Upon arriving at the hospital, Hajime immediately noticed three things at once.
First, the front door was missing.
Second, Monokuma was standing squarely in front of the entrance where the door was supposed to be.
And third, Mikan, Akane, Nekomaru and the Imposter were all standing outside along with him. Akane was looking too weak to stand. She was leaning against Nekomaru, wiping the sweat from her brow.
"Why are you still out here? Why aren't you helping Akane?" asked Hajime, more sharply than he'd intended.
"M-Monokuma won't let us in!" Mikan wailed. "I told him we have to move quickly to save Akane, but he won't listen!"
"Aww, that hurt my feelings, y'know. Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't listen!" said Monokuma. "Anyway, rules are rules, pumpkin. Nobody goes inside until everyone is here and I've had a chance to explain the rules! It's only fair!"
"S-so who's not here yet?" said Teruteru, looking around anxiously.
"Peko… she already said she doesn't want to help us," said Ryota. "She probably won't show up at all."
"I am here."
Everyone turned around in surprise to see Peko standing behind them, cold and still as a stone, frowning at all of them in a very unwelcoming manner.
Monokuma covered his mouth in amusement. "Well, lookie here! How kind of you to join us this morning, Pekoyama-sama-lama-dingdong! To what do we owe the honor?"
"Don't think for a minute that I'll be helping any of you," Peko said emotionlessly, arms folded. "I simply didn't want to be executed for failing to show up."
"Awesome. Thanks for nothing, you four-eyed bitch," Hiyoko sneered at her.
"We're all here now, Monokuma. Why don't you tell us what kind of game we'll be playing," said the Imposter.
"I wonder… could it have something to do with the front door to the hospital being missing?" Nagito said thoughtfully, though the smile on his face made it clear he knew the answer perfectly well.
"Hey now, no spoilers," Monokuma said sternly. "You'll understand the reason soon enough. But first… I'd like to introduce you all to your opponents!"
And at that very moment, the students all jumped back in fright as four more Monokumas came popping up behind them from out of nowhere.
Well, that wasn't true. Only one was a Monokuma. One of them… looked just like Monomi, except it was black and white. The other two were some other types of bipedal Mono-creatures. One was a baby chicken, and one was a fox.
Hajime instantly realized what this meant.
"Please tell me I'm imagining this."
Ibuki let out a loud squeal. "IBUKI LOVES THIS GAME!" she cheered. "She once stayed up for 96 hours trying to beat 4/20 mode! Then she started hallucinating a little."
"Thaaaaat's right!" said Monokuma, putting on the air of a carnival barker. "But you, my beloved students, only have to last for one night! You're practically playing on easy mode! Aren't I so generous?"
Mikan gingerly raised a hand. "Umm… but it's the middle of the morning right now?"
Monokuma looked at her impatiently. "Geez! You're really gonna split hairs that much? Fine."
He waved his paw around, and the students practically jumped out of their skin as the entire world around them started to fast-forward. The sun flew through the sky and then sank back down. The shadows shrank and then grew again, and in a matter of seconds, darkness had fallen over the island.
"There! It's now 11:45 pm! You happy now?"
"N-no! That was terrifying!" Mikan blubbered.
Monokuma ignored her. "Now then! Let me explain the rules, like I was going to do before I was so rudely interrupted. You kids will be in the lobby, while my good-looking friends here will be in the on-call room. They won't stay there, though…" He grinned deviously. "They have a tendency to move around when no one's watching them."
Hajime felt his gaze travel back to the four Monocreatures. They were all still standing in a line; in fact, they hadn't moved at all. Were they even activated? Looking at them suddenly made his skin crawl.
"Never fear, though! There's a monitor set up in the lobby where you can observe the camera feeds from every room in the hospital! All you have to do is make sure you keep checking those cameras…" Monokuma tittered in amusement. "Because if you don't… they might try and get into your room."
"And if they get in… they kill us?" Hajime asked wearily.
"Well, duh! What kind of game would this be if there were no stakes?" the bear scoffed. "Oh, but you're not completely defenseless. You're able to close the doors leading to and from the lobby. Be warned, though… closing those doors will drain a lot of your power! And you've got to make sure it lasts until 6 am!"
He spread his arms wide. "If you can make it until then without dying… da-dada-daaaa! You win the game!"
"Wait a minute, Monokuma. Akane and Mikan and I can't stay in the lobby," said Nekomaru. "We have to get Akane set up in a patient room now! We can't wait six hours!"
Monokuma didn't really looked concerned at all about their plight. "Hmm… this really throws a wrench in things, doesn't it?" he mused, rubbing his chin. "Well, if you really wanna go in one of those patient rooms… guess you'd better hope your friends keep a good eye on those cameras! For your sake!"
Nekomaru was looking impatient. He was itching to go inside and help Akane. "Okay then. Are those all the rules? Can we go in now?"
Monokuma folded his hands behind his head, looking quite happy to be getting on Nekomaru's nerves. "Well… noooooot quite. There's one other thing. Those four friends of mine… they're not the only ones you should be worrying about."
Before anyone could ask what he meant, there was a metallic screech from high above their heads. Everyone looked straight up.
The Eagle Mecha was circling through the sky. It had its eyes fixed on them, and each and every student grew stiff in fear as they sensed it might come divebombing them at any second.
"All this and the Monobeast? W-we're all doomed!" Teruteru cried, tugging on his hat.
"But of course! You didn't think I'd leave my precious pets out of the fun, did you?" said Monokuma. "While those four are running around inside… this big fella will be trying to get in from out here! So you'd better check that front door!"
He waved a paw around. "But don't worry, kids! I only programmed it to have power to last for six hours! So allllll you have to do is stop it from getting in until 6 am! Should be easy, right? Even you fat kids can handle that!"
"I'll ignore that," the Imposter said flatly.
As it happened, Monomi picked that exact moment to pop up among the rest of them, out of the loop as always. "Hey! What's going on here?" she said, trying to sound authoritative and failing miserably. "You kids shouldn't be playing around in a hospital! What if someone gets seriously hurt? You could – "
Then she noticed the black-and-white Monomi and started flailing her arms. "Ha-wa-wa! What is this? You can't use my likeness like that without my permission!"
"Aw, boo hoo. What are you gonna do? Sue me?" said Monokuma. "Go ahead! My team of highly paid attorneys will be at my side! But enough of that. I've explained the rules, so I'll leave you all to it!" He giggled into his paws. "As usual, I'll be watching from somewhere safe and well-insulated. Have a good night, kids!"
He let out his signature laugh, and then he was gone… and the four Monocreatures were gone with him.
––
With nothing else blocking their entry, the students (and Monomi) all resigned themselves to Monokuma's latest game, walking through the wide open doorway into the hospital lobby. Most of them stood around and wondered what they were supposed to do now, but Mikan and Nekomaru immediately made a beeline for the patient rooms and dragged Akane through the doorway with them. The actual door was missing from there as well, and Hajime suspected that every door in the building had been removed.
"Ugh… all this evil killer robot crap, and we have to worry about them too?" said Hiyoko, looking more irritated than usual. "Of course Titty McGee had to go and get herself shot up like that. And now the rest of us have to cover her ass."
"It's not her fault, Hiyoko. Monokuma probably set all this up on purpose," said Mahiru. "I'm sure he saw Akane's injury as the perfect opportunity to… make things harder for us."
"So, Hajime! How are we gonna play this game? You've got a plan, right?" Ibuki asked eagerly. As usual, she was the only one with a smile on her face.
Rather than answering her, Hajime let his gaze travel around the lobby to see how Monokuma had set things up. He was surprised to find a very familiar surveillance monitor sitting at the reception desk… in fact, it was the same one Kazuichi had set up the last time they had stayed here. He'd been so proud of himself, figuring out a way for the quarantined students to communicate with the others…
Hajime remembered him with a pang, and he pushed the thought out of his head.
"Look at this, everyone. This must be how we keep a watch on those Monocreatures," he said, walking over to the desk. Switching the monitor on, he saw that Monokuma had modified it. Now it was showing the camera feed from one of the patient rooms in the hospital. Fiddling around and pressing some more buttons, Hajime was able to get it to cycle through feeds from every other room in the building, as well as the hallway and the stairs. But it was hard to see much of anything; the lights were off, and the darkness outside meant there was little natural light coming through the windows.
Several of the students were watching over his shoulder. "It's so hard to see… is Monokuma just trying to scare us?" said Ryota.
Hiyoko looked at him in disgust. "Well, duh. Don't you know anything about this game?"
"I've seen a lot of fan animations… I was never very interested in them. I really don't like making derivative works…"
"Okay, nobody asked."
Hajime turned around to face the others. "So, for anyone who doesn't know how this works," he said. "We have a limited amount of power, and checking the cameras, turning on the lights, and closing the doors all drain that power. So we have to keep those things from getting in this room, but we also have to save enough power to last until 6 am. Because if we don't…"
"We're screwed, basically," Teruteru whimpered.
"But what do we do about Akane and Mikan?" asked Ryota. "We have to protect them too."
"I think we've figured that out," came a voice, and everyone turned to see Nekomaru had stepped back into the lobby. "I just checked, and… there's a patient room that's got this big button next to the doorway. I guess we can close the door from inside… but it's practically pitch black out in the hallway. And there's no light switch."
"Right… I guess we'll have to keep watch from in here, then," Hajime sighed. "If I see a Monocreature, I'll let you guys know over the intercom. Hopefully that gives you enough time to close the door."
Nekomaru didn't look very encouraged. "Right… hopefully."
"You should hurry up and get Akane settled in. Don't worry about us," said the Imposter, and Nekomaru took that as a sign to give a stiff nod and leave the room.
"Okay. Well… that's that, then," said Hajime. "It's just about midnight. We should get started. Monokuma won't wait for us."
Mahiru was hugging herself. "God… we just had to do this in a hospital." She shuddered. "This couldn't possibly get any creepier."
––
Monokuma had set things up so it was more than a one-person job.
It was unanimously decided that Hajime would be manning the monitor. He sat behind the desk, cautiously cycling through the camera feeds, careful not to use up too much power. An indicator at the bottom of the screen told him they were at 99 percent, but already that number was starting to dip.
Since Hajime couldn't be everywhere at once, two other students were standing at the doors. They had quickly discovered that each doorway now had two large buttons next to it, one to turn a light on and one to cause a large metal door to slam down from the ceiling.
Of course, since standing in front of the doors was probably the most dangerous thing they could do, the students had decided to divide the night up into hour-long shifts. The Imposter had volunteered to go first, and, to the others' surprise, so had Ryota.
"I've been nothing but dead weight so far," he'd said. "Please, let me be useful, Hajime."
Hajime had just given him a nod. "Okay. If you really think you're up to it."
Nobody even bothered asking Peko for help. She was standing off in a corner by herself, watching the others impassively, looking like she no longer cared whether any of them lived or died. It was clear she would just leave if she could, but of course the Eagle Mecha flying around outside meant leaving would be a death sentence.
It was still just after midnight, and things were deceptively quiet. As Hajime watched the cameras, he saw Akane was lying on a bed in the first patient room, with Mikan hurrying around and trying to set up an IV bag. Nekomaru was standing at the doorway, ready to slam their own door shut.
At the moment, three of the Monocreatures were standing together in the on-call room. Silent and still. Giving no signs of life.
A prickling feeling crawled up Hajime's spine as he observed the robots. He was starting to piece things together. He thought he had figured out what Monomi's "surprise" was. How Nagito had duped her into it.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe, just this once, he was wrong.
Inevitably, the stillness of the night came to an end. The robots started moving around. Hajime checked the cameras and saw the Monochick standing outside the on-call room, and the Monomi frozen in the stairwell. He went still, his instincts screaming at him to run up the stairs and dismantle those robots himself. But that wasn't how this game went.
Just after 1 am, Teruteru (who'd just started his shift) flipped the light switch on and screamed. The Monomi was grinning at them from just outside the doorway.
"AHHH! WE'RE GONNA DIE WE'RE GONNA DIE WE'RE GONNA DIE!" he shrieked, pounding the door switch and slamming the metal door shut, cutting them off from the Monomi.
"Teruteru, calm down!" Mahiru snapped at him. "You're going to give us all heart attacks!"
"It's gonna eat me… gonna eat me…" Teruteru whimpered, slowly crab walking away from the door.
"Teruteru. You can't leave that door shut. It's going to drain all our power," Hajime reminded him. "Open it and see if that thing is gone."
That looked like the absolute last thing Teruteru wanted to do, but he reluctantly got to his feet and pushed the door switch again. As he turned on the light, he saw the Monomi had already left.
"Tee hee! Those things have a shorter attention span than I do!" Ibuki giggled.
"It's going to get more difficult. This night has just started," said Hajime.
And he was right. As the night wore on, the Monocreatures started moving around more aggressively. Hajime had to pull up his monitor more and more quickly, trying to keep an eye on each of them, knowing he would doom all his classmates if he didn't do this exactly right. His stomach plunged as he saw the power drop below 50 percent.
They were attacked more and more frequently. The Monokuma, the Monomi or the Monochick would appear in the doorway with a demonic grin on its face, and whoever was guarding the doorway would have to slam the door shut in the scant seconds they had before the killer robot got inside and mauled them all to death.
All the while he was monitoring the cameras, Hajime periodically stole a glance over at Nagito. But he wasn't doing anything suspicious. He had his shift guarding the front entrance, and it passed without incident. Monomi, for her part, was cowering in one corner of the room, unable to do anything to help.
Just as Hajime was starting to think Nagito would let the night pass by without interfering, he suddenly spoke up.
"Hey, Hajime… weren't there supposed to be four robots inside the hospital?" he asked, his voice taking on a droll tone. "But we've only seen three of them. I wonder where that last one could be."
Hajime glared at him. He'd been keeping an eye on the last one, of course. It hadn't been in the on-call room with the others; it had been standing behind the curtain in the conference room. He knew this game well enough to know that as long as he kept checking on it with the camera, it would stay where it was.
But now as he checked the conference room, he saw the curtain was pulled back, and the room was empty.
His heart flipped.
He switched camera feeds.
The Monofox was sprinting down the first floor hallway, heading straight for the patient room.
"SHUT THE DOOR!" Hajime screamed into the intercom, and thankfully, the camera feed showed a metal door slamming shut in front of the patient room just in time. The Monofox started banging on the door, shaking the whole thing to its frame.
Hajime stared at the monitor in horror, his heart hammering. The others stared over at him. "Hajime? What's going – AAAAH!"
Mahiru had been so concerned with him, she hadn't even noticed the Monochick standing in the doorway, its head tilted to one side, giving her a grin full of razor sharp teeth.
Mahiru slammed the door switch. But she didn't do it quickly enough.
The door slammed shut on top of the Monochick as it was trying to pass through the doorway, pinning it to the floor on its stomach. Mahiru kept frantically pushing the button, but the door wouldn't close any further. The Monochick was left screeching in some combination of pain and rage, snapping its head around and trying to bite anyone who got close to it.
"W-what do we do now?" Ryota cried as he and the others inched away. "We can't get the door closed like this!"
"We'll have to move that thing. Push it back through the doorway," Hajime said firmly. What he meant, of course, was that he would have to do it. Anyone else who tried would probably get their ankles bitten off. "Ibuki, cover for me."
"Aye-aye, captain!" Ibuki gave a salute, dived into the chair and started clicking through the camera feeds at a rapid-fire pace without breaking a sweat. Hajime didn't even look back. He had already crossed over to the other side of the room.
He took a step closer to the immobilized Monochick… and stopped.
"Hajime! What are you waiting for?!" Mahiru shouted. She was still struggling to keep the door closed. The Monochick was obviously trying to force it back up.
Hajime couldn't take his eyes off the robotic creature. It was thrashing and screaming… it was in some kind of terrible agony… it almost seemed like it was trying to communicate something…
He had been right all along.
What a curse it was to always be right.
"Mahiru. How much do you know about this game?" he asked, turning to look at her.
Mahiru looked back in surprise, wondering how this could possibly be important right now. "What? What do you mean? I don't – "
"In the original game. Do you know how the animatronics came to life?"
"I – no, I don't…"
"They were haunted," said Hajime. "By murdered children."
And then she understood. All the color drained from her face, and she slowly, agonizingly, turned to stare down at the robot that she was still struggling to keep away. Her voice was so strained, she could barely even whisper.
"Sonia?"
