Work Text:
※
“This is part of our debriefing process, you see. Here, let me show you what I’m talking about.”
Shirogane moves her capped pen down the page until it falls under paragraph 7.
7. I agree to undergo the cognitive modification program employed by the Network. I have been informed of the effects of the program. I understand that this program will target specific neural structures to reorganize my memory. I understand that my former memories will be permanently inaccessible. I understand and assume all risks associated with the program. I agree to release the Producer, Network, and Released Parties from litigation associated with adverse affects as a result of the program.
She moves it further down to paragraph 14.
14. To the maximum extent permitted by the law, I release the Producer, Network, Team Danganronpa, all television networks broadcasting the series, and all other participants in the Series from all claims, damages, actions, costs, and expenses of any kind.
“This is just an abbreviated version. We had your mother sign the full version. I doubt you’d be interested in reading that,” she says with a good-humored smile.
“I...still don’t understand.”
The good-humored smile fades as Shirogane leans forward. Her eyeglasses catch the reflection of the fluorescent light.
“To put it plainly, Akamatsu-san,” she utters, “you wanted to have your memories erased. Neurologists here haven’t accepted cognitive modification for...a variety of reasons. So you, like many of our contestants, came to us wanting to forget. Participating in our VR show gives you that chance.”
She isn’t the Shirogane that Kaede knew, however briefly. In reality — reality — this woman is quite a few years older than her. She hasn’t stepped foot in a high school in recent history. She doesn’t cosplay. She doesn’t defer, doesn’t acquiesce, doesn’t offer her gaze shyly from under hooded eyelids.
“I don’t believe that,” Kaede counters.
Shirogane taps her pen at the dotted line on the bottom of the page.
“We didn’t hold a gun to your head and have you sign it, Akamatsu-san.”
※
Shirogane told her that their memories of their true families were kept intact.
Her mother picks her up from the television station. She and the rest of the participants exchange phone numbers just before then — a begrudging display of the false camaraderie they’ve cultivated in the shadow of their trauma. She can’t quite look them in the eye. They reciprocate.
All of them save for Saihara, whose desperate pleas make her heart race and the television station close in on her.
She shuffles out of the television studio, taking minute steps into the outside world. The sun is beginning to set; the world is dim and purple and far more humid than she expected. The minimal amount of light is still enough to strain her atrophied eyesight.
She waits for five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. A small white car finally pulls up to the curb and the driver honks its horn. Guarded, she approaches.
Her last memory of a car was being forced out of it. She stands before the passenger door, utterly useless. Her arm refuses to listen to the commands brewing in her brain. Her eyes dart to her mother inside the car, who, confused, steps out and opens the door.
“Kaede,” her mother coos. “It feels like it’s been such a long time!”
“How long has it been? They didn’t tell me that,” she mutters, staring firmly at the curb.
“It’s only been a month.”
Only been a month. A month. Just a month.
“I see.”
The thick, impenetrable sheet of ice separating them expands until it ensconces everything except the space Kaede occupies.
“So you don’t remember? You don’t remember anything about what happened before the show?” her mother asks. Her eyebrows crease in apprehension. This was her question all along, wasn’t it?
“No. Not a thing.”
Her mother is suddenly beset with emotion, sweeping Kaede into a hug and burying her face in the crook of her neck.
“I’m so glad,” she chokes out. “I’m so glad it worked, Kaede!”
※
She recognizes her house when they pull into the driveway. What should come as a relief only fans the flames of her anxiety, as her mind tries to grasp what it has retained and what it has lost. She still has her family and her house. What else?
“I’ll let you have some time to yourself. The doctor said that would be good for you. But your father will want to see you when he gets home,” her mother tells her.
She drags her feet up the stairs and into her room.
The room is bereft of nearly all personality. There’s her bed and desk, her corkboard and dresser, but little else. The hardwood floors have been cleaned to the point of being immaculate. The only evidence that a unique individual has ever lived here is a synthesizer in the corner of the room. Was that always there?
Her knees knock together as she grips the doorknob for support.
She closes her eyes. Who is she now? She’s Kaede Akamatsu. She loves playing the piano. She was always good at it. She could never get enough of it. What else? She wanted to save her friends and lead them to freedom. She loved them so much that she sacrificed everything for them. In theory, of course.
What else?
※
Kaede feels fairly certain that she’s being followed on her way to school each day. She stops taking the train, instead tripling her commute time by walking. No one stares or sneaks pictures when she’s walking along an empty riverbank.
That doesn’t stop the swarm when she arrives at the school itself.
She deflected the first few days, proffering the excuse that it was still all very surreal for her, and she’d be happy to answer questions later! And now that it’s been a week, she can no longer dodge their clamor and ingratiation — if only because she can get something she wants from them in return.
And so, she accepts this group of girls that has crowded before her desk prior to the first class of the day.
“Akamatsu-san, what was the last thing you thought before you got offed? Was it about Saihara?” one of them teases. “I hope it was, because you two were my favorite, even more than Momota and Harukawa!”
“To be honest, I can’t really remember,” she lies.
“Can I watch you play the piano? You weren’t any good at it before so I wanna see what it’s like now!” another girl chirps.
She grips the edges of her desk until her knuckles go pale.
“Actually, that brings up a good point! I’ve been meaning to ask...can you tell me what I was like before the show?” she asks, regaining her composure and plastering a smile on her face.
The group exchanges inscrutable glances.
“Well...um, you were really quiet and didn’t talk much. You were kind of a bitch to anyone who tried to be your friend. But then you missed school for a couple weeks and I saw you crying in the bathroom a lot and felt kinda bad for you,” one of the other girls explains. Her eyes light up as a grin spreads across her face. “But you totally aren’t like that anymore! We saw you on there and you were great! We were pissed when they killed you off. But at least you’re still who you were on the show.”
“Oh...”
The girl raises her eyebrows in alarm. “What’s wrong? You’re really pale and you’re sweating.”
“I’m fine, s-sorry. I guess I was just a little surprised to hear that,” she stutters, willing her teeth to stop chattering.
“Huh...they really wipe you completely, don’t they? That’s kind of crazy,” Girl #1 says.
“Ha. It really is.”
※
She gently places her bag down in the corner of her room before striding over to the bed and collapsing to her knees. She rests her head against her bed, facing her window. The sunset glares at her.
She wants to text them. Someone, anyone. She wants to talk to Saihara, or Amami, or — the list goes on. Their relationships were fabricated, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t real. That they aren’t real.
Sensation fades from her fingertips, the numbness advancing upwards until her limbs are leaden. The sun has completed its descent, immersing her room in darkness. It isn’t until several hours later that she wills her body to move and turn on the light.
Right before Kaede goes to bed, she stares at her phone for a solid five minutes before typing a message. She deletes it, groaning in frustration, and rewrites it. Deletes that too, buries her face in her pillow, and rewrites it once more. She deletes it again.
She puts her phone down and rubs her face. She stares at the ceiling for an indeterminate amount of time. She does this often, as though the ceiling will ever change. As though it will spit answers at her. As though it will tell her what it has seen and who she once was.
Finally, she picks up her phone again and types rapidly, fingers only brushing over the keys. She hits the send button before she has time to mull over it.
you know, it’s like my bed is a boat in the middle of the sea, and i don’t know how to swim. do you ever feel like that, saihara-san?
※
I know exactly what you mean.
If I can be honest, it’s strange talking to you. Not in a bad way, of course, but...I went so long thinking it would never happen again. I feel like I’m talking to a ghost.
Her eyes glaze over; perhaps he is.
※
“Kaede!”
Someone is shaking her shoulders. Who could it be?
“Kaede, wake up!”
She opens her eyes, but no one is there.
“It’s just a dream,” someone whispers with mellifluous calm.
She knows who she wants it to be.
“You’re safe, dear.”
Her eyes adjust to the dark. Her mother cradles her head in the crook of her arm.
“Who...” she rasps.
“Who?” Her mother stops her ministrations and Kaede extracts herself from her grasp.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I want to sleep,” she moans.
※
Going to school makes her sick, but she only has a year left and the consequences of dropping out are too dire to go through with it. The consequences of not dropping out are equally dire, but she has picked her poison.
She has more money than she knows what to do with, even though she was paid the least after Amami. Could she leave for America? China? Europe? Her English isn’t good enough, and the extent of her Chinese is “hello.”
She pulls out her phone on the train ride home.
i want to see you.
※
He lives a few wards over. Arranging a meeting was not the easiest undertaking, but they’ve agreed on this September day.
Kaede hardly sleeps; her heart beats wildly, clawing at its cage, begging to be released. She cracks her eyes open as the sun peeks over the trees and rooftops outside of her window. Her head falls back against the pillow, and she doesn’t leave her bed until shortly before she’s due to meet him there.
She dresses in a white sweater and a black skirt and tights, bracing herself for the autumn chill, and leaves without a word to her parents.
This is all for closure, she tells herself. It’s her mantra as she walks down the winding streets of her neighborhood, making her way to the park.
When she arrives, she spots him waiting on a grassy slope under the shade of a maple tree. She keeps her head down as she crosses the park and finally reaches him.
He looks up at her. She doesn’t look down at him.
“Hi,” she says awkwardly, pulling at the sleeve of her sweater.
“Hi, Akamatsu-san,” he responds, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. There’s a smile on his face, no less.
That smile revitalizes the weeks of fossilized sorrow at the bottom of the ocean of her heart. She swallows, and the tightness in her throat makes breathing a more arduous task than it should be as she sits down beside him.
“I’m sorry,” she plains. “Looking at you brings it all back, but I have no one else anymore.”
“It’s okay.” She believes him for the moment.
They make stilted, obligatory small talk, which is actually quite hilarious given that their lives are mirror images of each other at the moment. The conversation dies down, and she finally voices the thoughts she has been churning slowly in the back of her mind.
“Every day I wonder why I did what I did. I’m not who I was then, but I’m not who I was on the show, either. And I just wonder if I’m anything at all,” she confesses, drawing her knees up to her chest.
“Even if you’re not the same, that thought shouldn’t even cross your mind,” he chides with every good intention. “And...anyway, the only explanations are that we didn’t care about our memories and just wanted to win, or we were in a situation where a complete wipe was better than whatever we were living with.”
She turns to him, eyes wide with terror and voice trembling with abject realization.
“Saihara-san, what could’ve been so bad that we made that choice?”
He presses his lips into a thin line and looks to the sky.
“The reason our past selves did this was so that we wouldn’t have to ask questions like that.”
She plucks out the grass beneath her, blade by blade.
“But this is the choice we made for ourselves. This is the life we have now and we’re going to survive,” he affirms with (rather convincing) confidence.
The tears are falling down her face, onto her sweater, onto her skirt and onto the grass, until her body refuses to produce them any longer. The urge to hate him is irresistible.
He was a detective and still has the mind of one, but he cannot see the most apparent truth. The clearest sign.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” she abruptly announces. She rises to her feet and he follows her, despite his shocked expression.
They stand in silence before she reaches for his hands, grasping them in her own.
“Goodbye, Saihara-san. Let’s not meet again,” she bids through her tightened throat and streams of tears.
He likely anticipated that, but his expression is pained enough to add a layer of guilt to the horizons of negative emotions constituting the ground she treads upon day after day.
“Does it have to be this way?” he asks dolefully.
Kaede looks at him fully, analyzing his eyes, taking in the contours of his face, searching for something to prove her wrong. The longer she regards him, though, the more the light autumn day around them fades into grey concrete walls and fluorescent lighting.
She slowly lets go of his hands.
“Yes.”
※
She gets home late that night. Her parents don’t say anything. Exhaustion stings her eyes and multiplies gravity — her footsteps are sluggish as she crosses the threshold into her room. It’s all she can do to change into her night clothes before she falls onto the bed.
She slips under the sheets, settling herself, and closes her eyes.
The palette of her dreams shifts from black, grey, and red to yellow, blue, and green. It comes into focus, gradually, disjointedly — but it becomes clear nonetheless.
She stands alone in the middle of a meadow. The sky is split in two: the sun beats down on her and all other things in its path, and rolling indigo clouds roar with thunder on the other side.
A singular tree stands at the edge of the meadow, and she runs there when something wet strikes her forehead.
She takes refuge under a tree in the midst of a sunshower, watching raindrops fall to the parched earth. The air is fresh in her lungs, the rain cool on her skin, the texture of the grass pleasant beneath her hands. There is no then and there is no now. There is nothing but this feeling.
The dream falls out of focus and blends into bright hues — a melange of pastels.
It ends as quietly as it began.