Battle Royale (Remastered)

by Koushun Takami, Nathan Collins

  "I know."

  Shuya bobbed his head, then went on. "There are all kinds of kids in a facility like that. I was put there when both my parents died in an accident when I was five. But actually, I was unusual. Most of the kids—"

  "—are there because of family issues," Kawada finished for him. "Illegitimate children, mostly."

  Shuya nodded. "You know a lot about this."

  "I know a little."

  "Well. . ." Shuya took a deep breath. "Yoshitoki was illegitimate. Of course, nobody with the orphanage ever talked about it. But something like that—you can just tell. Seems like there's a lot of cheating going on these days. Anyway, neither of his parents ever came to take him back. And ..."

  The sound of water boiling came from the stockpot.

  "Yoshitoki told me something once. It was way back now—back when we were in elementary school, I think."

  Shuya recalled that moment. In the corner of the playground, the two friends had climbed astride a swing fashioned from wire rope and a rough log and were rocking back and forth.

  "Hey, Shuya. I. . ."

  Shuya prodded him casually, "You what?" He kicked at the ground to rock the log. Yoshitoki wasn't doing much of the work, instead letting his legs dangle off each side.

  "Well. . . uh . . ."

  "What? Out with it already."

  "It's just... is there anyone you like?"

  "Aw, geez" Shuya said with a grin. He knew his friend meant girls. "That stuff? What, you got a crush on a girl now?"

  "Well," Yoshitoki evaded the question. "Anyway, I asked you first. Do you?"

  Shuya thought about it, and then said "Hmm."

  Shuya had already earned his "Wild Seven" Little League nickname and had received a number of love letters. But as he remembered it, back then he didn't truly understand how it felt to like someone. That, he'd saved until he met Kazumi Shintani soon after.

  Just to give some answer, he said, "There're some girls I think are all right."

  He took Yoshitoki's silence as a sign his friend wanted him to go on, so he casually added, "Komoto's not bad. She wrote me a love letter. I haven't, uh, I haven't really responded to her though. And Utsumi, on the volleyball team, you know, from the other class? She's not bad either. Now that's my type. Real outgoing, you know?"

  Yoshitoki seemed deep in thought.

  "Hey now," Shuya said. "You got me to talk. Your turn. Who do you like?"

  Instead, Yoshitoki said, "That's not what I was talking about."

  Shuya frowned his eyebrows. "What then? What is it?"

  Yoshitoki seemed hesitant. Then he said, "Um, I don't get it." "Huh?"

  "I mean," Yoshitoki said, still letting his legs limply dangle, "I think if you love someone, you'd marry her, right?"

  "Well, yeah," Shuya replied with a dull expression. "Yeah. If I really loved someone, I'd want to marry her. Though I don't feel that way about anyone yet."

  "Right?" Yoshitoki said, as if it were obvious. Then he asked, "But look, if for some reason you couldn't marry her, and you had a kid, you'd raise the child, wouldn't you?"

  Shuya felt a twinge of embarrassment. He was at the age when the idea of how babies were made was beginning to dawn on him. "Had a kid? Come on, that's grown-up stuff. That kind of talk, it—"

  Shuya finally remembered how Yoshitoki had been born to parents that weren't married to each other, and that neither had wanted him. Shuya stiffened and swallowed the rest of his words.

  Yoshitoki simply stared at the log between his legs.

  Then he said, "My parents didn't do that."

  Shuya suddenly felt sad for his friend. "Hey, Yoshitoki—"

  Yoshitoki looked up at Shuya and his voice became firm. "That's why I—I don't understand how to like a girl, and all that stuff. I don't feel like I can trust it."

  As Shuya kept on pushing the swing with his legs, he couldn't help but stare at Yoshitoki. He felt like he'd been addressed in some alien language. At the same time, the words had sounded like a chilling prophecy.

  To Kawada, Shuya said, "I think ..."

  Shuya's hands rested beside him on the vinyl tablecloth. He wrapped his fingers around the edge of the table. Kawada, still holding the cigarette in his mouth, exhaled smoke and squinted in the cloud.

  "I think, back then, Yoshitoki was a lot more mature than I was. I was just this dumb little kid. But Yoshitoki, after that, he never— even when we went on to junior high, and I told him I really fell for someone," he said, meaning Kazumi Shintani, "he never talked about that kind of thing again. That worried me."

  The boiling water bubbled. Shuya looked over to Kawada. "But then one day he told me he had a crush on Noriko Nakagawa. I acted like it wasn't a big deal, but when he said it, I was so happy. It was just—it was just..."

  Shuya looked away. He knew he was about to cry.

  Once he managed to fight back his tears, he said the rest without looking at Kawada's eyes.

  "It was just two months ago that he told me."

  Kawada remained silent.

  Shuya faced him again. "That's why I have to protect Noriko to the very end."

  Kawada returned his gaze for a time, then said, "I see," and rubbed his cigarette out on the tablecloth.

  Shuya said, "Please don't tell her. After we escape this game, I'll tell her myself."

  Kawada nodded and said, "Okay."

  22 STUDENTS REMAIN.

  Nearly five hours had passed since the Macintosh PowerBook 150's network connection had been neatly severed with a beep. Shinji Mimura scrolled through a document in a window on the display of the 150, which was no longer a remote terminal but a mere calculator. Shinji sighed.

  Over and over he'd tinkered with the phone, checked the connections, and rebooted, but no matter what he tried, the black-and-white laptop screen displayed the same message. Finally, after disconnecting his cell phone from the modem, he concluded that the phone itself was completely dead. If he couldn't connect to the wireless network, he couldn't even access his home PC. Also out of the question was calling all of his girlfriends and tearfully saying, "I'm going to die soon, but I loved you more than anyone." Shinji considered stripping his cell phone just to make sure he hadn't made a mistake—but then he dropped everything.

  Shinji's skin crawled.

  The reason he could no longer dial in to the network had been clear to him for a while. The government had discovered the line service number used by the DTT technicians, the one accessed by the counterfeit alternate ROM he'd painstakingly built into his custom phone. They'd blocked that number just like any other standard line. The question was, how had the government been able to detect and respond to his method? He felt sure he hadn't done anything careless that would have exposed his hack. Of that much he could be confident.

  That left only one possible explanation. They/ had discovered his hacking attempt through some method other than their computers' internal security systems, alert systems, or someone manually monitoring the network. And now that they knew—

  The moment the realization hit him, Shinji reached for the collar around his neck.

  Now that the government knew, it would come as no surprise if they remotely triggered the explosives to kill him—and probably Yutaka too.

  Thanks to this, the government-supplied bread and water he ate after noon tasted even worse.

  When he'd seen Shinji turn off the laptop, Yutaka looked to his friend for an explanation. But Shinji only said, "It's no good. I don't know why, but it's not working anymore. I think my phone might have broken."

  Yutaka seemed pretty bummed after that, and he sat back down in the same place he'd been all morning. Outside of a few words exchanged after the occasional echo of gunfire, the two boys remained silent. Shinji Mimura's glorious escape plan, that Yutaka had called "incredible," had gone up in smoke.

  I'm going to make you bastards regret not killing me right away. No matter what.

  Shinji thought for a while, then stuck his hands into his
pockets and pulled out a small, old pocketknife he'd carried around with him ever since he was in elementary school. On the same key ring as the knife was a small metal cylinder covered with scratches. He held the tube up to his eye.

  The knife had been another gift from his uncle. The cylinder, however, like the earring in his left ear, he'd kept as a memento after his mentor had died. His uncle had kept it attached, in the same manner, to a knife that never left his side either.

  Inside the cap of the thumb-sized container, a rubber ring kept any water from getting inside. It was a case typically used by soldiers to keep a piece of paper with their name, blood type, medical conditions, and the like, in the event of injury. Some used it to store matches. Until his uncle died, Shinji thought something like that would be inside. But what he found was something altogether different. The case itself had been carved from a single piece of a special alloy, inside of which were two smaller, similar cases. Shinji took out the two cylinders. At first glance, he couldn't figure out what they were for, but he quickly realized that they were meant to be attached together. The screw on one fit perfectly into the other. His uncle had stored them separated within a case and under close guard, because if he left the two halves attached, something bad might happen. After some research, Shinji came upon what they were (and recognized immediately that they of course had to be kept separate—otherwise they would be too dangerous to walk around with), but he never figured out why his uncle carried them with him. On their own, they couldn't be used for much. Maybe the man had kept it on his person simply as a reminder of someone, much like Shinji did now, both with the cylinder and with the earring the boy now wore. Either way, the object provided a clue into his uncle's past.

  The cap squeaked as Shinji opened it. He hadn't done so since his uncle's death. He dropped the two nested cylinders into his hand and broke the seal on the smaller of the two.

  The inside of the cylinder had been packed with cotton to absorb any shock, behind which peeked out the dull yellow of brass.

  Shinji appraised the object for a moment, then closed it again. He returned the two smaller cylinders to their original places inside the larger case. He'd thought that if he ever had to use the thing, it would be after they'd escaped the island—though he had considered the possibility that he would need it after he disrupted the computers inside the school, once he got together everything else he needed to launch an assault on Sakamochi and his thugs. But now, this was all he had.

  He screwed the cap on tight, then flipped out the blade of his pocketknife. The sun had begun its descent in the west, and in the light of the thicket, the silver steel took on a yellow hue. Next Shinji took out the pencil from his pocket, the one he'd used when they all wrote, We will kill each other, before the game began. Because he'd also used it to write down the list of forbidden zones on his map and to check off the names of the dead from his class roster, its tip had gone blunt. Shinji sharpened it with his knife. Then, from a different pocket, he took out his map and turned the paper over. It was blank.

  "Yutaka," he said, and his friend, seated there, hugging his knees and staring at the ground, looked up at him.

  His eyes twinkling with hope, Yutaka said, "Did you think of something?"

  Shinji didn't know what it was about Yutaka right then that ticked him off. Maybe it was the boy's tone or the words themselves. Whatever it was, for just a moment, a voice deep inside Shinji said, What's this shit? I'm banging my head against the wall trying to think of a way out of here, and you think it's okay for you to just sit there and space out? Sure, you got all fired up swearing you'd avenge Izumi Kanai, but you haven't thought for jack You think you're ordering fast food and I'm working the register? Well fuck then, you want fries with that?

  But Shinji suppressed that voice.

  Yutaka's round cheeks had deeply sunken in, making distinct the lines of his cheek bones. But that was only natural. The stress of this killing, and not knowing when it would end, could exhaust anyone.

  Ever since he was little, Shinji never felt second to anyone in gym class. (Two exceptions came in eighth grade—Shuya "Wild Seven" Nanahara, and of course, Kazuo Kiriyama. Basketball aside, he never knew if he would beat them or not.) His uncle often took him hiking in the mountains, and he felt confident in any matchup that came down to physical stamina. But not everyone was as physically fit as The Third Man. As for Yutaka, he was hardly an athlete, and when the cold seasons came, he would miss a lot of school. The fatigue he was facing would be on an entirely different level than Shinji's, and it could be affecting his ability to think.

  Then Shinji came to a realization that froze him in place. Wasn't the fact that he was even a little upset at Yutaka just now an indication of his own fatigue? With their chances of survival practically nonexistent, it would have been more strange if he hadn't been on edge.

  That's not good enough.

  I need to be careful. Or else. . . This isn't some basketball game where losing means I have to feel bad. No, in this game the consequence of losing is death.

  Shinji shook his head.

  Yutaka asked, "What's wrong?"

  Shinji looked up and made himself grin. "Nothing. Anyway, you want to help me take a look at something on the map?"

  Yutaka scooted over toward Shinji.

  "Hey," Shinji said, raising his voice, "there's a bug—on your neck!"

  Yutaka jumped and raised his hand to his neck, but Shinji stopped him, saying, "I'll get it." He leaned in, and his eyes went to something—not a bug—at the base of Yutaka's neck.

  "Damn, it ran to the other side," Shinji said. He circled behind Yutaka and looked in close.

  Yutaka squeaked, "Shinji, did you get it? Shinji?" Shinji took an even closer, more careful look.

  Then he brushed the back of Yutaka's neck with his hand and squashed the imaginary insect beneath his shoe. He then (pretending) picked up the bug and (pretending) flung it into the brush.

  "Got it," he said. Returning around front, he added, "It looked like a small centipede."

  "Gross." Rubbing the back of his neck, Yutaka glanced to where Shinji (pretending) had tossed the bug and made a face.

  Shinji grinned and said, "Okay, the map."

  Yutaka peered down at the map . . . and seeing it facedown, he furrowed his brow.

  Shinji raised his index finger and waved it to get his friend's attention. Then he picked up the pencil and scribbled on the back of the map. He was left-handed, and his handwriting sloppy. His chickenscratch characters appeared along the edge of the paper.

  [7 think they can hear us.]

  Yutaka's face went stiff. "Really? How can you tell?"

  Shinji frantically put his hand over Yutaka's mouth. The boy understood and nodded, his eyes wide.

  Shinji lowered his hand and said, "I just can. I know a lot about insects. That one wasn't poisonous." Then, just in case, he wrote some more.

  [We are looking at the map. Don't say anything to make them suspicious.]

  Providing a fake cover, he said, "All right, so, since my hack didn't work, we're out of options."

  [ They heard me explain to you what I was up to and they cut off the Mac. I underestimated them. They expect some of us will try to resist. And monitoring our conversations is the easiest precaution. It's so obvious.]

  Yutaka took a pencil out of his pocket and wrote directly below Shinji's scrawl. His handwriting was much neater.

  [ They've got monitoring devices all over this big island?]

  He seemed to have cribbed Shinji's kanji for "monitoring," and he'd written "devices" all wrong. Well, so what? This wasn't Japanese class.

  "So," Shinji said, "I think we need to look for some of the others. The two of us can't do anything alone, and ..."

  He lightly tapped his collar. Yutaka's eyes bulged, then he nodded.

  Shinji wrote again.

  [/ just looked at your collar. It doesn't seem to have a built-in camera. Only a microphone. And I haven't seen any signs of cameras a
bout. All we have to worry about are satellites, but they won't be able to see us under these trees.]

  Yutaka's eyes widened again, and he looked up. The swaying treetops blocked any glimpse of the blue sky.

  Then Yutaka's face stiffened as if in sudden realization. He clenched his pencil and brought it to the paper.

  [ The laptop stopped working because you told me. If I hadn't been here, you would have succeeded.]

  With the hand holding his pencil, Shinji stuck out his pointer finger and poked his friend's shoulder, presenting him a reassuring grin. Then he wrote:

  [ That's true, but don't sweat it. I should have been more careful. The moment the government was on tome, they could have blown our collars. In their benevolent mercy, they're letting us live.]

  Yutaka returned his hand to his neck and made a shocked expression. For a while, he gaped at Shinji, but then he pressed his lips together and nodded.

  Shinji returned the nod, then said, "Seems like everyone is in hiding, but..."

  {All right. I'm going to write my plan here. I'm going to fake a conversation, so play along.]

  Yutaka nodded, then blurted, "Ah, but, there are so few we can trust."

  Shinji thought, Nice job, and grinned. Yutaka returned the smile.

  "Yeah," Shinji said. "But I think Nanahara would be one. I wish we could find him."

  [I have to warn you first. If my hack had worked, we might have been able to save everyone. But now, we can only think of saving ourselves. Are you fine with that?]

  Yutaka seemed to think for a moment. Then he wrote:

  [ We can't look for Shuya?]

  [ We can't. I know it sucks, but we can't]

  Shinji wanted to write the kanji for "afford" but couldn't remember it. Shinji's grades in Japanese weren't that great either. He spelled it out instead.

  [a-f-f-o-r-d to worry about the others. Are you fine with that?]

  Yutaka bit his lip. But finally he nodded.

  Shinji returned the nod.

  [But if my plan goes well, the game will be suspended for a while. That might give everyone else a chance to escape.}

  Yutaka bobbed his head twice. "Do you think everyone else is hiding in the mountains like us? I wonder if any of them have broken into the houses."