Chapter Text
When Sayaka Maizono awoke, she felt relief before anything else.
The agonizing pain in her stomach had finally subsided. She squeezed her eyes shut further, trying to hide from the harsh fluorescent lights behind her eyelids. Frankly, she wanted nothing more than to return to her lovely nap on the bathroom floor.
Unfortunately, she was rudely interrupted shortly after by the sound of a door slamming. She could faintly hear someone calling her name through the door. Reluctantly, she pried open her eyes and stared hazily at the bathroom wall. Slowly, she looked down at herself.
The kitchen knife was right where she remembered it—shoved directly into her abdomen. “It’s a miracle I survived,” she thought. “The knife must have stopped the bleeding.” She wasn’t exactly an expert on these things, sure, but it seemed logical enough.
Her internal detective work was interrupted by the bathroom door nearly flying off its hinges. Behind it stood Makoto Naegi, that awkward boy from Sayaka’s middle school.
Her scapegoat. Or so she planned at least. Said plan hadn’t gone so well.
“Makoto,” Sayaka rasped. “Leon, he—”
She lifted a hand to get his attention, but paused as it came into view. It was hazy and translucent, giving off a faint blue light. She blinked.
Distantly, she registered Makoto’s screaming .
Sayaka watched as he stared not at her, but through her. She watched as his eyes rolled upwards and he fell to the ground in an unconscious heap. She watched as she stood up and her body stayed on the floor.
And there, standing wordlessly in the bathroom she’d hidden in no more than a few hours ago, Sayaka Maizono took in the unbelievable reality of what she was witnessing.
Her own dead body, lying impaled at the bottom of the shower stall.
She felt sick. She felt numb . The world around her blurred around her into a slur of sounds and colors. They sounded far away. When had all these people arrived? What were they saying? She couldn’t seem to—
“You mean she’s—She’s really dead ? Y-You’re positive?!”
Suddenly, the world sharpened as she turned with a snap toward the voice. The boy in the doorway looked pale against his fiery red hair. He was shaking, and she swore she could hear his heartbeat like it was hooked to a loudspeaker. She watched the way his eyes darted around the scene, feigning the shock as if he wasn’t well acquainted with this dark little room.
She was certain those icy blue eyes would be ingrained in her memory for the rest of her life. Or, as it turned out, after it.
Sayaka had spent the formative years of her life believing in one truth—you can get whatever you want if people simply love you . No matter how artificial that love is, no matter how they beat you down, no matter how they cheat you. Keep people happy, keep smiling, keep letting them think that you’re so pleased that they’re in your life (—no matter how sad, how angry, how bitter you are—) Eventually, eventually, you’ll get whatever you want. And when you can get whatever you want, you’ll finally, finally be truly happy .
She stared at the body lying on the tile and watched as the people around her sobbed and screamed and gagged at the sight. Oh, she was loved, there was no doubt.
But what good had it done her?
She was loved, so she was supposed to live. She was loved, so she was supposed to get out of here. He had loved her, so he was supposed to die. He was supposed to be the corpse lying on the ground.
But there he was, with his stupid red hair and his stupid piercings and his stupid face, fidgeting with his stupid jacket using his stupid hands. It was his fault, wasn’t it? So why wasn’t he dead?
As she felt the rage drench every inch of her soul, Sayaka was suddenly struck with an odd sense of deja-vu. Her last moments rushed back to her in that instant. They had been like this—filled with hatred and rage. She remembered the adrenaline pumping weakly through her as she made up her mind to claw her way out of hell if she had to.
Or, at the very least, drag someone with her on the way down.
She staggered to the wall, slumping down with manic breaths. The bloody streaks were different than she remembered—upside now and twisted around. But they were still legible, to her relief.
How had she forgotten? Her final mark on the world—not of love, no. With Makoto exonerated, they would surely figure it all out. She’d be exposed, painted as a murderer. They wouldn’t love her in the end. But she found that she didn’t care.
The man who took her life wouldn’t get away, she’d made damn sure of that. Maybe she wouldn’t be loved in the end, but she’d finally be happy.
Slowly, but surely, a spark rose up within her.
The feeling that had propelled her whole career. The feeling Monokuma has spent the past week trying to crush. The feeling that had given her the courage to carry out this horrid plan in the first place.
Hope.
At that, Sayaka Maizono smiled.