Chapter Text
Akira Sakamoto hadn’t considered killing anybody since entering Hope’s Peak Academy all those weeks ago, but her resolve was certainly being tested.
It was the middle of the fifth class trial. An unknown body had been discovered by Genocide Jill earlier, and the remaining students were left to scramble for clues and try to figure out who on earth would've killed a student that they didn't even know existed.
Hiro had walked into the room convinced that the dead body belonged to Kyoko, and despite nearly everyone’s dismissal of this idea, considering that Kyoko was actively in the room with them, they were forced to present evidence as to why the Kyoko that they were faced with was, in fact, the real one, as opposed to a ghost.
Makoto, to his credit, noticed that the corpse was wearing fake nails, and deduced that it therefore couldn’t be Kyoko, because Kyoko wore gloves at all times, and gloves and fake nails sounded like a logistical nightmare. “Besides,” he continued. “Kyoko wears gloves to hide her hands, right? It’d be pretty weird for someone who’s self-conscious about their hands to wear fake nails, don’t you think?”
“Jeez man, you don’t know women, huh? They’re complicated like that!” Hiro insisted.
Hina rolled her eyes. “If anyone doesn’t know women, it’s you!”
Akira sighed. The debate had been derailed. Granted, the debate didn’t make sense even when they’d been staying relatively on topic, but this was a whole new level of ludicrousness.
Clearly, Akira wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Byakuya looked downright exasperated as he turned to Kyoko. “Well, Kyoko? Any thoughts?”
Akira knew that Kyoko had to be just as annoyed as she was at that moment. Still, Kyoko remained patient. Akira didn’t know how she did it. “These gloves were custom-made to the size of my hands to make sure they don't interfere with my daily life. If I wore fake nails, the gloves wouldn't fit properly.”
Makoto nodded. “Then that’s that. The dead body doesn’t belong to Kyoko.”
“Which should have been obvious, since she’s standing right here.” Byakuya deadpanned.
Hiro, to his credit, ignored this, finally ready to move on. "Okay, so, who's the real victim? First we need to figure that out!"
"That's what we've been trying to do since the beginning." Akira squeezed her eyes shut. Normally, she'd be more patient with Hiro, but this whole argument that he'd manufactured was completely pointless.
"You're the one who's been dragging us in circles." Byakuya added, glaring at the other boy.
Akira thought that this whole trial was completely unfair. How were they supposed to figure out the murderer of a student they couldn't even identify? She wanted to scream at Monokuma, at the mastermind who had placed them all there. To be fair, those feelings had been present in Akira since she and her classmates had initially been trapped inside of Hope’s Peak Academy, but they were even more apparent at that moment.
What sort of motivation would anyone have for killing a complete stranger, anyways? Monokuma hadn't given the students an incentive for murder this time - in fact, for most of this week, Akira and her friends had all figured that he was dead.
Basically, the whole thing was ridiculous. That was nothing new, though. Akira’s life was ridiculous, at least at the moment. If she could go back in time and tell a past version of herself that in the not-so-distant future, she’d be trapped in a school where an evil teddy bear would try to force her to kill her classmates for a chance to escape, she never would’ve believed it. And yet, there she was.
How had everything gone so wrong?