under the same sky

Naturally, the final book deals with Samidare's own Duel Noir scenario in which she is set up to face the killer of her sister. 

To her credit, evidently Samidare was waffling on whether she would really want to participate in such a thing. She soon decided she’d never agree to be the Victim in a Duel Noir. And then she was essentially forced into it after the Victims’ Catharsis Committee threatened to end Kyoko's life if Samidare refused.

So, the Duel Noir that the Committee sets up is pretty wild. Everyone in this crazy scenario is cuffed in some modified chains that can only be removed with a key card. Attempting to remove the chains in any other way injects you with a paralytic. Oh, and everyone in chains has to be inside their assigned room in the building before time runs out or the bombs go off and the building explodes.

Kyoko established way back in DRK2 that she’d never understand these Duel Noir “Victim” people risking everything for a chance to commit murder. It angered her. But that same book told us that, from Samidare’s POV, she kinda understood it, y’know? Because of her sister’s murder.

So now, naturally, Kyoko believes Samidare chose to be the Victim for this ultimate game. She feels betrayed by a fellow detective she had bonded with and looked up to.

Long story short: A fire breaks out in the building which renders the whole “go to your rooms” option pretty much non-viable. Kirigiri ultimately finds the key card for their chains held in the death grip of a body that is on fire. She ends up reaching into the fire and prying the body’s hands open to free herself, badly burning her hands in the process. She gets the card to Samidare, who also frees herself. They escape the building into the outside snowscape (yeah, it’s cold) and get into a discussion that’s interrupted when the Culprit/killer of Yui’s sister ultimately attacks. He shoots Yui with a crossbow a couple times. Kyoko tries to negotiate but gets a knife thrown at her for her trouble, which she catches right through her palm (even more hand injuries!). Samidare demands to know why he killed her sister, and the Culprit’s response is that he was just really “interested in” her. This pisses Yui off enough that she cuffs his leg and begins to forcibly drag him back towards the building. There’s a cliff beyond the building, so it’s unclear if she plans to have them both be by the building when it explodes or just drag him off the cliff, but either way, she’s bound and determined to die by killing her sister’s murderer.

She achieves that goal when the building finally explodes. Samidare’s body catches all the building chunks and shrapnel that would’ve flown into Kiri, and then her body lands atop Kiri as well. Kyoko loses consciousness. But even then, the fading warmth of Samidare’s corpse ends up helping to prevent Kiri from getting hypothermia before she’s rescued. 

Kyoko wakes up in the hospital and is told that Yui didn’t survive, which she initially responds to with merely an “oh.” She maintains that detached exterior during her hospital stay. However, once she recovers, she goes to visit Samidare’s grave. And that’s where she unleashes all her grief with a flurry of screaming and crying. She thinks about how her “Big Sis” was protecting her all the way to the very end. But unfortunately, Samidare never disabused Kyoko of the notion that Yui WANTED this Duel Noir. She believes that Yui entered this final game of her own volition in order to avenge her sister. Even a final posthumous letter from Yui (which she wrote to be given to Kyoko just in case she died) offers no hard denials. 

After losing it completely at the grave, Kyoko composes herself and shuts her emotions down harder than ever before.

But hey, that’s basically what the Victims’ Catharsis Committee wanted! See, their entire “Duel Noir” deal wasn’t just designed to give power back to victims who needed justice. It was actually ALL a huge manipulation to mold the “Ultimate Detective” who they believe will be needed in order to combat a forthcoming apocalyptic event. (Which they know about because their leader is a former detective who claims he can “sense impending death”... hmmm, shades of the whole “hearing death’s footsteps” thing) For a while, they had a number of candidates. But by volume 7, they knew it had to be Kirigiri. And Samidare’s death and subsequent trauma to Kyoko? Why, that was exactly the final push she needed to become even colder and more analytical. They manipulated her in exactly the way they always wanted... and Kirigiri will never even know it.

The story ends with a flashforward to Kiri starting her time at Hope’s Peak. We learn that she helped take down the remaining parts of the Victims’ Catharsis Committee; there will be no more “Duel Noirs.” Since losing Samidare, Kyoko’s evidently decided that she made a mistake letting someone else get that close to her in the first place, and that she won’t do something that foolish again.

Naturally, in the last scene, she is approached by none other than Makoto Naegi.

..............................................................................................................

Sooooooo...

It definitely feels like author Takekuni Kitayama had all the pieces lined up for this to align perfectly. But it also feels like he chickened out. In particular, having Samidare not sure she really would participate in a Duel Noir willingly, refusing to take on the “Victim” role, and then only doing it because Kyoko’s life is threatened? After Samidare already thought to herself in previous volumes about how she could understand participating in one if it’d let her get her sister’s killer? Either Kitayama stretched this series out to a level where he no longer thought Samidare would realistically participate in such a thing willingly after all she’d experienced, or he just couldn’t bear to let his fav OC be guilty of such a thing.