Danganronpa: String Theory (DrV3)

4.24 - Echo of a Person

To my relief, there's a large black sheet over the whiteboard in his room, the ends tied around the legs of the board so it needs to be unknotted to actually look at it.

"Nice decorum..." Kaito mutters sarcastically, shining his light on every inch of the room like he's absorbing as much information about the environment as he can. Eventually, he also stops his light on the box of movies, with Himiko and I walking in first to examine what it contains.

"Um..." Himiko trails off after picking one up under Kaito's light. She squints like she's having a hard time reading it, strange since she's never voiced having issues with her eyes. "...'Approved: The scenes with the blob absorbing people will scare her'."

'Her'? He better not be talking about me!

"He's talking about you..." Himiko adds, turning the box over so I can see that the sticky note on it has a round little doodle of my likeness on the bottom left corner- with puffed up cheeks, a bow, and a frown.

"You're scared of horror movies, Prairie?" Shuichi curiously asks, picking up a few more and immediately raising an eyebrow at one film and frowning at the title. "I-Isn't this movie completely in Spanish...?"

Gonta's not in here, that much we can be sure of. When Kaito turns his flashlight to the opposite side of the bed though-

"WAAA! Kokichi! Is he dead?!" Kaito howls first, contrasting both our shock and my own expectations on the state of his lungs considering how sick he was yesterday. With my heart leaping up into my throat at just the suggestion he's blurted out, the three of us turn to see what he's talking about.

Initially, the sight of Kokichi's body face down on the floor almost makes me want to fall to my knees. He's at the top of my suspect list right now, yet when faced with the possibility of his death, I feel faint. My vision wobbles slightly and the flavor of bitterness coats the back of my throat.

Even the others have frozen, all of us unsure of how to process the discovery.

"There's four of us looking at him and no body discovery announcement, he's alive," Shuichi is the first to snap out of it and speak, allowing me to exhale a breath I confined in my lungs longer than I'd care to admit. My obvious relief is followed quickly by mild embarrassment when they all turn to look at me, but I ignore their stares as I get down to check on him.

"Where's his shirt...?" Himiko asks when she sees me wrapping my arm around his waist, watching his head loll uncomfortably to the side under gravity's pull. He's got his lights out for sure.

"Somewhere under the mess probably. What I wanna know is why he was fast asleep on the floor with a perfectly good bed two feet away," Kaito comments.

"He must have been there for a while, look at his face. The carpet left an imprint on his cheek and jaw," Shuichi observes, helping lift Kokichi from his other side so we can set him on his bed face-up.

Once Kokichi is in bed, we move back and let Kaito shine his light over his form.

"Wha..." Even Himiko is speechless when we see the state of his body, marks lining his neck, collar, chest, and abdomen.

They're not just any marks either.

It's bite marks and hickies.

There's a generous amount sprinkled all over in areas he wouldn't be able to reach and recreate himself. Maybe the hickies could be replicated, but definitely not the bite marks.

Whoever is behind this...did they have extra Love Hotel syringes at their disposal even with how many Kirumi took for herself? Or maybe Kokichi was knocked out rather than injected?