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Ouma’s birthdays were always perfectly spent. Each one held its own surprises and celebration, but always welcomed one consistency, and that was the presence of the only people he trusted enough to hold near and dear to his heart.
Any birthday without DICE went uncounted in his book. So even as the ten of them skipped back home, covered in bubble bath solution and out of breath from running from authorities, Ouma was ready to dub this the best celebration he has ever had (through a lie that called it the opposite to stay on brand, of course).
Three members called dibs on the bathroom to change, wasting no time in bolting to the bathroom the second they made it home. Their shared apartment was definitely too small for all of them, but it was much spacier than the back of a cruiser could ever be, and that was enough.
Ouma watched as they struggled to push each other out of their destination’s threshold. With a smirk growing across his face, he considered inconspicuously squeezing between them while they were distracted to win the bathroom for himself.
But his plan must’ve been too transparent. He was swept off his feet before he could put it into motion.
He pretended to struggle, letting out a performative whine that broke into a laugh. “If I don’t wash all this off, I’ll inhale the bubble bath until I die of poisoning!” He fell limply over the other’s shoulder to give his complaint dramatic effect.
This earned a giggle from his attacker, “Yeah? Tell that to the cake that’s been locked in the fridge since last night, waiting for you to see it.”
“Why don’t you let me go so I can get it, then?”
“Absolutely not. You’re going to wait right,” she paused, plopping Ouma down onto a seat at the head of a set table, marked with a shiny, purple balloon that was tied to the back. “Here,’ she finished.
Ouma settled in the chair with one leg slung over its arm. He put on a show of thinking. “What kind of cake is it?”
“Guess.”
“Fruit cake.”
“Way to waste your guess-- that’ll poison you before the bubble bath does.”
“I was just testing you...” he replied, waving a hand dismissively. He took the liberty of guessing again. “Grape soda cake?”
She threw her head back in mirth, shaking it as she looked at him again to respond. “Not that either-- and ew, by the way.”
“You never know until you try it!” he sang out, taking joy in the way she scrunched her nose in a faux disgust.
“Uh huh. So do you give up?”
“Can’t I have a hint?” he threw his signature pout her way, forcing tears to well up in his eyes with every second he had to wait for an answer.
She cracked quickly. Only because it was his birthday. His theatrics had nothing to do with it. “It’s whatever type of cake you imagine,” she offered.
Unimpressed, Ouma drooped at the vague statement, raising a brow in obvious disappointment. “I said hint, not riddle.”
“Think about what cake will fit your lie best.”
“What are you on about?” Ouma’s voice was light with laughter, taking the comment with little weight. He stretched his leg out to give her a teasing nudge with his foot, but he didn’t get the same light hearted energy he was aiming for.
“Isn’t that how we’re here?”
Something in his smile twitched, but he refused to let it falter, telling himself it was some prank that was teetering its climax. “You’re not gonna get me that eas--”
The abrupt pop of the balloon made him eat his words sooner than he thought.
An all consuming sound, loud enough to shatter an atmosphere. His hands jolted up to his ears. A balloon popping wasn’t enough to damage eardrums, was it?
Then how was he to explain the dizzying pressure that was roaring louder every second? The ringing in his ears was strong enough to make the back of his eyes tingle. Such a familiar noise that nobody else at the table seemed bothered by. Yet he found it no different than the sickening crack that echoed through his brain nearly a year ago. He momentarily doubted the balloon’s fate. His skull was shattering again, wasn’t it? And he was seconds away from bursting, having his remains flow defeatedly to the floor--
And in what simultaneously feels like years and no time to him, he wakes up. Reliving the frantic gasping for breath, kicking off thin hospital blankets because he mistook them for suffocating steel. Fearfully tearing off a constricting headset that felt like the splinters of his broken skull digging into his brain.
His lie ruptured and crumbled to the floor with cheap rubber.
There was no set picnic table; only a messily laid out blanket that did a poor job mimicking it. Paper plates marked nine placements, apart from the one that was placed in front of him. Scribbled clown masks drawn onto each plate replaced friends-- each design unique and faithful to his memories. The warm clinking of silverware and laughter was devoured by an eerie silence, amplifying each movement he made. The slightest rustle of clothing had an echo to it. A detail that shouldn’t have been surprising when the company that would have absorbed any of the apartment’s loneliness was a wishful fantasy.
They weren’t actually there. They never were.
DICE was just a million-dollar idea created in a conference room, made to slap a mysterious backstory on him and dress him for an audience’s consumption.
DICE was a lie Ouma was designed to believe, designed to lose at what he did best for. He spent his nights relapsing even after the news of his memories’ artificial nature was broken to him, unable to fight the gullibility that forced him to take comfort in a family he never truly had.
His birthday was no exception to that. Now he sits on the hardwood floor, at the head of his makeshift picnic blanket, talking to paper plates.
Jeez. Maybe his neighbors weren’t exaggerating when they labeled him the local loony.
If only his organization could see him now. Would they still see him as such a leader? It’s a question he spirals down too often to keep his security stable (as if anything of his is stable).
Maybe it’s for the best they weren’t real, he thinks. He’s sure his leadership would burden them with the responsibility of staging a coup. Because what kind of group would want to keep around a batshit leader who can’t differentiate dreams from reality until a balloon pops? Those kinds of family members ended up in a home.
Yes, it had to be for the best. He couldn’t really die in a killing game, so it was only fair that they weren’t going to be there when he woke up. They didn’t deserve to deal with him, and whatever mental patient he made of himself.
Wasn’t that why he never bothered to put together a real organization after waking up? It was just a more appealing way of telling him to reach out to people, reach out to everyone else he ‘recovered’ with, so he rejected the advice immediately, only caving to it once. It was a mishap he pledged to never do again: texting Saihara an invitation to join his organization. He must have been out of it, drunk maybe, to repeat old habits like that. His recovery from such a humiliating slipup came at the price of breaking his phone before getting a response, and changing his number to ensure he will never get one.
...Also to ensure he won’t get rejected. And to stop himself from becoming another person’s problem. On top of all of it: Saihara couldn’t get back to him, and that fed the idea that he couldn’t have been desperate, because he was still the one being chased.
It was all just another fantasy he indulged in, one that he couldn’t let himself get lost in at that moment, so he opted to clean up the mess he made with his imaginary friends as a distraction. He began picking up the paper plates first, tossing them to a growing pile of paper scraps and materials he commemorated to DICE in a similar way. The pile was starting to take over an entire corner of his living room, its peak climbing with every delusion.
But he didn’t mind; he taught himself not to.
Ouma grew to like talking to paper plates, and hallucinating the ghosts that ate from them. Piling his baggage onto paper plates was easier. They couldn’t reject him, and he couldn’t exhaust them, thus they were more enjoyable to keep as company. Safer for him, and everyone who ever knew him. Besides, it was easier to admit to being crazy than it was to being lonely.
Loneliness would be his own fault, so he told himself that reaching out to real people had nothing on the stacks and stacks of cheap dining goods in his cabinet waiting to be invited to his next tea party, or birthday.
He let himself fall victim to the lie, because what was the point in fighting it? Every happy birthday that he knew was already a lie that he continued to abandon sanity for. He cursed himself for it, cursed Team Danganronpa for it, yet retreated into his imagination whenever he was reminded of the recovery he ditched. It was a cruel and unforgiving cycle that had him entranced every few nights a week.
After the scene was cleaned up, he did the only thing he knew how to: school himself on all the reasons why idle chit-chat with utensils was a great way to waste his mind.
Saihara was right, but Ouma didn’t care.
Even if he did care, spitefully cutting off contact felt fantastic.
His paper plates would never let him spend a birthday alone. They were having a grand old time until that fucking balloon popped.
The plates were representative of something. It’s symbolism. It’s avant-garde. It’s creative. Outsiders wouldn’t understand.
Since when did birthday parties and friends only count in one reality, anyway?
Ouma would go on like this until sleep silenced him. In a sense, they were his personally crafted, one-of-a-kind affirmations, shaping his mind for the next lie he could lose himself in, and allowing another cycle of deceit to run again.