J-Rock Battle Royale
by Scarlet and Dana

Chapter 2

"Toshiya-kun!"

Two warm palms were on his shoulders and someone was shaking him gently. He moaned and tried harder to keep his eyelids shut.

"Toshiya-kun! Wake up!"

He could have realised that those hands were shaking. He could have been terrified by the panic that was filling the atmosphere, by the weak whining noises that were echoing in the room. He didn't. His head was spinning and his thoughts were vague. What was going on? Where was he? He couldn't remember clearly what had happened to him right before falling asleep.

What about now?

"Toshiya-kun, please!"

The woman repeated and repeated the same sentence, her voice trembling with heavy sobs. The intensity of each of her words was increasing and her grip on Toshiya's uniform was so tight that her knuckles were turning to white.

She was yelling.

"Toshiya-kun! Wake up! You're about to miss the school trip!"

Crap! Did I oversleep? I have to call Aoi-kun before I leave.

Aoi…

 I wonder if he'll be wearing his black t-shirt, the thigh one that we bought in Shibuya together. Oh well…"we'' bought… I chose and he paid. I'm so good at choosing; he looks amazing with that t-shirt. I'm afraid that if I look at him for more than a few seconds, my eyeballs will pop out of my head.

It should be illegal to wear a shirt like that.

"Toshiya!" The voice was different that time. It was one that he recognized…

Without any more warnings, a strong fist collided with his cheek. Toshiya snapped his eyes open and instantly put both of his hands on his head, massaging his scalp. Kyo was standing in front of him, Ayumu by his side. Both looked worried, but also very tired. Weird. Didn't we just all sleep?

Ow. My head!

"Kyo! Are you crazy?! I already had a terrible headache" Toshiya complained

His brain took a few seconds to analyze the current situation. He raised his eyes and caught a grasp of the scenery behind the two students…

They were standing in a classroom that had its doors closed. Obviously, it wasn't their own at Kobe's municipal college. This one was smaller, and the wooden floor was of a different color. It was dark, the only source of light coming through the closed curtains of the windows, at the other side of the room. The whole place was dusty, as if the classroom had been abandoned for a long vacation, but the desks and chairs were still lined, and there were chalks on the blackboard, waiting to be used.

All in all, it was a pretty creepy scene, and Toshiya couldn't help but shudder as he felt like a chilly breeze had come thought the room. He could tell that they were far from home. Far from everything they knew. Toshiya looked around to his classmates, trying to find some understanding to their situation.

Or at least some reassurance that he wasn't the only one who was very worried about it.

The look on their face; on Kyo's face. Toshiya would have expected to see anger written all over his visage, or annoyance at the very least. The short boy had woken him up in a brutal way, after all. But all he could see, the only thing that the body language of each and every single one of his classmates was demonstrating, was confusion. Confusion and fear.

"Kyo...? Do you have any idea of what is happening right now?" Toshiya uttered, trying hard to keep his voice from wavering. His smaller friend shook his head.

"No, but..." He raised a hand, fingers closing on a metallic necklace around his neck.

Ayumu's eyes grew wide and she elevated one of her hand to point Toshiya's neck with a shaky finger.

"Th... there's a... thing..."

Toshiya felt an icy weight drop in his stomach. His own hands flew to his collar, to confirm the presence of the same object on himself.

What the hell...?

Some quiet gasps and cries of horror escaped from the other students' mouth as they all noticed the odd necklace at one moment or at the other.

"I think..." came the shy, strangled voice of Shinya Terachi (B-12) from the back of the classroom. Everybody was silent to let the timid boy speak. Toshiya, from where he sat on the ground, could see his skinny figure trembling, his friend Hikari Miyake (G-15) putting her arms around his bony shoulders.

"I think... that we... we were chosen..." It was spoken slowly, nervously, but most of the students could fill out the sentence in their mind, the pieces adding up perfectly.

No... no, it can't be...

"I think we were chosen for this year's Program."

Everyone was quiet for a few moments to let the weight of those words fall down. Toshiya couldn't believe it. It wasn't the kind of thing that happened to you! It happened to the cousin of the sister-in-law of your mother's coworker's ex-husband, but not to you! Kyo growled, hitting the floor with his fists. Ayumu removed the sunglasses she always wore to hug her legs, hiding her face between her knees with a weak sigh of resignation.

Even Kana, who had been standing near Aoi, momentarily forgot about her timid nature to literally throw herself into his arm, holding him close and compressing the fabric of his shirt between her little fingers. The young man closed his eyelids, trying to keep his tears from evading and gently rubbed the girl's hair with the back of his hand. He whispered a small: "Don't worry, everything will be fine." and even attempted to smile at the moment she raised her eyes blurred by tears to look at his face. He had to be strong

He had to...

But he did not want to die.

Koda, surrounded by her closest friends, was shaking her head vehemently.

"He's such a looser, don't even listen to him." she stated with as much force as she could but her voice was weak and doubt was obvious on the face of the other members of her gang. She then stood up and slammed the nearest desk with her hand. "Who organized this, huh? Well cut your sick joke! I'm not laughing."

Nao and Kai were staring at each other without daring to pronounce a single word. Behind them, Ayumi Hamasaki (G-13), the president of the class, waved her hands in the air to catch the students' attention.

"Calm down, guys. There must be something we can do!" she managed to say calmly.

The silence invaded the class. The children were glancing at each other and everyone was waiting for someone else to come out with a miraculous solution.

"NO!"  Shizuka Nakamura (G-12), a chubby, short-haired girl with heavy make-up broke the silence first with a shrilly cry. "You fucker... it can't be..." She voiced everyone's thoughts. But then, under her friends' surprised stares, she got up and made her way to the closed door, chanting "I'm not gonna die here, I'm not gonna die here…".

She began to try to force the door open, cursing when she realized it was locked.

"What the fuck is she doing?" Toshiya heard Aoi mutter from his side. "Isn't anybody going to stop her?"

Apparently not. Even her friends, Yuriko Matsumoto (G-14) and Hiroko Tanaka (G-11), had recoiled in fear of what would happen to them if they went near Shizuka. And at that point, she probably wouldn't listen to anybody. Her eyes narrowing in concentration and beads of sweat rolling down her neck, she had already started to take off a bobby pin from her hair and twisting it to lock pick the door.

Is she stupid or what? Like hell this is going to do anything good...

Strangely, Shizuka's yell of "Ah, got it!" did nothing to relieve the tension. The students all held their breath as their classmate opened the sliding door with a dramatic gesture and put one foot outside the room.

A few second passed.

Then, heavy steps were heard; a group of people was obviously coming. The students gasped. The fear was making their bodies quiver; making the tears fall across their cheeks. They moaned and some hid their eyes but none called for Shizuka to come back.

Despite their young age, most of the students of class 3-B of Kobe's municipal college had already heard a gunshot. Some of them were even able to identify the type of gun used by the sound it made.

They watched, mesmerized, as Shizuka took a step back, her eyes wide, a bullet-sized hole in the middle of her forehead. She fell backwards, already rigid, and hit the floor with a loud ‘thud'.

She was...

Dead?

"She... she... she" her friend, Yuriko, stammered. The young girl had made a few uncertain steps in direction of Shizuka's corpse. "Hey! Shizuka-chan! You're kidding... right?"

Yuriko did not want to see the hole between her friend's eyes and the pool of fresh blood underneath her head. She was walking slowly, hiccups and sobs making her delicate shoulders tremble.

The sound of a gun recharging made a shiver run through the whole class. The bodies straightened and this time, Saga Sakamoto (B-7) ran as fast as he could until he reached Yuriko, grabbed her by the waist with absolutely no delicacy and dragged her to the back of the classroom, where most of her classmates were.

Some of the newcomers began to fire at the still warm body of Shizuka, ripping it into pieces. Nobody could deny what was happening anymore. They could not shake their head and pretend that everything was fake, that it was all a big lie. And if the students hadn't started at that moment to run and screech like a pathetic bunch of beheaded chickens, they would have noticed five soldiers entering the classroom along with a tall and handsome looking man wearing a black suit. He stepped over what was remaining of the cadaver like it was a puddle of water on the sidewalk.

"You have to ask before going out of the classroom" the man said with a sight as if he had been talking to a crowd of 5-years-olds. "What do they learn in school, nowadays?"

He rolled his eyes at the nearest soldier who remained placid, nodding simply. After that, the anonymous man set his gaze back, with annoyance, on the students of class 3-B that were still staring at the remains of their deceased friend with fear. They were all jam-packed at the back of the classroom. Plenty girls were yelling with their eyes or ears covered with both hands and some of them had even made their way to the other side of the room to hammer the barricaded windows helplessly.

"Cut the noise" the mysterious man muttered, clenching his fists.

Most of the students did not even hear his voice. They were self-centered; they were hysterical, weak and pitiful.

"I SAID CUT THE NOISE!"

"SHUT UP!" the soldiers instantly repeated, aiming their guns.

Toshiya, Aoi, Kyo, Kana and Ayumu were standing close. Aoi still had the young girl hugging him and he had covered her mouth with his hand to keep her from yelling. Even Toshiya was ridiculously close to his friend as if his presence could somehow nurse his terror. Next to him, Ayumu had taken Kyo's hand and was squeezing it without even realising it. Toshiya noticed Saga moving closer to them. He was shooting a glance at the armed men with every step he made and his spine was bent frontward like he had been playing some kind of thief in a bad movie.

"Saga?" Toshiya whispered "Do you-" Saga cut him off with a glare, putting a finger over his pierced bottom lip. Slowly, carefully, he sat down on his knees besides them.

"Let's listen to what they have to say", he said quietly. "And calm down. Don't do anything rash."

Toshiya couldn't help but feel his heartbeat steady a bit at his friend's words. Saga was an intelligent, dependable boy, and Toshiya trusted him completely. Judging by the way Kana, Aoi and Ayumu reacted to these words, the others did too. Saga had that confident air that made people relax when in his presence. Kyo, however, didn't seem to calm down one bit. While it made Toshiya anxious, he wasn't entirely surprised; the shorter boy wasn't the kind to trust people easily, and he wasn't as close to Saga as his best friend was. The blonde was short-tempered and the situation seemed to require more calm than what his rational side could handle. Toshiya would have wanted to say something to somehow reassure him, but he was cut off again before he could find the right words.

"Now now, children!" The mysterious man at the front of the class room smiled pleasantly, pushing a strand of blond hair behind his ear. "Behave, alright? I don't want to hurt anymore of you. Honestly, I just want us to be friends!" The smile grew wider, exposing blindingly white teeth.

The polite, cheerful voice had a slightly creepy quality to it, and nobody dared to move a muscle. The man looked at the terrified students for a few moments, his bright smile dampening a little, but the disappointed look on his face disappeared as quickly as it came, and he let out a short laugh.

"Oh, how stupid I am! I forgot to introduce myself!" He put a hand to his forehead, still chuckling. Toshiya was quickly starting to hate that sound. "My name is Yoshiki Hayashi. I'll be your new teacher!"

Ayumi Hamasaki, the ever-brave class president, raised a timid hand and got up slowly. "Sir, I-I have a question."

Yoshiki nodded. "Yes, Hamasaki-san?"

"Why are you here? Where is our regular teacher?"

The blond man beamed at her. "I'm glad you asked, Hamasaki-san! You are a curious young lady, aren't you? Ah, it's a good thing! Well, for your question..." For a moment, Toshiya could swore he saw Yoshiki smirk. "Let's just say that your old teacher will be retiring, alright? It's pretty stressful to have your class taken like this against your will, after all! Although I'm sure this wasn't how he planned on taking his leave..."

Suddenly, he slammed his hands against the teacher's desk with surprising force. A few children gasped and straightened their back like they had been caught cheating in an exam; a student's reflex.

"Enough chitchat, now. I guess you all know why you are here by now, right?"

Yoshiki then turned to the blackboard, gracefully writing the two letters everybody in the classroom feared.

BR.

"Could someone tell me what's the meaning of this?" Yoshiki asked, crossing his arms.

The students looked at each other. They all knew what it meant but no one had the courage to make a single move and raise his hand. Toshiya remained silent like the others, breathing heavily even if the air was thick, filled with a disgusting smell of blood. The teacher cleared his throat, waiting for one of the students to answer. He then frowned sceptically, as if the lack of reaction had been unpredictable.

"No? Well, young people, it's the Battle Royale program. You've been selected to participate this year!" He smiled even more "Trust me, it's more simple than mathematics and sciences. There's only thing that you'll have to do: kill your friends. Ah, it may seem a little bit impressive but don't worry! I have a wonderful video that will explain everything to you."

[Remaining : 41]

Deaths:
Nakamura Shizuka (G-12)

For those of you who have no idea of who Yoshiki is, here is a picture.

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