Shuya put his hand on the door. He stood stiffly and lowered his head, trying to look sincere and apologetic, then slowly began to open the door.
But before he could look up repentantly toward the teacher's podium, the smell of blood assaulted him.
He lifted his head and threw the door open.
The first thing he saw was someone lying on the podium.
Ms. Okazaki—
It wasn't Ms. Okazaki. It was their class's head instructor, Masao Hayashida. And . . .
His head was missing, replaced by a pool of blood. One half of his eyeglasses rested in the puddle.
Shuya pulled his eyes away from Mr. Hayashida's corpse and jerked his head toward the inside of the classroom.
The rows of desks and chairs were there as usual.
What was not usual were all of his classmates, who were slumped over on their desks.
Blood covered the entire floor. The stench was overpowering.
For a moment, Shuya stood frozen, but then he quickly reached for Mayumi Tendo, at her desk nearest the door. Then he noticed the silverish bolt standing up like an antenna from her back. Its tip came out the front of her sailor top, and blood dripped down from her stomach to her skirt, and from the skirt's hem to the floor.
Shuya walked forward. He shook Kazushi Niida's body. Kazushi flopped to the side and his face turned up toward Shuya.
A chill shot through Shuya. Kazushi's eyes had become two dark-red cavities oozing a mixture of blood and a slimy egg-white-like substance. Some kind of metal spike with a thick handle on its end had been stabbed into his mouth.
Shuya screamed and ran to Yoshitoki Kuninobu's seat. Three large holes had torn through the back of his uniform, each blooming with a flower of blood. Shuya held him up, and his neck flopped onto Shuya's shoulder. His goggling eyes stared vacantly up at the ceiling.
Yoshitoki!
Shuya cried out and looked around the room in confusion.
Every single one of his classmates was either slumped in their chairs or had spilled onto the floor.
Megumi Eto's throat had been slashed open like a watermelon. A sickle was planted in Yoji Kuramoto's head. Sakura Ogawa's head had burst apart like an overripe fruit. Yoshimi Yahagi's head was half gone. A hatchet split Tatsumichi Oki's face into two lopsided halves like a cracked-open peanut shell. Kyoichi Motobuchi's stomach looked like a slop bucket at a sausage factory. Tadakatsu Hatagami's face was pulverized and covered in blood. Hirono Shimizu's face was swollen and black, a tongue the size of a sea cucumber lolling out the side of her gaping mouth. Shinji Mimura, The Third Man, had been riddled with bullets.
Everyone was dead.
Then something else caught his eyes—a knife plunged deeply into the chest of Shogo Kawada, that standoffish transfer student with the bad reputation. His half-lidded eyes stared down at the floor, seeing nothing.
Shuya gulped and looked at Noriko's seat. Her desk was directly behind Yoshitoki's, so he should have noticed her sooner. But Shuya felt as if all the desks and bodies of his classmates were spinning around him, and he only just now saw her.
Noriko was still in her chair, sitting with her head on her desk.
Shuya ran to her and sat her up.
Her head fell off. Leaving the rest of her body and her sailor suit behind, it thumped down on the floor and rolled through the pool of blood. When it stopped, it looked up at him with eyes forlorn and resentful. Didn't you tell me you'd save me, Nanahara? Well, I'm dead now, even though I loved you. I really loved you.
His eyes were glued to her face. He put his hands to his head and his mouth dropped. He felt like he was losing his mind.
A scream was building up deep inside him.
Suddenly, he saw something white.
As he regained awareness of his own body, he perceived that he was horizontal. His eyes focused, and finally he realized he was seeing a ceiling. It even had a fluorescent bulb at the rightmost edge of his vision.
A hand gently touched his chest.
He realized he was breathing heavily. His eyes followed the hand to an arm, and the arm to a shoulder, and he saw the sailor fuku, the braided hair, and the warm, serene smile of the class leader for the girls, Yukie Utsumi (Girls #2).
"You're awake," she said. "What a relief."
14 STUDENTS REMAIN.
Shuya tried to sit upright but was immediately met with sharp jolts of pain all over his body, and he fell back down. He realized he was lying on a soft bed with fresh sheets.
Yukie gently touched his chest again, then pulled a fluffy blanket up to his neck.
"Stop that now," she said. "Don't overexert yourself. You've been hurt pretty bad." Then she added, "You were moaning in your sleep. Were you having a nightmare?"
Still too disoriented to provide a proper response, Shuya turned his head to survey the room. It was a small space. The wall directly to the left of his bed was hung with cheap-looking wallpaper. On his right, behind Yukie, was another bed, but the room had no other furnishings to speak of. Down past the blanket and his feet was a door, but it was closed. Its wooden frame looked very old. A window seemed to be above his head, through which dull light came in and illuminated the room. With the way the light felt, it might have been cloudy outside. But where am I?
"Well this is weird," Shuya said. At least now he knew he could talk. "I don't remember checking into a hotel with you."
He was still in a half stupor, but Yukie gave a sigh of relief. Her full lips widened into a smile, and she laughed and said, "That sounds like something you'd say. That's a relief, actually." Then she looked into his face and added, "You were out for a long time. It's been—let's see ..." She looked at the watch on her left wrist. "About thirteen hours."
Thirteen hours? Thirteen hours. Thirteen hours ago, I was. . .
His eyes opened wide. His memories and the here and now were two gears that suddenly clicked into place. Now Shuya truly had awoken.
There was something he needed to ask her before anything else. "What about Noriko—Noriko Nakagawa? And Shogo Kawada?" After he asked this, he gulped. Are they still alive?
Yukie regarded him with a curious look, then said, "Noriko and Kawada are both fine, I suppose. At least, we just heard the noon announcement, and their names weren't called."
Shuya let out his breath. Noriko and Kawada had escaped. Kiriyama followed Shuya and lost them. And Kiriyama is . . .
Shuya looked up at Yukie. "Kiriyama. It's Kiriyama!" Panic edged into his voice. "Where are we? Are you alone? You have to be careful!"
He'd lifted his right hand from under the blanket. She patted his hand and said, "Calm down." Then she asked, "Did Kiriyama do this to you?"
Shuya nodded. "It was him. He attacked us. He's completely playing the game."
"I see." Yukie nodded slightly, then said, "We're safe here. There are six of us here, not counting you. Everyone else is keeping watch now. You don't need to worry about them—they're all my friends."
Shuya raised his eyebrows. Six of them?
"Who's here?" he asked.
"Yuka Nakagawa, of course," Yukie said, meaning the perky girl with the same last name as Noriko. Then she added, "Satomi Noda and Chisato Matsui. Haruka Tanizawa. And Yuko Sakaki."
Shuya touched his tongue to his lips. Noticing his expression, Yukie asked, "What's wrong? Can't you trust them? Which one? All of them?"
"No." Shuya shook his head. "If they're your friends, I trust them."
But how were six girls—who were all friends, no less—able to find each other?
With a sincere smile, Yukie squeezed his hand and said, "I'm glad to hear it."
Shuya smiled a little too. But almost immediately, he realized his smile had gone. Another question remained. He had missed the midnight, six a.m., and noon announcements.
He opened his mouth.
"Who died? I. . . Well, there've been three announcements today, right? Midnight, six, and noon? Did anyone die?"
Yukie pursed her lips tightly
and picked up two pieces of paper from the small side table next to her. It was a map and the class roster. He recognized the dirt stains and way they were folded. They were the ones he'd been keeping in his own pocket.
Yukie ran her eyes down the list. "Shimizu and Iijima. Oda, Seto, Takiguchi, Hatagami, and Mimura."
Shuya's mouth dropped—in part because the game had proceeded to whittle them down to little more than a dozen survivors, and he had played in Little League with Tadakatsu Hatagami.
But.
"Mimura..."
Shinji Mimura, The Third Man, was dead. He could hardly believe it. He'd thought that no matter what else happened, Shinji would never die.
Yukie nodded softly.
Shuya thought it strange that he wasn't that shaken. I've gotten used to this. That must be it. He pictured Shinji's grinning face—and his serious expression, back in the classroom, when he signaled Shuya to settle down.
So I won't be seeing any more plays by Shiroiwa Junior High's ace guard, The Third Man, Shuya thought with a twinge of sadness.
He asked, "When was Mimura's name read?"
"In the morning," Yukie answered. "Iijima and Seto were in the morning announcement too. They might have been together, since they were friends."
"Oh."
That meant that Shinji had still been alive at midnight. And like Yukie said, he might have been with Yutaka Seto and Keita Iijima.
"During the night," she added, "there was a huge explosion—and gunfire. That might have been what happened."
"An explosion?" Shuya recalled that Kazuo Kiriyama had thrown a hand grenade at them. "Do you think . . . Kiriyama had some hand grenades. Do you think that could have been it?"
Yukie lifted her eyebrows. "Oh, so that's what that was—after eleven o'clock, right? This one—the one after you were brought here— it came just after midnight. It was way bigger than the ones at eleven. The girls who were keeping watch said the sky lit up over the middle of the island."
Shuya pressed his lips together, then remembered that he still hadn't gotten an answer as to where he was now.
Before he could ask, Yukie held out his map and class roster and said, "These are yours. I updated your map too."
Oh, right, Shuya thought, the forbidden zones. He unfolded the map.
"At the place we were," Kawada had said. "Where we talked about rock."
Like so many other squares on the map, that sector—C-3, near the western shore—had been scribbled out with diagonal pencil lines. Small writing inside the grid read: 23rd, 11AM. This morning, while Shuya was unconscious, their meeting place had become off-limits.
Shuya pressed his lips together. Noriko and Kawada weren't there now. That is, Shuya thought, his mind having recovered into working order, unless they died after noon. He knew they had to be alive, but he recalled how he'd dreamed Noriko's and Kawada's corpses next to those of Yoshitoki and Shinji. Though he knew it was irrational, Shuya shuddered.
Anyway, for now, I have to believe they're still alive. But how in the hell am I going to find them again?
Shuya set the map down on his chest. To waste time thinking it through now would be a fool's errand. He needed more information first. Together with these girls, he might be able to find a way to reach Noriko and Kawada.
He looked up at Yukie and asked, "Um . . . where are we, anyway? How did I end up sleeping here?"
She bobbed her head, then looked up at the window and said, "This is a lighthouse."
"A lighthouse?"
"That's right. We're on the northeastern side of the island. Maybe you saw it marked on the map? We've been here this whole time— since the very start."
Shuya looked at his map again. The lighthouse was, as Yukie had said, on the island's northeast, where part of the shoreline jutted out in sector C-10. None of the surrounding area had yet been designated forbidden.
"As for the rest, Nanahara, it was last night. There's a cliff in front of the lighthouse. You came falling down it. The girl on watch found you, and she dragged you inside. You were really badly hurt—covered with blood. I thought you'd die right there."
Shuya realized he wasn't wearing a shirt, and the top of his left shoulder—where he was in excruciating pain—had been bandaged. From how his shoulder felt, a bullet must have shattered his shoulder blade and remained inside. On the right side of his neck, just below that ever-present collar, his skin seemed to burn. He could feel another bandage there, where another slug had probably only grazed him. A third bullet had torn through his left arm, just above the elbow. It must have shredded some of a bone or tendon on its way out, because his arm remained heavy and almost entirely immobile. One more shot had passed through to the left of his stomach, near enough to his side that it had probably missed any internal organs. Shuya awkwardly moved his untouched right arm and lifted the blanket far enough to see the many bandages that covered his body.
He lowered the blanket and said, "You patched me up."
"Yeah." Yukie nodded. "The lighthouse was stocked with your standard first-aid supplies. And about your wounds—I sort of stitched them. I'd never done that before, and it shows, and the only needle and thread I could find was from a sewing kit. I think the bullet that went into your shoulder is still in there, but I couldn't do anything about that. I was worried you were going to need a blood transfusion, you were bleeding so badly."
"Sorry to put you through all that."
"Oh, no," Yukie said with a warm smile. "I was psyched—I got to touch a guy. I even got to take off your clothes."
Shuya chuckled. Yukie Utsumi was quick-witted, perceptive, and considerate, but it was also just like her to say something so brash. She'd been that way ever since he'd first gotten to know her, back in elementary school, on a rainy day when his Little League team negotiated with the girls' volleyball team to share the gymnasium for indoor practice. He even remembered telling Yoshitoki once, "Utsumi in Class Two is pretty cool. I like a girl who gets things done."
But this was no time to bask in idle sentimentalities.
Then Yukie said, "Oh, here, have some water," and offered him a cup. Shuya whistled. He himself had only just realized he was thirsty. She must have had the cup ready and on the sideboard where he couldn't see.
He thought, That's just like you, Class Leader. You'll make someone a fine wife someday. You'll be a fine woman someday. Or maybe you already are one. I suppose I've thought that about you for a long time now.
He took the cup, lifted up his head, and drank the water. When he swallowed, his neck wound hurt and he grimaced. But he drank the entire cup.
"Sorry if I'm asking for too much," Shuya said, "but I think I need to be drinking a lot more water. And if you have any painkillers, could I have some? I'll take anything. Just something to help for right now."
Yukie nodded. "All right. I'll go get some."
Shuya wiped his lips, then said, "It's really cool that everyone was so understanding—letting me be carried in here, even though I might be one of the bad guys."
Yukie shook her head. "You were dying before our eyes. It's hard to argue against saving a life. Besides ..." She looked into his eyes and flashed him a mischievous grin. "It was you. I'm pretty much the leader of this group, so I made them all agree."
Does that mean she's also thought there's something special about us, ever since that afternoon in the elementary school gym?
He decided not to say anything about this suspicion, but instead probed another. "Does that mean some of the girls were against it after all?"
"Only because of the situation we're in." Yukie dropped her eyes. "Don't take it the wrong way. Everyone's so rattled."
"Yeah." Shuya nodded. "I can understand."
"But I convinced her." She looked up and smiled again. "You'd better be thankful."
Shuya started to nod, but then he noticed that despite her smile, tears were welled up in her eyes. What's that about?
"I was worried sick. I thought you might die, Nanahara."
> Taken somewhat by surprise, Shuya watched her expression.
She continued, "I didn't know what I'd do if you died." She was nearly crying now, and her voice quavered. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you see why I'd do anything to save you?"
As he gazed into her tear-filled eyes, he slowly nodded once. Then he thought, How do I handle this? And how popular can one guy be without his even knowing it?
Certainly this might just have been some kind of cabin fever. With death a looming possibility (a certainty, rather—Shuya had never heard of anyone surviving this Lord-and-Leader blessed Program save for the winner), and their numbers dwindling, maybe a little crush on a boy she'd talked to in the corner of the gymnasium one day could turn into a love for which she'd be willing to die.
But no, he didn't think that was the case. If she didn't truly care for him, she wouldn't have stood against her friends to save him—nor would she have trusted in him in the first place.
"I understand," Shuya said. "Thank you."
Yukie wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. Then she said, "I have to ask you something. Just now, you asked about Noriko and Kawada, didn't you? And you said 'us.' Were you with them? Were you actually with them?"
Shuya nodded.
Yukie tightened her brows. "Noriko's fine, but you were really with Kawada2."
Shuya could guess what she was getting at. "Kawada's not a bad guy. He saved my life. Noriko and I are still alive only thanks to him. I'm sure he's still protecting her now—but I forgot, there's something more important I have to tell you."
With eagerness in his voice, he said, "We're going to be saved."
"We're going to be saved?"
Shuya nodded deeply. "Kawada's going to save us. He knows a way off this island."
Yukie's eyes widened. "Really? For real? How?"
That cut him short. Kawada had said he couldn't reveal the plan until the end.
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