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The air tastes sterile on her own blighted tongue and had Maki not known better she may have assumed that she was in a psychiatric ward, though most of the faces of her dorm mates she sees in passing does little to dissuade the speculation. The man that leads her to her room is the same that had picked her up from the crumbling step of the orphanage. At the time she could only be grateful to be whisked away from the broken symphony of the disembodied sounds of one of the newest kids’ sniffles and the beginning of a brawl between two of the older boys with the underlying tone of worn-out matrons’ bitter scolding. Now, as she watches the man’s neatly pressed suit crinkle slightly at the arms as he points out places that would become essential in her daily life for her three month stay at the dorms, she can’t do anything but trail after him uncertainly.
“And here we are, as you can see this room’s a considerable distance from the cafeteria and nearest bathroom,” he says with a smile that makes Maki’s skin crawl when they finally reach a room with a plaque that reads 45B,“but the room itself is actually one of largest ones in the facility. It used to be a storage room, but due to the… unexpectedly large amount of candidates in the last few years and we were forced to make some renovations.”
Though the fact that even the executives of Team DanganRonpa had miscalculated the amount of teenagers willing to partake in their show is somewhat unsettling, it still manages to get the edges of Maki’s lips to twitch upwards. Admittedly her sense of humour has likely lost most of its humour after the barrage of lousy jokes on Mr Team DanganRonpa-employee’s part she’s had to endure for the last three hours.
The man eventually does leave her after he finishes the rest of his impromptu history lesson, walking off with the sudden mention of her roommate’s prior arrival being his last words. Wonderful.
Maki has to readjust the cardboard box holding her few belongings so that the wall supports its weight more than she does. It isn’t that the box is heavy, but more that the doorknob’s a piece of junk that they’d clearly spared quite a bit of expense on and it takes her 5 minutes of fumbling before she can even get the door open( which she’s internally grateful for, as it gives her time and reason to pause before entering the room).
She somehow doubts that the man was being entirely honest when he said that the room was one of the largest as she gets her first look at it. The room itself is nothing more than four white-windowless walls with god-awful lighting and two cots with a row of shelves beside (the description she ends up tacking onto the room is obstructive, she knows, but it feels nice to be able to criticise her surroundings openly, though her shared room at the orphanage was far worse). Her gaze lastly falls on the blonde girl sprawled across what she can now safely assume to be the cot that neighbors hers and Maki is suddenly painfully aware of the fact that she has to greet her new roommate.
“Hey.”
Maki’s words, or more accurately word, is tainted with the same uncertainty that has been clinging to her since her arrival in the stark building. The other girl’s reaction turning out to be a soft grunt in acknowledgement and not even looking up from the gossip-rag that Maki recognises from the entrance hall. The half-assed reaction just frays at her nerves even further and without realizing it, Maki’s teeth set about grinding together in a disjointed rhythm and her eyes continue their in depth study of the floor. The silence that hangs in the room is weighted enough to crush any bounds before they even form and Maki doesn’t even feel the need to try and scrape together the strength to lift.
“Right… Introductions. I’m Kaede Akamatsu. We’re roommates. This is my half of the room,” the now named, as well as upright, girl pauses her rushed speech to wave at her belonging-scattered cot and shelves, “ and… there’s a bucket in the corner there if you feel like you’re not gonna make it to the bathroom. That’s all I can think of right now.” Akamatsu’s speech’s end is punctuated by an obnoxious pop of the gum-bubble she’d somehow managed to blow during the awkward tangent.
Maki’s teeth stop grinding involuntarily as her jaw slackens slightly. She’s not quite sure whether the girl is assertive, nervous, an idiot or an awful combination of the three, but whatever it is the results are difficult to work with. Nonetheless Maki is still saved from having to stumble through her own introduction first, so the girl can’t be that bad.
Maki Harukawa knew of 18 different ways to break a man’s spine with only her pinky, as well as how to mix one the deadliest cocktails known to man using a mixture of bleach, insecticide and air freshener. Name a murder method and she’d probably came across it in her line of work, but despite all this knowledge, she did not know how to deal with the girl and her trusty hatted-sidekick’s introductions. The entire exchange had been investigative in nature and if anything, the girl’s constant flow of conversation had been difficult for Maki’s normally non-conversationalist self to follow and reply to. So, when the girl finally does leave, dragging her more tactful companion along, she breaths a sigh of relief.
Maki doesn’t dare stray too far from her self-designated corner until further notice after that delightful interaction and when the announcement to move on to the gym is made, it’s far too soon for her liking. She’s grown rather fond of her temporary shadow to lurk in.
The assembly is… an experience. And one that Maki would rather not repeat at that. Whoever had thought that giving some dumbass who hid behind papa-bear and his insufferable dummy-suckling cubs free-reign over a group of the most talented teenagers in the world (and her pseudo-talent) were fucking iidiots. Honestly, how had it been a good idea to make her a caretaker? Maki fucking hates kids. Their loud, unhygienic and have less personal-boundaries than their newly-appointed leader. Speaking of said leader, she’s still trying to fight the dying fight of denying the possibility that any of the students would even attempt to kill each other. Eventually, the girl’s positivity speech ends and she’s staring at the group with hopeful eyes and an expectant smile. Somehow, even if it’s just for a moment before she comes to her senses, Maki almost believes her.
The cafeteria food is awful, according to the purple-haired boy across from her. Maki herself isn’t all that fussed, she’s definitely had worse. Shaking her head to rid herself of the image of rat dropping-decorated crackers from a particularly destitute month, she reaches out for her glass of orange juice to drown the memory with, only to knock over the glass; its contents sloshing over most of the table. Her skirt’s drenched and the edge Akamatsu’s shirt cuff is stained yellow. The boy across from her looks as if he’s about to say something, but is promptly shut up by the glare Akamatsu sends his way and settles for snickering behind his hand. Akamatsu reaches over to the neighboring table and grabs a pile of napkins, then proceeds to hand over the frumpled stack to Maki, who gladly accepts. Once the blonde appears to be satisfied with the cleanliness of the tabletop, she returns her attention back to her half-uneaten porridge.
Around a spoonful of sludge Akamatsu mutters,“Be more careful.”
Maki stares at Akamatsu’s rippling throat for far longer than the moment where the vibration was formed by her few spoken syllables had lasted, only the screeching of the boy purposefully dragging his chair across the floor before finally exiting the cafeteria does her line of vision change trajectory momentarily. She can never seem to be able to bring herself to tilt her gaze just slightly upwards to meet that of her roommate’s. It’s a hell of a lot easier to allow herself to think that Akamatsu’s actions held some semblance of care if she didn’t meet her distrustful amethyst eyes.
She’d seen her fair share of limp bodies in her life, so Maki doesn’t really understand why she’d care all too much about the dark outline of the strung-up girl that swings to and fro with the uneasy breaths that fill the air, yet here she is. Staring at the dead girl’s body with a pained feeling brewing in her chest and then the lid falls closed with a sudden clap and all that’s left to stare at of the girl is a splatter of magenta staining the floor.
It would seem that Akamatsu’s death had by some odd convolution of her emotions affected Maki, but she doesn’t pay any more attention to it than necessary. It’s easy enough to convince herself that it was nothing at all.
The candidate evaluation held yearly by Team DanganRonpa, known for its general secrecy, had become infamous on online forums. Maki knew this from doing her fair share of research on the orphanage’s ancient computer after curfew (the half-healed welt on her back from the beating she’d received when inevitably caught still stings whenever making contact with her threadbare shirt, but she elects to ignore that particular memory). Most of the forums’ theories appear to be correct enough, the majority of her time is spent with a shrink picking at her brain, as predicted.
The woman who greets her the first time she enters the white-walled room looks about as tired as Maki feels. Her hair’s mousy and greying at the roots; her eyes sunken, yet startlingly alert.
The woman waits until Maki has finished shifting in the cushioned armchair across from her desk. The chair’s still warmed from its previous occupant and the remnants of the body heat scalds her skin through the thin cloth of her skirt. The room’s as frigid as any other in the facility. The only difference being that the woman doesn’t stare at her with undisguised disdain, having the decency to mask her distaste, unlike most of the others’ that roamed the stark halls.
They play a game of 15 questions, though Maki doubts that they’ll stop at fifteen, and it starts simple enough. A “how are you adjusting” thrown by the psychologist and readily received and answered with as polite a “well, thank you” as Maki can muster. The questions are still so simplistic that Maki can’t help but feel thankful towards the woman for going easy on her in their first session.
“And your roommate, you two getting along?”
It’s as complex as any other question asked, yet it causes Maki to waver in her rapid answering. Though she knew that the subject was sure to come, though that hadn’t prepare her for in any case.
She just doesn’t know anything about Akamatsu to tell, or at least not anything that the person asking would want to hear. She knows that on rough nights Akamatsu hums herself to sleep with an old nursery rhyme that she herself had sung to some of the younger kids on more than one occasion. She knows that she cuts the crusts from her toast and feeds it to the pigeons that peck outside of their single-paned window. Maki knows that though Akamatsu barely speaks more than she does, that she’s kind. At least, kind enough to tolerate her.
However, none of this can be used in her answer and she restores it to the back of her mind. The words she does end up using are as stilted as anything else said in the room. The only satisfactory thing to come out of her reused speech is the stopping of the impatient tapping of the therapist’s pen.
“She’s alright. Keeps to herself most of the time; nothing to complain about.”
The no longer-hatted detective was seriously starting to piss Maki off. Surely he wasn’t so blind that he couldn’t see that the deceased pianist wasn’t blameless? Maybe this is just a prime example of denial at its finest, but she refuses to take part in rebuilding Saihara’s self-esteem for some bullshit friendship.
The newest motive seem less deadly than the previous, but it still keeps Maki writhing under her sheets at night, restless and very much awake. She’s not quite ready for everyone to know about the countless lifelines she’d severed. It was easier for everyone, herself included, if the true nature of her talent was kept hidden. Perhaps this way she’s more than just a exterminator.
It’s a mixture of disgust and satisfaction that she feels when she examines Hoshi’s pile of bones mere hours later. She’d envied the midget and his readiness to announce his body count to everyone. Perhaps she’s being unfair to the midget’s memory, but it’s never been in her job description to care. Either way, all unsavoury thoughts of compassion are smothered by her making a note of the culprit’s disposal choices. It’d make for easy clean-up for future reference.
The newest lists are up and stapled to the bulletin board outside of the cafeteria. Maki waits until most of floor B’s inhabitants have left their positions flocked around the lists have left before she goes to examine them for herself.
The lists are divided into five simple categories: Possible Victims, Culprits, Protagonists, Masterminds and Survivors. She’s too nervous to search for her own name, so she searches for the only other that’s familiar.
Finding Akamatsu’s name ends up not being a too time-consuming challenge as her it’s written on nearly every list; all but mastermind. At the very least Akamatsu would definitely be a final possibility then.
Maki never does manage to scrounge up the courage to locate her name and returns to her room defeated. The walk back shameful.
Akamatsu’s already there, flicking through glossed pages, when Maki arrives. She lifts her head as Maki enters, but still leaves Maki to initiate their usual greetings.
“Hey.”
Akamatsu dog-ears the page she was reading before returning the greeting and discarding the magazine for the time being. “Hi-ya, you see the lists?”
Seen them, yes. Actually read them, not really, but clearly Akamatsu had and Maki isn’t about to throw away any conversation she can get in this place.
“Yeah, I did. Congratulations on getting on multiple times, by the way.”
The blonde gives Maki a honest-to-god smile(which she can only try and return by forcing her lips to tilt upwards in what she’s sure is more of a grimace than anything) with teeth(very white teeth at that) and everything. “Thanks. You didn’t do too bad yourself. Being put onto both survivor and culprit is pretty good.”
Maki’s eyes widen in surprise at both the fact that Akamatsu had taken enough interest to remember her placements and the mention of “culprit”. Culprit. As in murderer.
“Thank you,” her words are sharper than she meant and she hazily notices Akamatsu flinch, “I- I’m not to sure about being a culprit though.”
And she wasn’t. She couldn’t kill anyone. She wouldn’t kill anyone.
Momota is nothing if not persistent, and soon Maki’s participating in a series of exercises that don’t do all that much to strain her muscles beneath his beloved stars. Companionship is a feeling alien to her and whatever it is that she finds in Momota, though foreign, is… pleasant.
It’s nice not having to rein in her thoughts and belt her tongue. Momota shines brightly amongst all the other dulled remnants of her classmates and her gravitation towards him is natural, but there’s only so long that he can light all the other’s world. Much like Akamatsu, he too would burn-out eventually. And until then Maki’d soak in his dying starlight as much as she could.
But Momota’s extinction comes all too soon at her own hand. The poisoned bolt protrudes from his shoulder as if staking Maki to her own fate. She’d tried, she truly had, but her efforts were clearly in vain. She’s been branded as a slaughterer for far too long to be anything but.
“Why?”
The woman’s doing it again; impatiently tapping her pen against the glass desktop. “‘Why’ what? I hope you don't mean to ask why you’re here , because I am rather sure that you know that by now.”
Maki isn’t fazed by the woman’s clear attempted diversion. “No. Why am I written on that list as a culprit.”
For the first time since Maki had met her, the woman seems nervous. The rapping against the glass’s rhythm grows uneven and the beats hasten. She’s made the woman uneasy. Good.
“The executives thought you have the potential for a great design. What they have in mind doesn’t really suit the image of victim that well.”
The excuse was weak at best and the woman knows it. There’s no way that the executives would meddle with a candidate at such an early stage. Hell, it was unlikely that they’d even bothered to glance at the names of the candidates.
Maki’s always been somewhat gifted at reading people, probably even more so than the person who was sitting before her and paid to do so, so she is completely aware of the gaping hole that the psychologist has left unfilled in her reasoning. She doesn’t let the chance slip through her fingers quite so easily.
“I don’t care for your lies. Do what you want, kick me out of the program, but I won’t kill anyone. I’m no murderer.”
They’re both aware of Maki’s lie. The woman has undoubtedly read her case-file and Maki can practically still feel the blood caked beneath her nails. Nonetheless, Maki still exits the session a half-hour early.
Each footfall grows increasingly careless and her teeth grind together at a steady pace. She pushes through the door and sets herself down on her bunk, her movements mechanical.
Her vision blurs and she’s barely able to see Akamatsu approach her. Akamatsu’s lips are moving, but Maki hears no sound. All she can hear is the grating of her jaw and the throb of her heart pounding in her chest.
Suddenly cool fingers are pressed against her jawline and gently pry at her clenched teeth.
Akamatsu’s violet eyes are concerned as they flit upwards to find Maki’s own. “Christ, you’ll break your jaw.”
The words aren’t registering and Maki stays as despondent as before. Akamatsu’s all but straddling her now while shaking the brunette in a desperate attempt to wake her up.
“Fuck,” she mutters in a panicked whisper, “Harukawa, wake up. It’s too early to be spazzing out.”
Nothing. She hears nothing and sees nothing. Now, if only she could feel nothing.
After a fair share of futile fussing on her part, Akamatsu seems to have given up on communicating with her roommate and settles for helping her prepare for bed to the best of her capabilities. That night passes the same as most others, Maki’s consciousness fading away to the soft lilt of Akamatsu’s hum. Only this time it doesn’t seem to be herself Akamatsu is lulling to sleep.
The process of regaining their memories is a long one. She’s almost guilty at how gladly she accepts the chance to remember; guilty that when both her and Yumeno had agreed, Saihara drops the protagonist act completely. Guilty that it had been so easy to forget and then remember once more.
Regaining her recollection of her past is almost like catching flies with honey in winter. The memories trickle in slowly until something changes and the fragments swarm together to form a more clearcut image.
The one thing that each fragment had had in common, no matter whether hidden beneath images of worn orphanages or white halls or violet eyes, was the scene of a young man’s skull cracking against the staircase leading to her childhood apartment playing out before her eyes.
The morning after she’d temporarily shut down, Maki wakes to the sun shining into her eyes and nearly falls out of her bed in shock. They were usually woken at the crack of dawn to progress with their daily schedules and it definitely wasn’t one of their rare off days, so Maki’s natural reaction is to panic. It isn’t until she spots a tray of food with a small post-it-note stuck to side of the tray that she calms herself.
The note itself is nothing special; a flimsy slip of yellow paper with neat handwriting scrawled across. Nonetheless, Maki’s glad to have gotten anything at all, even if only a note confirming her clearance for rest.
Her burial is disgustingly commercial. She honestly shouldn’t have expected anything less; Akamatsu’s character was one of the most popular and it would appear that being the first had made the memorial all the more promotional.
Truthfully, she’d expected it all (it’s probably why she’d chugged anything alcoholic she could find in the hotel’s mini-fridge and woken with a splitting headache and a disgruntled Yumeno), but the expectation makes things all the worse.
Yumeno seems to be alternating between casting worried glances her and Saihara, who is sat two pews down. Maybe Maki would be pissed at her if it wasn’t for the fact that Yumeno’s concern was the only thing keeping her going some days.
Maki’s known two Akamatsu Kaedes in her life, yet hadn’t known whoever the girl stood at the podium spoke of. Both Akamatsu’s may have been many things, but neither had handled her with outright suspicion. In fact, the one’s trust had gotten her killed and the other’s had gotten Maki attached. Her jaw clenches tighter.
The girl from before approaches her again after all Maki’s official pleasantries are said and done. Maki takes the time bought from the girl’s trek through the droning flock of mourners to scrutinize her features.
The girl’s hair is a familiar blonde and her eyes are a shade of purple that’s reminiscent of Akamatsu’s, but her jaw’s to sharp and her smile too predatory for her to hold any resemblance but physical.
“If you want to know anything about your sister’s in-game self, I’d suggest you go speak to Saihara over there.” Maki tilts her head in the general direction of where said forged detective stood talking to Akamatsu's mother.
The girl flicks her hair back with a snort of derision. “I have no interest in hearing that delusional mess’ tall tales of someone who had nothing to do with me.” Even if Maki could hardly be called in-game Akamatsu's biggest fan, she can’t help but flinch at her harsh words. “No, I think we both saw that fuck up play out.”
The girl searches her pockets before continuing. “Actually, I’d like to ask about the Kaede that you knew before you were both on DanganRonpa.”
She hands Maki a creased letter that she easily recognizes. Maki recalls the monthly mail that was sent out to candidates’ relatives and friends (not that she had personally had anyone to write to). So Akamatsu had been serious about mentioning her “pain in the ass roomate” in her letter. Though hard to admit to herself, Maki’s pleased.
The letter is pretty ordinary. A greeting laced with Akamatsu’s usual sarcasm and contents that was impersonal at best; Maki’s first name isn’t even mentioned. Nothing special, but the girl continues to treat the it as if it were some magnum opus.
“Tha- This doesn’t even have my full name on it. Why would you think this has anything to do with me? You’re stretching.”
Maki can barely even hear the doubt in her own voice and she prides herself on a job well done, but the girl isn’t having any of her dismissal. “Think I’m that much of an idiot, do you? Well, too bad. I checked the list of candidates twice-over. Only found you and some other rando under Harukawa. He happened to be very much male, and I’ve readTeam DangnRonpa’s floorplans; seemed like they were too worried about having their candidates getting impregnated to allow two people of the opposite gender bunk together. And even if that weren’t the case, unlikely as it is, the letter alone is worth a pretty penny. Imagine how much more it’d be worth with Harukawa Maki’s signature.”
The silence is stifling and threatens to smother Maki, but the quietude does nothing but stoke the re-discovered embers of her rage. Maki’s sight fixates on a spot between the girl’s 23rd and 24th ribs, where her implanted memories recall that it would cause her to bleed out easily with the quick insertion of the switch blade she keeps stored in her pocket.
“Fuck off,” Maki takes a step closer with each growled word, now practically close enough to spit in the girl’s face. The letter’s tearing from the tension in Maki’s grip, but she couldn’t be fussed at the moment. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, or so help me…”
“What? You’ll kill me?” There it is again, that god-awful tone.
“Yes.”
Maki leaves with the torn scraps of the letter nestled in her pocket and dread coating her insides. It isn’t until she’s safely locked into the confines of her room that she pieces the letter back together.
It’s an odd feeling knowing that she’s able to talk to someone almost freely now. Even stranger is that it’s almost enjoyable speaking to Akamatsu. Sure, the girl’s callous and undoubtedly insecure enough to have willingly signed her own death warrant, but she was kind, trust issues and all. The strangest of all was that Akamatsu even seemed to seek out Maki in the halls, and maybe it was simply out of some sort of human obligation to the distressed, it still felt… nice.
It’s a rare off day from evaluations of their psyche that both roomates have off that day and it plays out as most others do; Akamatsu flipping through a month-old magazine whilst blowing (admittedly impressive) gum bubbles and Maki tapping out morse code learnt from a distressingly short boy bunking in Floor C.
“You’re doing it again.”
Maki shoots Akamatsu a genuinely confused glance. “What?”
“Grinding your teeth to shit.” Akamatsu taps at her jaw with a slender finger, as if trying to prove her point.
Maki furrows her brows. She hadn’t even noticed her teeth grating together again. “Oh.”
Before Maki can start her usual method of calming herself to unclench her jaw, Akamatsu chucks a piece of pum in her general direction, much to Maki’s bewilderment; again.
“Better than destroying the enamel on your teeth,” Akamatsu says with a shrug.
Probably too late for that. “Thanks.”
Akamatsu hums a “you’re welcome” and returns to her tabloids. Maki gently props the gum into her mouth. The gum itself is half-melted from being kept underneath Akamatsu’s pillow and tastes of synthetic berries, but her jaw is occupied.
It all feels so pleasantly domestic that Maki’s reluctant to break the silence. Nonetheless, there’s so much she’d like to get off her chest and now that someone actually seemed willing to listen, she choked at every opportunity.
“Hey, Akamatsu?”
“Hmmm.”
Maki pauses for a moment too long and struggles to blurt out anything to continue the ill-fated conversation. “W-why’d you want to audition for DanganRonpa?”
Akamatsu flips the magazine shut with a sigh and groans into her pillow. They both let the silence fester until the lack of words becomes unbearable.
To neither’s surprise, Akamatsu is the first to speak. “Have you ever felt that you want the ground to swallow you whole, but at the same time wanted to carve your name into that same surface just to scream I was here; I was alive, even if I fucking hated every second of it?” Akamatsu’s voice is muffled by the pillow she still has tightly pressed to her face, but Maki hears her clearly. “Well, yeah. My life’s always been pretty normal. Mom cooks and cleans; Dad’s a dentist- probably why I chew that sugar-filled crap. God, the worst thing about my life was probably my sister’s absurd obsession with DanganRonpa. And here I am. All because I find people pretty shitty and untrustworthy as fuck.”
She sounds out of breath after the end of her story of sorts, and Maki isn’t sure if it’s because of her practically smothering herself or if she simply was out of breath.
“Well, I told you my absolutely tragic tale; you’re turn.” Akamatsu’s request is innocent and predictable enough, yet it still causes Maki to bite down harder on the lump of .
Maki clenches her fists and steadies herself. “There’s nothing much to tell. I’ve been in an orphanage since my parents died when I was younger. I lived with my aunt for a while, until she-” The stench of alcohol-stained breath snaps at Maki’s face, threatening to push her over the edge she was already teetering at. Bony hands wrap around her shoulders and jerk her forward; only for the actions to be met with hollowed eyes hazily watching her and then, as if time slowed, Maki pushes forward with her palms. The woman’s body gracelessly tumbles down the flight of stairs and lands with a limp thud. And then all that’s left is a dented body and a lost child. ”-passed.”
Akamatsu rubs at the back of her neck uncomfortably. “Well, shit. I guess that makes my childhood sound pretty damn cushy, huh?”
They both try their hand at a bout of strained laughter, but the sound is strangled and the attempt ends as quickly as it starts, leaving them with another noiseless chasm to fill.
“Well, uh,” Akamatsu seems painfully serious now,“ I feel pretty bad about my backstory. You’ve lost so many of your loved ones and here I was, bitching about my family. God, you must hate my guts.”
Maki flicks her now-flavourless gum into the nearby wastebasket. “Don’t worry about. I wouldn’t even really call most of my family loved ones.”
Akamatsu regards her with a curious expression, but thankfully doesn’t question Maki further. Despite her relief, Maki still feels the need to explain herself.
“It’s just that I didn’t really know my parents long enough to really care that much about them and my aunt wasn’t exactly a decent human being,” Maki says in a rushed jumble of words.
Akamatsu smiles gently at her. “Y’know, you really don’t have to try and justify your hatred towards people. I trust your judgement enough to not question it.”
Maki stares at Akamatsu intently, warmth flooding her body. A foreign comfort presenting itself.
“...I don’t hate you.”
Shinguuji’s wake had had a surprisingly high attendance rate. A steady flow of friends, relatives and those in-between stream into the venue. And with each arrival Maki watches as Yumeno shrinks further into herself.
The ceremony passes in a trickle of weeping mothers and impatient priests and when it’s finally reached an end and Saihara’s gone off to do his usual meet-and-greet routine, Yumeno treks out of the gated venue with a slowness that Maki hadn’t seen her possess since the games.
Mostly out of worry, or so she mostly justifies her stalking, Maki trails behind Yumeno, ducking behind the occasional passerby to avoid getting outed. Luckily, Yumeno’s destination happened to not be too great a distance from the venue and Yumeno enters a brightly lit grocer.
Maki weaves through aisle after aisle until she finds Yumeno studying a shelf of canned soup blankly. “Yumeno?”
“...Yeah?”
Maki was sincerely starting to regret her decision to come after Yumeno. If there was one thing that she could never handle, it was distressed girls.
“Are you okay?” Maki tentatively steps forward.
“...Yeah,” Yumeno briefly looks up,“I- It’s just difficult to hate him after that.”
Maki’s almost certain she knows Yumeno’s answer before she asks, “After what?”
“He had friends, family, a sister that wasn’t anything like anything he described in the game,” Maki recalls the fair-haired little girl clinging to her mother’s hand with a grimace, “and more than anything, everyone there knew and loved a face that I see in my nightmares. I- I just can’t.”
Yumeno slams her hand into the shelf with a surprising amount of energy and the cans scatter across the floor. Maki approaches her slowly, sidestepping the occasional fallen tinned product. Once finally arriving at the mess of a girl, she uncertainly wraps her arms around her trembling form.
Maki is definitely not one to hand out human contact freely, but it seems to almost help Yumeno, so she’s glad.
And so they stand there amongst the fallen soup with Maki rocking her gently and whispering a familiar nursery rhyme in Yumeno’s ear.
Maki lies awake on her creaking mattress. It’d been two days since Team DanganRonpa had finally announced their chosen participants and to her pained joy, both her and Akamatsu were chosen. She knew she should be overjoyed at the new- there were thousands who would (quite literally) kill to have the same opportunity. Yet she still could only do her best to attempt to walk tall while her heart hung low. And then, all too suddenly, a pale hand is at her shoulder and shaking her from her musings.
Akamatsu’s features are shadowed by the soft glow of moonlight and she looks almost ethereal, though Maki barely notices through the sudden fright. Lowering her fist, Maki exclaims the first thing she can think of.
“Wha-”
“Shhhh,” Akamatsu cups her mouth in an attempt to quieten her. “Do you want to get us caught?”
Maki can feel the heat rising in her cheeks at the sudden contact, but knows that Akamatsu probably expected a reply of sorts and lightly shakes her head.
“Well then, get up and get dressed.” Too curious to object, Maki complies.
Once finished pulling on her shirt, Maki turns to find Akamatsu tying a knotted rope of sheets to the window grate.
“Akamatsu! What type of Rapunzel shit is this?!”
“Calm down. It’s probably one of our last night as roommates. Might as well make something of it.”
Maki still regards her with a raised eyebrow, but Akamatsu only smiles. “C’mon, I’ll help you down.”
Maki stares at Akamatsu’s outstretched arm for a good while. Ah, to hell with it. She takes her hand.
Ever since Shinguuji’s wake Yumeno had took to spending even more time at the local library than usual, much to both Maki and Saihara’s discomfort. Without Yumeno’s constant presence, the two have next to nothing to say to each other.
It’d been so easy to start hating Saihara, to blame him for the disastrous game when he took it so readily. Sometimes it was even easy to hate Yumeno along with him for so easily loving a falsified person. That would always be the difference between them, the other survivors clinging to a product of DanganRonpa and her having long since discarded any falsified feelings that she’d held towards Momota, now only left with a overwhelming sense of pity towards him.
The apartment is filled with the quiet emptiness that had haunted it since they’d first moved in. Maki feels the overwhelming need to escape and shrugs on her coat and prepares to leave the apartment.
Her exit is interrupted by the sight of a heaving Saihara on the balcony; his head propped on his open palms and his chest retracting from the supposed exertion.
It’s hardly the first time that Maki stumbled across Saihara exercising late at night, but it is the first that she finds him staring up at the sky as if he could see the glittering stars shine through thick layer of pollution. She approaches with caution, as one would a viper, the only difference being that this viper’s fangs had long since rotted and its venom dried.
Maki perches on one of the deck chairs without having any solid knowledge of her intention. She ends up biting at the inside of her cheek to prevent her from grinding her teeth and it isn’t until she tastes copper brushed across her tongue and red stains her teeth that she tries to distract herself with Saihara’s conversation.
“You’ll catch cold out here.” Maki’s voice is colder than any breeze that passes as she speaks. Though she isn’t sure if that plays a part in startling Saihara from his reverie.
“Harukawa-san!” Saihara politely, always politely, cries in greeting.
When Saihara seems to be assured that Maki wouldn’t be replying anytime soon, he looks back to the clouded sky. It’d almost be peaceful if it weren’t for both’s doubts weighing down on their shoulders.
“He can’t see you.”
Maki knows her words are unfairly cruel, but she also knows that he could defend himself; that the demons of his past could come out to play any moment. And she’s right. Saihara’s eyes flash and his mouth sets in a thin line.
“And you’d know, wouldn’t you?” Saihara’s voice is as condemning as in any trial, but Maki doesn’t flinch. She deserves it. “You’d know how his mother’s tears felt against your shoulder. You’d know how his father’s torn-shoes shone with polish that he could probably hardly afford. You’d know everything without being there.”
Maki can almost feel the tears slipping from her eyes, but she holds on until Saihara delivers the finishing blow. And he seems at the edge of firing; his finger at the trigger and his fist clenched in anticipation.
“You’d know without even caring.”
And then Saihara’s venomous tongue fails her and Maki’s tears never do trail down her cheeks. She’d deserved to be broken, deserved to have her pitiful pride shattered. But as much as she deserves it, she remains battered and unbroken.
“No,” Maki thinks of Akamatsu’s poorly stitched together letter beneath her pillow. “I wouldn’t.”
“...”
She buckles her coat and stands, then addresses Saihara, “I was going to buy gum. You can come with if you like.”
She offers him her outstretched hand.
Maki almost forgets of the worry of being caught once they reach the small park. The sun has just started peeking out from beneath the cityscape as Akamatsu leads her to a bench that overlooks the majority of the trees dotting the grass.
Rusted autumn leaves dance at their feet in the gentle breeze and now almost completely risen sun casts a soft light against her skin. The general lightness of her surroundings helps ease her mind and seeing Akamatsu’s own soft smile causes her to settle completely.
But the peace is only momentary and as time passes with the two simply relishing the taste of the air- no longer stale and laced with the promise of their inevitable fates- the brightness of Akamatsu’s smile fades.
“It won’t stay like this, will it?” and Akamatsu’s voice is so desperately seeking for Maki’s denial that any false image of peace is shattered instantaneously. Maki doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. They both have nowhere to go. Not anymore. Their defeat is crushing.
“Let’s live through this season together, yeah?” and there’s that spark of hope that Akamatsu clings to despite her and the world’s best efforts to smother it.
Through tears Maki responds, “Yeah.”