Everything seems to happen very fast once the votes finally roll in. One moment things seem like they might have a clear answer, and the next there are three Keiichis. And Hideo… has had enough.

“…” He stares down at his podium for several minutes, avoiding looking in the direction of the apparent mastermind. A glimpse was more than enough, he doesn’t… want to look at him. Them. Though every time the Real Keiichi smacks Ike, Hideo flinches visibly. He has to force himself to relinquish his white-knuckled grip on his podium, shakily wrapping his arms around himself instead as his classmates interrogate and shout and insult and rant…

He’s so tired…

“I… want to go home…” Hideo’s voice is soft, not really audible to anyone who isn’t standing near him. But then he raises it, pitches it to carry, and squeezes his eyes shut against the tears that won’t stop rolling down his cheeks. “I want to go home! I don’t care! I don’t care why he did it, what his reasoning was, what he has to say- none of it! Is there any reason, any answer he could give that would make you feel better? I’m tired of this! I just want to go home!”

Deep, hitching breaths shake his shoulders and Hideo presses the heels of his hands over his eyes. “I… w-what’s going to happen to Kojima-san…? The… the one who’s been going through all this with us? He really didn’t… know anything about this, did he? You just made him suffer along with the rest of us… what… what are you going to do with him now? Why did he shut down? Please just… I just want to go home… and he didn’t do anything wrong…”

Why is all this happening? Why does it matter? Hideo doesn’t want answers anymore, only freedom. Only for the pain to finally be over. But like always, it seems to just keep coming.

Before the older man could continue, he held a fist over his mouth attempting to clear his throat. That attempt soon became a gross and noisy cough, which took him a while to adjust himself. He patted his chest, taking in a few deep breaths.

It was a pitiful sight. Ike rolled his eyes, keeping his gaze away from the sight. Karoshi-kuma was apparently merciful to this individual, scampering towards him and offering a handkerchief to him. Taking the cloth and holding it over his mouth, he eventually settled himself to choke out, “Please don’t mind whatever he was rambling about.” His voice became clearer as he continued on, “I didn’t anticipate him to, just… act out. Speaking like that.”

“But I know how much this class loves that sort of behavior… or used to. I cannot imagine how tired you all must be. Hm.”

He rubbed his chin as he mulled this thought over, for whatever reason. 

“… Anyways- congratulations. You’ve all done it. You caught the mastermind, Keiichi Kojima.”

He removed his sunglasses, tucking them into his coat pocket as he said, “Feel free to celebrate.” Naturally, no celebration or confetti followed. Just an elder putting a hand on Keiichi’s and Ike’s shoulders. “I don’t mean to disappoint you when I say it wasn’t your classmate- or this nuisance.”

Ike rolled his eyes as he pulled close to his side with an iron grip. Opening his eyes to take in the sight- all of his hard work lined up in front of him. He couldn’t help but to smile at the sight.

“I may not look like it, but I was a Super High-School Level student much like yourselves. Don’t stress yourselves- y'all will one day look as handsome as myself. My name is Keiichi Kojima, the former Mathematician.”

Ike looked around the ground for a moment, pushing Keiichi away from his side all the while. Thankfully he didn’t fall over, as his eyes relit for a moment to take a few steps back to catch himself before immediately shutting down once his balance was regained. Ike winced, picking up something from the ground and holding up–

–a packet of oatmeal cookies.

“… … … … … … …”

“Y- You CAN’T be SERIOUS—”

“Enough.”

Ike’s mouth snapped shut. He clenched his fists, looking down at the ground with an angered glare. To just talk so much and suddenly be silenced by one word was… interesting. A slower set of footsteps followed and Ike huffed as he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked off to the side, peeved.

“Look at you, rushing out at the last minute. You’re just like these children, acting out without thinking of the consequences.” A sigh followed the gruff tone. What on Earth was going on? Everything was going a bit too quickly, wasn’t it? A pained groan followed as an…

… an older gentlemen came between Ike and Keiichi. He was donned in a white lab coat, and the first eye-striking thing on him was the sunglasses on his face. “My legs aren’t what they used to be… I can’t just run out like some sort of hooligan…”

“Ugh.” Ike let out another grunt.

“Are you finished?”

“Entirely.” His demeanor was quick to change to a bright smile. It caused the strange man to shake his head at his attitude.

“Finally.” He adjusted his glasses while leaning onto the podium for support. “Let’s try this again.”

[tw: cussing]

“—Not gonna lie, it feels really weird seeing y'all together like this. Or I guess not all of y'all technically, ha. That sucks.” A copy of Keiichi spoke so naturally, and without an ounce of sincerity. It felt like all of the raw emotion that the previous android had exhibited died as soon as this stranger came in. The clone patted Keiichi’s shoulder, shaking him lightly.

“Come on, man! Introduce me t'ya class!”

“… … … … … … …”

He snickered at his silence, finding the whole scene absolutely hilarious. It was confusing, but his grin made the atmosphere frustrating. He wiped a nonexistent tear from the corner of his eye, sighing. “Nah, nah, I know a good chunk of y'all. Sorta. One of y'alls was the Art Forger, right? Haha.”

“Sorry, I honestly can’t help myself– I’ve been thinkin’ of all sorts of funnies since we got here.”

None of this was funny though. No matter how much he laughed, it was all by his lonesome. He shook his head, rubbing the underside of his nose. “How confused are y'all? Are your hearts racing? I can’t even imagine what you guys are thinking about right now…”

Then he promptly flashed a peace sign, sticking his tongue out.

“My system is EIAC23- you could say I’m this little dude’s older brother. A previous version, maybe? But I do go by Keiichi Kojima- though I like the name Ike too– wait, can I just say I loved y'all’s theories! Especially from the Hacktivist and the Demon Card Reader! Too bad y'all got a whole lot of it really wrong?”

He adjusted his hat, rolling his eyes. “I was standing there, thinkin’ ‘Really? That’s what you got out of that?’ Three Keiichis- all this and that– Ikumoto being the mastermind?! That’s nuts!”

“You were right about one thing though. The original Keiichi Kojima is dead.”

“Because I killed him.”

His eyes became a hard glare as he gritted his teeth in a tight grin. “Who needed that damned bastard anyways anymore? A bunch of dead weight was what he was– making things way more complicated than it’s gotta be!”

Ike chuckled, his expression growing angry. “’Kinda like all of y'all, actually…”

“Now, which one of y'all busted down in my mansion and messed up my sh*t? You think you could just commit crimes and not have to pay for it? You bunch of stupid little di——”

He was interrupted by something hitting him across the back of the head. Ike momentarily stopped speaking, his voice bank vibrating with the tremors as he held the back of his head and groaning loudly. 

“J- JESUS CHRIST———–”

That…

How was that possible? Still shaking with his hands gripping his hair, he stared at the tally stupefied. There was no way– what did that mean? He looked between his father’s name and his own, and somehow–

“Wha… Whhh… Waitwaitwait– what does that mean?”

His voice trembled as his eyes started tearing up. “Nonono– what does that mean?! D- Did y'all get it ri– what does that- that—”

There was no way he could speak properly anymore. He combed his hands through his hair messily, his breathing going heavy as he tried to control himself. His entire system was going hot– he felt like he was on fire.

“G- Guys— I’m not joking— I wouldn’t— I’d never do something like this— I- I- I—”

His voice cut off, his expression relaxing immediately as an audible ‘whrrrrrrrr-’ came strong before shutting down. It was similar to issues that others might recognize from just before the murder occurred. The only difference now was that there was no violent jerking or attempts to reanimate.

Keiichi stood still, like a statue.

A tense silence followed… until footsteps could be heard. A chuckle similar to Karoshi-kuma could be heard, echoing “Upupupu! You damn bastards!” Wait, wasn’t that…?

“—That’s a pretty good impression, right? P'hahahaha!!”

Another Keiichi stepped up to the podium, wrapping an arm around your classmate’s shoulders as he smiled to the class.

“…”

Karoshi-kuma stared at the results on the board for a time. He removed, cleaned, and replaced his glasses a few times, as if it would change the results of what he was seeing on the screen. But the name remained there, clear as day.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle…I guess a certain someone will want to have a word with you now.”

“Hope you all take a second to get your appearances sharp! Look alive! The big cheese is on the way, and you’d better dress to impress! Straighten your backs, puff out your chest, move it!”

TOTAL VOTES:

“Kozue Kojima” : 2

Keiichi Kojima: 8

“Upupupupu, your confusion is music to my ears, you bastards! You really thought you were going to figure this all out on your own! But you entitled bastards can’t do anything on your own, just like the rest of your lazy generation!”

“I wan’t even looking at the votes you cast, let’s tally those up and see…”

This is all a lot to take in. Even considering the parts of investigations that he’d been present for, and the thorough recap that Jo thankfully provides, Hideo feels like they’re all no closer to an answer than they were before. Androids, transference, microchips, Shirosai, Hime-chan… the entire Akedo incident had happened when he was a child, and unlike some people Hideo had no desire to look into details of tragedies, quite the contrary, so everything just feels like more and more information is getting piled on without any of it being familiar.

Well, except for one thing.

“It seems like… we’re all still trying to figure out if Kojima-san is even involved or not but… we already know he is, don’t we?” Hideo speaks up, finally, a hint of a tremor in his tone. It’s taking a lot of effort to try and keep his thoughts and emotions straight, to actually move on, but he’s doing his best. He doesn’t want to be a useless bystander again.

“All these things… his name keeps coming up in so many different places. In the newspaper articles, as the person who inherited this place, all of this stuff just… keeps coming back to Keiichi Kojima. And everything else, all this stuff about androids… Is there… even one thing that could actually point at anyone else? Even that company that Jo talked about before… KKVEIACOM Labs… KK… Keiichi Kojima. If the mastermind is connected to someone in our class, or… is someone in our class… there’s really… no one else that’s implicated.” It’s obvious that Hideo isn’t happy about saying this, his tone is soft and bordering on apologetic, and he keeps glancing towards Keiichi and then around the rest of the room towards the others - notably avoiding looking at a certain delivery girl.

“I think that… everyone should share the questions they got. Mine was… H-How many students have been murdered in this city? I answered nine. Um, also… anyone who had any contact with the person through the PDAs, if you could say what they talked about…? Didn’t Seishiro-san also talk to them? Even if it doesn’t seem like they said anything important, maybe if we piece together everything then there could be… something there. I don’t know. I’m trying to understand everything but a lot of this just… doesn’t make much sense. It sounds impossible or bizarre or really unclear, the only thing that really… stands out to me is how it all comes back to Kojima-san, and we don’t know why. Even he doesn’t know why, or that’s… what he says…”

He takes a deep breath, looking down at his hands where they’re still gripping his podium. They can’t afford to get this wrong, but time is running out and no one seems to know the answer.

“EIAC24… what does that… actually stand for? If we could figure that out, it might answer something. I mean, the bot designations are all acronyms, right? Ah, sorry I… in Heloise’s journal she had information about the bots written down… like Muffin-san is BMFAU1… which stands for Bio-Medical First Aid Unit. So it’s possible that EIAC24 actually… means something like that. Is that Kojima-san…? Is there any way to tell? I just… maybe Jo is right, maybe the mastermind is… Kozue or whoever created Kojima-san, but… then why put him in here with us? And why does everything have Keiichi’s name on it? If Kojima-san… is the result of a successful transference, then who is he a transference of? There were already multiple Keiichi Kojimas in those newspapers, so was it one of them? But if that’s the case why wouldn’t he remember? And if he’s not, if he was always an android… if they all were… then a lot of his memories… must have been just programmed into him… maybe even all of them. None of this makes any sense… it all sounds unbelievable and I don’t know how any of it even works. I still have so many questions. If the mastermind completed a successful transference before, if it was possible and they knew how to do it, why did Ishiguro-san’s fail? How are we supposed to figure all of this out? Who are we supposed to vote for? I don’t… I don’t understand…”

Karoshi-kuma looked at the votes, clenching his little paws into a fist for a moment. He shook his head and growled slightly, before turning to address the class once more.

“A mastermind trial, eh? Once again, you bastards are just shirking all of your duties to this company for no good reason! You had a murderer right there, confessing and all willing to die and everything! And you just wasted your vote! How stupid are you?!”

“No matter. You’ll fail at what you’re trying, and then I get to deal out a punishment to someone, and I don’t even care who anymore! You bastards really know how to test this bear’s patience! And I’m the kind of bear that used to be able to hibernate for months on end! I dealt with the lowest of lows in the workforce, struggled to make ends meet, and clawed my way to the top, and even I can’t deal with how insufferable you’re being! You kids just don’t know how to do anything right!”

“I’ll give you the time you want to talk about those useless bits of paper, but once time runs out, you’re at my mercy. And, due to company budget cuts, I’m afraid the stock for mercy is a bit low.”

TOTAL VOTES:

Mastermind Trial: 8

Seishiro: 1

Arisa: 1

E̸R͢҉R̶O͏͞R̵̀͢-̕҉-̴̡ I̧̛N͡V͝A̷L͏I̷D TA͞Ŕ͝G҉ÈT̷.̸͞ ̀T̡̢Ŕ̛IA͏L͜͠ ͡͝S̀T͜A͜͞T͡E ҉R҉ȨS̡͢E̷T̨̕.̧͢ ̧́I͝N̸I̴T̢̨IA̛T͘͟͏E̡̨͡ ̴͡S̸̢EC̕ON̸̶͟DĄ̛Ŕ͢Ý ̕҉̢TR̀͏IA͡L̷͝:̸̀ ͝M͢A̴͜S͢T̶̢E̶͢҉R̛M̡I̷͟͏Ņ́D͞

“Okay, okay, I’ll level with you all here. After spending the entire trial talking about a bunch of silly newspapers instead of focusing on the girl who admitted to shooting two of your classmates, I’m a little confused on your guys’ lack of motivation in the workplace.”

“But, I guess someone here has to do their job, and that poor, underappreciated someone is going to have to be good old Karoshi-kuma here. So, it’s time for me to tally these sad, terribly wasted votes of yours!”

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to say it after all, Kimiko starts talking on her own. Osaka. Thoughts of home, of a simpler time, when things weren’t exactly good but they were better, at least. Better than this certainly, not that it was a high bar. For a long moment Hideo misses his family so keenly that it’s all he can feel, and that alone is like a kind of relief. And then he looks at her, forces himself to do so while she talks, but he can’t watch her for the whole confession. It hurts… He’d just wanted to understand, but not like this. This was the opposite of what he wanted, he didn’t want to feel this way. There’s a sick feeling in his chest and his stomach, there’s anger that’s all his own, not brought on by the motive, not a sudden surprised burst, not coming from anyone else but him. There’s no way he can keep looking at her, so Hideo squeezes his eyes shut, but he can still hear her and that’s bad enough. The pain, the desperation, the resignation… for the first time, Hideo truly can’t stand it, can’t accept someone else’s feelings. Because what gave her the right to feel that way? “Shut up…” His voice is soft, tremulous, barely audible and he presses his hands to the side of his head. And then suddenly he’s shouting, “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, just stop! You’re sorry but that doesn’t bring them back! It doesn’t matter how bad you feel! You killed them! They don’t get to feel anything anymore because of you! Why… why… if you want to throw your life away so badly why even do it? You killed Matsukaze because they saw you and now you’re just going to ask to die anyway!? What did you kill them for, then? Did their life mean so little to you!? Akihiko-san is right! You’re b-being a coward! You’re more of a coward than I am if you think you deserve anything you want after what you’ve done!” Hideo slams his hands down onto his podium, looking up at her again with eyes full of tears and pain and anger, squinting through the pain, it feels like he’s dying. It’s too much. He knows the feeling coming from her too well and it hurts, hurts, hurts but this time his own emotions are so much stronger that it doesn’t matter. Oh, he understands now, the real effect of anger. What it’s really like. This feeling… strong enough to block out everything else. No wonder people gave into it so often. “What about Giordani-san’s family? What about Matsukaze’s parents? Do you have any idea how much they meant to them? Do you know how much this is going to hurt them? Do you even… did you ever even talk to Matsu? Did you know anything about them? You can’t have known how much pain they were in, all the time, but they still… they deserved so much better… and you took them away. You killed my little sibling… and now you think you can just… make it better by dying? Because you don’t want to feel like this? You… you… I can’t stand you… I… stop making this about you! You killed two people! You should feel bad! I don’t care who told you to do it! No one forced her to pull the trigger five times!” Suddenly all he can think about is Matsu, their tiny body in his arms, their head on his shoulder, blood seeping into his shirt, a horrible mockery of the way they would lean against him when they were alive. They’ll never do that again. They’ll never do anything again. A sob tears its way out of Hideo’s throat and he presses his hands over his face, almost doubling over. “I… hate you…” That’s it, that’s what this feeling is. Hideo cries, gasps for breath, and takes several minutes to collect himself enough to speak again. And when he does, when he finally lowers his hands enough to do so, his voice is quieter again, but thick with tears and barely-suppressed emotion. “I don’t… want to hear what she wants anymore… I don’t want to listen to her anymore… d-don’t say anything unless it helps us find out who’s behind this. I can’t bear it. I just want this to be over. H-how is this supposed to work? What do we do now? I want to do what Jo said… move on, I don’t want to hear about… any of that anymore… please…”