Battle Royale

Leaving these resources behind, they came up here. Shinji stared into the dark. The foot of the northern mountain, where they were now, spread out around this side of the school, in other words, the north side, and his right, the west side. To the left of the school, the woods on the east extended up to the northern side of the residential area and the seashore. Beyond the school there were paddy fields. There were clusters of trees here and there, and between them he could see some houses. Beyond the houses, Shinji could barely make out the farm coop warehouse where they had left all their equipment. Immediately to the left the area became gradually crowded with rows of roofs that extended over the border of the forbidden zone into the residential area.

Yutaka tapped him on the shoulder. Shinji looked to Yutaka, who was on his right. Yutaka pulled out his student notepad and began writing something.

That's right, before they started moving, Shinji had warned Yutaka with another message that they mustn't give anything away by talking. After all, if Sakamochi and his men found out they were up to no good again, this time Shinji was sure they wouldn't hesitate to blow their heads off by remote control.

He'd already gone over why Sakamochi chose not to ignite Shinji and Yutaka's collars. It was probably because it was best for the game if the students fought each other as much as possible. Shinji had some theories about this. It had to do with a rumor he'd heard that high-ranking government officials placed bets on this game. If that was true, then he was sure the star shooting guard of Shiroiwa Junior High, The Third Man, must have been the top seed. All the more reason why Sakamochi couldn't just finish him off. That was Shinji's hypothesis. Meanwhile Yoshitoki Kuninobu and Fumiyo Fujiyoshi were irrelevant players. Or, to be blunt, no one had placed any bets on them.

Still, even if that were true (what a bastard that "Kinpati Sakamocho" was), as long as Sakamochi was in charge of this game, he could blow their heads off at any time. Shinji could only pray that wouldn't happen until they managed to bomb the school. Of course Shinji found the idea despicable. The thought of someone else having so much control over him was entirely revolting to Shinji, who learned from his uncle how to be totally self-reliant for everything in his life. As he looked down at the light from the school though, he shook his head. That was neither here nor there.

He recalled his uncle once telling him, "Don't worry about stuff you can't do anything about. You do what you can even if your chances of success are less than one percent."

Yutaka seemed done writing his message and tapped his shoulder. Shinji turned away from the view and examined the note under the moonlight.

There's no way we can toss that enormous rope over there. Besides we left the rope behind. What are we going to do?

That's right. He hadn't explained that yet. They'd been too frantic in their search for the equipment. Shinji nodded, took out his pencil, and wrote on the student notepad Wire. I brought some. We'll reel out the wire down to the other side and tie it to the rope. Then we'll draw in the rope by pulling the wire right before we execute our plan.

He handed the pad over to Yutaka. After reading the note, he looked at Shinji and nodded, as if satisfied. Then he wrote You're going to tie a rock to the wire and throw it over there?

Shinji shook his head. Yutaka opened his eyes, surprised. Then after some thought he wrote again Are you going to make a bow and arrow and shoot the wire across?

Shinji shook his head again. He took the pad and began scribbling That might work. But even I can't throw a rock 300m away. And I can't afford to miss. If the rock hits the school we're done. And if the wire gets caught somewhere and we end up breaking it... I have a better plan.

Yutaka didn't take up his pencil this time and only gazed back at Shinji as if saying, "?" Shinji took the pad and continued First, tie the wire to a tree here. Then go down the mountain with the other end of wire. Stretch it taut when we're on the other side.