"Gah!" Jane yelled. "What the hell was that?!"

"Dude, why'd you shut me in a force-field box?" Rocky yelled to Monokuma. Monokuma did not reply; he just stood still, trembling.

"Yes, I was shut off alone as well," Jane said. "Who was communicating?"

I struggled to come up with some sort of response, but Lucina spoke up quickly: "It was the mastermind. They were talking to me and Katy."

"The mastermind?!" Rodrigo barked. "What did this fiend say?!"

"Uh... they just told us... they knew which of us did it," Lucina answered. "And that the killer is going to get executed." I could see Katy almost yell out something, but she caught herself.

"Why would the mastermind do such a thing?" Rocky asked, confused.

"Just... to mock us?" Lucina offered. "Break our spirit, I guess? They..."

"Shut up!" Monokuma suddenly screamed in absolute rage. "Shut up shut up!" He flung all his tubby limbs around in a comical tantrum. "We are not going to talk about what the mastermind might or might not have said!"

Suddenly, he grew to an enormous size, looming over the treetops. "Any chaos introduced to perfect order is intolerable!" his voice boomed. "It is a perversion! It is a sick, feminine parody of justice! It..."

He froze, then popped back down to his regular size. He stomped around, grumbling. "Ooo, I am... oooo!"

"Yo, what the hell?!" Rocky asked, panting a bit.

"No!" The bear stomped and pointed a claw. "No! I am... I cannot abide disorder, but... but the wisdom of the natural competence hierarchy does not lie! There must be truth in the mastermind's actions... not that the mastermind did anything!... even if I can't see it."

"But..." Jane began, but Monokuma screeched.

"No! Stop! No! Leave it alone. Solve the murder, solve the murder!"

"Wait..."

"It's okay, really," Lucina said, soothingly. "We don't need to worry about it. They didn't say anything important. Right, Katy?"

Katy stared at her a moment, then nodded blankly. "Yeah. Nothing important."

I just stood watching this, silent. Lucina did it. Lucina killed Juliet.

Lucina's the only one who could have made the bookcase fall on top of Juliet. Juliet clearly got dragged directly from the bookcase to the rare books room, where she was killed. Katy had to come out of the stacks after Juliet had already been dragged away, because that's the only place those smeared footprints in the lines could have come from.

"Well then," Jane grunted, "where even were we? I think we had determined that the one who blew up the bookcase had to be the one who killed Juliet."

"No," I argued, almost automatically.

Rodrigo looked at me quizzically. "Friend Saya? You're the one who said it before."

"Yes... yes, but there has to be an extra twist or something," I stated. "It can't possibly be that simple."

"Simple?!" Rocky exclaimed.

"There's too many pieces we can't explain! Like... like the knife. Right? And why Lucina just let Juliet get up and run off into the stacks. And why Lucina took her shoes off! And..."

"Gah, fine!" Jane snapped. "It's a big mystery; we get it!"

"S...some of that isn't important, though!" Katy argued. At a glare from Monokuma, she clarified: "I mean... just because something is a clue, that doesn't mean you have to figure it out to solve the crime."

"Yes," I replied, unsure what her game was. "But we want as few loose ends as possible."

"That's a bad mindset," Lucina said. Her voice was smooth, and at first glance she seemed totally confident, but somehow it was completely apparent to me that she was terrified. "Because you don't want to fill in the blanks on a narrative that's wrong from the beginning."

"What's wrong about it?" Rodrigo asked.

Lucina opened her mouth, but Monokuma cut her off. "Oh, come now, Mr. Diaz! You know perfectly well she can't answer that!"

Lucina nodded. "Fine, but you've known about this big hole from the beginning, and you never addressed it. If you're right, and Katy pushed Juliet out the window, and if you're right that I was right there in the room below the window, how did Juliet just get up and run away? Why didn't I just pick up the knife and stab her, if I was so desperate to kill her?"

"Kill me first," Juliet clarified.

"R...right," Lucina agreed, still seeming very uncertain what to make of Juliet's presence. "I wanted to kill her before Katy could."

"Ugh, stop getting hung up on details," Jane groaned. "All this motive stuff won't help us figure out what happened!"

But I had already figured out what Lucina was up to (and... Juliet too?). I made eye contact with her, and the look on her face... I can't describe it, but somehow it flicked me straight into "trial mode." This was all just a chess game, past the point where any moves mattered.

"It is important," I said. "Because... let's consider three points of evidence. First, there's the glass, blood, and knife mark in the floor under the window."

FACT 13: GLASS AND BLOOD ON FLOOR.
There was a spot on the floor near the desk where the blood and glass shards seemed different from the rest.

"Katy pushing her isn't the only possible way that could happen," Rocky pointed out.

"Yeah." He was mostly on the ball; that was good. "But, also remember what we were talking about before. Juliet had two major injuries, and her arm couldn't possibly have been broken when the bookcase fell on her."

"Uh, why not?" Rocky asked, confused.

"Because it only fell on her legs. If it'd fallen on her arms, more of her body would have fallen in the paint puddle, and there'd be evidence of that on her body. So how did Juliet break her arm? And if she really fell out the window, why wasn't she even more badly hurt than she was?"

"Um... okayyyy?" Jane actually seemed more curious than impatient, which struck me as noteworthy somehow.

"And there's the third piece of evidence," I continued. "Something we haven't explained yet.

FACT 27: WITNESSES' CONDITION:
Lucina's feet are bandaged, and she is favoring her shoulder. She has a couple of bandages on her arms. Otherwise, she appears unhurt.

"How'd Lucina hurt her shoulder?"

"How is..." Rodrigo trailed off, thoughtfully. "I... see. This is the reason Friend Lucina's motivations are important."

I nodded. "She didn't just want Juliet to die. She wanted to keep Katy from becoming a murderer."

Rocky held up his hand. "Wait... I don't get it. What happened?"

"Friend Rocky, consider yourself in Friend Lucina's shoes," Rodrigo answered. "If you want to bear the burden of being a murderer alone, what would you do if you saw Friend Katy push Foul Juliet out of the window above you?"

"She'd... oh." Rocky took a deep breath and looked at his friend with heartbreaking sympathy. "Oh, Luce."

"She broke Juliet's fall," I explained. "She couldn't risk Juliet breaking her neck, so she ran and... caught her." I glanced at Lucina; again, I can't describe the expression at all. "That ties it all together. It explains how Lucina hurt her shoulder, why Juliet wasn't more badly hurt from the fall, and why she was able to get away and run off to the stacks."

Jane grimaced at Katy, who shrunk under her glare. "So you really did push her."

"I... I can't answer that," Katy said softly. "But I can say that I hated her. If I had the chance to kill her, I would take it."

"Hm, this makes the next step more interesting, then," Jane noted. "I had thought that the person who pursued Juliet into the stacks was clearly Lucina. But now, I'm not so sure."

"Indeed," Rodrigo agreed. "Friend Katy had to take her shoes off and run from upstairs. But if Friend Lucina broke the cruel devil's fall, she may have been briefly incapacitated."

"So... which one was it?" Rocky asked.

"Hmf, before we get to that, I'm interested in something our little detective said before," Jane said, eyeing me suspiciously (and holy shit kind of lustfully). "She was acting a bit odd about the notion that whoever blew up the bookcase had to be the murderer."

"Uh." I tried not to look at Katy or Lucina, but I failed. I was still ice-cold inside, but their faces stayed with me, like imprints on my retinas. They both just looked desperate. "Well... it's mostly the knife. Right? The knife is a big mystery."

"What's so mysterious about it?" Juliet asked, seeming to want to prod things along more than she actually wanted to know the answer.

"Well, we have to presume it's the murder weapon, right? But... but there's so many weird things about it."

FACT 10: BUTCHER'S KNIFE.
Juliet's knife was stuck into the exterior of the door to the rare books room. It had a thin, dry bloodstain on the blade and yellow paint on the handle.

"Like... why was it stabbed into the outside of the door? And how did it get yellow paint on it? "

"Uh also: where did it come from in the first place?" Rocky asked.

"Oh, I brought it," Juliet answered casually. We all stared.

"Yo, I thought you didn't remember any of this shit," Rocky said suspiciously.

"Well, but it's true, right?" She looked around at everyone. "There's no way I wouldn't have my own murder weapon already on the scene... especially, if what you said earlier is correct, a weapon that could be used to hurt me in a way I hurt someone else."

She sighed. "Based on the documents here, this Emily person was truly kind, good, and brilliant. Even though it wasn't me... I'm sorry."

"Don't say a fucking word about her," Lucina growled, glaring at Juliet with absolute hatred. "You... you have to keep trying to use her against us?"

"I'm not..." But Juliet trailed off. "Of course you don't believe me." She pressed her hand against her chest. "But for what it's worth, I died hating what I'd done to her."

"I think we made it perfectly clear you mustn't speak of her any more," Jane snapped. Juliet just nodded.

"Anyway, she was right," I said, trying to get back on track. "Juliet did bring the knife there; she'd had it for days."

"So... so it fell with her out the window, right?" Rocky ventured. "She was holding it and the mirror when she was pushed."

"One of our suspects took it, obviously," Jane sneered. "For all we know, they both took it. Look, I'm not a 'romance' 'author' or anything..." (she literally made air quotes when she said this, which seemed kind of over-the-top but whatever) "...but I'm not willing to put all this importance on guesses about what they wanted to do."

Rodrigo blinked in confusion. "Friend Jane, what do you mean?"

"I mean, they killed her together!" Jane snapped. "Because of course they did! Look, we're tracing these events down to the nanosecond, and none of it even matters! They both hated her, and so they both cut her up! The only question is, who cut her up more!"

"Uh, would they even know?" Rocky asked. "Would Monokuma even know? He's got cameras all over, but he didn't, like, measure the blood, did he?"

"Oh, I know who did it, don't you worry!" Monokuma assured us. "That's at least one part of this disaster that hasn't gone wrong."

"That just means one of them has more bloodlust than the other," Jane said, shrugging.

"But why would we lie?" Katy asked, looking... odd. Her voice was hesitant, but her stance was firm and confident. "Why would we both say we did it alone?"

"Who cares?!" Jane snapped. "I'm through with speculation; I'm only concerned with facts from now on." She smacked a fist into her palm. "And there aren't any facts saying they didn't work together!"

"I want to ask Monokuma a question," Katy said, suddenly.

The bear looked down at her. "Eh? Well, as long as it doesn't break the rules, go ahead."

"No; privately." She gazed at him almost dryly.

Monokuma shrugged, and for a good fifteen seconds, I found myself blocked off from everyone with those fuzzy forcefields again. When they came down, Monokuma looked angry again and Katy looked satisfied.

"Gragh!" Monokuma snarled. "Fine. Fine!" He sighed. "You are not supposed to use your poor adviser's words to help you solve the crime, but it's my own fault for misspeaking." He shook his head. "Pedantic little nerds..." he grunted under his breath, then pointed at Katy. "Very well, point out your evidence!"

"All right." She kept glancing at me as she spoke. "It's just something we already talked about. But there's something important in there."

"My game, my rules!" he replied happily. "But, as a gesture of good will, I'll go ahead and tell you her answer to that question was true. Right after the door opened, bam! I knocked 'em down and tied 'em up at gunpoint! I felt like a cowboy. Pu hu hu!"

"He says 'right after the door opened,'" Katy stressed. "I know you noticed that, Saya." She was looking at me kind of harshly now. "Why would he have to wait for the door to open to tie us both up?"

Jane frowned. "Well... perhaps he was locked out of the room. The door had a key in it... and the key was bloodstained, indicating a guilty person unlocked the door after killing Juliet!"

FACT 11: DOOR TO RARE BOOKS ROOM (revised).
The outside of the door had yellow paint smeared on it. The other side of the door had the key still sticking out of the lock, with blood on both the key and the door handle.

"They were both inside, and as soon as they opened the door, that silly little bear pounded upon them."

I spoke up: this I could do something about. "No, Jane, I don't think you're right." Ignoring her glare, I looked around at everyone. "Monokuma had a way in to the rare books room. One of his secret tunnels, probably."

Monokuma suddenly jumped out from the main desk in the center of the room. "Hey!" he shouted, storming up to her and pointing at the book she carried. "Where did you get that!?"

"So... if they were both in the room, he wouldn't have to wait for the door to open to get them. The only way that makes sense is if one of them was outside. Locked outside, as the evidence with the key indicates."

"Yeah!" Katy affirmed. "Which means, only one of us could have been in there. The other one is lying."

Her emphasis caught my attention, but I couldn't quite get what she was up to. Rodrigo kept the conversation going before I could dwell on it. "But... but now I'm even more bewildered. If the killer was waylaid right after unlocking and opening the door, how did the murder weapon end up stabbed into the other side of it?"

"Oh!" Jane exclaimed, snapping her fingers. "Oh, I just put a few things together. Allow me to explain, so that I may make up for the 'Katy and Lucina both killed her' debacle (although I feel compelled to add is is technically cheating to use the bear's words as evidence)."

"Uh, okay," Rocky said. "So... what'd you figure out?"

"That Saya was correct earlier!" Jane said cheerfully. "The killer was indeed the one who blew up the bookcase."

"Yes, that sounds right," Lucina agreed.

"Um," I felt like I was losing control of things. "Are you sure? Because..."

"C'mon, let Jane talk," Katy interrupted. I was so surprised, I indeed shut up. Why was she taking such a different strategy now? Was I wrong about everything?

"Thank you, darling," Jane said smoothly. She paused, milking the moment of attention. "Well, Rodrigo is correct: it does seem impossible for the murder weapon to be stabbed into the outside of the door. Which leads us to one clear conclusion: the knife isn't the murder weapon."

"Whoa, what?!" Rocky yelled. "Wait! Wait hold on. No way! It had blood on it, remember?"

I looked closer; it was almost certainly the same one Juliet had shown me earlier. I could see a thin, dark bloodstain running down the very sharp edge of the blade.

"It had blood on it before," Jane replied. "We saw it on the video."

"Oh! And I put the paint on the floor, so I'd be able to track anyone through the maze. She'll be helpless. With all these tools at my disposal, she'll be helpless. I can defend myself." She held up the butcher's knife, a small stream of blood on the blade.

"And it's clear whose blood it was, yes? Obviously the person whose ass Juliet had just beat: Katy. That was the cut on her neck"

Katy's bare feet were bandaged just like Lucina's, and she also had small bandages on her arms. Notably, though, she had a longer bandage on the side of her neck.

"The knife was outside the rare books room, and it never went back upstairs until the door was already locked. In fact..." Jane was totally relishing this. "...I'm certain it was taken by the person who pursued Juliet into the stacks. Ask me why."

There was a pause. Juliet, of all people ("people"), bit the bullet. "Why?"

"Because of the yellow handle!" Jane answered. "The person holding the knife got paint on their hands, and there was only one sign of that."

FACT 16: BOOKCASE AND YELLOW PAINT.
There was a large paint puddle right at the entrance to the stacks. It was partly covered by the collapsed, wooden bookcase. The two yellow lines go out one side into the main room, with a single handprint smearing one of them next to the puddle.

"Whoever placed their hand down in the paint also handled the knife."

She was right, of course, but... "Why do you think that's not the person who blew up the bookcase?"

She rolled her eyes. "Darling, your chessmaster mindgames, whatever they are meant to accomplish, are getting tiresome. You know perfectly well what I'm talking about: We both experienced this very thing!"

We had to crawl back over the bookcase to get out, and the paint puddle extended far enough out to make exiting difficult. We probably could have jumped, but it was too precarious to stand up, so there was just no way to get out without yellowing at least one of our hands or feet. Jane was very vocal about her dislike of this situation.

"That handprint was made by someone leaving the stacks after the bookcase had already fallen."

Rodrigo nodded sternly. "I see. And, upon leaving, they ran through the large room towards the stairs, stepping in the yellow tracks as they went."

"Indeed," Jane agreed, smirking. "But what did they find up those stairs? A closed, locked door. One they could only flail at vainly with their knife and with their paint-covered hands."

FACT 11: DOOR TO RARE BOOKS ROOM.
The outside of the door had yellow paint smeared on it.

Jane grinned. "And thus I have deduced that the killer must have been the person who blew up the bookcase, and the other person was stunned in the stacks. Thank you for your insights, everyone! I probably could have done it without you, but not so quickly."

"Wait!" Lucina exclaimed, voice quavering. "But... but if the knife was locked outside, then there's no murder weapon!" She kept looking at Katy, and I got even more confused. Why was she poking holes in this now? "There was nothing to cut her with!"

But luckily, Rocky didn't let it go far. "Luce, c'mon. Nothing to cut her with? In the room filled with shards of glass?" He stuck up an index finger in sudden realization. "Oh! I bet that's that thing I saw, right?"

FACT 13: GLASS AND BLOOD ON FLOOR.
There was a spot on the floor near the desk where the blood and glass shards seemed different from the rest.

"I bet it was some big piece of glass the killer used! And when they were done, they just threw on the floor and it smashed!"

Rodrigo crossed his arms and glowered. "So. No loopholes or twists. Friend Saya was correct: the killer couldn't possibly be the one who pursued Foul Juliet."

"If all this is true," Katy said, a slight hitch to her voice, "then one of us used the glass to cut Juliet and make her pay for all the awful things she's done. The other one is lying." She glanced up right at me. "Lying to make everyone vote wrong."

Oh. So that's why.

"Huh... I actually hadn't thought of that before," Rocky said. He glared at our two suspects. "Yo, what the fuck? If we vote wrong, we'll all get executed!"

And then Juliet went and said it outright. "One of you killed a monster. The other is trying to get five innocent people murdered." She shook her head in obviously performative disdain. "It's a real shame the rules of these trials work the way they do, huh?"

I was past feeling much, but the tone of her voice, along with the confident look on Katy's face, shook me. I couldn't think of what to say.

"I'd like to speak to Saya alone," Lucina announced.

"Huh? Wait, bu..." Katy's voice cut off as the force fields popped up. Lucina stood alone, among blurry, hazy figures. Just like whenever I closed my eyes and imagined all my classmates.

"You accept it?" Lucina asked me. "You accept the truth of what happened?"

Holy goddamn she was just so incredibly beautiful. "Yeah."

"And you know you can't do it, right?" She was pleading, openly. "You can't kill her. She's innocent."

I looked away. "Juliet made a good point. What she's done is worse than what you did."

"Juliet never makes a good point. Katy's being..." She sighed. "She's not thinking things through right now. She shouldn't die because of that."

"This goes beyond 'not thinking things through,'" I said coldly. "It's premeditated, attempted mass murder, and you know it."

Lucina looked at me helplessly, but suddenly one of the force fields dropped. Katy stormed forward, pointing. "Lucina! Don't tell her anything!"

"What...?" Lucina took a step back. "How did you..."

"Gahhh, she wouldn't stop yelling!" Monokuma wailed, wandering up with his paws on the sides of his head. "You couldn't hear it, but I could! Drove me crazy!"

Lucina was ash-white. "No... Katy, you can't... I have to talk to Saya alone."

"Nope!" Katy yelled. "That's not fair, for you to make some big argument all by yourself. Anything you have to say, you say it in front of me."

"I... but..." Lucina looked around helplessly. "But it'll hurt you."

Katy paused for a moment, then put her hands on her hips. "Well then you'd better not say it," she replied, almost smug.

"Katy..."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, glaring at Katy. "I just. I just can't wrap my head around what you're thinking."

"What? Saya... she'll die!" Katy rushed forward, yelling directly into my face. "She'll die! I can't let that happen! If I have to get executed to save her, then it's worth it!" She looked over at Lucina, desperately. "No matter how tragic it is, I'll always save you."

Lucina started to reply, then paused. She took a deep breath and regarded us both with a soft, sad smile. "I'm sorry. I truly believed we didn't have to end in tragedy. I wanted to believe what Rocky and Saya were telling me; I wanted to move on. But I couldn't."

I tilted my head in confusion. "'Couldn't?' What are you talking about? Killing Juliet was a choice you made." Realizing how harsh that was, I immediately added, "Maybe the right choice, of course."

"Everything's a choice and nothing is," Lucina replied helplessly. "Do... do you remember what JP said before his execution?"

"I'm confused," Earl stated. "If you aren't her Freund, why did you meet her in secret?"

"Because she said she'd fuck me!" JP spat. "That's what the note said! It said go to the music studio and... but when I got there, there was blood everywhere, and she just handed me this knife and costume and told me she would take care of everything! I didn't know Emily would be there! I didn't..."

"Yo, fuck this," Nicole sneered. "You still stabbed her on purpose."

"I couldn't feel anything; I couldn't think," JP moaned. "I just... she was telling me to do it, and she was telling me everything would be okay, and..."

"Everything I've done is for you," Juliet cooed. "I can't do anything for myself..."

"Shut up, shut up!" JP wailed, crouching and covering up his head, like he was in some sort of bombing drill. "Stop it! Stop stop stop!"

"He chose. But think about that moment. He was in shock, and all this momentum was already there saying 'do it, it'll be okay.' Was he ever going to say no? Is that even plausible to think about?"

"Gah... look, you're not like JP!" I grunted, feeling myself get... not quite angry, but aggressive. "He was..."

"A murderer?" Lucina finished. I found myself unable to respond.

"Do you know why I did it?" Lucina was almost placid now, like she was mourning some lost, sweet memory.

"I think I do," I said. "You hated Juliet, and you knew she was a monster. So..."

"You're wrong," Lucina said, sweet and musical but still shutting me up completely. "I already hated Juliet, you know that. But when I saw that video and understood what she'd convinced my parents of... I didn't feel angry. I felt relieved."

Katy was as baffled as I was. "...what?"

"It wasn't their fault." Lucina pressed her fingers against her throat softly, like it was a butterfly's wing. "Everything they did to me wasn't them. It was just Juliet." She pressed her palm against her throat as if she was choking herself. "They really did a number on me, I guess."

"But... of course you thought that!" Katy argued. "They're your parents, you love them! Of course..."

"I don't love them at all, Katy." Lucina said coldly. "They took music from me. I can't..." She clenched her fist, glaring down at the soft ground. "Even when I conduct, I'm... outside it. I can't feel it in me, anymore. You couldn't understand what torture it is to fake it and have everyone tell me how talented I am."

She sighed. "So no, I don't love them. They ruined me. But still, still I couldn't stand the thought that it was their fault." She looked back up, that soft smile returning to her face. "I'm never going to escape this. I'm just broken."

"Lucina..." Katy reached out a trembling hand. She didn't seem to know what else to say.

"This is what they wanted," Lucina said. "Even if I grew up and changed the world with my music, I'd bear such a deep scar, I'd never be able to forget them."

"But... but I'm the same way!" Katy argued with a sudden burst of energy. "Remember my fairy tale? I was the Lonely Princess, and all I wanted was to freeze time. That's me. I can't grow past when Mackenzie died. I'm stuck too!"

"That's not where you're stuck," Lucina mumbled almost too quietly to hear.

"What?" Katy frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Katy..." Lucina pressed a hand against her forehead. "I didn't want to tell you..." She hugged herself anxiously. "I read the stuff you got from Juliet. About you."

"I don't care!" Katy snapped. "None of that matters!"

"Please. I have to tell you what it said. I..." Lucina stopped suddenly, because a two-dimensional envelope suddenly appeared in between all three of us. "Okay. I... guess it's in the computer."

"Is it about my dad?" Katy asked, suddenly quiet. Lucina shook her head. "Oh." Katy shrunk in on herself a bit. "...Mackenzie?" Lucina didn't say anything.

Katy grimaced. "There's nothing else to know about her! She... she was innocent and pure and beautiful, and we loved each other, and I couldn't stop her from dying, and every day it feel like it kills me over again! I already know all there is to know."

"Katy, please..."

"We had one kiss." Katy was kind of babbling by now. "One pure, wonderful moment, and then she was gone."

Lucina had stopped trying to reason with her. She just let her finish and then stared. Katy stared back.

"I'm afraid," she said, finally.

"I'm here," Lucina said back. She took Katy's hand in her own. At her girlfriend's silent nod, she did that finger-moving weirdness that let us move the virtual list around and opened up the envelope.

What came out was a series of word balloons, alternating pointing left and right. I realized it was a chain of text messages. They were dated a little over one year ago.

-b?

mac! how you feeling?-

-it's a pretty good day today :)
I have an question

a question ooooo-

-a gay question.

nice-

-ok.

-so Katy and I are together I think?

(gif of clowns screaming happily)-

(gif of different clowns screaming happily)-

-yeah. It actually happened.

how is it?-

-she is

-just

-the smartest and kindest and hottest and Im kind of amazed all the time it's happening.

-but

what?-

-aaa now I'm embarrassed to ask it

No ask it ask it!-

-ok

-just why won't she fuck me?

-she won't even kiss me

-i keep trying to tell her i want to and she keeps not
i am preety sure she wants to but just won't

Do you think it's because you're sick?-

mac?-

-i think it might be

-she just acts like I'm fragile or something i don't know

-she's really sweet and loving all the time!
and she's, like. i can tell she's turned on
I'm really happy!

-I just want her to fuck me soooo baaaddddddd

-and

-doesn't she get that I won't be able to soon?

:( mac -

wait you were writing and then you deleted it-

what were you saying?-

-it's nothing.

Nope! tell-

-it's just I want to before I

-cant anymore.

-that's all.

The texts blinked out of existence when we reached the end.

Katy's knees buckled, but Lucina held her up with amazing strength.

"Is this real?" Katy asked, almost too quietly for me to hear.

"I don't know," Lucina answered. "But I think it probably is."

"I had no idea," Katy whispered. "I didn't...she never told me."

"Katy." Lucina turned Katy's head so they were looking into each other's eyes. "I know you loved each other, and I know you made her happy. OK? I'm positive of it. But you never really saw her."

"What...?"

"You don't want to go back and live in the moment when you kissed her, because by the time you met her, you were already stuck. The moment you want to go back to is older than that."

"No, but..." Katy argued feebly, but then she fell silent.

"When I came out to my dad," she said finally.

"When you were so afraid, and then everything was okay," Lucina confirmed. "When everything was pure and straightforward and simple. You could just be accepted."

Katy nodded. "I'd imagined feeling it," she murmured. "I'd read books, and I'd live among the characters and they'd accept me. If I acted like the heroes, I could pretend. But I'd never really had it before... yeah. Before that day. It's the first time I wasn't scared."

"And that's why we're not the same, Dear Heart," Lucina said kindly. "Saya?" Her voice stopped being kind, but maybe it just sounded that was because I was so startled at being drawn back in to the scene. "You get it too, right? This is why me and Katy aren't the same, why I'm lost and she isn't. We're both stuck in the past, but she's stuck in a moment of love. I'm... not."

She wrapped her arms around Katy, who appeared to be almost catatonic, and she squeezed. "I think all parents kind of hate their kids, because kids grow up and replace you. The old would wipe out the young, if they could. Maybe that's what this whole stupid school is about." She chuckled humorlessly. "I think both of you could break the cycle, if anyone can. And Rocky and Jane and Rodrigo, too. But not me.

"And Saya?" She looked down at me, almost pleading. "I'm ready. I really am."

"You're asking me to kill you," I said, voice hollow.

"I know." Her eyes narrowed. "And you also know that if you don't, I will absolutely never forgive you. Not ever. I will hate you for the rest of my life."

"Yes, but you won't be dead!" I didn't shout back. Instead, I just pressed both palms against my forehead.

I just couldn't stop thinking about that stupid story Juliet had talked about, with the lady and the tiger. I'd always tried to avoid actually thinking about what would be behind that door, it felt... uncomfortable. It's not like a chess game; there aren't rules.

But now I'd felt love. I'd somehow absorbed Lucina into me like a chemical. She was in every beat of my heart, which was the stupidest thing to even thing but it was true. And love... I knew what love would do. I knew, if love had to choose between selfishness and kindness, it would be kind, every time.

Behind that door on the right was a lady, because that's the only possible thing that could happen. It was a lady.

"Okay," I said. "Okay." I looked up at the sky. "Monokuma, could we talk to everyone else, please?"

All the force fields disappeared, and everyone else jumped in surprise.

"Christ, finally!" Jane yelled. "What were..."

"Lucina did it," I interrupted.

There was a chilling silence. "...Friend Saya? How do you know?"

"The person who chased Juliet into the stacks couldn't be the killer, and that was Katy. We know because of the footprints."

FACT 21: FOOTPRINTS.
Two sets of footprints led down the hallway into the stacks. Both people were barefoot, and the one with a slightly longer stride had smears of a brown color mixed in some of their footprints. Both sets of footprints were even and wide, as if the people were running.

"Longer stride, longer legs. Juliet, with the bloody footprints, was taller than whoever was chasing her, and that certainly wasn't Lucina."

"Um, but..."

"And Lucina had to be the one who set the trap that blew up the bookcase. Because to do that, she had to be able to distinguish Barrett's chemicals, and Katy was not in a state where she could do that. Remember?"

I kept gaping, but Katy's voice surprised me. "It's all right, Saya. I dough thick he'll shoot you."

I blinked, realizing how awful it would be to laugh at what her stopped-up nose did to her speech, given the circumstances. But luckily, that brought me out of my shock; I glanced back at Jane and reached up my hand; she rolled her eyes but pulled me up to my feet.

"Her nose was completely stopped up, and we heard her get that injury long before the trap was set. It had to be Lucina."

"But..." Rodrigo trailed off. "Hm."

"Oh!" Jane said suddenly. "Why did she take her shoes off? That's still..."

"I think she probably stepped in the yellow paint when she was setting the trap." I wasn't even looking at anyone; I was barely even aware of what was happening. "She didn't want to leave footprints, because it might tip off Juliet, or make her easier to pursue if the trap didn't work."

My three classmates glanced at one another, confusion on their faces.

"Look, just let me take you through the whole thing, all right?" I asked, voice cracking. "You'll see how it all ties together."

Today's events began when Katy went up to the rare books room. She was concerned that the culprit might murder Juliet, and she was angry at Juliet for what happened on the DVD. There was a confrontation, which Juliet won. However, soon afterwards, the culprit arrived and smashed the big window to the rare books room with two softballs they'd brought with them.

Juliet went to the broken window to see what had happened. While she was there, Katy ran up behind her and pushed her. Not wanting Katy to be guilty of murder, the culprit ran forward and caught Juliet as she fell, knocking both to the ground. Juliet broke her arm on impact but did not suffer a worse injury.

Juliet recovered and ran off to the stacks, running through the yellow paint puddle. Katy came downstairs and, seeing the culprit temporarily incapacitated, grabbed the butcher knife which Juliet had been holding and ran off in pursuit. Juliet managed to evade Katy and trick her into running full-speed into a trip wire.

Meanwhile, the culprit recovered and went about setting a trap for Juliet when she emerged from the stacks. They used the string, mirror, and chemicals that were nearby to blow up the bookcase as Juliet was right next to it. The bookcase fell over onto Juliet, breaking her leg. The culprit then dragged Juliet up to the rare books room and locked the door.

Katy recovered and left the stacks, but she was too late: she couldn't get into the rare books room. She stabbed the knife into the door and beat on it with her hands, but to no avail. The culprit hung Juliet in a noose and cut her with the knife until she eventually bled to death.

The culprit then opened the door, but as soon as Katy entered, Monokuma knocked them both down and tied them up at gunpoint. Also, at some point, Juliet's automatic email and recording went off, alerting us that something was happening at the library.

Based on the evidence, there is only one person who could possibly have committed this crime: Lucina Sorenson, the Ultimate Conductor.

Everyone kind of stood around in silence. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised: they didn't expect me to readily condemn the women I loved. But this was all so stupid. I just wanted it over.

"Friend Saya," Rodrigo said, examining me carefully. "Are you certain?"

"Yeah."

He frowned but apparently found no deception on my face. "Ay. I can find no argument."

Rocky looked up sadly. "Luce?" Lucina gave him a soft nod, which I thought Monokuma would chastise her for, but nothing happened.

"I guess that's it then," Rocky said.

"May we vote now?" Lucina asked.

"Yes!" the bear yelled. "Vote for justice and order! Your vote will determine..." I ignored his rantings and went over to my lectern, sticking weirdly out of the ground. It showed a list of my classmates. I voted.

"Well!" Monokuma said thoughtfully. "The killer you've chosen is Lucina Sorenson, which is... absolutely correct!" He wiped a paw across his brow as if getting rid of flop sweat. "Phew! Justice reigns supreme again, after all!"

"Thank you, everyone," Lucina said, voice lilting. She looked at Rocky, Rodrigo, and Jane seriously. "Please, forgive Katy for lying. She came to her senses in the end. I don't think she would have been able to go through with hurting innocent people, even to save me."

Katy glanced up at her but didn't say anything.

"One question," Jane said, staring Lucina down. "What was the recording? Your 'composition?'"

"Oh! Uh." Lucina shrunk in on herself a bit. "You didn't listen to it, did you?"

"No, it was password-blocked. Which made it very enticing."

"Oh, thank goodness, I wasn't sure I did that right," Lucina said, taking a deep breath. "It wasn't for anyone but me. It was just... to help me go through with it."

"Yes, but what was it, darling?"

"I... recorded her death." Lucina kept glancing at cyber-Juliet uncomfortably. "The... cuts and the screams and the choking."

Juliet stared her down. "Why?"

"To remind myself that's the only music I can make, anymore."

Juliet just looked. Finally, she sighed. "I need to tell her something before the execution. Tell everyone something."

"Hey!" Monokuma argued, putting his paws on his hips. "Why're you acting like you get a say in anything, hm?"

"She deserves to know," Juliet answered simply.

"Eh, whatever," Monokuma mumbled, shrugging. "Just hurry!"

Juliet walked forward into the center of the circle, still looking right at her murderer. "Apparently, before I died, I found this, right?" She took out (from nowhere) the child's diary I'd recognized before.

"Yes," I answered. "I saw you with it."

"And... when I got it, I changed, right?" I seriously couldn't tell if she was being sneaky or even if whatever she was could be sneaky, but I still felt very suspicious of all of this.

"Yeah. You started messing with the game. Giving us information before we were supposed to get it."

"I see." She glanced over at Jane. "And I was a monster before that, right? I did horrible things, all in the name of love."

"Get to the fucking point," Jane snapped. I agreed with her.

Juliet nodded. "I didn't know I was evil, y'know. For a long time. I thought I was just a normal little kid. Until my parents found this." She held up the diary. "All the gruesome, abhorrent things I'd been writing. I thought it was all just innocent, but my parents were horrified. They told me I was evil, deep down in my heart, and I needed some desperate intervention to keep me from causing anguish everywhere I went."

She held the book to her chest. "It's the defining moment of my life. And... it's strange. Even though it was so important, I didn't even remember what was in here."

I realized she was squeezing the book so tight, her hands were turning white. (This really was a fantastic simulation!)

Some text appeared in the air next to her. "This is the last entry before they read it," she said, nodding her head towards it.

JULIET MOUNTEBANK'S UPDATED LIST OF BOYS I LIKE:

Graham (smart! smells weird)
Zaw (amazing amazing brown eyes. annoying voice.)
Ayan (very cool. maybe dumb though?)
Gus (c u t e. weird long fingernails, but I think I can get over this)
Austin (pretty but in a funny-looking way. or funny-looking in a pretty way? the difference is IMPORTANT)

Updates:
Added Zaw (noticed those eyes)
Removed Barton (I can just tell he'd be a bad kisser)

There was a confused silence as we read. "And I had thought this was normal, innocent kid stuff," Juliet muttered. "My parents knew better, though." The text disappeared and was replaced with more. "Here's the entry before that one."

I told Ms. O that I needed a bra and didn't know how to talk to my parents about it. She was very nice, but she didn't end up with anything really useful. I realized it wasn't that I don't know what to say, but rather that I just hate talking about it.

Ugh I just hate it. It's weird turning into something different! Sometimes I wish I was a boy, so this wouldn't be happening. I imagined how I'd look as a boy, and it made sense! I was very handsome. But instead I just have this.

I asked Ms. O if I could still become a scientist even though I'm a girl. She said yes and acted like it was a silly question.

I guess it's good girls can be scientists, but I kind of wanted her to say no. I still really want to be a scientist, though. It kind of doesn't make sense? I have to think about this more.

Also apparently everyone hates fake lime flavor? Fake lime flavor is my favorite! This is great, because whenever there's candy I can trade all my gross grapes for limes.

The text disappeared again. "It goes on like that," Juliet said. "Entry after entry. Liking boys. Thinking about... things."

Rodrigo looked around the group in confusion. "Friends... I don't understand. What in that text revealed Foul Juliet's foul heart?"

"They were just so horrified," Juliet kept going, ignoring him. "And it was just so important to them that I find an antidote to the evil in me. Which means, I had to have evil in me, right?"

"Wait." Rocky waved his hands around. "Wait, what the fuck!? You made yourself evil?!"

"I wasn't like I decided it," Juliet explained. "I just... wanted to give them what they wanted. I change to fit what people want; I've always been that way. And they..." She glanced at Lucina. "They could... be cruel, too."

She held up the book. "It's odd what imagination does to your memory. I legitimately remembered murder and cruelty and blood." She shook her head, laughing softly. "Uh. Please forgive a non-living entity talking about 'imagination' and 'memory,' I'm simply trying to explain so you understand."

Lucina stared at her, unreadable. "How old were you?"

"Ten."

Lucina nodded. "And the DVD. The appointment with my father."

"Seven. So. You understand, right? I wasn't... like this, yet. I was just a normal little girl."

Lucina took a deep breath. "So it really was just them making me this way. Them alone." She put a hand against her temple. "And I killed you for nothing."

"No!" Juliet shouted, sounding appalled. "No, I really am a monster. You saved... maybe everyone I was ever going to meet for the rest of my life. But just." She ran a hand through her hair helplessly. "I didn't have to be that way. Just like you didn't have to lose music."

And that, of all of this, is what finally made Lucina start crying. "I wish it had been different," she said. "I wish no one had to..."

She broke down and Katy held her.

"Saya," Juliet said. I looked up at her, shocked, and I was even more shocked when she walked right up to me, putting her hand on my shoulder.

"You made a decision today," she said quietly, staring me in the face.

I couldn't get any words out. "Uh..."

"Oh c'mon, I live in the computer; these force fields don't mean anything to me." She smirked. "You made a decision. A big one."

I just nodded.

"It wasn't a real decision," the said plainly. "It was what was always going to happen. Your history and your beliefs and your feelings. It was inevitable. Everything else is an illusion."

Behind her, I could see Lucina and Katy tearfully signing something to one another. I just wanted to be there with them... but I stopped myself. What was happening there was for them. It wasn't about me.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because if I'm right, you're going to have to make another decision soon," she answered. "And this one will be real. A real choice, free from the past.

"That's what I've been doing, y'know." She had a charming, lopsided smile. "I'm pretty sure. Before I died I was just trying to give you something I couldn't ever have for myself."

She winked. But in that moment, I heard Monokuma yell "Enough stalling! It's execution time!" and I whipped my head over towards Lucina.

But there wasn't time to do anything; there wasn't even time to call out her name. In an instant, she was just gone.

Lent et Doloureux
the execution of LUCINA SORENSON

A huge, impossible TV screen popped up in mid-air. Lucina stood there, back straight, looking strong and gorgeous. She held a baton. There was no sign of fear or distress.

Lights flickered on. Dozens of Monokumas stood across from her, each holding a rifle. Slowly, they spread out into a line, all facing her rigidly. Slowly, deliberately, each one raised their rifles, pointing them right at her.

Juliet walked up next to Lucina. She took her hand and squeezed it and they shared a moment of eye contact. Lucina nodded. Juliet stepped away.

Lucina raised both her hands dramatically; all the horrible bears just staring blankly at her through their sights. Suddenly, she swooped the baton down on the right.

A single Monokuma, standing to her right, fired. The bullet caught her in the shoulder and she staggered. But then, blood on her shirt, she stood up straight.

She whisked her hands to the sides, and two Monokumas, each on opposite sides, fired. These bullets hit her leg and her cheek.

Over and over, she conducted them, and with each direction, they fired. She kept standing... it felt like forever. Bullets kept tearing into her, and her movements got slow and there was so much blood, but she kept going.

Until, finally, she raised both her quivering hands up as high as she could. Blood was coming out of her mouth, but she still held the moment. And then she threw both her hands downwards. Guns fired.

When the smoke cleared, Lucina lay on the floor, her head in Juliet's lap. Lucina groped around feebly with her hands and struggled to breathe, but Juliet softly stroked her hair. And after she stopped moving, Juliet closed her eyes.

The screen disappeared. But before I could even think, so did the entire world.

TRIAL ROOM

I jerked up out of my virtual reality pod, startled and shaking. I frantically started ripping off the gizmos attached to me, but I stopped when I noticed the... fire.

One of the pods was burning. It was Lucina's. I couldn't look away, all I saw was the flames and the metal and... charred bone.

"Fiend!" Rodrigo yelled at Monokuma. "How can you be so evil as to burn her alive?!"

"Hey, the machines can do cool stuff, but an execution that doesn't kill you doesn't mean much, does it?" Monokuma defended. "Oh, don't worry, she was basically just asleep for the burning part. But something had to happen in the real world, didn't it?"

He laughed and I vaguely, dreamily felt myself bending over and vomiting on the floor. "Actions have consequences, after all! You spoiled brats have to..."

MAIN QUAD

I literally don't remember what happened then. I think I must have passed out, or I was somehow semi-conscious. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the grass of the main quad, holding on to a trembling Katy. Everyone else stood around us.

"Friend Saya!" Rodrigo exclaimed. "Can you understand me?"

I nodded dumbly.

Jane growled. "The bear told us it was time for the 'final exam,' and we'd have to explore the school to take it. But he's oh-so graciously giving us some time off. We're to meet him back here at one a.m. to begin. That's approximately twelve hours."

"He told us that if we fail the exam, we are to be killed," Rodrigo said.

I couldn't think of anything to say.

"Fuck this," Rocky grunted under his breath. He walked over to the music equipment he'd set up and flipped some switches.

"Yo!" he called over. "Me and Roddy aren't done with this yet, but fuck it! This shit is for everyone we've lost and I am blowing out the fucking speakers with it!"

A song started playing, a bizarre but gorgeous mix of heartbreak and frenetic energy. It started loud, but Rocky kept cranking it up until it was absolutely deafening. The drums shook the buildings around us.

I realized I was wailing. Just howling in pain and loss. Katy was, too. I couldn't hear anything but the beats, no matter how loudly I screamed.

Q: Tell me about your parents, please. ... A note to the transcribers, the subject just handed me a blank piece of paper. She refuses to answer the question. And... oh, a note to the transcribers, I am now reading a message the subject just handed me: quote, that was my answer to your question, unquote.

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