Back with the main group, Noriko’s gotten even worse.

Shogo’s medicine didn’t seem to be having much effect.

It’s like cold medicine isn’t the cure for a terrible infection.

Shuya starts arguing they need to move her again. Shogo says she’s probably got septicemia so getting her warm won’t do any good.

“According to the map, there’s a medical clinic on the island. We might be able to find some better medicine for her there, right? It’s way north of the residential area, and it’s not in any of the forbidden zones.”

It’s also more than a kilometer away, which Shogo says is way too far to go during daylight. He doesn’t add that something like that sounds like it’d be a magnet to the other players, as I’d expect. Perhaps it isn’t? So far I haven’t seen might concern about getting into a fight and surviving but being injured in the process. All anyone has room to worry about is being killed, I guess.

Shuya doesn’t accept this. What if that area becomes a forbidden zone?” Well technically, you do always get at least an hour’s warning about that. But yeah, you wouldn’t be able to set up shop there in that case. Still, it seems a weaker argument than the fact Noriko’s extremely sick already and still getting worse.

Shogo ignores this.

“I-I won’t say you’re trying to get us killed. But why are you so afraid of taking any risks? Your life that precious?”

Shogo doesn’t bother replying to this either. Instead Noriko says they shouldn’t fight. Shuya doesn’t agree, though – he’ll go with Noriko and Shogo can stay here.

You can forget about our deal. You’re on your own.”

Not very diplomatic, Shuya. It’d have been much better to say that you guys could hook up again later now that you know you can trust each other to not kill on sight. (In fact, you could even plan it – say you’ll return to here, and if Shogo has to move, he should draw an arrow pointing in the opposite direction to tell you where to find him.)

But Shuya’s pretty mad. It’s clear he feels Shogo is actively opposing helping Noriko rather than just saying he won’t risk it himself.

Luckily for them all, Shogo does give in to the ultimatum, since as he says, he’s the only one who even knows what medicines to use.

It’s not clear what his motivation here is exactly. I kind of suspect he’s given up on Noriko, assuming she’ll die no matter what he does, but he’s still willing to try to keep Shuya alive, so he’ll follow when Shuya insists on going.

Then POV switch for the next chapter!

Although over half an hour had passed since she’d been shot in the back three times and though she’d lost a large quantity of blood from the arrow wound in her leg, Takako Chigusa was still alive.

Indeed, as the count indicated, she didn’t die. Yet.

She’s pretty far gone, sort of dreaming of her family. She’s picturing all of them waving goodbye to her and how they’re all sad, including their dog. She tells her little sister to look after everyone. Then she sees her best friend.

Time to say goodbye to you too, Kahoru. That’s right. You were the one who said that nothing, not even hell, could scare you as long as you gave it your best shot. That’s right, I’m not afraid. But…it’s still kinda hard, dying alone like this….

Next she sees her crush, an older student who’s already got a girlfriend. This is a memory rather than a more dreamlike hallucination. She tells him his girlfriend is beautiful and they make a great couple.

“Yeah?” he lifted his face and smiled. “You’re prettier than her.”
Takako smiled, but felt a little odd. She was happy to hear him praise her looks for the first time…but the fact he could tell another girl she was prettier also indicated how strong his relationship with his girlfriend was.

Is that how it works in Japan?

Then she remembers Hiroki back when they were kids and he was a shrimp. He was crying because someone took his comic book, so she tells him boys aren’t supposed to cry and that they should go see her dog’s puppies instead, which does seem like the way third graders would talk.

Once, when she seemed preoccupied, Hiroki asked her, “What’s wrong, Takako? Something wrong?”
Takako thought about it and then said what was on her mind. “Hey, Hiroki, what would you do if someone said they liked you?”
“Hmm. I don’t know, since it’s never happened to me.”
“…don’t you have a crush on someone?”
“Hmm. Nope. Not at this moment.”
Takako then thought, so I’m not even in the running?
Whatever. She continued, “Oh, really. Well you should find someone you can confess to.”
“I’m too chicken. I don’t think so.”

And so their whole relationship was like that. She thinks they always kind of liked each other, although it wasn’t the same sort of thing as she felt for her other crush.

Then she imagines him crying again, and she opens her eyes to see he’s really there.

Hiroki Sugimura was looking down at her in the soft afternoon light. Beyond Hiroki she saw the treetops, and in between them fragments of the blue sky formed complex patterns like those in a Rorschach Test.
The first thing she realized was that Hiroki wasn’t crying.

He asks who did this, and she warns him about Mitsuko. He says he was waiting for her outside the school, but she ran away too fast.

Oh no, Takako thought. So it was true. After she ran away from the school into the woods she thought she’d heard a distant voice. But she was so frantic she thought it was just her imagination—and if it wasn’t, then it meant there was someone—so she continued running at full speed.
Oh—
Hiroki had waited for her. Just as she’d suspected, he’d been waiting for her, risking his life. And when he said, “I managed,” he probably meant that he’d been looking for her all this time.

Aw.

Also, yet again are they brought low by fearing each other.

She says thanks.

then an odd question occurred to her and she blurted it out, “Do you have a crush on someone?”
Hiroki’s brows moved and then he gently said, “I do.”
“Don’t say it’s me.”

He says no, but not who.

She asks him to hold onto her because she thinks it’ll be over soon, and she tells him he has to survive. Then she realizes she can still talk, so she adds

“You’ve become quite a stud.”
Hiroki said, “And…you’re the most stylin’ girl in the world.”

And that’s all she can manage to say. She’s happy that she doesn’t have to die alone, though.

After she dies, Hiroki starts to cry.

23 students remaining

Then back to the main group again for the fortieth chapter. Shuya has apparently been carrying Noriko the whole way while Shogo heads the group and carries all their stuff. It’s been really slow going. He’s also doing the same pebbles-into-bushes trick of Takako’s, which surprises me considering it doesn’t seem to work well.

Currently, they’re about two thirds of the way, so still plenty left to go.

Shuya feels like he might have screwed up somehow, so he asks if the map really does say there’s a clinic, as if Shogo would have gone along with this just to mess with him.

Anyway, Shogo says that yeah, it definitely is, and adds that he really should have thought to get more medicine when he first explored the island.

They hear gunshots. One sounds louder than the other, so two different guns. Two people have shooting at each other.

Now that he knew they were safe, Shuya felt relieved, but he kept on biting his lip.
Whoever they were, his classmates were trying to kill each other again. In fact, it was happening right near them. And he was just trying to stay quiet, waiting for it to end.

Shogo preempts this by telling him not to intervene.

That’s right. His priority was to take Noriko to the medical facility. If they got mixed up with someone else’s fight they’d end up risking their own lives.

Noriko disagrees! She tells him they have to go see and he realizes that no, she’s the one who’s right.

What if someone who didn’t want to participate, in other words, someone innocent, was about to get killed right now? In fact that could be the case with both parties exchanging bullets right now.

The gunshots end. It’s near where Yukiko and Yumiko died, but there’s no machinegun sounds, so it’s not the same person – or, he’s out of the ammunition for that one, at least. Also, Shuya realizes, even though it probably isn’t their killer, the guy might show up when he hears the shots.

Shuya makes up his mind. He puts Noriko down and starts toward the sound. Oh, Shuya. You are so nice and yet so stupid.

“H-hey…”
He heard Shogo, but he was already on his way.

Shogo is presumably stammering because he’s too flabbergasted that this is actually happening to speak properly.

Hirono Shimizu (Female Student No. 10) was crouched against the wall in front of the building. Hirono was looking beyond the yard at what appeared to be a shack for farm equipment right beside the entrance road. He could make out the figure of a girl beside the entrance. The girl looked up, and that was when he realized it was Kaori Minami (Female Student No. 20). And both of them were holding guns. They were less than fifteen meters apart from each other.
He had no idea how they ended up shooting at each other. It was possible one of them was out to get the other girl, but Shuya could tell this wasn’t the case. They probably stumbled into each other, and because neither of them could trust the other, they ended up shooting at each other….

Shuya admits he has no real evidence for this beyond thinking girls are nicer people. Personally, it seems plausible enough for any of the kids to end up in that kind of situation – it does seem this is pretty much what happened to him when he ran across Tatsumichi, and may have also been behind Kyoichi’s attack.

He watches the two shoot at each other for another few seconds. Kaori doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing, while Hirono seems competent, but it’s Hirono who’s bleeding.

Kaori Minami loved pop idols, so she’d often talk about her favorite stars with her friends, or share a photo taken in person that thrilled her to no end. Then there was Hirono Shimizu, who hung out with Mitsuko Souma, so there was something jaded about her. But they were both third-year students in junior high, they both had charming qualities.

I wonder if one of the girls would have a different standpoint on this? The girls all seem to be sure Mitsuko’s gang is bad news, while the boys seem a lot less concerned.

So, Shuya fires into the air and then yells at them to stop it. I’m pretty sure he does this without having any cover.

Shuya continued, “Stop it! I’m with Noriko Nakagawa!” He thought it was best not to mention Shogo’sname for now. “You can trust me!”
As he said this, he realized how lame his words sounded.

…yeah, pretty much.

The two girls both gape at him. Hirono recovers quicker and turns back to Kaori, who’s shifted so that she’s partway out of cover.

What happened next reminded him of a traffic accident he once witnessed. It happened on an autumn evening before he turned eleven. Maybe the driver had fallen asleep or something. His truck lost control, rammed through the guardrail, rode up onto the sidewalk, and hit a young girl walking home from school, just like Shuya, who was behind her. It was unbelievable but her backpack came off her shoulders and flew into the air, tracing a different trajectory from the girl’s body. The girl landed on the sidewalk before the backpack did, falling on her shoulder. Obstructed by the wayside concrete wall she slid along the edge of the sidewalk and then stopped still. Blood came flowing out, leaving a trail on the bottom edge of the concrete wall over one meter long.
It all looked like—from the time the truck swung off the road and crashed into the girl—as if it was happening in slow motion. Anyone there could tell what was going to happen, but there was nothing anyone could do. That’s what it felt like.
Hirono aimed and fired at Kaori, who’d completely let her guard down. Two shots in a row. The first one hit Kaori in the shoulder, making her spin halfway to the right. The second shot hit her in the head. Shuya saw a part of her head—from the top down to her left temple—explode.

And Hirono takes another look at Shuya and then bolts.

Shuya goes to Kaori. She’s quite dead. Shuya starts to have another breakdown about how this shouldn’t be happening. Shogo shows up to collect Kaori’s stuff. He also shuts her eyes, probably just to avoid Shuya blowing up at him in five minutes when this all sinks in, and tells Shuya they’ve got to get going.

22 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. Shotgun. Saves Shuya and kills Kyoichi. Doctor skills.
6 Kazuo Kiriyama: Awesome. A sociopath who decides to play the game by flipping a coin. Possesses several guns. Kill count: 6.
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. Yoshimi’s boyfriend, attacks her. Killed by Mitsuko.
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. Close to Takako. Has a device that shows him when someone with a collar nearby, also armed with a staff. Searching for two girls, one of which was Takako.
12 Yutaka Seto: Class clown. Best friends with Shinji, joined up with him. Fork weapon. Had a crush on Izumi. Decides to take on the government.
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. Killed Tatsumichi. Attempted to stop Hirono and Kaori’s shootout, failed.
16 Kazushi Niida: jock, soccer. Killed Yoshio by accident. Had a crush on Takako, tries to get her to stay with him and assaults her. Asserts he’s chosen to play. Killed by Takako.
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. Best friends with Yutaka, joined up with him. Pistol weapon. Uncle probably part of the rebellion. Decides to take on the government.
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: Yumiko’s friend. Dart and dartboard. Crush on Shuya. Killed by Kazuo.
7 Yumiko Kusaka: Yukiko’s friend. Hand grenades. Crush on Shuya she’s hiding. Uses a megaphone to try to talk to the rest of their class and convince them to stop killing and join up with each other. Killed by Kazuo.
8 Kayoko Kotohiki
9 Yuko Sakaki: Sees Shuya kill Tatsumichi and runs away unnoticed.
10 Hirono Shimizu: Part of Mitsuko’s group. Tormented Megumi. Killed Kaori in a shootout, left Shuya alone.
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 two knives, a pistol and a bowgun. Seems to have resented Takako. Kill count: 4. Hiroko knows she murdered Takako.
12 Haruka Tanizawa: Yukie’s volleyball teammate, exceptionally tall. Not playing, joined up with Yuki.
13 Takako Chigusa: Close to Hiroki. Track star. Ice pick weapon. Rebuffs Kazushi and is attacked by him. Kills Kazushi. Shot by Mitsuko. Found by Hiroko shortly before she dies, tells him Mitsuko killed her.
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. Currently severely ill.
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. Yukie asks her to join her group, but she was too afraid to do so. Pistol. Sees Hiroki briefly. Cracking under the stress of the games.Killed by Hirono.
21 Yoshimi Yahagi: Part of Mitsuko’s group. Colt weapon. In love with Yoji. Killed by Mitsuko.