Last time, Shuya pulls an ax out of Tatsumichi’s face and turns around to see another student, Kyoichi.

Behind his silver-framed glasses, the class representative’s eyes met Shuya’s. His hair that was always so neatly parted at a 7:3 ratio was now a complete mess. The lenses of his glasses looked smudged, and the eyes behind them were bloodshot and wide open the way Tatsumichi’s eyes were. His face was incredibly pale, as it was inside the classroom, once again resembling a Warhol print. It didn’t look human anymore.

So, looks like we’re going to have a repeat.

Shuya dodges before the gun fires. He thinks he feels the bullet go across the top of his head, but he’s not sure if he imagined it.

But he falls in the process and he’s in an open area with a gun aimed at his chest.

More than protecting Noriko, more than anything, it was real fear that caught him now, welling up inside.

This makes me wonder how thing would go without Noriko. Maybe I was wrong earlier – maybe if push came to shove Shuya would manage to kill and justify killing in self-defense even without another person depending on him. I suspect things would go badly, though.

Someone else, though, suddenly shouts to stop it.

A large figure stood in the shade of the shrine. Buzzed hair, no, the head was practically bald, the prominent scars above his brows, the tough face of a thug. It was Shogo Kawada (Male Student No. 5). He held a pump-action shotgun (a sawed-off Remington M31).

Shogo what are you doing at the shrine? Shuya and I agreed it wasn’t a great position. Or maybe this is some meta thing where it’s such a clearly bad position that you figured few people would go near it while you’d see anyone approaching? I guess if you’ve got a gun your biggest issue is being ambushed, not being cornered.

Anyway all this does is make Kyoichi pick a new target. Shogo goes down on his knees to avoid the bullet and then shoots back.

sparks flew from the muzzle like a flame thrower, and the next moment Kyoichi’s right arm was gone. Bloody mist shot into the air. Kyoichi gazed blankly at the half-sleeve of his school uniform. The rest of his sleeve, from his elbow to the hand that was holding the gun, was now lying on the grass.

Shogo has some really good reflexes. And aim.

Kyoichi is screaming, of course. But he’s got more willpower than I’d expect.

Shuya thought he would fall to his knees. But he didn’t. The representative instead ran for his arm. He pried the gun loose from his right hand with his left hand. Like a one-man baton relay.

I can’t really tell if this is impressive or if he’s too far round the bend to be thinking straight. Let’s split the difference on “impressively crazy monofocus”.

Shogo again yells at him to stop. Kyoichi ignores him and gets the gun loose. Shogo blows him away.

Shuya manages to get up and then gapes at Kyoichi’s body. Meanwhile, Shogo’s approaching.

Shogo stopped behind Kyoichi’s body and said, “Don’t move. Drop your weapon.” Shuya finally realized he was still holding the hatchet.
He did as he was told. The blood-drenched hatchet fell to the ground with a thud.

Shogo so far has been an impressively reasonable person. It’s interesting that in a situation like this, overwhelming force can actually be better at convincing others of your trustworthiness. Two people with knives facing each other are equally matched, so there’s a good chance whoever puts theirs down will die to the other. But someone with a gun is already able to kill the person with the knife, so if they’d rather you put your weapon down, there’s a decent chance they don’t want to kill you.

I remember seeing something along these lines in one of the Drizz’t books, where in dark elf culture disarming someone and then handing their weapons back is a sign you want to be buddies. Those were like the platonic ideal of interesting concepts terribly executed.

Noriko suddenly appears. She’d managed to follow after Shuya, who realizes that this whole affair hasn’t even taken a whole minute yet. Shogo swings the shotgun toward her and Shuya says she’s with him and they don’t need to fight, then tells Noriko Shogo saved him.

Shogo lowers his weapon and Noriko slowly unfreezes and shows she’s not holding anything, then goes down the slope to Shuya.

Shogo’s first thing is to say he didn’t have a choice about killing Kyoichi. This prompts Shuya to realize what happened.

maybe the representative had totally lost control. He might have seen me beat Tatsumichi Oki and gotten the wrong impression. Noriko wasn’t around so it would have been natural.

And if it wasn’t for Shogo, he’d be dead, so he decides to thank Shogo instead for saving him.

Shogo shrugged. “I was just trying to stop Kyoichi, but I guess I ended up doing that as well.”

That’s weirdly modest. Kyoichi only attacks him once he interrupts the fight, so his original goal seems to have always been to save Shuya.

Shuya managed to blurt out, “I’m so glad. I’m so relieved we’ve met someone else who’s normal.”

“Friendly”, Shuya. You want “friendly”. What just transpired was not really “normal”.

Shogo is definitely being nice here. He intervened in a fight and attempted to get both people to stop, at personal risk. However, he was also prepared to fight back if that didn’t work. He first shows extremely good aim in managing to disarm Kyoichi, then kills when that doesn’t work. I’d expect the average kid to try to talk someone down to stick to that goal and get killed rather than immediately going offensive. That’s how people are – someone risking their life to talk someone else down probably psyched themself up into being really invested in that. Shogo’s ability to switch tactics properly is impressive but not normal at all.

(I’m not entirely sure how practical blowing Kyoichi’s arm off was, mind you. He’d have started to bleed out pretty fast, and even assuming immediate first aid, he’d probably have died quickly to infection. All that when the best you could hope for is that he’d be crippled in an unforgiving situation. In fact thinking about it, it seems like the only real purpose it has is for Shuya’s benefit – he sees Shogo give Kyoichi two separate chances to surrender.)

In fact Shuya was surprised. Back in the classroom he thought if anyone was going to play the game it’d be Shogo. But not only was he not playing along, he’d managed to save Shuya’s life.

Moral: it’s wrong to judge a book by its cover, unless it’s a girl book, in which case she really is a murderous whore.

Shogo wants to know what’s up with them being together. Shuya and Noriko have no idea what he means and simultaneously start to ask that, stop midsentence, then try to speak again only to do the same thing. Shogo seems to think this is cute and smiles. Then he tells them they’ve got to find somewhere to hide because hanging out in the open like this is a bad idea.

29 students remaining

Well then.

Although this is two chapters in a row that have someone crazy with fear attacking Shuya, it works pretty well because it has a sense of inevitability to it. Shuya goes for a weapon, triggering the first attack, then his fight with the first person causes a second person to attack him. And if Shogo had intervened with Tatsumichi, Shuya wouldn’t have killed anyone and might have been less understanding of Shogo doing so – plus, getting your arm blown off would be enough that someone with a hatchet could be more easily restrained, while a person with a gun stays nearly as dangerous.

Currently, that means nine boys are dead to five girls. That seems like it’s a plausible state of affairs – I’d expect that on average, the girls are more likely to initially hide while the boys are more likely to attack each other. This kind of thing may explain the fact the winners are nearly split fifty-fifty in gender. Or, the fact that so far half of this has just come down to chance may mean that the split is a sign the events on the island are essentially random, which sure would fit the fact it doesn’t seem like there’s any useful data being found here.

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. Shotgun. Saves Shuya and kills Kyoichi.
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 Niida: 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. Pistol. Killed by Shogo.
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.