A Kinder World – A Danganronpa Fanfiction
Daimon
The brat's the spitting image of his mother when she was a child, bouncing off the walls with eternal vigour, stopping only to apply plasters to scraped knees and bruised arms before shooting off again armed with nothing more than the invincible confidence of youth. Give him half an excuse and he'll up a tree in a heartbeat. The second they run out of milk or bread he's ready to bolt down the road to the corner shop so they can restock. The kid would probably die for him, given how he looks up at his old man with those wide, nervous eyes whenever he thinks he's done wrong and hops from foot to foot waiting for praise when he knows he's done well.
It's still not enough. It's not nearly enough to fill the void that he created with his entrance into the world. He knows that it's not the boy's fault, not entirely. Sometimes childbirth takes more from the mother than she could give, even after they'd already given everything they could and would do the same again without thinking about it. But that knowledge is small comfort when he's alone at night, sharing a bed with memories and a six-pack of cheap beer, cursing endlessly into the darkness for the eleventh anniversary in a row. She left them behind, and left him with a child that he had no idea how to handle, let alone raise. He's not sure if it's supposed to be his credit or his shame that it took five years of single parenthood for him to snap, taking out five years of grief and solitary nights on the boy's face in the depths of despair. Either way it was the first and last time it happened, as when the morning had come and he'd been forced to look upon his work, the sight of the small, desperate tears running over the horrendous bruise left over as his son begged forgiveness for a crime he'd committed unwillingly was enough to shock the hangover right out of him. He's drunk less since then. Not stopped, because then he'd have nothing to help him through the long nights, but it's a start.
They've had a rhythm since that day, systems between them to make it through life. He works stupid hours at the quarry to keep up the rent, and the kid buys cheap bento boxes on the way home so that neither of them is forced to learn how to cook. It's not an easy life, and they can go whole weeks without seeing one another if morning and evening rituals are interrupted, but life is rarely easy for anyone other than rich snobs and pointless celebrities. But sometimes it throws them a break. Sundays, for example. They're free from their obligations on Sundays, and so they go out and make up the time the working week robs them of. There's a park nearby that they're fond of, where the kid can run around to his heart's content and where he can exchange tips with the other parents that huddle around waiting for their offspring to tire out. It's not easy, and never will be. But as he watches the brat, his brat take hold of a massive pink pigtail and pull in the only way young boys can show affection for the girls they like, all the old man can do is laugh as he watches history repeat itself before him.
Kemuri
She's barely out of childhood herself when she gets pregnant. The experience is enough to convince her never to drink again, as not only has it lumbered her with a cold marriage, but when the child finally comes he's wrong from day one. She knows she shouldn't say wrong, but it's the word that always jumps into her head when she looks at him not interacting with other children, whenever he struggles to work out basic sentences but runs away on tangents at the flick of whatever switchboard runs inside his mind. That's not to say his condition is all bad. After all, for a kid that can find ten different ways to trip over his shoes before breakfast he has beautiful hands, hands that can turn a block of wood into a fully-functioning carousel in just under an hour. And he was blessed with her face, so that the children are at least willing to talk to him the once before they give up on understanding him. All in all, if the workshop thing doesn't work out, he could make his way as a model if nothing else. He's got so much potential.
Which is why it hurts that he's stolen all of hers. She wanted to backpack across Europe. Can't do that with a kid, let alone a clumsy one. So sometimes all she wants to do is take that perfect face and cover it up out of spite, take his latest creation and smash it so that he knows what it's like to have a dream ruined before your eyes. But she doesn't. It's not fair to punish him for her mistakes, so she tries to correct him. She makes sure he signs up for the right clubs and takes the night shift at her terrible job so he won't be alone when he comes back from school, teaches him how to do his tie and shoelaces even if it takes weeks for it to sink in. And when he comes home with the smartly dressed boy, she makes sure he doesn't snatch or slap so his one friend won't be scared and run away. She's less worried about that last one. Nagisa's a smart kid, maybe a little too much so.
All the kids seem a little different if she's honest with herself, watching as the gang of five play heroes and demons, with the girls storming the 'castle' owned by the boys, complete with masks her son made to really spook the other adults. He goes down first, as expected. What she's not expecting is for him to take a tumble off the side and fall down the slide, his backpack bursting open. She's about to run over when the kids drop everything to tend to him, and his pure laughter fills the air, lightening her heart as Kotoko's mother bends over double to apologise, and she has to stop her from making a scene. Maybe she doesn't have to worry about them so much. Maybe she's found others who can accept her strange little boy and all the gifts and quirks that come with him.
Utsugi
There's only so much time when you're young, especially if you're a girl. Especially if you're a girl in show business, and she so wants her daughter to be in show business, to take up the baton from where she was forced to let it lie. But not that badly. If it was only her, she'd sell herself in a heartbeat, but when that disgusting slob made the least subtle pass she's heard in all her years, it was all she could do not to punch him. Thankfully, her husband did it for her, taking them both in hand and storming out before the confused security could arrive. Less thankfully, it means that every door closed at once as the word went around. They're a problem family now, which means that her little girl never gets called back if they're allowed to audition in the first place. Her husband's talked about moving out to Tokyo, but they know that's as much of a pipedream as finding continuous work for Kotoko at this point, not on his salary at any rate. Besides, the way Towa City is growing, it'll be just as big in a few years, if not bigger now that there's talk of foreign investment. And so they double down, charging headlong at every posting that comes up. It's long and tiring work, and some Saturdays they don't come home until Sunday night, by which time there's very little will to make dinner, let alone act.
The arguments start after a month. Kotoko wants to see her friends at the weekends, not get dragged to the mainland to perform. Things get heated, resulting in a screaming match through a barricaded door, ending in the worst words she can muster.
"I wish I had sold you."
Because then they'd see only open doors. Because the child can't understand where she could be in life by now, and she's so selfish. It lasts only a minute and after that it's all stonewalled apologising until her husband comes home and suggests that they close Kotoko's window as it's about to start raining. Which is when they find out she's run away, leaving only a note proclaiming that they don't need to worry about her anymore.
As it turns out, they don't need to go far, despite driving like madmen through torrential streets. They pull into a café opposite the closest park and find her sitting in the back surrounded by other kids, all cuddled up together as she glumly drinks a chocolate milkshake. They receive a round of booing as the children spot them, but are gifted seats by the understanding adults. They've all been there, although details are left untouched. They wait out the storm and drink too much coffee, but manage to set up a network of their own, including the son of the Towa corporation, who asks for a list of names that he can pass on to his father and start cracking heads. They're the last to leave so that can slip opposite Kotoko and apologise again, and ask her what they should have done long ago.
"Are you even happy acting?"
Of course she is, but they take it too seriously. She doesn't want to go to Kyoto just to wait in offices and get turned down, she wants to go as a family and have fun. She wants to play make-believe with her friends instead, because she's really learned how to pull all sorts of faces from the boys and how to mask her feelings from Monaca, which helps with dealing with the more annoying kids in their class. There's a lot of hugging and crying and they've spent ten thousand yen in coffee but it's worth it to bring them together in the end.
After all, it could have been much worse for all of them.
Shingetsu
They took a simple route when planning their son's life: make it as similar to a game as possible. Children enjoy games, so removing the 'work' part of learning and replacing it with RPG terminology would mean that the boy would come to associate learning with play while giving them a straightforward measuring stick by which to gage his progress. In theory, they would end up with a child who would be akin to Izuru Kamukura, adept in any academic field. In practise, they had produced a broken child. He'd been brought home by his friends, who told them that he had simply shut down upon receiving a 99 on his English test. He had yet to recover, still staring out into nothing as he lay across the sofa with his head in his mother's lap. He was put to bed normally that night under the assumption that he would recover after a night of natural rest. After a week of silence and hollow stares they take to the bottle in realisation of what they have done. They're given a second reminder the next morning as they find him at his desk scribbling madly at a mountain of notes, an IV drip his sole lifeline that they're forced to snap so he can sit down and relax for once.
They explain everything and apologise in full. They've miscalculated on a massive scale, and they want to make things right again. He's not sure at first, expecting some new test or trial right up until they clear up the learning room and throw out all the 'items' that they had used to push him forward. A family meal follows, albeit fast food since neither of them has ever put thought to cooking before, not that he cares. He's just happy to open up and talk about himself for once, how he managed to better Masaru's throw in P.E. by using a sudden crosswind instead of swinging like a madman and that he's earned a sudden appreciation for cookies thanks to their homeroom representative.
It's a slow road back to normality for them, peppered with cheap comments from the other researchers about their commitment and the occasional relapse when they simply can't tear him away from studying because the old fears come back. To that end, they look into the friends he's made at school, and turn their talents to planning a new life for him. The burning desire to be perfect is divided amongst three other children who can't hold a candle to him and one who can but pretends otherwise as he guides them through their weekend homework during the weekly study groups. After that's wrapped up they take to the nearby park, so that he can claim back some of the youth they stole from him and so that they can lick their wounds by swapping confessions with the parents.
He'll always have doubts about himself, especially when it comes to the Towa girl (they've prepared a twenty-page document on biological processes for when the time comes), but for now they've given him back his smile, and that's all the research material they need.
Towa
He hates her from the first day. She's not a real Towa, just some mistake his idiot father squirted into a gold-digger that's come back to haunt them both. At least she knows her place, following in his shadow with big, sad, lonely eyes, begging to be accepted by the family that's forced to keep her instead of passing on the buck. The whole incident has thoroughly soured his opinions on women, to the point where he's almost happy to be followed by her, because at least then he's got a barrier field around him to keep his own mother away, the coward who refuses to speak up about her new step-daughter for fear of losing her extravagant lifestyle. It's almost a shame when she's enrolled at Hope's Peak Elementary, the void at his side filled by cruel reality as he's drawn back into business affairs and the new cold war between his parents.
He hates her. Like a flash flood or sudden earthquake, she's slammed into his life with no regard for the turmoil left over in her wake and worse still she tries. Tries to make herself part of the Towas, tries to cheer him up, tries to be accepted in a world that does not want her. Appearances must be maintained, so she joins them at garden parties and other money-displaying events, only to be met with a wall of silence, never acknowledged other than "the other child". He can see the barbs stick her every time, the slight dimming in her eyes until she finally slinks off to entertain herself. He's overjoyed for a time. Right up until he goes to the bathroom and finds her at the peak of a very tall staircase, one foot slipping and eyes wide with fear.
When he's asked later, he'll claim that it was an accident, that he was going up and she was going down, and they fell into each other in the middle. It's half true. They meet in the middle, but only because he sprints as hard as he can to launch up the stairs to catch her, arms outstretched. He hates her. He hates her eyes, so hopeful yet always hurting. He hates that she's exposed the bare threads holding his parents together. He hates the tingle in his stomach when she brushes him accidently, and how he's more likely to glance at a girl her age than one of the peers he'll have to marry one day. But in that moment, she's not the homewrecking bastard he hates, but his little sister, the shadow that tries so hard only to be ignored. And he doesn't want her to hurt herself. In that moment, that's all that's needed for them to fall together, her slight frame smothered by his suit as they bounce all the way down and hit the ground.
He wakes up at home with doctors fussing him something stupid given that all he's done is bang his head a little. His parents are furious with worry, and demand to know why. Like he says, it was just an accident.
He doesn't go looking for Monaca, knowing that she'll come looking for him eventually. He wasn't expecting her to make an appointment as his five'0 clock consultation. He barely has time to be surprised before she's shouting at him, something dark flickering in her eyes as she makes demands of her own. How can he have the nerve to ignore and slight her like everyone else, only to do something so stupidly heroic to someone he hates? He gives her the real answer, albeit bitten off through sarcastic shades. The two siblings glare at each other for the longest time before she reaches into her cutesy backpack and places a restraining bolt on his desk, to aid with his current project. Should reduce emissions on Towa brand electric cars by ten percent she claims. Her engineering talent is something else he hates, so he throws it back at her. If she wants to pay him back, she can work under him instead, so he can make sure she's not handed him a bomb. And while he can't pay her, being Vice-President to the Vice-President of Towa is a nice thing to brag about to her little friends, while outranking a thousand less talented people he has to put up with. Maybe he'll bump her up to Vice-President proper when he takes over. Hell, if she wants to fight him for the title that's fine too, but he's not going to ignore her anymore; either as a sister or a business rival.
Her counter-offer is for him to drive her and Kotoko to the shopping centre next Saturday, because they need new shoes and the boys want to show her what bowling is. If he's free to chaperone the day out, she'll show him exactly why his new engines keep exploding after fifty-thousand miles.
A pretty good deal all around, and one that lasts the next few years as the Towa name sweeps across the globe and struggles to save it during The Tragedy.