Danganronpa: Locked Doors of Despair

Ch.4 Deadly Life Part 2: Of Walls, Weakness, and Waltzes

Tozen

"Could your bones be weak? Maybe I could make you something with figs. They have loads of calcium," I offer.

"Pretty sure my bones are fine. Even Wakumi can't shatter my toes just by stomping on them once, especially not without cletes or anything like that," he smirks.

"Then your pain tolerance is pitiful," I snark playfully.

"WOW. That's rude," he announces dramatically, and with his current expression, it's hard to figure out whether or not he's kidding.

"Sorry," I apologize quietly, just in case. I don't think he can really hear me, but he doesn't say anything either way. Eventually, we arrive, and he opens the door to the training grounds. We both yelp. There are a hoard of weird Monoinu that look ever-so-slightly off standing against every single wall.

"These must be those prototypes. Wakumi's called them 'Protoinu' in the past. Their eyes are goddamn soulless, man," Yuu shivers, cradling himself.

"You've got that right. Not that the model we've already seen is much better. At least those ones are more huggable."

"Wakumi mentioned that they have a mode with armor. Maybe if we activate it, they'll be less creepy. Protoinu, put on your ar--"

"WAIT, that could be dangerous!" I attempt to interject, grabbing his arm.

"mor... Shit!' he finishes, yanking his arm out of my grip forcefully. Fortunately enough, they suit up, but stay in the same stoic position, not making any effort to rush at us. "Goddamn, this place is gonna give me five billion heart attacks all at once!" he pants. "I think I've already had like eight!"

"Let's just get to investigating. They look cute and/or funny now, so we don't have to feel like something haunting is staring at us." We get to work, heading to the area with the bows first and foremost. We're just testing around for idiosyncrasies. Neither of us know how to tell if a bow has been used recently, or even if that's something you can test, so we waste a lot of time testing out each individual one for tiny differences until we come across a bow with a very OBVIOUS difference. "Welp, that'll do it. A snapped bowstring is clearly an indication of unwholesome business. The Monoinu probably would've fixed or restocked it if it had been a while since it broke."

TRUTH BULLET: BROKEN BOWSTRING

"Well, if we found the bow, we should look through some of those arrow pouches," Yuu recommends. We check them, carefully detailing the amount of arrows in each one-- the small ones seem to have six, the medium have fifteen, and the large ones have twenty-four. "Oh! This one has twenty-two! It's missing two!"

"Huh. I'm surprised the killer decided to take a big arrow bag. You'd think a smaller one would be lighter and quieter," I point out.

"You're right. Seems like an odd choice, huh?"

TRUTH BULLET: ARROW BAG

It's then that we start to hear yelling. The wall between here and the playground is exceptionally thin."Oh, God, the girls are fighting. I understand why Zu wanted to redraw," I sigh.

"Sh-Should we check on them?"

"Let's just chill in front of the door real quick. We'll intervene if it starts to sound like it's getting physical. I have a feeling that if we were to jump in too early, it would just make things worse."

"If you s-say so."

We chill outside the door of the playground, hearing loud bickering. I can't help but chuckle a bit when Azumi says something extremely snarky, but it quickly escalates to yelling about who deserves to be more bitter, and Wakumi doing something to Bisque's present. D-Did she really? Is that what Zu overheard? Afterwards, it starts to die down, but Yuu is trying to blink back tears right next to me, and I feel like somebody just sucker-punched me in the chest, so we get out of there ASAP. "I... can't believe that," I mumble, dumbfounded.