Part 8: Chapter 1 Daily Life, Part 2

I rushed out of the room to meet up with all the others. But there was someone waiting for me there. It was like something out of an old TV show...

*WHAM*

???: Ahh!





: Oh--! ...Sayaka? S-Sorry! Are you okay?
: I-I'm fine. I hope you're okay... Sorry about that...

She had an embarrassed smile on her face. I stood up slowly.

: Are you okay, Sayaka? Are you hurt?



: Hmhm, you make it sound worse than it is. I'm completely fine. I know how I look, but I've actually built some pretty good muscle jumping up and down on stage!
: That's good, then...
: But...are *you* okay? You know, from when Mondo hit you...

That's true... I got knocked out right there in front of everyone. I guess I revealed my lack of cool right from the beginning...



: Makoto...?
: Oh, uh, I'm fine! Nothing wrong here!
: Oh, that's good. I was kinda worried...
: Th-Thanks... By the way...what are you doing here?



: Actually...I came to get you.
: You came...to get me?



: Well, if you really are feeling better...I was hoping you could come to the dining hall.
: The dining hall...?
: After you got knocked out, everyone decided to go and do their own thing. We decided it would be more effective if we split up to investigate. So we agreed to get together later on and talk about what we'd each found out.
: So does that mean it's almost time to get back together? If that's what's going on, then of course I'll go with you!
: Good. I'll go on ahead and meet you at the dining hall, then. *leaves*





: We now have control over Makoto again and can now explore the dormitory hallways.



: Here's the map of the area. All the dorm rooms are on the right side, with a few facilities on the left. The dining hall is the room with the spoon and fork in the lower left. Before we go there, however, let's see what else is in this area.




: Dorm rooms line the hallway here and around the corner.



: There appears to be some sort of inner courtyard here, though it's nothing more than scenery.



: A trash room is in this hallway, though we can't enter it yet. There are also a few bathrooms down the hall.



: At the bottom of the map is this barred-off staircase and caution-taped door. We can't do anything with either of them yet.




: There's a laundry room and a bathhouse in the upper part of the map but right now we can't go into either of them.



: Let's enter the dining hall.





This must be the dormitory dining hall.

: It looks pretty clean, so that's good.



: ...Er, I guess that's not really important right now, with us being prisoners here and all.
: Yeah, that's true...

Nobody was waiting there for us. We don't really have much choice. I guess we should just wait here for now.



: Hmm... Okay, let's just wait here.
: Huh!? You heard that!?



: Like I said, I'm psychic.
: Come on, I'm just kidding! Seriously, I just have amazing intuition.

Is it really just intuition...?



: It's kind of sudden, I know, but here comes a tutorial! Right now I'd like to talk about reactions. You're gonna be talking to Sayaka, right?



: I'm going to cut-off the tutorial here. In theory, Reactions are basically a small mechanic in which you can change a conversation's direction by pushing Triangle to select the purple words in a sentence, then pressing X to continue the conversation. In practice however, Reactions don't affect the conversations that much because there's basically no reason not to React to every instance that they show up. In fact, sometimes you MUST React to something to progress the story.
: They are used more heavily in the beginning of the game to demonstrate the feature, but most of what is said in a Reaction conversation is stuff you could have learned even if you skip the Reaction. They're harmless enough, but I'm not a big fan of them. The writers could have accomplished what Reactions do by just writing the conversations a little better.
: I'm going to represent them in text with [bolded square brackets] as best I can, as long as it doesn't break BBCode to do so.
: Let's skip the rest of the tutorial because I've basically explained everything it was going to and get back to the game.



Um, so...what time is it right now?

: What!? 7 o'clock!? At night!?



: You were unconscious for a pretty long time...

I see... Without being able to look out a window, I've lost all sense of time. If I have to stay in this place for too long...I might just go crazy...





: By the way, Makoto...
: Huh? What is it?
: W-Well, it's just... I know this is kind of [continuing the self-introduction thing], but I [wanted to ask you something].

> continuing the self-introduction thing

: Continuing our self-introductions?



: We kinda got cut off before, but I had a question I wanted to ask you.

Sayaka wants to ask me something? I wonder what it is. Now I'm really curious...

> wanted to ask you something

: What did you want to ask me?



♪ Music fades out. ♪

: Makoto...did you happen to go to Blackroot Junior High? Were you maybe...in class 2?
: Y-Yeah, actually...I was.





: I knew it! I went there, too! I was in class 4, though. Do you remember me?
: Do I remember...?

Even back in middle school, she was a celebrity with all kinds of "ultimates" surrounding her. How could I forget? Almost as surprising as her question was...that she remembered me! We'd never even talked to each other, but somehow she still knew who I was.



: Hey, are you okay?
: Oh, yeah. I'm just surprised, is all. I wouldn't have thought you'd remember me.
: We went to the same school for three years, of course I remember!
: Well, that's true. But there were lots of students in our grade, right? Plus, I've never been the type of person to ever really stand out. I'm average at everything, and all my hobbies are totally normal. Even "normal" would call me boring.



: What are you talking about? You're so strange!
: S-Strange? That's--!



: Hahaha!

She started giggling even louder. That somehow mysterious smile of hers made my heart grow calmer. Her smile was the nicest smile I'd ever seen...

: Anyways, I'm really glad...that I know somebody here.
: Talking to you has made me feel a lot better about all this... You're amazing Makoto!
: N-No, I'm really not... I'm nothing at all compared to all you "ultimates."
: But *you're* the one that helped me find my courage again. Not any of those "ultimate" students.
: Thank you for saying that...



: And to thank you for helping me out, I'm going to become your Ultimate Assistant!
: Huh? My assistant?
: Yup! I'm your assistant now! I'm going to help you out as much as I can, so let's get out of here together!

When she says things like that, it... It just gets me pumped up!

: Since we examined the clock to see what time it was and viewed all the Reactions Sayaka had for us, we now get the next scene.





: I can't believe no one's here yet. But I'm sure they'll start showing up soon...

Almost like he'd timed it, Taka threw open the dining hall doors right as Sayaka said that.



: Ah, Makoto, Sayaka! So you two got here first, huh?



: Too bad... I was sure I'd beat everyone here.



: I guess that just means I don't have enough fighting spirit yet!



: Well I won't give up! Next time, I swear I'll win no matter what it takes! Justice shall always prevail!
: That's a bit much, don't you think?

And soon after that everyone else came strolling in one after another. After a few minutes everyone had gathered in the dining hall.





: Okay! It looks like everyone's here. Time to start the meeting! Let's all go around and share what we found during out respective investigations! The sooner we find out what's going on, the sooner we get out of here!



: Wait, hold on a sec!



: What's wrong!?



: What about, uh...what's her name? You know, the silver-haired girl.
: Uh...oh yeah, Kyoko!



: ...What about her?
: She's not here.



: What!?

I took another look around the dining hall. Sure enough, she was nowhere to be seen.



: I wonder where she went. Has anyone seen her?

But everyone just shook their heads.



: Wait, so *nobody's* seen her?

Why hasn't Kyoko shown up yet? Could it be because...?



: Stabbing, strangling, bludgeoning, crushing, hacking, drowning, igniting, how you do it doesn't matter. You must kill someone if you want to leave. It's as simple as that.
: The rest is up to you. Give it your all to achieve the best outcome in the worst way possible.

Is it possible? Was she really...? No, no. I'm just overthinking things.



: Darn it Kyoko! You're really going to be late like this on the first day of school!? Not only is she late, she didn't tell anyone she would be late! A most unbecoming personality trait...



: You're being a real jackass right now, you know that?



: Well what do you want me to do!? Punctuality is everything!



: Now then, I declare that the first session of the Hope's Peak Academy briefing meetings has begun!



: Makoto... Actually, first of all... I've talked enough. Maybe we should listen to what everyone else has to say.
: Okay, let's do that.
: Hmhm. You know...
: Huh? What's up?



: I feel like I really have become your personal assistant, don't you agree?
: I may not be the best assistant in the world, but I'll give it everything I've got.

No...you've already done so much as my assistant.



: It's time to see what the others were up to while we were unconscious, next time.