Tatsuya Yamazaki - SHSL Street Fighter
_______________________________________________________________________________________
It was incredible. If the elevator ride prior to the trial hadn't been wrought with tension enough, the elevator ride that followed Alex's execution seemed to possess a somber air that rivaled that of the former. You'd think there would be some degree of relief, that they'd successfully identified the culprit, but the horrors of the punishment they'd been forced to witness bore too much weight upon the mind, it seemed.
Tatsuya was relatively unflinching however, keeping his silence and his sharp gaze averted until they'd returned to the first floor and the gates to the elevator had opened. Initially he had planned to simply head back to his room, to mull over what had happened and possibilities that might stem from this event before setting the matter aside for good. Tatsuya never was one to linger, and given Alex's strife wasn't his own, he had no inclination to mourn his passing. Of the few issues to consider however was how the mindsets of the others may have changed. Would murder have become more acceptable in their eyes? Or did the gruesome consequences of Alex's failure render the risks taken more repulsive? The lesson to keep one's guard up was something to be mindful of for sure, but in the absence of any other concern, Tatsuya soon felt his irritation wane and his apathy set in once again.
'I'm still alive,' he reminded himself as he stepped out from the elevator, setting off towards the other end of the corridor.
'And that's all that matters, really.'
It didn't take very long for Tatsuya to notice the changes about the hallway, enough that he was drawn from his train of thought to acknowledge the absence of the blood trail. He also remembered Monokuma mentioning that they'd been allowed a new area to explore, which momentarily stopped him in his tracks. Tatsuya stood outside the door to his room for a moment, contemplating further exploration or rest, before his restlessness and curiosity urged him to have at least a basic idea of what or where this new area was before he headed to bed.
Producing his tablet, it took some navigation of the electronic map he'd been provided before he noticed the first floor seemed very... different? It was nothing like it had appeared to them before, with the planetarium and physics classroom and otherwise. How had it changed then, if the doors were the same? Even as Tatsuya left the main floor and entered in on the first floor to witness things firsthand, he found the area unfamiliar to him and
this was rather unsettling, because he could swear the layout of the school looked nothing like this beforehand...
With tentative steps and certain vigilance, the street fighter moved about the different rooms, peering into the library and regarding it with relative indifference before happening upon the locker rooms and adjacent swimming pool. This piqued his interest, since Tatsuya quite enjoyed swimming from time to time, and the facility provided here was incredible to say the least. Promising to himself that he might return to the pool at a later date, Tatsuya left to examine a cluster of plain classrooms in turn, which is about the time he received Monokuma's impromptu announcement regarding the tablets. A semi-important message, but not so interesting given Tatsuya was more invested in exploring at the current moment. From the classrooms, he then ventured to a room that appeared to be marked upon his map as a gym...?
Upon entering the premises, it would be a lie to say the street fighter's face did not light up at least a little at the sight he was greeted with. This gym, like the swimming pool stationed by it, was incredibly expansive, in extremely good order and offered a plethora of equipment that would make any dedicated athlete nut. And while Tatsuya was not exactly an athlete so to speak, having several punching bags at his disposal was by no doubt an alluring notion, so to be allowed this... he wouldn't admit it out loud as such, but it was almost relieving.
"Huh..." Tatsuya moved further inside the room, his eyes and attention drawn to what seemed to be a storage room located towards the back, until he was given quick notice of two occupants that had arrived before him, one of which was sitting and the other short enough that Tatsuya had not noticed them prior. Tatsuya's expression steeled a little upon finding he was not alone, glancing between Ken and Monokuma in question of what was taking place here.
"What? Am I interrupting something?"
Finding Ken sitting upon the floor of the new gym was unexpected enough as it was, but the fact that he was accompanied by their perpetrator evoked even more questions. The tablet in Ken's hands might have something to do with it though, given the announcement given minutes prior. In any case, this had nothing to do with Tatsuya and the raven-haired male didn't exactly want to get dragged into something that didn't concern (or would irritate) him. If he had to check out the gym some other time, so be it, although Tatsuya was indeed at least a little interested in the scene at hand.
@SolemnOath @Neobullseye
