Battle Royale

by Koushun Takami

  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 interrupt
ed 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."