Now that Shuya thought about it, he realized he had nothing to back his claim. He of course trusted Kawada, but he'd been with Kawada this whole time. Yukie hadn't. He doubted that she would take his word for it. Kawada had said as much himself—it was conceivable that he was simply using them.
But for now, Shuya decided to tell Yukie everything that had happened.
And he did. He told her about getting ambushed by Yoshio Akamatsu as soon as he left, how he and Noriko were together the whole time after that, about his fight with Tatsumichi Oki, about Kawada saving him when Kyoichi Motobuchi attacked, how the three of them had stuck together and talked about escaping, and that Kawada was the survivor of last year's Program, about Noriko developing a fever and taking her to the clinic, and even about Hiroki Sugimura, and how he said that Mitsuko Souma was a threat, and then, about Kazuo Kiriyama ambushing them while they were on the move.
But when he'd finished, the first thing Yukie said was, "So Oki. . . was an accident?"
"Yeah, like I just told you." Shuya lifted his eyebrows. "What about it?"
She shook her head, said, "It's nothing," then quickly changed the subject. "Sorry if this seems blunt, but it's hard to trust Kawada all of a sudden—or believe that he knows how to escape."
Shuya wondered why Yukie had asked about Tatsumichi, but thinking it relatively unimportant, he let it slide, and he conceded to Yukie's skepticism.
"I don't blame you for thinking that. But I believe Kawada can be trusted. I wish I had a better way to put it, but he's not a bad guy." He made an impatient gesture with his unrestrained right hand. "Once we've met up with him, you'll see."
Yukie touched her fingertips to her lips, then said, "Okay.
I agree it's worth hearing him out. It's not like we have any better options."
Shuya looked at her. "What were you planning on doing?"
She shrugged. "I'd pretty much lost hope. All of us talked it over, but we weren't able to decide if we were better off taking our chances with an escape or waiting here a little longer."
Shuya remembered another question he'd meant to ask. "How did you all gather together—the six of you?"
"Oh, right." Yukie nodded. "I came back to the school, and I called out to them as they left."
This was a surprise. "When?"
"I guess it would have been right after you and Noriko fled. I saw Niida running away. Actually, I had hoped to get back in time to find you. And then I saw the two bodies outside the school—right by the entrance."
Shuya raised his eyebrows. "But Akamatsu was just unconscious, right?"
Yukie shook her head. "I didn't get a close look, but I think he was dead by then. He had an arrow sticking from his neck."
"That means that Niida ..."
Yukie nodded. "Yes, it does."
Shuya asked, "Weren't you afraid? Didn't you worry about someone else doing what Akamatsu did?"
"Yeah, I considered it. But I knew I needed to form a group, and I couldn't think of any other way. You remember the woods directly in front of the school? I figured that if I hid there, I'd be hard to spot. And even if it did mean I'd be found, I didn't see any other choice."
Shuya deeply admired her for that. Admittedly, he had had to look after Noriko, who was injured, but he left all the others behind and ran. Hiroki Sugimura had waited for Takako Chigusa,- but unlike Yukie, he was a boy, and he knew kempo.
"Wow. You're incredible, Class Leader."
Yukie smiled. "So you call Noriko by her name, but I'm Class Leader."
"Um, well. . . it's—"
"It's fine. You don't have to say anything." She gave him another smile, but it seemed a little lonesome. "Anyway, Yuka Nakagawa came out of the school, and I called out to her."
"Were you able to convince her right away? I mean, I don't doubt that you could. People like you, Class—uh, Class Leader."
"Yeah." Yukie nodded. "And I hadn't returned alone either. After I first left the school, I was totally shaken up. But then I knew that I had to go back to the school, and on the way, I ran into Haruka completely by chance. She's my best friend, you know."
Shuya nodded. Yukie and Haruka Tanizawa were on the volleyball team together.
"I talked with her, and I told her I was going back. She was against it at first, but since I was armed—I had found a pistol in my bag—she said okay. I think Yuka trusted us because we were together."
"But. . After brief consideration, Shuya decided to broach one of the game's tenets. "... in this game, you can't trust two people just because they're together."
Yukie nodded. "True. We ran into that."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, first off, we decided to leave out the boys—no offense, but I talked it over with Haruka, and we decided that boys mean too much trouble. So anyway, skipping the boys, next was Satomi, right, and then Fumiyo—" Yukie stopped. Fumiyo Fujiyoshi (Girls #18) had died inside the classroom. "After her came Chisato. That made five strong. When Kaori Minami came out, we called for her, but..."
Shuya picked up the rest. "She ran?"
"Yeah. She ran."
Shuya realized he hadn't told her that he'd watched Kaori Minami die. He thought about saying it now but decided against it. Now that her killer, Hirono Shimizu, was also dead, it didn't matter. Neither did he want to revisit the memory. And besides, though it might seem crass, he couldn't afford to waste time talking about the dead.
Shuya asked, "And then Yahagi ran just like Minami?"
Both Kaori Minami and Yoshimi Yahagi, the last girl to leave, were dead now, and speaking their names side by side gave him the chills. The names of the dead. Both of them dead. Two-for-one special. It had been a while since that smiling man in the black suit appeared in his mind's eye. "Hey there, Nanahara. Still alive, are you? Stubborn boy."
"Well." Yukie looked away from Shuya and drew in her lips and pressed them together. Her eyes narrowed. "That was different."
"How so?"
She let out her breath. "I told the others we should call out to her. But a few of them were against it. Yahagi's one of Souma's girls, right? So the other girls felt we couldn't trust her."
Shuya didn't say anything.
Still turned to the side, Yukie said, "But she's dead now, isn't she? We left her to die."
"No, you didn't."
Yukie looked at him.
"Some things can't be helped. It's not anyone's fault." He knew what he was saying didn't really make any sense, but it was all he could think to offer her.
Yukie smiled bitterly and sighed. "You're kind, Nanahara. You're always so kind."
Their conversation threatened to lapse into awkward silence, but Shuya found something to say. "You should have let Mimura join you."
Shinji Mimura (dead now) was toward the end of the seating list. They would have been able to call out to him.
Shuya added, "You could have trusted him."
Yukie sighed again. "I thought so too, but Mimura was never popular with the girls. I mean, you have to admit, he came off as a bit of... a playboy. And he was so smart that it became kind of scary, I guess. So you remember how he helped Noriko when she was hurt? Well, one of the girls suggested he might have done it as a calculated move."
That was almost exactly what Kawada had said when he mentioned he'd seen Shinji that first night.
"Before we could come to a decision, he was already gone." Yukie shrugged. "Anyway, we'd decided at the start not to take any of the boys. We didn't even call out to Yamamoto."
Despite his handsome looks, Sakura Ogawa's boyfriend, Kazuhiko Yamamoto, was unassuming and as warmhearted as could be. He must have been popular with the girls. But Yukie's group hadn't reached out to him. Given this policy, no wonder there'd been a dispute over bringing Shuya inside.
Shuya realized Yukie's account had ended with a group of five. She hadn't mentioned Yuko Sakaki (Girls #9).
"What about Yuko? How did you find her?"
Yukie nodded and looked at him. "T
hat was also pure luck. We came inside here yesterday morning—it's pretty good for a fortress, right? Anyway, it was last night, around eight I think. Yuko just happened to pass right by. She was terrified."
Yukie paused. Something seemed to have stopped her. Shuya was about to ask her what was wrong, but before he could, she spoke.
"Anyway," she said, "All of us know her really well, so there wasn't a problem."
That ended her story. Shuya considered pressing her about Yuko but decided against it. If Yuko had been on her own until last night, she might have witnessed something horrific. Maybe she had been attacked and managed to escape, or maybe she had seen two of the students trying to kill each other. She could have even come across some gruesome corpse left in the aftermath of a battle.
Shuya bobbed his head. "That all makes sense."
"There's still something I don't understand," Yukie said. Shuya looked up at her, and she continued. "It's not a big deal, but you said that Sugimura was trying to find Kayoko. And that's why he didn't stick with you."
While Shuya had been filling Yukie in on what had happened, he found himself thinking about Hiroki. Hiroki was still alive, as was Kayoko Kotohiki. Had he found her yet?
Yukie said, "And he told you he had to see her about something. I wonder what it is."
Shuya shook his head. "We didn't ask him. He was in a hurry. It was just as curious to us."
Something tugged at the back of his mind. Has Hiroki found Kotohiki yet? If he has . . .
Kawada's voice came back to him. "This little noisemaker is your ticket out of here. Hop on our train whenever you like."
Shuya's eyes widened, and he said to himself, "The birdcall." "What?"
He looked up at Yukie. "I have a way to meet up with Noriko and Kawada."
"You do?"
Shuya nodded deeply. He tried to get moving. The explanation could wait. "I have to send them a message. I have to go."
"Hold on there. You need to rest."
"I can't do that. While I'm lazing around here, something could—" "I said hold on. Listen to the girl who's in love with you."
Her cheeks flushed a little, but she managed to say this and follow it with a playful smile. "We put you in here assuming you wouldn't be able to move even when you did wake up. You'll scare some of the girls if they see you've got that much strength."
Shuya's eyes widened. But what she said did make sense. That was probably why the other girls accepted Yukie being alone with him.
She continued, "So just stay put a little while. I'll go and tell everyone what you told me. And I'll convince them that they can trust you—and Kawada as well. As for you contacting him and Noriko, I can't let you go alone. It's too dangerous. I'll have to discuss that with the girls too. So wait here."
Then she added, "Can you eat?"
"Yeah."
He was hungry. He was worried about Noriko and Kawada, but getting some food into his stomach sounded like a good idea. It would help his gunshot wounds to heal.
"If you can spare anything," he said, "I'd be grateful. I do feel pretty weak, as you'd expect."
Yukie smiled. "We were just preparing lunch now. I'll bring some for you. I think it's some kind of stew. Does that sound all right?"
"Stew?"
"Yeah. This place is loaded with food. Well, whatever was in the pantry at least—you know, cans and pouches. But there's water and fuel tablets too, so we can cook."
"Wow," Shuya said. "That sounds great. Thanks."
She gently withdrew her hand from the side of his bed. She stood and was walking toward the door when she said, "Sorry, but I'm going to lock the door."
"Huh?"
"I'm really sorry. One of the girls won't feel safe if I don't. Sorry. Just wait here."
She gave him a warm smile, then opened the door and left the room. Her two braids swayed like twin tails of some strange and unknown animal. He caught a glimpse of her pistol, tucked down the back of her skirt.
After the door shut, he heard another click. It didn't sound like a lock but some kind of latch. Had they put it on the door just for him?
Shuya leaned on his right elbow and forced himself upright. He looked up and over his shoulder at the window, which had been barricaded with pieces of squared lumber. Sunlight entered through the gaps. The intent had certainly been to keep intruders out—but right now, to Shuya, they were like prison bars.
Beneath the blanket, the fingertips of Shuya's nearly immobile left arm reflexively formed a chord progression. The chords were from "Jailhouse Rock," a hit song by the rock star worshipped by the man who had given Shuya his guitar.
With a sigh, Shuya lay back down on the bed. That movement alone was enough to send sharp pain through the wound on his side.
14 STUDENTS REMAIN.
The Oki Island lighthouse was old but sturdy, with a single-story brick residence extending south from the seventeen-meter-high tower. The living quarters were arranged from north to south, starting with a combined living, dining, and kitchen space adjacent to the tower, followed by a storage room, bathroom, and toilet. Farther south and near the entrance were a large and a small bedroom and another storage room. A hallway connecting all the rooms ran along the west side of the building. Shuya was in the smaller bedroom closest to the entrance.
A table, its small size ill suited to the large space of the living room/dining room/kitchen—which was as big as a school classroom— had been pulled over to one corner. Yuko Sakaki (Girls #9) was sitting on one of the stools around the table. She was slumped over the white tabletop and appeared have dozed off. The past night had not done much to alleviate the exhaustion of having roamed the island for so much longer than the other five girls. But this was no surprise, considering that something had kept her from getting much sleep.
Yukie Utsumi's group kept to this single room and had even slept there. They had to keep a lookout atop the lighthouse tower, but Yukie had decided that it would be best for everyone else to stick together.
Directly behind Yuko, Haruka Tanizawa (Girls #12) and Chisato
Matsui (Girls #19) stood at the cooktop, busily preparing a meal out of preserved foods, with fuel tablets substituting for the shut-off gas. Haruka, who as a hitter on the volleyball team made a great duo with Yukie as the setter, stood one hundred seventy-two centimeters tall. With her height and her short hair, and Chisato's petite frame and long hair, the two girls almost looked like a boy and girl couple.
On the menu was packaged soup mix with canned vegetables. The muted light of the cloudy day came in through a frosted glass window above the cooktop. To keep intruders out, the girls had hastily boarded up the window with lumber from the storage room. As soon as they had arrived at the lighthouse, the girls had sealed off every possible entrance from the inside. (They had designated the front door as their solitary entrance and exit, which was how they had brought Yuko and Shuya inside. They had since rebuilt the makeshift desk-and-locker barricade in the entryway.)
In the opposite corner of the open room was a writing desk with a fax machine and personal computer. To the left of the desk, Satomi Noda (Girls #17) sat on a sofa that had been pushed against the wall; its matching coffee table had been mobilized for duty at the front door. Satomi was a gifted student on par with Yukie, and although she usually seemed calm and collected, fatigue had started to set in, and she had lifted up her round-rimmed glasses and drowsily rubbed her eyes.
The door to the main hallway was to the left of the couch. The opposite door, to Yuko's right, led to the base of the lighthouse tower. The open doorway revealed a glimpse of the first few steel steps of the spiraling staircase to the lantern room. Yuka Nakagawa (Girls #16) would be up top keeping watch. Yuko hadn't taken her turn up there yet, but Yukie had assured her there wasn't much to it. The sea was to the lighthouse's back, and in front, a single narrow path led up from the harbor, and the rest was all mountain. Right now, Yukie was in the front bedroom where they were keeping Shuya Nanahara.
Shuya
Nanahara.
A flicker of her previous terror returned, and she again saw the scene that she would never forget—the cracked open head, the bloody hatchet withdrawn, and the boy holding that hatchet.
The memory chilled her. And that boy, Shuya Nanahara, was inside the lighthouse, under this very roof. That's—
No, that's fine. It's fine.
Yuko stared down at the white tabletop, trying to keep herself from shaking. That's right, she thought, he's nearly dead. With those injuries, and that much blood loss, he won't be waking up.
She felt someone tap on her shoulder. She lifted her head.
Haruka Tanizawa sat in the stool next to her, looked into her face, and asked, "Were you able to get a little sleep?"
She must have been taking a break from cooking. Chisato Matsui was scrutinizing the label of one of the pouches of soup mix—maybe she was looking at the recipe. (Chisato had quietly wept in the corner of the room this morning. She was crying because Shinji Mimura's death had been listed in the morning announcement. At least that's what Haruka had whispered. Yuko hadn't known that Chisato had a crush on him. Her eyes were still red.)
Yuko forced a smile and replied, "Yeah, a little." I'm fine here. We all know each other. As long as the six of us girls are together, we're fine. I can rest safe here, even if it only lasts until the time runs out. It's just that. . .
"Hey," Haruka said. "About what you told me yesterday."
"Oh." Yuko smiled. "It's all right now."
Yes. It's all right now. She didn't want to think about it anymore. Just the memory of that scene sent chills down her spine. A shiver came from deep down inside her.
But no, she told herself, Shuya Nanahara won't be waking up again. So there's no problem now. None at all.
Haruka made an ambivalent smile. "Okay. If you're sure."
When Shuya was discovered unconscious in front of the lighthouse last night, Yuko had vehemently opposed taking him in. She had explained (shrieked, rather) to the other girls what she'd witnessed— Shuya Nanahara pulling the hatchet from Tatsumichi Oki's split-open head. She warned them that if they let him live, he would try to kill them all.
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