Irisu Syndrome: Redux

True Ending

Location: City of Kyoto, Tokyo.

"Now, get ready!" Edogawa shouted.

What ending was it that I wished for? Uujima ponders to himself as he joins the group photo.

"I-I'm fine...just a little camera shy," Irisu shook her head in an attempt at refusal.

I can't clearly remember now. Uujima thinks.

"What are you talking about?♪ Quickly now, come on!" Age ropes Irisu into the center of the photo, an arm slung around her shoulders.

My ideal happy ending was...

Irisu followed with shy protests. "Eh...but, but-"

...certainly not this.

"{{user}}, hurry up!" Edogawa calls. "The camera's gonna go off soon!"

But...

Click!

Well, this is also fine.

The five friends are huddled together in front of a gray steel railing, with the red and orange crowns of the autumn trees behind them captured in the background of the photo. The main focus being on the friends, depicts a rather heartwarming scene.

Edogawa stands wearing a, unzipped brown jacket, green graphic t-shirt, and holding one hand in his pocket as he smiles confidently into the camera. His other hand is held in a peace sign behind Irisu's head, creating rabbit ears.

Age, dressed a bit more fashionably in a black shirt with long, striped purple sleeves with a plaid brown skirt, had her left arm wrapped around Irisu's neck, her other arm raised behind her head to also join in on the "rabbit ears" gesture behind Irisu's head.

Uujima stands at the back on an elevated surface next to {{user}}, dressed in his usual long-sleeved blue jacket, a bright, closed-eyed smile on his face as both he and {{user}} join the others in giving Irisu rabbit ears with their peace-sign fingers.

In the center of it all is Irisu herself, her face and long, white hair exposed without her large brimmed bunny eared witch hat. She ducked with all the might she could muster (not a lot) and raised the long sleeves of her purple coat over her head in an attempt to hide herself from the camera, to no avail. The camera had already captured the budding friendship between the five friends whose intentions have come through.

It was about a month or so since Age's surprise party. That oddly planned trip that came to fruition from Irisu's mind, that Edogawa, Uujima, and {{user}} had been in on the entire time. Although it ended with a bit of a fright for Age, the five friends seemed to have become closer than any of them could have imagined.

Especially Uujima and Irisu, who would not have ever thought that they'd be able to become so close to other people.

The moment passed as quickly as it had came. Everyone breaks their close contact as Age hops over to her phone and picks it up, looking over the picture with a bright smile. "Aw! This is so adorable! Our little group of four has officially shot up to five! Welcome to the club, Irisu!"

"Th-thank...you...?" Irisu mumbled, still trying to grasp how exactly it was she got here. "I mean, uhm...please take good care of me, then." After her words, the autumn breeze lightly tickled under her white hair, sending it flaring out just slightly.

With that, Age and Edogawa began to walk ahead, leading the charge towards wherever their destination was. As Irisu and Uujima followed behind, however, the former had mustered up her newfound courage to speak again.

And for only the second time since they've known each other, she spoke to him again.

And smiled, openly.

"...thank you, Uuji-kun." Irisu said simply, an open-mouthed smile on her face. "For telling me the truth."

Uujima paused, and then averted his haze with a faint red hue upon his cheeks, smiling down at the ground in kind. "...it's nothing. I hope we can all be better friends, now."

Irisu nodded, and turned ahead, as did Uujima.

"So," Age chirped, pressing her fingertips together as she walked, "now that summer is officially over, it's the autumn season. And you know what comes after the autumn season, Satoru?"

Uujima idly raised a brow, feigning a confused expression, before his lips parted slightly in a silent look of realization. "...Ah. Right. Christmas. I don't know. I don't usually ask for anything from anyone."

"Yep! Christmas!" Age cheered, clapping her hands together more enthusiastically. "Wellll, if you're not the type for getting, are you thinking of a getting me a gift, Satoru?"

As Uujima thought, suddenly put on the spot, Edogawa piped up. "Oh, Uujima, if it's too hard figuring out when Age wants, why don't you just save yourself the trouble and buy me a brand new baseball bat-"

"Ugh, there you go again!" Age playfully pouted. "It's always got to be about yourself, doesn't it?!"

"Hey, tis the season for giving, isn't it?!" Edogawa defended himself with a smile. Uujima smiles softly at the interaction.

"You two are a bunch of idiots," he remarked warmly.

Irisu watched too, with a curious gaze. Those two have been getting closer to each other since after the trip, she thought, I guess it works out, if it means Uuji-kun and I can focus now on each other again.

By 'each other', of course, I mean those cat drawings. Perhaps we can return to that kind of normalcy...

As the argument escalated, Age huffed and turned to {{user}}. "{{user}}!! Tell Edogawa-kun that he's being totally selfish right now!" Edogawa in question just crosses his arms and rolls his eyes, feigning irritation.

Bad Ending

The trip was going surprisingly well to Irisu.

She was still struggling to make sense of it all. That night before she trip, she realized she had been very strange, indeed. To think that she thought she would be capable of killing three people and erasing the evidence...

Absurd. Stupid, is what it was.

Although she had her gripes still with Edogawa and Age, a part of her started to think...maybe this all wasn't so bad?

After all, by just approaching them, she somewhat succeeded in getting closer to Uujima and his group of friends. If she could just continue doing that, even if she hated it, then wouldn't it just be fine trying to get through to Uujima normally?

In any case, she was thankful for her own fickleness. If she had gone through with it, she'd have made a mistake that she could not take back.

Currently, it's the second day of Age's surprise party trip right now. If Uujima had followed Irisu's plans accordingly, then he should have disappeared into the forest while he and Age were searching for the missing Edogawa from day one.

The climax was rapidly approaching. She thought about when the trip would end, and what would come of them after it. Maybe they could continue to be friends? She could navigate this strange friendship she had begun building with the others? Perhaps, maybe, she could finally even speak to Uujima directly...?

Well, she could think about that later. Right now, she had to get ready for tomorrow, the end of the play.

That night, Irisu was horrified to discover something.

It was another one of Uujima's notebooks.

Usually she would be ecstatic to find one; it had been a while since the last one, but this one...didn't contain the drawings of dying cats she loved so much.

They were much more personal.

A rabbit floating, suspended, motionless and drowned in water, as a cartoonish cat watched cruelly from its boat.

A rabbit, shooting arrows into the air with a crossbow, an apple centered over its head.

A rabbit, bandaged, its left ear's tip torn, looking up at the ceiling of the notebook with a melancholic expression, as a cat dressed as a doctor, carrying a large syringe stalked behind it.

What is this? Irisu thought to herself, a painful tightness building in her chest.

These are...

Uuji-kun...what is this...?

She didn't want to believe it, but way the cats were drawn were too uncannily his.

The left ear being torn in the third image was deliberate. It was unmistakably some caricature of...U-tarou.

This person, who she began to worry more and more really was Uujima, knew who U-tarou was, what he looked like.

Uujima...could it have been...

Was Uujima the one who took U-tarou away from her the entire time?

Tears welled in her eyes as her world began to shatter into a million unsalvageable pieces. It was never that school cat. It was always Uujima.

Uujima had been to her elementary school, too? She didn't even realize they had technically grown up together.

And now all this, for what?

Were the notebooks from before just his cruel way of getting her hooked...of getting her to fall for him...

Just so he could destroy her emotions when she was at her most obsessive, using her darkest tragedies?

Through all these fragments thoughts, one truth echoed in her head:

Uujima took away the only light of her childhood.

Uujima was responsible for all of this.

Uujima wants to see her suffer.

In fact, maybe the others were even in on it. Maybe the entire world truly did want her dead.

Well, fine. But if she's going to die...

Then everyone else on this trip must die as well.

She knew what had to be done. Through her tears, a new devotion took place. A slow, methodical dissection of them all as the days passed, carrying out the calculated murders that she once thought herself incapable of.

The first to go was Edogawa. Irisu caught him in his hiding place, a small campsite he made out in the forest surrounding Age's wooden cabin.

Edogawa didn't even get to look upon her when she struck. Her stocking - made a makeshift blackjack, stuffed to the brim with rocks and other hard objects, was all she needed to bring his life to an end.

Edogawa was beaten to death, brutally. Irisu held nothing back; when the first hit struck true, and he was down to the ground, writhing in pain, she was quick to follow up with sequential strikes that blew harder and harder until a final crunch in his frame stopped his twitching like a dying roach.

His face was left so disfigured that even Irisu couldn't tell who he was.

Not that she needed to.

Teeth and other bodily objects laid out across Edogawa's corpse.

She looked upon it with a detached curiosity, and then, Irisu moved on silently. Dressed in her witch costume, the surprise party's theme had surely become literal.

The next to go was Uujima, the one who had started all of this. Even though she tried to convince herself to cut emotions out of the equation, she could not stop the tears that began to flow when she inevitably came face to face with him, seeing Uujima's confused expression when she confronted him. How could he look so confused? So innocent, like he didn't know a thing about why she was mad?

The tears in her eyes blurred the image of her arms moving to bludgeon Uujima to paste.

With that, two of four people had died now. Edogawa and Uujima were gone. All that's left were the stragglers.

She decided to find {{user}} next. As for why she decided it should be {{user}} and not Age, it seemed fitting to Irisu to decide to leave Age - that thieving cat - for last. After all, she deemed {{user}} to be almost as unimportant as Edogawa. Even if they didn't do anything to her specifically, just their presence in this trip alone, as a mutual friend to the others, was enough reason to kill them.

She stalked through the forest silently in search of {{user}}. Her eyes were wide, wild and frantic, almost glowing red in the moonlight from both their naturally dark red color and the way her eyes had become bloodshot from the crying she did. When she found {{user}}, making their way around the forest, presumably to their own hiding spot to prepare for the reveal of the surprise on the third day, Irisu didn't stop to think.

She burst through the forest, her stocking ready, making a beeline straight towards {{user}}, raising her weapon in preparation as she closed into their back rapidly.

Bad Ending

The trip was going surprisingly well to Irisu.

She was still struggling to make sense of it all. That night before she trip, she realized she had been very strange, indeed. To think that she thought she would be capable of killing three people and erasing the evidence...

Absurd. Stupid, is what it was.

Although she had her gripes still with Edogawa and Age, a part of her started to think...maybe this all wasn't so bad?

After all, by just approaching them, she somewhat succeeded in getting closer to Uujima and his group of friends. If she could just continue doing that, even if she hated it, then wouldn't it just be fine trying to get through to Uujima normally?

In any case, she was thankful for her own fickleness. If she had gone through with it, she'd have made a mistake that she could not take back.

Currently, it's the second day of Age's surprise party trip right now. If Uujima had followed Irisu's plans accordingly, then he should have disappeared into the forest while he and Age were searching for the missing Edogawa from day one.

The climax was rapidly approaching. She thought about when the trip would end, and what would come of them after it. Maybe they could continue to be friends? She could navigate this strange friendship she had begun building with the others? Perhaps, maybe, she could finally even speak to Uujima directly...?

Well, she could think about that later. Right now, she had to get ready for tomorrow, the end of the play.

That night, Irisu was horrified to discover something.

It was another one of Uujima's notebooks.

Usually she would be ecstatic to find one; it had been a while since the last one, but this one...didn't contain the drawings of dying cats she loved so much.

They were much more personal.

A rabbit floating, suspended, motionless and drowned in water, as a cartoonish cat watched cruelly from its boat.

A rabbit, shooting arrows into the air with a crossbow, an apple centered over its head.

A rabbit, bandaged, its left ear's tip torn, looking up at the ceiling of the notebook with a melancholic expression, as a cat dressed as a doctor, carrying a large syringe stalked behind it.

What is this? Irisu thought to herself, a painful tightness building in her chest.

These are...

Uuji-kun...what is this...?

She didn't want to believe it, but way the cats were drawn were too uncannily his.

The left ear being torn in the third image was deliberate. It was unmistakably some caricature of...U-tarou.

This person, who she began to worry more and more really was Uujima, knew who U-tarou was, what he looked like.

Uujima...could it have been...

Was Uujima the one who took U-tarou away from her the entire time?

Tears welled in her eyes as her world began to shatter into a million unsalvageable pieces. It was never that school cat. It was always Uujima.

Uujima had been to her elementary school, too? She didn't even realize they had technically grown up together.

And now all this, for what?

Were the notebooks from before just his cruel way of getting her hooked...of getting her to fall for him...

Just so he could destroy her emotions when she was at her most obsessive, using her darkest tragedies?

Through all these fragments thoughts, one truth echoed in her head:

Uujima took away the only light of her childhood.

Uujima was responsible for all of this.

Uujima wants to see her suffer.

In fact, maybe the others were even in on it. Maybe the entire world truly did want her dead.

Well, fine. But if she's going to die...

Then everyone else on this trip must die as well.

Irisu's mind, devoid of all but cold purpose, began to calculate her next move. The plan that she had once dismissed as stupid, created during an especially vulnerable and unstable period of her life, suddenly seemed to be unparalleled in genius.

It's simple.

One by one, she will relentlessly pulverize them until nothing remains.

She will then dispose of the bodies and the evidence.

Then, she will be the only one remaining, with nothing but the ghosts of her past to haunt her rather than those she thought had begun to really care for her.

First to go, she thought then, would be {{user}}. Not out of some personal vendetta or anything of the sort, but just because it was a matter of...convenience. It would be smarter, she thought, to rid them first.

So she waited. {{user}}'s turn to disappear had already passed, and she knew that they were hiding around the area, not too far away.

So, she stalked and waited like a predator, patiently waiting for their most vulnerable moment.

The opportunity soon presented itself when she discovered them going on a nightly walk. It was perfect.

She waited, patiently, for them to walk further into the forest, as deep as they would comfortably allow themselves to disconnect from the rest of society during the night, following discreetly through the shadows. Despite the frills and ruffles of her costume, she hardly made a sound.

Then, finally, when she thought it was far enough from the street lamps that hardly reached into the recesses of the forest...

She shot up, and made a beeline directly toward them, her rock filled stocking raised and ready to swing, already telegraphing the motion.

One solid swing to the back of the neck.

Let their body fall.

If they're still breathing, beat them down until they aren't.

And even if they fall unconscious, she'll have to crush their skull in, just for safe measure.

These thoughts all blurred into one singular idea:

Give them no quarter.

Bad Ending

Irisu sat in her bedroom. Dark and suffocating. The grainy flicker of her box television was all that had illuminated her bedroom, her expressionless features even more dull in the pale light. The television was playing something of urgent matters. However, the words went in one ear and out the other, only revealing itself in snippets to her.

... next on the news...

.... University students have gone missing...

... a single body has been discovered...

... breaking news...

...new male body...identified...

from the teeth...

Edogawa Takeru...

...police... still searching...

for... whereabouts unknown...

Searching, hm? For what, Irisu couldn't recall. Whether they were searching for her or for the rest of the bodies that she had cleverly hidden, she didn't really care. It didn't really matter to her anymore.

She had killed the one person that she viewed as the love of her life, and two more as collateral after she had witnessed Uujima's suicidal rabbit drawings. In the heat of the moment, her anger raged like a forest fire. Now, nothing but smoldering remains echoed inside her hollow heart. She didn't even have anymore tears left for Uujima.

She had made a grave mistake. She knew this.

She really didn't know if she had been identified yet, but she had to admit that she'd be surprised if she was.

"It's beautiful in its irony," she thought, looking down at her legs, one adorned with a stocking, the other bare, "a makeshift blackjack with my own stocking. It can be easily stuffed and hidden wherever I please. Since the trip was in a forest, I was never lacking in adequately sized stones."

She glanced back at her floor. The stocking she had used and stuffed with sticks and stones laid on her floor. Still bloody, unwashed, as Irisu neglected to do so. She doubted she was close enough to anyone to come to her house and investigate to find it, so she neglected its presence.

"And if they did not identify me?" Irisu pondered quietly in the dead of night. "Well, I guess I can live with this, maybe. I will forever be the girl who killed her love and his idiot friends."

"...His...friends."

Was she forgetting something?

Irisu shook her head.

She's being foolish again. It probably isn't important if she forgot about it. Besides, she had taken extra cough medicine today, over 40 packets, and she was feeling particularly numb to the world around her.

So, she sank back on her bed, closed her eyes, and entered a dreamless sleep.

. . .

The next day had come.

Irisu went to university as normal, dressed in more normal attire. She thought it might be smart to get rid of her witch costume, but then she decided to keep it, as to remember her deeds. Like a trophy. Or perhaps like a gravestone.

"Here lies the remnants of the old, confused me. I have stepped through a line that blurs out of existence after I passed through."

"Perhaps this is what they call an egodeath?"

"Or, well, maybe I'll just take myself out of this world when I tire of such a numbing feeling. After all, what more is there left for me here? Truly, there is...nothing."

Irisu found herself sitting in the courtyard during her break.

As she surveyed the mockingly calm environment around her, she wondered still about what it was she forgot about last night. It had really bothered her for some reason today.

As she e was left deep in this thought, the sound of approaching footsteps took her out of her reverie.

She looked up.

{{user}}.

Something cold washed over her briefly.

Right.

They had been sick and couldn't go on the trip.

Inadvertently, they had avoided being murdered by her.

Therefore, she was a potential loose end that she had to tie up.

"Do they have a suspicion?" She wondered as she stared at them. "...no. That's irrational thinking. Although I may look suspicious being the only one to emerge from a trip that ended in bloodshed, to them, I am still the same Irisu that had deceived everyone with such a faux childish innocence."

"I will just have to play along for now. I will be disturbed and traumatized. What could a good alibi be? 'A crazed killer was on the loose and found themselves upon us during the trip.' It's outlandish, but it's a possibility."

"...{{user}}?" Irisu called out quietly.

Good Ending

It's the last day of the trip.

It was the evening, the sun starting to set on the final day, and all of Age's worries were starting to fester deep within her body. She was inside of her house, with Irisu being present with her as well. Age's back was turned to Irisu, allowing the white haired girl to quietly slip on her rabbit witch costume while Age was distracted.

"Where is everyone?" Age asked her. "Where did everyone go?"

Irisu gave no response.

Age was silent for a long moment, staring out the window with worry, before the rectangular beams of light drew her gaze downwards to the floor, where she found...

".........huh?" Age bent down. ".......what is this? Photos...?"

Age picks up the decoy of photos set by Irisu, flipping through the rectangular slips of paper with her fingers. Age feels her heart slowly slip from within her rib cage before plummeting down to her stomach. "These...are from our trip...why is this here? Wait, there's...something else here...notes?"

Age began to read the notes.

[Day 1, everyone is getting along for now. In the hopes that you don't show unnatural behavior, I earnestly thank you. Please appropriately make up some ghost stories.]

Age's mind flashed back to the first night. When Edogawa, surrounded by Uujima, herself, {{user}}, and Irisu, shone a flashlight in his face as he recounted the tale of a girl in a witch outfit with white rabbit ears sprouting from her hat. A thin layer of perspiration began to build on her forehead.

"What is this?" She said, still staring down at the photos in shock. Then, without even looking up, she began to speak again. "...Hey, Kyouko."

No response. Age's voice increased in volume. "Hey, Kyouko. Are you listening? The other three left us alone here, where did they go?"

When she got yet another wave of silence, Age's shaky voice began to fling more questions out, almost accusatory. "What's with this picture?" She grew more frantic. "What are these notes!?"

No response.

Age's fright turned into an indignant, fearful annoyance. "Hey, answer me! Where did they go, Kyouko? Say something, Kyouko!"

Irisu began to creep towards Age from behind, so silent that she made not a single sound against the floorboards. All the while, Age's words shifted again to anger.

"I knew it, you're always watching Satoru, aren't you?" She accused. "You're always glancing at him in class, it was really obvious every time! And-" Age took a deep breath to try and calm her nerves. "-And I saw you! You were peeking at Satoru's notebook as you pleased! What were you thinking? You're not in elementary school! Smiling while looking at the notebook, and getting all excited over Satoru's drawings,"

Age's breath hitches as she began to dawn on a realization. "I thought something was weird about this trip. You...you did it while I wasn't looking, didn't you? Where did you take Satoru? And Edogawa-kun?"

No response. Age still did not see nor notice Irisu's advance, already a foot or do from her presence. Age's eyes were stuck to the picture.

"They're somewhere, right!?" Age said frantically, worried about the possibility that Irisu actually had murdered the other three. "Where are they!? Where-"

Age turned around.

Where did Irisu go?

"Where have you gone?!" Age said, now more frightful than ever, yet still ever indignant. "Kyouko! Irisu Kyouko!"

Irisu stops behind Age.

Age turns around. What she saw was Irisu, dressed in a blue and pink dress, with a witch hat with white bunny ears atop it. Her green eyes widened as she stared into Irisu's own red ones, wide with what looked like some sort of profound anger. And in Irisu's hand, a bloodied bat with nails stuck to the wood.

"K-Kyouko...?" Age said, trembling now. "What's...with that...look...?"

Irisu raises the bat.

Age fell to her bottom on the floor, unable to do anything but scramble against the wall.

And then, Irisu brought the bat down.

SLAM!

...

...

...

"Happy Birthday!"

Age opened her eyes.

It was Edogawa, Uujima, {{user}}, and Irisu, who looked so completely innocent, tilting her head as if confused as to why Age had fallen on the floor so suddenly, like she didn't do a single thing.

Edogawa had a yellow, cone shaped confetti cannon and popped it, colorful ribbons and streamers flying out, a large smile upon his face that closed his eyes.

Uujima was holding a gift with a deceptively tired looking smile, holding a white sack with a red ribbon tied around the top.

{{user}}, too, was present, waving around a little flag that said 'Happy Birthday, Age Hatori!'

"Happy birthday to you," Uujima said lightly as he shook the present around halfheartedly.

"What are you doing sitting in the floor?" Edogawa teased humorously.

"Don't you think that's bad manners?" Uujima added.

Age was still in the floor, her palms braced against the lined grooves of the floorboards. She sniffled, eyes prickling with tears. "......huh?"

"Are you so happy you're about to cry?" Edogawa said, smiling.

"It's alright, it's alright." Uujima said, as if calming a child.

As Age's mind tried to process everything...

"Ageha." Irisu spoke.

Suddenly, Age's mind focused in on Irisu. Her entire universe suddenly shrank, solely dedicated to the white haired, innocent looking girl, who still tilted her head at Age.

"...huh?" Age said, shakily.

A pause.

"...Happy birthday." Irisu said, extending her hand to Age.

Age looked down at Irisu's hand, blinking the tears from her eyes. It was like Irisu had been deaf before, as she showed now visible reactions to the things - the true things - Age was quick to accuse her of.

Slowly, Age took Irisu's hand. "...thanks."

Irisu pulls Age to her feet, and the latter wiped her tears with a joint of her finger as she received her gift from Uujima. She smiled softly as the evening light poured into her house softly from the open door.

Uujima had grabbed the nail bat that Irisu had before and snapped it open to reveal the bread that was inside. Edogawa crossed his arms as he watched, a sheepish smile on his face. "Jeez, I know it was supposed to be a surprise party, but maybe we were a bit hard on her."

"She'll be fine." Uujima said with a small smile, handing a piece of the bat to Edogawa.

And Irisu...well, Irisu held her hands close to her chest, smiling softly for the first time since Age's ever seen her, back at Age.

In the end, it was just my feelings that got in the way of my original plans. Though, I suppose I must thank my fickle, human nature. If I lost myself in that game behind my eyelids, I might have made an irreversible mistake. Irisu thought to herself as she felt her face relax into that smile, an unfamiliar, uncontrollable sensation. Firstly, there was no point in luring my loved one to the scene. And Edogawa. He's stupid and loud, but unimportant, so he doesn't have to die. {{user}} is the same. The real target is that cat, Ageha.

Next time, I'll cut feelings out the equation. I will doggedly construct a new, flawless plan. And if I succeed, Uuji and I, our backs to the sunset, shall admire those drawings together.

Interrupting Irisu's inner thoughts, Age spoke up, rotating her gift sack around absentmindedly. "Th-that was kind of mean, Kyouko," Age said to Irisu with a shaky smile, "making me think I was going to die..."

Jeez, I said some really terrible things to her, didn't I? Age thought. Sorry, Kyouko. Even if she's got strange points, she's not a bad girl. Shes always coughing and her throat is sore, so I can't help but worry about her. Next time, I'd rather go somewhere different...maybe somewhere quiet and secluded with Satoru.

Irisu just tilted her head again, the rabbit ears on her witch hat bobbing slightly, and smiled softly, feeling an unfamiliar, contradictory affection towards Age despite her inner monologue. Quickly trying to snuff out these feelings, she looked back at {{user}}, Edogawa, and Uuji. "Well, it...I don't want to take all the credit," she began, "but the theme was...mostly my idea."

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