Shuichi collects three more rewards, but the final one eludes him

The changing area was split up for girls and boys, as was to be expected. Himiko would go through one side and the Shuichi the other; she had left all of her things in that room, but Shuichi had to collect his from poolside, only mildly damp. The process of toweling down his wet clothes seemed like it was going to take a while and, annoyingly, required him to strip off all of his wet things. Still, according to his pad, nobody else was in the bathroom. There wouldn't be anyone else around to see him naked-

"HIIII, KUMAAAA!"

Three bears appeared in triplet explosions of varying colors, right in front of his naked body, before he could enter the stall. Crossing both hands over what remained of his hard-on from his earlier encounter, the boy quickly ran past them and slammed the door behind him.

"Shuichiiiii?! Did you yell something just nooooow?! Nyeeeeeh?!" Himiko shouted from the other side, raising her voice to the same volume she'd just heard come from the other side.

"No, nothing!" Shuichi fired back as loud as he could, then lowered his volume again to speak to the Erokubs on the other side of the bathroom stall. "What are you three doing?!"

"We're here to reward you, idiot," Erosuke snapped. "You finished three missions."

"You were really going after them! I was so surprised when you grabbed her butt like that! Hey, didn't you do all that stuff with Himiko without using any Triggers at all? Wooow! You're a hero to all bland protagonist characters in larger peer groups! We're two peas in a pod, Shuichi!" Erotaro laughed, clapping his hands. "Hey hey, what happens if Shuichi just does perverted stuff without using the Triggers? Shouldn't he still get Ero Points?"

"Those aren't the rules," Erophanie answered him. "... But I really enjoyed watching it. I hope I give a boy a boner some day..."

Shuichi hissed desperately, keeping his voice to a whisper. "I'm telling you to keep your voices down! You only appeared in here because you can't show yourselves while other people are around, right? That's pointless if you draw so much attention they come anyway! If Himiko finds out you guys are alive, we'll break the rule, then the killing games are going to start over!" he explained, amazed that they hadn't understood that danger.

"Eeeh?! I knew that! I'm just making you sweat a little..." the half-yellow bear first exclaimed, then murmured. "H-Hey, instead of focusing on the bad things, you should be focused on the great Trigger I just gave you! Take a look!"

Level 1 Anytime Totally Soaked: Activate by pointing towards a source of moisture, then a target. Assigned to the first target its used upon. The target will never be aware of this Trigger's use, but others around will notice it. Being informed of this Trigger's use will cause the target to blame some sort of accident. Repeated use of this Trigger will allow you to assign it to more people. Levels up quickly.

Level 1 Daily Wardrobe Change: Activate by writing upon a piece of paper a costume you'd like a target to wear and leaving it in your bedside dresser before you sleep. The target will dress into that costume the following day. The target will see the outfit as normal for them and an excuse will be provided, but others may doubt that excuse. The user can change which target is assigned daily. Repeated use of this Trigger will allow you to assign it to more people. Levels up with daily use.

Level 1 Anytime Grope Forgiveness: Activate by apologizing after touching a target with any part of the body. The target will treat the touch as a careless bump. The target will never be aware of this Trigger's use, but others around will notice it. The target will continue to be forgiving, even if the Trigger's use is explained to them. Repeated use of this Trigger will allow you to assign it to more people. Levels up quickly and also evolves into a new Trigger at a certain level.

-------------

Shuichi's eyes widened as he scrolled through his notifications on his Eropad. There were so many new options available now, ranging from mean to outright perverse. Would he actually be willing to use any of these? As if covering up his erection would eliminate his urge to follow his dick on this one, he quickly yanked up his boxer shorts past his skinny legs. "I'm just glad I've already finished four missions. It's barely 1 o' clock yet," he mumbled. The young man almost wanted to thank the cubs... In hindsight, most of the requests had been a lot more reasonable than they could have been.

"Yeah, you're really motivated when it comes to ecchi stuff, huh? You're doing way better at this than the killing game," Erotaro pitched in, killing any gratitude that Shuichi felt towards him. "We're taking off now, but be sure to use my Trigger a lot today, alright? Byeeee-kumaaaa!" It was almost refreshing to hear the bears were still using that part of the catchphrase. At least one "kuma" hadn't been replaced with "ero" yet.

A little while later, now dry and reclothed, Shuichi exited the bathroom, finding himself alone. It was easy to imagine that the girl dressed at the same leisurely pace she did everything. "Himiko, I'm going to go catch up with Maki. When you're done, go find her, okay?" he shouted. When she nyeh'd in reply, he left, feeling satisfied. With so much time left over, he thought he could afford to talk to Maki and try to rope K1-B0 into his inner circle of confidants as well, before searching for the blue-furred Erokid.

Unfortunately, once he got to the assembly and met Maki near the back of the crowd of students watching the robot boy make a fool of himself on stage, he realized the situation was worse than he'd expected. K1-B0 was gesturing emphatically and shouting to the assembly, but it was hard to make out his words over the din, even with the built-in microphone he used. K1-B0 looked like a real human in many ways, but his thick black suit, glassy blue eyes, and thin indentations in his skin gave him away as a robot... as did his constant insistence that everybody respects his rights as a robot.

Maki pulled Shuichi away from the gathering, in order to speak to him in peace. "... So, it's like you're seeing. K1-B0 started out by trying to rally everyone against the mastermind, then, when he realized nobody knew anything about a mastermind, he tried to explain everything that happened to everyone. That didn't go well... to them, these are all crazy, lunatic stories, not memories, so they practically laughed him off the stage. That bonehead is too persistent, so he kept arguing... I don't think he's in any danger, but there's no way he's getting through to them," the pigtailed girl sighed.

"Should we help him?"

"We can talk to him later, but it'd be impossible right now. I especially wouldn't try to bring up your memories to any of the others. Even putting aside that they'll think you're crazy... Until we learn more, I don't think we want to break the illusion of peace here. Of course, there's a few people we do need to talk to. One or two of these students had **** built into their character..." It was a little ironic for Maki to say that, given that she thought herself an assassin, but Shuichi didn't say anything about that.

The two talked for a bit longer; Shuichi mentioned the strange discovery of the cold wall in Maki's room, but left out the parts about the panties, the pool scene with Himiko, and the meeting with the Erokubs. "That is strange... Makes me kind of nervous to keep sleeping there, like something out of a ghost story. But what should we do now? There's a lot of school left to investigate and, from what I can see, almost everything is open. Though, I already looked in the old production facility where the Monokumas were being mass produced... It's been cleaned out altogether."

That news made Shuichi start wondering: if Monokuma couldn't mass produce, was there actually any danger in defying his rules? Then again, the mass production means could have been moved to some other location. It was best not to risk anything yet. Seeing a chance to get Maki away for a while, he asked her to wait for an opportunity, then tell K1-B0 what she knew, but to make it clear that they weren't going to say anything about their memories to anyone else yet.

"Sure, though this noise is giving me a headache. I forgot that our whole group was even stupider when they started out..." she sighed, shaking her head with a wave of her flowing pigtails. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to explore the parts of the school we haven't searched yet," Shuichi explained. That'd give him the perfect chance to find Erokid and deliver the panties. With something like 11 hours to go before midnight, there was no chance he'd fail to find the blue Erokub and collect the last Eropoints he needed to win today. In fact, he was so confident, he decided to go and get food for his growling stomach first. One peaceful meal later-- uninterrupted by the others-- he took off to search every nook and cranny of the school building and the courtyard.

...

The search turned up fruitless. Minutes passed, then hours. When the time for dinner came around, Shuichi was exhausted, and he hadn't found so much as one blue hair off of the mission-giver's fur. Maki finally found him in Angie's art studio, out of breath and resting with his hands on his knees. "Shuichi... What's going on? I thought you'd be finished in two hours! It's six o' clock now, everyone's eating supper. Are you feeling every wall in every room or something?" she questioned, sounding equal parts scolding and concerned. "You could have asked for my help."

"Y-Yeah, that's what I've been doing..." he huffed, sitting down on an artist's stool and laying his hat on the desk next to him. "Sorry. I got carried away."

"The good news is, it seems like we have plenty of time to search. Haven't heard anything at all from Monokuma yet."

Shuichi gave a strained smile. His friend couldn't realize that they actually only had about seven hours left before the killing game started again, if he failed to find the blue fuzzball that was giving him so much trouble. Seven hours was a lot of time, but he'd looked everywhere he could think to look. There were two possibilities: either the bear was stupidly moving around all over instead of staying in one place, or else, he was deliberately trying not to be found. All of the others had come right to him, seeming overjoyed that he'd finished their missions... why was Erokid the only one giving him the slip?!

Dinner passed, with Shuichi slipping back into the odd group of people whose faces he knew, but sharing so few of the experiences with which he associated with them. Talking to Kaede, who'd been dead for so long, again was unreal. Speaking to Korekiyo, a career murderer, was unnerving. Eating alongside Tsumugi, the mastermind behind the original killing game, as though nothing had happened had him in a cold sweat. By the time he left the dining room, he felt like he was going to vomit.

He came up with an excuse to get away from the others. Another hour passed in a **** search for Erokid. It was just past nine o' clock. "I'm... I'm not gonna make it. I get it now... He's hiding from me so I can't get the last 20 Ero Points. They're not going to let me finish today without using the Triggers..." Shuichi groaned to himself, clasping his hands to his cap in despair. 20 Ero Points... That meant using two Triggers. Some of them were pretty harmless, but using them would assign them to somebody, and the clothes changing one actually couldn't be used until he went to sleep for the night-- another fun attempt at entrapment, perhaps, if he'd only gotten just that one Trigger.

****, he brought back out his Eropad and began to thumb through the options. He needed somebody alone, with no witnesses to see him use the Triggers. He'd probably end up assigning two Triggers to just this one person... Using the same Trigger twice against them just to fill the quota could result in Monokuma hitting him with that redundancy clause and taking away Eropoints, which would mean having to use even more Triggers.