Chapter Text
‘You are coming to cooking club, aren’t you, Naegi-kun?’ the familiar ahoge asked.
I felt bad already. At this time, at the end of the school week, I’d usually have cooking club on at Hope Peak’s Academy. It was the least competitive out of the club activities, and the one I was least likely to be trampled by my superhuman peers in. This week, the club was supposed to have a cooking excursion off-campus. To be precise, we were supposed to make food at a nearby nursing home. However, I was a little busy with other plans this weekend.
‘Ah, sorry, Hinata-senpai. I’m going home early today. I was just about to come over to tell you-‘
‘You didn’t tell me earlier?’
‘Sorry. It slipped my mind.’
I missed out last week’s cooking club session too. But there was a particular reason I needed to leave early today.
Before he could ask why, someone behind him tugged on his sleeve. Nanami-senpai, engrossed in her game as always. She was playing it with one hand, but I couldn’t see what was in her other.
Hinata-senpai stopped glaring at me with his unsettling eyes to wave at her. What was she doing here in the first place? She should’ve been on her way to the gaming club. Did she have some business with Hinata-senpai?
I packed up the rest of my bag as they chatted for a bit about a game that was just released. Decency’s Closing Prize, or something. I wasn’t too sure; I didn’t play many handheld games.
‘You’re not getting the game today?’
‘Maybe this weekend. I’m kinda busy now. Sorry.’
I thought about sneaking past Hinata-senpai while he was still distracted, but I felt he deserved to know my reason. So I remained behind, waiting for Nanami and Hinata to finish their conversation. I regretted it pretty quickly as their conversation dragged on. Nanami’s always sleepy, so she talks pretty slowly. Even so, even if I could get a word in edgewise, I didn’t want to interrupt her, anyway. Hinata-senpai was probably annoyed enough at me already. As I waited, the half of my class that hadn’t gone to school camp yet gradually filtered out of the classroom to their own clubs.
I kept one eye on Hinata-senpai. Fukawa and Yamada were openly shipping him and Nanami-senpai together, though Fukawa didn’t want to label her desire for a healthy relationship between the two as something as crude as “shipping”. And looking at them, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rumours were true. Even though she was still engrossed in her game, she at least managed to break her concentration temporarily to talk with Hinata-senpai. He was the only person she bothered to look away from her screen for. Yeah, there was definitely something going on…
After Nanami-senpai eventually left for the games club, I explained my situation to him.
‘Sorry, Hinata-senpai. It’s just that it’s Komaru’s – my sister’s birthday.’
His expression softened. ‘Should’ve told me that before. Take a hike, Naegi.’
Grateful, I bowed and sprinted past him out the classroom. On the way out, I almost bumped into Togami-san in my eagerness, managing to sidestep him with a millimetre to spare.
‘Don’t dirty my clothes, peasant,’ I heard him snap behind me.
I hurried back into my room to take a quick shower before I dashed back home. I’d baked the cake and everything for Komaru, but I still wanted to be at home for when she blew out the candles. She’d helped Mom bake a cake for my sixteenth too, so I was pretty eager to return the favour. Not only that, I had a birthday present to bring her.
After the shower, I scrambled around my room, pulling drawers out from the desk. Where was the present? I opened the small bag, just to check the CDs were still there. Maizono-san’s on school camp now, along with half the class, but I managed to get her to sign a couple of her group’s albums before she left. As one of her biggest fans, I’m sure that Komaru will appreciate it.
I dashed out the room, slamming the door shut behind me. I was halfway down the hallway when I dashed back to my room, just to make sure that the door was closed properly. After ensuring that it was secure, I dashed back out the dorms.
Just as I was at the hall entrance, the school bell sounded.
*ding dong, bing bong*
‘Class 78, please report to the headmaster’s office immediately! Repeat, Class 78! Please report to the headmaster’s office immediately!’
As our headmaster’s shrill voice wafted to us from over the speakers, a familiar dread passed over me.
Oh, no …I’ll be late for Komaru’s party.
I stomped my feet, immediately regretting it as the shock vibrated through my ankles. With a groan, I trudged up the staircases to the headmaster’s office. Oowada-san stood outside the door, already waiting. As soon as I approached him, he put his phone away.
‘You fucking believe this?’ he snarled as soon as he saw me.
‘What happened, Oowada-san?’
He shook his head, scowling. ‘I tell you something real interesting. One of my buddies in the lower years got into a fight with some dude from Hope’s Peak. Got his ass beat. Apparently the guy was wearing an expensive-ass suit.’
I was hoping he was going to tell me why Monokuma summoned us up here, but that wasn’t happening, apparently. As for his gang issues, there were only two people I knew who regularly wore suits around here. Togami-san was one, but he wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty. Kuzuryuu-senpai on the other hand…
‘I’ll bring it up with the rich fucker later. For now, let’s see what the prick bear wants. Come on, everyone’s inside.’
Surely Headmaster Monokuma wouldn’t bother calling the whole class up here just over Oowada’s friends getting bashed. No, this was something else entirely, I could sense it.
Apprehensive, I followed Oowada-san into the headmaster’s office.
‘Monokuma…appears!’
The bear leapt out from behind the desk. Fukawa-san squealed in shock, and for a moment, I worried that her Genocider persona would come back out.
Monokuma didn’t seem to care. Which means that he was particularly angry today.
‘Ahem…not that I like to cast any unpleasant aspersions upon my students, but…’
He slammed his paw on the desk.
‘What is the meaning of this?!’
From behind his back, Monokuma whipped out an object with his other paw and slammed it on the desk as well.
‘That’s weird…’ I heard Hina mumble.
I was puzzled, too. Did Monokuma have pockets on his back?
‘What’s weird about it, huh? One of you filthy, dirty scoundrels left this piece of trash in MY classroom!’ He swatted the object off the table straight at Hina, who squealed.
‘Now which one of you was it, huh? Answer up now, or you’ll all be bearing the brunt of my wrath!’
Silence.
I picked up the object off the floor.
‘It’s a Pocky box.’
‘An empty Pocky box at that, Naegi! There I was, your devoted headmaster, patrolling the halls and gazing proudly upon my students, when suddenly, I found an empty Pocky box upon the floor!’
‘And don’t try to deny it wasn’t someone from this class! You were the last class to use 5-A today, so I KNOW that it’s one of you! Naegi, Asahina, Yamada, Ludenberg, Oowada, Togami, Kuwata, Fukawa- one of you is a dirty, filthy litterer!’
Nobody answered.
‘Hmm, hmm, so that’s how you’ll play this game, huh? Alright, alright. I guess you folks will need a little,’ – he spread his arms theatrically - ‘motivation.’
‘Motivation?’
‘Yes. I’m very picky about litter, you know.’
‘Uh-huh…’
Kuwata’s lackadaisical answer sent Monokuma into a frenzy. ‘Were you raised in a barn? Did your parents not tell you to throw trash away? Filthy animals! I might be a bear, but at least I never leave my waste behind! What will I do if government inspectors visit us and see trash on the floor? How am I going to explain to them that the ostensibly greatest school in the country has poor hygiene? They’ll accuse us of declining standards! We’ll lose our funding!’
‘I oughta impale the lot of you on spears! I oughta deep fry the lot of you in batter and shoot you to death with helicopters, then crush the remains with Tetris blocks! But since I’m a nice bear, I’ll allow you so-called Super High-School Level students to investigate yourselves to find out which one of you did this!’ He pointed towards the Pocky box in my hands again. ‘But you can’t return to your homes for the holidays, not until you find me the culprit who dirties my rooms!’
‘Stop fuckin’ around!’ Oowada-kun was impatient as ever. ‘It’s the holidays already, goddamn you! I ain’t got time for your shit, I’m leaving.’ He stomped off to the door and wrestled with the handle. It wouldn’t open.
‘Oh no, Oowada-kun. You ain’t leaving school for a looooooooong time. Not until one of you tell me who left this Pocky box lying around! If you can figure out whodunit by the time you finish investigating, I’ll convene a class trial where you’ll expose the culprit! Then, you’ll have to convince your classmates of who it was. Do that, and I’ll punish the litterer and let the rest of you go. But if you can’t definitively prove who it was, I’ll punish all of you!’
The class around me began talking over each other to have their questions answered. The way their voices raised at the end of each sentence made me feel I was standing in a room of birds.
‘Class trial?’
‘Punish? What does that mean?’
‘Spoilers! Save your meagre brainpower for the investigation, my dear students. With that in mind, I’ve prepared a little program for your e-books to help with your investigation!’
He pirouetted on the table, arms raised above his head like a ballerina.
‘Heeeeree’s the Monokuma file!’
Our e-Handbooks buzzed with a new notification. Ignoring that he somehow found a way to install apps onto our school e-books without permission, I opened up the newly-downloaded file, which read:
The Pocky box was left in classroom 5-A somewhere between 2:45 to 3:30 PM. It was discovered at the foot of the classroom door.
‘This is all our hints? This is nothing!’
‘Don’t blame me. I’m not the one issuing vetoes on the Setting-Up-Cameras-In-Every-Room proposal. Now, get out my office, and don’t come back until I call you! I can’t wait around here all day, so I’ll give you until 5 o’clock to uncover the culprit!’
‘Only an hour?’
But Monokuma wasn’t listening to us anymore. He shooed us out, and slammed the door behind him for good measure.
As we all stood dumbfounded outside the headmaster’s office, we heard him grumbling to himself.
‘I keep asking the board of directors for a budget increase…if I had more cameras around the school, littering wouldn’t happen…’
His voice tailed off as I glanced around at the unsmiling faces of my classmates.
Oowada broke the silence in his usual bombastic way, punching a hole through alabaster wall. ‘Damnit! Can we really not leave school?’
‘We can if we run for the gates before he notices. But that’s breaking school rules, I think. Monokuma might punish us even worse if we leave.’
‘He may wreak havoc in my room,’ Yamada added glumly. ‘And I cannot afford anything to change the air pressure inside there, not with the secret manufacturing work occurring within there. If Robo Justice is exposed to moisture, the plastic may distort, and then, he’ll be literally RUINED forever!’
‘Fucking fine, let’s just get this shit over with. It’s 4 o’clock, and I got shit to do tonight.’
‘Vandalism ain’t exactly productive shit.’ Kuwata snickered.
‘Something to say, smartass?’
Kuwata and Oowada butted heads, Oowada’s corn-pompadour brushing the top of Kuwata’s red hair. Oowada-san was evidently more uptight than usual. Wanting to calm the tense atmosphere, I held our precious evidence in the air. ‘First, let’s take a look at the Pocky box.’
‘It’s a Pocky box. There is nothing to see.’ That was Celeste.
‘Maybe not, but if we take a closer look…’
I turned the box over in my hand. It was a normal-sized Pocky box, pink in color.
Strawberry-flavoured Pocky, then.
I didn’t think anyone ate strawberry Pocky in our class.
‘Disgusting peasant food.’ Only Togami would have such disdain in his voice.
‘It’s not! It’s really nice!’ Hina spoke up. ‘It’s a great snack for morning tea. You haven’t eaten any, because you…you…you’re just dumb! If you’d just stop acting all high and mighty-’
‘There is nothing wrong with filet mignon and caviar for my morning tea. Don’t drag me down to your level.’
‘Stop arguing with me, geez. It’s just food.’
As Hina and Togami continued bickering, I turned the box over in my hands. I noticed that there one of the corners had a small dent, as if it had hit something rather lightly. I opened up the box to see if there was anything inside. Nothing. Not even the plastic wrapper that usually housed the Pocky.
Something felt wrong. As far as I knew, the school’s cafeterias only stocked chocolate Pocky. I remembered trying to buy a box of Pocky from school a few weeks ago and asking the lunch ladies why they only had one flavour. Apparently one of the school cafeterias brought twenty boxes of strawberry Pocky in a year ago, and it took them almost five months to sell the whole stock.
‘Found anything, Makoto?’
‘It’s a strawberry Pocky box, damaged in one corner. There’s nothing else inside.’
‘How are we supposed to find out who owned in the box in the first place?’ Celeste piped up. ‘We do not even have the capacity to dust it for fingerprints.’
‘Let’s check the Monokuma file again.’ I suggested, opening my e-Handbook.
The pocky box was left in classroom 5-A somewhere between 2:45 to 3:30 PM. It was discovered at the foot of the classroom door.
‘That’s the last period. Someone in our class was secretly eating during the lesson.’
‘Then why wouldn’t they eat during lunch? Lunch time is SUPPOSED to be for eating!’ I heard Taka grumble in my head, ever the law-abiding citizen.
‘Don’t say that around Owari-senpai.’
‘Pardon me?’
I realised that I just said that out loud.
‘Nothing. Sorry, Celeste. I’m going back to the classroom to check things out.’
As I turned away, I felt someone grab my arm. ‘Alone? You aren’t going to tamper with any evidence, are you?’
I pried Kuwata’s hand off.
‘N-no! Of course not!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Then I don’t reckon you’ll have any objection to me coming with you?’
He was so suspicious of me that I was becoming suspicious of him in turn. Maybe he was acting this way to deflect attention.
‘C-coming with who?’ A look of ecstasy crossed Fukawa-san’s face. ‘After school, Two men, g-going to an empty classroom alone? With the classroom all to themselves, Kuwata and Naegi-I can imagine, Naegi’s ahegao, I mean ahoge, splattered with Kuwa-’
‘Quiet.’ Togami-san spared us the indignity of having to listen to her. In a way, she was worse than Yamada with all her fantasies. ‘Kuwata, go with Naegi. We should all go in pairs. That way, nobody can neither tamper with evidence nor hide anything.’ He paused. ‘On second thoughts, maybe-’
‘Oohohohohoho, yes! I’ll go with you, Master!’ Fukawa clung to Togami, her earlier fantasy evidently forgotten. With some effort, he shook her off to the floor.
‘Why do we need to go in pairs?’ I lamented. ‘We should trust each other, shouldn’t we? Look at what Monokuma’s doing to us! He’s severing our bonds of friendship!’
‘Quiet. It’s not as if we’re killing each other. This is a simple investigation, and I will be done in time to go home and enjoy a nice porterhouse steak.’
Togami snapped his fingers and turned away, making it clear he wasn’t listening to me anymore. ‘Kuwata and Naegi, go to Classroom 5A. I’ll explore the courtyard. The rest of you, do what you want. Just take that creature,’ – he gestured at Fukawa who was curled up on the floor, mumbling to herself – ‘with you.’
The others recognised the lifeline they were thrown, quickly forming pairs and babbling their self-appointed missions before fleeing the scene, leaving only a stunned Togami and Fukawa alone with me. Before I could stop myself, I bowed to Togami apologetically, and followed Kuwata out of the hallway.
Our investigation had begun.