The space immediately inside was a waiting room roughly eight square meters large. Along the left side of the room, a green padded bench with a white cover sat on the worn, cream-colored carpet. Above the bench, a wall clock was tick-tocking away as its hands approached three. A doorway to the right seemed to lead to the examination room.
Kawada jammed the door shut with a broom he must have found nearby and waved Shuya to the examination room, saying, "Over here."
Though he was probably supposed to remove his shoes, he kept his sneakers on and stepped up from the entranceway, then went into the room on the right. A wooden desk was at the window, and a doctor's black leather stool sat near another stool with green vinyl. Despite its small size, the clinic still carried the odor of disinfectant.
Two beds were on the other side of a thin green curtain hanging from a rail of metal pipe. Shuya carried Noriko to the closer of the two beds and carefully laid her down. He thought about taking back his school coat that he'd put around her but decided to leave it be.
Kawada quickly pulled the window curtains shut, said, "Here're some blankets," and offered Shuya two thin brown blankets that had been folded into small squares. Shuya took them, and after a moment of thought, laid one of the blankets across the empty bed. Then he lifted Noriko, transferred her there, and put the other blanket over her and tucked her in. Kawada was rifling through the drawers of a gray cabinet—probably a medicine cabinet, though nothing on the outside appeared any different from an ordinary piece of office furniture.
Shuya leaned in toward Noriko and brushed the sweat-matted hair from her cheeks back over her ears. She seemed to be only semiconscious. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing remained pained.
Shuya cursed. "Noriko, are you all right?"
Noriko's eyelids cracked open, and she vacantly gazed up at him and said, "Mm-hm ..." Her high fever was keeping her in a daze, but her thoughts remained clear enough for her to respond.
"How about some water?"
Noriko gave him a tiny nod. Kawada had left the daypacks on the floor, and Shuya went to his, retrieved a new bottle of water, and broke open the cap. He propped Noriko up and gave her a drink. Water spilled from the side of her lips, which he wiped with the back of his finger.
"Is that enough?"
Noriko nodded. Shuya laid her back down and looked up at Kawada. "Any medicine?"
"Hold on," Kawada said. He moved to another cabinet, this one low to the ground, and rummaged through it. He pulled out a cardboard box, opened the lid, and read the directions. He seemed to find it acceptable, because he took out a small jar and some kind of ampoule. The jar was filled with a white powdery substance.
Shuya asked, "Does that dissolve in water or something?"
"No. It's for an injection."
Shuya was startled. "You know what to do with that?"
Kawada opened the faucet at the corner of the room. No water came out, so he clicked his tongue and used a bottle of water from his daypack to thoroughly wash his hands. He set a needle into a small syringe and drew the liquid from inside the ampoule.
"Don't worry," he said. "I've done this before."
"Really?" Shuya felt like that was all he ever said to Kawada.
Kawada broke the seal on the small jar of powder, pressed the syringe through the cap, and expelled the ampoule's liquid inside. He withdrew the needle, took the jar in one hand, and gave it several small, quick shakes. He stuck the syringe back into the jar and extracted the liquid mixture.
After he'd prepared a second syringe, Kawada finally approached the bed.
Shuya asked, "Is that really going to be all right? What about side effects, or shock, or—"
"That's what I'm about to find out. Quit worrying and help me. Hold out Noriko's arm."
Shuya didn't understand, but he lifted up the side of the blanket and rolled up the sleeves of one of Noriko's arms, both his coat's and her own sailor-suit blouse's. The skin of her slender arm had lost its tanned, healthy color and turned sickly pale.
"Noriko," Kawada said. "Have you ever been allergic to any medicine?"
Noriko opened her vacant eyes.
Kawada repeated the question. "Are you allergic to any medicine?" Noriko shook her head.
"Okay. I'm going to do a little test first."
Holding Noriko's arm steady with her palm up, Kawada took a cotton ball soaked with some disinfectant and rubbed it over a wide patch of her wrist, where he then carefully inserted one of the syringes. He injected a minute amount of the medicine and her skin swelled in a tiny bump. He picked up the other syringe and made an identical bump right beside the first.
Shuya asked, "What's that for?"
Kawada replied as he promptly disposed of the two needles. "Only one of those contains the medicine. If both spots are identical after fifteen minutes, we won't have to worry about, well, any of the more extreme side effects. It means we can at least try the drug. But..."
"But?"
This time Kawada took a slightly larger bottle from the cardboard box. He set it down on a nearby side table and began preparing a new syringe in the same manner as before.
As he worked, he said, "Sepsis is difficult to diagnose. To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure if this is sepsis, or if it's just a regular cold. And antibiotics are strong stuff. That's why I had to test it first. Either way, I don't exactly have the right level of knowledge or experience you'd want for something like this. But..."
Shuya held Noriko's hand and waited for him to continue.
Kawada exhaled, then said, "If this is sepsis, we need to treat it as fast as we possibly can. We have a limited window."
The fifteen minutes passed quickly. In the meantime, Kawada checked her pulse again and took her temperature—thirty-nine degrees. No wonder she was faint.
As far as Shuya could determine, the two injection marks on her wrist were identical. Kawada must have concurred, because he picked up a slightly larger syringe than before.
Kawada leaned in to her and said, "Noriko. Are you awake?"
With her eyes still closed, she said, "Mm-hmm ..."
"I'm going to give it to you straight. I can't be sure if what's got you is sepsis or not. But I think it's highly likely."
Noriko made a slight nod. "It's all right. Go ahead ..." she said. She must have been able to follow the two boys' earlier conversation.
Kawada nodded, then inserted the needle more deeply. He injected the liquid and withdrew the syringe. He pressed a cotton ball on the spot, then instructed Shuya, "Hold it in place."
Kawada walked the empty syringe over to the sink and tossed it inside. Then he returned to the bedside.
"Now she needs to rest. Look after her for a while. If she seems thirsty, you can use the rest of our water bottles."
Shuya started to say, "But—"
Kawada shook his head. "It's fine. I found a well out back. If we boil it first, we should be able to drink it."
Then Kawada left the room. Shuya turned back to the bed. With his right hand pressing the cotton ball to her wrist, and his left hand gently holding hers, he watched her face.
22 STUDENTS REMAIN,
Noriko fell asleep almost immediately. For a while, Shuya watched over her. Then, making sure the bleeding had stopped, he discarded the cotton ball, tucked her arm back under the blanket, and exited the room.
A door at the back of the reception area appeared to lead into the doctor's living quarters. Shuya went inside.
Past the door, a hallway ended with a kitchen on the right. Kawada was there. Unsurprisingly, the gas cooktop next to the sink seemed to be inoperative—the familiar red glow of Kawada's charcoal peeked out from beneath a stockpot filled with water on one of the two burners.
Kawada had climbed atop the kitchen table to search through the built-in ceiling cabinet opposite the sink. Shuya noticed that Kawada was wearing New Balance sneakers. He hadn't paid much attention to them, assuming they were some domestic brand like Mizumo or Kageboshi. But t
hese were New Balance'. He'd never seen a pair of those before.
Putting that aside for now, Shuya asked, "What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for food. I found some rice and miso, but not much else. The vegetables in the fridge are rotten."
Shuya shook his head. "I feel like we're stealing."
"We are stealing. Did you think we weren't?" Still digging through the cabinet, he added, "Never mind that. Just prepare yourself. Someone could come here any moment. Just see what'll happen when that machine-gunner attacks. We don't have anywhere to run. So be ready."
"Okay."
Kawada rummaged through the cabinet a little while longer, then hopped down from the table. His New Balance sneakers squeaked on the floor. He asked, "Did Noriko fall asleep?"
Shuya nodded.
Kawada pulled out another pot from beneath the sink, walked it over to a plastic rice container at the corner of the room, and poured rice into it.
"Cooking some rice, huh?" Shuya asked.
"Yeah. Noriko won't get her energy back on that bread alone."
Kawada used a rice bowl to scoop out water from a bucket on the floor and into the pan. He must have filled the bucket from the well. He stirred the rice, then replaced the water. Then he took several pieces of charcoal from his daypack and placed them beneath the open burner. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, stashed its contents back into the same pocket, then crumpled up the empty package, lit it with his lighter, and tossed it into the charcoal. After the flames spread through the coals, he put the lid on the pot of rice and placed the pot on the burner. He clearly knew what he was doing.
"Damn," Shuya said.
Taking a break, Kawada lit a cigarette and sent Shuya a questioning glance.
"You're so good at everything."
"That so?" Kawada said dismissively, but a different thought crossed Shuya's mind, and he was back where Kaori Minami had been killed. I know what's going to happen, but I can't stop it. Everything's in slow motion. Kaori whirls, and the side of her head blows apart. Did you see that? It blew apart.
If it had been Kawada who tried to stop them, and not you, he told himself, maybe that tragic outcome could have been avoided.
Kawada asked, "Is what happened with Minami bothering you?" His mind-reading abilities were in full effect today. The lack of sunlight inside didn't seem to affect him.
Shuya looked up at Kawada, who shook his head and said, "Don't let it get to you. It was an awful situation, and you did your best."
Shuya dropped his eyes. Kaori Minami's corpse sideways on the floor of some filthy farm shed. The pool of blood oozing forth. By now it had probably started to coagulate. But she'd still be there like that, with no funeral. Just like some discarded mannequin, her body left to sprawl on the floor. In that way, she was the same as Tatsumichi Oki, Kyoichi Motobuchi, Yukiko Kitano, and Yumiko Kusaka, and all the others.
He felt sick. They were all sprawled about, already nearly twenty of them.
"Kawada."
The name had spilled out of Shuya's lips. Kawada answered with a tilt of his head and a gesture with the cigarette in his hand.
Shuya asked, "The ones who died—what happens to their bodies? Are they just left there until this bullshit game is over? Just rotting or whatever as the game stretches on?"
Matter-of-factly, Kawada replied, "About a day or so after the game ends, an appointed cleanup crew comes in."
"A cleanup crew?" Shuya bared his teeth.
"Yep. I heard it from one of the workers, so it must be true. The soldiers have too much pride to do some menial job like that. Of course, government officials accompany the crews to reclaim the collars and perform a cursory autopsy. You know, like you hear on the news? This number died from asphyxiation, and so on."
Shuya was disgusted. He thought back to how those news reports always ended, with some meaningless enumeration of the causes of death and the numbers of students.
But a realization caused him to knit his brows.
Noticing his expression, Kawada said, "What's up?"
"Well, it's just that doesn't make any sense, does it? This—" Shuya
raised his hand to his neck, and his fingers brushed the cold surface, the feeling of which no longer seemed out of place. "This collar is classified, right? Wouldn't they have to retrieve them before any contractors showed up?"
Kawada made a slight shrug. "The cleanup crews wouldn't have any idea what they are. They probably just assume they're used as some kind of tag. As a matter of fact, the contractor I talked to didn't even remember the collars until I asked about them. So there's no rush. The government can deal with the collars after the cleanup crew's collected all the bodies, right?"
Maybe he was right. But if he was, then something else bothered Shuya.
"Hold up," Shuya said. "What if a collar breaks or something? Say one malfunctions and thinks one of the living students is dead. Couldn't that student escape? Shouldn't they at least check the dead bodies as soon as the game is over?"
Kawada raised his eyebrows. "You sound like one of them."
"No—I," Shuya stuttered. "It's just. . ."
"I doubt these things ever break. If they could malfunction, it could throw the whole game out of whack. And remember, we're all armed. If one of us is still alive, it wouldn't be about checking the bodies. There'd be at least some kind of battle."
Kawada took a thoughtful drag of his cigarette, then exhaled the smoke. "This is just my guess, now, but I think each collar has been loaded with redundant systems. If something breaks, the electronics can just switch to the backup. Say one component breaks—and I think the chances of that would be far less than one percent—but say it does break. If you add redundancy, the probability of the collar malfunctioning becomes negligible."
He looked at Shuya. "The odds of us escaping that way are as close to zero as possible."
Shuya nodded in understanding. Kawada was probably correct. (And Shuya was continuously impressed by Kawada's ability to reason.)
But then . . .
Shuya's thoughts returned to the question he'd promised he wouldn't ask:
What countermeasures has Kawada prepared that can go up against such a flawless escape-proof system?
Before he had time to contemplate the matter, Kawada said, "Anyway, look, I have to apologize."
"For what?"
"Noriko. I was wrong. We should have treated her sooner."
"No . . ." Shuya shook his head. "It's okay. And thanks. I couldn't have done anything on my own."
Kawada lit a fresh cigarette. He blew out a puff of smoke and stared at a point on the wall. "Now all we can do is wait and see. If it's just a cold, her fever will go down with rest. But even if it's sepsis, that medicine should do the trick."
Shuya nodded, grateful to have Kawada there. Without him, he could only have sat on his hands, watching Noriko grow weaker and weaker. He felt childish and a little ashamed for having berated Kawada, saying, "Our deal is off," back when he started heading for the clinic. He knew Kawada had only made the difficult decision after carefully weighing Noriko's condition against the risk of moving during the day.
Shuya decided he needed to apologize.
"Um, sorry. Saying you're on your own and all that. I just got so worked up . . ."
His face still in profile, Kawada shook his head and grinned. "You made the right decision. End of discussion."
Shuya let out a breath and decided to drop the subject.
Then another thought came to him, and he asked, "Your father— is he still a doctor?"
Kawada took another drag, then shook his head and said, "No."
"What's he doing now? Is he still in Kobe?"
Casually, Kawada said, "No. He's dead."
Shuya's eyes widened. "When?"
"When I went into this game last year. By the time I got home, he was already dead. I figure he got in a scrap with the government."
Shuya's expression hardened. He felt he was beginning to understand
that spark that had crossed through Kawada's eyes when he vowed to destroy this fucked-up country. His father must have attempted some kind of protest when Kawada was taken away for the Program and had received his government's certain response in the form of a bullet.
Shuya wondered if some of his classmates' parents died the same way.
"Sorry," Shuya said. "I shouldn't have asked."
"It's okay. I don't mind."
Shuya paused and then asked another question. "So did your mother move with you to Kagawa?"
Again Kawada shook his head no. "My ma died young. I was seven. She was sick. My dad was really beat up over it—how of all the people, the one he couldn't save was his own wife. Most of his work was in surgery and abortions, you see. Disorders in the cranial nervous system were beyond his expertise."
Shuya apologized once more. "Sorry."
Kawada chuckled. "I said it's okay. You don't have any parents either. And that lifetime government pension deal is no lie. I've got enough money. It's not as much as they like to say it is, but still."
Tiny bubbles began to form on the surface of the stockpot of water above the charcoal. The briquettes beneath the rice pot were still black in quite a few places, but the ones beneath the stockpot were glowing bright red, and their heat reached the table where Shuya and Kawada stood. Shuya sat on the flower-patterned vinyl tablecloth.
Out of the blue, Kawada said, "You were good friends with Kuninobu."
Shuya turned his head to Kawada, regarded the boy's profile, then looked ahead. He hadn't thought of Yoshitoki for a while now. The realization came with some guilt.
"Yeah," Shuya said. "We were always together, you know."
After some hesitation, he added, "Yoshitoki had a crush on
Noriko."
Kawada listened as he continued to smoke.
Shuya wasn't sure if he should speak what next came into his mind. It had nothing to do with Kawada. But in the end, he decided to tell him. Kawada was his friend now. He could hear this. Besides, they had time to kill.
"Yoshitoki and I lived at this place called the House of Mercy and Love—"
Battle Royale (Remastered) Page 27