Recruiting a Hero Party (1/14)
"E-Enoshima unnie...! This is bad...! The hostages we locked up in Towa City have started a revolt...!"
"...Monaca, what are you talking about?"
"I sent the Monokumas like you told me to, to move the hostages to the scheduled location... but that kid from the nameless orphanage—the one you said you'd put in a killing game—used some weird gun, and..."
"...What's the situation right now?"
"Komaru Naegi and the kid from the nameless orphanage freed every hostage we'd locked in the building... and with those two at the head, the united hostages are putting up fierce resistance..."
"....."
"What should I do, unnie...? If the hostages escape the building like this, things are going to get pretty messy..."
"We'll have to move the plan up."
"U-Unnie... but the Monokumas still aren't fully ready, and... the brainwashing devices are incomplete, and more than anything, the Future Foundation is—"
"Monaca. Move the plan up. Starting now, you're going to stir up a riot in Towa City. You can handle that, right?"
"Ugh... Fine... Our Warriors of Hope believe in you, unnie... so I'll... do my best too...!"
"Haa..."
After cutting the transmission, Enoshima sank into thought.
Accept despair and plant hope in it like fertilizer?
What a nauseating idea. That despair—the thing that delivered a pleasure more intoxicating and dizzying than anything else in existence—being used as mere fertilizer to grow something as paltry as hope.
It was obviously nonsense, so she meant to dismiss it. And yet an uncomfortable feeling kept creeping up from some corner of her heart.
"Haa... Fine... I'll sleep for ten minutes..."
Lately, even ten bodies wouldn't have been enough for Enoshima. At first she had monitored the academy herself in real time, but even Junko Enoshima couldn't stay up night after night watching sixteen people at once.
"...Switch to recording mode, and set it so I get an alert if anything happens..."
So recently she had settled on a system: live surveillance for the critical moments, and for ordinary hours, analyzing the recorded footage and drafting countermeasures. Even if she couldn't respond instantly, her analytical ability made it practically no different from real-time monitoring.
"Mm... Yaaawn... Alright then..."
The moment she tried to close her eyes, something strange caught her attention in the footage she had been analyzing.
"Huh? What's this?"
The recording showed this morning—the moment Chihiro Fujisaki went to bring food to Ikusaba and Kei.
After delivering breakfast, Fujisaki didn't head straight back to the dining hall. Instead he went up to the second floor and entered the boys' restroom.
"Mm... That place... that's where the secret room is, isn't it...?"
A moment later Fujisaki emerged from the restroom with a perfectly casual expression, but he couldn't fool Enoshima's eyes. She smiled to herself.
Go on... Plant all the hope you want... In the end, there's nothing waiting but despair anyway...
Her mood restored, Enoshima leaned back in her chair and drifted toward sleep, thinking of her disappointing sister as she went under.
Yeah... I should deal with unnie soon... I've kept her around because she was... somewhat useful... but mm...
And so Enoshima sank into sleep with a blissful smile—only to scrunch her face into a grotesque grimace two minutes later when the alarm went off and force herself back up.
"Ghk... ghk... H-Hey..."
"Do I look like I'm joking? You'd better start talking—fast—about why the plan is going to fail."
"Even if I... told you... it'd already... be too late... wouldn't it...?"
"Shut up and spit it out!!"
Mukuro Ikusaba had lost all reason. She was straddling Kei, hands locked around his throat.
"I already... told you... it's too late..."
"I... I have to help Junko... If I just sit here... doing nothing... Junko's going to... Junko's going to throw me away...!"
Earlier, the instant Monokuma had popped out, Mukuro Ikusaba had tried to beg Enoshima for forgiveness. But Monokuma hadn't so much as glanced her way—he'd gone straight into conversation with Kei.
Forced to wait for their talk to end, Ikusaba had started furiously assembling her excuses.
She'd done her absolute best, even if bad luck had gotten her identity exposed. She never imagined that Togami of all people would abandon his own interests and betray her. Taking Kei hostage had been an unavoidable choice...
Even to her own ears the excuses sounded pretty solid, and she had hoped Enoshima would at least hear them out and, like always, sigh and tear into her.
But Monokuma had treated Ikusaba like she didn't exist right to the end—and then vanished. From that moment on, terror that she might be discarded had swallowed her whole.
If she were abandoned by her little sister—the entirety of her life, the one she loved so much she would give her life for her—then the reason she existed would disappear. That dread left Ikusaba's mind reeling.
So she had seized on one last scrap of hope, pathetic as it was coming from despair itself: if she could learn the "reason Junko's plan will fail" that Kei had mentioned, Junko might forgive her. That was why she was doing this.
"Talk! Talk!! Talk already!!! Kei! Hurry!!"
"Ghk... hhk... hhgk..."
"TALK!!!!!!!!!"
"Hhh..."
Pinned beneath Ikusaba with her hands around his throat, the boy thrashed with everything he had to break free—but her monstrous strength was draining the fight out of him by the second.
"Ngh......"
Looking down into the tear-bright eyes of the boy slowly dying under her, Ikusaba clenched her hands even tighter, desperate not to be ruled by the tangled emotions surging up again.
And in the instant that first murder was about to happen, someone knocked on the door.
"I brought lunch. Fujisaki said he had something to do, so I came instead—would you open the door?"
Kirigiri's voice from outside snapped Ikusaba back to herself. She jerked her hands away in shock, stared at the boy for a long moment, then hauled him toward the door with a knife pressed to him.
Kyoko Kirigiri had been deeply unsettled of late.
She didn't know why, but her fake boyfriend seemed to possess some kind of talent for getting tangled up in danger—he was always falling into crisis.
And yesterday, he had fallen into a crisis incomparably worse than anything before. He had been taken hostage by Mukuro Ikusaba, one of the masterminds behind the killing game.
For Togami, with whom he was usually at odds; for Fukawa, collapsed after taking a knife; for all of them—he had volunteered himself as a hostage, and been dragged into Ikusaba's room with a blade at his throat.
In the chaotic aftermath, while the others argued over what to do, Kirigiri had sat in silence for a time—and before she knew it, she was knocking on Ikusaba's door.
Looking at the girl who opened it in full wariness, knife pressed tight to Kei's neck, Kirigiri had impulsively offered to take his place as hostage.
"If you don't want to watch your boyfriend's throat get run through, you'd better get lost."
Ikusaba's response had been ice-cold. When she put a little more pressure on the knife, blood trickled down Kei's neck.
Kei had flinched, then closed his eyes and told her he was fine, not to worry—to go help the others instead.
Biting her lip, she had been forced to walk out of the room. She had tried to help the others, but her mind was too unsettled to be of much use, and morning had come.
Even when Monokuma announced the motive and the others were thrown into turmoil, Kirigiri hadn't been able to step forward properly—her grandfather's final words about her "father" tangled together with her worry for Kei.
Fortunately the others had proven tougher than expected, and the atmosphere that had been careening toward catastrophe had somehow been brought under control. But Kirigiri had begun to feel guilty, as though she kept failing the expectations of the Kei who had trusted her and left things in her hands.
Was that why? When lunchtime came and Fujisaki said he was going to bring food to Ikusaba and Kei, she had stopped him without thinking and insisted she would deliver it this time?
At first Fujisaki had been anxious, saying there was no telling how Ikusaba would react if he didn't go himself—but when Kirigiri asked again and again, he had handed over the basket of food with a sad look, told her to hang in there, and disappeared.
Looking into the basket, she found a single hard piece of bread and one carton of milk. Wondering if that was far too little, Kirigiri quietly slipped into the dining hall, packed in a bit more food, and headed for Ikusaba's room, lost in thought.
Just what am I doing?
In truth she already knew the answer. But to uphold her convictions as a detective; to avoid exposing a weakness to someone who might one day turn and become an enemy; and perhaps... to keep from growing attached to someone she might have to use in order to end the killing game—today, too, Kyoko Kirigiri averted her eyes from that answer as she knocked on the door of the dorm room where Ikusaba waited.
And inside the opened room, a dizzying scene awaited her.
"Pwahhh... haaah... haah..."
".....The arrangement was that Fujisaki would deliver the food."
".....What exactly is this situation, Ikusaba?"
Cold sweat ran down Ikusaba's body. Beside her, Kei stood with a knife leveled at him, looking utterly wrecked.
He was gasping for breath like someone who had just clawed back from the brink of death, tears welling in his eyes, and the red imprint of a hand stood out starkly on his throat.
"....."
"I asked you what this situation—"
Ikusaba, who had been glaring at Kirigiri, suddenly seized Kei's finger and snapped it.
"AAAAAAGH...!"
".....!"
"We clearly agreed Fujisaki would be the one delivering the food, Kirigiri."
Kei screamed as his finger broke—then saw Kirigiri and forced the cry back down.
"Leave the food there and get out."
"....."
"If you don't leave right now, I'll break his arm next."
"....If you lay another hand on him, you'd better be prepared for the consequences."
With an expression gone ice-cold, Kirigiri walked out of Ikusaba's room.
Time passed into evening, and the students gathered in the dining hall.
"Maizono, earlier you really..."
"Yes—and Naegi, the way you boldly shouted that Enoshima was wrong earlier was truly cool."
"Uh... don't tell me you're using esper powers again..."
"No. I don't need to be an esper to know Naegi is cool, you know?"
"Ugh, those two are at it again. Togami—how's Fukawa doing?"
".....Judging by the way she tried to get up the moment she saw me, then started shaking and collapsed again, she seems somewhat better than before. Not that that's particularly welcome news."
"Togami-san, why do you have to stretch out 'I'm glad she's doing better, and even though I won't show it I'm actually very worried' into such a long speech?"
".....Shut up."
As if the couples hadn't already been an eyesore lately, now Togami and Fukawa had been added to the mix—so the boys turned their attention to the food and ate dinner with dead eyes.
"Should I just kill them all...?"
"That Enoshima character or whoever is pretty stupid, huh. If they just looped those scenes on the dorm monitors nonstop, everyone would despair on their own... Haha..."
"Haa... Stop talking nonsense and just eat... Huh...? Come to think of it, where's Kirigiri?"
"...She went to deliver food to Ikusaba's room earlier. Poor Kirigiri, though—with Kei taken hostage, she must be wrecked."
"Yeah... By now her insides are probably burning so bad she can't even eat... I get it..."
".....Do you people have a hobby of discussing other people's misery?"
Speak of the devil—while the boys were talking, Kirigiri opened the dining hall door and walked in.
"Ah... no, we weren't talking behind your back... we were just worried..."
"...I don't need your pity. I have a plan."
"...A plan?"
Kirigiri smiled a thin, sharp smile and addressed them all.
"So—who's in on my plan?"