Dangan Ronpa: Unser Sommerende/Epilogue

Continued from Chapter 6 - Class Trial.

[1]

We tied our spare blankets together into a rope, and it now hung off the edge of the roof of the academy. Despite reaching the ground, it still swung around in the chilling black wind that blew among the streetlights. The wind was quiet - I could hear the stirring of a nearby mouse quite easily - and yet it was as bitter as could be.

We found ourselves standing there for much longer than anticipated. There was no reason why we shouldn’t have just climbed down immediately and left.

“I’m probably gonna fall off or something.” Mia stated, with an exaggeratedly hesitant tone. “I can’t stay holding on to a rope for that long.”

“You could have mentioned that earlier.” Archie slowly responded. He was nodding off just a little, but he still managed to express a bit of disgruntlement.

“She can just sit on my shoulders if she needs to.” Cody said. “I’m mostly sure that the rope can handle two people at once, at least. We don’t need to all climb down at the same time.”

“Do we need to climb down at all?” Dan asked.

“... Yeah.”

“Understood.”

“Nobody’s forcing you.” I mumbled. “I mean, people are going to come looking for you. I don’t think any more automatic mail is going to be sent to our parents after this point."

“People are going to come...” Archibald swung his head to face me, worried eyes. “I don’t know why we haven’t thought about it yet, but what exactly are we supposed to tell the police?”

There was about five minutes of silence following the question.

“... We could tell the truth?” I said, not expecting anyone to agree, but I was desperate for us to come to some sort of consensus.

“I don’t think we’d be able to explain everything... What happened here isn’t something that... Happens. People won’t be ready to hear about this, especially the talking goat demon stuff.”

“So we should burn it down.” Dan said, with not a hint of sarcasm or humour in his voice.

“Uh... Why?” Mia questioned, apparently the only one who needed the vocalise their confusion.

“Although none of us know where the surveillance room is, people will inevitably find out when investigating what happened in this school. Then they’ll no everything regardless of what we say. So, we burn down the school and pass ourselves off as the survivors.”

“... Huh. I guess that could work.” Cody shifted his gaze back to the interior of the building, the garden in particular.

“I’ll have to retrieve my plant.” Archie noted.

“Yeah. There’s enough flammable stuff there, anyway. How’d you get the idea, though?”

“Simple. We’re not the first.” Dan resumed. “I neglected to mention earlier, when it was more relevant, but I remember reading the newspaper some time ago. It said that the Birmingham branch of Wish’s Apex burned down some time ago. There was only one survivor, which was most likely Lucy. However that killing game ended, Monoyaki would have told Lucy to burn the building in order to destroy any evidence of the event. We don’t have much of a choice but to repeat that.”

“Ah...” I turned away from Dan and looked off into the night again. “Makes sense. Thanks. I’m surprised you felt the need to help us out, if nothing has any worth or whatever.”

“No worth? Aha. You’ll come to understand in time, so it’s best to keep your life smooth until then.”

“Yadda ya.”

“... So is that it?” Mia said, sitting down to dangle her legs off the edge of the building.

“What’s it?”

“That. Like, it’s over and stuff now. What’s that supposed to mean? Are we just supposed to start living our lives like normal again?... Yeah, I know, stupid questions that you’ve already thought of, but I don’t have an answer.”

“I don’t see why not. We were so focused on getting out of here before, so now that we’re out?...”

“Ten of us weren’t dead when that was our main goal.”

“... Yeah...”

Funny. Sadie and James and Terry and Robin and Charlotte and Amber and Molly and Lucy and Mary were all dead. Never going to talk, eat, have dreams, make friends, and love again. Jo too, but eh, whatever.

... I mean, he was a human, wasn’t he?

He felt like a fictional character, and I wished he was, go figure. How’d he even get like that? If he just said that he came to that conclusion on his own... Maybe he was leaving something out, I wouldn’t put it past him to lie.

I hope there aren’t many other people like Jo.

“So what do you think was the point of all this?” Cody said, awkwardly pulling his fur hat down warmth. “I mean, we need to take away something from what happened or we’ll all lose our minds and shit.”

“Being alive’s enough.” Archie said. “I can’t think of a single thing any of us gained from what’s happened. We could have lost more, so we should focus on what we have left.”

“We didn’t have that much to begin with.”

“We don’t need that much either.”

“True. Anyways, I’m just going down to check for any loose belongings or whatever. Just tell me when you’ve excavated your plant or whatever, and I’ll try and start a fire. Never tried it before, but there’s a first for everything, hey?”

“Be careful.”

... People went back inside. I was the only person who stayed on the roof for a while.

Contrary to instruction, Archie didn’t tell Cody that he’d gotten his plant back, at least, not right away. He was the first person back up, so I assumed that meant he hadn’t cared to tell the others that he was ready. He sat next to me, looking off into the empty air with me.

“I can see tears in your eyes, Jane.”

“You’re not even looking at me.”

“Doesn’t change that they’re there.”

“Bloody hell.” I dragged my sleeve across my face to dry it up. “It’s probably just something in the wind making my eyes like that.”

“Alright. Is there anything that you’d like to take with you before we try and demolish the school?”

“... I wouldn’t say so. There’s a piece of paper Lucy and I painted on for a bit, but I don’t need it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The wind picked up for a few seconds, sighing softly and dying down as soon as it began.

“You’re still crying.”

“For her. I’m crying for her more than myself. And I’m only crying just a little. Okay?”

“I-I could stop talking about it, if you’d like.”

“No, don’t worry... You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Alright.”

A few more whips of wind, and the song of the occasional passing car.

“Why am I crying for a mass murderer, Archie?”

“... I see... It’s about that?”

“Yeah... I know that she showed a lot more remorse than Jo ever did, but that doesn’t change the fact that they did practically the same thing, regardless of intention.”

“I guess it’s just because you knew her before finding out anything about her past... Okay, yeah, that’s obvious, but no matter what she did or even just participated in, she’s mostly a victim of circumstance, isn’t she?”

“I don’t think she really believed that her victims would come back from the dead, Archie. Fuck.”

“... When a literal demon manifests in front of you, you’re willing to accept things that wouldn’t otherwise make sense.”

“Stop defending her, for fuck’s sake!”

...

“Shit, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Wh-why? I-I mean, I kind of deserved it a little...”

“You were just saying what you thought I wanted to hear.”

“Ah... Was there anything you did want to hear?”

“... Uh... I just say things that are on my mind, usually. I don’t expect to hear any particular responses, I just talk.”

“Ah.”

The wind picked up again, and the moon peeked over a cloud.

“I think that approach might have saved our lives, Jane.”

“It’s not like I’ll find a use for it now.”

“Ah, perhaps you could try public speaking? You’re passionate about a lot of things, but you’re also pretty good at holding yourself together under pressure.”

“Yeah, and that makes me good at postmodern art."

Archie snickered for a little. Wow, I made a quip. It’s been a while. I bet I’m going to start acting fake-weird again to play into the whole ‘conceptual artists are weirdos’ schtick. Y’know, since that’s what ‘normal people’ want to see. How we never change, how we never change...

“W-well, it’s useful in life or death situations, at least. Aha.”

The moon was obscured again, though the cloud was thin enough to let it shine through this time.

“We’re keeping in touch, right Archie?”

“Yeah!... I guess I’ll need to a buy a phone. I’m pretty sure all of us are keeping in touch to some degree, since I guess we need to stick together or something. I mean, we don’t... Need to. But... It’d be nice.”

“Mhm. At the very least we can appreciate how we didn’t kill each other.”

“Ahaha.”

“Haha.”

...

“The others better hurry up, we’re going to catch a cold up here.”

“We’ve been through worse.”

Despite having been through worse, Archie shuffled closer to me, and we huddled.

“Guess so.”