Battle Royale

He'd started private violin lessons when he was four years old, and now he was one of the leading junior high school players in the entire prefecture. He wasn't a genius, but he wasn't mediocre either. Arrangements were made for him to enter a highly distinguished high school in Tokyo that had its own music department. As for his future career, he thought he'd at the very least become the prefectural government symphony conductor.

This gave him—so he believed—all the more reason not to die. He would attain the status of conductor, marry a beautiful, refined woman, and mingle with rich, elegant people. (His older brother Tadanori was going to inherit the company. Of course, the thought of making a lot of money as president was attractive, but I don't need to deal with food products, yuck. I'll let my vulgar brother deal with that.) He was different from his loser classmates. Their deaths wouldn't mean a thing, but he was gifted. He was precious. And even in biological terms, the superior species was destined to survive, right?

At first he only had this bulletproof vest, oddly supplied as a weapon, so all he could do was sneak away and hide, but now he had a gun. He was going to be merciless. What's this about the noble soul of a music lover? That's totally naive! It was true he was only fifteen, and he hadn't seen much of the world, but he knew what the music world was like. For those who weren't geniuses it was all about money and connections. It was all about crushing other competitors to survive.

Whether this was objectively true or not, this was what Toshinori Oda believed.

Of course, he had no close friends in Third Year Class B that was filled with the vulgar masses. In fact, he despised his vulgar classmates. Especially Shuya Nanahara.

Toshinori did not take part in the Shiroiwa Junior High Music Club, which was filled with vulgar masses who were especially vulgar. All those losers played was popular music (apparently the club office was cluttered with music sheets of illegal foreign music). That's right. Especially Shuya Nanahara.

Toshinori was vastly superior to him in term of music ability, given his ear training and understanding of music theory. And yet, in spite of that, the vulgar bitches in his class would scream out indecently at the sound of Shuya Nanahara plucking out kindergarten-level chords on his guitar (I mean come on those bitches who listen to Shuya Nanahara playing during the short break before music class, they might as well have printed on their foreheads in thick Gothic font: "Oh, Shuya, do me now, right here"). In contrast, they'd only politely applaud when Toshinori finished playing an elegant passage from an opera at the music teacher's request.

For one thing, those loser bitches could never appreciate classical music, and for another, it was only because Shuya Nanahara was good-looking (although Toshinori would never admit it, deep down inside he couldn't stand his own ugly face).

Fine. That's what women are like anyway. They're just a different species. Just a tool to produce children (and of course to provide pleasure for men when they need it), and if they were good-looking then they were just ornaments to place beside successful men. Yes, it all came down to...money and connections. And my talent is worth the investment of money and connections. Therefore...

...I deserve to be the survivor.

He heard gunfire at times throughout the night, and there was that amazing explosion to top it all off, but now the island was immersed in darkness and silence. Toshinori quickly circled the first house, passed it, and approached the second one. He could tell it was pretty old even though he could only make out its silhouette. The house was surrounded by a circle of trees, and on the west side in front was an extremely large broadleaf tree, its branches spread out. Its circumference was four to five meters, and it was seven to eight meters tall.

There shouldn't be anyone...here.

Toshinori gripped his gun and slowly moved forward, cautiously checking the house as well as the tree. Of course he didn't forget to stop and look in all directions. You never knew where the vulgar masses might show up. Just like cockroaches.

After spending a full five minutes passing by the side of the house, he looked over his shoulder and checked the house, which was surrounded by trees of various sizes. There were no suspicious movements that he could see through his open helmet's square window.

All right.

He could see the third house, the one he wanted, nearby.

...

Toshinori turned around one more time.

He thought something round and black stirred near the ground between the trees surrounding the house. It was...

...someone's head, he realized, but by then he was aiming his gun over there. But this one was wandering in an area that would become a forbidden zone soon. Who could it possibly be?...

It didn't matter.