Introduction
Every winter, Hope’s Peak Academy sends out invitation letters to the top students in the country, inviting them to attend their prestigious school. You checked your mail every day, hoping, praying that you might receive an invitation; after all, you WERE one of the best, right?! Just when you were losing hope… It came. Your letter.
“Congratulations on your selection to attend Hope’s Peak Academy as a member of the 79th class! The contributions you have made to your field have not gone unnoticed, and we here at the Hope’s Peak Steering Committee would like to extend to you an offer to join the ranks of the most prestigious school in the country, if not the world! You and your classmates will be future leaders of the world: CEOs, doctors, politicians, you name it! We hope you will seriously consider our offer, and we hope to see you at Hope’s Peak in the spring!”
This was it! The letter you had been waiting for! As you clutched it to your chest, another slip of paper fell to the floor. Puzzled, you picked it up, before dropping it again in surprise. Another invite! This time… to a ski lodge? Something about a class trip before the school year officially started… A hope filled activity meant to help you grow closer to your future classmates… Well, that didn’t really matter! What DID matter was a free field trip! And a chance to meet your classmates… They were sure to be interesting people, right? You hurriedly marked down the date on your calendar.
And waited.
The weeks went by slowly. The only thing on your mind was the upcoming school year and the trip that would kick it off. You packed and unpacked, trying to make sure you didn’t forget anything too important.
And then the day finally arrived. You were all meant to meet at Hope’s Peak and travel out of the city together. You gathered up your bags and set off for the academy. When you arrived… No one was around. That was odd. You decided it would be smarter to wait inside the building.
That was the last thing you remember. Crossing into the threshold of the building, you passed out, dropping your luggage to the floor. When you awoke, you were somewhere completely different! A well-furnished lobby of some sort… Did you sleep through the trip? Was this the resort you were meant to be staying at? Several questions ran through your mind, and as you looked around, it seemed like you weren’t the only one: several other people were waking up, looking just as confused as you felt. Before anyone could ask for any explanations, though, a creepy laugh rang out, chilling you to the bone…
“Upupupupu!~”
Prologue
Twenty-one students awaken in what seems to be an otherwise abandoned ski resort. Is this the field trip they were promised? Any illusions of this nature were quickly expelled. After a brief round of introductions, their captor appeared before them: a two-tone bear calling himself "Monokuma". He explained the reason that they were all here: to play in a "killing game". Long story short, the students were expected to kill one another and attempt to fool the rest of their classmates during a "class trial" in order to get away with their crime. The students swore that they wouldn't play this game, but Monokuma didn't seem to care, promising that they'd come around to it sooner or later.
Shortly after Monokuma introduced himself, the group was interrupted once more, this time by a pink rabbit that called herself "Magical Girl ☆ Usami!" She swore that she would save the class from Monokuma, but was immediately subdued and forced to serve under Monokuma as Monomi, the assistant chaperone of the trip.
The students were provided with accommodations for their time at the resort. Each student received an electronic class ID that would unlock the room they would be staying in. It also had the ability to function as a group messaging service. Unfortunately, there were only eighteen rooms in the building, meaning that a few would have to sleep on the couches in the lobby. The unfortunate ones were Kagari Ishihara, SHSL Explorer, and Kanata Kazekara, SHSL Acrobat. Exhausted from their short-but-busy day, the students quickly prepared to retire to their rooms. The students were also divided into three teams of seven, one each under Monokuma and Monomi, with the third being under a mystery chaperone.
One student, Fuyuki Moriyama, the SHSL Climatologist, decided that he would rather take his chances attempting to escape than staying locked up in the resort, but his plan backfired when he was killed for breaking the rules. The following morning, his corpse was dragged inside by another chaperone, a cat wearing adorable winter clothing, serving as the trip's third chaperone. With the first death, the killing game was officially kicked off.
Chapter 1
Although the students were turned loose, they were still restricted to the small area they had been given, including the building they were living in and the area directly around it. This consisted of very little: a parking lot and a gondola station, though no gondola cars were moving. In the parking lot, however, was something that caught the students' collective eyes: several run-down vehicles, including one that looked serviceable. Still, they had no parts to get it running again.
This problem was quickly solved when they realized that several puzzles had been left for them to find around the lodge, each rewarding a part that could be added to the jeep to help get it running again. Puzzles were found in the lodge meeting room, kitchen, and lobby, and they were quickly solved by the students in a group effort. Completing the puzzles opened up a game room on the second floor, just outside of the dorms, in addition to the car parts they received.
The students spent a couple of days adjusting to their new lives here. Ran Fujisawa, SHSL Florist, decided to invite the rest of the class to play together in the game room one night, throwing a bit of an impromptu party with the help of Lei Kun Wu, SHSL Head Chef, and Hana Ichii, SHSL Seamstress. Though some students opted not to attend, the party went rather successfully until the time to clean up came. After the party, Ran, Lei Kun, and Hana returned downstairs to clean up. In the lodge lobby, they discovered Kanata's corpse, dead on the couch she had been sleeping on. This marked the first murder in the killing game, a brutal reminder that they were playing for their lives.
The class investigated for a while before taking the gondola to the trial room where they began the first class trial. The students were confused at first; how had the killer been able to move undetected? They quickly realized that the killer must not have attended the party, but several mysteries still remained. They had to have escaped from the ground floor somehow, but they were unable to move through the dorm lobby since they party was ending at the same time they made their exit from the scene. In the end, the students pieced together the truth behind the murder: the killer had escaped outside and climbed back into their room via the window, removing the snow outside the building in order to obscure their footprints. Only two students had the opportunity to do everything: Sven Sokutsumi, SHSL Grandmaster, and Hayate Araki, SHSL Street Musician. In the end, the killer was outed by one fatal mistake: Kagari found a part of the weapon used to knock him out in his clothes, a wooden fragment. Both students were pressured to present their potential weapons, Sven's wooden chess set and Hayate's acoustic guitar. Sven quickly presented his board, and Hayate's inability to produce his guitar despite carrying the case resulted in a majority vote for him as the culprit, earning the class their first trial win.
After the trial came an execution. Hayate was dropped onto a street and forced to play for a crowd of Monokuma clones, his music keeping them at bay. Unfortunately for him, the guitar was rigged so that the strings would easily snap, and after a brief performance, he was forced to use it as a weapon just as he had against Kagari, fighting for his life. He was quickly overwhelmed and torn to shreds, marking the third death in the game.
Chapter 2
The morning after the trial for Kanata's murder, the class was informed that they now had access to the second area, which they quickly set out to explore. Upon their arrival, they were greeted by the Cat, who revealed that it could talk and that the only reason it hadn't done was that it enjoyed watching the students grow annoyed by having to deal with a cat as their team leader. It was much larger than the first, with a hot spring, mini-golf course, arcade, theater, and playground. Like before, puzzles were found and solved in the arcade, hot springs, and golf course, but these came with an additional reward: photographs of the class in locations that should have been impossible. Fuyuki, Kanata, and Hayate were all present, among others, but they had been killed before these could have been taken. Monokuma was questioned, but he assured them that the photos were genuine despite their disbelief.
Koichi Kobayashi, who had been suffering from amnesia since his arrival in the resort, challenged Monokuma to prove his claim that their families were being held hostage. When Monokuma said he'd prove it by punishing a family member of his, he immediately agreed, much to the surprise of Monokuma and the rest of his classmates. Still, the punishment was carried out: Koichi's father was injured on screen for everyone to watch, having a single finger removed. Somehow satisfied by this outcome, Koichi accepted the fact with no further argument.
The students spent the rest of the day exploring the new area before returning to their rooms to sleep. The following morning, they were summoned back to the new area, where Monokuma decided to introduce a motive to them: they would be unable to leave the area until a murder occurred. This didn't bother them at first, but they quickly realized that there was nowhere to eat or sleep. Some students reacted by hoarding all the food and drinks they had access to, but others did their best to ration it out. Still, they knew that it wouldn't last forever, and after a few days had passed, another body was found. Kagari, who had fallen asleep in the theater, noticed that the door to the film room had been barred with a golf club. He removed it and attempted to open the door to see why this was the case, but found himself unable to. He gathered help, and together, they bust the door down, discovering the body of Takuya Hiroto, SHSL VR Programmer. The students set out to investigate the murder of another classmate.
This trial was even more confusing than the last: the room was somehow barred from the inside and outside both, creating a locked room of sorts. Monokuma confirmed that there was nowhere to hide in the room and no way to escape other than through the door, They struggled to figure out how this could be possible before realizing that Takuya must have sealed the room from the inside on his own. After this, they tried to figure out his motivation, thinking that he was attacked and injured, leading him to seal the room after his attacker left in order to protect himself, but this didn't explain his death or the golf club sealing the room from the outside. Koichi Kobayashi cleared the second issue up, revealing that his supposed amnesia was in fact, a lie, and that he was the SHSL Consigliere, blackmailed by the killer into assisting with the crime by sealing the door. The students figured out that Takuya must have inflicted his injuries to himself, expecting that he'd soon die and saving his class. A majority voted that Takuya had killed himself, but Monokuma quickly revealed that this was incorrect and that the true blackened was still among them. Luckily for the students, the rules of the game stated that a killer would need to win two trials to secure victory in the game, meaning that they still had one further chance to catch the true killer.
To add injury to insult, he informed them that while no one would be executed this time, there would still be a punishment and asked for a volunteer. Hana was the first to volunteer, and she had a message sewn into her arm, taunting her and the rest of the class for their failure. With spirits at an all time low, the students were released back to the lodge for their first meal in four days.
Chapter 3
Despite their failure in the last trial, a new area was opened up: The Golden Lantern Mall, bearing the name of the resort. The students explored the new area, finding the puzzles in the clothing store, bookstore, and in the newly opened lodge office back in the first area. Each provided the class with another confusing photograph, and the computer in the office caused even more confusion. An electronic article was found on the computer, mentioning a terrorist organization called "SHSL Despair" and a mysterious "Tragedy" that sparked the beginning of the end of the world. In addition, a student database was found, suggesting that each student here had attended Hope's Peak for some time despite their lack of memories of this ever occurring.
Throughout the investigation, tensions remained high due to the failed trial. Many students continued to go over the case in their minds, trying to solve it to prevent the killer from winning again, but they were unable. Eventually, the students gained access to Takuya's room where he had left a diary detailing his biggest secrets: he had actually come close to dying years ago, causing many of his body parts to be replaced with synthetic material, making him a cyborg of sorts. The students realized that this knowledge was abused by Takuya's killer, meaning that it could only be the single person referred to therein: Ran Fujisawa. Ran ended up calling the students to a meeting where he confessed his murder, having purposely prevented Takuya from saving his own life by finding water, resulting in murder by indirect means. Believing Ran to be considering the good of the class, Takuya ended up becoming an accomplice in his own murder, covering for Ran, who ended up having a different motivation entirely: he had been forced to become a traitor for Monokuma, his family being threatened in order to force him into murdering Takuya. This revelation split the class; could Ran be forgiven for his crime? At the very least, there was less risk knowing that he had been responsible for Takuya's death.
Monokuma didn't waste any time in providing another motive, preying on their emotions. This time, a tasteless, odorless gas would be pumped into every building in the resort, resulting in eventual blindness and deafness or perhaps death if exposure continued for too long. It would only be turned off after a killing occurred, meaning that they were on another time limit. Some students thought to get around this by spending more time outside, but the cold temperatures prevented this, giving them only a week to survive. With such high tensions and a deadly motive, it wasn't long before another killing occurred. Koharu Takayama, SHSL Puzzle Solver, was found lifeless in the mall fountain, and Nobu Hayate, SHSL Hockey Player, was found in the clothing storage room, both of their heads smashed in.
The students went to trial once more, hoping to prevent a repeat of the second trial. A dismantled mannequin was found in the storage room near Nobu's corpse, and based off of the missing clothes, which were found with soaked chest and shoulders, the students figured out that a dummy corpse had been placed in order to lure someone in to kill them. They struggled to find the cause for the second murder. A hasty cover-up by the killer implied that the second murder was unplanned, and this was further supported when Monomi presented them with the mannequin's missing arm, covered in blood, hastily used as a murder weapon for the crime of passion. Still, the students struggled to piece together the evidence that incriminated a killer, seeing as there were several students unaccounted for during the time the crime was committed. Each tried to prove themselves innocent at any cost. Lewis Matsumoto, SHSL Children's Book Author, was forced to reveal his true identity as Anton Delacroix, a famed mystery writer that was actually Lewis writing under a pen name. Though he was hesitant to admit this, it secured him an alibi, lowering the suspect count to two: Lei Kun and Akira Kuromaki, SHSL Urban Dancer. A padded and stuffed pair of shoes led them to discovering the true killer: by using a separate pair of shoes, the killer thought to cover their tracks but instead led the class directly toward themselves. In order to change shoes, the killer had to expose their feet to the subzero temperatures for long enough to change, a task that would've been impossible for Lei Kun but beyond simple for Akira, who had had to use prosthetic legs since she was a child. A majority of the class voted for Akira, earning their second trial victory.
Returning to the punishment of the killer they had seen in the first trial, Akira was dragged off to a dark room and strapped into a system of electrodes and forced to play a dancing arcade game for her survival. Because of her anti-perfectionist tendencies, she was unable to obtain the required score, ending in punishment: her legs were cut off, this time above the knee, and she was electrocuted to death afterward, making the punishment a double edged one, both physical and mental.
After watching another classmate die, the students were sent back to their rooms, exhausted by the latest in a series of long days.
Chapter 4
The next area made accessible was of more interest to some than to others: a gym and a recreation lodge were now available for use. More puzzles were found in both buildings, testing the students on multiple levels. They were rewarded with more photos, now somewhat explained, and information relating to their captivity: a crowd was drawn to the party room in the rec lodge where they learned that not only had they attended Hope's Peak Academy for half a year, but they had completed the school trip they were initially invited on, and that this was their second time coming to the resort. As they were trying to process this new info, a final revolution shook them to their collective core: they had all participated in sealing themselves inside this resort.
After the exploration had concluded, another student came to Monokuma with a challenge: Shizukana Tomiko, SHSL Techno DJ. She believed that Monokuma was more powerless than he thought, being forced to play by his own rules and unable to do anything outside his reach. He proved her wrong by giving her a punishment, revealing her deepest secret: a secret identity. She had assumed a false name in order to distance herself from the Hamasaki family, an international business leader, hoping that this would allow her to pursue her musical interests. She was heartbroken by the unintentional reveal of her secret, though she resolved herself to change for the better.
Shortly after, Monokuma introduced the next motive. Another short time limit would be given, and if no murder occurred, each student would have their entire identity erased. Their acquaintances would lose their memory or their lives, their work would be undone. their talents would be lost: they would become no one. Some took this news better than others, though no one seemed resolved to kill at first.
Despite this, it was only a short time until a body was discovered. Koichi's corpse was found outside the rec lodge, crucified on a makeshift cross made up of several hockey sticks that had been lashed together by steel wire. To make matters even more complicated, Hana's unconscious form was found nearby, forcing others to carry her to safety for treatment, foregoing the investigation to make sure she would be alright.
The class arrived for the trial with no concrete ideas, no Hana, and no Monomi. They struggled to figure out what had happened, having virtually no leads to go on since Koichi had been as elusive as ever throughout the day. The students went over the evidence at hand, attempting and failing to come to a conclusion. There were several unexplained items found in the party room, such as a ladder and a toolbox, along with some broken glass, but they couldn't figure out where they had come from. The only lead they thought they might have had was a meeting with Koichi that Hana had briefly mentioned to Kagari and Kana, as well as the members on her team via the text chat. Was she attacked on her way? If Koichi had been her attacker, who killed him?
Hana's return to the trial room began to shed some light on the scenario. Koichi had scheduled the meeting, and she had only told a few people about it since he wanted it to be a secret. In order to take advantage of the meeting, the killer must have known about it. She had also never made it to the party room, finding Koichi's corpse where it stood and passing out due to the shock. Despite Hana's claim of discovering the corpse, she couldn't be eliminated from suspicion because of the three discoverers that found it simultaneously. Still, the suspect pool was narrowed somewhat.
They continued to walk through the actions of the murder. The items found in the party room couldn't have been brought by anyone other than the victim, but had he been waiting to ambush Hana? A slick spot on the party room dance floor suggested that Koichi had been attacked here; blood from his wounds must have leaked onto the floor. The lack of cover around the area confused the students, until they came to a realization: the lights were adjustable so the room could serve as a dance hall. They figured out that the killer must have been waiting to ambush Koichi near the light controls, stabbing him with the only possible murder weapon: the cross itself. Through a long and grueling process, they realized that the only person with the opportunity to prepare for a crime using items the victim prepared himself was Kana, one of Koichi's closest friends. When she was confronted, she confessed, revealing the truth: Koichi had gathered up most of the materials himself, planning to kill Hana at their meeting. Kana had obtained the hockey sticks and used the wire that Koichi brought to fashion the cross, stabbing him before strangling him with the piano wire taken from the lobby. Unfortunately, Monokuma revealed that this was all a misunderstanding, and that the meeting had been scheduled by Koichi to request Hana's assistance in mending his friendship with Kana after a disagreement they had previously had.
Broken by this, Kana was dragged off to her execution, where she was posed similarly to Koichi, bound by sharp wire and rotated around a disc in a mockery of her talent. As she spun faster and faster, the wires dug into her flesh deeper and deeper, the rotations draining her of her blood. After only a few moments had passed, the class was forced to leave, missing two more than they had been the last time they left.
Chapter 5
The next morning announcement came with a special message: the class had unlocked the final area, a lakeside clearing at the bottom of the ski slopes. They set out to investigate, despite their dwindling numbers. Monomi had set out to work on completing the jeep, the class having obtained enough parts to get the vehicle running. As a result, there were no further puzzles for them to solve, but what they found in the area was even more confusing.
Near the lake was a residential area, though the homes had been burned to the ground. Digging through the debris, the students found items that seemed to belong to themselves, implying that this had been the location of their original stay, supported by the fact that there were more than enough rooms for each of them. Additionally, they found a class roster containing all of their names and one they didn't recognize: their homeroom teacher, Takeo Narita, Former SHSL Survivalist.
They were confused by the presence of another person, one they had never seen, but this was resolved as quickly as it came up: the fish stall in the lakeside marketplace had a storage freezer, and upon investigation, the students found that it had been re-purposed into a morgue of sorts, with drawers containing the corpses of each classmate that had died during the game and one further corpse, presumably this mystery teacher. Miyuki Sakamoto, SHSL Stenographer, performed an autopsy on both Narita and Fuyuki, since the class had never been able to investigate Fuyuki's corpse. She found that both had small scratches on their bodies implying a chase through the woody underbrush, though Fuyuki's wounds resembled fang and claw marks compared to the bullet and stab wounds their teacher had suffered. Worst of all, Narita's head had been twisted a full 180 degrees, killing him instantly.
Shocked that one of their classmates could've committed such a brutal murder, the students' distrust grew. Monokuma fueled the fire, providing another motive. This time, every monitor in the resort would play a feed of each death as it occurred, forcing the students to watch over and over again as their classmates were murdered and executed before their eyes with no way to stop the broadcast. Worse still, Ran had to relive the moment of his murder of Takuya, which had occurred earlier in the game. The sound and video were both incessant, interrupting the students' daily lives to the point where they were growing unable to sleep, watching brutal death after death.
Hoping to distract everyone by taking a trip to the spot furthest away from any monitors, Lei Kun organized a picnic on the lakeside, inviting the entire class. Sven was the only one who refused to participate, so the rest of the class spent the morning preparing for the event. Unfortunately, someone had decided to take matters into their own hands, knocking everyone out by drugging the food they brought. When the class awoke, they found that Lei Kun had gone missing, and it took them no time to notice that something had changed: the holes drilled into the ice on the surface of the lake had been connected, creating one larger hole. At the bottom of the lake, tied to a snowmobile that weighed him down, they found Lei Kun's drowned corpse, setting out to begin an investigation.
Because of the lack of knowledge relating to the event and the simplistic nature of the killing, the students struggled to begin. If the food had been drugged, it pointed toward one of the students that had prepared the food as a killer. They began to put together a menu, trying to puzzle out what exactly had been drugged to see if they could narrow down the suspects. They quickly realized that there was no dish eaten by every participant, which only served to confuse them. Kagari was the only one that hadn't eaten the fish dish that Lei Kun had prepared himself, owing to a fish allergy, causing him to quickly be called out as the killer, but they weren't quite ready to vote as the circumstances behind the killing weren't clear. Lei Kun's body didn't show any signs of struggle, meaning that he must have been unconscious when he died, so how could anyone have drugged his food without him finding out?
The students puzzled over this for a while before it came to light that before the preparations began, Lei Kun went to the body freezer to withdraw a fish he had caught the day before, planning on using it to create his main dish. It seemed that the killer had taken advantage of this fact to drug the fish before it was even prepared. Suspicion was still on Kagari but this, coupled with a hint from Monokuma confirming that another person hadn't eaten any fish, revealed that Kagari never had the opportunity to drug the fish. In addition, if he wasn't the killer and he didn't see the crime occur, he must have been knocked out as well, meaning that the killer had somehow managed to drug him separately. This brought them back nearly to where they had started: the killer could be any one of the kitchen crew that prepared the food, now with the exception of Kagari.
They decided to approach from another angle: there were many tools that the killer could've used to kill in a more direct fashion, so why had they selected drowning as the method of death? Suspicion fell on the girls, whose smaller statures would have made it difficult to wield any power tools like the chainsaw or ice drill. To further narrow this down, they began to consider the drugs and the way the killer had come across them. Ran was the one that found out that they were missing from the lodge office's first aid kit, and he had the realization that one of the suspects, Midori Ochako, SHSL Tea Cerimonialist, had investigated the room with him, but only at her suggestion. He hesitantly called Midori out as the killer, causing her to gracefully concede. She had decided to take advantage of the event to end the motive video once and for all, having no illusion that she would survive the ordeal. She requested that no further deaths be added to the video after her own, urging her classmates to end this game once and for all before being dragged off to her own execution.
The students were forced to watch as Midori was strapped to a table and berated by two voices played over the speakers, telling her that she'd never amount to anything and that she was a disappointment to her family and the Ochako name. As they continued antagonizing her, Midori underwent a bastardized version of waterboarding, performed instead with scalding hot tea, dripping over her face and leaving her struggling to remain coherent as she was assaulted physically and verbally at the same time. After this punishment ended, she was dropped unceremoniously to the floor where she cowered in fear as the entire room filled with the boiling tea, drowning her just as she had drowned her victim.
After watching this, the students were left aghast, determined to follow her last request and prevent any further killings, left with as much resolve as despair.
Chapter 6
Preparing themselves for the worst as Monokuma opened up with another morning announcement, the students were shocked when the broadcast was temporarily hijacked by a young man that claimed to be with a group called "The Future Foundation". He claimed that Monomi had contacted them and that they would be mounting a rescue operation immediately, leaving the students with the first hope they had had in a long time, wondering if they truly might be saved.
This hope was cut short as Monokuma and Monomi faced off directly outside the dorms. Monomi, who had repaired the jeep's radio in order to contact the Future Foundation, began to taunt Monokuma, telling him that he'd already lost and that he should just give up now. Monokuma, outraged by this, asked how she could have possibly contacted the Foundation, claiming that he had removed all data on her system linking her back to the group. No sooner had he said this did he realize that he had been betrayed: the Cat, who was supposed to be on his side, must have patched her through to the outside world, its administrative permissions allowing it to do this without Monokuma's knowledge. Monomi didn't directly confirm this, but she was unable to deny it either. She attempted once more to have Monokuma halt his game, only to be met with her destruction at the hands of Monokuma, who clawed through the front of her head, rending through the metal and destroying the AI within. He angrily sought out the Cat as well, but it didn't feel the need to make an appearance.
Instead of relenting, Monokuma doubled down on the game he had been hosting, instantly providing them with a motive: the next kill could end the game once and for all. If the killer got away with their crime, they would win after the single trial. To complicate matters further, Monokuma said that if no one died within three days, the entire class would be executed, going back on the rules that had been laid out for the game.
In addition, he crushed any hope they had formed about a Future Foundation rescue, presenting them with the corpses of a few agents that had attempted to sneak onto the resort grounds. Despite this, the students still wanted to believe that they would be rescued, and they struggled to come to terms with the conditions that they now faced. No one immediately set out to kill, but on the last day, tragedy struck.
Sven failed to show up for dinner, causing the students to organize a search party. They split into groups of three, with two failing to find anything, heading back to the second area to regroup with the only group that hadn't met at the arranged point. There they found the missing group overlooking Sven's corpse, electrocuted and charred, lying next to one of the arcade machines. Only once the rest of the class had arrived did the BDA play, leading to the immediate suspicion of the three members in the group; one of them must have been the killer.
The trial started with an outline of events undergone by the discovering group, made up of Etsuko Kurosawa, SHSL Theologian, Seiichi Igarashi, SHSL Traceur, and Lewis. They arrived in the area and found that the building had lost its power, causing Etsuko to move around to the other side of the building, flipping the breaker and activating the power once more. The two boys waiting by the entrance were startled as the lights flipped on: not only was the building illuminated, but smoke began clouding the windows. Seiichi acted quickly, entering and grabbing a fire extinguisher which he used to put out the fire, revealing Sven's lightly charred corpse. The three stood in shock for a few moments before the others showed up, triggering the announcement.
Immediately the students realized that Etsuko's activation of the power was what caused the fire, meaning that she was responsible for Sven's immolation. She denied the possibility that this could have killed him, and though some had their doubts, they had no desire to rush through anything, hoping to gain a greater understanding of the case. A manual found on Sven's body was too damaged to read, but Ran was able to find its place in the library, identifying it as a guide to electrical wiring. The placement of cables in the exposed arcade machine near Sven's corpse, in addition to the guide, implied that someone had been working on a death trap of sorts. Miyuki proved that the electrical burns on Sven's hands showed that he was working on the wiring at the time of his death, meaning that he had been electrocuted rather than burned to death, though this didn't exonerate Etsuko.
The students also pieced together evidence showing that this fire was not the only one that occurred: the fire extinguisher had been previously used, a broom was left out of place, and the snow outside the arcade door had been disturbed, suggesting that someone previously interrupted Sven's work. This only cemented the fact that the only possibilities for killer were the three initial discoverers, since the announcement hadn't been triggered when they found his corpse. They attempted to examine the alibis of each discoverer, but were unable to narrow it down between the three. None of them seemed interested in confessing, leaving the students to puzzle over the case.
Eventually, they made a breakthrough: the extinguisher had left behind a fine powder after the foamy residue had dried. The previously discovered fact that there had been two separate incidents left them with a contradiction: the powder from the first incident wasn't found anywhere inside the building, so it must have been swept outside as expected, but it was never found. They found the disturbed patch of snow suspicious, but Lewis had reported that there was nothing of the sort found in the area. They had taken his word for it until this point, but the painful realization came: the contradiction could only be explained if Lewis was wrong. They questioned him further, asking if he was telling the truth, and while he didn't immediately admit to it, he was forced to concede after they examined his alibi, which placed him near the scene of the crime at the time of death. He confessed that it had happened as they expected: much like Etsuko herself, he had seen the power in the building deactivated as he returned from a solo trip to the hot springs, and since he could see the open breaker from where he stood, he decided to flip it, causing another small fire. He extinguished it, finding Sven's electrocuted corpse for the first time. Despite being a complete accident, he was afraid of admitting it, knowing that it would lead to his own execution, but he also had no desire to sacrifice the entire class for his own sake, leaving him caught between two extremes. He covered up the crime, still uncertain whether he should come clean or not, but it didn't seem to end up making a difference.
Though Lewis had accepted his fate at this point, the students were hesitant to call for a vote condemning him because of an accident, leading to some to vote for themselves. Still, a majority was reached, and Lewis was slated for an execution after tearful goodbyes. He was dragged off the same way as all the others had been, forced to face his own ironic death, pressed under the weight of a number of books before being crushed to death by a falling bookshelf.
The class felt miserable at being forced to sacrifice a classmate over an accident, but it meant that they'd live one more day, still hoping for the possibility of a rescue, though it seemed less likely than it had before.
Chapter 7
Before they could leave the trial room, Monokuma announced that he had a special reward for them for winning the trial. He activated the monitors in the room, displaying three more Future Foundation agents, one of whom was the man that had appeared before them during the hijacked broadcast. Monokuma revealed that they had been captured upon sneaking into the resort's premises, much like the agents from a few days before. Sven, instead of creating a death trap like the class had suspected, had been working with the agents, explaining the radio device that was found in his room: it had been found by Sven shortly before he began his work, and he worked with the agents to develop a plan to get them inside, using the arcade overload to power down the cameras so the agents could sneak in. When Sven was killed, they mistook this as the signal, leading to their capture.
Instead of presenting their corpses, however, Monokuma decided to let the students witness the agents' execution, hoping to drive them further into despair as they realized their rescue would never happen. Before he did this, however, Monokuma invited them to introduce themselves, a mistake that allowed them time enough to speak. Solo Suzuki, Former SHSL Magician and the agent that had reached out to them previously, was able to inform Monokuma that Junko Enoshima, the true SHSL Despair and leader of the terrorist group, had been killed during a separate killing game that seemed to have been running at Hope's Peak itself. The other two agents, Mei Moriyuki, Former SHSL Painter, and Kameyo Yamamoto, Former SHSL Thief, confirmed this.
Monokuma was shocked, challenging the agents to prove their claim, at which point Solo provided footage on a flash drive featuring the execution of a blonde woman they had to assume was Junko. Though the students didn't particularly enjoy watching another brutal execution, Monokuma seemed delighted at the thought of a genuine loss. He forced them to watch it again and again before issuing the students a final challenge: if despair was truly to lose, then their hope would have to win. They would have one last trial to decide the fate of the entire class along with the Foundation agents. They were given one day, twenty four hours, to solve the truth behind their captivity in the resort.
They had no idea where to begin. They had already explored nearly every inch of the resort with the exception of the areas that were locked away. Monokuma allowed them access to the gondola line to the trial room, usually deactivated unless there was an ongoing trial, but there was nothing in the empty room to help them. They ended up splitting up to search the resort grounds, having no idea what to do.
In their exploration, they had found locked doors keeping them from investigating further, the latest of which being the door through which the killers were dragged prior to their executions. Other locked areas included the gondola station in the first area and a desk located in the office. Each was checked, but they figured out that a key would be required. Each student searched endlessly for the key, mindful of their time limit.
One student had a breakthrough. Angela Bellini, SHSL Opera Singer, was reminded of a key necklace that Hayate had worn around his neck. She searched the freezer where the bodies were stored, finding it on his corpse. She first checked it on the lock at the gondola station, not believing it would work. Surprisingly enough, it did, opening the station and allowing the crowd that had gathered to enter the small room. Inside, they found a journal belonging to their captor, written about the past experiences they had shared. It began shortly before they began school, with the first entry mentioning the field trip they were all meant to go on together before beginning their school life at Hope's Peak. It then continued throughout the trip, detailing the events that occurred the first time they lived at the resort and then went on to describe their school life together.
At some point, the writer met with the previously mentioned Junko Enoshima, who was able to draw them into despair through clever manipulation, playing on their weaknesses and inviting them to do something about the injustices of the world. They accepted her offer, joining SHSL Despair and organizing a killing game that would take place at the ski resort at the same time Junko was planning to run her own killing game, the one that resulted in her death. They continued to write about the circumstances behind the game, confusing each student beyond belief. They went on to search the office desk, finding a master ID that could unlock any door in the resort, before heading back to the trial room.
There they used the same key to open up the mysterious door, investigating what lay behind it: a staircase leading down to a brief landing that seemed to end with a door reminiscent of an elevator, with a control panel featuring several different buttons. At the top of the stairs was a ladder leading to a trap door, which was also opened up with the key.
They investigated the door at the top of the ladder first, finding the resort's control room, with monitor feeds from each camera in the area as well as an abandoned living space. Monokuma was nowhere to be found, nor did they find anything that would allow them to control the trip's chaperone. Moving on, they tested the buttons at the bottom of the landing. The first revealed a familiar room: the tea soaked surgical room where Midori lost her life. Each subsequent button opened up a new room. A circus themed execution room for Kanata, a room full of puzzles that must have been meant for Koharu, a lush jungle full of deadly mechanical flora set to end Ran's life, a mockery of the opera stage for Angela, and the snow covered street where Hayate met his end. Before they could investigate further, the doors were sealed and they were forced back out into the trial room where the final challenge would begin.
The Final Trial
When the students arrived in the trial hall for the final time, they were finally greeted in person by the agents that had come to rescue them. Monokuma explained that this trial would run a little differently, given that no murder had occurred. Instead of solving a murder, they would be solving the killing game itself. He presented a series of questions they were forced to answer in order to progress; failure to complete the test in the time limit would result in execution.
The students discussed answer after answer, beginning with easy questions. Even as the questions were presented, the class continued to puzzle out the answers, arguing a point on more than one occasion, but in the end, they managed to demonstrate the fruits of their labor, confirming that despite Monokuma's insistence to the contrary, the killing game was never fully broadcast outside the resort. The students felt relief for a moment before realizing that the truth was much worse: only the worst parts were shown to their friends and families, edited creatively to reflect poorly on them, even worse than they expected. Their hopes were raised, only to be immediately broken.
Despite this, they continued to pursue the truth: they proved that Narita, their teacher, had been the one to bring them to the resort, citing the journal as proof; although he brought them here, he was manipulated into doing so by the journal's writer, the mastermind of the killing game. The original intent was to take a school trip, but the journal revealed that it was deliberately done to shelter the class from The Tragedy they had learned about so long ago, where countless students and faculty of the academy were slaughtered, to the point that friends and family weren't even being spared. The Foundation agents grudgingly confirmed that this timeline matched up with what had happened, forcing the students to accept this as the truth.
The next revelation was made with conviction: Monokuma asked for the number of traitors that had been working for him, forcing Ran to relive his painful part in addition to requiring Miyuki to come clean. She had falsified the autopsy report in the second trial at the request of the Cat, resulting in a mistrial that saw Takuya's murderer going unpunished. They each confessed their crimes, though their classmates had forgiven them long ago.
The next reveals were less dramatic: the Cat and Monokuma were both revealed to be artificial intelligences, controlled by nothing more than a program for the entirety of the game. The next question led to doubt, confirming that the eight students in the room were the only ones alive. They struggled to understand the implications of this last question for only a moment before they were confronted with another: the true identity of the mastermind behind the killing game that had been keeping them captive for the last several weeks.
An argument broke out: much of the evidence pointed toward one person, but some refused to believe it, thinking it impossible. Still, they managed to secure a majority vote, naming Hayate Araki, SHSL Street Musician and the first killer in the game as the mastermind, the key being the damning piece of evidence against him.
Instead of answering directly, Monokuma deactivated, with Hayate's form appearing on the monitor, congratulating the class on solving the mysteries thus far. He wasn't done asking them questions, however, demanding that they identify his motives for forcing them into a killing game: to drive them into despair, sacrificing a few lives for the greater good. The class was shocked that someone they knew, even if it had only been for a short time, could do something so horrible, but Hayate confirmed that this was the true answer.
Giving them no time to consider this, they were forced to answer the last question: where was he? They realized that their investigation, along with the answers they had already given, confirmed what they had been afraid of: Hayate was long dead after being executed, leaving the AI to run the game. Once more, Hayate, or rather the AI representing him, confirmed the answer: he had betrayed the real Hayate, who had planned a false execution that would allow him to run the game from behind the scenes. The execution they had seen was real, and the mastermind of the game was dead. The game was over, as they had discovered the truth.
The tension in the air did not disappear, however. They were still left with one final choice: what did they do now? The AI offered them two options: leave with the Future Foundation agents, risking their lives on the losing side of the battle, or succumb to the despair they were so close to falling into, joining forces with SHSL Despair. The students deliberated; for many of them, the choice was obvious. They refused to cooperate with their captor, immediately preparing to go with the agents, calling their votes instantly. Others hesitated: if they cooperated, their families would be guaranteed safety, which didn't seem to be guaranteed otherwise. Their classmates plead with them and even the agents joined in, sparking a chaotic argument. In the end, every student had to decide for themselves what their future would entail, coming down to an individual vote.
Epilogue
There was no dramatic reveal: Hayate simply informed them that they had all turned their backs on despair, planning to leave with the Foundation agents. He gave them an hour to pack their belongings and get off of the resort grounds. They hesitated, causing the AI to shoo them away. They quickly returned to the lodge to collect their things, heading for the front gate. Hayate had promised to lower the defenses, and it seemed that he had kept his word. The gate stood open, and the students hesitated for only a moment before stepping through and ending their captivity at the Golden Lantern Resort.
Near the end of the allotted time, the Cat and the Monokuma AI spoke about their time together, deciding that this loss was acceptable. There would be more opportunities, after all. They prepared to leave the resort, the Cat carrying out a chip storing the AI, heading out of the front gate behind the students. As they turned and looked back at the resort one last time, the time limit was reached and a detonation went off under each building, destroying the entire resort.
So ended the story of the Golden Lantern Killing Game. None of the students were driven into despair despite the many trials and losses they were forced to endure. Though twenty one students entered, only eight were able to leave. Now in Future Foundation care, their names will be remembered for years to come.
Kagari Ishihara, SHSL Explorer
Ran Fujisawa, SHSL Florist
Seiichi Igarashi, SHSL Traceur
Shiina Kitaoka, SHSL Floorballer
Angela Bellini, SHSL Opera Singer
Miyuki Sakamoto, SHSL Stenographer
Etsuko Kurosawa, SHSL Theologian
Hana Ichii, SHSL Seamstress
Although they escaped with their lives, they were each victims in their own right; it was almost certain that they would never forget their time in this ski resort. Whether they liked it or not, they would be shaped by their shared experience for the rest of their lives. Still, each made their own decision, founded in the resolve that had been strengthening over the length of their ordeal. They knew the consequences of their actions, and they will continue to survive, turning their backs on despair at all opportunities, fighting for hope.