historical

What Each Person Held

Hiyama Tomoko had worked toward taking revenge against the theory of a certain respected scholar in a distant country by approaching that scholar as the perfect beauty. The scholar’s theory said that criminals were raised by their environment, so one needed to be wary of people with similar life courses to historical criminals. She had wanted to give off intentionally sensational but incorrect hints to strike down that scholar from the scientific community. However, that was not a logical reason to come to a world-famous amusement park. Hiyama looked down on that scholar she hated so much, but it seemed her personality was not mechanical enough for that to be the whole of her life.

Kazakami Shinzou had lived without the help of a home or owning any land. While working for Direct Transportation, he had found himself shipping a suspicious package that stank of blood. He had begun investigating it and had ended up at this amusement park. He had been unable to hide his irritation at not finding any answers or possibly having fallen for a trap. He had grown violent, but the organizers had simply used that for their own ends. That had frustrated him all the more.

Matsuo Shirauo had come here to discover who she was. She had not expected it to be anything so dangerous, but she had also been relieved that the organizers had not excluded her from the danger. Even if she was considered disposable by them, she at least knew she was not one of them and anything was better than being one of them.

Rachel Skydance had found it hard to adapt to life in Japan and had hoped working at a world-famous amusement park would give her some hint of her home country. When it had turned out she had been deceived and she learned what sort of predicament she was in, she had seriously considered giving up on life. And she might have done so had she not heard that voice call out to her through the steel door while she was locked in that room with a corpse.

Anzai Kyousuke had once more been used by that group of four college girls. However, he had begun to realize that he enjoyed being used by them in that way. His feelings regarding Player 1 that he had met today were complicated, but he doubted the violence would have stopped at that level had the situations been reversed.

Harumi Quartervalley had not given it much thought. She had been the one to find the wanted poster, but she had not been in need of money. She had thought an amusement park sounded a bit childish, but she had decided it might feel more fresh and make for some fun memories if they went there as workers rather than guests.

Hasegawa Hotaru had heard some shady rumors about Attraction Land, but she had kept quiet because it sounded like fun. She had been surprised when her position switched from observer to participant, but that had simply meant she needed to switch her thinking over to achieving the happy ending that the organizers would least want.

Kusaka Kozue had been afraid to be left out. She felt safest with the structure of the four girls (+ one boy), so she had done her best to defend that structure. But she had been saved by some strange guy and the five had suddenly grown to ten. She had been confused at first, but she soon found it was not a bad change.

Yakushiji Aisu had wanted to save up money so she could visit Guam during winter break. She was what was known as a genius, so she was quite skilled. However, her abilities only ever showed themselves in the things she had a strong interest in. She periodically needed some new stimuli. That had been the reason for the winter trip to Guam and in a way it had been the reason for the part-time job as well.

Those nine were no more.

They had all died.

This was not just the elimination of nine names or symbols. These were flesh-and-blood humans who had lived up to this point holding onto their own reasons and circumstances.

They had made a single choice to protect Higashikawa.

And their decisions had been completely overturned by the worst possible trap.