Chapter 2a: Coexistance (4)

'Man, I'm bored. Is there anything I can do?' Sheldon thought to himself, as he has broken a quite a bit of sweat, after having jogged for a while to burn the energy from his lunch. This was something he hadn't realized up until now, since he kept himself occupied with his escape attempts or the stories, but now that he had some free time with nothing to do, he couldn't help but realize that there was truly nothing to do all by himself, since all sorts of entertainment were locked in the upper floors. There was the A/V room, but he doubted that Monokuma would be having any movies laying around, aside from the plot-related disks.

In the end, the only thing he could do was to wander around for a while and try to remember as much as he can from the plot, such as the events of the main story and any little extra things that could help him out. After a few minutes though, he noticed a peculiar group in class 1-B, so he decided to check them out, since he was rather curious about them.

"Hey guys." Sheldon greeted at the group of five in the classroom, those being Sayaka, Kyoko, Chihiro, Makoto and Byakuga.

"H-Hey Saito." "Hello." Chihiro and Sayaka greeted at the same time, then being followed with Makoto:

"How are things with... Y'know..."

Once that question came up, Sheldon could feel the awkwardness of the atmosphere, so he decided to clear things up quickly, before things get any worse:

"Surprisingly, she took it way more calmly than Celeste. She did warn me to keep my distance though, but that was expected, wo nothing of substance happened. Anyways, what about you 5?"

"We are looking for a way out and to do that, I believe we should solve the mystery of the password, since it could provide us with the exit password, or a potential clue, at the very least." Byakuya explained coldly, as he was staring seriously at Sheldon.

"Yeah... Sorry to ruin it for you guys, but that password ain't going to do shit for us. That password was used for the keypad by the door over there. Also, the missing number is 5, just for your information." Sheldon explained with an apologetic expression, as he knew that if they were trying to solve this, they would be wasting their time.

"Pardon? Wait, how do you know that?" Makoto asked, as this revelation felt like a shock to his system.

"I used that to escape from here. If anything, I woke up in this room, so I had to spend some time to find the password." Sheldon explained, as looked at the dice on the teacher's desk.

"Well, that was a waste of my time. If you will excuse me, I will go and look for another way out." After Byakuya said that, he left the room without batting an eye.

"What a bummer... Here I thought that we might have been able to find a way out." Makoto exclaimed with a dejected expression.

"Don't worry Makoto. Even if we didn't find the way out or any clues now, it doesn't mean that we won't find later." Sayaka reassured him, as she patted him on the back.

"Yeah... You're right Sayaka. Thanks for cheering me up." Makoto answered back with a smile and newfound determination on his face.

"Saito, can I ask you something?" Kyoko asked emotionlessly, as she was looking at Sheldon.

"Ask away. You don't need any permission from me." Sheldon answered back, as he slightly curious about her question.

"Did you happen to find something that had three rhombuses with spirals?" Kyoko asked seriously, but the moment Sheldon heard that question, he felt his body stiffen and freeze for a moment, since he remembered that he had found a necklace like that. If anything, he was actually anxious, since he had never mentioned anything like that before, so he couldn't figure it how Kyoko could have found out.

"I did, but how did you know of that? I have never mentioned anything about it." Sheldon asked, as he trying to find out how she knew about that.

"Interesting... Then check out the keypad and you'll know how I found out." Kyoko answered with a thoughtful expression, before pointing out at the keypad.

Once she pointed there, Sheldon did as she said and examined the keypad so see how she found out, but just at a first glance, he noticed that the number pad was opened like a door and inside it, there was an indent with the same shape of his necklace. He wanted to know how she found out, but he decided to see first what will happen when he put the necklace there, so he took it from his pocket and put in the indent. The moment he did so, a bright light suddenly came from the number pad and blinded everyone, while a loud noise was heard from the door at the same time.

"M-My eyes! What was that light!?" Chihiro asked, while trying to recover from the blindness.

"The light of unlocking something new probably!" Sheldon answered, as he was trying to recover as well.

After a few seconds, all five of them managed to recover their eyesight and once they looked around, they noticed that the classroom was completely different from before. Instead of one door, there were now four doors, for each direction, no blackboard and there was still the keypad on the wall, but now it was on and the numberpad was closed shut.

"Well... I certainly didn't expect this to happen..." Sheldon commented nervously, as he looked at the changed room and wondered what was going on.

"This was certainly unforseen, but Saito. When did I ever say to put it in there?" Kyoko asked, as she stared at him with a serious expression.

"Well... Y-You would have asked to do so anyways, so... Besides, I was curious about it, and how should I have known this would happen?" Sheldon answered back with a guilty expression, as he knew he had screwed up big time.

*sigh* "It doesn't matter anymore. What has happened, has happened, so no point in changing the past or blaming anyone. Anyways, we should find a way out." Kyoko explained, as she decided to check the room. With that order, the five of them decided to check the room, as well as the other rooms and after some time, met up with each other to discuss their findings.

"So, what did you guys find out?" Sheldon asked, as he wanted to hear from the others, before he explains the differences he found, compared to the first time he did this.

"I-I'll start then... I decided to check the keypad and see if I can crack the code, but the keypad was actually missing all of the number buttons and it didn't seem like it was lighting up, even if I pressed the enter button." Chihiro explained calmly.

"Me and Makoto decided to check the other rooms and as it turns out, whatever this place is, it's a much bigger place than it looks, but we don't think this is part of Hope's Peak." Sayaka explained with a serious expression, as she looked at the doors.

"What do you mean?" Chihiro asked curiously.

"In reality, all the other rooms were more or less the same as this one, aside from not having a keypad. Not only that, but there's actually a finite amount of rooms and you can only go a couple of rooms further from the sides, while the door opposite of the locked door leads to four more rooms, before reaching a wall. What about you Kyoko and Saito?" Makoto explained with a serious expression, before asking for their investigation results.

"I'd like to hear Saito's results first. Not only that, but I also want to hear about his process to the solution from the time you woke up." Kyoko answered with a thoughtful expression, as she was looking at him.

"If that's what you want Kyoko, then so be it. I checked on the room and I found the necessary clue needed to solve the puzzle, on top of the teacher's desk, that being the scratched out message that points towards the desks. Not only that, but there was also another clue there, that being a message that read as "It's not like the other". My guess would be that the solution won't be the same as it was the previous one, which was 48105 and that we'll need to figure it out through the numbered buttons we'll need to find. As for the desks that the keys were hidden in were B4, E3, D5, A1 and C4, in that order. I did check them right after checking the password, but I didn't find them in this room, so it's highly probable that the buttons we'll need are in the other rooms." Sheldon explained with a serious expression.

"Wait, we have to search them in the other rooms?" Makoto asked with a nervous expression.

"Of course, since I didn't find anything in the desks here, I can safely assume that those buttons are in the other rooms, although I'm not sure in which rooms." Sheldon answered calmly, since he wasn't particularly exited about finding the answer, since he quickly realized that this was probably a scaled up version of his initial escape room.

"W-Wait... Even if we spit and search the other r-rooms... Wouldn't it take a long time?" Chihiro asked nervously.

"True, it would take quite a while to brute force it and not only that, but we would also need to memorize where we found the buttons and it's just going to be an inefficient way of searching..." Sheldon answered with a downcast expression, since he remembered it took him quite a bit to get out.

"I don't think it will be necessary. If anything, we already have all the clues we need to unlock the room." Kyoko declared with a satisfied expression.

"We do?" Sayaka asked with a confused expression, as she was feeling a bit lost.

"Wait... We need to go to the room that corresponds to the same position as the desks and search the corresponding desk as well, am I right?" Sheldon asked for confirmation, since he had a suspicion that the structure of the rooms was possibly connected to the solution and the fact that there were 5 rooms in both horizontal and vertical rows only cemented his suspicion.

"That is correct. We will need to go to the corresponding rooms and desks to find the buttons for the keypad. Of course, no one should put them in the pad and instead, put them on the teachers desk and overlap it with the room that you found them. So, let's say that I found the buttons for the room and desk B4, I'll put them over the scratched mark for it, understood everyone?" Kyoko asked seriously, as she affirmed and explained what to do after finding them.

"Wait, we still need to find out the room we're currently in, otherwise it won't be any different from searching around blindly." Sayaka added, as she realized that after the explanation.

"That won't be a problem, since the room we are in should be pretty obvious, once you go through through information we know about the structure of this place." Kyoko answered with a confident look, before taking her look towards Makoto and asking him:

"How about it Makoto? Can you tell us which room is this?"

"I believe it should be... Room C1. The reason for that is the fact this room is in the middle of one row, while being at the edge of the other row. Not only that, but all the rooms have literally the same structure, except from the doors, so all of the teacher's desks are facing towards one direction and the door is to the left of it. Am I correct?" Makoto explained with a thoughtful expression, as he thought for a couple of minutes.

"That's right, this is room C1. So to get to the other rooms, we need to follow the rooms, as if we are walking from one desk to the other and the desks can act as a makeshift map for us, in case we are lost." Kyoko answered with a satisfied smile.

"Let's go everyone." Sheldon declared with a hint of excitement and everyone went towards one of the directions.