He had no idea how they ended up shooting at each other. It was possible one of them was out to get the other girl, but Shuya could tell this wasn’t the case. They probably stumbled into each other, and because neither of them could trust the other, they ended up shooting at each other….
This guess might have just been based on his own favorable opinion of girls, but in any case he couldn’t just sit back and let this happen. He had to stop them.
As Shuya tried to grasp the situation, Kaori stuck her head out from the shack’s entrance and fired at Hirono. She handled the gun like a kid playing with a water pistol, but unlike a water pistol the gun exploded, and a small brass shell flew into the air. Hirono fired two shots back. She actually handled the gun well, and her shells didn’t fly out. One of her bullets hit the post of the shack, which shattered into sawdust. Kaori quickly tucked her head in.
Hirono’s body was almost entirely visible from where Shuya was standing, and he saw her open the cylinder of her revolver to extract the shells. Her left hand was soaked crimson. Her arm might have been wounded by Kaori. But she managed to reload her gun quickly with that hand. She aimed her gun at Kaori again.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds, but right before he was about to act Shuya was once again overwhelmed by the sensation of being in a nightmare. Kaori Minami loved pop idols, so she’d often talk about her favorite stars with her friends, or share a photo taken in person that thrilled her to no end. Then there was Hirono Shimizu, who hung out with Mitsuko Souma, so there was something jaded about her. But they were both third-year students in junior high, they both had charming qualities. Now these two were shooting at each other. Seriously, with real bullets. Obviously.
I have to do something now.
Shuya stood up and fifed his Smith & Wesson into the air. Oh great, so now I’m playing the sheriff, he thought for a moment. But without hesitating, he shouted, “Stop it!”
Hirono and Kaori froze, and then together looked over at Shuya.
Shuya continued, “Stop it! I’m with Noriko Nakagawa!” He thought it was best not to mention Shogo’s name for now. “You can trust me!”
As he said this, he realized how lame his words sounded. But he had no other way to put it.
Hirono was the first to move her eyes away from Shuya to Kaori. And Kaori was gazing at Shuya.
Shuya realized at that moment how half of Kaori’s body was exposed beyond the entrance—she was in the open now.
What happened next reminded him of a traffic accident he once witnessed. It happened on an autumn evening before he turned eleven. Maybe the driver had fallen asleep or something. His truck lost control, rammed through the guardrail, rode up onto the sidewalk, and hit a young girl walking home from school, just like Shuya, who was behind her. It was unbelievable but her backpack came off her shoulders and flew into the air, tracing a different trajectory from the girl’s body. The girl landed on the sidewalk before the backpack did, falling on her shoulder. Obstructed by the wayside concrete wall she slid along the edge of the sidewalk and then stopped still. Blood came flowing out, leaving a trail on the bottom edge of the concrete wall over one meter long.
It all looked like—from the time the truck swung off the road and crashed into the girl—as if it was happening in slow motion. Anyone there could tell what was going to happen, but there was nothing anyone could do. That’s what it felt like.
Hirono aimed and fired at Kaori, who’d completely let her guard down. Two shots in a row. The first one hit Kaori in the shoulder, making her spin halfway to the right. The second shot hit her in the head. Shuya saw a part of her head—from the top down to her left temple—explode.
Kaori collapsed by the front door of the shack.
Hirono glanced over at Shuya.
Then she turned and ran to his left, westward, where Shuya’s group came from. She ran into the bushes and disappeared from sight.
“Damn!”
Shuya moaned. After some hesitation he ran to the shack where Kaori had collapsed.
Kaori was lying down, legs jutting out from inside the shack that only housed a decrepit tractor. Her body remained twisted as blood came flowing out the corner of her mouth, mixed with the blood from her head and shoulder wounds, turning into a puddle on the shack’s concrete floor. Tiny dust particles from the floor were floating on the surface of the puddle. Her eyes stared out at the sky. A thin gold chain hung down from her sailor suit onto the floor, and the golden locket attached to it looked like an island in a lake of blood. A famous male idol singer was smiling cheerfully from it.
Shuya was shaking as he knelt down beside her.
Oh, man… what the… so this girl… can’t gossip about pop idols anymore, she can’t go to their concerts anymore. If he had been more careful… maybe she wouldn’t have been killed?
He heard a sound and turned around. It was Shogo, holding Noriko with one of his arms as they looked out from the woods.
Shogo left Noriko there and trotted over to Shuya.
Shogo’s expression seemed to be saying, “See, what’d I tell you?” but he didn’t say a word. He just calmly picked up Kaori’s gun and day pack, and then as if it occurred to him as an afterthought, he crouched down and shut her eyes with his right thumb. Then he told Shuya, “We’re going. Hurry up.”
He knew it was dangerous. Anyone—especially the killer with the machine gun—could have heard the gunfire and might be showing up now.
Still, Shuya’s eyes were glued to Kaori’s corpse until Shogo tugged his arm back.
41
The medical clinic was an old, small, single-story building. The wood walls had turned black, and the black-tiled roof was so worn out with age that the corners had turned white. Like the shack where Kaori Minami had died, it was located in front of the northern mountain at the end of a narrow unpaved road. They’d made their way through the mountain, but they could tell the narrow entrance road led down to the paved road along the island’s eastern shore. There was a white minivan parked in front of the facility. Maybe the doctor had used it. Beyond the minivan they could see the ocean.
The afternoon sun was shining on the sea. The color of the ocean was completely different from the murky water that lapped against the concrete sea walls in Shiroiwa harbor. It was a wonderfully brilliant blue tinged with green. There were hardly any waves, and the sparkling dots of light on its surface became increasingly dense in the distance. Other islands floating in the Seto Inland Sea looked remarkably close, but this was probably due, as he was once told, to the optical illusion of reduced distance when objects were absent. So they must have been at least four or five kilometers away.
In any case they were here. It was a miracle they got here without getting hurt. They’d immediately left the area where Kaori died. No machine gun shots came after them. According to the map they’d traveled a distance of less than two kilometers, but Shuya, who’d been carrying Noriko, accompanied by the pressure of a possible attack, was incredibly tired. He wanted to check to make sure no one was in the area of the clinic as soon as possible, so that not only Noriko but he too could get some rest.
But something caught Shuya’s attention.
A ship was floating on the peaceful sea. It was probably the guard ship Sakamochi had mentioned. But… for some reason there were three ships in a row. Sakamochi said there would be one ship on all sides—north, south, east, and west—and on the west side they had only seen one. So what was this?