kiriya­ma had formed what ap­peared to be two piles of branch­es. Now he sat ar­rang­ing one of the piles.

Mizuho calmed her breath­ing. It was cold, and she was tired, but she didn't re­al­ly mind. Af­ter all, she was about to ex­ecute her most im­por­tant mis­sion...

...as a space war­rior.

Are you ready, war­rior Prex­ia Dikianne Mizuho?

In her mind, the God of Light Ahu­ra Maz­da asked her this. Ap­par­ent­ly, this voice came from the spin­dle-​shaped mag­ic crys­tal (in fact the mail or­der item was made of glass but Mizuho be­lieved it was crys­tal) she wore.

Of course. Mizuho re­spond­ed. I saw that de­mon walk away af­ter killing Yu­miko Kusa­ka and Yukiko Ki­tano. I lost track of him, but just found him. And I saw him kill that oth­er de­mon who killed Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki. I must de­feat this en­emy. And I have fol­lowed him this far.

Very well then. So you un­der­stand your mis­sion?

Of course, sir. I re­ceived your mes­sage from the lo­cal for­tune teller, that I would be­come a war­rior des­tined to fight evil. I didn't un­der­stand what it meant at the time. But now, now I un­der­stand com­plete­ly.

Very well then. Are you not scared?

No, sir. With your guid­ance I have noth­ing to fear.

Very well then. You are a sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Holy Dikianne Tribe. You are a cho­sen war­rior. The light of vic­to­ry will shine up­on you soon. Hm? What is it?

No, no. It's just that, great Ahu­ra Maz­da, my fel­low war­rior, Lorela Lausasse Kaori was killed (in their for­mer Class B class­room, Kaori Mi­na­mi, who spent some time hang­ing out with Mizuho In­ada, would re­strain her­self from yawn­ing ev­ery time Mizuho told her, "You're the war­rior Lorela," but what­ev­er). She...

She fought to the very end, Mizuho.

Ah. Oh, I thought so. But, but, she was de­feat­ed by the evil forces.

Uh, well, yes. Well, that was be­cause she was a mere com­mon­er in ori­gins. You are dif­fer­ent. In any case, let's not fuss over the de­tails. The im­por­tant thing is that you must fight for her sake. And you must win. All right?

Yes, sir.

Okay then. The light. You must have faith in the cos­mic light. The light that en­gulfs you.

The light grew in­side her. The great warm cos­mic pow­er that en­com­passed ev­ery­thing.

Mizuho nod­ded again in her brief re­pose. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Then she pulled the dou­ble-​blad­ed knife (when she found the weapon in her day pack she thought it most be­com­ing for a war­rior) out of its sheath. She held it up in front of her face. A white light cov­ered the blue blade, and Mizuho looked at Kazuo be­yond the light.

She saw Kazuo's back. It was wide open.

Now then. You must cut down the en­emy!

Yes!

In or­der to keep qui­et, Mizuho dodged the bush­es and dashed to­wards Kazuo. A light burst out from the short blade that had been bare­ly fif­teen cen­time­ters in length, and it sud­den­ly trans­formed in­to a leg­endary sword at least one me­ter long. This sword of light would pierce the evil mon­ster with a sin­gle thrust.

As Kazuo Kiriya­ma ad­just­ed the branch­es with his left hand, his right hand calm­ly pulled out the Beretta M92F. With­out even turn­ing around, he reached around and pulled the trig­ger twice.

The first shot hit Mizuho in the chest, stop­ping her, and the sec­ond shot went right through her head.

Mizuho fell back as her wounds burst in­to gen­tly curved red lines drawn through the air. The rain im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan wash­ing away the blood. Then the war­rior Prex­ia Dikianne Mizuho's soul trans­mi­grat­ed to the Land of Light.

His back still fac­ing her, Kazuo Kiriya­ma put away his gun and con­tin­ued ar­rang­ing the branch­es.

4 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

71

It con­tin­ued to rain. Shuya was slouched against the wet rock wall as he watched the rain drip­ping off the edge of the thatched roof. He heard rapid gun­fire. Then about five min­utes ago he heard gun­fire again, this time two sin­gle shots. Both times it didn't sound too close, but it didn't seem too far away ei­ther. It was prob­ably some­where in the north­ern moun­tain, where they were camp­ing.

A large rain­drop slid along one of the "roof" leaves and fell by Shuya's stretched out foot wear­ing Keds sneak­ers, splash­ing against the mud­dy wa­ter.

"Maybe Hi­ro­ki likes Ko­to­hi­ki."

That's what Noriko had said. "If I were him...I would have done the same thing." She glanced at Shuya. "I would find the per­son I cared about."

Was it true? Did Hi­ro­ki like Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki? Why, when he was so close to the pret­ti­est girl in their class, would he be in­to a Plain Jane like Kayoko?

Well, maybe that's how it was. Af­ter all, Bil­ly Joel sang, "Don't imag­ine you're too fa­mil­iar...I'll take you just the way you are."

Then...who was in­volved (the sec­ond se­ries of shots sound­ed like it was just one as­sailant shoot­ing away) in those rounds of gun­shots he just heard? If he were to in­clude the gun­fire he heard im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter leav­ing the light­house, it meant he'd heard guns go off three times since noon. (This wasn't in­clud­ing what hap­pened to Yukie Ut­su­mi's group.) It would be rea­son­able to as­sume at least three peo­ple had died. Then there were on­ly five left? Which three got killed? Or maybe no one died at all, maybe there were just con­fronta­tions, and ev­ery­one man­aged to es­cape each oth­er. Then eight stu­dents, in­clud­ing Shuya's group, were left.

"Are you tired, Shuya?"

They were sit­ting next to each oth­er in a row, but Shogo, who was on the oth­er side of Noriko, asked, "Maybe you should sleep a lit­tle."

Shuya looked back at them. "No." He gave a smile. "I slept a lot un­til noon. I bet you haven't had much sleep."

Shogo shrugged. "I'm fine. But Noriko. She didn't sleep at all wait­ing for you."

Shuya looked over at Noriko, but she waved her palms at Shuya and smiled. "That's not en­tire­ly true. I dozed off a lit­tle here and there. Shogo's the one who hasn't slept for my sake."

Shogo chuck­led and shrugged. Then he held his right hand up to his chest in a salute and said, "I shall al­ways guard you, Your High­ness."

Noriko grinned, touched his hand, and said, "The hon­or is mine, Shogo."

Shuya raised his brow and ob­served their in­ter­ac­tion. It was odd how close Noriko and Shogo seemed now. Ev­er since the game be­gan, Noriko seemed to speak to Shogo most­ly through Shuya, but now things seemed dif­fer­ent. They seemed like a good pair on their own. It was on­ly nat­ural though, giv­en how they'd spent over half a day with­out Shuya.

Shogo sud­den­ly point­ed at Shuya and said, "Uh oh. Shuya's get­ting jeal­ous."

Noriko opened her eyes wide and looked at Shuya. She smiled and said, "No..."

Shuya blushed a lit­tle. "I am not. What are you talk­ing about?"

Shogo shrugged. He raised his brow and said to Noriko in mock ex­as­per­ation, "He says he trusts you, out of love."

Shuya want­ed to say some­thing, but he was speech­less. Shogo be­gan laugh­ing. Clack­ing up, re­al­ly. De­spite the urge to protest, Shuya end­ed up go­ing along with it and chuck­led too. Noriko was smil­ing too.

It was a brief but won­der­ful mo­ment. It was the kind of con­ver­sa­tion and laugh­ter you'd share with your long­time friends, hang­ing out with them af­ter school at your fa­vorite cafe Of course, loom­ing over them was the feel­ing that they were all here on­ly af­ter at­tend­ing a friend's fu­ner­al....

Still smil­ing, Shogo looked down at his watch and went out­side to check again for a sig­nal from Hi­ro­ki.

Noriko grinned and looked at Shuya. "Shogo likes to kid around."

Shuya smiled. "Yeah, but..." He squint­ed at the open space.

I might have been jeal­ous.

Shuya looked back at Noriko again. He was about to tell her in a jok­ing way, "I may have been jeal­ous." Then Noriko would prob­ably laugh and say, "Yeah right."

Shogo re­turned to the front of the roof. His stub­bly face was moist with rain­drops. "I see smoke," he said and im­me­di­ate­ly turned around.

Shuya quick­ly got up. He helped Noriko up with his un­in­jured right arm. They walked to where Shogo was stand­ing.

The rain was light now, so he could make out the smoke drift­ing in the sky. As he fol­lowed Shogo's eyes...he saw a white col­umn of smoke on the op­po­site side of the north­ern moun­tain. Two columns, in fact.

"Right on!"

With­out think­ing, Shuya gave a lit­tle holler out as if singing a rock and roll song. His eyes met Noriko's. Noriko, no less en­thu­si­as­tic, broke in­to a grin and said, "So Hi­ro­ki's safe."

Shogo took out the bird call from his pock­et and teaked it as he ob­served the smoke. The cheer­ful chirp­ing of a lit­tle bird rose and spread out in­to the rain cov­er­ing the is­land. As he con­tin­ued, Shogo checked his watch. Fif­teen sec­onds lat­er he stopped.

Shogo then looked over at them.

"Let's wait a lit­tle more here. My guess is he won't hear this sound un­less he's close. It'll take time."

They re­turned un­der­neath the roof.

"Hi­ro­ki prob­ably found Kayoko," Noriko said. Shuya was about to nod but stopped when he saw Shogo's mouth stiff­en. Noriko al­so stopped smil­ing.

"Shogo..." Shuya said.

Shogo looked up. Then he shook his head. "It's noth­ing. I just think things might not be what they seem."

"Huh? But..." Shuya raised his opened right palm. "Hi­ro­ki would nev­er give up though."

Shogo nod­ded. "That might be true." He stopped and then looked away from them. "But he might have on­ly found Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki dead."

Shuya's face be­came tense. He was right. Ko­to­hi­ki seemed to be alive up un­til noon...but there was all that gun­fire. They'd just heard those sin­gle shots. Af­ter search­ing around for two weeks, Hi­ro­ki might have end­ed up dis­cov­er­ing Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki had died.

Shogo con­tin­ued, "Or there might have been a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent out­come."

Noriko asked, "What do you mean?"

Shogo took out a pack of cigarettes and an­swered curt­ly, "It's very pos­si­ble Kayoko didn't trust Hi­ro­ki."

Shuya and Noriko both fell silent.

Shogo lit his cigarette and con­tin­ued, "Well, in any case, let's just hope Hi­ro­ki can make it back here. We'll see then whether he's with Kayoko or not."

Shuya was hop­ing Hi­ro­ki would re­turn with Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki. Then... there would be five of them. Five of them could es­cape.

On­ly five.

Shuya then re­called that Mizuho In­ada was still alive, at least she had been at noon.

"Shogo."

Shogo glanced at Shuya.

"In­ada is still alive. I won­der if we can't con­tact her."

Shogo shrugged. "I keep on say­ing this, but it's best not to trust the oth­ers too much in this game. To be hon­est, noth­ing against Hi­ro­ki, but I don't nec­es­sar­ily trust Ko­to­hi­ki ei­ther."

Shuya bit his lip. "I know but-"

"Well, if we can af­ford to, then I'll come up with some way to con­tact Mizuho, but," he blew out smoke, "don't for­get, we may not be around to do that."

That's right, Shogo had said, "At the very end. Once ev­ery­one else is dead, there's a way out." That meant no mat­ter what, they would have to con­front Kazuo again and al­so take on Mit­suko Souma. He wasn't sure about Mit­suko, but there would be no way around fight­ing Kazuo. There was no way Kazuo could die eas­ily. Which mean that...ev­ery­one in Shuya's trio might not sur­vive fight­ing him.

Shogo puffed on his short­ened cigarette and said, "I'm go­ing to ask you again, Shuya." He ex­haled a puff of smoke and con­tin­ued to stare at Shuya, "Even if we man­age to hook up with Hi­ro­ki, we're prob­ably go­ing to have to fight Kazuo again and Mit­suko___Are you pre­pared to be mer­ci­less?"

So that's what it came down to. They could af­ford to con­tact Mizuho In­ada on­ly af­ter they'd de­feat­ed Kazuo and Mit­suko. Al­though he wasn't com­fort­able with how he'd got­ten used to the idea of killing his class­mates no mat­ter how ex­treme the cir­cum­stances were...

...Shuya nod­ded and re­spond­ed, "I am."

4 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

72

Shogo tweaked the bird call. It was the third time. The rain was now light­en­ing up, and the drops falling off the edge of the roof be­came less fre­quent. The time was al­ready past 5 p.m.

Af­ter he heard the same bird sound four times Shuya man­aged to join up with Noriko and Shogo.

But that was be­cause he had some idea of their lo­ca­tion. It could take Hi­ro­ki longer to find them since he didn't have that in­for­ma­tion.

Shogo re­turned un­der the roof and lit a Wild Sev­en.

He blew out smoke and asked out of the blue, "Where do you want to go?"

Shuya looked at Shogo, who was sit­ting on the oth­er side of Noriko. Shogo turned to­wards him.

"I for­got to men­tion it, but I have a con­nec­tion. Once we get out of here we can stay there for the time be­ing."

"Who's that?" Shuya asked and Shogo nod­ded.

"A friend of my dad's," he con­tin­ued. "He'll see to it that you get out of this coun­try... I'm as­sum­ing you'll want to do that. You'll get killed if you stay in this coun­try. You'll be hunt­ed down like rats."

"Es­cape the coun­try..." Noriko said, sur­prised. "We can re­al­ly do that?"

Shuya al­so asked, "Who's this friend of your fa­ther's?"

Shogo looked at them, as if con­sid­er­ing some­thing as he held the cigarette to his mouth with his left hand. He re­moved the cigarette from his mouth and said, "Right now isn't a good time to tell you." Then he con­tin­ued, "In case we end up split­ting up dur­ing our es­cape it'd be bad if ei­ther of you get caught and share our plans with the gov­ern­ment. It's not that I don't trust you. But once they tor­ture you, you'll even­tu­al­ly end up con­fess­ing. So I'll be in charge of get­ting us there."

Shuya thought about it and then nod­ded. It seemed like he was mak­ing the right call.

"But...let's see," Shogo said. He bit his cigarette and pulled out a piece of pa­per from his pock­et.

It looked like the sheet on which they'd all writ­ten that state­ment, "We shall kill each oth­er." Shogo tore it in two and then scrib­bled on­to both pieces. He fold­ed them up neat­ly and of­fered one to Shuya and the oth­er to Noriko.

"What's this?" Shuya asked and be­gan open­ing it up.

Shogo stopped him, say­ing, "Hold on. Don't look at it now. It's our con­tact method, just in any case. The time and lo­ca­tions are writ­ten on it. Go to that place and time ev­ery day. I'll do my best to get there too."

"We can't look at it now?" Noriko asked.

"Nope," Shogo said. "Look at it on­ly in case we end up split­ting up. In oth­er words...your note and Shuya's have dif­fer­ent in­for­ma­tion. It's best you two don't know what's on each oth­er's note. Just in case one of you gets caught."

Shuya and Noriko looked at each oth­er. Then Shuya turned to Shogo. "I'm go­ing to be with Noriko no mat­ter what."

"I know I know," Shogo grinned wry­ly, "but we can't rule out the pos­si­bil­ity you might get sep­arat­ed again, like you were when Kazuo at­tacked us."

Shuya pursed his lips and looked over at Shogo...but end­ed up nod­ding. He ex­changed glances with Noriko and put away the memo. So did Noriko.

It was true. Any­thing could hap­pen. Es­cap­ing this is­land in the first place was go­ing to be in­cred­ibly dif­fi­cult. But if that were the case then shouldn't he and Noriko al­so come up with their own place and time to meet? With­out telling Shogo? Then again, if Shogo end­ed up get­ting caught by the gov­ern­ment then their sit­ua­tion would be hope­less any­way.

Shogo asked, "So...where do you want to go?"

Shuya re­called how Shogo want­ed to know their ide­al des­ti­na­tions once they fled the coun­try. He fold­ed his arms and thought about it. Then he said, "It'd have to be Amer­ica. It's where rock came from. I al­ways want­ed to go there, at least once." He thought, I didn't think I'd be es­cap­ing there, though.

"I see." Shogo nod­ded. "What about you, Noriko?"

"I don't re­al­ly have any­where in mind but..." Noriko said and glanced over at Shuya.

Shuya nod­ded back. "Let's go to­geth­er. All right?"

"Oh..." Noriko's eyes opened wide. Then she formed a smile and nod­ded. "Sure, if you're all right with that."

Shogo smiled. He took an­oth­er drag from his cigarette and asked, "What will you do once you get there?"

Shuya thought about it. Then he an­swered with a grin, "I'll be busk­ing with my gui­tar. At least I'll make some change."

Shogo chuck­led, "Huh." Then he said, "You best be a rock­er. You're tal­ent­ed. From what I hear, in that coun­try the odds aren't stacked so high against you even if you're an im­mi­grant or ex­ile."

Shuya took a deep breath and gave him a skep­ti­cal grin. "I'm not that tal­ent­ed. I don't have what it takes to be a pro."

"I don't know about that."

Shogo smiled and shook his head. Then he looked over at Noriko. "What about you, Noriko? Any­thing you want to do?"

Noriko pursed her lips. Then she said, "I've al­ways want­ed to be a teach­er."

Her re­ply caught Shuya by sur­prise since he'd nev­er heard about it. He ex­claimed, "Re­al­ly?"

Noriko turned to look at Shuya and nod­ded.

Shuya con­tin­ued, "You want­ed to be a teach­er in this lousy coun­try?"

Noriko gri­maced, "There are good teach­ers too. I...that's right," she looked down and con­tin­ued, "I thought Mr. Hayashi­da was a good teach­er."

It had been a while since Shuya re­called the corpse of Mr. Hayashi­da, whose head was half crushed. "Drag­on­fly" died for their sake.

"...you're right," Shuya agreed.

Shogo said, "It might be dif­fi­cult to be­come a teach­er as an ex­ile. But you might be able do re­search at some uni­ver­si­ty. Iron­ical­ly enough, the rest of the world seems very in­ter­est­ed in this coun­try. Then you might be able to teach." He con­tin­ued star­ing ahead, then tossed his cigarette butt in­to the pud­dle by his feet. He put an­oth­er cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He con­tin­ued, "So you should go for it, both of you. Be what you want to be. Fol­low your heart and give it your best shot."

Shuya thought what he said was kind of cool. Fol­low your heart. Do your best. The way the late Shin­ji Mimu­ra would al­so say some­thing some­times that hit the mark.

Then he re­al­ized some­thing.

"What about you?" He asked anx­ious­ly, "What are you go­ing to do?"

Shogo shrugged his shoul­ders. "I told you. It's pay­back time against this coun­try. No, that's not it. They owe me, and they're go­ing to pay me back. No mat­ter what. I can't join you guys."

"No..." Noriko said with an­guish.

Shuya re­spond­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, though. He clenched his teeth and said, "Let me join you."

Shogo looked at Shuya for a mo­ment...then he looked down and dis­mis­sive­ly shook his head. "Don't be stupid."

"Why not?"

Shuya said in­sis­tent­ly. "You're not the on­ly one with a grudge against this fuck­ing coun­try."

"That's right," Noriko in­sist­ed. Her re­sponse sur­prised Shuya. Noriko looked at Shogo and con­tin­ued, "We'll do it to­geth­er."

Shogo looked at them. He heaved a deep sigh. He looked up and said, "Look. I think I told you be­fore that this coun­try might be fucked up, but it's well run. It's al­most im­pos­si­ble to take it down. No, I'd say it's ab­so­lute­ly im­pos­si­ble right now, but I..." He turned around and then looked be­yond the roof at the sky turn­ing white from the re­ced­ing rain. Then he looked back at them. "To use a cliche, I just want to take a stab at it. I'm get­ting back at them. I'm on­ly do­ing it for my own sake, which isn't such a bad thing." He stopped and then said, "No, it's not bad at all."

"So then-" Shuya said but Shogo in­ter­rupt­ed him, rais­ing his hand.

"I'm not done."

Shuya shut up and let him speak.

"I'm say­ing you'll die if you join me. You just said you're go­ing to be with Noriko. Which means..." He looked at Noriko. Then he looked back at Shuya. "You still have Noriko. You pro­tect her, Shuya. If she's in dan­ger then fight for her. Whether your as­sailant's a bur­glar, the fuck­ing Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia, or an ex­trater­res­tri­al alien." Then he turned to Noriko and said kind­ly, "You too. You still have Shuya, right? Pro­tect him, Noriko. It's fool­ish to die point­less­ly." Then he looked at Shuya again. "You un­der­stand? There's noth­ing left for me. So I'm just do­ing it for my sake. It's dif­fer­ent for you guys." The last state­ment sound­ed adamant. He checked his watch, tossed an­oth­er cigarette in­to the pud­dle, got up and went out from un­der the roof. The chirp­ing bird call rang out.

As he lis­tened Shuya re­called a song by a main­land Chi­nese rock­er that went: "Per­haps you are say­ing/You love me even though I have noth­ing at all."

But what did Shogo mean when he said he had noth­ing?-

Af­ter tweak­ing the bird call for ex­act­ly fif­teen sec­onds, Shogo went back un­der­neath the roof and sat down.

Noriko asked Shogo, gen­tly, "Don't you have some­one you care about?"

That's right. That's what he want­ed to ask too.

Shogo opened his eyes and then forced a grin. "I wasn't plan­ning on telling you, but..." he said and then took a deep breath. He con­tin­ued, "No, maybe I did want to tell you." He reached be­hind for his back pock­et and pulled out his wal­let. He re­moved a pho­to with frayed edges.

Noriko took it. She and Shuya looked at it.

The pho­to in­clud­ed Shogo. He was wear­ing a school coat, and his hair was as long as Shuya's. He was smil­ing, wear­ing a bash­ful smile that was hard to imag­ine on him now. And on his left was a girl in a sailor suit uni­form. Her black hair was bun­dled over her right shoul­der. She looked as­sertive, but her smile was in­cred­ibly charm­ing too. In the back­ground were a road, gingko-​like trees, a whiskey bill­board ad, and a yel­low car.

"She's beau­ti­ful..." Noriko ex­claimed.

Shogo rubbed the tip of his nose. "Re­al­ly? She's not what you'd call typ­ical­ly beau­ti­ful, but I al­ways thought she was pret­ty."

Noriko shook her head. "Well, I think she's very pret­ty and very...ma­ture look­ing. Is she the same age as you?"

Shogo broke in­to a bash­ful grin that was rem­inis­cent of the one he wore in the pho­to. "Yeah. Thanks."

Shuya gazed at the two smil­ing faces next to each oth­er in the pho­to and thought, hey, what do you mean you have noth­ing? But Shuya had over­looked some­thing cru­cial.

"So is she in Kobe?" Shuya asked and then Shogo gri­maced. He shook his head and said, "Re­mem­ber, Shuya? I played this fuck­ing game once be­fore. And I was the 'win­ner.'"

That was when Shuya re­al­ized. And Noriko prob­ably did too. Her face stiff­ened.

Shogo con­tin­ued, "She was in my class. I wasn't able to save Keiko."

They fell silent. Shuya fi­nal­ly felt he could tru­ly un­der­stand Shogo's anger, the sheer depth of it.

"So you see now," Shogo said, "I re­al­ly have noth­ing. And it's pay­back time against this coun­try for killing Keiko." Shogo put an­oth­er cigarette in his mouth and lit it. Smoke drift­ed by.

"So her name was Keiko," Shuya fi­nal­ly asked.

"Yeah," Shogo gave sev­er­al small nods."'Kei' means 'joy.' "

Shuya re­al­ized it was same kan­ji char­ac­ter as the first char­ac­ter to Yoshi­to­ki's name.

"Were you..." Noriko gen­tly asked, "...with her un­til the very end?"

Shogo smoked silent­ly. Af­ter a while he replied, "That's a hard one to an­swer." He con­tin­ued, "Her last name was Onu­ki. The roll call start­ed with No. 17 in that game. What­ev­er. Any­way, Keiko's num­ber came be­fore mine, so she left three num­bers be­fore me."

Shuya and Noriko lis­tened qui­et­ly.

"I thought...she might be wait­ing for me some­where near the de­par­ture point. She just might be. But she wasn't there. I mean it couldn't be helped. Just like with this cur­rent game. It was dan­ger­ous to hang around the de­par­ture point." He took a drag from his cigarette and ex­haled. "But I fi­nal­ly found her. The game took place on an is­land like this one, but I found her." He took an­oth­er drag and ex­haled. Then he con­tin­ued, "But she ran away."

Shuya was shocked. He looked at Shogo. His stub­bly face re­mained calm. It seemed like he was do­ing his best to re­strain his emo­tions.

"I tried chas­ing her...but I was at­tacked by some­one else. I man­aged to kill that per­son...but I end­ed up los­ing sight of her."

He took an­oth­er drag and then ex­haled.

"Keiko couldn't trust me."

He still wore his pok­er face, but there was a tense look in his eyes.

He con­tin­ued, "But I still looked for her. The next time I found her...she was dead."

Shuya un­der­stood. Once he was back here Shuya had told them about Yukie Ut­su­mi's group and ob­served, "It's so hard to...trust some­one," to which Shogo re­spond­ed by say­ing, "Yes, it is...It's very...hard." Shuya now saw why Shogo looked so un­easy then. He al­so un­der­stood why Shogo said Hi­ro­ki might have found Ko­to­hi­ki dead, or that she might not nec­es­sar­ily trust him.

"You asked me, Shuya," Shogo said. Shuya looked up. "Why I trust­ed you guys, when we first met, right?"

"Yeah." Shuya nod­ded. "I did."

"And I be­lieve I said you two made a nice cou­ple," Shogo said and glanced up at the roof. By the time he low­ered his eyes, the ten­sion in his cheeks was gone. "It's true. That's how you two looked. So I de­cid­ed I want­ed to help you guys out, un­con­di­tion­al­ly."

"Uh huh." Shuya nod­ded.

Af­ter a while Noriko said, "I bet..." Shuya looked over at Noriko, who con­tin­ued, "...she was just ter­ri­fied... and con­fused."

"No." Shogo shook his head. "I...1 re­al­ly loved Keiko. But there must have some­thing about the way I treat­ed her when we were go­ing out. That's what I think it came down to."

"That's so wrong," Shuya adamant­ly in­sist­ed.

Shogo looked over at him, his arms fold­ed over his pulled-​up knees. The smoke from the cigarette in his hands drift­ed up gen­tly like silk.

"There was a mis­un­der­stand­ing. A small mis­un­der­stand­ing, I'm sure. Giv­en how fucked up this game is. The odds were against you. That's what it re­al­ly came down to, right?"

Shogo gri­maced wry­ly again and on­ly replied, "I don't know. I'll nev­er know." Then he tossed his cigarette in­to the pud­dle and took out the bird call from his pock­et. "This..." he said, "...un­like most city kids, Keiko loved to go on moun­tain walks. The Sun­day af­ter the week that fuck­ing game hap­pened she was sup­posed to take me bird watch­ing." He raised the bird call be­tween his right thumb and in­dex fin­ger up to his eyes and ex­am­ined it as if it were a jew­el. "She gave this to me." He smiled and looked at Shuya and Noriko. "This is the on­ly thing I have left of hers. It's my lucky charm...Didn't bring much luck, I guess."

As he put it away, Noriko re­turned the pho­to. Shogo put it back in his wal­let, which he tucked in­to his back pock­et.

Noriko said, "Hey, Shogo." Shogo looked up at her. "I don't know how Keiko felt at the time. But..." She flicked her tongue against her lips to moist­en them. "But I think Keiko loved you in her own way. She had to...I mean, she looks so hap­py in that pho­to. Don't you think?"

"Yeah?"

"Of course, she did." Noriko nod­ded. "And if I were Keiko...I would want you to live. I wouldn't want you to die for me."

Shogo grinned and shook his head. "Well, that's just a dif­fer­ence in opin­ion."

"But," Noriko in­sist­ed, "please take it in­to con­sid­er­ation. Okay, please?"

Shogo's lips moved as if he were on the verge of say­ing some­thing...but then he shrugged and smiled. Sad­ly.

He checked his watch and went out from un­der the roof to tweak the bird call.

4 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

73

It had stopped rain­ing com­plete­ly by the sixth time Shogo tweaked the bird call. It was now 5:55 p.m., but the light which now seemed bril­liant, com­pared to the pre­ced­ing hours, en­veloped the is­land. They re­moved the thatched roof from the rock wall.

Af­ter sit­ting against the rock wall, the open sky up above, Noriko said, "The sky's clear." Shuya and Shogo both nod­ded.

A soft breeze rus­tled by.

Shogo put an­oth­er cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

Star­ing at Shogo's pro­file, Shuya hes­itat­ed over whether he should bring it up or not. He de­cid­ed to speak out. "Shogo."

The cigarette dan­gling from one end of his mouth, Shogo looked up.

"What about you? What did you want to be?"

Shogo snick­ered as he ex­haled. "I want­ed to be a doc­tor. Like my old man. That's right, I thought at least a doc­tor could help peo­ple, even in this fucked up coun­try."

Shuya felt re­lieved. "Then why don't you be­come one? You're cer­tain­ly tal­ent­ed enough."

Tap­ping the ash­es off his cigarette, Shogo shook his head, as if to say this dis­cus­sion was over.

Noriko said, "Shogo." He looked at Noriko. "I know I'm re­peat­ing my­self, but I have to say it. If I were Keiko, this is what I'd say." She looked up at the sky, now tinged with or­ange, and con­tin­ued, "Please live. Talk, think, act. And some­times lis­ten to mu­sic..." She stopped, then she con­tin­ued, "Look at paint­ings at times to be moved. Laugh a lot, and at times, cry. And if you find a won­der­ful girl, then you go for her and love her."

It was po­et­ic. Pure po­et­ry.

And then Shuya thought, oh. These are Noriko's words.

And words along with mu­sic had an in­cred­ible, holy pow­er.

Shogo lis­tened with­out say­ing a word.

Noriko con­tin­ued. "Be­cause that's the Shogo that I re­al­ly loved." Then she looked over at Shogo. She seemed slight­ly em­bar­rassed, but added, "That's what I would have said."

The ash on Shogo's cigarette grew longer.

Shuya said, "Come on, Shogo. Aren't there ways to tear up this coun­try with­out dy­ing? It might be a round­about way but still..." He con­tin­ued, "I mean we got to be such good friends. We'd re­al­ly miss you. Let's go to Amer­ica, the three of us."

Shogo fell silent. Then re­al­iz­ing his cigarette was burnt down to the fil­ter, he tossed it away. He looked up at them. He was on the verge of say­ing some­thing.

Shuya thought, that's right, come with us, Shogo. We'll be to­geth­er. We're a team.

"Hey-"

It was the all-​too-​fa­mil­iar voice of Sakamochi.

Shuya quick­ly lift­ed his left arm with his right hand and checked his watch. The mud­dy dis­play read 6 p.m., ex­act­ly, five sec­onds past the hour.

"Can you hear me? Well, I guess there aren't too many of you left who can hear. Now then, I will an­nounce the dead. Now in the boy's group..."

Shuya was al­ready think­ing. There were on­ly four boys left, Shuya, Shogo, Hi­ro­ki, and Kazuo Kiriya­ma. (Of course the same was true with the girls, Noriko, Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki, Mit­suko Souma, and Mizuho In­ada.) Kazuo couldn't die so eas­ily. And Hi­ro­ki had sent the sig­nal. So none of the boys were dead. But...

"...we have on­ly one. No. 11, Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra."

Shuya's eyes opened wide.

4 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART FOUR

FIN­ISH

4 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

74

"Now then, with the girls, the body count was pret­ty high. No. 1, Mizuho In­ada, No. 2 Yukie Ut­su­mi, No. 8 Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki, No. 9 Yuko Saka­ki, No. 11 Mit­suko Souma, No. 12 Haru­ka Taniza­wa, No. 16 Yu­ka Nak­agawa, No. 17 Sato­mi No­da, and No. 19 Chisato Mat­sui."

Shuya's eyes met Noriko's. Her eyes were trem­bling. They had al­ready been pre­pared to hear about Yukie's group, but Hi­ro­ki and Kayoko too? And Mit­suko Souma...and Mizuho In­ada. Ba­si­cal­ly...did it mean the on­ly ones left were them and Kazuo?

"That can't be-" Shuya ut­tered. Ev­er since the smoke sig­nal went up, there hadn't been any gun­fire. Or was Hi­ro­ki stabbed? Or... did he not hear Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment cor­rect­ly? Were his ears play­ing tricks on him?

No. Sakamochi con­tin­ued, "All right then. Now there are four stu­dents re­main­ing. Can you hear me, Kiriya­ma, Kawa­da, Nana­hara, and Nak­agawa? Won­der­ful work. I'm re­al­ly proud of you all. Now then, I'll an­nounce the new for­bid­den zones."

Be­fore Shuya could mark his map, Shogo said, "Gath­er your stuff."

"Huh?" Shuya asked, but Shogo on­ly sig­naled for him to hur­ry up. Sakamochi con­tin­ued, "From 7 p.m..."

"Get up. It's Kazuo. It's like­ly he some­how found out about Hi­ro­ki's method to con­tact us. We might have been send­ing our sig­nal to Kazuo all this time."

Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly got up. Noriko was car­ry­ing her day pack on her shoul­ders. Then right be­fore or af­ter Sakamochi fin­ished his an­nounce­ment say­ing, "All right then, do your best. Just a lit­tle more to go-" Shuya saw Shogo's eyes glance at that alarm sys­tem con­sist­ing of notch­es cut in­to thin trees wrapped with thin wire.

And then he saw this wire fall off the rain-​drenched tree trunk.

"Duck!" Shogo yelled. The rat­tling burst through. Right above Shuya and Noriko's heads, the rock wall burst in­to sparks. Its shards rained down on them.

Crouched, Shogo held the Uzi and shot in­to the shrubs.

Maybe he was hit or maybe he wasn't, Kazuo (who else could it be now?) didn't re­turn fire. Shogo said, "This way! Hur­ry!" They ran south along the rock wall away from Kazuo.

Once they reached the area be­yond the rock wall where Shogo had been us­ing the bird call, they heard a gun rat­tle off again. It missed them. They en­tered the bush­es ahead.

There was a crevice in the rock waist deep, less than a me­ter wide. Cov­ered with dirt and leaves, it con­tin­ued south­ward. Shuya didn't know about its ex­is­tence, but Shogo prob­ably chose their po­si­tion with this place in mind. It was a nat­ural­ly formed trench. Shogo urged them on. Shuya and Noriko jumped down. Shogo rat­tled off his Uzi and fol­lowed them. A dif­fer­ent rat­tling fol­lowed from be­hind. A thin tree with roots along the edge of the crevice ex­plod­ed with a pop right by Shuya's head.

"Run!" Shogo shout­ed, and they ran down the crevice. Shuya al­most tripped over a dry branch ly­ing on the ground, but he man­aged to re­gain his foot­ing and fol­lowed af­ter Noriko. Be­hind them, the two guns ex­changed shots.

Sud­den­ly Noriko stopped as if she were hit by some­thing. She moaned and crouched over. Shuya, who was turned to­wards Shogo, quick­ly ran to Noriko. Did she trip over some­thing?

No. She looked up at Shuya. A cut ran un­der her left eye and blood gushed down her cheek. Maybe her right hand was cut too then. It was al­so bloody. The Brown­ing that had been in her hand was on the ground by her feet.

Shuya put his right hand on her shoul­der, looked up, and found...a thin, twist­ed wire stretched out across the crevice, neck-​high. It didn't mat­ter where Kazuo had found it (he'd prob­ably un­fas­tened the wire used to se­cure some ob­ject). Kazuo had al­ready an­tic­ipat­ed their es­cape by this route. At Shuya's height the wire would have cut right in­to his neck. At least this didn't hap­pen to Noriko-but she could have lost her sight.

Shuya was fu­ri­ous. I don't know what Kazuo's about. Shogo had said, "He just choos­es as he goes." I don't know if he's ab­nor­mal or nor­mal, or a kind of ge­nius or mad­man, but hurt­ing Noriko, that was just un­for­giv­able. I'm go­ing to kill that moth­er­fuck­er!

He tucked his CZ75 in front to help Noriko up, picked up the Brown­ing, and then held Noriko's shoul­der with the gun in his hand. Noriko stag­gered but man­aged to get up.

Shogo caught up as he fired away. He glanced back at the two of them and then-maybe he caught a glance of the wire-clenched his teeth. As he turned around again, Shuya saw be­yond him Kazuo Kiriya­ma in his school coat jump in­to the crevice.

Shogo yelled, "Duck!" as he fired away. Hold­ing his ma­chine gun, Kazuo quick­ly ducked be­hind a curve in the crevice. Shogo's shots tore at the rock along the curve. Dust flew up.

"Run!" Shogo re­peat­ed. Shuya held Noriko up and pro­ceed­ed to run un­der the wire. He slowed down though, in case of any more wire traps.

Shuya was frus­trat­ed. If he could on­ly use both of his arms he could pum­mel Kazuo with bul­lets while he held Noriko.

Shogo con­tin­ued fir­ing away as he stuck close to them from be­hind. Kazuo al­so re­turned gun­fire as he ap­proached them.

The crevice that con­tin­ued for fifty or six­ty me­ters came to an end. Shuya leaped up to the ground be­fore Noriko. He took Noriko's un­in­jured left hand and pulled her up. Noriko brave­ly stiff­ened her face to con­ceal her pain, but the left half of her face was now cov­ered with blood.

"Don't stop!" Shogo yelled over the gun­fire. Shuya pulled Noriko's hand and dashed in­to the bush­es ahead.

Once they came out of the bush­es, they found them­selves in the front yard of a res­iden­tial house built against the side of the moun­tain. It was an old sin­gle-​sto­ry build­ing. There was a white light truck right next to an en­trance road in front of the house. For some rea­son there was a wash­er and re­frig­er­ator, both on their sides, load­ed in the light truck. Were they be­ing dumped?

"Get be­hind the truck!" Shogo's shout­ed again. Shuya and Noriko stepped on­to the rain-​drenched soil. Hold­ing each oth­ers hands, they made their way be­hind the truck.

By the time Shogo fol­lowed and slid in, Shuya had Noriko sit down, the Brown­ing in his hand. He caught a glimpse of a fig­ure mov­ing in the shrubs. He shot sev­er­al times at it. He felt a sear­ing pain through his left shoul­der, from the bul­let lodged in­side it. The pain siz­zled, but he had to ig­nore it.

Shogo reload­ed a mag­azine in­to his Uzi and hand­ed it over to Shuya. He said, "Shoot away. Hold him back."

Shuya put his Brown­ing down by his feet, took the Uzi, and fired away at the area where Kazuo ap­peared again.

Kazuo didn't shoot back. As Shuya peeked above the pick­up truck rack, Noriko plant­ed her­self right next to him. In her hands was the Brown­ing he had put down.

"Are you all right, Noriko?" he asked as he checked for Kazuo's move­ments in the shrubs.

"I'm okay," Noriko replied.

Shuya glanced be­yond Noriko over at Shogo. Shogo opened the door, dove in­to the driv­er's seat, and start­ed work­ing on some­thing.

With the sud­den revving sound, the truck Shuya and Noriko were lean­ing against be­gan to vi­brate. The revving be­came a low hum as the wa­ter drops on the truck body be­gan trick­ling with the soft vi­bra­tion.

Shogo poked his head out. "Come on! We're get­ting out of here! Noriko, hur­ry!"

Shogo of­fered her his hand and helped her in­to the truck. "Shuya! The front pas­sen­ger's seat!"

Shogo shout­ed as he start­ed back­ing up the truck. He steered the wheel, backed the truck to­wards Kazuo, and then turned it around. The pas­sen­ger's seat door was there for Shuya. Noriko opened the door.

The rat­tling ex­plod­ed as Shuya reached out his right hand to get in. This time though, it was ac­com­pa­nied by a ham­mer­ing sound. A hole formed in front in the trucks nar­row cab­in ceil­ing and the ex­it­ing bul­let tore through the wind­shield from in­side right in front of Shogo. Shuya leaned against the truck-he knew where Kazuo was now-point­ed the Uzi up­ward and fired away. The shad­ow slipped away in­to the bush­es sur­round­ing the hous­es up in the side of the moun­tain. Kazuo had made his way up there.

With­out a sec­ond to lose, Shuya leaped in­to the pas­sen­ger's seat. Shogo pulled the car out. The truck slid out on­to the un­paved en­trance road. The ma­chine gun rat­tled, shred­ding the hose of the wash­er on the rack. It thrashed in the air like a snake, fell off the car, and van­ished be­hind them.

The gun­fire ceased.

"Are you all right, Noriko?" Shuya asked.

In be­tween Shuya and Shogo, Noriko tilt­ed her face, cov­ered in red, and nod­ded. "Yes." But her body was still tense. She still held on­to the Brown­ing. Shuya put the Uzi in his right hand be­tween his thighs, pulled out a ban­dan­na from his pock­et, and wiped her face. Blood came pour­ing out of the wound, and her pink flesh showed un­der­neath. A sim­ple op­er­ation wasn't enough to re­move the scar from this wound. To do this to a girl...

"Damn it," Shuya looked over at Shogo, who steered the wheel. "He al­ready knew where we were a while ago. That's how he knew about our es­cape route."

But Shogo shook his head, say­ing, "No." As he quick­ly shift­ed gears to weave his way through the wind­ing road, he said, "He couldn't have known for sure. He on­ly fig­ured it out at the very end. Oth­er­wise, he would have shown up be­fore Sakamochi's an­nounce­ment. We would have come out wel­com­ing him, think­ing it was Hi­ro­ki, and then he would have eas­ily fin­ished us off. He didn't know where we were, so dur­ing the breaks be­tween the bird calls he plant­ed that wire to bide his time. He prob­ably plant­ed that wire in oth­er spots too."

Shuya then thought, I see. That might have been true. To bide his time. But that was what end­ed up severe­ly in­jur­ing Noriko. He said, "Noriko, show me your right hand."

Noriko then fi­nal­ly let go of her gun (its grip was al­so cov­ered in blood) and gave Shuya her hand. It seemed small and frail, but there was a sharp tear run­ning down be­tween her mid­dle and ring fin­ger. The palm of her hand was cov­ered with a web of blood in the pat­tern of the tex­tured pis­tol grip. He sur­mised, the wire must have cut her face first and then as she fell, it must have torn through her hand she put for­ward as she fell. The wound might have been much more se­vere if the gun hadn't been in her hand.

Shuya want­ed to wrap a ban­dan­na, but re­al­ized he couldn't use his left hand.

Noriko said, "I'm okay. I'll do it." She took the ban­dan­na from Shuya, flapped it, and spread it out, and then wrapped it around her right hand. She fold­ed the edges and tied it up.

Then she held the Brown­ing again.

Be­yond the bul­let-​rid­den front wind­shield the view sud­den­ly opened up. The truck was de­scend­ing the moun­tain. Un­der the sun­set, the flat field widened be­tween the moun­tain­ous woods.

Shuya re­al­ized some­thing ur­gent and said, "Shogo. We're head­ing in­to a for­bid­den zone-"

"Don't wor­ry. I know what I'm do­ing." Shogo an­swered as he looked ahead. "Did you hear? The for­bid­den zones are B=9 af­ter 7 p.m., E=10 af­ter 9 p.m., and F=4 af­ter 11 p.m. Add those to the map."

Shuya re­mem­bered too. He pulled out the worn out map from his pock­et, spread it out on his thighs, and marked off the ar­eas while the truck shook.

The truck de­scend­ed and passed by hous­es. It en­tered a road equal­ly wide, but paved this time. The south­ern moun­tain was vis­ible be­yond the row of fields. On the right was a low hill. On the left ap­prox­imate­ly two hun­dred me­ters away was a res­iden­tial house (it seemed to be in a for­bid­den zone). There were two more ahead slight­ly to its left. And then be­yond were scat­tered hous­es lead­ing up to the res­iden­tial area on the is­land's east­ern shore. In front of that re­gion there was the field, now hid­den in the shade of the low hill, where they first en­coun­tered Kazuo . One more hill over was the school, which was al­so hid­den from view.

Shogo slowed the truck down and con­tin­ued for­ward. And now the wide lon­gi­tu­di­nal road cross­ing the is­land was right there in front of them.

They passed through the fields and came on­to the road. Shogo turned the wheel and turned it again. He stopped the truck in the mid­dle of the road, its en­gine idling. Shogo then lunged at the cracked front wind­shield with his fist and knocked the en­tire win­dow out on­to the front of the truck. The glass made a shat­ter­ing sound.

"Check the map," Shogo said, his hand back on the steer­ing wheel. Shuya picked up the map again. "Ac­cord­ing to my mem­ory we should still be able to take this road all the way east. Am I right?"

Shuya checked the map with Noriko. "Yeah, that's right. But F=4 ahead is go­ing to be shut off at 11 p.m."

"That won't mat­ter," Shogo said, his eyes glar­ing ahead. The black, rain-​drenched as­phalt stretched out in a straight line. "So this road should be okay right up to the east­ern res­iden­tial area?"

"That's right. We're fine up to the front of the curve."

Shogo nod­ded in re­sponse.

Shuya poked his head out of the win­dow again and looked back. "What about Kazuo?"

Shogo looked at Shuya. "He'll be com­ing. How could he not? Take a close-" he said when an old, worn out, light-​olive mini­van sud­den­ly ap­peared af­ter turn­ing the curve of the moun­tain road they'd just de­scend­ed. Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized it was the ve­hi­cle parked by the house they had just passed by.

Shogo ad­just­ed the rearview mir­ror, looked at it, and said, "See?"

It quick­ly closed in on them, and the mo­ment Shuya con­firmed Kazuo was sit­ting in the driv­er's seat, a burst of shots came ex­plod­ing out. Shuya tucked his head back in. The bul­lets hit the truck with a clang­ing sound. Shogo shift­ed gears, and the truck moved out on­to the wide road, head­ing east.

As Shuya leaned out of the win­dow look­ing back, Kazuo's mini­van al­so got on the same road. Shuya fired his Uzi. Fol­low­ing Kazuo's re­flex­es, the mini­van smooth­ly moved to the right and dodged the shots.

"Aim good, Shuya."

By then Kazuo's mini­van had sped up and caught up to them.

"Shogo! Can't you drive faster!?"

"Calm down," Shogo said and steered the wheel slow­ly from left to right-prob­ably so Kazuo couldn't aim at the tires. Kazuo be­gan shoot­ing again, and Shuya tucked his head in. It seemed Kazuo had al­so smashed his wind­shield so he could have bet­ter con­trol of his gun. Shuya leaned out again and fired away at Kazuo's tor­so. Kazuo steered away and dodged the gun­fire. He hard­ly ducked.

The row of shells pop­ping out of the ejec­tion port sud­den­ly stopped, and the Uzi trig­ger mech­anism made a lock­ing sound. Shuya re­al­ized he was out of bul­lets.

Shogo leaned over Noriko and gave him an­oth­er mag­azine. Be­fore Shuya could take it, Kazuo's mini­van sud­den­ly came up to them. Shuya pulled out his CZ75 and fired away. Un­de­terred, Kazuo came at them.

"Damn," Shogo said. His pro­file broke in­to a slight grin. "You're dead wrong if you think you can beat me driv­ing."

Shogo sud­den­ly made a sharp turn. He si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pulled on the side brake with his left hand. Shuya was thrust to his side. The truck spun around the en­tire road like a car in a chase scene.

While the truck spun around, Kazuo's mini­van came rac­ing at them. The fa­mil­iar rat­tling sound burst at them from the driv­er's seat. The rearview mir­ror shat­tered above Noriko's head.

"Duck!" Shogo yelled. But Shuya was busy fir­ing away at Kazuo with his CZ75.

It was a mir­acle Kazuo's ma­chine gun bul­lets missed Shuya. But Shuya's shots al­so end­ed up miss­ing Kazuo too. As the truck's front bumper skimmed by the mini­van's left frontside, Shuya got a close up view of the eter­nal­ly frigid eyes of Kazuo Kiriya­ma.

The tires screeched against the wet sur­face. The spin­ning fi­nal­ly halt­ed. By the time it stopped, the hunter and the hunt­ed were re­versed. Shogo had man­aged to dodge the front of Kazuo's mini­van, com­plet­ing a full spin. Kazuo's mini­van was in front. Shogo im­me­di­ate­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed for­ward. The en­gine whirred away with a sud­den surge of pow­er, and the pick­up lunged for­ward to­wards the back of the mini­van. Kazuo was turn­ing around.

"Fire away, Shuya! Ev­ery­thing you got!" Shogo yelled.

He didn't have to be told. Shuya squeezed the trig­ger of his reload­ed Uzi with all his might and fired away with the gun on full au­to. He knew the scorch­ing, emp­ty shells were burst­ing out at Noriko, but he couldn't be con­cerned about that. The mini­van's rear wind­shield burst apart. Along with a pop­ping sound, the rear hatch opened up. Then the right tire was blown out with a pop­ping sound. Shuya was out of bul­lets, but the mini­van was now tot­ter­ing over to the edge of the road.

Shogo stepped on the gas. He pulled up to the left side of the mini­van, swerved the wheel, and smashed the right side of the truck against the mini­van.

The blow was hard on them, but it was noth­ing com­pared to the dam­age it did to Kazuo's mini­van. At first, it lost con­trol, then it slid to the right side of the road, and flew over its edge. The next mo­ment it land­ed in­to the low­er field and nose­dived to the ground. Cab­bage leaves flew up in­to the air.

Sud­den­ly, it was still.

Shogo stopped the car par­al­lel to the mini­van and stepped on the emer­gen­cy brake. He looked over its roof.

"Give me the gun, Shuya," Shogo said. Shuya gave him the Uzi. Shogo changed the mag­azine, ex­tend­ed his arm out of the win­dow, point­ed the gun at the mini­van, and pulled the trig­ger. Shogo's hand shook ver­ti­cal­ly. Even from the front pas­sen­ger's seat Shuya could tell the mini­van was get­ting pum­meled with bul­lets.

Shogo reload­ed an­oth­er mag­azine and fired away. He in­sert­ed an­oth­er mag­azine and emp­tied that one as well. Mean­while, Noriko was in­sert­ing spare bul­lets in­to the emp­tied out mag­azine with her wound­ed hand. Af­ter she was done, Shogo took that too and fired away. Noriko load­ed more mag­azines. Slight­ly bent over, Shuya looked at Noriko's hands, then at Shogo's, and fi­nal­ly at the mini­van.

They went through this round once, then twice. Be­cause the Uzi was a 9mm weapon, they end­ed up us­ing the bul­lets from the same cal­iber CZ75 and Noriko's Brown­ing too.

The Uzi trig­ger de­vice in­di­cat­ed the mag­azine was emp­ty with a lock­ing sound. It was out of bul­lets. Blue smoke drift­ed up from the short muz­zled Uzi. The nar­row cab­in was filled with the odor of gun­smoke. How many bul­lets had Shogo fired? The Uzi Shuya had tak­en from Yukie's group came with five ex­tra mag­azines and plen­ty of spare bul­lets, but if they were to in­clude the bul­lets from the CZ75 and the Brown­ing wouldn't the num­ber go up to two hun­dred and fifty? Or three hun­dred?

With its left-​side front pas­sen­ger's seat and roof fac­ing them, the mini­van was hon­ey­combed. It looked more like a strange bee­hive in the shape of a car.

The sky was or­ange now. Shuya couldn't both­er to look at it, but judg­ing from the light, he as­sumed there was a nice sun­set in the west­ern sky.

"Did you get him?" Shuya asked. Shogo was about to re­ply when-

The mini­van pro­ceed­ed to move. It was back­ing up. It cut across the edge of the field and backed up to the shoul­der of the road. Once again, to­wards the back of their truck.

Shuya was speech­less. Not on­ly was the van's en­gine still func­tion­ing, Kazuo was still alive and op­er­at­ing the ve­hi­cle. Shogo had wa­gered ev­ery­thing by emp­ty­ing their en­tire bul­let sup­ply and yet...Kazuo was still alive!

Be­yond the bul­let-​rid­den ve­hi­cle, Kazuo's up­per body sprung up like a jack-​in-​the-​box. With a ma­chine gun. With the rat­tling sound, the small win­dow above Noriko's head shat­tered. Two holes were punc­tured in­to the steel board next to it. The truck was a do­mes­tic mod­el made of flim­sy steel, so Shuya was sur­prised it had ac­tu­al­ly re­mained un­scathed this long. This al­so might have been thanks to the wash­er and re­frig­er­ator ly­ing on the rack. Or maybe, Shogo had load­ed them, an­tic­ipat­ing this sit­ua­tion.

"Damn it!" Shogo shift­ed gears and moved the car out. "Shoot, Shuya! Back me up!"

Shuya fired his CZ75 at Kazuo's mini­van. Kazuo fired back, the bul­lets land­ing right next to Shuya's face as sparks flew from the steel frame of the truck.

Shuya im­me­di­ate­ly emp­tied his gun. He changed the mag­azine and fired. Then he re­al­ized, once I shoot this round, I'm out of bul­lets. We'll on­ly have Noriko's Brown­ing and her ex­tra mag­azine. That's it.

While he hes­itat­ed, Kazuo fired. He heard the rat­tle. A zing­ing sound. More sparks this time from the re­frig­er­ator on the rack. The small door on the freez­er swung open and fell out.

"Shogo! I'm out of bul­lets!"

Shogo calm­ly steered the wheel. "His ma­chine gun will be use­less too. He doesn't have time to reload it."

Just as Shogo said, sin­gle shots came at them now. BLAM, POP. The seat by Noriko's shoul­der ex­plod­ed.

"Noriko! Get down!" Shuya yelled, stuck his arm out of the win­dow, point­ed at Kazuo, who now held a gun in one hand, and fired. He was out of bul­lets. He took the Brown­ing from Noriko's hand. He fired again.

To the left of the pick­up, be­tween the hous­es and the field, was a ware­house burnt to the ground. That must have been what Shogo had been re­fer­ring to, the build­ing that went up in flames in the late night ex­plo­sion. Now they had less than two hun­dred me­ters be­fore hit­ting the curve that led to the res­iden­tial area on the east­ern side of the is­land.

"Hey, Shogo, that's-"

Shogo replied, "I know," and swerved the wheel to the left. The left side of the truck un­der Shuya's body float­ed up. But once it re­gained its bal­ance, the truck leaped on­to the un­paved road. It was an­oth­er road twist­ing through the fields, head­ing back up to the north­ern moun­tain. Kazuo fol­lowed af­ter them in the mini­van.

Shuya aimed and fired. Kazuo ducked and fired away. This time the steel board right next to Shogo's head was punc­tured.

"Shuya! Just keep on shoot­ing un­til you're out! Don't let him shoot!" Shogo yelled, hunched over the wheel. Shuya no­ticed the left shoul­der of his school coat was torn and bleed­ing. He'd been hit by Kazuo.

Shuya was about to protest, but he leaned out of the win­dow and fired. Shogo might plan on es­cap­ing in­to the moun­tain again. If so, then the thing was to make sure Kazuo couldn't shoot. Or by some stroke of luck, maybe I'll end up hit­ting him-

He fired.

And now the Brown­ing was emp­tied out, the breech­block held open. He was out of bul­lets.

They were ap­proach­ing the moun­tain. A fa­mil­iar sight. Strange­ly enough, there was a farm­house sur­round­ed by a con­crete wall. And a field. A trac­tor.

Shuya re­al­ized this was where they first fought against Kazuo. But now they were on the op­po­site side.

"Shogo, I'm out of bul­lets! Are we es­cap­ing in­to the moun­tain!?"

Shuya could make out Shogo's pro­file break­ing in­to a slight grin. He replied, "Oh, we still got bul­lets."

Shuya knit his brows, puz­zled.

The truck ran off the en­trance road that led to the farm­house and dashed on­to the ridge road. He passed by the side of the trac­tor. The road ahead be­came too nar­row for the truck.

Shogo didn't seem to care and drove the truck straight ahead. Kazuo came af­ter them, main­tain­ing the same dis­tance be­hind-on­ly twen­ty me­ters. He fired from the driv­er's seat.

The truck dove in­to the farm and stopped. The side of the front pas­sen­ger's seat where Shuya sat now faced Kazuo. Shogo kicked open the door and yelled, "Get out, this way!" He jumped out of the car.

Shuya nudged Noriko, crouched down and fol­lowed them. He glanced back. Kazuo's mini­van was com­ing right at them!

There was a blast.

The left front tire of Kazuo's mini­van was blown off. It was on­ly ten me­ters in front of them.

The mini­van tot­tered...and slid along the ridge of the el­evat­ed field on the left, and its front went up in the air like a surf­board tak­ing on a large wave. The next mo­ment it rolled over on its roof in­to the field.

Right be­fore or af­ter the mini­van came to a com­plete halt, a black shad­ow leaped out. By the time it som­er­sault­ed and came to a kneel­ing po­si­tion, Shuya could see it was Kazuo. Sparks flew out from his hands with a con­tin­uous pop­ping noise. Then there was an­oth­er blast.

Shuya was still in­side the truck as he saw it through the win­dow of the pas­sen­ger's seat: the sight of Kazuo Kiriya­ma's body be­ing blown back like an ar­row.

Kazuo land­ed on the field with a thud. He was com­plete­ly still.

Shuya sud­den­ly re­called the way Ky­oichi Mo­to­buchi had died. His sausage-​fac­to­ry trash-​bin stom­ach. Kazuo was too far away to check the con­di­tion of his stom­ach. Still, giv­en how he was pum­meled with shot­gun pel­lets, there was no way he could have been alive.

Then Shuya fi­nal­ly emerged from the truck. He saw Shogo hold­ing that shot­gun-the one Shuya had tossed in­to the field when he was run­ning away from Kazuo-as he rose from be­hind the truck rack.

"Oh, we still got bul­lets." Shogo had picked up the shot­gun Shuya tossed away yes­ter­day, load­ed the shot­gun car­tridges he still had (he must have on­ly been able to load two shots in that span of time), and fired away...and shot down Kazuo.

"Right at the be­gin­ning..." Shogo said slow­ly, "...he missed us with his sur­prise at­tack. So he lost. Be­cause then he had to take on all three of us."

He took a deep breath, put down the shot­gun which thumped against the re­frig­er­ator on the truck rack, and took out a pack of Wild Sev­ens from his pock­et. He took one out and lit it.

"You're bleed­ing, Shogo," Noriko said, point­ing at his left shoul­der.

"Yeah." Shogo glanced at his wound and then grinned. "It's noth­ing." He ex­haled.

Bang. Shogo's body bent over. The Wild Sev­en cigarette fell from his mouth, leav­ing a trace of smoke in the air. The stub­bly face con­tort­ed. His eyes gazed down at Shuya's feet.

Shuya saw Kazuo's raised tor­so on the low­er field, hold­ing a gun in his right hand. He was still alive! But his stom­ach had been pum­meled by the shot­gun blast!

Shogo's body slow­ly caved in. Kazuo quick­ly point­ed his gun at Shuya. Shuya re­al­ized that he was, along with Shogo, no longer be­hind the truck. He had no gun in his hand. No, he had no bul­lets. It was too late for him to reload the shot­gun on the truck rack. It was way too late.

The small muz­zle of Kazuo's gun a good ten me­ters away looked like a gi­ant tun­nel. A black hole en­gulf­ing ev­ery­thing.

Bang. Shuya in­stant­ly closed his eyes. He felt a pierc­ing sen­sa­tion run through his chest and thought, oh, man, I'm dy­ing.

He opened his eyes.

He wasn't dead.

There was Kazuo in the di­ag­onal or­ange light of the set­ting sun, a red dot punc­tured by his nose. The gun fell from his hand. He im­me­di­ate­ly fell back and crashed on­to the ground.

Shuya slow­ly turned his head to his left. Noriko was stand­ing, hold­ing the Smith & Wes­son .38 cal­iber re­volver with both of her hands.

Wow. So that's what it was. While Shogo load­ed the shot­gun, Noriko had al­so load­ed the re­volver Shuya had tossed aside yes­ter­day with her re­main­ing .38 Spe­cial bul­lets.

Noriko's hands were trem­bling with the gun.

"Huh." Shogo stood up be­fore Shuya could even help him up.

Shuya ner­vous­ly asked, "Are you all right?"

Shogo didn't re­spond. He picked up the shot­gun, and as he load­ed it with the car­tridges in his pock­et, he walked to­ward Kazuo. Ex­act­ly two me­ters in front of him, he point­ed the gun at Kazuo's head and pulled the trig­ger. Kazuo's head flinched on­ly once.

Shogo turned on his heels and came back.

"Are you all right?" Shuya asked him again.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Shogo walked over to Noriko, gen­tly held her hands, still hold­ing the Smith & Wes­son, and low­ered them. He qui­et­ly said, "He's dead. I'm the one who killed him, not you." Then he looked over at Kazuo. "So he was wear­ing a vest," he said.

Shuya then fi­nal­ly un­der­stood. Kazuo Kiriya­ma had been wear­ing a bul­let­proof vest.

"Shogo," Noriko asked, her voice slight­ly trem­bling. "Are you re­al­ly all right?"

Shogo smiled kind­ly and nod­ded. "I'm all right. Thanks, Noriko." Then he took out his pack of cigarettes again. It seemed emp­ty so he looked around and picked up the lit cigarette which had fall­en from his mouth, and slow­ly raised it to his mouth.

Shuya turned around and stared out at the sun set­ting over the is­land. It was over. At least this won­der­ful game was. And now, in­clud­ing Kazuo Kiriya­ma over there, thir­ty-​nine of their dead class­mates were ly­ing sprawled all over the is­land.

Shuya had that dizzy spell again. Maybe his thoughts were numbed by this hol­low feel­ing. What the hell was this all about?

Faces flashed by one by one. Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu's face as he shout­ed, "I'll kill you!" Shin­ji Mimu­ra's face grin­ning slight­ly as Shuya left. Tat­sumichi Oki's face as he swung the axe with blood­shot eyes. Hi­ro­ki Sug­imu­ra who van­ished in­to the dark out­side the med­ical clin­ic, say­ing, "I have to see Kayoko Ko­to­hi­ki," Hi­rono Shimizu as she ran away from Shuya af­ter shoot­ing down Kaori Mi­na­mi. The tear­ful Yukie Ut­su­mi say­ing, "I just wouldn't know what to do if you died." Yuko Saka­ki, who pried Shuya's fin­gers loose. Then the cold eyes of Kazuo Kiriya­ma, who'd cor­nered them un­til now.

They were all gone. Not just ev­ery­one's lives, but so many oth­er things were de­stroyed.

But it wasn't over yet.

"Shogo," Shuya said. Shogo looked up, short­ened cigarette in hand. "We should treat you."

Shogo smiled. "I'm all right. It's noth­ing. Take care of Noriko's wounds." Then he said, "I'm go­ing to col­lect Kazuo's weapons." He walked over to the over­turned mini­van.

3 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

75

Shogo led the way up the moun­tain. The weapons he picked out of Kazuo's as­sort­ment were tossed in­to the day pack on his shoul­ders. He didn't of­fer them to Noriko or Shuya. It wasn't nec­es­sary for the time be­ing.

Shuya fol­lowed Shogo as he held Noriko up on his left side. They had cleaned Noriko's cheek wound with wa­ter for now and cov­ered it with a row of four band-​aids. Shogo said they were bet­ter off not stitch­ing it. Shuya cleaned her hand wound and wrapped it again with the ban­dan­na. Shogo had al­so quick­ly tak­en care of his wounds.

It was al­ready get­ting dim in the moun­tains, but there was no need to make their way through bush­es, so it was rel­ative­ly easy to climb. The ground strewn with piles of leaf mold was damp from an en­tire af­ter­noon of rain.

They had cov­ered quite a dis­tance ev­er since Shogo an­nounced, "We're climb­ing the moun­tain," and pro­ceed­ed for­ward.

"Shogo," Shuya called. Shogo turned around. "Where are we go­ing?"

Shogo grinned. "We have just a lit­tle more to go. Just fol­low me."

Shuya read­just­ed his arm on Noriko and fol­lowed him.

The peak with the view­ing plat­form where Yukiko Ki­tano and Yu­miko Kusa­ka were killed and its south­ern side had be­come a for­bid­den zone a long time ago. Shogo stopped right be­fore they en­tered that area, in the up­per mid-​re­gion of the moun­tain. Come to think of it, Shuya thought, a lit­tle ways be­low I saw Hi­rono Shimizu shoot Kaori Mi­na­mi.

"This should do it," Shogo said.

The slope and woods end­ed here, and the area of­fered a good view. They could see the en­tire is­land, now im­mersed in dim blue af­ter sun­set, where the fierce bat­tle be­tween the class­mates of Third Year Class B Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School took place. How­ev­er, the school hold­ing their fi­nal en­emy, Sakamochi, was hid­den by hills.

Shuya took a deep breath. Then he asked, "What's up here any­way? How are we go­ing to es­cape?"

Shogo smiled with­out look­ing at Shuya. Then he said, "Re­lax. Take a look over there."

Shuya and Noriko looked over where Shogo was point­ing.

It was over the south­ern moun­tain. Al­though it was grow­ing dim, they could still make out the ocean, sev­er­al is­lands, and be­yond, the main­land. Shuya could make out a mist of lights scat­tered over the main­land. If they were clos­er, they could have dis­cerned which ones were neon lights and which ones were lights along the shore high­way.

Now Shuya al­so knew that this was Ok­ishi­ma Is­land in the Taka­mat­su-​shi Bay. There were two oth­ers is­lands, Megi­ji­ma and Ogi­ji­ma, form­ing a ver­ti­cal row of is­lands, where Ok­ishi­ma was the one at the far north­ern tip. Which meant that the small is­land be­yond the south­ern moun­tain was Megi­ji­ma, and be­yond that was Ogi­ji­ma, and be­yond that was the main­land-Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture of Shikoku.

Shogo said, "It's not very fa­mil­iar to me, but that's your home over there. Shi­roi­wa-​cho must be over there. You won't see it again, so have a good look."

Did he mean they'd nev­er re­turn be­cause they were es­cap­ing the coun­try? Still...

Shuya looked back at Shogo. "Don't tell me we came all the way up here for this."

Shogo snick­ered. "Hey, what's the rush?" Then he said, "Show me your gun. There's some­thing I need to check."

Noriko hand­ed over her Smith & Wes­son to Shogo. He opened up its cylin­der and checked it. Shuya thought Noriko had reload­ed it af­ter tak­ing that sin­gle shot at Kazuo.

Shogo didn't re­turn the gun and in­stead held it in his right hand. He took a deep breath and said, "Do you re­mem­ber how I kept on say­ing I might be do­ing this just to have a group, and that my in­ten­tion might be to kill you off in the end?"

Shuya raised his brow. Yes, you said that, but?...

"Yeah, but?..."

"So," Shogo said, "you both lose."

Shogo point­ed the Smith & Wes­son at them.

3 stu­dents re­main­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

76

Shuya felt a strange ex­pres­sion form­ing on his face. As if he were grin­ning and be­wil­dered at the same time. Noriko prob­ably felt the same way.

"What is this?" Shuya said. "It's not such a great time to be jok­ing right now."

"I'm se­ri­ous," Shogo said and cocked the ham­mer.

Shuya's grin van­ished. His right arm felt Noriko stiff­en.

Shogo con­tin­ued, "You can en­joy the view a lit­tle more. I told you, it'd be the last time." His stub­bly face broke in­to a slight grin. It was a sin­is­ter grin he'd nev­er shown be­fore.

A crow cawed. Was it fly­ing up above in the dark­en­ing evening sky?

Shuya fi­nal­ly spoke. His feel­ings were out of sync with the sit­ua­tion, he could on­ly croak out pa­thet­ical­ly, "What? What are you talk­ing about?"

"You are so thick," Shogo re­spond­ed with a shrug. "I'm go­ing to kill you both. I'll be the win­ner. My sec­ond in a row."

Shuya's lips were trem­bling. No. This cant be.

He stut­tered, "Come on...stop it. Then...then you were just act­ing un­til now? You...you looked af­ter us. You helped us so many times."

Shogo replied calm­ly, "You're the ones who helped me. I prob­ably couldn't have killed Kazuo with­out your help."

"Then...so that sto­ry about Keiko was a lie too!?" His words trem­bled. The more he tried to keep his voice down the loud­er it be­came.

"Yep," Shogo an­swered curt­ly. "It was true I par­tic­ipat­ed in the Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture Pro­gram last year, and it's true there was a girl named Keiko Onu­ki. But there was noth­ing be­tween us. The girl in that pho­to's my girl­friend, but her name's Kyoka Shi­maza­ki, a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent per­son. She's still in Kobe. She's out of her mind...Well, any­way, she in­sist­ed I hold on­to this pho­to. I got to say she was a good lay, though."

Shuya took a deep breath. A light ear­ly sum­mer breeze blew against his skin, but for some rea­son it felt chilly. Then he cau­tious­ly asked, "But what about that bird call?..."

Shogo had an­oth­er curt re­sponse. "I just hap­pened to find that at the gen­er­al sup­ply store. I fig­ured it'd be use­ful. And it proved to be, in the end."

It grew dark­er and dark­er.

Shogo con­tin­ued, "You lost the mo­ment you trust­ed me," but Shuya still couldn't be­lieve it. That can't be. That just...can't be. Then some­thing oc­curred to Shuya. This...must be...

Noriko spoke out be­fore Shuya, "Shogo...is this some test to see whether you can re­al­ly trust us? Is it be­cause Keiko couldn't trust you?"

Shogo shrugged his shoul­ders and said, "Un­be­liev­able how you still be­lieve in that fairy tale."

Those were his last words. Shogo held the gun in his hand and slow­ly pulled the trig­ger.

Two gun­shots rang out as evening de­scend­ed up­on the is­land.

1 stu­dent re­main­ing-GAME OVER-Re­port from Third Year Class B Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School Pro­gram Head­quar­ters Track­ing Sys­tem

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

77

Shogo Kawa­da (Male Stu­dent No. 5) re­clined against the soft so­fa on the ship. He was sway­ing slight­ly from the rough waves.

The room was fair­ly spa­cious for a small pa­trol ship. The ceil­ing it­self was low, but the room must have been a cou­ple square me­ters. There was a low ta­ble in the mid­dle, and two so­fas on each side, with Shogo sit­ting on the one away from the door.

Be­cause the room was be­low deck it had no win­dows, so he couldn't see any­thing out­side, but it must have been past 8:30 p.m. by now. The yel­low ceil­ing lights shined against the glass ash­tray. Shogo didn't have any more cigarettes to smoke, though.

Once the for­bid­den zones were all de­ac­ti­vat­ed af­ter the game was over, Shogo obeyed Sakamochi's an­nounce­ments and made his way to the school. In front of the school were the bod­ies of Yoshio Aka­mat­su and Mayu­mi Ten­do, and in­side the class­room, the bod­ies of Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu and Fu­miyo Fu­jiyoshi, all left un­touched.

His sil­ver col­lar was fi­nal­ly de­tached, and af­ter the shoot­ing for the news seg­ment, he was tak­en away by sol­diers and es­cort­ed to the har­bor. There were two ships docked there. One for the win­ner...and the oth­er a trans­port ship to re­turn the sol­diers packed in­side the school. Most of the sol­diers board­ed this ship. On­ly the trio who were in the class­room dur­ing Sakamochi's game in­struc­tions joined Sakamochi to board Shogo's ship. And to­mor­row the sub­con­tract­ed clean-​up crew would take care of the re­main­ing bod­ies of the stu­dents on the is­land. The speak­ers and school com­put­ers at the school build­ing would al­so be dis­man­tled in a mat­ter of days. Of course the soft­ware and da­ta for the game had al­ready been re­moved from the com­put­er. This was the iden­ti­cal pro­ce­dure tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Kobe Sec­ond Dis­trict Ju­nior High School Pro­gram came to an end ten months ago.

And now Shogo was wait­ing here. They were now south of Ok­ishi­ma. The pa­trol ship was re­turn­ing di­rect­ly to Taka­mat­su Har­bor, but the sol­diers' trans­port ship would prob­ably al­ter its course and head west to­wards the mil­itary base.

The door­knob ro­tat­ed with a click. The sol­dier who stood guard (the un­charis­mat­ic one called "No­mu­ra") by the door looked in, then moved away. Kin­pat­su Sakamochi ap­peared. He came in with a tray with two teacups and asked, "Did I keep you wait­ing, Shogo?" as he en­tered the room. No­mu­ra closed the door.

Sakamochi walked up to him with his short legs. He put the tray on the ta­ble and said, "Here. It's tea. Drink all you want." He took out a flat, let­ter-​sized en­ve­lope from un­der his left armpit and sat on the so­fa fac­ing Shogo. He tossed the en­ve­lope on­to his side of the ta­ble, then combed back his shoul­der-​length hair be­hind his ear.

Shogo glanced down at the en­ve­lope in­dif­fer­ent­ly and be­gan speak­ing while star­ing at Sakamochi. "What do you want? I wish you'd leave me alone. I'm tired."

"There you go..." Sakamochi brought the cup to his mouth with a gri­mace. "You should be more po­lite with adults. I had this stu­dent Ka­to once. He used to give me a hard time, but now that he's grown up, he's quite re­spectable."

"I'm not one of your pigs."

Sakamochi opened his eyes as if tak­en aback and then smiled again. "Come, come, Shogo. I want­ed to have a nice chat with you."

Shogo slouched against the so­fa and fold­ed his legs. He re­mained qui­et as he rest­ed his cheeks in his hands.

"Where should I be­gin?" Sakamochi put his cup down and rubbed his open hands to­geth­er. "That's right." His eyes glim­mered. "Did you know we have a bet­ting pool for the Pro­gram, Shogo?"

Shogo squint­ed his eyes as if look­ing at filth. Then he said, "I wouldn't be sur­prised. You guys are taste­less."

Sakamochi smiled. "I had my mon­ey on Kazuo. Twen­ty thou­sand yen. With my salary, that's a lot. But thanks to you, I lost."

"Too bad," Shogo said in a tone de­void of sym­pa­thy.

Sakamochi smiled again. Then he said, "I ex­plained how I could tell where ev­ery­one was with those col­lars, right?"

The an­swer was ob­vi­ous. Shogo didn't re­spond.

Sakamochi stared at Shogo. "You were with Shuya and Noriko through­out the game, right? Then you be­trayed them in the end. That's what it came down to, right?"

"What's wrong with that?" Shogo replied. "There are no re­stric­tions in this won­der­ful game. Don't make me laugh. You can't crit­icize me for that."

A broad grin spread over Sakamochi's face. He combed back his hair, took a sip of tea, and rubbed his hands. He spoke as if he were shar­ing a se­cret, "Hey, Shogo. I'm not re­al­ly sup­posed to be shar­ing this with any­one, but I'll tell you the truth. These col­lars have built-​in mics, so we could hear ev­ery­thing the stu­dents said dur­ing the game. I bet you prob­ably didn't know that."

Shogo, who seemed so in­dif­fer­ent in his re­spons­es, fi­nal­ly seemed in­ter­est­ed. He knit his brows and pursed his lips. "How the fuck...would I know about that?" he said. "So then you heard ev­ery­thing, how I tricked them."

"Uh huh, that's right." Sakamochi nod­ded. "But that wasn't very nice, Shogo. Was it. 'Even if we man­aged to cap­ture Sakamochi, I'm sure as far as the gov­ern­ment's con­cerned he's ex­pend­able'? You said that. Be­ing a Pro­gram In­struc­tor is a pret­ty re­spectable oc­cu­pa­tion. Not ev­ery­one can do it."

Ig­nor­ing Sakamochi's com­plaint, Shogo asked, "Why are you telling me this?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sakamochi replied. "With your won­der­ful per­for­mance I couldn't re­sist telling you."

"This is bull­shit."

Shogo looked away, but Sakamochi pressed more in­sis­tent­ly, "A won­der­ful per­for­mance, but..." Shogo looked back at him. Sakamochi con­tin­ued, "...there's some­thing I don't get."

"What's that?"

"Why didn't you shoot those two right af­ter Kazuo was killed? You could have, right? That's the one thing I just don't get."

"Just as I told them," Shogo, replied with­out hes­itat­ing, "I just thought I'd let them have one last look at their home. A lit­tle gift for them be­fore their de­scent in­to hell. You may not be­lieve this, but I can be pret­ty loy­al. I mean, thanks to them, I won."

Sakamochi con­tin­ued smil­ing and ut­tered, "Hm­mm." Then he raised his cup to his mouth. He sat back on the back of the so­fa with the cup in his hand and spoke again, "Hey, Shogo, I got hold of the da­ta on the Kobe Sec­ond Dis­trict Ju­nior High School Pro­gram." Then he stared at Shogo. Shogo stared back at him and re­mained silent. "And as far as I can tell from the da­ta, noth­ing in­di­cates you had any spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with Keiko Onu­ki."

"Onu­ki? Like I said I made that up," Shogo in­ter­rupt­ed him, but Sakamochi spoke over him and con­tin­ued, "As-" Shogo shut up.

"As you said, to Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa, you saw Onu­ki twice-the first time on­ly for a mo­ment and then the sec­ond time right be­fore you won, when she was al­ready dead. Even ac­cord­ing to the taped con­ver­sa­tions, you nev­er even once ut­tered her name. Not once. Do you re­mem­ber that?"

"How could I? It's like I said-there was noth­ing be­tween me...and her. You heard me, right?"

"But the thing is, Shogo, the sec­ond time around you stopped there for two hours."

"That was just a co­in­ci­dence. It was a good spot to hide and rest. That's how I was able to re­mem­ber that name so vivid­ly. I tell you, she died a hor­ri­ble death."

His grin still glued across his face, Sakamochi nod­ded, hm hm. "The oth­er thing is...the en­tire eigh­teen hours which tran­spired in this game-which is ac­tu­al­ly quite fast, maybe the des­ig­nat­ed area was too small-in any case, you didn't ex­change a sin­gle word with any­one. I mean, aside from say­ing things like, 'Stop' or 'I'm not an en­emy.' "

"That was just an act too," Shogo in­ter­rupt­ed him. "It's so ob­vi­ous."

Sakamochi smiled, ig­nor­ing Shogo's state­ment. "So I have no idea how you ap­proached this game. You moved around a lot but-"

"It was my first time. I didn't know how to play it smart."

Sakamochi then nod­ded, hm hm. He held back a grin as if con­ceal­ing his amuse­ment. He sipped his tea and re­turned the cup to the ta­ble. Then he looked up and said, "By the way...what about that pho­to? I'd like to look at it, if you don't mind."

"Pho­to?"

"Come on, you showed it to Nana­hara and Nak­agawa, right? You said it was a pho­to of Onu­ki. Let me see it. It was ac­tu­al­ly a pho­to of some­one named Shi­maza­ki, right?"

Shogo twist­ed his mouth. "Why should I show it to you?"

"Come on, just show it to me. I'm your in­struc­tor. Please. Come on, please," Sakamochi said and bowed over the ta­ble.

Shogo re­luc­tant­ly reached around and searched his back pock­et. He raised his brow and swung his hand back. It was emp­ty.

"It's gone," he said. "I must've dropped it some­where when we fought Kazuo."

"Dropped it?"

"Uh huh. It's true. I dropped my wal­let. Well, I don't need it any­way."

Sud­den­ly, Sakamochi burst out laugh­ing. As he laughed he said, "I get it." He held his stom­ach, slapped his thighs, and kept on laugh­ing.

Shogo looked per­plexed...but then he squint­ed his eyes. He looked up at the ceil­ing in the win­dow­less room.

De­spite the in­su­la­tion of the pa­trol ship's walls, he could hear the faint but def­inite whirring sound. It was def­inite­ly not the sound of the ship's en­gine.

The sound be­came loud­er and loud­er...and then af­ter a cer­tain point, it re­ced­ed. Then it was al­most en­tire­ly gone.

Shogo gri­maced.

"Does that trou­ble you, Shogo?" He stopped laugh­ing. He still had that creepy smile on his face, though. "That was a he­li­copter." He reached out for his tea again and emp­tied his cup. He put the emp­ty cup on the ta­ble. "It's head­ing to­ward the is­land where you all fought."

Shogo knit his brows, but this time his re­ac­tion seemed to have a dif­fer­ent con­no­ta­tion. But Sakamochi didn't care. He ar­ro­gant­ly leaned back on the so­fa and changed the sub­ject, "Hey, Shogo. Let's talk about those col­lars again. Well, you know, they're ac­tu­al­ly called 'Guadal­canal No. 22.' That doesn't mat­ter. Any­way, weren't you telling Shuya about how they couldn't be dis­man­tled?"

See­ing how Shogo didn't re­spond, Sakamochi con­tin­ued, "In fact, your the­ory was right on the mark. Each unit is equipped with three dif­fer­ent sys­tems, so even if one of them has a one per­cent mar­gin of er­ror, with three sys­tems, on­ly one in a mil­lion can break down. In re­al­ity, the chances are even slim­mer. So, it's just like you said. No one can es­cape from them. Any at­tempt to re­move it will ig­nite it, killing its wear­er. It's very rare some­one ac­tu­al­ly tries that, though."

Shogo still re­mained silent.

"The thing is..." Sakamochi then leaned over, "...I just thought I'd get in touch with the De­fense Forces weapons lab this time around. And guess what?" He looked at Shogo. "They said it could be de­ac­ti­vat­ed by any­one with a ba­sic knowl­edge in elec­tron­ics, us­ing ba­sic tran­sis­tor parts, the kind you find in a ra­dio. Of course, that's as­sum­ing you al­ready know the cir­cuit­ry in­side the de­vice."

Shogo stayed qui­et, but as Sakamochi's con­tin­ued star­ing at him, he sud­den­ly said in a strange, blank tone of voice as if the thought sud­den­ly oc­curred to him, "I don't get it. Who could pos­si­bly have that in­for­ma­tion?"

Sakamochi grinned and nod­ded. He con­tin­ued, "Yes. Well, any­way, if we were to as­sume the col­lar was dis­abled, then ob­vi­ous­ly it would trans­mit a sig­nal in­form­ing us of the wear­er's death, right? In oth­er words, if there was a stu­dent who could re­move that col­lar, then he could sur­vive with­out a hitch. He'd just have to wait out the game, and once the mil­itary leaves the premis­es he could take his time es­cap­ing. That's right, just like you said to Shuya Nana­hara. Say the game were to end in the af­ter­noon, then the sub­con­tract­ed clean-​up crew comes the fol­low­ing day. So there's plen­ty of time in be­tween. Al­so, this time of year the wa­ter isn't too cold to swim in."

Sakamochi gave Shogo an im­plor­ing look, but Shogo on­ly re­spond­ed with a "Huh." Sakamochi leaned back on the so­fa. "This is ab­surd. The col­lar cir­cuits are sup­posed to be top se­cret, right? How could a ju­nior high school kid pos­si­bly know about it?"

Sakamochi replied, "He could, though." Shogo looked back at Sakamochi. "See, all of this in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing your records, and the Guadal­canal de­vice, un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances I wouldn't have looked up any of this stuff. I would have just sat back, im­pressed by your in­tel­li­gence. This time though, I was con­tact­ed by Dic­ta­tor Head­quar­ters and the Spe­cial De­fense Forces be­fore the game be­gan. I mean, on the twen­ti­eth."

Shogo stared at Sakamochi.

Sakamochi con­tin­ued, "They said some­one hacked in­to the gov­ern­ment's cen­tral op­er­ations sys­tem in March." He paused. Then he added, "Of course, the hack­er thought he man­aged to leave with­out a trace. He was in­cred­ibly skilled, and al­though he en­coun­tered the ad­min­is­tra­tor while he was hack­ing, he man­aged to erase his log-​in ac­cess be­fore es­cap­ing. But..."

Sakamochi paused again. Shogo kept qui­et.

"...the gov­ern­ment sys­tem has tight se­cu­ri­ty. It has a an­oth­er se­cret log-​in sys­tem that records ev­ery op­er­ation. Of course, they usu­al­ly don't mon­itor this sys­tem, and the ad­min­is­tra­tor didn't think there was any­thing ab­nor­mal at the time. That's why they took so long to dis­cov­er it. But they found it. Yes, they did."

Shogo sealed his lips and stared at Sakamochi. But his Adam's ap­ple moved ev­er so slight­ly. The move­ment was hard­ly dis­cernible.

"Look," Shogo said. "A sub­con­trac­tor re­al­ly did tell me about round­ing up the corpses. I was hav­ing a few drinks at this bar with him. The top­ic just came up. And the in­struc­tor from our last game told us the Pro­gram hard­ly ev­er ends from just time run­ning out. You can even ask him."

Sakamochi rubbed his right hand un­der his nose and stared at Shogo. "Why are you telling me this? I didn't even ask you about that."

Shogo's Adam's ap­ple moved again. This time it def­inite­ly moved.

Sakamochi then snick­ered and con­tin­ued, "So ap­par­ent­ly some of the hacked da­ta in­clud­ed in­for­ma­tion on the Pro­gram. In oth­er words, tech­ni­cal spec­ifi­ca­tions on the Guadal­canal col­lar. Why would some­one take such use­less in­for­ma­tion? I mean, what's the point? Even if the hack­er were to pub­li­cize it, the gov­ern­ment would on­ly de­sign a new col­lar, and that would be the end of that. There's no sign of that for now. But maybe we can as­sume this much: the in­trud­er was driv­en to ac­cess this in­for­ma­tion at all cost. Don't you think?"

Shogo didn't re­spond. Sakamochi sighed and picked up the en­ve­lope he'd tossed out. He flipped it over with one hand and pulled out the con­tents. He placed them side by side in front of Shogo.

There were two pho­tos. They were both black and white and print­ed on B5 pa­per. One of them had no con­trast at all, so it was hard to tell what it was, but the oth­er one clear­ly showed a truck and three black dots scat­tered around it. Giv­en how it was the top of a truck, the three dots were ob­vi­ous­ly heads.

"You see, right?" Sakamochi said. "That's the three of you just a while ago. Right af­ter you killed Kazuo. Those were tak­en by satel­lite. We don't usu­al­ly do this kind of thing. But I want you to take a clos­er at this oth­er pho­to. See? You can't re­al­ly make out any­thing, right? But that's ac­tu­al­ly a pho­to of the moun­tain. It was tak­en when you shot those two. There wasn't enough light, and it's ob­scure be­cause you're all hid­den by the woods. That's right, you can't see it."

He fell silent. The ship swayed a lit­tle, but Shogo and Sakamochi stared at each oth­er, com­plete­ly still.

Then Sakamochi took a deep breath and once again combed back his hair be­hind his ear. He broke in­to a smile and spoke in a strange­ly in­ti­mate voice, "Say, Shogo. I've been keep­ing track of this game from the very be­gin­ning. Right? Af­ter you shot Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa, Nana­hara took fifty-​four sec­onds to die, while Nak­agawa end­ed up tak­ing one minute and thir­ty sec­onds to die. They should have died in­stant­ly if you shot them point blank. So what's this time lag about?"

Shogo was silent, but-whether he was aware of it or not-his cheeks stiff­ened. He man­aged to speak out, "It can hap­pen. I'd have thought they died im­me­di­ate­ly but-"

"Enough." Sakamochi cut him off. He said in an adamant voice, "Let's put an end to this." He looked in­to Shogo's eyes and nod­ded as if ad­mon­ish­ing him. Then he said, "Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa are still on that is­land. They're still alive, right? They're hid­ing in the moun­tain. You're the one who hacked in­to the gov­ern­ment cen­tral sys­tem. Or one of your friends. You knew how to dis­man­tle that col­lar. You knew we could mon­itor your con­ver­sa­tions, so you gave us that ra­dio dra­ma per­for­mance of shoot­ing those two. Then you re­moved their col­lars. Am I right? I didn't say it was a won­der­ful per­for­mance. You're still in the mid­dle of that won­der­ful per­for­mance."

Shogo gazed at Sakamochi. He gri­maced through clenched teeth.

Sakamochi kept on smil­ing and con­tin­ued, "Didn't you give them some mes­sages about meet­ing spots? And you were sup­posed to hook up to­geth­er lat­er, right? Well, you can for­get about that. That he­li­copter that just flew by is go­ing to spray the is­land with poi­son gas. It's a com­pos­ite poi­son mus­tard gas de­vel­oped re­cent­ly called Greater East Asia Vic­to­ry No. 2. The guard ships are still over there. Nana­hara and Nak­agawa are fin­ished."

As he stared at Sakamochi, Shogo dug his fin­gers in­to the syn­thet­ic leather el­bow rest. Sakamochi took an­oth­er deep breath and sank back in­to the so­fa. He combed back his hair. "We have no prece­dent for this. Strict­ly speak­ing, you're not re­al­ly the win­ner. But one of the ed­uca­tion com­mit­tee of­fi­cials I work for bet a lot of mon­ey on you. So I de­cid­ed to treat this in­ter­nal­ly. It'll help my ca­reer if I help him out...there­fore, you'll be the of­fi­cial win­ner. Ac­cord­ing to the records, you'll be the killer of those two___Are you sat­is­fied now, Shogo?"

Shogo was ut­ter­ly stiff, as if he might start shak­ing any sec­ond now. But as Sakamochi raised his brow, Shogo looked away from him and stared down at the floor. "I...don't know what you're talk­ing about..." he said. He ner­vous­ly opened and then clenched his fist sev­er­al times. He glanced back at Sakamochi and then anx­ious­ly said, "Why both­er spray­ing gas? You're just wast­ing tax mon­ey."

Sakamochi snick­ered. "We'll soon see whether I am." Then he said, "Oh, that's right." He pulled out a small au­to­mat­ic pis­tol from un­der his coat and point­ed it at Shogo. Shogo opened his eyes wide. "I've de­cid­ed to take care of you as an in­ter­nal mat­ter too. You have dan­ger­ous ideas. I think it's against this coun­try's in­ter­ests if we let some­one like you live. Have to toss the rot­ten ap­ple out of the box. The soon­er the bet­ter. You ar­rive DOA due to in­juries from the game. How's that? Oh, don't you wor­ry. If you hap­pen to have friends too, we'll hunt them down. We won't have to in­ter­ro­gate you."

Shogo slow­ly tore his eyes away from the gun and looked at Sakamochi. "You..." he said. He was now bar­ing his teeth. Sakamochi broke in­to a grin. "Bas­tard!" Shogo howled in a voice full of in­dig­na­tion, de­spair, prob­ably mixed in with a dose of fear to­wards ev­ery­thing in­com­pre­hen­si­ble. What he want­ed to do most was grab Sakamochi by the neck. But the gun re­strained him. He could on­ly clench his fists over his thighs.

"Don't you... do n't you have any kids? How can you ac­cept this fucked up game?"

"Of course I have kids," Sakamochi replied ca­su­al­ly. "You know, I like to have a good time, so we're about to have our third."

Shogo didn't re­spond to the joke, yelling in­stead, "Then...how can you ac­cept this? One of your kids might end up in this game in the fu­ture! Or...or is it that...kids of high-​ranked of­fi­cials like you are ex­empt­ed?"

Of­fend­ed, Sakamochi shook his head. "That's pre­pos­ter­ous. How can you say that, Kawa­da? You read the Pro­gram Re­quire­ments, right? There are no ex­cep­tions. Of course I've done some sneaky things. Us­ing con­nec­tions to get my kid in­to a pres­ti­gious school. I'm hu­man. But be­ing hu­man al­so means we have to abide by cer­tain rules...oh, that's right, you weren't able to steal that, huh? The top se­cret agen­da al­so had in­for­ma­tion on the Pro­gram. I'll tell you now, this coun­try needs the Pro­gram. The thing is, it's not an ex­per­iment at all. Come on, why do you think we have the lo­cal news broad­cast the im­age of the win­ner? Of course, view­ers might feel sor­ry for him or her, think­ing, the poor stu­dent prob­ably didn't even want to play the game, but had no choice but to fight the oth­ers. In oth­er words, ev­ery­one ends up con­clud­ing, you cant trust any­one, right? Which would ex­tin­guish any hope of unit­ing and form­ing a coup d'etat against the gov­ern­ment, hm? And so the Re­pub­lic of Greater East Asia and its ide­als will live on for eter­ni­ty. Nat­ural­ly ev­ery­one has to die equal­ly for the sake of this no­ble goal. I've passed this wis­dom on­to my kids. My old­est kid is in the sec­ond grade now and she's al­ways say­ing how she'll sac­ri­fice her life for the Re­pub­lic."

Shogo's cheeks be­gan to trem­ble. "You're...in­sane," he said, "You're out of your mind! How can you be like that?" He was near­ly sob­bing, "A gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to serve the needs of the peo­ple. We shouldn't be slaves to our own sys­tem. If you think this coun­try makes sense...then you're in­sane!"

Sakamochi let him fin­ish. Then he said, "Hey, Kawa­da. You're still a kid. It looks like you guys had some talks, but I want you to think a lit­tle more. This is a mar­velous coun­try. It's the most pros­per­ous coun­try in the world. Well, you might not be able to trav­el abroad much, but its in­dus­tri­al ex­ports are un­sur­passed. The gov­ern­ment's slo­gan is telling the truth when it claims our per capi­ta pro­duc­tion is the best in the world. The thing is though, this pros­per­ity on­ly comes as a re­sult of uni­fy­ing the pop­ula­tion with a pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment at the cen­ter. A cer­tain de­gree of con­trol is al­ways nec­es­sary. Oth­er­wise...we'll de­cline in­to a third-​rate coun­try, like the Amer­ican Em­pire. You know, right? That coun­try is in tur­moil from all kinds of prob­lems like drugs, vi­olence, and ho­mo­sex­ual­ity. They're liv­ing off their past glo­ry, but it'll on­ly be a mat­ter of time be­fore they fall apart."

Shogo re­mained silent. He clenched his teeth. Then he spoke qui­et­ly, "Let me say one thing."

Sakamochi raised his brow. "What? Go ahead."

"You guys might call it pros­per­ity, but..." Shogo's voice sound­ed tired, but still dig­ni­fied, "...it'll al­ways be pho­ny. That truth won't change even if you kill me now. You're doomed to be pho­ny. Don't for­get...that."

Sakamochi shrugged his shoul­ders. "Are you done with your speech?" He point­ed his gun at him. Shogo tight­ened his mouth and glared at Sakamochi, ig­nor­ing the gun. He seemed ready to face the con­se­quences.

"Lat­er, Kawa­da." Sakamochi nod­ded as if to bid him farewell. Then his fin­ger be­gan pulling the trig­ger when-

BR­RRAT­TA...the tap­ping, type­writ­er-​like sound pierced through the room.

Sakamochi's fin­ger stopped for a mo­ment. He glanced at the door for a split sec­ond.. Jong enough to be dis­tract­ed. By the time he looked back Shogo was right in front of his face. Even though there was a ta­ble in be­tween them, he was on­ly ten cen­time­ters away. He'd moved in­stant­ly, like a ma­gi­cian, as if he'd tele­port­ed.

The rat­tling sound con­tin­ued out­side the room.

Shogo's left hand held down the gun in Sakamochi's right hand. Sakamochi froze up and looked up at Shogo's face, now with­in kiss­ing dis­tance. His long hair wasn't too messy. He didn't try to swing his hand loose from Shogo. He mere­ly looked at Shogo with his mouth closed.

The rat­tling sound again.

The door opened. "An at­tack-" No­mu­ra stopped once he grasped the sit­ua­tion and at­tempt­ed to lift his ri­fle.

Still hold­ing Sakamochi's right hand down with his left hand, Shogo spun Sakamochi's body around as if danc­ing a tan­go. As he turned, he squeezed Sakamochi's in­dex fin­ger on the trig­ger and be­gan fir­ing away. Three shots pierced No­mu­ra right above his heart. He groaned and col­lapsed. The rat­tling sound­ed loud­er now, with the door open.

Shogo looked in­to Sakamochi's eyes again. Their bod­ies still en­twined, he drove his right fist un­der Sakamochi's chin.

Sakamochi coughed out blood. His eyes stared up at Shogo. The blood spilled from his lips, drip­ping down to his chin and on­to the floor.

"I told you, it was a waste of tax mon­ey." Shogo twist­ed his fist fur­ther in­to Sakamochi's chin. Sakamochi's eyes rolled away from Shogo. Then they slow­ly rolled up­wards.

Shogo moved away from Sakamochi, and Sakamochi crashed on­to the so­fa. His throat was now ex­posed. A brown stick poked out of his wind­pipe like a strange or­na­ment. Clos­er up, the gold lo­go, "HB," on its butt-​end was vis­ible. This was one of those pen­cils that ev­ery­one, in­clud­ing Shogo and Shuya, had writ­ten, "We will kill each oth­er," but Kin­pat­su Sakamochi prob­ably had no idea.

Af­ter glanc­ing down at Sakamochi he tucked the gun in­to his belt. He dashed over to No­mu­ra, who was ly­ing face up, and picked up his ri­fle. He took the ex­tra mag­azines from his belt and left the room. He opened the two doors down the cor­ri­dor on the right, but there were on­ly rows of bunk beds. No one was in­side.

The rat­tling was ap­proach­ing him. A sol­dier came tum­bling down the stairs be­yond the nar­row cor­ri­dor. Un­armed ex­cept for the gun in his hand-maybe he'd thought he was safe now that the game was over-it was the sol­dier Kon­do, now dead.

Shogo stepped around Kon­do's body, en­tered the stair­case, and looked up.

There was Shuya Nana­hara (Male Stu­dent No. 15) hold­ing an In­gram M10, stand­ing next to Noriko Nak­agawa (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 15). They both looked down at him. They were soak­ing wet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

78

"Shogo!"

See­ing that Shogo was safe, Shuya cried in re­lief. Up­on hear­ing the gun­fire be­sides his shots, he thought they might have been too late.

Shogo ran up­stairs' with a ri­fle he'd tak­en from one of the sol­diers.

"So you're all right?"

"Yeah." Shogo nod­ded. "Sakamochi's dead. Did you get rid of ev­ery­one?"

"We got ev­ery­one on deck. But we couldn't find that one called No­mu­ra-"

"Then that's ev­ery­one. I got rid of No­mu­ra," he said. He passed by them and ran to the bridge where the pi­lot­house was lo­cat­ed.

There was one body ly­ing in the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to the pi­lot­house, then two more in­side and out­side the brief­ing room un­der the pi­lot­house. One of them was the sol­dier Tahara, the oth­ers were the ship's naval crew, but Tahara was the on­ly with a gun, and it was on­ly a pis­tol. Shuya had blown them away with the In­gram. There were two oth­ers ly­ing on deck, the first naval sol­diers Shuya killed.

Af­ter glanc­ing at Tahara's body, Shogo grabbed the rail­ing that led up to the pi­lot­house and said, "You were mer­ci­less, Shuya."

"Yeah." Shuya nod­ded. "I was."

Once he was up in the pi­lot­house, there were two more of Shuya's vic­tims, crew mem­bers sprawled in the cor­ner. In the dark win­dow were sev­er­al holes formed ei­ther from stray bul­lets or shots that had torn through the crew mem­bers.

The ship passed an is­land lit up with res­iden­tial lights (prob­ably Megi­ji­ma). Shuya won­dered whether the gun­fire could be heard over there or even fur­ther in­to the sea around them. Well, it wasn't that un­com­mon to hear sud­den gun­fire in this coun­try, so he wasn't too wor­ried.

Shogo looked straight ahead. Shuya and Noriko looked in the same di­rec­tion and saw what looked like a grav­el car­ri­er ap­proach­ing them on their right. Shogo held the steer­ing wheel and shift­ed the bar next to it me­thod­ical­ly.

"I hope you didn't catch a cold," Shogo asked.

"I'm fine."

"And you, Noriko?"

"I'm okay too." Noriko nod­ded.

Shogo squint­ed ahead as he said, "I'm sor­ry. I did the easy work this time." The grav­el car­ri­er was ap­proach­ing.

"That's not true," Shuya re­spond­ed as his eyes shut­tled be­tween Shogo's hands and the ship ahead of them. "I wasn't in any con­di­tion to take on Sakamochi. He was armed. You were the right man."

As he kept watch, the car­ri­er loomed larg­er and larg­er. But...they man­aged to skim past each oth­er. The car­ri­er's lights re­ced­ed.

"Phew." Shogo took a deep breath and then let go of the steer­ing wheel. He be­gan press­ing the in­tri­cate rows of but­tons on the nau­ti­cal in­stru­ments. He gazed at the pan­el for a while, and af­ter see­ing one of the diodes go out, he took the ra­dio trans­mit­ter. A voice came through the speak­er, "This is the Bisan Se­to In­land Sea Traf­fic Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vice Cen­ter." That's what it sound­ed like.

Shogo re­spond­ed, "This is De­fense Pa­trol Ship DM 245-3568. We need you to con­firm our lo­ca­tion."

"DM 245-3568, we can­not con­firm. Are you hav­ing trou­ble?"

"Our DPS nav­iga­tion de­vice seems to be bro­ken. We will stop the boat for an hour or so to re­pair the de­vice. Could you no­ti­fy the oth­er ships?"

"Yes. We need your present lo­ca­tion."

Shogo read off the dis­play on the nau­ti­cal in­stru­ment. Then he end­ed the trans­mis­sion.

He was on­ly buy­ing time to move the ship some­where. Shogo steered the wheel now and made a sharp left turn. Shuya felt the ship rock from the wide turn.

As he cau­tious­ly han­dled the wheel Shogo said, "That bas­tard Sakamochi re­al­ized what was go­ing on. I'm glad I had you guys get on board."

Shuya nod­ded. Wa­ter dripped down from his bangs.

He was right. Af­ter Shogo had shot his gun twice in­to the air, he pressed his fin­gers against his mouth, sig­nal­ing Shuya and Noriko, who were both blink­ing, to stay qui­et. He took his map out of his pock­et and scrib­bled on the back­side. The note was ob­scured in the dim light, but they man­aged to read it. Then Shogo re­moved their col­lars. All he used was a wire at­tached to a tran­sis­tor-which he had for some rea­son-a knife, and small screw­driv­er. And then Shogo took out a sim­ple lad­der made of bam­boo and rope from his day pack. He scrib­bled more on the map, "Sneak in­to the ship they put me on. It'll be night­time, so you'll be fine. Make your way to the har­bor by beach. There'll be a chain tied to the an­chor. Tie the rope lad­der to it and hold on. Once the an­chor comes up, and the ship starts mov­ing, climb up to the deck and hide be­hind the life pre­servers on the ship's stern. Then at­tack when the time's right."

Of course...it was no easy feat hold­ing on­to this flim­sy rope lad­der as the ship sped up, stirred up waves, and dragged them through the sea. It was al­so hard to reach the deck less than half a me­ter above the top of the lad­der. With­out his left arm, Shuya just couldn't do what should have been an easy task. But Noriko man­aged to lift her­self up there de­spite her wound­ed hand, then of­fered a hand to Shuya. Noriko's strength took Shuya by sur­prise. In any case...they man­aged to do it.

"But..." Shuya said, "...1 wish you'd told us about this ear­li­er."

Shogo re­turned the wheel to the right and coy­ly shrugged his shoul­ders.

"It would have made our ac­tions less nat­ural. Sor­ry, though."

He let go of the wheel. The black sea spread out in front of them. For the time be­ing, there was no sign of any ship ap­proach­ing. Shogo then be­gan check­ing sev­er­al of the ship's me­ters.

"It's amaz­ing," Noriko said. "You man­aged to hack in­to the gov­ern­ment com­put­er sys­tem."

"Yeah, re­al­ly," Shuya agreed. "You were ly­ing about be­ing com­put­er il­lit­er­ate."

His gaze still fixed ahead, Shogo grinned. "Well, they found out any­way. Any­way, it all end­ed up work­ing out."

Shogo seemed sat­is­fied with the me­ter read­ings and moved away. He walked up to one of the sol­diers on the floor. Won­der­ing what he was do­ing, Shuya and Noriko looked on as Shogo went through his pock­ets.

"Damn," he said, "So even the De­fense Forces aren't smok­ing now."

He was look­ing for cigarettes.

He did man­age to ex­tract a crum­pled pack of Buster from the oth­er sol­dier's breast pock­et. The pack was cov­ered in blood, but he ca­su­al­ly pulled out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit it up. He leaned against the side of the helm, and as he squint­ed his eyes, he ex­haled con­tent­ed­ly.

As she watched him Noriko said, "If our group was too large...we wouldn't have been able to es­cape like this."

Shogo nod­ded. "That's true. And it had to be at night. But there's no point in go­ing over that. We're alive. Isn't that enough?"

Shuya nod­ded. "That's right."

"Why don't you two go take a show­er," Shogo said, "It's in front of the stairs. It's tiny, but it should have hot wa­ter. You can just steal the sol­diers' clothes."

Shuya nod­ded and put the In­gram down on­to the low desk by the wall. He clutched Noriko's shoul­der. "Come on, Noriko. You go first. Wouldn't want you to get sick again."

Noriko nod­ded. They were about to head to­wards the stairs when Shogo stopped them. "Shuya," he said, "wait, hold on." He rubbed out his cigarette against the bot­tom of the helm. "First I'll show you how to steer this ship."

Shuya raised his brow. He fig­ured that Shogo would take care of guid­ing the ship. Come to think of it, Shogo prob­ably want­ed to take a show­er too. Shuya and Noriko would have to steer the ship then.

Shuya nod­ded again and re­turned to the helm with Noriko.

Shogo took an­oth­er deep breath and light­ly tapped on the wheel. "I'm steer­ing the ship man­ual­ly right now. It's less con­fus­ing than hav­ing it on au­to-​pi­lot. Now this..." Shogo in­di­cat­ed the lever by the helm. "It's like an ac­cel­er­ator and brake. Tilt­ing it for­ward in­creas­es the speed and back­wards slows it down. Sim­ple, huh? And over here..." Shogo point­ed at the round me­ter in­stalled right above the wheel. The thin nee­dle was tilt­ed left­ward. It was sur­round­ed with num­bers and let­ters in­di­cat­ing di­rec­tions. "This is a gy­ro com­pass. It gives our di­rec­tion. You see that ocean map?"

Shogo in­di­cat­ed the route they were tak­ing to weave their way through the is­lands and reach the main­land Hon­shu from their cur­rent po­si­tion east of Megi­ji­ma Is­land. They would be best off, he said, land­ing on some hid­den beach in Okaya­ma Pre­fec­ture. Then he pro­vid­ed sim­ple in­struc­tions for the radar and depth gauge.

He touched his chin. "That's about it for your crash course. That's enough to steer this thing. Now, you al­ways steer right of an on­com­ing ship. And the oth­er thing is that you can't stop im­me­di­ate­ly. As you ap­proach the shore you have to slow down well in ad­vance. Got that?"

Shuya raised his brow again. He won­dered, why is he ad­vis­ing me about dock­ing too? He con­tin­ued to nod, though.

Shogo added, "The notes I gave you guys. Do you still have them? It ac­tu­al­ly has your con­tact in­for­ma­tion."

"Yeah...we have them. But...you're com­ing with us, right? Right?"

Shogo didn't re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly to Shuya's ques­tion. He took out one of the cigarettes he'd stuffed in­side his pock­et, put it in his mouth, and lit his lighter. It lit up...but right then Shuya no­ticed some­thing strange. Shogo's hand hold­ing the lighter was trem­bling.

Noriko seemed to have no­ticed too. Her eyes were wide open.

"Shogo-"

"You guys asked me..." Shogo said over Shuya's words, his cigarette dan­gling from his mouth. His trem­bling hand tossed the lighter by the helm. He con­tin­ued, "...to come with you to the U.S." He re­moved the cigarette from his mouth with his shak­ing hand and ex­haled. "I thought it over. But..." He stopped and put his cigarette in his mouth. He re­moved it, then he blew out smoke. "It looks like I won't need to an­swer that any­more."

Sud­den­ly, Shogo's body slid down. His head slumped for­ward as he fell on his knees.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

79

"Shogo!"

Shuya ran over to Shogo and grabbed his right arm and held him up. Noriko al­so ran over to him and held his left arm from the oth­er side.

Emp­tied of strength, Shogo's body felt heavy. That was when Shuya fi­nal­ly re­al­ized how Shogo's back was soaked. There was a tiny hole right be­low his neck. It was Kazuo's shot. The one Kazuo fired at him. Shogo claimed it was noth­ing. Why...why didn't he treat it im­me­di­ate­ly!? Or did he know it was fa­tal? Or...did he de­lay it so Shuya and Noriko could get aboard?

In their arms, Shogo's body slow­ly gave way, and he slumped down on his butt.

"I'm sleepy. Let me sleep," he said.

"No, no, no, no!" Shuya screamed. "We'll take you to the near­est hos­pi­tal!"

"Don't be ridicu­lous," Shogo laughed and like the two sol­diers sprawled in the cor­ner of the room, he lay down on his side.

"Please." Shuya knelt down and touched Shogo's shoul­der. "Please get up."

"Shogo." Noriko was cry­ing.

"Noriko!" Shuya scold­ed her. Noriko looked over at Shuya. "Don't cry! Shogo can't die!"

"Shuya. Don't get an­gry with her over noth­ing," Shogo kind­ly ad­mon­ished him, "You have to be kind to your girl." Then he added. "Be­sides, sor­ry, but I'm go­ing."

Shogo's face be­came in­creas­ing­ly pale. In con­trast, the scar above his left brow was dark red now like a cen­tipede.

"Shogo..."

"I-​I-​I'm still not sure..." Shogo said. His head be­gan to trem­ble. But he con­tin­ued mov­ing his lips, "...whether I'm go­ing to join you. B-​b-​but IT w-​want to th-​thank you guys."

Shuya shook his head over and over. He stared at Shogo. He couldn't say any­thing.

Shogo raised his trem­bling right hand. "G-​g-​good­bye."

Shuya held his hand.

"N-​N-​Noriko, you too."

Hold­ing back her tears, Noriko held Shogo's hand.

Shuya now re­al­ized Shogo was dy­ing. No, he had al­ready known, but now he was ac­cept­ing it. What else could he do? He tried to come up with some­thing to say. He knew what it was.

"Shogo."

Shogo's eyes drowsi­ly shift­ed over from Noriko to Shuya.

"I'll tear this fuck­ing coun­try down for you! I'll tear it down, god­damn it!"

Shogo grinned. His hand fell from Noriko's hand on­to his chest. Noriko fol­lowed his hand, and squeezed it.

Shogo closed his eyes. He seemed to be grin­ning again. Then he said, "I-​I-​I-​I-​I told you, Sh-​Sh-​Sh-​Shuya. Y-​y-​you d-​don't h-​have to d-​d-​do th-​th-​that. F-​f-​for­get about i-​i-​it. You't-​t-​t-​two sh-​sh-​should just try't-​to 1-1-live, p-​p-​please. J-​j-​just like w-​w-​we d-​did here,'t-​t-​trust each oth­er. A-​a-​all right?"

Shogo said this much and took a long, deep breath. His eyes re­mained shut.

"That's what I want," he de­clared.

That was it. Shogo stopped breath­ing. The dim yel­low light falling from the ceil­ing of the pi­lot­house shined against his pale face. He seemed at ease.

"Shogo!" Shuya yelled. He still had more to say. "You'll see Keiko! You'll be hap­py with her! You're-"

It was too late. Shogo couldn't hear any­thing any­more. But his face just looked so damned peace­ful.

"Damn it." Shuya's lips trem­bled along with his words. "Damn it."

Hold­ing Shogo's hands, Noriko was cry­ing.

Shuya al­so put his hand on Shogo's thick hand. A thought oc­curred to him. He searched through Shogo's pock­ets and found it...the red bird call. He pressed it in­to Shogo's right hand and closed his hands over it so he could hold it. Shuya then fi­nal­ly burst in­to tears.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Epi­logue

UME­DA, OS­AKA

In the bustling crowd at the Ume­da-​Os­aka train ter­mi­nal, each pedes­tri­an busy for what­ev­er rea­son, Shuya Nana­hara (Male Stu­dent No. 15, Third Year Class B, Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School) heard the an­nounce­ment, "We have this re­port on the re­cent mur­der of a Pro­gram In­struc­tor in Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture," as he was step­ping off one of the pair of es­ca­la­tors that ran along the sta­tion's wide stair­ways. He gen­tly squeezed Noriko Nak­agawa's (Fe­male Stu­dent No. 15, same school) shoul­der with his right hand and stopped.

On the gi­ant TV screen as high as the es­ca­la­tor, there was a large, close­up im­age of a re­porter in his fifties, his hair part­ed in a 7:3 ra­tio.

Shuya and Noriko walked up to the screen to­geth­er. It was Mon­day, past 6 p.m., so there were stu­dents and salary­men in busi­ness suits wait­ing around the area. Shuya and Noriko were no longer wear­ing their school uni­forms. Shuya wore a pair of jeans, a print shirt, and a den­im jack­et. Noriko al­so wore jeans along with a dark-​green po­lo shirt and a light-​gray wind­break­er on top. (They did how­ev­er keep their sneak­ers, wash­ing them af­ter the game be­fore they wore them again.) Shuya's neck was ban­daged, but it was hid­den by the jack­et col­lar, and Noriko's left cheek was cov­ered with a large ban­dage, but it was ob­scured by her black leather base­ball cap that she kept pulled low over her eyes. She still dragged her right leg, but it wasn't so con­spic­uous any­more. Since his left arm was still par­alyzed, Shuya shift­ed the bag strap against his left shoul­der with his right hand.

Shogo's notes in­di­cat­ed the name of a doc­tor and his ad­dress in the city of Kobe. A small clin­ic in the back streets of the city, prob­ably sim­ilar to the one Shogo's fa­ther ran. The doc­tor who still seemed to be in his twen­ties warm­ly wel­comed them and treat­ed their wounds.

"Shogo's fa­ther was a se­nior of my dad's in med­ical school. I owe a lot to that man too, though," the doc­tor said. He seemed to be well-​con­nect­ed, and the fol­low­ing day, that is, yes­ter­day, he ar­ranged their es­cape from the coun­try. "Shogo had me hold on­to some mon­ey just in case of an emer­gen­cy. We'll use that." They would first take a fish­ing boat from a small fish­ing vil­lage in Wakaya­ma Pre­fec­ture in­to the Pa­cif­ic Ocean, and then trans­fer to an­oth­er boat in the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion of the Ko­re­an Penin­su­la. "You won't have any prob­lems get­ting from Ko­rea to Amer­ica. It'll be the trans­fer from that first boat that's go­ing to be hard." The doc­tor voiced his con­cern, but Shuya and Noriko re­al­ly had no oth­er choice.

Noriko called home be­fore they left the doc­tor's house to­day. She first called a close friend from an­oth­er class, hav­ing her re­lay a mes­sage to her fam­ily to call the doc­tor's house from a pay­phone. It was a pre­cau­tion against wire­tap­ping. Shuya left Noriko alone for a while, but he could hear Noriko's sob­bing from the hall where the phone was. Shuya him­self didn't con­tact the Char­ity House. He thanked Ms. An­no and bade her good­bye in his heart. He did the same with Kazu­mi Shin­tani.

The re­porter con­tin­ued, "Due to the De­fense Forces he­li­copter's dis­per­sal of poi­son gas over Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture's Ok­ishi­ma Is­land, where this Pro­gram was held, the in­spec­tion of the site was de­layed. How­ev­er two days af­ter the in­ci­dent, the in­spec­tion was fi­nal­ly held this af­ter­noon. We now know two stu­dents are miss­ing."

The im­age changed. A zoom-​lens cam­era from sea cap­tured po­lice of­fi­cials and sol­diers in­spect­ing the is­land where Shuya and the oth­ers had fought for their lives. There were piles of corpses. For a split sec­ond, Shuya man­aged to make out two bod­ies. There were Yukie Ut­su­mi and Yoshi­to­ki Kuni­nobu, on the edge of a black pile of school coats and sailor suits, fac­ing the cam­era. De­spite the dis­per­sal of poi­son gas, their faces man­aged to stay un­harmed be­cause they had died in­doors. Shuya clenched his right fist.

"The miss­ing stu­dents are Shuya Nana­hara and Noriko Nak­agawa, third-​year stu­dents of Shi­roi­wa Ju­nior High School in Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture." The screen now dis­played large close­up pho­tos side by side. They were the same pho­tos used for their stu­dent I.D. cards. Shuya shift­ed his eyes, but no one in the crowd star­ing at the screen seemed to no­tice them.

An im­age of an emp­ty coast right be­side a moun­tain ap­peared. As the cam­era zoomed in, a small mil­itary-​col­ored pa­trol ship which had run ashore ap­peared, and was now be­ing ex­am­ined by po­lice of­fi­cials and sol­diers on the beach. This seg­ment was shot im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent be­came known, so it was less re­cent.

"On the ear­ly morn­ing of the twen­ty-​fourth, the Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture Pro­gram In­struc­tor Sakamochi's pa­trol ship was found on the shores of Ushi­ma­do-​cho in Okaya­ma Pre­fec­ture. In­struc­tor Sakamochi and nine Spe­cial De­fense Forces sol­diers, in­clud­ing Pri­vate Tok­ihiko Tahara were dis­cov­ered along with the Pro­gram's win­ner, Shogo Kawa­da." Sakamochi's close­up pho­to ap­peared. He had long hair. "Sus­pect­ing there was a con­flict, the po­lice and De­fense Forces of­fi­cials pro­ceed­ed to in­ves­ti­gate. Au­thor­ities now be­lieve the two miss­ing stu­dents from to­day's re­port may pro­vide the cru­cial link to the in­ci­dent. They are cur­rent­ly search­ing..."

The re­porter con­tin­ued, but Shuya was too pre­oc­cu­pied with the fol­low­ing to lis­ten.

It was a short clip sub­ti­tled, "Win­ner Shogo Kawa­da- Found Dead." Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, they would have on­ly shown a gener­ic sub­ti­tle, "Male Stu­dent Win­ner," and the short seg­ment would have on­ly been broad­cast on the Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture lo­cal news. Shuya and Noriko watched the news at the Kobe doc­tor's house sev­er­al times, but they on­ly showed Shogo's pho­to. This was the first time they saw this clip.

Held be­tween the sol­diers, Shogo stared in­to the cam­era. Then-

At the end of the clip, which last­ed ap­prox­imate­ly ten sec­onds, he grinned and raised his right fist with his thumb point­ing up.

The crowd star­ing at the screen sound­ed dis­mayed. They prob­ably thought Shogo was proud about his vic­to­ry.

But of course that wasn't it at all, Shuya thought as he watched the screen re­turn to the im­age of the re­porter.

Was it a mes­sage to him and Noriko? Did he al­ready know he was go­ing to die when he stood in front of the gov­ern­ment cam­era? Or was it just a dis­play of his unique sense of irony?

I'll nev­er know. Just as Shogo once said.

Then Shuya and Noriko's close­up pho­tos were dis­played again.

"Any sight­ings should be re­port­ed to..."

"Let's go Noriko. We have to hur­ry," Shuya whis­pered. He took her left hand with his right hand. They turned away from the screen and be­gan walk­ing.

"Shogo told me..." Noriko said as they walked, hold­ing hands, "be­fore you came back...when you were with Yukie's group, he told me some­thing."

Shuya tilt­ed his head and looked at Noriko.

Noriko looked up at Shuya. Her eyes cov­ered by the brim of her hat were moist. "He said he was glad to have such good friends."

Shuya looked up and nod­ded. He just nod­ded.

They let a group of six or sev­en stu­dents pass by, and then they start­ed walk­ing again. Shuya said, "Noriko. We'll al­ways be to­geth­er. I promised Shogo."

Noriko seemed to be nod­ding.

"For now we es­cape...but some day I'm go­ing to tear this coun­try down. I'm still keep­ing the promise I made to Shogo. I want to tear it down for Shogo, for you, for Yoshi­to­ki, for ev­ery­one. Will you help me when the time comes?"

Noriko squeezed Shuya's hand and replied as­sertive­ly, "Of course, I will."

They de­part­ed from the crowd. They stood in front of a tick­et dis­penser. Noriko looked up at the dis­play above the tick­et ma­chine, took out some change, and count­ed it out. Then she stood in line in front of the tick­et ma­chine to buy their tick­ets.

Shuya stood still, wait­ing for Noriko's turn to come. It came im­me­di­ate­ly. She put the coins in­to the coin slot.

Shuya ca­su­al­ly looked over to his left.

He squint­ed his eyes. There was the en­trance to the sta­tion con­course, and he could make out the Os­aka high-​rise dis­trict, just be­yond the road where taxis and cars were pass­ing each oth­er. A tall, uni­formed man emerged from this back­ground, head­ing straight to­wards them. He skill­ful­ly dodged the flow of pedes­tri­ans and made his way to­ward Shuya.

It was a po­lice­man's uni­form. There was a gold peach in­signia shin­ing at the cen­ter of his cap.

With his right hand Shuya slow­ly reached for the Beretta M92F tucked in the back of his jeans as he looked for an es­cape route. There was a road at the en­trance op­po­site the po­lice­man. If they could get there, they could grab a cab-

Shuya whis­pered to Noriko, who re­turned with their tick­ets, "For­get about the train, Noriko."

Noriko un­der­stood. She quick­ly turned and opened her eyes wide af­ter see­ing the po­lice­man.

"That way," Shuya said. The po­lice­man came run­ning at them.

"We have to run, Noriko! Run as fast as you can!" he said. As they dashed out, Shuya thought, hey, doesn't that sound fa­mil­iar.

He glanced be­hind him. The po­lice of­fi­cer held out his gun. Shuya pulled out his Beretta. The of­fi­cer shot im­me­di­ate­ly. BANG BANG. Two sweep­ing shots, but luck­ily no one in the crowd, in­clud­ing Shuya and Noriko, was hit. There were cries though, as some fell to the ground for cov­er, while oth­ers hav­ing no idea where the gun­fire came from scat­tered in ran­dom di­rec­tions. The of­fi­cer, his gun down, ran to­ward them again, but then crashed in­to a fat wom­an car­ry­ing gro­ceries, and clum­si­ly fell. The wom­an fell too, and her bag of veg­eta­bles for din­ner tum­bled and slid on the floor.

That was all Shuya saw. He was look­ing ahead now.

As he ran next to Noriko, a thought sud­den­ly oc­curred to him. The scream­ing, their hasty foot­steps, and the of­fi­cer warn­ing them to stop all re­ced­ed as his mind was oc­cu­pied with this thought.

It might have been in­ap­pro­pri­ate. And be­sides...he'd ripped it off. Oh, man.

But still he thought this:

To­geth­er Noriko we'll live with the sad­ness. I'll love you with all the mad­ness in my soul. Some­day girl I don't know when we're gonna get to that place. Where we re­al­ly want to go and we'll walk in the sun. But till then tramps like us ba­by we were born to run.

The scream­ing and yelling swelled back, re­turn­ing with the sound of Noriko's heavy breath­ing and his heart thump­ing.

We're still on the run. That's for sure.

Right on. This time we're on.

And we won't stop till we win.

Now, once again, "2 stu­dents re­main­ing." But of course they're part of you now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pub­lished by VIZ Me­dia, LLC 295 Bay Street, San Fran­cis­co, CA 94133

© 1999 Koushun Taka­mi.

En­glish trans­la­tion © 2003 by Yu­ji Oni­ki/VIZ Me­dia, LLC.

All rights re­served.

First pub­lished in Japan by Ota Shup­pan in 1999

"Born To Run" by Bruce Spring­steen.

Copy­right © 1975 Bruce Spring­steen (AS­CAP).

All rights re­served. Reprint­ed by per­mis­sion.

Ex­cerpt from HOMAGE TO CAT­ALO­NIA by George Or­well, copy­right 1952 and re­newed 1980 by So­nia Brownell Or­well, reprint­ed by per­mis­sion of Har­court, Inc.

Ed­ito­ri­al ac­knowl­edge­ment: To­mo Machiya­ma

No unau­tho­rized re­pro­duc­tion of any por­tion of this book is per­mit­ted with­out writ­ten con­sent of the pub­lish­er. The sto­ries, char­ac­ters, in­sti­tu­tions, and in­ci­dents men­tioned in this book are en­tire­ly fic­tion­al. Any re­sem­blance is pure­ly co­in­ci­den­tal.

Print­ed in the U.S.A.

IS­BN 1-56931-778-X

First print­ing, Febru­ary 2003 Twelfth print­ing, March 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT THE AU­THOR

Koushun Taka­mi was born in 1969 in Am­agasa­ki near Os­aka and grew up in Ka­gawa Pre­fec­ture of Shikoku, where he cur­rent­ly re­sides. Af­ter grad­uat­ing from Os­aka Uni­ver­si­ty with a de­gree in lit­er­ature, he dropped out of Ni­hon Uni­ver­si­ty's lib­er­al arts cor­re­spon­dence-​course pro­gram. From 1991 to 1996 he worked for the pre­fec­tural news com­pa­ny Shikoku Shin­bun, re­port­ing on var­ious fields, in­clud­ing pol­itics, po­lice re­ports, and eco­nomics. Al­though he has an En­glish teach­ing cer­tifi­cate, he has yet to vis­it the Unit­ed States.

Bat­tle Royale, com­plet­ed af­ter Taka­mi left the news com­pa­ny, was re­ject­ed in the fi­nal round of a lit­er­ary com­pe­ti­tion spon­sored by a ma­jor pub­lish­er due to the crit­ical con­tro­ver­sy it pro­voked among ju­ry mem­bers. With its pub­li­ca­tion in Japan in 1999, though, Bat­tle Royale re­ceived widespread sup­port, par­tic­ular­ly from young read­ers, and be­came a best­seller. In 2000, Bat­tle Royale was se­ri­al­ized as a com­ic and made in­to a fea­ture film.

Mr. Taka­mi is cur­rent­ly work­ing on his sec­ond nov­el.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT THE TRANS­LA­TOR

Yu­ji Oni­ki is a writ­er and trans­la­tor.

]]>