Cabin Fever

Chapter 6 - Deadly Life 2/2

After the exchange with Minoru, Juro puts the binder in his backpack and continues looking around on the ground floor – though he can't be sure about it being the ground floor – and heads up the stairs he finds in the back. As he suspected, Mai and Ryoko are on this floor, with the former giving him a nod of aknowledgement.

"How's it downstairs?" Mai asks from where she's going through drawer after drawer.

"I'm guessing not very different from the situation up here." Juro glances at the stack of files Mai has gathered on a nearby desk and raises an eyebrow "What's that?"

Mai holds out one of the folders to him "Seems Jihun wasn't the only one with a stalker." When Juro gives her a look after taking the folder, she mutters "Right, sorry. Anyways, take a look."

Still not fully over the joke that was in rather poor taste, Juro sighs and does as he's told. When he does, his heart feels too heavy in his chest. In the folder, he finds both a brief and a detailed telling of his life's story, as well as extensive notes on his family, likes, dislikes, fears, a full profile of who he is as a person and what defines him.

"No wonder Monokuma could predict what'd make us tick, right?" Mai comments, continuing to rummage through the drawer that Juro now realizes is filled with even more folders.

"He basically created a whole profile of us, down to the very details. He knew all our weak points." Juro can't help but shiver "These observations are so detailed, it's... creepy."

Mai nods, closing the drawer and fully turning to look at him "Yeah, makes you wonder how long this has been planned." She gestures at their surroundings while saying that "There's profiles on everyone. Though I've yet to find Ishikawa, Asada, Fukui, Ebisu and Yukimura."

"Have you... read people's profiles?" Juro asks while opening a drawer to help her find the remaining folders.

"Well, I kinda had to considering we've gotta figure out who could've pulled this stunt." Mai responds "But, unlike Monokuma, I had the decency to leave it at the summary."

Juro nods, trying to ignore the discomfort in his chest at the thought of someone having gone through his personal information. He understands that this needs to be done to reach the truth, but he can't help but feel like he's invading someone's privacy. Especially when it comes to his deceased classmates, since they never agreed to Monokuma's terms to win this game.

Still, he goes through the drawers to find the missing files, though he takes a page from Mai's book and only reads the summaries.

First he finds Hachiro's file, feeling his heart sink a little. While the clown had mostly kept to himself, Juro had come to like him, he was a kind person. That's why it feels like such a betrayel to dig up his past.

However, he does what he has to do and reads through the file, learning more about his deceased classmate than he would have wanted. Hachiro had been born to parents with a rocky relationship who only got married to save face since they had him on accident. He tried to cope with the pain by making bad jokes after witnessing clowns perform at a circus. At the age of 14, he lost his father and not long after his mother remarried to someone she didn't love either and had Hachiro's half-sister. At this point he had gained a reputation as clown and the Academy scouted him.

Juro bites the inside of his cheek, immediately feeling the guilt wash over him for having invaded Hachiro's privacy. He shouldn't be digging around in people's past like this.

But soon he finds Mana's file and also reads the summary of that one. Her life had started a little easier, with two older sisters, two loving parents and her grandfather. However, when she was 9 a typhoon struck her hometown and one of her sisters died to save her. The traumatic event drove her to researching typhoons and eventually she delved into the environmental sciences with the support of her grandfather. Engaging in online discussions, she found fame and was scouted.