It All Started By One Single Tear (Rantaro x reader x YandereMastermind Kokichi)

Chapter 5 Part 4: Rantaro Amami's Ultimate Lab

Your POV:

    In terms of events this morning, a lot of things were happening, and some of what happened was good. However, what was going to come of everything that led to where we were now... I didn't know how things were going to end up for everyone.
    Before going to investigate the new areas, I managed to convince Gonta of a truth he didn't know. He thought everyone hated him after what happened, but that wasn't the case at all. After comforting him, he ultimately decided to come with us to investigate.
    We were on the fifth floor of the school, everyone deciding that starting on the fifth floor would be a good idea. I was one of the people who agreed with that. We managed to use the first key, and it caused the door to explode, but the weird thing was the key was still in my inventory.
    That led us to where we were now. Staring at a door that looked very unsettling. The pattern on the door looking a lot like blood and weapons. I knew this couldn't be Kaito or Kokichi's lab. That's what led to me saying...

    "Rantaro... I think this is your lab..."

In response to my words, Rantaro turned to me with a quizzical look on his face. He seemed to be thinking about what I was saying. I knew this had to be his lab, but what did this lab entail about his unknown talent...?
"Maybe if we go in, we can finally find out my talent..." Rantaro muttered, "I honestly never thought I was going to remember what it was, so hopefully my lab can give more insight, yeah?"
"Rantaro, the door to your lab looks unsettling!" Kaede exclaimed, "w-what if your talent is something that hurts people?"
"It's nice of you to worry about that, Kaede," Rantaro replied, "but I'm sure that isn't the case."
"In any case, we should go inside," Shuichi muttered, "we should see what's inside so we can try and pinpoint Rantaro's talent."
"I would honestly think Monokuma would be here for something like this..." Kirumi muttered, "maybe we should go in before he pops up."
I nodded lightly in response to that. I looked up at Rantaro, and he seemed to have a nervous look on his face. I honestly understood what was going through his head. He forgot his talent, and he was waiting for something to give him answers on that.
Now, Rantaro stood in front of the room that would hopefully give him answers. If I were him, I'd be having an anxiety attack about the whole thing. I still couldn't help but feel slightly paranoid about what designs were on the door to his lab. What if the lab was a lot scarier than the door.
I knew one thing... I had to put my fears of this unknown room aside for Rantaro's sake. He needed me for support, and I knew I needed to suppress my feelings on this for now. This moment was for Rantaro, not for me. That much was obvious.
    "Alright, let's enter and see what we find," Rantaro said, "I'll be ready with whatever I find, I'm sure of it."
    "I'm sure we will some how," I told him, "this is the moment you were secretly waiting for. This is something really important."
    Rantaro nodded at me with a small smile. It looked like he was starting to look less nervous about this whole situation. I mean... that was all I could hope for. Rantaro took a few moments to further compose himself.
    As soon as he did that, with my hand in his, he walked up to the door of his lab. He opened the door, motioning everyone else to follow him in as he walked in with me. As soon as I entered the room, there were many things I noticed. Things that startled me slightly.
    The room was lit dimly with shades of red being the only color of light unveiled by the darkness. The ambiance of the lab was weird. Most of the colors in this room consisted of black, red, and white. Pages and wooden picture frames hung from the ceiling, those things slowly moving with the slight breeze of the door opening and closing.
     There was a large circular table with a laptop on it, glowing green. That said table had many chairs surrounding it as well as the table being a hole in the center. I noticed a couple of vaults behind the table, as well as pictures... the room I was in was frightening to me. That was the vibe it gave off to me.
     The worse part about this however was the feeling of deja vu I felt. The table in the room looked familiar for some reason. The chairs that went with it gave the same feeling too. There was something about this room that connected to something we've had to deal with... that much was obvious to me.
    "So this is my lab, huh...?" Rantaro muttered, "it's a lot less settling than I thought it was going to be..."
"While the room is almost frightening, I was expecting it to be a lot more fearsome..." Kirumi muttered, "but what does this all mean?"
I understood Kirumi's question all too well. I had no idea what this lab had to do with Rantaro. Even seeing the lab for the first time, I had no idea what his talent was supposed to be. What I saw in here, it wasn't like the Rantaro I knew... it was strange how I couldn't figure out what his talent was or why this room felt so familiar to something else.
"I honestly have no idea on what talent this room screams..." Kaede muttered, "I'm slightly anxious and confused about this room. What does it mean...?"
"Maybe it has something to do with that vault..." Rantaro muttered, "think about it, why would there be a vault in here. There must be something in here that will explain everything, yeah?"
    "There is a chance that's the case, but..." Shuichi trailed off, "if we could just open those vaults, that'd be too easy."
    I knew that Shuichi was right about that. Monokuma would defiantly want to make this as hard as he could make it for us. He wouldn't just give us information for free. We either had to solve for it or find it ourselves. That was just how Monokuma played, and we couldn't do anything about that. All we could do was try to stay alive and try to keep ourselves from plunging into depression.
    "This defiantly looks like a quiz room," Kaede muttered, "but a darker version..."
"Maybe we should actually try to look around, yeah?" Rantaro asked, "all we're doing right now is commenting on how my lab looks, but we haven't actually investigated anything about it yet. Before we can try to figure out my talent, we need to find out everything we can about this room."
I knew Rantaro was right about that. Standing here and talking about what we see was not doing much. We couldn't find anything out just by standing here. Rantaro still had my hand in his, and I could feel myself getting more willpower to look around this room.
Rantaro looked at me, and he then walked to the back of the room. Since we were holding hands, it was more than obvious that he was taking me with him. We went around the large circular table, and soon enough, we were where Rantaro wanted to look first.
It was the two vaults that were in the back of the room. Now that I was in front of them, I could see something I didn't notice about it before. The center of the vault to the left said "B" in the center, and the one to the right said "A" in the center. There were two dials on the vaults, and it was starting to make sense on what these vaults were here for.
On vault B, there were pictures on it. The pictures held a lot of traction with astrology zodiac signs, but every astrology zodiac was pictured with a Monokuma design. Vault A however had pictures of Monokuma as different animals. I noticed the layout of the animals and I realized Monokuma was using the Chinese zodiac for this one. Fruits Basket never let me down.
I had the distinct feeling that these vaults were some sort of puzzle. The thing about it was the fact that I had no idea what the code was supposed to be. I didn't even think anyone was given any hints.
"It looks like this vault is a puzzle..." Rantaro muttered, "and Monokuma is using the astrology signs and the Chinese zodiac to lay out this puzzle."
"I saw that too," I muttered, "sadly I can't figure out what the code could be..."
"Hey, princess, it's going to be okay," Rantaro told me, "all we have to do is keep looking."
    I knew that Rantaro must've been very confused about this vault. Rantaro was probably still puzzled on what his Ultimate Talent really was, but he wasn't showing that. He was trying to be supportive to me, so I should be doing the same for him.
    "Rantaro, I'm sure we will find that code somehow," I told him, "you don't really show when you're worried about something, but I'm pretty sure you're worried."
    "Ah-haha, maybe you're right about that, (y/n)," Rantaro laughed, "I mean I wasn't expecting my lab to look like this, so ya got me there. As long as you're there to help me out, I'm sure everything will be okay, even if what I find about myself is something I wanted to stay long forgotten."
    Rantaro was still keeping his cool, and it was obvious. He was telling me that everything was going to be okay, but I didn't know if that was true. I found my gaze shifting to the wall, and that was when I got a closer look at something. In the back of the room, there were picture frames I couldn't make out, but now... I was closer to them, so I could see the contents on them.
     The contents of the picture frames showed unidentifiable head shots of people. Those picture frames had red x's across their faces, meaning that any sign of detecting them was untraceable. This led to a more terrifying realization on my part.
    These pictures... they reminded me of the class trials we had to take a part in. Seeing the pink x's across the faces of those we thought were dead... it was uncanny. This was just like how it was during the trial, but the x's were red, and the frames were hanging on wall.
     Even seeing this, I had no idea what Rantaro's talent was. All I knew is it had to do with events that were happening here. I couldn't pin point it though. I felt my head start to hurt from all of this information that was going through my skull. I didn't know if anyone else saw it.
    "Aside from the laptop, I think we've investigated all we could in my lab," Rantaro explained, "but for some reason, this room reminds me slightly of the class trials. In any case, let's not dwell on it for too long. We have more places to investigate, so why don't we go to those places instead of making ourselves lose brain cells over something we can't figure out yet."
     I knew Rantaro was right about that one. I agreed that there was no use dwelling on something we couldn't figure out at the moment. I knew everyone else would have to agree as well. I mean, this was Rantaro's Lab, not ours. That meant that it was his choice to leave for now and see if we could find anything else out about this.
"I-I agree," I muttered in response, "if we have more time after investigating the other areas, we could always come back..."
"I guess that makes sense," Kaede muttered, "what about you, Shuichi? Are you alright with leaving this area for now?"
"Y-Yeah," Shuichi replied, "I can't figure out this room, so we will just worry about it later."
"I guess it's decided then," Kirumi explained in a calm manner, "let's go unlock the other areas that we haven't unlocked yet."
I knew that there couldn't be any more areas on this floor to unlock. The same could be said about the second, third, and fourth floors. Those floors showed no signs of having anything to unlock. That meant the first floor and the outside probably had areas to unlock. That was all I could think of in this situation.
"We should take a look around the first floor," Shuichi muttered, "there was this black and white door I've been curious about for awhile. It's been locked for as long as I could remember, so what if one of these keys unlocks that door?"
"Shuichi that's an amazing deduction!" Kaede exclaimed, "why don't we go check out the door Shuichi was talking about?"
"I'm okay with that," Rantaro told Kaede.
"S-So am I," I muttered with a small smile.
It seemed like everyone agreed on going to the first floor and checking out the door Shuichi was interested in. We all headed down from the fifth floor, talking with each other to keep the silence away. Like I did on the way up to the fifth floor, I talked a lot on the fourth floor to keep my mind off of the events that took place there.
We made our way to the first floor in the same amount of time it took for us to reach the fifth floor. I honestly thought we would've moved a lot faster, considering we would have more momentum and friction with us coming down the stairs. I guessed that wasn't the case after all.
Before we knew it, we found ourselves at the pink and yellow metal door that led to the gym if I wasn't mistaken. Sometimes the layout of this place got pretty confusing. It seemed that as soon as we entered the door, I could see people standing near the door Shuichi was talking about. It was specifically Maki, Kaito, Tenko, and Himiko.
    I decided to try and wave at them to say hello. Maki gave a slight wave back, while Kaito... still avoided looking me in the eyes. I didn't know what I did for this to happen, but I knew if I tried to talk to him, it would be more awkward.
    Himiko seemed to be waving at us as well, Tenko trying to hold her other hand. Himiko had a bright smile on her face as she waved.
    "Nyeh, hey guys!" Himiko exclaimed, "you just missed Gonta. He said he was going to take a look outside."
'So we missed Gonta, huh...?' I thought.
Maki seemed to nod in response to what Himiko had just said. According to her words, they witnessed this happen with their own eyes. I knew I could trust Gonta. Hopefully, he could find some sort of clue on where one of these keys will go.
"There's something concerning me," Maki explained, "I honestly wonder where Kokichi is... There are only so many places he can hide."
"Honestly, that degenerate is probably moving around like the mouse he is!" Tenko exclaimed, "I think he's been moving constantly to avoid getting caught."
"That guy's really twisted if he enjoys people's suffering that much..." Maki muttered, "........and honestly... I'm not any better. I take people's lives for a living."
"Don't say it like that, Maki Roll," Kaito's voice suddenly boomed, "you're facing your past self. Unlike Kokichi. He doesn't even want to try and change. That's the worst decision you can make."
I knew what Kaito said was the truth. Shuichi and I seemed to reply in agreement of Kaito's words. In all honesty... you can't change someone unless they want to change. I learned that before Kaito mentioned anything about it. I realized it during one of my conversations with Kokichi.
In response to our words however, Kaito averted his gaze once more. It was getting slightly awkward now. I nervously looked towards Rantaro, and he seemed to have a slight glare on his face. Why was he showing anger... maybe...
'Did Rantaro figure out that Kaito has been seemingly avoiding Shuichi and I...?' I thought.
I could feel myself grow even more nervous from the tension I sensed. First, there was Kaito, who seemed to be upset with Shuichi and I. Second, there was my boyfriend, who had a glare plastered on his face.
"Kaito, you say that (y/n) is your supposed *sidekick*, along with Shuichi and Maki," Rantaro explained, "so why are you intentionally avoiding (y/n)? You've helped her gain confidence through training, but you do get that avoiding her gives her memories from the past?"
"R-Rantaro, y-you don't have to—" I tried to say before.
"Riddle me this, Rantaro," Kaito muttered, "how do you know that I'm avoiding her? What if I'm testing her overall resolve in her fear of losing friends?"
Kaito seemed to say those words emotionlessly as he turned away from Rantaro. With the way Kaito was acting, I couldn't tell if he was being serious, or if he was bluffing. I honestly had no idea.
"You have no evidence on what I'm trying to do, so mind your own business, Rantaro," Kaito muttered.
I looked down slightly, and I felt Rantaro squeeze my hand lightly. Looking back up at him, I saw he was smiling gently at me. It was like all of my worries were being melted away each and every time I saw that smile of his. Even though I felt more at ease for the time being, I was hoping Kaito wouldn't avoid me for much longer.
    "So, (y/n), try the same key you used to unlock Rantaro's lab," Shuichi told me.
    I nodded lightly in response to his words. I walked up to the door, seeing the black and white pattern on it. If I wasn't mistaken, this door kinda reminded me about Kokichi's scarf. It was probably just the colors of the door that probably made me think that way.
    The key used to unlock the door that led to Rantaro's Lab was still here, so there was a chance it could be used for this door right here. There was only one way to find out in a situation like that however.
    I took the key I had in my hand, and I placed it into the lock of the door. The key seemed to fit, causing a clicking sound as soon as I turned the key. The door was unlocked, and the key disappeared as soon as that door was unlocked.
    "It looks like I was right," Shuichi said, "that key unlocked two areas instead of one."
   "We should go in to see what this room leads to!" Kaede exclaimed, "I'm sure it'll be fun!"
    I didn't know if it was going to be "fun". Last I checked, Kaito was being awkward around Shuichi and I, and Rantaro called him out before I unlocked the door. I knew for a fact Kaito and Maki were going to look in that room. Tenko and Himiko decided to come as well.
    Before I could say anything and make the energy weirder for everyone, I let go of Rantaro's hand and went ahead of everyone. As soon as I walked into the black and white doors, I could feel a deadpanned expression form on my face when I saw the first glimpses on what was in here.
    There was a short hallway that had a spiral staircase at the end of it. That said staircase looked pretty long, and I couldn't help but have a deadpanned look on my face from seeing it. I was going to have to climb this thing, and it wasn't going to be fun.
    'My worst enemy...' I thought, 'climbing long sets of stairs...'
    I felt someone tap my shoulder twice. Turning around, I saw Rantaro smile at me as he noticed the staircase. It looked to be a really long stair case, and I didn't want to make myself suffer by climbing them. One or two staircases was one thing, but this looked longer than any of the staircases here.
"That staircase does look pretty long, yeah?" Rantaro asked me, "you look like you don't want to climb it, so how about I carry you up?"
I could feel my face flush up slightly from that comment Rantaro made. He probably noticed my expression and concluded that I wouldn't want to go through all of the trouble to climb those stairs. I didn't even know how long this staircase was, and I didn't want to force him to carry me up all of those.
    "Y-You don't need to do that," I stuttered nervously.
    "Alright then," Rantaro told me in response to that.
    Almost instantly, he let go of my hand, and he started moving pretty quickly to the spiral set of stairs. He quickly moved up the staircase, each step taken causing him to go out of sight once he got high enough.
    I had a feeling I knew what Rantaro was doing. When he wanted me to prove him wrong, he always did something that rigged it in his favor. The first time he did this, it was when when him and I first met. He told me I couldn't walk after falling so many times, so he walked to fast, suddenly stopping me, somehow causing me to fall onto my face.
I wanted to prove him wrong on this. Shuichi, Kaede, Kirumi, Tenko, Himiko, Kaito, Maki, and Rantaro were already going up the stairs and out of my vision. With determination in my eyes, I started running up the staircase as fast as my legs would take me. As I started running, my mind could only wander so much when I was in a new sense of surrounding. I had no idea where staircase would lead. I honestly wondered where it would lead.
.....
A few minutes passed by, the voices of my investigation group ringing through the area I was in. I couldn't hear Rantaro speaking, so I knew he must've been focused on proving me wrong, or he was already at the top.
I however felt my heart pounding rapidly as I tried to keep running. I was heaving slightly, trying to get air into my lungs as a result of the physical activity. I was an Otaku who watched anime and read manga. My stamina might've been a bit higher from the sit-ups and push-ups, but my stamina was still garbage.
It seemed no matter how far I went, the staircase was never ending. I stopped for a moment to take a breather. My hands were on my knees as I painted slightly, sweat forming on my forehead. There was just one thing frustrating me about this situation.
"How long is this staircase!?" I shouted, "if I can't get past this, I'll never prove Rantaro wrong!"
I let out a frustrated sigh. There was no use in just standing here. I started running up the stairs again, the pounding in my heart going max speed again. I continued to move my legs despite the look that these stairs were never ending. These stairs had to stop at some point. They just had to...
It seemed that another few minutes went by, and I finally made it up the stairs. I collapsed onto my knees as soon as I made it to the top. I was panting, trying to catch my breath. I continued to pant, not being able to register the sound of footsteps coming closer to me.
"So, (y/n)," Rantaro said with a chuckle, "what was that about being able to go up a long flight of stairs by yourself~?"

Hey guys! I apologize for my absence last week! I was doing a lot of college work, and I needed a break for a week. I hope this chapter was worth the wait. And I know a lot of you will hate where I left off.

Does that matter though? We are cruising through chapter five smoothly for now... a huge moment is here! Rantaro finally unlocked his lab! He also knows about the puzzle for him. What will that entail.

Who knows. In any case, you all have a great weekend! I will see you all next week! Ciao!- yuki_no_fuyu