Danganronpa: GHOST TOWN

Chapter Nine, Part Two: The Last of Us

The list stared up at me, my handwriting clear and centered. Each name was waiting for a sentence to be paired up with it.

Haruko Arakawa

Kiyoshi Hashumoto

Akemi Mataga

Kyofu Mashima

Manukena Josei

Shiyota Kazuyoshi

Mae Umari

Toshiro Kiyata

I frowned harshly at the page from my recently re-discovered notebook. I had been filling it with the flashes of memories that had come to me. Feeling the need to organize my thoughts on paper I had also began to work towards discovering a suspect that could be the Despair.

Mastermind: from Hope's Peak like us or planted in our memories to appear as though they were from Hope's Peak?

Next question: who here was lying? The answer? Everyone was, there was no doubt about that. We all had things we didn't want the group to know but I guess the right question wouldn't be 'who here was lying' but 'what is everyone hiding?' I could go around questioning everyone but of course the culprit would lie.

What about the Liar?

It wasn't the first time the thought crossed my mind and I struggled to organize it. To be safe I added it to my list.

Liar: possibly not real. If so, it is a distraction from the true traitor and a motive/IF real, they aren't a threat to the group and still have been used as a distraction- Monokuma OPENLY threatened their life to further his 'game'.

In my last sentence my penmanship was a little shaky but I believed what I wrote. My mind kept racing and I pressed the pen to the page again.

If Monkuma thought his motive would motivate the Liar then perhaps it's someone who seriously cares about the group?- or some of, or a member of.

I felt better as I scribbled my theories on paper. It was something I definitely should have done sooner. After filling up the space by the Liar I studied the name. Who would fit into that category? I found my eyes lingering on Mae.

She said she was a Dancer and yet had been dating a Hitman who was apart of the Yakuza. I remembered thinking it was strange in the beginning and when I asked she only said that he'd saved her from a bad crowd. A Hitman saving people. But I had seen him first hand helping to save Kaz.

Still there was enough doubt here to question it. If what Mae said during the trial was true about Ryu then did Monokuma have a point? Had his question for the Dancer been a hint? And it wasn't 'where did she fit in?' it had to be 'how did she fit in?'

I felt uneasy for I was sure that I liked Mae. It had been rough in the beginning but even now, after she'd lashed out at both Haruko and Kimiko, I still thought of her as an important friend. I paused. I had seen her dance. In the Arcade and in the Diner. She was really good. Doubt creeped up on me. But Kiyoshi was a wonderful dancer and he was an Inventor.

"We can't be bound by our Ultimates. We lose so much knowledge if we only focus on the one thing we excel at. For instance I graduated from here as the Ultimate Botanist and yet I designed and built the house I live in."

I fought to hold onto the sudden memory. To recall Rika's voice with more clarity. That was right...didn't she teach us more than we needed to know? More than our individual Ultimates?

My mind drifted to the others. I had to think about this like they would. I glanced at my ink smeared hands. I wrote poetry, and when I did I often used a different speaker or character to share thoughts or a perspective in each poem. I took the perspective of something outside myself. I just had to do that with the people here.