Reapergenesis32, RubyLeo and Kitty Painter: Thanks a lot for your reviews and I'm glad you're content with the portrayal of your characters so far!

And also thanks to Unawakened Spirit, FireDusk, CGStrykerz and TechniqueFantasy, your thoughts are very interesting for me so thanks for sharing them!

Now, may the first day begin!

"Good morning, everyone! It is 8 a.m. now and everyone is ready for another wonderful school day in our great village!"

These were the first words I heard when I woke up, an annoying proof that yesterday had really happened and I was indeed trapped inside a strange building, together with sixteen other students who should kill each other to escape. And our observer was a creepy toy watching us all through several cameras. Right now, I could see Monokuma on the monitor which was installed in my room. The bear waved towards me now, proving that I watched a video instead of a picture.

I could see that Monokuma was sitting behind a desk, apparently somewhere outside of this building since I hadn't seen such a desk here. The wall behind him was dark and I could see a part of a picture frame on it.

The next moment the monitor went black again and I got up. I had never thought that someday I would actually sleep underneath a camera. But when I had come to my room yesterday I had felt so exhausted and confused that I didn't care about anything else but the giant bed in the middle of the room. But now I decided to look around a bit more.

My room looked like a normal sleeping room, it was almost a bit disappointing. Next to the bed was a little cabinet, the floor was covered by a dark blue wall-to-wall carpet, the walls were of a friendly wooden colour. I had a wardrobe (with clothes in my size), an armchair and a reading lamp next to it. There also was a big window, giving me the possibility to look at the blue sky. I could see houses near to our stay and the fact that I could see them made the thought of being trapped much more unreal.

There were two doors here, one leading to the hallway, one to a small bathroom I quickly checked. It looked as normal as the sleeping room and at least here were no cameras. Returning to the other room I wondered if all the chambers looked alike. I should definitely visit the others in their rooms later.

Now there was only one thing left which made me curious – the bedside cabinet. I opened it and found two things inside it: a chocolate bar with a little picture of Monokuma on the transparent wrapping (I guessed that it was a normal Snickers) and something that looked like a very flat mobile phone. When I switched it on I realised that it had to be this Student-handbook Monokuma had been talking of yesterday.

On a yellow background the word 'menu' appeared, together with the school emblem. I had four options to click on

- rules

- students

- environment

- Monokuma file

I clicked on 'rules' and read:

1)Students of Hope's Peak Academy are allowed to walk freely through the village.

2)Nighttime begins at 10 p.m. and ends at 8 a.m. It is forbidden to spend the night outside of the

own sleeping room.

3)It is forbidden to destroy the cameras or monitors of the school.

4)Violence against any authorities like headmaster Monokuma is forbidden.

5)It is forbidden to stay away from gatherings Monokuma has summoned.

6)Students are only allowed to leave Hope's Peak Village after their graduation.

7)Monokuma has the right to make up new rules at any time.

I was still thinking about these rules when I noticed the little clock on the handbook, telling me that it was already nine a.m. I had almost forgotten that the others had wanted to meet for breakfast, I should better hurry over there.

When I came in everyone else had already gathered and to be honest I was a bit surprised to see some people there. After quickly counting I noticed that only one students was missing. "Ah, Lewis, good to see you here," Alice greeted me with a friendly smile. Tokaku waved at me and asked "Have you seen Avi?" Avi? Oh, the little Explorer-girl. "No, I'm sorry," I replied, taking a seat next to Reece. "I knocked at her door and told her about our meeting," Tokaku explained. "It's strange that she doesn't come."

"Maybe she needs some time," I tried to reassure her. "Probably she feels safer on her own. Or she just isn't a morning person."

"Well, I'm not a morning person," Ari grumbled. "Will that bear always wake us up this early? Not cool..." "I'm afraid we have bigger worries than that," Marilyn said but she smiled a bit. "Does anyone have an idea how to get out of here?"

"We could open a window and climb through it," Reece suggested and shrugged. "I would try it." Tani stood up. "Good, we've solved this. Can I go now?" "Don't you want to eat something?" Alice asked and pointed at a plate with fish he thought Tani would like. While she sighed and sat down again I asked "Where did you get all these food from?"

There were all kinds of food, so everyone could find something he would like to eat. I noticed that for some reason no one had taken a bagel although there was an entire plate of them. Perfect for me then.

"We found it like this in the kitchen when we came there this morning," Amelia explained. "It's like magic, isn't it?" Apparently she had found back to her cheerful self again.

"By the way," Akira suddenly piped up. Although he definitely was the youngest of us he seemed to handle the situation quite well. The rings under his eyes got darker but the boy looked calm – I was more worried about Sandrine who clutched a croissant without eating anything and who looked like she would burst into tears any moment.

"Have you seen this?" Akira asked now and showed us his handbook. It looked like he was totally fascinated by this thing. "There is a map of this place on it. It also shows where the students are at the moment or rather where their handbooks are. So it should be possible to locate each other if we have our handbooks with us." Here he smiled mischievously as if he could hear a joke no one else could hear. Well, it probably was like this.

"And there are information about every student," Akira added, making some of the others look uncomfortable. "What kind of information?" Vivienne asked with a frown on her pretty face. "Nothing to worry about, just name, talent, height, weight, things like this," Akira explained but I had the feeling that not all of the girls were happy to have their weight exposed. "And then there is this Monokuma file," Akira continued. "But for some reason I cannot open it."

"Maybe it's broken," Ari guessed and yawned. "I cannot open it either," Daichi disagreed with him. "I suppose we can only open it when Monokuma wants us to." Well, Akira was the Ultimate Hacker – if anyone could open this device for us it was probably him.

For now Daichi had another question for the boy. "What colour does your menu have?" Akira looked a bit surprised. "Sapphire blue. Why?" Daichi nodded as if he had expected this answer. "Our handbooks have the same colour as the plates next to our doors then. And I guess they are our favourite colours."

Everyone seemed to think about it and I came to the conclusion that Daichi was right. Both my handbook-menu and my door plate were of this happy yellow I liked. And since I was convinced that colours reflected the personality of a person I decided to check out the colours of the others later. But now there was something else on my mind.

"By the way, next to my handbook was a chocolate bar," I said. "Does anyone want to have it?"

"I would take it." Everyone stared at Jason who normally was so quiet and mousy that it was a real surprise to have him say something. Now the boy ducked his head and stammered "I...I j-just r-really like chocolate...A-and if you really don't w-want it..." "It's fine," I reassured him with a smile. "I think it's a Snickers and I'm allergic to peanuts so I should better keep my hands off it."

"Probably it's poisoned anyway," Vivienne said, fanning herself and completely ruining the mood. "I don't think that Monokuma would poison our food," Daichi replied in his usual calm manner. "He doesn't want to kill us – he wants us to kill." Everyone went silent after this – suddenly we were reminded of the situation we were in.

And just then someone coughed. We all looked to the door and saw Aviana standing in the frame. She seemed to feel a bit uncomfortable, being the centre of attention, but she spoke without stammering and for the first time I heard her voice. "Sorry that I am late. The door is unlocked! I went downstairs to take a look and I found that we can go outside... so I went exploring a bit."

"Great news!" Alice beamed and everyone else seemed to be as enthusiastic as well. Maybe it had been a joke after all, now we could go outside and take a look if we could find help from outside! Everyone quickly left the dining hall and I noticed some people already forming groups while others stayed by themselves. I approached Daichi. "Do you mind exploring together?"

His face was as expressionless as always. There needs to be a reason why he is always acting like this... "No," he simply replied and we went together outside. It felt great leaving the house – the sun was shining and I could hear some birds chirping. I looked back and saw big letters being paintedon the roof of our house: 'Kuma's hostel'. There were little streets nearby and normal houses, some even with little gardens. It looked exactly like a completely ordinary English town house complex.

As we walked around I quickly noticed that the streets were completely empty – no cars, no people, not even cats or dogs. Some of the houses were locked, some we could enter. It looked like people had actually lived here but now they were obviously abandoned. And of course none of the phones we tried had a connection. I wasn't really surprised about this nor was Daichi. We continued to walk along the big street until we reached something that looked like giant bars. The rest of the village was behind these bars, out of reach for us.

"You could try climbing," Daichi suggested. I didn't think that it would be so easy plus the bars looked like it would be very difficult to climb them. But why not give it a try? I touched one of the bars and the next moment I was hit by an electric shock that sent me down to the ground.

"It's charged up, I thought so... " Daichi wrote something down before he casually asked "You're still alive, are you? Your hair looks a bit messy." I blinked. "Thank you for your concern."

While I struggled to get up Monokuma suddenly appeared out of nowhere. "Ha-hahaha!" "What do you want?" Daichi asked and the stuffed toy tilted his head. "Such a cold greeting. I just wanted to tell you that you shouldn't touch the bars. The village behind them is nothing for little first-formers like you! If you want to go there you need to graduate aaaand kill someone! Hooray!" And with that he just disappeared again.

"I guess these bars are everywhere," Daichi said. "We should probably go back." "Good idea," I replied, still feeling a bit dizzy.

After some time everyone gathered in the dining hall again. The hope from before was gone again, everyone knew that we couldn't escape these bars. Alice at least tried to stay optimistic. "We should probably talk about what we found." Ammy tried a smile. "I found a bakery. Looks like we can get fresh bread there." "Oh, great," Vivienne scoffed. "Who cares about being trapped? At least we can stuff ourselves with bread!"

"We searched the houses," Akira quickly said. "But we found not a single computer or any other helpful electronic device." "Yes and the houses look like they were built during the 1930s," Marilyn added. Panini looked at her wide-eyed. "Does that mean we made a time-travel?!" Tani rolled her eyes as if that was too much stupidity for her. "You really are dumb... This is just an old village." "Well, I'm sure I find a way to use our handbooks for something," Akira promised with a determination in his eyes, proving that he wouldn't give up easily.

"That's good," Alice said. "I'm afraid we have to wait a little longer until we can leave. These bars look pretty solid." "And they're charged up," I added. Vivienne snapped her fingers. "Why don't we let Amelia cast them away? She's a magician after all." Ammy frowned. "That's not how my talent works." Vivienne sneered. "Your talent appears to be pretty useless then."

Before they could get into a serious fight Alice stepped in. "Vivi, stop it. Fighting won't help us. Did anyone found something else what could help us?" No one answered and finally Sandrine softly said "I-I've seen many villages before. But this one is strange. I m-mean, I know there are no people here and that's strange but that's not everything...There is something else about this place..." "Whaddya mean?" Tani asked and Sandrine's eyes welled up with tears. "I'm s-sorry, I can't put it into words!" "Hey, it's okay," Alice quickly said to calm her again.

We decided that there was nothing more to discuss and everyone went their way. I should use the time and talk with someone. And Daichi was just the right choice for that since I still had something on my mind.

"Can we go for a walk?" I asked him and he followed me outside without a question. Soon we were alone and I asked jokingly "You aren't afraid I could kill you now?" Daichi's face remained expressionless. "Not really. You don't appear to be someone who would just kill somebody. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand naivete, so I won't just trust you. But even if you would try to kill me I wouldn't mind. It's interesting to study people who are willing to murder. Our society considers murder to be a crime and yet it happens again and again – there are so many motives for it. Studying a murderer's mind is fascinating, don't you think?"

I laughed insecurely. "Sure, if you say so." Daichi nodded seriously. "People often call murderer insane but we know that this isn't right. There are murderer who are just ordinary people under circumstances which force them to crime. But I'm more interested in those who are indeed insane. Well, I will use our stay for some studies and I don't intend on dying." I had to admit that I was a bit impressed on his self-confidence. He really didn't seem to be afraid of this situation.

"What about you?" he asked me with this scrutinising look. "Why aren't you afraid?" I smiled. "You aren't a person who would kill someone in such a rush manner. You would make plans before. And I guess you share one reason with me for not killing someone. You're interested in who will snap first."

He didn't reply, just wrote something down in his journal. It still fascinated me that we shared the same habit. I waited until he was finished before I said what I had on my mind. "Look, apparently we both share the same talent. And I don't want that to be a problem. I don't want this 'There can only be one'. We should rely on each other instead." With this I offered him a hand and after a moment of thinking he shook it.

"May I ask why you're wearing gloves?" I asked then. "It's quite warm, isn't it?" "Why is it so important for you that there's no rivalry between us?" he asked back.

"Isn't it nice to make friends?" I gave him a surprised smile.

"Then why do you want to be friends with me? I wonder why someone who likes to make friends so much is interested in psychology and the abysses of the human mind."

"How about this?" I offered. "My backstory for yours."

"Sounds fair. We should probably talk about it one time. But for now I have other cases waiting for me." And with his ever so emotionless expression he walked back to 'Kuma's hostel'.

Cases, huh? I wonder if they will turn into friends some day...

I'm not really happy about this chapter but anyway, thank you so much for reading! Please leave a review and don't forget to vote for the rest of the Free Time Events!