I DEDICATE THIS TO EVERYONE I LOVE.
Even though it might not be appreciated.
“A STUDENT IS NOT A TANGERINE!"
- Kinpachi Sakamoto
(From Mieko Osanai's Kinpachi Sensei of Class 3-B)
"But till then tramps like us
BABY WE WERE BORN TO RUN"
- Bruce Springsteen, "Born to Run"
"It's so hard to love"
- Motoharu Sano,
"It's So Hard to Love"
"DURING ALL THOSE LAST WEEKS I SPENT THERE, THERE WAS A PECULIAR EVIL FEELING IN THE AIR-AN ATMOSPHERE OF SUSPICION, FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, AND VEILED HATRED. ... YOU SEEMED TO SPEND ALL YOUR TIME HOLDING WHISPERED CONVERSATIONS IN CORNERS OF CAF6S AND WONDERING WHETHER THAT PERSON AT THE NEXT TABLE WAS A POLICE SPY....
"I DO NOT KNOW IF I CAN BRING HOME TO YOU HOW DEEPLY THAT ACTION TOUCHED ME. IT SOUNDS A SMALL THING, BUT IT WAS NOT. YOU HAVE GOT TO REALIZE WHAT WAS THE FEELING OF THE TIME-THE HORRIBLE ATMOSPHERE OF SUSPICION AND HATRED."
- George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
Table of Contents
Cover
Opening Remarks
Prologue: Government Memo
Part One: The Game Begins 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Part Two: The Middle Game 14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
Part Three: The Endgame 52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
Part Four: Finish 74
75
76
77
78
79
Epilogue
Afterword to the 2009 Edition
OPENING REMARKS
(As Given by a Pro Wrestling Fan in an Alternate World)
What? Battle royale? You're asking what a battle royale is? Don't you know? Then what are you doing coming to a wrestling show? What? No, it's not the name of an offensive move. No, it's not the name of a championship title, either. A battle royale is a type of match. What, you mean today? Here? No, there's not gonna be one here today. They're held at bigger arenas than this—you know, a special occasion kind of thing. Hey! Hey, look! See, that's Takako Inoue. She's pretty hot, am I right? Oh, sorry, where was I? Right, battles royale. All Japan Pro Wrestling still puts them on. A battle royale is, well. . . Okay, so wrestling is usually one on one, or with two teams of two, something like that. But a battle royale has ten, maybe twenty fighters, just a big, big number of 'em, all in the ring at once. And anyone can go after anyone, one on one, or one on ten—anything goes. But no matter how many people get pinned—wait, you don't even know what a pin is? That's when your shoulders are on the mat and then comes the count, one, two, three, and on that third count, that's it, you're done. Same in a battle royale as with a normal match. Wrestlers can also forfeit, and sometimes there's even a knockout. Oh, and countouts too, when someone stays outside the ring too long. And there're disqualifications. In any case, pins are usually what does it in a battle royale.
Go! Takako, go! Take her out! Oh, ah . . . Sorry, sorry. Anyway, the ones that get pinned lose and have to leave the squared circle. And the match keeps going like that, with fewer and fewer competitors as it goes on. Of course, in the end, it's down to two. One on one, and there's the real match. One of those two is gonna go down. When it's over, only one man's standing. The winner. Victory. They give out a giant trophy and hand over the prize money. Get it? Huh? You mean the ones who are friends? Well, you see, at first, they work together. But when the end comes, they'll have to fight each other. Those are the rules. That means that sometimes, if you're lucky enough, you can see some really rare match-ups. You know, like way back with the tag team Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith. And it happened once with Road Warriors Animal and Hawk. Well, with that one, one or the other of them stepped out of the ring to let the other guy win. A real display of love, like they were brothers, you know? A letdown, if you ask me. Now see, two people who didn't always get along can still team up. But you're workin' with one guy to take out another, and your "partner" can stab you in the back just like that! Who would I like to see in a battle royale? Well, with all the rival federations that've popped up now, I'd like to see the best of each face off. Keiji Mutoh, Shinya Hashimoto, Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Nobuhiko Takada, Masakatsu Funaki, Akira Maeda, The Great Sasuke, Hayabusa, Kenji Takano, also Genichiro Tenryu and Riki Choshu, and Tatsumi Fujinami and Kengo Kimura could probably still pull it off. It'd be fun if Yoji Anjo and Super Delfin could be in it too. You never know, they might make it to the end. For the women, you have to go with Takako there. Then there's Aja Kong, Manami Toy, Kyoko Inoue, Yumiko Hotta, Akira Hokuto, Bull Nakano, Dynamite Kansai of course, Cutie Suzuki and Hikari Fukuoka, Mayumi Ozaki, Shinobu Kandori and Chigusa Nagayo, and . . . what's that? You don't know any of them? And you really came here to watch pro wrestling? Hey! No no no, Takako, fight back! Takako! Niiice.
PROLOGUE GOVERNMENT MEMO TOP SECRET
INTERNAL MEMORANDUM
1997.00387461
FROM: DIRECTOR OF DEFENSE, SPECIAL PLANNING DEPARTMENT OF THE SECRETARIAT TO THE LEADER; CHIEF OF COMBAT EXPERIMENTS, NONAGGRESSIVE FORCES STAFF OFFICE
TO: SUPERVISOR, REPUBLIC COMBAT EXPERIMENT 68TH PROGRAM, TRIAL #12, 1997
ON MAY 20, AT 18:15, A ROUTINE INSPECTION BY CENTRAL PROCESSING IDENTIFIED EVIDENCE OF AN INTRUSION INTO THE OPERATION SYSTEMS. THE INCIDENT OCCURRED IN THE EARLY HOURS OF MARCH 12, AND OUR UTMOST EFFORTS ARE FOCUSED ON THE INVESTIGATION FOR TRACES OF ANY POSSIBLE SUBSEQUENT UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.
THE IDENTITY AND OBJECTIVE OF THE PERPETRATOR, AS WELL AS THE EXTENT OF THE COMPROMISED DATA, REMAINS
UNDER INVESTIGATION. THE METHOD OF INTRUSION EMPLOYED A
HIGH DEGREE OF SKILL, AND UNCOVERING THE FULL PICTURE OF THE DAMAGES WILL LIKELY REQUIRE SIGNIFICANT TIME.
UPON RECEIVING A REPORT THAT WE COULD NOT RULE OUT THE POSSIBILITY THAT DAMAGES EXTENDED TO DATA FROM THE 68TH PROGRAM, THE OFFICE OF DEFENSE IN THE SPECIAL PLANNING DEPARTMENT OF THE SECRETARIAT TO THE LEADER AND THE COMBAT EXPERIMENTS DIVISION IN THE NONAGGRESSIVE FORCES STAFF OFFICE JOINTLY HELD AN EMERGENCY EXPLORATION INTO A POSSIBLE DELAY OF THE 1997 TRIAL #12 OF THE SAME.
HOWEVER, IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT PREPARATIONS FOR TRIAL #12 ARE ALREADY COMPLETE, AND WITH NO EVIDENCE YET FOUND OF A LEAK OF RELATED INFORMATION TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC, THE DELIBERATIONS RESULTED IN THE DECISION TO CONDUCT THE TRIAL AS PLANNED. DESPITE THIS CONCLUSION, WE WILL PURSUE A SWIFT INVESTI
GATION INTO NECESSARY CHANGES FOR TRIALS #13 AND BEYOND, AND WILL BE DEVOTING SPECIAL ATTENTION TO REVISIONS OF THE CURRENT GUADALCANAL SYSTEM.
NEVERTHELESS, GIVEN YOUR ROLE AS SUPERVISOR OF TRIAL #12, AND AS THE DIRECTOR OF ITS EXECUTION, YOU ARE TO PROCEED WITH THE UTMOST CAUTION.
FURTHERMORE, THIS INCIDENT IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET
AND IS TO BE TREATED AS SUCH.
Part One
The Game Begins
42 STUDENTS BEGIN.
As the bus entered the prefectural capital city of Takamatsu, the scenery slowly shifted from pastoral to urban. With the city came lights in multicolored neon, headlamps from oncoming traffic, and in offices left to shine through the night. A group of men and women in sharp business suits stood talking in front of a roadside restaurant, perhaps waiting for a taxi. Weary, cigarette-smoking youths squatted in the sterile parking lot of a convenience store. A blue-collar worker, perched on his bicycle, waited for the crosswalk signal to change. The evening was still a bit chilly for May, and the man's disheveled, threadbare windbreaker made him stand out—just one of many fleeting impressions flowing beyond the bus windows, swept away by the low rumble of its engine. The digital clock above the driver's seat changed to 8:57.
Shuya Nanahara (Boys #15, Ninth Grade Class B, Shiroiwa Junior High, Shiroiwa Town, Kagawa Prefecture) was seated on the left-hand side of the bus, gazing off into the nighttime scenery. He had to lean forward a bit to see around Yoshitoki Kuninobu (Boys #7), who occupied the window seat, rustling through his travel bag. With his right leg stretched out into the aisle, Shuya flexed his toes against the inside of his Keds sneaker, the canvas tom inside the heel, frayed threads sticking out like cat whiskers. Those shoes were hard to come by these days, although supposedly that hadn't always been the case. The brand was American, and the sneakers were made in Colombia. Though this was 1997, and the Republic of Greater East Asia certainly wasn't lacking for goods—if anything, it overflowed with them—imported commodities were extremely difficult to acquire. Well, such was only to be expected with the national policy of quasi-seclusion—especially so with a hostile country like America (government officials called it the "American Empire," as did school textbooks).
From his seat near the back of the bus, Shuya surveyed the cabin. Under the dim fluorescents filtering through dingy ceiling panels, he had a view of the other forty-one students who had been his classmates since the eighth grade. After leaving their school in Shiroiwa less than an hour before, the kids were all still excited and chatting away. They weren't overjoyed that their school trip was beginning with an overnight ride imposed on them either out of cheapness or possibly due to an overly packed schedule. But once the bus passed over the Great Seto Bridge, got onto the Sanyo Expressway, and was on its way to their destination in Kyushu, they would calm down a little.
Toward the front, a rowdy cluster of girls bubbled around the teacher in charge of their class, Mr. Hayashida. Among them was Yukie Utsumi (Girls #2), class leader and representative for the girls' side, with braided hair that looked good on her. Also in the group were Haruka Tanizawa (Girls #12), her teammate on the volleyball team and quite tall for a girl; Izumi Kanai (Girls #5), daughter of a town councilman with a prim attitude to match; Satomi Noda (Girls #17), a gifted student whose round-framed glasses suited her calm and collected countenance; Chisato Matsui (Girls #19), ever meek and demure,- and a few others. They formed the popular group, or anyway the middle-of-the-road group—though to call them a group at all might not be quite right. Girls tend to form cliques, but not so in the Shiroiwa Junior High Ninth Grade Class B, where there weren't really any to speak of. The closest to a clique would be the group led by Mitsuko Souma (Girls #11), who was a little rough around the edges and, to be frank, a juvenile delinquent. Hirono Shimizu (Girls #10) and Yoshimi
Yahagi (Girls #21) made three. From his position, Shuya couldn't tell where the girls were sitting.
The first row behind the driver's seat was slightly elevated, and its shorter backrest revealed two heads side by side, belonging to Kazuhiko Yamamoto (Boys #21) and Sakura Ogawa (Girls #4), the closest couple in class. Every so often their heads shook, likely in shared laughter at some joke. Well, with a pair as reserved as Kazuhiko and Sakura, the most trivial talk might seem hilarious.
Shuya glanced up the aisle to see an immense school uniform protruding into the space just ahead. Inside that uniform was Yoshio Akamatsu (Boys #1). Yoshio was the largest kid in the class, but he was sensitive, the type that ends up teased and picked on. He was scrunching his bulky frame forward, buried in the latest popular portable video game.
The jocks, Tatsumichi Oki (Boys #3, Handball Team), Kazushi Niida (Boys #16, Soccer Team), and Tadakatsu Hatagami (Boys #18, Baseball Team), sat together, flanking the aisle. Shuya himself had been in Little League (and was even called the ace shortstop) and used to be good friends with Tadakatsu until the two had drifted apart— possibly because Shuya had quit playing baseball. Replacing the sport with more "unpatriotic" hobbies, like the electric guitar, was likely part of it too. Shuya had seen Tadakatsu's mom get uptight about those kind of things.
After all, rock music was banned in the Republic. There were, of course, ways around the ban. Shuya's guitar wore an official permit sticker that read use of this musical instrument in the production of decadent music is strictly prohibited. "Decadent music" being rock.
Now that he thought about it, Shuya realized he had made a completely new set of friends.
A quiet laugh came from the seat behind big Yoshio Akamatsu. It belonged to one of those new friends, Shinji Mimura (Boys #19). Around the edge of the seat, Shuya caught sight of Shinji's short hair and the finely crafted earring in his left earlobe.
When they became classmates the year before, Shuya had already heard of "The Third Man," the ace guard on the basketball team. Shinji was proud of his exceptional athleticism, on par with the ace shortstop Shuya—though Shinji would certainly jest, Tm better, baby." During a school field day held soon after class placement, the two discovered they made a great duo and hit it off right away. But there was more to Shinji than just sports. Though his grades were merely average (aside from mathematics and English), Shinji possessed a staggering breadth of knowledge and a perspective far beyond his years. Ask him most any question, and he'd have the answer right away, even down to typically unobtainable information about foreign countries. And he'd always have advice in a time of need. Despite all that, Shinji didn't have an arrogant bone in his body. Well, he did have his own way of joking, like the time he said, "Everyone knows I'm a genius. Haven't you heard?" But there was nothing offensive about it. Basically, Shinji Mimura was a good guy.
Seated beside Shinji was Yutaka Seto (Boys #12), who had been the athlete's friend since elementary school. Yutaka was the class clown, and one of his quips was probably what had sparked Shinji's laughter.
One row behind the pair was Hiroki Sugimura (Boys #11). Hiroki, reading a paperback, had somehow managed to fold his lanky frame into the narrow seat. Taciturn and a student of martial arts, Hiroki had an intimidating presence and kept mostly to himself. But once Shuya had tried talking to him, he found the boy to be nice, if shy, and the two got along surprisingly well. The paperback was probably one of Hiroki's prized anthologies of Chinese poetry. (Chinese literature books were fairly easy to find despite being translations of foreign works. But then they would be, as the Republic proclaimed China "our sovereign territory.")
There was a line Shuya read once in an American book he'd salvaged from some corner of a used bookstore, relying on a dictionary to make it through: "Friends come in and out of your life." Maybe that was true. Perhaps he would drift apart from Shinji and Hiroki and his other friends like he had with Tadakatsu.
Or not.
Shuya glanced at Yoshitoki Kuninobu in the adjacent seat, still rustling through his bag. They, at least, had been together this far, and he didn't see anything changing that. Shuya and Yoshitoki had been friends ever since they wer
e still wetting their beds in the pompously named "House of Mercy and Love," a Catholic institution for children who had lost—or who were no longer allowed to live with—their parents. They seemed destined to be friends, whether Shuya wanted it or not.
While we're on the subject, an explanation on religion in the Republic might be in order. The government was a unique brand of national socialism, with the Leader, wielder of supreme power, as its leading symbol. (Once, Shinji Mimura had scowled and said, "This is what successful fascism looks like. Is there anything as evil anywhere in the world?") But the Leader didn't enforce a state religion—aside from belief in his political system, which itself didn't clash with any established faith. Citizens were free to worship, as long as their activities remained within certain bounds—though the complete lack of any legal protection meant that only the most devout persisted, and only in meager efforts. Shuya himself had never been particularly religious, but he did feel gratitude toward religion. He recognized that the Church had given him a comfortable childhood and had raised him into a decent young man, if he could be called one. Secular, state-run orphanages did exist, but by reputation were lousy facilities poorly run, notorious as training grounds for future soldiers in the Nonaggressive Forces.
Shuya looked over his shoulder toward the rear of the bus. Sitting in the long bench seat of the last row were bad boys Ryuhei Sasagawa (Boys #10) and Mitsuru Numai (Boys #17). A third was at the righthand window (Ryuhei Sasagawa had left a couple seats empty between). Though the seat backs blocked his view of this third boy's face, Shuya recognized the distinctive haircut, slicked-back and hanging long, atop a head that remained perfectly still, unperturbed by the dirty jokes and coarse laughter of other two at his left. The youth may have been sleeping, or perhaps, like Shuya, had been captivated by the city lights.
Why that boy—Kazuo Kiriyama (Boys #6)—had shown up to something as childish as this school trip was the greatest mystery to Shuya.
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