Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a nobleman named Gundham Tanaka who re-married. His second wife - Junko - could only be described as a villainous hag. From her previous marriage, she had one daughter and one son, who were just like her in all things. The nobleman, just like her, had a son from his previous wife. His name was Nagito. While he was a sweet and friendly boy, just like his mother, his physical and mental well-being was plagued by diseases. He had been diagnosed with lymphoma and frontotemporal dementia at an early age.
His frontotemporal dementia developed, among other things, due to a series of traumatic events he has had to face ever since he was born. As absurd as it might sound to some, Nagito with his whole heart believed he possessed a cycle of good and bad luck. Whenever something exceptionally lucky happened to him, something exceptionally unlucky was bound to occur right after.
The earliest occurrence of this was when his dog was hit by a carriage and died, momentarily after the rider of said carriage gifted Nagito a bunch of sweets. His luck cycle unfortunately also ended up being the reason why his father had to carry his mother to the grave. They were going on a family vacation which was probably the best event in Nagito's life. But when they were riding back home, a meteor hit his mother and she died.
After some time, his condition started to make the boy develop rather abnormal beliefs which often showed in his behaviour.
The first time he revealed his twisted obsession with hope was during naptime in kindergarten. He purposely woke up 20 minutes too early only to start rambling about hope, which woke up all the other children. After he secured himself an audience, he started to ramble more and more enthusiastically. By the end of his outburst, he was sweating, shaking and his eyes darkened and began to swirl. Due to this type of behavior becoming more and more common, he became the main target for bullying.
As this worsened his mental state even more, his father decided to remove him from kindergarten and let him be homeschooled when he was old enough. Despite all of Nagito's issues, his father's endeavors helped him to happily get through his childhood.
That was until Gundham decided his new wife and her children would move in with them.
Junko always hated Nagito. He assumed it was because of his disastrous outbursts, so he understood and never questioned her rude behavior towards him. What he did not know was that Junko was far more bothered by his appearance than his hope fixation.
While you could never catch her admitting it, Nagito was much more beautiful than her own children - Monokuma and Monami. His frosty, angelic hair and shining emerald eyes would always outshine her facially challenged children.
But the worst part was, after seeing a picture of Nagitos mother she realized that he not only supposedly contained a personality just like her, but also looked nearly the same. Despite Gundham’s efforts to hide it, Junko always knew he loved his first wife more than her and Nagito being a carbon copy of his mother drove her closer and closer to total despair every day.
While she never truly loved Gundham and married him only for his money, she still felt the need to be seen as the most captivating person in this household.
For a long time she thought she could live with only tormenting Nagito, but one day she realized she needed something more.. evil.
_____
”Gundham, I have an idea for our next family vacation”, Junko mumbled while finishing her breakfast.
Gundham, who had already started cleaning the dishes, looked up from the sink and responded: “Oh great dear, I too have been wondering about that matter for quite some time now. Do tell me what you have in mind.”
And that's how they all found themselves on their way to the magical strawberry funhouse. After thinking for a long time, Junko came to the conclusion that this would be the perfect place to carry out her evil master plan. The others happily agreed to her proposal, not knowing what she truly had in mind, of course.
After arriving, the children spent the first two days playing around in the strawberry labyrinth. The third day, fortunately, happened to be a Friday, on which the funhouse always had special events.
Today’s special event was called “Tiny Roulettes”. It was basically Russian roulette except that instead of bullets, confetti would be shot out of the gun if you lose. Nagito was in charge of reloading the gun, as his brain would not be able to handle the confetti suddenly shooting out of a gun.
Junko used to work at the funhouse when she was still a young lady, which is why she was familiar with the way these games worked and how to manipulate them. And so she could finally carry out her mischievous plan.
Right before the game started, she switched the gun they were supposed to play with, with one that she brought on her own. It looked exactly like a normal one from the funhouse, but there was an actual bullet in it. After replacing it, she gave the gun to Nagito and told him to fill it with confetti.
Nagito happily obeyed. Confetti was one of his favorite things on this planet and he carefully filled the whole weapon up. After closing the lid, he gave it to his father and told him they could start the game.
“Ah, a thousand thanks my dear son”, Gundham said and slowly lifted the gun to his head.
”Remember, everyone who doesn't die this round gets an ice cream”, Junko lightheartedly reminded him.
”Yes, you are right my dearest. Hopefully, I will get one as well“
After speaking his final sentence, Gundham pressed the gun fully against his skull and slowly pulled the trigger.
A loud bang erupted through the entire funhouse and everyone stared at the horrifying picture. Gundham’s body had fallen forward and not a single moving inch could be caught. Nagito sat next to his corpse and was fully covered in blood and confetti. Junko had a hard time not bursting into laughter after catching a look at his mortified face.
…
After a long and thorough investigation, the police concluded that the funhouse had to close down and the headmaster got arrested for possession of illegal weapons and 3rd degree murder. While this truly could not have ended better for Junko, Nagito was devastated. He felt incredibly stupid for not noticing it was a real gun from the beginning. The only reason they ended up with that gun was probably all because of his luck too. Never in his life had he felt this awful about his existence. His stupid luck had now officially taken everything for him.
Everything but his father's hamsters.
Feeling completely consumed by his misery, Nagito decided it would be best for him to completely distance himself from society. He packed all of his belongings into a little cloth and bound it onto a stick. With a depressing look on his face and the hamsters on his shoulder, he waved his goodbyes to Junko and his step-siblings.
After two hours of walking, he found a nice trashcan which he now called his home. He lived happily with his trashcan and hamsters..
.. until the waste collection came.
They soon realized that simply telling Nagito to leave his trashcan would not be enough. It has only been two weeks, but the bond between Nagito and the trashcan was already too strong. They tried everything, even threatening to bomb Nagito didn’t work. It only led to the poor workers getting attacked by his hamsters.
In the end, they had to surgically remove both Nagito and his hamsters from their “home”. It took another way too long discussion to find out where Nagito actually lives, but they managed to bring him back to Junko's house. He was absolutely not welcome, but he had no other place to go and the waste collection was too tired to drive him to the next adoption center.