Danganronpa Zero

Chapters Thirteen & Fourteen

The courtyard at Hope's Peak Academy's eastern quarter, deep at night.

The lights from the surrounding facilities were long gone. Only the street lamps, installed at fixed intervals, still dimly illuminated the darkness.

In front of the clock tower on the edge of the courtyard stood a teenage girl, alone. She narrowed her eyes and looked at the clock above her head.

"He should be here soon," she whispered. The girl was waiting for someone.

When she first contacted the man, he coldly refused to meet her, insisting that it wasn't necessary. But once she'd procured documents concerning shady deals in his past, she found him much more open to the suggestion. It wasn't hard - after all, she made her livelihood discovering people's secrets. In fact, she thought this one had given up a little too easily. What else was he hiding...?

- Fame is a fickle food...

- You work so hard to get it, and all it gets you is your freedom lost...

The man she was waiting for was a member of Hope's Peak Academy's steering committee.

There was a reason she had to meet a member of the committee. There was something she had to ask directly, whatever the cost. There was a certain truth that the committee were earnestly trying to hide. A truth even her client - Hope's Peak Academy's headmaster - most likely did not know. The only avenue of investigation was to question a committee member directly.

She had come to that important realization only a few short days after setting out on her investigation. Her formidable talent led her to it.

Her name was Kyouko Kirigiri.

She was a student in Hope's Peak Academy's 78th class, and bore the title of "Super High-school Level Detective". And right now, she was employed by Hope's Peak's headmaster to investigate a certain incident.

"He sure is late..." she whispered, looking up at the clock tower once more.

Five minutes late.

- I should have asked him to be strictly on time...

The wrinkles on her forehead deepened. But the moment she lowered her eyes from the clock, they disappeared. She saw a figure of a man in the distance.

The figure glanced around, seemingly on guard, then proceeded slowly toward where she was standing. His features slowly became clearer. He was an elderly man wearing a pitch-black suit and a matching pitch-black necktie, as if he was on the way back from a funeral. His grizzled hair was unnaturally stiff with pomade, and seemed almost artificial.

As the man came closer, his face also revealed itself. His brow was covered with deep wrinkles that seemed to be chiseled directly into his skull. The sunken eyes below them glared at Kyouko with a disgusted expression.

The distance between the two narrowed, and finally, when there were only three meters separating them, the man stopped.

"...Was it you who called me here?" The man opened his small, straight mouth and raised the question in a severe tone of voice. "What is it you wa -"

But, his words were cut short.

Something absurd, something completely out of place, came falling down from the sky - - and both the man and his words -

- were flattened by it.

Kyouko felt as if the scene before her was a stop motion animation -

- as though she was witnessing a series of ridiculous tableaus.