"So," he asked. "How's death?"
"Hard," she said. "It just keeps going."
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods
-ooo-
Breathe.
Just breathe.
It's always like this.
A back hall, too cold, because that idiot from season forty-four put just had to put that clause in his stupid freaking contract about it being precisely eighteen degrees in the waiting areas.
Something the kind folks of Team Danganronpa hadn't let him change after the fact even though they knew the freezer incident during the third murder case of his season left him unable to tolerant the cold.
You have a pretty healthy sense of humor, so you can admit that it was a little funny to see him sitting there, all huddled in on himself, dressed for an Arctic winter during his first convention.
It's significantly less funny a few years down the road when you're still stuck suffering through his poor choices.
You can hear the low, discontent grumble of the milling, restless crowd. It's such a familiar sound that if you close your eyes you might be standing in the back hall of any one of a hundreds of different venues around the world.
In a way it's almost like coming home… if you had run away from said home and then been dragged back in chains with the threat of death and ruin hanging over your head like your own personal Sword of Damocles.
But that's fine.
That's to be expected.
It's always like this.
The panic, the anger, the annoyance… you go through all this every time and you get through it every time.
It's just a few hours.
You can do this.
You've done this before, hundreds, no, thousands of times.
Just walk through the curtain when they call your name… no… her name.
Hers.
It wasn't yours, not really. It was just… just a costume you'd worn for a while. You were just a method actor who went too deep. Her life was never yours to keep.
You try not to think about it too much.
You're fine.
You've got this.
Just go through the curtain, cross the stage, smile and wave and then proceed to the table, sit down with your overpriced, lukewarm coffee and your complimentary bottle of water and brace yourself so that you're ready to meet your adoring public.
Easy.
It really is the easiest job in the world.
Hello and goodbye.
That's it.
That's all you have to say.
Sign whatever bullshit thing they shove in front of you.
That's all you have to do.
And you're good at it.
You've had to be.
The contract doesn't say you have to do anything more than show up, of course, but… you've learned that there are penalties for not meeting their expectations.
For not smiling for them.
Because if you don't there will be stories.
People will talk and then it'll be all over the place online and they'll theorize about what's wrong with you, whether you're sick, whether you've finally lost it or something and then someone is going to publish your address online again and all those assholes with their stupid, freaking cameras are gonna be outside your house again and once they show up, the neighbors are gonna find out who you are.
They're gonna know.
Of course, it's not like you lie about it, it's not like you go out of your way to hide it, but your season was ages ago and only real Ronpaheads really remember the names of all the survivors and it's not like you really look all that much like you did then. You've grown your hair out and you've stopped wearing your contacts and you dress much nicer than you used to. Almost no one just recognizes you on the street anymore.
But that will all change once the fans show up, because when the fans show up with their signs and their cameras, they'll all know, everyone will know who you are. And once they know it's just a matter of time before it all goes to shit.
Just a matter of time before some self-righteous jerk breaks your car windows and spray paints baby killer across the front of your house and never freaking mind that you were a baby too, that you were just trying to survive. Nevermind that you don't even remember what it was like to be that person, the person who wanted this life, that wrote all those posts and visited all those chatrooms and made all those movies. That you're not her. They you can't be her anymore. That you're not….
Fuck.
You hate thinking about this stuff.
Your hands are shaking and your stomach is sinking and you can't catch your breath.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This isn't the time for this.
Just breathe.
Just keeping breathing.
You can do this.
Just… don't think about it.
Don't. Think. About. It.
This is fine.
You're fine.
You're not a kid anymore.
You have a life and a home outside of here and maybe they're not what you would have wanted for yourself, but they're yours and that's something.
You have a cat, for fuck's sake. You have purchased and cared for a living thing that is not yourself for over six months and the world has not ended and the cat is fat and happy and you're both… fine.
Your life is boring and predictable and you're fine.
Just fine.
Nothing is gonna happen.
You're gonna keep your head down and you'll smile like you always do and you'll make it through.
Because if you don't….
If you don't… it won't matter, it never does.
You'll have to move again, change your name again, shave your head or dye your hair, or maybe move to the top of a mountain and live the rest of your life as a hermit with no running water and no electricity, living off the land and pooping in the forest or something.
But you never have to go that far.
You never even have to change your name.
You're not relevant anymore.
They lose interest soon enough.
What's the point?
If you go to all those lengths it'll just give them more to talk about, more reason to find you interesting and relevant again for all the wrong reasons.
So instead you'll smile and you'll sign their shitty t-shirts and their stupid photos and hope to hell someone else will slip, will draw their attention so they'll leave you the heck alone.
Because until they do, they're gonna ask you questions that you're not going to want to answer.
They're gonna ask you to say their favorite lines from the show too, but you're definitely not doing that.
You don't have to do much of anything really.
You don't have to even look at them if you don't want to.
You will… but you don't have to.
Don't have to look and see them dressed up like you… her… or one of the others. Playing at being Yuki or Nanami or some poorly conceived human version of Monokuma or one of the lame nobodies from one of the other seasons.
Some of the more ambitious, enterprising fans will come dressed as stylized versions of their favorite execution.
Pretentious little bastards.
Acting like they have any idea what true art is.
But that's fine.
Let them dress up however they want. It doesn't bother you as much as it used to. It's still… it's still bad sometimes, but you've learned not to think about it and how to look past them when it's too much… which it almost always is.
But it's fine.
You're fine.
You can get through this.
It's just a couple of hours.
Through the curtain, smile and wave, to the table, sit and greet and sign and before you know it you'll be done and you'll be free to return to your hotel room and order room service and watch terrible movies that you don't understand and eat overpriced food and, before you know it, you'll be on a plane back home and you'll have a whole two glorious weeks to yourself before you have to attend yet another one of these total soul-sucking shit shows.
And what is taking them so damn long?
"Sorry," your handler says as if he's read your mind. "They're having some technical difficulties. It shouldn't be too much longer."
His pronunciation sucks.
It sucks so bad you can barely make out what he's saying half the time.
Freaking America.
It's like this every time you have to come here for one of these things.
All the good handlers go to the bigger names, the newer survivors. All those poor bastards, still wide-eyed and horrified by all the camera flashes and having panic attacks at the drop of a hat, all those… kids.
Kids.
All just a bunch of babies, really.
They all look so young.
So lost.
The winner of this latest game, is pale, frowning at nothing, his sweater-clad arms wrapped tight around his stomach as he leans back against the wall, clearly not hearing a single word his handler is saying.
Good handlers are wasted on newbies.
You look away before he can catch you staring. Some of them try to talk to you and the other veterans and they always ask the same things.
Does it get better?
What do I do now?
How did you get through it?
So many questions you don't know how to answer and probably wouldn't answer even if you did know what to say.
No one helped you through this shit, after all.
No one told you how bad it would be.
No one told you about the fans that would send you mail, that would follow your every move, getting off on your suffering like you were the main event rather than just a person trying to get by in a world you didn't know or understand.
About having to move again and again to escape that level of scrutiny, but never succeeding.
No one thought to mention how you would always, always feel wrong and broken and how you would always long for a life, for people that didn't even exist.
No one told you anything.
You had to learn everything the hard way and you're stronger for it. If they want to survive, they need to figure things out for themselves.
It's only fair.
Not that you think this latest one is gonna have a chance to do that. You'd heard all the rumors and even though you don't watch the show there was no way to avoid all the spoilers and chatter surrounding last week's finale.
It's all over the news, social media, it's everywhere.
He's going to be the first contestant to play two games in a row, they say.
He's going to be the Super High School Level Survivor in the next game. He volunteered for it, they say.
The fans have been spamming the chatrooms about it all week.
What a twist!
A player who wants to continue to play, who is willing to sacrifice himself so the other contestant- who isn't really his sister and never was- can be freed of their obligation.
It's sweet, it's tragic, it's futile, but you're not gonna be the one to tell him that.
Let the poor dumb bastard think he's saving his sister or whatever. It's not like there's a chance in hell he'll survive the next game anyway.
What's the point of telling him his sacrifice is worthless?
That the fans- those rabid little monsters- will never let that girl live a peaceful life. They'll track her to the ends of the Earth. Peep in her windows, post photos of her online: cell phone shots of her getting coffee, blurry stills of her in her underwear taken with little low-quality cameras they'll have planted in her house. She'll try to escape- they all do- but it won't work. They'll find her. Hell, they always find you and you're not half as enticing a target as she will be. They'll take that insincere plea from the producers as a challenge, a dare, and she'll never be free of them.
He'll die for nothing.
Just like all the rest.
But you know there's no point in telling him that. He'll never believe you and even if he does… what's the point?
It's not like they're gonna let him remember any of this anyway. You're pretty sure he only survived the last game because he never made himself an easy target and he had an ally from the very beginning. He'll never manage without his sister to look after. He'll never be able to make anything of the opportunity he's been given.
The hall is warm.
Too warm.
Stifling.
Did the freaking air conditioner finally break?
"How much longer?" You ask, irritably, turning a glare on your handler, who is standing beside you flipping through his phone trying to look busier than he actually is.
"I'll, um, go see if I can, uh, find out," your terrible handler replies, jogging off in the direction of one of the red-shirted, clipboard-wielding, stressed out looking assholes who's currently yelling at someone through their headset.
You're pretty sure that's not a great sign.
"It's gonna be a few more minutes," he comments when he returns, not even trying to look appropriately apologetic.
"If whatever it is isn't fixed in the next ten minutes, I'm gonna walk," you reply, irritated and rather hopeful that it won't be and you'll have an excuse to duck out early and return to your room.
Your handler frowns, "You can't do that. They said you have to be here. You have an obligation to your fans."
An obligation.
That was certainly one way of putting it.
Another way of putting it would have been: you are contractually bound to appear at every convention they request your presence at until you die or manage to somehow disappear off the face of the planet.
The future stretches out long and horribly boring before you.
Fuck.
Your handler is calling out to you as you dart down the hall towards the bathroom and you already know you'll be lucky if that you manage to make into the room- much less into the stall or all the way to an actual toilet- before you vomit up whatever horrible Kraft services bullshit they fed you for lunch.
You hate these little American events that they always shove into your schedule at the last minute.
All the food tastes like greasy, overcooked garbage and you don't know nearly enough of the language to ask for directions much less actually get by so you're at the mercy of your stupid handler who is all of twelve and speaks Japanese with the most awful accent and he's been with you since you landed in Los Angeles three days ago and you keep hoping you'll lose him at some point and it doesn't even matter that if you did you'd end up wandering the streets, penniless and alone in the really shitty part of Anaheim because they said you absolutely had to go to this stupid exclusive fan event before you could go home and that's all you want. Just to go home. Even though it's not really your home and no matter how many years have passed, no matter how many different houses you've lived in or how often you buy new things, nothing ever feels right. Every aspect of your life fits like a stranger's coat, always too tight or too loose and you can't figure out how to make it right. Because nothing can ever be right again. Because you're not her. The person who wrote and stared in all those fan films. Sometimes real late at night when you've had way too much to drink, you'll watch them. Watch that person who is you and isn't, as they play at being Komaeda Nagito or the candy maker girl from the anime or any number of other contestants. Most of it isn't porn, most of it's just reenactments or continuations or something, but there are a couple which are… hard to watch.
No one will ever take you seriously after something like that.
You aren't the person you were before the game. You're not her and you'll never be her. Because you're still the girl she made you. No matter how often you try to convince yourself that you're not. You still wake up every day with all those images in your head, all those beautiful ideas, such wonderful inspiration, reaching for a life you never truly lived and every damn morning you cry in the shower where the cameras can't see you for all the things you aren't and all the things you are and nothing makes sense.
Nothing ever makes sense.
And the conventions make it all worse. Because they want you to be her, the character your played on the show. They want you to be who you really are, for them, but none of it is real for them. It's all make believe. It's all fantasy. None of them understand what you've lost.
They laugh and joke and they ask you if you think you and Mari had chemistry and what happened when the cameras when dark at night and they ask you if you regret it and they ask you- oh so seriously, like they really, really care- what it's like to be living with someone else's memories in your head and you want to reach across the table and just strangle the life out of them, because they don't know and they don't care how much it hurts and how much you hate her for doing this to you and how much you want to….
You make it to the toilet, somehow.
You kind of want to congratulate yourself for that. It's more than you managed the last four times this happened. Instead you wipe your mouth against the back of your hand and stagger to your feet.
Your throat aches and your mouth tastes awful in the aftermath as you flush the toilet.
You're not surprised to find your handler standing next to the sinks frowning at you in some sick parody of concern when you open the door. You'd have been shocked if he'd actually stayed outside and given you some privacy.
He stood there, staring at you, chewing on his lip like he was debating whether he should say something or not.
You hope he'll just keep his mouth shut.
But you're not the least bit surprised when he doesn't.
"Sorry this convention isn't going very well for you," he comments in his usual broken, half-assed Japanese.
You can't help the laughter that bubbles past your lips as you shake your head and head to the sink to wash your hands and splash water on your face, clean your glasses.
You were at a convention in Sydney and some assholes broke into your hotel room while you were down on the show floor and had sex on your unmade bed and stole all your dirty laundry.
At a convention in London a few months ago, you vomited all over a fan dressed as Enoshima Junko and they'd worn those stains like a badge of honor all day, telling the story to anyone who would listen and every social media post that tagged you for a month contained some reference to that incident.
And neither of those incidents even made your top twenty when it came to terrible con experiences.
The bar was very, very high after almost ten years of this shit.
You could tell him that, but you can't really see the point.
"Mint," you say instead and he looks flustered, scrambling through his pockets until he comes up with an half-used, paper wrapped tube which he offers to you with a tentative smile.
Gross.
You take it anyway, shoving two of the chewy mints in your mouth and crunching into them, handing the remainder back wordlessly and striding towards the door.
Your handler mutters something in English and you don't have to speak the language to know when someone is insulting you.
Whatever.
It's not like you care whether your shitty handler likes you.
When you emerge back into the hallway, nothing has changed except the rumble of the crowd has gotten noticeably louder and more discontent.
Fuck.
They were lucky the new season had just ended, if they'd been a few months into a hiatus, things would have already gotten ugly.
Of course all that did was buy them a little extra time. If they don't handle things soon, there's still an excellent chance that the situation will devolve into a full-scale riot.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
In point of fact, it would be the seventh, but you've been lucky enough to have only been present for two of them. The one at that little hotel in Copenhagen and the big one in Beijing about three years ago. You'd survived both, somehow. A lot of fans had been killed though and Tanaka (who people usually called 'Tanaka Not That Tanaka') from season 23 had lost an eye.
You remembered hearing it had sold online for like four million yen or something equally ridiculous before the authorities had found and arrested the seller.
They'd never actually recovered the eye.
You were pretty sure it was probably floating in a jar in some rich asshole's private collection alongside all the weapons from Season 12 that had gone missing from Murder Hall a few years back.
There was a huge black market for the more desirable Dangan Ronpa memorabilia.
The down payment on your fourth house had been paid for by whatever asshole had bought the bloodstained shirt you were wearing during your season's finale.
It was kind of gross to think about, but the residuals from the show didn't pay that well and you'd had to move way too often over the years to do anything more than break even when you sold the places you moved out of.
"All right, looks like they're finally ready," your handler called, smiling.
And there's anxiety, back again like an old friend, coming to choke off your air as you try and fail to smile and nod.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
In almost no time at all, they're motioning you forward and dragging the curtain to the side as they wave you through.
You only catch the last bit of your introduction, but you're sure the first half was just as boring. It always is these days.
"...the only blackened contestant to ever survive! Let's give a warm welcome to Season Thirty-Eight's Super High School Level Director, Shirogane Tsumugi!"
The applause is token and you grit your teeth and move, stepping quickly out to the center stage, but like always you're just the opening act. An appetizer before the feast.
You smile and wave and take your place at the table and try not to be annoyed that they've put you in-between two nobodies from Season Forty-Five.
"And last, but certainly not least in your hearts. You wept when he volunteered to sacrifice himself to save his sister, to die so she might live! And by now I'm sure you've all heard the rumors and I can confirm for you, exclusively, as confirmed by Team Dangan Ronpa, that he will indeed be our very first returning contestant! You know him as the Super High School Level Adventurer and soon you will all know him as our very first Super High School Level Survivor! Let's all give a very warm welcome to our very own, Amami Rantaro!"
The crowd goes crazy.
Of course they do.
He's fresh meat and he's handsome and he was ready to give his life for his family.
Nevermind that he wasn't really the first returning contestant. Unless you were willing to just ignore the Hope's Peak Academy arc which, obviously, no one in their right mind would be willing to do.
Amami looks like he'd rather be anywhere than on that stage. He's pale and he's still hugging his arms tight across his chest. It makes him look vulnerable and the crowd just eats it up.
They love him.
He's a hero.
He's their hero. And they can't wait to watch him fall, to see him fail.
You don't have any sympathy for him.
He made his choice expecting to die, and he will, but first he must suffer through off-season purgatory.
It's Dangan Ronpa, after all.
Suffering is to be expected.
And the fans are just eating it up.
They're giddy, still awash in that post-season glow. They can't wait to see what the next season has in store. Whether Amami survives or dies, it's all the same to them. It's all about the game, the twists the turns, the surprises…
Hope versus despair.
And they have a new face to pin all their hopes on.
What could possibly be more exciting than that.
You glare down at the stack of photos on the table at your elbow. The picture is from the moment just after the verdict was announced and she's smiling, laughing, victorious.
You still remember the looks on all their faces.
So stupid.
They all looked so stupid.
Oh.
Inspiration strikes in the strangest places, but you've learned not to question it.
You glance up just in time to watch Amami take his place at the far end of the table.
To see him smile weakly at some remark his handler has made.
He's a hero.
He's their hero.
You can't help smiling.
You'll call your contact at Team Dangan Ronpa tonight, but you already know they'll say yes.
They know better than anyone that every good hero needs a great villain to bring out their fullest potential.
And everybody loves a comeback story.
-ooo-