Chapter 3.5 - Two Despairs For The Price of One

For the fourth time they walked into the courtroom, taking their places around the increasingly empty circle, and for the fourth time Monokuma appeared in front of them, sitting on his elevated throne.

"Now, if there are no more interruptions planned..."

CLASS TRIAL IS NOW IN SESSION

Monokuma: "Welcome to the Class Trial for Mister Jaune Arc and Mister Sun Wukong. It's a double!"

Monokuma: "Let's start with an explanation of how the Class Trial works. You will be given time to discuss the evidence you all gathered, and at the end you will have to vote for who the murderer is. If you vote correctly, I'll execute the culprit, but if you're wrong I'll kill everyone except the culprit. So pick carefully, kiddos!"

Neo: "Please stop repeating that every time."

Monokuma: "No can do! It's the rules, and you know I'm a stickler for the rules!"

Ren: "Well, moving on."

Ruby: "Should we start with cause of death?" It was where they usually started.

Nora: "Beheading!" The blacksmith seemed to have the spark back inside her now that the bodies were out of sight.

Weiss: "No, their throats were cut. Do you not read the Monokuma Files?"

Nora: "Oh, right, that's a thing we have." The others kept talking as she hurried to read the autopsy report.

Velvet: "So, they didn't die from having their heads...chopped off?"

Blake: "No, the heads weren't cut, they were bashed in. The neck wounds reveal that much."

Emerald: "So, wait, the killer smashed their heads so hard and so many times that in the end there wasn't any head left at all?"

Neo: "That's pretty extreme."

Ren: "And personal. It sounds like quite a grudge."

Blake: "I don't know about that."

Ren: "Why not?"

Blake: "Because they were 'killed' beforehand. It takes significantly less effort and rage to do something like that to a body compared to a living person."

Weiss: "You would know about that wouldn't you?"

Emerald: "So besides the murder weapon, we also need to find what was used to crush their heads."

Ruby: "That would be the cabinets, right?"

Nora: "Hmm, that would be heavy enough to do it. Not in one go, though."

Ren: "Nora?"

Nora: "What, I'm a blacksmith! I know a hammer when I see one, even if it's improvised."

Blake: "So, the killer would need to smash it repeatedly against them."

Neo: "Yikes."

Emerald: "I'm with Neo, that seems kinda excessive. What's the point?"

Weiss: "That sure is a good question."

Ruby: "I don't know."

Ren: "Then maybe we should come back to this later."

Velvet: "What about the murder weapon itself?"

Blake: "I don't think we know that either."

Velvet: "Huh?"

Emerald: "There's a lot we don't know this time around, isn't there?"

Weiss: "Well, we know it was a knife."

Ren: "And we know of one knife involved in all this."

Neo: "We do?"

Nora: "Hey, that's got nothing to with this! It can't!"

Ruby: "You mean Nora's dagger that was in the art storage room?"

Ren: "Or, rather, what was left of it."

Blake: "Explain."

Ren: "There was a piece of molten metal in the art room's furnace. Looked fairly fresh."

Nora: "And I was working on a dagger, which is now missing, yes yes, I didn't do it! Ruby, you believe me, right? I showed you."

Ruby: "Showed me? Oh right, it didn't cut. It was useless."

Nora: "Hey!"

Weiss: "If so, it couldn't have been the murder weapon. Those two were very evidently cut."

Neo: "But we don't actually know if that piece of metal was the dagger."

Nora: "If only I could have seen it before we ran out of time..."

Monokuma: "Well, too bad! You can't now!"

Blake: "Anyway, like I said, let's put a pin on that for now."

Emerald: "Then what do you suggest we discuss, then?

Blake: "Time of death."

Velvet: "But don't we know that already?"

Neo: "It's in the Monokuma File."

Ren: "Sun was killed at 12 am, and Jaune fifteen minutes later."

Emerald: "Don't see anything wrong with that."

Ruby: "Blake?"

The terrorist frowned, but said nothing.

Weiss: "So much for that attempt to derail the discussion."

Nora: "What were those two even doing up there so late anyway? Were they secretly dating?"

Ruby: "No!" She hadn't intended for her interjection to sound so offended, but somehow that ended up being the case.

Ruby: "I can explain that, actually. I found these in Jaune's room." She reached for the pocket of her hoodie, since those stupid skirts didn't come with pockets of their own for some unfathomable reason, and retrieved the two slips of paper.

Neo: "What's that?"

Weiss: "I see you're following in Jaune's footsteps of tampering with evidence."

Ruby: "I wasn't tampering! I just...forgot to show the rest of you."

Neo: "*Not suspicious at all.*"

Ren: "Let's hear what she has to say."

She read the contents of the messages out loud.

Blake: "So, someone summoned him up there."

Nora: "And he fell for it."

Velvet: "Why the bathroom?"

Emerald: "Maybe he was having a hot fling with someone."

Weiss: "Jaune? Oh, please."

Ruby: "I don't know who wrote these, though..."

Blake: "Can I see those?" Ruby offered the messages to her.

Blake: "Yeah, it looks like Sun's handwriting. And yes, you'll just have to take my word for it." She added, directed at Weiss, who was already frowning in anticipation.

Nora: "Jaune and Sun were having a thing? Unexpected, I love it!"

Ren: "Very unlikely."

Emerald: "Well, whatever the case, Sun lured him to the rec room? Then how did Sun end up dead himself?"

Monokuma: "How indeed? Upupupu."

Weiss: "He probably wanted to kill Jaune himself so he could escape and get those millions of lien. He was a thief after all."

Ruby: "But he died first..."

Neo: "Meaning somebody else was there."

Ren: "Someone who had to know about the messages beforehand."

Velvet: "Like...Ruby?"

Ruby: "Like who now?"

Weiss: "I don't think we have grounds to suspect her over everyone else right this moment."

Ruby: "Weiss?" Had the heiress just...taken her side?

Weiss: "The killer probably knew about the messages too and simply kept quiet about it. Besides, Ruby could've just as easily fabricated them too."

Ruby; "Huh...thanks?"

Nora: "Well, aren't you trusting today?"

Blake: "She does raise an interesting point: either of those papers could be forged."

Neo: "By who?"

Ren: "The killer, I presume."

Velvet: "But why? What could they have to gain from making fake notes written by Sun?"

Ruby: "Maybe Sun wasn't supposed to die, and it was meant to frame him."

Emerald: "But the Monokuma file says Sun died first, wouldn't that make more sense the other way around?"

Ruby: "Yeah..."

Ren: "Nora?"

The blacksmith had her eyes closed and her hands to her temples, obviously trying very hard to concentrate.

Nora: "There was something I needed to remember to tell you! Aaaaargh, I can't figure out what it was!"

No one said anything, in a mix of confusion and hope that the silence would help her recall.

Nora: "We went to the physics lab, but it was closed." She began retracing her steps.

Nora: "Then Neo crawled through the vent in the rec room and opened it for us."

Blake: "Sun was inside, dead."

Nora: "Yes. It was gross. And then you flipped him around and he had stab wounds in his stomach."

Ruby: "Oh yeah, Blake asked you to check if Jaune had them too under his hoodie. Did he?"

Nora: "No, his abs were crisp and untouched, and then..."

Weiss: "Wait."

Nora: "...what? Oh! That was it, I remembered!"

Emerald: "You can't be serious."

Velvet: "I don't get it."

Weiss: "That was...Sun? And Sun was Jaune?"

Neo: "I'm so lost rn, wtf."

Blake: "The bodies were switched."

Ruby: "Huh? But..."

Blake: "They were dressed to look like each other, to throw us off."

Ren: "You don't sound surprised, did you know about this?"

Blake: "No, I...How did I miss that, Sun even had his tail..."

Weiss: "The killer probably tucked it into his pants to hide it."

Emerald: "This has got to be a joke right? What would this even accomplish? They're still dead, what does it matter who's who?"

Ruby: "The order of the murder, right?"

Ren: "Yes, if the first body we found was actually Sun, it means he died after Jaune, not before."

Nora: "Hey, I helped right?" She beamed a radiant proud smile.

Ren: "Yes, that was very useful."

Weiss: "And it fits much better into the timeline we built. Jaune is called up to the third floor, is killed, and then the killer gets Sun."

Velvet: "But weren't those messages in Sun's handwriting?"

Neo: "She's right."

Nora: "Then maybe Sun killed Jaune, and someone else got Sun?"

Ren: "And made it look like the first murder so it would seem like the same person did both."

Blake: "We already settled that the messages could be forged." Patience was running thin in her tone, perhaps the pressure was finally getting to her as well.

Nora: "But if he didn't do it, why would he even be on the third floor so late at night?"

Ruby: "Maybe he really was looking for a way out."

Neo: "He was probably in the vents."

Blake: "Exactly. The door to the storage room was locked, remember? The vents were the only way in and out. We're not getting anywhere by discussing this again."

Ren: "There has to be something that can prove his innocence."

Something… Ruby dug through her memories, she knew the answer was in there somewhere but it kept eluding her. What was there that could prove Sun didn't...

Ruby: "I got it!"

Emerald: "Huh?"

Ruby: "I can prove Sun is innocent."

Weiss: "Do tell."

Ruby: "His wrist! The one we thought was Jaune's, it was bruised. Like he had fought back against someone grabbing him."

Velvet: "Couldn't that have been done by Jaune?"

Blake: "There were no signs of struggle on Jaune's body."

Weiss: "Unless they were on his head."

Ruby: "But that means he wasn't the killer, because he fought with the actual killer."

Neo: "We already knew that."

Ren: "It's not like they could just kill each other."

Ruby: "Oh..."

Nora: "And you made it sound so cool too, what a bummer."

Velvet: "Now what do we do?"

Ren: "That's indeed the question."

Blake: "We should probably go over everything we know, to see what stands out."

Weiss: "We found Sun, who we thought was Jaune, in the Rec Room. He died from having his throat cut a little after midnight, and then his head turned into paste."

Velvet: "Su- I mean, Jaune who looked like Sun was the same..."

Blake: "Throat cut, no head. He was in the Physics Storage, where the cabinets used to crush their skulls were."

Nora: "All this Jaune-Sun and Sun-Jaune is giving me a headache."

Ruby: "In the storage room there was also stuff like a cart and a bloody tarp used to move Sun's body."

Emerald: "That's it? Nothing to discuss about that?"

Ruby: "Do we have to? It looked pretty straight forward."

Emerald: "Alright." She waved dismissively.

Neo: "+ Melted Knife & Messages."

Weiss: "Right. Ruby also found some messages in Jaune's room, and Ren found what was left of a knife in the Art Room."

Ren: "It could've been anything, not necessarily a knife."

Nora: "That's it? We got nothing! I don't wanna die here, you guys!"

Blake: "Calm down. Panicking will only help the killer. Are there any clues we didn't mention so far?"

Ruby: "The powder, I guess?"

Weiss: "Hmm, that is true, we haven't really touched on it."

Neo: "*powder?*"

Ruby: "We found some powder on Sun's fingers. It was a little bit lighter than his skin tone."

Velvet: "There was a lot of spilled powder in the lab storage floor, couldn't he have gotten it from there?"

Blake: "Yes, but we should start by assuming he didn't. It's a potential clue. Where else could he have gotten it?"

Emerald: "That's some skewed logic."

Nora: "Maybe it was sugar or flour and he got it from the kitchen. Wait, no, kitchen is closed at night."

Ruby: "Weiss, didn't you say it looked like makeup?"

Weiss: "Yes."

Nora: "Did Sun use makeup?"

Nobody answered. None of them had ever seen him do it, but then again it was believable that he of all people would.

Ren: "I think the better question is why Sun would be putting on makeup right before getting killed."

Neo: "Booty call."

Velvet: "We didn't find any messages in his room."

Blake: "We had previously assumed he'd gone up to the third floor to meddle by himself."

Emerald: "But in that case he wouldn't need to look pretty."

Ruby: "So what if it was the killer's?"

Nora: "That or we were right before and he was doing Jaune behind our backs! And behind his back too, I guess... I think that's how it works."

Ren: "Nora..."

Nora: "What, are you jealous? Don't break my heart like this, Ren!"

Weiss: "Ruby, you were saying?"

Ruby: "The makeup could be the killer's. Maybe he got some on him during the struggle?"

Emerald: "That...makes sense, somehow."

Neo: *"Are we going to start comparing skin tones now?"*

Nora: "Well, we can write Emerald off in that case, since she's got dark skin."

Emerald: "Why, thank you."

Blake: "That's not necessarily the case. The person whose skin tone we're comparing to might not be one of us."

Velvet: "Monokuma?"

Ruby: "Not one of... Oh! I got it! You mean Jaune!" Blake nodded.

Weiss: "So the makeup on Sun was to make him look like Jaune?"

Neo: "Weren't they switched anyway"

Nora: "Or maybe the killer was planning on switching places with the victim and pretend they were dead!"

Velvet: "...what?"

Ren: "So ,we don't have a murder weapon we don't have a motive, and we don't know what the powder was for."

Blake: "Oh we do have a murder weapon."

Ruby: "We do?"

Emerald: "But you said..."

Blake: "I lied. Weiss had the gracious courtesy of bringing it in here."

Weiss: "I... You mean this?" The singer produced a knife from within her sleeve.

Neo: "That was it?"

Blake: "Yes, that's what the killer used to cut their throats, and afterwards washed. I found it while I was investigating."

Emerald: "Where?"

Blake: "The killer's room."

No one spoke for a while. It took a little, but Ruby finally understood what was happening. It was a bluff. Blake was trying to bait out the blackened.

Nora: "Well? Cut the suspense already, and spit it out!"

Blake: "Ruby, you remember, right? We went to a specific room together."

No, we did not...

"Do you trust me?" Ruby recalled the prelude to the trial. Maybe this was it, the moment to trust blindly. Blake had a plan, one that needed her help. And so, she decided to take the leap.

Ruby: "Yeah, we went to..."

Blake: "Emerald's."

Emerald: "Excuse me, WHAT?"

Ruby: "And that's where we found the knife... I thought you said it wasn't relevant to the case?" She struggled to make the ruse as believable as possible. Was that really where Blake had gone during her solo outing, or was that a lie too? Was Emerald really the killer?

Blake: "Yeah, sorry about lying. I wanted to avoid jumping to conclusions."

Emerald: "Can you pause for A SECOND, and EXPLAIN SOME SHIT?"

Weiss: "Are you sure this is it?" The heiress brandished the knife slightly. "Shouldn't it be, I don't know, bloody?"

Blake: "It was on the bathroom sink, probably left there after scrubbing it clean."

Emerald: "How did you even get *INSIDE* MY ROOM?"

Neo: "Sounds like a confession."

Ruby: "Blake cracked the lock."

Monokuma: "SHE DID WHAT?"

Blake: "Cracked, not broken. Calm down, Monokuma, I didn't break any rules."

Monokuma: "You sure like stepping on my paws, don't you, Miss Belladonna?"

Velvet: "I thought the locks were tamper proof."

Blake: "Oh, please."

Nobody argued. It was too believable that the Ultimate Terrorist would have something like that in her skillset.

Nora: "So, Emerald did it?"

Emerald: "Bullshit, I did! There was no knife in my room, what are you talking about?"

Ren: "That's just one of the kitchen knives, isn't it?" The question was merely rhetorical, coming from the Chef.

Neo: "The most accessible"

Emerald: "So, she just took it from the kitchen! What does this have to do with me?"

Blake: "Ruby backed me up. We found this in your room."

Ruby: "Y...yeah." How long do we keep this up?

Emerald: "Then Ruby is lying too!"

Ren: "Why would she lie? If Blake was the killer, she'd die along with us."

Nora: "Yeah! Ruby wouldn't want that!"

Ruby: "...yeah."

Weiss: "We're just pointing fingers, this is going nowhere."

Blake: "But think about it. The pieces fit together."

Neo: "How"

Emerald: "Yeah, Blake, how does it fit together?"

Blake: "Let's put together the sequence of events. First, Jaune was lured upstairs by a note with Sun's handwriting. A nice *trick*, wouldn't you say?"

Velvet: "Trick...like magic?"

Blake: "Sort of. Emerald is the Ultimate Magician. She would know a few parlor tricks to be given that title, no?"

Emerald: "Are you seriously implying I'm more likely to know forgery than you?"

Blake: "Oh, not at all, I could do it. But so could you."

Emerald: "So you claim."

Ruby: "Lured upstairs, Jaune went to the rec room, where he was..."

Blake: "Knocked unconscious and dragged back to the Physics Lab."

Emerald: "Did I use a trick for that too?"

Blake: "At night, you wouldn't need to. There's not many people out, particularly not on the upper floors."

Ren: "In there, the killer positioned Jaune so that the cabinets would fall on him, and then killed him."

Nora: "And then crushed him real bad."

Blake: "The vent was hidden behind the cabinet, so Emerald didn't know about it. It was revealed upon slamming the cabinet down, and Sun too, inside it."

Weiss: "So they struggled, leaving the mark on Sun's wrist, but he was overpowered and then also killed."

Velvet: "What was the powder then?"

Blake: "Sun was not supposed to die, as we've concluded. He was accident. My guess is that the powder was indeed makeup, like Weiss said, and it was meant to disguise the killer as the victim."

Emerald: "What the hell are you talking about now?"

Ruby: "She was...going to trade places with Jaune?"

Blake: "It's the perfect crime. You can't be labeled as the blackened if you're presumed to be dead."

Monokuma: "Unless you come back in a shocking plot twist!"

Blake: "And, again, this is something the Ultimate Magician would be able to do. A disguise so good it would fool us all."

Emerald: "You cannot possibly be serious about this."

Ruby: "Oh, so thats why there was powder on top of the blood. It was spilled afterwards to cover up."

Weiss: "That plan sure went down the drain."

Emerald: "This is such horseshit. How are any of you buying into this?"

Ren: "So, to improvise, she changed Jaune and Sun's clothes, and moved one of the bodies to hide half of the crime."

Emerald: "Yeah, sure, I did that too." Her sarcastic tone was dripping with frustration.

Nora: "Then destroyed my beautiful dagger as a decoy."

Emerald: "Did I kill Yang and Penny too, while we're at it?!"

Blake: "And hid the real murder weapon in her room, where she thought no one would find it."

Emerald: "That's not even where it was!"

Emerald: "..."

Emerald: "I see. So that was your plan."

Blake: "Yes. Thank you for falling right into it."

Velvet: "She...confessed?"

Nora: "Wait, so the knife was a lie after all?"

Ruby: "...yeah."

Blake: "I noticed one of the kitchen knives was missing, so I grabbed another one, and used it as a prop."

Neo: "So it was Em"

Ren: "She did pretty much admit it."

Ruby: "But...why?"

Weiss: "Did you forget? The incentive."

Ruby: "...the money?"

Ren: "The world is in ruins. Why would she need it?"

Weiss: "The argument we had about it. I don't believe so. Emerald was on my side."

Blake: "If she won, she'd be out of here and rich."

Velvet: "So she really did do it?"

Emerald: "You're all ash."

Ruby: "What?"

Emerald: "Ash. Completely worthless. Why should I care about any of you?"

Nora: "And theeere's the creepo."

Weiss: "So you're gonna lay down peacefully?"

Emerald: "Fuck you. Fuck every single one of you, none of you matter. None of you compare to her."

Ren: "Her?"

Emerald: "I needed the money. With it I could help her, pay back everything she gave me."

Ruby: "Who are you talking about?"

Emerald: "My...teacher. Cinder. She lost her eye in an accident, and surgery was so expensive, and I..." She punched the stand in front of her. "I was so close."

Weiss: "And you killed two people for that."

Neo: "You don't get to give lectures on money."

Emerald: "So what if I did? She is everything to me, the very reason I'm alive! How can any of you possibly hope to compare?!"

Ren: "I don't think we'll get any more out of her."

Velvet: "Is it...over?"

Ren: "Yes, I think we should just vote now."

CLASS TRIAL - END

Ruby pressed the button in front of her with just a tinge of hesitation, and saw the others do the same, all but Emerald, who did nothing, standing with her eyes closed in an almost meditative state. She couldn't even begin to pretend to understand what had driven the magician to do something like this. She felt a bit of regret, knowing that there was more to that story, more that she might've understood had she spent more time with the now murderer, but now it was too late. Not that it mattered anyway. There had been more to Sun and Jaune's stories as well, and she had cut them down nonetheless. This was justice.

The giant screen descended from the roof and once again the slot machine spun and then stopped. Emerald Sustrai displayed exuberantly, with the usual horns and confetti. Monokuma sure did enjoy the psychological warfare of it all.

The culprit did not move or react when the claw came for her. Whether her closed eyes were acceptance, anger, or holding back tears, none of them could tell. And she disappeared, just as Coco and Pyrrha had. Then there was another flicker on the screen, and the execution broadcast began.

The House of a Thousand Tricks

Emerald Sustrai's Execution

Ultimate Illusionist

From within the dark screen, a spotlight lit up, revealing Emerald standing still and alone in front of a solid seven foot tall box, whose front lay open like a door.

Then a second spotlight lit up, revealing a Monokuma with a top hat and a bow tie, who bowed for an unseen uproarious crowd. The girl did not flinch, accustomed to the cheering of audiences. As Monokuma waved a short black magic wand in the air, she was pulled backwards into the box, and the door slammed itself shut.

As if pulling it out of nowhere, the monochrome bear unsheathed a long katana, and, with that trademark twisted smile of his, unceremoniously stabbed it into the box. Then he pulled out another, and again, repeating the process five more times.

There was a pause. The smile turned into an unconvincing frown, and he tapped the box with his wand, opening the door.

Inside was Emerald, stretching and contorting as best she could to avoid the blades, succeeding, with a determined fire in her eyes, in all but one, that cut a superficial thin line through her left arm. She tried to move forward, towards the outside, but in just a second, the box closed once more.

Disturbed by the defiance, Monokuma angrily retrieved two katanas at once, and stabbed them into the magician's coffin also. Just like last time, he repeated the stabbing again and again, his fury increasing with each blade inserted.

After reaching fifteen swords stuck at all different levels and angles, he tapped the box once more, and again it opened.

Emerald was even more contorted, and now bleeding more heavily, with three more than superficial cuts across her right leg and arm, and blood flowing out of where two of her right fingers had once been. But she was still alive, much to the executioner's frustration.

The door closed one last time, and now Monokuma reached under the stage and, rather than a sword, pulled out a massive handsaw, proceeding to cut the box in two with terrifying speed. After the deed had been done, he kicked the top half off.

And, from the bottom half of that bladed coffin, Emerald Sustrai leapt up from crouching down, and ran. Her clothes were bloodied, and the wounds starting to mount, but she was not ready to give up. And so she ran, spotlight following her path as she tried to escape the mastermind's grim fate for her. But running was never an option.

The floor caved in from underneath her feet, revealing a tarp stretched out over a long black pit.

Emerald fell.

Ten feet, twenty, forty, sixty. She fell into this seemingly bottomless hole, followed by the lone stage light. And at the end of it was a massive top hat, where her still living body landed limply.

In the silence that followed, Monokuma caught up, walking into the hat's spotlight, and waved its magician's wand in front of it. The hat began stirring and moving, as if a struggle was happening within it, and the quiet was broken by low growling.

And then it stopped, and the academy's mascot smiled twistedly again. Dropping the wand, he climbed to the top of the hat, and reached into it, pulling out Emerald's severed head, frozen in an expression of panic. And he laughed.

And the screen turned off.

No one spoke. Not even Monokuma, who opted to only survey their despairing faces with delight.

One by one, the students started leaving, the shock still reverberating all through their heads. Neo was the first, followed by Ren and Nora, who looked utterly nauseated. Velvet took off next, her rabbit ears hanging low, and Weiss not long after, still somehow maintaining a shred of composure none of the others had.

Ruby found herself alone in the room with Blake, and the still ecstatic bear. The raven-haired faunus looked grim, regretful, and let out a deep sigh, before returning to her stoic mask.

"Illusionist? huh..."

"What?" She knew those words hadn't been directed at her, or anyone for that matter, but she was still curious.

"Oh." Only then did the terrorist seem to notice she was not alone. "Nothing... Hey, Ruby? Thank you."

"I told you to trust me. It goes both ways." She attempted her best smile, coming off more as a half-grimace.

"You were right. We wouldn't have made it without you." And without expecting an answer, Blake walked off into the exit.

"You're not going back, Miss Rose?"

"Monokuma."

"When you say my name like that it makes it sound like you hate me!"

"That's because-" She stopped mid sentence. There was no point. He was trying to get a rise out of her. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing this? What do you have to gain from our pain?"

"Why do I need a reason? Can't I just do it for the fun of it?"

Ruby slumped her shoulders. This too was pointless. She turned away, and walked to the elevator.

"It's not like I'm the only one enjoying it."

The doors closed andand the machine began ascending before she could ask any further. It probably didn't matter anyway.

She found herself in her room, completely alone. Just a couple of days after losing her sister, she had now also lost what felt like her only friend. She didn't even have the energy to cry.

She just collapsed onto the bed, and silently prayed the last few weeks had been nothing but a dream or a virtual simulation.

CHAPTER 3 - END

Students Alive - 7