Battle Royale

by Koushun Takami

  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. "Sakamoc
hi 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 voic
e 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.)