Tatsumichi is just standing there. Holding a hatchet.

Shuya reflexively raised his hand to the knife tucked in his belt.
That set it off. Tatsumichi’s hand, the one holding the hatchet, twitched, and then he began running towards them.

Shuya shoves Noriko into the bushes and then tries to use his bag to block the hatchet. The hatchet just tears right through and hits his arm. It also breaks open the water bottle in the process.

Tatsumichi’s face was so wound up the whites of his eyes formed circles around his pupils.

Come to think of it, I believe this is actually the first real example of defensiveness and lack of trust driving a conflict. The suicides were close, but they killed themselves rather than causing a fight. We had a similar setup with Megumi, but it didn’t matter since Mitsuko was already planning to kill her.

Shuya couldn’t believe it. Yes, they were in a dire situation, and Shuya had been for a moment suspicious too, but how could he?

Because you went for a knife. Now, I’m not saying you’re at fault in the larger picture – you did what anyone would do – but at the same time it’s likely that it was your reaction that set him off.

Tatsumichi looks at Noriko for some reason, but doesn’t make any more toward her, just looking right back at Shuya. Shuya manages to block with his still-sheathed knife.

He managed to stop the blow about five centimeters away from his cheek. Shuya could see the blue ripple on the hatchet blade, probably formed when it had been forged.

Ah, that’s the obsessive detail I like.

Shuya then drops the knife in favor of grappling with Tatsumichi, which may not be such a great idea since Tatsumichi is stronger and just forces the hatchet into his head anyway, clipping his ear. Shuya thinks hysterically that hey, it’s just like Shinji and his pierced ear. Then he tries to kick Tatsumichi’s legs out, but the guy manages to fall on him instead, and Shuya stays upright but finds himself running backward.

No one has spoken yet.

Earlier, he was talking about how there was a nasty slope before the field of the shrine. He runs backward over it.

The two of them tumbled down the slope covered with shrubbery. The clear early morning sky and greenery spun around and around. But he still managed to hold onto Tatsumichi’s wrist.

Which serves to be the important part. The fall is chaotic, but while he’s tumbling he’s pushing the thing holding the sharp weapon away from himself.

Indeed, it works a little too well. When they stop, he realizes he’s now grappling with a corpse.

Right above him, the hatchet was lodged into Tatsumichi’s face. Half of the blade stuck out from his face like the top layer of chocolate on a Christmas cake. The hatchet had landed on his forehead, neatly split open the left eyeball (a gooey liquid leaked out with his blood), and a pale blue light reflected off the blade inside his mouth.

So I guess the book does sort of wallow in the violence after all.

Also, some of the blood is dripping onto Shuya. He lets go and pulls himself out from under the body, rolling it over in the process so the horrible wound is still facing him. But that’s not even as bad as the realization he just killed someone. The fact it’s an accident doesn’t really let him off, he feels – he was trying to keep the blade away from himself by twisting it toward Tatsumichi, which is why it ended up going through his face.

But Shuya gulped and held back the urge to vomit. He lifted his head and looked up at the slope he’d just tumbled down. He couldn’t see beyond the shrubbery covering the slope. He’d left Noriko alone. That’s right, the important thing now was to protect Noriko.

The Noriko thing is really the only interesting characterization Shuya has, and it does elevate him from his book counterpart who’s just Bland Jesus to my recollection. He’s using Noriko as a buffer. Without her, I think either he’d let himself be killed because he’d freeze up at the idea of hurting another person to protect himself, or he’d kill in self-defense and then freeze up in self-loathing afterward and be taken out by the next person. He’s more easily able to believe a third party deserves his help and that indirectly justifies protecting himself. Although I still think a lot of his exact motivation stems from his dead friend, I think that even without that, he’d have latched onto someone else as a required justification for surviving this. It’d have probably been one of his friends instead – if he was still alone by this point, he’d be motivated by the hope of finding and helping one of them.

He thinks he’s got to get back to Noriko, but first, he also can’t leave the body in this shape. Remember his remorse for not removing the knife from Fumiyo’s face? He’s going to try to pull the hatchet out.

Tatsumichi’s face was stuck to it though as it came up with the hatchet. The hatchet was lodged in so deeply, it was stuck.
Shuya took a deep breath. Oh God.

Oh god.

This whole book seems much less exploitative and much more condemning of the whole thing than the more voyeuristic manga. Even the very detailed bits are tightly focused on how awful everything is.

But anyway, the reminder of religion sends Shuya into a minispiral of shattered faith over how what good is God doing anyone? It’s not just them. Ms. Anno, he reminds us, the woman running their orphanage, was a devout Christian and God didn’t protect her from being raped either.

Yet this serves to have no impact on his obsession about proper treatment of the body. He just gets back to the issue at hand. This makes sense to me – nothing about it’s really rational, and it probably seems especially important in a situation where there’s nothing else you can do.

he pulled on the hatchet, which made a horrible spurting sound as blood sprayed out of Tatsumichi’s face, and the hatchet came loose.
He felt as if he were in a nightmare. Cracked in the middle, Tatsumichi’s head was now asymmetrical. It looked too unreal. It looked like a plastic fake. Shuya realized for the first time in his life how malleable and fragile the human body was.
He gave up trying to close Tatsumichi’s eyes. His left eyeball and eyelid was split, the eyelid shriveled and swollen so badly it couldn’t be shut.

Does the Battle Royale fandom have a similar interest in playing the games as the Hunger Games fandom? The only big RP I heard of sounded pretty grim. I’m also starting to see why the American remake of this has been stuck in development hell forever – though surprised that given the usual reverence for source material they didn’t just rewrite it into something flashy and traditional values immediately.

With that done he starts to look around for a way back to Noriko.

there was a boy wearing glasses and a school coat in the middle of the field

Oh.

the male class representative, Kyoichi Motobuchi.
And this representative was holding a pistol.

Oh.

30 students remaining

1 Yoshio Akamatsu: “the biggest kid in the class, the timid type, the kind of kid who’d always end up the target of pranks and insults.” Bowgun weapon, kills Mayumi, killed by Kazushi.
2 Keita Iijima
3 Tatsumichi Oki: jock, handball. Hatchet. Runs into Shuya and Noriko, attacks when Shuya reaches for a weapon and accidentally killed in the resulting fight.
4 Toshinori Oda
5 Shogo Kawada: Looks older than the rest, has facial hair already, transferred in, scarred.
6 Kazuo Kiriyama: Awesome. A sociopath who decides to play the game by flipping a coin. Current kill count: 4.
7 Yoshitoki Kuninobu: Shuya’s friend since childhood, they grew up in the orphanage together. Killed for threatening Sakamochi.
8 Yoji Kuramoto: Seen briefly by Mitsuru.
9 Hiroshi Kuronaga: Part of Kazou’s gang. Killed by Kazuo.
10 Ryuhei Sasagawa: Delinquent. Part of Kazou’s gang. Bullied Yoshio. Had a younger brother. Killed by Kazuo.
11 Hiroki Sugimura: Tall and knows martial arts. Seems tough but is actually shy, likes Chinese poetry. Shuya’s friend.
12 Yutaka Seto: Class clown.
13 Yuichiro Takiguchi
14 Sho Tsukioka: Part of Kazou’s gang. Escaped Kazuo’s massacre.
15 Shuya Nanahara: Main character? Minor but utterly harmless teenage rebelliousness. Popular with the girls.
16 Kazushi Nüda: jock, soccer. Killed Yoshio by accident.
17 Mitsuru Numai: Delinquent. Part of Kazou’s gang, pistol weapon, tried to keep Ryuhei from bullying Yoshio, believed himself Kazuo’s adviser. Killed by Kazuo.
18 Tadakatsu Hatagami: jock, Shuya’s friend when they were younger. ‘Shuya had started playing electric guitar, which was considered an “unpatriotic” activity. Tadakatsu’s mother was uptight about that sort of thing.”
19 Shinji Mimura: Shuya’s current friend. ‘short hair and wore an intricately designed ring on his left ear’, highly athletic, knows a lot of information, particularly about the outside world. Extremely cool under pressure.
20 Kyoichi Motobuchi: Class representative, dad’s a government official. Sees Shuya’s fight with Tatsumichi.
21 Kazuhiko Yamamoto: Sakura’s boyfriend. Gun. Commits suicide.
Females
1 Mizuho Inada: A friend of Megumi’s.
2 Yukie Utsumi: class representative, braided hair, Haruka’s volleyball teammate. The first one to speak after their abduction. Noriko’s friend. Not playing, joined up with Haruka, sees Kazuhiko and Sakura’s suicide.
3 Megumi Eto: Friends with Mizuho and Kaori. Had a crush on Shuya. Diving knife. Killed by Mitsuko.
4 Sakura Ogawa: Kazuhiko’s girlfriend. When she was young, she saw her father killed by the government. Commits suicide.
5 Izumi Kanai: ‘the preppy whose father was a town representative’. Killed by Kazuo.
6 Yukiko Kitano
7 Yumiko Kusaka
8 Kayoko Kotohiki
9 Yuko Sakaki
10 Hirono Shimizu: Part of Mitsuko’s group. Tormented Megumi.
11 Mitsuko Souma: Delinquent group leader. “Even though Mitsuko had the gorgeous looks of a pop idol, she always wore a strange, listless expression on her face.” Has a sickle and a diving knife. Killed Megumi.
12 Haruka Tanizawa: Yukie’s volleyball teammate, exceptionally tall. Not playing, joined up with Yuki.
13 Takako Chigusa
14 Mayumi Tendo: The first death in the game, killed outside the school.
15 Noriko Nakagawa: She has a crush on Shuya he’s unaware of and Yoshitoki has a crush on her she may be unaware of. She’s nice and likes literature. Suffering a leg injury.
16 Yuka Nakagawa: Yoshitoki says she’s fat. Class clown.
17 Satomi Noda : “model student who wore wire-rimmed glasses which suited her calm, intelligent face”
18 Fumiyo Fujiyoshi: Killed for whispering to Yukie. “She was the nurse’s aide. She was quiet but very caring.”
19 Chisato Matsui: always quiet and withdrawn
20 Kaori Minami: A friend of Megumi’s.
21 Yoshimi Yahagi: Part of Mitsuko’s group.