Battle Royale

"I'm jealous. Even in this situation, it's still hard."

Shuya looked at her face that was no longer discernible in the dark and hesitated whether he should tell her, but then decided he should be honest with her.

"I can relate to the guy who had a crush on you though."

Noriko looked up at Shuya. Her well-defined brows seemed to quiver slightly. Her lips seemed to be forming a slightly melancholic smile.

"You're so wonderful," Shuya said.

"Thar's nice to hear even if it's not true."

"But it is."

"Can I ask you a favor?"

Shuya opened his eyes wide as if asking, "What is it?" but he wasn't sure whether Noriko could see his reaction. Noriko then leaned over slightly and gently put both of her hands on Shuya's upper arms, putting her head against his shoulder. Her shoulder-length short hair brushed up against Shuya's cheeks and ears.

They remained like this for quite some time until the dimness outside the window turned into moonlight.

21 students remaining

46

Before the dusk turned to darkness, Hirono Shimizu (Female Student No. 10) emerged from the thicket she'd been hiding in and proceeded west. It was unbearable. Her body was on fire as if she were walking in a desert under a burning sun. Water.

She needed water.

Kaori Minami had shot her in the upper left arm. After tearing open the sleeve of her sailor suit drenched in blood, she discovered the bullet had penetrated her arm. The skin on the exit wound was torn up badly. It seemed the bullet had barely missed the major blood vessels. The torn sleeve she wrapped around her arm as a bandage seemed to have stopped the bleeding for a while. But then...the wound started to burn and the sensation spread all over her body. The initial chill was replaced by a numbing heat. By the time Sakamochi made his announcement at 6 p.m. Hirono had finished off her entire supply of water. After she killed Kaori she ran approximately two hundred meters away from Shuya and hid in the thicket, but she ended up using a lot of water in her attempt to clean her wound (which she ended up deeply regretting).

Almost two hours had passed since then. For a while she'd been sweating profusely underneath her uniform, but now she wasn't sweating at all. Most likely she was approaching dehydration. In other words, unlike Noriko Nakagawa, Hirono was actually suffering from septicemia. And because she hadn't disinfected her wound, it came on quickly. Of course she had no way of knowing any of this.

The only thing she knew was that she needed...water. As she cautiously moved through the green woods of the mountain, Hirono's head spun with thoughts of hatred towards Kaori Minami. Her burning body and thirst only intensified these thoughts.

Hirono Shimizu had no intention of trusting anyone in this game. Of course she'd been tight with Mitsuko Souma forever, and according to student number she immediately preceded Mitsuko. So if she'd managed to avoid Hiroki Sugimura, who came in between their departures, she could have met up with Mitsuko, but she chose not to. Because she knew how terrifying Mitsuko really was. That's right...like when Mitsuko took on a bad-girl leader from another school (who'd by then become the mistress of a yakuza gangster). That girl ended up getting run over by a car. The injury was nearly fatal. Mitsuko didn't say anything about it, but Hirono knew Mitsuko had some guy do it. There were plenty of guys willing to do anything for Mitsuko.

If Hirono had decided to meet up with Mitsuko, Mitsuko would have probably used her as much as possible only to finally shoot her in the back. Even though she was part of the group too, the somewhat clueless Yoshimi Yahagi might trust Mitsuko (which reminded her of how Yoshimi was dead, and Hirono had a hunch that Mitsuko was the one who killed her), but Hirono was having none of that.

She couldn't imagine trusting anyone else in her class. The ones who acted nice were the ones that wouldn't think twice about killing the others now. She might have only been fifteen years old, but those fifteen years had taught her that much.