Danganronpa: GHOST TOWN

Chapter Eight, Part Two: Despair Out of Love

~ALL RISE~

The surface of every wall in Monokuma's trial room had been replaced with screens. It came as no shock to see the room different once again. Like many other things, this was something I now found myself expecting.

Beautiful swirls of color, shapes and flowers bloomed into existence before wilting and fading to something dry and dead. A perfect reminder of life and death.

Mae faltered when she reached her podium, a portrait now taking the place of Ryu just beside her. I thought maybe she would start crying again but she only regarded the photo with a solemn gaze before standing beside it, arms crossed. She appeared calm but I knew that was something that would change once we began talking.

From the corner of my eye I caught sight of Saori's portrait, crossed off with a large X. I looked away. I hated that we had to do this again. It had only been a day. Monokuma had to have caused something to happen. No one could be over what happened last time so quickly.

My anger momentarily faded as Kaz collapsed into the chair he had been allowed to use. His face looked ashen and his body shook with weakness. I had to tear my eyes away, the sight too painful to watch. Monokuma -and whoever was working with him- were pushing us to all our breaking points. They wanted us to suffer in the worst possible ways.

"Someone was eager to come back here." Monokuma grinned from his chair. "I wonder if you'll be able to vote correctly this time! Will you make the right choice, or the dreadfully wrong one?"

"We shouldn't be making a choice!" My voice bounced around the room with more volume than usual. This remodeling must have affected the acoustics.

Toshiro shook his head. "No one wants to sentence someone to die but-"

"No!" I glared. "I mean we shouldn't be here! Not so soon. We shouldn't have to stand here again."

It seemed Kiyoshi agreed for he spoke just as fervently about it as I. "It makes no sense." His purple eyes traveled over each of us. "Please, if you're the blackened just tell us. And tell us why. I thought maybe, with the eleven of us that the killing could stop." I watched as his gaze grew clouded with tears. "I thought we were all friends."

"Thinking like that will only make this worse." Kyofu cut in.

Toshiro had a lost look on his face. "I'm not sure any of us can be friends in this room."

After letting that sink in I felt no better than before.

"Listen, we're here to find out who did it, so get over it already." Kena huffed and crossed her arms, looking no happier than I felt.

"Not get it over with." Mae addressed us with dull but harsh words. "We're going to expose the blackened and then they will pay for what they did." Her eyes rose to mine. "And stop seeing it as though we become murderers each time we vote. These are just the rules of living here, it doesn't make us killers."

"Deciding to kill in your own time is different?" Kiyoshi didn't seem as though he agreed. "So you're saying that that is the only bad part about this?"

Mae refused to answer. She crossed her arms and duly gazed back at him.

"Please don't fight about this." Kimiko said hesitantly.

Akemi nodded quickly. "We're already so uncertain of each other, we don't need to add fighting to the list of things to worry about."

"What...what evidence...was found?" Kaz spoke softly with much effort, bringing surprised attention to himself.

"We didn't have much time to investigate but I'm sure some of us found something." Toshiro said. I tried to look only at his face whenever he spoke, Saori's photo too near to bear.