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Darkness was all that Izuru Kamukura saw as he fell deep into the Neo World Program. The whole situation was just boring. Waiting, waiting, and waiting for something to change. All he wanted was something interesting. The war between Hope and Despair raged on through the world, but it was all so predictable . Nothing could cut through the thick, oppressive veil of dreariness that pushed down upon every experience he went through. The moment he came into the world, he knew all there was to know, and nothing was new. In a sense, he understood Junko Enoshima’s desire for despair. As someone who claimed to have been disillusioned with the world from birth, he could sympathize with her yearning for a force seemingly fierce and unpredictable. Despite that, he just couldn’t agree. Human beings were human beings no matter the place or time. Whether they felt hope or despair, he knew what they would do before even they did. Sometimes he wondered if he, himself, was human. The answer to that question was of no consequence to him.
The whole reason he monitored the Ultimate Despair was to see if maybe, just maybe, Junko Enoshima was right. Maybe she saw something in despair that he just couldn’t see. Then again, that was impossible -- he had every talent that she had, and every talent that she didn’t. Still, the idea intrigued him, if only slightly. What could despair offer that hope could not? As someone who was supposed to be the Ultimate Hope, the irony was humorous to him. From the moment he became himself, the world felt dull. Hope brought him nothing. He went on into the Ultimate Despair because it was the path that held the most possibilities. It was a shame that almost all of it was pointless. Still, some things about the Ultimate Despair were at least a little interesting.
Izuru Kamukura’s first memory was waking up and feeling nothing. He knew about his past, but remembered none of it. It was just a story of a boring boy living a boring life in a boring world, and it was trivial to him. He knew that he was a Reserve Program student, and that he was only in Hope’s Peak Academy because he wanted to become something other than the worthless person he was. He did not know the members of Ultimate Despair in his previous life, and even if he had, he couldn’t remember anything of them as people. Even if he could, it would be inconsequential, since their personalities had no bearing on him. Seeing them for the first time as ordinary students, and then after their transformation into the Ultimate Despair, he was somewhat intrigued. Such a drastic change in one’s behavior in such a short time was an interesting concept. The interest didn’t last long, however, since each of them went right into a predictable pattern of causing ruckus again and again. Whether a coin lands on heads or tails, it’s still the same uninteresting coin.
One of them, though, would ask him the strangest questions.
“Kamukura-kun, do you ever think about the future?”
Kamukura looked quizzically at Nagito Komaeda, one of his supposed comrades in the group known as Ultimate Despair. “... Excuse me?”
”Do you ever think of what the world will become? All of this bloodshed wrought on the world by Junko Enoshima’s followers; I can’t wait to see what kind of hope it blooms into!” beamed Komaeda, smiling off into the abyss. This kind of talk was nonsense to Kamukura. Despair morphing into hope and back meant nothing. It was like matter transforming itself; nothing can be taken away, and nothing can be added. It could barely be called change, and it certainly was not interesting.
“I don’t. It’s boring. What’s the point?” Kamukura asked. Of course, Komaeda would launch into another explanation of the wonders of hope and how it stands up against despair. It was always the same boring rant, with the same boring reactions, and the same boring end result. The only part of it that entertained Kamukura was just how enamored a person could be with such a boring topic. Hope and despair were meaningless facets of the human condition that could be easily explained away with basic knowledge of neuropsychology, and here was an individual putting his life on the line to prove his worship of one of them. There is no force behind hope, and there is no force behind despair. It can all be explained away. That’s what he always thought.
Months passed. Komaeda and Kamukura stayed together out of convenience. They both wanted to watch Ultimate Despair wreak havoc upon the world, infecting others with the contagious plague of dismay and hopelessness that Junko Enoshima wanted. They both wanted to see the end result. They witnessed betrayal, death, murder, suicide, and all sorts of unspeakable tragedies. To Kamukura, it was all a waste. A waste of talent, a waste of useless life, and a waste of time. To Komaeda, it was a beautiful scene showing just how strong hope will become to triumph over this formidable foe. They shared debates on how the situation would finally end. When the debate turned into one of Komaeda’s rants, Kamukura took it upon himself to stare out into the distance and let Komaeda tire himself out. ‘If I interrupt, he’ll just talk more, and it’ll be even more dull,’ he thought. One day, Komaeda said something unexpected.
“Kamukura-kun, I think you’re my hope,” he rasped in his wispy, slightly hoarse voice. He smiled and tilted his head, staring into Kamukura’s dark red eyes, as if he were looking into a snow globe.
“I cannot begin to fucking fathom what you’re talking about,” Kamukura replied. He was tired of the ranting each day, and he had a feeling that this was about to turn into another. He rolled his eyes before realizing that he, indeed, did not know what Komaeda was talking about. He didn’t understand. For the first time, someone had said something to him that he hadn’t predicted.
“They say you’re the Ultimate Hope,” Komaeda explained, “but you’re so disillusioned. You can’t see any of the beauty in the world that I do, even surrounded by all of these wonderful things!” As if it were punctuation at the end of his sentence, a blood-curdling scream rang out from one of the alleyways going off of the street they walked on. Neither of them paid it any mind. “My hope is for you to finally feel the hope that I feel!”
Kamukura pursed his lips. He was starting to understand Komaeda’s point of view, and unfortunately seemed to have become his… muse? This boring, convenient man who happened to be running the same never-ending errand that he was, had become attached to him. He felt somewhat disquieted. “I doubt that will happen,” he said, deadpan. It was better to not mince words.
“Exactly! That’s where my hope lies, in proving you wrong.” When Komaeda explained that, it made a sort of morbid sense to Kamukura. Hope, to Komaeda, was not just desire, yearning, or a reverie, but a stubborn, pointless assertion in the unlikely or impossible. It was the absolute dumbest thing he had ever heard. He scoffed, like an aggressive chuckle.
“Prove me wrong? I’d like to see you try,” Kamukura said. He almost felt entertained. It was like a pointless game of cat and mouse. No purpose, no substance, and no reason to continue, but they continued on anyway. Komaeda attempted to herald the wonders of hope to Kamukura, while Kamukura begrudgingly allowed him to drone on. It wasn’t an obligation, a chore, or another ideology forced onto him without his choice. He wasn’t expected to become the almighty wielder of an ideology he had no belief in, just because someone else wanted him to; he had the final say. It was a game . A game that he had never played, where he wrote his own rules. He had a feeling he knew how it would end, but for the first time, he wasn’t completely sure. Humans were predictable, the world was predictable, and the future was predictable, but for this game, he had to predict something new. No one in the world could stand face to face with Izuru Kamukura, but this time, he found a worthy opponent in himself. Komaeda had invented the perfect game.
Drifting off into the Neo World Program, while his memories were wiped clean once more, he thought of Junko Enoshima. He thought of the battle between Hope and Despair, and he thought of the agreement he had made with Nagito Komaeda. To level the playing field of the opposing ideologies, they would hijack the Future Foundation’s plans, and create a battleground for the forces of Hope and Despair. At the end of the battle, when Kamukura wakes up either as himself or as someone else, they will know who won. For the first time, Izuru Kamukura felt anticipation, but not at the battle itself. Rather, he only wanted to see for himself whether Nagito Komaeda was right. Could he really feel hope, or was he destined to feel nothing? For once, Komaeda had a point, and Kamukura was ready to let the chips fall as they may. He couldn’t predict something, and for the first time, he felt free.