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It wasn’t that Makoto was scared, not really.
Well, he was scared – who wouldn’t be, if they were in his situation? Trapped in a school, with originally fourteen other students who were supposed to be his friends, now left with only five as they were picked off one by one?
And then they discovered the body of Ikusaba Mukuro, her face shielded by a horrifically familiar mask. When Fukawa reached out a hand to rip it off, she was blown backwards into the multitude of bushes in the garden by a hidden explosive, and all of their leads disappeared.
And Kyoko was still gone, nowhere to be found. The student was like a ghost, flitting between opacity and absolute translucency whenever and however they pleased – this was evident in the fact that there was no sight of them during the investigation of Ikusaba’s death.
They reappeared fifteen minutes after the group were supposed to meet in the elevator room, but it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. From the very start of the trial, they were suddenly accusing him of a murder he didn’t commit, and he felt everyone’s eyes on him, so betrayed, so disappointed, that he couldn’t bring himself to refute any longer.
He let himself be taken, and he thought, just for a moment, why was Monokuma executing him instead of the others? He didn’t kill her, they were wrong, they should be here with him, frozen in a seat with only the ear-splitting sound of the slamming mallet of the trash compactor behind them.
And yet he was alone, wrongly accused of a crime he swore he’d never commit as his death loomed ever closer. It was hard to breathe suddenly, and the oxygen tasted wrong in his lungs, and all he wanted was for it to end.
And end it did, as the stage tipped over and the screen was illuminated with Alter Ego’s green icon, and he fell and fell until his back hit the unforgiving concrete of the trash chute.
It wasn’t that he was scared – he just wanted to know. He wanted to know what would happen to him, trapped further in the smallest, messiest cube of stone that he had ever seen, with little to no chance of rescue.
The curiosity ate at his heart as time passed. He craved to know whether he would live or die. If it had to be the latter, couldn’t the mastermind just make it quick and painless, rather than letting him starve to death?
Was this despair?
Maybe this was what the mastermind had wanted all along. Maybe they had left some scrap, some fragment of Alter Ego alive so that he could save him, and plunge the falling Makoto into this overwhelming sense of despair.
It was all he could do to crawl across to some pile of garbage and haul himself to his feet. His back ached like he had just fallen fifty, a hundred feet onto a concrete pavement (which he had). He stumbled over to the large door, standing regal and imposing before him, and rattled on the handle in vain.
It only wriggled in its rusty hinges, and creaked as he shook it back and forth in his desperation to simply escape the hell he was trapped in. He fell to his knees, feeling hopeless like he never had before.
He was overcome with a longing to just sleep. He wanted to ignore it all. He wanted to ignore the hunger and the pain and the thirst, if only for a few hours. He hadn’t slept well at all recently, the horror of Sakura’s trial still weighing on his shoulders.
At least nobody could murder him down here, he thought to himself with an odd, choked laugh. At least he wasn’t in danger of a knife through his back as he slept. At least he didn’t have to lock his door, or worry about being stabbed, or stress over who he could trust and who he could not.
But he was lonely.
He was so lonely. He missed them, for some twisted reason. He knew in his soul that they were his enemies. He knew in his soul that they had tried to kill him, but he couldn’t bring himself to hate them.
Not after everything that had happened.
Yasuhiro and Asahina, struggling with the Robo Justice costume, unbeknownst that a killer was beside them. Kyoko, off somewhere, lost to the world. Fukawa, following Byakuya from ten feet away, in love with him in her own confusing way.
Byakuya Togami was who he missed most. He missed side glances as they rifled through books together, Makoto only half-reading the words on the pages. He missed being called a commoner, a plebeian, though the insults carried less and less weight the more they were used.
How long had he been trapped down here? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know, not really.
He rested his head on one of the bulkier bags of garbage and curled into the foetal position, wrapping his legs into his chest in his desire to keep the only remaining sliver of heat tucked into his chest, and the world faded to black.