Battle Royale (25 page)

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=ll 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
1
1 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?