Leon Kuwata was freezing. His clothes - which would have been perfecting for showing off to chicks on stage - weren't enough to stop him from feeling the cold. What he needed was a bed and some blankets, but the only thing this cabin had was a toilet. 'Is this a fucking joke? At least the last place had a heater.'
On the bright side, he was alone with Sayaka. She was beautiful and talented, and she'd caught his attention in more ways than one the second he saw her. The only problem - apart from the fact that being stuck out in the middle of nowhere wasn't a good time to ask for a date or for help becoming famous - was that she was suddenly shy. It was as if she was afraid. 'She's different than she was back at Hope's Peak', he thought as he glanced over at her on the other side of the room. 'She must be having trouble coping with all this shit.'
He couldn't blame her. He'd been having nightmares about that insane fucking parachute jump. The plane - the whole thing - had just fucking fallen apart around him! He'd fallen into empty space, plummeting towards the ground like a brick, surrounded by the other students and bits of the plane. For the first time in his life, he'd felt like he was going to die. Then he'd remembered the parachute, quickly pulled the cord, and suddenly he'd been floating down towards the snowy ground. It looked like something out of a postcard. The wind had blown him into a field near an abandoned farmhouse, and Sayaka had landed nearby. Everyone else had drifted off around them, leaving them alone in the cold together.
She hadn't spoken much at all since. She'd mostly just nodded when Leon had asked her anything. He sighed. 'I'm not a fucking therapist or anything... but looks like I'm going to have to try and help her...' He pulled himself up off the ground and headed towards the corner she was curled up in. She couldn't sleep either, and looked at him with big, scared eyes. 'Hey, uh... are you okay?' 'Of course she's not okay, moron!' As he cursed himself, she slowly shook her head. He cleared his throat. 'Well, is... is there anything I can do? To help?' She glanced at the floor for a few seconds. 'Would you have... killed someone? Back at Hope's Peak?'
His heart sank. 'Is she... scared of me? Does she think...' He shook his head firmly. 'No! Of course not! That would be fucking crazy!' But instead of calming down, Sayaka buried her face into her hands and began to cry. 'Woah, hey! It's alright!' Leon knelt down next to her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. 'We're... we're out of there now, so... so you don't have to worry about any of that anymore!' But Sayaka couldn't stop sobbing. 'I... would... have!' 'Huh?' His eyes widened. 'You... you don't mean...'
'I... would have... killed somebody!' Her weeping grew louder and louder as she buried her face deeper and deeper into her hands. 'I... my friends... I saw them... I needed to get out... to know they were alright... I had to!' Leon was frozen, staring at her in complete and utter shock. 'She... would have killed someone? How could she... how could she even...? I wouldn't... I couldn't...or... could... I have?' The video he'd seen flashed before his eyes again. Something had happened to Kanon. She was his cousin, but they were so close that he thought of her as his sister. And now she was in danger, and '... I could have done it too', he whispered, horrified by what he was saying but unable to deny it. Sayaka stared at him, her face subtly shifting until it formed something resembling a smile. 'I'm... glad. I'm not alone.' She exhaled a ragged breath. 'I'm sorry, that's... terrible of me... but it's true.'
'Well, like I said, we're out of that fucking place now', he sighed as he sat down, unsure of how to reply to what she'd just said. 'All that killing bullshit is... it doesn't matter anymore. And besides, it's not as if you actually killed anyone.' Sayaka was silent. Leon rested his head against the wall.
They sat together for an hour or two, tired but too cold to sleep even as their bodies and minds cried out for it. 'Why did we leave the house with the heater? We should've just stayed there', Leon thought bitterly. 'Now we're going to get frostbite or some shit.' He glanced back over at Sayaka, still awake and freezing. 'Fuck it, might as well try to distract ourselves.' 'What are you going to do after this?' She slowly turned her head. 'Huh? What... do you mean?' 'When all this shit is over', he mumbled, 'what are you going to do? I... I was thinking... maybe I'll go back to baseball.' His freezing lips managed a smile, while Sayaka tried to listen through her exhaustion. 'I was gonna move on to being in a punk band', he continued, 'but... I just started missing baseball, you know?' Sayaka nodded. 'You would look good in a punk band', she mumbled with a small smile, causing Leon's to grow wider. 'But... sometimes, you just have to do what feels right... like me and singing.' Her smile fading, she pushed her head up to look at the ceiling, staring at it as if she was disappointed that it was blocking the stars. 'That was always my dream. I did... I did whatever it took to get where I was.' She let out a sigh of resignation. 'If that's all gone... if my friends... I can't think of doing anything other than starting over again.'
'I mean, you won't have to start over.' She turned to look at Leon as he spoke, a kind expression on his face despite his visible exhaustion. 'You're the Sayaka Maizono. Fucking everyone knows who you are... people will still want to hear you sing.' Sayaka nodded, but her face was still woeful. 'Yeah, but... my friends... if they're... I can't do it without them. I don't want to do it without them.' Leon frowned. 'The hell do I say? Fuck, I can't think straight... I'm too tired. Wait... I should say...' 'Maybe... you will still be able to do it with them? There's... there's still hope, isn't there?' She stared at him for a few moments with sad, exhausted eyes before slowly nodding. 'Yeah... yeah. Maybe I will.' An almost-smile flickered on her face for the briefest moment. 'Thanks... but... I just need to... sleep...' As soon as she finished mumbling, her head slid down the wall and came to rest on Leon's shoulder. 'I'll look after you, Sayaka. I promise', he whispered with a smile as he closed his eyes.
Suddenly, he heard a voice calling out from the other side of the heavy metal door he was facing. 'Leon, please! Hurry!' His heart started pounding in his chest. 'Kanon... that's Kanon's voice!' He ran at the door and pounded on it with his fists, tearing through the metal like paper. 'Please be alright, please be alright!' Finally, enough of the door was gone for him to step through it into the pitch-black room on the other side. His body was shaking as he fumbled for the light switch on the doorway. 'Come on, come on, come on!' After an eternity, he finally found it. Bright lights burst on, and his nightmare came true.
Kanon lay dead on the ground in front of him, face-down in a pool of her own blood. He fell to his knees. 'Wh... why?' His words were little more than a strangled gurgle - he was too paralysed by the horror before him to do anything more. 'Why? Puhuhuhuhuhu!' Standing on Kanon's corpse, Monokuma leered mockingly over him. 'You didn't kill any of your classmates, so I had to kill her! You did watch the video, didn't you? After I put so much effort into it? Get up! Come on, get up!'
Leon's bleary eyes snapped open as something hit him hard in the chest and he fell to the ground. 'Get up, dumbass!' His heart caught in his throat and his eyes bulged out of his sockets in terror as he looked up to see a soldier, their face hidden behind a Monokuma helmet, pointing a gun at his head. 'Wha... no, this... this can't be... no, please!' Next to them, another pointing their own weapon at Sayaka's petrified form. 'Having a nightmare, were you?' The first soldier chuckled as he gestured at his two captives to get on their feet. 'You haven't seen anything yet.'
