Battle Royale

by Koushun Takami

  "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 sl
ightly 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."