"...Hey there?"
"....."
Komaeda, dragged out of the hospital while restrained by Pekoyama, wore a hollow, exhausted smile.
"You bastard... tell us where you hid the bombs. Right now...!"
"Y-Yeah...! Or else..."
"Or else what...? You're gonna kill me...?"
As the others demanded to know where the bombs were hidden, Komaeda let out a dry little laugh and answered with open contempt.
"There's no point in holding me like this... Once morning comes, every bomb on this island will go off all at once... and then this meaningless killing game will finally be over... Hahaha..."
"...I can make you talk soon enough."
When Pekoyama spoke in an icy voice, Komaeda answered in one just as cold.
"Yeah... probably... If it's you people, the kind who'd use any means necessary to get what you want... But can you make me talk within twenty minutes?"
"...What?"
Komaeda curled his lips into a sneer, then slowly looked around at everyone.
"Pretty soon, the bomb inside my stomach is going to explode. And when that happens, the bomb locations and the disarming method will disappear with me. It may be tiny, but it's still got quite a punch...!"
"Oh, give me a break! What kind of stupid lie is that...?"
"You... don't tell me...!"
"Th-The thing he swallowed earlier...?"
Most of the group scoffed at Komaeda's claim, but the faces of Pekoyama and Saionji—who had actually subdued him—drained of color.
"What are you talking about...? Explain it properly!!"
"W-Well... right before we pinned Komaeda down... he pulled something out of his pocket and swallowed it..."
"It happened in an instant, but he definitely swallowed a piece of metal. I never imagined it was a bomb..."
At that, everyone else's complexion started to pale too.
"I-It has to be fake! What kind of lunatic would swallow a bomb himself?!"
"I-If it's Mr. Komaeda... doesn't that sound... completely possible...?"
"It could be fake. But it could also be real. And in a situation this dangerous, you assume the worst-case scenario."
At Togami's calm, razor-sharp conclusion, the others all turned to glare at Komaeda.
"So all that means is we've gotta make him talk somehow in the next twenty minutes, right...?"
"...Leave the dirty work to me."
"If you don't want this to get ugly, you'd better start talking right n—"
"Well, if you agree to my condition, I could cooperate without making a fuss..."
Komaeda glanced at Nanami for a moment, then opened his mouth.
"If you let Nanami and me go into the hospital alone and talk. Just the two of us."
"N-No way!!!"
The instant those words left his mouth, Hinata practically shrieked and cut in.
"Why Nanami!? I-If anything, take me instead...!"
"For a Reserve Course nobody... you've got a lot of nerve butting in, don't you...?"
"W-What did you say...?"
"I don't have time to waste on second-stringers... so could you shut that mouth of yours...?"
Komaeda fixed Hinata with a glacial stare until he fell silent, then looked back at the rest.
"It's not just Hinata. I don't want to exchange a single word with any of you besides Nanami right now. You make me sick."
"You... you piece of..."
"So. I'll talk with Nanami alone in the hospital. I've already prepared a way there to temporarily stop the active bomb inside my stomach, and there are things I want to say to her. Once we're done talking, I'll tell you where the bombs are. Well? Not a bad deal, right...?"
"....."
As Nanami fell into grim, troubled silence, everyone else immediately tried to stop her.
"N-Nanami...! It's a trap...! You absolutely can't go...!"
"If you go alone with him, there's no telling what he'll do!! You gotta refuse, no matter what!!"
"I can feel a sinister aura from the hospital...! Some scheme is definitely lurking there...!"
"Or we could quit holding back... I'm seriously at my limit here... Can't we just beat the hell out of him for twenty minutes straight...?"
"That would be preferable to putting an innocent person in danger. I will assist."
Owari and Nidai, faces blazing with fury, cracked their knuckles and started toward Komaeda.
Then Nanami spoke, quietly but firmly enough to stop everyone cold.
"...Leave it to me."
"N-Nanami...?"
"I'll talk to Komaeda."
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I was walking toward the hospital with Komaeda.
"Nanami!! If anything happens, call us on the radio right away!!"
"No, forget that!! If anything happens, just shoot him!! Gently! Like, not enough to kill him!!"
"There's no predicting what that maniac will do. Be wary of even the smallest movement."
When I said I'd be the one to persuade Komaeda, everyone reacted with outright horror and tried to stop me. But there were less than twenty minutes left now, and if it was true that only Komaeda knew the method hidden in the hospital to pause the bomb, then sending me in was the only sliver of hope we had. After hearing that, they reluctantly gave in.
Of course, Komaeda's entire body was tightly bound, and in my hand was the self-defense pistol taken from him. Part of it had broken from the impact when the bullet jammed, but Souda had repaired it in a flash, so it was functioning normally again.
There were only a few minutes left now, so I hurried forward, leaving the others' anxious voices behind me.
"Haha... Nanami, why are you letting yourself be cheered on by people like that? Those guys don't even deserve to encour—"
"Komaeda, shut up and take me to the place where the bomb can be stopped."
"....."
At my sharp rebuke, Komaeda fell silent and quietly headed toward one of the hospital rooms.
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"....."
"So? What exactly is supposed to be here?"
"....."
"Komaeda...?"
"....."
"Open your mouth, Komaeda."
"To think you'd let someone like me speak... Thank you so much, Nanami..."
"...Seriously."
The moment I spoke, Nanami looked like she wanted to shut me up all over again. Somehow, she swallowed it down and forced out her question.
"Enough already... stop the bomb. You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about, right?"
"Come to think of it... how much time has passed...? I'm not really sure, but there probably aren't even a few minutes left until it explodes... Hahaha..."
"I know that too, so hurry..."
"There isn't actually any way to stop the bomb."
"...What?"
I gave Nanami an awkward little smile as she stared at me in shock.
"It's a manually activated bomb... so why would there be any way to stop it...?"
Nanami's face went white. Looking at her gently, I thought to myself:
'Nanami... that switch you found earlier. Nothing happened when you pressed it, right? That's because it was actually the switch that activated the miniature bomb inside my stomach.'
In that split second, of course there'd be enough time to swallow the bomb, but not enough time to activate it too. I had simply swallowed a bomb that was already running.
'I prepared it in advance, just in case something like this happened... Which means if the bomb inside me explodes like this... then you'll become the blackened, Nanami.'
Thank goodness Plan B had worked. If I died here and a Class Trial was held, the others would naturally identify Nanami as the one who killed me.
And then all those despair-ridden fools who chose the wrong answer would die, and Nanami—the embodiment of hope—would be the only one left alive.
Needless to say, the bombs I claimed to have hidden around the island never existed in the first place.
To blow up the first island, I had gathered every usable bomb I had, except the one for my suicide and the one installed in the hospital. So Nanami was never in any danger of dying.
"K-Komaeda...! Stop joking around...!"
"Nanami... there was something I wanted to tell you before I died... That's why I brought you here alone..."
"W-What...!?"
"That password in [mouse castle]... it had been erased, right...?"
".....!"
"Haha, so you did see it..."
"That was... Monokuma erased it..."
"No... Monokuma did block the others from entering [mouse castle], but he never actually went inside. The one who erased it... was me."
"...What?"
Seeing Nanami's stunned expression filled me with a strange kind of delight, and I continued.
"The password that will lead everyone to the future... it's..."
".....!"
When I told her the password, Nanami looked genuinely shaken. I smiled at her and went on.
"That's quite the expression... You can more or less guess what it's for too, can't you...?"
"...The ruins?"
"Hahaha... Just like hope, you caught on immediately. Yeah. If you go there... you'll probably be able to escape Monokuma... maybe. So once everything's over, make sure you go."
"....."
After hearing me out, Nanami's face hardened as she sank into deep thought. Watching her, I suddenly felt the end drawing near, and quietly whispered:
"Well then... I think it's almost time. Nanami, let me ask you one last question."
".....?"
I hesitated for a moment, then carefully asked her:
"...Do you think someone like me deserves to be loved?"
"....."
Nanami said nothing.
Of course she didn't. What right did I have to be loved? More than that, why had I even asked something like that?
Had the final moment made me sentimental without realizing it? Or had my incurable illness finally flared up enough to drive me insane? Or maybe... the knot I'd carried inside me my whole life had only now, at the very end, finally burst open.
Well, there was no point thinking about it now. I was about to be blown apart in a grotesque instant anyway—
"Yeah. You do. More than enough."
"...Huh?"
"And..."
"Haha, thanks. Even if you're only saying th—"
"You deserve to keep living, too."
".....!"
Nanami stepped right up beside me and wrapped her arms around me.
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"...!?"
"I can't let anyone else die anymore. Those two managed to get out safely... but if we die, we'll cause enormous damage to the entire world."
"G-Get away from me...! I-If you stay like this..."
"Right. If I stay like this, I'll get caught in the blast too. But if you don't want me to die... then maybe your luck will kick in and the bomb won't go off, right?"
The instant he understood what she was trying to do, Komaeda started struggling violently.
"Stop it...! Don't sacrifice yourself... for trash like me...!!! That's not... hope at all...!!!"
"Sacrifice...? Hope...?"
"Let go!! I said let go!!!!!"
"That's wrong."
"...What?"
"This isn't a sacrifice. And it isn't for hope, either."
".....?"
Komaeda was so blindsided by Nanami's absurd answer that he forgot to struggle and just stared at her blankly. Looking straight at him, Nanami spoke in a calm, unwavering voice.
"This is so we can move toward the future."
Boom!!!!!
The moment she finished speaking, the bomb exploded.
"....."
"...See? I was right, wasn't I? Komaeda?"
"H-Haha... hahaha..."
Except it wasn't in the room where the two of them were standing.
It was in the hospital room where Komaeda had taken hostages, threatened everyone, and then been subdued.
"No wonder it tasted like gunpowder..."
It was a ridiculous farce born from one catastrophic misunderstanding: while being violently restrained, the bomb had slipped out of Komaeda's pocket, and the broken fragment of the gun—shattered when the bullet jammed—had fallen into that pocket instead. Without noticing, Komaeda had swallowed that piece of debris.
That absurd little tragedy—caused by Komaeda's impossible luck, laughable from one angle and utterly stupefying from another—was it fortune for Komaeda? Or misfortune? For everyone else, was it salvation... or just another twist of despair?
That much, no one could say yet.
But the children who had clawed their way through countless ordeals, the children who had come to wish for a radiant future where every last one of them could walk forward together, and the children who were about to face their final decisive battle—soon enough, they would learn the answer.