Danganronpa: Days Before Despair

Chapter 47~Searching for the Keys

Super High School Level Warrior Ryo Matsuki's POV

Chiyosu and I figured that looking for the keys was a good idea if we wanted to get out of here as soon as was possible, so we split up to search for any hints as to who could have taken them. I made a run for the headmaster's office on the fourth floor of the school and began to look around.

Surprisingly, the room was a mess. Papers were flung everywhere, making me gasp. Whoever had taken the keys had no idea where they would be, so it was probably somebody who wasn't used to being in here. That crosses quite a few suspects off of the list, believe it or not.

I began to search through the mess, hoping to find some sort of clue, any sort of clue. I didn't seem to be having all that much luck for a while, though after about ten minutes of looking through everything, I came across something that could be considered useful.

A fake nail.

It was pretty long and red in color. If you stabbed somebody hard enough with it, it might kill them. It was pretty tough, too, not to mention sharp. I held it from the dull end, not wanting to scratch my skin open on accident.

Who wore long, red, fake nails? I knew for sure that it wasn't a guy, as there was no chance that they would ever do something like that. Well... Maybe some sort of cross dresser, but I don't think there are any at the school.

I figured that it had to be a girl of some sort, so now it was just a matter of which girls wore enormous fake nails like that? I bet that it was somebody who was extremely girly and ditzy and other things of that nature. Basically, the girls that I try to avoid.

I mentally cursed my dislike of those girls, as now, I didn't know which ones wore long nails like that and which ones didn't. Maybe if I paid more attention to them before, we wouldn't be in this situation now.

I looked around for a little bit longer and found a complete list of students that attend the school. It wasn't hard to find, as it was a pile of blue notebooks. Each individual book was pretty light, but together, even a sumo wrestler would have trouble lifting them. I don't know how I managed to pick up the stack from a drawer and set it down onto the desk with a booming 'thud'.

I picked up the top book and began to flick through it. I frowned. There were eight girls in each book, and there had to be at least ten books. Eighty girls to sort through. Who would feel the need to take the keys out of those eighty?

You see, this is why I stay away from detective work. It's far to hard to tell who did what in this case or who did that in that other case.

All I knew was that I was going to be here for a long time.

Super High School Level Actress Chiyosu Sunadu's POV

Ryo didn't come to find me with any clues after a while, so I decided to go and look for him. I had checked the headmaster's private room (which was pretty nice, I must admit) and there was nothing there that seemed out of the ordinary or extremely important.

I found Ryo in the headmaster's office. He was looking through a book. He sat next to a pile of huge blue books. Ryo sighed and looked up when he saw I had come in. "This is tiring," he declared. "Whoever came up with the idea of putting all of these notebooks separate is going to get hurt. I hate having to look through ten notebooks at once."

"What did you find? Well, other than the excessive amount of notebooks right there," I said, looking up and down his pile of notebooks. "Are there any clues in there?"

"I found a fake nail on the floor and figured that it had to belong to a girl. And then I started looking through all of these notebooks for which girls could have done it," Ryo explained. He sighed. "But there are eighty one girls in total, and looking through all of them is a pain. Plus, I don't know half of these girls, so I don't know if they'd wear fake nails or not."

"Yeah... I don't know everybody here, either," I frowned. "But I know at least half. Maybe we can put our knowledge together and figure out who might have taken the keys."

"Let's try that for now. If it doesn't work, then we can get Ai in on this and tell her that we almost figured it out," Ryo suggested.

I nodded. "Then let's get to work."

~

About an hour later, we had eliminated about half of the girls because they were tomboys or wouldn't bother with fake nails. The sound of the other students complaining was just as deafening as it had been before, if not more so. The sound was starting to make its way from the first floor all the way up to the fourth floor, which made me groan. Couldn't those guys chill out for just a second?! We were trying our best!

"I didn't realize that it would take so long to do this. On the cop shows on TV, it takes an hour to solve the mystery, not just go over the suspect list," Ryo groaned.

"We have eighty one suspects. It's hard to narrow it down when you have that many potential culprits," I told him. "Just be patient. We have to figure this out if we want to get out of here by the end of the school day. We only have two more hours."

Ryo nodded and turned back to the list. "What about Mahiru Koizumi? Do you think that she would wear fake nails?"

"Denied," I said for the thirty ninth time. I was getting sick of saying that over and over by now.

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RIP

-Digital