Livin' In a Hateful World

[Aura]

(Hirono Shimizu continued from Shottemballs Nii)

Hirono took refuge in a thick cluster of trees as she stopped to eat and rehydrate. It had been a little while since she left the lighthouse, and she was still wondering about that decision. It was probably the best-equipped location she had seen on the island thus far, but the only person there was Takaguchi. While he seemed harmless enough, the fact that he'd apparently killed Niida by accident made her worry. And if he somehow did do it on purpose... well, that wouldn't be a ringing endorsement either. She had to stay on her toes.

As she rested, she mused about the people who had already died. Yeah, Niida was a dickhead, but the others didn't really seem so bad, especially Sugimura. And even though most of them probably did nothing wrong at all, they were dead. As in, dead dead. Executed for basically no reason. The part that really stung is that they were all 18 at most (although she had her suspicions that Kawada might actually be in his 20s), and that was all they were gonna get. She couldn't imagine how their parents would probably feel once they heard the news.

Well... most of them, anyway.

Nanahara and Kuninobu didn't really have parents as far as Hirono knew, but the two of them seemed to be liked by most of the class, Nanahara especially. She was pretty sure that a lot of people would be sad to hear that they were gone. She was pretty sure that every death announcement was going to devastate a lot of people, even jerkoffs like Niida and Sasagawa.

Well... she wasn't sure if all of them would.

Hirono knew that she wasn't popular with the rest of the class. Eto had made that pretty clear when they met earlier. As for her parents? She was pretty sure they wouldn't care if she never made it home. They didn't even really talk anymore, and she had stopped trying with them. She was just the lost cause, taking up space in their house. Everyone else had people waiting to see them again and hoping that they would come back. But Hirono? Outside of Mitsuko and Yoshimi, she didn't really have anyone. And for her to live, they would probably have to die.

Thinking about that made Hirono start wondering in a different, darker direction. With all things taken into account, did she even deserve to be the sole survivor? There were so many people on the island, different classmates with families, skills, and futures. Most of them probably had a real chance to do shit with their lives. All Hirono had to offer was a criminal record at 18 and parents who hated her. Was it really fair to let everyone else die when her own life seemed to have so little to offer?

Hirono sat in silence, the wind blowing between the trees providing the only distraction from her own thoughts. She didn't like to think deeply about these kinds of things. It was usually easier to just hang out, have fun, and leave the scarier, more serious topics for another day. Yeah, thoughts about her future and what she would do after she graduated spent a lot of time in the back of her mind. It scared her to think that she might not actually amount to anything, and that her parents would have been right. So she would try to ignore them and spend another night downtown until after dark. But those thoughts were always still there when she got home. And now she had much bigger, much scarier things to consider. Not that she might not have much of a future, but that she might not have a future at all.

She returned her rations to her bag as quietly as she could. "Do I deserve to live?" is not a thought that she wanted stuck in her head, but now it was there. On top of that, she thought back to everyone she had run into so far. Eto, Mitsuko, Matsui, Takaguchi. Hell, even people she hadn't seen since the classroom like Yoshimi and Nanahara. She thought about each of them, and that question came back again.

Do I deserve it more than them?

That question tormented her as she left the little thicket behind. She just wanted to live, that wasn't supposed to be complicated. She repeated that simple desire in her mind, trying to drive out her fear and doubt as she traversed the island terrain once more.

(Hirono Shimizu continued elsewhere...)