Meetup with Maki and Himiko

It wasn't lost upon Shuichi that three out of five of his Erokub Missions were focused upon the survivors who'd made it out of the previous killing game. This was probably by design, although whether he could chock it up to appropriate game design or to malice remained to be seen. On one hand, these three were likely to be more amiable towards him due to their history together and would understand any kinds of slip-ups or believe him when he said he had a plan. On the other hand, it was equally likely that the Erokubs and Erokuma were looking forward to seeing how he twisted and squirmed when **** to take advantage of those he was closest to.

The wording of that passive trigger still bugged him. He knew that he couldn't tell anyone about the plan at play here, nor about Erokuma's existence, but he still had hope that others could piece it together themselves and perhaps he could give them discrete clues along the way. The only problem was that those three were apparently programmed to willfully ignore or misconstrue all of the puzzle pieces related to the new game. That meant he couldn't count on those same handful from the last game to be his A-Team again. With annoyance, he realized that spending time with them, solving these missions, would mean playing right into the paws of his captors. For now, he had no other choice.

Shuichi's first surprise, venturing out of his room, was that he appeared to be the last one up, or close to it. His Monopad-- which he now realized Erokuma hadn't bother to rename to Eropad-- showed him the locations of the others at the school and it appeared he was the last one out of his room. Annoyingly, it didn't tell him where the Erokubs had gone, though he only really needed to find Erokid anyway. "I can't believe it... if I can believe these marks, they're all really here again," he thought to himself, cupping one hand to his mouth to stifle a shudder. He knew he ought to feel relieved, but given what he knew of this school and Monokuma's plots, he couldn't take too much solace in that fact. Instead, he was left with one nagging question: "how?"

Or perhaps, "who?"

For now, he focused on the locations of the three he needed to start out with. Understandably, Maki and Himiko were together. As the last two survivors besides himself, they'd find safety in grouping together. For all they knew, everyone else here were androids designed to mimic their dead friends. It made sense that he two of them would be grouped together in Maki's room. K1-B0, on the other hand, was currently deep inside the school, alone. "He may be even more paranoid than I am, as someone who came back to life with all of his memories but has no idea why. I'm sure he's searching for answers on his own..." Shuichi resolved. For now, that would be okay; they could meet up later. He had to focus on one mission at a time.

Before he could reach Maki's place, one more marker stood out to him: Tsumugi's. Currently, the pixel version of her face was clumped up with others at the cafeteria; it was pretty much lunch time, after all. He shuddered, realizing that none of them would remember she was the mastermind behind it all. Come to think of it... Erokuma hadn't mentioned her as someone who had retained their memories. Was she still in control of this whole scenario? Or was she being used by the new mastermind? Did she still think everyone was trapped in the very beginning of her killing game? The urge to confront her about it was strong, but he put it in the back of his mind for now. After all, he couldn't bring up the new plot to her at all, not without defying the rules of the game and suffering the consequences.

By the time he was knocking on his friend's door, he wasn't thinking about Maki at all. Still, it was a welcome relief when she answered after that short pause. The door opened up to reveal Maki Harukawa. Her vibrantly red eyes were sharp and suspicious as he remembered them, fitting a killer rather than a child caretaker. Privately, he was happy to realize he wasn't going to have to play along with her deception again. Her black hair in twin-tails and her red schoolgirl outfit were also familiar, seeming cleaned and neat compared to how she'd looked after surviving the destruction of the school. "Shuichi..." she muttered, lowering her eyelids slightly and wearing a noncommittal frown. She didn't seem ready to trust him yet.

"I remember, Maki. I remember everything!" he answered desperately. He didn't want to waste any of his limited time, playing a guessing game as to whether or not he could be trusted.

To his surprise, the girl threw her arms around him, her slender, feminine body shaking as she rested her head upon his shoulder. "I'm so glad... I thought it was just me and Himiko! I can't believe we're here again... And... Kaito is...!" she sobbed. "But he's not...!"

Shuichi embraced her awkwardly; perhaps this would be a tearful reunion if he didn't have the additional context that he was supposed to be stealing a pair of her panties at the moment. "I get it. He looks like Kaito, but he's different, right? His memories are-"

"Gone," Maki answered, drawing back now and wearing a demure frown. "He recognized me, but not any more than to speak my name and wave at me. His attitude's similar, but he-- nor anyone else-- remembers any murders or school trials. Even Tsumugi was playing dumb. They can't really be alive again, but they're all here. It's uncanny..."

"Shuichi! Nyeh... You ran right up and grabbed Maki, but you didn't even say hey to me," a whiny voice shot out from deeper in the room. The voice belonged to the Ultimate Magician, Himiko Yumeno, who was currently sitting on the bed with her hands in her lap and a pouty expression. As usual, the small girl wore a school uniform accessorized by a sweater-vest and a magician's hat, perched atop her red, bob-cut hair. The fact that the initially useless, self-proclaimed "mage" was one of the last survivors at the school had been a big surprise, but she'd grown a lot since the early days... mentally, not physically. "I've still got my memories too. It's like magic... but it's not as good as the magic I can do. It's more like a trick, nyeh!"

He thought to himself that it was awfully bold of her to say she could do better than resurrecting a class full of dead people, but he kept that to himself. "I think we can all agree that whoever brought us back here doesn't have good intentions. Even if we're given the food and shelter that we need to survive, there are no instructions at all saying what we're supposed to do. Plus... a few of us were killers from the moment we entered the school, right? They might kill again, even without Monokuma providing any motivation," Shuichi wondered out loud. Secretly, he hoped to bait the others: would they correct him and tell them that there were new instructions, or that they'd seen Monokuma?

They didn't, although Maki did raise an eyebrow. "What makes you so sure Monokuma isn't going to pop up and talk to us like always? Nobody's talked about seeing a bear anywhere, but... you have to figure, right? If Tsumugi's here, Monokuma won't be far behind. Even if it isn't Tsumugi doing it, that bear's sure to appear."

"Darn! I already slipped up," Shuichi cursed inwardly. This was going to make Maki suspicious right from the outset. "Well, it's unlike him to resist appearing for so long."

"You think so? He didn't appear to everyone the first time until the school assembly. Honestly, I was assuming he'd announce something like that any time now," Maki mused, crossing her arms as she walked inside and took a seat next to Himiko on the bed. Shuichi took the chair by the desk. "We looked for you earlier, Shuichi... It was confusing. Your door was unlocked and you weren't in your room. Where were you?"

Shuichi's eyebrows tensed briefly, but he was afraid to show how surprising that information really was to him. Hadn't he slept through the night? How could the others visit his room, search it, and not find him? "I don't know."

Himiko fell backward on the bed and began kicking her legs. "Nyeh, Shuichi, just tell me what we're gonna do first. We need to start gathering clues or something, right?" she questioned, sounding a little bored.

"... Something like that. For now, Maki, I'd like you to go find K1-B0 inside the school. Himiko, can you go to the pool? I want you to wait for me there." Sweat was already rolling down from Shuichi's shaggy black hair to the nape of his neck. Manipulating his friends felt especially heinous after all the deception involved during the killing game, but he had to remind himself that his intentions were good.

"Why K1-B0? Oh, because he has the ability to destroy the school again?" Maki asked. "He probably won't have his same memories, but you've got a good point... In some ways, he's the most dangerous one. I should make sure he's himself."

"Thanks. It's important, so please hurry. Himiko, you go on to the pool."

"... Okay, but what about you, Shuichi? What are you doing?" the little magician questioned. "Are you trying to end up alone in Maki's room for some reason? Seems kinda suspicious, nyeh." Maki was nearly out the door, but she turned around to watch Shuichi, curiously.

"Why are they such good detectives when we're not trying to solve a class trial?!" Shuichi thought to himself, panicking. The real answer to that question was just as perverse as they were probably jokingly imagining. Trying to keep his embarrassment off his face, he smiled awkwardly and waved away their concerns with his hands. "It's nothing! Just... after what you said about not finding me in my room, I got curious. I want to make sure there's nothing hidden."

"Nyeh. That's the detective for you," Himiko shrugged.

Maki closed her eyes and nodded, but then slowly reopened her red eyes and placed one hand on her hip. "Just stay out of my clothes, Shuichi."

He felt himself gulping. It was like she could read his mind! He nodded, assuring her that he wouldn't touch them. There was no way she'd remember what the inside of her panty drawer looked like when she checked later, not with so many other things to think about.

Once the girls left the room, Shuichi had silently begged Maki's forgiveness, then plunged straight into her drawers. Most of her regular clothing was hanging inside the closet, which meant that the contents of the drawers were the foldable items. Things like underwear and socks, essentially. The long, red stockings inside were essentially Maki, as were the white uniform kerchiefs. Alongside those... the panties were sitting in a small pile. With quivering hands, he grabbed a single pair up out of the cabinet like a thief and held them up to inspect them. Inspecting clues was the nature of being a detective, after all.

The panties were tiny, with a small triangle of white fabric on either side with ludicrously thin side-straps. "No way... Maki really wears something like this?" Shuichi questioned out loud, trying to imagine what such a thing would look like on her. Was it one of those things where people who are used to **** favor light clothing, or... was it actually an erotic preference of hers? Like where someone who seems reserved actually wears immodest clothing underneath? The boy gulped, then quickly stuffed them inside his pocket to avoid thinking about them any longer. A new thought occurred to him: he ought to grab a second pair.

"Why?" he asked himself.

"What if you lose the first pair of panties? You won't have anything to give Erokid. Since there's plenty in here, you should take a backup."

Flawless detective logic. Apologizing out loud for this greedy reasoning of his, he snatched another pair and put it in the pocket of his blazer, inside his coat. The good news about these erotic panties was that they could easily be stashed anywhere on his person. It felt like he'd begun to turn a corner in his rejection of the perverse whims of Erokuma, but without Erokid physically around to accept the panties, he could forestall things a bit longer.

Shuichi spent a moment sitting on the corner of the bed, thinking, and clearing his brain of any guilt at taking his friend's underwear. Once he was satisfied, he stood back to his feet and prepared to join Himiko. However, a thought occurred to him: he ought to at least search the room a bit more and see if he could find any sorts of clues. It'd be too suspicious if Maki found something hidden after he'd supposedly conducted his search.

Feeling like he was back in the early days of his killing game, Shuichi began to run his hands around the walls and search for anything hidden. He remembered the strange thing Maki had said: he hadn't been in his room earlier. Was there something strange about the bed? Ignoring the lingering scent of Maki on the sheets, the boy began to snoop under the bed, then the sheets, looking for some hidden mechanism. When that turned up nothing, he took off his shoes, then stood on the bed, reaching up to the ceiling and feeling there. Nothing. Finally, not expecting much, he placed his hands upon the wall behind the bed.

"... What?"

The wall was cold, but not just in the way it might lose temperature if AC was blowing on it. It felt almost frigid. Just that one wall... Curiously, he pressed his head against the wall and closed his eyes, listening hard for any sort of activity. Silence...

This dormitory wall had to be connected to the next room over, right? There couldn't be anything hidden inside the walls, with how thin they were. Was it possible that the next room over was significantly different in temperature? Even if they had the AC on full blast, would it make the conjoining wall this frigid? Eager to find out the answer, Shuichi left and ran to the next room over, missing the identity plate on the door. He pressed one hand against the doorframe... It was a perfectly normal temperature. How to explain this...?

At least it would give him the chance to tell Maki he'd found something while investigating her room.