A Mastermind's Mind

Saihara Shuichi (Log 1, Chapter 2)

First of all, Kokichi Ouma couldn't remember what he did last night. That was suspicious.

Second of all, he'd never had a good night's sleep. Doubly suspicious.

Finally, he should have that familiar pain that was always present on his neck or back due to staying up late plotting- and he didn't?

Drugged. Definitely drugged.

How?

Who prepared the food? The drinks?

Shuichi and Harukawa, right? Harukawa might've done it, but he made sure to pick the same foods as everyone else ordered, making it easier to lose sight of his (apparently) drugged meal. Even so, she was an assassin. If she wanted to kill him, she would've made his food lethal, or slow-acting and painful, at the very least. But really, all he was was unusually relaxed and comfortable. What even was the point of sedating him, anyway?

"Geeeez, Makiroll," he whined, pouting childishly. "If you gotta kill me, at least do it right. I feel neglected." The creeping unease that Harukawa likely wasn't the one who'd drugged him set him on edge.

...Shuichi's tea had tasted weird.

Only Shuichi and Harukawa were in the kitchen together, and why would Harukawa want to do anything not related to murder? So if it wasn't Harukawa, then...

..But really? Shuichi? The poor detective wouldn't know how to murder unless it went up and bit him in the ass. Or maybe he'd noticed the bags underneath Ouma's eyes and wanted to help? There were other ways to get someone to sleep, honestly. But he needed confirmation from the source itself.

Who was Saihara Shuichi under his layer of deceit?

-

This chapter, Shuichi was going by tradition.

Gonta had to go. How..?

He'd get to it later.

Shuichi glanced around the empty corridors, staying as silent as possible as he crept into the computer room. The soft whir of the computers continued as he searched the lines of code Miu had carefully crafted into existence.

"...mmm.." He clicked down, checking and rechecking her code. "Everything..seems fine..characters..Kaito..I see. Gonta..check. Kokichi...ah." He stared at the commands Kokichi's avatar was programmed to have. "So Miu's planning to murder someone, huh."

Method eleven, plan sixteen. He'd scripted and written and altered it so much in the entry for the Ultimate Inventor's murder plans, and it ended in a total mess. So instead, he'd taken the basic idea (virtual world with a 'real world' motive), and revamped all his murder and plot ideas for all sixteen of them. So apparently they were using that journal? As much as he hated to admit it, the special code on Kokichi wasn't his doing, and this murder plan had felt farfetched.

...it was soooo embarrassing for them to use his most terrible idea. It almost made him blush, really.

"Well..", he paused, getting up and stretching a bit. "I should leave the code as is, I guess.." I want to see how this plays out. He hides the code in the highest place possible (calling on a monokuma to bring it to the top of the cube for him) before leaving the academy to go outside.

He strolled down the path leisurely, smiling as Miu, looking rather groggy, stumbled past him. He really had too many laxatives in the detective's lab.

-

Kokichi spent some time pestering Kiibo like he always did, the robot shifting uncomfortably and occasionally responding to the leader's taunts, indignant.