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She won't accept this, not after how long it took for the UTP to actually recognise her as an Ultimate. Toshiko won't let her mother stand in the way of her achieving her dreams.
"I will never forget this, mother!" she screams, voice dangerously high, almost resembling a child throwing a tantrum. Almost, and the thought of being perceived as such gives her the strength to claw back some of her composure. "They've decided I'm to be an Ultimate - they have deemed me outstanding, valuing my talents above all the other candidates! So why won't you let me go?"
Her mother watches her rant, arms folded. Disappointed. Unmoved by her yelling. "Put down your fans."
Toshiko freezes, the fan still covering her face. "D-Do not attempt to change the subject, mother! I assure you, your attempts at distracting me-"
"I've listened to every word that's come out of your mouth. The UTP wants you to attend Eden's Garden Academy with fifteen other Ultimate students this September. And I am telling you to put your fans down."
The hand, holding her fan in front of her face, starts to tremble. Suddenly, she feels her eyes stinging. "If you insist...t-then, I will endeavour to search for my face mask-"
Her mother snatches the fans out of her hands, exposing her face. Quickly, Toshiko moves to cover her mouth, but not before her mother grabs her face with both of her hands.
"Stop that! M-Mother, why are you-"
"You're not going to Eden's Garden Academy," her mother says slowly, "because if I let you go and they destroy the little self-confidence you have left, I'll never forgive myself."
Toshiko is shocked into silence, because she sees tears welling in her mother's eyes. Tears from her mother made of steel, too fierce to show weakness. Her mother strokes her cheek, gently tracing over the marks over her mouth, the indents where her flesh was carved out, the dark, deep scars left behind.
"And I can harass the parents of those cruel, cruel children at your school...and I can fight anyone on the street who dares to insult you behind your back..." Her tears began to fall, dropping onto Toshiko's face. "But I can't protect you when you're halfway across the world. And if those other children got to the top through immoral means, or if despite their skills they're utterly repugnant people...I won't be able to save you."
A lump starts forming in Toshiko's throat. She tries to speak past it, but the tears stinging her eyes were already blurring her vision.
"Please, stay. Don't go." her mother begs, holding her close to her chest. Hugging her daughter tight as Toshiko, too, starts to break down in tears.
Toshiko watches the 7th of September come and go. She's awake the evening she was meant to leave, on her phone. Looking up the other Ultimates online. She finds herself looking up this Ultimate Blacksmith: she had looked terrifying, but all the reviews spoke about how nice she was, how skilled her works were. How surprised they were, to see somebody so young with this level of skill. A part of her wonders if they would have been friends.
She tries to avoid looking at her replacement, but Toshiko sees bits and pieces about her: the Ultimate Chocolatier, three months younger than her. She's tanned, speaking in a heavy French accent, and she's a few inches taller than Toshiko. But still short. She smiles a lot and Toshiko sees a brief clip of her laughing - quiet, high-pitched, and finds herself loathing the sound of it.
Toshiko stays awake all night until the time she was meant to be getting on the train next morning. She obsessively tracks their social media pages. Therefore, Toshiko finds out early when the train doesn't arrive - one hour turns into two, which turns into six, and suddenly their faces are on the news. People online talking about another kidnapping, and a few comments about Danganronpa that are swiftly deleted. Her mother strictly forbade her from watching any of those shows, not after the revelations of the people sick enough to recreate it in real life, but the information about Danganronpa was unavoidable - the show, it's controversy, its cancelling, the recreations people made where real people died and real people were kidnapped and their lives were turned into a spectacle. It was hideous and gruesome, and Toshiko tried to avoid it when possible.
A day after their disappearance, a calling card was sent to the UTP. A bullet, with the tip covered in blood dyed bright pink. And the world panicked, now that yet another group of young talents had been stolen.
It's nearing three months when a gas station reports a group of five exhausted teenagers begging for help. On the video circulating everywhere, Toshiko sees the face of the Ultimate Debater, black roots growing in, eyes black instead of green. Missing one hand, voice quivering: W-We need your help, please, you have to help us- and her mother takes her phone away before she can watch any more.
It's futile: the videos of their capture are released everywhere - given the name Project: Eden's Garden, hours of videos of the sixteen students dwindling down into a measly five. She doesn't want to see it. She doesn't want to hear about it, but a recommended video sends her off course and she's watching the Chocolatier sobbing violently before a metal chain wraps around her neck. She had murdered the world famous influencer Kai Monteago. His family sue the UTP for the crime of their son's murder, even though it's futile - the UTP washing their hands clean from any wrongdoing. The video blurs the gore, but Toshiko's shaken. The hatred she'd felt towards the girl disappearing in an instant.
Toshiko finds her classmates giving her a wider berth than usual. Something about her dodging a bullet - how she was close to dying alongside all of them. She hears whispered theories as to whether or not she would have made it, and hears one voice wishing her dead before Toshiko finally turns around and scolds them, causing them to scatter. After school, she cries, recounting the story to her mother, but the tears aren't all from the gossip. She was so close to walking herself to her death - inches away from being kidnapped and tortured. The 'motives' she'd heard from their hushed conversations - starvation, secrets revealed, incentives created to single out certain people. Toshiko knows in her bones that had she been there instead would never have walked out of there alive...and would that be a good thing? Would that be better, than the death of the Chocolatier, whose grandparents sorely missed her?
Her mother listens to her, keeping a stiff upper lip. Later, when Toshiko's cried herself out, lying in her room, she overhears her mother arguing with on the phone with the principal about insensitive comments and harassment. The next day, they're all smiles, and it's almost like her peers weren't theorising if she could have won a class trial behind her back.
Above everything, she's still here, safe and sound. The Chocolatier had died, burned to a crisp. The families of the dead mourn and cry out for justice that may never be served for their loved ones. The survivors struggle to reintegrate into society, the businesses they once had failing. The scars on their soul carved deep, some too deep to ever fade.
But Toshiko gets to survive.