Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2015-04-01 08:13 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2015-04-01 08:13 am
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Fanfiction: Flashbulb (Super Dangan Ronpa 2)
Hello! Here is a Super Dangan Ronpa 2 fic. It's set post-canon and I can't come up with a summary that doesn't at least imply spoilers, so the heading is under the cut. 3,400 words.
I'm noticing some weirdly specific patterns cropping up in my Dangan Ronpa fanfiction.
Title: Flashbulb
Fandom: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,400
Summary: The person who was once Mahiru Koizumi wakes up.
When she wakes up, there’s someone – a boy – holding her hand. The left hand, the one that still has fingers. He’s staring into her eyes like he thinks he’s dreaming.
“Koizumi?” His fingers tighten around hers. Maybe she should have taken all of them.
It takes her a moment to place his face. “Kamukura.”
Or maybe he isn’t? She could swear he jerks back when she says the name. But the face is right. The eyes are right.
“You’ve cut your hair,” she says. “It’s about time.”
Kamukura says nothing. He isn’t meeting her eyes any more.
“Let go of me,” she says, and he pulls his hand away.
She tries to push herself up, deliberately using what’s left of her right hand, but she’s too weak – how long was she in that ‘rehabilitation’ simulator? She can’t remember a thing – and she falls back onto the pillows, glaring up at the ceiling. This is the hospital, isn’t it? They’re still on Jabberwock Island. She’s vaguely aware of more hospital beds around her.
“Did the plan work?” she asks, and then she answers her own question. “Obviously not well enough, if there’s more than one of us still alive. I don’t know what Junko-chan was thinking, trusting a boy with something this important.”
“You really don’t remember anything?” he asks.
“Why? Did I miss something worth seeing?”
He sighs and stands up to grab something from a shelf above her head.
“I was afraid of this,” he says. “But at least you’re awake.”
And in the next second he’s handcuffed her to the bed frame.
-
Things have definitely not gone as planned. Yes, Kamukura managed to upload the virus, and, yes, he managed to avoid having all his memories as a member of Super High-school Level Despair overwritten, but inexplicably he’s decided to renounce a life of despair anyway. He wants to be called Hinata now. It takes her a moment to realise that must be the name of the ordinary student he used to be.
It’s pathetic, really. This guy had greatness dropped into his lap, and now he wants to go back to the nobody he was before all this? But something about it fascinates her. “They operated on your brain, didn’t they?”
‘Hinata’ winces.
“Yeah, I thought so,” she says. “So are the Future Foundation good enough to reverse brain surgery? I heard there was nothing left of you.”
He shrugs, uneasily. “I don’t know. The simulator was able to find enough of me to put something together. I guess living like that... put me in touch with myself, if that makes sense.” He gives a laugh. It’s not much of one. “Or whatever’s still there. Pretty sure there are memories I’ll never get back.”
“So why don’t I remember the simulation?” she asks. “I don’t need whatever humiliating existential crisis you’re going through, but I’m sorry I missed the murders.”
“Uh.” He shifts in his seat. “I can guess. A few of us lived through it, and we all remember, but everyone else is unconscious. You’re actually the first one to wake up.”
“So I was murdered?” she asks.
Hinata gives her a look she can’t read. “You’re assuming you weren’t executed?”
“They took away all my best memories, right?” she asks. “I know the person I used to be wasn’t capable of anything as interesting as murder. Who did it? They obviously didn’t do a good enough job, if I woke up.”
Hinata hesitates.
“It was a blow to the head,” he says.
“But you’re not going to tell me who did it? Worried I’ll hold a grudge?” She looks him up and down. “Was it you?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not answering any more questions.”
“You know, you’re even less fun than you were as Kamukura.”
-
She’s going to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance, it turns out; mysteriously, her former partners in crime don’t seem to want an agent of despair running around unchecked. She’s torn. On the one hand, obviously it would cause despair if none of the others ever came out of their comas. On the other, she sort of wants them all to wake up, just to see what happens; they can’t keep them all under constant surveillance.
Akane helps Hinata bring her to one of the cottages at the Hotel Mirai. She isn’t surprised to see Akane was one of the survivors; that one would be a pain to kill.
She’s a little more surprised when Kuzuryuu comes to take over the watch, although of course he’d have had his bodyguard in the simulation with him.
“I owe you a great apology,” he says, stiffly.
This is... definitely Kuzuryuu, right? Because he’s being even weirder than she’d expect from a Kuzuryuu who’s given up despair.
“I don’t need your apologies,” she says. “What are you apologising for, anyway?”
He freezes. “Damn it, Hinata didn’t—?”
“Did you murder me?” she asks, delighted.
He hesitates just long enough for her to know the truth. He’s always had a terrible poker face. In a way, he’s the one she was always closest to; they fell into despair together, both dwelling on his sister’s death.
“Oh, your pet murdered me.”
Kuzuryuu’s jaw tightens.
“Obviously a shoddy job, if I woke up first,” she says. “I thought it had to be a boy. I suppose it might as well have been; it’s not as if Peko-chan could ever do anything without her master’s approval.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Kuzuryuu says, low as a whisper.
There’s the Kuzuryuu she remembers. It actually feels good to see him again. She widens her eyes. “What happened to my apology?”
Kuzuryuu takes a deep breath. She can see him trying to push down the rage. It’s going to be fun to tease it back out of him.
“Hey,” she says, “what’s up with the eyepatch?”
Kuzuryuu says nothing.
“What, you’re ashamed of your trophy? It’s the best part of you. C’mon, let me see.” She reaches out with her right arm, trying to bat her fingerless hand against his eyepatch, but he recoils. Using the hand with fingers would probably have been more effective, but then she wouldn’t have had the pleasure of his horrified expression.
-
“Hey, Kamukura,” she greets Hinata, when he comes in for the next shift.
His whole body tightens up. She’s already stopped thinking of him as ‘Kamukura’; the wimp in front of her is nothing like Junko’s perfect weapon. She’ll still call him it, though, just to watch him flinch.
“Kuzuryuu’s wearing an eyepatch,” she says. “Thought he was lucky enough to get Junko-chan’s eye.”
Hinata shudders. “He, uh. He clawed it out. Just after we woke up.”
That’s interesting. And a waste. “Is it still on the island?”
He gives her a sharp look. “It’s been destroyed. Leave your eyes alone.”
-
Sonia’s survival is neither a surprise nor a given. She could have been murdered, but of course she was never going to be executed; she’s like Kuzuryuu, always having someone else carry out her dirty work.
Sonia is harder to dig at than Hinata or Kuzuryuu, better at rising above things. Her expression is painfully sympathetic.
“I annihilated my own country,” Sonia says. “My own people. I cannot imagine how you could wish to remain as you are. And yet I can remember being the same myself.”
Does she want to remain as she is? She’s loyal to Junko, and yet the thought of the despair that awaits her if she learns to be horrified by her own actions again... that sort of temptation is difficult to resist. It’s hard not to envy Sonia, who’s able to look back on the atrocities she’s committed and feel the perfect agony of thinking they were pointless.
But she’s killed that part of herself. It was no great loss.
“I am glad you live,” Sonia says, “however it may be.”
-
“Good book?”
Hinata looks warily at her. “Are you trying to have a normal conversation?”
“I don’t have that many options,” she says. “Good book?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s in English. Sonia says it’s a classic.”
She looks at the cover. It’s a pair of hands holding an apple.
“Apparently just staring at it isn’t teaching me English,” Hinata says, “but maybe I’m not trying hard enough.”
They both go quiet for a moment.
“So,” she says. “You said there were memories you didn’t think you’d get back. How do you know something’s missing?”
Hinata glances up from his book, frowning. “Why do you want to know?”
“You’re stuck here with me,” she says. “I know you’re bored. You might as well tell me.”
Hinata looks away. He doesn’t speak for at least three minutes. She can wait; it’s not like she has anything else to do.
“I don’t remember my family,” he says, eventually. “I guess I must have had one. And I still have my memories from being Kamukura, so I know he didn’t...” He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of his throat. “And I keep thinking, maybe having those memories cut out of me kept them safe. Maybe they’re okay somewhere. But what am I meant to do? Look them up? Turn up all ‘hi, I’m your mass-murdering son and I don’t remember who the hell you are’?”
She shrugs. “It’s likely they’re dead anyway.”
“Okay,” Hinata says. “I’m going to pretend that was just a really bad attempt at cheering me up, because I need to believe the old Koizumi’s in there somewhere and you’re not just getting off on my misery.”
She smirks.
“Do you ever wonder what she’d think about the things you’ve done?” he asks, after a pause. “The old Koizumi.”
“Does it matter? She’s gone. She never really had a point, anyway. It’s not like anyone misses her.”
He half-smiles. “I’m missing her right now.”
“What you think doesn’t matter. You’re even less of a person than she was. Super High-school Level Photographer isn’t much, but at least it’s something.”
It hits home. There’s something very satisfying about seeing pain she caused on Izuru Kamukura’s impassive face. She wishes she could take a picture.
“The answer’s yes,” she says. “I’ve thought about what she’d think of me. She’d be horrified. But I wasn’t seeing anything in focus back then.”
“You know,” Hinata says carefully, after a moment, “I talked to you a lot in the simulation.”
“And I was boring, right?”
“I didn’t think so,” he says. “You obviously really loved photography. I mean, it’s not something I know that much about myself, but it was good just to see someone being so passionate about something.”
“What’s your point?”
“Your hand,” he says, nodding towards it.
She looks down at the remains of her right hand.
“You did it so you couldn’t hold a camera, right?” he asks, quietly. “You took away something you loved for no reason. And you think that’s when you were seeing clearly?”
She shakes her head. “The great Izuru Kamukura doesn’t even understand. Junko-chan would weep.”
“Did you stop loving photography?” he asks. “I’m trying to understand how the girl I met could end up doing that.”
“You really are an idiot,” she says. “There’d be no point in taking it away if I didn’t love it.”
“God, it’s like dealing with the opposite of Komaeda,” he mutters, pressing his face into his palms. “I never thought that would be a bad thing.”
-
Ten days later, Hinata shows up with Akane to escort her to the beach. There’ve been a few excursions like this – every so often, she’ll be taken out of the cottage to stretch her legs – but she can tell something’s different this time. Hinata is tense, anticipatory. Maybe they’ve given up on rehabilitation and they’re going to dump her in the ocean.
The plan turns out, when she reaches the beach and sees what’s set up on it, to be less sinister than she’d hoped.
“What’s that?” she asks, tightly, although she can see perfectly well what it is.
“It’s a camera with a tripod,” Hinata says. “I asked the Future Foundation to bring it in. I thought it might be good for you to get back into photography, and this way you can set up shots with just your left hand, right?”
She stalks slowly around the tripod.
“Okay, I’m sensing you’re not overjoyed,” Hinata says. “Is it not the right kind of camera? I wasn’t sure.”
“I’m just thinking about how I’m meant to amputate the rest of my fingers with no right hand,” she says, with a casual shrug. “I guess I could bite th—”
“I’ll get them to take it back,” Hinata says, grabbing the camera.
-
Akane’s guarding her for the next afternoon, which is unusual; she’ll show up for escort duty, yes, but the only person who takes fewer guard shifts is Souda, who’s obviously terrified and will take any excuse to be as far away as possible. Akane spends the entire time restless, picking fights with all the furnishings in the cottage. At least it’s mildly entertaining to watch.
Akane lost a lot of muscle mass, back when she was starving herself. She’s putting some back on now, but it’s obvious that it still bothers her.
It’s strange to think about regret. She can look back on Mahiru Koizumi, on the girl she once was, and she knows that, yes, if Mahiru could somehow find out what she’d end up becoming, it would tear her to shreds. But she can’t feel that despair herself, even if she craves it. She isn’t that person any more. She’s someone real.
“Hey, look, I’m hungry,” Akane blurts out eventually, “and my shift ends in another five minutes, so you don’t mind if I leave early, right?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Be my guest.”
-
She steps lightly through the hospital, smiling as she looks around at the unconscious figures. The plan may not have gone perfectly, but every person in here is still a victory. She’s unintentionally given the survivors some hope by going and regaining consciousness like an idiot, of course, but that can be crushed easily enough.
Who to kill first? Whose death would cause the most despair?
It’s a question that barely needs to be asked. Kuzuryuu is conscious, after all. It might look like she’s trying to get revenge if she kills Peko, which is less elegant than despair for its own sake, but it’s really the only answer.
The room she woke up in originally had four beds crammed into a space much too small for them, but now her bed’s been taken out to give the others some room: Ibuki, Hiyoko and her target. Someone – she can guess who – has laid a palm frond across the foot of Peko’s bed, in what she can only assume is some pathetic substitute for flowers.
She sits on the side of Hiyoko’s bed – there’s plenty of space for sitting, as Hiyoko so obligingly cut off her own feet – to savour the moment. How to approach this?
Kuzuryuu will have made sure Peko’s bamboo sword isn’t too far away, she knows, and when she looks around she sees it leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. Beat her to death with her own practice sword? It would be apt, although it’d probably take a while.
Better get started, then.
She stands up, and turns, and...
Something happens. Something is wrong. She’s just standing there, staring at Hiyoko.
Why?
Hiyoko is pale and thin, and her hair is lying in strands over her face. She’s so still it’s hard to tell whether she’s even breathing.
The door slams open behind them. It’s gunshot-sudden, but her jump reflex doesn’t even kick in.
“Oh, shit.” Hinata. He’s breathing like he’s run all the way here from the first island. Probably did, when he showed up for his shift and found she’d gone. “Koizumi?”
She doesn’t turn to look.
“Shit. Tell me you haven’t done anything—” and then he cuts himself off, and when he speaks again it’s a lot quieter. “Is that Saionji?”
It’s a moment longer before she can make herself speak. “How did she die?”
“Um, her... her throat was cut. I think it was quick.” Hesitant footsteps. “Are you okay?”
A victim, then, rather than a murderer. Hiyoko would be furious. She was swearing she’d commit the first murder before they were put into the simulation.
“I’m fine,” she says.
She’s fine. There’s no reason for her not to be fine.
“Are you sure? I know you were close – I mean, you were close in the simulation—”
“I don’t remember the simulation,” she says, shortly. She tears herself away and sits in the space where Hiyoko’s feet aren’t again, looking at the floor.
He hesitates for a moment, then perches next to her, on the very corner of the bed. “Maybe you do. Maybe there’s a way to get the memories out somehow.”
“I don’t want to get the memories out,” she says. “You think I want to be boring photographer Mahiru Koizumi again? I don’t even have the ‘photographer’ part any more.”
“You weren’t boring,” he says. “I don’t know why you keep saying that. You were just a normal person.”
“They’re the same thing.” Junko always said so.
It grates that she went to Hope’s Peak, a school only for the extraordinarily talented, and she’s still being called normal. But he’s not wrong, is he? She had that supposedly great talent, and all she did with it was take insipid photos of people smiling. What a waste.
He shakes his head. “I think maybe I needed it. I mean, everyone was kind of... intense.” For once, his smile feels more fond than bitter. “I like Mioda, but I wouldn’t be able to live on an island with fifteen of her. It was like you kept things grounded.”
He hesitates.
“It was hard, you know, after you... died,” he says. “Or however I’m meant to say it. I mean, they were all hard, but...” He’s not looking at her any more; he’s staring very hard at a point on the ceiling. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I think I’m saying I was glad when you woke up.”
She gives a short laugh. “Oh, you were glad?”
He flushes. “I’m glad you woke up. I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Nice try. The girl you’re getting embarrassingly unmanly over is still dead, you know.”
“Maybe.” He stands up, stretches, looks past her arm. She follows his gaze to Hiyoko’s face, peaceful and motionless, and has to look away.
-
Souda, as always, spends his entire guard shift as close to the door as possible, glancing nervously between her and his watch. She’s asked who’s meant to follow him, but he still isn’t able to communicate with her in any language more complex than ‘frightened squeaking’.
There doesn’t seem to be any sort of official guard rota; everyone’s so disorganised. Hinata and Kuzuryuu take the most shifts; Kuzuryuu still seems to feel some kind of obligation, even if he gets closer to exploding every time he sees her. Sonia comes next. Souda and Akane, as far as she can tell, have to be physically dragged to guard her, and nobody has taken the trouble to push Akane into it since her not-so-great escape last week.
Eventually there’s a knock on the door, and Souda immediately bolts out of it. She sits up a little straighter when she sees who’s coming in.
“Hinata,” she says briskly, “I have a request.”
Hinata pauses with his hand on the door. “Did you...?”
“Did I what?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, after a moment. “What is it?”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t start sentences if you aren’t going to finish them.”
“Whatever. Do you want to go to the hospital?”
They’ve decided she can visit the hospital if she has an escort. There’s no point. She just ends up sitting next to Hiyoko’s bed, feeling uncomfortable for no reason, while Hinata watches her like he’s expecting her to explode into some kind of Komaeda speech about the glory of hope.
“Did the Future Foundation already take that camera back?” she asks instead.
He looks at her for a moment, hopeful but wary.
“Do you actually want it, or do you just want to take pictures of my face while you bite your fingers off?” he asks.
She honestly doesn’t know. “Let’s find out.”
I'm noticing some weirdly specific patterns cropping up in my Dangan Ronpa fanfiction.
Title: Flashbulb
Fandom: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,400
Summary: The person who was once Mahiru Koizumi wakes up.
When she wakes up, there’s someone – a boy – holding her hand. The left hand, the one that still has fingers. He’s staring into her eyes like he thinks he’s dreaming.
“Koizumi?” His fingers tighten around hers. Maybe she should have taken all of them.
It takes her a moment to place his face. “Kamukura.”
Or maybe he isn’t? She could swear he jerks back when she says the name. But the face is right. The eyes are right.
“You’ve cut your hair,” she says. “It’s about time.”
Kamukura says nothing. He isn’t meeting her eyes any more.
“Let go of me,” she says, and he pulls his hand away.
She tries to push herself up, deliberately using what’s left of her right hand, but she’s too weak – how long was she in that ‘rehabilitation’ simulator? She can’t remember a thing – and she falls back onto the pillows, glaring up at the ceiling. This is the hospital, isn’t it? They’re still on Jabberwock Island. She’s vaguely aware of more hospital beds around her.
“Did the plan work?” she asks, and then she answers her own question. “Obviously not well enough, if there’s more than one of us still alive. I don’t know what Junko-chan was thinking, trusting a boy with something this important.”
“You really don’t remember anything?” he asks.
“Why? Did I miss something worth seeing?”
He sighs and stands up to grab something from a shelf above her head.
“I was afraid of this,” he says. “But at least you’re awake.”
And in the next second he’s handcuffed her to the bed frame.
Things have definitely not gone as planned. Yes, Kamukura managed to upload the virus, and, yes, he managed to avoid having all his memories as a member of Super High-school Level Despair overwritten, but inexplicably he’s decided to renounce a life of despair anyway. He wants to be called Hinata now. It takes her a moment to realise that must be the name of the ordinary student he used to be.
It’s pathetic, really. This guy had greatness dropped into his lap, and now he wants to go back to the nobody he was before all this? But something about it fascinates her. “They operated on your brain, didn’t they?”
‘Hinata’ winces.
“Yeah, I thought so,” she says. “So are the Future Foundation good enough to reverse brain surgery? I heard there was nothing left of you.”
He shrugs, uneasily. “I don’t know. The simulator was able to find enough of me to put something together. I guess living like that... put me in touch with myself, if that makes sense.” He gives a laugh. It’s not much of one. “Or whatever’s still there. Pretty sure there are memories I’ll never get back.”
“So why don’t I remember the simulation?” she asks. “I don’t need whatever humiliating existential crisis you’re going through, but I’m sorry I missed the murders.”
“Uh.” He shifts in his seat. “I can guess. A few of us lived through it, and we all remember, but everyone else is unconscious. You’re actually the first one to wake up.”
“So I was murdered?” she asks.
Hinata gives her a look she can’t read. “You’re assuming you weren’t executed?”
“They took away all my best memories, right?” she asks. “I know the person I used to be wasn’t capable of anything as interesting as murder. Who did it? They obviously didn’t do a good enough job, if I woke up.”
Hinata hesitates.
“It was a blow to the head,” he says.
“But you’re not going to tell me who did it? Worried I’ll hold a grudge?” She looks him up and down. “Was it you?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not answering any more questions.”
“You know, you’re even less fun than you were as Kamukura.”
She’s going to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance, it turns out; mysteriously, her former partners in crime don’t seem to want an agent of despair running around unchecked. She’s torn. On the one hand, obviously it would cause despair if none of the others ever came out of their comas. On the other, she sort of wants them all to wake up, just to see what happens; they can’t keep them all under constant surveillance.
Akane helps Hinata bring her to one of the cottages at the Hotel Mirai. She isn’t surprised to see Akane was one of the survivors; that one would be a pain to kill.
She’s a little more surprised when Kuzuryuu comes to take over the watch, although of course he’d have had his bodyguard in the simulation with him.
“I owe you a great apology,” he says, stiffly.
This is... definitely Kuzuryuu, right? Because he’s being even weirder than she’d expect from a Kuzuryuu who’s given up despair.
“I don’t need your apologies,” she says. “What are you apologising for, anyway?”
He freezes. “Damn it, Hinata didn’t—?”
“Did you murder me?” she asks, delighted.
He hesitates just long enough for her to know the truth. He’s always had a terrible poker face. In a way, he’s the one she was always closest to; they fell into despair together, both dwelling on his sister’s death.
“Oh, your pet murdered me.”
Kuzuryuu’s jaw tightens.
“Obviously a shoddy job, if I woke up first,” she says. “I thought it had to be a boy. I suppose it might as well have been; it’s not as if Peko-chan could ever do anything without her master’s approval.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Kuzuryuu says, low as a whisper.
There’s the Kuzuryuu she remembers. It actually feels good to see him again. She widens her eyes. “What happened to my apology?”
Kuzuryuu takes a deep breath. She can see him trying to push down the rage. It’s going to be fun to tease it back out of him.
“Hey,” she says, “what’s up with the eyepatch?”
Kuzuryuu says nothing.
“What, you’re ashamed of your trophy? It’s the best part of you. C’mon, let me see.” She reaches out with her right arm, trying to bat her fingerless hand against his eyepatch, but he recoils. Using the hand with fingers would probably have been more effective, but then she wouldn’t have had the pleasure of his horrified expression.
“Hey, Kamukura,” she greets Hinata, when he comes in for the next shift.
His whole body tightens up. She’s already stopped thinking of him as ‘Kamukura’; the wimp in front of her is nothing like Junko’s perfect weapon. She’ll still call him it, though, just to watch him flinch.
“Kuzuryuu’s wearing an eyepatch,” she says. “Thought he was lucky enough to get Junko-chan’s eye.”
Hinata shudders. “He, uh. He clawed it out. Just after we woke up.”
That’s interesting. And a waste. “Is it still on the island?”
He gives her a sharp look. “It’s been destroyed. Leave your eyes alone.”
Sonia’s survival is neither a surprise nor a given. She could have been murdered, but of course she was never going to be executed; she’s like Kuzuryuu, always having someone else carry out her dirty work.
Sonia is harder to dig at than Hinata or Kuzuryuu, better at rising above things. Her expression is painfully sympathetic.
“I annihilated my own country,” Sonia says. “My own people. I cannot imagine how you could wish to remain as you are. And yet I can remember being the same myself.”
Does she want to remain as she is? She’s loyal to Junko, and yet the thought of the despair that awaits her if she learns to be horrified by her own actions again... that sort of temptation is difficult to resist. It’s hard not to envy Sonia, who’s able to look back on the atrocities she’s committed and feel the perfect agony of thinking they were pointless.
But she’s killed that part of herself. It was no great loss.
“I am glad you live,” Sonia says, “however it may be.”
“Good book?”
Hinata looks warily at her. “Are you trying to have a normal conversation?”
“I don’t have that many options,” she says. “Good book?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s in English. Sonia says it’s a classic.”
She looks at the cover. It’s a pair of hands holding an apple.
“Apparently just staring at it isn’t teaching me English,” Hinata says, “but maybe I’m not trying hard enough.”
They both go quiet for a moment.
“So,” she says. “You said there were memories you didn’t think you’d get back. How do you know something’s missing?”
Hinata glances up from his book, frowning. “Why do you want to know?”
“You’re stuck here with me,” she says. “I know you’re bored. You might as well tell me.”
Hinata looks away. He doesn’t speak for at least three minutes. She can wait; it’s not like she has anything else to do.
“I don’t remember my family,” he says, eventually. “I guess I must have had one. And I still have my memories from being Kamukura, so I know he didn’t...” He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of his throat. “And I keep thinking, maybe having those memories cut out of me kept them safe. Maybe they’re okay somewhere. But what am I meant to do? Look them up? Turn up all ‘hi, I’m your mass-murdering son and I don’t remember who the hell you are’?”
She shrugs. “It’s likely they’re dead anyway.”
“Okay,” Hinata says. “I’m going to pretend that was just a really bad attempt at cheering me up, because I need to believe the old Koizumi’s in there somewhere and you’re not just getting off on my misery.”
She smirks.
“Do you ever wonder what she’d think about the things you’ve done?” he asks, after a pause. “The old Koizumi.”
“Does it matter? She’s gone. She never really had a point, anyway. It’s not like anyone misses her.”
He half-smiles. “I’m missing her right now.”
“What you think doesn’t matter. You’re even less of a person than she was. Super High-school Level Photographer isn’t much, but at least it’s something.”
It hits home. There’s something very satisfying about seeing pain she caused on Izuru Kamukura’s impassive face. She wishes she could take a picture.
“The answer’s yes,” she says. “I’ve thought about what she’d think of me. She’d be horrified. But I wasn’t seeing anything in focus back then.”
“You know,” Hinata says carefully, after a moment, “I talked to you a lot in the simulation.”
“And I was boring, right?”
“I didn’t think so,” he says. “You obviously really loved photography. I mean, it’s not something I know that much about myself, but it was good just to see someone being so passionate about something.”
“What’s your point?”
“Your hand,” he says, nodding towards it.
She looks down at the remains of her right hand.
“You did it so you couldn’t hold a camera, right?” he asks, quietly. “You took away something you loved for no reason. And you think that’s when you were seeing clearly?”
She shakes her head. “The great Izuru Kamukura doesn’t even understand. Junko-chan would weep.”
“Did you stop loving photography?” he asks. “I’m trying to understand how the girl I met could end up doing that.”
“You really are an idiot,” she says. “There’d be no point in taking it away if I didn’t love it.”
“God, it’s like dealing with the opposite of Komaeda,” he mutters, pressing his face into his palms. “I never thought that would be a bad thing.”
Ten days later, Hinata shows up with Akane to escort her to the beach. There’ve been a few excursions like this – every so often, she’ll be taken out of the cottage to stretch her legs – but she can tell something’s different this time. Hinata is tense, anticipatory. Maybe they’ve given up on rehabilitation and they’re going to dump her in the ocean.
The plan turns out, when she reaches the beach and sees what’s set up on it, to be less sinister than she’d hoped.
“What’s that?” she asks, tightly, although she can see perfectly well what it is.
“It’s a camera with a tripod,” Hinata says. “I asked the Future Foundation to bring it in. I thought it might be good for you to get back into photography, and this way you can set up shots with just your left hand, right?”
She stalks slowly around the tripod.
“Okay, I’m sensing you’re not overjoyed,” Hinata says. “Is it not the right kind of camera? I wasn’t sure.”
“I’m just thinking about how I’m meant to amputate the rest of my fingers with no right hand,” she says, with a casual shrug. “I guess I could bite th—”
“I’ll get them to take it back,” Hinata says, grabbing the camera.
Akane’s guarding her for the next afternoon, which is unusual; she’ll show up for escort duty, yes, but the only person who takes fewer guard shifts is Souda, who’s obviously terrified and will take any excuse to be as far away as possible. Akane spends the entire time restless, picking fights with all the furnishings in the cottage. At least it’s mildly entertaining to watch.
Akane lost a lot of muscle mass, back when she was starving herself. She’s putting some back on now, but it’s obvious that it still bothers her.
It’s strange to think about regret. She can look back on Mahiru Koizumi, on the girl she once was, and she knows that, yes, if Mahiru could somehow find out what she’d end up becoming, it would tear her to shreds. But she can’t feel that despair herself, even if she craves it. She isn’t that person any more. She’s someone real.
“Hey, look, I’m hungry,” Akane blurts out eventually, “and my shift ends in another five minutes, so you don’t mind if I leave early, right?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Be my guest.”
She steps lightly through the hospital, smiling as she looks around at the unconscious figures. The plan may not have gone perfectly, but every person in here is still a victory. She’s unintentionally given the survivors some hope by going and regaining consciousness like an idiot, of course, but that can be crushed easily enough.
Who to kill first? Whose death would cause the most despair?
It’s a question that barely needs to be asked. Kuzuryuu is conscious, after all. It might look like she’s trying to get revenge if she kills Peko, which is less elegant than despair for its own sake, but it’s really the only answer.
The room she woke up in originally had four beds crammed into a space much too small for them, but now her bed’s been taken out to give the others some room: Ibuki, Hiyoko and her target. Someone – she can guess who – has laid a palm frond across the foot of Peko’s bed, in what she can only assume is some pathetic substitute for flowers.
She sits on the side of Hiyoko’s bed – there’s plenty of space for sitting, as Hiyoko so obligingly cut off her own feet – to savour the moment. How to approach this?
Kuzuryuu will have made sure Peko’s bamboo sword isn’t too far away, she knows, and when she looks around she sees it leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. Beat her to death with her own practice sword? It would be apt, although it’d probably take a while.
Better get started, then.
She stands up, and turns, and...
Something happens. Something is wrong. She’s just standing there, staring at Hiyoko.
Why?
Hiyoko is pale and thin, and her hair is lying in strands over her face. She’s so still it’s hard to tell whether she’s even breathing.
The door slams open behind them. It’s gunshot-sudden, but her jump reflex doesn’t even kick in.
“Oh, shit.” Hinata. He’s breathing like he’s run all the way here from the first island. Probably did, when he showed up for his shift and found she’d gone. “Koizumi?”
She doesn’t turn to look.
“Shit. Tell me you haven’t done anything—” and then he cuts himself off, and when he speaks again it’s a lot quieter. “Is that Saionji?”
It’s a moment longer before she can make herself speak. “How did she die?”
“Um, her... her throat was cut. I think it was quick.” Hesitant footsteps. “Are you okay?”
A victim, then, rather than a murderer. Hiyoko would be furious. She was swearing she’d commit the first murder before they were put into the simulation.
“I’m fine,” she says.
She’s fine. There’s no reason for her not to be fine.
“Are you sure? I know you were close – I mean, you were close in the simulation—”
“I don’t remember the simulation,” she says, shortly. She tears herself away and sits in the space where Hiyoko’s feet aren’t again, looking at the floor.
He hesitates for a moment, then perches next to her, on the very corner of the bed. “Maybe you do. Maybe there’s a way to get the memories out somehow.”
“I don’t want to get the memories out,” she says. “You think I want to be boring photographer Mahiru Koizumi again? I don’t even have the ‘photographer’ part any more.”
“You weren’t boring,” he says. “I don’t know why you keep saying that. You were just a normal person.”
“They’re the same thing.” Junko always said so.
It grates that she went to Hope’s Peak, a school only for the extraordinarily talented, and she’s still being called normal. But he’s not wrong, is he? She had that supposedly great talent, and all she did with it was take insipid photos of people smiling. What a waste.
He shakes his head. “I think maybe I needed it. I mean, everyone was kind of... intense.” For once, his smile feels more fond than bitter. “I like Mioda, but I wouldn’t be able to live on an island with fifteen of her. It was like you kept things grounded.”
He hesitates.
“It was hard, you know, after you... died,” he says. “Or however I’m meant to say it. I mean, they were all hard, but...” He’s not looking at her any more; he’s staring very hard at a point on the ceiling. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I think I’m saying I was glad when you woke up.”
She gives a short laugh. “Oh, you were glad?”
He flushes. “I’m glad you woke up. I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Nice try. The girl you’re getting embarrassingly unmanly over is still dead, you know.”
“Maybe.” He stands up, stretches, looks past her arm. She follows his gaze to Hiyoko’s face, peaceful and motionless, and has to look away.
Souda, as always, spends his entire guard shift as close to the door as possible, glancing nervously between her and his watch. She’s asked who’s meant to follow him, but he still isn’t able to communicate with her in any language more complex than ‘frightened squeaking’.
There doesn’t seem to be any sort of official guard rota; everyone’s so disorganised. Hinata and Kuzuryuu take the most shifts; Kuzuryuu still seems to feel some kind of obligation, even if he gets closer to exploding every time he sees her. Sonia comes next. Souda and Akane, as far as she can tell, have to be physically dragged to guard her, and nobody has taken the trouble to push Akane into it since her not-so-great escape last week.
Eventually there’s a knock on the door, and Souda immediately bolts out of it. She sits up a little straighter when she sees who’s coming in.
“Hinata,” she says briskly, “I have a request.”
Hinata pauses with his hand on the door. “Did you...?”
“Did I what?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, after a moment. “What is it?”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t start sentences if you aren’t going to finish them.”
“Whatever. Do you want to go to the hospital?”
They’ve decided she can visit the hospital if she has an escort. There’s no point. She just ends up sitting next to Hiyoko’s bed, feeling uncomfortable for no reason, while Hinata watches her like he’s expecting her to explode into some kind of Komaeda speech about the glory of hope.
“Did the Future Foundation already take that camera back?” she asks instead.
He looks at her for a moment, hopeful but wary.
“Do you actually want it, or do you just want to take pictures of my face while you bite your fingers off?” he asks.
She honestly doesn’t know. “Let’s find out.”