Dangan Ronpa: Unser Sommerende/Chapter 2 - Deadly Life

Continued from Chapter 2 - Daily Life (2).

Lucy and I stared at each other for a few moments. She did her usual head tilt thing, and looked confused.

“What is it?...”

“I... Thought you were dead.” I was barely breathing myself. It was one of those moments where you barely felt conscious despite being fully awake, as if the world was reduced to the sum of its parts, a series of images, sounds, and sensations. These included the sounds of footsteps coming towards me, and two arms surrounding my torso.

If she had hugged me any other time, I would probably have been overwhelmed to the point of fainting, yet I could barely register it whatsoever. We spent a good bit of time like this, until I heard an interruption from behind.

[1]

“What exactly is the meaning of this?” Mary’s voice, commanding as usual, though slower than usual, as if to denote her bewilderment.

I was promptly thrusted back into reality, and hence pushed Lucy’s arms off of me as I realised the situation I was in. “Nothing! I-I mean we weren’t doing anything! It’s not what it looks-”

“No, that.” She pointed to the large amounts of blood in the corner of the room.

“O-oh yeah... That.” Now that I was no longer focusing on Lucy, I got a better sense of the scene; aside from the large amounts of blood along the wall, floor, and a table which had been knocked over, there was a buzzsaw that was completely coated in it. As I heard more people entering the room, I walked towards the area, getting a closer look.

[2]

Thing is, there wasn’t a body. Mary, who had followed close behind me, noted this. “Perhaps the body was disposed of in the rubbish?”

“I suppose... Though I don’t know how the body announcement was activated, in that case...” I looked around the room, and back towards the entrance; most of the remaining students were there. Naturally, the way to figure out who had been killed was via process of elimination; I was able to count twelves of us, the only one who wasn’t in the room was Jo.

Mary ended up announcing it to everyone, who had gathered around the crime scene proper, before I did, though. “I have managed to figure out, through process of elimination, that Jo Leary has been mercilessly slaughtered.”

Amber fidgeted as Mary said this. “D-do you have to use words like that to describe it?...”

“Well, it’s clearly the case, considering the state of this general area.”

“Hey, wait,” Dan started, “why is everyone acting like this is normal already? S-someone’s been killed! Again!”

Archie simply noted, “There isn’t time to mourn, that’s why.”

“Well d’you have t’be so cold about it, boy?” Rocky shook his head. “He’s clearly not fit for this kinda situation. Too weak for it.”

“B-but,” Dan elaborated, “p-people shouldn’t be so casual about murder! O-or it’ll keep happening! I-I mean... Wh-why aren’t we even stopping to... Sh-show ANY amount of respect for the dead?” He looked to the ground. “Th-the deceased have a strong spiritual influence on the material world, so... I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t mourn Jo for at least a few seconds.”

“Hmm, I can think of a couple of reasons!” Molly stated sarcastically. “That fool has caused immense amounts of stress for everyone here, and through his apparent statement of lunacy against the basic laws of human nature in order to achieve his insane ‘goal’, he has forged an air of unease and instability that has greatly reduced the chances of the class staying together!” Her volume greatly increased as she spoke. “If anything, I’d say I’m nothing but relieved to hear of his passing!”

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

“Too bad, then.” A voice from the doorway; Jo was leaning against the open door, looking even more smug than usual. The group was silent for a moment.

[3]

“Uh oh!” A voice from the other corner of the room, in which Monoyaki sat on the edge of a table, dangling his legs about. “What a disaster! Nobody even knows who died! What’s everyone gonna do?! Ohhhhh noooooo!” He cackled and fell backwards.

“Alright...” I wiped some sweat off my brow. “What the hell is going on?”

Monoyaki took a bit to catch his breath, and continued. “Who knows? All it seems is that someone’s dead! Maybe not even someone from this class! It’s so weird, I’d expect something like that to happen, maybe, five murders in or something.”

“But if there’s no body, why did the announcement-”

“Over there, ding dongs.” He pointed at a severed finger on the ground; apparently the finger of the deceased. Everyone looked around at each other, as if to confirm that everybody’s fingers were intact. “Don’t be so stupid, if that was one of you guys’ fingers, that person would be dead already!”

“Well, the point is, how can we find out who’s dead then?...”

“Eh. You kids are smart, you can work it out yourself... So, go ahead! Start figuring it out or something!” He sped away as he finished talking.

[4]

Well, whatever had happened, we wouldn’t find out by just standing there. Unlike last time, people sort of dispersed without having to be told to, we all knew well that we had no choice but to do this investigation-thing again. At the very least, none of us were dead at that moment.

Lucy and Rocky stayed back at the scene again, to deter anyone from tampering from the evidence. I figured that, since she had seen the crime scene before most of us, she might have some useful information regarding this case.

Looking at her, her clothes looked surprisingly clean, considering that she had been lying in a pool of blood, so it must have been dried; **the murder likely happened last night**, giving it time to dry up. She was frowning, and looking away from the messier part of the room. She usually didn’t get too distressed, partially due to her seeming nearly half asleep a lot of the time. Perhaps she’d be more attentive in regards to the case...

“Lucy, did you see anything out of the ordinary before you came in? Has anything changed here since you first saw the crime scene?”

“... I don’t know... I...” She winced. “I don’t like blood... I don’t want to look and check if anything became different from before...”

“Don’t worry then, it’s fine. We’ll sort it out. But, also... Did you come here last night? I heard someone pass by when I went up here last night, and I was wondering if it might have been you.”

“Not according to my recollection, no...” She shook her head.

“Understood. We’ll solve this fine, anyway, so try not to worry...”

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if we would be able to. Having no confirmed victim led to a lack of a proper aim. Although, going through what I knew already... I figured that, since three people have to see the body (or finger, in this case) to activate the announcement, and Lucy and I had already seen it, **there must have been one other person aside from the killer who had visited the area after the murder**. Who it was, I had no clue.

With the questions over, the next logical step was to examine the scene itself. Archie was doing the same, seemingly a bit ahead of me in that regard. Of course, the earlier details I mentioned were apparent; the **blood-coated buzzsaw**, the **wrecked crime scene**, and the **severed finger**.

Archie had a hand put up to his chin, looking pensive. “Aside from what’s the most obvious, there doesn’t appear to be much evidence here. At the very least, the messy state of everything suggests **a struggle happened between the victim and the killer**.” He stood and turned to me. “Is there anything else you can gleam?”

“I suppose there’s the saw, which was most likely the murder weapon. Thing is... The finger on the floor might have been cut off by something else. **It’s a bit further away from the buzzsaw**. There was probably another weapon involved at some point...” My mind immediately drifted to Lucy’s scythe, which I saw that night. Looking to the desk where it was before, I now saw that it was empty, clear of any scythes or sets of keys. “It was probably that scythe Lucy asked for. It’s gone now, along with the keys to the rubbish dump.”

“The keys?” He seemed jolted for a second. “Doesn’t Molly have those?”

“She said so, but I saw them on the desk last night, when I went up to get that spoon.”

“You didn’t even say you were there last night. I mean, that shows you don’t have an alibi...”

“I-I suppose, but neither does Terry. He was just sitting there, at the desk. He’d be able to verify I wasn’t there for too long, or at the very least, that I haven’t killed anybody.” I paused for a moment. “... I also heard footsteps as I was heading back to my room, and they were going towards the workshop, I think. I couldn’t tell who it was, though.”

“I see... Back to the subject of the keys, how did they end up in Terry’s possession last night?”

“I have no clue. If we’re going to figure out what happened, we’ll need to question him, as well as Molly.”

We were interrupted by a voice which sounded somewhat muffled, yet close. “Keys?...” This was because Lucy had apparently come near us without us noticing, but wasn’t facing us, still trying not to look at the blood.

“E-err, yes. Keys.” I paused for a moment again, weirded out. “What about it?...”

“I have some.” She reached beneath her coat and pulled out a keyring; identical to the one I saw last night. “**This was in my room, lying by the door**. I think somebody slid them under.” She jangled them a little. “You can have them if you’d like...”

“Thanks...” I took them from her, as my mind felt only vexed by the unfolding key mystery that seemed to overshadow the rest of the case.

“So,” Archie began again, “It seems they started in Molly’s possession, then Terry had them, and then Terry, or perhaps somebody else, slipped them into Lucy’s room? I mean, there could be any number of middle parties involved in this transfer.”

“Well, the only way to find out more is to ask people, so, I suppose we’d better leave for now.”

As we passed through the door, it sounded somewhat more squeakier than when coming beforehand- only to realise the squeak had emanated from the ground. Looking towards the origin point, there was a recognisable little mouse slowly moving about, as if low on energy.

“Joan?” I crouched to get a closer look at her.

“Who?”

“This mouse. Her name’s Joan, Terry keeps her as a pet.” I picked her up. Usually she scurried away from anyone who wasn’t Terry, but she was unusually calm, and somewhat thinner than before. “I don’t think he’d lose track of her as easily as this, **I saw him feeding her last night**.”

“So, does that mean that he was keeping extra food for the sake of feeding her?”

“Well, he claimed that it was cutting into his personal ration, so, assuming that was the truth... I mean, even if he was lying, it’s okay if it’s for the sake of another living being, right?”

“It’s an animal.”, he noted, deadpan.

“... Whatever. I’ll just give her back to Terry when we find him.”

It took a bit to track him down, but we eventually found Terry standing around in one of the hallways, doing nothing, which I found somewhat strange, since he usually put his best effort into everything. Some of us got a bit overwhelmed in high pressure situations like these, I suppose. Upon noticing us, he plucked Joan out of my hands remarkably quickly.

“Wh-where were you?!” He said to his tiny friend, as if she could understand English. “I’m so sorry, I’m never letting this happen again! I promise I will always look out for you and be more careful and-”

“How did you get the keys?” Archie asked, significantly less animated in comparison.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

“... Um, what?”

[5]

“Jane says you had the keys to the rubbish dumping area last night.”

Terry was silent, his face slowly becoming more and more muddled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But,” I interjected, “I was there. A-and, you were there?... Did you forget maybe? You seemed very tired.”

“Nothing weird happened yesterday. I went to bed at a perfectly normal time, and I don’t remember seeing you then.” He put a hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry, but can we save this sort of stuff for the trial? I can’t deal with this, I even lost my Monopad and I can’t get into my room now.”

“Well, if you lost it, then you definitely must have forgotten what happened last night then?”

“My memory’s completely fine. It just disappeared. I need to find it.” With a stressed expression, he turned away and walked off.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

“Jane.” Archie gave me a doubtful look. “You are entirely sure about what happened last night, correct?”

“... Yes?” I smiled awkwardly.

“... I am going to ask Molly what happened now.”

“You mean we, right?”

“... You can follow, I suppose.”

[6]

Molly was eventually found in the recreation room, resting against one of the lounges. She was muttering to herself about something or another.

“I do enough work as it is... I don’t need to deal with all of these shenanigans... Is it so hard to simply not kill somebody?...”

“Molly.” Archie began with his almost signature style of saying someone’s name without any identifiable tone. Molly opened a single eye and looked over at him.

“Whatever it is, don’t take long.”

“Jane claims Terry had your keys last night. Terry disputes that he ever did. What happened?”

“Ah, that... When Terry was requesting people to request him to make a requested item according to their requests, **I asked him to create a spare set of keys**. The original keyring is in my room as of now. Say, did he finish them yet?”

“Well,” I recalled, “they looked finished enough to me. Somehow, they ended up in Lucy’s possession, and she said they just showed up in her room this morning.”

“How odd... Perhaps the murderer is attempting to frame her? They could have disposed of some evidence using the rubbish using those keys.”

“On the other hand...” Archie pondered for a second. “There is the possibility that Lucy actually did take the keys from Terry in the first place, and is lying about where she found them.”

I shuddered a little at the very prospect of Lucy being a suspect. “Can we save that sort of discussion for when the trial actually starts, please?”

“I suppose so. The only logical thing to do now is to inspect the rubbish area.”

“Wait, you mean go inside the dump?...”

“Doing that should reveal extra evidence for the case. However unsavoury it may be, it is of utmost importance.”

“... Fine...”

So, we went there, somewhat reluctantly in my case. Archie didn’t seem to have any particular qualms with it, or at least, he didn’t let them show. I hadn’t actually been in the rubbish area yet, so I took a bit to take in the surroundings; white. It was just another blank white room, which was borderline frustrating, the lack of variety in the school’s design was driving me mad. Anyways, there was a chute covered by a locked hatch, along with another locked hatch on the ground near it. Unlocking the grounded one, it revealed a ladder downwards, into darkness.

“Do you have a light, Archie?”

“No.”

We were awkwardly silent for a few moments.

“Maybe it isn’t as dark down there as it seems.” I hesitantly inched on to the ladder, and climbed down, and he followed close behind, or above rather.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

The bottom was pretty far down. Stepping on it, it was hard and soundless, most likely made of concrete. With the little light that flowed in from the room above, I was able to make out a light switch, which I promptly flicked on, causing a flicker from the far, upper corner of the room. I looked towards the piles of rubbish, or rather, what the rubbish was piled on top of.

[7]

Bodies. I don’t know how many. The room was somewhat vast, so there could have been a hundred or so. They were slightly rotted. Judging from their uniforms, they appeared to be students of Wish’s Apex Academy, along with a number of adults, presumably teachers.

Well, that’s the most impartial, literal description I can give. Of course, there was an overwhelming surge of disgust and horror, but it was to the point that I just sort of froze up. It was kind of hard to process what the fuck this was.

I mustn’t have been very aware of what was even right in front of me, as I didn’t see Archie climb up the pile until he called out to me. I didn’t even process what he said, I just looked at him as he was up the very top of it, and I then recognised what he was standing next to; a recognisable corpse among the mountain of unknown faces. **It was Terry**. Though I couldn’t make out any particular injury, I saw Archie pick up the apron off the body, which was **cut in two pieces**, along with a **scythe**. He descended the pile and came up to me, as I began to come back to my senses a little.

“He’s missing a finger, and had a **long vertical wound down his torso**.”, he muttered. Though his face seemed unfazed, his voice had a slight tremble.

“... Okay.” Without saying anything, I started climbing up the ladder again. I heard the light get flicked off below me as I went up.

I just didn’t have time to process it all, honestly.

[8]

The announcement jingle sounded as we reached the top.

“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!”

[9]

I shook my hands a bit, tired from the climbing. “Do you think we found everything we need?”

“We still don’t have a proper idea of the killer, but we can only make do with what we have.” He placed the scythe upon the ground. “You can tell Lucy to pick this up later. I’ll keep the apron to use as proof of Terry’s apparent death.”

“Hang on...” For some reason, it only really set in then the strangeness of Terry’s body being present if he was seemingly alive. “Does that explain why he’s-”

“Whatever the case, we can discuss it during the trial.”

Arriving down there, the whole crowd of thirteen was gathered at the wall, only to hear a voice from down the hall.

“You numbskulls got the location wrong again!” Monoyaki was pouting even further away from us than last time.

“I-I mean...” Dan scratched his head. “I-it’s only the second time we’ve done this.”

“Whatever... Just get down here.”

We went up to him, and we did the whole wall-opening-elevator-entering thing again.

(SOUNDTRACK PAUSES)

Once again, the elevator ride was completely silent. I’m not sure why, honestly, since you’d think it would be good to discuss what we found there just before the trial started, but I suppose it just felt a little bit awkward to speak, and most of us were just trying to calm down to stay in control, anyway. At the very least, I now knew who the victim was, though there was still a lot that went unexplained, most importantly, who the killer was. Whatever the case, until we reached the bottom, all I could do was hope for the best.

[10]

Arriving in the trial area once again, the grass seemed noticeably less green; green still, but drier. The fountain’s water spout was less powerful as well, though it still seemed in good condition. Alongside Sadie’s portrait, which was still there, a portrait of James was now propped up, crossed out as well. Everybody took their places like before without saying too much, as if we were waiting for Monoyaki to cue us in to start talking. He seemed somewhat aware of this, since he just gave us a dumb, cheeky smile as if he didn’t know any better. Of course, he couldn’t annoy us by stalling like that forever.

“So, does anyone have any questions before the trial starts?~”

“I don’t think so.” Terry said... I mean, if that actually was Terry, whatever the hell was going on. “The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”

“Alrighty! Then, in a moment, we’ll begin!~”

With that, I took a deep breath, wiped my brow, and prepared myself for whatever was about to come my was as the second trial commenced.

Continued in Chapter 2 - Class Trial