"I guess not knowing someone
doesn't mean you don't
understand them."

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   "No...i'm sure  i've got it...Is it Y/N."

   I choked on my saliva, "W-Wait me?"

   Of course it was me, who else could it be? Im sure im the main protagonist--sorry Makoto. This is my show now bitch.

   "...Why do you say that it's us?" Kyoko asked.

   "Allow me to explain... Just after nighttime last night, I went to the garden. So I can confirm that at that point, there was no dead body there. So, the murder must have taken place after I left the garden. However...Celestia, Mondo, Toko, Hina and I were in the gym the entire time. I assume you met up with Chihiro and Yashihiro on the way to the gym." I was flabbergasted, no way he managed to do that and completely write out that i had Hiro and Chihiro with me the whole time.

   "No way, i was with the two of them for the whole time--"

   Byakuya argued. "Not all the time i assumed..."

   "Well...I was with chihiro outside your dorm waiting for you to come out....so we went in." Yashihiro's voice deflated. 'No way I was being thrown under the bus...'

   "What!--I was sleeping?!"

   "I-I'm just saying!"

  Kyoko held up a hand to grab our attention, "Hold on. The gym?"

   "That's right. The four of us were there trying to dismantle Monokuma. The whole time we were very careful not to go anywhere alone." Byakuya explained, "We even went to the bathroom in pairs. All of which is to say...the four of us all have alibis. The only ones without alibis..."

   "...are me, Y/N and Makoto. That's why you're able to narrow down the list of suspects." Kyoko put a hand on her chin.

   "No way, this is bullshit. I'm only a suspect because you want me to.."

   Byakuya grinned at me, 'god i hate his shiteating grin...' "Exactly so, darling.".

   "Um, I have something I'd like to say regarding the whole alibi thing..." Yes, Makoto defended me! Defend all three of us!

   " ...Are you thinking of raising an objection?"

   "Well, before that, I just want to try and get a better idea of what time the murder took place. Doing that might reveal some kind of clue..."

   "Whatever you want. Somebody go ahead and help him out."

   Yashihiro put a hand on his chin, i thought we all decided not to let him speak-- "Me and Byakuya can both confirm that the body wasn't in the garden at... Well, it was after nighttime for sure. I'd say it must have been around 10 o'clock. So the murder musta happened after 10 p.m."

   "Then I guess we can say the timeframe for the murder was between then and when we found the body...?" Celsestia hummed, "Oh dear, I can't seem to remember. What time did we happen to find the body?"

   "Man, i don't know--The one who saw the body first was Toko, right? When she went to get the pickaxe..." Mondo asked.

   I decided to cut off Makoto, saying what he was going to say was so funny to me....i couldn't help it. "The body must have been discovered at 9 a.m., since that's when Toko went to get the pickaxe."

   "T-They're right, it had to be around th-then."

   "So we can be totally sure the murder happened sometime between 10 at night and 9 in the morning." Chihiro bit down on one of his small fingers.

   "For me, I was already asleep before nighttime hit. So I don't have an alibi after 10 o'clock...I assume Y/N was also sleeping-- But I'm sure we met up with everyone else before 9 this morning." Yes, Makoto! Grill their asses!

    "We ran into each other in the dining hall, right? That was around... Oh yeah! Right around 7:30! I remember checking right before I went in, so I'm totally sure about it." Aoi clapped.

   "Which means from 10 p.m. to 7:30 a.m., you don't have an alibi." Byakuya disagreed. "We've established a timeframe for the murder. It took place somewhere between 10 o'clock at night...and 9 o'clock in the morning."

   "Yup. And Makoto doesn't have an alibi for most of that time." Yashihiro the sell out sighed.

   "Yeah, from 10 o'clock...to 7:30."

   Byakuya piggybacked off of Celest, "That's more than enough time to commit murder, I should think. So Makoto--Y/N, if you have any objections, now would be the time..."

   "Actually, the murder couldn't have happened anywhere near 10 o'clock. It had to have taken place way later!" I argued.

   "And what makes you say that?" He hummed.

   "Because of the sprinklers in the garden. The sprinklers are set to go off right at 7:30 every morning, right? So if the body had been in the garden before 7:30.."

   Makoto immediately caught onto what I was referencing. "...then it should have been completely soaked!"

   "T-They're two of the same minds?! H-Hold on! I remember this part p-perfectly! The body was wet! Dripping wet, in fact..." Toko bit her nails.

   "Sorry Toko, but you're wrong."

   "Am I wrong? H-How? Are you saying o-only the mouth down south was wet!? How dare you spew s-such indecent words!?" Toko sputtered.

   "No...What... I'm saying that the body was wet, but not because of the sprinklers."

   "What do you m-mean? By d-denying the sprinkler...are you trying to deny my e-entire existence!?"

   Mondo sighed, "Man! You're totally wacko!"

   "If you're-really thinking it wasn't the sprinkler...y-you'd better tell us why!...The both of you!" Toko pointed a finger in my direction, then Makotos.

   "Just remember what the body was like after the explosion and you'll see why it wasn't the sprinklers." Makoto dragged his finger along the wood. "The top half of the body was wet, yes, but the bottom half was completely dry. The mask was drenched which is why I assumed Y/N tried to cut it instead of pulling it off. If the sprinklers got the body wet, shouldn't the whole body have been wet?"

   "He's got a valid point there, my hands were completely soaked when I cut the mask....it was gross."

   "S-So they only got the top wet? The bottom was c-completely dry!? What a brutal m-maniac!" Toko sighed.

   Aoi crossed her arms, "I'm so sick of her..."

   "Let's just...move on. The reason only the top half was wet was because...while the body was still on fire, I doused it with water. But only the part on fire--the top half." Makoto explained.

   "O-Oh...then I guess the sprinklers r-really didn't do it..."

   "So if the sprinklers didn't get the body wet, then the murder must have taken place ...sometime after the sprinklers turned on at 7:30 in the morning!"

   "Which means she must have been killed sometime between then and when the body was discovered at 9." Mondo shouted as if he won the lottery.

   "But their alibis were the only ones missing from 10 o'clock last night to 7:30 this morning, right?" Aoi bit her finger.

   "S-So in the end there's no way Y/N could have done it!" Chihiro clapped his hands eagerly.

   "In which case, the only one left without an alibi...is Kyoko." Byakuya blamed.

   "...I'd just like to say one thing. If you vote for me, and I die here, the mystery of this school will stay hidden forever. Which is why...I can't let that happen!" She said.

   'Here it goes down...' We all were in suspense at what she was going to say next. Of course I knew what was going to happen but I couldn't be more excited.

   Byakuya asked, "So are you saying...you're not the culprit?"

   "Of course I'm not. I have no reason to kill anyone. This is a trap the mastermind has laid for us."

   "A trap...?" Aoi asked.

   "Ahahahaha! We're this far into the game, and now you decide to blame me? Stop wasting time! Stop wasting energy! You really think your little trick is gonna work!?" Monokuma was lying on the chair, his little feet in the air.

   "Shut up, you!"

   "You got it, boss! Shutting up now!"

   "Anyway... Kyoko, you actually did have a reason to kill her."

   "Huh? She did?" Chihiro asked.

   "She thought Mukuro was the Ultimate Despair. In other words, the mastermind behind everything... So she killed her to try and put a stop to all this. Isn't that right, Kyoko? But you made one catastrophic mistake--Mukuro wasn't the mastermind at all. And as a result, we were forced into another trial, something I'm sure you weren't at all expecting."

   "So th-that was her motive...?" Toko asked.

   Mondo crushed his hands, "If she had a motive, and no alibi, well then...I think it's pretty clear Kyoko's gotta be the culprit..."

   "I'm not the only one without an alibi. Makoto's and Y/N's explanation is still insufficient." 'This bitch....'

   "Why do you keep dragging me back into the conversation? Just accept the fact I was sleeping and move on. I'm not like you and I'm awake at twenty four seven." I was becoming more and more irritated.

   "I will not, in fact I believe you are lying. The sprinklers didn't get the body wet, but that doesn't mean the murder happened when he said it did."

   "Wh-What are you--!?" Makoto hissed.

   "Because you see, there is a way the body could have avoided getting wet."

   "...Interesting. I'm listening." Byakuya hummed.

   "All it would take is covering the body with a certain something to keep it from getting wet. I'm talking about the tarp. All they have to do is cover the body with the tarp, and that'd take care of the water. In fact, that's exactly what the killer or should I say killers did. The dirt pattern on the tarp can attest to that. Only one side of the tarp got dirty, because that's the side that got covered in water. The side that faced down over the body, meanwhile, kept perfectly clean. This proves that the killers used the tarp to keep the body from getting soaked."

   'I'm really going to start kicking ass, wtf.' I know this is all part of the good ending but it doesn't feel right. I don't know why I was dragged down along with Makoto--i don't have plot armor like him..

   "But why would they go to all that effort just to keep the body from getting wet?" Byakuya asked.

   "Most likely so they could cloud the issue of when the murder actually took place. In other words, to create an excuse exactly like the one Makoto just gave us..."

   Makoto and I were starstruck, how did she manage to do that "Wait...something's not right."

   "And what might that be? By covering the body with the tarp, the killer prevented it from getting wet." She repeated herself.

   Mondo hummed, "So the reason the tarp was only dirty on one side...is because the sprinkler got that side wet!"

   "But the underside of the tarp was totally spotless, was it not?" Celestia asked.

   "It's cuz that side was protected from the water! Since it was facing down toward the body..." Mondo shrugged his shoulders. "Of course it didn't get dirty!"

   " Actually, one side being clean is pretty strange, if you think about it...Because...the blood wasn't dry before the body got blown up, right? Byakuya said it himself--not to touch it or you might get some on you. If you put a tarp on a body in that state, it absolutely would have gotten blood on it." Makoto was amazing at defending himself, if it were me, i would've cried.

   "Well...maybe the culprit washed it, so nobody would know they'd used it." Yashihiro asked.

   "You're... you're an idiot. If they had, they would've washed both sides. Just washing the one side wouldn't hide anything, dumbass." Mondo laughed.

   "Oh...yeah, true." Hiro deflated Mondo's name calling.

   "More than that, what if the very blood we saw on the body was meant as a kind of camouflage? What if, after the killer used the tarp to avoid the sprinklers, they then covered the body in blood that didn't belong to the victim?" Kyoko was clinging to anything and honestly, it was working really well. Even though I was convinced I had killed Mukuro.

   "Y-You mean...someone else's b-blood? Where would they get something like that? Who would do something like that?" Chihiro covered his eyes with his hands.

   "I know! They grabbed some of the blood packs from the nurse's office! That's what Y/N would've done, right? They spend most of their time there anyway." Yashihiro put a hand on his chin.

   "No, that's not what happened this time. The killer got the blood from right there in the garden."

   I piggybacked off of what Kyoko said, "Are you talking about the chicken blood?"

   "What!? Chicken blood!?" Celestia looked actually shocked, it was the first time I saw her break character.

   "You're right, Y/N! When I checked the chicken coop before the murder, there were five chickens." Makoto looked egger, "But after the murder, there were only four..."

   "S-So you're saying...someone killed a chicken and then covered the body with its blood!? Man, that's messed up!" Mondo sighed.

   "K-Killing a living thing just to do something like that is awful!" Chihiro looked as if he were going to cry.

   "Yeah, They should have at least eaten it!" Aoi scratched her head.

   "NO!"

   Kyoko ignored the two yelling, "I wonder if the killer had to get the blood from the scene so they wouldn't be spotted walking around... Anyway, there's no denying that a chicken went missing, which provides a basis for my theory."

   "Perhaps, but even so..." Byakuya started, "there's one thing that still doesn't make sense. You said the culprit used the tarp to avoid the water, and then covered the body in blood, right? But if that's the case, then the blood should have soaked into the ground around the body. But that's not what we saw. Only the victim's clothing had blood on it. The ground was completely clean."

   "I have to agree, that certainly is strange... Maybe they didn't apply the blood at the scene. Maybe they covered the coat in blood beforehand." Kyoko agreed.

   "They covered it...beforehand?" Makoto said.

   "When you two discovered the body, was it wearing the coat like you normally would?"

   "Um...I think so..."

   "Wait, no... The head was through the neck hole, but the arms weren't in the sleeves."

   "Then that settles it."

   "This settles nothing!" I groaned, this is all so stupid. Was I really about to be convicted for someone else's crimes?

   "Allow me to put it into words for your simple minds..." Kyoko sighed.

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