Battle Royale '03
Part Two
9
Masao held his axe steady as he walked down the street of the residential area. He wasn't afraid of being alone in this, just afraid of being found by someone willing to play the game. He had already cut down a few trees on the way here just to see how sharp the axe really was, then decided not to abuse it just in case it broke or wore down too far later on. The rain soaked through his white shirt (he wasn't wearing his school coat) and dripped down the ends of his hair, which he usually wore spiked up. However, Elmer's Glue didn't react well with water and his hair was now a sopping, dripping mess. All he wanted was to go in a house and get a towel to wipe down his shirt. He wandered down the street, axe still in hand, when he saw her. He saw Junko standing by the window she broke herself and knew he wanted to go see her.
"Who's there?" Junko asked as Masao approached. Shizuka was sitting on the couch with a woolen blanket wrapped around her petite figure, being quiet.
"It's Suzuki," Masao answered calmly.
"What are you armed with and what are your intentions?"
"I've got an axe...but all I want is a towel."
"A towel?" Junko turned to Shizuka. "Is a towel a good intention?"
"It's raining out there, he's probably soaked to the bone. Let him in," Shizuka answered, wrapping the blanket around herself even tighter.
"You may enter," Junko said to Masao, who climbed in through the window. "You want a towel?"
"Yeah. That'd be nice." Masao gathered a bunch of his hair in his hand and wrung it free of water. "Who else is in here besides you, Junko?"
"Just Shizuka," Junko answered, going to a small closet and pulling out a fluffy cream-colored towel. She walked back to where Masao was standing (and making puddles on the floor) and handed him the towel. "We're just going to stay here for a while. Shizuka's cold, too."
"I'm cold," Shizuka added gleefully. "Not used to no heaters."
"Looking for anyone else in particular?" Masao asked Junko. Shizuka nervously eyed Masao's axe and turned away from him.
"Not really, just whomever comes by, I suppose." Junko sighed. "This is so scary." Shizuka silently agreed.
21 students remaining
10
Sayaka Ichiki (Female Student No. 7) only wanted to see one person, her steady boyfriend Shinji Asaba (Male Student No. 4). She could hardly read her map, what with it being so rainy, so she was relying on her compass (she could hardly read that, though) and her sense of direction to guide her down to the southern coast, where Shinji told her he'd be waiting. Sayaka was soaked with rain and every part of her felt wet, even the bottom of her socks. She made a squishy sound as she walked. How annoying. She had a samurai-style sword's sheath latched to her skirt, but she had no idea if she could even use it correctly. 'This is 2003, who the hell uses a samurai sword anymore except on terebi period dramas? Certainly not a teenage city girl such as myself.' She sighed. "I hope Shinji has a better weapon than this...or a clue as to how to use it.' Shinji. She'd been with him since halfway through first year of junior high. Sometimes the really, well, mature girls like Sakura or Tetsuko would ask her if she'd slept with him yet, to which a resounding no was the answer. Sayaka loved Shinji with all her heart, but felt she couldn't just mess up their wonderful relationship by letting her carnal desires take center stage.
Actually she couldn't really trust anyone except Shinji at this point. Not even Miki Aizawa or the other "good" girls and especially not Sakura, Tetsuko or Shojiro's crew (little did she know most of them were dead). 'At this point it's just me against the world,' she lamented as she peered at her compass yet again, then pressed the light button on her watch. 5:57am? She was one of the last to leave the school, after all, so it factored out nicely now that she thought about it. Hey, the sun was going to rise soon under all this rain, maybe she and Shinji could watch it come up together. Wouldn't that be nice? She kept walking on until she heard a strange crackling noise.
21 students remaining
11
"Hi everyone, it's Mr. Toyama here! I've got some announcements to make. First, the forbidden zones. At 7 am, I-2; at 9 am, B-5; and at 11 am, C-4. Okay? Mark those on your maps. Now for the deaths. First, the males: No. 2 Kazuo Hanagata, No. 8 Akito Kanzaki and No. 12 Junji Mitagawa. Now, the females: No. 2 Tomoko Daidouji, No. 5 Naomi Fujisaki, No. 8 Tetsuko Matsutani, No. 9 Shuko Inada and No. 14 Minami Shimada. Okay? I'm going to make another announcement at noon. Good luck, everyone!"
"What was that bullshit?" Shizuka asked from her viewpoint on the couch.
"Apparently Mr. Toyama made an annoucement," Junko answered. "You get the third forbidden zone, Masao?"
"Yeah, it's C-4."
"Thanks. He announced who died and when areas become forbidden. Most of Shojiro's crew is dead except Daisuke and Sakura."
"Shojiro's crew? You'd think they would've lasted longer than that!" Shizuka exhaled a deep breath. "Maybe they all commited hara-kiri or something."
"It's possible," Masao added. "So we're down to 23 now? It seems so surreal. Just yesterday it was a normal school day, now look at us." Shizuka nodded silently, preferring not to talk much. Plus she was still cold, dammit.
21 students remaining
12
As the sun rose somewhere behind the rain, Kiyoharu Moritaka (Male Student No. 9) was still alone. He used his fist to punch open the door to the general store and was now inside, raiding the place. He threw a few tea bags into the day pack he had stolen from...oh hell he forgot, it was empty, someone harvested all the valuables from it except the bag itself. Then he went over to get to the medicine. Instead of being choosy with what he needed he decided he'd do a Noah's Ark and take two of each item, watching as brightly colored boxes dropped quietly into the day pack. He wanted to make sure that if someone else found the general store after he did that they wouldn't find half of anything they were looking for. He was greedy like that.
He heard a rustle and turned, pistol in hand, to see a rat crawl across the table. 'Just a rat...got my adrenaline up for nothing.' The day pack was beginning to bulge as Kiyoharu finished his "shopping". Finally, he declared himself done and headed out of the door towards the houses. This little special bonus that he found in his day pack was starting to help. It was a Palm Pilot-sized machine that showed where he was with a circle and where other people were with asterisks. The only problems were that he didn't know who the asterisks were and if the asterisks were dead or not. But all he knew was that he should go find Toshiya Wakabayashi (Male Student No. 14) or Masao.
21 students remaining
13
Toshiya was with Takashi Hirai (Male Student No. 3) and they were headed northwards. They had no real purpose for going northwards other than to maybe explore the island a little, get to know it better. More like getting to know their future graveyard better. Toshiya was armed with a diver's knife and Takashi with what both guys described as a big wooden pole, because, well, it was a big wooden pole. The two would always descend into childish snickers whenever Takashi mentioned his big wooden pole (Author: I -know- some of you guys are snickering, admit it).
"Maybe you'll fight someone with that big wooden pole," Toshiya thought aloud right as the duo bumped into Daisuke, headed for the Shinto shrine. "Speak of the devil," Toshiya quickly added as Daisuke drew his shotgun and Toshiya unsheathed his diver's knife. Takashi quickly hit Daisuke on the side of his head with the big wooden pole and then hit the same place with more force, watching as Daisuke fell to the ground. He wasn't dead, just knocked out.
"Why don't you slice him up?" Takashi suggested.
"Nah...don't feel like killing right now. Besides, someone'll probably finish the job later."
"We are so cool, Toshiya."
"I know." Toshiya smiled his "hooray for me" smile as he and Takashi kept on towards the north. "Look, it's a big mountain-type thing. Should we go up there?"
"Sure, why not? We could go up the mountain and look around to see everyone going places." The two boys suddenly stopped when they heard the sound of a chain swinging around over and over again. They stood at the ready with their weapons as Suzuko walked by with her ball and chain in hand. She looked over at them with just one side of her face and the usually sweet and innocent face of Suzuko Harada turned into the cold, lifeless face of a killer. Blood from where Tetsuko slashed her leg was still dripping down, turning her white sock red and even staining some of her shoe.
"Harada!" Takashi exclaimed, surprised. "Hey, you're hurt, are you all right?"
"Put down your weapons," Suzuko answered.
"Why? We don't want to hurt you, this is just precautionary."
"I said put down your weapons!!" Suzuko swung her ball and chain around, obviously not knowing very well that it wasn't light and had its own trajectory. She held it away from herself as if it were a cat that used to be sweet but then turned fierce and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard the sound of ball hitting pole. With a loud crack, part of Takashi's wooden pole fell down to the ground, leaving a sharp splintered end where a smoothed tip used to be. Suzuko looked shocked at what she had done and quickly ran off, her ball and chain swinging around madly. Takashi paused by the end of the pole, which now lay discarded on the ground. Then he looked at Toshiya then back down at the pole.
"Girls are weird," he noted. Toshiya nodded.
"She was headed north. What a psycho. Let's go south instead, who knows what she'll try if we see her again? She might even learn how to use that ball and chain."
21 students remaining
14
Daisuke was smarter than that. When he heard the announcement that almost everyone in Shojiro's group was dead, he suspected the worst. 'But come on, Daisuke, would Shojiro summon everyone to him so he could kill them? Seriously?' He paused and twirled his shotgun around in his hand. 'To be honest, yes.' Daisuke went about halfway to the Shinto shrine (he wasn't good at running and didn't have a lot of stamina) when Mr. Toyama's announcement was made and then turned back around. He was now in a farmhouse in square E-6. The farmhouse wasn't much to write home about, it was just, exactly as the name stated, a farmhouse. But it was a good place to hide. There were lots of bales of hay that could be a good place to dive into should someone come along looking for blood.
Daisuke was sitting on top of some bales that he shaped into a couch of sorts. "Ah, Shojiro, you fooled Akito, Junji and Tetsuko, but you won't fool me," he remarked aloud to nobody in particular. "They were fools anyway." He shifted his weight on the hay couch and it fell through. "Dammit!" His echoing expletive bounced off the smelly walls. "This place smells like horse shit," he added. Suddenly he heard someone heaving against the door, which had wheels and was on a track but was still pretty heavy. Daisuke held his shotgun at the ready as the door opened and the cold rainy wind blew in.
"Who's there?" he asked.
"Satsuki," a male voice answered. It was Sho Satsuki (Male Student No. 7), who was always trying to get into Shojiro's group. He was the yakuza boy poser of class 3-A. He held a sickle in both of his hands as he entered the farmhouse. "And you are?"
"Daisuke," Daisuke answered. 'And you're about to die,' he added to himself. "Hey, you know one of the rules in this game that should always prevail?"
"No, what's the rule?"
"Don't trust anyone." Daisuke stood up and pointed his shotgun at Sho so it was pretty much rammed into his jugular. Sho held his sickle to Daisuke's jugular. "Especially not Shojiro Umeboshi." He pulled the trigger. Sho's body was thrown back with the force of the bullet and a circular wound appeared on his throat. He fell to the ground with his sickle still in hand. Right as Sho fell, however, the sickle grazed Daisuke's arm. It wasn't much, he'd sustained more serious injuries before, but it did sting a bit.
20 students remaining
15
Sayaka was on the sandy southern shore of the island, watching as the waves rolled in and out, over and over. Since it was still raining, the sea was fiercer than it would normally be. She squinted and saw the lights of the southern guard ship, then looked farther out and saw lights. 'That's right, there are other islands around here. What are they called again? Megijima and...um...the other one, what's it...That's right, Ogijima. If I could only swim faster, I could try to make a fast break for Megijima.' She unsheathed her sword and began to scratch into the sand, making deep canyons and watching as the sea filled them up, then washed them away. 'Shinji said he'd be here by now, where is he?'
---
Well, Shinji was running into a bit of a problem going to the southern shore. Those problems had names and their names were Shojiro and Sakura. The two grew tired of waiting for Daisuke to show and eventually gave up on him altogether, so they went exploring and found Shinji. Shinji was given a set of blowdarts as his weapon so it wasn't really possible to fire blowdarts while running. He managed to lose them by hiding away but sustained a bullet wound in his right wrist which hurt like no other. Shinji knelt down in some bushes to look at his wound. It was steadily dripping blood and stung terribly, but it didn't appear to be in a place where it could be fatal. Sure, it might paralyze him but there were prosthetic hands on the market nowadays (and since they were made in Japan, not America, they were relatively easy to find), weren't there? He was also left-handed. It wouldn't matter when it came to writing. Then he noticed that the blood was running onto a bracelet Sayaka gave to him. Sayaka wove a bracelet of purple and black string that was about as thick as floss, then called it a "friendship bracelet" and put it on Shinji's arm. When they started going out she upgraded it to a "lover's bracelet" and requested that Shinji still wear it. He wore it everywhere, even in the shower and to sleep. It was a symbol of his dedication to Sayaka and now his own blood was dripping onto it.
'Dammit...' He stood up out of the bushes and continued on down to the shore, pausing to note that he was in square I-5. He could hear the not-so-gentle whooshing of the waves and knew he had to be close to her. The beach was becoming visible and the ground beneath his feet morphed from being dirt to being sand. He could see her standing there, her back turned to him.
"Sayaka!" he called. Right after he shouted her name, an explosion rang out and he dropped onto the ground. He spat sand out of his mouth and tried to stand back up but found it was impossible to do. There was a sharp pain in his back, like there were thousands of needles surging up and down and he was powerless to do anything about it. Sayaka turned and gasped, putting her hands over her mouth.
"Shinji!!" she screamed, running towards him and sitting down by him. She put her hand on his back and it felt warm. Too warm. She pulled back her hand and discovered a large amount of blood on it. "Blood?!"
"They got me," Shinji answered quietly.
"Who got you?"
"Shojiro...Sakura...they chased me here...shot me in my wrist...and back..."
"Don't talk too much, Shinji," Sayaka pleaded. She brushed back some of her bob-cut hair with the hand that was bloodied. "Are you going to be all right?"
"I...don't know, Sayaka," Shinji replied, being honest. "It hurts...so much."
"It's going to be all right," Sayaka said, placing her hands on his face. "I promise." Her eyes were blurring up with warm tears.
"I don't think so, Sayaka...I feel weak."
"You're just tired," Sayaka insisted. "You'll be fine! We'll get you to the clinic. They have to have something there that can help you, right?"
"But, love, I have two bullets lodged inside my body..."
"Doesn't matter! I'll remove them with tweezers! They can't be that big, can they?" The tears were rolling down Sayaka's cheeks now, one after the other. "I can't lose you!"
"Sayaka..." Shinji reached with his wounded arm up to touch Sayaka's face and smiled wearily. "Just...remember all the fun we used to have...together."
"No..." Sayaka whispered. "Please..." With a grunt Shinji forced himself to sit up.
"I love you...Sayaka..." Shinji kissed Sayaka once more and she felt the last breath leave his body.
"No..." she repeated. "Shinji!!" she wailed loudly, then let out another scream of pain and slumped down next to his dead body and wept, her hand across his chest, trying to will his heart to begin beating again. Shinji's blood was staining the sand red.
19 students remaining
16
Miki was still awaiting the arrivals of Suzuko, Asuka, Nanako and Fujiko. Now that Tomoko was dead their group was only going to have five people, but that was good enough, right? Safety in numbers was what she had been taught as a small child and that lesson carried on all the way up to 15. Miki's provided weapon was a police gun, just like the one her father used. Her father was a high-ranking police officer in Kobe and he was very well-known, with a good reputation. She didn't know that her dad usually used that police gun to kill civilians, not just fire warning shots. Under the Dictator's ruling, a police officer could shoot anyone who was a threat without even having to ask. Act out of hand and you'd get a bullet to the head. Miki was relatively naive for her age, still living under the delusion that the world was a really nice place to live and everyone would be kind to you.
She was inside a viewing platform which, thankfully, had a roof. There were some binoculars there which she would peer through every so often, but visibility was low due to the rain.
'It's not fair that I got selected for this,' she lamented to herself. 'My dad works for the government, doesn't that kind of excuse me from the Program?' She began to paw around in her day pack, shoving aside her police gun and the extra bullets, moving the nasty government-provided bread and water, digging past the map and compass. Her hands came upon a small rectangular object and she pulled it out. It was a cell phone! Her cell phone, to be exact, what with the Hello Kitty faceplate and the little alien dangling from the small nubby antenna. Miki turned on the phone and her welcome screen came up just as normal. The backlighting for the display came on and everything glowed blue. Miki was focused on the top left-hand corner where there was a picture of a cellular tower and some blocks next to it. One block meant no signal, two blocks meant weak signal, three blocks meant clear signal. The blocks switched awkwardly from one to two for a few minutes, then finally settled on THREE! Miki did a small dance of joy and began to tap in her home phone number, then hit send and heard the glorious, glorious ringing. After two rings, the other end picked up.
"Hello?"
"Daddy, it's Miki! I got selected for the Program, oh Daddy, I'm so scared, I'm on Okishima Island, please come save me, I don't want to die, don't let me die, please don't let me die..."
"Miss Aizawa, I must not have mentioned that phones won't work on this island. Not even cell phones. There's a temporary cellular tower here and every signal is relayed through it before being sent out to anywhere else in Japan. Therefore, all calls out of here are relayed to us." Miki clamped her hand over her mouth and felt her heart pounding in her throat. That voice didn't belong to her father, it belonged to...
"Mr. Toyama?!"
"That's right, Miki. Now you better hang up. You can't get out of here." Mr. Toyama hung up. Miki pulled the phone away from her ear, then looked down at it, confused. 'No calls...no way to send an SOS...I'm trapped...I'm trapped...' Like a broken record, her mind repeated the same thought over and over, even as she shut off her phone and placed it back in her day pack. 'I'm trapped, I'm trapped, I'm trapped..." She backed into one of the corners of the viewing platform and hugged her knees. Her heart was still pounding like a sledgehammer and suddenly she felt nauseous. She truly was trapped, wasn't she?
19 students remaining
17
It was approaching 9:00am when Kiyoharu reached the house that Shizuka, Junko and Masao were in. Surprisingly, there was only one other house that was occupied by anyone and that was Kaoru and Kazuhiko Yamatani (Male Student No. 15), whom he decided to just leave alone. He didn't think of them as enemies, nor did he think of them as friends. Kiyoharu knocked on the door of the house, then saw someone approaching. Someone wrapped in a blanket?
Shizuka opened the door. She was normally pale due to the fact that she hated the outdoors, but her face was a bit paler than normal. She had two blankets wrapped around her body.
"What are you armed with and what are your intentions?" she asked mechanically.
"I just have a pistol but I raided the general store and got all kinds of cool junk. I also know Masao's here."
"Masao," Shizuka called into the house. "Kiyoharu's here." She turned back to Kiyoharu. "Please, come in, and place your bounty on that table...the Western-style one." Kiyoharu placed the second day pack down on the Western-style table and waited for Junko and Masao to appear. Shizuka didn't try to have a conversation with him, in fact every time their glances met she would turn away shyly.
'He's right here, with me, and I'm wrapped up like some old granny,' Shizuka thought silently. 'I look like an idiot. And it's all because it's so goddamn cold in here.' She could feel her heartbeat getting faster and faster. 'Maybe he could warm me up?'
"So, what did you get at the general store?" Junko asked.
"A whole boatload of stuff." Kiyoharu unzipped the day pack and began to take items out of it. "First of all, food and drink." He had about 10 bottles of water, bags of miso soup (just add boiling water), bread that was actually good, vegetables, some chicken, cookies, teabags, coffee beans, cereal and assorted candies and snacks. "Second of all, since there's no electricity we can't cook, right? Wrong. Behold the splendor of propane." He took out a camping propane grill and two canisters of propane. "Third off, even though there's a clinic it's always a good idea to have medicine." He had two boxes of aspirin, painkillers and cold medicine, as well as rubbing alcohol, bandages of all sizes and gauze. "And fourth of all..." He took out five flashlights and batteries. "Flashlights, although you might want to cup them with your hands so people don't see you. There are still people willing to play the game."
Junko's stomach began to rumble loudly.
"I haven't had anything to eat except that nasty bread," she said, shrugging.
"We should have some food now," Masao suggested.
"I want hot food," Shizuka added.
"It's breakfast, we'll just have some cereal or something and I can make some tea for Shizuka." That was the first time Shizuka actually heard Kiyoharu mention her name, let alone putting the word "for" in front of it, meaning that he was going to do something FOR her, meaning that maybe he cared about her too? She knew she was blushing and even though she was still cold she was warmed up a small bit with the thought that Kiyoharu Moritaka might actually return her affections.
"I'm up for it," Masao said, nodding slightly. "What about you two?"
"Sure!" Junko and Shizuka answered in unison.
"The tea'll take a few minutes, but the cereal can be eaten now," Kiyoharu informed the group. Junko began to search the cabinets in the kitchen for some bowls and spoons, which she found quickly. She also found a cup for Shizuka's tea and brought them all back to the dining room table. Kiyoharu was firing up the propane grill and asked for Junko to go get a small pan for him. She nodded and quickly returned with a small pan. Kiyoharu thanked her, then placed the pan on the grill and poured some water in it, watching for it to boil. The rest of the group was serving cereal to themselves, then sat down in the living room to eat it.
"You like him, don't you?" Junko asked on a piece of paper she found in the dining room. Shizuka hesitated before responding.
"Yeah...I do, but don't tell him. I want to tell him."
"When?"
"When the time is right. Here he comes." Shizuka quickly hid the piece of paper as Kiyoharu came in with her hot cup of tea.
"Be careful, it's really hot," he warned her.
"That's what I want," she responded, sipping daintily from the cup. "It tastes so good," she said, delighted that someone actually had the great idea of raiding the general store.
"So, Kiyoharu, what have you been up to?" Masao asked Kiyoharu.
"Well, I have this special bonus in my bag, it's a little thinger that tells me where people are, but it doesn't tell me if they're dead or not. I found you guys with it. Before that, I raided the general store. That's about it. I was one of the last to leave the school, only Shuko, Kaoru and Miki were after me. Miki was a wreck. She couldn't stop crying and whimpering that it wasn't fair."
"Her dad's a police officer," Junko added. "That's why she says it isn't fair to her."
"Obviously she doesn't know jack about equality," Masao commented. "We're all the same, just students. Our background doesn't matter when it comes to the Program. Hell, you could be an illegitimate child of the Dictator himself and they wouldn't care."
"Nn," Shizuka said as she swallowed another sip of tea. "That's not true. You just know that the Dictator would have someone kill off any illegit children of his. So technically the illegit kids would die, just like in the Program, just at someone else's hand." Kiyoharu looked over at Shizuka as she talked and noticed that there was a large scar on her right cheek with some concealer marks down the side of her cheek. The concealer she used to conceal any scars on her face wasn't waterproof, obviously, as it dripped off when she was running.
'I wonder how that scar got there,' he thought as he tried not to stare at it. Shizuka finished off her tea with one last slurp.
"So, we're just hiding out here?" Kiyoharu asked.
"Yeah, our square isn't in the forbidden list that Toyama announced, so we're good for the time being. If our zone is announced at noon, then we have to go as soon as possible."
"...but take some stuff with us, of course," Shizuka finished.
"Of course," Masao added.
19 students remaining
18
Toru and Kanako got to the shrine a short time after Shojiro and Sakura left, so they played jan-ken-pon to decide where exactly they went. Kanako and her bet of "south" won, so the twins began to head south, towards the beach.
"You know, this place is pretty," Kanako commented. "If I came here on a vacation, you know, a normal vacation, I think I'd have fun. I mean, the beach is probably really nice." She stepped in a puddle and mud splashed onto her boots. "Yuck! That's gross."
"I wonder if the rain'll ever stop, or at least let up," Toru thought out loud as he looked up.
"Dunno, those clouds are really dark. It could rain for a long time." Kanako tried to wipe some of the mud off her boots, but instead got her hands filthy. "Listen, you can hear the waves if you stay silent. The beach can't be too far, can it?"
"Ssh! Listen," Sakura whispered to Shojiro. The two were hiding in the same bushes Shinji hid in to check on his wrist wound. "Doesn't that sound like the Niimura twins?"
"It does," Shojiro replied. "He never came, either. Nor did Daisuke."
"Maybe they figured it out?" Sakura suggested, shrugging.
"Dammit, they should've obeyed like a circus monkey and come anyway."
"Shit happens, Shojiro. Do you wanna go for it?" Sakura held her .45 at the ready.
"Why not?" Shojiro held his machine gun at the ready and the duo jumped out of the bushes, weapons ready. Kanako gasped in shock and Toru stood in front of her defensively, holding a grenade.
"Toru, they've..."
"I know they have guns, Kanako, just get as far away from here as possible."
"Toru!!"
"Don't worry about me, Kanako, just go down to the beach and wait for me. I'll be there momentarily." Kanako nodded, turned on her heel and began to run wildly towards the shore, leaving Toru with Shojiro and Sakura.
"Why didn't you show?" Shojiro asked.
"I got an idea of what exactly you wanted to do with us once I heard the announcement that Tetsuko, Akito and Junji were gone. I'm not as stupid as you think I am, Shojiro." Toru pulled the tab on the grenade and threw it, then ran after Kanako. Shojiro and Sakura watched it soar through the air, then began to run in whatever way their legs could propel them to get away from that thing before it exploded. They ducked down as it exploded and weren't hurt, but the explosion did numb their eardrums for a short time.
"Are you all right?" Shojiro asked Sakura as he helped her to her feet.
"I'm fine," Sakura replied, dusting off her skirt. "Just kind of dazed. Where did they run off to?"
"I think I saw them go north," Shojiro said after a short pause. After another pause for Sakura to stretch her legs, the two turned and began to head north.
Kanako and Toru, on the other hand, were getting closer to the beach. Neither twin had 20/20 vision, so they didn't see Sayaka slumped over Shinji's body at first, but they did start to hear her loud wailing cries pretty early on. Finally Kanako got close enough to see it was Sayaka and Shinji.
"W-who's there?" Sayaka asked, sniffling.
"It's me, Kanako Niimura. Don't worry, I don't want to hurt you. Are you all right?" Sayaka looked up at her, eyes red, trails of many tears on her face.
"They killed him," she answered deftly.
"Who killed who?" Toru asked.
"Shojiro and Sakura. They killed Shinji." Sayaka sniffled again. "Two shots, one in the wrist and one in the back. They stole my only love from me..."
"Oh, Sayaka, I'm so sorry," Kanako gasped quietly.
"It's all right." Sayaka took out her samurai sword and Kanako took a step back. "Oh no, I'm not aiming for you two." She set the blade down, then grabbed it about halfway up and sliced her right wrist with it, then turned it around and sliced her left wrist. "I can't live without him." She smiled as she looked down at her two cuts and watched the copious amounts of blood flow from them. "So I'll die with him. Easy enough, huh?" Kanako was frozen in horror as the blood dripped down onto the sand. "Well, Kanako, thanks a lot for caring, I appreciate it. But...I'm leaving now." Sayaka smiled wearily and the last of her tears descended from her eyes as her life quickly drained from her. She died a few seconds later. Toru moved her so that she was locked in an embrace with Shinji and closed her eyes in respect for the dead.
"It's so horrible, isn't it?" Kanako asked a minute later. The waves continued to move in and out at regular intervals, but Sayaka and Shinji were too far from the water to possibly be swept away. "If you have even one person willing to play the game...look what happens. Should we collect their weapons?"
"If we don't, who knows who will." Toru was already placing Shinji's blowdarts into his day pack and Kanako took Sayaka's sword down to the water to wash it clean of blood.
18 students remaining
19
Suzuko was climbing the northern mountain all by her lonesome. Her cut wasn't bleeding anymore, as she applied pressure to the cut and then tore off a small section of her skirt to tie around it. Sure, it looked strange, but it would have to do. She saw the viewing platform up ahead and climbed faster, then stepped inside. Miki was still curled up in the corner.
"Miki?"
"Oh, Suzuko, you're the first to arrive. Do you know where Asuka, Nanako or Fujiko are?"
"Sorry, I don't. Is that everyone else who's coming?"
"Yeah, and Tomoko would've come if she was still alive. You got hurt?"
"Tetsuko slashed me when I walked by her. But I'm still here and she's not, so who's laughing last?"
"Is that your weapon?" Miki pointed to Suzuko's ball and chain.
"Yep, I finally can wield it properly. I ran into Hirai and Wakabayashi and lopped off some of Hirai's big wooden pole with this thing, so it's gotta be good, right?" Suzuko swung the ball and chain in the air while Miki ducked. "Oh, don't worry, I won't hit you. I know how to wield it, remember?"
"Right..."
"So, when the others get here what'll we do?" Suzuko asked, looking through a pair of binoculars. She pointed them down the mountain and noticed Nanako, Asuka and Fujiko were coming up the mountain. They were, obviously, drenched in rain but weren't injured very badly if at all.
"Compare weapons, then sit around and talk. If someone wants to challenge us we'll all fight them. There's no way one person can win against five, don't you agree?"
"I agree. We can be the hiding group, we'll survive a lot longer if we stay in a group where everyone will want to be alive." Little did Miki know that one girl in the group had very different ideas about the group's survival.
18 students remaining
Part Two
9
Masao held his axe steady as he walked down the street of the residential area. He wasn't afraid of being alone in this, just afraid of being found by someone willing to play the game. He had already cut down a few trees on the way here just to see how sharp the axe really was, then decided not to abuse it just in case it broke or wore down too far later on. The rain soaked through his white shirt (he wasn't wearing his school coat) and dripped down the ends of his hair, which he usually wore spiked up. However, Elmer's Glue didn't react well with water and his hair was now a sopping, dripping mess. All he wanted was to go in a house and get a towel to wipe down his shirt. He wandered down the street, axe still in hand, when he saw her. He saw Junko standing by the window she broke herself and knew he wanted to go see her.
"Who's there?" Junko asked as Masao approached. Shizuka was sitting on the couch with a woolen blanket wrapped around her petite figure, being quiet.
"It's Suzuki," Masao answered calmly.
"What are you armed with and what are your intentions?"
"I've got an axe...but all I want is a towel."
"A towel?" Junko turned to Shizuka. "Is a towel a good intention?"
"It's raining out there, he's probably soaked to the bone. Let him in," Shizuka answered, wrapping the blanket around herself even tighter.
"You may enter," Junko said to Masao, who climbed in through the window. "You want a towel?"
"Yeah. That'd be nice." Masao gathered a bunch of his hair in his hand and wrung it free of water. "Who else is in here besides you, Junko?"
"Just Shizuka," Junko answered, going to a small closet and pulling out a fluffy cream-colored towel. She walked back to where Masao was standing (and making puddles on the floor) and handed him the towel. "We're just going to stay here for a while. Shizuka's cold, too."
"I'm cold," Shizuka added gleefully. "Not used to no heaters."
"Looking for anyone else in particular?" Masao asked Junko. Shizuka nervously eyed Masao's axe and turned away from him.
"Not really, just whomever comes by, I suppose." Junko sighed. "This is so scary." Shizuka silently agreed.
21 students remaining
10
Sayaka Ichiki (Female Student No. 7) only wanted to see one person, her steady boyfriend Shinji Asaba (Male Student No. 4). She could hardly read her map, what with it being so rainy, so she was relying on her compass (she could hardly read that, though) and her sense of direction to guide her down to the southern coast, where Shinji told her he'd be waiting. Sayaka was soaked with rain and every part of her felt wet, even the bottom of her socks. She made a squishy sound as she walked. How annoying. She had a samurai-style sword's sheath latched to her skirt, but she had no idea if she could even use it correctly. 'This is 2003, who the hell uses a samurai sword anymore except on terebi period dramas? Certainly not a teenage city girl such as myself.' She sighed. "I hope Shinji has a better weapon than this...or a clue as to how to use it.' Shinji. She'd been with him since halfway through first year of junior high. Sometimes the really, well, mature girls like Sakura or Tetsuko would ask her if she'd slept with him yet, to which a resounding no was the answer. Sayaka loved Shinji with all her heart, but felt she couldn't just mess up their wonderful relationship by letting her carnal desires take center stage.
Actually she couldn't really trust anyone except Shinji at this point. Not even Miki Aizawa or the other "good" girls and especially not Sakura, Tetsuko or Shojiro's crew (little did she know most of them were dead). 'At this point it's just me against the world,' she lamented as she peered at her compass yet again, then pressed the light button on her watch. 5:57am? She was one of the last to leave the school, after all, so it factored out nicely now that she thought about it. Hey, the sun was going to rise soon under all this rain, maybe she and Shinji could watch it come up together. Wouldn't that be nice? She kept walking on until she heard a strange crackling noise.
21 students remaining
11
"Hi everyone, it's Mr. Toyama here! I've got some announcements to make. First, the forbidden zones. At 7 am, I-2; at 9 am, B-5; and at 11 am, C-4. Okay? Mark those on your maps. Now for the deaths. First, the males: No. 2 Kazuo Hanagata, No. 8 Akito Kanzaki and No. 12 Junji Mitagawa. Now, the females: No. 2 Tomoko Daidouji, No. 5 Naomi Fujisaki, No. 8 Tetsuko Matsutani, No. 9 Shuko Inada and No. 14 Minami Shimada. Okay? I'm going to make another announcement at noon. Good luck, everyone!"
"What was that bullshit?" Shizuka asked from her viewpoint on the couch.
"Apparently Mr. Toyama made an annoucement," Junko answered. "You get the third forbidden zone, Masao?"
"Yeah, it's C-4."
"Thanks. He announced who died and when areas become forbidden. Most of Shojiro's crew is dead except Daisuke and Sakura."
"Shojiro's crew? You'd think they would've lasted longer than that!" Shizuka exhaled a deep breath. "Maybe they all commited hara-kiri or something."
"It's possible," Masao added. "So we're down to 23 now? It seems so surreal. Just yesterday it was a normal school day, now look at us." Shizuka nodded silently, preferring not to talk much. Plus she was still cold, dammit.
21 students remaining
12
As the sun rose somewhere behind the rain, Kiyoharu Moritaka (Male Student No. 9) was still alone. He used his fist to punch open the door to the general store and was now inside, raiding the place. He threw a few tea bags into the day pack he had stolen from...oh hell he forgot, it was empty, someone harvested all the valuables from it except the bag itself. Then he went over to get to the medicine. Instead of being choosy with what he needed he decided he'd do a Noah's Ark and take two of each item, watching as brightly colored boxes dropped quietly into the day pack. He wanted to make sure that if someone else found the general store after he did that they wouldn't find half of anything they were looking for. He was greedy like that.
He heard a rustle and turned, pistol in hand, to see a rat crawl across the table. 'Just a rat...got my adrenaline up for nothing.' The day pack was beginning to bulge as Kiyoharu finished his "shopping". Finally, he declared himself done and headed out of the door towards the houses. This little special bonus that he found in his day pack was starting to help. It was a Palm Pilot-sized machine that showed where he was with a circle and where other people were with asterisks. The only problems were that he didn't know who the asterisks were and if the asterisks were dead or not. But all he knew was that he should go find Toshiya Wakabayashi (Male Student No. 14) or Masao.
21 students remaining
13
Toshiya was with Takashi Hirai (Male Student No. 3) and they were headed northwards. They had no real purpose for going northwards other than to maybe explore the island a little, get to know it better. More like getting to know their future graveyard better. Toshiya was armed with a diver's knife and Takashi with what both guys described as a big wooden pole, because, well, it was a big wooden pole. The two would always descend into childish snickers whenever Takashi mentioned his big wooden pole (Author: I -know- some of you guys are snickering, admit it).
"Maybe you'll fight someone with that big wooden pole," Toshiya thought aloud right as the duo bumped into Daisuke, headed for the Shinto shrine. "Speak of the devil," Toshiya quickly added as Daisuke drew his shotgun and Toshiya unsheathed his diver's knife. Takashi quickly hit Daisuke on the side of his head with the big wooden pole and then hit the same place with more force, watching as Daisuke fell to the ground. He wasn't dead, just knocked out.
"Why don't you slice him up?" Takashi suggested.
"Nah...don't feel like killing right now. Besides, someone'll probably finish the job later."
"We are so cool, Toshiya."
"I know." Toshiya smiled his "hooray for me" smile as he and Takashi kept on towards the north. "Look, it's a big mountain-type thing. Should we go up there?"
"Sure, why not? We could go up the mountain and look around to see everyone going places." The two boys suddenly stopped when they heard the sound of a chain swinging around over and over again. They stood at the ready with their weapons as Suzuko walked by with her ball and chain in hand. She looked over at them with just one side of her face and the usually sweet and innocent face of Suzuko Harada turned into the cold, lifeless face of a killer. Blood from where Tetsuko slashed her leg was still dripping down, turning her white sock red and even staining some of her shoe.
"Harada!" Takashi exclaimed, surprised. "Hey, you're hurt, are you all right?"
"Put down your weapons," Suzuko answered.
"Why? We don't want to hurt you, this is just precautionary."
"I said put down your weapons!!" Suzuko swung her ball and chain around, obviously not knowing very well that it wasn't light and had its own trajectory. She held it away from herself as if it were a cat that used to be sweet but then turned fierce and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard the sound of ball hitting pole. With a loud crack, part of Takashi's wooden pole fell down to the ground, leaving a sharp splintered end where a smoothed tip used to be. Suzuko looked shocked at what she had done and quickly ran off, her ball and chain swinging around madly. Takashi paused by the end of the pole, which now lay discarded on the ground. Then he looked at Toshiya then back down at the pole.
"Girls are weird," he noted. Toshiya nodded.
"She was headed north. What a psycho. Let's go south instead, who knows what she'll try if we see her again? She might even learn how to use that ball and chain."
21 students remaining
14
Daisuke was smarter than that. When he heard the announcement that almost everyone in Shojiro's group was dead, he suspected the worst. 'But come on, Daisuke, would Shojiro summon everyone to him so he could kill them? Seriously?' He paused and twirled his shotgun around in his hand. 'To be honest, yes.' Daisuke went about halfway to the Shinto shrine (he wasn't good at running and didn't have a lot of stamina) when Mr. Toyama's announcement was made and then turned back around. He was now in a farmhouse in square E-6. The farmhouse wasn't much to write home about, it was just, exactly as the name stated, a farmhouse. But it was a good place to hide. There were lots of bales of hay that could be a good place to dive into should someone come along looking for blood.
Daisuke was sitting on top of some bales that he shaped into a couch of sorts. "Ah, Shojiro, you fooled Akito, Junji and Tetsuko, but you won't fool me," he remarked aloud to nobody in particular. "They were fools anyway." He shifted his weight on the hay couch and it fell through. "Dammit!" His echoing expletive bounced off the smelly walls. "This place smells like horse shit," he added. Suddenly he heard someone heaving against the door, which had wheels and was on a track but was still pretty heavy. Daisuke held his shotgun at the ready as the door opened and the cold rainy wind blew in.
"Who's there?" he asked.
"Satsuki," a male voice answered. It was Sho Satsuki (Male Student No. 7), who was always trying to get into Shojiro's group. He was the yakuza boy poser of class 3-A. He held a sickle in both of his hands as he entered the farmhouse. "And you are?"
"Daisuke," Daisuke answered. 'And you're about to die,' he added to himself. "Hey, you know one of the rules in this game that should always prevail?"
"No, what's the rule?"
"Don't trust anyone." Daisuke stood up and pointed his shotgun at Sho so it was pretty much rammed into his jugular. Sho held his sickle to Daisuke's jugular. "Especially not Shojiro Umeboshi." He pulled the trigger. Sho's body was thrown back with the force of the bullet and a circular wound appeared on his throat. He fell to the ground with his sickle still in hand. Right as Sho fell, however, the sickle grazed Daisuke's arm. It wasn't much, he'd sustained more serious injuries before, but it did sting a bit.
20 students remaining
15
Sayaka was on the sandy southern shore of the island, watching as the waves rolled in and out, over and over. Since it was still raining, the sea was fiercer than it would normally be. She squinted and saw the lights of the southern guard ship, then looked farther out and saw lights. 'That's right, there are other islands around here. What are they called again? Megijima and...um...the other one, what's it...That's right, Ogijima. If I could only swim faster, I could try to make a fast break for Megijima.' She unsheathed her sword and began to scratch into the sand, making deep canyons and watching as the sea filled them up, then washed them away. 'Shinji said he'd be here by now, where is he?'
---
Well, Shinji was running into a bit of a problem going to the southern shore. Those problems had names and their names were Shojiro and Sakura. The two grew tired of waiting for Daisuke to show and eventually gave up on him altogether, so they went exploring and found Shinji. Shinji was given a set of blowdarts as his weapon so it wasn't really possible to fire blowdarts while running. He managed to lose them by hiding away but sustained a bullet wound in his right wrist which hurt like no other. Shinji knelt down in some bushes to look at his wound. It was steadily dripping blood and stung terribly, but it didn't appear to be in a place where it could be fatal. Sure, it might paralyze him but there were prosthetic hands on the market nowadays (and since they were made in Japan, not America, they were relatively easy to find), weren't there? He was also left-handed. It wouldn't matter when it came to writing. Then he noticed that the blood was running onto a bracelet Sayaka gave to him. Sayaka wove a bracelet of purple and black string that was about as thick as floss, then called it a "friendship bracelet" and put it on Shinji's arm. When they started going out she upgraded it to a "lover's bracelet" and requested that Shinji still wear it. He wore it everywhere, even in the shower and to sleep. It was a symbol of his dedication to Sayaka and now his own blood was dripping onto it.
'Dammit...' He stood up out of the bushes and continued on down to the shore, pausing to note that he was in square I-5. He could hear the not-so-gentle whooshing of the waves and knew he had to be close to her. The beach was becoming visible and the ground beneath his feet morphed from being dirt to being sand. He could see her standing there, her back turned to him.
"Sayaka!" he called. Right after he shouted her name, an explosion rang out and he dropped onto the ground. He spat sand out of his mouth and tried to stand back up but found it was impossible to do. There was a sharp pain in his back, like there were thousands of needles surging up and down and he was powerless to do anything about it. Sayaka turned and gasped, putting her hands over her mouth.
"Shinji!!" she screamed, running towards him and sitting down by him. She put her hand on his back and it felt warm. Too warm. She pulled back her hand and discovered a large amount of blood on it. "Blood?!"
"They got me," Shinji answered quietly.
"Who got you?"
"Shojiro...Sakura...they chased me here...shot me in my wrist...and back..."
"Don't talk too much, Shinji," Sayaka pleaded. She brushed back some of her bob-cut hair with the hand that was bloodied. "Are you going to be all right?"
"I...don't know, Sayaka," Shinji replied, being honest. "It hurts...so much."
"It's going to be all right," Sayaka said, placing her hands on his face. "I promise." Her eyes were blurring up with warm tears.
"I don't think so, Sayaka...I feel weak."
"You're just tired," Sayaka insisted. "You'll be fine! We'll get you to the clinic. They have to have something there that can help you, right?"
"But, love, I have two bullets lodged inside my body..."
"Doesn't matter! I'll remove them with tweezers! They can't be that big, can they?" The tears were rolling down Sayaka's cheeks now, one after the other. "I can't lose you!"
"Sayaka..." Shinji reached with his wounded arm up to touch Sayaka's face and smiled wearily. "Just...remember all the fun we used to have...together."
"No..." Sayaka whispered. "Please..." With a grunt Shinji forced himself to sit up.
"I love you...Sayaka..." Shinji kissed Sayaka once more and she felt the last breath leave his body.
"No..." she repeated. "Shinji!!" she wailed loudly, then let out another scream of pain and slumped down next to his dead body and wept, her hand across his chest, trying to will his heart to begin beating again. Shinji's blood was staining the sand red.
19 students remaining
16
Miki was still awaiting the arrivals of Suzuko, Asuka, Nanako and Fujiko. Now that Tomoko was dead their group was only going to have five people, but that was good enough, right? Safety in numbers was what she had been taught as a small child and that lesson carried on all the way up to 15. Miki's provided weapon was a police gun, just like the one her father used. Her father was a high-ranking police officer in Kobe and he was very well-known, with a good reputation. She didn't know that her dad usually used that police gun to kill civilians, not just fire warning shots. Under the Dictator's ruling, a police officer could shoot anyone who was a threat without even having to ask. Act out of hand and you'd get a bullet to the head. Miki was relatively naive for her age, still living under the delusion that the world was a really nice place to live and everyone would be kind to you.
She was inside a viewing platform which, thankfully, had a roof. There were some binoculars there which she would peer through every so often, but visibility was low due to the rain.
'It's not fair that I got selected for this,' she lamented to herself. 'My dad works for the government, doesn't that kind of excuse me from the Program?' She began to paw around in her day pack, shoving aside her police gun and the extra bullets, moving the nasty government-provided bread and water, digging past the map and compass. Her hands came upon a small rectangular object and she pulled it out. It was a cell phone! Her cell phone, to be exact, what with the Hello Kitty faceplate and the little alien dangling from the small nubby antenna. Miki turned on the phone and her welcome screen came up just as normal. The backlighting for the display came on and everything glowed blue. Miki was focused on the top left-hand corner where there was a picture of a cellular tower and some blocks next to it. One block meant no signal, two blocks meant weak signal, three blocks meant clear signal. The blocks switched awkwardly from one to two for a few minutes, then finally settled on THREE! Miki did a small dance of joy and began to tap in her home phone number, then hit send and heard the glorious, glorious ringing. After two rings, the other end picked up.
"Hello?"
"Daddy, it's Miki! I got selected for the Program, oh Daddy, I'm so scared, I'm on Okishima Island, please come save me, I don't want to die, don't let me die, please don't let me die..."
"Miss Aizawa, I must not have mentioned that phones won't work on this island. Not even cell phones. There's a temporary cellular tower here and every signal is relayed through it before being sent out to anywhere else in Japan. Therefore, all calls out of here are relayed to us." Miki clamped her hand over her mouth and felt her heart pounding in her throat. That voice didn't belong to her father, it belonged to...
"Mr. Toyama?!"
"That's right, Miki. Now you better hang up. You can't get out of here." Mr. Toyama hung up. Miki pulled the phone away from her ear, then looked down at it, confused. 'No calls...no way to send an SOS...I'm trapped...I'm trapped...' Like a broken record, her mind repeated the same thought over and over, even as she shut off her phone and placed it back in her day pack. 'I'm trapped, I'm trapped, I'm trapped..." She backed into one of the corners of the viewing platform and hugged her knees. Her heart was still pounding like a sledgehammer and suddenly she felt nauseous. She truly was trapped, wasn't she?
19 students remaining
17
It was approaching 9:00am when Kiyoharu reached the house that Shizuka, Junko and Masao were in. Surprisingly, there was only one other house that was occupied by anyone and that was Kaoru and Kazuhiko Yamatani (Male Student No. 15), whom he decided to just leave alone. He didn't think of them as enemies, nor did he think of them as friends. Kiyoharu knocked on the door of the house, then saw someone approaching. Someone wrapped in a blanket?
Shizuka opened the door. She was normally pale due to the fact that she hated the outdoors, but her face was a bit paler than normal. She had two blankets wrapped around her body.
"What are you armed with and what are your intentions?" she asked mechanically.
"I just have a pistol but I raided the general store and got all kinds of cool junk. I also know Masao's here."
"Masao," Shizuka called into the house. "Kiyoharu's here." She turned back to Kiyoharu. "Please, come in, and place your bounty on that table...the Western-style one." Kiyoharu placed the second day pack down on the Western-style table and waited for Junko and Masao to appear. Shizuka didn't try to have a conversation with him, in fact every time their glances met she would turn away shyly.
'He's right here, with me, and I'm wrapped up like some old granny,' Shizuka thought silently. 'I look like an idiot. And it's all because it's so goddamn cold in here.' She could feel her heartbeat getting faster and faster. 'Maybe he could warm me up?'
"So, what did you get at the general store?" Junko asked.
"A whole boatload of stuff." Kiyoharu unzipped the day pack and began to take items out of it. "First of all, food and drink." He had about 10 bottles of water, bags of miso soup (just add boiling water), bread that was actually good, vegetables, some chicken, cookies, teabags, coffee beans, cereal and assorted candies and snacks. "Second of all, since there's no electricity we can't cook, right? Wrong. Behold the splendor of propane." He took out a camping propane grill and two canisters of propane. "Third off, even though there's a clinic it's always a good idea to have medicine." He had two boxes of aspirin, painkillers and cold medicine, as well as rubbing alcohol, bandages of all sizes and gauze. "And fourth of all..." He took out five flashlights and batteries. "Flashlights, although you might want to cup them with your hands so people don't see you. There are still people willing to play the game."
Junko's stomach began to rumble loudly.
"I haven't had anything to eat except that nasty bread," she said, shrugging.
"We should have some food now," Masao suggested.
"I want hot food," Shizuka added.
"It's breakfast, we'll just have some cereal or something and I can make some tea for Shizuka." That was the first time Shizuka actually heard Kiyoharu mention her name, let alone putting the word "for" in front of it, meaning that he was going to do something FOR her, meaning that maybe he cared about her too? She knew she was blushing and even though she was still cold she was warmed up a small bit with the thought that Kiyoharu Moritaka might actually return her affections.
"I'm up for it," Masao said, nodding slightly. "What about you two?"
"Sure!" Junko and Shizuka answered in unison.
"The tea'll take a few minutes, but the cereal can be eaten now," Kiyoharu informed the group. Junko began to search the cabinets in the kitchen for some bowls and spoons, which she found quickly. She also found a cup for Shizuka's tea and brought them all back to the dining room table. Kiyoharu was firing up the propane grill and asked for Junko to go get a small pan for him. She nodded and quickly returned with a small pan. Kiyoharu thanked her, then placed the pan on the grill and poured some water in it, watching for it to boil. The rest of the group was serving cereal to themselves, then sat down in the living room to eat it.
"You like him, don't you?" Junko asked on a piece of paper she found in the dining room. Shizuka hesitated before responding.
"Yeah...I do, but don't tell him. I want to tell him."
"When?"
"When the time is right. Here he comes." Shizuka quickly hid the piece of paper as Kiyoharu came in with her hot cup of tea.
"Be careful, it's really hot," he warned her.
"That's what I want," she responded, sipping daintily from the cup. "It tastes so good," she said, delighted that someone actually had the great idea of raiding the general store.
"So, Kiyoharu, what have you been up to?" Masao asked Kiyoharu.
"Well, I have this special bonus in my bag, it's a little thinger that tells me where people are, but it doesn't tell me if they're dead or not. I found you guys with it. Before that, I raided the general store. That's about it. I was one of the last to leave the school, only Shuko, Kaoru and Miki were after me. Miki was a wreck. She couldn't stop crying and whimpering that it wasn't fair."
"Her dad's a police officer," Junko added. "That's why she says it isn't fair to her."
"Obviously she doesn't know jack about equality," Masao commented. "We're all the same, just students. Our background doesn't matter when it comes to the Program. Hell, you could be an illegitimate child of the Dictator himself and they wouldn't care."
"Nn," Shizuka said as she swallowed another sip of tea. "That's not true. You just know that the Dictator would have someone kill off any illegit children of his. So technically the illegit kids would die, just like in the Program, just at someone else's hand." Kiyoharu looked over at Shizuka as she talked and noticed that there was a large scar on her right cheek with some concealer marks down the side of her cheek. The concealer she used to conceal any scars on her face wasn't waterproof, obviously, as it dripped off when she was running.
'I wonder how that scar got there,' he thought as he tried not to stare at it. Shizuka finished off her tea with one last slurp.
"So, we're just hiding out here?" Kiyoharu asked.
"Yeah, our square isn't in the forbidden list that Toyama announced, so we're good for the time being. If our zone is announced at noon, then we have to go as soon as possible."
"...but take some stuff with us, of course," Shizuka finished.
"Of course," Masao added.
19 students remaining
18
Toru and Kanako got to the shrine a short time after Shojiro and Sakura left, so they played jan-ken-pon to decide where exactly they went. Kanako and her bet of "south" won, so the twins began to head south, towards the beach.
"You know, this place is pretty," Kanako commented. "If I came here on a vacation, you know, a normal vacation, I think I'd have fun. I mean, the beach is probably really nice." She stepped in a puddle and mud splashed onto her boots. "Yuck! That's gross."
"I wonder if the rain'll ever stop, or at least let up," Toru thought out loud as he looked up.
"Dunno, those clouds are really dark. It could rain for a long time." Kanako tried to wipe some of the mud off her boots, but instead got her hands filthy. "Listen, you can hear the waves if you stay silent. The beach can't be too far, can it?"
"Ssh! Listen," Sakura whispered to Shojiro. The two were hiding in the same bushes Shinji hid in to check on his wrist wound. "Doesn't that sound like the Niimura twins?"
"It does," Shojiro replied. "He never came, either. Nor did Daisuke."
"Maybe they figured it out?" Sakura suggested, shrugging.
"Dammit, they should've obeyed like a circus monkey and come anyway."
"Shit happens, Shojiro. Do you wanna go for it?" Sakura held her .45 at the ready.
"Why not?" Shojiro held his machine gun at the ready and the duo jumped out of the bushes, weapons ready. Kanako gasped in shock and Toru stood in front of her defensively, holding a grenade.
"Toru, they've..."
"I know they have guns, Kanako, just get as far away from here as possible."
"Toru!!"
"Don't worry about me, Kanako, just go down to the beach and wait for me. I'll be there momentarily." Kanako nodded, turned on her heel and began to run wildly towards the shore, leaving Toru with Shojiro and Sakura.
"Why didn't you show?" Shojiro asked.
"I got an idea of what exactly you wanted to do with us once I heard the announcement that Tetsuko, Akito and Junji were gone. I'm not as stupid as you think I am, Shojiro." Toru pulled the tab on the grenade and threw it, then ran after Kanako. Shojiro and Sakura watched it soar through the air, then began to run in whatever way their legs could propel them to get away from that thing before it exploded. They ducked down as it exploded and weren't hurt, but the explosion did numb their eardrums for a short time.
"Are you all right?" Shojiro asked Sakura as he helped her to her feet.
"I'm fine," Sakura replied, dusting off her skirt. "Just kind of dazed. Where did they run off to?"
"I think I saw them go north," Shojiro said after a short pause. After another pause for Sakura to stretch her legs, the two turned and began to head north.
Kanako and Toru, on the other hand, were getting closer to the beach. Neither twin had 20/20 vision, so they didn't see Sayaka slumped over Shinji's body at first, but they did start to hear her loud wailing cries pretty early on. Finally Kanako got close enough to see it was Sayaka and Shinji.
"W-who's there?" Sayaka asked, sniffling.
"It's me, Kanako Niimura. Don't worry, I don't want to hurt you. Are you all right?" Sayaka looked up at her, eyes red, trails of many tears on her face.
"They killed him," she answered deftly.
"Who killed who?" Toru asked.
"Shojiro and Sakura. They killed Shinji." Sayaka sniffled again. "Two shots, one in the wrist and one in the back. They stole my only love from me..."
"Oh, Sayaka, I'm so sorry," Kanako gasped quietly.
"It's all right." Sayaka took out her samurai sword and Kanako took a step back. "Oh no, I'm not aiming for you two." She set the blade down, then grabbed it about halfway up and sliced her right wrist with it, then turned it around and sliced her left wrist. "I can't live without him." She smiled as she looked down at her two cuts and watched the copious amounts of blood flow from them. "So I'll die with him. Easy enough, huh?" Kanako was frozen in horror as the blood dripped down onto the sand. "Well, Kanako, thanks a lot for caring, I appreciate it. But...I'm leaving now." Sayaka smiled wearily and the last of her tears descended from her eyes as her life quickly drained from her. She died a few seconds later. Toru moved her so that she was locked in an embrace with Shinji and closed her eyes in respect for the dead.
"It's so horrible, isn't it?" Kanako asked a minute later. The waves continued to move in and out at regular intervals, but Sayaka and Shinji were too far from the water to possibly be swept away. "If you have even one person willing to play the game...look what happens. Should we collect their weapons?"
"If we don't, who knows who will." Toru was already placing Shinji's blowdarts into his day pack and Kanako took Sayaka's sword down to the water to wash it clean of blood.
18 students remaining
19
Suzuko was climbing the northern mountain all by her lonesome. Her cut wasn't bleeding anymore, as she applied pressure to the cut and then tore off a small section of her skirt to tie around it. Sure, it looked strange, but it would have to do. She saw the viewing platform up ahead and climbed faster, then stepped inside. Miki was still curled up in the corner.
"Miki?"
"Oh, Suzuko, you're the first to arrive. Do you know where Asuka, Nanako or Fujiko are?"
"Sorry, I don't. Is that everyone else who's coming?"
"Yeah, and Tomoko would've come if she was still alive. You got hurt?"
"Tetsuko slashed me when I walked by her. But I'm still here and she's not, so who's laughing last?"
"Is that your weapon?" Miki pointed to Suzuko's ball and chain.
"Yep, I finally can wield it properly. I ran into Hirai and Wakabayashi and lopped off some of Hirai's big wooden pole with this thing, so it's gotta be good, right?" Suzuko swung the ball and chain in the air while Miki ducked. "Oh, don't worry, I won't hit you. I know how to wield it, remember?"
"Right..."
"So, when the others get here what'll we do?" Suzuko asked, looking through a pair of binoculars. She pointed them down the mountain and noticed Nanako, Asuka and Fujiko were coming up the mountain. They were, obviously, drenched in rain but weren't injured very badly if at all.
"Compare weapons, then sit around and talk. If someone wants to challenge us we'll all fight them. There's no way one person can win against five, don't you agree?"
"I agree. We can be the hiding group, we'll survive a lot longer if we stay in a group where everyone will want to be alive." Little did Miki know that one girl in the group had very different ideas about the group's survival.
18 students remaining