Rewritten chapter 2 plot synopsis
(This is a more thorough chapter 2 synopsis for my rewritten plot of PJED I made here https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectEdensGarden/comments/1sws0r6/a_rewrite_of_project_edens_garden_ch_26/. I’m not great at writing murder mysteries, so I won’t be going through the case, but I’ll include the plot points and major character developments. All of these chapters will have some ideas from the original plot and this one especially has a lot, but there’s also a few new ideas. I was originally planning on making CGs, but scrapped them, sorry. Once I fully write out the chapter 3 plot, I’ll post that one.)
Daily Life:
Damon has a nightmare about the academy flooding at night. As he goes into the halls to wake the others, he sees Eva in the dark water. She invites him to fall with her and he ends up doing so while trying to grab onto her. Damon wakes up from the dream in a cold sweat, clearly still distraught about the previous day’s events. Kai tries to talk to him about it, but he only responds distantly.
The students all meet up in the dining hall, the atmosphere a lot more gloomy than the days before. Diana gives everyone a motivational talk in Wolfgang’s place and Grace is the first one to join in due to her close relationship with him. Though Damon still isn’t having it, some of the others feel a bit better.
The new area opens up and it appears to be a large library. Ulysses seems the most interested in this, glad to have more reading material. Damon is skeptical that the books aren’t just props, let alone have any accurate information, but after looking at a few, they seemed surprisingly factual. Two small doors in the library lead to an infirmary and a solarium respectively.
A day after the new area is unlocked, Tozu appears in front of the group for a new motive which is a social class simulator. The cast were randomly assigned three groups that affect the things they are able to access and their living conditions. Though sharing isn’t technically against the rules, it isn’t encouraged. The groups are as follows
Upper class: Toshiko, Damon, Mark, and Grace.
Middle class: Cassidy, Jett, Jean, Eloise, Ingrid, and Ulysses.
Lower class: Kai, Wenona, Diana, and Desmond.
Though none of the lower class are happy about it, Wenona is clearly the most irritated by her random grouping. Cassidy dislikes the motive in general and encourages everyone to share in order to make things equal. Despite this, none of the upper class students promise to give anything to the rest of them. A rift quickly forms in the cast.
Damon begins to indulge in the perks his newfound status gave him. Despite the generally good time he’s having, he does recognize being a higher status than most of the group makes him a target and reminds himself to stay vigilant. Two FTEs can be done after this.
That evening, Damon is notified that a lock was installed in his room along with the other upper class students’ rooms. Damon is relieved he no longer has to have Kai as a roommate and enters his room.
About an hour later, Damon hears a knock on his door. Kai came to convince Damon to let him stay in his room, as without a lock or a roommate, he was vulnerable to a murder attempt. He begs until Damon reluctantly agrees but says Kai would be the one sleeping on a couch this time. Despite complaining, Kai feels forced to agree to this. He also asks Damon to share other resources with him, but gets shut down fast.
The next morning, it’s obvious the new system is causing issues. The lower class is feeling demoralized and tired of their living conditions, the upper class are for the most part refusing to help and on a power trip, and the ones in the middle can’t do much about anything. Damon is invited to join Toshiko, Grace, and Mark’s meetup in the solarium that afternoon.
After two more FTEs, Damon meets up with the others. During this time, Toshiko accidentally hurts herself, causing her knees to get scraped and bloody. She stays there as the other three go to get bandages for her.
When they make it to the infirmary, they are shocked to find Jett’s corpse lying on the ground with a large slit through his throat. Mark turns unresponsive as the body discovery announcement plays, proving that Jett was in fact dead. After a while of silently staring at the body, he breaks down. He’s angry at himself for taking too long to show he actually appreciated Jett’s company and is even angrier at whoever killed him. Though unable to interact with during the investigation, he ends up being very active during the trial.
Deadly Life:
For the investigation segment, Diana assists Damon at the crime scene, while Kai helps him search for evidence around the rest of the academy. Ingrid treats Toshiko’s injuries away from the corpse at this time.
During the trial, it’s found out poison was the real cause of death instead of the visible wound that was made postmortem. Due to there being no later opportunity to poison Jett, it’s assumed that he was poisoned a day before and died around 20-24 hours later.
Likely through alibis and resources available to each student, Jean gets found out as the culprit. His reasoning was that he wanted to get back to his crew, who are in reality drug smugglers. He also feared someone may have found that out due to the previous chapter’s motive and as he didn’t know who got it, the safest bet was to not let any of them survive. Mark loses it on Jean after hearing all this, calling him a pathetic selfish murderer.
Jean is dragged into his execution which features him at a poker table with robotic dogs as the other players. Every time he loses, water starts pouring into the room. Due to bad hand after bad hand, the room fills up with water pretty quickly, leaving him to drown.
Yet again, the students are disturbed and disheartened. Even Diana is uncharacteristically quiet as she wonders if “adapting” in this situation means throwing away her blind optimism. Instead, Mark is the first to speak up. Though he’s still clearly struggling and unstable himself, he says he believes Jett wouldn’t want to see them in this state. Mark resolves to try to form closer bonds with the others. The 12 remaining students head back to their rooms soon after.