#ch.05

‘After all, you might be talking to the only person on this train who’s still willing to hear you out.’

The doctor was dead now, and the truth of his words felt twice as heavy. This was not the outcome Fennec had wanted, and the sting of disappointment still lingered as passengers filed out of the lounge. There was no sorrow in Fennec’s heart for Sawbones or his family, or even his own loneliness—there was only bitter dissatisfaction, and the unmistakable sensation of standing on thin ice. The butler stood in the centre of his bedroom with a carving knife, sweeping it out of his pocket over and over again.

The disdain for his circumstances, the wish for a different result, the regret that he had not reached the answer sooner—by morning, those things were unnecessary. Like sand through his fingers, Fennec let them go. The sun had just barely begun to peak over the mountaintops by the time Fennec left his cabin with a smile that seemed part of the uniform. He tossed two caffeine pills into his mouth, smoothed his jacket and moved towards the lounge. 

When Fennec’s hand caught the wall and the ground swam beneath him, he thought the train must have lurched to a stop. The butler looked up and saw that the world had become hazy—he could hear the wheels rolling dutifully along the track, but it sounded somehow far away. With a forefinger and thumb, he rubbed at his eyes while the other hand moved to the knife in his blazer pocket. His heartbeat was rapid in his chest, his breath shallow.

“…”

Fennec knew then that he had reached his limit. He had gone too many nights without a restful sleep, and fatigue was finally taking its toll.

Not here.

Fennec pushed himself up and pulled open the door to the lounge—it was impossibly heavy. He hurried through to the next car, the kitchen, but he could not stop there. Fennec borrowed a dish towel from one of the drawers and carried on, wading through a thick fog of exhaustion until he reached the church. It was empty, quiet. An imposing cross loomed high at the end of the room, boasting of a higher power.

“. . . God,” he greeted dryly. “Are you up there?” Fennec’s voice echoed through the church, and then there was silence.

“No,” he said, splaying out his hands as he tipped his head back and stared up past the ceiling. “I already know. What’s up there is . . .”

A bout of self-awareness hit him then—he envisioned himself standing alone in the dark room, arms spread wide, finishing that sentence. Laughter erupted from his gut, and he wondered with some humour if he was already delirious. Stifling his outburst, Fennec knelt by one of the pews and folded his dishtowel four times over. With one last look at the door, he slipped under the pew and made a bed of the floor. It was hard and cold, but a small price to pay in order to survive. With the carving knife tucked beneath his makeshift pillow, Fennec let himself sleep.

The pulse of drums and the soaring guitar could still be heard two cars over, joined by a new voice—Fennec had little interest in whose it was. The passengers had made an event of the karaoke machine’s arrival, a party where self-serving butlers were no doubt unwelcome. In other instances, Fennec might have lingered anyway—offered food and drink, kept everyone under his watch—but this time he had left without a word. The answers to his questions felt too near not to chase them.

The ballroom was empty, and Fennec swept through it with seasoned poise, as though the tray perched delicately on his fingertips was not there at all. There was an unmistakable sense of purpose in the clipped sound of his footsteps as he moved through the train, never once changing pace. When Fennec pulled open the door to the Gift Shop and saw his host standing there, his eyes gleamed with warmth.

“Miss Dot,” he said, coming to a stop some steps away. With a humble bow of his head, he lowered the tray to present two steaming mugs of hot chocolate, only one of which had been decorated. Floating undisturbed at the top of the cup, marshmallow foam and chocolate syrup formed an intricate spiderweb.

It was eleven minutes past midnight, and the Sleepover Suite was dark and empty. Pillows collected in heaps, folded and creased from when Daisy, Bandit and Toto had made beds of them. Wrappers from cookie packets and sticks of gum still littered the left corner, and in the centre of the room a game of Monopoly sat unfinished. Toto stood blinking in the doorway. Oh, he realized, the rooms were reopened—and then he was struck by a feeling of incredible loneliness. Toto lingered there for half a minute longer before he shut the door.

When the elevator stopped and he stepped out onto the sixth floor, Toto decided he was no longer lonely—there was so much to do and see that it left little room in his head for any thought but one, and it was a truth he had known all his life: the reasons to smile far outnumbered the reasons not to. And so he smiled as he moved down the empty hall, thinking that maybe, if his late night exploration stretched on long enough, he would cross paths with a friend. He never did—but he played soccer with the gym ball and danced with the human models in the lab, and after that he ate banana cream pie in the movie theatre until he felt sick. In spite of the nausea and an errant crumb on his cheek, Toto still managed to look dazzling in all of the pictures he took in the photo booth—he was sure that anyone would say so.

By the time he reached Paradise Deck, half the sky had already turned pink. Toto fished the pocket watch out of his coat to find that it was several hours later than he had thought; he did not consider how it might look should someone find him standing there, alone in the still-dark morning with the Killing Hour inches from his fingertips, but no one ever did, and he carried on—past the volleyball court that was now so clean, past the pool where he had once thrown Fantasma from his shoulders, and on another day found himself stranded with Daisy in a makeshift gondola. Toto walked to the very end, the bow of the ship where, at one time, fifteen passengers had stood. The deck seemed so much larger now. Toto spread his arms, teetered from one foot to the other, hummed a jaunty tune as he looked out at the sun on the horizon. It cast a glimmering orange line down the centre of the sea, where Toto noticed a spot of water that was several shades darker than the rest—and then that darkness moved.

“Ah–!”

The sea frothed around the shape as it broke the surface, smooth and grey, and two smaller shapes followed. From the first, a burst of water. From the second, a tail.

“Aaaah-! Haha! Les baleines!”

Toto tore from his spot at the bow and raced to the elevator in a clumsy sprint, jabbing the down button over and over as he descended to the first floor. The doors has barely opened when Toto shouldered his way through, screaming his delight into the hall.

“Whales! Whales, there are whales, wake up!” He banged his fists on every door in his path—Daisy’s, Bandit’s, Nobody’s, Lumi’s, Judge’s, Nightingale’s, even Dot’s. “Upstairs!” he called out. “Hurry!”

Toto did not wait for an answer; once his friends had been sufficiently alerted, he was back in the elevator, loosed onto Paradise Deck. He ran and ran until he reached the bow, but when he looked out at the sea again he saw nothing but a sheet of glistening water. A small sound escaped Toto as he opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped himself when he realized that whales would not be convinced by him. With his palms against the barrier, he watched the empty water, rooted to the spot until he heard the footsteps of a friend who had answered his call. He turned to face them. 

The mood had grown heavier on the mountain. With classmates dying one after the next, Sekai had not expected anything different. Perhaps some here had managed to hold onto hope—perhaps there were still survivors who thought they might all escape one day, envisioning a life outside of Monokuma’s game—but Sekai walked with his head down, dragging his feet as he passed the rooms that had become so familiar to them all. 

“Gloomier and gloomier! Cheer up, Sekai-tan  ♪ I’m not getting any younger, y’know! Why don’t we have some fun? You’ll feel better ~ ♪” 

“Mm . . .” Sekai gave a half-hearted murmur, glancing around at all the bedroom doors until his eyes found the ski lift. “Okay,” he said, monotonous and defeated. “Let’s go play outside.”  The cold was biting out on the mountain; Sekai had not bothered to make any adjustments to his attire, kneeling down in bare legs as he gathered a ball of snow with both hands. Felix sputtered and complained every so often, but he kept the puppeteer company all the same.  After two hours outside, Sekai had crafted a snowman. It was large and featureless, missing arms and a face for the time being, but it was halfway decent for his first attempt. Sekai slumped against it, his legs red and raw from the cold, his eyes teary. It seemed that even playing in the snow had failed to make him happy.  When the exit door opened, Sekai snapped his head up, wide-eyed. Alone in a bed of snow, he had made himself as vulnerable as one could be in a killing game—the thought was not lost on him. Slowly, Sekai shuffled back behind his snowman and peered around its hefty body to stare at the approaching student.

Slowly, the fog in Kohaku’s mind was beginning to clear, but what it revealed was enough to make him regret ever seeking clarity—it was a hellish world, a wicked game that made a grand palace feel like the smallest of cages. The walls were closing in on him—on all of them—and there was no way out but death. The monster called reality loomed over him once again, but Kohaku Kido did not fight monsters. He ran from them until they disappeared on the horizon. He ran from them until he forgot they were ever there at all. If he could lose himself again, perhaps he all of this weight would lift itself from his shoulders—a supervillain like Kohaku von Korona could carry it all, but this was not Kohaku von Korona’s world. He had tried to return to it more times than he could count, but it wouldn’t take; it was like a striking a match over and over, a match that had once been aflame, black and burnt. It would not light a second time.

The courtyard was damp under Kohaku’s feet. The sight of it made his left eye ache, but he found gauze when he brought a hand up to touch it. There was momentary confusion before unease washed over him. As he walked deeper into the courtyard, his heart began to beat faster. In his mind’s eye, he could see a black serpent, remember its eyes. Was this a fantasy world after all?  He lowered himself to sit at the edge of the fountain, gripping the front of his shirt and drawing slow, deliberate breaths. Kohaku did not know very much for sure, but he knew his mind was in pieces. A crushing disappointment struck him in that moment—this was all he was, all he had amounted to. Reality truly was a monster. 

He hadn’t realized his face was in his hands until he heard footsteps coming through the wet grass. The one eye that remained to him was red and teary when he looked up at the other student and forced a smile—he did not know why he did it.