Chapter 22: The Definition of Friendship

After Byakuya collected his chicken wings in a lunch box, he left the two girls to sort the rest out for themselves.

He didn't expect to encounter anything bad when he just went to give his problem child a casual visit. However, when he reached Nagito's cottage, he heard someone talking inside. This alone would have already alarmed him, even if he hadn't recognized the irritating voice a second later. As fast as he could, he unlocked the door and burst into the room.

Monokuma turned around to look at him without a care in the world.

"What are you doing here?" Byakuya practically hissed at him.

Monokuma, completely unimpressed, just raised his arms in a shrug. "Why, I'm just looking after one of my precious students after he has been abandoned by his peers. I simply couldn't bear to watch him suffer all alone."

"Get lost!"

"Why don't you get lost?" Despite his counter question, Monokuma dove through the open door into the bathroom with one last growl.

Byakuya hurriedly went after him only to find that he had disappeared, as was his habit. With a scowl on his face, he turned around. Nagito was still lying in bed, smiling and unconcerned.

"What did he want?" Byakuya asked curtly.

"I think he was trying to convince me to kill you." Nagito said this with nothing but friendliness in his voice. Byakuya couldn't decide whether that unnerved him more than it aggravated him.

"Was that the first time he came here?"

Grimacing, Nagito carefully pushed himself up, his legs slipping out from under the covers to sit on the edge of the bed. "No, he's been here a couple of times."

Byakuya couldn't believe it. "And you didn't tell me?!"

Nagito didn't look bothered. As soon as he sat properly, he was right back to smiling. "You didn't ask," he told him as if it was obvious. "Besides, it's not like I would have been physically capable of doing anything, so there was no reason to worry."

Byakuya wanted to wring his neck to wipe that annoying expression off his face and maybe force him to see how backwards that logic was.

Now that he thought about it, though, he hadn't seen Monokuma in quite a while. Ever since they had gotten the second motive…? No, he had shown up once more after that to announce the new accomplice rule. Still, that was unusual for the bear. Monokuma loved to show up randomly to taunt and provoke them or just to make a nuisance of himself. Encountering him multiple times a day hadn't been uncommon in Hope's Peak. Now, however, his appearances had become less and less frequent.

Internally, Byakuya cursed himself. He should have noticed earlier that this was suspicious. He had been too concerned with the buddy project to pay much attention to what Monokuma was doing.

It would have been nice to just accept and enjoy his absence. However, just because Byakuya hadn't seen him didn't mean that the bear hadn't pestered the other students in the meantime.

Considering that Byakuya was trying to prevent the killing game from starting and that he wouldn't commit murder himself, it made sense that the bear wouldn't bother with him. In fact, Monokuma had explicitly kept this moronic ending prize from the video game to himself because of that. They were enemies and their positions were clear. Why would Monokuma still try to manipulate him?

This didn't apply to the rest of the students, though. What if Monokuma had ambushed them whenever Byakuya wasn't around to whisper murder fantasies into their ears? What if someone started to listen to him?

He fixed Nagito with a stern look. "Forget about everything he told you until now," Byakuya ordered. "You will not listen to a single word he says in the future, understood?"

"Of course."

"I mean it," he emphasized. "Monokuma only has his own interests in mind. Listening to him will only lead to disaster."

Nagito chuckled. "I know. Don't worry, I don't plan on killing you." His face was unreadable.

Though he was feeling uncomfortable, Byakuya forced himself to drop it for now. Nagito had already agreed with him. What more could he possibly achieve? Instead, he raised the lunch box to draw Nagito's attention to it. "I brought some snacks for us to eat."

"That's very considerate of you. Thank you."

With a nod of his head, Byakuya indicated the couch. "Do you want to sit at the table?" Eating on the bed would just end with dirty sheets. And he wasn't about to learn how to do laundry.

"Sure."

As soon as he gave his agreement, Nagito tried to get up by himself. Byakuya cursed him under his breath, threw the box on the table and hurried to stabilize him with an arm around his waist. Thankfully, Nagito hadn't managed to fall over in that time, even if he barely kept himself upright.

"Why didn't you wait for me to be there?" he asked with barely contained anger.

"Sorry," Nagito said, "I didn't want to inconvenience you."

"I'm here to help you," Byakuya pointed out through gritted teeth. "You'll inconvenience me more if you hurt yourself again."

"Ah, that's true," Nagito conceded with a self-deprecating smile. "How stupid of me."

Byakuya rolled his eyes and roughly maneuvered him to sit on the couch. Maybe he could have been a bit gentler, but then again, Nagito could have just not gotten on his nerves at the first opportunity.

When he went around the table and sat down next to him on the couch for a lack of a chair, Nagito regarded him with surprise. "You're staying?"

Reaching out to open the lunch box and placing it on the table between them, Byakuya glanced at him. "Is that a problem?"

"Not at all. I just didn't expect it."

"What, I can't just spend some time with you?"

Nagito chuckled. "Come on, I'm sure you have other things to do. You don't have to waste your time on me."

Whether this would be a waste of time or not remained to be seen. "I'm taking a break and I wanted to use the time to get to know you a bit better. Eat." He took a chicken wing for himself and pushed the box a bit in Nagito's direction.

"Thanks for the food." Nagito took one of the wings himself and nibbled at it. He still looked a bit pensive. "I already told you a lot. What else do you want to know?"

By the time he asked, Byakuya had almost finished the first wing. It wasn't gourmet quality; just cheap, overly greasy mass-produced junk and the taste really hit the spot. It reminded him of the first time he had this kind of chicken wing when he and his friends managed to find some that hadn't thawed yet in an overlooked back room of a long-raided supermarket. This had been shortly after they had escaped Hope's Peak, so they had still been struggling quite a bit. It had been the first proper meal they'd had that week and really managed to lift their spirits.

"Well, last time you said your parents died. What happened to you after that?" He hadn't thought to bring a tray for the bones, so he put them in the lid of the lunch box. Without missing a beat, he reached for another wing.

Nagito shrugged. "I was mostly handed around various orphanages and foster families until they thought I was old enough to live alone in a dorm."

"So, you never stuck around long enough to really get to know someone?"

"Not really, but that didn't bother me." Nagito added his bones to the pile Byakuya had begun stacking on the lid. Then he glanced at Byakuya knowingly. "That's what you're getting at, isn't it?

It was, yes. Did that mean he had no stability or anyone to properly support and guide him ever since his parents had died? He dug deeper. "You never had anyone you were close to? Didn't have a role model or a guardian, or …," Byakuya struggled to think of something other people might have, "a romantic partner, friends…?" As soon as he said it, he realized that it was very unlikely for Nagito to have had either of those. His peers probably avoided him like the plague.

Which was why it took him very much by surprise when Nagito replied, "Sure, I had lots of friends."

"You did?!"

If Nagito was offended by his open shock, he didn't show it. "Of course. After all, it's very easy to make friends if you have a lot of money."

It was? Byakuya himself had never really tried getting friendly with anyone prior to Hope's Peak, so he couldn't judge that properly. "How so?" He nudged the box again, reminding Nagito to finally take a second chicken wing.

Nagito obeyed his silent command and explained, "Well, if you have money to spend on things other people want, you can become quite popular."

Ah, so he was talking about friendships with commoners. That made sense. Byakuya had been thinking about the offspring of other rich families he had been acquainted with. Commoner children didn't have easy access to money, did they? So it made sense that they would flock to someone who did.

"So, how exactly did that work?"

"To give you an example, there was one school where pretty much everyone was into trading cards, so I regularly bought a bunch of packs as well. All in all, I got a lot of pretty powerful or rare cards, so everyone was always happy to hang out and trade with me at school."

Byakuya had no clue about trading card games, but he could figure out the gist of it. "They saw you as a source for valuable cards," he concluded.

Nagito shrugged. "I didn't mind. Everyone else went nuts over them and the cards didn't hold much value to me personally. I didn't really care about the game itself. Even if you come up with the best strategies, a deciding factor is drawing the right cards at the right time. So I usually either won with no trouble or I lost spectacularly," he said with a laugh. "It was a bit boring, so I mostly just watched others play. It's just an ordinary game for ordinary people."

"Still, you did enjoy the social aspect?" Byakuya pressed on. Maybe this could be the first piece of evidence they needed to prove his beliefs wrong. If he had been happy with his friends, and nothing bad happened to balance it out, this could be the first step.

"Oh, yes, it was nice while it lasted. It's too bad that I was forced to switch schools."

Or maybe not. "Why was that?"

"After the second time a fire broke out and destroyed my foster family's apartment, they just couldn't afford to keep me anymore. I should have known something like that would happen eventually, but it was still very unfortunate. They were good people who just wanted to help; I felt bad for them."

… This was going to go horribly, wasn't it? Byakuya longed to take another wing, but he stopped himself reluctantly. Nagito needed them more. He'd take the rest if Nagito didn't want any more. For now, he just encouraged the other boy to eat another one.

"You had two foster families whose apartments burned down?" he asked to clarify.

"Oh, no." Nagito shook his head. "It was the same family. We moved after the first fire, I had to leave after the second."

Was that better or worse? Byakuya couldn't tell. Either way, it was indeed horribly unlucky.

"Of course, I had to switch schools, but I managed to quickly make new friends," Nagito continued. While that sounded promising, Byakuya was wary at this point. "We didn't really hang out at school, but they often invited me to join them after school."

Byakuya paused. "Is that normal practice? Wouldn't it make more sense logistically to spend time together at school?"

"It's a bit unusual, but they preferred it this way."

With a frown, he asked, "And what did you do together?"

"Oh, this and that. We usually went to the mall, the arcade or to karaoke, sometimes we just went out to eat. A few times, we were also at a fair and an amusement park."

That sounded… normal enough, as far as Byakuya could tell. Still, if Nagito said he got popular for having money, he had to ask, "Did they take you along because they expected you to pay for everything?"

Nagito smiled. "I suppose they had some expectations, but it was also my choice to pay for our activities. It was only fair."

"I see."

…Would they have kept him around if he stopped paying? Since they already didn't want to hang out with him at school, Byakuya guessed that the answer was no.

Maybe it was fair in Nagito's eyes. He certainly sounded like he truly meant it. Money in exchange for company. Every party benefited from this arrangement.

In the past, Byakuya wouldn't have thought twice about it. He would have accepted that answer and moved on. However, somehow it didn't sit right with him now. Something… bugged him about the whole thing. He just didn't quite know what it was.

Not coming to a conclusion right away, he asked instead, "Where was the catch with that?" Because surely this was what it would boil down to.

Nagito hesitated for once, before he answered: "We were splitting up as usual on our way home one day and one of us had to cross the street to get to a different train station. A driver lost control of their vehicle at that moment and ran the red light. The car hit him head-on."

Every shred of hope that Nagito's backstory might have anything positive in it crumbled into dust.

"Did he die?" Byakuya asked somberly.

"Yeah. He died on impact." Nagito sighed, but he didn't seem overly saddened. Instead, the way he said it made it seem like this was just an unfortunate inconvenience. "I apologized, but nobody wanted to have anything to do with me after that. I don't blame them, of course."

"You apologized? Why?"

"It was my fault this happened."

Byakuya frowned. "You don't know that."

Without answering, Nagito looked at him as if they both knew that this wasn't true.

This was ridiculous. Byakuya didn't even know if he really believed in luck as a trait so strong that it could be classified as a talent. But even if it was, the question remained whether those bad things happened because of Nagito or whether they would have happened anyway and Nagito was just unlucky enough to be there to experience them all. "Did they blame you before you blamed yourself?"

Nagito answered with a shake of his head.

"That means you were the one making them believe that it was a consequence of your extreme luck," Byakuya concluded, staring down at the artfully stacked pile of bones.

"They had a right to know," Nagito said.

Nagito treating this like a part of the luck cycle he had made up in his head when it could just as well have been a freak accident really bothered him. Would it get him somewhere if he tried to convince Nagito that he had no hand in what happened? Probably not. Granted, his word against so much anecdotal evidence was probably rather weak. Which brought him back to square one. He had to prove that there could be positive events in his life that were unconnected to negative ones.

"Anyway, how is your project coming along?"

He looked up in surprise to see Nagito smiling at him as if they had just been talking about the weather before. It was a bit strange, but Byakuya gladly accepted the change of topic. He would need more time to think about this.

"It's working out fine. Everyone is getting along," he said. Nagito didn't need to know about the problems Fuyuhiko was causing or how Mahiru needed to be protected or that Teruteru was not in the best state of mind.

Nagito's eyes softened. "I'm happy to hear that. It sounds like you're doing a good job."

Byakuya paused. He could be wrong, but he thought Nagito looked unusually sincere. It was always hard to tell what he really thought, but his expression and tone of voice seemed unguarded for once. This was strange. Suspicious, even. Hadn't he wanted the killing to start? Why would he be happy to hear that they were far from resorting to violence?

"Naturally," he eventually said slowly. If he didn't think it would be a bad idea, he would have asked about it. Unfortunately, he had no idea how Nagito would react or if it wouldn't be detrimental to his cause. For now, Byakuya thought it would be best to avoid reminding him of his original goal.

Instead of trying to navigate another minefield of a conversation, he decided that he was done with Nagito for the day. "Speaking of which, I should take my leave," he said, getting up. "As you can imagine, there are lots of things to coordinate."

"Of course! Thanks for the visit, I hope I didn't take up too much of your time."

In lieu of a response, Byakuya just rolled his eyes. He helped him move around to get back into bed and, with a heavy heart, he left the rest of the wings on the nightstand. Well, almost all of them. He took one for the road as compensation for the mental suffering he endured every time he came here.

As much as taking the rest of the day off sounded like a great idea, Monokuma's suspicious behavior was best not to be ignored, so he went looking for Sonia and Hajime. He found the latter in Kazuichi's company. When he mentioned Sonia, Hajime told him with a grimace that she was at the ranch with Gundham. Byakuya didn't ask how he knew. He could fill in the blanks himself.

He brought his assistants back to his cottage so they could talk without disturbances and they sat down around his table. He got their daily reports out of the way first, even if it was a bit early. They didn't have much to say either way. Fuyuhiko predictably hadn't reacted well to his new group members. However, neither he nor anyone else had caused any problems as far as they had noticed.

Therefore, Byakuya could get to his main point quickly. "Have you two encountered Monokuma over the last few days?"

Sonia and Hajime shared a look before Sonia shook her head. "I have not. I think Gundham mentioned having to shoo him away once when he got too close to the four Dark Devas of Destruction."

… the what?

Oh, she was talking about his hamsters.

Hajime frowned. "I saw him yesterday when I was in the hotel with Mahiru and Hiyoko."

"What did he want?" Byakuya asked.

"Uh… he was mocking them for restricting themselves so much. I think he was just trying to get them to leave the hotel. And, uh, he ranted about how much he hates you. Why?"

That certainly sounded like him, but that still meant that he was more or less absent. It was one thing if Monokuma avoided him. That he only showed up once between both Sonia and Hajime was another thing entirely. Byakuya could feel unease spread through him like a bucket of ice water that had been emptied over his head.

"He has been strangely absent. I don't like this," he said, speaking more to himself.

"Absent?" Sonia looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I think he showed up a bit more often during the first two days. Remember, we had to station Chiaki outside with Monomi to keep a lookout for him when we had the party in the old cottage," Hajime provided. Then he added, "Still, maybe that was just at the beginning so he could see what we would do."

Byakuya frowned. No, that wasn't it. He was definitely acting differently. Not that he could tell them that. He hadn't taken into consideration that they hadn't experienced the first killing game. To them, the difference probably wasn't all that noticeable. To him, on the other hand, this confirmation caused the alarm bells in his head to start ringing even louder.

"He has the cameras to observe us. He never had to show up in person," Byakuya argued. "No, there has to be a reason. Something is up with him."

"Maybe he was just busy," a different voice chipped in from behind him.

"Woah!" Hajime tried to twist away from the intruder so fast he almost fell over.

Sonia reacted with a bit more composure, but her wide eyes betrayed her surprise.

Not wanting to give Monokuma the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, Byakuya turned around slowly. "Busy doing what? Crying because your plans don't work?" he asked sarcastically.

The bear looked murderous, his long claws extracting from his paws. "I do admit that you're a bigger thorn in my side than I expected. Thanks to you, I realized I had to get a bit more creative." He retracted his claws and planted a haughty smile on his face. "Therefore, I scrapped everything I had in mind originally and came up with something else. I'm sorry you missed me, but I've been preparing a surprise for you that will make it all worth it. I think you'll like it." That ominous statement was accompanied by a sharp-toothed grin.

He liked this less with every passing second. "What surprise?"

Monokuma giggled with uncontained glee. After a tense pause, he announced: "It's a secret."

"What are you talking about? Just—"

"Forget it, I'm not telling you! Have fun figuring it out!"

And in the blink of an eye, he disappeared again.

Byakuya scowled. Secret, yeah, right. He knew exactly what was up. "He's going to give us a new motive," he voiced his conclusion.

"Are you sure?" Sonia asked.

He turned back around to face her.

"What else could it be? The video game didn't work out in his favor. He's trying to give us another incentive to act."

His assistants both had uncertainty plastered over their faces.

With a scoff, he pushed away his own doubts and smirked. "That's a good thing," he clarified. Upon seeing their confused faces, he explained, "He's getting desperate. He expected us to start killing each other much earlier and we keep defying him. As long as we are in control of the situation, he will never be more than a nuisance and not a real threat."

Infected by his confidence, Sonia straightened her posture. "You are right. Victory will be ours if we put on a united front and hold out." She gave Hajime a look.

He returned it, nodding slowly. "Yeah… We managed to get through everything he threw our way so far. There's no reason to think this would change now."

Byakuya chuckled, crossing his arms in satisfaction. "Exactly. With my guidance and your cooperation, everything will work out. However, we need to be vigilant. Next time you see Monokuma talking to another student, interrupt him and chase him off. Keep your eyes open and ask around. And report to me immediately if you see him anywhere or hear about him."

With the morale back up, they discussed some last details before they dispersed again and he finally managed to get some rest for a while. Just in case his peace would be disrupted if another student saw him outside, Byakuya chose to stay in his cottage until it was time for the self-defense lessons.

They met up in the hotel as usual, but moved the activity outside to have more space. Apart from Fuyuhiko, everyone was present, which he was glad to see.

Apparently, word had already gotten around, so most of the students already knew what they were about to do. Peko gave a short introduction regardless, but started the lesson soon enough. After she made them run around the pool as a brief warm-up, she began by showing them a basic stance that they tried to copy as best as they could.

Byakuya took to watching what they were doing, though his thoughts kept wandering.

Therefore, he almost wouldn't have noticed Chiaki separating from the group to sit down on the steps of the hotel entrance, if she hadn't quickly been joined by Mikan. He raised his brows. They had hardly participated for more than ten minutes. Instead, they got out their student handbooks and started chatting among themselves.

He walked over to them. "A friendship isn't supposed to be transactional, is it?" he asked the question that had been bouncing around in his head.

Mikan flinched.

Chiaki looked up at him owlishly, probably trying to process that he had skipped the greeting and just opened with what was on his mind. "No, it's not," she eventually confirmed his suspicions after a long pause.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he mumbled to himself.

"A friendship is built on trust and respect", she elaborated. "You spend time together, get to know each other and gradually develop an understanding of one another. Both people gain something from it, but I wouldn't consider that a transaction. The point of a friendship is to feel good when you're with that person, not to focus on what you're getting out of it."

"I see." That made sense. He wouldn't have been able to put it into words like that, but it sounded correct.

She tilted her head to the side. "Does this have to do with Nagito?"

He took a deep breath. "Yes."

Chiaki kept staring at him. He wondered if he should elaborate, but then again it was just more of the same as the rest of his backstory. "I'm working on it," he eventually assured her.

That seemed to be good enough for her. "Thank you," she said and finally looked away.

"You're not participating?" he changed the topic, nodding towards the rest of the students.

"No." She sighed, hugging her legs to her chest. "We've been walking around all day. I'm so tired."

Mikan nodded quickly in agreement.

Maybe it was a good thing. Mikan had already lost her balance once and almost fallen over, bumping into Nekomaru in the process who had caught her with ease and put her back on her feet.

Meanwhile, Chiaki perked up and smiled. "But it was worth it. Both of our pets evolved to the last stage, so we wanted to try and see if my Shitimi could visit her Monomi."

Shitimi?! And Monomi? Like the rabbit?

"Excuse me?"

"They can evolve into different forms depending on how you treat them as they grow up," Chiaki said, completely missing the point.

"Care to explain what Monomi has to do with it?"

"Oh, that's just the form it takes when you raise it optimally." She nudged Mikan with her elbow, who flinched again before showing him her handbook.

Indeed, there was a small pixel creature that looked just like Monomi. Or rather, it resembled the appearance she used to have before Monokuma redesigned her.

In any case, it didn't seem to be anything he needed to worry about, so he decided that was more than he ever wanted to know about this weird feature of their handbooks and left it at that.

"You're not participating either?" Chaiki asked when he had taken to watching the lesson again.

He looked back down at her and shook his head. "No need. I have been sufficiently trained." Of course, as the heir to the Togami Empire, he had received thorough formal training. He was familiar with all of the bases they covered today.

"Hmmm. You could help them then, couldn't you?"

"Help them?" he asked, his brows drawing together.

"Yeah. Peko can't help everyone at once," she said, looking over at the other students.

Well, that much was true. He followed her gaze. While some students, like Sonia and Nekomaru, quickly picked up on what they were shown, others were struggling a bit more. Peko was trying her best to attend to them all individually whenever she noticed that someone was making a mistake, but she couldn't be everywhere and it took her a while to get to everyone. Right now, she was explaining to Hiyoko how she needed to raise her arms higher and there were still a couple more students whose postures were simply egregious.

"I guess I could give them some pointers," Byakuya concluded and walked over to correct Hajime's form.

A/N: This month passed so quickly and I was too busy with other things that I didn't manage to get any writing done for the next chapter, so I only have about 700 words that I wrote back in 2021 lol. I don't know when it'll be ready, but I hope to have it out sometime in May.

Fun fact: I originally thought I could squeeze the content of chapters 20 to 22 into a single chapter. I assumed half the chapter would be the Ibuki & Teruteru stuff and the rest would just be rushing through the rest of the day with Byakuya. Uhm. Yeah. I quickly realized that Ibuki needed her own chapter and then Nagito demanded so much attention as well...
I'm always telling myself to just get through the whole buildup stage as fast as possible, but I am very, very bad at rushing things. Which is good for the story I guess, but bad for progress.