Last time, he was interrupted by the sudden blare of Sakamochi’s voice ringing through the air.

“Good morning everyone.”

Shuya can’t see any speakers, but he realizes they must be scattered all over the island. I wonder how long all of this took? How long has the place been evacuated? Afterward, do they tear it all down or is it left in place? (Did they also map the island during this time?)

Sakamochi tells them it’s six am in a horrible cheerful voice.

“Well then, I will now announce the names of your dead friends.

It’s the “friends” that really makes this sentence. One of the various elements of sadism to this is how things jump back and forth from “everyone is trying to kill you so you have to act first” to “you fuckers murdered your own buddies”.

Yoshio, as we know, is dead. Shuya’s shocked, though, since he last saw him alive, and wonders if Yoshio kept trying to kill people and ended up killed. Or, no, did he remain unconscious, lying there … until head go boom. Poor Shuya feels pretty bad about the idea he might have accidentally killed Yoshio. He’d probably feel a little better here if he actually had decided to kill Yoshio to help out everyone else. Leaving him just raises all sorts of issues – did he cause Yoshio to die? Did Yoshio go on to kill other people before dying, so his act of mercy just hurt others? Uncertainty can be the worst thing.

Sakamochi then tells us that of the boys, Hiroshi, Ryuhei, and Mitsuru are also dead. That was Kazuo’s gang, but Shuya at least doesn’t make that connection upon hearing it. Finally, there’s Kazuhiko, who we just saw suicide.

And then, let’s see, the girls. No. 3 Megumi Eto, No. 4 Sakura Ogawa, No. 5 Izumi Kanai, No. 14 Mayumi Tendo.”

Megumi was just killed by Mitsuko. Sakura is the other suicide. Izumi was grabbed by Kazuo’s gang and killed along with them, and Mayumi was the one killed right outside the school by Yoshio.

Hearing this makes me have second thoughts about the validity of suicide. Any death makes people assume you’ve been killed, so you’re still playing into the government’s hands.

In fact, with the benefit of our multiple POVs, we know that currently there are only two killers moving around, with a third, Kazushi, having only killed someone by accident so far and taking out another killer in the process. I suspect that having done that it’ll be easier for him to kill more deliberately, but even three active killers is probably less than someone would assume are around after hearing a list of ten deaths. It’s only been a few hours, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to have managed to kill more than one other person – maybe one person managed two, but not much beyond that. So that would mean that at least one-fourth of my classmates were playing. And that one-third of the remaining students are. The addition of the suicides and Kazuo’s slaughter make it seem like more people are willing to kill.

He felt dizzy. The faces of his dead classmates drifted through his head and disappeared. They were all killed, which meant that there were killers out there. That’s right, unless some of them had committed suicide.

Shuya’s point of view, though, continues to not really impress. We already know that yes, some committed suicide and even exactly how many and why. The book seems to be using these sections as a sort of recap. It doesn’t have Shuya and Noriko debating if these were suicides or otherwise making their own decisions based on the data, so it’s not using the reader’s knowledge of events to set up some suspense with Shuya’s more limited information.

Instead, he just thinks about how it’s like a funeral procession.

A man in a black suit with a somber know-it-all face addressed them, “Oh, Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nakagawa? You two, that’s right, you’re a little early. But you did just pass by your own graves right here. We carved in the number you two share, No. 15.

I don’t really like these little tangents. The book is strongest when it’s focusing on what’s actually happening.

Sakamochi then compliments them and says how impressed he is. I wonder if he says that to everyone? I know one thing interrogators do is things like pretend everyone else has talked. Of course, in this case it probably is impressive to have lost a fourth of the group just getting to dawn of the first day.

He goes on to give what areas will be forbidden next, followed by the exact time. It seems it isn’t something that happens all at once. Instead different areas are banned at different times. I suppose that actually creates incentive to head toward them when you hear about this, in case there might be anything useful you need to find before you’re locked out of the area, which then is yet another way to encourage students to run into each other.

Still shocked by the number of dead classmates and angered by Sakamochi’s tone of voice, Shuya nonetheless reluctantly pulled out his map.

Shuya is so bland. It’s not even that he’s emotionally numb and just behaving on autopilot, he’s still thinking so clearly that he does it reluctantly. I remember him being Bland McBlandson in the manga as well, but it’s bugging me more here, maybe because he’s also the recap character or because I wasn’t slowed down by commenting all the time.

One of the areas is H8, which was the residential area Megumi was in. That also means most of the houses are already off limits. It probably doesn’t matter much – the one game we know of was over in four days, after all, and assuming that’s representative they probably won’t have enough time for things like food to become an issue.

The others are J2 and F1. It’s not clear how many sections there are total. We know it starts with A because Sakamochi wrote out the top of the map on the board to illustrate the idea. And J is probably the last or second to last because Shuya says it’s at the southern tip. Let’s estimate ten for each. If ten, and if J is the last, then there’s a total of a hundred squares. At the current rate of four a day it’d take a bit less than a month to make the whole island forbidden.

There’s varying numbers, though, because the island is a diamond. J2 is apparently just slightly west of the tip, so there’s probably four at most at the bottom. H8 is on the eastern side of the island, so there’s probably only nine or ten there. H is still pretty close to the bottom, though, so probably most rows have more than ten squares.

The total probably doesn’t matter too much, because I doubt this goes on long enough to have time to ban too many areas. Currently they’re more than in line with the four-day game. Even assuming only five deaths a day now, that’s only six days.

That’s all for the announcements, so now they discuss what they heard. They wonder if the couple suicided, which we already know, and hope that at least they were together, which again, we know.

Then he pulls out his class list and decides to mark down the dead. Unlike our list, he balks at the idea of crossing the names out (it was just too awful) which is a nice bit of personality from him. Instead he puts a check mark next to them.

Shuya felt like he was turning into the man in the black suit from the vision he just had. “Let’s see, you, and also you. And you. What’s your coffin size? It’s a tight fit, but we can offer our popular No. 8 model to you at a specially reduced price.”
Enough.

Yes, please let’s be done with this weird sidetrack.

He notices now that three out of four of Kazuo Kiriyama’s gang are dead. The only one who isn’t is Sho, nicknamed Zuki because who knows, who Shuya says is kind of weird. Still, he’s the only one who got away. And Kazuo Kiriyama himself. This seems to smack of the problem with us already knowing about this all. He already seems to make a distinction between Kazuo and Kazuo’s gang, when normally a person’s gang includes themselves as a member.

He recalled Mitsuru Numai’s smug face when Kazuo Kiriyama left the classroom.

This also seems awkward. We spent our time in Mitsuru’s head, so we know he was indeed pretty smug. But why wouldn’t the other ones feel similarly? Particularly when Kazuo told them where to meet and most of them showed up.

Shuya spends a bit considering this, which like everything involves him thinking of a bunch of possibilities (did they turn on each other? Are Sho and Kazuo together? Something else?) and coming to no conclusion. Then he wonders about the fact he heard gunfire and if that was involved, again with no conclusion.

This is finally interrupted by the sound of rustling. Someone else is there.

Shuya pulled out his knife.

So for the second time, someone talking about how terrible this is and how they don’t want to play has pulled out a knife as soon as they hear someone else.

At least he does try to do more than that. As the rustling gets closer, he and Noriko start to edge away from the sound.

A white cat jumped out of the bushes and landed on the trail. It was scraggly, and its hair was frayed

So basically a textual jump scare. Being a cat, of course, it ignores the fact Shuya’s brandishing a weapon, so we’re spared the expected escalation.

The cat jumped into her hands and nuzzled her feet. Noriko slipped her hands under the cat’s front feet and hugged it towards her.
“Poor kitty. Look how thin it is.” Noriko said as she pursed her lips towards the cat as if to kiss it. The cat responded enthusiastically, purring

They guess its owner must have left it during the evacuation.

So how long have people been gone? They’ve only been on the island a few hours and this cat has obviously been there much longer.

I really hope things wrap up quickly and its owner can come back and feed it. People complain at times about the idea of animals being seen as more important, but it’s really just that animals can’t understand and are so much more reliant on human goodwill, like babies. And even more so with domestic animals. The humans understand why bad things are happening and can at least react to it in some way. I can hope that the human characters win. But the only thing that can happen for the cat is that someone comes back for it.

Let’s move on. Shuya looks up.

There was someone wearing a school coat ten meters away

It’s Tatsumichi. He’s standing frozen in place.

All we know about him already is that he’s a jock who plays handball, and that’s all we’re told here.

So – he doesn’t appear violent, but given the intense paranoia of everyone here, it’s easy to see that changing quickly.

And that’s all! Still no new information to add to the list. This chapter was just partly bringing Shuya up to speed and showing how areas are quickly being removed from play.