Nothing was the same after that trial. Everyone could laugh it off, pretend it didn't happen. They could imagine that Vechs didn't try his hand at being a culprit only to get a girl who wouldn't hurt a fly executed. It... it was all Kazuma's fault. He suggested the pool party in the first place. Maybe if he'd called it off when they got the motive, they wouldn't have had to deal with another murder and another trial. A thick, grimy feeling roiled within him. It couldn't possibly be described as anything other than despair. He needed a distraction, something that could get his mind off of the events of the previous day. As if on cue, the monitor in his apartment turned on.
"Hey assholes! Guess what? You've got a new area open to you all! Head on through Ward II if you wanna check it out!"
Oh good. They were getting another reward for sentencing their friend to death. Kazuma sighed, standing up. It wasn't as if he could just waste away in his apartment just because he was down. He figured he should at least go check out the new area. Before he could make his way to the door, a knock was heard. Opening the door, he found Tenri standing on the other side. The timid harpist hesitated for a moment, then began speaking.
"H-hey, Kazuma. You looked pretty d-down after yesterday, so I thought we could check o-out the new area?"
"Uh, yeah, sure." He agreed. He didn't intend for it to sound like he didn't really want to, mentally smacking himself for not wording it better. Stepping out into the hall, he let Tenri lead the way. It wasn't that much of a walk to the new ward, just past the Literary Supernova was the newly unblocked Ward III. There were some generic buildings around that weren't really worth noting, but he did see four new unique places that they could visit.
"Hey, what place do you want to look at first, Tenri?"
"How about there?" The harpist responded after a moment, a finger pointed towards a building named the Playwright's Paradise Theater. Based upon the name alone, he could tell that the place was a stage for plays to be performed. The exterior of the building looked elegant, worthy of the name paradise. Kazuma shrugged, following Tenri to the front doors. Gripping onto the metal doorknob, he pushed the double doors open.
Located inside was a huge auditorium. Kazuma was shocked, since the building hadn't looked that big from the outside. There were rows and rows of seats in a curved shape around the stage. Glancing upwards, he noticed that there were even balcony seats. He imagined they had some of the better views you could get. Turning his eyes forward again, he saw the stage. The stage itself was quite large as well, spanning nearly wall to wall. It was carved out of a rich brown wood, neatly shined. Center-stage was none other than Kimiko Harumashi, meticulously cleaning what he presumed must've been a dirty patch on the stage.
"Wow, this place is really big.." Tenri said, voicing thoughts Kazuma had previously had. He couldn't help but chuckle from this. Tenri noticed. "H-huh? Did I say something wrong?"
"Nah, you just said what I was thinking."
"O-oh." Tenri looked down awkwardly before shuffling off to greet Kimiko, who still hadn't noticed their arrival. She was still hard at work on the stage.
"Hey, Kimiko!" Kazuma said after letting Tenri say hello himself. He strode up beside him, leaning on the stage.
"Greetings, Minami-san." She gave him a warm smile, and this time he didn't feel obligated to point out her formalities.
"What're you up to?" He asked, despite already knowing the answer. It was more out of politeness than curiosity.
"I'm polishing the stage!" Kimiko beamed. "I figured that this would be a perfect area for Tenri to perform if he wanted, so I want the stage to look as best as it can!"
"Y-you're cleaning it for me?" Tenri stammered. Kazuma bit his lower lip to hold back a snicker from the poor guy's embarrassment. "..that's v-very nice of you.."
"That's actually a good idea. This would be the ideal venue for Tenri to perform in, assuming you're up to it?"
"Of course! I-I'm always ready to perform, especially for friends." The harpist smiled weakly at Kazuma, then turned to Kimiko. "I guess we'll leave you to your work then, if that's okay."
"It's alright, Nonaka-san. Don't worry about it!" She responded.
With that, Kazuma and Tenri turned to leave. Trudging out of the theater, the novelist decided to lead them over to the next building that seemed to be worth noting. It had a large neon sign, making sure it was noticeable. What he detested most about the building was that it's logo contained Monokuma's face. It was the MonoMeds Pharmacy. Despite not liking the sound of the place, he entered regardless.
Keeping true to it's name, the place was just a large store with aisles and aisles of different medicines. They ranged from your traditional over-the-counter things, to stuff like morphine and other stuff that he had no chance in hell of pronouncing correctly. Despite knowing that he should have been, it didn't surprise him at all to find that the counter had several manuals that listed each medicine and what dosage would be fatal to the average male and average female.
"That's horrible.." Tenri said quietly, a comment that Kazuma could only nod in agreement to.
"Horrible? Show some respect, I spent quite a while figuring all that out!" The voice that could only belong to a certain annoying bear yelled from behind them. "Good bears like me never get the respect they deserve for their hard work!"
"Oh, shut the hell up already." Kazuma said exasperatedly. "You've been here less than a minute and you're already giving me a migraine."
"Ow.." Monokuma responded, clutching his chest. "It hurts when you're mean to me, Kazuma."
"Hey, someone ribbing on the douchebear without me?" A familiar street accent sounded from the doorway as Sumiko made her entrance.
"Oh good, my favorite buzzkill.." Monokuma groaned. "Seriously, you were like my top pick to commit murder and your hands are still clean! Kill someone already!"
"Why are you still here?" Kazuma questioned the monochromatic bear. "Really, go bug someone else."
The bear in question continued to grumble and disappeared out the door, stepping around Sumiko and someone else Kazuma hadn't noticed earlier. The always excitable Ami stepped around the thief and bounded into the room. She glanced around the area, her smile fading a bit as she noticed the books dedicated to describing lethal doses.
"That bear..." She said softly, bearing the same expression that everyone else had been. One of pure hatred towards the half-black, half-white ursine. "He seriously needs to find some hobby that's not dangerous and murder-y."
After saying that, Ami disappeared down one of the aisles, probably looking to see what types of meds this place had out of curiosity. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been thinking of doing the same thing. Out of the corner of his eye, Kazuma noticed the uncomfortable Tenri inching his way towards the door. Nodding to Sumiko who was still in the lobby, he followed after the harpist.
"Everything alright?" He asked as he caught up to him.
"Yeah.. I just wanted to get out of there after Monokuma showed up." Tenri responded quietly. "Shall we check out the next location?"
Kazuma nodded and they went off to the next building that was worth checking out in their opinion. What he found was a small one-story building. It didn't seem to stick out at first, but would probably draw interest if one read the name of the place. Up above the doors was plain, all-caps text that read TANOSHII ARCADE. From outside, he could hear the noises of arcade machines going off. Sounded like someone was deep in a game from the excited shouts he could hear. Pushing open the door, he was greeted with quite a scene.
Rikiya was standing at a two-player arcade cabinet, mashing furiously at the buttons and yanking the joystick around wildly. Next to him, playing a lot more calmly, was Kaede. The one shouting and making all the noise, he came to find, was Misaki. The daredevil was standing on Kaede's side, cheering him on. Sitting on a stool directly behind both boys was Midoriko. She had eagle eyes on what each of them were doing, while simultaneously scribbling notes down in her journal without even looking down at it.
"...What the hot mess of fresh hell have I walked in on?"
"Kaede challenged Rikiya to a game. Rikiya started off strong but his strategy is starting to fail him, meanwhile Noboru is doing quite splendidly without fail." Midoriko said the moment Kazuma posed his question, almost as if she had anticipated the question despite appearing to have not noticed his and Tenri's presence at all. It kind of scared him just how observant she was.
"Y'know, all you had to say was that Kaede's kicking the mimic's ass!" Misaki cheered.
"I much prefer the way I worded it," started Midoriko, "seeing as it's a more eloquent way of putting it."
Misaki simply shrugged in response, going back to watching Kaede. Compared to the spastic and erratic button mashing that Rikiya was displaying, the young astronomer was a lot more composed with his movements. His fingers fluidly danced across the buttons while he elegantly guided the joystick around in the directions it needed to go. It seemed like he was a natural at...whatever game they were playing. Kazuma couldn't identify it, it seemed like a mashup of several different games that should never cross paths. Walking over to inspect it in an attempt to understand it better, he just found himself even more confused.
"Alright, well, you guys have fun with that." He turned to face Tenri so they could leave, but only found that the harpist already left. Letting out an exasperated sigh, he dashed out in an attempt to find him.
He was greeted by the sight of the only other interesting looking building in the new ward upon exiting the arcade. Just across the street was a store called Media Mania. Intrigued by it, he jogged over to check it out. Upon arriving, he found himself staring at a store that was basically the Literary Supernova of other media types. There were shelves upon shelves of DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, console games, consoles, DVD/VHS players, even projectors if you wanted to have a movie night.
Inside, he could see Israfel browsing idly. Off to the side, Emiko was in the CD section, having acquired a CD player to listen to an album she'd found. Not too far from her was Tenri, also looking through the CDs. If he glanced far enough back, Kazuma could see Rei huddled around the gaming consoles, having apparently found a title she found interesting. She was leaning against the wall, eyes trained on the handheld system in her grip.
Making his way into the store, he moved towards the projectors and stuff, giving them a once-over. Israfel's curious eye turned in Kazuma's direction. The SHSL Angel was soon over at Kazuma's side, staring down at the projectors as well. He seemed to understand the thought processes going through the novelist's mind as he spoke up.
"Thinking of a movie night?"
"Yeah, could be fun. It'd be a nice distraction from everything that's happened, plus this place seems to have a whole ton of fun movies." Kazuma failed to mention that he noticed some of the film adaptations of his novels. He didn't want to seem prideful.
"I see. It certainly sounds like it'd be good for us. We could do with having something go right for once."
"Yeah, we could." Kazuma said with a nod.
With that, Israfel turned to leave. Kazuma continued to stare at the projectors for a moment, before giving Rei and Emiko a friendly greeting. Seeing no reason to stick around any longer, the horror novelist headed towards the door himself. As he made his way to the diner, he pondered over the thoughts in his mind. A gathering going correctly would do them some good. Maybe sometime soon, he'd have everyone get together to set up one of the projectors somewhere.
Perhaps things would actually go right this time.
(A/N:) Guess who's back! Damn, I've had some tough writer's block. Also having a life all of a sudden didn't really help me get this written. If it seems a little lacking in quality compared to other chapters, blame it on the writer's block. In other news, I tried my hand at having Tenri be a prominent character this chapter. He's such a precious child. The new poll will be going up soon, where you can vote on who you think the victim will be in this chapter! I'll keep the poll up until the body discovery chapter is up, so it'll be there a while. Happy voting, upupu~