Chapter 1

Your name is Art Hightower, though most here know you as Hiroto Fukui. And you had no idea what you were getting into, but it has to end here.

With the murder of Kaoru Hanazaki and the unintended, yet hypocritically anticipated Minato Mikimoto (MAESTRO as he preferred to be called), you can’t help but be proud of the nearly perfect crime you had committed. As expected of an international Superspy, Division A of Interpol, though.

You came to Japan, before this entire mess, with the intention of discovering what lay beneath the eerily quiet government, especially after the election of Prime Minister Masahiro Kiibo. It was almost too easy, to integrate yourself into Japanese society as a master billiards player with a mysterious past. Mysterious pasts are so often common here, you considered it a non-issue.

You underestimated them. Before you knew it, they had you under their thumb without your realization. They goaded you into accepting your invitation to Hope’s Peak, a situation you thought was an advance on the part of the U.S. rather than a powerplay by Japan. If things had gone as intended, whatever that was, you’re certain it could have been disastrous for the U.S. But a disaster far worse, encompassing more than just the Japan or America, perhaps the entire world had emerged as a fish that swallowed the one that swallowed you.

You were out of your league here, and it was illustrated beautifully in the most recent motive. A multiplication of people dying, all over the world, at the slightest whim of your nefarious captor. As somebody who has devoted themselves to international peace, you finally couldn’t agree that your life, and the lives of just a few other kids, was worth the amount of death this would toll.

And here, at your trial, you lack any regret as Fukai re-appears from her comatose state, at an unnaturally quick rate of healing, enters the trial to mark you as the perpetrator. As both the key witness and nearly the third victim, she brought your sentence down as the others could barely piece together what happened. It could have succeeded, you could have ended this despicable plan, yet the monster Boufana had to raise the nearly dead to stop you.

You give the others one last goodbye, not as Hiroto, but as the deadly-serious Art, a warning on the goings-on here, and what it could mean for the entire world. With the burden of that information lifted off your shoulders, you readily accept death but failed to prepare for the form it would take. Although you didn’t truly reveal your identity, you hope they would still trust you as you are…

ART HIGHTOWER HAS BEEN PRONOUNCED GUILTY. COMMENCING EXECUTION…!