Battle Royale '03
Part Eight
50
Suzuko barely missed the deadline to get the hell out of square B-7, but managed to make it just seconds before her head would've exploded. She found that there were no forbidden zones in the area she was in for a long while, not until the school (which she could barely see from where she was) or the residential zone (and besides, the other five people left wouldn't be hiding there). She paused by some tangerine trees to regain her breath and footing, then continued on her journey. She could go west all the way to the squares right before the coast, stopping at the hill (which was just labeled 'hill' on her map, great descriptive skills), the house with a well, the farmhouse, the southern mountain and the coast. Or she could go east to the tourist association and the clinic. Of course, she didn't have any fancy-schmancy people locator like Kiyoharu did, so she relied on her good judgement...
...and picked west.
But not before stealing a tangerine and checking to see if it was maggot-free before eating it, of course. By now she didn't care about scurvy or whatever disease someone could get from eating old fruit as long as it was food, glorious food. She tore off a slice of the tangerine and shoved it in her mouth. The juices tasted like heavenly ambrosia. She was satisfied.
She also wanted to try to get the blood out of her hair. Oh well, that would have to wait.
6 students remaining
51
It was obvious that Sakura wouldn't be doing anything anytime soon...or ever, so eventually Shojiro tired of sitting there. He poured the contents of Sakura's day pack into his own, then stood up to leave, casting one last glance at Sakura as he shut the door behind him. He found himself under an awning, the rain falling around him and making large, muddy puddles on the ground. He didn't exactly relish walking through these puddles but did anyway. Instead of going south, which he already had explored, he decided to go west. He only remembered seeing the Shinto shrine and wished to see more of whatever lay out west in Okishima. So he rearranged the pack on his shoulder, made sure his machine gun was right where he left it and set off to the west. He heard loud slurping, munching and smacking sounds in the distance and went into prowling mode, trying to be as silent as possible. Who was that making those loud noises? He got closer.
'Oh, it's Harada. One of the goody-goodies. Wonder where her little goody-goody crew is now? They're all dead. All of them except her. But who killed them?' Shojiro kept his finger on the trigger as he rose out of the bushes and startled Suzuko, who was just trying to enjoy some tangerine. She gulped down half of a slice of tangerine and turned to face Shojiro.
'Oh shit...the only person in class 3-A I honestly fear is right before me,' her good girl side spoke.
'Why don't you fucking gut him?' her bad girl side suggested.
'Because he'll gut me first! I want to win!'
'You'll win faster by eliminating him!'
'I don't want to die at his hand!' Suzuko whirled back around, dropping her tangerine and beginning to run. Shojiro ran after her, knowing she was headed for the general store/clinic.
'Why does everyone keep going there?! Maybe they think there are still knives left there. Well, because there are knives left there,' Shojiro thought as he chased after Suzuko, whose braids whipped around, sometimes making visibility difficult for him. At one point, one of her braids whipped him right in the face, which slowed him down for a moment. He regained footing and continued running after Suzuko, through underbrush, over roots and leaping around thorn bushes. Finally Suzuko looked behind herself to see how far away he was and slammed into the side of the general store. It only hurt a little. She turned back towards Shojiro and took out every weapon she had, which was the mace, the blowdarts, the throwing stars, the whip, the sword, the quill knives, the shotgun and the grenades.
"I'm going to fucking kill you," she hissed at Shojiro, then began to aimlessly throw the blowdarts. Shojiro actually caught one in his hand (!) and the others flew off in different directions due to the wind. Suzuko growled and drew her whip.
"Dance," she commanded Shojiro, whipping the ground below his feet.
"How about you dance?" Shojiro asked in reply, drawing his machine gun and shooting. Suzuko's body flailed around wildly in the air like she actually was doing some kind of dance. Once Shojiro was done pumping her full of bullets, he lowered the gun and watched her body collapse on the ground. "You honestly thought you could defeat me. Maybe for a second there you actually believed it. That was called hope, but didn't you realize you had no hope when I saw you? Silly girl. Never thought anything through." He knelt and stole the entire bounty of weapons from right under Suzuko's feet.
And with that, Suzuko Harada, who killed four girls in less than a day, was dead.
5 students remaining
52
Anxiety and tension were building inside the clinic. The four heard gunshots a short while ago, so they hid, hoping that no shadows or silhouettes were showing through any windows. Shizuka wasn't used to hearing gunshots still, so she was in shock for a while after hearing so many of them ring out. She'd sit in a corner, shaking, hands over her ears, no way to convince her it was okay. Every so often she would whimper something very quietly and didn't respond to Kiyoharu touching her hand.
"We'll...die..." she whimpered.
"No, we won't," Kiyoharu replied. All right, so maybe the game wanted only one person to survive, but they'd find a way out. They had to. It was heartbreaking to see a girl reduced to her most primal fears by having to hear gunshots on a school trip. Masao checked the Palm Pilot and noticed one star was completely gone from the radar, meaning someone else was dead. They, of course, had no idea who died but they knew there were five people left on the island.
"Five of us are left."
"How much do you want to bet it's Umeboshi?" Junko asked, spitting to her side.
"If I had any money, I'd bet it all," Shizuka replied quietly. "And it's about 2:00 pm, right?"
"Right."
"How long do you think it'll take for him to find us?" The other three paused as Shizuka stood up. "That's right, how long? Factor out the forbidden zones so far. How long will it take Shojiro to find us? What are we going to do when he inevitably finds us? We can't just run and scream, there's nobody else left for him to kill except us." She began to head for the kitchen. "There has to be a butcher knife or something in here."
"Don't forget the various scalpels and needles that might be hiding in the clinic area!" Junko added cheerfully, standing up and going towards the clinic area.
"Well, the girls are off arming themselves, I guess now all we can do is wait," Masao said, still looking at the Palm Pilot very intently.
"Turn that off," Kiyoharu commanded. Masao looked at him like he was nuts. "Turn it off. If we sit here waiting for that thing to refresh, which only happens every fifteen minutes, then we'll spend the whole day waiting. I like the element of surprise." Kiyoharu gave Masao the eye of death until he turned off the Palm Pilot. "Much better. Now we just have to be prepared."
5 students remaining
53
"What'd you get?" Junko asked, coming down the hall with a basket. There were no needles in the basket because they were exposed and would probably stick someone unintentionally instead of sticking into a target. She did, however, find scalpels of many fun sizes and crammed them all into the basket.
"Same to you. I got a hold of their knife collection. Someone in this family liked to cook, as they left behind about ten different knives. Of course, I took all of them. It's better to have too much than to have too little, right?"
"I got scalpels." Junko showed Shizuka the basket.
"Excellent, can I put my knives in there too?" Junko nodded and Shizuka placed the ten knives in the basket.
"So, what are we going to do now?" Shizuka asked as the girls began to walk back to the living room.
"I don't know, I suppose the only thing we can do is wait." Shizuka paused and kept walking silently.
"More tension?" Junko suggested.
"I got enough tension in my little body to fill the entire country of Cambodia, that's tension." Shizuka noticed Junko seemed shocked when she said the little Cambodia comment. "I scared you."
"Kind of...I'll get used to it eventually." Junko sighed, then looked at her watch. 2:15 pm. Her ears perked up upon hearing the beep and the crackling sound. "What? It's four hours too early for this!"
"Hi, everyone, it's Mr. Toyama. I decided to do this a bit early. I'm going to clump all the forbidden zones into this bulletin, so watch out. All right, at 1 pm, A-7; at 3 pm, F-6; at 5 pm, F-5; at 7 pm, D-2; at 9 pm, C-3 and at 11 pm, H-1. There are two deaths to report. First, Female Student No. 6, Suzuko Harada, and Female Student No. 15, Sakura Yanagi. By my count that means five of you are left. Congratulations, Suzuki, Moritaka, Umeboshi, Arai and Mizuboshi for making it this far in the game. Remember, if nobody else has died before 11 pm, the collars will detonate." The girls' faces both went pale.
"We're in the top five?" Shizuka asked in disbelief.
"Unbelievable," Junko replied, almost dropping the basket full of knives. Shizuka had to save it in midair as Junko's jaw dropped, too.
"And I actually expected myself to be one of the first to die," Shizuka muttered, trying to brush that off with a low-voiced 'heh'.
"But the first to die was Hanagata, he's probably still at the school, rotting in the classroom." Junko paused, biting her lip. Lip biting was a very bad habit of hers and during the course of this Program she chewed about five scabs into her lip which she kept reopening periodically. One of the scabs was reopened and began to bleed. "What do you think?"
"I think that we kill Shojiro when he comes, then figure out something. I'm pretty good with machines, there has to be a way to deactivate those collars."
5 students remaining
54
"And the truth shall set you free," Mr. Toyama muttered, puffing on an expensive Cuban cigar. He blew out rings of smoke around a TV screen labeled "F1", which showed Shizuka's POV if you put a camera around her neck. "Oh, how I wish to tell you that I can see you and hear everything you're saying." He blew another ring onto the screens labeled M10 and M15. "It's too bad Kaoru and Kazuhiko died before they learned that I severed their Internet connection. That Sengakuji was pretty damn talented. He thwarted all our firewalls and even made a very irritating virus for us. It's not fun when 'The Star-Spangled Banner' plays every time you try to do anything. But who's laughing last? You're dead and I'm not." More tendrils of smoke swirled into the air from the lit end of the cigar. "As well as...hm...25 in total classmates? How unfortunate." Mr. Toyama moved his chair over to the TV labeled M13 and began to watch intently. "Tatsumichi?"
"Yes sir?" A soldier dressed in the military uniform stood at attention.
"Can you give me the coordinates of M13?"
"Yes sir." Tatsumichi turned to another computer, typed in a few lines of code and some coordinates popped up. "M13 is currently in square C-7, atop the northern mountain, sir."
"Ah, so that's what that blurry thing was." Mr. Toyama turned back to the screen and nodded. "Hey, Tatsumichi?"
"Yes sir?"
"Who did you bet on, if I may ask?"
"Well, sir, I actually bet on Yanagi."
"Yanagi. Oh, it's too bad she's dead, huh? Tell you what. If Umeboshi wins, I'll give you a cut of my winnings." He grinned and sent more smoke rings into the air.
"You would do that, sir?"
"Of course I would, Tatsumichi, you're one of my favorites."
"Well, um, uh, thank you, sir."
"Not a problem. Now come over here and let's watch this little drama unfold, shall we?" Tatsumichi nodded obediently and brought a chair over to sit next to Toyama.
5 students remaining
55
"What are you doing?" Shizuka asked as she looked at her collar in a mirror. The other three were sprawled out behind her.
"We're reminiscing on the good times," Kiyoharu replied miserably.
"Hm," she replied, poking at the small red circle in the middle of her collar covered by a piece of red plexiglas. "How was life?" she asked as if seeing an old friend from high school for the first time in ten years.
"It was pretty good," Junko replied.
"It was okay," Masao replied.
"It was bad," Kiyoharu replied.
"Bad?" Shizuka asked, tapping the red plexiglas a few times. "Bad? You think you had it bad?" She whirled around from looking at the mirror and began to frantically unbutton her school coat. "Let me show you how bad it can get." She tossed her school coat, discarded, onto the floor and began to unbutton the white blouse underneath. "You'll see more if I do this," she said before Kiyoharu could say a thing, then she shimmied out of the blouse. "Look at this! Look at how bad it can get. Look at me, because of my careless stepfather my body is ruined forever! As well as my emotions! I'm afraid that someday I'll turn out to be a sucker just like my mother and the man I marry will abuse my children! I don't want that! I just wish I could go back to being a normal fourteen-year-old schoolgirl. But before that, I wish I could wear girls' uniforms. Sure, I don't have a good body or anything but if it wasn't completely covered in scars, I would be able to wear those cute uniforms! You have no idea! Whenever I see girls on the streets in Kobe, I get a little pang right here--" she pointed to her heart--"and wish that I could be in those. But no! Because of that asshole Arimachi, I'll never be able to wear those adorable skirts and sailor-style blouses! Oh, and not only that." She removed a wrist cuff she was wearing and exposed a few very deep scars. "I inflicted these on myself. Junko. Remember that one time when I called at 1 in the morning and told you over the phone that I was taking a box cutter to my arm? I did! And I ended up in the hospital because of it. All that Arimachi told me was that I needed some medicine because I was a 'fucked-up child', his words, not mine. My mom asked me what happened and I told her. I told her the whole truth. EVERYTHING. Even the fact that he'd completely ruined my body. I thank God he didn't decide to rape me too and just have it all over and done with. Right before I left for the 'school trip', my mom told me that she was going to get him into jail no matter what it took. I want them to kill him. I want them to kill him for everything he did to me. I never wanted her to marry him. I want my dad back. I want my old life back." She put her blouse back on, then wiped her eyes on the sleeves and began to put her school coat back on. "There you go. How much worse can you get?" She was fully aware that she was crying again and she didn't care. She saw the looks of utter shock reflected on Masao, Junko and Kiyoharu's faces. "Junko knew most of this story already. You two didn't. Now you do. Now if you excuse me I think I'll go jump off the roof." She smiled and began to head for the stairs up to the sunroom. The three exchanged glances, then all began to stand up to chase after her.
5 students remaining
Part Eight
50
Suzuko barely missed the deadline to get the hell out of square B-7, but managed to make it just seconds before her head would've exploded. She found that there were no forbidden zones in the area she was in for a long while, not until the school (which she could barely see from where she was) or the residential zone (and besides, the other five people left wouldn't be hiding there). She paused by some tangerine trees to regain her breath and footing, then continued on her journey. She could go west all the way to the squares right before the coast, stopping at the hill (which was just labeled 'hill' on her map, great descriptive skills), the house with a well, the farmhouse, the southern mountain and the coast. Or she could go east to the tourist association and the clinic. Of course, she didn't have any fancy-schmancy people locator like Kiyoharu did, so she relied on her good judgement...
...and picked west.
But not before stealing a tangerine and checking to see if it was maggot-free before eating it, of course. By now she didn't care about scurvy or whatever disease someone could get from eating old fruit as long as it was food, glorious food. She tore off a slice of the tangerine and shoved it in her mouth. The juices tasted like heavenly ambrosia. She was satisfied.
She also wanted to try to get the blood out of her hair. Oh well, that would have to wait.
6 students remaining
51
It was obvious that Sakura wouldn't be doing anything anytime soon...or ever, so eventually Shojiro tired of sitting there. He poured the contents of Sakura's day pack into his own, then stood up to leave, casting one last glance at Sakura as he shut the door behind him. He found himself under an awning, the rain falling around him and making large, muddy puddles on the ground. He didn't exactly relish walking through these puddles but did anyway. Instead of going south, which he already had explored, he decided to go west. He only remembered seeing the Shinto shrine and wished to see more of whatever lay out west in Okishima. So he rearranged the pack on his shoulder, made sure his machine gun was right where he left it and set off to the west. He heard loud slurping, munching and smacking sounds in the distance and went into prowling mode, trying to be as silent as possible. Who was that making those loud noises? He got closer.
'Oh, it's Harada. One of the goody-goodies. Wonder where her little goody-goody crew is now? They're all dead. All of them except her. But who killed them?' Shojiro kept his finger on the trigger as he rose out of the bushes and startled Suzuko, who was just trying to enjoy some tangerine. She gulped down half of a slice of tangerine and turned to face Shojiro.
'Oh shit...the only person in class 3-A I honestly fear is right before me,' her good girl side spoke.
'Why don't you fucking gut him?' her bad girl side suggested.
'Because he'll gut me first! I want to win!'
'You'll win faster by eliminating him!'
'I don't want to die at his hand!' Suzuko whirled back around, dropping her tangerine and beginning to run. Shojiro ran after her, knowing she was headed for the general store/clinic.
'Why does everyone keep going there?! Maybe they think there are still knives left there. Well, because there are knives left there,' Shojiro thought as he chased after Suzuko, whose braids whipped around, sometimes making visibility difficult for him. At one point, one of her braids whipped him right in the face, which slowed him down for a moment. He regained footing and continued running after Suzuko, through underbrush, over roots and leaping around thorn bushes. Finally Suzuko looked behind herself to see how far away he was and slammed into the side of the general store. It only hurt a little. She turned back towards Shojiro and took out every weapon she had, which was the mace, the blowdarts, the throwing stars, the whip, the sword, the quill knives, the shotgun and the grenades.
"I'm going to fucking kill you," she hissed at Shojiro, then began to aimlessly throw the blowdarts. Shojiro actually caught one in his hand (!) and the others flew off in different directions due to the wind. Suzuko growled and drew her whip.
"Dance," she commanded Shojiro, whipping the ground below his feet.
"How about you dance?" Shojiro asked in reply, drawing his machine gun and shooting. Suzuko's body flailed around wildly in the air like she actually was doing some kind of dance. Once Shojiro was done pumping her full of bullets, he lowered the gun and watched her body collapse on the ground. "You honestly thought you could defeat me. Maybe for a second there you actually believed it. That was called hope, but didn't you realize you had no hope when I saw you? Silly girl. Never thought anything through." He knelt and stole the entire bounty of weapons from right under Suzuko's feet.
And with that, Suzuko Harada, who killed four girls in less than a day, was dead.
5 students remaining
52
Anxiety and tension were building inside the clinic. The four heard gunshots a short while ago, so they hid, hoping that no shadows or silhouettes were showing through any windows. Shizuka wasn't used to hearing gunshots still, so she was in shock for a while after hearing so many of them ring out. She'd sit in a corner, shaking, hands over her ears, no way to convince her it was okay. Every so often she would whimper something very quietly and didn't respond to Kiyoharu touching her hand.
"We'll...die..." she whimpered.
"No, we won't," Kiyoharu replied. All right, so maybe the game wanted only one person to survive, but they'd find a way out. They had to. It was heartbreaking to see a girl reduced to her most primal fears by having to hear gunshots on a school trip. Masao checked the Palm Pilot and noticed one star was completely gone from the radar, meaning someone else was dead. They, of course, had no idea who died but they knew there were five people left on the island.
"Five of us are left."
"How much do you want to bet it's Umeboshi?" Junko asked, spitting to her side.
"If I had any money, I'd bet it all," Shizuka replied quietly. "And it's about 2:00 pm, right?"
"Right."
"How long do you think it'll take for him to find us?" The other three paused as Shizuka stood up. "That's right, how long? Factor out the forbidden zones so far. How long will it take Shojiro to find us? What are we going to do when he inevitably finds us? We can't just run and scream, there's nobody else left for him to kill except us." She began to head for the kitchen. "There has to be a butcher knife or something in here."
"Don't forget the various scalpels and needles that might be hiding in the clinic area!" Junko added cheerfully, standing up and going towards the clinic area.
"Well, the girls are off arming themselves, I guess now all we can do is wait," Masao said, still looking at the Palm Pilot very intently.
"Turn that off," Kiyoharu commanded. Masao looked at him like he was nuts. "Turn it off. If we sit here waiting for that thing to refresh, which only happens every fifteen minutes, then we'll spend the whole day waiting. I like the element of surprise." Kiyoharu gave Masao the eye of death until he turned off the Palm Pilot. "Much better. Now we just have to be prepared."
5 students remaining
53
"What'd you get?" Junko asked, coming down the hall with a basket. There were no needles in the basket because they were exposed and would probably stick someone unintentionally instead of sticking into a target. She did, however, find scalpels of many fun sizes and crammed them all into the basket.
"Same to you. I got a hold of their knife collection. Someone in this family liked to cook, as they left behind about ten different knives. Of course, I took all of them. It's better to have too much than to have too little, right?"
"I got scalpels." Junko showed Shizuka the basket.
"Excellent, can I put my knives in there too?" Junko nodded and Shizuka placed the ten knives in the basket.
"So, what are we going to do now?" Shizuka asked as the girls began to walk back to the living room.
"I don't know, I suppose the only thing we can do is wait." Shizuka paused and kept walking silently.
"More tension?" Junko suggested.
"I got enough tension in my little body to fill the entire country of Cambodia, that's tension." Shizuka noticed Junko seemed shocked when she said the little Cambodia comment. "I scared you."
"Kind of...I'll get used to it eventually." Junko sighed, then looked at her watch. 2:15 pm. Her ears perked up upon hearing the beep and the crackling sound. "What? It's four hours too early for this!"
"Hi, everyone, it's Mr. Toyama. I decided to do this a bit early. I'm going to clump all the forbidden zones into this bulletin, so watch out. All right, at 1 pm, A-7; at 3 pm, F-6; at 5 pm, F-5; at 7 pm, D-2; at 9 pm, C-3 and at 11 pm, H-1. There are two deaths to report. First, Female Student No. 6, Suzuko Harada, and Female Student No. 15, Sakura Yanagi. By my count that means five of you are left. Congratulations, Suzuki, Moritaka, Umeboshi, Arai and Mizuboshi for making it this far in the game. Remember, if nobody else has died before 11 pm, the collars will detonate." The girls' faces both went pale.
"We're in the top five?" Shizuka asked in disbelief.
"Unbelievable," Junko replied, almost dropping the basket full of knives. Shizuka had to save it in midair as Junko's jaw dropped, too.
"And I actually expected myself to be one of the first to die," Shizuka muttered, trying to brush that off with a low-voiced 'heh'.
"But the first to die was Hanagata, he's probably still at the school, rotting in the classroom." Junko paused, biting her lip. Lip biting was a very bad habit of hers and during the course of this Program she chewed about five scabs into her lip which she kept reopening periodically. One of the scabs was reopened and began to bleed. "What do you think?"
"I think that we kill Shojiro when he comes, then figure out something. I'm pretty good with machines, there has to be a way to deactivate those collars."
5 students remaining
54
"And the truth shall set you free," Mr. Toyama muttered, puffing on an expensive Cuban cigar. He blew out rings of smoke around a TV screen labeled "F1", which showed Shizuka's POV if you put a camera around her neck. "Oh, how I wish to tell you that I can see you and hear everything you're saying." He blew another ring onto the screens labeled M10 and M15. "It's too bad Kaoru and Kazuhiko died before they learned that I severed their Internet connection. That Sengakuji was pretty damn talented. He thwarted all our firewalls and even made a very irritating virus for us. It's not fun when 'The Star-Spangled Banner' plays every time you try to do anything. But who's laughing last? You're dead and I'm not." More tendrils of smoke swirled into the air from the lit end of the cigar. "As well as...hm...25 in total classmates? How unfortunate." Mr. Toyama moved his chair over to the TV labeled M13 and began to watch intently. "Tatsumichi?"
"Yes sir?" A soldier dressed in the military uniform stood at attention.
"Can you give me the coordinates of M13?"
"Yes sir." Tatsumichi turned to another computer, typed in a few lines of code and some coordinates popped up. "M13 is currently in square C-7, atop the northern mountain, sir."
"Ah, so that's what that blurry thing was." Mr. Toyama turned back to the screen and nodded. "Hey, Tatsumichi?"
"Yes sir?"
"Who did you bet on, if I may ask?"
"Well, sir, I actually bet on Yanagi."
"Yanagi. Oh, it's too bad she's dead, huh? Tell you what. If Umeboshi wins, I'll give you a cut of my winnings." He grinned and sent more smoke rings into the air.
"You would do that, sir?"
"Of course I would, Tatsumichi, you're one of my favorites."
"Well, um, uh, thank you, sir."
"Not a problem. Now come over here and let's watch this little drama unfold, shall we?" Tatsumichi nodded obediently and brought a chair over to sit next to Toyama.
5 students remaining
55
"What are you doing?" Shizuka asked as she looked at her collar in a mirror. The other three were sprawled out behind her.
"We're reminiscing on the good times," Kiyoharu replied miserably.
"Hm," she replied, poking at the small red circle in the middle of her collar covered by a piece of red plexiglas. "How was life?" she asked as if seeing an old friend from high school for the first time in ten years.
"It was pretty good," Junko replied.
"It was okay," Masao replied.
"It was bad," Kiyoharu replied.
"Bad?" Shizuka asked, tapping the red plexiglas a few times. "Bad? You think you had it bad?" She whirled around from looking at the mirror and began to frantically unbutton her school coat. "Let me show you how bad it can get." She tossed her school coat, discarded, onto the floor and began to unbutton the white blouse underneath. "You'll see more if I do this," she said before Kiyoharu could say a thing, then she shimmied out of the blouse. "Look at this! Look at how bad it can get. Look at me, because of my careless stepfather my body is ruined forever! As well as my emotions! I'm afraid that someday I'll turn out to be a sucker just like my mother and the man I marry will abuse my children! I don't want that! I just wish I could go back to being a normal fourteen-year-old schoolgirl. But before that, I wish I could wear girls' uniforms. Sure, I don't have a good body or anything but if it wasn't completely covered in scars, I would be able to wear those cute uniforms! You have no idea! Whenever I see girls on the streets in Kobe, I get a little pang right here--" she pointed to her heart--"and wish that I could be in those. But no! Because of that asshole Arimachi, I'll never be able to wear those adorable skirts and sailor-style blouses! Oh, and not only that." She removed a wrist cuff she was wearing and exposed a few very deep scars. "I inflicted these on myself. Junko. Remember that one time when I called at 1 in the morning and told you over the phone that I was taking a box cutter to my arm? I did! And I ended up in the hospital because of it. All that Arimachi told me was that I needed some medicine because I was a 'fucked-up child', his words, not mine. My mom asked me what happened and I told her. I told her the whole truth. EVERYTHING. Even the fact that he'd completely ruined my body. I thank God he didn't decide to rape me too and just have it all over and done with. Right before I left for the 'school trip', my mom told me that she was going to get him into jail no matter what it took. I want them to kill him. I want them to kill him for everything he did to me. I never wanted her to marry him. I want my dad back. I want my old life back." She put her blouse back on, then wiped her eyes on the sleeves and began to put her school coat back on. "There you go. How much worse can you get?" She was fully aware that she was crying again and she didn't care. She saw the looks of utter shock reflected on Masao, Junko and Kiyoharu's faces. "Junko knew most of this story already. You two didn't. Now you do. Now if you excuse me I think I'll go jump off the roof." She smiled and began to head for the stairs up to the sunroom. The three exchanged glances, then all began to stand up to chase after her.
5 students remaining