They pressed his right wrist against the floor. One of them carefully pried Mitsuru’s index finger back and tucked it under his leather shoe. For the first time in his life Mitsuru experienced real fear.
No… this can’t be.
It was. The sole of the shoe came down as Mitsuru’s finger made a horrible cracking sound. Mitsuru shrieked. He’d never been in such pain. They kept laughing, “Hee hee hee!”
Mitsuru thought. These bastards… they’re insane… they’re not at all like me… they’re crazy…
They were preparing his middle finger.
“S-stop…”
Without an ounce of pride left, Mitsuru begged for mercy, but they ignored his pleas. The same cracking noise came. Mitsuru’s middle finger was ruined now. Mitsuru screamed again.
“Let’s have one more then.”
That’s when it happened.
The door to the art classroom suddenly slid open.
“Can you guys keep it down?” The voice was quiet, though.
For a moment Mitsuru wondered if it was a teacher. But a teacher would have intervened a lot sooner, and besides, a request to keep it down would have been strange.
With his back still pressed to the floor Mitsuru glanced over at the door.
He wasn’t too big, but he was incredibly good looking. He was holding a paint brush.
He’d seen him at the class introduction. He was one of Mitsuru’s classmates. His family seemed to have recently moved here. No one knew who he was, but since he was quiet and appeared obedient Mitsuru didn’t pay much attention to him. Given how his looks were so refined, he probably came from a nice family. Someone like him would do his best to avoid fights, so he was nothing to worry about.
But what was he doing in the art classroom? Probably painting, but wasn’t that a little strange on the first day of school?
The pimply guy went up to the boy. “Who the fuck are you?” He stood in front of the boy. “Who the fuck are you? First year? What the fuck are you doing here? Huh? What was that you said?”
He knocked the paint brush out of the boy’s hand, and the dark blue paint from the brush splattered against the floor.
The boy slowly looked up at the pimply guy.
The rest needed little explanation. The small boy beat up the four third-year students. (They were all lying on the floor, completely paralyzed.)
The boy approached Mitsuru. After looking him over he only said, “You should have your hand examined at a hospital.” Then he went back inside the classroom.
Mitsuru gazed at the four bodies lying on the floor. He was completely stunned by something so completely unprecedented. He felt in awe of the boy, like a rookie boxer doomed to mediocrity upon suddenly encountering a world champion. Mitsuru saw genius.
From that point on Mitsuru served that boy—Kazuo Kiriyama. He had no need to acknowledge it. Kazuo Kiriyama had beaten up four guys at once when Mitsuru could have only taken them on one on one. There should only be one king, and those who weren’t should serve under him. He reached this conclusion a long time ago. The idea probably came from his favorite boys’ manga magazine.
Kazuo Kiriyama was a mystery.
When Mitsuru asked how he managed to learn how to fight so viciously, he’d only respond, “I just learned.” Kazuo would only ignore any further attempts to find out more. Mitsuru would then try to coax more out of him by suggesting he must have had a reputation in elementary school, but Kazuo only denied it. Then maybe he’d been a champion in karate or something? Kazuo denied this too. Another odd point, Mitsuru learned later, was the fact that Kazuo had broken into the art classroom to paint the day they met. When Mitsuru asked why he did that, Kazuo only replied, “I just felt like it.” This was how Kazuo’s strange persona contributed to Mitsuru’s attraction to him. (Furthermore, the quality of the painting depicting a view from the classroom of the empty courtyard far exceeded the first-year junior high level, but Mitsuru never got to see this painting, because Kazuo had tossed it into the trash after completing it.)
Mitsuru showed Kazuo around. The small town, including the cafe where his friends hung out, the place he stashed stolen goods, the shady dealer who provided illegal goods. Mitsuru’s talents were in fighting, but he did his best to show him every place. he knew. Kazuo always appeared calm. He came along maybe out of curiosity. Eventually he took on upper class students besides the ones he’d beaten up, bullies from other schools, or sometimes high school students.
Without exception Kazuo had them instantly writhing on the ground. Mitsuru was crazy about Kazuo. It was perhaps no different from the joy a trainer feels in training a champion boxer.
Kazuo wasn’t only strong, though. He was extremely smart. Quite simply, he excelled at everything. When they broke into the liquor store’s warehouse, it was Kazuo who came up with the brilliant plan. Kazuo saved Mitsuru from numerous jams he got himself into. (Since he got involved with Kazuo, he never got arrested by the police.) Furthermore, his father was supposedly the president of a leading corporation in the prefecture—no, the entire region of Chugoku and Shikoku. He was fearless. Mitsuru believed some people were destined for greatness. He thought, this guy is going to be someone so extraordinary I can’t even imagine what he’ll become.
Mitsuru made him the leader of his gang, which continued to stir up trouble. Mitsuru only wondered once whether it was right to get Kazuo involved. Kazuo strictly prohibited (he never said so, but that was the vibe he gave off) Mitsuru and the others from visiting his house (in fact it was a mansion), so Mitsuru had no way of telling whether Kazuo’s parents were aware of their son’s activities. He was concerned his gang might be a bad influence on Kazuo, who was so obviously well bred. After thinking about it a lot, Mitsuru finally shared his concerns with Kazuo.
But Kazuo only said, “I don’t care. This is fun too.” Mitsuru decided it was all right then.
And so, he and Kazuo had been through a lot together. The king and his loyal advisor.
Even though they were now in an extreme situation, this was why, while killing other classmates was possible, it was out of the question when it came to the members of the Kiriyama Family. After all, Kazuo himself had passed them notes. Mitsuru was certain Kazuo had already planned out a strategy to deal with this situation. He’d outwit Sakamochi, and then escape. If he really wanted to, Kazuo Kiriyama could take on the entire government, no prob.
These were Mitsuru’s thoughts as he left the school and walked approximately twenty-five minutes southward. He saw only one person the whole time. The figure who vanished into the residential area southeast of the school was probably Yoji Kuramoto (Male Student No. 8). That made Mitsuru nervous, of course. He’d already encountered the corpses of Mayumi Tendo and Yoshio Akamatsu lying outside the school when he left. The game was well on its way.
Mitsuru’s priority was to get to the place assigned by Kazuo as soon as possible. The others were irrelevant. What mattered was how his group would escape from here.
As he moved south, Mitsuru became increasingly tense as any shelter he could hide behind grew sparse. Underneath his school uniform, his entire body was drenched in cold sweat. Sweat oozed out of his short, permed hair and dripped down his forehead.
A little bit further ahead the coast curved right and left, and somewhere in the middle of this curve a rugged reef extended eastward from the hill and sank into the ocean like a buried dinosaur only revealing its back. The reef was much taller than Mitsuru, blocking his vision beyond it. Glancing at the sea, he saw islands and other small lights that indicated a larger piece of land beyond the dark, vast, horizontal expanse of water. This had to be an island in the Seto Inland Sea. That much was certain.