After weeks of watching Miu come in and out of consciousness, she was finally fully in the present. The clothes Kibo had picked out for her made her look like a chewed up barbie doll, but that was the least of her problems at the moment. In the middle of the night, right before Ouma was ready to throw in the towel, she'd shuffled into the kitchen and had a long coherent conversation with them.

But she didn't remember them.

For Kibo, it seemed the lesser of two evils, though his grief-stricken delusions seemed to grow worse by the day. The second she wanted to know who they were, he'd concocted a whole childhood Ouma never heard of. One conveniently scrubbed clean of issues with drugs or the multiple behavioral corrections camps she'd been to. Normally when she was told something so contradictory, she'd get paranoid, but this time she took everything at face value. When she looked at him, it was as if she was looking at a stranger.

Six in the morning had rolled around with little event after that. Everyone else had gone to bed, thankful that Miu had finally gone a full twenty-four hours without a seizure. On paper, it seemed like the nightmare was finally over. Which meant, in the next few days, Ouma would need to find a new place to stay again. It had him restless. With no practical solution available or means to get one in the moment, Ouma found it difficult to rest.

The sporadic clicks of his keyboard were the only sound in the kitchen as he combed through the Killing Game forums he'd been following through the season. Most of the people there were making fan edits or talking about their favorite moments. However, there were a few members he'd bother to respond too.

PhotoPlayRight: Somethings off about the shadows on set. Been tracking it on cam 3 all season, last week the angle is exactly the same as episode one, but look at today's. It finally changed.

It was the same person who'd noticed the day and night cycles were too perfectly synched. His entire log of posts had been deep dives speculating about where the sets were each season, but this season had given him trouble. All his math added up to an empty spot on a map. The plants in the area were all from different regions and climates. It was the fakest the set had looked in years.

Gambell_06: Did they film it at a different time from the rest of the season? We're getting close to the mastermind's reveal, maybe they filmed it ahead of time.

XxLoveLiveLiexX: God I hope not. The whole point of the live stream is to watch in real time. They can do a greatest hits later. Big Brother has better quality control than this.

If they had filmed ahead of time, the shadows would have been steadily drifting throughout the season, and then back again. It was probably just a closed set. Considering how persistent some fans were, it'd make sense the team would try to be more discreet. He made a joke about it being an editing glitch.

PhotoPlayRight: Yeah, the sky glitched.

An attachment followed, of the cam footage. One clip showed the sun rising just behind the post. The second showed the sun rising above it on a different axis.

XxLoveLiveLiexX: Cool edit.

PhotoPlayRight: It's not an edit. The sky isn't real.

Ouma watched the clip a few more times. It'd take more digging to fact check it, didn't do much for his friend getting roasted in the chat. A dome this size should be easily spotted, there were no random birds flying around, or other indications that it was a closed set. Even the first killing game had issues with camera angles. If he was stuck with an artificial sky for hours on end, he would get a migraine from the blue light. No one had complained about headaches or the sky this season, but you'd be able to tell in person whether the sky looked real or not. Why hadn't anyone else noticed?

Gambell_06: Time delay. Blame it on the edit.

Interesting they'd edit out any complaints about health this season. Usually someone would have a chronic something to make their backstory more interesting, even if they were faking it. Everyone was just a little too polished now that he thought about it. Any drama had been so fabricated, you could practically taste producer meddling. It was like being confined hadn't put them on edge at all.

PhotoPlayRight: They don't act like people who are trapped.

His face was starting to go numb, he needed sleep. No satisfaction would come from solving a puzzle with no official answer. In hindsight, the season had felt deeply uncanny. Just not in a way that any one of them could really put a finger on. It just felt kind of fake. Which didn't line up considering he knew for a fact one of the cast members had been a real person. He couldn't say that without giving himself away. Instead, he asked the forum to brainstorm what would make real people act like that, then resolved to at long last get some sleep.

Miu had slept all day. Ouma paced about, hoping that the next time she woke by some miracle she'd be back to her old self. That she'd have something else to say about her old friends or their school, but when she woke up she had the same dead look in her eye.

She may have had the same body, the same brain, but he was talking to a completely different person.

She constantly apologized for every little misstep. There was no snark or bite to her comments, no feigned familiarity. She tiptoed around him like he'd snap at her at a moment's notice.

"Where's Kibo?" She asked when he brought her breakfast. Ouma sighed, it wasn't her fault for not remembering the last three weeks, but he had hoped she would at least not play favorites.

"Finally asleep." It was the only time he'd caught the other boy unawares. Miu's shoulders dropped and she poked at her food with disinterest. "So, you remember yesterday, hunh?" She nodded.

"I woke up by myself and found you two arguing in the kitchen... about me I think..." She groaned. "Kibo took me back to the lab and I had got a massive migraine. He thinks the computers set it off, so I've been trying to sleep it off." She slowly tore her piece of lunch meat into tiny shreds. "He said we were friends."

"Thank god this nightmare's finally going to be over!" She'd be able to walk out of here on her own, go to her family, and they'd be able to take her to the doctor. Or at the very least, she could take care of herself again. " Just, such an icky feeling thinking you watched someone eat it. Which, speaking of which, you should actually try to eat. If I come downstairs with a full plate, I'm going to take the heat for it." She nibbled on some cheese, more proof that she was fully present in the moment. It wasn't a struggle for her to move things around anymore either. "You probably feel like shit though." The bruising on her face was a sickly brown and green. Kibo's robotics couldn't do much for facial fractures or the withdrawals that shook through her system.

"Yeah...What... what happened to me?" The way she asked it, he could tell she knew something was wrong. The story was a tough pill to swallow and she insisted she remembered what they'd told her. She knew she'd been in an accident. "Why was I walking near a car?"

"I don't know the answer to that." The only person who'd witnessed the whole thing was Kibo. The more he told her what he witnessed, the more uncomfortable she became.

Kibo could have lied about what happened.

She should have gone to a doctor not someone's house.

Someone should have noticed she was missing by now.

"Honestly," Ouma said, "I wouldn't be surprised if you never remember it either. It sounded traumatic as fuck." If he could offer anything, it was that at this moment she was safe. Even though he too had hoped for a clearer answer. "But hey, you're alive and you're not eating through a tube anymore so... progress?" She didn't smile.

"Yeah, progress..." She looked up at him. "My parents... Do they know?"

They never picked up. No matter how many messaged he'd left them.

"We told them you were staying with Kibo for a few week; so they aren't worried."

"Where's Kibo's grandfather?"

Dead.

"I don't know, I was told he was resting, but obviously he's not here."

"I thought this was Kibo's room, he said-"

"He thinks the whole house belongs to him!" This is why he hated working with people. If Kibo was going to lie, the least he could do was keep his stories straight. It was going to bite both of them in the ass. He quickly came up with a reason to run out of the room without scaring her. That stupid kid needed to give her the all clear so all of them could move on from this.

That evening Miu mutely shuffled into the living room. She grunted instead of greeting them and stood in front of the couch Ouma was drawing at. She barely had her eyes open.

"...Can I help you?" Ouma asked, relieved when she glared at him through one squinted eye.

"Move." Miu shielded her eyes from the light. " 'N why's the thing so loud?" Ouma lowered the volume of his deep dive.

"You could always rest upstairs." Ouma said, but he moved to the end of the couch. Miu crawled into the opposite corner and laid facing the back of the couch.

"-slonely." Miu grumbled.

"You're not missing much." Kibo said. He had been trying to playtest some platformer, but he could barely focus. "Ouma's just watching... honestly they all just bleed together."

"Research." Ouma shrugged. Idle hands made for the devil's work. Anytime Ouma sat still too long, he'd plunge himself into research about the Killing Game. It felt less like he was doing nothing then. He'd found plenty of self-proclaimed ARGs or theories that went nowhere. No matter how he looked there wasn't a crack in the system, the best way to survive was to not get caught.

Kibo had started to nod off in his chair. Ouma glanced back at Miu, her steady breathing too deep to just be dozing. Carefully, Ouma set aside his old pencils and slipped into the downstairs lab.

It was easier to poke around now that he could turn on the lights. There had been nothing of note in the boxes Miu had pillaged. The inventions in glass cases along the ceiling were more heavily monitored now, but this time the computers were online.

Ouma pulled up to the monitor, thankful Kibo was too old fashioned to put a lock on the desktop. The huge thing moved like molasses. Whatever background processes were running, it was taking most of the ram to run.

"Come on, where is it?" The desktop was cluttered with random folders. None of the files were labeled, or at least, labeled with anything that made sense. The random combinations of letters would contain anything from dense legal documents to cat photos. "Finally!" It didn't look quite as resent as the model he smuggled out, but it was a good place to start. He clicked through to print and the only option available was to save it as a PDF. "Save? No, no come on, there has to be a printer somewhere." He didn't have the time to futz around with settings without getting caught.

It was a gamble, but he took a picture of the blueprints with his flip phone.

That night he slipped out of the house. The fresh night air wasn't as comforting this time. Summer had sunk it's claws into the pavement and the humidity made it difficult to breath. The meeting place was tucked away in rows of identical warehouses. Large, soulless structures that loomed overhead and blocked out the night sky. He knocked on the metal shutters and waited.

"Over here." Someone waved him over from a side door. "Put on your mask, you trying to tell everyone who you are?" They were a kind of silly thing to wear, but the clown faces were easier to tell apart than a voice in a crowd.

The inside of the warehouse was drowned in heavy bass music. On a large project the final trial of the season was playing with captions at the bottom for people to read along. For people supposedly hard up on money, they certainly had enough for pizza.

"What's the party for?" Ouma asked. His escort pointed to a black-haired person on screen.

"Jack- er Shin made it to the final round. We find out if he comes home today." The Ultimate Magician, so the old man found a successor after all. He was arguing with the other finalists about whether there was a mastermind or not. Pretty typical stuff for the end of a season, no wonder people had been casually glancing at the screen. He made rounds saying hi to people before rushing to where Ace was sipping on fanta.

"I have the blueprints." Ouma said. "I could only grab a pic, but I have access to it." He pulled the image up on his phone and showed the top brass. Clover squinted at the picture, when Ace raised a hand.

"Turn up the volume!" A hush fell over the room as the music died. Their comrade had been guilty of being the mastermind this season.

"But how," Clover bit his lip, "they had to force him-"

"Shh!" Ace leaned forward. "Come on kid, say the line."

"It's true. I haven't been honest with you all." Shin said. "This is my last card to play." Ace jumped out of his chair. The energy in the room was electric, despite their friend being backed in a corner.

"It worked!" Ace cheered.

"Can't completely work if he's the Mastermind." Clover shook his head. "And he's still going by the wrong talent."

"But he kept some of his real memories!" Ace turned to the crowd. "I don't care if you need glasses or not. We're dipping into the pool to get contacts for everyone." He grinned up at the screen. "I knew those damn lights had something to do with it. Now Joker, let's see these blue prints." Ouma showed him the picture. "I don't suppose you had anything smaller?"

"I had a narrow window to get this." Ouma started.

"No, no; like the device. Specifically, the disrupter, can you make it smaller?" Ace held up his wrist. "Like watch sized, something we could disguise as an ordinary thing."

"I don't know..." Ouma watched the other guests party like it was the end of the world. "What's all this for anyway."

"An anti-killing game kit." Ace walked with Ouma to one of the many pizza boxes. "We've been trying to crack it for months. Who they pick, how they take them, how they convince people to play against their will. The last few seasons, people haven't been acting like way out of line, down to having talents they shouldn't have. This is the closest we've come is finding a way to help people once they're in the game." He grimaced as Monokuma hit the execution button. "We try not to test those theories if we can help it. It seems like they've gotten their hands on some of the Future Foundation era tech. If we can get more of these, then it might prevent people getting brainwashed, or buy them time at the very least."

"I thought the point of all this was to help each other hide." Ouma said. Ace nearly choked on his slice of pizza.

"And then what?" Ace slapped Ouma's shoulder. "You won't need to hide forever. You just gonna pretend like none of this ever happened?"

"...I've never thought that far ahead." Having spent his whole life running from the Killing Game, he couldn't picture anything else. There were so many adults around him that let him down, he just assumed people like him didn't make it that far. "Kind of hard to when I don't know where I'll be sleeping next month."

"If we can get a working prototype of the hacking gun, you won't have to worry about a thing." Ace laughed. "People pay through the nose for that kind of memorabilia, you just gotta know what channels to go through. Here, I'll send you a link to where people are trading parts, it'll give you an idea of what we're working toward." A working prototype would be hard for him to cobble together. He understood how it worked in theory, but if anything went wrong, he'd be hard pressed to trouble shoot it. It would be nice to be on his own for once. "Everything takes time man. If you need a couch to crash on, we'll work something out."

It would risk putting him in further debt though. Walking into someone's home and knowing their real identity would put him at the top of the suspect list if they messed up and got caught. He wanted to try everything else he could do first. Still, it was nice knowing he had a backup plan for once.

The vote had been cast, and the members of DICE watched as their old friend took his final bow as the Ultimate Magician's Assistant. The nicest people in their group offered to stay behind as the rest got to escape home to their families. Doomed to play the game for another season, the camera zoomed out on their detached expressions, like they had been watching a movie. An emotionally flat finale for a mediocre season. He felt uncomfortable lingering around mourners when he hadn't know the guy himself. As soon as possible he dipped out into the night and back to the Idabashi house.

He opened the fridge to grab a soda and paused at a plate of leftovers that had been marked as his. They didn't have to do that. He hadn't told them where he was going, or if he'd be back. He mostly came to make sure Miu was able to take care of herself since Kibo had proven time and again that he would forget about basic human needs. And yet, he remembered to make Ouma dinner. It was the blandest food on the face of the planet, but he couldn't bare to let it go to waste. Especially when he hadn't done anything to earn it.

"How much longer do you plan on staying?" Kibo asked. It was an innocent enough question, which is what struck Ouma as so odd. The last few weeks of Kibo shuffling around like a zombie, monotonously working on Miu's life-saving implant, had been colored by underlying resentment. Kibo had accused Ouma of breaking into the home on multiple occasions, even going so far as to snoop through his things for evidence of theft. Ouma found the whole thing quite insulting. To be fair, these were things Ouma had done. But Kibo had no proof to make such accusations, no matter how unspoken. "You were waiting for Miu to recover so you could leave without a guilty conscious." Kibo spoke with no malice.

"I... I don't know." Ouma saw Kibo dress his knee so he could make the arduous journey upstairs to change out of his nightclothes. This kid had survived years without showing up on the Killing Game's wish list. He was the only person that validated Ouma's fears of getting reaped without needing an explanation first. "Are you asking me to leave?" Kibo fumbled with the pin to his wrap.

"...No.. I just figured you had your own friends or family that were worried about you." He'd never stayed in one place long enough to make friends. Ever since running away, it was too risky to stay put for long. "I haven't seen you call anyone outside of Miu's contact list." Kibo looked up at him, judging his reaction. Just how much had this kid figured out?

It wasn't like Ouma hadn't talked to anyone else. He'd been on several calls with members of DICE and Killing Game forums. To the outside observer, he had to look completely insane. He had mentally prepared for Kibo to push him out the door and yet, here this kid was, implying it was his choice to make.

"I mean, it's the same for you isn't it?" Ouma flopped on the couch. All his drawing supplies were still spread out over the cushions and coffee table. "Besides the old man, you didn't have anyone you wanted to come look for you, you just holed up here." The video he'd been watching on reasons people had been drafted into the Killing Game was still paused at number six. All of this running, and it was only from the sixth top reason kids ended up on the dark web show. "At least you have a 'here' to to hole up in. I haven't been anywhere for longer than a year." He waited for a cutting remark that never came. Instead, Kibo let him ramble on, a little too candidly to Ouma's liking. But after years of having to obfuscate his motives, it was nice to just be heard. "...for now, I gotta count on the kindness of strangers." He laughed.

"Like the Professor?" As always, Kibo took his self-deprecation at face value. Kid wouldn't notice a joke if it hit him. His insistence the professor was alive after so long was also concerning.

"...yeah...I guess..." Judging by the heavy security system, Ouma doubted the old man would help anyone. He'd been a hermit for so long, even the police were afraid to set foot on the old property. All his old inventions were sitting around the house collecting dust.

"You could always try asking me for help." Kibo said. His tone when paired with his dated clothes and silver hair, reminded Ouma of the staff back at the orphanage. "I may not have lived in Towa City, but I know a thing or two about robotics." A complete impractical talent for everyday life, but the gesture was sweet if not patronizing.

"Like you'd actually let me stay here Mr. I-did-lock-the-door."

"Maybe I would." Kibo said, a youthful playfulness returning after what felt like months of survival mode. "If you asked, I might say yes."

The hacking gun.

He'd been so focused on making sure Miu didn't end up living in shlock horror film, that he hadn't had a chance to investigate the house properly. Now that Miu was staying upstairs, it could be a different story. He might be able to find proper notes on how to recreate the professors most sought-after invention.

"Well then, I might be staying here through the summer." Just long enough to get what he needed without drawing too much suspicion. And maybe long enough to figure out what to do after escaping from the Killing Game.