Battle Royale

He gazed at the sea. There was a strong breeze. Six girls had all died here at once. There were no guns in the room, but given how they were wounded and how the walls and floors were ridden with bullet holes, he was certain the gunshots he'd heard had occurred here. The most logical scenario was that...the girls somehow got together and cooped themselves up here, but then someone attacked them. The five girls were shot down there first, and then Yuko Sakaki managed to get this far and fell to her death without being attacked by the assailant. Then the assailant left before Hiroki got here....

But given how they'd formed a barricade at the entrance—the planks nailed over the windows, every entry point probably sealed—why would they tear the barricade down? Did the assailant shove it away as he left? But then how could he or she have entered in the first place? Could it be...there were seven of them? And one of them had suddenly betrayed the rest—no, revealed his or her true intentions? No, that can't be....The other thing was that Yuka Nakagawa didn't look like she died from gunshots. She looked like...she'd been choked. The blood splattered all over the table also didn't make any sense. How could that large amount of blood end up there? There was more. The door to that room right next to the entrance. Why was it torn down?

There was no use trying to figure it out. Hiroki shook his head, checked the roof of the building, and returned to the lantern room.

As he descended the steel spiral staircase in the dim tower and gazed at the inner walls of the lighthouse, Hiroki felt a light sensation of vertigo as if the spiral movement of the stairs were internalized. It might have been from fatigue, but still...

So now there were six students less. Sakamochi said there were fourteen students left, as of the noon announcement. Then there were at most eight students left now.

Was Kayoko Kotohiki still alive? Wasn't it possible she might have died between noon and now in some area he didn't know about?

No, Hiroki thought, she has to be alive.

Even though he could hardly justify it, for some reason he was nearly certain. Eight students remaining, possibly even less. But I'm alive, and so must be Kotohiki. This is taking too much time. It's been a day and a half since the game began, and I still haven't managed to find Kotohiki. But...I will eventually. Once again he was nearly certain.

Then he thought of Shuya's trio. None of their three names had been announced. Shogo Kawada had said, "If you're up for it, you can come aboard our train."

...was there really a way out? And would he really be able to reach that station with Kotohiki? He wasn't sure. But at the very least he wanted Kotohiki to board that train.

Shall I offer you a hand then, mademoiselle?

It sounded like something Shinji Mimura would have said. Now he saw how Shinji could be good friends with Yutaka Seto. Shinji liked to kid around. The jokes were different from Yutaka's, of course. They were more sarcastic and at times biting. Shinji seemed to value "the importance of laughing it off." At the closing ceremony before New Year's, when they were in their second year, during the regional education representative's dull speech, Shinji said, "My uncle once said laughter is essential to maintain harmony, and that that might be our only release. Do you understand that, Hiroki? I still can't quite get it."

Although he could relate to it a little, he also felt he didn't fully get it. It might have been because he was young. But in any case Shinji Mimura and Yutaka Seto were both dead now. He could no longer give Shinji a reply.

As he pondered these thoughts, soon enough he was back in the kitchen filled with five bodies. Once again Hiroki looked over the room covered in blood.

He hadn't noticed because of the stench, but now he saw the gas stove pot and caught a whiff of the appetizing odor. There was no gas of course, so they were probably in the middle of cooking using solid fuel. He went to take a look. The flame under the pot was out, but there was still steam rising from what looked like stew.

Ever since the game began he'd only had the bread the government had supplied (when he ran out of water he retrieved some from a house well), so he was famished, but he shook his head and peeled his eyes off the pot. He just couldn't bring himself to eat it. Not in this terrible room. Besides, he had to hurry...and find Kotohiki. Hurry up...and leave.

He staggered out into the hall. Not having slept at all, he was feeling dizzy.

Someone was standing at the entrance at the far end of the long corridor. Because the hall was dim, this person looked like a silhouette outlined from behind by the light.

Hiroki leaped to his side before his eyes could even open wide and crashed his way into the kitchen. All at the same time, flames came bursting from the silhouette's hands. A row of bullets raced past the tips of Hiroki's feet flying out of the hall.