Disclaimer: I do not own the Battle Royale concept nor it's characters. This story is manga-based. Enjoy!
"Fucking game." – cursed Girl #14, Mayumi Tendo, under her gritted teeth, as softly as she could. She was lucky, because neither Yonemi Kamon nor his soldiers were able to hear her.
It was, perhaps, the most rebellious thing the determined, hard-working girl had done in her life, and even that wasn't saying much. One of the best students in the 3rd B class of Shiroiwa High School, Mayumi believed life would reward her for her achievements since she was a little girl, under the strict control of her conservative parents. In the Tendo household, there was no room for boys, sleepovers, and definitely no drugs, (including alcohol and cigarettes) and any tiny act of rebellion from Mayumi's part resulted in discipline being, well, beaten out of her. Although she rarely rebelled against her family's authority, Mayumi could not help but wonder if one day she would be free to do whatever she wanted to do, and longed for her days of independence yet to come as anxiously as any other teenager.
And now... where could she begin?
It had only been twenty minutes, and the class trip the attractive girl prepared herself for, a time to relax and to forget about the exams coming in the next few weeks– for which she was already studying for – had derailed into the nightmare of every teenager in the Great East Asian Republic. All of the girl's hard work had pretty much gone to shit, because her class was stuck in the annual Battle Royale, and nothing could be done about it. The hired teacher, Yonemi Kamon – one of the ugliest and least pleasing men she had ever seen in her life - had just murdered in cold blood one of her classmates, Boy #7 Yoshitoki Kuninobu, and then shot Girl #15 Noriko Nakagawa on the leg, just a few feet away from Mayumi. In the apparently ordinary classroom she had just woken up into, the girl and her classmates had just witnessed more carnage than most people do in their lifetimes. First, Mr. Hayashida's disfigured corpse was found, and then Kuninobu had his lips and tongue visibly torn apart by a bullet, before being shot in the head.
Thankfully, Mayumi had learned something over the years, while being physically punished by both of her parents any time she disappointed them: to disassociate.
Whenever the student got into a new, stressful situation, her thoughts were able to leave the environment around her, as if she was floating above the room she was in, merely watching what was going on. She did that, for example, whenever she had to deliver a school project with a short deadline, or when one of her pets died. Right now, the girl was having a difficult time with this technique, since the smell of blood and death made it more difficult, if not impossible, to concentrate.
"Hush, Mayumi." – the girl thought to herself. – "Focus on your new situation, pretend you are alone in this room. Right now, what can you do? You are in a game, this is just another game, another obstacle, another school project. You will receive a weapon, you won't be entirely defenseless, and there will be people around here who will protect and care for you. And then you will beat this game and …. kill, or die. Fuck, that's much harder than anything I have ever done. I'll be dead in three days. At best."
The girl have her brain a short pause to stare at Yoshitoki's corpse for a moment, and then allowed a couple more tears to fall, after the many she had shed after hearing from Kamon that she was in The Program.
"Izumi (Girl #5 Izumi Kanai) is your friend. You know her since first grade, she never did anything bad to you, you can find her somewhere and team up with her. She's a girl like you, she's not strong, but maybe she gets a good weapon and then you can both stay alive for a longer period."
And what about what would happen if only the two of then remained alive at the end of The Program? Mayumi pushed this thought away from her mind. It wasn't the time to think about it.
But really, the truth was – reflected Mayumi, after looking at the headless corpse on the floor once more –Izumi was the only person she knew she could count on, the only one she considered a friend. True, she wasn't bullied like Boy #1 Yoshio Akamatsu or Girl #20 Kaori Minami, but she was nowhere near the popularity league of, for example, Girl #02 Yukie Utsumi, who was a beautiful class representative, and led a big girl posse. Most students in class did not like nor dislike Mayumi, for them, she was just there. Pretty ironic, since for all of her life, Mayumi worked hard in order to not simply be there.
Yonemi Kamon kept explaining the rules of the game in front of the blackboard, wearing the same disgusting grin on his bestial, ugly face. But his words did not register for Mayumi, who was by now completely disassociated. While the teacher explained what were the danger zones – something Mayumi already knew of, since her father worked for the government and was involved in The Program – the girl was still thinking about who she could ally with, in order to survive the next couple of days.
"Lets se, who else do you know a bit better, and does not seem to be a psychopath. And of course, does not belong to the Kiriyama family, Souma-san's group, and isn't a weirdo like Inada-san (Girl #1) and Oda-kun. (Boy #4) Who could it be?
Meanwhile, Kamon was finishing his speech, and telling his soldiers to distribute small pieces of paper to the students in the class, when Mayumi looked to her right to meet the gaze of Girl #02 Yukie Utsumi. Moments later, Mayumi's eyes moved to the seat in front of Yukie, to look at the short-haired girl sitting there, her chubby face looking absolutely terrified - Girl #18, Fumiyo Fujiyoshi.
"Well, maybe she will do." – Thought Mayumi, while looking at her classmate. She and Fumiyo did a school project together only a couple of weeks before, in which they treated each other nicely, and even managed to have some good girl talk. True, they weren't friends yet, but Mayumi knew she would probably not be able find Kanai during the game, since she was Girl #5 and would leave the school much earlier than her. Besides, their seats were too far away from each other. On the other hand, Fumiyo was Girl #18, and would leave the school only a few minutes after Mayumi, making it possible for them to meet if she waited outside for her.
"And" – thought Mayumi with a sneer – "I would rather be with her than with her friends." Mayumi did not talk much to Yukie Utsumi's circle of friends, but she held a strong grudge against the class representative, and also against Girl #17, Satomi Noda. Those two, along with Boy #20 Koichi Motobuchi, and Boy #6 Kazuo Kiriyama, were the ones who prevented her from being the best student in class, no matter how hard she studied. Mayumi almost always got A's, but even when she did, her parents still yelled and got mad at her if a significant number of students did better than her. The last time it happened, Mayumi ranked at 5th place in the midterm exam, with 94 questions out of 100 answered right. When she got home and her mother found out, the girl got a slap across the face.
"So, would you kill them?"
The piece of paper reached Mayumi's desk, and the instructions were clear: they all had to write "I will kill" on it, at least three times. Mayumi did the same with the pencil on her desk, but thought better. She wrote "I will kill," and underneath it, a message for Fumiyo. Then, when Kamon was looking at another direction, Mayumi carefully passed the note to Fumiyo's lap, as gentle as possible so as not to be seen or heard, but with enough strength for Fumiyo to feel it on her chubby legs underneath the skirt. Right after feeling the note, Fumiyo looked at Mayumi, too confused and frightened to say a word.
"Well" – thought Mayumi right afterwards, while looking at Yukie. – "not yet."
The next one is, Girl #5 Izumi Kanai!"
Right after the soldier said that, Mayumi's friend stood up and looked at her in the eye, visibly terrified and crying profusely. Well, that was to be expected. Izumi was the daughter of a town official and, compared to most of the students, lived a very privileged life. It was understandable that she would freak out and not be able to take care of herself in that sort of situation, she wasn't a strong willed girl like Girl #13, Takako Chigusa, or Girl #10, Hirono Shimizu. In part, that's why Mayumi decided to send a note to Fumiyo: deep inside, she knew Izumi would probably not last long. From Mayumi's position, she could see that Izumi's legs were shaking, her eyes unfocused on any particular object. Izumi left the school very quickly after getting her duffel bag, and ran away with no particular direction, and probably with no plan of survival on her mind. But then again, who could blame her for being scared?
Although there was no way to know where she went to, , Mayumi knew that, if she somehow was able to find Kanai, they would team up, and perhaps, play the game.
After a few more students left the class, it was Mayumi's turn to leave. She stood up, without looking at anyone, and walked up to the soldier with a bit more determination than Izumi Kanai had. Since her father was involved with the Battle Royale industry, the girl was a bit more confident than the majority of her classmates about her own chances of survival. Mayumi wasted no time: she grabbed her duffel bag and ran away as quickly as Takako Chigusa had, until she was almost through the front door of the building. Then, the girl heard a sound coming from the roof, and stopped dead on her tracks.
Mayumi silenced her mind, paying close attention to the sound.
The sound echoed again, stronger this time.
"Could it be… that someone is on the roof?"
Suddenly, Mayumi heard a thud, and a male voice screamed "ouch" for a brief moment. Maybe he slipped, maybe his limbs hit something, but now there was no question: a boy had climbed to the roof of the school, a boy who was released into the game before Mayumi did. And if he was there, waiting for people to come out of the school, then it was certain that his intention was to attack and kill. And obviously, he had a weapon that enabled him to attack from afar, probably a firearm.
"Shit!" – thought Mayumi – "I don't want to get shot. I'm not going to die so early into this thing."
Acting on pure instinct, Mayumi opened her duffel bag, and searched vigorously for her own weapon, as fast as she could. In less than one minute, she found what she wanted, although it wasn't exactly what she wanted: her weapon was a nunchaku, a Japanese fighting tool the girl had no idea how to use. And even if she did, that weapon was nothing against the one the attacker had, or the ones most students certainly had received. Mayumi's mouth dropped in a sorrowful grin. For a moment, she started to cry.
From above the school, the sounds kept coming, and heavy breathing came from the roof-boy, who was probably extremely nervous. But Mayumi couldn't avoid leaving the school, or she would be easy prey to whoever came behind her. And suddenly, the girl heard steps coming from the hallway behind her, and a male voice began to call her name.
At this moment, she had an idea: sure, it was unethical, but why not? She could sort of guess who was coming after her… the class Prince Charming.
"Mayumi! Are you Ok? What is going on?" – the girl turned around and saw the new "attacker." It was Boy #15, Shuuya Nanahara.
"I… I'm scared Shuuya! I don't want to play!" – tears were now freely streaming from Mayumi's face. And she looked at Shuuya, who was coming closer to her, with puppy dog eyes, almost begging him to come and embrace her.
"I'm sorry Mayumi, I'm sorry." – Answered the handsome, beloved-by-all-the-girls boy. Mayumi though, wasn't one of them, he wasn't her type. Still, she needed protection due to her frailness and weak weapon, and thus her goal was to make Shuuya trust her.
"I'm… scared." Although there was no intimacy between them, she embraced Shuuya as hard as she could, causing the boy to freeze for a second before embracing her back, visibly uncomfortable. Then, Mayumi looked at Shuuya's heroic face, deep inside his innocent eyes, and added: "A boy is on the roof."
For a moment, Shuuya froze in his place, to register what he had just heard. Listening closely to the sounds of the environment, he quickly heard heavy breathing from the top of the school. People were already playing, right from the very beginning, and much closer to him than he thought.
Shuuya also cried for a while, but regained his composture quickly, putting his face closer to Mayumi and talking to her quietly, almost like a whisper:
"Mayumi, stay here." – The girl smirked slightly. "I'll go and see who he is. And I'll try to convince him to stop."
Before Mayumi could say anything, Shuuya had already begun to run to the front of the school, with the high speed earned from his years as a baseball player for the school's team. Mayumi also ran, but to a different direction. A few minutes earlier, while looking for her weapon, the girl saw a circle of five medium-sized stones on the ground. They could be a good makeshift weapon. Without waiting to see who was coming behind her, Mayumi quickly ran to the door, grabbed the stones on the ground, and put four of them on the pocket of her uniform. The other one rested on Mayumi's right, ready to be thrown at someone.
Mayumi had never in her life been so thankful for the fact that her father was involved in the Battle Royale. Although he never instructed her on anything – he probably never imagined his daughter's class would be selected – she saw him work at home on designing the rules of the Program since she was a child, and often paid close attention on her father's conversations with his work colleagues, when they often came for visits at her house. Therefore, Mayumi was certain she would be shot and killed if she ran to courtyard in front of the school, like Shuuya was doing.
Instead, Mayumi walked quickly along the wall on the left of the school's door, slowly and carefully enough so that roof-boy wouldn't hear her steps. Quickly, she managed to reach a spot on the wall that she knew was the boy's blind spot, according to the sense of distance and movement she developed while playing baseball on the school's female team: there, he would not be able to see and shoot at her, but she could see who he was.
He was Boy #1, the obese class nerd Yoshio Akamatsu, crying and looking even more pathetic than usual. In his hands, there was a crossbow with an arrow placed on it, ready to shoot; at least, it was not a handgun, like Mayumi feared. And it was aimed at the person right in front of him, the boy who promised to "protect" Mayumi, after she made him fall into her trap.
"What an idiot."
"Akamatsu-san! Stop!" – screamed Shuuya, while waving his arms at the boy at the top of the roof, begging for him to stop. He didn't, making those screams Shuuya Nanahara's final words. Akamatsu quickly released the trigger, a look of pure fear and rage distorting his face. The arrow made a loud, wheezing sound, and Mayumi could see all of it's movement from her safe position. It almost looked beautiful while dashing in the air, until it finally went through Shuuya's chest, piercing it entirely and sticking out from the back of the school uniform. Blood poured out of the popular kid's shirt, staining it red, and he fell forwards, his face down on the ground. The first true victim of the Battle Royale, and the first one to be killed by a classmate. He wouldn't be the last.
The idiot was so focused on calming Akamatsu down that he forgot the arrow that was aimed at him. Shuuya probably thought Akamatsu would not dare to shoot the arrow, but Mayumi knew better. And at that moment, the girl could not thank him more for it.
"Now, I've got my chance."
From her blind spot, Mayumi raised her right hand and threw one of her stones at Akamatsu, before he was able to reload his crossbow. It hit the bullied, broken mess of a person on the head, causing an enormous impact. Mayumi was a tall girl who played baseball since she was younger, and even worked out on her neighborhood's gym once in a while. Therefore, she was stronger than most girls, and specially, stronger than most of the ones in her class. The blow hit Akamatsu in the ear, making him shriek in pain and causing a trickle of blood to fall from his ear. Before he could turn his head to look at her, Mayumi quickly grabbed a second rock from her pocket and threw it: it another good throw, hitting Akamatsu on the side of the head.
"Argh!" – Screamed the nerd in intense pain; in a split second, he managed to turn his head at Mayumi's direction, to see where the stones were coming from, not thinking coherently; but there was nothing he could do, the girl was too fast and merciless. The third stone caught Yoshio in the middle of the face, breaking his nose. The fourth, on his left shoulder, and the fifth, in the middle of the back; five stones were all it took.
The large boy lost his balance, slipped, and fell from the roof much faster than Mayumi could imagine, hitting the floor with a resounding thud. He could be dead, he could be alive, but Akamatsu had passed out and was clearly incapacitated. He wouldn't attack, wouldn't live much longer, and it was all much easier than Mayumi ever thought. For a moment, the girl almost smiled, before the tension inherent to The Program returned in full force.
"Akamatsu-kun?" – Cried a female voice, just exiting the school through the front door.
Mayumi left her hiding spot and turned around to see the crying Girl #15 Noriko Nakagawa, but only for a split second. She paid the girl no attention, and soon moved her gaze towards the bushes lying behind Shuuya's corpse.
"She definitely won't last long in this game."
And with that, Mayumi Tendo, the wannabe-winner of that Battle Royale's season, ran away towards the bushes in order to hide herself behind them, hoping that she would be able to see and meet up with Fumiyo when Girl # 18 left the school. In seconds, she was already at her new hiding spot, ignoring Noriko's wail when she saw Shuuya's corpse, ignoring the tears flowing from her face as she walked away from the school in no particular direction, her leg bleeding and limping from the gunshot she took to the leg earlier.
Exhilaration dominated Mayumi's senses more than ever before, and although the fear of death still consumed her, one simple sentence couldn't leave her mind.
"I can win this."