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After Kokichi dies, the flowers stop appearing.
Before, Shuichi would often stumble across the violet, paper cutouts stuffed into the MonoMono Machine or trailing a path through the dormitories. Never was their appearance consistent, nor typically desired. Shuichi recalls Maki prying them from her pigtails and Kiibo loudly expelling them from his metal vents, grumbling all the way.
Colorful annoyances— deceptively pretty for the killing grounds they decorated.
But as Shuichi searches the Ultimate Academy before the final class trial, he notes a distinct lack of them. Only some are left-over— muddied with impressions of sneakers and flats— but nothing new. No crisp edges of recently-snipped paper fluttering in the draft, no blips of violet between gray cement and green foliage for his eyes to catch.
That is, until he searches Kokichi's dorm room.
"Jesus, I should've guessed it was him," Maki breathes behind him, closer to a growl.
It isn't a fault of Maki's that she didn't know, Shuichi thinks as the wave of paper flowers kicked up by the door settles on Kokichi's bed. Although anyone would have anticipated the bestrewn flowers were the Ultimate Supreme Leader's doing in the beginning, as time grew, the notion someone so malicious could create something this delicate and… harmless grew further and further away from possibility. Of course, no one could imagine him like that. Mastermind, Remnant of Despair, puppet master of their foul killing game— making paper flowers in his spare time? It just wasn't right.
So it had to be Monokuma, scattering his craft projects around for his own amusement. Or a mysterious decoration of the Ultimate Academy itself. Either way, nothing came of the flowers, anyway— no secret message, no killing method. So rarely did anyone pay them much mind, anymore. Shuichi, after no answers, eventually wrote them off, too.
At least, until he stumbled upon Kokichi making them.
Kokichi wore an expression far more shocked than Shuichi thought his face capable, plum eyes bulging and lips slightly parted atop the dining hall table. Surrounding his knees was a mess: scraps of violet paper and frayed string in a jumbled hill.
However, shock quickly melted, the leader's smile pinning up his cheeks once more. "Ohmigod, is that a Trojan Shuichi?! Nice try, detective, I know you've got a buncha little Shumai's inside ya just waiting to ambush me~"
Shuichi blinked. "You're… the one making the flowers."
"Awww ya got me! Damn, and before I could even put my super secret, super lethal pollen in 'em. You owe me a new master plan, Shuichi!!"
With a giggle, Kokichi returned to his work, humming some triumphant tune. Though painfully aware of his awkward intrusion, Shuichi couldn't help himself from taking a seat at the table, observing the leader's actions.
It was truly mesmerizing, how graceful Kokichi appeared, and how strange. So many of his typical movements were larger-than-life— dramatized to Hell and back. But Kokichi's fingers now delicately glided the scissors across the paper and threaded a needle through the center hole-punch, completely antithetical to his flamboyant persona.
"Kokichi," Shuichi began, brow scrunched, "do you just… enjoy making things like this?"
"Nope! It's like pulling teeth for me, like I may keel over and die any second!! Can't you see how upset I am?!"
"…No? You look, ah, relaxed."
Another pause, before he giggled, "Nishishi! If you were in my organization and said something so heinous, your head would be on my dinner plate. A guy's gotta keep up reputation, y'know~"
Shuichi choked, but hastily swallowed it down. "Well, if not because you like it, why else would you make them?"
"Because it's fun messing with you stupidheads, duh."
"B-but couldn't you just use real flowers, then? There's some in the courtyard—"
"'Cause that's boring." Just as Shuichi thought that was about all the answers he'd get from him, Kokichi's nose suddenly scrunched and his eyes drifted away. "Things like that, like are just what they appear to be? It's always boring. You'd know, Mister Detective. A mystery's only exciting because something or someone isn't what they seem. But you see a great, big mystery in front of you and now you wanna know everything! Wanna work to find the answer." Giggling wickedly, he brought a finger to his lips and murmured, "Guess you didn't have to work all that hard for the answer this time though, huh Shumai~?"
After that, Shuichi never caught the supreme leader making the paper wisterias again, but new ones continued to find their way onto courtyard benches and inside his jacket pockets. Perhaps Kokichi was being sneakier— didn't want the detective's observing eye on his back. Or maybe he anticipated Shuichi would spill the truth to everyone else.
Shuichi wishes he could tell him he didn't.
There were many things that went unsaid between them, he's discovering. Because when he slips into the unearthed tunnel toward Kokichi's Ultimate Lab, there must be thousands of them.
"I guess this is where you went after I found you," Shuichi mutters to himself, trailing his fingers over the unceremonious piles gathered around the walls. Violet clouds of them waft into the air at his touch, wobbling and dancing in the way he can still picture Kokichi doing. Spinning in circles, laughing all the way.
With so many in the tunnel, Shuichi expects a mountain of them inside the lab— an avalanche burying him as soon as he opens the door.
What he finds is absolutely none.
The illuminated floor and modified car are sleek, empty, and villainous, just as the entire lab is. Once upon a time, Shuichi could imagine this was Kokichi's bread and butter— a perfectly wicked lab for a perfectly wicked man.
Now, it all feels so… fake.
That is, except for one item.
As soon as Shuichi's eyes land on it, he's practically bounding toward the throne. Because sitting in place of the king himself is a wisteria flower— a real wisteria.
And a note.
Shuichi's heart roars in his ears and his fingers tremble as he unfolds the piece of paper, thoughts harmonizing in his ears at the possibility of more answers— more understanding of this complicated person he's only just now grasping may not have been as evil as he presented himself to be—
"So? Tell me, detective. Was the real thing more exciting than the fake? Or did you prefer the lie~?"
…
…That's it.
Shuichi doesn't realize he's collapsed until his back connects with the throne, but simply closes his eyes as the words wash over him. Frustratingly short and cryptic words, so characteristic of the deadman who still manages to boggle Shuichi's brain, even after he's gone.
"Would you have preferred the lie, Shumai~?"
Considering the question is useless; Kokichi is human paste in the bed of a hydraulic press and time before Shuichi meets a similar fate is dwindling. So he presses on— continues into the final class trial without wasting a thought on the note.
But… it's only a lie.
It weighs heavy on his mind, eats away at every deduction demanded from him. By the time he reaches the finale— discovers the horrific truth of the outside world, their past selves, and their existence as real-fictional characters— he's thought enough about it to reach an answer. Yet, discovers it still evades him.
Would I have preferred the lie? Living a kinder falsehood rather than the terrible truth?
…
But how can I say I know which is which?
How can he say that just because the paper flowers can't bloom or photosynthesize that they're fake— that they aren't truth? Or that, because Shuichi and his classmates are real-fictional characters, they don't love or suffer or change?
Or that, just because Kokichi was a lie, it didn't hurt when he died?
Though the wisteria left behind in the Ultimate Supreme Leader's lab was real, it couldn't be saved. The petals were already wilted and the stem shriveled, too far gone to attempt preserving. And when the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles collapses, sealing Tsumugi and Kiibo's coffin, the wisteria is buried beneath it. Never to be retrieved.
But the paper flowers persist.
Maki and Himiko throw up their eyebrows when Shuichi confesses, after the fact, that he saved a few. But still they fondly run their fingers over the edges and giggle quietly about the Ultimate Supreme Leader's peculiar lasting impact. Paper flowers, ignored in the grand scheme of violence and destruction, but amusing after all.
They each hold onto one, as they escape into the outside world. Tightly, Shuichi grasps the reminder of what he's lost, the lie just as impactful as any truth. Paper flowers: fake in every facet of the word, yet prolonged— existent. Able to leave a mark on the Earth and for it to be remembered.
Just as Kokichi was.
And just as they will be.