Battle Royale

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.

I 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 "Zuki," 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.