Friday, March 1, 2013

Battle Royale Ch41

So. Halfway through this book, and half the characters are dead. Let's take stock.



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.

Currently, eleven boys and eleven girls remain in the game.

Yoshio Akamatsu, Shogo Kawada, Kazuo Kiriyama, Shuya Nanahara,Kazushi Niida, Hirono Shimizu, Mitsuko Souma, and Takako Chigusa have all killed.

Keita Iijima, Toshinori Oda, Hiroki Sugimura, Yutaka Seto, Yuichiro Takiguchi, Sho Tsukioka, Tadakatsu Hatagami, Shinji Mimura, Mizuho Inada, Yukie Utsumi, Kayoko Kotohiki, Yuko Sakaki, Haruka Tanizawa, Noriko Nakagawa, Yuka Nakagawa, Satomi Noda, and Chisato Matsui have remained alive so far without any deaths.

We still know nothing about Keita Iijima, Toshinori Oda, Yuichiro Takiguchi, and Kayoko Kotohiki. I don't know how much longer that can last - it's clear by how things are going that at the least, we'll see everyone before their death.

In Chapter 41, they reach their destination.

The clinic is small and terribly run down. There's a minivan next to it, though. Hm, come to think of it I haven't heard any other mention of cars that I recall. There probably aren't - the island is quite small so if you were actually going anywhere, it'd be by boat to another landmass. Presumably the doctor has this to move anyone injured.

I don't suppose it's of any use - driving around would just get everyone aiming at you, while the area's forested enough you can't run people down.

The afternoon sun was shining on the sea. The color of the ocean was completely different from the murky water that lapped against the concrete sea walls in Shiroiwa harbor. It was a wonderfully brilliant blue tinged with green. There were hardly any waves, and the sparkling dots of light on its surface became increasingly dense in the distance. Other islands floating in the Seto Inland Sea looked remarkably close, but this was probably due, as he was once told, to the optical illusion of reduced distance when objects were absent. So they must have been at least four or five kilometers away.

Doesn't it sound lovely?

They haven't run into anyone new, and there's no sign of their machinegun killer. Come to think of it, although they're certain he'll show up for gunfire, there's actually no evidence of that. The one time he responded to sound it was people indicating they were defenseless, which is the opposite of what gunshots mean.

I mean, it's Kazuo, so he probably is sprinting joyously toward the sound of bullets, but there's no real reason to think this just because of Yumiko and Yukiko's murders.

Shuya notices there's three ships on the water, not just one. Shogo explains:

"The small one is a guard ship. The huge one is the ship that will transport the soldiers who were in the school building back to their base. The one in the middle is for the winner of the game. The winner rides that boat. It's the same model as the one from last year."

So they expect the game to end soon. We know half the kids are dead and it isn't even night yet, so from this, we can assume that the death rate generally doesn't slow much even as the population density plummets and they're expecting this to end shortly. I'm still thinking the computer program should be picking areas based on how many people are hiding and who hasn't moved. Of the people who've killed others so far, about one third died as well. Cowering in a hole somewhere is proving to be a great idea. It seems like under normal circumstances, it should be relatively common to end up with just a couple kids hunting the rest. You'd need something like Hiroko's device to speed that up, and if the kid who gets that decides to hide out instead (or jump off a cliff with it) you'd likely end up with a couple people picked off until finally they hit the twenty-four hour limit and everyone goes boom.

Shuya has no interest in that. Instead, he asks if that means Shogo's area also does island games. Shogo says that all the areas around the Seto Inland Sea use the islands, because there are so many tiny ones to take advantage of. It must really suck living on the islands.

Then he goes down and smashes the glass of the door to unlock it. Hope no one heard that.

The inside is worn but nice enough and it still smells of disinfectant, so it seems the place was kept clean.

Shuya has Noriko lie down and wraps her in some blankets. She's really out of it by now. Shogo finds some injectable antibiotic, which luckily he knows how to prepare.

Shogo held her arm out with her palm up, then took a cotton swab soaked with disinfectant and wiped the area between her wrist and elbow. He slowly inserted the needle, injecting only a small amount of the liquid. A slight bump formed on this area of her skin. Shogo took out another syringe and performed another injection.
"What are you doing?" Shuya asked.
"One of them is real medicine. If she's in the same condition fifteen minutes later, we won't have to worry
about side effects. It means we can probably use the medicine.


That's some admirable caution, but I'm not sure if I see the point. It seems pretty likely that if she doesn't get some kind of treatment immediately she'll die anyway, so it's not like it'd matter if she'd die from the medicine.

Shogo's not sure how sick she is, though.

"It's not easy to diagnose septicemia. To be honest I can't tell whether this is from septicemia or just a cold.

For god's sake, Shogo, she has textbook septicemia and her symptoms don't match a cold at all. Colds do not generally go from unnoticeable to deadly within hours and there's no sign of any respiratory problem. If she has a cold, you're all about to die of pandemic. This might be a translation issue and what he's talking about is the flu, which does have sudden onset and tends to be worse in the chills/fever/fatigue department.

Anyway, Shogo explains that antibiotics are serious business so he's nervous about it, but on the other have septicemia has to be treated as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, Shogo checked her pulse again and took her temperature. The thermometer read 39 degrees Celsius. No wonder she could barely stand.

That's actually a lot better than I was expecting, as that comes to 102 Fahrenheit, still in the safe zone - although conversely, it could be that her fever would be worse if she wasn't so cold, which would be the worst of the various options.

Finally, they recheck the marks and decide there's no sign of a reaction. Shogo tells Noriko he thinks she has septicemia but he's not totally sure and she tells him to give her the injection, so he does, then tells Shuya to make sure she gets water and that it's okay to use up the bottle because he's found a well.

As long as we boil the water we can drink it."

O.o I guess that's what you get having wells in populated areas.

And then Shogo goes off to...do that I guess, or maybe he just doesn't want to risk watching Noriko die. Shuya sits with her.

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