PROLOGUE…█

Over his sunny-side up eggs, Hinata is beaming.

Absolutely, positively glowing. It's giving me a strange sense of déjà vu.

"You wanna run that by us again?" Kuzuryuu growls.

"It's like what Souda just said," Hinata says. "We're done with the prototype for Project Paradise."

"So what does that mean?" Kuzuryuu demands. His hands are clenched into fists, and they're shaking. But I know him well enough not to panic. Kuzuryuu isn't shaking from anger.

"It means," I say. And if I'm letting the silence drag on a little bit, I can hardly be blamed for it, can I? "It means we might be able to save our friends."

There's a clatter from my far left. Sonia-san's dropped her fork on her plate.

When mostly everyone is done with eating, Hinata speaks.

"Okay," he says. "It's important that we go over all of this. You guys need to understand how it'll work. Because there are risks."

The underlying message is clear to all of us. I don't want anybody having false hopes.

Everyone nods. Kuzuryuu is draped all over his seat, his good eye turned towards Hinata. Sonia-san sits upright, looking as regal and beautiful as ever despite her scars. Owari is still shoveling food into her mouth, her eyes gleaming brighter than my hair. But the atmosphere is tense.

"As you know, the reason we didn't just reboot the Neo World Program for the rest of our friends was because of the Enoshima Junko virus. While it's dormant and doesn't have the rights to modify their data anyway, it still has strong, almost administrator-level privileges over the virtual world in the program. We can't take the risk of it hijacking the system and giving itself more power. That's why we moved them out as soon as we could too."

"Yeah, I remember you saying something like that a few weeks ago," Kuzuryuu says. "And? What's Project Paradise?"

Hinata grins briefly before his expression turns sober again. He's been moody a lot lately. I mean, if it were me talking, I'd be basking in the glory.

"So, for the past few months, we've been working with Alter Ego to try to understand the program. Originally, it was so that we could write a new version of it and let it work as it was meant to the first time. But after we looked at the code, we found out it was split into a couple of subprograms."

Silence. Hinata gestures at me to continue with a smile, but the others are still tense and stone-faced. Suddenly, basking in glory doesn't feel so right anymore.

I clear my throat. "Right. The two major subprograms we managed to piece out were the environment simulator and the data compiler. The first one created a virtual copy of this island for our virtual selves and the second one analysed us... as we were. Back then. It has data on a whole bunch of things like our personality, memories, brain matter distribution, even our genetics.

"There was another subprogram, a decompiler responsible for creating our avatars for the Neo World Program based on our memories of before we entered Hope's Peak. Basically, it analysed all our memories and only uploaded the relevant ones. Hinata and I couldn't extract that because of the Enoshima Junko virus though." I let out a breath. "That one's a really amazing program... I'm still nowhere near understanding how it works. We're really lucky in many ways to have been able to use it."

Wait, that's probably been the wrong thing to say, judging by what happened in there.

"Anyway! The point is that we can use the compiler to scan everyone again."

"I may not be following," Sonia-san says. "Is the next step then to decrypt the data so we can understand our friends better for the new Neo World Program?"

"We're probably not going to be able to go with that plan," Hinata says.

"Why not?" Kuzuryuu demands.

"The Neo World Program is incredibly complex. It says in the program notes that the Ultimate Programmer, Ultimate Neurologist, and the Ultimate Therapist all contributed their knowledge. Souda and I have been reading up in the library, but there's no way we'd be able to reach the level of expertise to even understand how the program works in a reasonable time. The worst is the script that manages which memories are uploaded into the avatar, the decompiler that Souda mentioned. According to Naegi-san, the Enoshima Junko virus may have written itself into it, so we can't copy it over. But it's the most complicated part of the program. It's probably impossible for Souda and I to recreate even in our lifetime."

"So why don't you just put everyone in the new program after you recreate the rest of it? You don't need to do anything with their memories." Owari is now on her tenth waffle. Either she's good at not letting the tension faze her... or this is her way of coping with it.

A shadow crosses Hinata's face.

Ah. I know that look.

"It's Ultimate Despair, isn't it?" I venture, trying to keep my tone neutral. Ever since Hinata started trying to remember, he hasn't been the same. Even the smallest things set him off into strange moods nowadays.

Silence greets my words. Hinata's expression mirrors our thoughts. And if just saying our old group name has already turned his face grey, I sure don't want to know what he looks like when he's alone at night.

"You mean the shit we did back then, right?" Kuzuryuu says. His brows are furrowed and his sole remaining eye is troubled. "It was pretty fucked up. We were pretty fucked up."

I know Kuzuryuu's been trying to remember too. Hell, he probably started right after we woke up. He's the honourable yakuza type, after all. He probably feels all guilty and responsible for what we did.

Well, not like we can really do much to undo any of that.

"Yes," Hinata says, with a strained smile. "The data on the avatars, how we were before Ultimate Despair, is gone. We deleted it all when we did the shutdown command to escape Enoshima Junko. What data we have is from the Ultimate Despair. Even if we create new avatars from analysing our friends now, we wouldn't be able to recreate a version of them that isn't corrupted by despair. And if the Ultimate Despairs mix in the program... it might be bad. No, it'll definitely be bad."

"Never mind rehabilitation, they'll kill each other. Again." Kuzuryuu isn't packing punches this morning, apparently. Something dark from within me bubbles up at this, festering almost at the surface.

I vehemently squash it down. We don't need none of that anymore.

EXECUTING PROLOGUE…END

LOADING PT.1_PROJECT_PARADISE…█