Noriko nodded slightly. She must have been able to follow Shuya and Shogo’s conversation moments ago.
“It’s all right… go ahead.”
Shogo nodded and inserted the syringe, this time deeply. He injected the liquid and removed the needle. Then he wiped her arm with the cotton and told Shuya, “Hold this.”
Shogo took the empty syringe and walked over to the sink to toss it away. Then he came back.
“Now she’s got to sleep. You look after her for a while. If she looks thirsty, you can use the whole bottle.”
Shuya said, “But that’s—”
Shuya shook his head.
“Don’t worry. I found a well behind the building. As long as we boil the water we can drink it.” Shogo left the room. Shuya turned towards the bed. With his right hand pressing the cotton swab and his left hand
gently holding Noriko’s hand, he watched over her.
42
Noriko fell asleep almost immediately. Shuya checked to make sure she wasn’t bleeding from the shot, then he tossed the cotton swab, tucked her arm under the blanket, and left the room.
The doctor’s living quarters was beyond the waiting room next door. There was a kitchen at the end of the hall on the right. Shogo was in there. The gas stove next to the sink wasn’t operating, but on it was a large pot filled with water, and under it a pile of charcoal was glowing red.
Shogo was standing on a table, looking through a built-in ceiling cabinet across from the sink. That’s when Shuya noticed for the first time that Shogo was wearing New Balance sneakers. He’d assumed they were some domestic brand like Mizumo or Kageboshi. New Balance! He’d never seen them before!
Whatever. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m looking for food. I found some rice and miso, but nothing else. The vegetables in the fridge are rotten.”
Shuya shook his head. “You’re stealing.”
“Of course I am,” Shogo said dryly and then added while he continued rummaging, “Forget about it. Just be ready. Anyone could show up at any moment. If the machine gun shooter shows up, we’ll be dead. So be ready.”
Shuya replied, “Yeah, all right.”
Shogo jumped off the table. The New Balance shoes squeaked against the floor.
“Is she asleep?” he asked.
Shuya nodded.
Shogo pulled out another pot from under the sink, walked up to the plastic rice container in the corner, and poured rice into the pot.
“So you’re boiling rice.”
“Yep. Noriko won’t recover eating that terrible bread.” Shogo scooped up a bowl of water from the bucket on the floor and poured it into the pot. He combed through the rice and only changed the water once. Next to the boiling water, he placed several pieces of charcoal from his day pack onto the other burner, then took out a pack of cigarettes and emptied them into his pocket. Then he crumpled the pack, lit it with his lighter, and stuck it into the charcoal. Once the charcoal was lit, he put the lidded pot of rice on the burner. It was an impressive sight.
“Damn,” Shuya said.
Shogo took a break as he lit up a cigarette and looked at Shuya.
“You’re so good at everything.”
“Yeah?” Shogo answered lightly. But something else flashed through Shuya’s mind. The moment Kaori Minami was murdered… you know what’s going to happen but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Slow motion. Kaori spins around and the left side of her head’s blown off. It was blown away, did you see that? If it had been Shogo instead of Shuya, the outcome wouldn’t have been so horrible.
“Are you still bummed about Kaori?” Shogo said. Once again, Shogo’s psychic powers were on. The sunlight doesn’t reach this far inside, but that didn’t seem to affect him.
Shogo shook his head. “Don’t let it get to you. It was a bad situation. You did your best.”
Shogo’s voice was kind, but Shuya looked down. The corpse of Kaori Minami, collapsed on her side inside a grimy farm equipment shack. The pool of blood gradually spreading, oozing outward. By now, beginning to congeal. But the body would just stay there, with no ceremony, just left there like a disposed mannequin sprawled inside that shack. Of course in that sense she was no exception to Tatsumichi Oki, Kyoichi Motobuchi, Yukiko Kitano, and Yumiko Kusaka. Everyone else was in the same boat.
He felt like puking. They were all lying there, on the ground. Already close to twenty of them.
“Shogo.” The words spilled out.
In response Shogo tilted his head and slightly moved his hand that was holding the cigarette.
“What happens to the dead… their bodies?” Shuya asked. “Are they left there until this stupid game is over? So they just start rotting while the game is going on?”
Shogo answered as if it were an official matter. “That’s right. Once it’s over, the following day a clean-up crew is hired to take care of them.”
“Clean-up crew?” Shuya bared his teeth.
“Yep. I heard about it from someone who works for the subcontractor, so I’m sure it’s true. Self Defense Forces soldiers are too proud to perform such menial tasks. Of course, government officials accompany the crew to collect the collars and examine the bodies. You know, so the news media can report the number of deaths by strangulation, all that stuff.”
Shuya was pissed. He recalled that final part of the news report. The meaningless causes of deaths and itemization of each student.
But he also realized something and knit his brows.
Shogo saw this and asked, “What’s up?”
“Well, that doesn’t make sense. I mean these…” Shuya raised his hand up to his neck. His fingers touched the collar’s cold surface, its sensation no longer so strange. “I thought these were a secret. Shouldn’t they collect them before the hired hands come in?”
Shogo shrugged. “The cleaning crew have no idea what they’re for. They probably just assume they’re used as markers. The guy I talked to didn’t even remember them until I asked him about them. So there’s no rush. They can deal with the collars after the clean-up crew’s collected the bodies, right?”
It was true. But even so, something else bugged him.
“Hold on. What if one of these is defective? Let’s say it breaks down and someone who’s alive is assumed to be dead. Couldn’t that student escape? Shouldn’t they confirm all the dead right after the game?”
Shogo raised his brows. “You talk like you work for the government.”
“No…” he stammered. “It’s just that—”
“I doubt they could ever be defective. Think about it. If they actually could break down, this game couldn’t proceed smoothly. Besides, if a student equipped with weapons turned out to be alive, they couldn’t even afford to check the bodies. It’d turn into another battle.”
Shogo took a drag as he considered it more thoroughly. “This is just my guess, but I think each collar is loaded with multiple systems, so that if one breaks down, another gets switched on. Even if one system became defective—the chances of that being at least less than one in a hundred—if the systems were combined the probability would practically be reduced to zero. In other words,” he said, looking at Shuya, “it would be impossible for us to escape that way.”
Shuya understood. He saw no reason not to object. (Once again, he couldn’t help but be impressed by Shogo’s intelligence.)
But then—
The question he promised not to ask crossed his mind. Which was:
How did Shogo plan to beat a perfect, escape-proof system?
Before he could consider it, Shogo said, “Anyway, look, I have to apologize.”