"E-Enoshima sis...! This is bad...! The hostages we were keeping in Towa City have started a revolt...!"
"...Monaca, what are you talking about?"
"We sent Monokumas to move the hostages to the designated location, just like you ordered... but the kid from that nameless orphanage—the one we were going to force into the killing game—started using some weird gun..."
"...What's the situation right now?"
"Naegi Komaru and the kid from the nameless orphanage freed every hostage locked inside the building... and now the hostages, united under those two, are putting up fierce resistance..."
"....."
"What should we do, sis...? If the hostages escape the building like this, things are going to get pretty troub—"
"We'll have to move the plan forward."
"W-wait, sis...! But the Monokumas still aren't fully prepared... the brainwashing devices are still incomplete... and more than anything, the Future Foundation is still—!"
"Monaca, move the plan forward. Starting now, you're going to incite a riot in Towa City. You can do that much, can't you?"
"Uuu... okay... The Warriors of Hope... believe in you, sis... so I'll... do my best too...!"
"Whew..."
After cutting the transmission, Enoshima sank into thought.
"Accept despair, then use it as fertilizer to plant hope...?"
What a nauseating idea. Despair—the very thing that brought a pleasure more intoxicating, more vertiginous than anything else—being reduced to mere compost for something as pathetic as hope.
Obviously, it was absurd. She should have dismissed it outright. And yet, from some cramped corner of her heart, a prickling discomfort kept crawling out, little by little.
"...Haaah. In that case... maybe I'll sleep for ten minutes..."
These days, even ten bodies wouldn't have been enough for Enoshima. At first, she'd monitored the academy in real time herself, but even Junko Enoshima couldn't stay awake for days on end while keeping sixteen people under simultaneous surveillance.
"...Switch to recording mode, set it to notify me if anything happens, and..."
So lately, Enoshima had adopted a new method: real-time monitoring for critical moments, recorded footage for ordinary hours, then analysis and countermeasures afterward. She might not be able to respond instantly, but thanks to her analytical ability, it was practically no different from watching live.
"Mm... yawn... then..."
Just as she was about to close her eyes for a moment, the footage currently being analyzed caught something strange.
"Hm? What's this?"
On the screen, footage from that morning was replaying—the moment Chihiro Fujisaki went to bring food to Mukuro Ikusaba and K.
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' bathroom.
"Hmm... that's where that hidden space was, wasn't it...?"
A little later, Fujisaki emerged from the bathroom looking perfectly calm, but he couldn't fool Enoshima's eyes. Smiling to herself, she thought:
"Right... go ahead and plant all the hope you want. In the end, all that's waiting is despair anyway..."
Her mood restored, Enoshima leaned back in her chair and drifted toward sleep, her drowsy thoughts turning to her disappointing older sister.
"I guess... it's about time... I dealt with sis too... I've left her alone this long... because she was... useful enough... but... mm..."
With a blissful smile on her face, Enoshima fell asleep—only to be jolted awake two minutes later by a blaring alarm, forcing her upright with a face twisted in utter irritation.
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"Kgh... kgh... h-hold on..."
"Do I look like I'm joking? You'd better tell me why the plan is going to fail. Now."
"Even if I... told you... it'd already be... too late..."
"Shut up and talk already!!"
Mukuro Ikusaba had lost all reason. Straddling K, she was throttling him with both hands.
"I told you... it's already... too late..."
"I... I have to help Junko... If I just stay here... if I do nothing... Junko... Junko will throw me away...!"
Earlier, the instant Monokuma appeared, Mukuro Ikusaba had tried to beg Enoshima for forgiveness. But Monokuma hadn't even spared her a glance. He'd started talking to K instead.
Left with no choice, Ikusaba had waited for the conversation between K and Monokuma to end, desperately piecing together excuses in her head.
Her luck had simply been bad. Her identity had been exposed, yes, but she'd done her best. She never could have predicted that Togami would abandon his own self-interest and betray her. Taking K hostage had been an unavoidable choice...
Even by her own standards, they were solid excuses. Ikusaba had hoped Enoshima would at least hear them out—if nothing else, sigh at her and hurl the usual abuse.
But Monokuma had treated her like she didn't exist until the very end, then vanished. From that moment on, Ikusaba had been swallowed by the terror that she might truly have been abandoned.
If she were cast aside by the younger sister who was her entire life—the sister she adored beyond reason, the one she would gladly die for—then the very reason for her existence would disappear. That dread hollowed her mind out.
And so, clinging to one final hope despite being a creature of despair, she had done this—convinced that if she could uncover the reason "Junko's plan would fail," Junko might forgive her.
"Talk! Talk!! Say it already!!! K! Hurry!!"
"Ghk... sob... hhk..."
"TALK!!!!!!!!!!"
"Hngh...."
Pinned beneath Ikusaba, his throat being crushed, the boy struggled with everything he had to break free. But against Ikusaba's monstrous strength, he was gradually losing power.
"Ugh..."
Staring into the tear-filled eyes of the boy slowly dying beneath her, Ikusaba felt those tangled emotions surge up again—and to keep from being ruled by them, she tightened her grip even harder.
And just as the first murder was about to happen, someone knocked on the door.
"I brought lunch. Fujisaki said he had something to do, so I came in his place. Will you open the door?"
At the sound of Kyoko Kirigiri's voice from outside, Ikusaba suddenly came back to herself. Startled, she let go, stared at the boy for a long moment, then dragged him toward the door with a knife pressed to him.
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Kyoko Kirigiri had been deeply uneasy lately.
She didn't know why, but her fake lover seemed to possess some bizarre talent for getting entangled in danger. He was always in trouble.
And yesterday, he had fallen into a crisis so severe it dwarfed all the others. He had been taken hostage by one of the Masterminds behind the killing game—"Mukuro Ikusaba."
For the sake of Togami, whom he usually clashed with. For Fukawa, collapsed after being stabbed. For all of them. He had stepped forward and offered himself as a hostage, and with a knife at his throat, Ikusaba had dragged him away to her room.
Right after that incident, while the others noisily debated what they should do, Kirigiri—silent for a long while among them—had, before she even realized it, found herself knocking on Ikusaba's door.
When the door opened and she saw Ikusaba standing there on full alert, the knife pressed tight against K's throat, Kirigiri impulsively offered to become the hostage instead.
"If you don't want to watch your boyfriend's throat get pierced, you'd better get lost."
But Ikusaba's response had been glacial. The moment she put a little pressure on the knife, blood streamed down K's neck.
K had flinched, then closed his eyes and told her he was fine, that she shouldn't worry about him and should help the others instead.
Left with no choice, she bit her lip and walked away from the room. She tried to help the others, but her mind was in turmoil, and she barely managed to do anything before morning came.
Even after Monokuma announced the motive that morning and the others began to waver, the final words her grandfather had left her—about her "father"—combined with her worry for K, and Kirigiri couldn't step forward properly.
Thankfully, the others had been stronger than she'd expected, and the atmosphere barreling toward catastrophe had somehow been brought back under control. But Kirigiri had begun to feel guilty, as though she were continually betraying the expectations of K, who had trusted her enough to leave things in her hands.
Was that why, when lunchtime came and Fujisaki said he was going to bring food to Ikusaba and K, she had stopped him without even thinking and said she would deliver it herself this time?
At first, Fujisaki had been anxious, saying there was no telling how Ikusaba might react if he didn't go. But after Kirigiri asked again and again, he finally handed over the basket with a sorrowful expression, told her to stay strong, and left.
Inside the basket were a single piece of hard bread and one bottle of milk. Wondering if that was far too little, Kirigiri quietly entered the dining hall, added more food, and then headed for Ikusaba's room, lost in thought.
Why am I acting like this?
In truth, she already knew the answer. But to protect her creed as a detective, to avoid exposing a weakness to someone who might change at any moment and become an enemy, and perhaps... to avoid growing attached to someone she might have to use in order to end the killing game, Kyoko Kirigiri turned her eyes away from that answer once again today as she knocked on the door to the room where Ikusaba was staying.
And inside the opened room, a dizzying sight awaited her.
"Hahhh... haaah... haaah..."
".....I was under the impression that Fujisaki was the one supposed to deliver the food."
".....What exactly is going on here, Ikusaba?"
Cold sweat ran down Ikusaba's body, and beside her stood K, a knife trained on him, battered from head to toe.
Like someone who had survived death by a hair's breadth, K was dragging in ragged breaths, tears shimmering in his eyes. Bright red handprints stood out clearly around his throat.
"....."
"I asked what this situation is—"
Ikusaba, glaring at Kirigiri, suddenly grabbed K's finger and snapped it.
"Aaaaaaagh...!"
".....!"
"We agreed that Fujisaki would be the one delivering the food, Kirigiri."
K screamed as his finger bent the wrong way, but the moment he saw Kirigiri, he forcibly swallowed the rest of the cry.
"Put the food down there and disappear."
"....."
"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 what comes after."
With her expression gone cold and hard, Kirigiri left Ikusaba's room.
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Time passed, and by evening the students had gathered in the dining hall in a tight cluster.
"Maizono, earlier, were you seriously—"
"Yes, and Naegi, the way you boldly shouted that Enoshima was wrong earlier was genuinely amazing."
"Uh... was that your esper thing again...?"
"No. I don't need to be an esper to know when Naegi is amazing, you know?"
"Jeez, those two are at it again. Togami, how are Fukawa and the others doing?"
".....Judging by the fact that she tried to get up the instant she saw me, only to start trembling and collapse again, I'd say she's probably better than before. Not that it's particularly welcome news."
"Why does Mr. Togami take something as simple as 'I'm glad she seems better, and even if he doesn't show it, he's actually very worried' and stretch it out that much?"
".....Shut up."
The boys were already sick of watching all the couples lately, and now Togami and Fukawa had been added to the list. So they turned their eyes to their food and ate dinner with dead, hollow stares.
"Should we just kill them all...?"
"That Enoshima idiot is pretty stupid too. If she just kept broadcasting scenes like this into the dorms, everyone would fall into despair on their own... haha..."
"Haaah... stop talking nonsense and just eat... Hm...? Come to think of it, where's Kirigiri?"
"...She went to bring food to Ikusaba's room earlier. Come to think of it, Kirigiri's got it rough too. K's being held hostage, so she must be miserable."
"Yeah... her insides are probably burning up right now. She probably can't even eat... I get it..."
".....Do you all have some kind of hobby involving gossiping about other people's misery?"
Speak of the devil—just as the boys were talking about her, Kirigiri pushed open the dining hall door and walked in.
"N-no, it's not like we were talking behind your back... we were just worried..."
"...I don't need your sympathy. I have a plan."
"...A plan?"
With a sharp, dangerous smile, Kirigiri addressed everyone.
"So then—who wants to join my plan?"