“You fool,” Mitsuko said. She sounded as if she could care less about the gun pointed at her forehead. “Those are the rules.”
Hiroki squinted and shook his head. “Not everyone’s playing by them.”
Mitsuko tilted her head again. Then she said, still smiling warmly, “Hiroki.” It sounded so plain and friendly, the way a girl who ended up sitting next to her crush would call him, looking for some topic to bring up before homeroom began. “You’re probably a good person, Hiroki,” she said.
Hiroki didn’t understand and knit his brows. His mouth might have been open.
Mitsuko continued, lightly, as she were singing, “Good people are good. In some respects. But even those good people can turn bad. Or maybe they end up being good their entire lives. Maybe you’re one of those people.”
Mitsuko looked away from Hiroki and then shook her head.
“No, that’s beside the point. I just decided to take instead of being taken. It’s not a question of good or bad, wrong or right. It’s just what I want to do.”
Hiroki’s lips trembled. They were twitching uncontrollably. “Why though?”
Mitsuko smiled again. “I don’t know. But if I have to come up with some explanation. Well, for starters—” She looked into Hiroki’s eyes and then said, “I was raped when I was nine years old. Three guys taking turns, three times each, oh, wait, one of them might have done it four times. One of you did it. Although they were middle-aged men. I was just a skinny kid back then, my chest was flat, and my legs were like sticks, but that’s what they wanted. And when I started screaming that only excited them more. So even now when I’m with perverted men like that I still pretend to cry.”
Hiroki stood frozen as he stared at Mitsuko who’d just revealed so much but continued wearing her pleasant smile. He was shocked by this devastating story.
It was—
Hiroki might have been on the verge of saying something. But before he could, a silver light flashed out of Mitsuko’s hands. Hiroki realized Mitsuko had managed to reach behind her back with her right hand, but by then the double-bladed diver’s knife (this used to be Megumi Eto’s weapon) was already planted in his right shoulder. Hiroki let out a groan, and although he still held the gun, he staggered back in pain.
Mitsuko instantly got up, ran past Hiroki, and into the woods behind him.
Hiroki quickly looked back and caught a glimpse of her as she vanished into the dark.
He knew if he didn’t kill Mitsuko Souma now then Kayoko Kotohiki might be the next one to fall into her trap. But Hiroki couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he pressed his left hand against his right shoulder where the blood from the knife wound began to soak through his school coat. He stared into the dark where Mitsuko had disappeared.
Of course Mitsuko might have made up that story to stall him. But Hiroki couldn’t buy that. Mitsuko told him the truth. And he’d only heard part of it. Hiroki had been puzzled over how a third-year junior high school girl his age could be so merciless. It turned out she had acquired the psyche of a grown adult a long time ago. A twisted adult’s—no, maybe it was more accurate to say a twisted child’s—psyche?
The blood oozed down his sleeve then down the Colt .45 and began dripping from the tip in a thin line, landing onto a pile of moldy leaves by his feet without a sound.
54
Slightly past 3:30 a.m., Toshinori Oda (Male Student No. 4) left the house he was hiding in. Immediately after he hid there, he surmised it was inside sector E-4. Sakamochi had announced the sector would be forbidden at 5 a.m.
Before he opened the back door to leave, he glanced over at Hirono Shimizu’s body, which he’d dragged into the corner. All he did was glance at the body lying face down. He didn’t feel particularly sorry for her. After all this was a serious competition. You get what you deserve. Hirono Shimizu didn’t even think twice about shooting him the moment she saw him. Of course, he’d been the one who snuck up behind Hirono to choke her.
Although he wasn’t sure where his next resting spot should be, Toshinori finally decided to move east towards the residential area. The area on the map was approximately two hundred square meters. According to the map, the narrow flat land extending outward from the residential area turned into farm fields spotted with houses. Once he was well beyond this zone then all he had to do was hide in one of these houses. After all, he came from a privileged family and lived in what was probably the nicest house in the prefecture (Kazuo Kiriyama’s house was probably the nicest, but Toshinori would never admit this). Hiding in bushes was beneath him. Entering a house was dangerous, given how someone might already be hiding there, but he wasn’t worried. Now he not only had a bulletproof vest (with a certificate of high quality) but the revolver he’d taken from Hirono. Furthermore he was now wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet he’d found inside the house.
A thin cloud appeared in the sky. Its tip was already slowly beginning to cross the low full moon. After checking the chin guard of his superdeluxe helmet, he crossed the yard and made his way down the edge of the narrow field next to it.
He could see the flat land continuing down to the eastern shore. It wasn’t completely flat, though. It went up and down. Most of the area was covered with farms visible by their various moonlit shades. On the left, a hundred meters away, was a house by the base of the northern mountain. There was another house another hundred meters to its right. Further left were two more houses. There were no other houses in the vicinity. Three to four hundred meters away were farms spotted with houses. He couldn’t see very well because his view was blocked by a hill and the woods, but this geography seemed to continue out to the residential area on the island’s east side. The flames from the intense explosion that came immediately after Sakamochi’s midnight announcement were located immediately to the right of the hill. But the flames must have gone out, because now the area sank back into darkness.
On the south side, to his right, were two adjacent houses. But this was—if you assumed the blue dots indicated residential houses—on the borderline between sectors E-4 and F-4. Behind him the northern and southern mountains were connected—or to be more accurate, the base of the northern mountain stretched out like a cliff along the western shore without any houses in sight. According to the map though, there were supposed to be a couple houses up in the mountain.
Unless he’d misread the map, he’d be outside the forbidden zone if he got to the third or fourth house to the east. But if he found out they were dumps, then he might have to consider moving further on. First of all, he couldn’t stand dirty houses, and second of all, he was certain a vulgar place would only attract vulgar people.
Toshinori decided to move over there. He crouched down and walked cautiously along the field ridge of the farm. But he was appalled at the sensation of dirty soil. The dull pain he felt from Hirono Shimizu’s shot in the stomach area of his bulletproof vest only infuriated him more. Why did he have to be thrown into this coarse game and writhe around on the ground with the “vulgar masses”? (This was an expression his father, who ran the largest food company in the eastern part of the prefecture, often used at home, but it was a favorite phrase Toshinori himself used to express his scorn for the “vulgar masses.” Of course, he was well bred, so he could never say it out loud.)
Whether he had a right to claim it or not, it was true he possessed a unique gift, unique even among his talented classmates who ranged from being star players of their teams and clubs to being leading delinquents, or even being queer (this one was dead now—he was a very vulgar queer too). In fact, it was unique to the entire school.