Entertaining a Small Thought

5th Arc Part 6: Despair Searching; Hope Searching

"It's no use. There's nothing to make this press lift up..." Kirumi grumbled to herself as she finished searching around the hydraulic press.

After discovering the torn power cables, Kirumi had spent time trying to see if there was some other way to lift the press, like some kind of manual way like a handle or lever. Unfortunately, she couldn't find anything like that at all around the press. It seemed that the only way to operate the press was with the control panel. Was that intentional on Monokuma's part? Kirumi wouldn't doubt it.

"So there really is no method we can use to get a look at the victim's body." Kirumi frowned as she took a few steps away from the press, taking it all in again.

Tragic was an understatement. No matter who was under there, this was just an awful sight. Kirumi had to suppress a shutter as she stared at the blood-soaked sight. It made it worse when she thought about how the one who was slowly crushed was one of her dear friends.

Rin...

"No. It's not possible." Kirumi immediately said as her face hardened.

It just couldn't be true. She wasn't in denial. Kirumi Tojo was not the sort of person to deny possible truths and go off completely on assumptions. This was different. She knew it couldn't be Rin couldn't be the one who died. She just had to prove it.

Too bad that without the ability to raise the press, that would be much harder than she would have liked. Unless she wanted to confess, but...

"No matter. It should be easy enough to gather enough evidence since it is the truth of the case." Kirumi hummed to herself as she walked away from the press.

Yes...that's right. That was the truth. Rin was alive, and Kokichi was the victim. She should continue operating under that truth. But that leads to other questions.

Why was Kokichi crushed by the press? If Kokichi was dead, then why was this killing game continuing? Was he really the mastermind then? Was Kokichi like Tsumugi? Had Kokichi just been manipulated into the role? Or could it have been that he truly was the true mastermind but his death had no bearing on whether the game continued or not?

And then there was the matter of Rin. Why is Rin hiding from everyone else? Was he the one who crushed Kokichi? Why in the world would he do something like that? She knew he had attempted to kill Kokichi after the fourth trial, but she had assumed that was mostly a result of his anger boiling over at that moment, as Rin stated he no longer cared about taking Kokichi's life before they saw the truth at the end of the underground tunnel. Did he change his mind again? Was Rin the blackened? Kirumi prayed not. But if he wasn't...

Was Kirumi?

She... It was very likely she was. It scared her when she thought of it like that. After what she did...

She almost wanted to let out a hopeless laugh. Her, a killer. Who could have predicted such a thing? Not her, that's for certain. Perhaps if it was in the line of duty, then maybe she could see it happening. She had learned multiple kinds of self-defense to protect those who had hired her. If she was to kill, she would have believed that it would be for someone else. And that held true here. She did what she did for someone else's sake.

However, that wasn't entirely true. This was more...selfish, wasn't it? Despite how she might try to justify it, she didn't have to attack anyone. She didn't have to attempt to kill anyone. Yet she went out of her way to. For her own reasons. What else is that if not selfish? The term felt unfamiliar on her lips, and it didn't feel right to use it to describe her own actions.

Kirumi had changed, hadn't she? For better...and worse.

...And yet, she felt that she wouldn't change anything about herself, even after all of this. Strange, isn't it?