Last time, the class couple met up.

Megumi Eto (Female Student No. 3) sat in the dark, hugging her knees while her small body shook violently. She was inside a house slightly removed from the island’s most populated area on the eastern shore. The lights might have worked, but Megumi didn’t dare try them.

She’s hiding under a battered kitchen table. Her watch doesn’t light up, so she has to estimate the time. She thinks it’s 4 am.

The ability to get sleep seems much more desperate in this. There’s just so many more people in such a small area, and worse, there’s periodic rule updates that you need to keep track of. They’re released in the middle of the night too, so they don’t have a day to get their bearings and find somewhere to hunker down.

She says that about an hour ago, she heard a sound like fire crackers. So she’s not just scared by the idea of the games, she knows that people are playing already.

She sees a kettle in the moonlight.

She was aware the government probably relocated the island’s residents to some temporary housing units, but the remaining traces of someone’s life in this house was unnatural and creepy.

As well it should be. I really wonder what happened to these people – presumably they’re not just dead, if for no better reason than that the government probably kills too many people already to also wipe out these villages, but at the least, they were removed very quickly and without the time to pack much stuff. And there may have been deaths – someone complained, someone didn’t move fast enough, someone tried to take more than they were allowed.

And of course it’s creepy on an irrational level. It’s making her think of a story about a ship whose crew vanishes, leaving behind their meals and possessions in mid-use and she’s working herself into a panic. Humans are social so the environmental cues we pay most attention to are if it looks like something happened to other humans. Why are they gone? Did something kill them, or is there something else bad here that they knew about and you don’t? Knowing the answer doesn’t quiet the instinctive panic. Humans can’t survive on their own, so even if you think you could survive whatever’s going on, if there’s no one else, you’re doomed too.

Megumi doesn’t even know where she is. She just ran as fast as she could and hit a bunch of buildings. She pauses to reason just long enough to decide that she’s one of the first out and there are more houses than there even are students, so she should just lock herself in one to be safe.

At least, until the area’s designated forbidden, but she doesn’t dare mess with the collar. She’ll be safe for the moment.

Unfortunately, it seems the inhabitants locked their doors before going. (I wonder what people were thinking? Just on autopilot, not really thinking that there wasn’t much point? Hoping it really would keep people out so they didn’t come back to find blood all over their living room? Did anyone suggest leaving it open so no one would smash their way in? Did they even know this would happen, or were they just told to leave?)

Well, it’s not clear if everyone did, but at least first two she tries are locked and she’s too impatient to keep trying.

She went to the backyard of the third one and broke the sash window with a rock she found on the ground. It made such a huge sound, she ducked under the veranda. No one seemed to be in the area, though. She entered. There was no use locking the sash now. She had to laboriously close the storm door.

I’m not sure exactly what a sash window is. Wikipedia seems to be saying it’s what I think of as paned windows, with a true sash window being one where you can move the upper and lower ones to open the window but it also being common to have one where only the lower one opens. This just confuses me more because there’s no mention of her trying to open the window first. Or maybe it’s that the doors being locked just goes without saying and when she says the houses are locked she means the windows.

Anyway, I’m going to assume that the storm door covers it from the outside, which would make sense given you’d want to protect the glass. In that case it’ll disguise her entry, but if she can’t lock it from the inside there’s the problem that someone else might try to get inside – someone more patient or more nervous might just keep trying doors and windows until they get to this one.

Come to think of it, probably the best idea here is to smash the window of another building. Someone hunting for others will check that out first and someone just desperate to get inside can use it as well rather than continuing on to investigate the house she’s inside.

She took two fishing poles and used them to jam the storm door shut.

So…is it on the inside, then? I’ve either never seen this setup or I don’t know the right words for it, so I’m not sure. Well, even if it’s on the inside, it’s slightly less suspicious and noticeable (even if someone does see the broken window, it’s at least possible it broke earlier and just wasn’t fixed) and at least she’ll be alerted if someone enters now since they’ll have to smash a different window to get in.

Of course, despite her hiding place she’s still shivering under the table. It’s still a horrible murder game.

Killing each other was out of the question.

She’s clearly doomed because we seem to only switch POVs for that purpose, but at least we’re getting a good look at the cast and how few of them want to play.

She considers that if this particular place stays open the whole game, maybe she’ll win. I doubt that. It’s weird that this is actually a viable strategy for the Hunger Games, which are supposed to be televised, while apparently these things can be over in a few days yet are supposed to be actual representations of combat and survival.

Pretty much the only way she’d make it is if the area isn’t just safe, but somehow blocked off by the forbidden zones. Supposedly they’re picked at random, which should actually mean that it’s possible for blocks to be cut off from the rest. But for that same reason, I doubt they actually are. It’s more likely the people in charge pick blocks that have kids in them and make sure the non-forbidden areas always connect. Having one person actually safe goes against everything, and certainly they don’t want things to resolve with the last couple trapped until their collars explode.

It might actually be true, though, if the games don’t go on long enough for there to be many forbidden areas. In that case doing it randomly wouldn’t matter.

She doesn’t spend much time on her fantasy of survival. Instead, she immediately thinks it’s terrible. Yes, she knows that they’re all enemies now, but-

but even if the game ended and she turned out to be the sole survivor, then that would also mean everyone else had died: her friends (like Mizuho Inada and Kaori Minami), as well as Shuya Nanahara, who made her heart flutter every time she thought of him.

This is a better version of what Sakura was saying last chapter. It’s not just that it’s scary and you have almost no chance of winning. It’s that there really is no winning – if you live it means all your friends have to die first.

Of course, the deck is rather stacked here, since they all know each other. I’d really like to see the more heroic version of this where someone realizes it’s wrong to kill anyone, even strangers. I spent the whole of Hunger Games waiting for that, not so much because I expected anything good from the series but because it just seemed so obvious.

Back in this book, Megumi may not be able to relax in a happy fantasy of winning, but she can think about how great Shuya is. He’s got a great voice and doesn’t like music class because it’s all songs about how great the evil government is. And he’s got cool hair and he’s graceful, not to mention his slightly drowsy looking, kind eyes with double eyelids. She doesn’t even know anything about rock, so she’s probably one of those students who’s never done anything the government said not to, which just highlights the incredible unfairness of all this.

She wishes Shuya was here, which suggests he might actually have had luck trying to recruit people, then thinks about how she wishes she’d told him she liked him before all this. She starts listing off the possible ways.

That’s when it occurred to her.
The phone.

The house phones won’t work. But her mom, nervous about the trip, gave her a cellphone. Megumi had thought her mom was silly and overprotective, but now here she is.

And the cellphone works! There’s a signal on the island. She dials home.

The ringing was interrupted by a voice answering, “Hello.”
“Oh Dad!” In her cramped position Megumi closed her eyes. She thought she would go crazy from relief. I’m going to be saved. Saved! “Dad, it’s me! Megumi! Oh Dad! Please help me! Please, save me from here!”

There’s just silence.

Finally, the voice at the other end spoke, “I’m not your dad, Megumi. This is Sakamochi. I told you the phones wouldn’t work, Megumi.”

It’s odd this line is so flat. He’s really not too threatening in the book beyond the obvious. Still, Megumi’s already in hysterics, so this pushes her well over the edge and she throws the phone down in panic, then fumbles for the button to end the call.

She starts to despair again, only for things to get worse. She hears glass break. Someone else is entering the house.

She may not want to hurt anyone, or even want to leave when it means everyone else’s death. But hearing someone else enter…

took the weapon from her day pack, and pulled the double-bladed diver’s knife from its plastic sheath. She gripped it tightly.

She doesn’t truly mean to use it. The next line is She had to escape as quickly as possible. But she’s already pulled a weapon out. You can easily see how plenty of kids could kill each other just by panic.

She sits in the dark, listening to the other person’s footsteps. Eventually, they approach the kitchen.

Someone sighed with relief and said to herself, “Good, there’s no one here.”

And things just keep getting worse, because she recognizes it’s Mitsuko’s voice. That’s the beautiful girl with the gang.

Megumi explains that one of Mitsuko’s friends harassed her all last year, and by harassed, I mean Hirono would trip her or slash her skirt with a razor. so yeah, that’s a pretty good reason to be terrified. I wouldn’t assume the average bully at a school would be first in line to murder people, but I never went anywhere that involved razors being in play.

Mitsuko hasn’t personally done anything, but she’s absolute ruler of the gang, so Hirono’s actions must have been okay with her.

Megumi starts to shake, which only terrifies her more, because if she makes the slightest sound she’ll be discovered. She prays that Mitsuko will leave soon, because maybe she could then get into the bathroom and lock the door and get out that way.

Of course instead, her phone rings.

A voice leaked out, “Hey, it’s Sakamochi again. I just wanted to remind you, Megumi, to turn off your cell phone. Otherwise, if I call you like this, everyone will know where you are, right?

He can see the exact location of all the kids, of course.

This seems to prove that also, it’s really likely forbidden zones are picked to purposefully move kids around. There’s not even the premise this is scientific here.

Then there’s just silence again until finally Mitsuko speaks.

“Megumi? Is that you?”

Megumi tries to figure out what she can do. She doesn’t think Mitsuko is much stronger. So if she doesn’t have a gun, maybe there’s a chance. And Mitsuko would probably have fired already if she did, so maybe…

That’s right, she had to kill. If she didn’t kill, Mitsuko would surely kill her.
She had to kill.

I’m a bit disappointed we have a more flamboyant cast, what with Yoshio going crazy immediately and of course Sociopath Boy, because the more mundane characters do a lot better at showing how people will go from not even wanting to win to willing to kill just to survive a little longer.

Instead of attacking, though, she drops her flashlight and Mitsuko Souma sank down on the floor into the light, staring at Megumi.
Tears were streaming down Mitsuko’s cheeks.

She stammers out that she’s so glad and she was so scared and reaches out with empty hands for Megumi.

Then she continued, “I can trust you, right? I can trust you. You wouldn’t think of killing me, would you? You’ll stay with me, won’t you?”

Megumi is completely blindsided.

That’s right. So that’s how it was. It didn’t matter how bad her reputation was, Mitsuko Souma was just another third-year junior high school student like her. Even Mitsuko Souma couldn’t take part in something as horrible as killing other classmates. She was just lonely and scared out of her wits.

…like I said, I really do wish here that our cast was just the mundane ones. This here would be a really good moral.

Megumi starts crying, horrified that she could actually have thought of killing her, drops the knife and crawls over to hold Mitsuko’s hands and promise they’ll stay together and then hugs her, feeling more and more guilty. She confesses that she did think of killing Mitsuko out of fear.

Mitsuko’s eyes widened when she heard this but she didn’t get upset. All she did was slightly nod her face which had been scrunched up from crying hysterically. Then she offered a warm smile. “That’s okay. Really. Don’t get too upset. It’s only to be expected. In this awful situation. Really, don’t get upset. Okay? Just stay with me, please?”

Megumi thinks that Mitsuko is such a wonderful person to be willing even to forgive her after confessing that.

Didn’t our teacher, Mr. Hayashida, who’s already been killed, warn us how wrong it is to judge people just by their reputations?

So she sits hugging Mitsuko.

That was all she could do for now. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I am such a horrible person, I am really
The slashing sound Megumi heard sounded like a lemon being cut.
It was a nice sound. The knife must have been really sharp and the lemon fresh, the way they are on television cooking shows, as in, “Today, we’ll be cooking lemon salmon.”

Mitsuko is holding a sickle.

She couldn’t say a word and lost consciousness as her chest warmed over with blood. She expired, unable to form any idea of what it meant exactly to have a blade stuck in her throat.

I am actually of two minds about this. On the one hand, the ability to ape normal emotional responses is incredibly creepy. It’s not that she’s hurting people because she just doesn’t understand other people very well. She knows people have feelings and it just doesn’t matter to her. She is using empathy against people and that’s horrifying. On the other hand, Mitsuko here is not sadistic, which is something I appreciate as a potential victim. If I’m going to get my throat cut, I would prefer to not know in advance.

If this was happening in a context where there was no larger purpose to the killing, I’d be a lot more horrified, but given they’re already under such heavy duress it seems more excusable, although going by the manga Mitsuko would probably kill for pocket change – although possibly only a guy.

Anyway, the thing is that Mitsuko not only isn’t a good illustration of a mundane student, she’s not even a good illustration of an unusual person’s reactions to the game. In the manga she got at least two people killed already and someone else sent to prison for murder. Killing people for survival now isn’t really any different than how she was already living her life, so this doesn’t tell us anything about her.

(You actually could use a Mitsuko-like character here if she wasn’t reacting by killing people. Just because someone’s willing to do criminal stuff doesn’t mean they’d be able to handle a murder cagematch. Someone who thinks it’s okay to take advantage of a class of person they’re marked off as deserving – men, for Mitsuko – doesn’t mean they can murder any forty people you put in front of them. You could even have someone theoretically willing to murder any forty people, but when presented with the fact those people are all also armed, decide that they’d rather try out escape.)

Plus, well, it’s a pretty uncomfortable moral to have, especially so explicitly with Megumi thinking about how wrong it is to assume the delinquent girl is evil right before we find out the delinquent girl is evil. It’s rather odd, actually – this book is nominally about the younger generation vs authority, and the main character is considered a subversive for liking rock music, but at the same time it seems to be drawing clear lines that you can only be rebellious in ways that are acceptable to the more mainstream adults. Stuff they liked as a kid is fine. Stuff kids today do…nope! Evil. I suppose it’s part of the problem you get when it’s adults who write the books, it’s always out of step a bit.

Well, let’s wrap things up. Mitsuko wipes off the tears, something she’s apparently very good at faking, and takes stock. She didn’t like the knife when she saw it but decides it worked well enough. It seems she really did enter the house by accident, which I’m surprised by given the odds, and resolves to be more cautious.

Looking down at Megumi’s corpse, she spoke slowly and quietly, “I’m sorry. I was also trying to kill you.”

I find this endearing, since it’s a very understated sort of remorse. It’s also a clue that she’s not exactly sociopathic and, like I said, not sadistic. I’m not sure how stable her characterization will be, but I thought the manga did pretty well at portraying her as the result of abuse.

31 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.
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.
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.