This chapter, at last, is Kayoko. What’s she been doing this time?

Well, like everyone, she was in position to see Yumiko and Yukiko’s murders. Since then, all she’s done is stay still. She’s had to move twice due to the area she was in being forbidden, but only moved the shortest distance she could.

So as I’ve been saying, Hiroki would have done better to make his way through the non-forbidden zones for someone hiding there, rather than in places everyone was leaving. If he’d tried to go through in an organized manner rather than running back and forth across the island after each forbidden zone, maybe he’d have found her ages ago.

She hadn’t met anyone yet. She heard a lot of gunfire, sometimes in the distance, sometimes near. She even heard an explosion, but she just remained still and absolutely quiet.

This suggests that just caution is enough to go a long way in the game. A lot of the deaths can be attributed to noise or trying to get into a better location.

Of course, this method comes with its own downsides.

Kayoko put the heavy gun (Smith & Wesson M59 Automatic, manual included, but Kayoko of course could care less about the gun’s name) down by her feet and massaged her right-hand fingers with her left hand. She’d been holding the gun all this time, and now the muscles in her fingers had gone numb. The palm of her hand was flushed red and imprinted with the gun-grip pattern.
She was completely exhausted, both from sleep deprivation and the threat of attack. Because she was too scared to enter a house that might be occupied, the only food she ate was the bread and water that came supplied with her day pack. She was hungry and thirsty. Her water intake was grossly inadequate. She did her best to save the supplied water and only drank over a liter since the game began. If there was one good thing about the rain, it was that she could collect water by putting the recently emptied water bottle under a dripping branch, but it wasn’t even a third full. She would intermittently remove the handkerchief from her head and wet her dry lips with it, but of course this did nothing to relieve her dehydration.

It’s amazing how small things just make the suffering in this book seem so much realer than in Hunger Games. Katniss tells us she’s dying of thirst or that she’s burned, but it’s always the big dramatic kinds of suffering and it doesn’t seem to impact her decisionmaking in the least.

Kayoko here seems more convincingly miserable. And she’s showing that just sitting in fear isn’t really a solution either – she’s safe, but she’s unable to take any action that would really help her, either. Maybe this is why the games so rarely run out of time – staying hidden is getting her killed.

And like other characters, she’s coping by thinking about her crush.

Also like a number of kids we’ve seen, her crush isn’t a classmate. She first met him at her tea ceremony class.

His preparation was very impressive. He handled the tea whisk and bowl incredibly gracefully, and his posture was impeccable. Despite his age, he didn’t look odd in traditional clothes.
Kayoko put her tasks on hold and was gazing at him when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and saw her senior in the Tea Ceremony Club at Shiroiwa Junior High, the one who’d invited her to attend the tea ceremony school.
“He’s pretty hot, huh? He’s the grandson of the headmaster. Well, to be more accurate, he’s the master’s mistress’ grandson.

There are an awful lot of mistresses’ kids in Japanese stuff. I’m not sure if it’s actually more common there or just that the connotations are less negative.

Anyway, this guy is just generally awesome. he was handsome and intelligent, cheerful and considerate, basically the kind of ideal man you hardly believed existed. On top of that, he apparently didn’t even have a girlfriend.

I much prefer this type of romantic ideal over the more Cullins variations.

For the most part Kayoko admires him from afar. She only has two real interactions with him. The first time, during a tea ceremony the government official in charge of culture starts complaining about it. Although in theory they’re supposed to be making sure culture is preserved, in practice they’d ask for bribes in order to get more funding. Kayoko knows the headmaster refuses to do this, and thinks this might have been revenge for that.

The headmaster himself is out that day, and his son and legitimate grandson can’t handle it, but her crush steps up!

He took the belligerent official to another room, then returned alone and said, “The official has left. He seems satisfied now, so there’s no need to worry, everyone.”

No one else asks any questions, just glad to have dodged the bullet.

But Kayoko was concerned. Knowing him, he could very well have assumed full responsibility, saying something like, “I am in charge of today’s ceremony,” and if that were true then the official could get back at him by concocting a report and arranging his arrest for being a malign influence against the government (and as a result sending him to one of those “reeducation camps”).

Team ceremony is apparently very serious business indeed.

So, afterward she goes over and asks if things are okay. He smiles at her and says it’s fine, and she asks why the officials are mean.

“That official doesn’t necessarily get a kick out of doing what he does. I’m sure this kind of thing happens all over the world…but the way this country is…it twists people…We’re supposed to strive for harmony and that’s what the art of tea is supposed to accomplish… but it is very, very difficult to achieve in this country.” Near the end, he almost seemed to be addressing himself. Then he looked back at Kayoko and continued, “Tea ceremony is powerless. But it’s also not such a bad thing either. You should enjoy it while you can.”

I feel like whatever the subtle meaning here is going over my head just as much as it did Kayoko. The most I can get out of it is that the tea ceremony is good in part because it has no power, but that doesn’t seem to fit when clearly it has some potential to be used as a bartering chip.

But regardless, he seems glad she stopped to talk to him and from then on smiles at her when they meet.

The next time is more traditional. They meet up while she’s looking at a flower arrangement and he says he’s impressed by how good she is at it. And she’s over the moon.

From that point on Kayoko began to practice tea ceremony more seriously. She thought, I can do it. Of course, I’m still just a kid, but once I’m eighteen he’ll be twenty-four. That would totally work….

When dealing with these sort of age imbalances I really prefer this sort of thing about how the younger character takes it as a given that she’ll have to grow up first. The whole relationship here is definitely positive – he’s inspiring her to do things and she’s happy to be around him, but he isn’t reciprocating, where there’d start to be power imbalance problems.

She starts to cry at the memory (don’t! You’re already dehydrated!) and wishes she could see him again. The book says it’s adolescent love, and seems to be saying both that it’s not really the same thing as an adult relationship would be but at the same time it’s real love, which is nice – I don’t like having people only fall in love once with their childhood sweetheart, but dismissing those relationships as just not real love is just adding a no-true-scotsman fallacy in.

At this point, Hiroki appears!

He’s torn the sleeves of his coat off and wrapped his shoulder, which is all bloody and he just generally looks like shit. Also, he’s clutching a gun.

Kayoko, rightly, is terrified. She screams and runs.

He calls after her, but that just scares her more. She’s not a good runner and wishes she’d been practicing that rather than track, but really, even if she had she probably wouldn’t be able to run far without food, water or sleep.

If she had been calmer—that is, if this were a scene in a movie and she were in the theater watching the actor performing as she munched on some popcorn—then it would have been obvious he was pleading with her. But right now it sounded like he was saying: “Kotohiki! You better stop! I’m gonna kill you!”

And this is what makes the book – people not acting calmly or reasonably. Not only does it make things more realistic, it also means that when they do, it actually feels like an accomplishment rather than business as usual.

She can’t get away in time, though. She can see thicker cover in the distance, but there’s no way she can sprint there before he gets into the open too and shoots her.

So she spins around and aims her gun instead. She didn’t want to, but she had to.

Maybe if Hiroki wasn’t already bleeding out, he could have handled this. Remembered he was carrying the gun and dropped it, shouted that he wasn’t going to shoot her. Or even realized that trying to catch up with her in the first place was just scaring her more and stayed back, shouted that he wasn’t going to hurt her instead of just not to run.

Instead he just stops and stares, and she shoots him.

She hits him in the chest and he goes down. It’s not an immediately fatal wound, and still terrified, she runs back to shoot him again and make sure he won’t kill her. She sees he’s still got the gun and realizes he can shoot her –

She stopped…because Hiroki had tossed his gun aside.

Hiroki tells her to light two fires and she’ll hear a bird call that’ll lead her to Shuya and Noriko.

“Wh-what?”
Hiroki seemed to be smiling. He repeated patiently, “Build two fires. Then find the bird call.”

He tells her to go, and when she doesn’t, he shouts at her that someone will have heard the gunshot.

She falls to her knees and cries.

She’d always found Hiroki intimidating, which might have played a part in how scared she was, because he knew martial arts and didn’t talk much, plus he looked grumpy. She wondered why Takako would go out with him, and that’s all she really knew before now.

This is somewhat less tragic than it first seems. As Hiroki tells her, he was already going to die. He tells her to get going, and she says that no, they’ll both go, and he says he’s happy just to have seen her and confesses he was in love with her, which naturally doesn’t make her feel any better about shooting him.

“It’s all right,” Hiroki said kindly. He closed his eyes slowly. “Kayoko…” he called her by her first name as if it were a precious treasure. It was probably the first time he had ever called her by her first name. “I don’t mind at all.. -dying because of you. So please, please go. Or else…”
Kayoko kept on crying, waiting for Hiroki to continue. “Or else”?
Hiroki didn’t say anything. Kayoko slowly reached out for him. She held his shoulders and shook them.
“Hiroki! Hiroki!”
In a TV drama when someone died their words would be cut off, like, “Or el—” but Hiroki managed to say in a painful but clear voice, “Or else.” So there had to be more. Or else?…
“Hiroki! Hey, Hiroki!”
Kayoko shook his body one more time. Then she finally realized he was dead.

She sobs over the body, thinking about how he was in love with her just like she was in love with her crush.

Suddenly, Kayoko recalled a scene. It was when they were doing their cleaning tasks. Kayoko was wiping the blackboard with a wet rag and when she couldn’t reach the top, Hiroki, who had been slacking off, rested his chin against his hands that were holding the upright broom as if it were a cane, and said, “You’re too short, Kotohiki.” He took the rag from her and wiped the area she couldn’t reach.

She also realizes that if he’d meant to shoot her, he could have while she was running, and can’t believe she didn’t realize all of this before.

Of course, she continues to reminisce and there’s a more questionable example:

When she was telling some of her classmate friends about “that guy,” Hiroki, who was nearby looking out the window, muttered, “You’re being foolish, getting so worked up like that.” It made her mad at the time, but in fact he was right, she was being foolish. And yet…and yet Hiroki told her he’d cherished this fool.

That really sounds more like just regular jealousy. I mean really, who’s more foolish – the girl with a crush on an older guy, or the guy with a crush on his classmate he never admits until the murderdeath games where he gets himself killed running all over the island after her? It was certainly nice of him to be so concerned, but you can’t say it wasn’t foolish as well.

Disappointingly, it continues in this vein.

I’m going to cry over the dedication (it was irreplaceable) of this boy who loved me and my foolishness (I was such a kid thinking I was actually in the running for “that guy”), I’m going to keep on crying. Even if it was suicidal in this game.

So, although we had a very nice critique of nice-guyism from Takako, this here rather playing into it, where she’s so upset at herself for not realizing there was a great guy all along she’s lost all will to live. What bugs me here is the focus has very quickly shifted from being horrified she shot someone trying to help her to being horrified she had a crush on that guy rather than this guy.

You plan on dying with him? a voice whispered to her in her thoughts.
That’s right, yes, I’m going to die with him. I’m going to die for the sake of Hiroki’s love for me and my foolishness.
“Then why…don’t you go ahead?” the voice said.

It’s Mitsuko, who is not impressed by these shenanigans. She shoots Kayoko into the head, then, as is her custom, chats with the corpse:

“You really were a fool. You should have understood him.”

I’m not sure if she means that Kayoko is a fool for thinking Hiroki was attacking her, or a fool for not understanding he wanted her to escape. I think the former, because she goes on to say: “Long time no see, Hiroki. Are you glad you got to die with your beloved?” which would seem to contradict the latter.

Mitsuko started off well but she really hasn’t been impressing me much since then. This is the second time she’s been used to confirm that a boy wasn’t going to hurt a girl – first with Yoshimi confirming that her super doormat powers were right, and now saying Kayoko is an idiot for not getting it. Why does she find it so easy to believe guys are good people who won’t kill girls? It really doesn’t fit her character in the least. Combine that with the fact most of her aggression has been toward girls and her freudian excuse really doesn’t work well.

Also, she overheard the bit about the fire. It seems slightly ominous, but since the group has all been warned about Mitsuko, it’s unlikely they’d actually be in too much danger from her. It’d be suicidal to just attack when she’s outnumbered, and her other plan of pretending to be harmless won’t work.

she suddenly heard the rattling sound of an old typewriter.

Doesn’t look like it’ll matter either way.

6 students remaining

Really getting down to the wire now. The main group now makes up half of the survivors.

And the next chapter begins with

Her back was pummeled, repeatedly. Her chest burst open with blood. She staggered…and she felt something hot expand inside her, like burning embers.

So, it’s really five people left. There’s no way she’ll survive this.

Mitsuko remembers what she said to Kazou about taking instead of being taken, and recounts her history, which is basically a lot of rape. Her mom sold her to the guys who raped her, and then when she told her teacher he raped her, and then her friend saw and spread a rumor – although that gets rid of the teacher, so it seems a positive – and then her mom tries to send her off to get raped again and Mitsuko accidentally kills her, then cleans up the evidence, then she’s taken in by relatives and their kid harasses her, and then the kid falls off the roof in what apparently really was an accident, but the mother blames her, and the father takes her side but then starts raping her.

It’s a bit much.

So, she shoots Kazou, but it’s in the chest, so it doesn’t do any good, and he blows her head off, then picks up the guns.

5 students remaining

I’m really disappointed that she doesn’t manage to get in any hits of her own. Kazou just tearing his way through the regular kids like a little terminator sort of works because he’s so clearly on another level, but Mitsuko was similar, just not as extreme, so it doesn’t seem right that even she can’t manage anything. If she’d seen him and tried her vulnerable girl trick only to be killed, that’d have made sense, but having him just get the drop on her regardless seems too lucky, and having him not even aiming properly but still not getting hurt because everyone always shoots him in the chest is really pushing it.

Chapter 70! It’s Mizuho, at last.

And just as Kazou came behind Mitsuko, she’s behind Kazou.

Kazuo Kiriyama had formed what appeared to be two piles of branches. Now he sat arranging one of the piles.

So he also heard the whole thing. I wonder how well this will work. He only has until the next announcements, at which point the gang will know both Hiroki and Kayoko are dead. Also, I’m pretty sure the fires have to be separate or else it’s going to be hard to tell there’s two.

Mizuho calmed her breathing. It was cold, and she was tired, but she didn’t really mind. After all, she was about to execute her most important mission…
…as a space warrior.
Are you ready, warrior Prexia Dikianne Mizuho?

Yeah, so, she’s crazy. She believes Kazou is a demon and that there’s a voice in her head telling her to do stuff because she’s from some lost holy tribe. She also believed Kaori is another one, and is upset that Kaori died, because she was another of the holy tribe (and so we find out she was this crazy even before the fight started. Also, it’s just sweet she wanted her friend to be a magical girl too.) but the voice reassures her that she fought nobly and anyway, Kaori was only a commoner and not an extra-special light warrior like Mizuho who’ll definitely win.

The whole chapter is short but glorious.

In order to keep quiet, Mizuho dodged the bushes and dashed towards Kazuo. A light burst out from the short blade that had been barely fifteen centimeters in length, and it suddenly transformed into a legendary sword at least one meter long. This sword of light would pierce the evil monster with a single thrust.
As Kazuo Kiriyama adjusted the branches with his left hand, his right hand calmly pulled out the Beretta M92F. Without even turning around, he reached around and pulled the trigger twice.

Until the end.

I think the real problem with Kazou is he keeps skipping around between genres. Sometimes, he’s in a skill vs skill setup, where he wins because he’s the most skilled and that’s how he’s terrifying. Sometimes he’s the incarnation of anyone-can-die, about how the best laid plans can go arry, and that’s what’s terrifying about him. But the rules that dictate his victory never lead to his downfall.

I didn’t have this problem in the manga, where I believe she shows up earlier and Kazou takes her out very easily. There, she’s doing rituals of protection and Kazou walks right up through her careful lines and shoots her in the head, and that seemed fitting – being crazy may help you cope, but it comes with a lot of drawbacks.

It doesn’t help that Kazou is rapidly getting more overpowered. Initially, he’d spray people with bullets then follow up with a headshot, and there was a big point made about this because it’s why the bulletproof vest didn’t work against him, not because he’s super-skilled but just because he’s methodical.

Now, he’s shooting people without even looking at them.

His back still facing her, Kazuo Kiriyama put away his gun and continued arranging the branches.

And without even a backward glance to verify they’re actually dead.

This kind of confidence would be the death of any other character.

4 students remaining

There’s now only him and the group left.

It’s disappointing Kayoko died. So far, as I’ve been mentioning, the book generally balanced out the girls and boys. There were various points this wasn’t true, but it’d always balance out in the end. But now that we’re in the endgame, it’s him against Shuya’s group, which is two boys and one very passive girl.

Hirono’s presence, as I mentioned earlier, would have been even better and given some drama to their dynamic itself, which was pretty bland and mostly Shuya/Noriko asking questions and Shogo being smart.