Take Responsibility.

[andexecutioner]

The door at the northwestern corner of the foyer is open. It's hard to say when it opened, but the fact of the matter is that it seems to have; it leads to a separate hallway that seems to run alongside the dormitories. The hall is long and dimly-lit, but it's illuminated well enough to make it plain that the walls and floor in here are different; they're far less designed to give off an impression of grandeur - if anything, it's claustrophobic back here: the walls are close and darkly-colored, and the entire area is barren until it opens up into the room serving as your destination. The room is circular and high-ceilinged, covered in more of the exposed wood that lines the rest of the building; there aren't any visible lights, however, which is...odd, given how bright the place is. It lends the entire area a sense of unreality; it's easy to distract yourself from it, however, once you notice this place's centerpiece. In the center of the room is a circle of podiums, thirty in total, arranged so that everyone standing at them can see each other. So everyone can look each other in the eyes, if they so choose. The podiums are interlocked - there's no cutting across the center of the circle, and for good reason, it looks like there's a lot of nothing down there where the floor should be - and each is bearing the title of the person who's assigned to stand at it. No names, just adjectives, emblazoned across two brass panels on the very top and the front of each podium. Affixed to the podium itself is a panel with buttons on it, and again, there are thirty in total; next to the buttons are smaller strips of engraved metal to serve as labels, bearing the titles of everyone that's been present in the facility, living or dead. All of the podiums are identical, except for the one intended for Sayaka. The podium that should bear Attentive's title has had a black cloth draped over it, and a copy of Sayaka's profile photo is sitting on top of it, framed and colorless, an image in greyscale. Juri is nowhere to be found in here, but that doesn't mean you're alone down here; the feeling that you're being watched is strong, and he'll wait until you've had time to take in what you're looking at before he addresses you - over the public-address system again, from the sound of it. "Attentive's dead, and somebody's to blame for it - but you guys get to decide whether Rule Seven's carried out or not. It's your job to hold them responsible for what they've done. Good luck in doing it."

Comments

[gorira]

Either way, I don't like the implications here...

[fittedgloves]

Neither do I. No matter how one looks at it, she was prepared for something to happen.

[gorira]

Not only that, the notes don't help her case...what the hell happened last night?!

[fittedgloves]

The only way we can know for sure is if we find out what Maizono-san was doing.

[flagitate]

How are we supposed to do that, if no one who knows is talking?

[fittedgloves]

We use what we already know to piece things together. If anyone does know what happened I can't imagine they would talk and risk implicating themselves.

[flagitate]

We've been doing that the whole time.

[fittedgloves]

Then we keep doing this until we find the answer. Even if it takes all day. We won't catch the killer unless we work through everything.

[gorira]

The only evidence we have that points to a specific person here, or group of people, even, are the notes...

[fivepints]

...Sayaka told me about her intuition. That she's good at reading people and figuring them out. It's. Probably likely that one of our first assumptions was right, she was picking people it'd be easy for her to go after.

[gorira]

...If it was, she'd be sorely mistaken, but, if that was the case, then does that make us the suspects? Or was she plotting to get us and bumped into a...fifth party? Or maybe she settled on someone whose name isn't in the notes?

[fivepints]

[...]

I don't...I don't think those were the only notes she wrote.

I received one, but I didn't go meet with her.

[meanttobe]

What?! Mallick, why didn't you say so earlier? What'd it say?!

[fivepints]

It...it was really polite? I don't know. The sort of shit a fuckin' teenage girl would write. She wanted me to meet with her in the dining hall.

There are a lot of fuckin' reasons to not answer a note like that. So I didn't.

[flagitate]

Did she say what time she wanted you to meet her?

[fivepints]

Sometime like...I don't. I don't know. Eleven-thirty? After the clock went off, I know that.

I wasn't...I wasn't going to go out meeting someone in the middle of the fucking night. For all I knew she hadn't even written it? So I. I didn't.

[gorira]

In the dining hall?! You realize that's vital information, right?! If you didn't meet up with her, why the hell didn't you speak up, you idiot?!

[fivepints]

Right, and fucking implicate myself. Real smart plan.

[gorira]

...

You only decide to tell us this now?!

[fivepints]

[PLEASE DON'T PUNCH HIM]

[flagitate]

It'd be too much to ask who else received one, right.

[fittedgloves]

No. In fact, I think that's exactly what we need to be asking.

[flagitate]

Is anyone actually going to admit that?

[didntgetdadslooks]

We probably don't need to ask everyone, though. At least not at first.

[INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SKILLS, HO. Thank god she memorized ALL THE THINGS when she got here.]

We now know notes were written specifically to rooms 16, 19, 21, and 22. That suggests at least that the next people to talk to are the ones in 17, 18, and 20.

[meanttobe]

...So let's look more at the notes.

[Sorry, Sayaka.]

You, me, and Inigo. We've all got rooms close to Ferid... What else ties us together?