Dangan Ronpa: Unser Sommerende/Chapter 5 - Motive

Continued from Chapter 5 - Daily Life.

[1]

MONOYAKI HOROSCOPE

Aries!

Sweet potatoes are your lucky food for today. You better eat them... I’m watching! No ice cream if you refuse!

[2]

“Wakey wakey, here comes the sun! Come out to play and greet the brand new day! I have an extremely important announcement to make, and it’s going to affect each and every one of you in far more potent ways than you can ever imagine!... So get over here.”

[3]

... I didn’t get the best sleep last night, so my brain needed time to really wake up before it started going off on tangents about what the announcement might be about. So I just got dressed and reluctantly headed to the assembly hall, as always. Monoyaki didn’t even need to mention where the announcements were any more, it was always there. There were barely any of us left, yet he still used the huge room that was meant for an entire school... Kind of stupid.

Six of us went to the announcement, the only absent student being Lucy. I couldn’t blame her for not going, honestly, considering that we’d probably just tell her what Monoyaki had to say, anyways, so it was fine if she just needed more rest...

[4]

Anyway, the goat of the hour soon climbed up on the podium, seemingly popping into existence unseen, as always, and spread his arms out as he started his speech off.

“Hello! Friendly hello hi, everybody! This is a very big, special day!”

“Mind telling us why?” Jo asked, with a muted chuckle.

Monoyaki looked like he was about to lose his temper as usual, but he started to get confused instead. “... What, do you think I’m gonna do something else?”

“Honestly...” Rocky started, “You’re pretty predictable, so...”

“It’s just a motive again, isn’t it?” Archie added on. “You don’t need to preface it with anything.”

“Uh...” The goat shook his head. “N-no it’s not! I’m not predictable! Uh, well, yeah, it’s a motive, but you won’t predict what the motive is! This is the most dastardly, most insidious motive of them all!”

“Really?” Archie sounded a bit unconvinced. “There isn’t that much you can do to drive the group apart any more, since there’s not many of us left.”

“Huh.” I said. “I’d think we wouldn’t be driven apart any further since we’re already mostly broken up.”

“Jane... That isn’t very encouraging...”

“Of course it is!” Monoyaki interjected, “It’s encouraging people to murder!”

“I didn’t mean it like that, but...” I sighed.

“Anyways, I think it’s about time we got to the point. The new motive, friends and fiends, is pretty simple. Now, when you kill somebody...” His red eye glinted as he giggled to himself, paws on his cheeks.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

“That’ll be the end of the killing game.”

[5]

“The end?” Dan questioned. “Surely it isn’t that simple.”

“Now, don’t misunderstand! There’ll still be an investigation. There’ll still be a trial, but it’s a mock trial at best, because, get this... All you have to do is find any place that’s secluded, a place where nobody will hear you, and call out to me... And I’ll offer you a special murder plan, with assistance from moi! A murder plan engineered in such a way that it’s...” He paused to snap his fingers. “Unsolvable.”

I felt my body temperature plummet. He wasn’t being serious, was he? A kill done in such a way that it’d be a complete cold case, no matter what... And we’d all be doomed from the start.

“But that’s unfair!...” I pointed at him, shouting. “You can’t do that! There has to be a rule against helping the entrepreneur, right?!”

“Nuh-uh, there’s nada! I take those rules more seriously than anyone here, and I’ll remind you that even I wouldn’t violate them! In fact, I’d have to execute myself if such an incident were uncovered, uwehehe. No really. I would. You don’t believe me, do ya?”

“We don’t have a reason to.” Mary stated.

[6]

“Since when have I ever lied, huh? Whatever... There’s one special catch to this motive though, in that you can’t choose who the victim is.”

“I guess there’s a catch to everything, isn’t there?” I said, groaning. “Why does that even matter, who dies? All of us are going to die.”

“Oh, but the killer’s going to go free, and there’s a certain student who I can’t let go under ANY circumstances. You guys all have a feeling who that is, no?... Uwehehe... Yes, the target of this motive is none other than Lucy Rotkappen!”

... If my temperature was lowering earlier... Now my blood was fucking boiling.

“... Not feeling too well, huh?” He was staring at me in particular. He knew all too well what was going through my head, and he was loving every moment of it. “Silly girl... You were starting to think you were in control, huh? This isn’t a personal thing, by the way, I know you think I’m doing this to mess with you. It’s none of your business why I need her killed, but the point is, she may as well be dead already.”

I tried forcing myself to speak, I really did, but I was barely able to process what I was even being told; my vision was blurring somewhat, and I couldn’t really hear a thing, or at least, I couldn’t focus enough to remember what was being said.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

And eventually, after talking his vile mouth off some more, Monoyaki left. I couldn’t make myself run to Lucy’s room like last time, I didn’t even feel like I could walk properly. Nobody really looked at me or spoke to me at that moment, and I... Shuffled out of the room. Anger gave way to numbness rather quickly... But once I was out of the room, I tried shaking it off. Just because this motive was being mandated by that awful thing, it didn’t mean anybody would take it, right? There’s no way anybody would do that.

At least, there was no way in hell I’d let anyone do that.

I knocked about eight times on Lucy’s door in quick succession. The door opened slightly, and she peeped out at me. The complex patterns that always occupied her irises seemed faded, and gave me the sense that she was somehow more aware of her surroundings than usual.

“... Please enter, Jane.”

I tried to respond, and thank her, but my throat didn’t want to function properly. I just walked in as she held the door open further.

Continued in Chapter 5 - Daily Life (2).