Makoto wandered out into the hallway, and was surprised when he bumped into Sayaka. "There you are Makoto! I was looking for you!"
"You were?" He asked, surprised.
"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you." She smiled at him. "You went to Blackfoot Middle School, right?"
Makoto gave her a small grin back. This was strikingly similar to how the two of them first began talking in their first year. "Yeah, I remember seeing you a lot. Everyone was happy to have the Ultimate Pop Star around."
She giggled. "Well, I'm glad to have a friend here in such a... scary situation."
Makoto allowed himself to chuckle. "Well, I don't think we talked much in middle school."
"No, but I always knew who you were!" She laughed. "You were the one who helped the crane that fell into the school pond!"
He remembered being on the livestock committee all those years ago. "Y-yeah. That was me."
"That's why I wanted to talk to you!" Sayaka grinned "I'm that crane, come to repay you!"
Makoto was glad to see her sense of humor hadn't changed. But it felt weird, unnatural to restart their entire friendship over. "Very funny, Sayaka."
"Haa, you're a bit more steadfast than I thought you'd be," Sayaka replied. "The middle school Makoto would have gotten all flustered. Anyway, want to look for clues with me?"
"S-sure," Makoto replied. He knew very well there was no way out of the school without the button in the headmaster's office.
Instead, he pondered who he should tell that he had their school memories, and how he should do it. Would anyone believe him? Would it make things worse?
What would Junko do to him if she found out Makoto's procedure failed?
And could he trust that Mukuro wasn't going to say anything?
Mukuro stepped around the corner and walked towards her dorm. As if psychic, a Monokuma popped out of a hidden wall panel by Mukuro's door. Somehow, the stuffed animal looked sweaty.
"Oh my, did you take Mr. Ahoge to the laundry room for a confession?" Monokuma said, hugging itself. "I can see it now. You take advantage of the boy's amnesia to get him securely in your grasp. Can love bloom on the battlefield, Mukuro?"
"Nothing like that," Mukuro grunted. "I think he just got really paranoid with all the cameras. Ended up just crying about the whole thing. He really misses his family."
Lying to Junko felt so unnatural. Mukuro was happy that if she had any skills at all, concealing her emotions was one of them.
"Puhuhu," Monokuma giggled, "What an herbivore man. I can't believe he gets your fat little heart racing. Did you finger yourself to that stupid hair every night?"
Mukuro said nothing, but wasn't able to stop herself from squirming a bit.
After a pause, she asked. "Hey... Junko?"
"Grah! Call me Monokuma!" The bear raised its arms as if it was an actual, scary predator. "You're breaking character!"
"But... you called me Mukuro."
"Bears are allowed to break character." Monokuma waved its hand. "Whattaya want?"
"Ah... nevermind, I guess just I'm just worried about the plan. There are a lot of unknown factors."
"Jeez, you're so disappointing!" Monokuma huffed. "And you know, despair and disappointment is a completely different feeling. This does nothing for me. This plan is foolproof! Get it through your thick head!"
Without another word, Monokuma disappeared as quickly as he came.
Mukuro paused, weighing Junko's words against Makoto's. Would her sister betray her? Was it not too late for her?
She shook those thoughts from her head. She was a killer. Not a hero.
Makoto reported to the dining hall, as everyone had agreed. He listened, patiently, as it was confirmed that all the entrances and windows were impenetrable.
Makoto and Mukuro avoided eye contact throughout. All the students looked through their e-handbooks and reviewed the rules that were put in place by Monokuma, including one forbidding violence against the headmaster. Mondo's previous outburst in the gym was the only warning any of them would receive.
Kiyotaka and the others established some ground rules and suggestions; not going out at night, meeting in the dining hall in the morning. Everyone agreed, except for Byakuya. He refused to play nice, and pretend that no one present was above killing the others.
Makoto had forgotten that Byakuya was so much... worse when he first started at Hope's Peak.
"What the fuck did you say about me, asshole?" Mondo grunted, cracking his knuckles as he stepped to the prodigy, angrily.
"Out of my way you peasant," Byakuya sneered. "Violence just proves my point that you peons aren't worth my time."
Makoto stepped between them. "Guys, we shouldn't fight, this is exactly what Monokuma wants!"
Unfortunately, Mondo was already seeing red and punched Makoto across the room.
It took all of Mukuro's willpower to keep her composure. She wanted to carry Makoto to his room, but that would break cover. Instead, she suggested Sakura do it. The Martial Artist was happy to comply.
Kyoko Kirigiri had already begun to have an inkling of what her talent might have been, but she didn't want to assume. Not yet, anyway. But every time she walked into a room, her focus darted from all the various things in a room that stuck out. As if on muscle memory, she would begin deducing what was out of place, what was a recent development, what belonged and what didn't.
Two students stuck out to her as strange in this matter.
One, was Junko Enoshima. Upon meeting the model, Kyoko saw she looked nothing like the magazine covers that were left in the laundry room. She overheard Junko say to Sakura that this was due to the airbrushing and editing done in the fashion industry, however. While Kyoko believed this was a reasonable explanation, for now, something still felt off about her.
The other was Makoto Naegi. He was regarded, per the e-handbook, as the Ultimate Lucky Student. For him to be in this situation was anything but lucky. But his facial explanations during all the situations so far were contradictory of a boy who was confused and thrust into a new situation. Confusion was certainly present, but he had an expression that belied concerns that lie elsewhere.
She had a hunch that he knew more than he was letting on. But for now, he had been punched across the room by Mondo. If he did have more knowledge than he let on, that certainly wasn't part of the plan.
She didn't assume any negative or sinister plots from him. Not yet. Like Byakuya, she didn't feel anyone was above suspicion. Unlike Byakuya, she wasn't going to antagonize strangers about it.
She decided to walk the halls one more time, searching for anything that seemed out of place. For some reason, she couldn't shake the feeling the building seemed familiar. Then again, she knew her father was the headmaster, so she had been in and out of the building many times. She trusted that something odd or out of place would be noticed.
So far the amount of things laying around the school store were certainly out of place; no school would need a full suit of armor.
She walked into a classroom and examined one of the plates on the window. Leaning in, she could see it was rusted.
It had been there for some time.
There was no way this was their first day of school.
She began to compile a hypothesis.
Makoto Naegi woke up in his bed, wondering if anyone got the number of the truck that hit him.
As he sat up and groaned, he remembered that it was no truck, just Mondo. "Ugh... me and my rotten luck."
He sat on his bed and composed himself.
He was stuck in a killing game with fourteen of his good friends, one of them being in on it with her sister, his fifteenth classmate.
His friends didn't remember each other, save for the...
Makoto paused at the word traitor. He didn't want to think of Mukuro that way. Mukuro was the girl that he would sit with and share breakfast with. The person who was always there to help him off the ground. Reliable, even if she was shy and reserved.
Still, she was an Ultimate Despair.
He sighed. Why did this feel so complicated? He should hate her.
But he couldn't. He was too optimistic, too compassionate. He had tried, for two years, to help her out of her shell, if only a little. Every little smile and laugh he got from her was a victory.
And if she was to be believed, those were real.
He shook himself. He needed to focus on the life and death matters in the school. Hopping out of bed, he opened his door, and was shocked when he crashed into Sayaka, knocking the two of them down.
"Ah!" He cried, rubbing his forehead. "Are you okay, Sayaka?"
She stood up and rubbed her forehead. "Yeah, I'm okay... thank you Makoto. I was actually just coming to check on you."
His face turned red. "Oh... how long was I out."
"Most of the day," she replied, "Mondo really knocked you out. Everyone decided to split up and explore more. It's just about dinner time if you wanted to join us."
After eating, Monokuma called them all to the Audio-Visual room. He claimed that since no one had died yet, he decided to spice things up with a motive.
Every student had a DVD with their name, and was automatically apprehensive. What did Junko have that allowed her to create a personalized motive for each student?
Makoto loaded his own DVD into the small screen, and his heart broke a little when he saw his parents and Komaru on the screen, wishing him well at Hope's Peak. Hearing their voices brought a tear to his eye. The scene shifted, quickly, to that same couch and living room destroyed by the Tragedy. It made Makoto wince; he knew that his hometown had been attacked, he had just hoped his family had been able to escape and someday he'd reunite with -
Wait.
His eyes widened.
That's why their memories were taken.
No one here remembered the Tragedy.
He looked around the room to see looks of anger, sadness, and confusion on the face of class 78. Sayaka took her headphones and let out a scream that only about half the class even reacted to.
As he looked around, he and Mukuro locked eyes. He noticed she wasn't actually watching her screen. Instead, their gazes met, and she quickly looked away.
He could have sworn he saw guilt, if only for an instant.
Sayaka ran out of the room. Makoto paused, looking from the door, to Mukuro, and decided to go after his middle school friend.
Giving chase, he saw Sayaka collapsed on the floor of the hallway. "H-hey, Sayaka. It's going to be okay!"
She sobbed and pushed him away lightly. He stood back. He couldn't help but wonder what was on her tape. If it was anything like his, it was just a taste of reliving the Tragedy once again.
He bit his lip. Did he lie to her? Tell her the truth? Try and comfort her? He thought back to his pre-Tragedy self. If someone had told him the world had been turned upside in quick succession, by teenagers nonetheless, they'd have thought they were crazy.
"I have to get out of here, Makoto," Sayaka said. As she raised her face from her hands, Makoto saw a look he'd only seen on her face once before, vividly.
While the television stations still had broadcasts, class 78 and their headmaster still watched the news for coverage on how the outside world was dealing with the Tragedy. Some students opted not to, and Makoto didn't blame them, but he still tuned in every day, hoping things would settle down.
It seemed like every few days, a news story would bring tale of a tragedy or event that personally affected one of Class 78. Sayaka was no exception.
On that day, Makoto was sitting with Leon, Sayaka, and Kyoko eating dinner, when the story cut to a reporter, on scene, to a benefit concert being thrown by Sayaka's old group. Mid-performance, a member of the Ultimate Despair had attacked, gunning down each singer and a good portion of the crowd.
The horror struck look on Sayaka's face stayed there for weeks.
Makoto swallowed. Leaving Hope's Peak was not ideal with the Tragedy raging on. But they couldn't stay in this situation either.
"We'll all get out, Sayaka," Makoto decided. "Together." He knelt down next to her. "Whatever was on everyone's video, true or not, is designed to get us to kill each other. We don't want that kind of blood on our hands."
"But..." She said, lip quivering. "I have to..."
"Don't lose yourself now," he replied, gently. "We're all in this same situation. We have to figure it out."
"You're... you're right, Makoto," Sayaka replied, gently. "Maybe I should come your assistant, to make up for it."
"Th-that's unnecessary," Makoto laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Let's just try and figure out what we can do."
As the two took a walk around the first floor to calm Sayaka's nerves, Makoto couldn't help but wonder what sort of things his classmates were going through as well.
At the gym, Sayaka suggested taking a gold-plated sword to his room for self-defense.
He refused. "I wouldn't need to use it," he insisted. "We're not going to need it. We're all going to be okay."
Sayaka frowned, and he wasn't sure why.