Danganronpa: ReProgrammed

Boys Life of Despair: Part 10

The rest of the day went by pretty uneventfully. Chihiro spent the day hanging out with Mondo and Taka, and eventually grew used to their back and forth banter. Again, this was at least better than having the two of them constantly fight. The friendship that had formed between then gave her some hope...

Friendship...

Chihiro had never had many friends growing up. If anything, she'd usually been picked on by a lot of people, or, more commonly, flat out ignored. Chihiro didn't really mind being alone, as long as she had her computers, but it hurt all the same when people would constantly whisper things behind her back, or make fun of her...That was before...No, there was no use thinking about that now...

That evening, she returned to her room, feeling very good about herself...However, if became clear that these good feelings weren't to last...The school bell rang as it usually did in the evenings, but Chihiro immediately noticed that something was...off. Usually, the school bell rang at 10pm, followed by the nighttime announcement, however, it was only 9:40pm, so it was 20 minutes too early for nighttime.

"Ahem, ahem, may I have your attention please?" Monokuma's cheerful face popped up on the monitor "I know that nighttime is fast approaching, but before then, everybody, report to the gym on the double! Emergency meeting time is a-go!"

The monitor screen went dark, and Chihiro could feel herself breaking out into a cold sweat.

Report to the gym? Emergency meeting? What is he up to now? 

...

I've got a bad feeling about this...

A really bad feeling...

"It is rather late in the evening..." Taka was the first to speak up after everyone arrived in the gym, everyone bearing very tense and worried expressions on their faces "what could Monokuma possibly want with us at this hour?"

"I admit, I am curious to see what that stuffed animal has in store for us this time..." Celeste confessed.

"Hmph..." Byakuya, who had shown himself to the group for the first time since the "incident",  smirked "great timing...I was beginning to get bored..."

"Would it kill you to put on a more pleasant expression while you laugh?" Hifumi asked quietly.

"Or like...can you not laugh at all?" Hina grunted "this isn't funny...! This a cause for concern?"

"Who is it you're concerned about?" Byakuya asked "actually, don't answer that...I don't really care..."

"What are you talking about now?" Junko grumbled "make sense dammit!"

"I'll be blunt. You're all fools," he sneered, as blunt as he'd claimed "you claim you don't want to live here, but you also refuse to kill anyone. You've been given plenty of options and you've rejected every single one of them...I'm amazed any of you can live your lives without any sort of goal in mind..."

"That's not true and you know it!" Hina snapped "I've had an idea or two! We all have!"

"Ah, that's right, now I remember..." Byakuya smirked "you and a few others were rather certain that the police would come looking for us...Tell me, how has that turned out? I don't see any evidence of an attempted rescue..."

Hina looked like she wanted to argue back, but she recoiled in surprise when she realized Byakuya had made an amazing point.

"Yeah, what is up with that?" Makoto chimed in "I thought for sure the Police would know if 16 Ultimate Students went missing, especially since we've been here for almost over a week now..."