This fic will ultimately go along with the events that happen in canon, so try your best not to expect a certain character getting a happy ending.

Do enjoy.

Disclaimer: Dangan Ronpa is not owned by me.


He watched as Chisa lured her down the endless hallway, betraying all trust the two had previously built up over long months of time. He watched her face as she was pushed into the elevator that descended straight down to hell. Upon the girl's arrival, he watched as she listened to the obnoxious voice of the girl on the monitor, a voice belonging to Junko Enoshima.

Izuru Kamukara was promised by Enoshima that he would not be bored if he joined alongside her, and doing so left a rather confusing question floating around in his head. While Izuru thought that Junko's personality was as boring as anyone else's, the motive that she lived for oddly left him sticking around.

Despair was an awkward concept to him. He observed it during the student council killings and is sure he had never experienced it himself. He truly doesn't know what it would feel like, let alone what he would have to do to experience it. What he had learned though, was that it can make people's emotions insanely unstable.

He could certainly tell despair was present as those Student Council members hesitated to do anything at first, but within minutes they were all dead. Junko was probably expecting him to feel despair as he got the final kill, but it did not appear. The video that she had shown Mikan and Chisa caused similar reactions to the Student Council members, but when it was over it changed their entire personalities and outlooks on life. Everything was despair to them.

When Izuru focused his attention back over to the girl in front of the monitor, he could easily tell she was full of the other thing. The thing that he himself was made for yet saw very little of.

Chiaki Nanami was pure and full of hope, and he knew that was exactly why Junko had chosen her for this. Izuru had also been told that everyone in her class had nothing but positive things to say about her, which lead them all to voting her as their class representative.

Despite him having an odd feeling about Chiaki and knowing all these crucial facts about her, he didn't bother to stop Junko at the time. Why? He thought he had no reason to. But looking at Chiaki now…he couldn't help but wonder if he did.

The only possible one that came to his mind were those first few moments the two met in the room under the statue, merely hours ago. The stare down.

"Hajime, is that you?".

Hajime. His previous self? Izuru knew little to nothing about what he was like before and currently had no intention of finding out anytime soon. Regardless, he found that he couldn't force himself to look away from the girl, as her eyes were telling him a short story at the time. A story that while difficult to read, gave its reader multiple interpretations. He saw loneliness, confusion, and fear clouding her vision of him, but after a blink of both of her eyes, he thought he saw something else for just a mere second. It was less of a vision and more of a feeling, one that he couldn't describe easily. It was a warm and special feeling, one that was calming but also nerve-wracking, serious yet joyful. When Junko interrupted the two and brought them back to her despair filled reality, the feelings vanished.

Were those few precious moments a reason to stop all of this? Saving the girl because she recognized who he used to be? He was aware that the pictures Mikan brought contained only the students from her class, which meant that he was never in Chiaki's class, let alone the same building, so why would she care for him? More and more questions began to flood the Ultimate Hope's head faster than he could address them, and suddenly they stopped.

They didn't stop coming because he solved all of them, as most of them were unsolvable with his current knowledge. They stopped as he was pulled back into reality to a loud scream of pain, coming from no other than her.

The maze was open, and the image of Junko had been replaced from the monitor with Chiaki Nanami, the Ultimate Gamer. Izuru immediately noticed her arm was bleeding and her face was full of tears. Trying to remember why Junko was doing this, a sharp pain came to his chest. He watched as the girl had been stabbed yet again but was still moving.

Why did he…feel pain?

"I can make it!" the wounded Chiaki yelled as she continued to march on. Izuru watched her limping as Junko gave her ten seconds, surprised at her ability to still move. Junko's counting made her move slightly faster, but then the counting paused.

A scream escaped the girl as another spear went flying right through her leg.

Izuru felt as if he had been shot as the pain made its way back into his body, and was stumbling towards the wall while attempting to comprehend what was happening to him. "Not…like this." he heard Chiaki's low voice over the monitor, but decided not to look anymore.

Izuru desperately tried his best to regain himself, and immediately started to follow the trail of blood into the maze. He did not know why he was doing so, as it felt like his body was moving on its own.

The farther he traveled the more the blood there was, to the point where there were puddles of it lying around. He managed to find a slice of a familiar brown jacket attached to the wall by spear, and while the monitors were all pitch black now, he noticed that one of them had a deformed line of blood going across it. Even though most of it was dripping down to the floor, his body didn't let that distract him from where it was going. The blood eventually led him to an open door which contained a scene that would change him forever.

Chiaki laid near the door in a massive pile of her own blood, her face completely soaked in a mixture of the blood combined with water from her eyes. He noticed that she no longer had six major wounds, but more scattered all around her. Izuru stood frozen in sight of her, with his mind trying to process this. Was this the despair Junko mentioned? It couldn't be, Chiaki had nothing to do with him.

"Hinata-is that...you?". Chiaki's eye opened. He said nothing. "I just wanted…to help you.". Still standing in place, he couldn't help but give her the truth.

"I have no memories of my past self." Izuru told the girl.

"So you really don't remember?". No response came out. She tried her best to let out a sigh. "I couldn't save my classmates, and-" she hesitated because of the pain. "I only wanted to help.".

"Why do you still think of others even now?" Izuru finally asked, and Chiaki was quick to answer.

"That class was my life!". She slowly started to use her arms. "And so were you…".

She started to drag herself across the floor. "I'm not ready to die…". More blood poured out as she crawled towards him, refusing to stop. She was begging for help.

Izuru's vision began to blur as a voice was yelling at him inside his head. It wasn't Chiaki's, nor Junko's. It was one he had never heard before, at least not recently. Unless it was-

Chiaki collapsed back down to the ground, only an inch away from where she was originally.

"Please...One more...game...". Her head lowered, until she slammed face down to the ground.

There was no more struggling, just...silence.

He couldn't - no, refused – to turn himself away from her, because something was happening to him. There were tears running down his face.

Hinata?

His focus turned towards Chiaki's hairpin. It was a unique multi-colored spaceship hairpin that he had never seen anyone wear before and staring at it was, giving him a vision?

He saw an isolated fountain surrounded by an endless number of trees, and in front of it sat a bench with two teenagers on it, one boy and one girl. They were…playing a game?

"Gala Omega? I recognize it." The boy said, with the girl looking surprised. A moment later, the two were in different spots. They were now standing in front of the fountain, the girl was looking at the boy's back who was a small distance away from her.

"See you tomorrow?".

"Yeah, see you tomorr—

The tears didn't stop, they just came out faster. Were those real moments of him? They couldn't be, he was gone. And now, she is as well.

Izuru's mind dialed back to the question that posed him to make all the moves he has made up until this point. Was despair stronger than hope, if hope is now...dead? He once again thought back to the moments under the statue with the girl by his feet, the feeling he felt. That feeling felt much better than the despair he thinks he felt, yet it hasn't appeared since. It had to have been a glimmer of hope.

He must solve that question.

Izuru started to dry his face and looked at the lifeless Chiaki once more. Particularly the hairpin, the object that gave him that vision of what he thinks is the forgotten past. He bent down and removed it, grasping it tightly in his hand, and exiting the room without saying another word.

Junko's plan must have succeeded, meaning he has seen all he needed to about despair. He was curious about the opposite now, hope. Could hope triumph against despair? There was only one way to know.

As Izuru navigated his way back across the bloody maze, he continued to brush something aside that had been present and increasingly violent since he found Chiaki lying on the floor in that room.

The anger coming from his inner voice.


This chapter was heartbreaking and hard to write, as Chiaki's death broke me and watching it again didn't help. Although, I do think it sets a decent tone for the rest of the fic.

I tried my best depicting Izuru as his normal silent and stoic self on the outside, but on the inside I wanted him to react to emotions and try to answer questions in a way they never showed in dr3. So please, tell me how I did on that.

tellonym: waterbird