Battle Royale

Shogo then continued, "What I mean is that, even a dumb ass like me can think everything's pointless. Why do I get up and eat? It all ends up shit anyway. Why am I going to school and studying? Even if I happen to succeed I'm going to die anyway. You wear nice clothes, you seek respect, you make a lot of money, but what's the point? It's all pointless. Of course, this kind of meaninglessness might suit this crappy nation. But...but, you see, we still have emotions like joy and happiness, right? They may not amount to much. But they fill up our emptiness. That's the only explanation I have. So...these emotions are probably missing from Kazuo. He's got no foundation for values. So he merely chooses. He doesn't have a solid foundation. He just chooses as he goes... Like for this game he might just as well have chosen not to participate. But he decided to. That's my little theory."

He said all of this at once and then concluded, "Yeah, it is scary that someone could live a life like that...and that we have to take on someone like that right now."

They fell silent. Shogo took one more drag from his shortened cigarette and then rubbed it out against the ground. Shuya took another sip from his cup of soup. Then he looked up at the cloudy sky over the edge of Shogo's thatched roof.

"I wonder if Hiroki is all right."

He'd mentioned the gunfire he heard after he left the lighthouse. He was still worried about it.

"I'm sure he's all right," Noriko said.

Shuya looked at Shogo. "I wonder if we'll be able to see any smoke."

Shogo nodded. "Don't worry. We can see smoke coming from anywhere on this island. I'll check periodically."

Shuya then remembered the bird call. It led him to them. But why did Shogo have such an odd thing to begin with? He was about to ask him when Noriko said, "I wonder if Hiroki met up with Kayoko Kotohiki."

"If he did, we'd be seeing smoke," Shogo answered.

Noriko nodded and then mumbled, "I wonder why he had to see Kotohiki."

This came up when they were in the medical clinic. Shuya's response was the same. "Beats me."

"They didn't seem all that close."

But then Noriko said, "Oh...," as if she'd realized something.

Shuya looked up. "What?"

"I don't know for sure." Noriko shook her head. "But maybe..." She emphasized her last vowel. Shuya knit his brows.

"Maybe what?"

"That would be..."

Shogo interrupted them. Shuya looked over at him. Shogo was tearing the seal off a new pack of cigarettes and continued, his eyes glued to the pack, ".. .too corny...in this fucking game."

"But...," Noriko continued, "...it's Hiroki, so..."

Shuya looked back and forth at them, utterly perplexed.

8 students remaining

68

Kayoko Kotohiki (Female Student No. 8) was hugging her knees in the bushes. She was on the southern slope of the northern mountain, in sector E=7.

Evening was approaching, but the light coming through the bushes didn't change much. It just stayed dark. In the afternoon, the area was covered with thick clouds, and just two hours ago it finally began raining.

Kayoko wrapped a handkerchief around her head to shield herself from the rain. Thanks to the branches over her, the rain didn't hit her directly, but her shoulders were drenched. She was cold. And of course more importantly... she was terrified.

Kayoko had first hidden on the eastern side of the northern mountain peak, in sector C=8. So of course she witnessed Yumiko Kusaka and Yukiko Kitano getting killed in front of her very own eyes. She held her breath. She knew that their killer was near, but she instinctively thought she would be risking more by moving. She stayed absolutely quiet. As noon and then night passed, she managed to avoid any attacks.

She moved twice in accordance to the forbidden zone announcements. The second time she moved was immediately after noon today, because the southern side of the peak, sector D=7, was going to become forbidden at 1 p.m. So the northern mountain peak was now surrounded by three forbidden zones. Her allocated area was definitely shrinking.

She hadn't met anyone yet. She heard a lot of gunfire, sometimes in the distance, sometimes near. She even heard an explosion, but she just remained still and absolutely quiet. The announcement every six hours made it clear though, the number of her classmates was steadily diminishing.

At noon there were supposedly fourteen remaining. And then there was more gunfire. Was it now just twelve? Or ten?

Kayoko put the heavy gun (Smith & Wesson M59 Automatic, manual included, but Kayoko of course could care less about the gun's name) down by her feet and massaged her right-hand fingers with her left hand. She'd been holding the gun all this time, and now the muscles in her fingers had gone numb. The palm of her hand was flushed red and imprinted with the gun-grip pattern.