Kaede felt sick to her stomach.
First, the three-day motive. She had tried her best, keeping the 'class' united with the power of hope while planning to murder the mastermind using the shotput-ball trick.
Which ended up failing and killing her friend, Rantaro Amami, instead. One of the few people she actually trusted in the 72 hours of worry and despair.
After that, she had found out that Tsumugi, who had painted her nails only the previous day, was one of the two crazy masterminds of this entire Killing Game.
After Tsumugi had bailed, Kaede was left with 13 remaining classmates, more worry and sorrow, and the fact that there was another traitor among them.
And guilt. Guilt for having killing intent. Guilt for killing. Guilt for not finding the mastermind earlier. She was full of it, welling up inside her, so close to overflowing. She sat on her bed in her dorm room just before breakfast, trying to calm herself down. She was the leader. The shining beacon. No one knew about the shotput ball trick yet, no one but Shuichi. With luck, Monokuma had cleaned up the bo--Rantaro already. Imagining the pool of blood in the library, sinking into the carpet made Kaede freak out once more.
Just then, someone knocked on the door.
"K-Kaede? Are you feeling a-alright? Breakfast is starting now, so K-Kirumi asked me to come to fetch you."
No. She couldn't go crazy. Not at this critical time, when everyone else counted on her. Everyone else was scared, too. Everyone sans the other mastermind.
"Yes, I'm coming!" she called.
She straightened her tie once more and gave her cowslick a little tug, before finally leaving her room.
She was the last person in the room--Kirumi had already served everyone breakfast, western style today. Shuichi and Kaede sat down on the last two seats between Kaito and Kirumi, trying not to look at two unoccupied seats at the end of the table. After a period of silence in which everyone just sat and ate, she tried to put her thoughts in order. It was the quietest morning of their time in the Ultimate Academy, which wasn't saying much since it was their 4th morning together. But it was what made the place so quiet that unnerved Kaede. Since it was partially her fault.
After she felt like the silence had gone on long enough, she stood up.
"Alright, guys. Can I have your attention please?"
13 heads instantly turned towards her.
"I think that we need to talk about what happened last night," she started
"When the avocado dude got guacamoled and plain Jane admitted to being one of the masterminds of this entire thingy? What is there to discuss, Kaededs?" Miu leaned back in her plastic chair and groaned.
"We're back at square one, without the threat of slow death by mauling." Kirumi pointed out.
The Kaede inside agreed, but she had to remain optimistic. "Well, now we're one step closer to finding the other mastermind and getting out of here!"
