Battle Royale (Remastered)

by Koushun Takami, Nathan Collins

  Hiroki recocked the hammer on the Colt M1911. Her eyes narrowed.

  "I know Takako. She's not the kind of girl who would kill in cold blood, and she's not the kind of girl to lose it and go around shooting at people. Not even in this game."

  Mitsuko tucked her chin and tilted her head. She looked up at him, and then her lips suddenly formed a smile. It was a chilling smile, and yet, in that moment, she became even more beautiful than before.

  She quietly laughed. "I thought she'd died instantly."

  Hiroki didn't respond. He held the Ml911 steady, pointed right at her.

  Then, still on the ground, Mitsuko took the hem of her skirt between the thumb and pointer finger of her left hand. Slowly, she pulled it up, baring those seductive white legs once again.

  She looked up at him and said, "Well? If you help me, I'll let you do whatever you want. I'm not bad, you know."

  Hiroki didn't move. He just kept the pistol trained on her and stared directly into her eyes.

  Casually, Mitsuko said, "So that's a no? Yeah, you're right. If you gave me an opening, I'd kill you. Anyway, you couldn't sleep with the girl who killed your girlfriend—"

  "Takako wasn't my girlfriend."

  Again Mitsuko peered into his eyes.

  Hiroki continued, "But she was my best friend."

  "Oh, I see." Mitsuko lifted her eyebrows. Then she asked, "So why haven't you shot me? You're too chivalrous to shoot a girl, is that it?"

  Brimming with confidence, Mitsuko's face remained beautiful. She was something altogether different from Takako, whose well-honed beauty could have belonged to a war goddess of Greco-Roman myth. If there was such a thing as a fourteen or fifteen-year-old sorceress, Mitsuko would be her. Spirited and childlike, and charming too, but cold. Beneath the moonlight, an icy light filled her eyes. Hiroki felt he might become dizzy.

  "How ..." Hiroki's voice cracked, and his throat felt tight. "How can you kill so easily?"

  "What are you, stupid?" She spoke as if she were completely indifferent to the gun pointed at her forehead. "Those are the rules of the game."

  Hiroki narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "Not everyone's playing."

  Mitsuko tilted her head again. After a moment, and still smiling up at him, she said, "Sugimura." Her tone was friendly and unadorned, the way a girl would say the name of her crush when sitting next to him before homeroom and had decided on something she could say.

  "You must be a good person, Sugimura."

  Not following, Hiroki raised his eyebrows. His mouth might have dropped open a little.

  Lightly, almost singing, Mitsuko continued, "Good people are good people—in certain circumstances, anyway. But even good people can turn bad. Though maybe some of them stay good all the way until the end of their lives. Maybe you're one of those people."

  Mitsuko looked away from him and shook her head. "But that doesn't matter. I just decided to take instead of being taken. I'm not saying it's good or evil, or right or wrong. All I'm saying is that's how I want to be."

  Hiroki's lips twitched. "But why?"

  Again Mitsuko smiled. "I don't know. But if you insist, well, there is one thing."

  She looked directly into his eyes. Then she said, "I was raped when I was nine years old. Three different people taking three turns each. Or did one of them go four times? They were all males, just like you— though they were older men. Back then, my chest was flat, and my legs were like sticks. I was a frail, skinny little girl, but I guess that's what they wanted. When I started crying and screaming, it only excited them more. That's why now, whenever I'm with dirty old men like that, I pretend to cry for them."

  Through this all, she never stopped smiling. Hiroki stared at her in horror, overwhelmed by her devastating story.

  Hiroki might have been on the verge of saying something.

  But before he could, a silver light flashed from Mitsuko's hand. By the time he realized she had reached her right hand behind her back, the double-edged diving knife was planted deep in his right shoulder. (The knife, of course, had been the weapon provided to Megumi Eto.) He let out a groan, and though he didn't drop the gun, he staggered back in pain.

  Seizing this opportunity, she stood and ran past him and into the trees behind him.

  Frantically, he turned and caught a glimpse of her back. . . and she disappeared into the darkness.

  Though he knew if he didn't stop Mitsuko Souma now, Kayoko Kotohiki might become another of her victims, he couldn't make himself give chase. Instead he pressed his left hand against his shoulder, where the blood had begun to soak through his school uniform around the knife, and stared into the shadows where Mitsuko had vanished.

  Hiroki realized that she obviously could have made up that story to catch him by surprise. But he couldn't believe that. Mitsuko had been telling the truth. And likely that had only been one small part of it. He had wondered how a ninth-grade girl, the same age as he was, could be so cold-blooded. But that wasn't really it, was it? At her age, she'd already acquired the psyche of an adult—a disturbed adult. Or was it that of a disturbed child?

  Blood ran down the inside of his sleeve and onto the Colt Ml911 in his hand, trickled from the muzzle, and silently soaked into the leaf mold below.

  17 STUDENTS REMAIN.

  Just after half-past three in the morning, Toshinori Oda (Boys #4) left the house where he'd been hiding. As soon as he'd first gone inside, he tried to determine where he was, which as far as he could tell was somewhere inside zone E-4. And Sakamochi had announced E-4 would become a forbidden zone at five o'clock.

  Before he opened the back door, he glanced over to Hirono Shimizu's body, which he'd dragged into the corner of the entryway. But it was only a glance. He didn't particularly feel any pity for her. After all, this was a serious match. They were all playing by the same rules. She hadn't thought twice before shooting him the moment she saw him. Of course, he had been sneaking up from behind to choke her in the first place, but that was beside the point.

  He had wavered for some time over where he should settle in next, but he decided to go east toward the village. According to the map, each zone spanned a square roughly two hundred meters to a side. Also on the map were scattered dots indicating houses in the fields of the narrow band of flat land extending out from the eastern village. Once he got far enough away from this zone, all he had to do was hide inside the first house that looked good to him. Hiding in the bushes was far too vulgar for him to bear—after all, he did live in one of the two nicest mansions in Shiroiwa. (Kazuo Kiriyama's might have been in first place, not that Toshinori would ever admit it.) He did risk going into a house where someone else was already lurking, but he wasn't too worried about it. No, he was wearing that bulletproof vest (proven to be effective), and he had taken Hirono Shimizu's revolver, plus he was wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet he'd found inside the house.

  A thin cloud had begun to form in the sky, its tip slowly moving across the low full moon. Fully decked out, Toshinori double-checked the helmet's chin strap, then crossed the yard and made his way down to the edge of the small adjacent field.

  From there, he could look out over the flat land that extended to the eastern shore. The area wasn't completely flat, however; the ups and downs of the hills were made visible by the pale, moonlit hues of the crop fields that claimed them. A hundred meters to his left, a house stood alongside the foot of the northern mountain. A further hundred meters to its right stood another house, and two more just beyond the left of that house. For some reason, the line of buildings broke off there for three or four hundred meters before houses began to dot the fields again. The mixed woodland, along with a foothill protruding from the northern mountain, prevented him from seeing any farther, but the farms and houses likely continued all the way to the eastern village. Shortly after Sakamochi's midnight announcement, Toshinori heard a tremendous explosion and saw rising flames just to the right of the base of the foothill. But the flames must have gone out, because the
area had sunk back into darkness.

  Ahead and to the right of Toshinori, on the south side of the flat land, two more houses stood adjacent. If he could trust the blue dots indicating private residences on his map, the buildings were right on the border between zones E-4 and F-4. Behind him, the northern and southern mountains met. Or, more accurately, the foot of the northern mountain extended in rolling hills all the way to the western shoreline. He couldn't see any houses in that direction, though according to the map, one or two were there up on the mountain.

  If he hadn't misread the map, once he went three or four houses to the east, he should be clear of the forbidden zone—though if upon closer inspection the houses turned out to be filthy and vulgar, he would have to consider going farther. Firstly, he hated filthy homes, and secondly, vulgar places attracted vulgar people. Such was the will of the market.

  For now, Toshinori decided he'd head that way.

  Following the dirt ridges between the fields, he ducked low and advanced with caution. Soon the sensation of vulgar dirt clinging to his feet began to gall him. The dull pain in his stomach where Hirono Shimizu (that slut) had shot him fueled this irritation.

  Why did he have to be thrown into this vulgar game to crawl around in the earth with this vulgar rabble? (That was a phrase often used by his father, who ran the largest food company in the eastern part of the prefecture. Toshinori himself loved using it to express his scorn for the "common man," though as the son of a good family, he had to act the part, and never ever said it out loud.)

  Whether or not he was qualified to think that of his classmates, he still possessed a gift unique within the entire junior high. This included his talented classmates—who ranged from the star players of all the school teams and most gifted members of every club, to both the male and female leaders of the delinquents, and even a gay one (though he was dead now, and an incredibly vulgar example).

  Toshinori had started taking private violin lessons at the age of four, and now was one of the leading junior high student violinists in the prefecture. He wasn't at the level of a prodigy, but neither could he be lumped in with the unexceptional. Arrangements had been nearly settled for him to enter a highly distinguished private high school in Tokyo that had its own music department. With his talent, he would at the very least go on to become the conductor of the state-run prefectural symphony orchestra.

  Therefore—at least, so he believed—he could not die on this island. He would attain the status of a professional musician,- he'd marry some gorgeous yet refined woman and keep company with rich, cultured people. (His older brother Tadanori was going to inherit the company. Being the wealthy head of a company had its appeal, but Toshinori thought, I don't need it. Food companies deal with such vulgar things. I'll leave that to my vulgar brother.}

  Toshinori was different from his classmates, the common rabble. He was a person of worth, blessed with talent. To put it in biological terms, shouldn't the superior members of the species survive?

  When the game began, he had been inexplicably handed a bulletproof vest for a weapon, and he'd had no choice but to hide. But now he had a gun.

  He would show no mercy.

  What about the noble soul of the music lover, you ask? Please. Only a rank amateur would talk like that. Sure, I'm only fifteen, and I haven't seen much of the world, but I at least know what the music world is like. Unlike the prodigies, the merely gifted rely on money and connections. It's all about crushing your competitors and surviving without being trampled on yourself.

  Whether or not any of this was objectively true, it was what Toshinori Oda believed.

  He had no close friends among the rabble of Ninth Grade Class B. Far from it—he despised his vulgar classmates. And one particular cause of this was Shuya Nanahara.

  Toshinori was not in the Shiroiwa Junior High Music Club, which was home to an especially vulgar rabble—a bunch of losers who played nothing but vulgar popular music. (Apparently, the music room was strewn with sheet music for illegal foreign songs.) And Shuya Nanahara was the worst of them.

  Toshinori vastly outclassed the boy in terms of musical ability, given his well-trained sense of pitch and his understanding of the many different musical modes. Yet when Shuya Nanahara strummed a nursery-school-level beginner's chord on his guitar, those females in class erupted in squeals as vulgar as themselves. (And with the looks on their faces, as they listened to him play in the break before music class, they might as well have had extra-bold sans-serif writing on their foreheads that went Oh, Nanahara, do me, right now, right here.}

  But when Toshinori skillfully accomplished an operatic passage, all he received was half-hearted clapping.

  For one thing, the female rabble could never appreciate the rarefied pleasures of classical music. And for another, Shuya Nanahara was good-looking. (Though Toshinori had never admitted it to himself, on a deep psychological level, he hated his own ugly face.)

  Fine. That's what women are like. They're just a different species. Women are nothing more than tools for producing babies (and of course for men to get pleasure when they need it). And the decently attractive ones are ornaments to be placed beside a successful male. All I need is money and connections. And talent like mine merits money and connections. Therefore . . .

  I'm the one who deserves to win this game.

  During the night, Toshinori had heard occasional gunfire and a tremendous explosion, but now the island, enveloped in darkness, had returned to utter silence. Before long, he had bypassed the first house and was approaching the second. Though he couldn't see much more than its silhouette, he could tell the building was very old. Planted trees of different sizes encircled the house, and on Toshinori's western approach, one particularly large broadleaf stood with outspread branches, seven or eight meters tall, its trunk probably four or five meters around.

  No one could possibly be up in the tree.

  Could they?

  Toshinori gripped his gun, and keeping an eye on both the house and that tree, he slowly proceeded. And he wasn't so foolish as to forget to stop every now and then and look in all directions. You never know where the vulgar ones might come from. Take cockroaches, for example.

  After taking a good five minutes to pass the house, he looked over his shoulder for one more glance at the tree-encircled house. Through the rectangular window of his visor, he saw no suspicious movements.

  Good.

  He looked ahead. The third house, his destination, wasn't far now.

  Toshinori glanced over his shoulder one more time.

  He thought he saw a round black shape stir near the ground among the trees of the house.

  That's someone's head. But by the time he'd realized it, he had already pointed his gun at the shape. Who in the hell would be loitering around here when it's about to become a forbidden zone?

  He didn't care who it was.

  He squeezed the trigger. The Smith & Wesson Model 10's wooden grip kicked back in his hands—it felt good—and an orange flame came out of the muzzle alongside a not-too-loud bang. His spine tingled. Although he despised the vulgar rabble, Toshinori did have one hobby, quite dissimilar from the violin, which would not be considered elegant. He collected replica guns. His father owned several hunting rifles but had never let him touch them. This was the first time he'd ever squeezed a real trigger. Hot damn! The real thing! I'm shooting a real gun!

  Toshinori fired one more time, but whoever the person was had ducked down and hadn't moved. And this opponent didn't shoot back. Well of course not. If they had a gun, they'd have shot me when my back was turned. That's what let me safely fire at you, anyway.

  Toshinori slowly approached the figure.

  A voice cried, "Wait!"

  From the voice, he could tell it was Hiroki Sugimura (Boys #11), that lanky boy who did that vulgar karate or whatever. (Toshinori also hated tall guys. He was only a hundred sixty-two centimeters tall, the second shortest in class after Yutaka Seto. Toshinori couldn't stand guys who were: [1
] good-looking, [2] tall, and/or [3] vulgar on the whole.) Hiroki was dating that Takako Chigusa, who put that foul dye in her hair and wore all that repulsive, jangling jewelry. Oh, right, she's dead. Well, she had a halfway decent face.

  Hiroki continued, "I don't want to fight. Who are you? Takiguchi?"

  Hiroki meant Yuichiro Takiguchi (Boys #13), the next shortest boy after Toshinori. The only other guys around his size who were still alive were Takiguchi and Yutaka Seto—Hiroshi Kuronaga was long dead.

  Toshinori thought about what Hiroki had said. You don't want to fight? Nonsense. If you don't want to fight in this game, you might as well decide to kill yourself Is this a trick? Even if it is, you don't have a gun.

  Toshinori changed tactics. He lowered his revolver.

  With his other hand, he lowered his helmet's chin guard a little and said, "It's Oda." Oh, I should be stuttering. "S-sorry. D-did I hurt you?"

  Hiroki slowly rose. Like Toshinori, he had his daypack over his left shoulder. He held some kind of pole in his right. His right arm was bare, with the right sleeves of his jacket and his shirt both missing. Maybe they'd gotten torn, or maybe he tore them off himself. A white cloth was wrapped around his shoulder like a bandage. His bare arm holding the stick looked like it had been transplanted from a primitive, naked tribesman—a vulgar naked tribesman.

  Hiroki tilted his head a little. "I'm fine," he said. Then, looking at Toshinori's head, he asked, "A helmet, huh?"

  "Y-yeah." Toshinori continued his advance, walking through the farm soil. All right, only three steps more. "I-I was scared—"

  Before he finished saying "scared," Toshinori raised his right hand. At this close range—only five meters away—he couldn't possibly miss.

  Hiroki's eyes widened. Too slow, too slow, you vulgar karate bastard. Die your vulgar death, get in your vulgar coffin, and go get buried in your vulgar grave. I'll bring vulgar flowers just for you.

  But Hiroki wasn't in the path of the flames spitting from the tip of the Smith & Wesson Model 10. A split second before, he'd unexpectedly shifted to the left—from Toshinori's point of view, he was falling over to the right. Toshinori had no way of knowing that this was a martial arts move, but he did know that Hiroki had moved incredibly fast.