Himiko Yumeno

“Who are you calling little?!” the short mage, Himiko Yumeno piped up, apparently missing the part where she was also called a pervert. Of course, by the time she complained, she was talking to herself: the stuffed bear had performed a disappearing act of its own. “Nyeh… You’re shorter than me, Monokuma, and twice as annoying!”

Himiko stared at the elaborate key she’d stumbled upon with a frown. “I’m not dumb enough to fall for a trick like this… Besides, what did he say about… ‘at the heights of pleasure’ they’ll transform into my ‘vision of an ideal partner?’ To do that... it’d have to be real magic.” Himiko scoffed with a smirk, ironically denying the possibility.

… After she said it, however, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. “It’d have to be… real magic…” she repeated, setting the key on a desk in front of her and peering at it harder with her fists on her hips. She had to admit, the ornate item did look like it could be magic… If so, wasn’t it her responsibility as the Ultimate Mage to investigate it? “That’s right! My hands are tied here. I’ll do it because I have to see the magic… No, to stop Monokuma from besmirching the name of real magic! Cuz there’s no way this thing works like he says, nyeh…”

She looked around the empty room with a flush, as if expecting to see someone else. “It’s just cuz of that, all right? Not just cuz I’m curious, and definitely not cuz I’m horny, nyeh! I’m not!” The young woman defended herself to an imaginary audience.

“Now… there’s no way it works, but on the off chance it did, I have to think hard about who I invite. Nyeh… That bear said something about it changing me, too. If I turned into something else and couldn’t make people happy with my magic anymore… the world might never recover! So I need to think real hard about it…”

The mage gave that her best shot, rubbing her fists into the sides of her hair as if trying to juice her brain cells, but thinking about something with so much effort was exhausting. “Maybe I don’t need to think about it so hard after all. If something goes wrong, I can just use my magic to escape, nyeh, or even turn us back… P-probably,” Himiko hedged her confidence, already getting tired out before even getting started. She grabbed the key in one of her small hands and clutched it close to her chest. “Yeah… no need to overthink it. I’ll invite the first person who pops into my head…”