Chapter Text
The game is over.
The game is over, and he, Himiko and Maki can leave. Their steps are slow, stumbling over the rubble as they head towards the light. Shuichi’s mind is racing—their path forwards is built on all the others’ bodies, and now, Keebo’s sacrifice too—but he can’t slow down now. He breaks out into a run, desperate to leave this place, to leave this nightmare behind forever.
He doesn’t quite notice how the grass and weathered tiles beneath his feet give way to linoleum, or how the sunlight doesn’t seem to cover the whole area or feel hot against his skin anymore until it’s unavoidable, leaving him to stare dumbly at the “outside world” behind the blinding light.
There are cameras, for one-–too many, so they can capture them from each and every angle (were the nanokubs not enough?). Far more people than he had seen in one room for so long were operating them and mechanisms he wasn’t familiar with—and each and every one of them were staring right at him, cameras moving to capture his exit until he left the frame.
He'd stay there, demand answers, at least ruin their ending, but his momentum till now propels him forward. As he slows to a stop, he hears one of the workers triumphantly yell: “And that’s a series wrap for Saihara, Yumeno, and Harukawa! Great job, team!”
Great job . All of the work, all of the pain, the sacrifice, the effort to get an audience to turn away, the destruction of the academy…and it was a success in their eyes. Wrapped up neatly to package and sell.
He distantly wonders if the ending--if ending Danganronpa once and for all--will even be kept in or seen by anyone not watching live, and Shuichi feels something inside him snap .
Maki beats him to it, moving from by his side to gripping what he assumes is the director by the neck in a flash. “Explain. Unless you want to die, explain.”
The director barely reacts, instead flashing a symbol to the other workers in the room. He’s halfway to helping Maki restrain him—make him talk , get answers for everything that’s happened to him—when he feels a prick near his neck. He slowly reaches to feel what hit him, and feels a dart protruding from near his collarbone.
They shot a tranquilizer at him, like he’s an animal.
“Maki, watch out—” He tries to warn her, but instead, gets to watch her eyes widen, and the very moment her attempts to protect herself fail, and the dart lands. The quiet snk! and the feeling of air rushing past his face tells him that Himiko did not fare any better than they did. Though he tries to hold onto his anger and adrenaline as well as he can, he feels the drug’s effect start to take hold, and the emotions that had been propelling him forward slip from his mind as smoothly as sand in an hourglass. As darkness starts to close in on his vision, he staggers forward, trying to-trying to do something , yell at someone, prove something, support the others-
The world fades to black and his body crashes to the floor before he can figure out what.
When he comes to, it’s in a white room, to a throbbing head. His body feels like lead, his stomach is turning angrily, and any thoughts he had before have long since been replaced by what feels like cotton—too much of it, pressing uncomfortably against his skull. The comfort of his detective uniform has been replaced with the light, papery feeling of a hospital gown. A survey of the room around him reveals him to be trapped in a high-end hospital room. The bed beneath him would be comfortable, were it not for the restraints around his wrists and ankles trapping him there. The walls are covered in Team Danganronpa posters, diagrams and framed photos (he can’t bring himself to look for Tsumugi there), and it makes him feel even sicker to his stomach.
He’s in the middle of trying to piece together how he got here when his thoughts are interrupted by a nurse coming into the room. Despite having no memory of seeing her before, her white uniform with a red stripe, pink blouse and blue skirt underneath, and messy brown hair give him a sense of déjà vu. She brushes past his confusion to rush to his bedside, with only a small stumble towards him.
“How are you feeling after your surgery?” Her voice is high-pitched and soft, the intonations familiar to him somehow.
“…Surgery?” he slurs out. He had not noticed it until trying to speak, but his mouth isn’t faring any better than the rest of him; soreness emanates from the back of his throat.
The nurse giggles nervously. “They didn’t explain it to you? Were you a runner?”
Something about that rubs him the wrong way, but the words get lost in his head as he tries to piece it together. She glosses over that. “Well, I can explain it to you in their place!” She gets up for a moment to get a pointer, before sitting down on a stool by his side.
“How much do you know about TV production?”
He struggles to tell her not much before she realizes her mistake.
“Sorry, only yes or no questions from now on. Are you familiar with the concept of sound design?”
He nods. She giggles and pats his head.
“Of course you are. Well, part of that is making sure your actors are mic’d up. But for a detective like you, finding and removing a microphone on your person would be trivial, wouldn’t it?”
He nods, a sinking feeling growing in his chest as he starts to piece together how this could be connected to the surgery.
“So we had to find new ways to get clear sound from all of our contestants.”She points to one of the diagrams of a robotic Monokuma on the wall.“Now, did your season’s mastermind explain the nanokumas to you?”
He nods.
“Well, the team figured out they could be used as microphones to fix that little sound problem! They were implanted on each of the actors, so we could get clear audio tracks from all of you.”
She clasps her hands together, as though she’s explaining something quaint and not just how thoroughly team Danganronpa engineered his existence.If she notices his dawning horror, she doesn’t acknowledge it, instead leaning over to tap somewhere near the back of his throat.
“We implanted a nanokuma back here to pick up everything you said during the game. The editing team’s working hard as we speak to make that into the most compelling narrative they can! But with this season over, we don’t need your voice anymore. Removing all of the nanokumas from your body is part of general post-season process.”
The worst part is that it makes sense. In some horrible, twisted way, this makes sense to him. He’s sure the Shuichi before the game already knew this – or if he didn’t, he would have approved.
Wait a minute.
It takes effort – his throat is still recovering from-from having a nanokuma inside it – but he manages to speak. “ All of the nanokumas?” He’s hoping and praying for that to be just a slip of the tongue, even if he suspects it’s not.
The nurse doesn’t seem bothered by his question—instead, she just pats him on the head, like he’s a schoolchild who’s gotten a question right. “You really are the Ultimate Detective! I was going to save this for later, but I can explain that now, too. That is what you want, riiight?” He doesn’t. He wants for all of this to be a terrible dream, or a lie, or anything—anything but the truth.
He takes a breath. Hiding from the truth isn’t how he got here—isn’t how he’s going to stay safe or figure out how to take down Team Danganronpa for good once he can leave this place. After a long moment, he nods.
“You have heard of confessional cameras, right? In reality TV shows, when contestants can turn to the camera and talk about their inner thoughts and strategy?” He nods. “Well, they posed quite a conundrum to the production team here. When we installed one, no one used it—and worse than that, it broke the suspension of disbelief. There’s a reason season 48’s considered a wash…We needed a way to access your thoughts without showing our hand.”
Please no. Please stop talking.
“Enter the neurokumas!” She leans forward, this time to tap the side of his head. “They rest in your brain here and record all your thoughts. The live audience couldn’t hear them, but when the season’s edited and broadcasted, they’ll be a part of the narrative. The inner turmoil of all the contestants is an integral part of the death game, after all!” He stares at the wall, starting to tune out her words about “character-centric cuts”. Every single thought he had—his worries, his happiness, his sorrow— all of it was just another part of the show, another thing to be monetized and sold.
Create the weakest Ultimate Detective ever, watch him grow, but get an inside line to every bit of suffering he experiences. He feels…naked, from how much of him was put on display for the audience. Every person you meet in the outside world is going to have seen this, the particularly pessimistic part of his mind tells him. Tsumugi was right. There is no place outside for you. Not now that everyone’s seen the real you.
Distantly, he feels a hand running through his hair, and a tissue against his face. When had he started crying?
“Oh dear—was that too much at once? Forgive me!” Any other time, he’d at least try to comfort her, reassure her that it’s fine, and not to worry on his account. His eyes don’t stray from the wall, and his mind can’t be diverted from the despair that’s settled in.
“U-um, what would make you feel better? You can yell at me if you want? Oh-I can tell you some about the others’ thought streams! Do you want to bet on how much of Miu’s thought stream is going to have to be censored?” The mention of Miu does little to ease his heart or stop his tears, and the memory of seeing her dead-of having to prove who did it—of Gonta’s execution—only brings more sobs. He tries to wipe his own eyes, before remembering they’ve restrained him, and his arms can’t reach.
The nurse is starting to get more distressed as she tries to reassure him. “Do you not like her? I can bring her in so you can yell at her instead. I’m sure she’d like that, too!” That gets a glare from him. He isn’t sure how a joke like that about one of his fallen friends is supposed to reassure him at all. The anger urges him to speak.
“What is wrong with you? How can you support any of this? And how is mocking me over the friends I couldn’t save going to help me at all?” he yells. His throat screams out in protest, but it’s worth it.
This takes the nurse aback. “…Did I not…explain that part? About the others and the postgame procedure for them?”
He angrily shakes his head. Her demeanor, while never quite seeming self-assured, has devolved into near complete uncertainty. After a long pause, she speaks slowly. “I don’t…think you’re ready to hear that right now. I think you should get more rest and recovery first.”
She can’t do this. She can’t just drop all of that on him and then leave him in despair while still blatantly hiding things from him.
“Wait—ave to—ou have to tell me,” he struggles to get out, but she ignores him. She’s quick with a needle, injecting him with clear liquid while giving him a sad smile. “I will when you wake up, okay? Please…forgive me for all of this.”
His body rapidly grows heavier, sinking into the earth, and he can’t bring himself to resist. He sinks into nothingness, careless of if he’ll resurface.
When he reawakens, it’s to the same room (to his chagrin). The two toned black and white décor somehow grates on him more than before, and the nanokuma and neurokuma diagram mocks him. Look, they say. Look how much of yourself you gave to Danganronpa. Look how much you gave to us happily and freely.
The moment he’s out of these restraints, he is going to tear them down.
He is not alone with his thoughts for long; the nurse returns, with what looks like his uniform from the killing game in her arms, hat and all. After placing it on a nearby desk, she cautiously approaches his bedside.
“How did you sleep? Are you feeling alright?” she asks.
She’s going to ignore the elephant in the room, isn’t she? “…What were you going to explain last time?”
She sighs deeply. “If you’re feeling alright, I can tell you.” Her face then morphs from its grim concern to something bright-manic, almost. “You spoke smoothly. Is your throat feeling better?”
…He hadn’t noticed until now. “It is. I don’t feel as tired as before, either.”
“Good! You’ve recovered so well.” She hesitates before her next question. “…And your mental health?”
She has to know what Pandora's box she’s about to open with that.
“I don’t know – all but two of my friends have died in front of me. Some of them by each other’s hands, and some of them by mine, since I’m the one who proved they were guilty and sent them to the axe. On top of all of that, I’m fictional, and from what little I know of who the real Shuichi is, I wouldn’t want to meet him, much less be him. How well do you think I’d be doing?” Deep down, he realizes that little of that is her fault, but she’s part of the team that did this to him. She’s complicit in it.
She takes a deep breath. “That makes sense. A lot of survivors talk like that. I can leave you-“
“Wait,” he cuts her off. He might be reeling angry over everything he’s experienced, but he has to know the truth. “You said you would explain. What did you mean when you offered to bring Miu in here?”
She exhales slowly. “Right. …The neurokumas had another purpose than recording your thoughts. How to put this…If you’d been injured, and you thought you were dead from the bottom of your heart, would you get up and keep moving?”
He takes a moment to think, putting a hand to his chin. If he thought he were dead…of course he would stop moving. There were times he tried that during the game. But for her to ask… “No. If I thought I had been killed, or lost all hope, I would accept it.”
She nods. “And one of your friends? If you knew they were dead, would you check their pulse, or expect them to get up?”
He shakes his head. “Even when I was in shock, I…didn’t.” His brow furrows. “But foul play wasn’t- can’t have been the only reason. Miu is the only one of us who I can imagine having a fabricated death, since her body had no external injuries. Everyone else who’s…gone…had injuries too great to survive.” He can see the glimmer of hope she’s offering him, the bait to bite at, but he refuses it. Not until he can confirm it. This could be more lies for the cameras.
“The medical field has come a long way, hasn’t it?” she airily muses. “Nothing that happened this season was unfixable. Once the cameras stop rolling, we get the body, and can patch it up and tell the brain it’s alive again.” She giggles. “Having the neurokumas set your death flag really is an effective anesthesia!”
This-this can’t be. He won’t let himself believe it. Even if it’d be good to see Kaede again. See Kaito again. She’s lying to him. “That—I can’t believe that. There’s no way your medical abilities can be that good.”
She arches an eyebrow. “You’ve already seen it in motion, haven’t you? Kaito Momota was a fully healthy individual when he auditioned for the show. We gave him that illness – and once he was back off the set, removing it was even easier!”
“I didn’t know Kaito before the show, and haven’t seen him since…his execution. How can I believe any of this?”
She grins an unsettling grin. “I can show you his audition video. He used to be the picture of health.”
He grits his teeth. He remembers the bit of Kaito’s audition video Tsumugi showed him, and he wishes he didn’t. Even so, she isn’t wrong, but…he can’t accept what she’s saying.
What must you never give up?
This is another attempt to keep him playing the game, and he won’t be fooled.
“…What about the others? What about Ryoma, who got eaten by piranhas? Or Kokichi, who got crushed? There’s no way.”
He does not like the look in her eyes. “Those were a little harder, but it was possible to construct a body around the parts of them we could salvage. The new parts wouldn’t have the memories, but that’s nothing flashback lights can’t fix.” Her voice is sickly sweet. “If it looks like them, and remembers their memories, isn’t it still them?”
He feels his stomach turn a bit. “You have no proof. You could be lying to me.”
“They’ve recovered, you know. You’ll see them soon.”
His mind fills with images of Ryoma and Kokichi as patchwork zombies. Even putting aside his complicated emotions over what happened to them, he is dreading seeing what was done to them.
She tilts her head in confusion. “Why are you upset? Is it because the deaths aren’t real?”
He recoils at the thought. “What? No—how could I be?”
“Your name is Shuichi Saihara, right? There used to be hate mail from someone by that name about how the show had gone downhill since we started faking the deaths.”
That…sounds accurate. He wishes it weren’t. “…I didn’t know any of the people. I’m not...like that anymore.”
She pats him on the head. “Plenty of survivors talk like that. The Kaito we treated didn’t sound like the one in the video at all.”
…He knows he should raise another objection, but he can’t find any. This…is the truth. It’s unbelievable, and he still can’t figure out how to feel about it. What’s been done to all of them is too much. It’s impossible to take back, and crosses so many boundaries.
…But even so, he can’t deny how much he wants to see everyone again.
His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “And you said he’s alive now?”
“He is. Every one of the contestants of season 53 are. There’s a meeting for all of you in an hour or so.” She moves to get up. “If you’re feeling up to it, that is. Your vitals are normal, but if you’re still feeling bad in some way…”
He shakes his head. “Please—I want to see them. I’m fine.”
She nods, before starting to undo his restraints. “We’re gathering you all at the room at the left end of the hall. …Before I leave, are you sure you don’t need anything else?”
He pushes aside the lingering feeling that something is off about her. That can wait. “I’ll be fine.”
After she leaves, he gets up to get dressed. The nurse left him with perfect copies of both his detective uniform from the game and what he was wearing in his audition tape. It takes a moment for him to decide which one to wear. As much as he wants to face reality, he does not want to put on the clothes of his old self quite yet. After putting on the rest of the detective outfit, he looks down at the hat and hesitates.
He had sworn to face the truth with his own two eyes, and that brought him here. As difficult as it was to handle, he knew it was better than continuing to live a lie or to be deceived. And yet…He’s going to see everybody again. Everyone whose deaths he watched happen, everyone he sent to the gallows with his deductions(even on the off chance Kaede has forgiven him for failing to find the true culprit, he can’t believe the others would.)…everyone that could have suffered so much less had he been quicker to find the truth of the game.
He imagines the looks in their eyes that’ll meet him, and he picks up the hat and places it a bit too firmly on his head, pulling the brim down.
His steps get less and less certain as he leaves the room and goes down the hall. Who is he going to see first? Are they going to be waiting for him? And if so, waiting because they want to see him or waiting with dread?
His hands finally get to the doorknob. It’s now or never. Even if his stomach is turning and he’s filled with dread, he can’t—and some part of him doesn’t want to—avoid this forever.
He takes a deep breath, and opens the door.