Dangan Ronpa: Unser Sommerende/Chapter 3 - Deadly Life

Continued from Chapter 3 - Daily Life (2).

[1]

Needless to say, the garden was a mess. There weren’t any knocked over chairs or anything, but the unconscious bodies definitely made it seem untidy. It took a second to get a hold of it, but the only thing that was really clear at the moment was that somebody ripped up the crisp bag, and that meant it was time to investigate. I mean, investigate what? What even happened here?

I looked about aimlessly, not really being able to process it. I guess I wasn’t able to just start investigating immediately the past couple times either... But that was just from the shock of finding a dead person, which was absent when the corpse was a bag of snacks. I couldn’t think straight, it was just such an absurd situation.

Lucy didn’t appear to fully understand it either, but that only made sense since she usually wasn’t very focused... Or maybe she understood things better than me, and I just couldn’t tell by the look on her face.

My disorientation almost stopped me from realising that Dan was sitting in the corner, wrapped up in that cloak. He was just staring ahead of himself, looking about, completely calm. The three of us soon had more company, since Mary and Mia showed up within a few minutes, which meant that everyone aside from Jo was here, although half of us were present physically and absent mentally. Nevertheless, the unconscious bodies seemed to be slowly rousing, if only a very slight amount at a time.

“Are... Are they all dead?...” Mia asked, pale-faced.

“Nah.”, Lucy said as if it were a casual conversation. “Just sleeping. Judging by their current state of slow awakening... They must have been knocked out simultaneously. Unfortunate...”

“Understood.”, Mary said. “And the bag was opened by whoever pulled that off, I assume?”

“Uh...” I said, or tried to say, still a little disorientated. “Maybe. Not necessarily, they might be different people. I don’t know.”

“Hey, why does the bag matter?!” Mia asked, who sounded uncharacteristically riled up. “It’s just a bag! It’s a plastic packet, aren’t you worried about the...?”

I sighed. “You didn’t really hear about the motive, right?”

“The motive?... Wait, was that bag supposed to be part of it?”

“Well, yeah, Monoyaki just sort of said whoever ate the crisps would basically be treated as the next murderer.”

“... Oh... And... How were we supposed to know about that?”

“I mean, he announced it while you were lying around and not paying attention, so...”

“Crap...” She scratched the back of her head. “I mean, I guess I shouldn’t worry, uh... ‘Cause we’ll figure out who did it, right?”

“Yeah, we’ll figure it out.”, I said.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

Although, I wasn’t entirely sure that we would.

[2]

Though I was waiting for Monoyaki to come out and say something like the last couple cases, he didn’t show up, so perhaps he just didn’t have anything to say. Mia and Mary went off, presumably to try and find evidence. Dan was still sitting there, silent.

Without really thinking much, I crouched and poked Archie in the face a couple times. It was a bit instinctual on my part, but all he really did was groan and shift over a little bit.

“There isn’t a use in trying, Jane...” Lucy said, staring at both of us intermittently. “All we can do is hope they’ll be awake for when the trial starts.”

“Alright.” I stood, and internally panicked for a moment, since I was used to the previous dynamic that Archibald and I had during these cases. Really, no matter who it was, I needed someone to have a second opinion or another way of looking at things, so... “Uh, Lucy? Do you think we can try and investigate this... Uh... Together?”

She smiled a little, despite the proposition being of a more serious and dire tone, and said “Sure thing, sugar.”

“A-and tr-try not to call me that.”

“Do you dislike it...?”

“... N-not necessarily, j-just, we need to focus on the investigation.”

The first step of any investigation is to examine the body... Or the bag. It was lying on the ground, having been **removed from the rope** which held it up; said rope was just hanging off the water storage’s roof with some crude sticky tape at the end, which presumably held the bag up. The bag itself was empty, with **crumbs surrounding it**, and, as I mentioned earlier, was **cut across the top instead of being ripped open**, and **no longer had its googly eyes** from before. Nearby were a few interesting things: **a chair**, seemingly moved from the table to the rope’s location, as well as a **pair of scissors** lying next to the bag. There was also a **note** on the door into the water storage room, and a **pencil** was lying at the door’s bottom.

The note itself read:
‘To talliate a cloison, with a juglandaceous plant inboard
A kephalonomancer and her quidam are osculating
Two younkers lying upon an attenuated jangada of burlywood color
They whiker and yuke, her hypnogeny omniferous’

In the bottom right corner of the paper, there was a single word:

‘thanks!’

This word had far messier handwriting than the preceding poem.

Although the note had such odd detail to it, the scissors were just a pair of scissors, and although I assumed the scissors had cut the bag open, I thought it strange that they also hadn’t been used to cut the rope, which remained **fully intact**.

I stared back at the poem, and as you’d expect, I was unable to gleam any information from it.

“Lucy, do you recognise any of these words?”

“... Maybe.” She stood right near the poem, leaning in, her face practically smothered by the paper. “... A kephalonomancer is someone who heats a goat’s skull in order to divine information from the spirits.”

“Is that... Alchemy?”

“Nah. It’s cool and peculiar, though.” She turned to me. “I’m unsure about the rest of it though.”

“I’m pretty sure the one who broke open the crisp bag must have written that. I’m just not sure if it has hidden meanings that are important, or if it’s just to mislead us completely...”

“Both, maybe?”

“... As crazy as that sounds, maybe. I don’t know how it could be both. But, who knows?...”

“Whoever wrote it knows.”

“Well, yeah, but... Whatever.”

We weren’t able to figure out what the ‘thanks’ meant, either. We talked a little about where the scissors may have come from (probably a classroom) and the use of the chair that had been moved (to imply the entrepreneur was too short to reach the bag, probably a framing since the if it actually was a shorter person using it, they would have just moved it back.).

“So...” Lucy looked over each item a couple more times. “Is that the investigation?”

“Err, well, there’s definitely more we can do...” I realised that, in my disorientation from the whole thing about the crisp bag, I had forgotten that Dan was even here. He was still sitting there in the corner, staring at us the whole time. “We could ask Dan if he saw anything suspicious? I’m pretty sure he went to the party, but he isn’t knocked out like the others. He probably has some info about what actually happened last night.”

Thing is, it was a bit awkward to just walk up to him and start asking questions. I mean, walking up to him was the easy part, but once Lucy and I were right in front of him, none of us spoke for about a minute. It wasn’t that he was intimidating, it was more like I didn’t know how to ask him anything, and he didn’t have much to say until then. Still, I’d have to ask him something if we were going to get anywhere in regards to the case, so...

“I’m assuming you attended the gathering here last night?”

“Somewhat reluctantly.” He responded, followed by another pause from both of us. “Mostly to observe and see if anything interesting occurred.”

“And I’m assuming based on the mess here that something did occur, correct?”

“It was less interesting than you’d expect. Those five on the ground simply **had a small amount of the beverages** on offer, and within minutes, each was on the floor.” His voice was still consistently monotonous, as it had been since his... Change.

“You sound like you weren’t fazed at all by it...”

“Not at all. I came to observe, and that’s what I did.”

“And...” I glanced back at the objects surrounding the broken bag. “Can you tell me everything that went down over there?”

“I cannot.”

“A-and why’s that?...”

“Once everyone had fainted, since there was nothing left to observe, I committed myself to deep meditation for the remainder of the evening. Any other occurrences that night would have been outside of my perception.”

“That’s... Inconvenient.” I sighed. “Lucy, is there anything that you’d like to ask?”

The girl seemed oddly anxious. “What happened to the drinks? Did you see them get taken away? They aren’t here.”

“They were still present when I detached from reality, so **they must have been taken away** while I was embedded in the cosmos.”

“Crap...” She winced. “... Did they have a strange colour?”

“Perhaps. I don’t recall paying close attention to them.”

“Understood...” Lucy nodded to him, and then tugged on my hand a little, motioning me to get some distance between from Dan with her.

“It’s the potion.”

“The potion?”

“Yes.” I had never seen Lucy so stressed like this, her eyes were fixed on mine and she was clutching my hand just a little too tight. “Someone must have taken it. The one I gave you last night.”

“But you still have it on your belt, right?”

“I have spares. I don’t know how anyone was able to get it, I haven’t let anyone in my room since arriving at the school.”

“Well, if you’re so sure that it must be your chemical, then... If the drinks were spiked with it, we might be able to find something in the cafeteria’s kitchen. Molly would have been making the food and drinks in there, so there might be some evidence leftover.”

“Alright...” The tone of voice she had while talking about it made it seem like she was less worried about someone spiking drinks and more worried about someone touching her stuff... I suppose her concoctions mean a lot to her.

Just as I was about to exit the garden, my shoe brushed up against some sort of soft object, and looking down, I saw **my beret**, crammed in between a bush and the edge of the path. I frantically grabbed it and pushed it over my head before I could even think. I just... Felt naked without it or something.

That’s kind of what happens after you wear the same headgear every day.

“That seemed a bit intense, Jane.” The ruby haired girl said with the sort of tone that implied a mixture of finding something funny and adorable. “It’s just a hat, is it not?”

“I mean, yeah, but...” Adjusting it for a second, something became apparent to me. “... Weren’t you really anxious just a moment ago? You seem completely calm, if not happy, even...”

“Oh, no, I’m still concerned. It’s just momentary entertainment. And besides, I’m just happy to see you get your hat back.”

“But how did it even get here in the first place?”

“Ah, I brought it up here when the gathering was about to start to show that you couldn’t make it. I suppose I could have just told them without bringing your hat up... Well, I forgot to bring it back down to you, so I suppose that’s why it’s up here.”

“Okay... Uh, let’s just get back to the investigation.”

This was the first time either of us had been in the cafeteria kitchen. It looked similar enough to the rest of the cafeteria, retaining the white and blue colour set the rest of the school had. The blue was concentrated on the tables and sinks, drawing one’s attention to them. Each of the appliances used a mixture of white and blue, so that they didn’t just have one boring colour. However, by the looks of things, nothing was out of the ordinary; although I had never seen the kitchen before, I could tell that this was how it usually seemed. Nothing was knocked over, everything was in its place, it was all very tidy...

Lucy was sniffing about the room, in every corner. This didn’t really make sense since, from what I can remember, the liquid she gave me didn’t have any aroma to it whatsoever, but maybe there was just something in it she was more attuned to detect. After thirty seconds or so, she locked on to a cupboard underneath the main sink, and swung it open with great force.

“I’ve located them.”

Peering over the crouching girl’s shoulder, there were a couple **cups of something like orange juice, but with a slight discolouration**.

“You can see that they’re off, can’t you, Jane?”

“Well, yeah. It’s a bit hard to make out, but... I’m pretty sure they’ve been tampered with. I don’t know why these were left behind though... I’d imagine that all the drinks would have been brought out, and that the entrepreneur would have taken the leftover drinks from the garden, so as not to leave any evidence...” I stopped for a moment, then continued to think aloud. “... Why are they even in the cupboard, of all places?”

It was less like I was talking to myself, more of a meandering mumble. Thanks to the low volume, I was able to hear the fast taps of someone running down the nearby hall and into the cafeteria and-

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”, the shout being followed by exasperated breathing. Molly was standing in the kitchen doorway, in a state of being on high alert and somewhat asleep at the same time. She looked somewhat imbalanced. “I... You better not be... Tampering with...” She kept stopping to catch her breath.

“Err, it’s not like that at all,” I answered, “in fact it’s basically the opposite. We’re trying to figure out who messed with the drinks, and I can guess that you’re probably somewhat aware of that as well.”

“W-well... SOMEONE must have...” She wiped some sweat off of her forehead, and then straightened her posture, still slightly shaky. “So... First of all... I’m not the one who spiked them with whatever.”

“Uh, you don’t have to say that, I mean, you wouldn’t have drunk it and knocked yourself out if you knew what it did in the first place?...”

“E-exactly. Err...” Her breathing slowed down to more acceptable levels. “... What now?...”

“Questions.” Lucy said, to the point.

“... To whom?”

“Uh, I think she means to you.” I said, trying to think of what she might have seen in regards to the case. “Like, uh... Did you see anything suspicious happening with the drinks?”

“No, not at all... **Nothing out of the ordinary happened** while I was making them, and everything went as planned. But once I had finished, and **put them in the fridge**, I spent an hour or two doing other things, since that job was taken care of.” She turned her head downward, and noticed the two drinks sitting in the cupboard. “... So that’s still there...”

“Oh? You know about...?”

“Yes, when I came back to the refrigerator to retrieve the drinks, I noticed that **they looked somewhat odd**... I didn’t think much of it at the time. I felt the drinks were a bit colder than I expected... And I realised that I made an unnecessary amount of them in the first place. That’s why I **left a couple spare ones in the cupboard**, so that if we needed them, they wouldn’t be too cold to drink.”

“Was it really too cold? I mean, it’s just a fridge, right?”

“It’s honestly colder than it looks.” She sighed. “The equipment here seriously acts up far too much, it’s an insult to my outstanding talents...”

“Well I’m sure it isn’t that bad...”

“So...” Lucy started, “Still no idea who actually took my stuff...?”

“It’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out. Maybe with just a bit more evidence-”

[3]

Somewhat startlingly, the announcement sounded in the middle of my sentence. “Aaaaalrighty! Time's up! I’d like everyone to head to the back half of the hallways on the ground floor, thank you very much!”

“Crap...” Lucy sighed. “Guess we’ll never know.”

“A-again, don’t worry, Lucy! You never know what we could figure out at the trial-”

“THERE’S A TRIAL?!” Molly spurted out. “DID SOMEONE DIE?!”

“... Let’s... Let’s just save the discussion for when the trial actually starts.”

The lift was already open when everyone was gathered in the dorm hallway. Perhaps Monoyaki was simply tired of having to point it out to us. We entered without too much chatter, just murmurings between each other. At the very least, we all seemed fully awake now.

Once again, a smooth, silent ride downwards.

Mia, hands stuffed in her pockets, said “Y’know, how come we never talk during these elevator rides? It’d really help defuse the tension...”, to which nobody responded.

... Formulating and organising my thoughts was getting easier with each passing trial, and it didn’t take quite as long to consolidate what I knew. Whoever had done this had spiked the drinks, knocked everyone out, and broke the crisp bag, leaving behind a cryptic poem... At least, from the looks of things. It was all rather convoluted, but perhaps we’d be able to make something out of it.

Perhaps.

[4]

The doors opened and ushered us back into the stone garden court. The fountain was no longer spraying out water, though water was retained in its pools. The grass wasn’t looking so nice; it had yellowed, dry and jagged, ironically resembling the crisps themselves.

Monoyaki was sitting in his usual spot, the first time I’d seen him all day. Despite not having interacted or visited the crime scene, he knew everything thanks to the security cameras... Which brought up the question of if it was even him looking at them, or someone else working behind the scenes. Really, the latter seemed far more likely, since, even after weeks, it was still somewhat hard to believe this goat boy was a real, living thing.

“Okay, okay, does anyone wanna say anything before the trial begins? Nah, I’m sure everyone’s on the same page.”

“We really aren’t...” Charlotte said, with a grumble.

“Well you can discuss that DURING the trial, dum-dum. I don’t even know why I asked that to begin with, we’re not supposed to exchange information until the hammer comes down, isn’t that right kiddies?”

“Then get on with it...”

“In a moment. Just wanna let you guys simmer for a minute...”

... I imagine most of the people at the party would have noticed that the bag was opened when they woke up, at least. It was a little unfair that this investigation happened with half of us unconscious, but we’d be able to get everyone up to speed fast enough, provided we don’t descend into petty disorganised arguments over minor points. Whatever the case may be, I felt more determined to find the culprit than usual... Even if our previous plan of trying to prevent the bag from being opened in the first place failed.

All I was waiting for was the moment that mallet would come down...

Continued in Chapter 3 - Class Trial