Danganronpa Midnight: Lantern Lament (Fanganronpa)

Chapter 2 - A Grasp of Fading Spotlight

"Eh. It was fine." I shrugged and stood up. "Try not worrying about Satoshi and worry about yourself. He'll turn up eventually."

"Alright, I suppose." She exhaled a breath and held her hand out towards me. "Let's go to breakfast, shall we? After yesterday, everyone might be a bit down."

"True. Let's get going."

I took her hand as we both began walking to the dining hall.

-

Hidemi's pushed the door open and we stepped inside, noticing a few missing faces.

Satoshi and Kenjiro weren't here, along with Kokoro.

I should've guessed Kokoro wouldn't have come. She was a mess yesterday and I doubt she could just recover overnight. Satoshi makes sense too, seeing as he wasn't that good either yesterday.

But Kenjiro...? What's he up to?

The atmosphere was strangely silent, contradicting the mountains of conversation I usually heard in this room every morning

Hidemi was right. Everyone seems unhappy today.

That's when I realised the corkboard on the wall had changed. Out of all sixteen photos of us, Akemi's, Shunsuke's and Shimura's all had red strings tied to pins drawn across them, forming large Xs over their faces.

"What the...?" I said as I took my seat.

"Do you like what I've done with it?" Ryoko happily sat by me, admiring her own work. "It really...illustrates how exciting our game is, don't you agree?"

"As if." I rolled my eyes.

"Hm. You'll learn to appreciate it soon enough, Chiyo." She smiled, taking a sip of tea. "It's just marking down the dead. Nothing wrong with that."

After that, I couldn't say anything else. To be honest, I was too tired to argue. Seems like everyone else was too, and even they couldn't do anything or be bothered to change it.

It looks like...we're all finally accepting this situation.

...God, this sucks.

"So..." Yuna spoke up. "Is everyone ok?"

"What does it look like?" Yukari mumbled, taking a bite out of her toast.

"I was just asking...!" She lowered her head.

"Clearly we are not ok! Three people died! True, one was an asshole and one was a killer of two, but still. Do you seriously think we would be ok?" Yukari continued, not holding back. "Shimura was the only alright one out of the three."

"It was just a question. Calm down!" Kairi stopped her.

"Tch. I'm just being honest!"

"Enough." Tatsuo sighed. "Arguing isn't going to get us anywhere. Alright, ladies?"

"Right." Hidemi nodded, reinforcing what he had said. Kairi and Yuna just huddled together, while Yukari leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.

"That's rich, coming from you."

"H-Huh?" Tatsuo didn't know what to say. "What are you getting at?"

"You still haven't told us what the hell your secret meant! You know, if you don't tell us, we're going to just assume to worst, right?" Yukari said.

"I-"

"Ah, she's correct!" Ryoko cheered, interrupting him. "Tatsuo, why don't you tell everyone?"

"But...Everyone's not here." Finn added.