Tetsuji

I shouldn't have been surprised when the two men faced us, but I was.

They were dressed in suits but had an air of desperation about them that didn't seem to match the smart polish of those clothes. They weren't Japanese, either, though I couldn't tell what they were. Their hands, I could see, were rough and callused as they held a cellphone and what I assumed was a taser. Labourer's hands, it looked like.

"Y-you shouldn't be here!" one of them said in heavily-accented Japanese. "This is private property!"

"There are no signs." Takaaki said blandly before I could say anything.

"T-that doesn't matter!" this same one said. "It's still private property and you must leave or the police-"

"No!" the second one unexpectedly interrupted. "Not the police!"

The first one turned in confusion.

"B-but, Master said…"

The first person switched to speaking what I presumed to be their mother tongue, and the two of them began to argue fiercely. One word was clear from their yelling, however-or rather, one name. Oomori. They did not mention a first name, but it didn't take much stretching to imagine who they were talking about. I'd been in Kazuo Tengan's house after all. I'd seen the documents. That man…that man, and all who had conspired to protect them were the ones I should have directed my anger at. Not a catatonic teenage girl twenty years ago. Not Takaaki in the here and now. Not any of them. But Kazutaka Oomori and his cronies.

I had been so selfish.

Without a word, I strode forward and barged past them, whacking them with my walking stick for good measure before striding forward, yelling to Takaaki to carry on leading the way. He, in response, grabbed my arm and dragged me.

"They're chasing us!"

I let out some choice swears, and a few moans and groans as my leg protested against the strain but I put as much speed as I could into it.

"Just take me to where Moeka died!" I demanded.

Takaaki didn't acknowledge this, but kept dragging me, stopping at a small door. He let go of me, and rubbed his face, before reaching to open it with a shaking hand.

"No, not that room!" I heard the foreigners yelling.

"Why? Is that where you've hidden them, huh?"

I pushed past Takaaki, imagining teenagers tied up, restrained in some way. But I was dumbfounded to discover that the room was tiny, and empty. I turned to yell at Takaaki, but saw he had sunk to the floor, hands trembling even more as he held them over the floorboards, looking as if he didn't quite know what to do with them.

"Under…it was under here?"

"Huh?"

"There were…stairs, when we came here. Stairs leading underground."

I was vaguely aware of the foreign workers arguing in their mother tongue once again, but as they didn't come forward to try and stop me I didn't particularly care. With some effort, I crouched down and looked at the floorboards. Suddenly, they moved slightly, shaking slightly before landing flat, then rising again.

"Hello?" I called. "Is anyone in there?"

Then, before I could get an answer, I grabbed one of the floorboards and pushed it aside myself.

…

Otsuka

I wondered how long it had been since we had been trapped here. It had been early evening, or thereabouts when we had been thinking of leaving. But I didn't want to turn my phone back on to see what the time was now, not when I wouldn't be able to reach anyone for help. All I could do was estimate that it had been three, maybe four hours since someone had covered up this space again. I was starting to get hungry, but it was a normal type of hungry. If somebody came soon, it wouldn't be so bad. We could go home. I could eat food and have a bath and it would be fine. But maybe the person who pushed aside those floorboards wouldn't be a saviour, but someone who decided to finish us off with their own hands, rather than leaving it to fate.

I rubbed my eyes. Don't think like that, Otsuka. I stared at the stairs for a long time, and then stood up, intending to go to Rieka and ask her to carefully inspect this place with me. Perhaps there would be some hole in the wall, a secret underground passage of some kind. If we put our investigative powers together, perhaps we'd actually be able to find something like that this time around and then get out before it was our turn to be executed.

Except when I turned around, Rieka was just sitting there filming. Not even filming the scenery, but herself, murmuring.

"Seriously?"

Rieka looked up and raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean, seriously?"

"You're wasting all your batteries on filming! I told you that we needed to save them!"

"I'm making a record! Nobody knows we're here, thanks to you!"

"Hey, you agreed as well!" I said hotly.

"Yeah, because the adults would have fucking stopped us if we'd told anyone what we were actually going to do! But now look!"

Rieka swung her arms around to encompass the whole of this godforsaken room. Even though she was glaring at me with that irritating self-righteous face, her eyes still gleamed.

"Look at this!" she said. "We've found the answer, not anyone else, but us! One day, they'll find us, and they'll find our footage! We'll have cracked the case and justice will be done-"

"Oi, I thought we were meant to be sleeping."

Both of us whipped around to stare at Mitsuhide. Although everybody was awake now, it was he who had spoken.

"This doesn't involve you!" Rieka snapped.

"Awww, are you pining for me? Come here, I'll comfort your during this cold, unforgiving night."

Mitsuhide smiled, but even in the dimness I could tell he wasn't putting much effort into the flirt. Not that his flirting was particularly effortful anyway, but his voice was cracking a little and his tone sounded more sleepy than seductive now. Still, I was oddly grateful for it and how it stopped Rieka in her tracks because that let me say:

"Cracking the case is no bloody use if nobody knows about it. And if we die here, nobody will know about it. Not soon enough for it to matter anyway."

"Do you think I don't know that? Huh?"

Now Rieka stood up. Her fists clenched and her camera dropped to the floor, but even when it hit the floor and cracked she didn't seem to notice. She took a few steps towards me, but before anything could happen Akio sprung up and came between us.

"Guys, let's not fight, please!"

"That's right," Akagi said. "It's no good if we fight. We need to try and get along with each other. Our real enemy is the person who left us here, right?"

The silence softened around us. Rieka glared at me for a moment more, and then rather suddenly sunk to her knees. Immediately, Akio knelt and started asking if she was alright, and Akemi rushed over too. But Rieka ignored both of their attempts at comfort, and crawled over to Mitsuhide, stopping a few steps away from him. There, she hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in them.

"Don't touch me, Lewd Whisperer. Just stay there."

"Sure thing, Scorned Sweetheart."

But again, Mitsuhide's voice was cracked and defeated, and as he played with his hair he didn't take his eyes off of her. He didn't try to move closer either. I wasn't sure what to make of that, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was we were stuck, and we needed to find a way to change that.

"Let's carefully examine the walls and the floor here. It's entirely possible that there might be another entrance to this place, and that there may be a way out through that. "

"Actually, I had a thought of my own." Ritsuka said.

"Go on."

"If we dismantle some of those things…" she waved over to the torture devices. "We might be able to use those bits to push aside the floorboards from underneath, and then climb out back the way we came."

I stared at the torture devices.

"Y-you want us to touch one of those." Akio asked faintly.

"They can't do anything to us now." Ritsuka said with a shrug. "And to be honest I'm not so sure of your plan either, Jihara."

I couldn't even bring myself to be offended by that, but before I could say anything I was surprised by Rieka getting up and walking over to where all the devices were. She went to one at random, and began attempting to pull apart one of the wooden frames, and then rapidly progressing to kicking and punching at it. When a handle broke off, she started using that to swing at the devices, and went on to rain down more destruction on the others, yelling all the while.

I immediately ran forward, and everybody did too. Akio and Mitsuhide went to hold back Rieka, while Ritsuka and Akemi tried to dismantle some in a more methodical way, and Akagi and I gathered up the pieces already fallen. Eventually, we managed to gather a pile of wooden and metal sticks, planks and levers that we could use. I grabbed a long straight plank, and a couple of curved metal poles from this pile. I then made my way up the stairs and attempted to use them. I assumed that Ritsuka's idea was that something solid could lift them up, and something curved could be hooked around it and then used to manoeuvre it away. But when I tried, my arms only trembled, and the boards didn't seem to shift at all.

"Do you want one of us to try?" Akemi called up after a few of my failed attempts.

"No, dammit, I'll do it!"

I tried again, and then paused. Were those…voices? Hesitantly, I moved the floorboards again, but didn't get very far. Then I heard a very familiar voice:

"Hello? Is anyone in there?"

I opened my mouth, but as soon as I did so the floorboards started to move by themselves. Well, obviously not by themselves. Large, age-spotted hands moved them and when they were pulled aside I saw none other than Tetsuji peering down at me.

"Old man?" I spluttered. "What are you doing here?"

"Should ask you the same. Come on. Are those stairs? Are they safe?"

I turned to yell down at the others. Questions could come later, I decided. And I certainly had a lot of them.

"It's fine, we're safe! Come on, let's go!"

I then scrambled the rest of the way up and into the room, only to be met by the additional surprise of Takaaki Jinsai standing there, looking like he was seeing ghosts. He turned to me, and the way his eyes widened it was as if he thought I was one of those ghosts. But then, he said.

"Oh good. You're alive."

"We are, yes."

"You're mum's friend!" Akio exclaimed as he came up.

Takaaki gave him a long look, as if really seeing him for the first time.

"You look like her."

Akio started to respond, but was interrupted by Rieka saying:

"Yes, that's great, but can we get a move-on now?"

"Yes, we should, there are people around." Takaaki said.

"People?" Mitsuhide and Rieka asked at the same time.

"Like our captors?" Akagi asked.

This question was soon answered because almost immediately after we left the room, two men came running in our direction. The two of them were yelling things to each other in a language I didn't know, but at the sight of us they both stopped and stared.

"Where? Where did you kids come from?" one of them asked, their Japanese somewhat accented.

"You didn't put us here?"

"Where?"

All of us, Tetsuji and Takaaki included, looked at each other in confusion. Eventually, Akio pointed to the small room we had just come out of. We stepped out of the way so the two men were able to get through. They went to the doorway and just stood there for a moment.

"We were trapped underneath." I told them. "We went to explore, and somebody pushed the floorboards over us and left us here."

One of the men turned to look at us, forehead creasing.

"You were trapped?" he asked uncertainly.

I nodded. The man's expression wavered in a way that made me feel uncertain. Whoever these people were, their involvement was potentially more complicated than I had realised. He then tapped the other man on the shoulder.

"Maybe we should phone Master." He said uncertainly.

Master? I raised an eyebrow, looking at the others. They looked just as intrigued too.

"Are we the only ones here?" the second man asked. "Do we have to patrol the whole building?"

"Yes, he said, remember? We have to check the whole building and report back."

"What do you need to report back on?" Rieka asked boldly. "And who is this 'master' anyway?"

It was the man who had wavered when I'd told him we'd been trapped who answered, even though the other man hissed something urgent to try and get him to stop.

"Master owns this building. He wishes to ren…ren…renv, no, renovate this building. But he has not been here for a while. He was concerned for squatters."

"Yes, well, we're clearly not squatters. " Rieka said. "And actually, do you even know what this place is?"

"It is an old school, abandoned long ago. It has fallen into disrepair which is a shame because it was once a beautiful building. Master will repurpose it."

This had an air of something practiced, something the man had possibly been made to memorise. Rieka scrunched up her face.

"Yeah, but it was used more recently than tha-"

"Shhhh!" Mitsuhide said.

"Don't shush me!" Rieka snapped at him. "Why would you do that?"

"They might be lying!" Mitsuhide protested. "They probably already know and-"

"Go and wait back in there." The second man suddenly interrupted.

"Back in there?" most of us echoed.

"Oh no way, there's no way we're going back in there!" I said hotly. "And what, this time we will actually starve to death? No, no way."

"No, no starving." The first man said. "You just…we wait. We tell Master and you wait."

"Not happening." I repeated. "Come on, let's go."

We backed away, clustering together. Well, the seven of us did. Tetsuji and Takaaki remained where they were, somewhat separate.

"D-don't come any nearer!"

To my surprise, Akio had picked up something from that torture chamber basement and was attempting to hold it out like a sword. A wooden plank with nails in it, or something metal poking out anyway. How I hadn't noticed that before, I didn't know. This seemed to energise Tetsuji, because out of nowhere he charged at them with his walking stick. A burst of energy seemed to erase his usual old-man stiffness and he yelled.

"Jinsai, take the kids!"

The men started towards us, but Tetsuji started to hit them with his walking stick. Rieka ripped the plank from Akio's hands and hurled it at them, then grabbed his hand and Mitsuhide's and dragged them away. Takaaki, Ritsuka and I started running by ourselves and Akemi guided Akagi. As we ran, Tetsuji's yelling and hitting seemed to echo behind us, and from the thuds and yells it seemed like the men fighting back didn't care that he was old but I tried to ignore them.

But then, out of nowhere, there was a gunshot.

We all stopped at this, turning back to stare. We were too far to see what had happened, but I knew all of us were wondering. Those men had guns? How did we not see? My hands started to shake, but I willed them to stop.

"Keep going," I said, gruffly. " We're almost there."

And sure enough, we were. The spray-painted room we were at seemed to greet us like an old friend, but the joy was short-lived.

Ritsuka marched right up to the window and tapped whatever was blocking it, then looked over her shoulder at us, mouth pressed in a thin line.

"A car, I think. Or possibly a van. But they've manoeuvred it here and parked it right up against the gap. It's too dark to tell what else is there."

Fuck. I took a deep breath. I looked around the room, where it had all begun. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"What about through that courtyard?" Akio suggested tentatively.

"What, the one with all the bones? No, no way!" Rieka protested.

"If we can get through the courtyard, into the building on the other side, there may be more boarded up windows we can prise away. Then, we can get through the forest and something will be on the other side." Akemi said. "I think that might be our best bet, unfortunately."

"No, no way, no, no, no-"

Even I recognised Rieka's panic, and I wasn't unsympathetic, but I had to agree with Akemi. I didn't see a better bet. It was probably better that we got lost in a forest than remained trapped here.

"Why don't we ask the only adult here?" Ritsuka shrugged, pointing at Takaaki.

And with that, we all stared at Takaaki.

…

Takaaki

Never would I have thought that being stared at by seven dusty high schoolers would be more pressure than being stared at by one hundred bored students in a lecture theatre. Then again, it wasn't as if I had particularly pictured myself being here in the first place.

I hadn't pictured myself as the adult either, though.

And normally, I'd have plenty of responses to such a statement, about age as a social construct and adulthood as a myth, or plenty of other things to deflect from the fact that really, a part of me was still a helpless teenager. But none of that mattered, not really. Being the adult here wasn't about any of the things I tried to enlighten (by which I sometimes meant confuse) students about. It wasn't about the fact that I was child and adult both, in one exhausted body. It was about the fact that I had come here seeking to do the greater good, and these kids needed me to actually do that.

So, I just said:

"Let's see if there's a hole we can squeeze through…but we need to hurry. "

"Yes, lets." Otsuka said.

We left the room, and I looked either side of me. Nobody seemed to be hurtling down the corridor in hot pursuit of us, so I just pointed to the boarded-up windows in front of me.

"Those lead out into the courtyard, I'm sure."

"There's a gap here!" Mitsuhide exclaimed.

At least, I thought it was Mitsuhide. Apart from Otsuka, and Friede's and Mai's boys, I wasn't sure I knew all their names. Still, it wasn't like it mattered really. The redheaded girl and the other one, with the piercing gaze that seemed oddly familiar, helped him to pull away some of the boards before Otsuka shoved them aside and kicked in the floorboards. Then, she practically threw herself through, and we all followed.

When we were in the courtyard, Akio got out his torch, as did a few others. I checked my phone, disheartened to see that there was no signal, still. Then, we looked around.

"Um, isn't that the place we went through before?" Akio asked.

He was pointing across to one of the other walls, where a board had been broken through. Come to think of it…

"Weren't all those inside boards new?" I asked.

"Yeah, we already noticed that-hey, come back!"

Otsuka was yelling this at Rieka, the redhead, who was already halfway through the courtyard, walking strangely, dodging here and there and seeming to walk on her tiptoes. She glared at Otsuka.

"Do you really think I want to stand around in here? With all those bones?"

"You can't just go off haring off by yourself! Are you stupid? Has making videos addled your brain?" Mitsuhide demanded.

"Not anymore than it has for you!" Mitsuhide said. "I can't believe I'm agreeing with her of all people, but come back here."

Rieka glared, then sighed. She took a step forward, and then stopped. She looked down at the ground. I couldn't see what she was looking at, what with all the overgrown plants but I thought about what she had said about the bones. Don't ask about it, don't ask about it. I watched her gulp, and her fists clench as she took another tentative step, and then my mind was made up. I strode over to her and stood next to her.

"You're the one who tied that ribbon to the tree, right?" I asked when she looked at me in surprise.

"What makes you think that?"

"It matches your clothes."

That it did. Though she was dressed in practical, comfortable clothes, they all had pretty, feminine flairs to them, all in red or black. Rieka looked down at herself, and then back up at me. Behind me, I heard the others come up to us.

"One of the other boards have been broken there. We could try there, instead."

We all looked to where Akio was pointing, and immediately the familiar-seeming girl said:

"That doesn't seem right."

"How so, Nishimiya-chan?"

She frowned and considered.

"I'm not sure. It might be nothing. But something doesn't seem right. "

"Let's just go anyway!" Rieka said. "I want to get out of here!"

But even as the others agreed (and I nodded along, on account of being the adult), she still hesitated, not moving when the others started. I looked at her, mind racing. How did people talk to kids anyway? For some reason, the only thing that came to mind was my little nephew, so I just stuck out my hand. Rieka gawped at it, and then back up at me.

"What am I? Five?"

"My nephew's two."

"What? That not only doesn't make sense, but it's even worse. God, you're a weirdo, aren't you?"

I decided not to answer that, but as I followed the other kids, Rieka stuck close to me. She didn't take my hand which, in all honesty was probably for the best. But once we had climbed back through in one of the other boards' holes and confirmed that nobody was around, we went into the nearest room.

There we saw that some of these boards had been pulled away, and although they were a lot older, again the girl with the familiar glare said.

"There's something not right about this, either. "

"Oh my god, you've said that about everything!" Mitsuhide exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "Let's just go! Nothing's right about any of this!"

"I mean, I think she might be right." Friede's boy said hesitantly.

Mitsuhide lowered his hands and gawped at him. He didn't ask, but Akagi elaborated anyway:

"That cologne, I smell it here again."

"What, the stuff you smelled when we first came down here?" Otsuka asked.

"Y-yeah."

"She did work out something was hiding under those floorboards." Akemi said. "So I think we do need to tread carefully."

I saw her look uncertainly at this other girl, and get a cool gaze in return. Akemi faltered at this, then gave me a winning smile.

"Jinsai-san, what do you think?"

"Well…I don't really know what happened to you the entire time you were here, but because of what happened to me, I don't want to spend any more time here than I need to. Let's get out as fast as we can. But…"

Aware that I was starting to shiver, I walked up to the hole in the boards and leaned out. Someone pressed a torch into one of my hands and I stuck that out, sweeping its beam across the greenery that I saw, swaying in a slight breeze, the leaves rustling enthusiastically. There seemed to be a slight incline upwards, and something that looked like a path through the trees, but I didn't see anything else.

"Seems alright," I pronounced eventually. "Come on kids, let's go."

I didn't sound particularly authoritative, especially as I yawned immediately after. But who cared about that? Eikichi or somebody should have come along, that would have been authoritative enough. But it was just me.

Just me.

Once I was out, I helped Friede's boy out, and then everybody else followed. Akio was the last, but as he pushed himself out, he lost his footing and crumpled to a heap with a sharp, surprised cry.

"Arisato-kun!"

Akemi knelt by his side immediately as he pushed himself into a sitting position. He smiled up weakly at us.

"Sorry, hold on, I can get u-oh."

He winced and crumpled again. I knelt beside him and Akemi.

"It's not broken, is it?" Otsuka asked before I could.

"Hold on, I'll check. Which leg is it?" Akemi asked gently.

Akio indicated, and did his best to shift his position so that Akemi could examine his leg. She did so gently and carefully, eventually pronouncing.

"I don't think it's broken, but you might have torn a ligament. At the very least, it's badly sprained. Did we bring a first-aid kit?"

The awkward silence told me that probably, none of them had bought a first aid kit.

"I have paracetamol, and plasters….but plasters won't help." Rieka said with an awkward laugh.

"He's scraped up some, so they might, actually." Akemi said. "But we really need a bandage of some kind."

The others looked in their bags and pockets, and while more paracetamol (and some ibuprofen) surfaced alongside plasters, hand sanitiser, tissues, antiseptic wipes and various other items that would probably make a decent first-aid kit, there were no bandages. And of course, none of those things belonged to me. I thought for a moment, and then shrugged off the shirt I was wearing and handed it over. Akemi blinked at me.

"Are you sure, Jinsai-san?"

"I am wearing a t-shirt too." I pointed out. "Besides, he's not going to be able to walk if we don't do something, is he?"

The answer came and made my blood run cold:

"No, I shouldn't think so."

Which of course, was a perfectly normal answer. Or would have been, if it had come from any of us. But it hadn't.

"Who…who the fuck was that?" Rieka demanded.

"It was me."

That voice. I recognised that voice. I don't think that voice had ever, ever spoken to me before, not really. And it had been twenty years since I had last heard it. But sure enough, from out of the trees, the person I saw was chillingly familiar. The hair had grey threaded through it, and there were more lines on the face than what I remembered but it was still the same.

"Well then, girls, I'll leave you."

He put a hand on Kimiko's shoulder. Softly, but lingering a little too long, just as his eyes roved over her, Moeka and the Kishinami twins a little bit too long. Then, he glanced at me as I set my lunch tray down.

"Hello there, Jinsai-kun."

"Hello."

I stared at his hand on Kimiko's shoulder, and he stared at my staring. Eventually, he lifted his hand, a finger at a time, and went off to another table. Kimiko immediately dusted off her shoulder, and Moeka immediately wrapped her arms around her.

"This can't keep going on." She said. "I'll make another complaint."

"But nothing happened with the others, did it?" Akari exclaimed.

"Yeah, and when he was asking me those questions about life-modelling, I got brushed off, even though Eizo was a witness." Azami agreed.

Moeka let go of Kimiko.

"Yes, I know but that Oomori-san is just so…ugh…I need to try again. Maybe if I get Sonoda-sensei to help me too?"

"Maybe…"

Kimiko said this absently, looking off into the distance. She rubbed her shoulder again, and then grimaced. But then she saw me and put her hand down on the table. I pulled an exaggerated face, the best way I could think of showing that I had seen what had happened. That I didn't know what I could do.

Kazutaka Oomori looked exactly the same as he had back then. A thousand more tiny memories, mostly of things I had heard my classmates discussing, flooded back in my mind. Underlining them all was what Ayuna had told us all when she'd revealed Seiko's script to us all. And now he was here, standing in front of us. I hadn't been sure if it really could have been him who'd done all of this, but nearly all of my doubts vanished as he walked towards us, slow and sure. He regarded us all with that same genial smile that he'd used every time he'd said something smarmy or leant in a little too close to one of the girls back in Hope's Peak. His dark brown eyes were still bright and intelligent, still scrutinising everything, missing nothing as they observed Akio on the ground, and Akemi with my shirt in her hands, and the others standing gathered around us. His smile widened a little more when he finished.

And then he held out a gun, and the final doubts vanished.

Yup, it's an official mastermind reveal. How do you feel about this?