Chapter 23

"What a dream…"

In her dream, water was all around her, and Kagura was calling her name. In her dream, she was on a beach, pulling the drowned bodies of all of her friends out of the water and screaming for help while a large ship passed by the savage island. But the ship did not come.

Minutes after waking up, Sachiko Kirihara still belonged to that dream.

Slowly opening her large, almond-shaped eyes, Sachiko began the difficult process of moving her neck and shoulders, in order to release her joints after so many hours of sleep. Many creaks echoed in the air, each one taking her more and more away from her dream, and closer to reality. Sachiko had slept no less than four hours, and not even the latest announcement managed to wake her up. In the back of her mind, the girl wondered how she could sleep so peacefully, if death was so close to her and her friends. The answer was obvious: she didn't really get into the game yet. Apart from the weapons and announcements, the previous day was no different than the meetings and "girl parties" she and the other girls' went to in her house.

Her dream, though, was anything but peaceful: it remained in Sachiko's memory completely, and would not go away very soon. In it, the girl was back in her school uniform, instead of the long purple nightgown she wore to sleep. And instead of being in an apartment, the bespectacled girl was on a beach with hot, tickling sand. It was a treeless, deserted place, and Sachiko remembered walking around the shoreline before finding someone floating face down in the water. Curious, she turned the girl's body to the other direction effortlessly, only to see that it was Kagura Soga, who seemed to be suffocating with something. Sachiko was instantly desperate, but before she could do anything to save her friend, three more bodies were washed by the waves and dragged towards the shore. This time, they were all floating face up, and Sachiko knew who they were. Hitomi Nara, Hana Nozaki and Rin Tosaba, and all of them had the same expression of pain on their faces. Their throats made weird, grunting sounds.

Sachiko remembered hearing Kagura's voice suddenly calling her name, almost if pleading to be saved or for her friend to wake up. But the actress remained still, unable to do anything to save any of them. Suddenly, the sky turned dark, and a blue, giant ship became visible at the horizon. Realizing the possibility of being rescued, Sachiko started waving for the ship and screaming at the top of her lungs, but the conductor apparently did not notice it. Soon the ship disappeared from where it had arrived, leaving Sachiko alone and in the dark.

"I'm glad it was just a dream."

There were many things to blame: maybe her nightmare was caused by the recurrent readings of The Lord of The Flies. Maybe the cause was The Program. Or maybe the roots of that dream were much older than that, coming from that day when…

"Forget it."

After a while, Sachiko managed to find some impulse and enough willpower to move her invigorated muscles. The first thing she did was turning her body to the side, which gave her a full vision of Kagura's back. Sachiko's best friend was still sleeping with her school uniform, and her hair, a long and dark ponytail, was over her pillow like black ink. Kagura's hair was a mess of strands that fell flat over her face, followed by a straight hairline that split her scalp in half. Finally, her hair ended in the long, disheveled horsetail. Sachiko was no hairdresser, but underneath Kagura's overall unattractiveness, she could see a pretty girl who could look much better if she took better care of her hair and appearance.

"She was supposed to wake me up. Why didn't she do it?"

Sachiko quickly unraveled the mystery. Kagura was tired after spending many hours taking watch and slept before she could wake her friend up. Simple as it was. Solving problems was something easy for Sachiko, who had a rational mind and only got emotive when she was with Kagura. Obviously, some problems were too big to be solved, such as "How to escape The Program" or "How to avoid getting killed in the next few hours."

Sachiko sighed. Her friendship with Kagura was maybe the oddest one in her class and one of the most unusual in her entire grade. Unlike Chitose Higurashi and Yoriko Shibasaki, who had different interests but personalities that matched well, Sachiko and Kagura thought, behaved and lived in completely opposite ways. Sachiko was confident while Kagura was not. Sachiko was outspoken while Kagura was shy. She was reasonable and clear-intentioned, while her friend was emotional and very moody. There was little to bring them together.

But they became friends anyway. There was nothing else to say.

Sachiko raised her small, long nailed hand in the air, and gently massaged Kagura's shoulder, to check if the girl was sleep. She was. She didn't snore nor mutter anything, but was completely silent. When the two girls had sleepovers together, Sachiko often noticed that Kagura was a huge light sleeper. One pat in the back was enough to wake her up. If it didn't work, there wasn't much else she could do.

"I want to go home…"

Sachiko started raising her legs and torso, struggling against the enormous gravity that threatened to pull her towards the bed once more. She tried three times before coming to a sitting position, staring at the almost complete darkness of her bedroom. Sachiko was able to figure out some shapes, such as the walls and floors, but that was it. She could also see that the door to the bathroom was wide open. Strange.

Slowly, the girl grabbed her glasses from the counter and put them on. Now she could see a little bit more than before, but not really enough. Sachiko was proud of her glasses; she had once tried wearing contact lenses, but quickly got tired of it. It was annoying to remove them, and she didn't want to be compared with Mari Shikamoto, one of the school's most self-hating girls.

Because she did not hear the announcement, Sachiko couldn't know that Mari was dead.

It was a nocturnal habit for Sachiko to go to the bathroom every time she woke up. To wash her face, look at her reflection in the mirror, play with her hair, and even pee sometimes. She wasn't vain, only needed some time for herself once in a while. Determined to leave her bed, Sachiko began to slowly turn her body around, and after some trouble in finding them, to put her feet on the pair of bunny sleep shoes right next to her bed.

"I must look like a small child now. These clothes certainly belonged to one."

The bespectacled girl quickly got up and moved slowly towards the open door. It was hard to see where she was going, and suddenly she tripped on the edge of the bed and almost fell. However, Sachiko did not panic, because unlike Kagura, she wasn't afraid of the dark. There were only three things she was really afraid of. The first was being watched without her consent. The second was water. And the third one was being abandoned and left behind.

It didn't take long for Sachiko to reach the door and come inside. She just needed to watch out where she was going and keep her arms examining the bed and the walls. Once in, she turned on the lights, and the whole room lit itself up for her. The bathroom looked nice, but was nothing special. The shower was hidden completely by a pair of green curtains. The toilet, unused and new, was shining through its whiteness. Right below the large mirror, there was a narrow sink. It was the same place where, hours before, Kagura was found mumbling and on the verge of a panic attack.

"I hope she's doing better now."

Sachiko was unable to forget Kagura's angry and frozen face when she was found, and as the hours went by, she could see that the feeling was mutual. Since that unexpected encounter, four hours before, Kagura seemed to be somehow avoiding her. She still helped Sachiko to prepare for the night, but rarely, if ever, initiated a conversation. And even when she did, she seemed to be hiding something, speaking monosyllabic answers and barely looking at Sachiko in the eyes. The bespectacled student could see that she was afraid of saying something, but no matter how much she tried, nothing managed to crack Kagura's shell and bring her out, safe and sound. Maybe the unattractive girl was just stressed and did not want to talk, but The Program is an event when all secrets are revealed and all of the unsaid words are spoken. Maybe it was something involving her friends' de…

"No, it's not this. You know her, she won't hurt a fly. She might go nuts at times, but she's a good girl at heart. Maybe she got into a fight with Rin and does not want to tell me. Yeah, that's right. It was a silly, stupid argument. It's temporary. Tomorrow she'll talk to me again."

Forcing herself to feel comforted, Sachiko quickly turned on the cold tap and began to wash her hands. The icy water caused the skin of her palms to tickle, filling it with both rigidity and a strange sense of pleasure. Unlike most people, Sachiko preferred the cold water to its hot counterpart, and rarely took hot showers. Some would say that she worried about her appearance and skin, but it wasn't that. Any water with a temperature above fifteen degrees Celsius could bring bad memories. Memories from the short time she spent swimming, which was abruptly cut short when the worst day of her life occurred.

The day when she lost her sister.

After washing her hands for a little while, scrubbing soap on both of them and then scrubbing the palms against each other, Sachiko turned off the tap and began washing her face. Unlike Kagura, she was pretty, with a long but not protuberant chin, doe eyes and a small, firm nose. Her looks alone could have made her even more popular than she already was, but since she was raised in a family of librarians and scientists, Sachiko believed her studies were more important than her appearance. For her, doing homework and reading school books were not an obligation, but a pleasure. She never forgot about her social life, but if left alone in her house for a weekend, she wouldn't start screaming and yelling that no one loved her, or complaining about being bored as hell.

Her glasses were a symbol of pride. She only removed them before going to sleep and while taking showers. Even while washing her face, her main activity at the moment, the twin lenses covered her eyes. In the plays where Sachiko commonly played the lead role, she wore her glasses even if her character was not required to wear them. Without her signature trait, Sachiko felt weaker, fragile. She wasn't with them on the day her ex-boyfriend almost killed her, or when Momoko died.

"Momoko… This place reminds me of you a lot, do you know that? How did you feel like when you drowned? I want to know the pain you felt, because I'm going to join you soon."

Momoko's name meant "peach" and her rosy, large cheeks and round face, along with her extremely small eyes, gave her the appearance of the homonymous fruit. She had been born "special", like the doctors and her mother called her, which was just another way of saying that she had Down syndrome. At first, Sachiko's family didn't notice that she had a mental disability, but as the months flew by and she seemed to learn things in a very slow rate, Momoko was taken to a doctor and her disease was discovered. From then on, the peace was gone.

Sachiko wanted to become a mother one day, even with all the complications having a child would bring to her life. But if she also gave birth to a disabled baby, she wouldn't behave much differently from how her parents did. After that trip to the doctor, Sachiko's mother started to eat less and to leave her bedroom less regularly, and tried not to look at her daughter's round face while breastfeeding her. Sachiko's father shared her pain, and started spending more time outside his home on purpose. The real reason was his secret lover, but his wife only found out about it many years later.

Sachiko, at the time an eight year old, couldn't fully comprehend why her parents spent more time with Momoko than with her. She also didn't know why Momoko looked different, was out of home out less often and never played with other children. As the girl slowly grew up, she found out about the reason, and soon developedhuge feelings of pity towards her sister, the opposite from her initial jealousy.

Mom and Dad were at work most of the time, so when she wasn't at school, Sachiko was the one who took care of Momoko. She did everything the smaller girl liked: gave her a shower, read her bedtime stories, and cooked her breakfast. She had to wake up early for this, but it was worthwhile. Momoko's smile after receiving her breakfast was priceless.

However, it wasn't possible for Sachiko to be by Momoko's side all the time. And being a "special" child, the girl would need a nanny. When Momoko was only two years old, the family hired one. She was an overweight, mousy faced woman, who smiled often and seemed nice enough to meet the high standards of Sachiko's mom. At first, everything looked good. The babysitter treated Momoko very well, Mom slowly got over her personal struggles, Sachiko made friends at school, and life was going ahead the way it should go.

Until Sachiko found bruises on her sister's arms while giving her a bath.

Out of a sudden, the cheerful and caring image of the babysitter was shattered into pieces. Upon inspecting her sister closely, Sachiko found beating marks not only in Momoko's arms, but legs and back as well. Mom and Dad got equally horrified, and after deciding that it was worth it, installed a video camera in Momoko's bedroom, on a day when the nanny was out. The images captured there were shocking and cruel. The woman, a ferocious beast behind her sheep's clothing, was routinely throwing Momoko on the floor, pulling her hair and slapping her face. There were neither discussions nor arguments with the abusive nanny. The family simply called the police, and on the same day, the viper that got into their Garden of Eden was sent to jail.

The most affected victim of the crime was not Momoko, but Sachiko. The girl slowly became more fearful for her sister's safety, asking her about the day, checking her body for bruises when they were not there, and even visiting Momoko's bedroom in the middle of the night, only to look at her disabled sibling's face for a little while. Momoko became more important than anyone else she knew.

But Sachiko couldn't protect her sister forever. As soon as Momoko turned four, it was the time for her to go to school. Sachiko was pessimistic about Momoko's future, and feared for what would happen to her while with other kids from her age. She would probably be labeled a freak, not make any friends while she was there, never get a boyfriend and be bullied constantly until her graduation day. Unless she committed suicide before that.

It was with hidden tears and bear hugs that Sachiko said goodbye to her sister in her first day of school. The teachers knew that Momoko had Down's Syndrome, and promised they would treat her with enough respect and decency. Momoko's classmates said the same on the day she was admitted into the school. But Sachiko did not trust any of them. In her country, being disabled was almost a crime. Due to the government's desire to create a "perfect" population, racial, religious and sexual minorities were often ostracized and viewed as the lowest of the low. Sachiko was a very realistic girl, and knew that, even if Momoko managed to survive through the hell middle and high schools are, getting a job or marrying would be almost impossible for her. The chances were close to zero.

In class on that day, Sachiko prayed and hoped that her sister was doing well.

The weeks flew by, and time seemed to prove that Sachiko wasn't that right. Momoko's social life was nothing outstanding, but acceptable, and her "cute" appearance made her not be the primary target of jokes and gossip that often. Obviously, she had trouble in understanding class and its subjects, but since the teachers felt somewhat sorry for her and wanted her to do better, Momoko quickly became their pet. Other children got jealous, and a boy or two called her weird from time to time, but overall Momoko's life at school was perfectly fine. Sachiko felt relieved.

Since she was only one year old, Momoko showed a greater-than-average interest in water. She usually spent a long time staring at lakes and puddles of rain water, and when she took a shower, Momoko would splash water over the walls and the panel, in order to make them wet. Then she would stay there, sitting and smiling in the center of the cold bathtub, until Sachiko or her mother noticed her absence and picked her up. When taking a bath, Momoko did not seem to be absent-minded or daydreaming, but happy instead, enjoying the effects of submersion and smiling as she did so.

Was it a surprise that, on the day the Kirihara family took her to the beach for the first time, she was absolutely excited?

That unforgettable day, the family of four decided to take the five year old Momoko to see the sea for the first time. On the weeks before the incident, the younger daughter had gone out of her house very often, including amusement parks, frozen lakes in the winter, and even rivers. But never to a beach, even though it was the place Momoko wanted to visit the most, sometimes running around with her arms raised and shouting "Sea, sea!" over and over. After travelling for half an hour due to traffic, the family finally arrived there.

Momoko was delighted. She quickly put sun block on, and ran towards the sea with her older sister by her side, playing with her among the waves. Sachiko lifted the smaller girl as much as possible, in order to never let Momoko's head drop below the water's level. Mom and dad did the same, and suddenly, a day that seemed to be troublesome, due to the traffic and some rain, turned out to be extremely pleasant instead. All of the four beach-goers were having fun equally, and under the warm summer sun, nothing else got into their minds for a while.

Sachiko's parents decided to go for a walk around the beach, leaving her alone with Momoko for about thirty minutes. Although Sachiko was only twelve at the time, she was viewed by her parents as mature and responsible enough to take care of a small child on her own. They gave her all of the necessary advice: always look at her, don't let her go into the water alone, put sun block on her again, etc. Sachiko followed all of them perfectly.

Up to a point.

Fifteen minutes after they were gone, Sachiko decided to read a book she had bought a week earlier and carried to the beach in a small bag. It was a bestseller series called "The Mists of Avalon", containing a new take on The Arthurian legends by the perspectives of the female characters. Although the novel contained certain themes her parents would never let her read about, such as descriptions of sex, Sachiko quickly became so addicted to the reading that the subject matter became nothing but a small grain of sand on her rational, knowledge-starved mind. Her eyes travelled along the pages like a car travelling on a mountain highway. The white paper blocked the sun and the sky. Even Momoko disappeared from her mind. The disabled child was making a mess with wet sand, trying to build a castle but having a hard time in doing it. Realizing that wet water was better to play with, Momoko went further and further towards the sea in order to get more of it.

Suddenly, she was completely swallowed by the waves.

Sachiko only noticed her small sister was drowning fifteen to twenty seconds after the torment started. By then, it was already too late. The bespectacled girl heard her name being called from the sea, in a high pitched but weak voice, and lowered her book.

When she saw the stream taking Momoko's body away from the shore, like a small bug floating in a swimming pool, a dark cloud completely covered the sun.

Sachiko began to scream, but screaming was useless. The strong ocean stream was dragging Momoko to the right, farther and farther away from her sister. Dropping her book to the floor like a sack of potatoes, Sachiko ran with towards the water with her arms open, and her thin body quickly made swimming a struggle as she ran along the shoreline, screaming Momoko's name and with water up to her waist. However, Sachiko did not dare to go deeper; her fear of the same fate was too strong. It was a rational decision, but rationality was out of the picture. In her life, Sachiko had never been that scared or worried before. Under all of her books and stoicism, there was a little girl.

The world was spinning around the girl, and she tripped on her own legs and got up again countless times. Momoko's wails slowly got weaker and weaker, until ceasing to exist. When Sachiko finally arrived to the place where her sister was, she could not see her, because the water was too deep. Only some of Momoko's hair was visible above the water, and it also began to sink after a while. Sachiko's heart stopped for a moment.

Too scared to walk into the water, which seemed to be a blue, huge bogeyman, Sachiko felt powerless and weak. She did not call for a life guarder. She screamed and wailed at the water for a long time, until a strong man appeared and came to rescue Momoko. Since his post was far from the drowning scene, he had to run for a long time until arriving for the help. After a brief struggle with the water, which felt like hours for Sachiko, the life guarder managed to localize and take the drowned Momoko on his arms. . The small girl's skin was discolored and even wrinkled, and her eyes, closed and still. The man laid her frail body on the sand, and Sachiko desperately prayed for anything that was good in the world to save her sister.

The life guarder did RCP on Momoko. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. She did not move.

Sachiko preferred not to remember the rest of that day.

Momoko's body was buried three days later, in the biggest graveyard in town. A part of Sachiko's happiness was also buried under the soil, and never came back. The girl did not even go to the funeral, and instead spent an entire day lying on her bed, staring dumbly at the ceiling and breaking down into heavy tears. Sachiko's parents became more and more distant from each other during that year, and even though things had gotten better with time, the scars were still present and visible.

After her sister was gone, simple activities of the everyday life, once meaningless to Sachiko, became symbols of sadness and grief. The girl never stopped taking showers, but going to the pool or the beach became the absolute "no-no" in her book. Sachiko quickly abandoned swimming, and also removed all of the pictures she had of Momoko in her bedroom, placing them on the attic instead. That way, nothing would remind Sachiko of what she had lost so often and so painfully. On the day after Momoko's death, all students of Sachiko's grade were told about the incident, but the girl avoided talking about it anyway. In fact, she doubted that the most recent additions to her class knew of her sister's fate.

Kagura knew about it, though.

Sachiko wasn't crying, but was quickly getting close to it. Some things are better to be left forgotten. Her face, wet and dripping except for her glasses, was apathetical, lethargic and distant. Sachiko turned around and looked at the door behind her, staring passively at the sleeping Kagura. Now, she could have a complete view of her best friend. The way Kagura breathed, which sounded like an out of tune guitar note. The position of her legs, one crossed over the other in a nearly perfect "A" shape. Kagura's pimple-ridden and round face, which yet was so beautiful for Sachiko.

That face reminded her of Momoko. Imperfections included.

Sometimes, Sachiko wondered if this was the reason why she befriended Kagura in the first place. Not only her appearance, but also the way she behaved. Very few people would quickly befriend someone who was so clumsy and socially awkward, but for Sachiko, Kagura's needy behavior made her more interesting. She always seemed so dependant and beguiling, but still had a ferocious, violent temper inside of her which she wanted to hide all times. Sachiko knew it was a consequence of Kagura's harsh past, and that much probably, Momoko would turn out to be like her in the future.

"She wasn't going to have a very good life. But she did not deserve to die anyway." Sachiko did not know if she was referring to Momoko, Kagura, or herself. After all, there wasn't much time left to live.

The girl took a couple of good breaths, and walked towards the sink once more. Unconsciously, she grabbed the green towel next to the mirror and dried her face and hair in seconds. She felt better and ready to go back to sleep, if sleep decided to be kind to her. The night wasn't like high school. It was actually a good advisor.

"I'm not that different from them, after all." Sachiko's eyebrows fell downwards. In the end, she was just as needy as Kagura and Momoko. This was why she always made shy smiles, and decided to date that guy even though her instincts told her otherwise. The need to surround herself with pleasures and forget Momoko always spoke higher, due to Sachiko's own cowardice to face her memories. She wasn't the good sister she wanted to be.

The bespectacled girl shook her head sideways twice, and after looking at the mirror dumbly, stared at the sink. Something was wrong. "Wait a second, who closed this?", she thought, after watching some water floating by the bottom of the sink, due to a closed lid that kept it from going down.

It was the last conscious thought in Sachiko's mind.

Before Sachiko could turn around or even blink her eyes, someone grabbed the back of her head. An enormous force pushed it forwards, and one second later, Sachiko's face went down and was buried at the bottom of the sink.

The violent impact caused the left lens of Sachiko's glasses to crack, and the whole object was partially dislocated away from her face. The girl's mouth and teeth began to hurt, after hitting the metallic edge of the sink and staying there. Sachiko's tongue came out and began licking the wet hardness of the sink against her will. She couldn't know it, but her entire head was buried at the narrow bottom, completely under the tap and unable to rise up. The hole was small and hardly left any space for her to move.

Struggling to free herself, Sachiko raised her neck upwards – and was met by the harsh and painful contact with the tap. The girl kept trying, but every time she made some progress, the sharp center of the metallic object caused pain on the area right above her temple. Besides, the other girl was stronger than her. Shaking her arms wildly, Sachiko tried grabbing the attacker, but her right hand was unable to reach anything but some of the stronger girl's clothes. There wasn't even enough space for a pinch. The left arm went for the girl's shoulder, but was quickly grabbed by the wrist. The stronger hand began to crush Sachiko's bones, causing her pain and small, muffled screams. Sachiko's pale arm struggled to be freed, but it was hit against the edge of the sink at full speed. Sachiko's left hand became numb and started swelling, useless. A purple bruise grew on three of her fingers.

With the same arm she used to grab Sachiko's wrist, the attacker quickly opened both taps. What was once a small puddle started getting wider as both types of water washed the top of Sachiko's scalp. Dripping down her face, they gave her "funny" feelings of numbness and pain, increasing the amount of water in the sink as it all sprayed violently against the mirror, the attacker's arms and Sachiko's body. The truth became even more evident: someone was trying to drown her.

The hand kept pushing down, holding strongly. Whoever wanted Sachiko dead was determined to finish the job. But Sachiko couldn't know who it was. At the moment, everything she could see was the shining lid of the closed hole, which pressured her forehead and made the whole situation even more uncomfortable. Her entire face was so strongly crushed that there was hardly any space left to breathe, see or taste the water. She tried screaming as loudly as possible, but since the water was now by the level of her nose, only guttural, muffled sounds came out.

Sachiko tried to fight back in a different way. She used her feet to kick backwards, hoping to hit the legs of her attacker and make her stop. Sachiko managed to deliver a blow from the right one, while completely missing the left. She heard a small grunt of pain from above, but her efforts weren't enough. The attacker used her unmoving right foot to step on Sachiko's, sending a wave of paralysis and pain up her right leg. The left one wasn't as strong and remained kicking, but the pain it caused to the other girl's knees was small and bearable. With escape getting more difficult, fear and desperation took over Sachiko.

The attacker pulled Sachiko's long hair upwards, and in the process, her head was scratched by the tap countless times, until her face was out of the wet sink and she could even see the mirror…

…One second later, it was pushed towards the bottom once more.

The violence only lasted for one or two seconds, but it was more than enough. Sachiko did not have enough time to scream or see who was behind her, but the pain she felt after hitting her forehead on the white hardness of the sink lasted for what felt like hours. The second impact was so strong that a purple bruise was formed on the left side of Sachiko's forehead. The cracked left lens of her spectacles shattered entirely, and shards flew out of the sink or remained tangled in the folds of her hair. The spectacles fell off, leaning to the side of the sink and leaving Sachiko's eyes completely exposed to the water. Breathing got harder. Her vision started blurring.

Strength began leaving the girl, making her efforts to fight back more desperate and futile. Her arms were still struggling and her left leg, kicking, but they did not have nearly the same willpower or resistance they had before. On the other hand, the girl drowning her remained firm, as if Sachiko's attempts to escape made her job more entertaining. Now the water covered Sachiko's head almost completely, leaving only her black hair visible above it. The girl's nostrils, with nothing but water to inhale, lost all control and unintentionally brought enemy into her lungs.

Sachiko's chest burned, and her body screamed for air more and more, to no avail. Pain dominated her chest and neck, while everything underneath it felt numb and rigid. The girl's throat tried to expel the water away, coughing so violently that even some blood came out of her mouth. Sachiko's back spasmed as she slowly drowned, contorting itself several times and increasing the cough. Some water was inhaled towards her brain, giving her the feeling of drinking a lot of coke at once. With the strange coldness that appeared there, some thoughts came.

Who could that be, who was drowning her? Rin, Hitomi, Hana? No, not them. They were away, somewhere she could not recall. It could only be…

"Kagura"

Sachiko did not need to cry over her friend's betrayal. The water was her tears.

The gray lid right in front of her eyes seemed to get more and more distant, and the many colors Sachiko liked so much were fading into black and white. Before, there were many noises coming from above. They were slowly silencing, leaving only the simple and homogeneous noise of immersion into water to haunt her ears. Sachiko's struggles became less intense and more instinctual, caused more by her threatened brain than her own will. Water had long passed its peak and continued overflowing, dripping heavily over Sachiko's back and shoulders, but she could hardly feel anything. If she was still able to think, she would have regretted abandoning swimming after Momoko's death.

Sachiko once thought that being drowned was a peaceful, painless death. It was the way she wanted Momoko to have died. But if the pain was half of what Momoko felt on that day, then she had no other choice but to suffer it. It was her fault that her sister had died in the first place. Fate finally caught up with her. No matter which way she looked at it, she deserved to die that way. Now she could feel that it did not even hurt that much. The pain was already fading, along with everything.

The lid disappeared entirely. The world turned white.

"Mo…mo…ko…."

White faded into black.

After death, Sachiko's serene, beautiful face got turned into a doll mask. Those were the best words Kumiko Noma could use to describe it. With the left eye rolled up on its socket and glass shards stuck in her disentangled, wet hair, Sachiko looked like an old lady instead of a teenager. Shortly after she stopped struggling and went limp, Kumiko turned off the two strong taps and, with her hand still on Sachiko's hair, brought her body to a lying position on the floor that looked bizarre and humiliating. The once bespectacled girl's skin instantly got whiter than porcelain, but not in a pretty way. Rather, it looked like a polluted and intoxicated coral reef. Sachiko's mouth was open with horror and pain, her jaw dropped permanently and her tongue rolled upwards inside it. Her arms and legs turned rigid and stiff. Sachiko's black hair was so wet that it looked like dark blood, splattered on the wooden floor like a badly burnt spaghetti.

Who was more beautiful, she or Rena Kuroda? What a difficult question.

Killing Sachiko was incredibly easy. Kumiko arrived only two minutes before Sachiko woke up. Fearing being discovered and killed, Kumiko only had to hide behind the shower curtain and wait for her classmate to be distracted enough. The drowning itself lasted for four or five minutes, and although some parts of Kumiko's body did sore from Sachiko's kicks, restraining the weaker girl took no big effort. In other words, the bespectacled girl was just another student who had absolutely no chance of winning the game, anyway.

When would she find a real challenge? Kagura got lucky and managed to capture her, but did not pull the trigger when she had the chance. Before killing Sachiko, Kumiko went to the other bedroom and saw the other three girls, sleeping like stones. She could have tried smothering pone of them with the pillow, but the ensuing struggle would be too close from the other two girls, who, if woken up, would cause Kumiko's death. Drowning someone in a sink was the best option she could have imagined.

"Time to continue this thing." With one of them dead, Kumiko could proceed to the next part of Kagura's game: hiding the evidence of what she did. Sachiko's spectacles were the first target. Still on the sink with only one lens, they were floating wildly in the water, resembling a dead water bug on a lake. Kumiko turned off the tap, and water instantly stopped dripping on the floor. Then, she grabbed the instrument to enhance vision and threw it in the place it belonged to: the garbage can.

Kumiko removed the lid that kept water from flushing downwards, submerging her right hand in the process. Although the sink was overflowing, it took only no more than ten seconds for it to be empty again. Now, the only sources of water in the room were the dripping edge of the bathroom counter, the mirror, and Sachiko's hair.

Drying it all also took little effort. Kumiko grabbed the same green towel Sachiko used to dry her face in her final moments and scrubbed the mirror with it. The area became foggy with dispersed water, but it at least did not look very wet. Kumiko began scrubbing the sink and its surroundings, eliminating all evidence of a drowning that could be there. When she was finished, the psychopath moved to Sachiko's hair, which was so wet that it left a puddle on the floor. Bringing the dead girl's black strands to the front of her face, Kumiko started covering the puddle with her towel, and then wrapped it over Sachiko's head. It took quite a while, but the corpse's hair also dried. Afterwards, Kumiko took another look at Sachiko's face. Something looked strange there.

Underneath Sachiko's blue nightgown, there was something black that seemed to protrude from her breasts. A closer look was all it took to discern the object's identity.

It was a bulletproof vest.

Kumiko was about to jump in joy, but restrained herself. The weapon was everything she was looking for. With it, winning would be much easier. Not wasting her time, Kumiko kneeled on the floor, and began unbuttoning Sachiko's blue garment. When she reached the fifth button, the vest was exposed right on top of Sachiko's bra. Working quickly, Kumiko undid the straps that tied the vest to Sachiko, having to flip her over more than once until the job was done. When she was done with them, Kumiko grabbed Sachiko's left arm and tried moving it to the side. Although the arm could not be folded in half, the effort was worth it, and only one arm remained trapped in the vest. Kumiko repeated the process on her classmate's right arm, and soon the entire vest was out. She buttoned Sachiko's nightgown again after that, to make sure no one would notice the theft.

Delightful over the possibility of winning, Kumiko took off her blouse. The vision of her underwear would make viewers go crazy at home. It was a brief vision, though: the girl quickly put on the vest, covering her bra with it. She did all the straps, and after putting on her blouse again, Kumiko was free to continue her job.

Without any sign of hesitation, Kumiko grabbed the dead body with both arms and lifted it up, carrying it to the living room slowly and patiently. Sachiko was a tall girl, but being thin as a bird, she didn't have many pounds of fat to complicate Kumiko's work. The killer never particularly argued with Sachiko, but did not have a good opinion of her either. For Kumiko, Sachiko was an I-know-it-all-and-I'm-better-than-you wannabe nerd, who knew more about her books than about the real world. Her friendship with Kagura only confirmed Kumiko's opinion of her.

Sachiko's body was slowly dragged out of the bedroom and into the dark living room. The mood was threatening and funereal there, with the sofas and lamps looking as if they would come to life and attack the intruder at any moment. The moonlight peering through the window turned the walls and furniture into macabre kaleidoscopes. Girls like Kagura would run back to their beds, but there was no fear in Kumiko's eyes. She was used to the dark.

Sachiko's body was laid on the floor once more, and the water dripping from her hair quickly created another puddle on the blue carpet. Instead of leaving the apartment, Kumiko remained there for a while, staring at her new masterpiece and wondering where to go next.

Suddenly, the blue carpet became a white floor, made of many squares of solid marble.

Sachiko's young, thin body started growing and her hair got shorter. Her clothes changed. She morphed into a woman in her thirties.

The water around Sachiko's head quickly turned red. A sick, maddening odor impregnated it. It was not water anymore, but blood. Another hot liquid appeared next to the woman, but Kumiko did not know what it was.

Kumiko closed her eyes. Shook her head. Inhaled rapidly. When she opened them again, the woman had disappeared. Sachiko continued to be the one who was dead.

"Not again…"

The short incident made Kumiko decide. She wouldn't stay there for another minute. Her job was done, why would she stay, even if to see how things would turn out? The girl already knew where to go next. It was just a shame, in the end, that she wouldn't be able to see the final result of her actions.

Walking towards the entrance door, Kumiko opened it and left.

The game was still hers.

The first thing Kagura Soga saw was the eye. The lifeless orbit, which glared into her soul like a dead fish. Then, she noticed the long hair that partially covered the girl's face and was as dark as the feathers of a crow. Finally, she saw the mouth, wide open in a never ending scream, with a disgusting foam of water dripping from its left corners.

It wasn't her.

It couldn't be her.

Sachiko wasn't dead.

That thing wasn't her.

It wasn't true.

She didn't die.

It was someone else.

It couldn't be her.

But it was.

As soon as Kagura's eyes made the connection with her brain, an enormous pressure came to her neck and throat, bringing agony upwards and until it exited through her eyes. The tears came seconds later, burning Kagura's eyelids and causing her to swallow all of the anger that once powered her. She quickly began to bawl, and covered her head with the blanket in order to avoid seeing the body of her friend. Her teeth were clenched together inside of her enclosed mouth, attempting to stop the tears from falling. It didn't work.

"Why her?"

Kagura's chest was on fire, and her heart had never beaten that fast before. Her stomach contracted involuntarily, hundreds of times, making the girl's situation even worse. Kagura's legs trembled under the covers, and felt cold even though it was summer. Without Sachiko, the heat in Kagura's life was gone.

"Why? Why her? This is not fair, not fair!"

No matter how big the physical pain was, it meant nothing compared to what Kagura felt inside. She was drowning in misery, anger and grief, an emotional turmoil that made her head ache and didn't allow the tears to stop. No, it wasn't right. Sachiko shouldn't have been the one. It should have been them, not her. Not her….

"What did she ever do to me?"

Yes, that was right. Sachiko never even argued with her, not even once. She was always smiling, always helping her with homework, always doing the right thing… she wasn't like the others. And yet, she was the one who paid the price for Kagura's stupidity. For making a deal with the devil, whose name was…

"Kumiko." Kagura's face turned red.

The girl heard steps coming at her direction, passing right through the side of the bed. It was her. The whore. The one who deserved to die. Kagura's heart remained strong, and anger rose up to her face, causing her ears to redden as well. If she could only reunite enough strength to do so, she would kill Kumiko right there. Rip her apart with her bare hands. Break her neck. Make her suffer ten times more than what she did to Sachiko. Kill her before she killed anybody else.

Fear was stronger.

Kagura pulled herself up, but quickly went down. No matter how much she wanted to, another force paralyzed her to the ground. It wasn't just her fear, but all of her insecurities and weaknesses. Yes, that was it. She didn't change anything from the day when Kumiko locked her in the bathroom. She was just a coward. And she was weak.

The tears were even stronger, falling like waterfalls over Kagura's cheeks, hitting the white pillow and turning it into a dark shade of gray. Sachiko, the only real friend she ever had in her life, was dead and would never come back. She had disappeared under the water, sunk down under the bottom of the sink like in the sea, found her sister there. Leaving Kagura alone.

"I'm alone… always alone…"

It was her fault that her friend died. Not only she brought Kumiko there in the first place, but she also saw all of it. Kagura could still hear the muffled screams Sachiko emitted underwater, see her desperation when she realized she would die, feel Sachiko's pain when her head hit the edge of the sink. However, Kagura did not move a muscle to help her, too shocked and afraid to even open her mouth and scream. She was always hesitating in the worst moments, always losing her battles, always being the underdog because of her weakness and lack of initiative. And her weakness brought her the final torment: her best friend's death.

"Why did I do that? She's dead now, and what did I get from it? This wasn't part of the plan… so stupid…. Stupid…"

More tears fell over the pillow. Kagura's school uniform was also soaked. The girl had never looked uglier. She wanted to stop that. Stop the plan. Stop more deaths and more suffering. But…

"There's no turning back now."

On the next day, they would all find out. And they would turn on her. It was kill or be killed from that moment onwards. Kagura never had a choice. She would cry herself to sleep and pretend she did not know anything. And lie again. Something she was good at, because lying is the instrument of the cowards.

The steps quickly disappeared from Kagura's hearing. Kumiko was gone. But Kagura did not dare to move to look at Sachiko's corpse. If anything, she wanted to stay away from it as much as she could. It wasn't the way she wanted to remember Sachiko.

And so, Kagura Soga remained there the entire night, crying, cursing and with her heart crushed. The romantics would say that, because Sachiko was dead, Kagura would never be complete again. It wasn't true, because the girl still felt whole. But she was lonely. Extremely lonely.

There was no more meaning in living in the surface, because all of the joys in her life had sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Girl #7 Sachiko Kirihara – Dead

12 to go.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

An emotional, heartbreaking chapter. There are three or four chapters in this story which I consider to be unbearably sad, and this is the first of them. Finally, someone is dead, but it is a character who was well-liked by the readers. If creating sympathetic characters causes the reader to share their suffering, then this chapter is the test to determine if Sachiko was developed or not.

Although this is not the longest chapter I've written so far, it's certainly the one that took the longest to be completed. The reason for such delay can be partially blamed to final exams, but mostly to my own lack of initiative. To prove my point, most of the chapter was written in a period of three days. I once promised myself that I wouldn't take that long to update, but this time I don't promise anything. Life is hectic and unpredictable, so I do believe that it will still take a long time before this story is finished.

Good news: the 100,000 characters point was reached with this chapter. It means this fic is now among the biggest works of the sadly underappreciated Battle Royale fandom. I've read most of the stories that have more than this in length, and most (if not all of them) possess excellent writing quality and developed characters. Hopefully, I'll reach this level of proficiency towards the end of the story.

To Terrilenium: Thank you for the review, but please reply to the private message I sent you. I proofread this chapter a lot due to your good advice.

See you all on the next chapter!