---

---

The attacker picked the loudhailer back up and continued talking even more.

"Honestly, thinking you won't get shot in this situation is just delusional. When a violent thug with a gun attacks like this, you *should* act on the assumption you'll be shot to minimize harm to others. Understand? You useless girl. You're all pathetic. Try to gain some objective perspective, you hopeless students."

The attacker seemed to be reveling in his superiority, smugly lecturing and criticizing the students. Setting aside whatever mad whim led him to occupy a gymnasium in this remote countryside town, the mindset he described for handling the situation *was* valid and undeniable. Still, was he actually embodying that principle, or just spouting it? If it was merely a veneer stemming from his position as the perpetrator, it was destined to peel off eventually.

When I imagined peeling his skin… I shouldered a sudden chill, and my cheek twitched. His way of dissecting people was identical to the kidnapper from the past, which sent a shiver down my spine.
Couldn't they just drain all his blood out, like a blood donation, and replace it for him?

The air was thick with the feeling that someone *had* to say something back.
Was the attacker looking for some kind of dramatic performance, his very presence creating this expectation?

The one who answered was a nondescript individual.
Sugita in the front row (Fine, I'll stick with Sugita) lifted his chin, heedless of his hair dirtied by muddy water.
"W-wait... please... stop..."

=
"Huh?"
As if finding the stutter utterly amusing, the attacker stooped down threateningly.
"Th-this kind of thing... um..."

"Hey, hey... You planning on talking like that in your university entrance interviews? You'll be failing exams your whole life."

The attacker delivered his pointedly out-of-place instruction. His tone was such that he seemed liable to casually blurt out that his dream job was "teacher."
And then, the one who offered clear resistance and a reply was a different male student.

"What purpose does this serve?"
The clearly articulated question came from behind. The attacker looked up, and Sugita turned just his head.
"What do *you* gain from doing this?"

Speaking loudly enough to reach even us, it was Inazawa. As expected of a drama club member, the core of his voice hadn't dissolved in fear. His lips relaxed slightly, and he consciously eased the tension from his shoulders, managing to project at least an air of composure.
Sugita, having had his moment stolen by this interjection, kept looking back, his eyes flickering with complicated emotions.

"Did I give you permission to ask questions?" The attacker advised him to back down, exhaling more than necessary as he laughed.
"I can't claim I didn't hear that rule." Inazawa held his ground.
"You speak quite clearly for a damn student." He lightly tapped the hand holding the gun. "Haven't forgotten this, have you?" the attacker added, kicking a spent casing towards Inazawa.

"I built up my courage talking to the girl I like."
Inazawa stood defiant, likely revealing his true feelings. He confronted the crime with the posture of a textbook protagonist—definitely the wrong stage for such heroics. Naturally, the attacker couldn't suppress a snicker.
*This guy,* I thought. *Even if he knew what "Mii-kun" meant to Mayu, he probably wouldn't exploit it.* I was getting exasperated by the rigid values that convinced me of that.

Incidentally, the girl Inazawa liked was currently displeased that, having finished making her requests of Mii-kun, the situation wasn't progressing towards lunchtime bento, letting out an "Nnmuu..." She also seemed to want attention, nibbling my ear and tickling my sides.
Personally, rather than focusing on that man's every lie and action until my eyeballs dried out, I wanted to blatantly dote on Mayu and accelerate the sticky humidity of the rainy season. My ideal life involves the two of us being so damp and gloomy together that mushrooms might sprout on us.
Deciding to cherish, just this once, the truth that sometimes emerges from my "It's not a lie" bullshit, I took Mayu's hand. I tried to feel a sense of security, like touching a teacup filled with warm tea. However, my hand was squeezed back—half-crushed, really—and swung vigorously up and down, making it swell awkwardly with pain and heat.

(180 E)
Who was it again that described handshakes as "legal sexual harassment"?

Even while we were confirming our suspicious bond across some mysterious bridge, the war of words between Inazawa and the attacker continued, quietly playing out and drowning the surrounding noise.

Shooter: "And what good would hearing it do? The incident isn't resolved yet. Seems a bit premature for news reports, don't you think?" He seemed drunk on himself.
Inazawa: "I believe my attitude and perception towards you might change."
Narration (Mii-kun): Inazawa was choosing his words carefully from the 'proper' options. But they weren't necessarily the *right* answers. He lacked that awareness, which made him incompatible with me. Compared to me, who consciously shoves the 'correct answer' outside the mosquito net, the best relationship we could ever manage would be less than email buddies.
Shooter: "...Right then. Action plan briefing. Poking. Yeah, sounds good, that's right. Okay, let's talk!" With an attitude seemingly designed to provoke, mixing self-intoxication with actual drunkenness, he accepted Inazawa's request. His eyes, which had gazed into the distance as if lost in thought, snapped back into focus, and his cheeks twisted into a grin so wide they looked like they might detach.

"See, this is actually for the sake of your social studies. Unofficially, of course."

The attacker's narrative began with a single line that likely made everyone's eyes glaze over in disbelief.

"Having an experience like this will be a huge help in planning your future lives. Man, you guys are lucky, so fortunate to have such a great experience while you're still young. Oh, and incidentally, being in a position to give orders was also a dream of mine. Right now, I feel like I skipped ahead and became a company chairman or something."
The attacker spoke rapidly, his high-pitched voice grating like silver scraping against someone's skull. Everyone present was aghast; the sheer weight of the injuries inflicted didn't remotely balance the frivolity of his motive.

Those whose flesh had already met bullets must have felt a true shudder of fear at the flimsy cause behind their wounds.
No one voiced agreement with the attacker as he cheerfully extolled the effectiveness of his madness. But the students clutching their wounds, faces streaked with the two great bodily fluids of snot and tears, couldn't manage to open their mouths properly, offering neither denial nor assent. To any bystander, such an attitude could only be interpreted as complicity.
That type of person fuels their own self-righteousness, supplying all the nourishment its roots need to grow deeper.
No matter how hopelessly deep those roots burrow, the will to cut them down must never falter.
During my time living underground, I couldn't do it… so I had Mayu kill them.
Maa-chan, who loves cleanliness but hates cleaning, tidied everything up for me.
They were my family, so I should have been the one to do it.
*I failed, didn't I?* the coward in me constantly regrets, sometimes feeling suicidal.
Though lately, she seems to be restraining her urge to jump off buildings. Or perhaps, she's just watching intently, waiting for the right moment.
Well, the manner of my life's departure isn't worth considering right now.

(3)
The one to look down upon now was Inazawa, the very person who asked the question, likely the most stunned among the bewildered flock.
Applying his common sense, this must have seemed like a use of violence transcending the merely "absurd."
Their fists grow strong and hard to shatter the frozen common sense people cling to, and yet...
Could he possibly have expected that eliciting the motive would somehow lead, domino-like, to persuasion?
The price for an unauthorized question, in this harsh educational setting he'd established, is accompanied by intense pain.

"Well, like I said at first, I thought this would be good social studies for you guys too. I believe this is the best way to satisfy both sides. Normally, nobody teaches you this stuff. Especially adults. So I'm making a special exception here; you could say I'm incorporating an educator's perspective. At the very least, the ones suffering from gunshot wounds right now should be learning something important. Right, you there?"

As an aside while speaking, Inazawa was shot without preamble. The area near his right ankle seemed to explode. The impact slammed into Inazawa, feeling like it would drive his foot right through the floor. Even as the side of his body hit the ground, he embodied sheer willpower, blocking the overflowing anguish with clenched teeth.
It seemed he possessed more readiness to be shot than the girl from earlier.
Albeit, within the narrow confines of his self-centered view.

Perhaps as a reward to himself for dealing with the cheeky student, three others—the boy sitting behind me, an unknown girl from another class, and a boy from my own class prone to truancy—were also hit by gunshots aimed away from vital areas. With this, nearly twenty people had now acquired at least one extra hole in their bodies.

If the pandemonium echoing through the gym—the agonized screams of the shot—could be perfectly captured in a painting, it might even win an award. That raw, vivid atmosphere was likely born from everyone screaming in their own way, voices thick with guttural sounds and sharp as thorns.
My acquaintances (or so they claim), Fushimi and Nagase, hadn't been injured yet. That was probably a good thing.

The attacker began the task of reloading his bullets again. He looked like he hadn't shot nearly enough, as if he were at a shooting range, perhaps about to start whistling. While he was at it, he pulled a portable music player from his right pocket and fiddled with it. Maybe the playlist had finished.
Fourth period sank another step deeper into a landscape of piled corpses.
The only thing missing to complete the picture was protruding viscera.

Setting aside the life-or-death status and brilliant futures of the injured, I watched the scene of blood-soaked boys and girls rolling on the floor like so many potatoes, and worried whether Mayu's old wounds might ache, relapse, or fester. However, the girl herself seemed utterly unconcerned, playing with my little finger. Apparently, she was checking to make sure the little finger hole used to draw fate towards oneself wasn't blocked up.
*I see, I see, so Mii-kun and Maa-chan had an extra hole opened up in them long before those people the bullets just passed through, huh?* Uhuhuhuhu… fufufufuu. Let's stop the profound analysis there, shall we?

For a free lecture, it was certainly fruitful, so I'll pay my respects to his sincerity. But that's a lie.
I'd grasped his personality type. If I searched my past, I'd met more people with similar thought patterns than I could count on both hands. That man, soaked in his fleeting moment of ecstasy, was just a typical, dime-a-dozen criminal.
(46)
Petty, second-rate—whatever label you prefer fits him perfectly. The owner of a meager mind.
However, faced with the combination of a gun and a straight, open space with no cover, trying to resist by dashing through without gritting my teeth and going full throttle is called suicide. It's worse than a kamikaze attack.
Even if there happened to be a crowbar backstage (real or imitation, doesn't matter), the best you could hope for would be a fight against the principal's metal bat.
Which means, as expected, the only option is to make the opponent fly into our bonfire himself.
Like a summer moth drawn to a flame. And the one doing the luring is also just a single worker ant.

To that end, I reached for the broadcast equipment near the viewing window, preparing to seal the smoke signal of rebellion into sound.
I wasn't vice-president of the Amateur Radio Club for nothing. Come to think of it, when I first joined, Fushimi and I kept trying to push the presidency onto each other. If I recall, she ran out of stock phrases like "I leave it to you," "I decline," and "It suits you" from her notebook, became unable to argue further, and was thus happily inaugurated as president.
Right, time for less thinking, more doing.

Even in this day and age, the equipment didn't support CDs. Cassette tapes were still the mainstream.
But fiddling with broadcast equipment like this reminded me of a bittersweet memory from several years ago when I was invited to Teacher K's house. He caught me in his room spinning discs, getting hyped up all alone, shouting things like, "Replay the last five minutes!" Of course, later on, I interrupted *him* while he was enjoying himself in his garden, addressing the profusely blooming flowers in his flowerbed with, "Be born… new life!" So, we both became unable to carelessly laugh at the other's eccentricities. Let both stories be lies.

*I can't retain more than three dark secrets from my past,* I told myself with self-suggestion, placing a hand on my head as I finished the preparations. All that remained was to press the play button with my index finger.
Do that, and Mayu and I would be dragged into this incident as involved parties. *'Again,' 'I'm used to it,' 'Something that should normally be extraordinary.'* We'd become deeply involved in it.
°
Give me a break. How many times do I have to play the protagonist? It really isn't my style.
Even if, right now, we're the only ones on the platform that ought to serve as the stage.
I'd like someone to explain the karma that causes me—someone neither in the drama club nor named Romeo—to shoulder such misfortune. Lie.

Taking a deep breath, I glanced at Mayu's expression. She was slightly embarrassed at being caught opening her mouth wide in a yawn.
Okay then.

"Click."

For Mayu, as long as her kind Mii-kun was beside her, everything simply settled into the realm of the everyday.
She's kind of like a vacuum cleaner. Does she even have a capacity limit, this girl?
…Ah, well. If I start thinking about it, despair might sprout from realizing how close the limit really is.
I decided I'd do my best for my own sake today too. This time, I pray it earns a barely-passing, wilting flower-circle mark.

The intro to an immortal masterpiece began flowing throughout the gymnasium. Though if you just removed the 'masterpiece' part, it might be somewhat closer to the truth.
Nagase, Fushimi, and incidentally, Inazawa and others, stared intently at the speakers above, murmurs spreading through them like wind through rows of grain. The attacker continued to observe the situation calmly, never letting down his guard of the surroundings.
Eventually, the song that began playing, distorted through the third-rate speakers, was our school anthem—the one only played at opening, closing, and occasionally, graduation ceremonies.

"Maa-chan, can you sing this?"
"Not at all~"
Her tone was endearing, so I patted her head reflexively. Mayu's head wobbled like a puppy's tail.
Incidentally, Nagase knows the lyrics. When we went to karaoke once, she belted it out a capella for some reason. And for some reason, I was forced to join her in a duet. Linking arms and everything… Nah, enough reminiscing about those days. Just stay swaying at the bottom of my heart like seaweed.

"Okay." Holding Mayu, I crouched down low on the spot.
Two seconds later, a bullet pierced the glass window in front of us. Just as I thought, he shot.
No hesitation, or maybe no pause for thought. Either way, he seems to have no qualms about killing.
I was acting calm, but if I'd been captivated by Mayu and my judgment had been delayed, a bullet would have pierced somewhere in my body. I felt like the baka-couple's guts clenched tight, emitting a jolt of intense pain.
Are my emotions pathologically forgetful? I can only seem to reconstruct my feelings in a vague form.
"Something flew by," Mayu remarked, straightforwardly accepting the situation, her eyes fixed on the shattered glass.
"Yeah. But if it can't hit us, it's not fast enough yet." But that's a lie.
"Hmm, Love & Thrill, Love & Suspense."
"Is Love required?"
"Rather, it's the main component."
"Then, approved."
"Mm." I got a tight hug.

During that exchange, about two more bullets zipped past. Easily leaping over our sugar-sweet love, the bullets of suspense shattered the glass. The exhilarating sound of destruction, and reflected in the scattered shards lying on the floor… damn it, we were barefoot. This wasn't part of the plan. Well, stepping on them solves everything, I suppose.
Long ago, I was forced to step on a straightened knife. Man, that hurt. I had the distinct illusion that my innards and everything else flew thirty centimeters upwards and might just settle back into place right there. That's how intensely the pain shot up to the crown of my head, pulling everything along with it.
Compared to what was essentially a landmine like that, shards of glass are merely a trap made of wooden arrows. Not fatal.

The barrage of bullets stopped. Unless there was a red light somewhere along the path, it must be due to the sender's circumstances. He seemed to be reloading. And one piece of information gained: the rifle's magazine capacity is six rounds. Who knew, at that moment, that this would be the game-changing piece of information to resolve this incident without a hitch… Nah, I'm exaggerating. It's probably the kind of knowledge destined to be abandoned in a graveyard moments after its birth.
From here on, it was hard to imagine he'd waste bullets.

The school song nonchalantly played its chorus. Until the speakers finished the entire song, we would wait, holding our breath. But how many verses did this song have, anyway?
Now that the convenient glass window for checking the gym was broken, if we stood up, our figures would be completely exposed. To proceed advantageously, we couldn't afford such a rash move. We mustn't let our lines of sight meet yet. For now, pour all nerves into hearing. If that wasn't enough, I wouldn't mind carving out nerves from my little toe or torso and repurposing them for my ears—I delegated the authority.
Right now, I just needed to pick out the footsteps threatening to get lost in the ridiculously loud volume of the school song from the floor. Currently, the only one capable of proper bipedal locomotion was the attacker. His movements were thus completely exposed.
If that attacker's composure was genuine, I'd be shot dead. If he was reckless enough to charge headlong into this situation.
But that attacker was trying to value calmness and intelligence. Therefore, he wouldn't move.
*I have a weapon. I have a gun. There's no point in closing the distance. I must be cautious.*
The delusion that he was making choices like a wise man dominated his thoughts.
It was the same self-preservation instinct, not much different from the students earlier who thought, *Approaching someone with a gun is dangerous, let's escape far away.* An idea rooted in fear, restricting his actions. A so-called ordinary man.
He might be capable of toying with people in an unseen basement, but he wasn't suited for overt crime like this. An ordinary person.
Just small fry, as expected. The only painful thing about encountering him was his bullets.
*He ranks lower than my old man as a criminal,* I praised his character.

Should I also be grateful he's easy to deal with?
I strained my ears.
The next thing he'd do, naturally, was information gathering, one step behind us.

"Could it be… not everyone's gathered here, huh?"
The attacker belatedly realized he'd forgotten to take roll call, his voice high-pitched, like a bottle shattering in his throat. An active teacher really should have objected to such crude procedure earlier. Take attendance, at least. Not that I care.
"Hey! Someone's there, right? Come out, or I'll judge you vermin and shoot you dead!"
Using the loudhailer, the attacker strained out threats, not wanting to be drowned out by the school song. He himself probably didn't think anyone would surrender based on that line alone. The simple search would soon be abandoned.
"Ah, no doubt. Some crap student who can't even listen properly is hiding here. And pulling pranks on adults, too. Hey, you. How about it? Yes, identify your friends."
He was likely pointing the gun at a nearby student, intending to quickly ascertain our identities.
*Yes, yes, keep taking in information like that, information that breeds uncertainty.*
That information would bring me an advantage greater than any weapon.
When people move exactly according to plan, a foolish sort of pleasure follows.
It felt like reaching into a pencil case stuffed randomly with junk and pulling out the exact item you wanted on the first try.
*Ah, so that's the kind of elevated feeling that man wants to taste.* Sorry for experiencing it first.
But that's a lie. Before you reach the point I'm at, I'll do something about this incident.

"...Saying stuff like that, am I actually confident?" I lightly slapped my cheeks to wake myself up.
Don't get carried away, I voiced the self-warning. Mayu, who had been picking up a shard of glass and gazing at the face reflected in it, started fussing over this good-for-nothing based on a huge misunderstanding. "It's okay, Mii-kun! Even if you don't have a job, Maa-chan will figure out the money somehow~" That tightly clenched fist of hers was also rather sad. If I could actually make Mayu worry about me, I'd almost like to try. "Thanks," I said, pinching her not-particularly-high nose. "Fumi," she responded, accepting it without any notable reaction, sending her eyeballs on a journey to explore the intention behind my action.

The school song ended. A rough, deep voice immediately covered the fading resonance.
"Two missing? Heh~, hmm, hah, two, huh. So, are they the ones? The ones currently holed up over there like parasites, the ones needing special social studies? Seems like they'll make a good example of the fate awaiting those who disrupt group activities. Really appreciate the cooperation~"
He provoked us with sarcasm so light it felt like it would vaporize before reaching us. Simultaneously, it served as a clumsy probe. Probing implies being driven by anxiety.
Curiosity and fear are fueled by the same components overflowing in the heart.
The only difference lies in whether they become fuel to stir the will to retreat or to advance.

"Oops," I put the human analysis on hold and released Mayu's nose. "Nmumu," she mumbled, her nose slightly red. She wiped it and tossed the glass shard away. I gently ran my fingers through the hair of this girl who seemed to live on, breathing air different from the rest of humanity, trying to steady my own racing heart.

There was no way rescue would arrive this quickly. But my reality demanded a solution within a short timeframe. So, I had no choice but to *do* something.
Help isn't something you wait for; it's something you create. It should be treated the same way as any opportunity.
Lately, it feels like my mind, however minutely, has been trying to shake off its lack of exercise. The mental muscle soreness is terrible, though, constantly aggravating my throat and the pit of my stomach. Still, it's hard to condescendingly advise myself that it's useless.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." …Is that quite right?
What I wanted to express was that half-baked knowledge just increases the number of not-very-effective options, but I couldn't find an appropriate metaphor, so I'll just say, "All I managed was to swap a written-answer English problem for a multiple-choice one with a hundred options."
Incidentally, this also applies as an example for this time's "monster."

Two students are missing. That much, the opponent should know.
But he can't be certain *if* there are two.
Inside this gym? Are they together? Scattered? On the platform? Could there actually be three?
The purpose of playing the obscure school song was to plant these question marks in the opponent's head.
It wasn't like I wanted to kill the mood with sheer awkwardness, like a certain Nagase-san might.

From here on, that attacker will be encumbered by his weapon and his own body. His mind and body will detach.
Let him learn just how much of a coward he himself truly is.
And, just as planned, let's have Mr. Attacker change his role from stage director to character on the stage.
As a rampaging marionette.
To set the stage for that. To construct the process that leads to the desired result.

I grabbed the microphone I'd prepared and switched on the main power.
Confirming that the fleeting life granted by electricity had flickered on, activating the voice-amplifying 'powder',
Alright, let the broadcast begin.

Prefaced by a sticky-sounding burst of static, my voice as MC echoed throughout the hall.
"Following the school song chorus, we will now have words from a current student."

---

**[Supporting Character + Perspective]**

It's similar to kendo.
Similar to that feeling, after a match starts, of being unsure about your first move.
Even when faced with what should be a limited number of options,
Hesitation still creeps in.
It feels like my two eyes and my hands
are trying to grasp things separately.
My throat tightens, and what I think in my head doesn't quite reach my body.
When I can't stand it anymore, do I create distance, or do I charge in?
Usually, I choose the latter.
But with this similar, yet different, current problem, I don't have the guts to choose charging in.
Ah, I'm such a coward.

Apparently, this thing is called love.

---

I’ve always disliked sweet things.
And yet, Ebihara Kanae falls in love time and time again.
…If I tried giving my thoughts a title like that, my cheeks felt like they’d burst into flames from sheer embarrassment. *Poof… fwah!*
"Hey, Ebihara. That fire's burning a bit too strong."
Was my heart laid bare to Kaneko, sitting right across from me?! Flustered, I shook my head, messing up my hair. "Hey, that's dangerous," Kaneko warned again, this time pressing the base of his hand against my forehead.