Whatever he thought in reaction—or maybe he wasn’t thinking at all—his expression stayed the same, and he yelled, “Don’t move!”
Yuko gazed up at Shuya again—and realized the bandage under the silver collar covering his neck wound oozed with blood now dripping down his bare shoulder.
The blood dripped down his arm and reached her left hand.
“Ugh,” Shuya moaned. He gripped Yuko’s hand tighter. His face was breaking into a sweat. It wasn’t just his neck, his entire body was covered with severe wounds. Given how he was not only holding her entire weight with his right arm but attempting to pull her up, he had to be in incredible pain.
Yuko’s jaw dropped. Why? Why would you try to save me when you’re in so much pain? That’s—
Strangely enough, it suddenly all came to her. The black mist clouding her thoughts suddenly cleared as if blown away by the sea breeze blowing against her body. The image of Shuya holding the blood-soaked axe, looking down at Tatsumichi Oki’s corpse, suddenly vanished as if shredded by the wind, and all her previous (although it was only two days ago) memories of the Third Year Class B classroom along with the cheerful expressions of Shuya Nanahara came back to her. How he joked around with his friends Yoshitoki Kuninobu and Shinji Mimura, how he looked so serious repeating a difficult guitar line while practicing in the music room, how he posed triumphantly at second base after making a perfect hit down the third base line during gym class, which she managed to see from the gym where she was playing volleyball. And then when she was pale from menstrual cramps, how he’d gently said to her, “What’s wrong, Yuko? You look pale,” interrupted their English teacher Mr. Yamamoto, and called on the nurse’s assistant, Fumiyo Fujiyoshi. How he looked so concerned then.
Oh no. Yuko finally understood the situation. This is Shuya. Shuya is trying to save me. I… why? Why did I have to think I had to kill Shuya? Why did I believe that? It’s Shuya. And I always thought he was kind of cool… that he was really nice but no—
Then a different thought occurred to her. The action she took and its results. Yuko once again turned pale.
I… my mind was all screwed up… and… and that’s how I ended up—
Yuko burst into tears. Shuya saw this and looked puzzled.
“Shuya!” she screamed. “I-it was me! I tried to kill you!”
Shuya looked surprised as Yuko looked up with despondent tears in her eyes.
“I-I-I thought you’d killed Tatsumichi… I saw you two… and I was scared. I was so scared. So I tried poisoning your food… but Yuka ended up eating it… and then everyone… everyone…”
Shuya then understood everything. Hiding in a nearby bush, Yuko had seen him extract the axe from Tatsumichi Oki’s head after fighting him. She didn’t see how Kyoichi Motobuchi and Shogo appeared afterwards. She’d only witnessed that one moment. She could have interpreted it as an act of self defense on Shuya’s part or as an accident, but Yuko was too frightened to trust Shuya. And so she poisoned the food to kill him, but Yuka ate this by mistake… and everyone panicked with suspicion. The culprit, Yuko, ended up being the only survivor.
“It’s all right!” Shuya shouted. “It’s all right, just don’t move! I’ll pull you up!”
Shuya was nearly lying flat on the balcony, his body jutting out between the bars, but because his left arm was useless, he couldn’t grab onto the railing. Still, he twisted his body, and finally managed to tuck his right knee up to his body so he could rely on his back. He did his best to hold onto Yuko’s wrist. The pain from the wounds all over his body, his side, his left shoulder, and the right side of his neck was mounting. But…
Her face soaked with tears, Yuko shook her head. “No. No. It was my fault everyone… everyone…” she said, and suddenly her hand began to pry his fingers loose. The tight grip he’d finally managed to get on her came loose. Shuya gripped tighter in response, but the blood dripping down from his neck suddenly made his hand slip.
Yuko’s hand left Shuya’s. The weight on Shuya’s arm suddenly vanished.
Yuko’s face receded—
With a thud, Yuko fell on her back onto the roof of the single-story building below. Instead of slipping from his hand, she seemed to have appeared there suddenly via time-lapse photography.
Her body wrapped in her sailor shirt and pleated skirt was sprawled out… and her neck was crooked, which made her head look oddly disjoined from the rest of her body. The top-right side of her head spurted out a red substance in the shape of a shriveled up maple leaf.
“Ah…”
Shuya stared down at her, his right arm still hanging over the balcony.
65
Hiroki Sugimura (Male Student No. 11) took a deep breath.
He’d heard the rapid gunfire approximately ten minutes ago. He’d been wandering around the northern mountain, but he quickly headed east toward the shots. Then… by the time he arrived it was already quiet at the lighthouse. He knew it was there from the map, but he assumed Kayoko Kotohiki would never hide there alone in such a conspicuous location, so he’d ignored it until now. He wasn’t sure whether this was where the gunfire occurred. He looked down from the cliff over the lighthouse and saw a girl lying on the roof of the brick annex by the lighthouse. Even from a distance he could make out the red color and see that she was dead. The short hair and petite body resembled Kotohiki, as Megumi Eto’s corpse did when he discovered it.
He slid down the edge of the cliff. As he descended, the corpse on the roof disappeared from view. He reached the front entrance of the lighthouse. There was a pile of chairs and desks beyond the open door. Someone had formed a barricade, but for some reason this barricade was also torn down. He looked at the window that was sealed shut with planks and cautiously walked down the hall. (There was a room with a bed right by the entrance, and for some reason its door had been knocked down.) His detector responded. Six. Hiroki proceeded cautiously and stood frozen in the room splattered with blood.
The bodies of five girls were scattered all over what appeared to be a kitchen. There was the female student representative Yukie Utsumi on her back by the center table. To her right was Haruka Tanizawa, her head nearly torn off (!). And further down Yuka Nakagawa, whose face had turned nearly black. Chisato Matsui was lying face down in front of the side table to his right, her pale blue face turned his way. And then one more girl was lying face down behind the table, covered in blood.
The four girls, including Yukie, were clearly dead. But this one whose face he couldn’t see was…
Hiroki cautiously checked the room once again. He listened for any sounds beyond the opened door on the other side of the room. There didn’t seem to be anyone else hiding.
He tucked the gun in his left hand in back, walked between the bodies of Yukie Utsumi and Haruka Tanizawa, passed by Yuka Nakagawa’s body, and walked around the table. The soles of his shoes splashed against the blood all over the floor. He crouched down beside the girl lying face down, put aside the stick in his right hand, and lifted her body. He felt a sharp pain from the wound in his right shoulder where Mitsuko Souma had struck him. The gunshot wound Toshinori Oda had inflicted on his thigh though was only a scrape, so there wasn’t much bleeding or pain there. Hiroki tried to ignore the pain, in any case. He turned over the body.
It was Satomi Noda. There was a red hole in the left side of her forehead, and her glasses, though crooked, managed to stay on her face. The left lens probably shattered when she fell. Of course she was dead.