Naegi, Kyoko Kirigiri, Chihiro Fujisaki, and I left the dining hall together and immediately started discussing how we were supposed to investigate the identity of that unrecognizable corpse.
"...But where do we even start? How are we supposed to investigate this...?"
"Hmm... maybe we should go back to the park first...?"
"We were only there for a short time, but we already checked everything we could. The body had been reduced to pulp, so there was barely any usable information to begin with, and if we go now, it'll already have been cleaned up. I doubt we'll find anything new."
"Th-Then... doesn't that mean... finding the victim's identity and the culprit is... impossible...?"
"Even Enoshima wouldn't assign us something completely impossible... probably..."
In the original game, the corpse had been Mukuro Ikusaba's body after it was turned into a pincushion, and the damage hadn't been so catastrophic that nothing could be identified. Between the [Monokuma File] and the body itself, you could at least piece together who it was.
But this corpse was different. There was nothing to infer. All we knew was that the victim had already been dead before being blown to pieces, that a knife had pierced the abdomen, and that there had been a major wound on the head.
Still, no matter how cornered Junko Enoshima was, there was no way she'd just drag in some random corpse from outside and say we'd die if we couldn't identify it. There had to be a clue somewhere...
"...I've got an idea. Want to hear it?"
Naegi suddenly lowered his voice to a near-whisper, speaking with furtive caution.
"...K, you said Enoshima was in the data processing room, right? So... what if we go catch her there...?"
"Hmm... it's a pretty good idea, but Enoshima already knows we've figured out the secret behind the killing game, doesn't she? Wouldn't she have evacuated somewhere else by now?"
"Yeah... good point."
"I... think I know where Enoshima would hide..."
".....What?"
"...She's probably hiding in a concealed space inside the data processing room... Of course, the door to it can only be locked from the inside, and it can't be opened from the outside..."
"How do you even know that...? No, forget it. At this point, asking is pointless. You're seriously incredible in all kinds of ways, K."
"Ahaha..."
While I awkwardly scratched my cheek, embarrassed, Kirigiri leaned in and whispered with a grave expression.
"Anyway, if that's true, then all we have to do is get into the data processing room, seize control of Monokuma, and smash the door down. Then we can capture Enoshima and end this killing game right here."
"Th-That's a great idea. As expected of you, Kirigiri...!"
"Shh. From here on out, we move as carefully as possible. Act natural so Enoshima doesn't catch on."
"U-Um... then wouldn't it be better... to gather everyone and rush in all at once...?"
"If we do that, Enoshima will sense something's off and make her move. We need to pretend we're investigating as naturally as possible, then slip inside."
"Ah... right...!"
"If we head straight for the data processing room, it'll look suspicious. First we'll pretend to investigate the greenhouse on the fifth floor, then make our way there."
"Okay...!"
And so the four of us headed upstairs, carrying a fragile, feverish hope that maybe—just maybe—we could capture Enoshima and bring this killing game to an end without even holding a Class Trial.
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After giving the greenhouse a cursory once-over and casually encouraging the others who were investigating the fifth floor, we came back down to the fourth.
".....Ready?"
".....Yeah. Let's go in."
We entered the data processing room as naturally as we could manage. The moment we stepped inside, countless monitors filled our vision, each one displaying a different part of the school.
"Whoa... Enoshima was monitoring all these screens at once...? To use a talent like this just to run a killing game..."
"This is the first time I've seen this many electronic devices since we got trapped here... Somehow, it's calming..."
".....That must be the Monokuma control room."
Kyoko Kirigiri said it while staring at the door marked with Monokuma's face. We exchanged glances, swallowed dryly, and quietly opened it.
".....So Enoshima's hiding somewhere in here, right?"
"Yeah... There should definitely be a hidden door. Fujisaki, do you think you can control Monokuma...?"
"I'm used to electronics... leave it to me...!"
Chihiro examined the control system for a moment, then pressed a button. A Monokuma popped out.
"Whoa... so this really is where they control him from..."
"I... probably can't do it as skillfully as Enoshima... but I think I can at least break open a hidden door..."
For one surreal second, I just stood there blankly, staring at Monokuma speaking in Fujisaki's timid tone with a bashful expression plastered on his face. Then Kirigiri jabbed me in the side.
"Focus. This is a situation where even being tense isn't enough, so what exactly are you doing spacing out?"
Kirigiri's sharp rebuke snapped me back to reality, and I joined the others in searching for the hidden door. We were in the middle of the search when Kirigiri suddenly called out.
"Everyone, look over here. Doesn't this seem suspicious?"
What she was pointing at was a square metal plate embedded in the floor.
"This section's made of a different material from everything around it. I think this is the hidden door. Fujisaki, can you break it?"
"Hmm... since it's metal, I think I'll need to use Monokuma's self-destruct function... It could be dangerous, so everyone stand back! I'll trigger it and run back to you right away...!"
"Then... we're counting on you, Fujisaki...!"
Once we retreated, Fujisaki nervously fiddled with the controls for a moment, then hurried back toward us.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
"I lowered the blast power as much as I could... but just in case, everyone be careful...!"
Boom!!!
Just to be safe, we ducked out into the monitor room, shut the door, and flattened ourselves against the floor. A violent explosion thundered from the control room.
When we cautiously got back up and stepped inside, the metal plate had been blown away and lay twisted on the floor. In the space where it had been, there was now a passage.
"Everyone...! What was that sound...? I heard an explosion from here and came running at once!"
"My heart nearly stopped—I thought something had happened again...! Honestly..."
"You bastards, what the hell did you do in here?"
Right on cue, the others who'd heard the explosion began gathering one by one. Ignoring them for the moment, I peered into the opening with taut nerves. The space beyond was larger than I'd expected.
"What is this place...? It's cleaner inside than I thought..."
Following Naegi's ominous mutter, I stepped in and immediately noticed all kinds of preserved food. Cup ramen, frozen meals, and other packaged food were strewn around carelessly. Judging by the mess, Enoshima must have been eating here.
"Enoshima...! We know you're hiding in there, so come out...!"
I shouted at the top of my lungs, but only an echo came back. As I scanned the room on high alert, my eyes landed on a table.
"What's this...?"
There was a note stuck to the tabletop.
"Did you seriously think I wouldn't hear you just because you were whispering? Honestly, are you idiots or what...? I already went ahead to the trial grounds, y'know? What a waste of effort. Upupupu..."
Even if she'd gotten petty and sloppy, Enoshima was still Enoshima. The nickname [Ultimate Analyst] hadn't been bestowed on her for nothing.
"Anyway, since you worked so hard to get all the way here, I'll give you a special hint about the corpse! Actually... it's less of a hint and more like the answer! Search the hidden room in the headmaster's office inside the ruined dormitory on the second floor...! Well then, have a nice despair!"
...Looks like we had no choice but to go to the headmaster's office.
"Um... guys...? While we were investigating the fourth and fifth floors, nobody checked the ruined dormitory on the second floor, right...?"
"Huh? Oh, K! So you didn't hear? We checked that place ages ago! I even helped break down the door to the headmaster's office."
Hearing Mondo Owada's bright, guileless voice, I suddenly remembered what Kirigiri had told me before. The others had definitely raided the headmaster's office. But in the game, wasn't the second floor of the dormitory only supposed to open when Monokuma announced the final battle...?
"That Monokuma bastard got tired of hiding floors, so he opened the second-floor dorms but kept the door itself shut. Petty as hell, right? So I showed him what's what!"
Damn it. There it was again—my bad habit of blindly trusting game knowledge. I'd sworn I wouldn't do that anymore, and I broke that promise almost immediately. Pretty pathetic.
"Ah, I see... Anyway, if that's how it is, then we should go to the headmaster's office, right...?"
"Hold up, though. If we can control Monokuma from here... couldn't we just use this Monokuma to fight Enoshima directly?"
Huh...? He was right...? Was Yasuhiro Hagakure secretly a genius...?
"F-Fujisaki, can you control multiple units too...?"
"Y-Yeah...! I think I can manage somehow...! If it's for everyone's sake...!"
"All right! Then let's send every Monokuma to the trial grounds—!"
"Upupu... I even left a note to set up a dramatic reveal, and you still forced me to come out early...!"
The students jumped at the sudden appearance of Monokuma.
"Upupupu...! You actually got startled for once! That's why surprise parties are so—"
"Enoshima, how exactly are you controlling Monokuma right now?"
"Well... obviously, I have a remote control device with top-level authorization! You guys... just because I've been racking up failures lately, don't tell me you've started underestimating me that much? Anyway, since you're all here, how about a nice little housewarming—"
".....Anyway, it looks like we need to go to the headmaster's office."
"Hey, K. Could you come there with just me? The two of us alone."
"Huh...?"
Kirigiri made the suggestion with a dark, sorrowful expression. Just looking at her like that made my chest ache on its own.
"Upupu... You dare cut me off and start flirting in the middle of my scene...? Haaah... whatever... K, I'm sick of you. I'm leaving..."
Completely ignoring Monokuma as he vanished while muttering to himself again, I asked the others to keep investigating the academy's secrets, then headed for the headmaster's office with Kirigiri.
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"...This is your first time here, but this is the headmaster's office. To enter the hidden room, you have to input a password into this computer..."
In the original story, the password was Kirigiri's name. Of course, I'd already decided not to trust the source material anymore, but surely one thing hadn't changed: Jin Kirigiri loved his daughter. Maybe this time, at least, it would still be right.
"Um... could it be..."
"You know the relationship between the headmaster and me too, don't you?"
".....Yeah."
"...It's nice not having to explain. Anyway, you were about to ask if the password was my name, weren't you?"
"Uh... w-wasn't it...?"
"My name was the first password. But we need a second one."
A second password...? That was bad. I only knew the first one...
"Honestly... I've been agonizing over whether I should admit this feeling for a long time now... But I guess it's time to make a decision."
Suddenly, Kirigiri looked straight at me and began speaking with deadly seriousness.
".....Huh?"
"Once a detective starts mixing in personal feelings, they lose their light. That's what my grandfather always told me."
"....."
"And do you know what else he told me almost as often as that?"
".....?"
"Never forgive your father for abandoning the family."
"...I see."
In a way, Kyoko Kirigiri was a deeply pitiful girl. Because her father left her, she was able to walk the path of a detective—but at the same time, she must have grown up under the negative, pitying gaze of everyone around her, all because she had no parents by her side.
How must she have felt when she broke even the Kirigiri family's creed—that they must never step into the public eye—and enrolled in Hope's Peak Academy, all so she could declare a final severance from her father and reject those suffocating stares?
I wanted to understand, but I couldn't fully. At the very least, I had parents. We weren't close, but they existed.
When I looked at Kirigiri with a complicated expression, she gave a faint smile.
"What, K? Are you actually worried about me? That's kind of gross."
"S-Sorry for worrying...?"
".....I'm joking. Anyway, you saw that video call between me and my grandfather before, didn't you?"
"Ah, back then..."
"Right. At that time, my grandfather was trying to tell me something about my father."
"....."
"Even though I didn't hear his last words, it wasn't hard to infer what he was trying to say from his expression, his tone, and the situation itself."
"Uh... so...?"
"My grandfather was the first one to break his word, so wouldn't it be fine if I broke mine just once too?"
With that, Kirigiri pressed a single key on the computer keyboard.
The key she pressed was "K."
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"Kyoko, and K. This should buy you some time. Your plan should be able to progress at least a little with this..."
"Upupupu...! Time's up! Then shall we begin the punishment...?"
"My daughter..."
"The name of this punishment is... Space Journey!"
"I've always loved—"
Rumble!!!
The moment we entered the hidden room, we found a photo of Kirigiri as a child with her father, a photo of Kirigiri and me together, a photo of Kirigiri, her father, and me all in one frame, and a DVD labeled "The Corpse's Identity."
I inserted the DVD into the same computer we'd used for the password and played the video. It began showing the moment Kirigiri's father, Jin Kirigiri, was executed.
The instant the footage started, I tried to shut it off in a panic, but Kirigiri stopped me. Wearing an expression of painful restraint, she watched the video in silence.
Eventually, the spaceship crashed into the ground, and from the opened craft emerged his cold, lifeless body—with a massive wound on the head.
Then Monokuma appeared in the video and began explaining everything in that revoltingly cheerful voice.
"The original plan was to burn him up in the atmosphere until nothing but bones remained... but as a final courtesy to the headmaster, I specially allocated some budget for heat-resistant panels, so he was spared the whole skeleton-only thing!"
"....."
"Well, originally this was meant to be shown to Kirigiri to plunge her into despair... but I decided to use it for this trick instead! Watching your father get blown to pieces right in front of you and not even realizing it—now that's despair, isn't it? Upupupupupu..."
".....Ugh."
"Originally, I was gonna pack in a whole mystery element where you'd have to put in serious effort to deduce the corpse's identity and the culprit... but lately I've gotten sick of everything in every possible way... so I just revealed it like this! It's easier for you too, right? So whatever—despair, hope, do what you want! Upupupupupupu..."
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"Ding dong, bing bong!"
"Everything that begins must eventually end, and the sunless—ah, whatever... I'm tired of speeches too... Everyone, report to the trial grounds immediately..."
The final showdown with Enoshima was right in front of us now, but Kirigiri was in no condition to face it. First, I had to calm her down...
"...Honestly, I already knew."
"...Huh?"
"The corpse gave off a strange feeling. So when I first saw it, I thought it was Ikusaba... or your body. But it was neither."
"....."
"The moment Monokuma's note mentioned the headmaster's office, I already expected this ending... but seeing it confirmed... it really is..."
"Kirigiri..."
Kirigiri stopped speaking and took a deep breath. Then, after forcing her turbulent emotions back under control, she looked me in the eyes and quietly said,
".....Hold my hand."
".....!"
Kirigiri removed her glove and held out her hand to me. On her outstretched right hand, I could see a severe burn scar.
I gently took her hand, covering the burn with my own, and stood up at the same time.
"Let's go."
And so, hand in hand, Kirigiri and I walked toward the end of the killing game.