Back to the main characters.

Shogo has decided to take care of Noriko’s leg wound. First, he scooped some water out of the nearest filthy river, then he chewed leaves and stuffed those in.

No, wait, actually he’s pouring whiskey on it and then stitching it closed like he isn’t insane. My mistake.

While there’s no way Collins didn’t know of Battle Royale, I believe her claims she never read it more by the chapter.

Furthermore, Shogo boiled water, which he used for sterilizing the needle and thread. He got the charcoal for the fire and the rest of the stuff at the same supply store. I’d like to see Shogo vs Zombie Apocalypse, he really knows what he’s doing.

They don’t have any way of numbing the wound, unfortunately, and either Shogo didn’t want to risk more blood loss or the alcohol is too valuable to get her drunk. Noriko manages to keep quiet, though. She really fades into the background, but I like what I see of her.

They finish up and wrap sterilized bandannas around her wound.

He added with a note of concern, “I hope the wound hasn’t been infected.”

A good point, Shogo! Pouring alcohol on injuries, while a good idea, is by no means perfect.

Then Shogo pulls out a cigarette (Wild Seven, Shuya’s nickname) because he doesn’t expect to live long enough for it to matter or his practical doctoring knowledge doesn’t extend to cancer.

Shuya then thinks about how he was a baseball star again. I don’t care, Shuya. And about how his friend’s a star. Shuya, really, it doens’t matter.

Then Shogo pulls out some painkillers and gives Noriko them. Why not at the start? It’d take a while to kick in anyway and at least that way maybe she could get some placebo effect. They’re pretty crappy, actually, just asprin, but better than nothing. He actually got that out of the store’s first aid kit, I guess in Japan actually finding painkillers in a store is harder?

Shuya wants to know how Shogo is so awesome at everything. Shogo claims his dad is was a doctor, and specifically a doctor at a clinic in a slum area. He had to play nurse because they didn’t have funds to hire anyone.

Then Shuya asks why he tried to open the window back when they were being gassed on the bus.

“So you saw me? You should have lent me a hand.”

I really like Shogo. Shuya asks how he knew and he said that the gas did have a slight smell.

if you’ve smelled it once you’d recognize it.”

The kids are not quick on the uptake and ask how that could happen. He starts to say well, he’s got this uncle and his uncle worked at a lab where there were chemicals for the state

“Come on,” Shuya interrupted him.
Shogo grimaced and said, “If I have to, I’ll explain it later.

He says that all that mattered is he blew it, presumably by not getting the window open. I’m not sure that’d really have done much when they were already pretty drugged. Then again, knocking people out without accidentally killing a few is pretty tricky, so the gas may have been the very minimum dosage necessary and fresh air would have thrown all the calculations off.

Shuya isn’t too satisfied with Shogo being mysterious but he agrees that they should focus on not dying right now.

Shuya says they’re planning on trying to escape.

Shuya continued. “How hard do you think it’ll be?”
Shogo shook his head. “The question is whether it’s possible at all.

Being a fan of the Socratic method, he asks that if they did manage it, what would happen next?

Shuya says that the collars would give them away. And there’s no way to get to the school to disable the collars. But they could have a chance if they can take Sakamochi hostage! That honestly seems the most remote option to me. A guy who makes it a point to terrorize the students right before giving them weapons yet is still alive is a guy who isn’t in the habit of venturing out afterward.

Shogo raised his brow. “And?”

Shuya obligingly continues his pipe dream about how also they find a boat and then they take Sakamochi with them and-

Even a he was saying it, Shuya knew his plan was hopeless.

So I guess that’s Shogo’s way of dealing with things. Rather than argue they should do it his way, he listens to Shuya’s plan until even Shuya can hear it collapsing.

Then he points out that also? No boats.

You don’t know that! Shuya says.

No seriously, Shogo says, he was at the harbor. There aren’t even broken ones left.

Well, they could get on a guard ship! They just need Sakamochi.

Still doesn’t work, Shogo says. There are tons of soldiers protecting him, and if they did succeed they’d just have their heads blown off by the collars, and also Sakamochi’s just some flunky, the government isn’t going to let kids escape just because of him. (It’d be interesting if this wasn’t true and he’s actually the kid of the current guy or someone else who’s super important, slumming around here because he just really loves watching kids suffer. That’s the sort of mistake I’d expect a dictatorship to make. So far, they’ve been surprisingly competent.)

Shuya’s plan demolished, Shogo asks after Noriko’s. She says she doesn’t have one in particular, but her idea is to gather everyone they can. The more people, the more likely one of them will figure out the solution. Noriko is the best social monkey, that’s totally how you’re supposed to do things.

In fact, they don’t even need to worry so much about the trust issue. If you can get a critical mass of people, you’ll tip the scale and it’ll no longer be advantageous to try to kill other people, at which point you don’t need to rely on trust to keep things from breaking out into violence.

That last part is what no one ever gets in these situations. It’s like how in Dangan Ronpa no one groks that the solution is to stay in a group. And whenever there’s one of those body snatcher or infiltrator plots, everyone freaks out and doesn’t want to be near anyone else, instead of realizing that if there’s only one traitor/braineating shapeshifter/whatever, and you’re in a group of thirty, you’re safe.

I can think of all of one story that had kids reacting halfway sanely to all this, where they did such advanced reasoning as “if only one of us has been replaced, we should just vote on what we think is the best course of action”. They also figured out the guy who spent most of his time scouting couldn’t be the shapeshifter because the shapeshifter was supposed to be influencing the group. I forget what it was called, it was one of those slim book kids series, where there were these three magic users and different levels of planets where magic got stronger the farther up you went. Whatever they were, I can’t say how they’d hold up now but I certainly liked them at the time.

Anyway, Shogo is unimpressed by this plan as well.

Shuya replied enthusiastically, “There’s Shinji Mimura. Then there’s Hiroki Sugimura. Let’s see, as far as the girls go, there’s our class representative, Yukie Utsumi. Shinji is really amazing. He knows a lot. He knows so many different things. He’s good with machines too. He’d come up with something.”

The fact Shinji heads the list and then Shuya derails into just singing the guy’s praises is what happens every time Shuya thinks about Shinji.

Ah well. Hooking up with Yukie would actually be a great idea, because she seems to be gathering people with her as well. She was with someone else last we saw her and probably meant to join up with the couple if they hadn’t suicided first.

Shogo thinks Shinji is an interesting choice and says he saw him and he had a gun. Shuya doesn’t get why Shogo didn’t go talk to him, and when Shogo doesn’t see why, Shuya points out that actually, Shinji did a lot of stuff to flag himself as generally trustworthy – he got Noriko back to her seat so she wouldn’t die and then tried to talk them into postponing the games.

Shogo shook his head. “You expect me to trust him on account of those acts? No way. Besides, he might have been trying to con everyone into believing he was a trustworthy guy. It’d suit him fine if he planned on getting rid of everyone later.”

That really seems excessive. Shogo was willing to take enough of a risk to pop out at get in the middle of the Kyoichi/Shuya fight. But this would seem to suggest a concern – the main difference there was that Kyoichi was really out of it and Shuya didn’t have a gun himself. Shinji, on the other hand, seems to have things together. So it may be Shogo is only willing to show himself to others when he has the overwhelming advantage.

Shogo defends himself by saying that he doesn’t know the guy and you’re supposed to be suspicious of everyone.

And you have to be all the more suspicious of someone who’s smart.

Which suggests that he really doesn’t want to be near equals. Idealistic Shuya is a safe option for him.

He then points out what’s actually a good reason, but clearly wasn’t much of a factor when he only brings it up last: Shinji had no reason to trust him either and likely would have rejected any offer to join up.

Shuya decides not to keep arguing. What’s important is that he knows Shinji’s trustworthy and Shinji will know him so they can all form one big government-fighting group. Let’s go to where he was!

Shogo shook his head and said, “If Shinji is so smart then do you think he’d stay where I saw him?”

And so the other half of the problem – they ran away because they were afraid of each other, and now they have no idea where anyone else is.

Noriko wonders if there’s any way of contacting people.

If we were trying to reach a general, unspecified number of people, well maybe, but contacting a particular party or person would be difficult.”

Good thing that’s about to happen!

Shogo claims to have some sort of plan, though. Not a plan for the contacting of people, though.

Shogo said, “There might be a way.” Then he continued, “On one condition, though.”
“What’s that?”
Shogo shook his head slightly and then brought his cigarette closer to his lips. “We have to be the only survivors.”

Ominous! After all, remember what he said – you should only need to kill a couple people, all things considered. If being in a group can keep him alive until the end – really, just having people to be on watch while you rest and spending your time avoiding others would do most of it – then he just has to kill them and he wins.

Shuya doesn’t understand. Or doesn’t want to.

“Meaning the three of us have to be the only ones alive. The others would have to be dead.”

Noriko is rightly horrified. That’s basically the exact same thing as the existing games, it just has three winners rather than one.

Shogo doesn’t see the issue, isn’t that the same as Shuya’s escape plan?

“No,” Shuya intervened. “That’s not what Noriko’s saying. She’s asking you whether our survival comes at the cost of everyone else.

Exactly! That’s the problem.

Shog waves this off and says that he doesn’t actually mean his plan requires only three survivors. If they can get more people to join, then that’s fine. But everyone not in their group has to die – and he doesn’t seem to think it’s likely they’ll get much in the way of other people.

“If that’s the case,” Shuya said enthusiastically, “We could inform everyone. If you have the most reliable plan then no one will oppose it. Then everyone would be saved? Right?”

Although earlier Shuya was considering that he didn’t think he could manage a plan within the time limit if no one else died, he really doesn’t seem to be willing to think that Shogo’s plan is probably relying on people continuing to kill each other for a while. Maybe he just really doesn’t want to.

Shogo doesn’t say this, though. He says they might be attacked before they explain anything.

“Unless you’re actively out to kill people, then, relatively speaking that is, the smartest way to survive would be to stay put and hide. That’s the reason why,” Shogo pointed to his collar, “the government is using this to force us to move. That’s one of the basic tenets of this game. Don’t forget that. You move around aimlessly, and you’re a walking target for someone lurking in the shadows.

That too. The addition of guns is the main issue, it means that it’s easy for someone to take a potshot any time you’re visible.

But then he goes on to more questionable points.

if we end up as fugitives? We’ll be chased by the government, and the probability that we’ll get killed in the end is extremely high. I doubt anyone would submit to a plan like that.

The probability that they’ll die playing this game is currently 28/29. And that’s assuming an even playing field, but in a situation like this, you’ll have a few people who are more likely to survive and most people with even worse odds. That’s assuming there even is a winner – not having magic tech around, it’s easy for a kid to kill their opponent and then die of their injuries.

In other words, the nice thing about their chances convincing people to escape is it’s not actually much of a risk. Even if the probability of the government killing them eventually manages to be even higher than their probability of dying now, in both cases death is virtually certain but at least the run-away option means not dying right now.

That’s before we even consider that Sakamochi deliberately fucked with them for the sake of it, ensuring that they’d easily unite against a common enemy if they had half a chance. Faced with the option of dying to each other or dying to the government, people would rather go down killing sadistic monsters than crying classmates.

Really, the only thing that’d screw up the plan to get everyone together is if they figure the government will just blow their heads off early if it looks like they’re organizing. No one would be turning down the plan on the basis that if they escape they’ll still be in danger. They can’t get in any more danger than they currently are.

Of course, it’s hard to say if Shogo’s pulling up poor arguments because he’s manipulative for evil purposes or because he gives more weight to some arguments than Shuya and Noriko do, so he needs extra arguments to convince them.

Then there’s another iteration of Shuya not wanting to believe people could be bad and Shogo saying some people are bad.

then we’re going to let most of our classmates, the good ones, just die. That’s what this means, right?”

Yes. Don’t lose sight of that, Shuya. Sometimes you’ll be backed into a corner and you really can’t help people who deserve better. You aren’t a bad person for it, but you will be one if you forget that and consider it acceptable.

Shuya then brings up the issue of the twenty-four hour time limit. That’d screw up the plan, right?

Shogo explains, nicely, that it’s just really not something they should worry about.

He does say if everyone can really get along and agree to my plan then they’re totally welcome. and it sounds sincere enough, though it could be because it’s an easy way of placating Shuya. But he hasn’t even explained the plan yet, so it may have no connection to the number of people, just that it’s a bad idea to try while there are still people who might kill you running around.

Then he gives us numbers! Glorious numbers.

Apparently only 0.5% of the national Programs have ended due to time expiration.”

That’s interesting. I mean, it’s certainly unlikely that everyone regularly refuses to play and then waits to die. But this means that even as the herd thins, people manage to keep encountering each other. Another point against the banned area thing being truly random, there should be a decent number of kids who just hunker down. Chance alone likely wouldn’t be enough to ensure they’re consistently forced to move and expose themselves. Even switching to deliberate right at the end might not be enough, you’d want to be pushing them around and keeping them moving the entire time to maximize the chance that by the end it’s mostly people actively looking for each other.

Shuya is more interesting in what he means by “apparently” and how he knows any of this. Well, don’t they release the results about number of deaths and causes? Plus they show the winner. If there’s no winner you know it must have ended in explosions.

Shogo says hey, all this chatter and no one wants to know what his plan is? I just assumed everyone was ignoring that because he was obviously going to be cagey or else he’d have explained it without prompting. Shuya asks and he’s cagey and refuses to explain it. He’s just messing with Shuya at this point.

“What do you mean, ‘not yet’? Then when do you plan on telling us?”
“I suppose when it’s just the three of us left. Let me just tell you one thing, though. My plan won’t work if anyone tries to intervene. So my plan can’t start until we’re the only ones left.”

Not suspicious at all.

Shogo deals with this much more directly. He says that yeah, he could just plan to murder them both when it’s down to that.

Shuya denies this, because Shuya is going to be even more trusting now that there’s someone to take up the cynic role. But whatever friendship speech he was readying is cut off because for the second time today, they can hear someone talking.

It was very distant, but he could tell it was electronically distorted.

Yumiko and Yukiko have decided to gamble on people being basically good.