“…The world of cinema is certainly very complex. There is such a great variety of movies.”
“Yeah! Movies have so much to offer. Watching them is a long-lasting hobby!”
Dropping the topic for the time being, Takina started searching the room, keeping an eye on the window. The lights wouldn’t switch on—no surprise there. The lightbulbs were missing. And there was nothing that could serve as a weapon.
“We don’t have our phones, either.”
“No means of contact with anyone outside. That’s a common trope in this genre, after all. I bet the phone line’s been cut, too.”
They left the room to search the rest of the cabin. There were two more bedrooms. They opened the door to the first one. It had a bunk bed, just like their room. They found Mizuki on the bottom bunk. She was asleep, cradling a bottle of sake in her arms. The top bunk was unoccupied.
“Hey, Mizuki! Wake up!”
Chisato slapped Mizuki’s cheeks.
“Hngh?” Mizuki emitted an indistinct noise, sitting up on the bed.
“Mizuki, please listen carefully,” said Takina. “This is a dream.”
“Then lemme sleep.”
Mizuki slumped back onto the bed. Chisato sucked her teeth in annoyance. She grabbed Mizuki by the arms and forced her to sit up again.
Takina continued explaining the situation.
“A large man armed with a machete, hostile to us, is prowling the area around this log cabin. Do you understand, Mizuki? We’re in—”
Mizuki’s eyes shot open.
“I’m going to get killed?!”
She caught up fast.
“Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to happen—”
“Oh man… It’s always like this. The sexy, stylish beauty is the first to fall victim to the killer… Is this how it’s going to end, my beautiful life, nipped in the bud…?”
“As I was trying to say, you don’t necessarily need to die. If we take measures and fight back, we should be able to—”
“How awful… Alas, I was simply too beautiful for this world… The cruel fate! But what can I do?”
Mizuki picked up her glasses, which were next to her pillow, and put them on. She got out of bed and hurried to get changed out of her sleepwear. Takina was surprised by Mizuki’s sudden impatience to get dressed. She watched her coworker put on a very short skirt and a snug tank top. Even in the darkness, she could see that the pattern was unusually garish even for Mizuki.
“If a killer’s coming to take my life, I’ve got to be dressed for the occasion!”
Mizuki sat down on the bed again, crossing her legs as she tied her hair back. It slightly grated on Takina’s nerves that Mizuki was so preoccupied with appearances and nourishing her ego, but there was something bothering her even more than that.
“Are you…intending to just wait for the killer to come and murder you?”
“Heh,” Mizuki laughed defiantly. “It’s my role as the beautiful heroine.”
Confused, Takina looked at Chisato, who just seemed bored.
“Going by that logic, it should be me or Takina getting killed first… But we’re only teenagers.”
“It sounds as if you were accepting that one of us will be getting killed… Why is that, Chisato?” asked Takina.
Chisato had to explain to her that in slasher and other horror movies, the sexy character was the first to be killed—it was the iron rule. But the victim would normally be in her twenties or older, very rarely a teenager. Outside of Japan, teenagers were still seen as children, not as sexy young women.
“It’s different when all of the protags are teenagers. Then it’s usually either the one with the biggest boobs or a mean rich girl who dies first. Hmm…”
Chisato thought for a moment and then suggested checking the other room. If Mizuki was in the cabin, then there was a good chance Mika or Kurumi would be there, too.
“We probably need them if we’re to survive this.”
“And why is that…?”
“Tough, muscular black guys hold out against the killer until the end, and little kiddies have a surprisingly high survival rate.”
“…But aren’t those just stereotypes from the movies?”
“That’s how it works, Takina. All right, let’s go.”
They headed to the next room, dragging Mizuki, who was in sandals, along with them… But the third bedroom was empty. The bottom bunk did look as if someone had been sleeping in it until not long ago, though.
Chisato sniffed the pillow.
“Teach was here,” she said.
“But smelling people’s pillows…?”
“Hey, it works.”
Mizuki checked the top bunk. That bed didn’t seem to have been used.
“Okay. Let’s search the cabin for anything we can use as weapons and for food and water. Then we’ll—”
A scream outside interrupted her. They all recognized the voice as Mika’s.
Without hesitation, Chisato opened the window and jumped out. Takina followed after her.
The air was chilly outside. The grass Takina was flattening with her sneakers as she ran was slightly damp, which added to the impression of a rather cold night.
“Wait up!” Mizuki shouted, struggling to keep up in her sandals and impractical clothes, but Chisato and Takina left her behind, rushing into the dark woods.
It was pretty dark, but there was more light coming through from the direction they were going, where they’d heard Mika’s scream. They kept running…until they reached a lake. It was large and surrounded by forest on all sides. The girls saw Mika on the shore, at the bottom of a massive tree. He was sitting on the ground, with his back against the trunk, his head down, limp… A machete was stuck in his abdomen.
“Nooo! Teach?! T-Teach…? You can’t be…!”
Aghast, Chisato started running toward him, but her pace dropped the closer she got, until she was walking. She stopped a few paces away from him.
Takina lined up with Chisato and looked down at Mika without emotion.
“What’s this supposed to be?” she asked.
The man was certainly Mika. He was wearing a thin, tight undershirt which showed off his bulging muscles and sweatpants. The outfit didn’t seem so much like his pajamas, but what he might wear when exercising. He had clearly been fatally wounded, given the machete piercing his stomach…but the odd thing was that a large amount of blood was still spurting out of the wound. Blood was gushing out of Mika like water from a small fountain or from a broken pipe. The volume certainly exceeded the five liters that a human body holds.
“Ah, so it’s not a slasher movie, but a splatter one. The over-the-top type.”
Gore was a big part of splatter movies, which aimed to excite their audiences by portraying gruesome events with chilling realism or by featuring shockingly drastic developments, but there was another sub-genre where the gore was so over the top, it became comical.
“Comical…”
“Yeah, like this,” Chisato said, pointing to the blood ceaselessly gushing out of Mika.
“But you know, horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin. And abroad, audiences in movie theaters sometimes burst out laughing at the scary scenes, apparently. So you get comedies pretending to be horrors… Or, no, you get movies that the viewers can interpret either as a horror or a comedy.”
“Really…,” Takina replied, gazing down at Mika’s body with Chisato.
The way blood was spurting out of him was so unrealistic, it did look quite funny, and Takina couldn’t muster any sorrow. The blood was puddling around Mika, forming a stream, which started to flow into the lake.
“Guys…! Hah… Haaah… I told you to wait for me… Hah… Haaah… Whoa, what? Is he…is he dead?!”
“Hey, what? You’re still alive? Hang on a moment… No way! Does this mean the sex symbol at Café LycoReco…was Teach?!”
“Ah, right. The sexiest character dies first rule…”
Now the girls thought about it, Mika was always dressed in a kimono, which covered up most of his body, but under it, he was totally ripped. It was obvious with him wearing a tight-fitting undershirt and soft sweatpants, which showed off his shapely legs. At a glance, you could tell he had an amazing body. He really was sexy.
“Know what…? This makes sense. Teach was always super popular.”
“Was he, really?”
“Yeah, he even had those obsessive fans. Well, actually, they were stalkers. But if he’s the sexy one, then what’s Mizuki’s role…?” Chisato gasped, suddenly looking worried. “At this rate, she will be the only one to survive! She’s the final girl!”