"Nanami...!? Is this really your first time seeing what's written here...?"
"...Sorry. I don't remember any of it at all."
"Judging from all this... it looks like the Future Foundation had a vicious internal dispute over how to deal with us survivors of 'that incident'..."
"W-Why? Wasn't the Future Foundation supposed to be on the side of justice? If they were an organization created to fight against 'that incident'... shouldn't they have protected the survivors no matter what?"
"...The more new information we uncover, the deeper we sink into the labyrinth."
The moment they finished reading the messages, the group began to spiral into confusion. The records plainly showed that the Future Foundation, the side they had desperately wanted to believe was righteous, had been locked in a fierce argument over what should be done with them.
"...At this rate, we can't just trust the Future Foundation so easily either..."
"....."
The others slowly turned their uneasy eyes toward Nanami, but Nanami, still unable to reveal the truth, could only stand there in grim silence.
"...Yeah, that's true, but... at the very least, we can trust Nanami. I don't know all the details, but... if she left behind messages that sounded like she was trying to protect us, then that has to mean something."
"Come to think of it... Kyoko Kirigiri and K seemed like they were protecting us too..."
"Yeah. Even if the place itself isn't trustworthy... it's still gotta be better than Monokuma! I'm choosing to believe them!"
"...Thanks, everyone."
At those cautious words, Nanami finally relaxed a little and managed a faint smile.
"More importantly... what's that? 'Hope's Peak Academy founder Kamukura Izuru'...?"
"Pfft! So Hope's Peak Academy's founder was bald!"
"...Looks like we've squeezed all the information we can out of this place. Let's move somewhere else."
The students stared for a moment at the portrait hanging above the blackboard, then, at Pigami's prompting, began filing out of the office one by one.
'...Kamukura Izuru?'
By the time nearly everyone had left the room, Hinata was once again the only one still standing there, lost in thought.
"Hinata-kun, let's go too."
"Huh? O-Oh... right..."
Only after Nanami called out to him did Hinata snap back to reality and leave the office.
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"This is... an arcade...?"
".....!"
"N-Nanami...?"
The instant she heard the word "arcade," Nanami took on a strangely entranced expression, then opened the door and stepped inside.
"There aren't any game cabinets... but something this classic has its own charm too..."
While Nanami took a brief moment to heal her gamer soul, the others began searching every corner of the arcade.
"What's this...? 'Hope Cultivation Plan'...?"
In the middle of the search, Souda found something on a desk and started reading it aloud.
"'A revolutionary and ultimate educational program created to produce [true hope] from Hope's Peak Academy'... Huh. So Hope's Peak Academy was doing stuff like this too...?"
"...Hope... true... hope..."
"W-What the hell!? Did Komaeda finally come to his senses or something?"
"....."
"Hey!! I heard all that muttering! Get up already!"
Each of them gave the confidential file a careful read once or twice, but there wasn't much more in it beyond what Souda had already said. One by one, they lost interest and turned away.
"...[true hope], [Hope Cultivation Plan]. I don't know why, but those words feel familiar somehow..."
Except for Hinata, who remained behind, quietly holding the file and murmuring to himself as those phrases lodged like splinters in his mind.
"Ah! Another hologram popped up, sir!"
"What's it gonna say this time...? I'm seriously starting to dread this..."
"But if we want the truth, we have no choice. We have to read it."
Meanwhile, the others gathered around the hologram that had suddenly appeared in the corner and began reading.
"...Now that's one hell of an information dump..."
"What are we, cargo? 'Transfer them,' my ass..."
"Ugh... my head hurts... what is any of this even supposed to mean...?"
The students huddled together and spent a long while trying to decipher the meaning of the messages, but the harder they pushed, the more contradictions and questions multiplied.
"Why are they so obsessed with us? Sure, we're Ultimates, but... the Future Foundation was founded by Hope's Peak Academy graduates, right...? So what could they possibly want from us that badly?"
"Actually... maybe we were exceptionally talented even among Hope's Peak Academy students?"
"No way... Hope's Peak Academy was supposed to be full of monsters... there had to be tons of people way more impressive than us..."
"Maybe... before we lost our memories, we were..."
"Hm? Pigami, what was that?"
"...Nothing. Forget it."
".....?"
Pigami looked like he was about to say something important, but in the end he swallowed the words and quietly walked out of the arcade. The others followed after him one by one.
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"Hmm... I don't know why, but I feel like that library's hiding something this time..."
"But, uh... hasn't something been weird for a while now? Every time we go into a room and come back out, it feels like the hallway keeps changing..."
"Huh? Really...? I can't tell..."
"Now that you mention it... maybe you're right...?"
Feeling a vague but growing sense of wrongness, the students entered the library and, as if it were second nature by now, headed straight for the hologram and began to read.
"...What is this?"
"The others were hard to understand too, but... this one really makes no sense at all..."
"Upupupu!! Wait!! Hold it right there!!!"
Everyone was tilting their heads in bafflement at the incomprehensible message when Monokuma suddenly burst out and hurriedly blocked the hologram with his body.
"My bad! That was a mistake! Wrong one! Oopsie... this is awkward..."
"What? Was it actually important enough to make Monokuma panic...?"
"Even so, the contents are too vague to infer anything from. I doubt we can learn much from it."
"Whew... good thing I turned the cameras off until the graduation exam. That could've been a disaster! Upupupu...!"
Monokuma gave an embarrassed little laugh, turned around, and started wildly fiddling with the hologram.
"Heave-ho... heave-ho... there! Fixed! This is the message I was supposed to show you! Welp, see ya!"
"...What kind of mechanism even is that?"
"At this point, if we start worrying about every little absurdity, our brains are going to explode. Just read the message."
By now, the students had become almost numb to Monokuma's deranged antics, so they simply turned to the altered message and read it.
"...What the hell is this now?"
"So we really were sent to Jabberwock Island after all..."
"More importantly, wasn't this guy acting like he wanted to tear us apart just a second ago, sir?"
"...Once again stand on the side of hope. Don't tell me... we really were..."
The students all started voicing their own reactions, suspicion and speculation tangling together into a suffocating knot. Then Pigami cleared his throat and forcefully organized the chaos.
"...To summarize: we, the survivors of 'that incident'... were protected by the Future Foundation, led by Class 78, and transferred to Jabberwock Island as subjects of the New World Project. And then..."
"...You got dragged into a killing game! Upupupu!"
Monokuma suddenly popped just his head out of the floor to shout that, then vanished back down again.
"...That's all we can say for certain right now. Honestly... there are a few things I can more or less guess at... but nothing is definite. So... it'd be better not to indulge in reckless speculation."
"I don't totally get it, but... it feels like we're getting closer and closer to the end..."
"Whether the end holds an abyss or a lifeline... that's something you only learn by crashing into it yourself. So for now, we move forward."
"So basically, there's nothing else to learn here and we should leave, right? I've heard your dramatic speeches so many times I can kinda translate them now..."
And so the students began leaving the library in search of the next piece of the truth.
"Something feels... off. Like someone's coming for us..."
"...Yeah, I feel it too. Friend or foe, I can't say... but someone is definitely approaching."
"What are you two even talking about...?"
"Hm? Oh, just a feeling."
"We've got good instincts, y'know."
"...Yeah, I guess you do."
Leaving behind Nidai and Owari, who were saying bizarre things with utterly serious expressions, Hinata paused at the library door and thought to himself.
'...That should've been obvious nonsense, so why did I just accept it like it was perfectly natural...?'
The dissonance gnawed at him for a moment, but when the others called from behind for him to hurry up, he abandoned the thought and stepped out of the library.
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"What the...? We definitely just left the library, so why are we..."
"I've been brushing off the weirdness this whole time, but... no, this is too much. Since when did we end up in the laundry room?"
The moment they left the library, the students found themselves in the laundry room in the blink of an eye. They had been forcing themselves to ignore the bizarre phenomenon for a while now, but at last, their patience snapped.
"Monokuma!! What kind of trick are you pulling this time!?"
"There has to be some mechanism behind it... like the structure shifts with machinery every time we enter a room..."
"More importantly... every time we leave a room, my head starts hurting... are any of you feeling that too...?"
"Ah! So it wasn't just me, sir!? Thank goodness! I thought I was coming down with a cold!"
For a while, the students threw theories back and forth about the nature of the phenomenon, but no convincing answer emerged. In the end, grumbling all the while, they started investigating the laundry room.
"Ah...! F-Female swimsuits...!"
"Pervert... die..."
"Hanamura... don't you get anemia or something...? At the rate you're losing blood through your nose... I feel like your body should've run out by now..."
"Why is this magazine sitting in the middle of a laundry room...?"
"Hey, isn't the person on the cover Junko Enoshima?"
"...So this girl was the leader of [Ultimate Despair]... She really was just a high school girl..."
After rummaging through the laundry room for quite some time, the students found a tablet-like computer inside one of the washing machines.
"This definitely looks like it's got something important on it..."
"...Got it. I turned it on. So what kind of information is in here...? Hm? [Neo World Program]?"
"It seems likely to be connected to the 'New World Project' that kept coming up in those messages. Let's take a look."
The students placed the newly discovered tablet on a desk, crowded around it shoulder to shoulder, and began reading what was inside.
""...V-Virtual reality!?""
And in the next instant, everyone except Nanami froze solid.
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