Chapter Text

Makoto Naegi's body still carried bruises and aches from the events of the Mutual Killing Game at Future Foundation's headquarters. Subsequently, putting on his shirt and jacket each day had become a newly painful endeavor over the past two weeks. The first sleeve was simple enough, but the stretch into the second sleeve consistently shot pain through his shoulders and down his arms.

For whatever reason, the Future Foundation's board of division heads had decided that all members would wear some manner of formal dress while performing Foundation actions and business in public. Given that Naegi's division was dedicated to public interactions, that meant he was in a black suit and tie almost every day.

Of course, there wasn't any board of division heads anymore, let alone a chairman to oversee the Foundation. Only the 13th and 14th division heads remained alive, and the head of the 14th — Kyoko Kirigiri — had taken on many leadership duties until a new chairman could officially be put into place. The selection of new division heads was one of the reasons that most members were coming together at the island-based headquarters today.

Even so, the "selection" of division heads was little more than a formality; the remaining 12 divisions already had "acting heads" running them, mostly consisting of the second-tier officers who served under the previous heads. It was generally assumed that these acting leaders would become permanent in short order.

Even with most of the new Future Foundation leadership seemingly a foregone conclusion, there was an unease among all the members. Few of them were completely aware of what happened during this latest killing game, and even fewer understood how the supposed perpetrators — the Remnants of Despair — had managed to set up and execute such a crime right at the organization's home base.

Kirigiri had assured all branches that the killing game was set up remotely via a software intrusion that had also included hacks into Foundation robotics so as to perform physical tasks; therefore, the Remnants neither had knowledge of nor any exposure to the specific location of the base. This was a lie on multiple levels, but it was necessary given that the Foundation needed to meet somewhere, and it's not like it was easy to find a suitable facility in the world's current state.

The reality of who was behind the "Monokuma Hunter" game was a closely guarded secret among the survivors — Naegi included. None of them wanted to rock the boat too much. Part of the cover story required giving respect to the deceased, which in turn meant maintaining certain traditions they set in place.

One such tradition? Wearing a suit that is physically painful for some people to put on.

Makoto strained to get his arm into the second sleeve of his dress shirt, grunting audibly as the pain from his left shoulder shot down his arm. He was expected to speak at the memorial for the deceased division heads this morning, and he tried to focus on going over his speech as he buttoned up his shirt. Many members of the Foundation had traveled to what was left of the HQ to pay their respects and/or participate in the determination of new leadership, but most of them were quartered on their ships. Only a few attendees were allowed to stay in the remaining quarters that were still intact on-site, and most of those had been relegated to the barracks.

Makoto had been granted a private quarters — partly because it was largely Kyoko Kirigiri's decision as to who got them, and partly because a plurality of Foundation members were already calling for Makoto to become the Foundation's new chairman.

He was purposefully avoiding thinking about that last part.

Makoto was almost finished fastening the top buttons on his shirt when there was a loud knock at his door. His hands jumped, fumbling the button he was on. After a quick glance in the mirror to confirm that he was at least decent, he headed for the door.

When Makoto peered through the peephole, he only barely recognized the blonde woman he saw staring back at him. She was cute, with a black choker around her neck and a strand of her yellow hair pointing down as it fell just over the edge of her left eye. Her hair spiked out up and to the right of her head, and there was a purple comb embedded in the upper-left side of her hairdo.

Makoto vaguely recalled seeing her in a file running down all of the former Hope's Peak students that were part of the Future Foundation, although he couldn't remember her name or talent off-hand. He checked the wall clock to verify that he still had plenty of time before the memorial began, and then opened the door.

"Hello?" he began uncertainly. "What can I do for you?"

The woman stood about a head taller than Makoto, and she smiled tightly when she saw his face. Makoto noticed her dress shirt and jacket was slightly at odds with the pair of black shorts she was wearing, and that she had a canvas messenger bag slung over her left shoulder.

"Hey there," the woman began. "My name is Rina Ikeda. I'm from the Sixth division."

"Makoto Naegi," Naegi said by way of introduction. "Did you attend Hope's Peak?"

Rina nodded. "I was part of the 76th class — the Ultimate Make-up Artist."

Makoto's eyes widened as he put it all together. "Oh no," he muttered. "You're from the 76th class AND the Sixth division? I'm… I'm really sorry for your losses."

Rina's eyes drifted down a bit. "Sakakura-kun was a good man," she said firmly. "And Izayoi-kun was… a friend." Her voice grew quieter when she spoke of Izayoi.

Makoto's face made a sympathetic wince of pain when he heard how she said that. He tried to transform it into a compassionate smile before he asked, "Do you want to come in?" He assumed that she wanted to talk about Juzo and Sonosuke and prod him for some information on their time in the "game." After all, he'd already been approached twice by other Foundation members seeking similar information in regards to Chairman Tengen. It was an unpleasant duty that required him to try and mix reality with kind lies, but he quickly understood that the inquiring parties wanted those kind lies. If he could make the pain of loss easier for someone, then Makoto was happy to do it.

Rina stepped into his quarters and looked around quickly before returning her eyes to her host. "It's a little weird meeting you in person, honestly," she said bluntly. "Not just because I watched you on TV, but more because I had to make a fake corpse of you once."

Makoto's head jerked backwards in surprise. "Why would you ever do that?!" he asked in disbelief.

Rina smiled a cocky, playful half-smile. "For a Sixth division case. Sakakura-kun wanted a corpse that looked exactly like you for this infiltration plan he had, and… it's not really important right now. It's just funny to see the real thing in front of me after I spent hours making an identical fake, y'know?"

He could only shake his head in response. "I really don't, actually," he replied, smiling with a combination of nervousness and confusion.

"Maybe it's better if you don't get it," she said back with a chuckle. "Anyway, that's not why I'm here," she added, reaching her right hand over to one of the straps on her messenger bag. "And I'll try to make this quick."

Makoto glanced at the clock again. "No big hurry," he assured her, flashing a look of compassion. "We have almost 20 minutes before I'll need to leave for the memorial."

She stood still and stared at him with a blank expression on her face for a few seconds, giving no indication that she heard him. Finally, Rina said, "So, uh, is it true that no one involved in the Hope's Peak broadcast regained any memories of your two years at the academy?"

His eyes went wide with surprise. This was definitely NOT the line of questioning he was anticipating. "Uhhh, well… yeah," he finally admitted. "Where did you hear that?"

"I know a lot of other Future Foundation members who worked on helping you all or wanted to," she said matter-of-factly. "And I know that most of the digital records from the school's final two years were destroyed either by the Board of Trustees or Junko Enoshima."

Makoto gave her a single nod. Without thinking, he moved his right hand to the back of his head and began to rub his hair nervously. "Uh-huh," he confirmed. "Evidently the board didn't want a lot of documentation around after the incident and the subsequent disappearance of the entire 77th class. And Enoshima, well, who knows what she was thinking?" He half-smiled and shrugged. "Some dumb thing about despair, probably."

He gestured towards a lock-box sitting on a wooden desk by the window. "At least she left us a few photos from our missing time. The Foundation found them while they were scouring the old school for evidence on Enoshima's plans and accomplices."

"Are those the same ones that she showed to you during your imprisonment?" Rina asked.

"Yeah," Makoto confirmed softly. He didn't particularly love talking about that time, but given that it's also the very thing that made him an international celebrity, he had come to terms with the necessity. "There were enough photos that we each got to keep at least one, sometimes two."

Suddenly remembering his manners, Makoto gestured towards the small love seat beside his single bed. "Um, did you want to sit down?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Rina said quickly, continuing to keep her feet locked in place. "So here's what I don't get," she continued. "How is it that Kirigiri-san gradually regained all of her memories from before her time at Hope's Peak, but nobody from your imprisonment ever regained anything they lost from those two years at Hope's Peak?"

Makoto folded his arms and leaned against the wall. His confusion with this line of questioning was beginning to turn into mild frustration. "Well, apparently Enoshima was in league with Yasuke Matsuda of the 77th class," he explained. "He was called the Ultimate Neurologist, and she learned a lot from the guy. The doctors here explained it to us once, and I can't say I understood it all, but it was something like… if you take away memories by just pulling something out, your brain can rebuild the things it lost. But if you take them away and replace the old memory-things — uh, ‘engrams’ I think — then the brain never knows to rebuild anything, so it… just continues operating without those memories? Or something like that."

"That's okay," Rina said. "I didn't really need to understand it, I guess. I just… was curious. It's related to what I wanted to talk to you about."

Makoto stood up straight again, dropping his hands back to his sides. "And what's that?" he asked.

Rina's eyes drifted away from him. She looked either guilty or nervous – it was hard to say. "It's… ah… " she began awkwardly. "It's just… how important do you think that past is?"

His face fell into utter befuddlement. "I don't follow," Makoto admitted.

"What I mean is," she continued, "Do you think knowing something about those two years would change anything for you today?"

Now Makoto laughed a little. "Like what?" he said. "I mean, it couldn't change my current life, right? Nothing will change how I feel about the people important to me. So how could it?"

Rina looked him in the eyes. "It might change how you feel about people who aren't in your life, though," she told him. "Or even make you… uh, realize things."

Makoto was getting a little nervous now. He could feel his heart rate speeding up. "Wh-what do you mean?" he stammered. "What kinds of things?"

"I just mean," she continued awkwardly, "That people grow and change all the time, and if you lose a few years of your life and have to… reset, I guess… it's… "

Suddenly, Rina stopped talking, closed her eyes, and made a deep sigh. When she opened her eyes again, her face showed a new determination. "Look," she said, "I have something you might be interested in."

She reached into her bag and withdrew a large hardcover book. "I've been debating whether to give this to you and your classmates for a while now," she said. Rina turned the book, holding it face-forward in both hands. The cover said "Congratulations to the 76th Class" in large print, with smaller text stating "Hope's Peak Academy" and the school's logo embossed in the lower right corner.

Makoto shook his head. "And what is it?" he asked, staring at the book's cover.

"A yearbook," Rina explained. "Actually, the last one Hope's Peak ever printed, since we were the last class that ever graduated — even if that was sort of unofficial. They would print these a few weeks prior to the year's end, so they never quite covered the entire year. But by doing so, they could give free copies to all of the graduates before commencement, and then sell the books to the other years for profit. Except we never got our commencement, and nobody ever sold the books either… for obvious reasons."

The implications dawned on Makoto quickly. His eyes darted away from the book and up to Rina's face. "…sold them to the other years," he repeated. "So us — the 78th class I mean — we're in there?"

"Your class is in here," Rina confirmed. "The usual headshots, loads of candid photos from throughout the year — the works."

Unconsciously, Makoto took two steps towards her. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to get his hands on that book and scour it for information.

Rina continued on, "It's the same for the 77th class, my class, and even the Reserve Students at the time. The Yearbook was one of the only places they made the Reserve Students feel like they were in the same school as the rest of us, so it was a nice cash cow from the families who were already paying top dollar."

In spite of his intense interest, Makoto's mind started to hold him back from getting too thrilled. He could feel the instincts that Kyoko Kirigiri had worked so hard to instill in him kicking into gear, albeit on a marked delay. Staring at the book now, he began to see aspects of this 'gift' that didn't sit well with him.

Makoto took a deep breath, trying to calm his obvious excitement approach the situation more logically. With his eyes still on the yearbook, he asked, "If this has been out there this whole time, why haven't any of us seen one before?"

"Well, it's like I said," Rina told him. "They were never sold. The only copies that went out were the ones shipped to the graduating class. That means that even my former classmates who were division leaders never got copies, because they were all expelled before graduating. And there aren't many survivors left from the actual graduates, either. A few of them never even made it home from school when classes ended… they got caught up in the riots and war, and, well… " She trailed off, but the implications were clear.

Makoto brought his hand up to his chin and focused his attention on Rina's face again. "Okay," he said carefully, "So it's rare. But even given that, why show me this now? Why not send it to me earlier? And for that matter – why me?"

Rina tilted her head. "Do you think I should've given it to the board for study or something?"

"I'm just wondering why you aren't giving it to Kirigiri-san," he said, trying to retain his calm. "I mean – she's my superior."

"She is," Rina admitted. "But you're more, you know… approachable."

It was an obvious fact, but Makoto still felt flattered. He blushed a little. "Gee thanks," he said sincerely.

"Plus," Rina added as she slung the book under her right arm, "Sakakura-kun had some weird kind of respect for you, and that means a lot to me."

This statement completely took Makoto aback. "He did?!" he replied incredulously.

"I take it that he made his dislike for you pretty obvious, huh?" she asked, smiling sadly.

Makoto thought back to meeting Juzo Sakakura for the first time — and promptly getting handcuffed by him, then punched in the stomach. "Kinda, yeah," Makoto said sheepishly. In the end, Juzo had saved all of them, so Makoto didn't want to speak ill of the dead.

"But even though he didn't like you for whatever reason, he admitted to me once that you had done something even he couldn't do – and that he thought you were formidable because of that," Rina said. "He never explained what he meant by that, but it stuck with me. It takes-I mean, it took a lot for Sakakura-kun to call anyone 'formidable.'"

Makoto cast his eyes down a bit. "Yeah, well, don't believe all the hype," he told her quietly. He smiled a little shyly and shrugged. "I'm just a regular guy who's good at looking at the positive. There's not much else I'm good at."

Rina put her left forefinger up to her lips and looked up to the ceiling in thought. "I read in one of Gekkogahara-san's books that if people keep praising you for something and you keep denying yourself the credit, eventually you're not being humble anymore – you're just hurting yourself." Her eyes moved from the ceiling and back to Makoto. "Well, I think she said it a little differently, but you get the point. You should try to own how much people look up to you, Naegi-kun."

Blushing once again, Makoto nodded at her advice. "Yeah. I'm working on that," he told her.

Rina promptly moved on. "To the other part of your question, I had a lot of doubts about showing this to you. Maybe that seems selfish, but everyone feels like they know your class from the broadcast, and there are photos in here that… could be painful for you all. Photos that show your class forming different kinds of bonds than the ones that developed during your imprisonment, if that makes sense."

Makoto's powerful interest was back again, but with a feeling of dread added to the back of his mind. "Er, what kind of bonds do you mean?" he inquired. “Is this thing going to make us angry at each other? Or get me angry at myself?”

Rina nodded once. "It's possible," she acknowledged. "I don't know the answer to that. I don’t even know if I’m doing the right thing right now. I even tried to ask a couple of my friends in my division what they would do, and they just made me even more confused." She gave a bemused smile and added, "Not Sakakura-kun, for the record."

"I guess I appreciate that," Makoto replied, smiling.

Rina continued, "That's why I ultimately decided to leave it up to you. Maybe the book will change how you and your friends see each other. Maybe it'll change how you think of the classmates you lost in the killing game. Maybe it'll even change how some of you see yourselves. Or maybe none of that will happen, and I'm just completely misreading a bunch of people I only know from watching them on TV. Whatever the case, you can determine whether you share it with the others or whether you even open it at all. In the end, this whole thing is your decision."

Now it was Makoto's turn to shake his head. "No, it isn't," he said. "It's not up to me to make that decision for them."

"Deciding that you won't decide for your friends is a decision," Rina told him gently. "And I trust you to make the right call. Or calls? Whatever. It's not like anything in there is going to crush anybody's life — at least, I don't think it will. I just wanted to be sensitive." She sighed, seemingly relieved that she was about to let go of this responsibility at last. "Even if I had no other concerns about it, I still can't imagine it would be easy to see the friends you've lost, all happily spending time with you survivors that can only remember them from the game that killed them."

Makoto felt a pang of sadness and regret when she said that. The smiling visage of Sayaka Maizano flashed in his mind. "Yeah…" he murmured.

"Anyway," Rina said in an attempt to quickly change the subject, "The point is, I'm leaving the yearbook with you." She headed for a small coffee table resting in front of the love seat. "I'd like to have it back someday, but I understand if you want to hang onto it for a while to make copies or whatever." After she set the book on the table, she turned back to Makoto. "Your class first appears on page 93, after the initial section on the Reserve students. You're under no obligation to even open the thing, of course. Just letting you know where to go if you do."

Makoto's gaze followed Rina as she moved to the table, then back away from it as she headed for the door again. "Thanks for doing this, Ikeda-san," he told her. "It means a lot to me – to all of us in my class."

Rina opened the door and turned back to look at him one more time. "I hope you still feel grateful after looking at it," she said, her mouth turning down in an expression of concern. With that, she walked off down the hall.

As the door to his quarters swung shut behind her, Makoto stepped over to the book on the table. He looked at the "Congratulations to the 76th Class" label again, then reached out and put a hand on the book's cover.

He turned and checked the clock, rapidly realizing he had ten minutes before he had to leave. Gritting his teeth, he quickly reached a decision: There wasn't enough time to really study the book's contents right now, and he didn't want anything he saw in there to affect his ability to give his speech at the memorial. Therefore, the yearbook would sadly have to wait for the time being.

As he rushed to get his tie on, Makoto decided that it was probably wisest to wait regardless of any external pressures. It would provide an opportunity for him to get Kyoko's input and tell her everything that Rina had just told him.

Even so, his mind was flush with possibilities about what bizarre "bonds" Rina was alluding to. Was the book going to contain pictures of Owada and Togami partying together? Would he see Enoshima making out with Yamada?

At the very least, both of those scenarios fell under "extremely unlikely." They were were probably far too absurd to be real, but concocting the most insane possibilities in his mind seemed like a decent defense mechanism against whatever was really in there.

He groaned and grunted in pain yet again as he slipped on his jacket and headed for the door. With one last glance at the yearbook, he headed out.