Extending from his hand, the nose of the PPK shook. But Kiriyama was already throwing back his jacket.
There was a faintly pleasant sound. Brattattattat. The sound of 950 rounds firing per minute, though of an altogether different nature, resembled the clacking of an old mechanical typewriter in an antique store. Izumi Kanai, Sasagawa, and Kuronaga, had all been stabbed. For the first time since the game's opening, gunfire echoed across the island.
Mitsuru was still standing. Though he couldn't see them through his clothes, he had four finger-sized holes running from his stomach to his chest. Whatever the reason, only two holes came out his back, each wide enough to fit a tin can through. The Walther PPK wavered at his side. His eyes stared off toward the North Star, though on such a brightly moonlit night, he probably couldn't see it.
Kiriyama was holding a crude hunk of metal that looked like a small gift box with a grip slapped on—an Ingram MAC-10. He said, "Tails, I'd play the game." .
As if he had been waiting for those words, Mitsuru tipped over forward. When he fell, his head bashed against a rock and bounced back five centimeters.
Kazuo Kiriyama remained seated for a time. Then, he abruptly stood, walked over to Mitsuru Numai's corpse, and touched the fingertips of his left hand to the bullet-riddled body, as if he were checking for something.
This was no emotional response. He wasn't feeling anything—no pangs of conscience, no remorse, no sympathy.
He just wanted to know what happened to the human body when penetrated by bullets. Actually, it wasn't that he wanted to know, just that knowing it wouldn't be bad.
Before long, he withdrew his hand and touched it to his left temple—to be precise, a little behind it. To anyone who didn't know, he might have appeared to be straightening his slicked-back hair.
But that wasn't what he was doing. He had a strange sensation— not pain, not an itch, but a peculiar feeling that came to him only rarely, not more than a few times a year, drawing his hand reflexively to the spot. That sensation, along with the feeling of his fingertips touching there, had become deeply familiar to Kiriyama.
Though he knew a great many things about the world, due to the thorough and exceptional education provided to him by his "parents," what Kiriyama didn't know was the cause of that sensation. But how could he? By the time he was old enough to look in the mirror, the wound's scar had almost completely healed. The rest of the story remained in the distant past: the freak accident that had caused the wound and nearly killed him in the womb; his mother's immediate death; with less than a month to his due date, the consultation between his father and the famous doctor over the shard that had pierced his skull; the fact, unbeknownst to both his father and that doctor who bragged about his flawless operation, that the shard had gouged out the most minute cluster of nerve cells. The surgeon died of liver failure soon after, and his father—his biological father, that is—passed away under complex circumstances. By now, none were left who could tell Kiriyama the whole story.
But one thing was clear—though to Kiriyama, it was just the natural way of things—and even if he never consciously acknowledged it, and may have even lacked the ability to acknowledge it, this is what it came to:
He, Kazuo Kiriyama, standing in front of the four corpses, including that of Mitsuru Numai, had no reason to feel any pangs of conscience, any remorse, any sympathy, or any emotion at all. From the day he came into the world, he had never experienced anything that resembled an emotion.
34 STUDENTS REMAIN.
On the northern edge of the island, opposite Kiriyama and his Family, a steep, towering cliff side plunged into the sea roughly twenty meters below. The small clearing atop the cliff wore a crown of wild grass. The sound of crashing waves came carried up by the rocky face; their mist drifted in the breeze.
Bathed in moonlight, Sakura Ogawa (Girls #4) and Kazuhiko Yamamoto (Boys #21) sat side by side at the edge of the grassy cliff, their legs dangling below, Sakura's right hand resting gently on Kazuhiko's left hand.
Their daypacks and belongings, including their two compasses, were scattered around them. Just as Kiriyama had told the others to meet him at the southern tip, Kazuhiko had given Sakura a scrap of paper that read, "At the northern point," (next to the words: "We will kill each other"). That he had not chosen the same location as Kiriyama was a bit of good luck, and no matter what else would happen next, they at least had been able to talk alone. A .357 Magnum revolver was tucked into Kazuhiko's belt, but he didn't think he'd be using it now.
"It's peaceful here," Sakura murmured. Her hair was cropped quite short for a girl, and her profile traced a beautiful outline from her high forehead down to the sideways glimpse of a gentle smile. She was tall and slender, and she always sat up straight. When Kazuhiko had finally arrived, the couple had shared all too brief of an embrace. In his arms, she had trembled like a wounded little bird.
"Yeah, it is," Kazuhiko said. Aside from the bridge of his nose, which was slightly too wide, he had a handsome face. He turned away from her and faced ahead. The open sea remained pitch black in the moonlight, dotted with silhouettes of islands even darker and a large landmass beyond, which Kazuhiko thought must be the Honshu mainland. It was not quite half past three in the morning. Lights floated in the darkness, where all the different people were in peaceful slumber—though some may have been students his age, up late studying for their high school entrance exams. Not so far away, yet a world beyond their reach now.
Kazuhiko shifted his attention a little closer and saw the small black dot roughly two hundred meters away. It must have been one of those ships Sakamochi said would shoot anyone who tried to escape. Even at night, the Seto Inland Sea bustled with nautical traffic, but on this night, the lights of sailing ships were nowhere to be found. The government had likely prohibited all passage.
The sight gave Kazuhiko the chills, but he tore his eyes away from the black dot. When he'd left the school, he saw Mayumi Tendo's and Yoshio Akamatsu's bodies, and on his way here, he'd even heard far-off gunfire. Now that the game had begun, all that would continue to the end. He'd talked to Sakura about it a little before, but none of it seemed to matter anymore.
"Thank you so much for these," Sakura said. She was looking at the tiny bouquet of tiny flowers in her other hand. Kazuhiko had found them along the way and picked a few he liked, white clovers or something like that, the bundle of white petals like cheerleader pom-poms atop the airy stems. The flowers didn't make for a particularly impressive bouquet, but they were all he could find.
Kazuhiko flashed her a grin. "Thank you very much."
She remained looking at the flowers for a time, then said, "We won't be able to go back together. No more walking through town together, no more eating ice cream together."
"That's not—" Kazuhiko started to say, but she cut him off.
"There's no fighting it. I know that too well. I heard that my father tried to oppose the government's methods. Then one day ..." Through her hand, Kazuhiko could feel her trembling. ". . . the police came. They killed him. They didn't have a warrant or anything. They didn't even say anything, but just came in and shot him dead. I can remember it. I was in our tiny kitchen. I was still small. I was sitting at the table. My mother held me tight. And I grew up, still eating at that same table."
She turned to Kazuhiko and said, "There's just no way to fight it."
They had been dating more than two years, and he'd never known. She never told him about it, not even after they'd first slept together in her house the month before.
Kazuhiko knew there had to be something else he could say, as all he could muster up felt incredibly trite: "That must have been hard."
Sakura surprised him with a smile. "You're so kind, Kazuhiko. You really are. That's why I love you."
"I love you too. I love you so much."
Kazuhiko wished he weren't so young and inarticulate, so that he could explain how he felt: the effect that she had on him, her expressions, her words, her movemen
ts, so tender, her soul, beautiful and perfectly pure; how important her very existence was to him. But he felt unable to express it. He was only a ninth grader and, worse yet, one with low marks in Japanese.
"Anyway," she said, closing her eyes. She took in a breath, more composed now, and let it out. "I wanted to make sure I got to see you first."
Kazuhiko remained quiet, listening to what she had to say.
"Terrible things are going to happen. With what you told me, they're already happening. Yesterday, everyone was friends . .. but they're killing each other, aren't they?"
Through her hand, Kazuhiko could feel her shudder again.
She gave him a smile mixed with emotion—fear, and maybe a little irony at the senseless fate that had visited them. "I can't take it," she said. "Not that."
Of course she couldn't. Not someone as compassionate as Sakura. Kazuhiko didn't know any sweeter girl.
"Besides," Sakura continued, "we won't be able to go home together. Even if by some miracle one of us could go back, it wouldn't be together. Even if . . . even if I somehow survived, I couldn't take you being gone. So . . ."
She didn't finish the sentence. Kazuhiko knew what she had been about to say: So I'll die. Here. With you here, before anyone else can interfere.
Instead, she said, "But you will live."
Kazuhiko smiled sadly, squeezed her hand tight, and shook his head. "That's cruel. I feel the same as you. Even if I survived, I couldn't take you being gone. Don't you go and leave me alone."
Sakura's wide eyes stared into his. She began to cry.
She looked away from him and wiped her tears with the hand holding the clover bouquet. Then she said something that took him a little by surprise. "Did you watch it last week? You know, the one on Wednesdays at nine. The last episode of Tonight, At Our Rendezvous2.”
Kazuhiko nodded. Rendezvous was a drama broadcast by the DBS commercial network. As would be expected from a show produced in the Republic of Greater East Asia, it was a shallow love story—though fairly well made for its flaws, and it had been a ratings hit for years.
"Yeah, I saw it," Kazuhiko said. "You kept telling me I should."
"Uh-huh. Well, you know ..."
She went on, and as Kazuhiko listened, he thought, This is just how we always talk. He found such bliss in their ordinary, pointless chatter. She wants us to be us through the very end.
Before he knew it, he was on the verge of tears.
"I'm totally fine," Sakura was saying, "with how the two main characters ended up together. That's how it always goes, you know? But I don't like what happened with Miki's friend, Mizue—the one played by Anna Kitagawa—and how she gave up on the guy she loved. I would have gone after him."
Kazuhiko grinned. "I thought you'd say that."
Sakura laughed bashfully. "I can't hide anything from you." She sounded so happy. "I can still remember when I first saw you, on my first day in junior high and in your class. You were tall, and cool, but more than that, I saw you and I thought, 'Here's someone who could really understand me. Deep down, he'd understand me.'"
"I . . . don't know how to say this very well, but..." Kazuhiko twisted his tongue around inside his mouth and thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know how to say this very well, but I felt the same way, I think."
He had said it well.
For a while, he leaned in against Sakura. With his left hand still holding hers, he reached his right hand to her shoulder.
Sitting together like this, they kissed. The moment lasted a few seconds. Or was that half a minute? Or an eternity?
Then, their lips separated. They had heard rustling in the bushes behind them. Someone had come. That was their signal. The train's about to depart, so all aboard, you'd better get moving.
There was nothing left to say. Sure, they could have fought back. He could have taken his revolver in hand and faced whoever was there. But that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to pass quietly, before she got sucked into this damned senseless massacre. Nothing was more important to him than her. He couldn't trade her for anything now. This was what her trembling heart wanted, and he would obey. If he were a little more eloquent, perhaps he would have thought: For her principles, I offer my life.
Their bodies fell through the air beyond the cliffside, the pitchblack sea at their backs, their hands still clasped together.
Yukie Utsumi (Girls #2) was peeking out from the brush. Her breath caught in her throat. She hadn't the slightest intention of harming anyone, at least not unless someone attacked her first, and had never imagined her sound would have signaled their departure. She could only stare in stunned silence as the best couple in class, their two bodies side by side, vanished from the grassy cliff top. She could hear the faint sound of waves crashing against the sheer cliff below. A gentle breeze blew. The tiny white clovers had spilled from Sakura's fingers and came to rest upon the grass.
Behind Yukie, Haruka Tanizawa (Girls #12) asked, "What's wrong, Yukie?"
Yukie heard her, but just stood there, trembling.
32 STUDENTS REMAIN.
Megumi Eto (Girls #3) sat in the dark, arms wrapped around her shins. Her small body trembled. She was inside a house on the outskirts of the island's only village, a cluster of residences along the eastern shore. Though the lights might still have been working, Megumi didn't dare find out. The moonlight coming in through the kitchen window didn't reach under the table where she hid, leaving her in near total darkness. She couldn't see her watch, but figured she'd been sitting there for two hours, which made it nearly four in the morning. Almost an hour had passed since she'd heard the small and distant burst of what sounded like fireworks. Megumi didn't want to think about what that noise really was.
She lifted her face and saw the moonlit shapes of a teakettle and cupboards above the kitchen counter. Megumi knew that whoever had lived here must have been sent away to some temporary housing, but she could still sense their presence in the home. It felt unnatural and creepy, and reminded her of an old ghost story she'd heard as a child— the one about the crew of Mary Celeste, who had suddenly vanished, leaving behind on their abandoned ship everything in mid-use, meals and all.
When she left the school, Megumi ran, unaware of where she was going. The next thing she knew, she had ducked into a village. Her first thought was that not many of the others had left before her—five, only five. With fifty, maybe sixty, buildings in the village, she could fly into one of them with hardly any risk of running into anyone. Once inside, she could lock the door and hold the fort, as it was, and remain safe—at least until she was forced to move by one of those forbidden zones. The exploding collar made for an oppressive presence, but there was nothing she could do about it. If you try to force it loose, it'll explode, Sakamochi had said. What mattered now was not to miss the scheduled announcements of where and when the forbidden zones would activate.
Megumi had tried to enter the nearest house first, but it was locked. So was the second. At the third house, she used a rock to smash the sliding glass door around the back of the home. The loud noise sent her instinctively scrambling beneath the veranda to hide. No one seemed to be approaching. She went inside. With no way to lock the back door now, she struggled with the heavy storm doors on the outer rails but managed to slide the panels closed. Plunged into total darkness, the house felt sinister, more haunted mansion than home. Megumi turned on her flashlight to search the house and found two sturdy fishing rods to jam the storm doors shut.
Now she was under the kitchen table. I can't kill anyone, she thought. There's no way. But maybe, just maybe, if this won't be in a forbidden zone until the end (she had checked her map and seen that nearly the entire village lay within zone H-8)z I might be able to survive.
But, Megumi thought, her body still quivering, it's so terrifying. The way the game is, everyone's my enemy. I can't trust anyone, I know that. . . but I just can't make myself think that way. That's why I'm stuck here, shaking like this. But even if. . . even
if. . . that time comes, and the final whistle is blown, and I'm still alive, that would have to mean everyone else is dead. . . my friends, like Mizuho and Kaori. . . and that boy—even thinking of him now makes my heart race—Shuya Nanahara.
In the darkness, Megumi pulled her knees into her chest and sat thinking of Shuya. What she really loved about him was his voice. It was a little gravelly, not too high-pitched, but not too low. He seemed really into that banned music—rock or something—and when he had to sing songs praising the government or the Leader in music class, he always had this displeased look on his face. But even then, his voice was remarkable. And with his guitar, he could improvise rhythms like nothing she'd ever heard, and they made her body dance of its own accord. Yet there was a grace to the sound, the beauty of a church bell's resounding ring. He had long, wavy hair ("the Bruce Springsteen look," he'd said, though Megumi hadn't a clue who he meant), kind, double-lidded eyes (sometimes Megumi thought they looked cute, like a cat's), and the agility of a former Little League MVP.
Thinking of Shuya's face and his voice, her trembling subsided. Ah, how nice would it be if Shuya were with me now. . .
But.. . but why did I never tell him how I felt? I never sent him a love letter. I never had him meet me somewhere so I could tell him face to face. I didn't even tell him over the phone. And now I never will.
A thought caught her attention.
The phone.
Sure, Sakamochi said we couldn't use the phones, but what if. . .
Megumi scrambled for her nylon handbag, which she'd left next to the daypack, and pulled the bag closer. She opened the zipper and shoved aside her clothing and toiletries.
Her fingertips felt the hard, squarish object, and she pulled it out.
It was her cell phone. Megumi's mother had bought it for her in case something should happen on the school trip (though this was hardly just something. Sure, she'd envied the couple kids who had one, and there was a thrill to it, like having her own secret passageway. On the other hand, she wondered if her parents were being overprotective and thought her mother worried too much, and besides, what did a junior high kid need with one of those things anyway? So she had stuffed the shiny new phone into the bottom of her purse, completely forgetting about it until this very moment.
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