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She doesn’t know when she picks up the first magazine.
That’s not exactly true. Somewhere, she must know when she did; it’s only that she can’t access the memory. She’s forgotten it. That’s the proper term for it: forgetting. But so much of forgetting feels more like misplacing the memories, like when she buys something special and wants to put it somewhere special so that she doesn’t lose it, only then she doesn’t remember where that special place is that she put her special thing, and then, because she’s her, she forgets that she even bought the special thing in the first place, so she just opens up that one drawer in her desk one day and finds something new and wonderful and fascinating that she’d forgotten she’d ever had in the first place!
…okay, so the metaphor’s a little broken. But that’s okay! Broken isn’t bad after all, because then she would be bad, and she’s not! So there!
Ryoko doesn’t remember when she picks up the first magazine, and even if she did, she wouldn’t know why she picked it up. She’s never really been one for all of those fashion idols (at least, as far as she can remember, which isn’t very far, but she doesn’t feel like she’s ever been one of those people who gets super obsessed with fashion and looking nice, except for maybe looking nice for Yasuke, but he doesn’t ever seem to notice that, so maybe not even for him, except sometimes, because she forgets), but there’s something familiar about the model with the bright blue eyes and the pink hair. She looks like cotton candy, all pink and blue and even white, like the paper stick the fluffy sugar is always on, and cotton candy is one of her favorites! That’s been written down in her notebook: she loves cotton candy, especially because one time Yasuke bought some for her at the fair, and she’d gotten it all over her face, and he’d brushed some of it off with his thumb and eaten it! Sometimes she’s not sure that actually happened, like maybe it was a dream, but whenever she reads it, she gets all tingly inside, so it must be true!
But the thing is….
The thing is that when Ryoko looks at the girl on the magazine cover, she gets all tingly inside, too. Sometimes, her heart pounds quick and hard in her chest like it does when she thinks about Yasuke, too, which doesn’t make any sense at all, because that’s the way she knows that she’s in love, and she’s in love with Yasuke, so she can’t be in love with that girl in the magazine.
But Ryoko buys the magazine anyway and she holds it to her chest and then she gets far enough away, long enough away that she forgets why she's holding the magazine to her chest and then she slows and she looks at it and she doesn’t remember but that tingling feeling comes back again and her eyes grow wide and she hopes that she bought that magazine (or maybe it came from Yasuke, maybe that's why her heart is pounding like that) and she holds it to her chest again and she runs to her dorm and she remembers just long enough to tuck the magazine into a secret special spot so that no one else knows she has it and she can take it out and look at that girl with the cotton candy sugar look and wonder why she makes her all tingly inside except that she forgets where she put it and forgets that she has it.
(Ryoko does not remember this, but there are somewhere between fifty and two hundred copies of magazines with Junko Enoshima’s face on them hidden around her dorm room, in numerous secret places to keep someone else from seeing them. Every now and again, she sticks the newest magazine in the same spot that she’s already used and she stares at the other one blankly before hiding them both together. She’s most likely to find the one she hides under her pillow. But that requires her to shove her hand there while she’s still awake, and that happens less often than you’d think.)
Then the day comes when Ryoko tries to stash her new magazine and finds that the special place she wants to stash it already has so many magazines with that idol’s gorgeous face on it hidden there that the new one won’t fit. So she tries another special place only to find the same thing. Again and again and again, until she’s pulled out all of her magazines – so many multiples of the same ones, but so many variations, too – and has to admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, she has a problem.
Ryoko pulls out her memory notebook, sighs softly to herself, and writes, I think maybe I’m in love with Junko Enoshima.
After confessing her problem to herself, Ryoko goes on the biggest spree she thinks she has ever been on (mostly because she can’t remember ever going on a bigger one, even if she already has). She starts taking notes in her notebook about all the really super cool wonderful things about Junko Enoshima, starting with her cotton candy colors (which makes her wonder if she tastes like cotton candy, and then she flushes a really bright red because why is she thinking about what Junko Enoshima tastes like and then she reads where her notebook says that maybe she’s in love with Junko and then she feels bad because she’s pretty sure she’s supposed to be in love with Yasuke, but she wouldn’t have written that she was maybe in love with Junko if she wasn’t maybe in love with Junko, so that’s a problem) and then her big bright happy always excited smile and how all of her clothes in all of those pictures look like they fit so well and Ryoko wonders what she would look like in Junko’s clothes and then she thinks that probably she wouldn’t look good in them at all because she’s all red and ugly and plain and Junko’s Junko.
Once Ryoko’s finished writing down all the things she likes about Junko, she starts investigating her, starting by reading all of the interviews in the magazines she has. Some of them she reads multiple times. The interviews don’t stick. So she starts taking notes on that, too, which only kind of helps.
And then Ryoko reads that Junko goes to Hope’s Peak Academy.
That sounds familiar.
Ryoko flips through her notebook and then stops, her eyes widening.
She goes to Hope’s Peak Academy! Sort of!
And so does Yasuke!
So maybe he can—
“What?”
Yasuke looks at her with anger. Ryoko’s pretty sure she’s never seen Yasuke look angry before because it looks really ugly on him except that it doesn’t because Yasuke’s not ugly but she’s pretty sure if she’d seen Yasuke look angry before she would remember it. She would have written it down, and she would have tried to draw him so that she could remember what he looked like when he was angry, even if it’s probably her least favorite of her looks.
“What the hell do you want with Junko Enoshima?”
Ryoko can’t explain it without saying that she thinks she’s maybe in love with her, and she can’t tell Yasuke that because maybe it would break his heart. He seems to really hate this Junko girl. But that means he has to know her, because you can only hate someone that completely if you know them! Or have been hurt by them!
...which makes her like Junko a little less because how could she like anyone who would hurt Yasuke.
“I-I-I just see her in those magazines all the time, and she’s really pretty, and I thought maybe she could help me look prettier because you’re always saying how ugly I am!” Ryoko holds her notebook tight to her chest like a lifeline (because it is one).
Yasuke’s eyes narrow. “Are you lying to me?” he asks, his voice a growl. In another situation, this could be cute. Right now, it’s not cute. It’s actually kind of scary. It should be funny that Yasuke can be scary, except that it isn’t because he’s being scary, but maybe later, she’ll think about it and laugh! Except probably not because she’ll probably forget just how scary Yasuke can be. His voice softens. “Is your memory better?”
“N-n-no—”
Yasuke reaches out and snatches Ryoko’s notebook from her.
“Hey!”
Ryoko leans up on her tiptoes to try and take it back from him, but Yasuke places a hand on her forehead, holding her in place as he scans the pages. “That’s my personal notebook!” she cries out. “I’ll forget if you don’t give it back—”
Yasuke’s eyes widen in horror. “You’re in love with her?”
Ryoko stops flailing for her notebook and immediately averts her eyes, blushing. “M-m-maybe.” She doesn’t want to see how heartbroken Yasuke must be. “I thought…I thought maybe if you introduced me to her—”
“She’s an ugly fucking bitch,” Yasuke says, tucking Ryoko’s notebook in his dirty shirt. “Just as ugly as you are. No. Worse.” He shoves Ryoko towards the bed. “Look, while you’re here, we can do that procedure. Help you with your memory.”
“B-b-but my notebook—”
“I’ll give it to you when you’re done.” Yasuke glares at her. “Now get up so I can help you.”
When Ryoko wakes up, she doesn’t know where she is. This doesn’t look like her room. There aren’t a bunch of post-it notes everywhere. To be fair, she doesn’t know that there should be post-it notes everywhere, and she doesn’t really remember what her room looks like, so maybe this is her room—
“You awake, ugly?”
Ryoko’s heart pounds once, hard, in her chest. She knows that voice. She knows—
Yasuke appears on the side of her bed and taps her head with a notebook. “This belongs to you. But you’ve got to write something in it before you go anywhere, got it?”
“S-s-sure?” Ryoko says, uncertain. “What do I write?”
“I, Ryoko Otonashi, hate Junko Enoshima.”
Every now and again, Ryoko passes magazines with Junko Enoshima’s face on them. She stares at them for a while, and her heart pounds in that wonderful, horrible way it does when she thinks of Yasuke. Her hands reach for them like reaching for her notebook. Sometimes, she even buys one or two.
But then Ryoko reads in her memory notebook that she hates Junko Enoshima.
Which is weird, because it feels kind of like she’s maybe in love with her. This feeling is love, isn’t it? Because it’s the same feeling she gets about Yasuke, like maybe her hearts going to tear itself into bits from the pain of it all, and she knows she loves Yasuke, it’s written all over her notebook in so many different ways with so many hearts and doodles.
But her notebook can’t be wrong.
So maybe love and hate just feel the same?
Ryoko thinks maybe she should ask Yasuke about that. He’d probably have something to say about it. But she also thinks that maybe she shouldn’t tell Yasuke that she thinks maybe she’s actually in love with Junko Enoshima and her notebook is wrong.
So she keeps the magazines she buys, and she hides them, and she looks at them with confusion, and she wonders why she would write that she hates Junko when her heart says she loves her.
Until she hides the magazine and she forgets again.