Biding Time

Makoto figured it would be best to bide the time until he absolutely had to make an action. Of course, that was the logical thing to do. He stupidly let his curiosity get the best of him with Sayaka, and now all of his actions were three times more risky and uncomfortable.

He did a good job of not rushing headfirst into the next action. It was now past nighttime on day one. Sayaka's trigger now made it very awkward to be around her, even if she didn't notice anything she did, but he kind of avoided her since then. He had absolutely no clue about what Kyoko's trigger did, as the description about it wasn't exactly clear.

"Makoto!" Monokuma shouted, appearing in his room again.

"Uagh!" Makoto shouted. "Stop it with that!"

"Nope, nope, nope, I'm going to be doing that whenever I want to talk to you! Anyways, you're feeling awkward about your encounter with Sayaka? That awkwardness will go away by the end of the week and you'll end up fully embracing your new life!"

Makoto sighed. "What do you want from me?"

"Well, I figured that I haven't talked to you at all since the game started, so you haven't had the chance to ask me any questions about the fine details. And I do have some extra information to give to you, but that will come after the Q and A session."

Makoto thought about his questions. "Alright. I have a few questions. Not that I'm excited about this game, but this is important to my survival. What exactly constitutes the difference between a passive trigger and an active trigger?"

"A passive trigger is something that they instinctively do without you having to physically do anything. It could be something like a change in their daily habits, an inability to comprehend something, or something that only happens when they're interacting with you or in your general vicinity. Sometimes it can be triggered permanently on, other times it's situational. For example, a trigger that requires you two to be alone before it activates will be considered passive, since it's possible for you to be alone without you physically doing anything. An active trigger is something that you physically have to do in order to make it work. Most of the time that's verbal commands, but as you've already seen with Sayaka motions and gestures work as well."

"Okay, I see..." Makoto said. "Next: what did Kyoko's trigger do? The description says that she dresses only to maintain her outward appearance. What does that mean?"

"Oh, Kyoko's trigger? There's no way you'd be able to make use of that trigger this early in the game. It's definitely happening though. I'll leave the answer a mystery, but it's honestly very simple to understand. To be fair, a relatively innocent mindset like yours might have trouble comprehending it."

Well... that didn't help at all. He's probably going to figure out what it is sooner or later, though.

"What about my status? Does it ever go down?" Makoto asked.

"Oh, your status? Like Innocent, Slightly Hormonal, that? Well, no it doesn't go down. But if I end up running out of ideas I might stick in some lower-level actions for the people you have a low amount of triggers for. That's only if I run out of ideas, though. Just assume that there's no going back."

"What are the girls thinking when the triggers are happening? Do they notice?"

"They do notice what they're doing, but they feel like it's something that they've always done, or something that shouldn't need explaining. Any more questions?"

"Anyways, how do people comprehend Clean Up Time?"

"Ah, that one's a good question," Monokuma replied. "That one's actually kind of difficult to explain. Clean Up Time itself is actually just them zoning out. It'll be like a gap in their memory. But as long as you make it look like your action never happened, and don't do anything stupid, you'll be fine."

"Define stupid."

"Like, if you do nothing, they will notice the results of the action, even though they don't remember the action itself. If you do something small and unimpactful, like slightly move their location, no one will notice as long as there is a reasonable explanation for why they would be there. For example, if you were to move Kyoko's seat earlier in order to clean up the water and didn't put her back in the exact same place, it wouldn't be a big deal. She wouldn't notice as it could be reasonable that the chair was in a different location and she just didn't move it. However, if you were to strip her naked during that time, she would definitely notice an instant change. So, people won't notice you 'teleporting' due to Clean Up Times unless you're in the middle of a conversation unrelated to your Action or something like that."

Makoto sighed. "I see." It was difficult to understand, but he felt he had a base of an idea.

"It looks like you're out of questions now, puhu! Well, I'll start by saying a few things. Because of your delaying the motives, I've decided to begin opening up the floors. I was originally going to only open them up after each ****, but this kind of throws a wrench in the original plan. Second, because of the nature of some of these actions you're going to have to do, I've updated your handbook to become a Universal handbook. You can use it to open any locked door in the academy, including the doors to the dorms and the girls' locker room on the next floor. Well, you won't be able to unlock the vault main door, or any of the stairwells I've blocked off, but you get the point. Third regards the game. I didn't add this in the instructions, but once you've gotten all the girls to the same level, you'll unlock something that will definitely help you in this game. It will vary depending on what level you achieved, but they're much more useful than each individual trigger. I originally meant for this to be a surprise, but you're seeming a little let down, so I decided to let you know to motivate you."

"I see..." Makoto said. "So If I get all the girls to unlock one trigger, than I'll get something else?"

"Exactly! Well, it's nighttime now and all the gates blocking the stairwells to the second floor have been lifted. I'll give you an opportunity to explore before anyone else."

After Monokuma vanished, Makoto grabbed his handbook and left his room to explore.

The second floor had a few more locations, including a library, swimming pool, and two more classrooms. As he approached the changing rooms for the pool, he looked at his handbook. With this, he could get into the girls' room? He eyed the giant gatling gun aiming towards the girls' locker room. He was so lucky that Celeste gave the nighttime rule, so no one's around to witness him going inside. He cautiously swiped his handbook.

*Whirr* *CLICK*

He tried the handle as it gave little resistance, opening up the door for him. Inside the room wasn't anything special, it was a small locker room. There were some showers, lockers (of course), and exercise equipment.

He looked around the room until he opened the lockers, seeing school swimsuits for all the girls, each clearly labelled.

"Hmm..." Makoto said. He remembered back to the actions he had.

Not that he wanted to do it, but this might be the easiest way to give Hina a wardrobe malfunction, fulfilling his task. In fact, this might be the only way. With Hina typically dressing in shorts and a track jacket, it wouldn't exactly be easy to give her a public wardrobe malfunction. This swimsuit might be his only chance to do that action. He slowly reached over and checked the time he had left.

"Around 15 hours" he said. Sure, that was a lot of time, but just simply sleeping would soak up 8 of those hours and he really didn't want to fulfill an action while someone was sleeping and risk them waking up. Hina would definitely jump at the chance to swim, so he had no doubt that if he wanted to do it, it would work. And after tonight, there would be no guarantee that the locker room would be empty.

He approached Hina's swimsuit as he thought. Should he sabotage the suit, or refrain and find a different target the next day?