The Plan Is Underway / A Midnight Scare

How would you feel then? Surely you'd first come to hate that voice intensely, then redirect your anger toward the person who caused it, growing dissatisfied and irritated with them.

That was because your comfort zone hadn't gotten what it wanted—or, to put it another way, what you wanted was in someone else's hands, and that person was toying with it without a care.

How could anyone be pleased when something as fundamental as their sense of self had been provoked?

"...I've thought of a solution, but I don't know if you'll be willing to accept it." While everyone else was silent, Soma Shuhei offered them a glimmer of hope.

"Could you tell us your idea first?"

"Aren't we given an unlimited supply of plastic bags? We could take a lot of them and lay them beneath the tent. That way, the ground wouldn't feel so hard."

"...Oh, that might actually work."

"But there's a downside."

Before the girls could celebrate this solution, Soma poured cold water on their excitement.

"What's the problem...?"

"Yeah. Whenever you move even a little while you're sleeping, the plastic will rustle. It might make it harder to fall asleep."

I'd thought Soma was going to mention some serious side effect, like violating the rules against polluting the environment. I hadn't expected noise to be the issue.

"You scared me. I thought it was going to be something serious. If it's only that, I don't think we'll mind."

"So it's just the noise. That's still a lot better than sleeping on a hard 'mattress.'"

"Agreed."

"Then it should be fine."

"That's a great idea, Soma." Ichinose praised him with a smile.

"But could this count as polluting the environment? It is plastic, after all..." Sumida cautiously raised the question, but Soma quickly put her mind at ease.

"As long as we return the bags to the school afterward, it'll be fine."

"Then I'll go ask Teacher Hoshinomiya for permission."

"Everyone, it's time for roll call. Please gather over here."

As luck would have it, it was exactly eight in the evening. Teacher Hoshinomiya walked over from the separate tent set up not far from our area, carrying the attendance sheet.

The guidebook listed an item that would cost us points: if a class missed either the eight-in-the-morning or eight-in-the-evening roll call, it would lose five points. Since this rule inevitably required us to gather together, this was the most chaotic time for us.

We'd deliberately avoided taking the base-camp device right away, intending to seize it as a group during this busy, crowded period. This was an effective way to block prying eyes.

After finishing a series of tedious discussions and taking care of the necessary tasks, we finally reached our brief moment of freedom for the day.

I'd been planning to observe the ants crawling along a tree trunk, but Kanzaki suddenly came over to see me.

"Tell me, you didn't do that on purpose, did you?" As he spoke, Kanzaki stared directly into my eyes.

"What are you talking about?"

"I followed the direction you gave me, but I didn't find any firewood. Instead, I stumbled across a cornfield... You didn't do that on purpose, did you? You didn't want to take credit for finding it, so you made up an excuse to send me there."

"Now that you mention it, you never did bring back the firewood I asked you to get... Wait, why would I do that? Finding a cornfield wouldn't cause me any trouble. Either you went the wrong way, or I gave you the wrong directions. I really did leave half the firewood along the way. If you went where I pointed, then I must've given you the wrong directions."

"So you just gave me the wrong directions?"

"...Are you trying to give me too much credit?!" I suddenly understood what Kanzaki was getting at, and I scorned his way of thinking.

"If you're trying to fool me, you might as well give up. I've already seen through your tricks."

"I'm serious."

"...Are you sure you know what you're saying?"

"Isn't it highly likely that things happened just as I suspected?"

"Are you all right? Think about it. I came back with Ichinose. If I could find the cornfield on the way, wouldn't Ichinose have noticed it too?"

"..."

I thought my explanation made perfect sense, but Kanzaki still looked at me with suspicion and confusion.

It was probably one of those situations where you knew something, but couldn't put into words exactly what you understood.

"I feel like I'm starting to have trouble figuring you out."

"You're the one making things too complicated." I irresponsibly blamed Kanzaki for the whole thing.

"But now I'll have to go gather that firewood myself tomorrow." I sighed.

"...I'll go with you tomorrow to make up for it. And I'll see just how much truth there is in what you've been saying."

"Then let's get one thing straight: you're still the one carrying the firewood."

"..."

Action Underway

The special exam during the school break: the Uninhabited Island survival test.

Before the exam began, the school gave each class 300 points to use during the test and handed out a guidebook. As long as the items appeared in the guidebook and the class's total spending didn't exceed its budget, it could purchase whatever supplies it needed.

At the same time, to give the classes a chance to widen the gap between their point totals, the school offered extra points for meeting certain conditions. Those points would be added up when the exam ended and couldn't be used during the test.

The so-called special conditions were "occupying devices" and "identifying the leader."

On the uninhabited island provided by the school, there were over a hundred occupation devices, and each location could be used as a class's test campsite. In itself, occupying one was simple enough, but a series of additional conditions forced us to proceed cautiously.

The first was "identifying the leader," a rule that severely restricted the leader's movements. If another class observed the leader while we were carrying out our plans, our class risked losing fifty points.

Second, only the leader could use the special unlocking card, and once we chose who would use it, we couldn't easily change our choice. That meant that if we wanted to occupy a base-camp device while going out to look for food, we'd have to bring the leader along. This created a risk, and even if our plan was exposed, we wouldn't be able to change who the leader was.

Once I understood the rules, I came up with an extremely simple, brute-force solution: let a physically gifted student be the leader, then have them use their superior speed and agility to occupy as many bases as possible over the course of a week. That way, even if we were discovered, we'd earn enough to make up for losing 150 points.

Unfortunately, our class's leader had neither superior physical abilities nor nimble movements. She was a delicate girl.

Of course, this plan was far too idealistic. It could only work if everyone clearly understood what was happening and completely cut off any lone actors.

Given all that, the importance of the leader was obvious.

To that end, we'd prepared two layers of protection for the leader's identity. First, since we knew Shiranami Chihiro was the leader, we'd entrusted the special unlocking card to Ichinose Honami. That way, even if someone discovered who had the card, the leader would still be safe from identification.

The second layer involved how we handled the occupation process. We selected a fixed first team from within the class to surround the occupation device and prevent anyone from observing the person using it, while a second team kept watch on the surroundings. Once the occupation was complete, we'd pass the special unlocking card through everyone's hands before finally returning it to Ichinose.

It wasn't an especially dazzling plan, and it might not have seemed impressive, but it was absolutely effective at protecting the leader's identity.

As long as the special unlocking card wasn't leaked or...

stolen.

1

The way someone slept was related to their physical health and sleeping habits. Also, if someone tossed and turned all night, it meant they were trying to ease spinal fatigue caused by being overly active during the day.

The latter alone didn't mean they were a restless sleeper. They were just too tired from the day.

So I wasn't making excuses for accidentally breaking my tracking watch. If anyone was to blame, it was Ichinose.

I shouldn't have helped her gather firewood.

I sighed at the shattered screen. The watch's temperature, heart rate, and location systems were all showing errors. Only the timer, which could barely still tell the time, was stubbornly working.

It was 3:14 a.m.

I stretched, removed the broken watch from my wrist without permission, and set it on a rock I'd been in close contact with not long ago.

Then I silently climbed down from the hammock.

It hadn't rained this morning, but that did nothing to lessen the dampness of the forest around us.

The faint, earthy smell of the soil, mixed with the fresh scent of leaves and the rich fragrance of fallen leaves and rotting wood...

It had been more than a year since I'd encountered these unfamiliar yet familiar scents.

Still, I hadn't come here to reminisce.

After making sure I hadn't woken anyone, I quietly walked over to the luggage piled on the plastic groundsheet.

The tents the school had given us weren't very big. The girls wanted enough space to turn over during the night, so they hadn't brought their belongings inside. We boys followed suit, and soon everyone's luggage was piled together.

We'd originally wanted to find a way to deal with our personal luggage, but since this seemed to work, and we didn't have any extra space to put it anyway, we let it be.

At first, there had been some room in the tent the school had given us to use as a simple toilet. But to save five points, we'd turned it into an outdoor shower.

If you wanted to get your hands on the underwear of a girl you liked in your class, now was definitely the best time.

Using the faint light of the moon, I picked out the only bag among the luggage that stood out in a different color, then tiptoed over to the edge of the groundsheet with it.

The mechanism behind night vision was relatively simple. The rod cells responsible for vision at night were far more sensitive to light than cone cells, but unlike cone cells, they couldn't perceive color. That was why we could see things in the dark, but often couldn't make out their colors.

Even with the corresponding special training, I couldn't guarantee I'd identify an object's color perfectly in the dark. Still, I could generally tell the difference between things.

Before the exam began, each class had been assigned backpacks in a different color. So the luggage in my hands belonged to Kaneda Satoru from Class C.

Don't get the wrong idea. I didn't like him, and I wasn't planning to steal his personal belongings.

I moved slowly, trying to unzip the bag as quietly as possible.

I knew that if someone caught me illegally searching through someone else's luggage, I'd be condemned on moral grounds—even if the person condemning me was a classmate and I had a good reason...

I'd noticed something was wrong as soon as I saw Kaneda carrying his backpack. If it only contained clothes and toiletries, there was no way its outer pocket would have a curve with such an unmistakably mechanical shape.

The weight of the bag was another issue. If our luggage contained only two changes of clothes, then his had the equivalent of ten.

Towels, a change of clothes, underwear...

Most of the things inside were the same as what we used.

But this was—

I pulled out an object that felt cold and hard, with a metallic texture. There was nothing else in the backpack.

...A digital camera?

After finding the power switch, I turned it on without hesitation. Kaneda had only just arrived at our campsite yesterday, but it was better to check, just in case.

"Beep... beep... beep..."

I went through the contents in the most direct way possible. At this point, finishing the inspection quickly was the only way to avoid making too much noise.

There were traces of the camera having been used, but the files on it were all landscape photos of the island. There were no pictures of anyone from our class.

After looking through everything, I made a few small adjustments to the digital camera, then put everything back the way it had been.

Once I'd finished preparing, I was about to leave the campsite when I heard a faint rustling from inside the girls' tent.

It was the sound of a zipper being pulled open.

"Zzzip—"

The next moment, a faint light from a lantern appeared behind me.

A Midnight Fright

In his book Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft once wrote a famous line: "Fear is born from the unknown."

That made a certain amount of sense, but it wasn't the whole story.

Fear itself was simple. It was an instinct embedded in our genes, a warning that protected our lives by urging us to seek benefits and avoid harm. All fear could be traced back to a fear of death itself. As an emotion, it could warn us at critical moments, but when it came to the unknown, it was also a killer of thought.

Sigmund Freud divided the human mind into three parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. There was no need to say much about the conscious; it was the sensations we could perceive and recognize in our everyday lives. The unconscious was made up of experiences that rarely entered our awareness, including primitive instincts and desires. Normally, the conscious mind wouldn't accept them. The preconscious was more fluid, lying between the conscious and the unconscious. In the psychologist's words, it was a "censor," making sure the unconscious didn't simply barge into the conscious mind.

Since fear was a killer of thought, perhaps turning the unconscious into the conscious was a good way to erase it.

0

"Clack clack clack—"

Mm... Is it morning?

I struggled to open my eyes. It was still pitch-black around me, and the girls' breathing could still be faintly heard nearby.

"Beep, beep, beep—"

Since it wasn't morning yet, let me sleep a little longer.

I rolled over petulantly, but the weather was so muggy that I couldn't fall back asleep. The increasingly hot sensation of my body made me more and more alert.

Mm, we should've switched the tent to mesh mode for better ventilation. It's summer, but there don't seem to be any mosquitoes around the campsite, right? It's so stuffy. If the night breeze could get in, it might cool things down a little.