Work Text:
Shirogane Tsumugi is always tired, she finds.
Going to sleep is the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. Her mind just keeps screaming about deadlines, and character arcs, and everything under the sun. It yells and screeches about colour pallets and ultimate talents, about killing games and small conversations. It never shuts up.
She’s come to appreciate the coffee maker that’s been put in her room, even if the lighting is still terrible and every time she moves even an inch in her chair, it creaks- almost as if it’s screaming in pain as she tries to find comfort in her terrible working space. Still, the coffee maker was worth it- or at least she’s convinced herself that it was.
Cup after cup Tsumugi pours and consumes. It’s not good for her in the slightest, she knows that, but over time her heart and soul have become entirely devoted to Danganronpa. She’s become invested in the lives that she herself created from her very own pen, so caught up in the world that they’re living in that she forgets about her own.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Shirogane Tsumugi is always restless, she finds.
She spends hours upon hours in her office, writing and revising and rewriting. Then, at the end of the day when the janitor- Higuchi, if she remembers correctly- knocks on her door and convinces her to go home and rest. So, she goes home with all her notes and tries - she really does try- to relax, until the notes of all her characters running through her mind drive her crazy enough to continue working.
Shirogane has given these characters lives in sacrifice of her own. And in the end, she will end up killing and betraying them all- well not all of them. She has to keep some alive, to keep the fight of hope and despair alive- to help keep the flame that has kept her warm for so long alight.
From her pen, Shirogane Tsumugi uses her own blood to write a travesty into existence. She uses the same ink that created her characters to kill them off one by one in the most brutal of ways. Drowning, strangulation, stabbing- her creations all killed by her own hands.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Shirogane Tsumugi is going crazy, she finds.
Constantly, her mind is filled with voices. Screaming at her to fix every imperfection- be that by filling plot holes or flawing her characters, she’s on a mission to make this all perfect . Every character must be real, with their own goals and thoughts and quirks. She has become their god - and when gods create humanity out of nothingness, they create perfect imperfections- they create true life .
Pulling at her hair, fixing her glasses, flattening her skirt- she finds herself obsessing over these fictional fixations of hers. She is god . She has to suck her audience into the world of Danganronpa, she has to create people so obsessed and devoted to her that they become her.
She will write the most perfect season of Danganronpa in its history. Season 53- this is her season, her legacy. If she has to die for this show she will. She’s already put her entire being into it, she has nothing left to lose and everything left to give. Shirogane will become one with the show, with the series, with the game.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Shirogane Tsumugi is in despair, she finds.
Part of her wonders if maybe, at some point, every writer of Danganronpa truly falls into despair just like she has. Maybe that’s how they get such wonderful performances as masterminds- they have already become one with despair before their role has begun.
All the great masterminds before her were eccentric, both in their respective shows and in reality- at this point she wonders if there was ever a difference. Of course, none of them were murderers , they just held the same feeling of despair- intertwining in their hair and mingling in their breath.
She stares at the picture of Enoshima Junko that hangs on the wall across from her bed. She feels apathetic, numb, emotionless. She finds that despair tastes different in her mouth than how it looks on a tv screen. It doesn’t taste like thrill or risk or energy, it tastes like boredom and silent insanity.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Shirogane Tsumugi is never happy, she finds.
At some point, looking back at her work would bring her something akin to joy or satisfaction. It would make her smile, seeing how well everything she worked for played out. At some point, Shirogane was truly proud of what she created. But now, staring at her pages and pages of character notes and designs, she feels nothing.
Write, revise, rewrite, repeat. She picks at every loose thread of her characters’ non-existent clothes. She finds a way to make her characters so put together that she starts to lose touch of everything around her. Losing touch with reality, becoming one with the anxiety and paranoia that plague her mind.
She cares so very much about what people will think of her creations, and yet at the same time so little. Slowly, she becomes detached even from the one thing that she thought she could stay grounded to: creating. The very idea of Danganronpa- the thing she once praised and admired to the point that it
became
her- was now just another mindless thought in her mind.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Shirogane Tsumugi is nothing, she finds.
Joining Team Danganronpa was a mistake, Shirogane realizes. Or maybe she already knew, but was too afraid to admit.
Shirogane Tsumugi is not god.
Shirogane Tsumugi is nothing.