Kiriyama was certain to base his plans with those zones in mind and would stay well clear of any forbidden zone, so if Sho held to that basic distance, he wouldn't have to worry about crossing into one of those sectors. Whenever Kiriyama stopped, Sho could check his map to make sure they weren't inside one of the forbidden zones, and that would be enough.
And everything had proceeded as Sho had planned.
Kiriyama had left the island's southern edge and stopped at a few of the houses in the village (he must have found what he'd needed), then for some reason headed for the northern mountain, where he stopped to rest. In the morning, gunfire sounded in the distance, but perhaps too distant, because Kiriyama didn't move. But soon after, when Yumiko Kusaka and Yukiko Kitano began calling out with that microphone on the mountain just above, he acted quickly, and as soon as he determined that no one was going to respond to the girls' call (Sho had heard another gunshot then—apparently intended to get the two to stop. Sho thought, Wow, incredible, a humanitarian out here. The gesture moved him, though not enough to take action.) Kiriyama shot and killed the two. After that, he descended the mountain's northern slope.
That afternoon, Kiriyama heard another instance of gunfire, but this too he overlooked. Then, just a little bit ago, before three o'clock, shots came from their side of the mountain. But when Kiriyama followed the sound, he (and consequently Sho) found only Kaori Minami's body, dead on a farm shed floor. Kiriyama went down to check the body, probably to go through her belongings, but someone else appeared to have taken off with them first. After that, he moved a short distance away. . .
And now he's in those bushes below.
Kiriyama's strategy seemed simple, at least so far. Once he knew where someone was, he ran there and fired away. Sho had been somewhat repulsed by the way the boy had mercilessly slain Yumiko Kusaka and Yukiko Kitano. (Listen, bub, your name is Kazuo Kiriyama, so dreadfully plain, yet your actions are out of control. Meanwhile, my name is Sho Tsukioka, worthy of a celebrity, and yet I'm this ordinary.) But such quibbles weren't going to accomplish anything now. Sho figured he should just be happy that Kiriyama seemed to remain completely unaware of his presence.
Kiriyama appeared to be resting quietly. He might have been sleeping, as Sho had supposed.
Sho, on the other hand, would be entirely unable to sleep, but in that department too he felt confident. As well he should, since girls possessed better stamina than boys—at least he'd read so in a book.
The hard part was being a heavy smoker. The smell of his cigarette smoke, depending on the direction of the wind, might give him away to Kiriyama. The click of his lighter might prove even more fatal. He was practically beside the boy, after all.
From his pocket, Sho pulled out an imported Virginia Slim Menthol. (He liked the name. In this country, the cigarettes were hard to acquire, but they could be found, and then he only had to steal them. His apartment bedroom was piled with cartons of them.) He slipped the thin cigarette between his lips. The scent of tobacco and that particular mint eased his withdrawal. He so wanted to fill his lungs with that smoke, but he somehow managed to fight down the urge.
I can Y die. There's too much waiting for me to enjoy at my age.
To distract himself, Sho held up his mirror and caught sight of himself holding the cigarette in his mouth. He turned his head to the side and appraised his own face with a sidelong look.
Oh, he thought, how handsome I am—and how clever. Winning this game would only be natural. Only the beautiful survive. That's God's—
Out the corner of his eye, he caught rustling in the bushes below.
Sho plucked the cigarette from his lips and put it back into his pocket along with the hand mirror and drew his Derringer. He picked up his daypack with his left hand.
Kazuo Kiriyama's slicked-back hair appeared at the edge of the thicket. He slowly moved his gaze from his left to his right, then looked to the north—directly on Sho's left—and up the slope.
Watching from the shade of an azalea shrub covered with pink blooms, Sho raised his eyebrows.
What's he doing?
Sho hadn't heard any gunfire. He hadn't heard anything at all. Had Kiriyama seen something?
Sho looked in the same direction and saw no unusual movement.
Kiriyama emerged from the thicket. His daypack hung from his left shoulder, and his submachine gun was slung from his right. He held the weapon's grip. Weaving his way through the trees, he climbed up the mountainside. Within moments he was on the same level as Sho, and then he ascended farther. Sho stood up and took pursuit.
Sho's catlike movements belied his husky build, at one hundred seventy-seven centimeters tall. Catching quick glances of Kiriyama's black uniform from behind every tree, he maintained his twenty-meter distance. In this point, Sho's confidence was well placed.
Kiriyama advanced with precision and haste. From time to time, he stopped behind a tree to survey ahead. Where the vegetation grew thick, he got on his knees and looked beneath it before he went on.
Your back's wide open, Kiriyama-kun.
After about a hundred meters of this, with that observation deck visible on the left, Kiriyama stopped.
A narrow, unpaved road interrupted the line of trees ahead. Not even two meters across, it was barely wide enough for a single car to pass—and even that depended on the car.
Oh, Sho realized, this is the path that goes up to the summit. We crossed it before we found Kaori Minami's body.
Then Kiriyama looked to the right, where a small clearing made way for a single bench and a beige prefabricated restroom for hikers on their way to the summit.
Kiriyama surveyed the area, even turning his eyes Sho's way, but Sho had already hidden himself in the underbrush. Then Kiriyama turned back to the road and dashed for the restroom. He opened the door, which faced Sho's direction, and went inside. He looked back out, making sure no one was near, then noiselessly closed the door, though he didn't shut it all the way, instead leaving it open a crack, maybe to be able to make a fast escape should anything happen.
Well. Sho put his hand to his mouth. My, my.
Still crouched in the bushes, Sho had to fight to keep himself from laughing.
The entire time Sho had been following him, Kiriyama hadn't stopped to do his business anywhere. He might have used the bathroom in the house he'd been in overnight, but either way, he couldn't be expected to hold it in for an entire day. Sho had assumed Kiriyama had taken care of it while stopped in those bushes. (That's what Sho had done. He had to work not to raise any noise.) But apparently, Kiriyama hadn't. Whatever else he was, he was a rich boy. Maybe he couldn't accept going without a toilet. He must have remembered passing by the toilet and returned.
So, even Kiriyama-kun has to pee. Ha ha. Kind oh adorable, really.
Right away he heard the splash hitting the toilet. Again Sho had to swallow a chortle.
Then a thought came to him, and he turned over his wrist to look at his watch. He was pretty sure they were somewhere near D-8, which Sakamochi had said would become a forbidden zone at five o'clock.
On the face of his women's watch, with its elegant italicized numbers, the hands indicated four fifty-seven. (He'd synchronized the watch with Sakamochi's announcement, so he knew it was correct.) Sho hurriedly took out his map and traced his eye to the northern mountain. But the map only included the dotted line of the mountain road, with no symbol for the rest area and public toilet either inside the square area of D-8 or out.
For a moment, panic gripped him, and he reflexively raised his hand to that metal collar and felt compelled to go back down that path.
But he glanced back to that toilet where the splattering sound continued. He shrugged and let out his breath.
No matter how strong the call of nature, Kazuo Kiriyama—the Kazuo Kiriyama—would surely be aware of where he was. When he had stuck his head out from the bushes and carefully stared up in this direction, he must have made a visual determination that the toilet was n
ot within sector D-8. And Sho was hiding only thirty meters west of the toilet Kiriyama was using. The rest area would be closer to the forbidden zone than where Sho was hiding, so if Kiriyama was over there, Sho knew he must be safe as well. If he let some groundless fear spur him away from Kiriyama, his plans would be ruined.
Sho took the Virginia Slim back out from his pocket and put it in his lips, then looked up at the near-dusk sky. At this time of year, the sun wouldn't set for another two hours or so, but to the west, orange had begun to mix into the darkened blue sky, and the few small clouds glowed bright orange around their edges. It's beautiful. Just like me.
The splattering sound continued. Sho made another smirk. You must have been holding that in a while now, Kiriyama-kun.
The sound still continued.
Oh, how I want to smoke you, cigarette. I want to take a shower, do my nails, mix myself one of my screwdrivers, sip the drink, enjoy the smoke, and—
It still continued.
Geez, get it over with already. Kiriyama-kun, quit peeing and get back to work.
But it still continued.
Finally, Sho frowned with his full, downturned eyebrows. He took the cigarette from his mouth and quickly stood up. Following the edge of the thicket, he moved a little closer to the restroom and squinted.
That splattering sound went on. And the door was still open a crack.
With impeccable timing, a gust of wind blew the door open with a creak.
Sho's eyes went wide.
Inside the restroom, a water bottle—one of the ones supplied to the students—hung from the ceiling by a string. The bottle swayed in the breeze. A thin stream of water was leaking out from a small hole, probably opened there by a knife or something. As the bottle moved back and forth, the water came splattering out.
Terrified, Sho looked all around.
Then he saw it—far off, the back of that black uniform passing through the trees and into the distance, the head with that unusual slicked-back hairstyle he'd recognize even from behind.
What? What? Kiriyama-kun? What? What's going on? W-what? But I—
As Kiriyama disappeared into the woods, a dull bang of a noise filled Sho's ears. The sound resembled a gunshot muffled by a silencer, or maybe a pillow. He would never know if the sound came from the explosive inside the collar so carefully designed by the government for the Program, or if it had been the reverberations of the blast through his own body.
A full one hundred meters down the slope, Kazuo Kiriyama didn't look back. Instead, he glanced down at his watch.
The second hand had just made its seventh click past five.
21 STUDENTS REMAIN.
Noriko stirred, then opened her eyes. It was past seven in the evening. Her unfocused gaze drifted across the ceiling of the now dim room. Then she looked at Shuya by her side.
He half rose from the stool he'd pulled over and removed the damp cloth from her forehead. He placed his hand where the cloth had been. Just as when he'd checked not long before, her fever was nearly gone. Inside himself, Shuya let out a sigh of relief. Thank you. Oh, thank you.
"Shuya," Noriko said, still sounding a bit dazed, "what time is it?"
"Past seven. You got some good sleep."
"Oh."
Noriko slowly sat up in bed. Shuya took his hand off her forehead and helped her sit up.
She said, "I..."
Shuya nodded. "Your fever broke. Kawada says it probably wasn't sepsis. Just a really bad cold. You were exhausted."
That seemed to put her at ease. She slowly nodded, then turned to Shuya. "Sorry—to be so much trouble."
"What are you talking about?" Shuya shook his head. "It's not your fault." Then he asked, "Can you eat? We have rice."
Her eyes widened. "Rice?"
"Yeah. Just wait here a moment. Kawada cooked some up." Shuya left the room.
He stood in the kitchen doorway. Kawada was sitting on a stool, leaning back against the wall. The last traces of sunlight came in through the window, and motes of dust floated in the blue, almost indigo light, which didn't quite reach the edge of the room where Kawada sat, leaving him submerged in near darkness.
Noticing Shuya, he asked, "Is Noriko awake?"
Shuya nodded.
"How's her fever?"
"I think it's gone. Her temperature hasn't gone back up."
Kawada gave him a slight nod, then stood, still holding the shotgun, which hadn't left his grasp for one moment. He lifted the lid of the pot on the gas burner. The two boys had already filled their stomachs with rice and miso soup—though all they had to add to the soup was some leaves from an unidentified plant growing in the backyard.
Shuya asked, "Has the rice gone cold?"
"Hold on for five or ten minutes. I'll bring it in when it's ready."
Shuya thanked him and returned to the examination room.
He sat back down beside the bed and gave Noriko a small nod. "It'll be a moment, but Kawada will bring you some rice—actual rice."
Noriko nodded, then said, "Is there a...bathroom here?"
"Yeah, uh, over this way."
Shuya helped Noriko off the bed, and holding her arm, he guided her across the front waiting room to the bathroom. She was still unsteady, but this was a great improvement from the pain she'd been in before.
When she was ready, he escorted her back. She sat on the edge of the bed, and he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, as Ms. Anno used to do for him at the House of Mercy and Love when he was a little boy.
"After you've eaten," Shuya said, pulling the edges of the blanket snug, "you should sleep a little more. We'll have to leave here by eleven."
Noriko stared at him. Her eyes still seemed unfocused. "You mean ..."
Shuya nodded. "Yeah. At eleven, this will become a forbidden zone." Sakamochi had said as much in his six p.m. announcement. The others were G-l at seven and 1-3 at nine; part of the southwestern shore and the southern slope of the southern mountain. Since they couldn't know exactly where the sector boundaries lay, this meant that nearly the entire southwestern shore was now off-limits.
Noriko's eyes dropped to her knees, and she ran her hand between her forehead and her bangs. "I was sleeping like some idiot."
Shuya placed his hand on her shoulder. "What are you talking about? Of course you should sleep. You need rest."
But suddenly she looked up to him and asked, "Besides Kaori, did anyone die?"
Shuya pressed his lips together and nodded. "Chigusa and . . . and Tsukioka and Niida died."
According to Sakamochi's announcement, those four had died in the hours between noon and six, and the students had already dwindled to twenty-one. Only eighteen hours had passed since the game began, and the Shiroiwa Junior High Ninth Grade Class B had been halved.
Sakamochi had also proudly declared, "Tsukioka got caught in a forbidden zone. Be careful, everyone!"
Sakamochi hadn't said where Sho Tsukioka had died, and Shuya didn't remember hearing any loud explosion during the afternoon. But he couldn't think of a reason for Sakamochi to lie. So Zuki, the member of Kiriyama's Family who was kind of effeminate despite his burly form and rugged features, had been carelessly caught inside one of the forbidden zones and had his head blown off. Save for its boss, the Kiriyama Family was defunct.
Shuya thought about commenting on this, but seeing Noriko's sorrowful expression, he kept it to himself. He couldn't imagine that any talk about the boy whose head had been ripped off his body would have a positive influence on the rest of Noriko's recovery.
"I see . . ." Noriko said quietly. Then she added, "Thanks for this." Underneath the blanket she started to remove Shuya's jacket.
"You can keep wearing that."
"No, I'm fine now."
Shuya took his jacket and straightened the blanket over her shoulders.
After a little while, Kawada came in. He held a round tray, topped with a bowl, up at shoulder height like a waiter. Steam wafted up from the dish.
Lowe
ring the tray, Kawada said, "Order's up."
Shuya grinned. "What is this, some soba noodle joint?"
"Sadly, this ain't soba noodles. But I hope it's all right."
Kawada placed the dish, tray and all, beside Noriko on the bed.
Noriko peered down into the bowl and asked, "You made rice porridge?"
"Yes, ma'am," Kawada said, in English. His accent sounded flawless to Shuya.
"Thanks." Noriko picked up the spoon he'd provided. Then she lifted the bowl to her lips and took a sip.
"It's delicious," she said. "You put egg in it."
Shuya looked at Kawada, who said, "It's our specialty, ma'am."
Shuya asked, "Where'd you find eggs?"
All of the fresh food in the refrigerator had gone bad, probably because the government had cleared out everyone well in advance. Shuya assumed the same would be true of every house on the island.
Kawada gave Shuya a sidelong grin. "I found a house where they'd been raising a hen—though she hadn't been fed in a while and looked pretty weak."
Shuya made an exaggerated shake of his head. "When we ate our rice, I seem to recall there being no eggs."
Kawada raised his eyebrows. "There was only the one. Hey, I'm nicer to girls. I was just born that way."
Shuya laughed out his nose.
Kawada went back to the kitchen and returned with some tea. As Noriko ate, the three of them drank the tea. It gave off a slightly sweet and nostalgic aroma.
"Damn it," Shuya groaned. "This feels too damn peaceful, the three of us sitting here drinking tea like this."
Kawada grinned. "I can put on coffee after this. But I think Noriko might want to stick with the black tea."
Noriko nodded, smiling around the spoon that was still in her mouth.
Then Shuya said, "Hey, Kawada."
Nothing had changed the fact that they were still inside this killing game, but Noriko's apparent recovery had made him talkative. "Someday, let's drink tea like this again, the three of us together. We can sit on some veranda and watch the cherry blossoms."
Battle Royale (Remastered) Page 30