Sometimes when she's lying in her bed, Shirogane thinks about the porcelain hands gliding through her hair with the strength and grit of a lion.

Clawed talons that comb and scratch at delicate fibers, looking to harm but not maim. They're not gentle, and Shirogane knows they never will be.

It doesn't stop her from wishing for a happier circumstance of meeting. Instead of being introduced as rivaling masterminds ringleading multiple different seasons, maybe they could've met beneath the closed-in sky of the Ultimate Academy, discussing plans of murder, escape, or whatever participants did in their free time.

The silent buzz of Shirogane's muted cell phone hums through the stagnant air. Outside of the virtual world of Danganronpa, she's living in a cramped flat piled head-to-toe with scrapped ideas and papers. Rejected designs and character concepts hanged on a corkboard near the back of the room, quietly taunting her of her incompetence.

"Hello?" she slurs into the speaker after fumbling to receive the call. A loudly enthusiastic, "Yo, Shirogane!" shrieks at her from the opposite end, making her wince and lower the call volume by nearly sixty percent.

"Ouma," she sighs, slapping a palm hand over her eyes. "It's two in the morning. Why are you calling me?"

"Saihara-chan is being thoughtful again," he whispers, and Shirogane can see him holding his phone beneath his cheek like Regina George The Second while painting his nails with god-awful colors.

"Again?" she echoes, kneading the spots between her eyebrows. "Isn't he your problem? Why should I solve it?"

"Because I'm bored, and you're fun to annoy!"

Because you're the one that can control the Monokumas, is Shirogane's translation.

"This is real life, Ouma," she says instead.

"Your point being?" An expected response.

"Shut up," she grumbles without much venom. Shirogane yanks herself off the bed and slips her bare feet into some fuzzy slippers, silently padding her way to the company-issued Monopad lounging on her coffee table.

"He's still awake! Lights on and everything, I'm sure he's going to bust out of his room anytime soon," Ouma tells her as she inspects the camera feed with heavy eyes.

Indeed- Saihara is lying on his bed with a pillow over his eyes, completely lost in thought. Shirogane wrinkles her nose, brings out the control tab on the Monopad, and summons a Monokuma into Saihara's room.

"You take over," is all she huffs at Ouma before she promptly hangs up.

Maybe liking Ouma a little too much is both a curse and a charm.

Shirogane hits the sack, but not before blocking Ouma's contact. Why didn't she do it just now? A simple solution to her endless problems.

Oh well, too late to continue thinking now.

Shirogane drifts off into a dream, and Ouma casually awaits his confrontation.

__

"Monokuma," Saihara bites out. He's not scared. He shouldn't be.

Monokuma doesn't talk. How strange, Saihara thinks. So he asks, "Why are you here?" to pick up the pace.

Monokuma waddles towards his door, stubby arms pointing at the handle.

"...You're afraid that I'll leave and break the rules?" Saihara guesses. Monokuma nods with an enthusiastic grin on his two-colored face.

Saihara goes silent. "Why can't you talk?" he questions after a moment of consideration. Monokuma bares his claws, and Saihara scrambles to get away from him.

"Okay, okay! I won't ask about that." The claws are put away.

"...So, mastermind."

The tension in the room rises immediately.

"I know you're watching me, I know you've sent Monokuma to stop me from trying to break out."

Saihara shifts uncomfortably on his bedsheets.

"What do you want? Who are you ?"

Behind the flimsy Monopad feed, Ouma snacks on some sour cream chips, wearing nothing save his hideous boxers and a t-shirt.

"I hate that I can't do anything to crack open that mask of yours, mastermind."

Ouma crunches through on the can of chips faster, louder.

"You know, you remind me of Ouma... he's strange, but as a detective, I want to uncover his lies one-by-one. You're not so different from him, mastermind."

Ouma peers into the now-empty chip can with a snort. "Wow, character development," he mutters beneath his breath.

"So... my promise between you and I," Saihara says, eyes cold, "is that I'll save everyone from this Killing Game. You won't be able to force us through anything anymore."

"Fat chance," Ouma grunts while licking his fingers clean. "God, sometimes I can't believe I killed Akamatsu off just to give you the protagonist's golden halo."

Ouma wipes his hands on his boxers before shooting the camera feed one last glance. He tries calling Shirogane to send the Monokuma away, but his call never connects.

"She's finally blocked me? Took her long enough," Ouma laughs half-heartedly. He motions for the Monokuma to exit via. Saihara's door, which it does with a small chime. The Monokuma closes the door with a muted click, and Ouma trains his gaze on Saihara's stormy expression, completely infatuated with the way his brows creased, how he looked like he's ready to strangle someone to death.

Ouma shuts off his Monopad and falls onto the bed behind him. Inhaling a trembling breath, he runs a hand through his sweaty hair.

"Saihara, Saihara, Saihara," he murmurs, shaking his head, "whatever will I do with you?"

__

Checking in on Shirogane- somehow, Ouma is in the said dream of hers with his dyed hair and devilish smirk. He stands patiently amidst a field of grass, the lazy sun casting warm rays of heat onto Shirogane's face like a mother caressing its child.

Shirogane has a knee-jerk reaction: she reaches for her phone. It materializes in her hand- dreams are incredible - and she somehow chucks it at Ouma's head with insane ferocity.

Ouma is killed instantly. Blood flies, and he's gone. Headshot. Wasted. An instant KO.

Another Ouma spawns, and he opens his lie-swarmed mouth to talk. Before a word can tumble out, he's dead- again- with a phone-shaped mark being his rueful downfall.

What is this? Duck Hunt but Ouma-fied?

Shirogane's not sure how to react, but she continues hurling phones at the targets. Each blow lands dead-center on his forehead.

...Is this dream supposed to mean something?

Shirogane pays that fleeting thought no mind. She continues venting her frustrations through cell phone throwing- bullseye, bullseye, bullseye. The pile of carcasses grows and grows, and when Shirogane's out of breath, the body count is nearly taller than the single, lonely tree growing among this endless plane of grass.

The tree leaves shimmer as a hot breeze slowly tousles the field. Another Ouma pokes his head out from behind the tree trunk, and Shirogane reaches for her weapon of choice-

-but it doesn't come. Ouma giggles quietly. He's wearing a strange dog costume, stained with dark magenta and fresher shades of bubblegum. It reeks of too-bitter coffee and dead animals- there's a shotgun in his arms.

Ouma tugs down the costume's head and turns his lifeless stare towards Shirogane's direction.

The unevenly stuffed dog-face has rounded eyeballs with dark, blank irises- it's empty; obsidian in color- and Shirogane just can't look away. Its cutely curved mouth has barely-visible blood marks around it, and beneath the little puppy tongue is a small trail of duck feathers stinking of intestinal organs.

"Try using this, Shirogane-chan," he huskily rasps from underneath the suit. Ouma shuffles towards her, and for every step he takes, Shirogane takes one back. She still feels the warm sun rays shining on her, but the wet, cold sensation seeping through her socks and shoes is a harsh juxtaposition.

Wet?

Shirogane looks down with wide eyes.

There are severed lungs everywhere, splayed out all over the grass. She spies the ribbed edges of a trachea poking and prodding its way out of the dry soil right next to her foot, blood bubbling from the gaping hole on top like a wine fountain of crime.

The blood isn't hot by any means. It's so, so cold- freezer cold, like ice settling into the veins of a corpse, the darker sides of winter stabbing and grasping at the sweetest smiles of spring.

The sun is getting harsher and harsher now, and the soil is starting to churn into mud. Shirogane's sinking into the reddish sludge, the sub-zero freeze gripping at her calves as she sees more and more lungs unearthing themselves, some with their bronchi exposed, some covered in walls of yellowish fat.

"The voices you've extinguished," Ouma breathes, a dark shadow of an uncanny dog looming over her as she's dragged down into hell. "They outnumber mine." He points the shotgun at her forehead.

"No," Shirogane tries to gasp, clawing at the soil around her. Her fingers curl around the ridged edges of a larynx, and she yanks her hand away in disgust. "You're the better mastermind, you've killed far more than I have..."

"Maybe I'm lying," is the dog's reply.

It's not Ouma. It's never been Ouma. It's always been Mister, Excuse Me, and May We Speak To Him. Only Shirogane says his name- the real Shirogane. All the students are fake, fictional. They don't exist, they're not real-

" Speak up, mastermind. I can't hear you!" the dog trills, cupping a palm over his floppy ears. Shirogane lunges out, snaring her dirtied hands around those matted pieces of fabric, hoping to bring the dog down with her. It drops the shotgun, and it goes off with a bang, shooting god-knows-what at god-knows-where.

The bone-chilling mud is nearly past her head. When Shirogane aggressively pulls the dog head off, the entire cloth body goes limp and falls. Stuffing pours out, colored in Danganronpa neon pink.

Where's Ouma?

"You're going to hell, right next to me. Forever and ever... you're going to repent."

Hell is cold. Hell isn't fiery, hell isn't ablaze with four-horned demons and poison-lined tongues. Hell is filled with grief, hell is filled with greed, and her hell is ruled by one person, namely:

Ouma Kokichi. Self-proclaimed royal, name-brand liar. A hundred and fifty-six centimeters tall, raven-black hair with bright purple tips.

When her vision goes dark, Shirogane wishes her anger will be enough to set hell aflame again.