Battle Royale Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kuninobu had already stopped watching a while ago and was preoccupied with eating his tangerine.
    As Shuya grew older, this same local report, given at the rate of once every two years at any time without any warning, felt more and more ominous. From a pool of all third-year junior high school students, fifty classes were issued an annual guaranteed death sentence. That was two thousand students if each class consisted of forty students, no, more accurately, that was 1,950 students killed. Worse yet, it wasn't simply a mass execution. The students had to kill each other, competing for the throne of survivor. It was the most terrifying version of musical chairs imaginable.
    But…it was impossible to oppose the Program. It was impossible to protest anything the Republic of Greater East Asia did.
    So Shuya decided to give in. That was how most of the third-year "reserves" from junior high school dealt with it, right? Okay, our special conscription system? The beautiful homeland of Vigorous Rice Plants? How many junior highs were there in the republic? The birth rate might be declining but your chances were still less than one in eight hundred. In Kagawa Prefecture that meant only one class every other year would be "chosen." Put bluntly, you were just as likely to die in a traffic accident. Given how Shuya never had the luck of the draw, he figured he wouldn't be chosen. Even in the local raffle he'd never win more than a box of tissues. So he'd never be chosen. So fuck off, man.
    But then sometimes when he heard someone in class, particularly a girl in tears, saying something like,
    "My cousin was in the Program and…" that dark fear choked him up again. He was angry too. I mean, who had the right to terrify that poor girl?
    But within a matter of days the same girl who'd been so gloomy would begin smiling. And Shuya's fear and anger would gradually wane and disappear too. But the vague distrust and powerlessness he felt towards the government nonetheless remained.
    That's the way things went.
    And when Shuya entered his third year in junior high school this year, he along with his other classmates assumed they would be safe. Actually they really had no choice but to assume this.
    Until now.
    "That can't be."
    A chair fell as someone stood up. The voice was shrill enough to make Shuya glance over at the desk behind Hiroki Sugimura. It was Kyoichi Motobuchi, who was the male class representative. His face was beyond pale. It had turned gray, providing a surreal contrast to his silver framed glasses, resembling one of those silkscreen prints by Andy Warhol illustrated in their art textbooks as "the decadent art of American imperialists."
    Some of his classmates might have been hoping that Kyoichi would provide some adequate rational form of protest. Kill the friends you were hanging out with yesterday? It was impossible. Someone's making a mistake here. Hey rep, can you take care of this one for us?
    But Kyoichi completely let them down.
    "M-my father is a director of environmental affairs in the prefectural government. How could the class I'm in be selected for th-the Program?…"
    Due to his shaking, his tense voice sounded even more wound up than usual.
    The man who called himself Sakamochi grinned and shook his head, his long hair swinging in the air.
    "Let's see. You're Kyoichi Motobuchi, right?
    "You must know what equality means. Listen up. All people are born equal. Your father's job in the prefectural government doesn't entitle you to special privileges. You are no different. Listen up, everybody. You all have your own distinct personal backgrounds. Of course some of you come from rich families, some from poor families. But circumstances beyond your control like that shouldn't determine who you are. You must all realize what you're worth on your own. So Kyoichi, let's not delude ourselves that you're somehow special—because you're not!"
    Sakamochi bawled this out so suddenly, Kyoichi fell back into this seat.