I Will Name Him Shogo
A Battle Royale fanfic (based on the manga)
By Technomad
He cries in his sleep---more often than he's really aware of. But that's not too surprising. So do I. More often than not, I awaken with wet cheeks.
Both of us still expect, upon awakening, to find ourselves back on that hellish island. I find myself bracing at sunrise, noon, and sunset for Kaemon's hateful voice, echoing from the loudspeaker system, telling us who has died in the latest interval. We both reflexively duck and flinch whenever we're startled, particularly by a loud noise.
Right now, we're hidden aboard a freighter, on our way to the United States. It's a scary thought, in some ways; I don't have much command of English, and he's not much better off. Luckily, the people who found us this escape route do have some names and phone numbers of people in the States, and were able to give us enough American money to keep us afloat until we can make contact with our new friends.
I see the way the crew looks at us. Some of them would like the money that the Greater East Asia Republic would pay them for betraying us, but none of them care to argue with the captain. He's made it very clear that we are not to be touched. Others---the majority---I see horror and pity in their eyes, when they look at me.
They wonder what we went through, out on that island. The worst they could imagine was nothing compared to what actually did happen. More than once, I've found myself expecting to wake up and find that this was all a horrid nightmare; that all I have to worry about is a day at school with people like Mitsuko Souma's gang ready to torment me. If only that were true!
The thing about the Program is that it boils those who go through it down to their essentials, leaving only the core. Some of our classmates succumbed to fear, like poor Akamatsu. I imagine Megumi Eto went the same way---she was never a very brave person, and always hated violence. Others tried to find other ways out---Yukiko and Yumiko, up in that observation tower, crying out to the rest of us to not play; the "lighthouse girls" who tried to fort up; and almost certainly, others that I'm not aware of. Still others went mad---Kaori Minami, to name one that I'm certain about, and I'd wager that Mizuho Inada also lost touch with reality.
And then we come to those who played. I'll never know why they did it, but I think that in most cases, they saw playing as the only possible way off that accursed island. Some of the players, like Hirono Shimizu, could be reasoned with, but others threw themselves into the spirit of the game with utter abandon. Mitsuko, for one, and Kazuo Kiriyama.
Kazuo, in particular, haunts my nightmares. Again and again, I see his impassive face, beautiful as the Angel of Death, pursuing us relentlessly, until we finally managed to bring him down. He never showed the slightest hint of emotion in all the years I knew him---I can't remember ever seeing him laugh or cry. He was frighteningly good at anything he did; I heard about how, having only read one book about judo, he humiliated and mutilated a bullying teacher who had challenged him to a match in gym class. Shuuya says that he thinks that Kazuo had the highest kill rate of anybody on that island, and possibly one of the highest in the history of the Program. I can believe it. I still can't quite believe, in my heart of hearts, that he's gone; I half expect him to leap out of hiding, down here in the hold where we must stay, and begin blazing away with that MAC-10 submachine gun of his.
As I've said, some people succumbed to fear, others to madness, still others to the twisted logic of the Program itself. However, there were those who rose above it---who became heroes. My Shuuya was one of them. Because he thought his best friend had been in love with me, he vowed to protect me, and he has, and will till the day we die. Even when it would have been much easier to abandon me, like when I was down with fever from that wound I took at the beginning, Shuuya protected me at all costs.
However, he's not the one who was the most heroic. While there were many who were heroes---the "lighthouse girls," for example---the single greatest hero on that island was Shogo Kawada. To my shame, I'd never looked behind his façade before we were in the Program; I thought, like my classmates, that his gruff manner and scars indicated a criminal past. When I found out that he'd been through the Program before, and had deliberately put himself back into it in order to sabotage it, I felt like crying.
I did cry when I found out what he'd been through, his first time. Trying to save his girlfriend, Keiko Inoue, he carved a bloody swath through their classmates---only to end up killing her by mistake, when she was trying to save his life! He'd been beating himself up with guilt over that ever since. He thought he hadn't done enough; that she had died not loving him.
I wasn't having any of that. I was polite and respected his feelings, but I laid it out on the line. I'd seen her picture; I saw the expression on her face, and I knew that she had loved him. He thought he'd hurt her, that he'd made her cry with his gruff ways. All that was, to her, was little pinches. We girls are a lot tougher than boys give us credit for; we have to be, to deal with them. Not that we'd ever want it any other way.
I hope I got through to him. I think I did; in his last moments, he said he could see her, smiling at him. He'd been shot, but held on until he was sure that we could handle the boat we'd hijacked from the Program. Even though he must have been in horrible pain, he didn't show it until he just couldn't hold on any more.
I'm sure that it'll surprise you---it would have shocked all of my late female classmates---but Shuuya hasn't touched me. Not in that way. Right after we escaped, we were both too exhausted and drained to even think about that---and since then, we just haven't had any real privacy.
But we'll get to America. And when we're there, I will go to Shuuya one night. I will take off my clothes, and climb into bed with him, and I will take him in the way that a woman takes a man.
If I have a daughter, I will name her Keiko. If, as I hope, I bear a boy, I will name him Shogo.
Yours truly,
Noriko Nakagawa
Class B