Chapter Text
Things had just settled down as much as they could have after two days on Jabberwock Island. After being presumably kidnapped, trapped on a deserted island and terrorized by two talking stuffed animals, the sixteen students (under Byakuya’s guidance) had agreed to meet after the morning announcement at the hotel restaurant. After Byakuya’s impromptu speech, most everyone went back to eating breakfast in a suffocating silence, one in which Hajime couldn’t help but feel tense. At least Nagito had tried to cheer Hajime up a bit (he was almost unsettlingly cheerful), but he probably did more harm than good.
Thankfully the girl with the crazy hair—Ibuki Mioda, the Ultimate Musician, Hajime recalled—soon broke the silence. “Soooooooo… Ibuki’s getting the weirdest feeling… it’s like my ears are tingling!” she paused briefly for effect. “Mahiru—are you related to Fuyuhiko?”
Mahiru choked on the water she was drinking. For a second of silence, all eyes locked onto either the bubbly musician or the redhead herself, except for Byakuya’s, as he continued to inhale his breakfast.
“Wh-what? What are you talking about?” Mahiru spluttered, once she was done coughing.
Was something like that even possible? Hajime hadn’t considered it when they first arrived, but there’s no reason his classmates couldn’t have met before now. Wouldn’t they have said something, though?
“They did pick a fight with each other pretty quickly back at that countdown thing,” Akane commented, munching on one of the lobsters Teruteru had somehow decided would make for a good breakfast. “It was pretty weird, since we’d just met each other ‘n all.”
“T-t-that’s right,” Mikan agreed, her voice shaking.
“What would you know, you skanky pig barf?” Hiyoko sneered. Ignoring Mikan’s stuttered wails of apology, she turned to glare at Ibuki. “That dummy said it herself, we don’t know each other at all. She’s just wayyy too gullible!”
“Umm… I agree, they didn’t seem friendly. Plus, if they were related, wouldn’t they have the same last names?” Chiaki commented slowly, without looking up from her game.
Soda nodded as his hand stroked at his chin. “Ohhh… that makes sense.”
Nagito, surprisingly late, finally decided to chime in. “We should probably ask those in question first…” Hajime watched as a dreamy look appeared in his eyes. “But imagine…. two Ultimate siblings acting together as shining beacons of hope.”
“Exactly- wait, what? I-” Mahiru tried to protest, but was once again interrupted.
“That reminds me of a game I played once. It pulled a twist where a character was revealed as her own twin sister…” Chiaki interjected again.
How is that related…?
“Well, we know that Fuyuhiko is the Ultimate Yakuza… It wouldn’t be unheard of for a yakuza’s family member to change their surname to protect their identity.” Sonia mused.
“THAT’S RIGHT! GOOD JOB, MISS SONIA!”
Soda’s enthusiastic shouts went largely ignored, as the rest of the group broke off to murmur amongst themselves. Hajime noticed Peko sitting silently at the corner of the table. He thought he caught just the hint of a smirk, but it disappeared before he knew any better.
“Um… so why did you ask in the first place, Ibuki?” Hajime asked, taking advantage of the lull in conversation.
Ibuki looked quite smug with herself, bursting at the seams to share her brilliant observation. “It’s soooooo obvious! Ibuki just looked at them!”
Hajime was perplexed. He studied Mahiru’s glaring face closely. Obviously, it wasn’t her bright red hair, which far from matched Fuyuhiko’s blonde. If he remembered correctly they were pretty close in height, but that didn’t mean much. Mahiru didn’t have Fuyuhiko’s baby face, either. What could Ibuki be talking about? He tried to sort the letters zipping through his mind, but came up with nothing but confused explosions...
Gundham’s voice cut the silence. “Kehehe… I see.”
“So, wh-what is it?” Mikan asked.
“Freckles!” Ibuki proudly exclaimed, shaking Hajime from his jumbled thoughts. Once again, everyone stared at her in baffled silence, except for Chiaki, who remained focused on her video game. Sonia started nodding vigorously in agreement. On the other hand, Hajime couldn’t believe that Ibuki was so confident based on such… feeble evidence, to put it kindly.
“Hmph. Just as I thought… you commoners really have nothing inside your heads at all. To think that you actually had me intrigued…” Byakuya scoffed in between bites.
Saionji, finishing her toast with a loud crunch, stood up to leave. “Ugh, I can’t stand this ugly airhead anymore. Let’s go, Mahiru.” With that, she dragged Mahiru out of her chair and they left the restaurant. Hajime could hear Mahiru’s exasperated “geeeeeez” as they walked away. He turned around to catch Peko also leaving, that small smile back on her face. Hajime sighed. He looked at Ibuki, Sonia, and Soda, now chatting away, with even Gundham chiming in now and then. The tense atmosphere from before had lightened just a bit with their friendly banter… all thanks to Ibuki.
Well, Hajime thought, on the bright side—it looked as if some of them could be friends, after all.
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Peko approached where Fuyuhiko’s silhouette stood against the blue sea. The small boy stiffened and turned at the sound of crunching sand.
“Oh, good, it’s just you. I thought it was that fuckin’ psycho-bear again. What do you want?” He stared warily at her, as if warning her against saying too much. She continued walking towards him silently, stopping behind him and giving him a small bow.
“I thought you might want to hear what the others have been saying about you. Apparently, they suspect you are the brother of Mahiru Koizumi, the girl with the red hair.”
A pause.
“The fuck did you just say?”