Shuya walked on Noriko's left, supporting her as they followed Kawada. For now, they had washed the cut on her cheek with water and covered it with four band-aids in a line. Kawada had said they were better off not making a poor attempt at suturing it themselves. They'd also washed the wound on her hand and wrapped the bandana back around it. Kawada had also quickly attended to his own injuries.
The mountainside was already growing dark, but they no longer needed to make their way through the brush, and they ascended the mountain with comparative ease. Beneath their feet, layers of leaves in varying stages of decomposition were wet from the afternoon-long shower.
They had covered a long distance since Kawada had announced without explanation, "We're going up the mountain."
"Kawada," Shuya said, and Kawada turned over his shoulder. "How far are we going?"
Kawada grinned. "Just a little farther. Just keep following me."
Shuya readjusted his arm around Noriko and quietly obeyed.
The summit, near the observation deck where Yukiko Kitano and Yumiko Kusaka were killed, and the area to its south had already become forbidden zones. Kawada stopped just outside the sector's edge fairly high up the mountain. Now that he thought about it, he realized that the farmhouse where he'd witnessed Hirono Shimizu shoot Kaori Minami was not far below.
"I think here should do it."
A steep drop below broke the tree line and offered a picturesque view to the south. Shuya looked across the island, now immersed in the blue twilight, where the fierce battle of the students of Shiroiwa Junior High Ninth Grade Class B had unfolded. But the school where their final foes dwelled—Sakamochi and his men—remained hidden among the rolling hills.
Shuya let out his breath, then asked, "What's up here anyway? How are we going to escape?"
Kawada smiled without looking at him. Then he said, "Relax. Take a look over there."
Shuya and Noriko looked to where he pointed.
In the darkness beyond the southern mountain, Shuya could see the outline of several smaller islands, and in the distance, a larger landmass with points of light scattered across it. Were he closer, he'd be able to tell which were neon and which were the lights along the coastal highway.
Now Shuya knew they were on Oki Island, off the shore of Takamatsu City. The island formed a small north-to-south chain with Megijima and Ogijima. Oki Island was the most northerly, and the farthest from shore of the three. Looking past the southern mountain, the closer island would be Ogijima, followed by Megijima, and then followed by the Shikoku mainland—and Kagawa Prefecture.
Kawada said, "I wasn't there very long, but it's your home. Shiroiwa will be over that way, I suppose. You won't be seeing it again, so take a good look."
Right, since we're escaping the country, I guess we'll never be coming back. But still. . .
Shuya looked at Kawada. "Don't tell me we came all the way up here just for the view."
Kawada chuckled. "Don't be in such a hurry." Then to Noriko, he said, "Let me see your gun. I need to check something."
She was still holding the Smith & Wesson. She held it out, and Kawada took it. He opened the cylinder and checked to see if it was loaded. Noriko would have reloaded it after taking that single shot at Kiriyama.
He didn't return it but kept it in his right hand. He took a single breath and let it out.
Then he said, "Do both of you remember what I told you all those times? That maybe I simply wanted partners but would try to kill you in the end?"
Shuya raised his eyebrows. Yeah, we had that talk, but what about it?
"You did," he said. "So what?"
"So," Kawada said. "You lose."
He pointed the Smith & Wesson at them.
3 STUDENTS REMAIN.
Shuya felt a strange expression spread across his face—like a simultaneous mix of amusement and bewilderment. Noriko was probably experiencing the same emotion.
"What's this?" Shuya said. "After all that, you're going to joke around?"
"This is no joke," Kawada said.
He pulled back the hammer.
Shuya's grin melted. His right arm was around Noriko, and he felt her stiffen.
Then Kawada said, "You can enjoy the view a little longer if you'd like. I told you, it's the last time you'll see it."
A faint smile was plastered across Kawada's stubbled face, a sinister expression he hadn't shown before.
Somewhere a crow cawed. It might have been flying above them in the darkening sky.
Finally, Shuya spoke. He was having trouble emotionally coping with the situation, and his voice sounded tearful. "What? What are you saying?"
"You're a slow one," Kawada answered with a slight shrug. "I'm going to kill you both. I win. That'll be two in a row for me."
Shuya's lips trembled. It can't be. It just can't be.
His words came tumbling out. "Don't be ridiculous. So you're telling me all this was some act? Didn't you—didn't you look after us? Didn't you save us all those times?"
Calmly, Kawada explained, "You two saved me. If I hadn't had you two around, Kiriyama would probably have killed me."
The more Shuya tried to keep the shaking out of his voice, the louder it became. "You . . . and I suppose that story about Keiko was all made up too, yeah?"
"Yep," Kawada admitted. "It's true I was in last year's Program in Hyogo Prefecture, and I did have a classmate named Keiko Onuki. But there was nothing between us at all. The girl in the photo is my girl, Kyoka Shimazaki. She's still in Kobe. She doesn't have a lot going on upstairs. Well, anyway, she insisted I carry her photo. Not a bad lay though."
Shuya swallowed. The light, early summer breeze felt chilly against his skin. Weakly, he added, "But the birdcall..."
"Was just something I picked up at that general store. I thought it might come in handy. And it did at that."
The light continued to fade.
Kawada continued, "Do you understand now? You two lost the moment you started to trust me."
Shuya still couldn't believe it. It can't be. It. . . can't.
Finally, a thought crossed Shuya's mind. This, this is . . .
But before he could say something, Noriko spoke.
"Kawada ... is this some test to see if we really trust you? Is it because Keiko didn't?"
Kawada shrugged. "Incredible. You're really going to believe that crap until the very end."
He was done talking now. He casually shifted the gun in his hand and slowly squeezed the trigger.
Soon after the echoes of the two shots had faded, the island fell into darkness.
1 STUDENT REMAINS.
Game over
End of player monitoring system report Program Headquarters/Shiroiwa Junior High Ninth Grade Class B
Shogo Kawada (Boys #5) reclined in the soft chair. His body gently rocked as the ship carried him across the choppy waves.
The room was fairly spacious for being inside a small patrol ship. The ceiling was low, but the floor covered a good eight square meters. A low table sat in the center of the room, flanked by two armchairs. Kawada was sitting in the one farthest from the door.
The room was below deck and hadn't a single window. Kawada couldn't see outside, but it must have been nearly half past eight. The ashtray on the table reflected the yellowish light from the ceiling, but Kawada was out of cigarettes.
When the game ended, the forbidden zones were nullified, and Sakamochi's voice instructed him to walk back to the school. In the schoolyard, Yoshio Akamatsu and Mayumi Tendo's corpses remained untouched, as did those of Yoshitoki Kuninobu and Fumiyo Fujiyoshi inside the classroom.
At last he was freed from the metal collar, and after recording the video clip of the victor for the news, the soldiers escorted him to the harbor, where two ships were docked. One was for the winner, the other a transport ship to carry away the soldiers who had been crammed inside the school. The majority of the men—the ones who had been stuck waiting in the faculty room—boarded the transport ship. O
nly the three who had been in the classroom at the start of the game boarded the other ship along with Sakamochi and Kawada. A cleanup crew would come the next day to dispose of the other students' bodies. The speakers that had been placed across the island and the computers in the school would be taken away within a few days—though the software and data related to the game had likely been retrieved by now. Everything had followed the same procedure as after the Kobe Second Junior High Program Kawada had been in ten months before.
And now he was being made to wait in this room. The ship was south of Oki Island on its direct route to Takamatsu Harbor. The soldiers' transport ship would have peeled off to head for their base in the west.
The door handle turned with a click. The soldier standing guard (the unimpressive one called Nomura or something) peered in, then quickly withdrew to the side. Kinpatsu Sakamochi appeared. He was carrying a tray with two teacups.
"Hey," he said, "did I keep you waiting?" and entered the room. Behind him, Nomura closed the door from the outside.
Sakamochi conveyed himself in on his stubby legs and placed the tray on the center table. "Here," he said. "It's tea. Have all you want."
He took a flat, letter-sized envelope from under his left armpit and sat in the armchair opposite Kawada. He tossed the envelope onto the edge of the table in front of him and brushed his shoulder-length hair behind his ear.
Kawada gave the envelope a disinterested glance, then put his eyes on Sakamochi and said, "What the hell do you want? I'm tired and I just want to be left alone."
"Now now," Sakamochi frowned. He raised his teacup to his lips. "That's no way to speak to an adult. You know, I had a student once, named Kato, and he used to give me a lot of trouble. But he's a respectable man now."
"I'm not one of your dogs."
Sakamochi's eyes widened a little, as if he were taken aback, but then he smiled again. "Don't be like that, Kawada. I just wanted to have a little chat with you."
Kawada remained silent as he leaned back in the armchair with his legs crossed and his chin resting on his hand.
"Let's see, where should I begin?" Sakamochi put down his teacup and rubbed his hands together. "Ah, yes," he said, his eyes glimmering. "Did you know we have a betting pool over the Program?"
Kawada narrowed his eyes in disgust and said, "I wouldn't be surprised. You are a bunch of tasteless bastards, after all."
Sakamochi smiled. "And you see, I had my money on Kiriyama. Twenty thousand yen. On my salary, that's quite a lot. But because of you, I lost."
"My sympathies," Kawada said, his tone entirely unsympathetic.
Again Sakamochi smiled. Then he said, "I explained to all of you, didn't I, that those collars let me know where everyone is at all times?"
They both knew he had. Kawada didn't respond.
Sakamochi looked him in the eye and said, "You were with Nanahara and Nakagawa the whole time. What you did at the end— you betrayed them, didn't you?"
"You got a problem with that? There are no rules in this happy little game. Surely you're not going to criticize me for that. Don't make me laugh."
Another broad grin spread across Sakamochi's face. He brushed back his hair, took another sip of his tea, and rubbed his hands together.
Then, speaking as if he were sharing a secret, he said, "Hey, Kawada. I really shouldn't be telling you this, but those collars have built-in microphones. It's the truth. We can hear everything the students say during the game. I bet you didn't know that."
Until now, Kawada had responded with indifference, but now he showed a reaction. His eyebrows lowered and his lips tightened.
"How the hell would I?" he said. "So, you heard everything then— how I tricked them."
"Uh huh, that's right." Sakamochi nodded. "But that wasn't nice, what you said. 'I bet the government wouldn't think twice before writing off someone like Sakamochi as an acceptable loss.' Maybe it doesn't seem like it to you, but the Program Administrator is an important position. Not everyone can do this work."
Ignoring Sakamochi's complaint, Kawada asked, "Why are you telling me this?"
"Oh, I don't know. I just, well, I guess I was just impressed by your brilliant performance and wanted to let you know."
"Bullshit."
Kawada turned his head away, but he soon turned back when Sakamochi said, with emphasis, "It was a brilliant performance."
Sakamochi continued, "But there is something that's bugging me." "What?"
"Why didn't you shoot those two immediately after you took out Kiriyama? You could have, couldn't you? That's the one thing I don't get."
Without hesitation, Kawada said, "It's like I told them. I figured the least I could do was let them have one last look at their homes before they died. Even I know the value of common courtesy. After all, I was able to win because of them."
Sakamochi continued to smile as he made an odd-sounding, "Hmmm."
He brought the teacup back to his lips. Keeping the cup in his hand, he settled back into the armchair and said, "By the way, Kawada, I requested the records from the Kobe Second Junior High Program. You know, the one you were in last year?"
He stared at Kawada for moment. Kawada returned his gaze without a word.
"And, you see, as far as I could tell from the records, you didn't have any special connection with Keiko Onuki."
Kawada cut in. "Onuki? Like I said, I made that—"
"You—" Sakamochi talked over him, and he shut his mouth. "You came across her twice, like you told Nanahara and Nakagawa. The first was only for a moment, and the second was right before you won—and she was already dead. I read the transcripts, and you didn't even mention her name—not once. Do you remember that?"
"What's to remember? It's like I said—there was nothing between me and Onuki. Weren't you listening?"
"But here's the thing, Kawada. The second time, you remained there for two hours."
"That was a coincidence. It was a good place to hide, that's all. Anyway, that's why her name stuck with me. She died gruesomely."
With that ever-present grin still plastered on his face, Sakamochi bobbed his head attentively. "The other thing is," he said, "during the eighteen hours of your first game—and that's quite fast, actually. I think the battlefield might have been a little too small for that one. Anyway, you didn't talk to anyone in your game. Well, you said things like 'Stop' and 'I'm not your enemy,' and so—"
"Also just a means to an end. Wasn't it obvious?"
Sakamochi ignored the interruption with a smile. "And so I can't figure out what your approach to that game was. You did an awful lot of moving around, and—"
"It was my first time. I didn't know the smart moves."
Sakamochi nodded again. The corners of his lips contained an amused smile, as if he found something terribly funny. He took a sip of tea, then returned the teacup to the table.
He looked up again and said, "By the way, how about that photo?
Do you mind if I have a look?"
"What photo?"
"Come now, you showed it to Nanahara and Nakagawa, right? The one you told them was of Onuki. Oh, but you said it was really of . . . Now what was her name? Shimazaki?"
Kawada sneered at him. "Why should I have to show you that?"
"Come on, let me see it. You're making me feel left out. Please. Come on, please. Look, you're making me beg." He put his hands on the edge of the table and bowed to Kawada.
Resigned, Kawada reached behind his back and searched his back pocket, then raised his eyebrows and brought his hand out. It was empty.
"It's not there/' he said. "I must have dropped it when we were fighting Kiriyama."
"You dropped it?"
"Yeah. It's the truth. ID wallet and all. Well, it wasn't that important, anyway."
Suddenly, Sakamochi burst out laughing. As he laughed, he said, "Right." He clutched at his sides, slapped his knees, and laughed and laughed.
Kawada looked on in confusion.
But then he narro
wed his eyes and looked up to the ceiling of the windowless room.
Though dampened by the military ship's thick walls, he could hear the quiet but distinct roar of an engine—and it wasn't from the ship.
The sound grew increasingly louder and then softer again. And then it was almost entirely gone.
Kawada's lips twitched into a frown.
"Is that noise troubling you, Kawada?"
Sakamochi had stopped laughing, but the twisted smile remained in place.
"It's a helicopter," he said. He reached for his cup, slurped the rest of his tea, and placed the cup back on the table. "It's flying to the island—the one where you all fought."
Kawada's eyebrows tightened again, but with a hint of an emotion he hadn't yet displayed. Disregarding this, Sakamochi leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms, and shifted topics.
"Hey, Kawada. Let's talk some more about those collars. They have a name, you know. Guadalcanal 22. Well, not that it matters. Anyway, you told Nanahara that they couldn't be hacked."
When he saw that Kawada wasn't going to respond, he continued, "In fact, your speculation was right on the mark. They're built with three redundant systems, and even supposing a one-percent failure rate for each system, only one in a million will fail. In reality, the failure rate is even smaller. In any case, what you said was correct. Nobody could possibly escape from them. Any attempt to remove them would trigger the explosive, you see, killing the wearer. Rarely does anyone try it though."
Kawada still didn't speak.
"But, and there is a 'but,'" Sakamochi said, sitting forward. "You see, I'm a curious kind of guy, so I thought I'd get in touch with the Nonaggressive Forces R&D center this time around. And when I did . . He looked Kawada in the eye. "Guess what I found out. If someone knew their way around electric circuitry, he could use parts from a common radio to easily unlock the device. Of course, he'd have to know what was inside the collars."
Kawada remained silent, but as Sakamochi continued to stare, he spoke up, as if a thought had occurred to him, and in a voice unnaturally flat. "But nobody does know that, so that shouldn't be a problem."
"Right." Sakamochi nodded with a small grin. "Well, anyway, if someone did unlock his collar that way, what would happen next is incredibly simple. The collar transmits the same signal as if the student had died. Supposing that—just supposing, mind you—one of the students removed his collar without triggering the explosive, then that student could wait for the game to end and the soldiers to pull out, and then escape at his own leisure. What you told Nanahara was right—in the event that the game ends after noon, the procedure is for the cleanup crew to come the next day. That leaves plenty of time, wouldn't you say? And this time of year, the water's not too bad for swimming."
Battle Royale (Remastered) Page 54