C2 Start Game

42 students remaining

As the bus entered the prefectural capital of Takamatsu, garden suburbs transformed into city streets of multicoloured neon, headlights of oncoming cars, and checkered lights of office buildings.

A group of well-dressed men and women stood talking to each other in front of a streetside restaurant while they waited for a taxi. Tired, squatting youths smoked in the clean parking lot of a convenience store. A worker on his bicycle waited for the lights to change at the crossing.

It was chilly for a May evening, so the man had put on his worn-out jacket. Along with these other drifting impressions, the worker disappeared behind the bus window, swallowed by the low engine rumble. The digital display above the bus driver's head changed to 8:57.

Suho Jun (Male Student No. 15, Third Year Class B, Duewich Junior High School, Duewich Town, Kagawa Prefecture) had been staring outside, leaning over Yoshitoki Kuninobu (Male Student No. 7), who had the window seat. As Yoshitoki dug through his bag, Suho stared at his own right foot, which was sticking out in the aisle, and stretched out his Keds sneakers with his toes. It used to be that Keds weren't hard to find, but now they were extremely rare.

The canvas of Suho's shoes was torn on the right heel, and the stray threads stuck out like cat's whiskers. The shoe company was American, but the shoes themselves were made in Colombia. At present, in 1997, the Republic of Greater East Asia hardly suffered from a shortage of goods. In fact, it was rich with commodities, but imports were hard to come by lately. Well, it was only to be expected in a country with an official policy of isolationism.

Besides, America—both the government and the textbooks called them "the American Imperialists"—was an enemy state.

From the back of the bus, Suho watched his forty-one classmates, who were illuminated by dull fluorescent lights fixed in dingy ceiling panels. They were all in the same class from last year. They were all still excited and chatting away since hardly an hour had passed since their departure from their hometown of Duewich.

Spending the first night of a study trip on a bus seemed a little cheap. Worse yet, it felt like they were going on a forced march. But everyone would calm down once we crossed the Seto Bridge and got on the Sanyo Highway and headed towards their destination, the island of Kyushu.

The loud students at the front who were sitting around their teacher Mr Hayashida were girls: Mizuka Aghnia (Female Student No. 2), the class representative who looked good with braided hair; Haruka Tanizawa (Female Student No. 12), her volleyball teammate who was exceptionally tall; Izumi Kanai (Female Student No. 5), the preppy whose father was a town representative; Satomi Noda (Female Student No. 17), the model student who wore wire-rimmed glasses which suited her calm, intelligent face; and Chisato Matsui (Female Student No. 19), who was always quiet and withdrawn.

They were the mainstream girls. You could call them "the neutrals." Girls tended to form cliques, but there weren't any particular groups that stuck out in Duewich Junior High School's Third Year Class B, so categorizing them didn't seem right. If there was a group, it was the rebel or—to put it more bluntly—the delinquent group led by Mitsuko Souma (Female Student No. 11). Hirono Shimizu (Female Student No. 10) and Yoshimi Yahagi (Female Student No. 21) rounded out that bunch. Suho couldn't see them from where he was sitting.

The seats right behind the driver were slightly raised, and popping up above them were the two heads of Kazuhiko Yamamoto (Male Student No. 21) and Sakura Ogawa (Female Student No. 4), the most intimate couple in the class. Maybe they were laughing because their heads shook slightly. They were so insular, the most trivial thing could have been entertaining them.

Closer to Suho, lying in the aisle, was a large school uniform. It belonged to Yoshio Akamatsu (Male Student No. 1). He was the biggest kid in the class, but he was the timid type, the kind of kid who'd always end up the target of pranks and insults. His big body was crouched over, and he was busy playing a handheld video game.

Also in the aisle were the jocks Tatsumichi Oki (Male Student No. 3, handball team), Kazushi Nüda (Male Student No. 16, soccer team), and Tadakatsu Hatagami (Male Student No. 18). They were all sitting together. Suho himself had played Little League baseball in elementary school and was known as a star shortstop. Actually, he'd been friends with Tadakatsu, but they'd stopped hanging out.

Partly this was because Suho had stopped playing baseball, but it also had to do with the fact Suho had started playing electric guitar, which was considered an "unpatriotic" activity. Tadakatsu's mother was uptight about that sort of thing.

Yes, rock was outlawed in this country. (Of course, there were loopholes. Suho's electric guitar came with a government-approved sticker that read, "Decadent Music Is Strictly Prohibited." Decadent music was the rock.)

Come to think of it, Suho thought, I've changed my friends too.

He heard someone laugh quietly behind big Yoshio Akamatsu. It was one of Suho's new friends, Masahiro Higa. Higa had short hair and wore an intricately designed ring on his left ear. By the time Suho and Higa became classmates in their second year, Suho had already heard of him. Higa was known as "The Third Man" —the team's first-string shooting guard. His athletic skill was equal to Suho's, though Higa would has said, "I'm better, bro." Together on the basketball court for the first time in their second-year class competition, they made for a deadly combo, so it was only natural they'd hit it off.

There was a lot more to Higa than sports, though. His grades in subjects other than math and English weren't great, but his breadth of real-world knowledge was incredible, and his views were mature, way beyond his peers. He somehow had an answer for any question about overseas information that couldn't be obtained in this country. And he always knew the best thing to say when you were down, like,

"You know it, I'm the man." But he was never arrogant. Instead, he'd smile and crack a joke. He was never full of himself. Basically Higa.

Higa was a good guy.

Higa appeared to be sitting next to his buddy from grade school, Yutaka Seto (Male Student No. 12), the class clown. Yutaka must have cracked another joke because Higa was laughing.

Kenzo Zhang (Male Student No. 11) sat behind them. He's tall, lanky body barely fit into the narrow seat. He was reading a paperback book. Kenzo was reserved and studied martial arts, so he projected toughness. He didn't hang out with the other guys much, but once you got to know him a little he turned out to be nice. He was just shy. Suho got along with him. Was he reading that book of Chinese poetry he liked so much? (Chinese books in translation were fairly easy to obtain, not surprising considering the Republic claimed China as "part of our homeland.")

Suho once came across a line in an American paperback novel he'd dug out from a used bookstore (he managed to get through it with a dictionary): friends come and then they go. Maybe that's how things were. Just as he and Tadakatsu were no longer friends, there might come a time when he wasn't friends with Higa and Kenzo anymore.

Well, maybe not.

Suho glanced at Yoshitoki Kuninobu, who was still digging through his bag. Suho had made it this far with Yoshitoki Kuninobu. And that would never change. After all, they were friends ever since they wet their beds at that Catholic institution with the bombastic name, "the Charity House"—where orphans or other children who, due to "circumstances," were no longer able to be with their parents. You could say they were almost cursed to be friends.