Chapter 21: It’s better to be kind than to be cruel

Friday, 9 May, 20XX - Part 2

Murakami Ryu didn’t open his eyes when we stopped next to him.

Yui and I looked at each other.

The Murakami brothers should’ve reported us to the police. So why was the elder brother slumped over next to a vending machine?

“Let’s have a look,” I said.

Yui touched my arm. Her hand felt warm and soft. She has been touching me a lot lately. No, don’t get any weird ideas. She just started hugging my arm more because we had to pretend to be lovers in front of the others at the campsite.

“What if it’s a trap? They reported us to the police,” she said.

“If they knew that we are in this area, they could’ve arrested us while we were sleeping.”

“That’s true…”

We got out of the car. There was still no reaction. Police officers didn’t suddenly surround us. No helicopters appeared in the sky above.

I approached Murakami.

“H-Hey, it’s morning already. Are you okay? Please wake up.”

I repeated the words I heard station staff use when they had to deal with drunk salarymen who had fallen asleep on their way home.

There was no response.

I shook his shoulder. His body fell sideways, his head hitting the ground.

“Is he dead? Yui asked.

I put two fingers on his wrist.

“There is a pulse.”

We both let out a sigh of relief.

Yui got down on her knees and slapped him.

“Whoa…he is completely unconscious. What should we do, Haruto?”

It seems that he was beaten up during the dark night. Maybe he and his brother were targeted by local criminals after the power went out.

We could just leave him. Someone else will eventually find him. In the first place, he is the ‘enemy.’ He had probably reported us to the police. We had no obligation to help him.

But he was bleeding from his head.

Depending on his injuries, he might die if we left him like this.

I looked up. The first rays of sunlight stretched across the sky, the clouds somewhere between night and day.

What would mother think? She’d probably scold me for thinking about abandoning someone like this.

“It’s better to be kind than to be cruel.”

She said those words just one time when I was in kindergarten and had gotten into a fight with another child. I could barely remember anything from that period of my life, but those words always stayed with me.

“We can’t take him to the hospital,” I said. “After a long night without electricity, there’s probably going to be a lot of police there.”

“Then…”

Yui looked like she knew what I was thinking.

I rested my forehead in my hand.

We had no choice but to go back to camp.

Yui and I cleared some space, then loaded Murakami Ryu into the back of the car.

Donk!

“Hey, be careful with his head,” I exclaimed.

“I know! But he’s really heavy!”

Clunk!

“Haruto, you’re gonna break his legs!”

After stowing Murakami Ryu away like a dead body, we drove back the same way we came.

As we approached the camp, Yui said, “Let me do the talking.”

I nodded.

The Kobayashi sisters were aware that we ran away. It will be difficult to explain why we had returned to the camp with the elder Murakami brother injured and the other missing along with their white minivan.

I took a left turn, drove through the forest for a few minutes, and we arrived at the campsite next to the lake.

The Kobayashi sisters rushed out of their tent when they heard the sound of our car.

Their expressions changed from joy to astonishment, dissapointment, and eventually confusion.

Like we agreed, I let Yui do the talking.

“Sorryyyyy, it took us a while to come back~” She clapped her hands together.

“Haruto? Yui? I thought…” Fumi began to say, but Yui cut her off.

She explained to the Kobayashi sisters that the convenience store didn’t have any painkillers in stock, so we decided to drive to the city to find a pharmacy. Once we were there, we resupplied at a supermarket and have a proper meal at a restaurant because we had been camping for several days and wanted some hot food. After that, we went to the arcade to have some fun. In fact, we had so much fun that we lost track of time, and in the middle of our gaming session, the power got cut. Since it was too dangerous to drive, we decided it was safer to spend the night in the city. Then in the morning, as we were heading back to camp, we found Murakami Ryu unconscious next to a vending machine.

Yui explained everything while Yuki and Fumi used a first aid kit to treat Ryu’s wounds.

Yuki was crying the entire time, begging him to wake up.

The sisters believed us. If we wanted to run away, then we wouldn’t have come back with Ryu. Yui and I pretended to know nothing about how they wanted to report us to the police.

Thankfully, the wound on his head wasn’t a deep cut. We just had to wait for him to regain consciousness.

“Do you know what happened?” Yuki asked.

We shook our heads.

“Ryu was like this when we found him,” I said.

It wasn’t hard to guess what happened to the Murakami brothers last night. Most likely, they were driving around in their minivan after the power went out. Most people continued to pay for food and remained members of society, but there must be others who saw the lack of electricity as permission to do whatever they wanted. A group of these people stopped the brothers, beat them up and took their white minivan. They must’ve taken Kota with them and left Ryu for dead.

Fumi took out her phone. “This morning we walked down the road and found a place where we could get a 3G signal. None of you were back, so we got worried…”

Yuki said, “We needed to know what was going on out there.”

Come to think of it, we were so busy resupplying and transporting Ryu that we didn’t have time to check the news from the outside world.

Fumi showed us her phone. “I saved a few videos from YouTube. They got uploaded when the Internet came back.”

The video was recorded from someone’s balcony. It looked like it was somewhere in Shinjuku. There were several office workers walking towards the station at around midnight after likely having worked overtime.

But these exhausted officer workers weren’t the only ones out on the street.

Gangs of people in hoodies and masks ran around, smashing into stores and looting them. There were so many of these mini gangs that the police couldn’t keep up with all of them. The video’s sound was filled with the sirens of police cars. But for every police car that showed up, there were five groups breaking into a different store.

The office workers walked past those mini gangs breaking into a Bic Camera. Some ignored the gangs completely while others watched for a few moments before walking away, as if nothing happened.

Throngs of gang members rushed past the office workers, eager to get into the electronics store, the two different groups ignoring each other.

They walked the same streets, but lived in completely different worlds.

It was just as I predicted. Most people will continue to live their usual day-to-day lives until the end of the world. They don’t know any other way to live. And others will see this as a chance to change their lives. Even if looting is the change they desire.

“My friend told me the same thing is happening in Osaka and Fukuoka,” Fumi said.

Yui scratched her chin. “Hmm…but why didn’t this happen in the city we were in?” She told the sisters about how everyone at the 24 hour supermarket was leaving behind cash to pay for their groceries.

The two sisters shook their heads. They didn’t know.

I raised my hand slightly to my chest.

“I think I know. Social cohesion in larger cities is weaker than it is out here in the countryside. In big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, lots of people live together, but they don’t know each other. If no one knows each other, then it is easier to commit crimes. It’s harder to overcome the emotional barrier to commit a crime in small cities because the social cohesion is stronger.” I took a breath.

In other words, when electricity vanishes, it is the places with the least social cohesion that will lose the status quo.

“Haruto…how do you know all that?” Yui asked.

“It’s just something I read in a book to prepare for university entrance exams.”

“Also – “ I was about to explain more, but the sound of a car interrupted us.

The white minivan belonging to the Murakami brothers parked next to our red Kei car.

But it wasn’t Murakami Kota driving it.