Battle Royale (Remastered)

by Koushun Takami, Nathan Collins

  "You got that?" Mitsuru was saying. "Don't you go acting like you're tougher than me!"

  The kid was nodding his head, okay, okay, okay. He was begging to be let free, but Mitsuru needed a promise first.

  "I asked you if you got it!" He lifted the boy up with one arm. "Answer me. I'm the toughest in this school. You got it?"

  Annoyed at the kid's lack of a response, Mitsuru raised him higher still. That was when he felt his eyes upon his back.

  Mitsuru spun. Suddenly released, the boy fell to the floor and took off running, though Mitsuru wasn't about to chase after him.

  There were four of them, all far taller than him. They surrounded him. Lapel pins on the stand-up collars of their sloppy uniforms announced they were in ninth grade. With one glance, he knew exactly what they were. They were like him.

  "Hey, kid," a pimply-faced one said with a creepy grin. "You shouldn't pick on the weak."

  Another, with shoulder-length, auburn-dyed hair, pursed his unusually thick lips and said, "Naughty, naughty."

  The mocking, effeminate way he said it sent all four into roaring, deranged laughter, Hee-hee-hee!

  "We'll have to teach you a lesson," the first one said.

  "Oh, we must," lisped the second, and they all laughed again, Hee-hee-hee!

  Mitsuru tried to take the pimpled teen by surprise with a front kick, but before he could, the one on his left swept his leg out from under him.

  Mitsuru fell flat on his ass, and the pimply one was right on him, kicking him in the face, knocking out one of his front teeth. The back of his head slammed against the same wall he'd been holding the other kid against. He felt dizzy. The back of his head felt warm and wet. He got on his hands and knees to try to stand, but the one on the right kicked him in his stomach. Mitsuru groaned, then puked everything he had. He heard someone say, "Gross."

  Fuck, he thought. Cowards, bastards! I could take on any of you, one on one.

  He was helpless now. He had chosen this location to rough up the other kid because no one would be around. No teachers were going to come.

  Then his wrist was being held to the floor. One of them carefully curled Mitsuru's index finger and pressed it beneath his leather shoe. For the first time in his life, Mitsuru felt total terror.

  They wouldn't. They wouldn't.

  They did. The foot pressed down, and Mitsuru's finger audibly, sickly, snapped. He shrieked. The pain was incredible, like he'd never experienced before. He heard more laughter, Hee-hee-hee!

  They're insane, Mitsuru thought. They're nothing like me. There's something wrong with their fucking minds—

  They prepared his middle finger.

  Pride and everything be damned, he was ready to beg. "S-stop," he pleaded, but they ignored him. Another snap, and his middle finger was ruined. He screamed again.

  He heard one of them say, "Now, how about another?"

  That was when it happened.

  That was when the door to the art room slid wide open, and a quiet voice said, "Would you guys keep it down?"

  At first, Mitsuru wondered if a teacher had been in the classroom. But a teacher would have intervened more quickly, and besides, the request would have been bizarre coming from one of the faculty.

  Still pressed against the floor, Mitsuru turned his head to look.

  There stood a boy, not too tall but incredibly handsome. He was holding a paintbrush.

  Mitsuru had seen him at orientation. The boy was one of his classmates. He was from out of town, and no one knew who he was. But he was quiet and meek, and Mitsuru hadn't taken much notice of him. The boy had the refined looks of someone from a well-off family. He would certainly be no good in a fight and wasn't worth Mitsuru's time.

  But what the hell is he doing in the art room after the first day of school? Well, painting, of course, but that's kind of weird.

  Whatever the case, the pimpled bully approached the boy, saying, "What was that, asshole?" He stood in front of the kid and repeated,

  "What was that, asshole? You some first-year? What the fuck are you doing here? Huh? You want to say that again?"

  He slapped the paintbrush from the younger boy's hand. Dark blue paint splattered across the floor.

  The boy slowly looked up to the older boy's pimply face.

  What happened next might seem obvious. Suffice it to say, that little kid beat up the four ninth graders—knocked them all out cold.

  The boy approached Mitsuru and gazed at him for a time before saying, "You should go to the hospital." Then he was gone, having glided back to the art room.

  Mitsuru remained sitting on the floor for a time, staring off at the four bodies in stunned awe. That boy was something altogether different. Mitsuru felt like a novice boxer, who, even granted a decade long career, would likely never progress past six-round bouts, meeting the world champion for the first time.

  Mitsuru had seen genius.

  Ever since, Mitsuru served that boy—Kazuo Kiriyama. Mitsuru didn't need to test him. Kiriyama simultaneously took out four guys who Mitsuru thought he could handle one at a time. And, since one king was enough, anyone who wasn't the king had better serve. He'd believed that for a long time. That's how it worked in the boys' manga he so avidly read.

  Kazuo Kiriyama was a mystery.

  When Mitsuru asked him how he had learned to fight like that, he simply said, "I just learned," and wouldn't answer any further questions on the subject. Mitsuru tried to coax more out of him by suggesting he must have had a reputation in elementary school, but he only denied it. Any karate competition wins, then? That didn't work either. Later, Mitsuru learned that Kiriyama had been sneaking into the art class to work on a painting, as had happened on the day they met. When Mitsuru asked him why, he said, "I just felt like it." Mitsuru was drawn to Kiriyama, due in part to those mysteries. (As an aside, the painting, a view of the empty courtyard from the art room, was a far better work than a sixth-grade student would otherwise be expected to produce. Mitsuru never saw the painting, however, as Kiriyama tossed it into the wastebasket as soon as he had completed it.)

  Mitsuru showed Kiriyama around the small town, with the coffee shop where he and his friends hung out, the secret stash where he kept his stolen objects, the shady dealer of illicit goods, and so on. He was only a small fry, but he left out nothing he knew. Kiriyama never gave a reaction, though he must have been interested enough to come along. Sometimes Kiriyama ran up against some of the older kids in school (aside from the ones he'd already beaten up), and some from one of the other junior highs, and sometimes even high schoolers.

  Each time he laid them flat on the ground in a flash. Mitsuru was crazy about Kiriyama, elated like a trainer feels when a boxer he coaches becomes a champion.

  And there was more to Kiriyama than that. He was smart, and he excelled at anything he did. When they did a break-in, like at the liquor store warehouse, he came up with, and executed, the brilliant plans. Kiriyama had gotten Mitsuru out of many a scrape. (Since he and Kiriyama teamed up, he had never been caught by the police.) Also, his father was supposedly the president of a major company within the prefecture—and even the entire region of Chugoku and Shikoku combined. He was afraid of nothing. Mitsuru believed that some men were born to be Icings. He thought, This man is destined for greatness. Something more than I could even imagine.

  Kiriyama was appointed the leader of their group. As they went around causing trouble, Mitsuru had asked himself once, just once, if it was right to involve him. The single restriction Kiriyama imposed on the gang was his own house (strictly speaking, a mansion); he never allowed Mitsuru or the others inside. (He had never said this straight out, but his demeanor made it understood.) Mitsuru didn't know if Kiriyama's father was aware of what his son was up to, but either way, this delinquent wondered if he should be teaching the sheltered boy all this bad behavior. After mulling it over, he voiced his concern to Kiriyama.

  But the boy only replied, "Whatever. It's interesting."

  Mitsur
u decided to accept that.

  And so, he and Kiriyama had been through a lot together—the king and his trusty advisor.

  As for his classmates, he wasn't sure, but he could never believe that Kiriyama and his Family would kill each other, even in this desperate situation. That's precisely why Kiriyama had handed them notes. Mitsuru was certain Kiriyama had already figured out what they needed to do—how to outwit that Sakamochi and escape. Once Kazuo Kiriyama got started, the government wouldn't stand a chance.

  Such were Mitsuru's thoughts as he left the school and headed south. Just once, in the twenty-five minutes he walked, he saw another person. The figure vanished into a cluster of houses to the southeast of the school. Mitsuru thought it might have been Yoji Kuramoto (Boys #8). Mitsuru was of course nervous. After all, he had seen Yoshio Akamatsu dead out in front of the school. The game had begun.

  Nothing had changed Mitsuru's plan. He hurried toward the meeting location. The others didn't matter a bit. He and his friends were escaping.

  As he moved farther south, cover became more sparse, and he grew more tense, both in body and mind. Underneath his school uniform, he was drenched in cold sweat, and beads of it ran from his short, permed hair and down his forehead. A little ahead, the shoreline curved right, to the west. In the middle of the curve, a craggy outcropping jutted eastward from the mountain and submerged into the sea. The rock formation looked like the exposed spine of a buried dinosaur, or a kaiju maybe. The rocks stood far taller than Mitsuru and blocked his view of the other side. He glanced seaward where, across the dark, flat expanse, tiny lights indicated small islands and other landmasses. Mitsuru was certain he was on an island in the Seto Inland Sea. At least of that much he could be sure.

  He carefully surveyed the area before leaving the trees and stepping onto the sand. Exposed in the moonlight, he walked toward the outcropping. Clinging to the steep rock face, he began to climb. The ascent was difficult; the rocks were cold and smooth, and his bags and the pistol he held got in the way.

  After some struggle, he reached the top of the rocks to find that the formation was only three meters wide, with sandy beach spreading out below on the other side. He stepped forward to begin the descent.

  "Mitsuru."

  The voice came suddenly from behind, and Mitsuru nearly jumped. Reflexively, he turned and raised his gun.

  Then, with a sigh of relief, he lowered it.

  Kazuo Kiriyama was sitting on a ledge in the shadow of a bulge of rock.

  With relief in his voice, Mitsuru began to say, "Hey, Boss—" Then he noticed the three lumps on the ground at Kiriyama's feet. Mitsuru squinted at the darkness, then his eyes shot wide open. Those lumps were people.

  Ryuhei Sasagawa (Boys #10) was on his back, staring up at the sky. Hiroshi Kuronaga (Boys #9) was twisted on his side. He recognized them without a doubt—like him, they were part of Kiriyama's Family. The third was a girl in a sailor fuku. She was face down, and he couldn't be sure, but he thought she was Izumi Kanai (Girls #5). Beneath the three bodies was a pool of liquid. In the dark, the puddle was black, but Mitsuru knew that in daylight, it would be the same crimson color as on the flag of the Republic of Greater East Asia.

  Clueless of what had happened, Mitsuru began to tremble. What. . . what was . . .

  "This is the southern point," Kiriyama said, looking up at Mitsuru beneath slicked-back hair, his eyes as calm as ever. He wore his school jacket on his shoulders, with his arms free of the sleeves, like a boxer draped in his robe at the end of a bout.

  "W-wha-what..." Mitsuru said, the tremble of his chin transmitting into his voice. "What. . . they ..."

  "You mean them?" Kiriyama thumped Ryuhei Sasagawa's body with the end of his plain (though high quality), leather cap-toe boot. Ryuhei's right arm swung from its resting place on his chest and traced a half-arm's-length arc before splashing into the puddle. His pinky and ring finger disappeared into the liquid.

  "They tried to kill me," Kiriyama explained. "Kuronaga, and Sasagawa too. So I. . . killed them."

  It can't be!

  Mitsuru couldn't believe his ears. Hiroshi Kuronaga was a nobody who just tagged along with their group. And he'd sworn an oath of loyalty to Kiriyama. Ryuhei had a lot of bravado and a violent streak (sometimes Mitsuru had to go to a lot of trouble to keep him from kicking Yoshio Akamatsu's ass). But when his little brother got caught shoplifting, Kiriyama pulled some strings to deal with the police, and ever since, Ryuhei had been extremely grateful. Those two would never have betrayed Kiriyama.

  Mitsuru sensed something sticky in the air. Blood. The stench of blood. Far from the smell of Yoshitoki Kuninobu's blood in the classroom, this was on an entirely different level. The difference was in the quantity. A full bucket's worth of blood had been splashed around.

  Overcome by the smell, Mitsuru's head shook up and down. That's right, he thought, you can't ever know what someone else is thinking, and maybe Kuronaga and Sasagawa thought they were going to be killed and went crazy, and that's just how weak they were. They came here to the meeting place but tried to surprise Kiriyama to take him out.

  Mitsuru's eyes were pinned to the other corpse. Now flat on her stomach, Izumi Kanai had been a pretty and petite girl. She was the daughter of a town councilman (though, in a country with such an ultra-centralized bureaucracy, the title was only honorary), and though she wasn't nearly in Kiriyama's league, if you counted off the wealthiest families in town on your fingers, you'd reach her family on one hand. But she never acted stuck up, and Mitsuru himself had, on occasion, thought she was cute. Of course, he knew better than to get hung up on a girl of her class.

  And now she's . . .

  Mitsuru somehow managed to speak. "B-but, Boss, Kanai. . . she—"

  Kiriyama's cold, dull eyes stared at him, overwhelming Mitsuru, who tried to come up with an answer to his own question. "Sh-she . . . She tried to kill you too, right?"

  Kiriyama nodded. "Kanai just happened to be here."

  Mitsuru's faith wavered, but he ultimately forced himself to believe that it wasn't impossible. It's what the boss said.

  Mitsuru blurted, "Y-you don't have to worry about me. I'd never think of killing you, Boss. Th-this stupid game can eat shit. We're going to take out Sakamochi and those soldiers, right? Let's do it! I—"

  He knew that with the forbidden zones, they couldn't approach the school. That's what Sakamochi had said. But Kiriyama would already have thought of a way around it.

  But Mitsuru stopped talking. He'd noticed Kiriyama shaking his head. Mitsuru's tongue had turned sticky, but he continued, "Okay, all right, so we're escaping then? Great! Let's find a boat and—"

  Kiriyama said, "Will you let me talk?" and when Mitsuru stopped again, he continued, "Either way would have been fine with me."

  That's what Mitsuru thought he heard, and he could only blink in response. He didn't understand what Kiriyama had said. He tried to read Kiriyama's eyes, but they were just a calm twinkle in the shadow of his face.

  "W-what do you mean, either way?"

  Kiriyama's neck stretched as he lifted his chin to the night sky. The moon shone brightly, creating delicate shadows on his handsome face.

  In that pose, he continued, "Sometimes, I lose track of what's right."

  Mitsuru was even more confused now, but as he listened, an entirely different thought skimmed across his mind—a sense that something was missing.

  He realized what it was—who it was.

  With him there, and Sasagawa and Kuronaga on the ground, one of the Family was missing: Sho Tsukioka (Boys #14). He had left the school ahead of Mitsuru. Where is he?

  Of course he might have been frightened and was taking longer to get here. Or might he have been killed on the way? Whatever had happened, his absence felt like a bad omen.

  Kiriyama was saying, "Like now. I just don't know."

  The sight of Kiriyama, talking on like this, seemed strangely sad.

  "Anyway," he said, and turned to Mitsuru. He seemed to
be talking faster now, as if he'd reached an allegro mark in the score. "When I came here, Kanai was already here, she tried to run away, and I kept her from escaping."

  Mitsuru swallowed.

  "Then I flipped a coin," Kiriyama said. "Heads, and I'd fight Sakamochi. And ..."

  Before Kiriyama had finished speaking, Mitsuru finally understood.

  No. He couldn't. . .

  He didn't want to believe it. It shouldn't have been. Kiriyama was the king, and he was his trusty advisor. It was supposed to be his eternal loyalty, and Kiriyama's grace. Take Kiriyama's slicked-back hair. Right about when Mitsuru's broken fingers had healed, he'd recommended the new hairstyle to Kiriyama and had him try it out. "That's better, Boss," he'd said. "You look badass." And Kiriyama had never changed it. Maybe a hairstyle didn't amount to much, but to Mitsuru, it was a symbol of their bond.

  But, Mitsuru now realized, what if he just thought it would be too much of a bother to change it? What if he had too much on his mind to care about something like that? And it doesn't stop there. All we did together, I believed was out of a kind of sacred team spirit. What was it to him? A diversion? Just—just—an experience? Not more than an experience, no feelings attached? Hadn't he said it himself? "It's interesting."

  From the depths of his mind, an old doubt came back to life. He had thought it unimportant and left it gathering dust in some corner of himself.

  He had never seen Kazuo Kiriyama smile.

  Mitsuru's next thoughts drew closer to the core of the truth.

  He's always seemed like he has a lot on his mind. I think that's true, but down in his heart, is there a darkness deeper than I can imagine? No, not a darkness, but nothing, just an empty space.

  Maybe Sho Tsukioka sensed it.

  Mitsuru had no more time to think. He focused all his thoughts on his trigger finger (the one that had been broken) on the lowered Walther PPK.

  The sea breeze blew in, stirring up the smell of the pool of blood, mixing with it. The sound of crashing waves carried on.