He felt something hard and cold. There was no doubting it—he had one too.
He gave the object a little tug, but, firmly in place, it refused to come off. Now that he had become conscious of the band, he felt like he was suffocating. A collar! A goddamn collar. I'm no dog!
Shuya fidgeted with the thing for a time before giving up.
And what had happened to the school trip?
Shuya noticed his gym bag lying at his feet. The night before, he'd stuffed it with clothes and a towel, a travel notebook handed out by his school, as well as a flask of bourbon and whatever else he thought he would need. Everyone else's bags were beside them as well.
Suddenly, the sliding door at the front of the class clattered open. Shuya looked toward the entrance.
A man entered the room. He was alone.
He was well built, though a little on the short side, with undersized legs that seemed only an afterthought to his torso. He wore plain, light beige slacks, a gray suit coat, a crimson tie, and black loafers, all of them shabby. A peach-colored pin on his collar identified him as a government official. He had rosy cheeks. But what stood out the most was his hair, straight and down to his shoulders in a style popular with younger women. Shuya was reminded of the grainy photocopied cover of a Joan Baez cassette he'd copped off the black market.
The man stepped onto the teacher's podium and surveyed the class. His eyes landed upon Shuya, the only student awake (unless it was all a dream).
The two stared at each other for at least one full minute. But as the other students began to stir, and the sounds of uneasy breathing grew, the man looked away. Some of the students called out to wake up others who were more deeply asleep.
Shuya looked across the classroom. The other kids had started to awaken, their eyes yet unfocused, and with no idea of what was happening. Yoshitoki Kuninobu turned in his chair and met Shuya's gaze. Shuya pointed to his own collar and tilted his head to the side. Yoshitoki's hands scrambled for his neck, and shock sprang to his expression. Then, for some reason, Yoshitoki shook his head several times, finally looking to the front of the class. Noriko Nakagawa also gazed at Shuya, her eyes distant, but Shuya could only offer a shrug in response.
Finally, when everyone was awake, the man spoke, his voice cheery, "All right, is everyone awake? Did you sleep well?"
No one said a thing in reply. Not even the two class clowns, Yutaka Seto and Yuka Nakagawa (Girls #16).
42 STUDENTS REMAIN.
The long-haired man at the teacher's lectern continued with a broad smile, "All right, all right, all right, okay, I'll explain. First off, My name is Kinpatsu Sakamochi, and I'm your new instructor."
The man who called himself Sakamochi turned to the blackboard and wrote his name in large, vertical characters with the chalk—a riff on the name of a teacher on a long-running TV series. What kind of stupid name was that? An alias, maybe, given the situation.
The class leader for the girls, Yukie Utsumi, stood suddenly and said, "I don't understand."
All eyes turned to her. Yukie's long hair parted into two neat braids. Her expression was a little tense, but her voice was firm. Maybe she'd imagined up some scenario, impossible as it seemed, that had brought the students there, like they had all been knocked unconscious in a bus accident.
"What's going on?" Yukie asked. "We'd just left on our school trip. Isn't that right, everyone?"
Yukie looked over her shoulders to her classmates all around. Her question had triggered an outburst, as nearly everyone was shouting over each other:
"Where are we?"
"Did you fall asleep too?"
"Hey, what time is it?"
"Was everyone sleeping?"
"Shit, I don't have a watch!"
"Do you remember getting off the bus and coming here?"
"Who the hell is that guy?"
"No, I don't remember anything."
"I don't like this. What's going on? I'm scared."
Shuya noted that Sakamochi had stopped his speech to listen. Silent himself, Shuya watched his classmates. A few were keeping quiet.
The first to catch his notice was Kazuo Kiriyama, a little behind him and to the side, at the middle of the back row. Beneath his slicked-back hair, Kiriyama's calm eyes were fixed on the man at the podium— watching, not glaring; his eyes were far too placid to call it that. Despite their attempts to get him to say something, Kiriyama paid no attention to his lackeys seated around him: Ryuhei Sasagawa, Mitsuru Numai, Hiroshi Kuronaga (Boys #9), and Sho Tsukioka (Boys #14).
Then there was Mitsuko Souma, second seat from the front on the window row. You remember, that vaguely rough-around-the-edges girl. Her desk was separated from the other two in her clique (Hirono Shimizu and Yoshimi Yahagi), and none of the other girls—or boys, for that matter—tried to talk to her. (Hirono and Yoshimi were in adjacent seats to Shuya's left and were saying something to each other.) Mitsuko had the captivating face of a pop idol, though it wore its usual vaguely listless expression. Arms folded, she stared at Sakamochi. (Hiroki Sugimura sat directly behind her and was talking with Tadakatsu Hatagami to his right.)
Next was Shogo Kawada, in the same window row, two seats from the back. He too silently stared at Sakamochi. As Shuya watched, Kawada took a piece of gum from his pocket and started to chew, his eyes fixed dead ahead as his jaw worked up and down.
Shuya faced the front of the class and noticed Noriko was still staring back at him. Her dark eyes trembled in fear. Shuya glanced at Yoshitoki in the seat ahead of her, but he was talking about something with Shinji Mimura in the next row. Quickly returning his eyes to Noriko, Shuya attempted a tiny nod. A little relief edged into her eyes.
Sakamochi clapped his hands a few times and admonished, "All right, all right, all right, quiet down, everyone!" The uproar quickly subsided, and he continued. "Okay, I'll explain. We've had you come here for one and only one reason."
Then: "Today, you're all going kill each other."
This time, no outburst came. The students froze like subjects of a still life photograph—except Kawada, Shuya noticed, who kept on chewing his gum. Kawada's expression remained impassive, though Shuya thought he might have seen the flash of a faint smile.
Sakamochi maintained his broad grin and continued, "Your class has been chosen for this year's Program."
Someone whimpered.
42 STUDENTS REMAIN.
Every junior high school student in the Republic of Greater East Asia knew about the Program, which was covered in textbooks starting in the fourth grade. A somewhat detailed description appears in the government-compiled Republic of Greater East Asia Compact Encyclopedia:
Program (pro'gram, -gram) n. 1. A written list providing details of items or performers (names, order of appearance, etc.) [. . .]
4. A battle simulation necessary to our defense and conducted by our nation's Ground Nonaggressive Force. Officially titled "Combat Experiment 68th Program." First held in 1947, the annual simulations are conducted by fifty ninth-grade classes selected voluntarily nationwide (prior to 1950, the number of classes was forty-seven), with various statistics collected from the trials. The experiment itself is simple: the students in each class fight each other until only one remains, and the findings, including the elapsed time of the simulation, are determined. The last survivor (winner) in each class is awarded a lifetime pension and a personally signed autograph from His Majesty The Leader. The 317th Leader's famous "April Speech" was given in response
to protestors and agitators from an extremist sect during the first year of the Program.
The "April Speech" appears in the seventh grade textbook as follows:
My beloved comrades, who strive toward revolution and development. [Two-minute interruption for applause and cheers for the great 317th Leader] Comrades. [One-minute interruption] Throughout the world, shameless imperialists who seek to menace our Republic still continue to assemble. Observe what they do to their own countrymen. They exploit them, they cheat them,
they brainwash them, the people who would otherwise have been our comrades, into becoming the advance guard of their imperialism, and then they use them at their whim. [ Unanimous cry of righteous indignation] Given the slightest chance, the imperialists would invade the soil of our Republic, the most advanced revolutionary state in the world. By weaving their plots to bring ruin to our people, they lay bare the depths of their devious ways. [Scattered shouts of anger] With our nation surrounded by this state of affairs, the 68th Program is absolutely vital. In truth, I myself will be unable to hold back my bitter tears of remorse over the loss of the lives of thousands, even tens of thousands, each at the age of only fifteen. But if their lives serve to protect the independence of our people living in this nation of abundance, then will not their flesh and blood live on for eternity, becoming one with this land of beauty passed down to us by our gods? [One-minute interruption for a wave of applause and cheers.] As you all know, we do not have a military draft in the Republic. The Ground, Maritime, and Air Nonaggressive Forces consist of young volunteer soldiers who aspire to patriotism and burn with a resilient purpose of revolution and development. They risk their lives day and night on the front lines. Think of the Program as a kind of draft, one unique to our nation. To defend our nation [. . .]
Enough of that windbag. (Middle-aged Nonaggressive Forces recruiters could be often found right outside train stations, saying, "How about we get some pork and rice?" as their standard bait.)
Shuya had heard about the Program before he was even in fourth grade. It was after his parents died in a traffic accident and when he'd just begun to adjust to life in the House of Mercy and Love, where an acquaintance of his father had put him. (None of his relatives would take him in. Some said it was because his parents had been involved in antigovernment activities, but he'd never confirmed the story.)
Shuya must have been five at the time, watching TV in the rec room with Yoshitoki Kuninobu, who had already been well established at the House of Mercy and Love when he showed up. The latest episode of Shuya's favorite giant mecha anime had just ended, and the director of the facility, Ms. Ryoko Anno, changed the channel. (The daughter of the previous director, at the time she was probably still in high school. Regardless, the kids used the honorifics with all the workers there, and Ms. Anno was no exception.) Shuya kept on watching the screen, where an adult man in a stiff suit was talking into the camera. The child recognized that this must be that "news" thing, that boring show that was on all the channels from time to time.
The man was reading from a script. Shuya couldn't remember what the newscaster said, but it was pretty much always the same and was probably something like:
"We have received confirmation from officials with the government and the Nonaggressive Forces that the Program, run in Kagawa Prefecture for the first time in three years, completed yesterday at 3:12 p.m. The participating class was from Zentsuji Fourth Junior High, Ninth Grade Class E, of the city of Zentsuji. The Program took place at the previously undisclosed location of Shidaka Island, four kilometers off the coast from the town of Tadotsu. Three days, seven hours, and forty-three minutes elapsed before the winner was determined. Earlier today, the bodies were retrieved, and autopsies were held to determine the preliminary cause of death for the thirty-eight deceased students as follows: seventeen by gunshot, nine by edged weapon, five by blunt object, three by suffocation . . ”
The newscast displayed the apparent "winner," a young girl in a tattered sailor-suit uniform, flanked by two soldiers, her face twitching as she looked into the camera. At the edge of her long, disheveled hair, her right temple was smeared dark red. But something peculiar about this image would remain fresh in Shuya's memory: the corners of the girl's mouth working in contorted flashes that looked like a smile.
Shuya recognized now that this was the first time he had witnessed the face of insanity. But at the time, he hadn't distinguished it as such; he simply felt afraid, as if he were looking at a monster.
Shuya believed he had asked, "Ms. Anno, what is that?"
Ms. Anno shook her head and said, "It's nothing." Then she looked away from Shuya and whispered, "That poor girl."
Yoshitoki Kuninobu, preoccupied with a tangerine, hadn't been paying attention to the TV for some time.
As Shuya grew older, these local news reports, coming roughly twice a year with no schedule and no warning, felt increasingly ominous. With fifty ninth-grade classes around the country, and assuming forty students in each, it was a death sentence visited annually upon two thousand children—no, one thousand nine hundred fifty, to be precise. And this was no mere killing, but familiar classmates murdering each other in competition for a single survivor's throne, like the most heinous game of musical chairs.
But there would be no resisting it. The actions of the government of the Republic of Greater East Asia were not to be defied.
So Shuya viewed the Program with dismissive contempt. That was how most of the kids in the ninth-grade "reserves" dealt with it. Okay, sure, a kind of draft unique to our nation? Our nation of abundance and land of beauty? How many junior high students were there in the Republic? Even with the declining birth rate, the odds weren't even one in eight hundred or so. In all of Kagawa Prefecture, at most only one class "wins" that lottery in two years. Frankly, getting killed in a car accident was just as likely, and seeing how he never got the luck of the draw, Shuya never thought he'd get chosen. Hell, when the local shopping arcade held a raffle, he'd never won more than a box of tissues. So who gives a shit? Fuck it.
But every once in a while, someone in his class—usually one of the girls—would cry and say, "My cousin's in the Program," or something like that, and inside Shuya that black terror would return. And with it, anger. Who had the right to make that cute girl sad?
But then, after days of depression, that girl would begin to smile again, and Shuya's feelings of terror and anger would gradually fade away. Only the faint, indistinct sense of helplessness and distrust toward the government remained behind.
That's how it went.
And when Shuya entered ninth grade this year, he—and likely his classmates—believed Class B alone was safe. They had to believe.
Until this very moment.
A chair noisily scraped against the floor as one of the boys stood and shouted, his voice shrill, "That can't be!"
Shuya turned to see the source of the outburst, somewhere behind Hiroki Sugimura. It was the class leader for the boys, Kyoichi Motobuchi. Kyoichi's face had crossed from pale into ashen in a surreal contrast with his silver-rimmed glasses. He could have been one of Andy Warhol's silkscreen creations from their art textbook, Decadent Art of the American Empire.
Some in the class may have hoped Kyoichi would offer some rational argument. Kill the kids who were our friends just the day before? That's impossible. This has to be a mistake. Explain it to this jerk, class leader.
But what Kyoichi said was utterly worthless.
"M-my father is the director of the Kagawa Department of Natural Resources." Kyoichi was trembling, and his voice sounded even more nervous than it usually did. "There's no way my class would be selected for the P-Program."
The man who had called himself Sakamochi shook his head with a dry smile. His long hair billowed.
"You're Motobuchi, yeah?" Sakamochi said, his voice syrupy. "Surely you know of the concept of equality, right? Listen, all people are born equal. Just because your father is a government official doesn't mean it's all right for him to receive special treatment. Clearly the same goes for his son. Listen, everyone, you all have your own circumstances. Some of you come from rich families, and some poor. But your value isn't determined by such things—by things beyond your control. Each one of you must discover your own worth through your own efforts. So, Motobuchi, don't make the mistake of thinking that you alone are special." Then he shouted, "Because you're not!"
Stunned to silence, Kyoichi slumped to his chair. Sakamochi glared at the boy for a time until his broad grin
suddenly returned.
"They'll be talking about you on the morning news," Sakamochi said. "Of course, with the Program being a secret experiment, they won't announce any of the details until it's over. But, well, your fathers and your mothers have all been informed."
Everyone appeared stunned. We have to kill our classmates? Can it really be?
"What," Sakamochi said, scratching his head in apparent consternation, "you still don't believe me?"
He faced the doorway and called out, taking time with the words, "You men—come on in!"
On command, three soldiers noisily rushed into the room. Their dress—a camouflage combat uniform, combat boots, and a metal helmet with the peach emblem emblazoned on the front—identified the men as members of the Nonaggressive Forces. They carried assault rifles slung from their shoulders and wore belt holsters with pistol grips visible. One was tall, with tousled hair—odd for a soldier, that—and his default expression seemed to be an insincere smile. Another was of average height and baby-faced, a leading man type. The last seemed a touch effeminate and fairly unimpressive compared to the other two. The three men were stooped over, hauling a large sack made of heavy plastic. It resembled a black sleeping bag, only it bulged here and there, as if stuffed with pineapples.
Sakamochi stepped aside to the window, and the three soldiers placed the bag atop the teacher's podium. The ends of the bag hung off the edges of the platform. Whatever was inside must not have been very rigid, because the ends—especially the side facing the windows— drooped.
Sakamochi said, "These men will be assisting with your Program. Allow me to introduce them. This is Mr. Tahara, Mr. Kondo, and Mr. Nomura. All right, show them what's in the bag."
The insincere soldier called Tahara grabbed the zipper on the hallway side and tugged it open. A red liquid covered the interior.
With the zipper only partway open, one of the girls in the front row screamed. Others quickly joined in, the soprano chorus swelling over a backdrop of confused exclamations and clattering desks and chairs.
Battle Royale (Remastered) Page 3