Chapter 16: Exit Music
Fuyuhiko already had four cups of coffee in a cardboard holder when he woke her the next morning. Hanako burned her tongue on the one he handed her and silently nursed her wound as she slipped her shoes on. She stood up and looked past him at the empty walkway.
"Where's Hinata?"
Fuyuhiko shrugged. "He didn't answer when I knocked on his door. Maybe he went to the hospital early."
Hanako couldn't stop a frown from wrinkling her features. She tried to wipe it away and closed the cottage door behind her. Hajime was fine. The pit of foreboding in her stomach was just normal anxiety. They would meet him at the hospital, and everything would be fine.
"You get much sleep last night?" Fuyuhiko asked as they left the hotel grounds.
"In hours or minutes?"
He exhaled something that might have been a laugh, but there was no levity in his voice when he said, "We can't keep going on like this."
Hanako said nothing.
"Komaeda's hanging on by a thread. Tsumiki's gonna kill herself looking after him if he doesn't get better. And we're lucky as hell one of us hasn't caught the disease."
"I know." She took a moment to just breathe. Her nerves were getting the better of her, and the caffeine wasn't helping. "So?"
"So we can't wait around for the motel group to figure something out."
She kept her eyes on the ground as they neared the bridge. The ground near the shore was littered with stones the size of her fist.
"You planning another murder?"
"You—" Fuyuhiko stopped short and took a deep breath. He spoke his next words with a calm that came from effort. "I would never sacrifice one of you to stop this, alright?"
"You'd sacrifice yourself."
He didn't meet her eyes. "It'd be more than a fair trade."
She wanted to shove him. Scream at him. It's supposed to be me. Why the fuck would you trade your life away after we worked so hard to save it?
But this was the closest they'd come to a solution. He'd been accomplice to a murder before. If he really wanted to pay his dues, she could ask him to do it again.
The phrase Nagito repeated like a mantra sprang to her mind. From the darkest despair springs the brightest hope.
Did it count as hope, what she was planning to do?
Hanako shook her head. It didn't matter, as long as it fixed things.
"Let's not talk about this until we get to the hospital," she said. "I want to make sure everyone's all right."
"Fine." Without looking at her, Fuyuhiko turned on his heel and they crossed the bridge.
Anxiety burned through her again. Their seed of a plan wouldn't amount to anything if something had happened to Hajime. If Nagito had finally succumbed to his illness.
"Oh, shit." Hanako reached for her back pocket. "Tsumiki asked me last night to grab some meds from the pharmacy before I went to the hospital."
Fuyuhiko glanced at her. "You gonna go now?"
"Komaeda might need them soon with the state he was in last night." She handed him her half-emptied coffee cup. "Can you…Can you make sure everyone's okay?"
He nodded. "I will."
She jogged away towards the bridge to the second island. Running helped soothe her anxiety a little.
The pharmacy was silent except for the low buzz of the overhead lights. Hanako took out the paper and smoothed it with her thumb.
"Fucking hell." It hadn't been exhaustion last night—Mikan's handwriting was terrible. She squinted at the kanji, sounding them out under her breath.
Hurry up, hissed a voice at the back of her head, and she bit her burned tongue to keep it quiet.
After too many minutes of pawing through the brightly-lit shelves, she had her collection of painkillers and fever reducers, which she rattled into a plastic bag. She wrapped a fist around it and ran.
By the time she crossed the bridge to the third island, her pulse was pounding in her temples and her limbs felt weak and clumsy. She braced her hands on her knees and wished she'd had more than half a cup of coffee.
"Yukimura!"
Her head snapped up. Mikan was running towards her, breathing hard. Her foot caught a crack in the pavement and she let out a yelp as she pitched forward. Gravel crackled under her arms when she hit the ground.
Hanako ran over and helped her up. "What's going on? Why aren't you at the hospital?"
It took a moment for Mikan to get the words out. "When I went to check on M-Mioda this morning, I couldn't find her."
"What?"
"I'm so sorry," she wheezed. "I was so tired and focused on Komaeda and I was going to get some r-rest in the on-call room but I decided to check on the others first and I couldn't find her and I don't know how long she's been gone—" Her voice cracked and the rest of her sentence turned to gibberish.
"Hey. Breathe." Hanako brushed away some of the gravel sticking to her forearms. "Slow down. When was the last time you saw her?"
"Hey!" Fuyuhiko was coming towards them from the direction of the movie theater, one hand clutching his stomach. "You find her yet?"
Hanako shook her head, still half-supporting Mikan with one hand. "How the fuck did this happen? How could she just be missing?"
Her heart squeezed so tightly she stopped breathing for a second, her ears ringing loud enough to drown out whatever Fuyuhiko said in response.
Someone took her.
Mikan was tugging at her arm, but her limbs had gone cold.
Someone took her, and I wasn't there.
"Hey." Fuyuhiko cuffed her on the shoulder, roughly, but it was enough to pull her back to reality. "Someone's coming."
Hanako turned and squinted against the morning sun. It was Hajime and Chiaki, jogging down the road to meet them. A tiny bit of relief trickled through her, seeing that Hajime was all right, but it fizzled out as he approached. He was looking at her with something like apprehension. Like she had an open wound and hadn't noticed yet.
"Hinata! Nanami!" Mikan beckoned them closer. "Have you seen Mioda? I c-couldn't find her this morning."
Hajime was breathing hard from exertion, but his face was pale as he said, "We need to get to the music venue."
"Is Mioda there?"
Hanako swayed on her feet.
It would be nice to see the music venue again.
"This isn't happening," she whispered. "Fuck, this isn't happening."
"Yukimura," Chiaki said. "Maybe you should—"
Hanako pushed her way through their little group and sprinted towards the music venue. She barely felt her feet touch the ground, but the road seemed to stretch out endlessly between her and the music venue, like she was running in a dream.
And then the doors were right in front of her, and she launched herself at them. She bounced off them with enough force to throw her to the concrete.
"What the fuck?" She pushed herself up just as the others caught up.
"The hell? Is it locked?" Fuyuhiko said.
Her arm stung where it had skidded against the ground. She'd at least taken some skin off her elbow. Normally she would have fussed over the injury, made sure there was no damage to her tattoos. She ignored the pain and shoved at the doors again. They didn't budge.
"That's not possible," Hajime said. "I was just in there. The doors opened just fine."
"Maybe there's another way into the building," Chiaki said.
"There's no other doors or windows." Hanako took a running start and launched herself at the doors. They bent inward upon impact, but didn't open.
"What are you doing?" Fuyuhiko said. "You're gonna hurt yourself!"
She stepped back and rubbed her smarting shoulder. "Then fucking help me!"
"Alright. On three."
The five of them lined up in front of the doors. Hanako flexed her fingers, nearly dizzy with the adrenaline swimming through her body.
"One…Two…Three!"
They slammed against the doors in unison, and they finally flew open. Mikan tumbled to the ground with a yelp, but Hanako didn't move to help her up. She was frozen, her gaze locked on the body—
The body
Hanging
In a hospital gown
Lit by the stage lights like it was the main act.
No. No. It's not her please god don't let it be her.
Hanako took a couple of shaky steps forward, the plastic bag of medicine slipping from her grip. It was impossible to see who it was with the hemp bag stuffed over the corpse's head.
"Saionji?" Hajime sucked in a sharp gasp, and it was only then that she noticed the shape hanging from the pillar off to the side.
Hiyoko had been tied to one of the pillars on the stage with long strips of duct tape. The front of her kimono was dark with blood. Her face was a sickly, motionless gray.
Hanako clasped one hand over her mouth, her breaths coming too loud. She barely heard the chime of the monitor as the body discovery announcement played. And played again.
The others were talking over each other, Monomi's squeaking interspersed with their voices.
"I was here ten minutes ago," Hajime was saying. "I didn't see Saionji at all. I don't understand how—"
"Does it fucking matter?" Fuyuhiko said. "The point is we have two bodies on our hands now. Saionji and…"
Mikan let out a small, broken sob.
"For now, we should focus on getting the other body down and pulling the bag off," Chiaki said. "We can't leave it up there."
"Yukimura, you were using the control panel a few nights ago. Is there a way to bring that rig down?" Fuyuhiko asked. "Hey, are you listening?"
She was listening, but she could feel herself pulling away. Whatever was supposed to tether her mind to this moment was fraying. She wanted to go, wanted to observe all of this from somewhere quiet and safe and far away.
"Forget it." Fuyuhiko rushed towards the control panel and began pressing random buttons.
Please, god, whoever the fuck is watching this, whatever higher power is up there…
She felt like a marionette, like someone else was moving her limbs towards the stage.
I don't ask for anything. I never ask for anything. Just please don't let it be her.
The lighting rig let out an electronic hum and began to descend. The body swayed ever so slightly with the movement. Hanako felt a noise die halfway in her throat and raised one hand to her neck, just below her chin.
People didn't understand that it hurt, hanging like that. The human body wasn't meant to support its weight with just the neck. There was pressure, and the very beginning of a tearing sensation, like the body would leave the head behind and drop to the ground.
They lowered the lighting rig as far as it would go. Hajime helped Chiaki untie the rope and lower the body to the floor. From where she was standing next to the stage, Hanako was eye level with the body. She could see the chipped nail polish on its slender fingers.
Chiaki sat back on her heels and turned to Hanako. "I'm gonna take the bag off, okay?"
Why is she asking for my permission? Hanako wondered distantly, but nodded anyway.
Dark hair streaked with blue and white spilled out of the bag as Chiaki pulled it off. Hanako had combed her fingers through those strands less than twenty four hours ago. The head was turned away from her, but she could still see the rounded shape of her cheek, the edge of her jaw. Places she had touched with her lips and fingers.
She could see, above Ibuki's necklace, a dark ring of bruised skin on her neck.
If people were speaking to her, she couldn't hear it. She pulled herself onto the stage, nails digging into the wood, and knelt beside the body.
"Ibuki?"
She reached out and took her hand. It was like clay. It felt like a wax doll, like some fucked up imitation of what a human hand was supposed to be. It was Ibuki's hand, but she was gone.
She was gone.
"Yukimura?"
That was Hajime's voice. She could hear him somewhere to her left. Behind her, Kazuichi's scream. Monokuma crowing about a pair of murders.
Her vision blurred. There was a pressure building in her head, ringing that sounded like wailing crowding the space inside her ears. Ibuki's hand was stiff and unmoving in her own.
Why was it so hot in here?
"Yukimura?" Mikan approached from the side, her voice thick with tears. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I d-didn't know—"
"Where were you?" She shot to her feet and grabbed Mikan by both shoulders. "Where the fuck were you? You were supposed to be taking care of her!"
"Hey!" Hajime took her arms and pulled her away. Mikan bent inwards, tears dripping from her chin. "It's not her fault, okay?"
Hanako realized she was crying. Her hands were shaking.
"It's someone's fault," she spat. "Someone did this. Someone fucking killed her."
"I know." Hajime's grip on her was gentler, now. "I know. That's why we have to stay focused. We have to find out who did this."
"We have to…" she repeated, tasting salt on her lips. "I don't know. I don't know how to do this."
"We'll all help." Chiaki stepped close and rubbed her shoulder. "Maybe you can go look around the hospital. You don't need to be here. Right, Hinata?"
"Yeah. Right." Hajime hesitated, then put an arm around her and led her off the stage. He positioned himself in between her and Ibuki's body, but it didn't matter. The image was still branded behind her eyelids.
Everyone else was scattered in the main area of the music venue. They were looking at her with pity. Even Sonia, who was pretending to examine some smashed electronic on the floor, was watching her out of the corner of her eye. Hanako gritted her teeth as the buzzing in her ears grew louder.
Halfway to the door, Nagito intercepted them.
"I'm truly sorry for your loss, Yukimura. There are few greater despairs than losing a loved one." A smile spread across his face. "So, will your hope be strong enough to overcome the despair of Mioda's death?"
Hanako punched him hard enough to knock him on his ass. Someone let out a gasp. She lurched forward, arm cocked for another swing, but Hajime grabbed her arms and held her back.
"Fuck you, Komaeda," she said, more tears rolling down her cheeks.
Nagito climbed to his feet and brushed off his coat. "Thanks, Hinata. I thought she was going to knock me out."
"That wasn't for your benefit," Hajime said coldly. "Get lost."
With an obliging smile, Nagito stepped away from them. No one else approached as Hajime led her out of the building.
It was still hot outside, but compared to the stuffiness inside the music venue, it felt like a blast of cool air. She started to shiver and couldn't stop.
Hajime took her inside the hospital, sat her in one of the chairs in the lobby, and left her there. He returned a minute later with one of the thin cotton blankets from the supply closet and draped it over her shoulders. His movements were clumsy and awkward, but they kept her from teetering over the edge of another breakdown.
With a sigh, he sat in the chair next to hers. "No one really expects you to do any investigating, okay? You can wait here until it's time for the trial."
Hanako dragged the edge of the blanket over her face. "I have to do something." Her voice was hoarse, nearly unrecognizable. "I was supposed to look out for her. I was supposed to…"
Her nails dug into her palms. She could have ended all of this if she hadn't been such a fucking coward.
"Maybe you can look around the hospital rooms," Hajime said. "Just take it easy, alright?"
She sniffled and nodded.
"I should get back to the music venue. I'll probably circle back to the hospital in a little, and we can talk then." The last four words were stilted and hesitant.
He didn't expect her to find any clues. Hanako nodded again anyway.
"Alright." Hajime waited a second longer, then stood up.
He stepped out of the lobby, leaving her staring at her hands.
"I can't keep doing this," she whispered, her eyes already swollen with tears again. "I can't keep fucking doing this."
She remembered the night Byakuya had been killed, how she'd spent her time dry-heaving into the bushes and circling the building with Gundham. She'd been just as useless after Mahiru's murder. But Ibuki had been there, had taken her by the hand and things had been a fraction less awful for a while.
And then there had been the trial and Peko's execution and Fuyuhiko's blood all over her hands—
Hanako let out a whimper and dug her nails into her scalp. Someone had killed Ibuki. They'd probably made her hang herself, and they'd killed Hiyoko too. One of the people she'd passed in the music venue had done that.
Before she could stop herself, she was running through the list in her mind. Hajime wouldn't. Mikan wouldn't. Fuyuhiko had told her just this morning that he wouldn't. Chiaki wouldn't. Akane and Nagito had both been sick.
She didn't know Gundham well enough to rule him out. Kazuichi didn't strike her as a killer, but a coerced suicide might have been bloodless enough for him to stomach. And Sonia, with her fascination of serial killers, would probably have the technical knowledge.
Stop. She released her head and straightened. If she started suspecting people with no evidence, that suspicion would turn into anger she didn't have the ability to control.
They needed information before anything else. She just needed to keep herself together until the verdict.
She stood on stiff legs, shrugged the blanket onto the chair, and entered the main part of the hospital. The hallways were the same, almost painfully bright under the fluorescents and smelling of chemicals. White, clean, indifferent.
She hurried down to Ibuki's room and slipped inside. A stupid, childish part of her half-hoped to see her sitting on the bed, arms out—Surprise! But the bed was empty.
Hanako walked forward until her thighs were nearly touching the edge. The covers were still rumpled, the pillow hollowed out where Ibuki's head had rested. The mp3 player was still on the windowsill, its screen dark. There were no signs of a struggle. There wouldn't need to be. Anyone could have come in, asked her to follow. Led her to the music venue and put her head through a noose.
When had Ibuki realized what was happening?
Hanako surprised herself with a sob. She should have been there. She should have known what was going to happen.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…
She didn't remember sliding to the floor, but that was where Hajime and Chiaki found her, with her back against the hospital bed and her arms wrapped around her knees.
On instinct, she wiped her cheeks, but her tears had already dried. How long had she been sitting there?
"I didn't find any clues," she said, focusing her gaze on a dust bunny under the storage cabinet. "In case you were wondering."
"That's okay," Chiaki said. "We might've found some useful information upstairs. We're going to head back to the music venue to talk to everyone else."
Hanako closed her eyes. Ibuki's body was still there.
"Monokuma might call us all to the trial grounds soon," Hajime said. "He never gives us much time to discuss things beforehand."
"We might as well get a head start, then." Chiaki's footsteps drew nearer. "What do you say, Yukimura?"
She opened her eyes to see Chiaki's outstretched hand and past it, a soft, reassuring smile. She remembered the first night on the island, the first time she'd taken that hand, the unspoken promise that things were going to be okay.
Hanako knew better now. She also knew, finally, what she was going to do about it.
She took Chiaki's hand and let her help her up.
As if on cue, the monitor chimed.
"Alrighty then, time's up! It's finally time for the class trial. Please proceed to the Monokuma Rock. See you soon!"
Hajime sighed. "I guess that's it."
"Let's go." Chiaki led the way out of the room.
Hanako didn't let herself look back as she followed them. There was no sense in wasting her energy picking at an open wound. She needed to save everything she had for the trial.
As the door closed behind her, she stopped.
"Hinata?"
Hajime paused and turned back to her.
"I'll go on ahead," Chiaki said, then left them in the hallway.
"I trust you," Hanako said. "I trust that you'll be able to find the culprit. I just need you to be one hundred percent certain, okay?"
He searched her face for a long moment. "What are you going to do?"
Maybe he could see through her. Maybe he had the ability to sniff out killers.
She still wasn't going to let anyone stop her.
"I haven't decided yet," she said. A half-truth. The specifics depended entirely on the result of the trial, but she had a general goal in mind.
The only way out of this game was to take a life.
I don't condone this at all, but I think it's funny Hanako just decks a guy that was coding in his hospital bed the previous day. Really looking forward to writing more Hanako-Nagito interactions.
This chapter is titled after Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead. Sorry to everyone who was hoping Ibuki would live. This chapter was her Exit Music, and I have big plans for Hanako for the second half of the story. Next chapter is going to be very long and very explosive.
