Dangan Ronpa: Unser Sommerende/Chapter 4 - Motive

Continued from Chapter 4 - Daily Life (1).

[1]

MONOYAKI HOROSCOPE

Libra!

Yippee! You’ve just won an all expenses paid trip to jury duty! I’m sure this won’t be an incredibly boring and uncomfortable experience. Just declare them guilty, I don’t care what the defendant’s done, just slam the door on ‘em.

[2]

“Good morning everyone! Come out to play, brand new day, yadda yadda ya, point is! I’ve got another special message for everyone in the assembly hall-gym-thing-place, so it’s VERY important that all of you come! And, uh, it’s probably obvious that you won’t like it... So if you don’t come, I’ll, uh, kill you all, I think!... Just get over here already!”

... Well, he did say he’d prepare something to make us scared of him again. It probably wouldn’t be anything too concerning, considering the recent track record for his motives so far.

[3]

So there we were, all ten of us in the gymnasium again, with Monoyaki attentive and upright at the front of the stage, though the rest of us didn’t seem quite as excited... Not out of fear or anything, just knowledge that we could probably spend our time better than this.

“That’s everyone, right?” The goat-creature-thing said, leaning forward on his podium. “I’m bad at counting, so I’ll just assume everyone’s hear and ready to go... Right?~”

None of us could bother to respond to him, for the most part.

“... Alright, fine, if you REALLY don’t wanna talk, I’ll just have to get into the motive right away... Since you’re so BORING. Ugh.” Reaching into his suit, he pulled out ten envelopes, and, much like he did a couple weeks back with the Monopads, he checked each name on the back, before throwing them out at us, one at a time. What he didn’t seem to realise was that he wasn’t tossing it like you would with an envelope or a frisbee, just a regular old throw... Which meant that the letters weren’t really flying through the air right. In fact, they were piling on the ground a couple meters in front of him. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to just pretend not to notice, since, despite his apparent proneness to blunder, it still wasn’t a great idea to draw out Monoyaki’s temper at any particular one of us.

I mean, he probably wouldn’t do anything, anyway, but just to be careful...

But eventually, he had tossed out all ten, and only then did he notice that none of us held or read any letter whatsoever.

“... Don’t just put them in your pocket for later, read them NOW! I need to gloat about how clever and evil the motive is, and I can’t do that for each one of you in your own time, because I’M BUSY!!!”

“... S-sorry, mister, but...” Amber, sounding apologetic despite not having done anything, pointed at the pile of envelopes. “They’re actually a bit far away... Would you like us to go and get them?”

“... What do you think you’re supposed to do? Leave them there?!”

“I-I mean... I’d rather do the latter...”

“... Alright, look, man.” With a tensed up face, Monoyaki took a deep breath in, a very slight maroon shade overtaking his visage. “I worked long and hard on coming up with this, so if you guys don’t do your part, I’ll...!”

“Calm yourself.” Dan said, with monotonous reverence as always, “If you cease to concern yourself with the actions of others, only then can you find peace.”

“I’m not LOOKING for peace, though! Can’t you get that through your head?!”

“Wait, but...” Charlotte mumbled to herself, before speaking up. “You can’t just kill all of us if we refuse to open the letters, right? Then your whole dumb killing game thing just ends abruptly.”

“Hey, that could actually work!” I added on. “All we have to do is just stand here and-”

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

My ears picked up an audible ruffling of paper, and the sound of a bit of it being torn open. Easy-going and cross-legged, Jo was sitting next to the pile and reading his letter, nodding and putting a couple fingers to his chin. “Yes, yes, very interesting.” He said in a tone that must have been intentionally fake sounding, considering that he could probably muster any emotion and make it look real if he really wanted to.

“... You just...”

“Look, I wanna know what it says, alright?” He chuckled, and continued reading.

(SOUNDTRACK RESUMES)

“... There, see?” Monoyaki said with some fatigue. “N-now just... All of you, read it. Your braindead plan failed, so, yeah, you have to read it now, okay?...”

Having no real choice at this point, although we still felt a bit hesitant, we collected the envelopes and distributed them among ourselves. Having mine handed to me, I could see that the handwriting was very, well, crappy. I supposed that Monoyaki was the one who did the name, but... Whether or not he wrote whatever was inside the envelope...

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

I opened it. The letter inside looked to be printed, with a font that didn’t stand out as anything in particular. There wasn’t any decoration, just a blank, white, unfolded sheet with thin, black letters. As for what it said:

‘To my sweet little Jane,

My, how time seems to fly by! I can’t even keep track of how long you’ve been at the academy. Oh, you’re growing up so fast! You’re making plenty of friends, right? Are you struggling with anything? Don’t forget to write down anything that I should know, it’s clearly very important!

I would have loved to write longer and tell you how things have been over here, but the council’s renovating the power on my street, so I’d better send the E-mail now before the connection’s gone! Still, you’ll have plenty of time to write back to me about everything that’s been going on where you are! I can’t wait to hear back about it!

Love, Aunty Marcy’

It didn’t quite click at first, to be honest. It was just a letter from my guardian. I mean, it wasn’t so hard to figure out just why Monoyaki had given us these.

[4]

Yeah, fuck.

He actually came up with a good motive this time, teasing us with the possibility of freedom and uniting again with our families... It’s probably condescending for me to repeat what was obviously going on, but I hadn’t expected him to pull through with something this effective. Aunt Marcy wasn’t super close to me, at least, not as much as you’d think, given that she’d taken care of me for most of my life... Even so, it did affect me, and it must have affected some of the other students even more.

“So how’s that? Satisfactory enough?” Monoyaki yapped, being the only one who was actually satisfied. “Yeah, I can see the looks on your faces! Dumbfounded!”

“It’s blank.” Archie said, looking away from his note. “Mine’s blank. What is it?”

“Well, you get nothing ‘cus I’m pretty sure you’re on orphan or something, didn’t get any E-mails or letters for you... But for the rest of ya, it should be obvious enough who’s behind these heartfelt messages! Ain’t that right?”

He tapped his foot, as if waiting for a response.

“... That wasn’t rhetorical.”

“Our... Parents.” Molly said, looking a bit empty. “Trying to tempt us with our life before.” She was just fixated on the letter itself, not looking up at Monoyaki at all. “... I should’ve expected it.”

“Screw this.” Mary tossed her paper away, stiffly. “This is just a rehash of the first motive... Do you really think this’ll w-work?” Despite her assertation, she looked to quiver slightly in the eye.

“Dunno, uwehehe... You seem pretty affected by it though, hm. So if rehashing works, then-”

“I’m not. There’s no way in hell this affects me! For the record, whether I potentially kill someone or not has nothing to do with this.”

“Hey, uh...” Lucy murmured, “You might not wanna imply that you’re planning to kill someone...”

“And I didn’t.”

“Say what you will, you silly old stick in the mud.” Monoyaki said, before yawning somewhat inappropriately. “I’m sure there are plenty of others here who’re way more keen on murder now, so that’s the main point of it... Just kill someone, and you get to no longer be isolated from society, including the ones you need the most! The ones you love the dearest! The ones that make life-”

“We get it.” Rocky said, stuffing the folded letter into his jacket pocket with a face reminiscent of nothing in particular. “We don’t’ need to be hearin’ it. Nothin’ left for you to say, just shut it.”

“... I do all these things for you guys and this is how you treat me. Pah... Whatever! Hope you enjoy the ensuing uncertainties thanks to today! Now get lost, and go find something more useful to do with your time then stand here and listen to me... If you hate listening to me that much.” Monoyaki tipped over backwards and was instantaneously gone.

[5]

... So it was another bout of silences. All these lapses of conviction were getting repetitive. Whatever the case, we just stood there and looked at each other. He finally did it, he made a motive that actually gets to us... Except he already had the last couple times, right? Even if the earlier attempts seemed silly, they worked. So... Maybe it’d go better this time. Since we were taking it seriously, we’d maybe be able to get through this one.

But I had no idea how to help it.

Really, trying to stop murder seemed to do nothing. It seemed better to not bother trying and hope for the best. At this point... I just didn’t have any ideas.

“... So...” I said, despite not really having anything to say. “... Should we just hold the usual cafeteria meeting that we do?...”

“I don’t care, do what you want.” Mary said, with a slight twitch as she turned to the door. “I’m not going. I don’t need to think about any of this.”

“I can’t say I expected you to.”

“Whatever. Shut up.” She stood still for a few moments, before actually walking out.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

“... I can’t say I would expect myself to, even.”

Continued in Chapter 4 - Daily Life (2)