"Ugh..."
Smack!
"....."
Smack!
"H-hey, Kirigiri... maybe that's enough now... maybe we should talk..."
SMAACK!!
Consumed by fury all the way to the crown of her head, Kyoko Kirigiri kept slapping Pekoyama and Kuzuryu across the face until her own hand was torn up and bleeding.
The others tried to approach and stop her, but the instant they met Kirigiri's glacial stare, they could only falter and back away.
Smack!!
"Kirigiri..."
SMAACK!!
"Kirigiri...!"
K, finally freed from where the others had been restraining him, called out to Kirigiri in a desperate voice. But Kirigiri only raised her hand again, her expression empty, soulless.
"Kyoko!!!"
".....!"
Just as she was about to strike Pekoyama and Kuzuryu again, Kirigiri finally came back to herself when K called her by name and wrapped his arms around her from behind.
"Kirigiri... stop..."
"What...?"
"That's enough now... so stop... please..."
"Let go of me... right now... this still isn't nearly enough for what these two..."
"You idiot!! I said stop!!"
".....?"
For the first time, K snapped at Kirigiri in anger and grabbed her hand. Blood and clear fluid were seeping from the hand he caught.
"It already kills me every time I look at your hands, and now you're going and tearing them up like this...? What am I supposed to do with that...?"
As K spoke through trembling, tear-choked breaths, Kirigiri let her hand fall limply and began speaking to him in a shaking voice.
"I told you... not to come back... hurt..."
"And you still tried to throw yourself away for everyone..."
"....."
Silence hung over them for a while. Then Kirigiri opened her mouth.
"I'm sorry too... for recklessly throwing myself into it..."
"....."
"But you do this over and over again... not just once or twice..."
"Sorry..."
"So from now on... I'm never going to let you fight alone again."
At last, Kirigiri tightened her grip around his hand. Blood began flowing more heavily from her own, but she didn't show it. She only looked at K and finished her vow.
"...Promise me."
"Kirigiri..."
After staring at each other for a long while, K and Kirigiri walked back toward the others, their hands clasped tightly together.
The children had been staring at them in a daze, but then a sudden voice made them all look forward.
"I... I..."
Kuzuryu, touching the blood running down from his grotesquely swollen cheeks, abruptly dropped to his knees in front of everyone and bowed low in a full dogeza before speaking in a trembling voice.
"Th-this... this kind of ending..."
"So what exactly are you trying to say?"
"I-I was wr-"
"You're going to apologize now? At this point?"
When Kirigiri sneered in that icy voice, Kuzuryu swallowed hard, squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and then—
BANG!!
"Kyaaaah!!"
"W-what are you doing?!"
"Wh-what the..."
He slammed his forehead into the floor with all his strength.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
"...What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"Ugh..."
Because he kept smashing his head into the floor with full force, blood began pouring from Kuzuryu's forehead, which had already been hideously split open.
"This was... all done on my orders... so... whatever punishment there is... I'll accept it gladly..."
The others watched Kuzuryu in silence as he spoke through violent trembling. In the middle of that suffocating, uncomfortable hush, K suddenly shouted.
"No!!"
As he yelled, K snatched up a chair lying on the floor and hurled it somewhere with all his might.
"...Ghk."
"Wh-what was that?!"
"A... a dagger...?"
Pekoyama had secretly drawn a short blade from her clothes and tried to drive it straight into her own stomach. But the flying chair struck her dead-on, knocking the blade off course so that it stabbed into her side instead.
"Why..."
"Did you really think disemboweling yourself would make this all go away?"
".....!"
.
.
.
.
.
"I... I committed an unforgivable sin... I will throw away my life... so please... spare young master..."
Looking at Pekoyama as she pleaded with us in a desperate voice, the dagger still lodged in her side, I sank into thought.
'If I'd left that alone just now... Pekoyama definitely would've died.'
In the original story, Kuzuryu attempted disembowelment too, but Pekoyama was the [Ultimate Swordswoman]—the Kuzuryu family's personal assassin. If she had truly resolved to carve open her own abdomen, the odds of reviving her would have been terrifyingly low.
Thank God I'd been watching them closely in case one of the two tried something like this. I hadn't stopped it completely, but at least I'd prevented an outright suicide.
"N-no! Please! I-I'll offer my own life, so... forgive Peko... please...!"
"Young master...!"
Watching the two of them launch into this grotesque melodrama made a sigh slip out of me. How the hell had things gotten this tangled?
Well... for whatever reason, fate had shifted because [Twilight Syndrome Murder Case] turned out to be a staged performance, and we'd reached an ending where nobody died. That part was good.
But even if those two hadn't murdered Koizumi the way they had in the original story, they'd still committed crimes serious enough to rival it.
Just listing the charges that came to mind was enough: kidnapping, unlawful confinement, torture, threats, attempted murder... one vicious crime after another. Really, they were yakuza through and through. They'd gone all out.
Ordinarily, they were supposed to reform and become allies, so the remorse they were showing now was probably genuine... but the real problem was how the others would take it. Since this hadn't all been some harmless prank, there was no way everyone could just laugh it off and move on.
"The people you should be begging forgiveness from are obvious, aren't they?"
At the sudden voice, I turned my head. Koizumi, who had regained consciousness and was now listening to Saionji explain what had happened, stood there with her arms folded, glaring at Kuzuryu and Pekoyama as she spoke.
"Me, K... and Kirigiri. Shouldn't you get our forgiveness first? Isn't that the priority?"
"Th-then...!"
"But I don't want to forgive you."
".....!"
Koizumi's merciless words made Kuzuryu and Pekoyama freeze solid. Koizumi pressed them harder, her voice sharp as a blade.
"Sure, I was deceived too, and given the situation, maybe there wasn't much choice... but you believed the motive the Mastermind handed you without question, kidnapped us without even hearing an explanation, and treated us however you pleased. If that motive had been real, you were probably planning to kill us, weren't you?"
"....."
"And you think I can forgive that so easily?"
Kuzuryu and Pekoyama stared at Koizumi with hollow expressions. Koizumi looked back at them, let out a sigh, and spoke again.
"So... I'll decide after I see how you act from now on."
"Y-you mean...!"
"Don't get the wrong idea. I haven't forgiven you yet. Honestly... forgiveness or not, I don't even want to look at your faces. But the one most at fault is Monokuma, the one who planned all this... so I'm giving you one last chance."
"Ah..."
"Then... that leaves two more."
After finishing, Koizumi looked at me and Kirigiri. I gave her a faint smile, then turned to the two of them and spoke.
"You really did something unforgivable. You almost shattered the hope everyone had been desperately trying to hold together."
As I watched their expressions darken, I continued.
"So no, I can't just say, 'Well, it was all staged anyway, so let's laugh it off.' If the only one you'd hurt was me, maybe that'd be different. But you caused serious harm to everyone."
"I have no excuse..."
"....."
"So... just like Koizumi said, from now on, contribute to us as much as the damage you've done. If you do that... I'll consider forgiving you."
When I finished speaking, Kuzuryu and Pekoyama turned to look at Kirigiri.
"Why are you staring at me like that? Want to get hit some more?"
At Kirigiri's frigid words, both of them flinched. She glared at them and spat out her verdict.
"For the time being, crawl around serving everyone like dogs. If you slack off even a little... you'd better be ready."
When those words ended, Kuzuryu spoke to everyone in a trembling voice.
"To people like us, who deserve to die... thank you... for giving us a chance... so from this moment on... I will devote my life... to serving all of you...!"
BANG!!!
As soon as he finished, Kuzuryu smashed his head into the floor again with all his strength. Then, drenched in blood that had burst outward from the impact, he lost consciousness.
"I... will never forget... today's sin... for the rest of my life..."
Meanwhile, Pekoyama yanked the dagger out of her side and drove it deep into her own thigh. Groaning, she collapsed, then pulled the blade free and stabbed it into her other thigh as well before slamming her head into the floor with the same desperate force as Kuzuryu.
BANG!!!
"To us, who committed an unforgivable sin... thank you... so much... for giving us a chance to atone... from this moment on... I will stake my life on helping all of you..."
BANG!! BANG!! BANG!!
As Pekoyama kept smashing her head into the floor, Tsumiki finally couldn't take it anymore and screamed at the top of her lungs.
"S-stop already!! No more hurting yourselves!!! As the health committee member, I can't just stand here and watch this anymoooore!!!"
Tsumiki's cry broke the spell. The others rushed in, grabbing Pekoyama to stop her from continuing to bash her head in, while carrying the unconscious Kuzuryu outside.
"Whew... this was exhausting in more ways than one... but in the end, this whole mess is over without any deaths. Thank God..."
As I watched all that and let out a sigh, Kirigiri's eyes suddenly sharpened, and she spoke in a grave voice.
"Wait... there's still one unresolved question left in all this."
At that, the expressions of the others—who had just started to relax, thinking everything was finally over—froze all over again. Leaving the newly tense group behind her, Kirigiri turned to Pekoyama, who was still bleeding profusely while the others held her in place, and asked:
"How did you learn about the [clear bonus]? That was information only Nanami, who cleared the game first, and K and I, who directly received the reward, should have known."
"Y-young master... told me..."
"When?"
"This morning... young master went to deliver a meal to Komaeda in my place... and when he came back, his whole body was trembling as he told me..."
Hearing that, all of us quietly turned to stare at the storage room visible beyond the wide-open doors of the banquet hall.
"Everyone, let's keep it just shy of lethal."
The others, furious all over again, started cracking their knuckles with ugly little pops—when Monokuma suddenly popped out in front of them.
"Upupupu...! Great news for everybody! I've finally finished restoring School Regulation #1, which had been disabled!! Now I can walk around without worrying about getting beaten up by anyone, nice and safe and—hm? What's with this atmosphere...?"
Monokuma, dark circles drooping all the way under his eyes, forced out that absurdly chipper announcement with a hollow, exhausted expression before sensing something was off and tilting his head.
Without even sparing Monokuma a glance, I stared at the firmly shut storage room door with the eyes of a man who had attained bitter enlightenment and muttered,
"Seriously... that bastard's luck is disgustingly good."