Chapter 3: The Bear and the Maiden Fair IV
Before I'm able to enter the cafeteria, I'm stopped in the doorway by Rin, who hurriedly thrusts her envelope into my empty left hand.
"Let Hikari burn it," she orders. "I feel that would be the safest option for us all."
"Couldn't you have just given it to her?" I ask bemusedly, looking at her scornfully. Seriously, Hikari's just over there. You're not telling me you couldn't just walk ten feet and give her the fucking envelope.
"I felt she might appreciate it more if you were the one to give it to her. You are her soulmate, after all, as she told us all numerous times during your absence." After this declaration, she turns away from me and begins conversing with Daisuke about some matter or other. I'm relieved to see that the Ultimate Critic has, for now, kept his composure and not allowed himself to become Deus again. Hikari's still kneeling besides the pile of ashes that she's convinced is her grandfather's remains when I reach her side once more, and reluctantly she allows me to collect the mess in the dustpan, although she makes sure I dust off the brush too so none of him gets stuck on its bristles.
"If he's not kept all together, he'll have no rest in the afterlife," Hikari explains. "It's a belief we've held in our family for generations. We were born from fire, we live with fire, and when we die we must return to fire. That's how it works. Only when we burn can we finally achieve inner peace." Nah, you'll just end up in Irkalla like most of humanity. Them's the breaks.
"We'd better find somewhere safe to put these then," I say. I can't really say what's on my mind because that's basically like telling her she's going to rot in hell for all eternity, and I can't do that to anyone no matter how much I might despise them. Okay, actually, I might make an exception for Monokuma.
"Nanima might be able to help with that," says Hikari, taking the dustpan's handle in both hands, gripping it tightly and trying her best to balance it so none of the ashes spill out. "She's got boxes. It's not really what grandpa would want, but it's the best we can do for now." Sounds like a plan. Where's our internet star got off to then? I check my e-Handbook and see that she's squirrelled herself away in the MRI room. Nobody ever really goes in there so it's nice and quiet.
"Stay here," I order. "Don't want you dropping your grandad everywhere."
"No!" Hikari says, vehemently refusing to allow me to leave her behind. "I'm coming with you! You can't make me stay behind again!"
"Fine, you can come with," I say. "Just be careful."
"Yaaaay!" she squeals, trotting up beside me. We make our way out of the cafeteria and into the corridor, but as we enter the waiting room we're brought to a halt by Zygoth.
"Ah, just the two people I wanted to see!" he declares.
"What's up?" I ask the conspiracy theorist. "Did Lord Wonnacott get assassinated or something?"
"No, no, of course not," says Zygoth. "It's regarding the rather disturbing contents of… this!" He waves his envelope around like a madman, which is a fairly accurate description of all his actions to be fair.
"Is your family in terrible danger?" Hikari asks. "Are they being held to ransom by evil spirits? Will they be sacrificed to appease the blood god Phillip if you don't kill somebody?" I really need to stop letting these two hang out.
"Family?" Zygoth asks with the tone and expression of a man who's just been offered a platter of fresh dog shit. "Pah! They disowned me years ago! They refused to accept my theories, and so I departed on my own path to inform the public of the terrible truths of this world!"
"Well, who else is out there Monokuma could be holding hostage?" I ask. A girlfriend? Boyfriend, perhaps? Maybe the Big Giant Head's been brought back to Earth. Anything could happen with this guy.
"This is worse than a hostage situation," Zygoth says forebodingly. "Within this envelope is unequivocal evidence that the Russians have a secret military base deep in Antarctica, where for the past fifty years they've been genetically engineering a race of militarised penguins with opposable thumbs! But fear not, I have a plan. If we were to set up a base at the North Pole and capture some polar bears…"
"Look, we're kinda busy," I interrupt, which is sort of true, but really I'd rather not be stuck here for hours listening to him come up with ridiculous plans for a non-existent threat. "We'll come back later, okay?"
"Why do the penguins have opposable thumbs?" Hikari asks, and I can only clutch my head in my hands in second-hand embarrassment.
"To grip their weapons with, of course!" answers Zygoth as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Without further delay, I usher Hikari away so we can make our way to the MRI room, taking extra caution when climbing the stairs. Upon our arrival, I see Nanima sitting near the large machine, headphones on and hood pulled down, engrossed in her game. Can't really blame her for wanting to shut the world out after seeing what's been pulled out of those envelopes. I'd imagine the threat of people on the outside world being hurt is even worse for her because of her huge fanbase.
"Leave this to me," I say to Hikari, sticking a hand out in front of her to keep her from disturbing Nanima (or dropping the ashes all over the place). "Nanima, are you alright?" I ask, raising my voice in order to be heard through the headphones. It doesn't quite work as Nanima appears to be completely disconnected from reality, escaping into the virtual world in an effort to forget the horrors that await in the real world. Hikari rolls her eyes, then thrusts the dustpan into my hands.
"Let me show you how an expert does it," she says, cracking her knuckles. She sidles up right beside the distracted gamer and places a hand right on the screen. "Hey Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaanimaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Well, that worked. Instantly the Ultimate Internet Star takes notice of her surroundings, deftly hitting a button on her handheld to put it to sleep, and smiles.
"Hikari, Shinji, so nice to see you both!" she declares. The hood comes down, the headphones slip down to her neck and she shakes out her long black hair before jumping up in the air. "Yeah!" She gives Hikari a high-five and the two of them start talking about random games while I just stand around awkwardly with the ashes.
"Oh, oh, oh," Hikari suddenly says, interrupting Nanima while she's describing the intricate mechanics of dungeon crawlers. "I just remembered why I came here. I need a box!"
"A box? What for?" Nanima asks, tilting her head and placing a finger on her chin inquisitively.
"My grandpa," Hikari replies. "Come on, hurry up before he gets cold!" He's dead and scorched, he's hardly going to feel anything but burning agony. My first concern would not have been the ashes being exposed to cold air.
"Sure thing, Hikari," Nanima says. Those two have definitely grown quite close, and it's nice to see that happen in spite of this oppressive atmosphere. In fact, it's almost like the Nanima everyone knows and loves from the streams comes back whenever she's around Hikari. "I'll be back in a minute." Nanima puts her handheld device in the pocket of her hoodie and leaves me and Hikari alone in the MRI room.
"Hmm, what does this button do?" Hikari wonders, her hand hovering over the control panel beside the MRI machine. She pushes a big red button and the bed retreats into the machine, preparing to scan its occupant. Bit useless since nobody's on it, but nevertheless as the machine whirs to life, Hikari watches and claps with glee.
"Turn it off," I shout over the horrible cacophony of the scanner. Hikari either can't hear me or just isn't listening as she continues to be enraptured by the MRI machine. I put the dustpan of ashes down on a nearby desk and stride across the room, taking matters into my own hands. I try pushing the same button, but nothing happens. I push it several more times in the hopes that repeatedly bashing it will at least do something, but the machine shows no signs of stopping. Surely you're not telling me this thing has two separate buttons to switch it on and off? I bet Monokuma did this on purpose.
"How the hell do you turn this thing off?" I yell.
"WHAT?" comes Hikari's inevitable reply.
"That was a rhetorical question," I say as I look around the control panel for any wires that could lead to the mains. Suddenly, a loud explosion rings out from inside the MRI machine, the shock sending me stumbling into the wall, and the machine goes quiet. Thin wisps of smoke begin pouring out of the MRI machine, indicating some form of non-superficial damage. I suppose that solved our little problem of how to turn it off, though.
"It worked!" Hikari squeals excitedly, hopping on my back and wrapping her long arms around my neck. "It really worked!"
"What are you talking about?" I ask, although the answer is probably obvious.
"My homemade explosive!" my pyrotechnic partner replies. "I found some lithium tablets in the medical supply room and figured if I had enough of them there'd be enough pure lithium to make a bomb with, and I was right! I just needed to give it a little push." You gave it more than just a push. More like whacked it with a great big mallet. Is it even possible to make an explosive like that? Then again, I guess if anyone is capable of it it'd be Hikari.
"So you thought putting it in an MRI would be a good idea?" I enquire. "What if it'd gone wrong and killed us both?"
"Don't be so silly, Shinji," Hikari says. "They don't call me the Ultimate Pyrotechnician for nothing, you know! I'm an expert at working with even the most volatile compounds." They must be bloody volatile if putting them in a magnetic tunnel is enough to blow them up.
"…Dare I ask what happened?" Nanima's peering in through the door, cradling a shoebox in her hands. If she didn't hear the explosion, she can certainly see the damage. The bed's been blown to pieces and the inner mechanisms are completely shot. How much power was that bomb packing? Sparks fly from exposed pieces of wiring and smoke begins to billow out from scorched remains of the scanner. Let's hope nobody needs a brain scan any time soon.
"Oh my god, Nanima, you should've seen it!" Hikari squeals, jumping off me and running up to Nanima, talking to her at great length about something called Project Zeus. Nanima listens attentively and nods as Hikari details every step of this masterpiece of a plan. She's been thinking about this for a long time, it seems. This is a big discovery. This could well be the way we get out of here. If we can determine the thickness of the walls and collect a sufficient amount of materials, Hikari can make us a bomb that could blast us out, and there's not a thing Monokuma can do about it. Sure, it's against the rules, but we'll have scarpered by the time he tries to exact his punishment.
"Wow, that's amazing!" Nanima exclaims, eyes so bright you'd swear they were illuminating the room. "You're so inventive. I never would've thought of anything like that."
"I know, right? I'm so smart! It only took ten bottles to make that bomb." Ten bottles for something that can blow up a flimsy bed and punch holes in some metal? I dread to think how many tablets it'll take to make something that can blast through concrete or brick. Damaging an MRI machine is one thing, but managing to blow a hole in a wall large enough for a person to escape through is going to be a colossal feat. We're gonna need everything we can get our hands on to do this.
"That's so cool," Nanima says, looking to have almost fully regained her former enthusiasm. When she's happy, the world is happy. "Now then, what say we get your grandpa in here? He can rest easy now." She lifts open the box and allows Hikari to tip the ashes in before sealing it shut.
"Thanks so much, Nanima," Hikari says. "You're a great friend, y'know! I dunno what I'd do without you!"
"What about Shinji?" Nanima asks. "Isn't he important too? Shouldn't you thank him as well?"
"Oh, that's right!" Hikari yells, before running up to me, pressing me up against the control panel and kissing me forcefully on the lips. "That's my way of thanking you! For now, anyway." She gives me a cheeky wink before hauling me back up onto my feet. Tonight's gonna be fun.
"For now, eh?" I ask, slipping a hand around her slim waist. I'm tempted to push the horseplay a little further but decide against it as Nanima's still watching us both. She couldn't even look me in the eye after she saw me in just my boxers. "My, I wonder what you could have planned…"
"Umm… are you planning on doing something with this box?" asks Nanima slightly nervously. Shit, yeah, we need to find a place to put that. I suppose we can just stick it on top of the chest of drawers and be done with it.
"Why of course!" Hikari says, slipping from my grasp to retrieve her grandfather's ashes. "I'm not letting him out of my sight until I know for sure he's safe. Hey, I have an idea! He can come chill with us in the rec room! Come on!" She takes the box and runs out into the corridor, leaving me and Nanima in the dust. As I approach the door to follow Hikari, the Ultimate Internet Star puts a hand out in front of me to prevent me leaving her behind.
"Before we go up there, there's something I want to talk to you about. You're the only one who'd understand." I am? What gives her that impression, I wonder?
"Oh?" I find myself uttering. Would've been nice if I'd managed to say something remotely intelligent instead of grunting like an imbecile. Gonna have to try and make up for that now. "What's on your mind?"
"I-it's the thing that Monokuma gave me…" She reaches deep into the recesses of her hoodie and pulls out her envelope, reminding me that I've still not given Rin's away to be burned. Suppose I'll stick this one on the fire too when I'm done with it. I doubt Nanima would want it to be hanging around. I open it up and unfold the sheets of paper that lie within. My first instinct upon seeing the layout is that it's a printout of an online forum. No idea which one, but the title of the thread has caught my eye.
'I can't take this anymore,' is the title of this thread. So far, so terrible but that's nothing compared to what's written underneath it.
'Without Nanima Shinogani's shining light to guide me, I can't function anymore,' says a user named Komamura345. 'She's the only thing that's kept me from killing myself all this time. Tonight, if she hasn't returned, I'm going to hang myself. Nobody can prevent my death but her.' Rather conveniently, Monokuma appears to have blurred out the timestamp. I read on, fearing things could get worse, and they do. Some users offer support and guidance, while others attempt to goad this poor soul into suicide.
'That bitch is probably out getting some premium cock,' says someone calling themselves Oji-Sama.
'Stop telling us about it and do it, you spineless piece of shit,' replies another user by the name of Garu33. 'The world would be better off without cowards like you.' Man, this is cruel. I turn the page and it appears there's a news report of a suicide somewhere in Hokkaido. Poor guy. He must've been suffering horribly and without the one little bit of positivity left in his life, he decided it just wasn't worth it fighting on. It doesn't bear thinking about. Of course when you've got people bullying him and telling him to go ahead with it, that just makes the whole thing even worse.
"Now do you see? You're the only one in here who understands the joy I bring to others. You were one of my fans, just the same as him. I feel so ashamed. I just couldn't stop it…" There's that familiar trickle of blood dripping down Nanima's face. Thankfully this time she's prepared with some tissues and catches it quickly, but the sight of it will bring her no comfort. "I saw him, Shinji. I saw his ghost. He was crying out to me, asking me why I couldn't stop this from happening. I just feel so guilty…" I'd expect her to be crying by now, but she's merely blank and expressionless, like all her emotions have been sapped away. This is definitely one of her episodes.
"Nanima, you weren't to blame for any of this," I tell her, putting an arm around her to placate her and hopefully bring her back to reality through sensory input. She doesn't know it but I'm holding down her hood. I can't let her retreat again, not after the progress we've been making. "It wasn't your fault. You need to realise this. You had nothing to do with that kid's death. You know how it is when school starts up again. Parents start pressurising their kids to succeed and sometimes they just can't take it."
"I-I know," Nanima says weakly. "But… if I'd been there for him, maybe he wouldn't have died…"
"We don't know that for sure," I say. "He never said anything about what was going on at home. He was probably too afraid to talk to anybody about it, and with all the bullying that went on in this thread, I can't say I blame him. If anyone is responsible for his death, it's them. Or Monokuma. The main thing is, it's not you." Now the floodgates have opened. Did I fuck up? I don't think so. Nanima needs to get it all out of her system so I hold her and allow her to rest her head on my shoulder as she cries.
"I-I know how he must've felt... Shinji, I tried… I tried to kill myself…" Well, shit. If I didn't know Nanima as well as I do now that would have been the absolute last thing I'd expect. Sadly, now I know that her happy-go-lucky persona on screen is just a mask, a façade used to bring happiness to others so they don't have to suffer like she did.
"Oh, Nanima," I say. "I'm so sorry…" That's really all I can say at a time like this. How the hell am I even supposed to react to that sort of revelation?
"I-it's alright," she whimpers. "I just felt so overwhelmed, like I couldn't control anything. I just wanted everything to end. Everything was black, except the red blood in my veins…" Ouch. Sounds fucking painful. I'm glad that she's recovered from that though. The world would be a much darker place without her in it.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that," I say. "I won't force you to tell me what happened. I don't want you to make yourself upset." I do my best to calm her down, holding her hand in mine and sitting with her until the tears dry up. If Hikari was here to see this she'd probably be fairly jealous now, but I'd hope she understands. This is gonna have to be kept secret. If letting Nanima sit on that green chair riled her up, lord knows how she'd react to me having actual physical contact with another girl. Hope Monokuma's got some nails ready because I'd be crucified if Hikari ever finds out.
"I… it's not true, is it? That someone died because I wasn't there?" Nanima asks faintly.
"The way I see it, it's all a bluff," I say. "This could easily have been faked. There's no proof that any of this actually happened. Monokuma could have just made this himself to try and trick you. Notice how all the timestamps are blurred out? He probably wants to hide the fact this was all done on the fly. Just think of it as another of Monokuma's tricks. Don't let him get to you."
"I'll try," Nanima says shakily, slowly nodding her head. "Really, I will."
"I believe you," I reply. Now I feel it's safe to take back my arm and uncoil our fingers. As I do so, Nanima looks up at me, her vibrant yellow eyes staring into mine. Are those contacts or just an incredibly rare colour of iris? Who knows, but it's one of the things that makes Nanima uniquely fascinating to many.
"Shinji… um…" She seems embarrassed now she's started speaking; her cheeks flushed red and her gaze falling away from mine. "…Thanks. Again. You've been a big help."
"Any time," I say. "Not like need to worry about losing sleep over this stuff, after all." That raises a shy smile from Nanima, who turns towards the door and leaves the MRI room, beckoning for me to follow.
"Come on, Hikari must be worried sick about us both," she says. With a potential meltdown averted, it's time to actually take some time out and enjoy ourselves.
A.N.: AnimeFreakOutFan, this one's for you. Never had a better fan than you.
Also, I've officially been working on this for over a year now! I can't quite believe it honestly. Never did I think this would be as successful as it's been, or last anywhere near as long as it has. Couldn't have done it without all you guys. Thanks all of you, especially those of you I've spoken with regularly. Without you I wouldn't have steered my life in the direction it's going now.