Final Danganronpa: Curse III

Chapter 03 // Errors and Correct Assumptions // Class Trial

Woah, this is a long one. At 12k words, it's the longest (single part) trial I've ever written by far! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

There's a lot going on, especially near the end, so feel free to task any questions!

Monokuma: ....

Monokuma: ...

Monokuma: ...

Makena Simiyu: What's happening? Why won't the trial start?

Monokuma: ...

The throne Monokuma was sitting on glitched and disappeared from in front of our eyes; and the large monitor descended from the roof, showing a very disgruntled Dissonance.

Dissonance: Sorry. Monokuma's still recovering from a slight glitch we had earlier. In the meantime...I guess I'll take the lead.

Dissonance: *Sigh* There's a script here.

Dissonance: Ahem, During the trial, you'll be asked to present arguments and evidence, and at the end you'll vote for...ugh..."whodunnit".

Dissonance: If you vote correctly, only the blackened will be punished, but if you pick the wrong person...

Dissonance: Blah, blah, blah, you get it.

Dissonance: Don't be stupid and you should be fine. Honestly, ignore me. Get on with it.

Chiyo Sakakibara: ...

Fuyuko Shirota: ...

Shin Akada: It's quiet in here. Too quiet.

Brittany Miller-Brown: Feels a lot bigger, huh?

Shin Akada: That, and nobody's actually talking.

Akari Aokichi: Well, should I get us started?

Fuyuko Shirota: Actually, I wanted to ask you, where were you during the investigation?

Akari Aokichi: Oh, me? I was sleeping!

Fuyuko Shirota: ...sleeping. Like, in your room?

Akari Aokichi: Where else, silly? I was sleeping so soundly, I didn't even hear the announcement! I woke up...some amount of time before the end of the investigation!

Fuyuko Shirota: How specific.

Chiyo Sakakibara: We're wasting time. Shouldn't we get started properly?

Fuyuko Shirota: Something I find interesting about this case is the lack of a clear murder weapon...but I'm not sure if it's even that important.

Brittany Miller-Brown: What?! How could something like that not be important? It's the murder weapon!

Fuyuko Shirota: Yes, but the murder weapons from the previous cases haven't exactly been central focuses...although I suppose Junpei's weapon helped us figure out the specific plan which led up to the murder, we didn't even know what the weapon used to kill Hidemi was until significantly far into the case.

Fuyuko Shirota: Based on this, we can take the route of reverse engineering a weapon. That is, we'll come back to it once we know more about the murder itself and see if we can figure it out like we did for Hidemi. But for now, it's not very important.

Makena Simiyu: Hm...good point. So where do we actually start?

Otoha Aoyama: To be honest, I think that I already know the killer's identity. To a seasoned killer like myself, their identity is laughably obvious.

Brittany Miller-Brown: Tell us, then!

Otoha Aoyama: No.

Otoha Aoyama: If I just told you the killer's identity, you simply wouldn't learn anything! And would any of you honestly believe me if I just told you?