#kumikin

After a decidedly unpleasant morning, Kumiko had been hoping for a much more entertaining afternoon. And indeed, her afternoon had gotten off to a flying - or, as would be more apt to say, a splashing - start. She’d been having so much fun larking about with her friend in the fountain that the volleyball player had almost managed to forget all the worries and concerns that were hanging over her like clouds, which had multiplied tenfold to form an overcast sky after that morning’s events.

However, her brief spot of sunshine was quickly cut short by metaphorical rain when another of those announcements which Kumiko so loathed to hear rang out across the complex, blaring the news of a murder to all pupils. A glance at the Monokuma file confirmed it: Eun Yun Yu was dead.

Aito, Benito and Tsukasa had been one thing - she’d never exchanged so much as a word with the former two and as for the latter their communication had been brief - but Eun Yun was quite another. This death felt like she’d been kicked in the face. She’d known them. They’d exchanged puns together! And now a chill was sent down her spine and her heart fell and she wanted nothing more than to rewind time.

They were still stood in the fountain, soaking wet from their folly which had only been a few minutes prior but now felt an eternity away. Instinctively - both to provide comfort to her friend and perhaps to derive some for herself - Kumiko reached out her arm and placed a hand on Ririko’s shoulder. She didn’t say any words. Words weren’t necessary, and she could provide none to soften the blow. But she placed her hand there anyway, a silent signal to Ririko that she was there for her.

She let it rest for a short while before she spoke. Kumiko surprised herself - her voice was choked, distressed. For once, she was struggling to feign cheer. Reality had come crashing down, hard.

This motive was the worst of them all. The others had threatened Kumiko’s personal safety and wellbeing - something which she was quite capable of completely disregarding and had hardly batted an eyelid at. But this was different. Monokuma was going for the kill here (no pun intended), striking them where they knew it hurt the most. The idea of killing over a letter, a scrap of paper, was ludicrous; but the possibilities of what could be on that paper were almost unbearable to consider. If she let her last messages from Taiyu, Iwao, Uncle Ryu - heck, maybe even from her father - burn, would she ever be able to live with herself?

The concept was far too grim, and so Kumiko decided not to overthink it. Such thoughts bred fear and paranoia, and (as they had seen twice before) those were states that led directly to murder. She resolved to, as she did with most of her life, promptly eject such ideas from her mind and ride on a wave of oblivious positivity.

Besides, she couldn’t afford to be selfish and think only of herself right now - she had friends to look out for. And right now there was one friend in particular that she was searching for. After hearing Arata’s report on the cafeteria convention, one thing that had worried her in particular was what she had heard of Seta’s behaviour. In addition, she knew that this motive would sting him especially. She felt compelled to help in any way that she could, even if she was unsure as to whether or not she could provide any kind of useful support.

And so that evening she knocked on the door of Seta’s room and waited for him to open it, bobbing up and down on her feet in anticipation. The door finally opened and she spoke, although her tone was remarkably less chirpy than before.

“I, uh. I thought you might want to talk to someone, yeah? And I, uh, I’d like to talk to someone too so I thought why not kill two birds with one stone and talk to each other?” She paused awkwardly before speaking again. “Oh, and I brought something for you. Thought you’d like it, anyway, since it’s no use to me.”

With that she brought her hand out from behind her back and held out her gift - an origami guide. The booklet was filled with instructions on how to make all kinds of origami creations (or so she had gathered from her quick perusal of its pages), from classic cranes to some of the weirdest shapes she’d ever seen. In addition there was a small sheaf of star patterned origami paper which she hadn’t even tried to fold yet.

At first, when the first flakes of snow began to drift down, Kumiko had been ecstatic. Okay, so having the Murder bear hijacking what was supposed to be her super-fun beach party and motive-ing it up wasn’t the best thing to happen to her, but she supposed it could have been worse - at least nobody died, right?

But snow; now, that was exciting. Being from Naha and having only left Okinawa for sporting ventures (or to visit her grandparents in Hawaii, which wasn’t exactly cold either), she’d never actually seen or felt snow for herself. So when she saw it begin to fall, delicate and precious, Kumiko had actually shrieked with joy at finally being able to experience the real deal for herself.

“Yeah! Yeaaaahhh!”

After a good ten or so minutes spent trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue, however, reality kicked in. It was night, and soon she would have to settle down inside one of the tents and wait it out until morning. Maybe the snow would settle, and they could build snowmen and have snowball fights? She sincerely hoped so!

But for now, she was reminded that she had a duty as part of Jinya’s Super Squad - or, something like that. Granted, she wasn’t entirely sure how her headcount duties transferred from one situation to another, so she reasoned that if she counted the number of people in the campsite before telling Jinya then that would be good enough. Then all she’d have to do would be to leave her arm somewhere to charge for the night, dibs a tent and try to sleep through her excitement.

Skipping along as though she wasn’t wearing shorts and a tank top on a snowy night, she made her way to the campsite in order to gauge how many people were there. What time was it, anyway? Maybe she should have listened to Jinya more carefully. Well, she could always ask for clarification later.

She was just about to arrive at the campsite when she stopped. Not for any particular reason, but-

“Huuh - huuuuh-”

“ACHOOO!”

Knife making was admittedly not something that Kumiko had been expecting from her first day of school, but she was hardly complaining. A quick rendezvous of the area had revealed little in the way of entertainment besides books, playing pool (both of which were hardly action-packed activities) and the potential of splashing around in the fountain. And so as far as knife making was from her ideal pastime, Kumiko was satisfied until she could find some other way to liven up their time in the facility. Man, if this was a prank then the novelty was wearing off.

Having taken her carving knife, wood and metal and glanced at the blueprints, Kumiko sat cross-legged on one of the tables, equipment around her, ready and raring to go.

She discovered within about ten seconds that this task was not going to be an easy one.

Kawai Kumiko was a champion athlete, a sportswoman who was blazing a trail in the world of Japanese beach volleyball and beyond. Her physical strength was incredible, her speed admirable and versatility a force to be reckoned with. She could punch a ball with more power than one could believe a teenage girl capable of displaying. She could not, however, do certain things. Braiding hair, for instance, or using keys, or picking up eggs without making a gooey mess everywhere - she had learned that one from experience. Even taking letters out of envelopes was a mammoth task for her (she had torn many a message while attempting to open envelopes with her teeth).

And as she tried to whittle a knife, it occurred to her that she should add knife making to the list of impossible tasks. When she tried to hold the wooden stick in her right hand and the carving knife in her left, she almost stabbed herself in the arm. When she tried to hold the stick in her left and the knife in her right, the stick slipped between her prosthetic fingers before she had made so much as a scratch on it. Experiments into various other ways (including wedging the stick between her knees and holding the knife between her teeth) resulted in some very close shaves and a stick covered with small nicks and cuts that resembled a dog’s chew toy more than it did a knife handle.

For the first time since waking up in this completely unfamiliar location and being told that she was expected to murder her peers, Kumiko’s eyebrows furrowed into an annoyed frown. She stared at the stick for a good minute or two before taking on a look of determination.

“Alright knife, PREPARE TO BE MADE! KIIIIIIYYAAAH!”

And thus Kumiko began to smash her triangular piece of metal onto the stick as if her sheer force and willpower would motivate them to merge into one prize-worthy structure.

The result was an explosion of splintered wood and one bent metal triangle.

There were any number of reactions that one could expect from a teenager who had just woken up in a completely unfamiliar location and been told by an animatronic bear that their only method of escape was via murder. Even if those events had been exclusive and not come in quick succession, one could hardly not be blamed for feeling distressed, or frightened. Tears would be rational in this case, and perhaps if the news had been delivered by anything but something that looked like a cheap plush toy from a claw grab machine, Kumiko would have shed a few.

Instead, however, she burst into loud laughter that rang out clearly in the comparative hush.

“Good one! Beary good one!” The original cackle was then supplemented with amused giggling. “Man, that’s one heck of a first impression! Can’t wait to tell my brothers ‘bout this!”

After all, it wasn’t as though it was really possible for their situation to be legitimate, was it? Hope’s Peak wouldn’t be able to maintain its spotless reputation if its class of talented students all murdered each other, and surely nobody else had the resources to kidnap them all. Thus this was either an elaborate prank or an incredibly immersive induction ceremony

As if the tirade of morbid information had simply flown over her head - which, in all honestly, most of it had - she cheerfully bounded over to the nearest student, her voice almost nauseatingly chipper in the midst of all the tension. She failed to notice that none of her fellow classmates were as enthusiastic about their imprisonment as she was (maybe they just weren’t crazy about the whole ‘training regime’ thing?).

Kumiko felt as though her mind had been forcibly extracted, jostled and mashed by all sorts of strange methods, then unceremoniously dumped back inside her head - such was the fogginess that dominated her consciousness as she came to. Her senses seemed to come back gradually: first her hearing, which initially detected nothing; then smell, which perceived an unpleasant clamminess; then she began to feel coldness, a crawling sensation on her skin. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d properly felt cold. This couldn’t be home. Home was beaches and sun and the smell of the sea wherever she went, not wherever this was. And ‘this’, judging by the stiffness in her limbs, was not somewhere where people were meant to sleep.

Once these initial observations were made, the power of thought began to kick back in again. She remembered Hope’s Peak - yes, she had been heading to her new school. Kumiko could recall that much, so why did everything else elude her? She felt surrounded by misty memories of such an intangible nature that to grasp them would be an impossible task.

How had she gotten here, and where even was here? She cycled through possibilities - parties gone a bit too wild, some kind of weird initiation ceremony, maybe she’d just hit her head too hard - yet none of these could explain the dread feeling in the pit of her stomach that insisted that this was not such a mundane event.

The interruption of the tannoy was like nails on a blackboard to Kumiko, prompting her previously gradual gaining of consciousness to jolt suddenly to completion. Rubbing her eyes, she forced herself to sit up as the mysterious voice spoke. 

“And a good mornin’ to you too, Loudspeaker person...” She murmured. Okay, so she understood pretty much none of what had been said - something about institutes and staff and classmates- hey, classmates! That’s what you had at schools. So perhaps this oddly elaborate room (as she decided to describe it based off what she had seen so far) was all part of the Hope’s Peak experience. Well, it was a famous elite school; she’d be surprised if they didn’t do special, quirky initiation ceremonies.

Deciding not to think of the matter any further for the time being, she instead decided to do as instructed. Picking herself up, she made her way over to the boxes and rooted around until she found her designated ElectroID card. Hot damn, that’s some fancy technology. Like, that Pear company or something. Man, an Electronic card. That’s a real shocker!

Anyone observing Kumiko would have seen her begin to grin goofily at her own internal joke before idly tossing her ID card up into the air, then catching it effortlessly and slipping it into the pocket of her shorts. She’d look through properly later - for now, she had exploration to do!

The beach volleyball player noticed another student next to her - how long had they been there for? Either way and famous or not, she could not for the life of her put a name to their face. Well, no better way to find out than asking, right? She beamed widely at them as though they were meeting under completely ordinary conditions.

“This is all pretty cool, isn’t it? It’s like, an adventure, right? Some kinda bonding exercise I’ll bet. Oh man, this is way cooler than my old school!”

There was a short pause before Kumiko realised that she had missed out several key components of any introduction.