“All of a sudden Yutaka realized he had created a cloud of dust all around him. Oh no! No! This sucks. This blows more than your mama! Hey, now's not the time to come up with stupid jokes!”

“Kazuhiko could have taken his gun and aimed it at the person behind them. But Sakura wouldn't want that. What she wanted was to leave this world quietly before they got sucked into this horrible massacre. Nothing was more important to him than her. There was no room for compromise. If this were what her trembling soul wanted, then he would follow her. Had he been more eloquent he might have described his feelings as something like, "I'm going to die for her honor."Their two bodies danced in the air beyond the cliff, their hands still clasped together, the black sea under them.”

“As he ran next to Noriko, a thought suddenly occurred to him. The screaming, their hasty footsteps, and the officer warning them to stop all receded as his mind was occupied with this thought.It might have been inappropriate. And besides… he'd ripped it off. Oh, man. But still he thought this:Together Noriko we'll live with the sadness. I'll love you with all the madness in my soul. Someday girl I don't know when we're gonna get to that place. Where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun. But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run.”

“One thing was absolutely certain—it was a given for Kazuo. Although he might not have particularlyrealized it, or more appropriately, perhaps because he was incapable of coming to such a realization, this was what it came down to: he, Kazuo Kiriyama, felt no emotion, no guilt, no sorrow, no pity, towards the four corpses, including Mitsuru's—and that ever since the day he was dropped into this world theway he was, he had never once felt a single emotion.”

“Furthermore--though it was quite irrelevant now--he had no idea his killer, Kazuo Kiriyama, had, in his mansion that was much larger than Toshinori's home in Shiroiwa-cho, mastered the violin at a level far superior to Toshinori's a long time ago--and then tossed his violin into the trash.”

“And so Yoshimi heard the dry pop one more time. Her forehead felt as if it were being crushed by a car. That was all.”

“Shogo looked at Shuya and Noriko. "The winner's forced to transfer to another school where he or she is ordered not to mention the game and is instructed instead to lead a normal life. That's all."Shuya felt his chest well up inside and his face froze. He stared at Shogo and realized that Noriko was holding her breath.Shogo said, "I was a student in Third Year Class C, Second District, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture." He added, "I survived the Program held in Hyogo Prefecture last year.”