The first student Rinku rambled about in her painfully long spiel was third-year Ultimate Adventurer, Rantaro Amami.
"I remember some of us calling him "Avocado", cuz his hair was bright green!" she laughed. Esora's nose crinkled, then she exhaled quietly.
There was also third-year Ultimate Anthropologist, Korekiyo Shinguji. Because his Talent was similar to Rantaro and Rinuku's, that was what made them a close, albeit unlikely and unusual, trio of friends.
But of course, Rinku had friends her age as well. One girl Rinku remembered was first-year Ultimate Swimmer, Aoi Asahina.
"She and I bonded over donuts!" Rinku grinned. Like Rika, even though her video was barely a minute long, it was jam-packed with memories that triggered other memories. "And isn't it funny? I just realized that she has your name, Aoi!" Rinku turned to RONDO's DJ. "Oh! And there was also this other guy in her class! Leon Ku- Kwa- Kuwait? Kawaii? Cumquat?"
"Just get on with it already!" Muni interrupted. Or else we'll be here all day!
"Leon!" Rinku blurted out. "I just remember, cuz of my chameleon! I remember asking him, the Baseball Player, if he wanted to hold Leon! The chameleon. But then he, the Baseball Player, said no because Leon, the chameleon, would scuff his pinching hand, or something like that!"
"You mean pitching hand?" Aoi asked, raising an eyebrow in amusement. Rinku shrugged cheerfully while Maho facepalmed beside her.
The scene with the chameleon wasn't something Rinku saw in her video, rather, it was one of the peripheral memories. What she actually saw was a snippet of a conversation between herself and the fiery-haired, fiery-tempered Ultimate Baseball Star, and it was about Talent.
"He wanted to be a rockstar, like Nagisa!" Rinku said, and while she continued to recount as much as she could for the records, some of the other students caught one another's eyes worriedly. The videos were powerful enough to bring back memories not even in them. Or were they implanting false ones? With only Rinku and Rika's testimonies, the others were left to decide on their own if they wanted to watch their videos or not.
Rei was one of the first to raise a timid hand. "If anyone is willing, I am interested in my video!" she said hopefully.
As perhaps… uncouth of me as it is, I do not trust Monochio, nor do I trust anything it provides us with! However, I must confess that I am curious. Everything Rinku and Rika described sounded so… so… magical! Almost otherworldly! Are there truly friends we have forgotten about? The Ultimate Pianist's stomach twinged guiltily, even though she knew it wasn't her fault for forgetting.
In asking to watch her video, she clarified her position on the side of the class that was curious about Hope's Peak. In asking to share her video, she wished to mitigate some of the distrust the other side might feel for her now.
I also understand very little of technology, so perhaps it is for the best I do not do this alone. For poor Rei, even opening a video file was hard. Who knows what sort of evil could be contained in these and I might never know? It could be something as dastardly as brainwashing! She frowned.
"Ugh, give it here!" Muni swiped the PheFo from Rei, once again livid that she wasn't one of the students with a motive video. Like Rinku and Rika, Rei's memories were cheerful and delightful. They centered around third-year Ultimate Pianist, Kaede Akamatsu. Rei, as a first-year, had a mentor-mentee friendship with her, and together, they ran a two-person unit as a side-hobby, named KaeReiDe.
Rei also saw herself having tea with the likes of Gonta Gokuhara, Kirumi Tojo, Sonia Nevermind, Hiyoko Saionji, Celestia Ludenberg, and Byakuya Togami. She was so overwhelmed and fascinated by how many students she recognized that she scarcely realized how few of them were compatriots from Yoba, whether from Hapiara or either of the other two units. After watching Rei's video, curiosity spiked even higher.
Shinobu's eyes locked on Kyoko's face. She'd watched the other girl closely ever since Monochio mentioned memory motives. All the while, she thought back to one of the very first conversations Peaky ever had at… Hope's Pinnacle.
"Ugh! The hell? Do these people not know what exits are?!" The quartet trekked through as much of the school as was open to them.
"Ehm… Kyoko…" The embarrassment in Yuka's voice was so obvious that the others didn't even need to see her blush to know.
"Hmm?" Kyoko's tone was casual, nonchalant, but on the inside, she was grinning. Oh, Yuka, what is it now?
"I'm sorry to have to ask this, but… for the life of me, I just can't seem to remember what your Talent is!" Three pairs of eyes widened, and Yuka winced. "Hey, I said I was sorry! I've been wracking my brain ever since waking up, but yours is the only one I can't—"
"No, no, it's not that…" Kyoko said, dazed. "I don't remember either…" Shinobu and Esora's eyes widened again, then they locked gazes.
Kyoko never mentioned her lack of memory of her Talent so thoughtlessly ever again, but it never left any of their minds. From what they gleaned in their interactions with others, everyone remembered their and their unit's Talents. If they wanted to know anyone else's, they had to ask and trust that they were told the truth. For whatever reason, Kyoko seemed the only one unable to remember her Talent, and she was unwilling to tell everyone about her strange case of amnesia in the weak hope that one of them magically had the answer.
It's not that I don't trust them, or anything, Kyoko thought guiltily. It's just smarter to not paint a target on my back! Being unable to remember my Talent might make me seem weak, so I don't want to do anything that even hints at it! Killing Game aside, Kyoko just didn't want the others thinking she needed extra help. I can keep up with any of them perfectly fine on my own!
But even though she was unwilling to discuss her Talent—or lack of memory thereof—she encouraged the others to explore the videos.
"If anything, I wish they were more detailed," she said. "We could find more out that way." It was an innocuous statement, but some of the sharper students looked at Kyoko curiously. Shinobu, meanwhile, grit her teeth and cursed Kyoko in her head.
Damnit, Kyoko! You're gonna look sus! She was seconds away from stepping between Kyoko and the others when Rika unwittingly saved the day.
"I feel you, Kyoko, I feel you!" she said. "One minute isn't anything! Like, it just starts getting good, and then it's already over! Oh, but it must've been even harder for you since it sounds like you didn't get anything at all!" she added a moment later, wincing sympathetically.
"Really well-put, Rika, really well-put," Saori deadpanned, rolling her eyes. Could you be any more insensitive?
"N-no! It's all right," Kyoko grinned disarmingly. "Can't say she's wrong…" The vocalist chuckled at herself. In truth, it humiliated her to admit to something as basic and human as jealousy, but especially with the way Rika worded it, it sounded far less suspicious than letting others think she was searching for something specific in the videos. The excuse Rika unwittingly gave her wasn't purely a made-up excuse, though.
"Zero out of four!" Yuka cried, punching her palm. "Now we definitely gotta explore the second floor!" No one could tell if she was joking or not, including herself. What she, Kyoko, and Esora didn't know, though, was that someone in Peaky did get a video. The moment the emails updated, Shinobu knew she had a split second to hide anything she got. The moment her inbox turned red, her nimble gamer fingers marked it "read" and moved it to an archive folder. By the time the others looked up from their PheFos, Shinobu's inbox was empty.
Half of Photon received motive videos, Ibuki and Noa. They agreed to watch theirs together, and depending on what they saw, would share with the rest of their unit and class. Ibuki saw a slew of athletic students, and not just the Muscle Trio, but others like Sakura Ogami, Akane Owari, and Tenko Chabashira, to name one across every year. The one Ibuki was closest to was fellow second-year Nekomaru Nidai, Ultimate Team Manager. Ibuki saw flashes of her time as Hope's Peak's track-and-field team captain, her Talent of Ultimate Runner her greatest strength and weakness. After driving her team away because she drove them too hard, Ibuki nearly gave up on herself and dropped out of Hope's Peak entirely.
Nekomaru almost literally smacked some sense into her, dueling with her and shouting motivational speeches at her until she began to find a sense of Hope again. She would credit him as one of her greatest supporters during that despairful time of her life.
And to think, I forgot… Ibuki's face contorted in longing. Oh, Nekomaru, where are you? I hope your situation is better than ours!
And the other individual Ibuki saw was one of Nekomaru's classmates, the Ultimate Musician. She was just as exuberant, and she was over the moon when she realized that she and Ibuki shared first names. On more than one occasion, she even called Ibuki Niijima her twin sister!
As for Noa, she also saw Tenko, but unlike in Ibuki's video, she and the Ultimate Neo-Aikido Master weren't Warrior Training. Instead, they were on Cutie Patrol, Noa the Kawaii Hunter and Tenko the Hero of Justice. It was funny, though, because the one other student Noa saw in her video was the complete opposite of Tenko, even down to being a first-year rather than a third-year. She was Toko Fukawa, Ultimate Writing Prodigy.
As different as she was from Tenko, though, and as overall difficult as she was to get along with, Noa somehow clicked with her. They bonded first over their shared love of good literature, and because that was the one topic Toko could talk about without stuttering and being nasty, that was the start of a most unusual friendship. But, Noa supposed, kawaii comes in countless forms.
For a time, Saori waffled on her video, torn between the fear of what she might see if she watched it, and the fear of what she might miss if she let her unit-mates watch without her. Asking them to forget about it wasn't going to happen. Rika and Marika smiled at Saori wickedly, fingers curved and ready to tickle her for the PheFo. The DJ cast a deadpan glance at Dalia and was unsurprised to see that even the Ultimate Dancer had abandoned her. She could usually count on Dalia to be slightly more reasonable than RikaMarika, but every once in a while…
Sorry, Saori, just too curious! Just let us watch the videos if you don't want to. But that was even more untenable for Saori, so she skimmed her video quickly before letting the others see what she deemed acceptable. To her pleasant and genuine surprise, it actually wasn't too bad at all. Her video centered mostly around a girl a year younger than her: second-year Ultimate Nurse, Mikan Tsumiki.
"YOU COULD BE TWINS!" Rika howled with laughter, elbowing Saori as they watched the two low-confidence, self-loathing, socially-awkward, purple-haired girls get stuck in an apology loop. It was the fourth one so far, and the video was only half a minute in.
Saori was humiliated, but the closing memory softened her up again. Mikan noticed some of her calligraphy hanging in the hall and remarked that she would've liked some for her office. A stunned Saori thoughtlessly confessed to creating the pieces and Mikan practically fell to Saori's feet, sure that she was mad that someone as ugly as Mikan would think she was worthy of even looking at art as beautiful as what the Ultimate Calligraphist could make. By contrast, Saori was more amazed that someone as esteemed as a nurse would want her silly little doodles.
A table away, after a bit of cajoling, Aoi and Hiiro managed to get Tsubaki to watch her video for reasons similar to Saori. At first, Tsubaki was staunchly against the motive videos, but then she realized that she was even more staunchly against Hiiro seeing her motive video.
And I know that girl! I can see the look in her eyes… If I don't let her see it now, she'll find a way to sneak it later somehow! Upon realizing that the thought of Hiiro seeing a video from her past was scarier than seeing the video herself, Tsubaki instantly played her email's latest file.
Also like Saori, what Tsubaki saw wasn't terrible at all. She was the only student to see a staff member in her video, and it was Airi Amano, owner of Hope's Peak's largest café. She was a retired Ultimate Vocalist who now did coaching on the side. Tsubaki saw herself receiving a booster-and-checkup session from the other woman when a blue-haired first-year named Sayaka Maizono burst in.
She was convinced that if she became a good enough singer, her five-person unit would be allowed to sing in a highly exclusive show whose criteria demanded a four-person unit. Rather than choose one of her members to "sacrifice", the Ultimate Idol hoped to use the power of song and charisma to change the hearts and minds of everyone running the highly exclusive show.
The memories triggered in Tsubaki's mind told her that she was often exasperated by the younger and more energetic singer, viewing her as naive and pushy, but even though the feelings Tsubaki associated with Sayaka were often annoyed, they were not hateful. On the contrary, although she never showed it, a tiny part of her admired that Sayaka had a group, a family, she loved, talked about, and sang for so deeply and passionately.
Soon, only Lyrilily had yet to view their motive video, and if Haruna had her way, it would stay like that.
"C'mon, Haruna, if you're not going to watch it, let me!" Kurumi whined, jumping up and down in attempt to grab the PheFo from Haruna.
The taller girl easily held it out of reach of the smaller, frowning disapprovingly. "Kurumi! It is not safe!" Hadn't the first trial taught her that?
"But what if there's memories of Miiko in it?!" Kurumi continued to jump up and down, eyes never leaving Haruna's PheFo.
For the duration of the argument, Miyu felt at a crossroads, unable to choose a side, but as soon as Kurumi suggested the chance of seeing Miiko again, she looked at Haruna earnestly. "Perhaps, Haruna, if you do not wish to see it, we could allow Kurumi to—"
"No," Haruna interrupted, eyes flashing. It was rare for her to defy Miyu so directly—or at all—but after what happened with Miiko… "I don't want any of us knowing something that the others don't! It's just too dangerous to be worth that risk!"
"Then let's all watch the video!" Kurumi cried impatiently, tugging Haruna's arm, but she still would not yield. "Haruna! You're being unreasonable! You won't let us watch the video together, but you won't let us watch it alone either! Since when are you the Ultimate Tyrant?!"
"Hey!" Haruna snapped. "Who are you calling tyrant?! I'm just trying to keep us safe!"
"In a Killing Game?!"
"I have to try!"
Hiiro finally interjected, their shouting match slowly overtaking the whole dining hall. "If I may, I could watch it for you!"
"O-oh!" Haruna blushed in embarrassment while Kurumi glared at her. "You needn't trouble yourself!"
"Oh no, it's fine, I want to!" Hiiro smiled sweetly, a hunger for gossip in her eyes. Five minutes later, Haruna finally broke. Alas, there was no Miiko anywhere in the motive video. As Hiiro reported, it was only Kurumi, Haruna, and some of the Hope's Peak boys.
Despite herself, Hiiro couldn't stop a small smile, for the video had been most amusing to watch. Haruna raced around Hope's Peak with a fellow first-year, Kiyotaka Ishimondo, Ultimate Moral Compass, right beside her. Their faces were set in grim determination as they chased fellow first-years Kurumi Shiratori and Mondo Owada, Ultimate Prankster and Motorcyclist, the latter two distracting the rest of campus with loud engines and bright, flashy pranks. The next scene Hiiro saw was almost exactly the same, except this time, Haruna worked with third-year Ultimate Detective Shuichi Saihara to catch Kurumi and one of Shuichi's classmates: Kokichi Oma, Ultimate Supreme Leader.
In other words, it was yet another example of a lovely, enticing memory, and yet seemed to be of little use to them while they were stuck in a Killing Game. Then Monochio's words about the second floor came back to them. Anxious eyes met all over the room. Many students were still wary, but curiosity was too high now. Again, the question was compromise. What was the safest way to find their memories without triggering a murder? How close could they come to the truth before they were burned like Icarus by the sun? How long before curiosity killed the cat?