They concluded the entry procession and moved on to the opening ceremony. Led by representative team members carrying their classes’ banners, the students of each class formed two columns and stood in alignment. The explosive roar of metalcore music stopped, and the grounds were silent.
Amid the solemn atmosphere, a woman clad in a white jersey calmly ascended the morning-assembly platform. She was pretty, with loosely tied black hair and eyes like polished obsidian. She clasped her hands behind her back and looked over the students with a gentle gaze.
“We now begin the Nineteenth Purgatorium Remedial Academy Athletic Festival,” Busujima announced. Kurisu was lying facedown in a pool of blood on the desk, having hit her head one too many times.
“Well then, first the chairman of the board…is, as always, shut away in solitude, so we will have a greeting from the homeroom teacher of third-year Class A, Miss Mihiro Mizuchi. Miss Mizuchi, if you please.”
“Yes.”
Nodding, the woman standing on the morning-assembly platform smiled. She surveyed the students with a disarming expression, looking as if she wouldn’t harm a single fly.
“There.”
—Blam, blam!
Faster than the eye could see, the woman—Mizuchi—pulled out a pair of pistols that had been hidden behind her back and fired twice.
“Gyah?!” Two shots rang out, and two students fell to the ground.
“““……?!”””
In the face of such astounding violence, the other students huddled together.
Mizuchi’s expression did not change in the least. “Quiet now,” she cautioned them in a gentle voice, gun barrels still raised to the sky. “Let’s refrain from whispering, everyone. If you don’t, I’ll have to fire again.”
“Ookubo, Kattaaa! Are you okay, hey?!” The fallen students were both in third-year Class B, and a classmate was checking on their status.
A girl in the same class yelled, “Miss Mizuchi?! It’s unfair! Gunning down students in other classes and reducing their fighting strength is—”
—Blam! Mizuchi fired another shot, silencing the screaming girl with a bullet.
“Sayaaaaaa?!”
—Blam! With her left-hand pistol, she gunned down a male student who was about to protest the previous shooting.
Clutching a weapon in each hand, Mizuchi was no longer smiling. A vein on her forehead bulged angrily. “…Quiet, I said. I don’t have bullets to waste on pigs who can’t follow instructions. These aren’t rubber bullets—they’re live rounds, so is there anyone else who would like one?”
“““”””
The whole student body answered Mizuchi’s stern question with silence.
“Very well,” Mizuchi said and lowered the pistols. With a sidelong glance at the casualties being loaded onto stretchers, she began her greeting with a renewed smile.
Kyousuke and the other first-year students were already trembling with fear as they listened to Mizuchi’s speech. “We’ve been blessed with good weather,” she said, and “Be careful not to get hurt,” and “Don’t push yourselves too hard.” By the tone of the opening ceremony, they could tell it would be hard going.
The athletes’ oath that followed only reinforced those feelings.
“We pledge! We players every one do hereby pledge to engage in free and uncontrolled behavior, unconstrained by sportsmanship, and to utilize any and all despicable means, including but not limited to violence, assault, insult, sexual assault, ambush, espionage, trickery, and deception, to crushingly defeat our rivals! Team member representative, Saki Shamaya.”
The extremely unorthodox contents of the oath were hardly becoming of an academy founded for the reformation of juvenile murderers. Of course, the person leading the oath was the chair of the Public Morals Committee. Just like the Summer Death Camp earlier that year, there was no doubt that this was going to be the kind of event that would never take place in a normal rehabilitation facility.
Even the first-year students who, unlike Kyousuke and the others, did not know the true nature of the academy, were likely already starting to suspect something…
“—Continuing on, we’ll have the school song.”
While singing the school song, over 70 percent of which was sung in a death-metal growl, Kyousuke peeked at the person directly to his right—the upperclassman in the kigurumi mascot suit.
He had been told that the assassination curriculum would start next year, but now that Kyousuke found himself standing in the same space, face-to-face with the upperclassmen, it became abundantly clear how different the second-year and third-year students were. They had none of the hoodlum-like roughness of the first-year students, but rather a strange sense of calm hanging over them. Their killer instincts had been honed to a fine edge. It made them all the more terrifying.
“…………”
Standing to Kyousuke’s left was the girl wearing the black gas mask.
People like Renko or Shamaya might try to hide their insanity and blend into their surroundings, but no matter how hard they pretended to be normal, they were always strange and frightening in the end—that is what Kyousuke was beginning to truly realize.
Seeing as how all the upperclassmen have been trained to be assassins…they’ve got to be a pretty evil bunch. That’s exactly why I’ve got to pull everyone together.
Standing in the middle of the athletic grounds, devoid of spectators, Kyousuke tightly clenched his fists.
With the opening ceremony finished, and Purgatory-Style Warm-Up Exercises over, the students filed out of the grounds.
The competition would finally begin, starting with the first event on the program. There were sixteen contests in all, worth varying amounts of points depending on their difficulty.
First up was the Hundred-Meter Slaughter Footrace. It was a simple contest in which the selected runners from each class would circle the track halfway, competing for first place. Although the points awarded for each individual race were very low, five races would be run in total, which meant that, taken together, a valuable number of points were on the line.
It was the first match of the first event, a memorable occasion. The participants in the first race were—
Lane 1 Chihiro Andou (First-year Class B) Rank: C+
Lane 2 Ronaldo Gacey (Second-year Class A) Rank: B
Lane 3 Kotonoha Katsura (Third-year Class A) Rank: B+
Lane 4 Hiroshi Rekuta (Second-year Class B) Rank: B+
Lane 5 Mei Kuroki (Third-year Class B) Rank: A+
Lane 6 Shinji Saotome (First-year Class A)
“And it’s already my turn, eh? Take a good look, everyone… I’ll take a magnificent first place and show you all how to get off to a good start.” Shinji, wearing a red headband, brushed his hair back and laughed boldly.
From the spectator seats, Tomomi yelled, “Kyah, Shinji! Do your beeest!” and waved the class flag.
Shinji raised his hand slightly in response to the cheering. “Hmm… Leave it to me. It might not be obvious by looking at me, but I’m a rather accomplished sportsman. My hundred-meter time is just over twelve seconds! You can be sure I won’t lose to any ordinary opponent. But—”
Shinji looked toward the runner next to him in lane five. There, armored from head to toe in all-black protective gear, was a girl with braided hair. Expressionless, she stretched in silence.
Shinji suddenly grinned and held out his right hand toward her. “Nice to meet you, miss. I’m Shinji Saotome, first-year. Wow, you’re awfully pretty, aren’t you! I’ll have to be careful not to let your feminine charms distract me from the race.”
“……That’s right,” she answered curtly, ignoring Shinji’s extended hand.
“Ah,” Kyousuke muttered at the familiar-sounding tone, as he watched over the match from the spectator seats. “That upperclassman, she led us during the woodland exploration—”
“…Y-yeah.” Maina nodded. “She’s on the Public Morals Committee, right? I wonder if Shinji c
an really win…,” she mumbled apprehensively.
At that time, she had called herself Morita, but apparently her actual family name was Kuroki. She was not wearing her silver-rimmed spectacles, which made her cold aura seem that much more frigid.
Beside her, a faintly smiling boy dressed as a clown with a bright red afro, and a girl who was staring vacantly into the air with deep-set eyes, had each taken their places.
“…Sluurp. Anything goes, so…it’s okay if I eat them, right?”
Waiting impatiently in the first lane, Chihiro’s bloodshot eyes were open wide, and she was drooling. She surveyed the other participants as if looking over her next meal.
Energetic and melodic death metal exploded out of the speakers.
“It’s showtiiiiiime! Finally starting in our bloody colosseum, the first event of the athletic festival…it’s the Slaughter Footraaaaaace! It’s funny because the name is weird!”
“Sure. Well then, everyone, are you ready? Take your places—”
The six took their starting stances.
“Get seeeeeeeeet…”
—Bang!
“Bwah?!”
The instant the gunshot rang out, Shinji’s body went flying through the air. The moment the race had begun, Kuroki had pulled out a baton and smashed it into Shinji’s side.
Spinning around and spewing bloody vomit, Shinji plunged into the first-year Class A spectator seats.
“Kyaaaaaahhh?! Wha…? Shinji, are you okay?!”
“…Bon appétiiiiiit!”
While Tomomi was dropping the class flag and screaming, the next one to pick a fight was Chihiro. Her big mouth open, she leaped toward the buttocks of the clown, who had come out in front of her at the starting dash. However—
“Ronaldo magic. ”
“……?! Huh, huhhh?”
Chihiro realized that the clown’s body was not where it had seemed as her jaws chomped fruitlessly in the air. It really was just like magic. The cannibal’s eyes darted about as she began to panic.
Avoiding her surprise attack, the clown bounded toward Chihiro, hands clapping joyfully. “Luu. Luu. Laaa. ” With a cheer, he launched a violent counterattack, landing a dropkick on Chihiro’s stomach.
“Gyahn?!”
Chihiro’s small figure went tumbling over the ground, sent flying by the force of the blow. Her breathing was labored as she writhed in agony and spewed drool everywhere.
“Sorry! Whenever Ronaldo starts having fun, he ends up killing. ”
Ahead of the laughing clown, Kuroki grabbed Shinji by the collar and pulled him back onto the track. “…That’s out of bounds.”
The clown, on the other hand, straddled Chihiro, pinning her down—
“Would ya look at thiiiiiis?! Third-year Class B’s Mei Kuroki and second-year Class A’s Ronaldo Gacey are ignoring the race and beating up on the first-yeeeears!”
The violence was entirely one-sided.
Kuroki held Shinji by the collar with her left hand, dispassionately striking his face with her baton. Ronaldo worked up a nice rhythm with his left and right punches, beating Chihiro’s face to a pulp. One of them indifferent, her expression, even her eyes unchanging; the other, entranced, his voice playful: The two carried out a savage assault, showing no mercy.
“Violeeeeeeence! The incredible Heartless! Unable to feel empathy for others, Kuroki does not understand people’s pain and suffering. She’s a demonic bitch who can perform any act with a straight face. Even things that an ordinary person couldn’t do for the pain in their heart, those feelings have no effect on Heartless! And the other one, the Cannibal Clown Ronaldo Gacey, the buffoon who tricked young children with his magical sleight of hand and killed them, then made hamburgers with one-hundred-percent human meat patties! That clown won’t stop until he makes his opponent into mincemeeeaaat!”
“Noooooo, Shinji?! Shinjiiiiii!”
“Waaahhh, chika-chika-Chihiroooooo?!”
Screams welled up from the first-years’ seats. Unable to contain herself, Tomomi tried to run over to the track, but Kurumiya pinned her arms behind her back and held her in place.
“Calm down. I told you, didn’t I? The athletic festival is a beatdown. If you go out there now, you’ll just get yourself killed, too… There are plenty of groups that don’t care about winning in the events worth fewer points, and just beat up on their opponents! That’s why I told you not to be careless, but…those idiots!” Glaring at the field, Kurumiya ground her teeth in frustration.
At first Shinji and Chihiro had fought back desperately, but their strength was exhausted in the face of the relentless violence, and finally they had collapsed.
The remaining two competitors left the four behind and had long since passed the goal line.
“…Why don’t we leave it at that.” Finally taking her hands off the unconscious Shinji, Kuroki stilled her baton. Surveying her surroundings with dull eyes, she stepped toward Ronaldo, who was even now continuing to swing his fists.
“Luu. Luu. Laaa. Luu. Luu—”
“Stop it.”
“Laaaaaa?!”
She kicked him in his bright red afro.
Staring down at Ronaldo where he lay on the ground, Kuroki held him down with a combat boot. “As a member of the Public Morals Committee, I cannot overlook any further acts of violence. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and violence for violence…which is to say, I will also destroy your face.”
“Kyyyeeeaaaiiiiii?!”
—Crunch.
Her heavy boot crashed down, crushing Ronaldo’s face. After stomping him to a pulp several more times, Kuroki walked leisurely toward the goal.
Shinji, Chihiro, and Ronaldo twitched pathetically, unable to rise. The medical team rushed over with stretchers and carried them away, heave-ho.
“Bam-bam-baaaaaam! And that’s the maaaaaatch! Third-year Class A’s Kotonoha Katsura, second-year Class B’s Hiroshi Rekuta, and third-year Class B’s Mei Kuroki finish, in that order! The remaining three were all retired! From the very beginning the upperclassmen are giving the underclassmen a bitter baptism! As expected, the upperclassmen are very strong! Can you rally yourselves, underclassmen?! We hope that you will for the following races!”
In the second and third races that followed, the first-years also suffered crushing defeats. The upperclassmen rushed to attack the new students, who were still reeling in shock after the first race. First-year Class A lost two male students to the bloodbath, and first-year Class B had one boy and one girl torn to tatters. And then—
“……Fwah.”
The fourth race. The runner from first-year Class A was a beautiful, yawning girl. Eiri, her red headband tied on like a ribbon, stood at the starting line, looking as if she didn’t feel the least bit of enthusiasm.
At her feet—
“Ah-ha! Wh-what exquisite bare legs these are…pale and smooth, with a delicate balance of muscle and fat, the lively beauty of slender feminine legs! They’re not only soft but look really flexible as well. Why, just looking at them makes me want to reach out and… Ah-ha-ha, and bloomers, too, atop Miss Akabane’s legs—could it be that Miss Kurumiya is trying to kill me with desire?! Aah, I can’t stop drooling…slurp, slurp, ha-ha…hnnnggghhh.”
Shamaya from lane five had wandered over to the first lane and was crouching low, eyes locked point-blank on the pale expanse of Eiri’s bare legs. Her slack facial expression was completely inappropriate for a young lady.
Eiri was pretending not to notice the attention, but her face had stiffened slightly. Even the students waiting in the other lanes looked a little uncomfortable.
However—
“Pardon meeeeeeeeeeee!”
As soon as the race began, Shamaya displayed her peerless strength, dispatching the competitors on both sides—from second-year Class A and third-year Class B—with powerful backhand blows.
“Gyah?!”
“Gwaah?!”
Indifferent to the sprawling, bleeding pair, Shamaya kicked
off into a run. Next she set her aim on a female student in a happi coat. The demonic hand of the Murder Princess stretched out behind the girl, who was chasing a male student in a blue T-shirt.
“You’re out of your depth. Move aside!”
“—Huh? Kyaaaaaahhh?!”
Shamaya grabbed the girl by the nape of the neck, then pulled her back and threw her down with all her strength.
The boy ahead of her turned to look, and his eye—the one that was not covered with an eye patch—opened wide. “Kuh… You mustn’t. Control yourself, Azrael! Ragnarok has only just begun—here, in this place, you mustn’t release your power, Skylit Drive—”
Ignoring Kuuga Makyouin (real name: Michirou Suzuki) as he crouched, clutching his left arm and rambling nonsense, Shamaya dashed onward, her bloodshot eyes blazing.
“Wait, Miss Akabaneeeeee! Wait, I saaaaaayyy! You simply must allow me to savor your lustrous leeeeeegs! If I catch you, first I’ll lick you all over and get you sticky with spit and then move on to the secret garden hidden by your bloomers! I’ll…ha-ha. I’ll XX, and XXX, and XXX, and get messy when I XX while everyone watches—”
“Nn…noooooooooooo!!”
Shamaya furiously chased after Eiri, who had leaped out in front at the starting dash. Fearing for her personal integrity, Eiri picked up the pace as tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.
Even so, she couldn’t shake Shamaya. The distance between them quickly narrowed, and an outstretched hand grasped at Eiri’s bloomers—
“GOOOOOOOOOOAL! Reaching the finish line first, against all expectations, it’s first-year Eiri Akabane of Class A! Holding back third-year Class A’s Saki Shamaya, she’s first to the goooaaal! An unbelievable rookie has entered the scene…seducing the goddess of victory with beautiful legs that drove Killing Mania mad, securing an unexpected victoryyy?! And also, first-year Class B has shrewdly made it to the finish!”
“Ha-ha, I got yooouuu! Oh-ho-ho…”
Murder Machine and the Catastrophic Athletic Festival Page 8