Chapter Text
The buzzer rings.
"Thank you for everything, Saihara! We're going to get out of here! All of us, together!"
Kaede Akamatsu gives Shuicihi Saihara a shaky smile, trying to calm down the wild racing of her heart, bursting with nervousness. He nods calmly, smiling back at her.
Somehow, even though he seems so unreliable sometimes, he has strength when she loses hers. I knew I could rely on you, she thinks. I'm sorry I had to lie to you, but you'll see. He would understand. She had only done what she did to save them all.
They run to the library together, steps clattering down the hall, down the stairs, both of them breathless with anticipation. All the nervousness leaves her as she rushes to pull open the door, running in without stopping to look, there's no time for that, Saihara following behind her moments later.
The first thing she sees is a heavy metal ball lying on the ground.
Her heart sinks at the sight of it. But there's someone else there at least, a boy with a shock of green hair, staring at the ball, bemused. So the mastermind is!...
Rantarou Amami looks up at them, eyes wide.
"The camera, then... it was you. What are you doing? Didn't I say not to get in my way?"
"Amami?! What are you doing here in the library?" Kaede points accusatorially. "You, you must be the mastermind!"
Rantarou's eyes narrow warily first, his hands set forward, placating, "I'm not the mastermind," but he switches to a strained, friendly expression as he continues.
"What am I doing here? Haha... I guess I was doing the same thing as you two. But," his eyes flicker back to the ball before coming to look back at her, and now he looks pained. "What were you planning, Akamatsu?"
Kaede sweats under his stare, but when she speaks, it's confident. She knows she's in the right. "It was the only way to end the game for sure." Her voice is full of conviction and her eyes are hard as she stares at him, angry at his escape. Though they had caught him, and the cameras were bound to have gotten pictures of him trying to go into the room, she was worried now. How were they going to stop him, now that he knew they knew?
"And... you helped her?"
The question bounces off Saihara, who hasn't said a word since they came in. He jumps as it sinks in that he's the one being addressed, his eyes going back and forth from the ball on the ground, to Kaede, to Rantarou. "I-I," he says, and while he's actually trying to talk to Rantarou, his eyes come to her.
"Akamatsu?" Why?
So the ball has dropped, and he's realized. To think that he figured out her plan so quickly. She can't look him in the eyes, but she can hear the hurt in his voice.
"If the mastermind dies, the killing game ends." She smiles sadly. If he had known, she knows he would've tried to stop her.
"There's... that's..." It seems like he's having a hard time trying to speak.
"Gyahahaha! No, no, you don't have to question it! She's right!"
A whirlwind of noise and commotion sweeps into the room, replacing the tension with something else entirely as Monokuma and the Monokuma Cubs pop out of nowhere, all of them laughing, talking, arguing raucously.
"Ah~ there's such a dark atmosphere in here! That's no good at all."
"But then the extermination is about to happen, no wonder the mood is so down! How much time is left, let's see! Let's see!"
"Poppa, poppa! How much longer? I want to send all these bastards straight to hell!"
"E-eh... extermination, huh... I don't want to think about such violent things, I'm going to cry!"
"..." Monodam, silent as always.
"My cubs, my cubs, I love you all, but, be quiet! Be quiet!" He slaps them all back in a furious rage, sending them all tumbling away crying as they hit the walls. "I have to tell these bastards something, and I can't do it with all this noise!"
"Anyway! You're right, you don't have to question it, 100% right! If the mastermind is dead, the killing game is over! You're not that stupid after all!"
"But! You're still stupid! Because... Mr. Mystery there is not the mastermind!" The bear laughs uproariously. "Maybe you should have killed him anyway? (Saihara jerks at the words, makes a strange noise) Characters like him, they're just meant to die, aren't they? He's just there to pull at your heartstrings!"
The words sink into her heart with shock. Amami, not the mastermind? "Why should we believe you? If we figured it out, you would just lie!"
"How dare you!"
"Poppa would never lie!"
"Quiet, quiet! I said quiet!" Monokuma roars again, but the Cubs have worked themselves up into a frenzy, shouting off objections and refutations at Kaede's words.
But someone else speaks up.
"...I don't think Amami is the mastermind either," Saihara mumbles underneath his breath, hat pulled down low over his eyes. He seems deep in thought. He's not looking at her.
"Hah?" A strange fear and uncertainty strikes her. Even Saihara agrees? But she couldn't be wrong, could she?
"There's just too much that doesn't fit together..." He trails off.
"Like I said, I'm not a suspicious person. I was just trying to stop the mastermind, just like you!" Amami is smiling cheerfully now, if a bit sheepishly.
"Gyahahaha, you bastards think you're so smart, you think you can outsmart our poppa! He's smart, you aren't that smart!"
"...that's saying smart too many times, isn't it! It doesn't even sound like a word anymore..."
"Stop! Stop! Please don't fight..."
"Anyway! Anyway! We'll just be taking these—"
Monofunny gathers up the cameras in a flash, almost too quickly for them to see.
"Hey! You can't take that!" Both Saihara and Kaede start, though he stops as he hears her, trailing off and looking down.
"Don't worry! Don't worry! We'll just be developing them for you! You'll get them back soon—"
"—that's if you don't all die! Hahaha!"
"Bye bear!"
They vanish just as quickly as they appeared, leaving thick silence in their wake. It sits in her throat, clogs it up, chokes her. She has to say something. But what can she say?
There's only one thing she can say.
"I'm... sorry." It hangs in the air.
It's small, insincere, dulled by the heaviness of books and library air. While she says it to Amami she means it for both of them.
Somehow Amami laughs at it, soft and easy. "It's okay. I can appreciate the sort of person you'd have to be to make a plan like that... you really are a leader-type, Akamatsu." He gives her an admiring look. He's strangely unperturbed for coming so close to death just minutes earlier.
He actually even smiles at her.
Just what kind of person are you? How can you say something like that when you almost died?
Saihara doesn't take it so easily. He says nothing, a hand raised to the brim of his hat, fingers gripped tight with strain.
"It's not the time for hard feelings," Amami's smile turns sad. "Our time is almost up."
What was left? Hours? Minutes?
But... of course it couldn't end so easily.
Ding dong ding dong…!
They're all shocked as a strange jangling noise plays.
A monitor switches on. Monokuma is splayed out in an armchair, jauntily swinging around a glass of wine. He must be happy.
A dead body has been discovered!
Please hurry over to the location of discovery in the warehouse!
Thinking back now, I know it would have been better if it had just all ended there. But it really was only the beginning of this crazy story...