31

The faint sound reached Shuya and the others. Shuya looked up. Then they heard it again. They waited, but that was it. They only heard the rustling sound of treetops deep inside the thicket shaking in the wind. Shuya looked at Shogo, who was sitting next to him.

"Was that a gunshot?"

"That was a gunshot."

"Then someone's already…" Noriko began to speak, but Shogo shook his head and responded, "We don't know for sure."

They had all remained silent for several minutes, but the gunfire prompted discussion. Shogo spoke up, "Look, as long as you trust me, it's cool but…like I said before, we have to survive till the very end. So I just want to make sure." Shogo looked over at Shuya. "Are you willing to be merciless against the enemy, Shuya?"

Shuya swallowed deeply. "You mean the government?"

"Including them, yeah." Shogo continued, "As well as your other classmates, if and when they attack us." Shuya nodded slightly and then answered, "If that's what it comes down to, I will." His voice sounded feeble, though.

"Even if the classmate was female?"

Shuya's lips tightened as he looked back at Shogo. He looked down again. "If I have to I will."

"All right then. As long as we're on common ground." Shogo nodded and grabbed the shotgun resting on his crossed legs. Then he added, "Someone else will finish you off if you get too hung up on every person you kill."

Shuya was about to say something but hesitated. He decided it was best not ask, but couldn't stop himself from blurting out, "So you were merciless a year ago?" Shogo shrugged. "I killed. You want to hear the details? How many guys I killed? How many girls I killed until I won?"

Noriko crossed her arms over her chest and brought in her elbows.

"No…forget it." Shuya shook his head. "That's pointless." They fell silent again. Then Shogo said, as if offering an explanation, "I had no choice. Some of them lost their minds…and then some were willingly killing as many as they could__Most of my friends died pretty quickly, and I didn't have any time to hook up with anyone. And IT just couldn't offer myself up and get killed by someone." He paused and added, "I also had something I had to do, so I couldn't die." Shuya lifted his face. "What's that?"

"Come on, it's so obvious." Shogo smiled a little, but his eyes glimmered fiercely all of a sudden. "I was going to tear up this fucked up country, this country that tosses us into this fucked up game." Watching Shogo's lips tremble in anger, Shuya thought, he's just like me. He wants to bring down these assholes in charge of this game, these assholes who won't think twice about making us play this fucked up game of musical chairs, this game of mutual fear and loathing. He wants to send them to hell just like me.

Or maybe…Shogo mentioned in passing he'd lost his friends early on, but I bet he lost someone equally important as Yoshitoki was to me.

Shuya thought of asking him about this, but didn't.

Instead he asked, "You said you'd done a lot of studying…so that was for this purpose?" Shogo nodded, "That's right. I would have done something against this country eventually."

"Like what?"

Shogo only grimaced. "I wonder." He shook his head. "It's not so easy bringing down a system that's already built up. But I would have done something. Well no, I'm still going to. That's why I have to survive this time too."

Shuya looked down at the revolver and looked up. Another question had occurred to him.

"Can you tell me something?"

"What?"

"What's the purpose of this game? How could this serve any useful purpose?" Shogo's eyes widened…but then he looked down and began to chuckle. He found it funny. Then he finally said, "There is no purpose."

Noriko raised her voice. "But they insist it has some military purpose." Shogo kept on smiling and shook his head. "That's just crazy nonsense. Of course this whole country's insane, so maybe it's completely rational."

Shuya felt a rush of anger once again as he spoke, "Then how could this go on for so long?"

"That's easy. Because there's no one speaking out against it. That's why it's still going on." Seeing how Shuya and Noriko were at a loss for words, Shogo added, "Look, this country's run by a bunch of idiot bureaucrats. In fact you have to be an idiot to be a bureaucrat. My guess is that when this lovely game was first proposed—some crazy military strategist probably came up with it—there was no opposition. You don't want to stir things up by questioning the specialists. And it's terribly difficult to end something that's already been established. You interfere, and you're out of a job. No, worse yet, you might be sent to a forced labor camp for ideological deviation. Even if everyone were against it, no one could say it out loud. That's why nothing changes. There are a lot of screwed up things in this country but they all boil down to the same thing—fascism."

Shogo looked at Noriko and Shuya. He added, "You two, and the same applies to me, we cant say anything. Even if you think something's wrong, your life is too precious to risk it by protesting, right?" Shuya couldn't say anything back. His hot flash of anger all of a sudden went cold.

"It's shameful," Noriko said.

Shuya looked at Noriko. Noriko looked down sadly. He agreed. He felt the same way.

"Did you know there was a country called the South Korean People's Republic?" Shogo asked. Shuya looked at Shogo, who was staring at a pink azalea flower on a tree branch right in front of them. It seemed irrelevant, but Shuya answered anyway, "Yeah, it was the southern half of the current Democratic Nation of the Korean Peninsula, right?"

You could learn about what was known as the South Korean People's Republic and the Democratic Nation of the Korean Peninsula—and the civil strife between the two Korean nations immediately west of the Republic of Greater East Asia's inland sea—in a textbook: "Although our relations with SKPR

were cordial, due to conspiracies concocted by the imperialists of the United States and the DNKP, the SKPR was annexed by the DNKP." (Of course, following this explanation, the summary would continue,

"Our nation must immediately oust the Korean Peninsula imperialists and annex this country not only for the freedom and democracy of the Korean people, but in order to progress towards our goal in attaining the co-existence of Greater East Asia peoples."

"That's right," Shogo nodded. "That country was just like ours. An oppressive government and dictator, ideological propaganda, isolationism, and information control. And support for snitching. It failed though after forty years. But the Republic of Greater East Asia is doing quite well. Why do you think that is?" Shuya thought about it. He hadn't really given it much thought, but the textbooks explained South Korea's defeat as "a cunning conspiracy instigated by the imperialists including the American imperialists" (The vocabulary employed in these textbook explanations was beyond junior high level.) But then why was the current Greater East Asia still prosperous? Of course the SKPR was geographically located right next to the DNKP but…

He shook his head. "I don't know."

Shogo looked at Shuya and nodded. "First of all, it's a question of balance."

"Balance?"

"That's right. While the SKPR was totalitarian—of course, this country is essentially totalitarian. But it employs a subtle, well, this just might have been a fortunate result, but it skillfully managed to leave little bits of freedom intact. By providing this kind of candy, they can proclaim, 'Of course, every citizen has the right to freedom. However, freedom must be controlled for the sake of the public good.' The claim actually sounds legit, huh?"

Shuya and Noriko silently waited for Shogo to continue.

"That was how the country became this way. Seventy-five years ago." Noriko interrupted him, "Seventy-five years ago?" Hugging her knees under her pleated skirt, Noriko tilted her head with a puzzled look on her face.

Noriko then looked over at Shuya. Shuya nodded and then looked back at Shogo. "I heard something about how the history they teach us is a big lie and that the current Dictator is hardly the 325th Dictator. In fact, he's only supposed to be the twelfth one, right?"

Shinji Mimura had told him this. Noriko wouldn't know. It would never be taught at school and most adults kept their mouths shut about it (maybe they didn't even know), and even Shuya was appalled when he first heard it from Shinji. After all, this meant that before the appearance of the First Dictator less than eighty years ago—in other words, before the Great Revolution—the name of the country and system of government had been totally different. (Shinji had claimed, "Apparently, it was a feudal society. People wore these psychedelic hair styles called chonmage, and there was a caste system. But to be blunt, it was better than what we have today")

Shuya glanced at Noriko's surprised face, but when he heard Shogo's next statement, "Well, even that might not be true," he raised his brow.

"What do you mean?"

Shogo smiled and said, "There is no Dictator. He doesn't exist. He's just made up. That's what I heard."

"What?"

"That can't be…" Noriko said hoarsely, "but we see him on the news…and on New Year's he makes an appearance in front of everyone at his palace..."

"Right." Shogo grinned. "But who is this 'everyone at the palace'? Have you ever met someone who was actually there? What if they were actors too, just like the Dictator?" Shuya considered the possibility… It made him nauseous. Nothing but lies, there was no truth. Everything felt uncertain.

"Is that really true?" he asked despondently.

"I don't know. It's just something I heard. But it seems likely to me."

"Where did you get that information? By computer on that thing called the Net?" Shuya thought of Shinji Mimura when he asked him this, but Shogo only grinned again.

"Unfortunately, I'm no good with computers, but there are ways to find out if you want to. It seems likely, because that would allow the government to have no supreme authority. That way everyone at the center of the government would be equal. They would have equal freedom. Which means that their responsibilities are also equal. There would be no inequality. There'd be no objections. The only thing is that there has to be some subtle trick going on…The whole charade has to be kept secret from the general public. The leader figure just has to play a charismatic role." Shogo took a deep breath and continued, "Anyway, that's neither here nor there. To get back to what I was saying, the country implemented this system, and it just kept on successfully evolving. What I mean by 'success' is that it succeeded as an industrialized nation. Even though the country stuck to isolationism, it traded with other countries that remained neutral, not only to us but to America as well, and imported raw materials from them and sold products to them. The products sold well. Of course they would. Their quality is really high. Serious competition against the U.S. The only things this country lags behind in are space technology and computers. But the high quality comes as a result of the individual's subservience to the group and an oppressive government. Still…" he stopped. He shook his head and continued, "I have a feeling that once we've reached this level of success even the people themselves are afraid of changing the system. With this kind of success, and this high standard of living, they won't be willing to make a few sacrifices, even if there may be a few little problems. And overthrowing the government would be out of the question."

Shogo looked over at Shuya again and gave him a sarcastic smile. "And one of the 'few little problems'?

This wonderful game. Of course the students and their families might have been dealt a bad hand, but they're a small minority. Even the families eventually let it go. Sorrow passes with time." Shogo's winding explanation finally returned to this stupid game, the pride of the Republic of Greater East Asia. Perhaps it was Shuya's grim frown that made Shogo ask, "What's up?" Shuya replied, "I feel like puking." He finally began to understand exactly what Shinji Mimura meant when he said, "This is what they call 'successful fascism.' Where else in the world could you find something so sinister?" Shinji must have known and understood long ago everything Shuya had just learned.

"Ha! Wait till you hear this one. It'll make you sick." Shogo almost looked as if he were relishing this as he continued, "I think that the fundamental difference between the SKPR and this country is ethnic."

"Ethnic?"

Shogo nodded. "Yeah. In other words, I think that this system is tailor-made to fit the people of this country. In other words, their subservience to superiors. Blind submission. Dependence on others and group mentality. Conservatism and passive acceptance. Once they're taught something's supposedly a noble cause by serving the public good, they can reassure themselves they've done something good, even if it means snitching. It's pathetic. There's no room for pride, and you can forget about being rational. They can't think for themselves. Anything complicated enough sends their heads reeling. Makes me want to puke."

He was exactly right. It was completely revolting. Shuya felt his stomach turn. That was when Noriko interrupted Shogo, "I don't agree at all." Shuya and Shogo looked at Noriko. The way she was hugging her knees and hunched over, Shuya thought she was tired out. But she looked at both of them and spoke clearly, "I didn't know about this. This is the first time I've ever heard any of this. But if what you just said is really true, and if everybody were really informed, I don't think they would sit still__It's because no one knows about this that we've ended up in this situation. You say we've always been like this, but I refuse to believe that. I'm not saying we're especially noble, but I think we're just as capable as any other people on this planet of dunking responsibly."

Shogo responded with a surprisingly kind and gentle smile. "I like what you just said." Shuya meanwhile all of a sudden saw Noriko in a different light. She didn't really stick out in class, nor was she so outspoken she'd express her opinions the way she had just done now. It was odd, but ever since this game began he was seeing another side of Noriko. And maybe—it might only mean Shuya had been totally ignorant—Yoshitoki had perceived this side of her long ago. Anyway it was a much more admirable response than his knee-jerk "It makes me want to puke." Once again she was absolutely right. No matter what, this was their country, the place where they were born and grew up (although he wasn't so sure how much more growing up was left for them). The U.S., a.k.a. the American Empire, might liberate this country some time in the future, but the fact was that this was their deal. They shouldn't, and in the end they couldn't, rely on others. Shuya looked over at Shogo and asked him, "Hey Shogo. Do you think we can change this country?" Much to Shuya's disappointment Shogo shook his head. He thought that, given his pledge to "tear up this fucked up country," he would reply affirmatively, that they would change it. Shuya said somewhat clumsily, "But you just said you'd tear up this country." Shogo lit a cigarette, which he hadn't done in a while, and then folded his arms. "I'll tell you what I think." He unfolded his arms, removed the cigarette from his lips, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "I think history comes in waves."

Shuya didn't understand, but before he could ask what he meant, Shogo continued, "At some point in time, when the situation is ripe, this country will change. I don't know whether it will happen in the form of a war or a revolution. And I have no idea when the time will come. For all I know it may never happen." Shogo took another drag and then exhaled. "In any case, right now I don't think it's possible. Just like I said, this country is insane, but it's also well run. Extremely well run." Shogo pointed at them, the cigarette between his fingers. "Now here we have a rotten nation. If you can't stand it, then the wisest thing to do would be to abandon it and go somewhere else. There are ways to escape this country. Then you can avoid the stench. You might get homesick once in a while, but life outside would be grand…but I'm not doing that."

Shuya rubbed his hand against his thigh. He was hoping Shogo's statement would correspond with his thoughts: I want to do something here because in the end this is my country. Didn't Bob Marley sing, "Get up, stand up…you can't fool all the people all the time"?

But Shogo's response fell short of this expectation.

"I'm doing this for myself. I want revenge… even if it's for my self-satisfaction…I want to strike against this country. That's all. I really doubt it'll actually lead to change in this country in the long run." Shuya took a short breath… then uttered, "This sounds hopeless."

"It is hopeless," Shogo replied.

25 students remaining