Kaiko's POV

"Tsk tsk tsk, poor, poor Ikeda-Kun," said Monobear, without a hint of sympathy in his voice, "not only did he fail to kill, but his attempt was discovered anyway! However..." Monobear suddenly looked very angry "I have no sympathy for you. Ikeda-Kun, how dare you disrupt the order of this school?"

"Wh-what?" Ikeda looked even more horrified than before, "B-but you told me to kill!"

"Exactly!" Said Monobear, "but did you kill? No! Failure on this level deserves a punishment!"

Ikeda was on the verge of fainting. "Are you gonna... Execute me?" He asked.

"What?!" shouted Monobear, "My signature executions are designed for hardcore murderers only! A second-rate assailant like yourself isn't worthy of being executed by me".

"Then... What are you gonna do?" Ikeda asked, shaking.

"Upupupupu! Behold!" Monobear announced, "'The Secrets and Lies of Shun Ikeda'!" He held up a book with a crude illustration of Ikeda on the cover, and began reading it. "Well first off, it should probably be called 'The Secrets and Lies of Adrien Arment'!"

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Shouted Ikeda, "I'm Shun Ikeda, Japan's greatest underage drag racer!"

"Are you?" Asked Monobear, feigning surprise, "because this book says you're Adrien Arment, France's greatest underage drag racer! And I have great faith in this author". He gestured to himself, in case we hadn't understood what he had been blatantly implying.

"Besides," he said, "do you really expect us to believe that the famous racer was named Shun? Speed? That's a helluva coincidence". Ikeda/Adrien gritted his teeth, but didn't say anything and allowed Monobear to continue.

"Adrien was born in France, but moved to Japan in the third grade due to the death of his parents." He looked straight at Adrien and asked, "How did it happen again? Ah, yes. Your mother died of cancer. Your father couldn't take it and put a bullet through his own skull. How dreadful" Monobear said this all sounding as cheerful as ever.

"Adrien's two little sisters were sent to live with their grandparents here, while Adrien drifted from foster home to foster home, like a sick little dog that nobody wanted. And the final deep dark secret of Adrien Arment; the reason he came to Hope's Peak Academy!"

"It was for the money!" Adrien interrupted, "Graduating from Hope's Peak Guarantees success. I wanted money I could support my family with!"

Monobear shook his head, "Well, that may be part of it, but what I've heard... Is that is was to impress a boy!" Adrien's face was white.

"Yep, that's it," Monobear continued, "a young man named John Garon. He was quite a looker, huh?"

"Wh-what?" Shouted Adrien, "what do you mean 'was'?!"

Monobear ignored him, "He gave you that necklace you're wearing, right? Under your shirt".

Adrien put his hand on his chest. "How did you..." He began to ask, but he stopped and took out the necklace. It was a simple stone pendant, with the initials AA engraved on it.

"And that concludes the reading of 'The Lies and Secrets of Shun Ikeda'. Everyone, please return to your rooms. We need to be ready for another big day tomorrow!"

/

The following days passed mostly without incident, but there was noticeable change in the way people acted. Takeru did little but sit and stare silently, a far cry from his previous self. Without Fumikazu, nobody felt like taking it upon themselves to organize classes, so we simply wandered the halls and sat in our rooms. The most noticeable change was in Adrien.

While before he had been loud and generally cheerful, he now always looked sullen, and became prone to lashing out. He was frequently the victim of harsh words and glares. Try as I might, I couldn't pity him.

Monobear was complaining that we had become 'too boring', so he opened up the second floor of the school for us. There was a pool and a gym, so it gave us something to do, but still, nothing happened worth mentioning, until about a week after the trial.

We were eating breakfast in the cafeteria, when Monobear suddenly dropped from the ceiling onto our table.

"G'morning, bastards!" He said, in his infuriatingly cheerful manner, "So, what do you all have planned for today?" Obviously, nobody answered.

"You know," Monobear continued, "I've been doing some thinking about the next motive. Last night though, I thought of something brilliant!"

As he spoke, a hatch opened up in the ceiling, and a large object fell down, stopping a couple of feet above the table. Screams erupted from the table, and Otonashi fainted on the spot. When I looked at what fell, I saw that it was actually two things; hanging from a rope by her neck was a girl who at one point was probably quite good looking.

She had strawberry blonde hair, a fair complexion, and a rather curvy figure. She was wearing what seemed to be a modified schoolgirl's uniform, black and red with laced-up boots and a very short skirt. Subtracting from her attractiveness, however, were the unnatural angle of her obviously broken neck, and the look of her face. Her eyelids were wide open, but behind them there were only empty sockets, steadily leaking blood. Her mouth was set into a unnerving smile, almost grotesquely wide, showing off teeth in a way that that reminded me of a shark.

Even more disturbing, however, was the fact that she was attached to a second person by nails through her hands. This person also seemed to be a girl, judging by her figure, but her face was black and burned beyond all recognition. She wore an outfit similar to that of the first girl, but it was full of holes that continued through her body.

"Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba," said Monobear, "these two girls were once part of my game, but unfortunately, they were under the impression that the rules didn't apply to them"

Monobear laughed slightly, "you know, they say fear is a very powerful motivator. So, what do you say kids?" Monobear let out an enormous laugh.

"Are you afraid of the big bad bear?"