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The warmth that upholds Hifumi’s head disappears. He drifts in the dark for a while, as if floating in the ocean—and absentmindedly, he has the thought of leaning back and flopping onto the comfort of a mattress, fresh sheets engulfing him into a world of much-needed sleep. He hasn’t rested properly in days. He would kill for some good sleep.
—or, erm, maybe that’s some poor word choice for the time being.
As quickly as Hifumi fades into unconsciousness, he finds himself awake again, lying flat on the ground. He blinks a few times, attempting to look for something to pay attention to. His head is killing him. A searing headache, concentrated in exactly one part of his head—he almost wants to close his eyes and drift back off into sleep.
The next thing he registers is the blinding lights hanging overhead. Oh, he recognizes those lights.
He’s in… the art room.
Where he was struck.
There’s a small hum of voices that begin to fill Hifumi’s ears. It’s nothing coherent, not yet. Distant conversation from the others. He doesn’t know why he can’t make out any of the words. He can barely see anything, either.
“Here.”
He tilts his head to the side. A girl with dark blue hair is crouched beside him, holding something that looks like a pair of glasses in her hands. But that can’t possibly be right.
Hifumi quickly accepts the item from her hands, pushes them onto his face. As his vision clears, he looks around the room again—Asahina is wiping away her tears; Ogami is posted between the two bodies on guard; Naegi is standing there, absolutely horrified—it’s the same array of events he’d seen for many of the other deaths.
And beside him is—“Miss Maizono?”
“Hi,” she starts, awkwardly. Her voice is missing its usual cheer. She doesn’t stare at him long, already finding it easier to look at Monokuma speaking about something Hifumi can’t make out. “Sorry, I’m not… usually who greets people when they,” she pauses, trying to find her words—not that there’s a nice way to say it—“die.”
The reality of things slowly starts to settle in. He pushes himself off the ground, struggling with his pounding headache. As he does so, he glances behind him.
His corpse stares right at him. There’s a crack on his glasses. In the anime and manga he buries himself under, dead bodies are either heartwrenchingly peaceful, or they’re too gory to even bear to look at. On first impression, he’s inclined to think his own dead body is applicable under the latter category. After a few passing moments, he finds himself believing otherwise.
It’s strange. Hifumi can’t wrap his head around it. Every real corpse he’s seen has ripped a scream straight from his throat. He doesn’t yell when he sees his own though, even when it’s taken him a moment longer to truly register that that’s him. He only feels empty staring at it, the blood running down his forehead and his head turned limply to the side.
Maizono clears her throat. “I figured… someone should come see you, though,” she reasons, as if trying to justify this to herself. “Fujisaki-san still can’t stand looking at the blood. And Kuwata-kun is…” She pauses again, this time vaguely gesturing with her hand in a way that Hifumi doesn’t understand. “Probably not good at comforting people. And Owada-kun is—”
Hifumi swallows dryly. “Not too happy, I take it,” he says, shivering at the prospect of having to face him later.
She hums. “He’s still with Ishimaru-kun in the other room. I don’t think either of them are taking it well—but I’m not sure what the right way to take this all in would be, anyway.”
He’s still staring at his corpse. Naegi finally shakes himself free of his trance and approaches him. Probably to examine him for clues. He realizes he doesn’t exactly want to be on the ground while he’s doing that.
“Oh, right,” Maizono says, shaking her head. For a brief moment, her voice climbs in pitch, and he can hear a ghost of the energy she once had when she was alive. She stands on her own two feet, circles around him and offers out her hand. “Let me help you up.”
Without much protest, Hifumi takes her hand, and with considerable effort from both of them, Hifumi is able to find his footing just as Naegi crouches to the side of his corpse, while Togami watches not too far away. He’s suddenly very aware of just how much weirder the both of them are. Togami more than Naegi, who at least looks upset and disturbed.
“I’m afraid I can’t understand how he does it,” Hifumi mutters quietly, though he does somewhat intend for Maizono to hear.
“Yeah, well… Naegi’s smarter than he looks,” she replies, releasing his hands. “I don’t think I stood a chance.”
Ah, right. Maizono had intended to kill too. He would have thought that he would be too scared to ever interact with someone capable of murder—he even thinks back to how jittery he felt around Fukawa, regardless of Syo’s presence—but the fear buried in his chest seems to have dulled out. Perhaps because he knows it’d be hypocritical to start acting strange.
At least Maizono failed to kill somebody. Hifumi succeeded.
He looks away from where his own body is, rubbing his head. He fidgets with the straps of his backpack while Maizono dusts herself off.
Absentmindedly, his gaze drifts towards the mallets set up on the wall. The base for the Justice Hammers. Hifumi saw a beauty in it, using an art tool to deliver justice to the one who would dare to have been so deplorable—there was supposed to be something poetic in it, so when Hifumi told the story for ages to come, he’d be something of an inspiration.
In the end, Hifumi wanted to make something memorable.
“Mister Ishimaru,” he starts, staring blankly at the mallets on the wall, “didn’t do any of that. Did he?”
Celestia’s story repeats in his mind. He thinks about her words that only now feel too much like an act. Is it dying that’s brought him so much clarity?
Maizono walks up beside him. “He didn’t,” she confirms, and he realizes that everyone else that’s dead has probably seen Hifumi be strung along like the fool he is. “Celeste lied to you.”
He doesn’t know how to feel. There’s a small part of him that’s angry; he truly, truly cared for Celestia. He wanted to be helpful. He wanted to avenge her and avenge Fujisaki’s creation.
But more importantly, a trap like Celestia’s wouldn’t have worked if Hifumi weren’t so simple-minded. He’s not like the characters in the stories he writes, the main hero that saves the day and finds their way—he’s the bumbling moron that goes and gets themselves killed first. A side character that nobody remembers the name of, just that he did something so terrible.
In the end, Hifumi only hurt—killed—someone who didn’t deserve it.
He reaches out for the one mallet that stands out among those that remain, but his hand phases through it. It’s not dried properly. A water droplet rolls down the side of it and drips onto the workspace counter underneath it.
The only reason it’d have to be cleaned is… if it were used recently. And the only reason it’d have to have been used recently is…
Hifumi’s eyes glance up across the room again. Celestia dusts off her skirt after not doing much, and exits the room unnoticed.
“Yamada-kun,” Maizono says, trying to find some words of comfort.
Hifumi doesn’t know how he’s meant to sit with any of this for the time being. “I…” He drags out the word, interrupting the only person in the room who can hear him. “I don’t have the heart to handle this. P-Perhaps I should step out…”
Maizono slowly nods. “That’s understandable. Um, don’t stray too far.”
Is there anything that would stop him? Even the world of 3D doesn’t seem to hold that limit on him anymore.
Instead of responding, however, he finds himself shuffling out of the room—his hand instincitvely attempts to push on the door, but his heart sinks when he realizes he can just phase through the door, too.
Hifumi Yamada is surely dead. No save file to return to.