Danganronpa: String Theory (DrV3)

4.24 - Echo of a Person

I face her and hold out the spare duffle bag and flashlight, making her turn enough for me to make out her face just a bit under her dusty rose pink hood. The white fluff around the hems of her snow jacket make her lilac eyes pop more despite the shade the hood offers.

"...Y-Yes. I'm ready," she hesitantly answers with a disquieted voice, taking the duffle back from my outstretched hand.

Hm. She sounds like Kaede.

After she takes it, I take her other hand and feel her body flinch again. The others are watching us with investigative eyes, which nearly bug out from their heads as I make contact with her fairly normal skin.

No decay, no blemishes, nothing signifying her having died. She's a little warm.

Kaede is completely tense, but she still lets me pull her forward so she's a bit closer. I know she hasn't been around for a while, but I've only seen her this nervous once. Back when she opened her door to Rantaro and I, when she was apologizing for trying to kill me.

Against my gut feeling to just get moving, I reach up and lift her hood slightly to get a look at her face. A nervous and somewhat fearful expression greets me as I do, scanning her features.

...She remembers dying.

At the sudden quip in my mind, a whisper from my intuition I still don't expect to hear unless my eyes are closed, my hand on her hood lets go quickly. I definitely wasn't asking it, but I was wondering about it...was that enough to trigger an answer?

If my intuition keeps handing me answers without my prompting, won't that be troublesome though? I might exhaust my backlash-free reserve of prompts sooner than later. If I pass out in a trial, that will definitely be a problem. Or worse, if I need to go into an execution floor to save someone, I could die passing out from the backlash.

Now's not the time to think about that. Gonta needs to be found as soon as possible.

"Let's go," I say as I tug on her hand lightly, leading her to the exit and giving a careless wave to the rest of the pairs. "We'll regroup back here if we can't find anything so we can tick down all the places we searched and note any places we may have missed."

"Right. Stay safe- both of you," Shuichi says, falling quiet as he and the others watch us step out into the blizzard. Cold wind sweeps snow inside the dormitories as we walk out under the daylight, rays of sunshine hidden behind the clouds of frigid fog and snow swept landscape.

It really is a blizzard now, and the wind has picked up. For Kaede, the layers of powder snow reach her knees. For me, it reaches just past them quite a bit, melting and seeping into my pants at contact. I don't need the layers of clothing, other than for show of course.

"I can't really think of a place where Gonta would go, but we should check the third floor first where his lab is. Unless Maki already checked that area while she secured Kirumi, we might find him with his bug buddies," I say after we walk into the academy building, catching Kaede off guard with my voice.

"...You're too casual about this..." I hear her answer, though she follows me diligently as I make my way to the location of the stairs.

"Well, there's really no point in slowing down to be shocked. I'll admit I didn't actually think the crummy ritual from the stupid book would work at all," I sigh, pointing my flashlight along the floor so I don't trip on anything. "Welcome back to hell."

"That's exactly what it feels like," Kaede's voice comes out normally this time, unlike her initial quiet responses or comments. "I remember everything."