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Sometimes recruiting students for Hope’s Peak Academy is easy.
Best case scenario, you come to their house at an appointed date and time and their mother - or, in the extraordinary cases, their servant - invites you into the kitchen and fixes you some tea. Then the mother or servant calls the prospective student out of their room - maybe they’ve been doing their homework or watching TV or even practicing the spectacular talent you’ve come to invite them to hone for the good of the country - and they come and sit at the table, somewhat confused.
You introduce yourself to them and talk to them for a while about the school, about the opportunities available to them. They might look excited, or afraid, or seem to feel nothing at all. But then you butter them up with tales of their accomplishments, and they’re always excited by the time you slide them the acceptance literature. The whole exchange usually takes less than an hour, and the next time you see them is at the opening ceremony, fresh-faced and eager to start.
Sometimes it’s not so easy. Sometimes they don’t answer your calls for weeks, or never at all. Sometimes the prospective student’s father tries to chase you out of the house. Sometimes the prospective student’s father makes you drink multiple cups of sake with him and you end up having to be carried back to the car. Sometimes their only known address is a street corner and you have to wait there for five days before they show up. Sometimes they make you wait for three hours in a seedy gambling den and you’re not sure if you can hear gunfire echoing through the walls or not.
And then you have the cases like this, where, after more than a year of searching, finding them in prison is a near-unthinkable victory.
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Jin Kirigiri listened to the charges as they were read out to him by the escorting officer. Ten confirmed counts of identity theft, five suspected counts of identity theft, dozens of counts of property theft and damage, one count of resisting an officer.
Their trial date had not been set. If convicted on all charges, they would likely be in the detention house for life.
He asked the officer about their personal details, and she told him they hardly knew much more than he did. The prospect had no identifying information on them when they were arrested, and they wouldn’t answer a single question presented to them. Not even their name had been recorded in the legal system.
Any efforts to ask them about it had only been met with a blank stare.
Jin tried not to let his surprise show when he was led not to the visitors’ area, but behind security and into the prison itself. Rows and rows of cells lined either side of the darkened hall, but he did his best to look ahead and not distract himself.
After a series of turns the cells abruptly ended, leaving a stretch of blank wall surrounding a heavy door, flanked on either side by guards. The officer nodded to the guard on the left, who opened the door and ushered them into a small antechamber, barely wide enough for two people.
The officer punched a code into a keypad next to another door, which opened automatically onto near-total darkness. Kirigiri could see a strip of bare floor in front of him, a table and a rickety chair, and, just barely illuminated in the fluorescent glare, a row of bars blocking the back half of the room. If there was anyone else in the cell, he couldn’t see or even hear them.
He had just opened his mouth to ask what was going on when the officer stepped forward and rapped against the bars with her clipboard. “Hey, you!”
Something shifted in the darkness, and Jin could distinguish the outline of a figure on a narrow stone bench, sitting up straight with a whimper of fear.
“Get ready. We talked about this.” She fished a flashlight out from the side of her belt and shone it into the darkened cell. Jin only caught a glimpse of a very large teenager in a dark prisoner’s uniform before they ducked away with surprising speed, moving into a corner.
“Not this again,” the woman mumbled. “Hey!”
She swerved the flashlight to follow them, but by the time it hit the corner they were already gone. “Rrrgh, come ON!” She kicked at the bars, but stepped back when she heard Jin suck in his breath. “Not a fan of the light,” she explained, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Then what are you doing all this for? Kirigiri thought but didn’t say. Still, he knew every second wasted at this was a shred of trust he wasn’t going to get back. “This isn’t necessary,” he said, stepping forward. “I know they can hear me from here.”
“You…” The officer, clearly not used to having her authority undermined, bit her lip against some defiant torrent of insults.
Kirigiri didn’t feel the need to ask for any permission to begin. Instead, he took the chair from the side of the room and moved it to the middle of the cell, sitting with his hands in his lap.
Now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, he could see the shape of its occupant more distinctly. A rotund figure took up nearly the entire bench, with a face hidden by a curtain of hair. They sat hunched over slightly, with their hands in their lap.
“Erm…” This was where, ordinarily, he would call out to a student by name. In the absence of one, he let the awkward silence linger too long.
“Hello,” he said.
The prospective student did not respond.
“Our files call you… Youth A,” he continued. “I’m assuming that’s not your name.”
The form in the back of the cell said nothing. If not for the slight rise and fall of the outline of their chest, Kirigiri might not have been sure they were alive.
“My name is Jin Kirigiri.” He tried his best to keep his voice level. “I don’t know what you’ve been told about the purpose of my visit, but I’ll lay it out as clearly as I can. Have you heard of Hope’s Peak Academy?”
Youth A shuffled slightly. Jin was inclined to assume this meant they were going to keep quiet. But just as he was about to continue, a small, raspy voice sounded from the back of the cell.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Jin pursed his lips, while the escorting officer took a few steps back in surprise. “Well, I happen to be the headmaster. We’ve had our eye on you for some time –”
“What do you mean?” Youth A pushed themselves back against the wall, and in the quiet Jin could hear their breathing quicken.
“I’ll rephrase,” Jin said. “We’ve been interested in your talents, ever since we first became aware of you. Even if we’ve never been able to track your exact whereabouts, you’ve… left a mark wherever you’ve been. I don’t usually like to assign titles before you’re enrolled, but in your case, Ultimate Impostor was about all we had to go on.”
“Im…postor.” They didn’t back down, not right away.
“I’m sure it’s not difficult to figure out what I’m about to offer. Your abilities really are remarkable, and we’re more than eager to provide you with a way to cultivate them.” He paused. “In a safer and more controlled fashion than you’ve been doing on your own.”
From what little Jin could see of the Ultimate Impostor, their reaction to this proposition was… minimal. They tilted their head toward their chest, and the indistinct shapes of their fingers twisting together.
“And if I refuse?”
Jin pressed his hands to his temples. He had hoped this would be easier.
“Well… you’re quite free not to,” he said. “It is entirely your choice. Of course, I should mention that with our academy’s government connections, any charges against you or prison sentences yet to be served would be dropped or commuted on condition of your enrollment. Er, you wouldn’t be the first.”
“Right.” The Impostor tilted their head, breaking eye contact, if indeed they’d made it at all.
Kirigiri waited longer than he’d expected for them to continue. Clearly it had been too much to hope that this would be their ticket to an enthusiastic yes. Behind him, the officer coughed.
“How can you be so sure?”
Kirigiri blinked. “What do you mean?”
“That what I have is a talent.” They took a heaving breath. “All it does is cause trouble.”
This Jin could not deny. He’d seen the bodycam footage. He knew how ferociously they could fight back when cornered.
“You underestimate what we’ve dealt with in the past,” he said. “Talent isn’t always well-behaved. I don’t think I have to tell you that.”
“There’s nothing you can do for it.” They gave a lifeless chuckle. “I have no place in the world. That’s why they keep me here. It’s safe. Safe for them and safe for me.”
This time it was Kirigiri pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be honest, I don’t believe that’s true,” he said. “You’re not the only one in the world, or even in our student body, that thinks the things that make them special are a curse or a burden. And we find that changing that mindset around is where our students really start to unlock their potential-”
“That’s not possible,” the Impostor said. “There’s nothing to change. I’ve never been anyone of my own, not in my entire life.”
Kirigiri bit his lip, and mulled over what he’d heard. This was… different, and a little tough for him to wrap his head around. But he’d dealt with his share of teenagers. Even if the Ultimate Impostor claimed to be no one at all, they had to be, at their core, a confused human being on the cusp of adulthood.
“If you didn’t have an identity, then how can you be talking to me now?”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Right. Well…” Time to change tactics. “If, hypothetically, you did come to Hope’s Peak, you wouldn’t have to live the way you have been. You can choose any name you want when you enroll, and even change it as you wish. You can make friends, join clubs... do the things that others your age do in order to establish their own identities. In time, and with the resources at our disposal, you’d be able to build that for yourself. It truly isn’t as hard as you think.”
He really did feel good about his chances with that. Did he entirely believe it? That was irrelevant. All that remained was to see if it got through to the prospect.
It would all be so much easier if he could see their face. Instead, he could only hear them sigh. “You really don’t understand.”
“Maybe not,” Kirigiri said. “But if you give this a chance-”
“Am I free to go?”
Jin gritted his teeth against a sound of exasperation. Of course they were free to go. He really would get up and leave them here if there was no other choice. But there were things the Ultimate Impostor didn’t understand either. All the things that Hope’s Peak represented, and what it had to do. The imperatives that went into the selection of each and every student. What it would mean to let someone with this much talent – someone so young, who had lived so little – languish and eventually die in a cell.
There had to be some way in. Something they truly wanted and connected with. But if they were going to go on insisting that they were no one, and in that way couldn’t be reached…
All Kirigiri knew about the Impostor was what had been recorded about them leading up to their arrest. Under the identity in which they’d been caught, they’d traded several million yen in stocks under false pretenses, all in the course of a single day. The skill with which they’d carried out their operation was on par with the corporate scion they had been imitating. Almost as if they weren’t just wearing that boy’s name and face, but embodying him, body and soul…
He stood up from his chair. “Your rejection makes no sense, Togami.”
The form in the back of the cell started.
“Are we not the most elite educational institution in the country?” Jin stood up from his chair and stepped forward, stopped only by the bars that separated him from the student. “You require us as much as we require you. Would you truly settle for less?”
“That’s-”
“Accept our offer, and our resources and connections will be at your disposal. Reject our offer, and it’s the Togami Conglomerate that will suffer for it. Your intelligence and business acumen are legendary. I think you and I have already come to an understanding.”
Jin was sweating buckets, but he had to stand his ground. He didn’t look back to see how the officer was reacting to this, but he wasn’t being pushed out of the room, so something was going right. All that remained was to see if his gamble had taken root.
The Impostor sat still for a moment, as if absorbing the impact of Kirigiri’s words. Their breathing quickened, and they gripped their fingers together tightly, the straining of their tendons audible in the silent cell. But then they relaxed - and then, for the first time in the conversation, he stood up and stepped into the light.
Byakuya Togami was taller than Kirigiri by a good deal. He pushed a lock of blond hair away from his face as he approached, revealing a set of piercing blue eyes, then stopped just short of the bars, looking down at the principal of Hope’s Peak by at least a foot.
“Very well then,” he said in a deep and commanding voice. “I accept. And now that I have, I hope you don’t expect me to stay in this place a minute longer than necessary.”