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takes more than a few moments. Video of the heper picking the fi rst three numbers is looped over and over. Word spreads around school about me; more students crowd the classroom.
    Then more news: Another student in the school is stil in the running. As I pump out more saliva down my chin and jerk my head in staccato fashion, I make some rough math calculations in my head. The odds that I have the last winning number are 1 in 97.

    my head. The odds that I have the last winning number are 1 in 97.
    That’s just a little over 1 percent. A comfortingly low chance, I tel myself.
    “Look!” someone says, pointing at the deskscreen.
    The TV channel has shifted away from the newsroom to an outdoor location. The male heper is gone. In its stead is a female heper, young. This heper is sitting outdoors in a chair, a hemp sack and glass bowl on the ground next to it. The image is glassy and shiny, as if a glass wal stands between the heper and camera.
    Behind the heper, distant mountains sit under the few stars that dot the night sky. Unlike the other heper, this female heper is looking not nervous ly offscreen, but directly at the camera. With a colectedness in its gaze, a self- possession that seems odd in a captive heper.
    Some of the boys lurch up on desks. A female heper is known to be the choicer morsel of the two genders. The fl esh meatier, fattier in parts. And a teenage one— as this one appears to be— is the most succulent of al, its taste beyond compare.
    Before the hissing and drooling kicks up again, the heper is already reaching into the sack. It calmly removes a bal, holds it with outstretched arm toward the camera. But it’s the eyes I’m looking at: how focused they seem to be on mine, as if they see me in the camera lens.

    I don’t need to see the bal to know the heper has picked number 87. An explosive hiss curdles out from classmates, folowed by THE HUNT 33
    a phat- phat- phat of smacking lips. The congratulations begin: ears brought down to mine, rubbing up and down, side to side. A minute later, between ear hugs, I glance down at the deskscreen.
    Amazingly, the heper is stil holding the numbered bal up to the camera, a look of quiet defi ance imprinted on its face. The picture starts to fade out. But in the moment before it does, I see the heper’s eyes moistening, its head slanting forward ever so, hair bangs faling over its eyes. Its defi ance seems to melt into a sudden, overcoming sadness.
    Before too long, they come. Even as my classmates are stil congratulating me, I hear their offi cious boots thumping along the halway.
    By the time they open the door to my classroom, every student has taken his or her seat, standing up at attention as the team of four walks in. They are al immaculately dressed, silk suits with tight, clean lines.
    “F3?” the squad leader asks from behind the teacher’s desk.
    Like his suit, his voice is silky, pretentious, but with undeniable authority.

    authority.
    I put my hand up.
    Al four pairs of eyes swivel and fasten on me. They are not hostile eyes, just effi cient.
    “Congratulations, you have the winning lottery combination,”
    the leader murmurs. “Come with us now, F3. You wil be taken directly to the Heper Institute. Your ride is awaiting you in front of the school. Come now.”
    “Thank you,” I say. “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. But I need to pick up a few items from home, clothes.” And my shaver and scrubber and nail clipper and fang cleaner—
    “No. Clothing wil be supplied at the Institute. Come now.”
    34 ANDREW FUKUDA
    I’ve never been in a stretch carriage, much less one drawn by a team of stalions. The stalions are sleek black, merging seamlessly with the night. They turn toward me as I approach the carriage, their noses sniffi ng me out. I climb inside quickly. Students and teachers spil out of the school from the east and west wings, rushing over to gawk. But they al stand a respectful distance away, silent and