Welcome to The Hell
"…ey. Hey, wake up. Shūhei."
"Huh? Kazuhiro…"
"It’s almost 8:30."
"What!"
I couldn’t help but to jump out of bed.
I looked at the clock on the classroom wall and saw that the hands were pointing to twenty minutes past seven o’clock.
"What, we still have an hour and more left."
"We need to do patrolling. The killer might have set something up while we were sleeping."
"Oh, right. Well, let’s go then."
I stood up in disgust. After all, anyone would feel uncomfortable about being forcibly awakened by someone.
"Besides, I've got some things on my mind."
"What is your concern?"
Kazuhiro's face showed a silent expression as he said.
"Hey, you guys wake up. If you don't want to die, come with me."
"Hey, having a walk with you in such an early morning? I’m not a dog, you know."
"You are loud Shōta, don’t shout."
Risa also seems to be weak in the morning.
"Are you alright? Take your time"
Minami was already up and helping Hiroto.
Hiroto silently caught Minami's offered hand and stood up.
We had circled around the school, plowing through the woods in the backyard of the school that had helped us so many times.
Shōta, as usual, was still smiling and biting into a piece of chocolate plate wrapped in silver paper in his right hand.
Next to him, Risa was mumbling and complaining, with dark circles under her eyes. Maybe fear and anxiety avoided her from sleeping much.
Behind her, Minami walked slowly with heavy steps, supporting the shoulders of Hiroto who can no longer speak, like a caregiver, and although she was not as tired as Risa, her face showed clear signs of fatigue.
"We could see only corpse."
"But if the experiment starts again, we're not going to be able to take our time, so find something that might give us a clue to the culprit while we still have time. Don't overlook anything."
Kazuhiro's motivation was apparent more than ever.
"I know it."
I replied calmly as if to counter Kazuhiro's enthusiasm.
"Hey, look. We came back to the main entrance."
Shōta pointed in the direction of the fence, which was painted in places with black oxidized blood splatters over the peeling white paint.
"We found nothing."
Risa forced her sleepy eyes open, and with slow steps, she headed back to the school building.
"No, wait."
But Kazuhiro stopped her.
"Let’s see here before we go back."
That is the security room. It was a long, narrow building like a rectangular telephone booth, less than two tatami mats in size. Inside, there is a short rectangular table and one tattered chair.
Hanging on the wall was a red vest with two yellow highlighter-like colored lines, a glowing red nightstick, and a white helmet which often see them at traffic control. On the table was a mug of cold coffee with a night scene with snow falling and white English letters engraved on it, yesterday morning’s newspaper, and a monitor displaying the school's interior as seen through surveillance cameras. Also there is a clean ashtray, a chocolate bar wrapper, and a cell phone.
"That guard used to be cleaner than I thought."
"You can't be a security guard here if you keep such a small space unclean."
Risa answered grimly to Shōta.
Kazuhiro picked up the guard's cell phone, operated something on it, and for some reason he showed me the screen. It seems like the call rejection history was from 2pm yesterday. However, the email receipt history contained nothing from yesterday.
"This is suspicious."
"Hey, by the way, where did Keisuke go?"
Shōta mumbled as he looked around.
At that moment, those of us who knew the situation fell silent.
"He was…"
"Buzz…"
Suddenly, the loudspeaker on campus was switched on.
"Good morning everyone. I hope you had a very good sleep last night. Now let's continue with the experiment. This time it is a team competition. I divided the 16 remaining people in half. Please check your email to see which team you are in. The clones are also divided among the same team members as yours. What you will be playing this time is a game in which the humans in the same teams should work together and kill the other team's clones. You have five hours from now to annihilate the other team's clones. Humans killing humans is forbidden this time, but there is no punishment. Also, even if the humans do not want to kill the clones, I will instruct the clones to kill the opponent team's humans. Don’t pretend to be a good guy. Well, see you soon."
"He really likes to see us killing each other."
The faces of everyone here pulled together, imagining the nightmare tragedy that will going to take place at this school soon…
