“No,” Shinji shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think whoever fired it did it to stop them. It was so obvious what they were doing was risky. The shooter wanted to scare them with the gunfire so they’d run and hide.”
Yutaka leaned forward excitedly, “The-then that shooter isn’t an enemy.”
“Yeah well, we don’t have any way to hook up. Even though I have a rough idea where the gunshot came from, the shooter’s probably already on the move—since the machine gun shooter knows where he is too.”
Disappointed, Yutaka drew back. They fell silent while Shinji continued thinking, his arms folded. Shinji wanted to know if Yutaka had seen anyone they could trust. He thought they could hook up with a classmate if he or she hadn’t moved, but come to think of it, he’d trust anyone Yutaka would trust, so if Yutaka had seen others who were trustworthy Yutaka would have been with them by now. But Yutaka was alone. So the question was pointless.
But in any case, who could he trust? Shuya… and then maybe Hiroki Sugimura? The rest were girls. He could probably trust the class representative, Yukie Utsumi, and her friends, but he didn’t have a good reputation with the girls in his class, probably because he slept around. Ah well. Hey Uncle, I should have found a steady girlfriend, huh?
But how lucky was he to hook up with Yutaka? He could absolutely trust him.
Yutaka asked him, “Hey Shinji. You said you were looking for something.”
Shinji nodded. “I did.”
“What was it? What were you looking for? A weapon? I was too scared. It never even crossed my mind.”
Shinji looked down at his watch. It should be done by now. An hour had elapsed since the machine began its password search.
Shinji got up and tucked his gun in front. “Yutaka, can you move over?” Yutaka moved away from the tree he was leaning against. Beyond it, there were bushes spreading out over the ground, forming a thicket.
Shinji walked over there and stuck his arms into the bushes. Carefully he pulled out the accessories and cables together.
Yutaka looked astonished.
Shinji had pulled out a car battery (the power source), a partially disassembled cell phone, and a laptop computer. They were all connected by a patch of red and white cables.
The liquid crystal monitor display had been left on, with the computer screen display turned off.
Which meant… Shinji puckered his lips and whistled quietly, pressing down on the space bar. The computer, conserving its energy in sleep mode, turned on with the sound of its hard drive spinning and the grayscale display lighting up on the screen.
After searching for the final line in the tiny window on the screen, Shinji’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Geez. Just a switch of vowels. Too simple for me to guess on my own,” he said.
“Hey, Shinji, is this—” Yutaka finally blurted out in amazement. Shinji closed and opened his fists as he always did before tapping away on the keyboard. Then he grinned at Yutaka.
“It’s a Macintosh PowerBook 150. I didn’t expect to find such a good machine on this lousy island.”
30
Yoshimi Yahagi (Female Student No. 21) waited until her watch read 10 a.m. and then cautiously looked out the rear entrance of the house. It was on the southern end of the residential area of the island, so it was far from the house where Megumi Eto was killed, but Yoshimi had no idea Megumi had died there anyway. She just heard her name in this morning’s announcement.
She was more preoccupied with the forbidden zone announced this morning. At 11 a.m. all collars in sector H-8, which included the houses here, would explode. The computer would not respond to pleas for it to wait.
The rear entrance faced a narrow alley that ran between the houses. Yoshimi held the heavy automatic pistol (Colt Government Model .45) with both hands, pulling back the tight hammer with her right thumb. She quickly checked the premises. There was no one in the alley in either direction.
Even though as a member of Mitsuko Souma’s gang she was considered a “delinquent,” her round face had a childish quality. Right now though, it was breaking out in a cold sweat. It was only an hour or two ago that she saw from the second floor window Yumiko Kusaka and Yukiko Kitano calling on everyone to join them. Then the rattling machine gun. No doubt about it. The killing was continuing. Not everyone was hiding out like she was. There were others willingly killing their classmates. And it was impossible to know where they might show up.
She stepped out and cautiously tiptoed to her right with her back pinned up against the wall of the house where she had been hiding. She turned south at the corner and saw a field extend up a gentle slope. The mild slope was covered with patches of green and headed up to the southern mountain. The houses there weren’t as crowded together as they were here. She decided it was best for her to reach the southern mountain. Then she’d be safe for the time being.
Yoshimi shouldered her day pack, checked around again, then ran out to the small thicket by the field.
She reached it in a matter of seconds. Holding her gun with both hands, she pointed it left and right, but no one was there.
Yoshimi was already panting after that brief excursion. She had further to go, though, to get out of sector H=8. She actually might be beyond the border, but it wasn’t as if there was a white line running on the ground. It was best to err on the side of caution. Otherwise she’d go nuts. There were blue dots on the map indicating houses and the group of houses where she was was cluttered up with so many dots she had no idea exactly where she was. The sector border was at the edge of this clutter.
Yoshimi felt like crying. If she wasn’t in Mitsuko Souma’s gang then she’d have probably found someone, yes, some nice girl she could trust, and joined up with her. But no one trusted her. Well, she’d done some bad things with Mitsuko Souma and Hirono Shimizu. Stealing from, even at times terrorizing her classmates. No one would believe her even if she insisted she meant no harm. They might attack her on sight.
Before she hid in the house last night she saw another girl heading in the opposite direction. She was leaving the residential area. Was it Kayoko Kotohiki (Female Student No. 8)? Maybe she’d first hid in the residential area but then decided against it and moved on. (Her decision proved a good one, since the area became the game’s first forbidden zone.) It was a perfect opportunity to contact someone, given the timing and proximity, but Yoshimi just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
And what about Mitsuko Souma and Hirono Shimizu? It was true they were bad—but they were her friends after all. If she could find them, would they trust her? And could she trust them? No, she probably couldn’t.
Overwhelmed by despair, she thought of a certain boy’s face again. It was the same face she’d been thinking of ever since the game began. The one who said he didn’t care she was with Mitsuko Souma, he still liked her. He kissed her gently on the bed and kindly warned her, “Stay out of trouble.” The boy who made her believe she could actually change.
When she left the school building, she thought he might be waiting for her. But of course there was no one there. Of course there wouldn’t be. There were the corpses of Mayumi Tendo and Yoshio Akamatsu lying on the ground, though. Chances were if you stuck around you’d end up like them. (She had no idea where their killer had gone.)
Where could he possibly be right now? Or was it too late…
She felt her chest tighten. Her eyes filled with tears.
She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sailor suit and moved through the thicket towards its edge. She had to move a little further ahead.