Then, two years ago, it happened—his uncle's death. On the surface, it appeared to be an accident. When the police came to ask his family to claim his body, they explained that he had been electrocuted while working alone at his factory at night. But Shinji's uncle had been acting strange for a little while. The man had seemed unusually preoccupied. While Shinji was doing his customary poking around on his uncle's computer, he asked him what was wrong.
His uncle replied, "Well, one of my old friends ..." But then he stopped himself, suddenly evasive, and said, "Ah, never mind. It's nothing."
My old friends.
Shinji's uncle hardly ever discussed his past. He always managed to change the subject. When Shinji realized his uncle didn't want to talk about it, he stopped asking. (And when he asked his father, he was told, "That's nothing you need to know.") But his uncle's breadth of knowledge spanned the legal and the illegal, and behind his explanations on the world and society Shinji perceived a buried dislike, even a hatred, toward their nation. And also . . . something of a shadow. Once, Shinji had said, "You're incredible, Uncle. You're so cool." But his uncle gave a pained smile and said, "That's not true, Shinji. I'm not cool or any of that. You can't survive in this country and live with integrity. No, if I were a good person, I'd be long dead by now." The conclusion Shinji drew from all this was that at some point, his uncle had been involved in some form of resistance against the government. But something had caused him to stand down. At least that's what Shinji suspected.
Because of this, Shinji was a little worried when he heard his uncle mention his old friends. But, thinking his uncle could handle anything, he decided not to pester him with questions.
But his fears had been well placed. At the time, Shinji had suspected one of his uncle's old friends, with whom he'd lost contact, had reached out to him, and after some hesitation, he'd decided to take on the assignment.
And then . . . something happened. Since the police in this nation had the right to execute civilians without trial, they didn't hesitate to do so wherever they were, whether it was at someone's workplace or out on the street. But when the person involved was related to a prominent figure, it wasn't unlikely for them to cover up the execution as an "accidental death." What really disgusted Shinji was that his father had a fairly important role in a fairly important firm. (According to the Republic's worker classification system, he was a Class-1 worker—the highest rank outside of the upper-level bureaucrats.) What disgusted Shinji even more was that, if his theory was true, his uncle had been "taken care of," while his good-for-nothing father had, in whatever roundabout way, consented to the government's actions.
No matter what else, his uncle's death couldn't have been an accident. That man would never die some stupid, careless death via accidental electrocution.
Thinking about it now, Shinji sensed that his earring's former owner may have been linked to his uncle's past. Trembling with rage at his uncle's murder, he swore to never bow down to this country.
Shinji was convinced that his uncle's words—"You can't survive in this country and live with integrity"—had been a warning. And just as he had warned, he died. But after all that he had taught Shinji, the boy thought this: I'm going to find a way to do what you gave up long ago. I want to be virtuous. After all, isn't that what you taught me?
But of course that was only a general emotion, and he hadn't taken any direct action to bring it into reality. He had heard of resistance groups but had no idea where to find them. Besides, his uncle had warned him, "You're better off not trusting any groups or movements. They're not all that reliable." He also thought he was a little too young. But more than anything else, he was scared.
But then even if he got lucky enough to escape this damn game, he'd be a fugitive. If that's the case, then lean do whatever I want, ironically enough. Whether through some group or on my own, it won't matter. I'll do whatever I want to with this country as my enemy. This determination had begun to harden inside him.
And now, Yutaka's words had given those feelings a final push.
But Shinji decided to set aside such complex emotions for now and instead admit something else he'd been feeling.
"I'm jealous of you, you know—that you had a girl to love. So if you're doing this, we're doing it together."
Yutaka's lips trembled. "Shit, you mean it? You really mean it?"
"Yeah. I do." Putting his arm on Yutaka's shoulder again, Shinji added, "But for now, we need to think of our escape. Killing that one little bastard, Sakamochi, won't hurt the government. They wouldn't even feel an itch. If we're doing this, we've gotta have a much bigger goal. Right?"
Yutaka nodded. After a while, he wiped his eyes, and Shinji said, "Hey, you haven't seen anyone, have you? Aside from Kusaka and Kitano?"
His eyes red from rubbing the tears away, Yutaka looked at Shinji and shook his head. "No. I. . . ran away as soon as I left the school. And I kept on running. What about you, Shinji? Did you see anyone?"
Shinji nodded once. "Just as I left. It must have happened after you were gone—Tendo and Akamatsu's corpses were right outside the entrance."
Yutaka's eyes widened. "They were?"
"Yeah. I think Tendo was killed as soon as she stepped out."
"And Akamatsu?"
Shinji folded his arms. "I think he killed her."
Yutaka's face stiffened again. "Really?"
"Yeah, he was the first one out, so what other reason would he have for being there? He came back and shot her, probably hiding in some shadow. They had arrows sticking out of them, Tendo and Akamatsu both. The same kind of arrows. So he did in Tendo, then tried to attack the next one out, but instead he got his weapon taken from him—probably a crossbow, looking at the arrows—and got killed himself. That's the simplest scenario."
"But the next one out. . . that was ..."
"Nanahara."
Again Yutaka's eyes went wide. "Shuya? Shuya killed him? He killed Akamatsu?"
Shinji shook his head. "I don't know. The most we can know for sure is that Akamatsu wasn't able to kill Nanahara. And he wasn't able to kill the one after him either. So it was probably Nanahara who did it. Nanahara could have just knocked him out. He can be a little soft sometimes. Then someone who came out later finished off Akamatsu."
Shinji thought for a moment, then added, "Nanahara would have escaped with Noriko. He might not have had time to deliver the killing blow."
"Noriko? Oh, that's right, she was shot, wasn't she? That's when you—"
"Yeah." Shinji formed a sardonic smile. "If only the game had been delayed. I never expected that to work, but I thought I'd try it. Anyway, Noriko came next after Nanahara. He signaled to her before he left. My desk was close enough to see it."
Yutaka nodded. "I get it. Noriko was shot, so Shuya ..."
"Yeah. And there's the thing with Kuninobu."
Now really understanding it, Yutaka bobbed his head several times. "That's right. Nobu, he had a crush on Noriko, didn't he? So Shuya couldn't abandon her."
"Yeah. Well, even without that, a kid like Shuya, I bet he had some plan to join together with everyone who came after him, or something like that. But Akamatsu made it obvious that that was never an option. Especially with Noriko injured. So I think he took off with Noriko, just the two of them."
Yutaka nodded again. Then his eyes dropped. "I wonder where Shuya is. If you two teamed up, we'd be unstoppable."
Shinji raised an eyebrow. Yutaka was probably thinking about the masterly combo Shinji and Shuya Nanahara made in the intramural games.
He's right, Shinji thought. I'd feel a lot better if Nanahara were with us.
And it wasn't just because of the boy's athleticism—he had this unfailing brand of courage and the ability, which Shinji shared, to make snap judgments under pressure. But more than anything else, few could be trusted in this game. Such a gentle person (a little too easygoing, from Shinji's perspective) would never kill his own classmates just so he could survive.
&
nbsp; But Shinji reached out again and placed his hand on Yutaka's shoulder. His friend looked up at him, and he said, "I'm just thankful you're with me. I'm glad we found each other."
Yutaka looked like he might begin crying anew. Shinji put on a reassuring smile. Yutaka held back the tears and grinned back.
Then Shinji continued, "Enough about the dead bodies. I noticed someone else. You know the woods on the other side of the schoolyard?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"Someone was there. Several people, actually."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I think . . . they were waiting for someone. And only five people left after me—Motobuchi and Yamamoto, and Matsui, Minami, and Yahagi. Anyway, they didn't try to get my attention. They were in a group, so they probably weren't going to suddenly come after me, but I didn't see any reason to want to go over to them and join them, either. You said you wished you'd waited for me—but the way things were, that would have been impossible. The fact is that Akamatsu probably came back and killed Tendo. When I saw that group in the woods, I thought, The same could just as easily happen to them. Sure, they could have been well armed. Either way, I got away from there as quickly as I could."
Shinji paused to wet his lips, then went on. "I saw two others." Yutaka's eyes widened again. "Really?"
Shinji nodded. "During the night, I moved around a bit. And I saw a girl. She'd done her hair up all weird—standing straight up, you know? So I think it was probably Shimizu. When I was walking along the base of the mountain, I saw her moving through the bushes."
"Didn't you . . . call out to her?"
Shinji shrugged. "Well, maybe I'm not being fair, but Souma's friends scare me."
Yutaka nodded.
"I saw one more person," Shinji said. "It was that Shogo Kawada."
Yutaka opened his mouth as if to say, Wow. Then he said, "Kawada, huh." He spoke the older boy's name with a certain amount of awe, as did many of the other students. "He's a little intimidating. So you—"
"Yeah, so I didn't try joining up with him. But. . Shinji glanced up to the sky, then looked back to Yutaka. "He seemed to notice me. I'd gone into a house to look for something. Just as I was about to step outside, I saw him straight ahead. He quickly ducked behind a ridge in the crop fields. He was carrying a shotgun, I think. I hid behind the door, but I could tell that he was watching me for a moment. But then he was gone. He didn't attack me or anything."
"Hmm," Yutaka said. "So, at the very least, Kawada's not hostile."
Shinji shook his head. "We can't be so sure. He could have seen I was armed and decided not to risk an attack. Either way, I wasn't about to follow him."
"I see." Yutaka nodded. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he looked up. "Hey, I didn't see anything, but just before Kusaka and Kitano were killed, did you hear two other shots?"
Shinji nodded. "Yeah."
"They didn't sound like that machine gun. Do you think someone else was shooting at Kusaka?"
"No," Shinji said, shaking his head. "It wasn't that. I think someone was trying to stop them. What they were doing was so obviously dangerous. I think whoever fired those shots was trying to scare them into hiding."
Yutaka leaned forward, nearly frantic. "Then at least whoever fired those shots isn't hostile."
"That's right. But we don't have anyway to meet up with them. We could probably find where they fired from, but surely they've already moved. They exposed their location to that machine-gun bastard too."
Yutaka sat back, dejected. The two remained silent for a while, and Shinji crossed his arms to think. He had been hoping that Yutaka had seen any of their classmates they could trust. If they had stayed in the same place, the two boys could have met up with them. The people he would have trusted were probably the same people that Yutaka would have trusted, and if his friend had come across any of them, he would have joined up with them. But Yutaka had been alone, so none of that really mattered.
But who can we trust anyway? Nanahara . . . and Hiroki Sugimura? Is that all? What about the girls? Maybe the class leader, Yukie Utsumi, and her friends . . . but the girls in class aren't crazy about me, maybe because I get around too much. Well, Uncle, I guess you were right—I should have found one girl and stuck with her.
Oh well, I must have been lucky just to run into Yutaka. Him I know I can trust.
Then Yutaka said, "Hey, Shinji. You said you were searching for something, right?"
Shinji nodded. "Yeah, I said that."
"What was it? What were you looking for? Some kind of weapon or something? I should have done that, but I was too scared."
Shinji looked down at his watch. Well, it should be about finished. The password cracker's been running for an hour now.
Shinji stood up, tucked his gun in the front of his waistband, and said, "Yutaka, could you move over?"
Yutaka scooted away from the tree he'd been leaning against. Beyond it, bushes extended their roots along the earth, forming a small thicket.
Shinji walked to the cluster of bushes and reached his hand inside. Carefully, he slid it out, accessories, cables, and all.
Yutaka watched in astonishment.
Shinji had pulled out a car battery (that provided the power), a half-disassembled cell phone, and a laptop computer, all interconnected with red and white cords.
The LCD screen was on, though its display was blank.
Blank. That means . . .
Shinji pursed his lips to let out a barely perceptible whistle and pressed the space bar. The computer awoke from its energy-saving sleep mode, its hard disks whirred back to life, and the grayscale desktop came back on the display.
Shinji's eyes twinkled mischievously as he searched for the last line in the tiny window in the center of the screen. "Shit, that's all? A vowel substitution, really2. That's so easy, I never would have guessed it."
Finally, Yutaka said in amazement, "Shinji, is this . . ."
Shinji opened and closed his fists, his customary warm-up to prepare his fingers for their flurry on the keys. He gave Yutaka a grin. "It's a PowerBook 150.1 never would have thought I'd find a sweet machine like this on some island in the middle of nowhere."
27 STUDENTS REMAIN.
Waiting for her watch to point to ten o'clock, Yoshimi Yahagi (Girls #21) cautiously poked her head out the back door of the house where she hid. The structure was located at the southern edge of the village, far from where Megumi Eto had been killed—though Yoshimi had no idea Megumi had been killed there anyway. She'd only heard the girl's name in the morning announcement.
Far more pressing from that announcement were the forbidden zones. At eleven a.m., the collars of any players remaining in sector H-8, which included the village, would explode. No pleas could convince the computer to wait.
The rear entrance faced a narrow alleyway that ran between the houses. The house on the other side might not have been even a meter away. She renewed her grip on her firearm (a Colt M1911, .45 caliber), putting both hands on it. It felt sturdy and solid. With her right thumb, she pulled back the heavy hammer. She'd only taken a quick glance, but she didn't sense anyone down the alley in either direction.
Cold sweat bubbled up on a round, girlish face that didn't quite suit the bad-girl reputation Yoshimi had earned as part of Mitsuko Souma's group. Only an hour or two ago, from the second-floor window, she'd seen Yumiko Kusaka and Yukiko Kitano calling out from the top of the northern mountain. Then she heard the brattattat of the gun. No doubt about it—the killing was on, and not everyone was simply hiding as she was. Some of the others had no trouble killing their classmates. And she couldn't know where they might suddenly appear.
She stepped out and sidled along the wall to her right. When she reached the corner, she peeked out to the south and saw crop fields extending up the gentle slope of the island, dotted with patches of green. She noticed several houses, though far more scattered than the village where she was. Yoshimi decided she needed to reach the mountain. There she would b
e safe for the time being.
Yoshimi resituated the daypack on her shoulders and glanced all around. Then she sprinted for a small thicket alongside the fields.
She made it there in seconds and pushed her way into the bushes. Holding her pistol in both hands, she looked to the left and then to the right. No one was there.
She hadn't gone that far, but her shoulders heaved as she gasped for breath. Keep going, keep going. She was still in H-8. Actually, she might have left the sector already, but it wasn't like a white line had been drawn across the ground, and she wouldn't be able to feel right until she made it good and far away. A blue dot marked each house on the map, but with so many of them clustered in the area around the village, she couldn't be sure which dot denoted which house. And the sector's border cut straight through that cluster.
Yoshimi wanted to cry. She believed that if she hadn't been part of Mitsuko Souma's clique, she would have been able to find the trustworthy girls—those average girls—and moved as a group. But nobody would trust her now. Not after all the bad things she'd done with Mitsuko Souma and Hirono Shimizu—like shoplifting and what was basically extortion. Even if she told the others she didn't want to hurt them, they probably wouldn't believe her. In fact, they might attack her on sight.
During the night, Yoshimi had seen another girl before she'd hid inside that house. As she was running into the village, the other girl ran out from it. She wasn't sure, but she thought it might have been Kayoko Kotohiki (Girls #8). The girl might have initially hidden in the village, then changed her mind and relocated. (That turned out to be the correct decision, since the village became the first forbidden zone.) If she'd wanted to call out to the girl, the timing and distance would have been right. But Yoshimi couldn't bring herself to do it.
So, then, what about Mitsuko Souma and Hirono Shimizu? Sure, her friends were bad, but they were her friends. If she could find the girls, would they trust her? Could she trust them? Maybe not.
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