Gamer in the Fog
Enter Nanami Chiaki
Disclaimer – I do not own either Danganronpa or anything from the Persona Franchise. Danganronpa and its characters are the property of Kazutaka Kodaka, Spike Chunsoft, NIS America, Lerche and Funimation, and Persona and its characters are property of Kōji Okada, Kazuma Kaneko, Atlus (both Japan and USA), ASCII Corporation, Arc Systems Works, Deep Silver, Koei Ghostlight, Sega, Square Enix and Zen United.
Summery – A Nanami Chiaki in the place of Persona 4's protagonist (Narukami Yū/Seta Sōji) scenario. A very lonely and friendless Chiaki goes to stay with her uncle and cousin in the rural country town of Inaba while her uncaring parents go and work overseas as part of their jobs. Unsure of herself and her ability to make friends, Chiaki just hopes to be able to get by without causing too much trouble for everyone. However, as Chiaki starts to make friends, much to her own surprise, she finds them all thrust into the midst of a strange and terrifying mystery, a mystery that could potentially have world-ending consequences if left unchecked. With the power of Persona, Chiaki sets out to solve the mystery along with her new friends, but can they navigate through the metaphorical fog in order to find the truth or is the truth doomed to be forever lost in the fog? However, as if turns out, Chiaki's Persona did not develop in the way that the mastermind intended. Just what could this mean? One thing's for sure though, Nanami Chiaki, using her vast knowledge of video games is determined to get to the bottom of it no matter what, and is determined to hang onto the bonds she's formed with her new friends, but even in light of this strange mystery, other forces seem to be at work, laying the groundwork for their own nefarious purposes.
Sunday 10th April 2011
"So, in light of your husband's affair, I can understand that you're upset, Hīragi-san," the news reporter said, holding his microphone out to the mouth of the brown-haired woman he was currently interviewing.
"Upset," the woman, Hīragi, said as she glared furiously at the news reporter, clearly outraged at him for stating the obvious, "Of course I'm upset. We've only been married for a year, and he has the nerve to go off and have a fling with that disgusting piece of reporter trash behind my back. I think any woman who had just discovered that her husband was seeing some disease-ridden harlot behind her back would be upset. Mark my words, I will be seeking compensation from that despicable slut and that sad excuse of a TV Station she happens to work for. When I'm through with her, she won't be able…"
"…To get a job anywhere in the entire country," Hīragi went on ranting, as a couple stood underneath a big TV that had been built into the side of a building in Tōkyō watching, and listening in on the interview, "If she ever wants to have any hope of avoiding starving to death, then it'll be in her best interests to flee the country and get a job somewhere else in the world."
"Tch, what a bitch," the man scoffed, his face in visible disgust as he glared up at the kimono-clad woman on the TV, and then he proceeded to speak as if she was standing right in front of him, "We already know what you think of Yamano-san. There's no need to remind us at every given opportunity."
"Though, I have to say that that Yamano woman's no better," the woman, who just so happened to be his wife, said quietly to her husband, "You should've seen last week's interview with her when news of the affair broke."
Hīragi was the only one displayed on camera and all that could be seen of the reporter interviewing her was his outstretched arm and the microphone in his hand. From what the couple could see of the reporter, he appeared to wearing a white shirt and a green coat over it, but considering that all they could see was his arm, it was no surprise that that was all they could make out.
Hīragi, who could be seen had long brown hair that was tied into a bun at the back of her head and dark brown eyes. She also had light purple eyeshadow over the bottom of her upper eyelids and white and purple hair decorations that looked like a series of flowers on either side of her head. She wore a red kimono with a pink obi sash with various designs on it and a brownish orange string tied around the centre of the sash. In any case, she then started to go off into, yet another rant, calling the other woman, Yamano all sorts of derogatory names and complaining about how much of an awful woman she believed she was.
"You're absolutely right," the husband said in response to his wife's statement, as he nodded his head in agreement, "In fact, when you put it all into perspective and take a look at both of them, then it becomes obviously apparent that they're just as bad as each other, but at least, unlike the bitch on TV right now, Yamano-san's not using the news as a means of gaining attention. I don't know where she is, but I heard that she's fled to some rural town in the countryside somewhere in order to keep a low prolife till this whole mess blows over."
"But unfortunately for us, with news of this affair, mostly everyone else's probably already forgotten about our daughter's suicide by now," the wife said with a sad sigh, as she shed a tear, remembering the ordeal that her daughter went through and how it had driven her to suicide, "It's true what they say. That everyone takes the news for granted. So long as you or those you care about aren't personally affected by it, you're just eager to find out everything you can, even if it means making a circus out of someone else's misfortune."
"Yeah, and whenever something everyone deems more exciting comes along, they quickly forget about what it was they were obsessing over before and focus on the new story instead," the husband added as he agreed with his wife, nodding his head and then let out a sad sigh, "And before what happened with our little Yui-chan, we were just as guilty as they were."
"Unfortunately I can't see any reason to argue with that," the wife said, sighing in reluctant agreement, as she knew that her husband was right, and then the look on her face suddenly hardened into a look of pure fury with no prior warning as her tone became that of a furious growl, "Though, I'm pretty sure that that Maizono bitch had something to do with what happened to our little Yui-chan."
Sixteen-year-old Nanami Chiaki stood at a nearby bus stop, half-engrossed in the game she was playing on her Nantendō Game Girl Advance and half-listening to the nearby couple looking up at Hīragi Misuzu's latest interview on the big TV on the side of the building. She could not help but sigh as she listened to them. She was mostly too engrossed in her video games to pay any sort of attention to everything else that was going on round about her and in the rest of the world at large, but she did manage to pick up bits and pieces of information, either from snippets of conversations she happened to overhear or parts of TV news reports that she happened to hear as she passed by.
She did not know the full story of what the whole affair was about, but from what she managed to hear, she deduced that a man by the name of Namatame Tarō, a Councilman's Secretary from some rural town somewhere, was married to a well-known Enka Singer, Hīragi Misuzu, and it had been discovered that he had been having an affair with a woman by the name of Yamano Mayumi. However, that was all she knew, since she did not pay all that much attention to any of the news reports or conversations that were going on round about her. She did not see why they should interest her since they had nothing to do with her. However, since she was standing there waiting on the bus that would take her home, she could not help, but listen in on the husband and wife's conversation.
She guessed that they must have been the parents of one, Kaneda Yui, or Yukan, as she had been known in the idol world. The story of Yukan's disgrace, and the fact that it had led to her suicide had been the previous story that everyone had been interested in before the whole affair between Namatame Tarō, Yamano Mayumi and Hīragi Misuzu broke. However, like Mr. and Mrs. Kaneda were talking about, since news of Namatame Tarō's affair with Yamano Mayumi broke, everyone seemed to have been quick to forget about the Kaneda Yui story, and like with the current story, Chiaki could admit that she did not know much about that either, heck, until Kaneda Yui's suicide, she did not even know what her real name had actually been, since from what she had heard about her beforehand had all been pertaining to her stage name.
She knew the name, Yukan, but she had not known that her real name had been Kaneda Yui. However, from what she did know, Yukan, or Kaneda Yui, had been a fairly recent idol who had been quickly gaining in popularity before her disgrace and suicide, and from what she heard, Kaneda Yui could have potentially earned her place alongside some of the bigshot names in the Japanese Idol Industry, such as, Risette or Risechī, as she had originally called herself, and who was only just starting to get popular herself, though Chiaki had to admit that, like with Kaneda Yui at first, she did not know what her real name was, and Maizono Sayaka, the lead singer of an all-girl pop-band. She did not know the details of the incident, but apparently, during a TV show that Kaneda Yui was supposed to perform on, she somehow managed to end up on stage in nothing except her birthday suit during one of the other performances, and as a result of the shame she suffered due to the incident, she had committed suicide just two days later.
Shaking her head, Chiaki let out a sigh, as she noticed a bus driving towards the stop she was waiting at. Neither, Yukan, or Kaneda Yui's fate, nor what was currently happening between Namatame Tarō, Hīragi Misuzu or Yamano Mayumi was any concern of hers, so she pushed all thoughts of both incidents to the back of her mind as the bus pulled up in front of her and opened the door at the side at the middle of the bus. She then entered the bus, taking a hand off her handheld and grabbing a ticket from a machine inside the entrance to her right, and briefly taking her eyes of the screen of her handheld game, she examined the ticket to see that it displayed the number, five. Nodding to herself, she went and took a seat nearby and brought her eyes back to the screen of her Game Girl Advance and continued with her game after she placed her ticket in the pouch on her backpack that she had placed in the seat next to her after she had taken it off.
Once everyone waiting at the bus stop was on board, the doors closed and the bus drove off. Despite seemingly being engrossed in her game, Chiaki was not completely ignorant to everything that was going on round about her. She had one eye on the screen of her handheld and one eye looking out the window, looking out for when her stop would come up. She was not all that worried that she might miss her stop on account of being too engrossed in her game to notice when her stop was coming up, as she had taken this journey many times before, so much so that she knew roughly how long it would take to get from the stop she had just gotten on to the stop nearest her home like the back of her hand. It normally took between twenty and thirty minutes, sometimes a little bit longer or less, to get to her stop depending on how heavy the traffic was.
Anyway, Chiaki just let out another sigh, shaking her head, as she knew that this was probably going to be the last time she would take this bus journey from the city out to her home, at least until the following year. Tomorrow, she would be making one final journey into the city, and she would not be coming back till next year.
"Why do my parents always have to care so much more about their jobs than they do about me?" she thought to herself sadly, shaking her head with a subconscious wince.
It was no secret to the young gamer girl that her parents cared more about their jobs than they did about her. In fact, it was not all that surprising to her that they did not care about her at all, and she knew that that was the truth. It had always like that for her for as long as she could remember, and it was also no secret that her own parents viewed her as a nuisance that only served to get in the way of them pursuing their careers. In fact, they made absolutely no secret that she was an unwanted pregnancy that was a result of them both getting drunk on the night of their wedding reception and constantly ignored her whenever she was around, and on the rare occasions they regarded her, they made it well-known just how much they viewed her very existence as a mistake and berated her at every opportunity they had. Whenever she was in the house, they forced her to stay in her room where she would not bother them, but that did not mean that she was grounded. She was allowed to go outside, but it was just that if she did not want to be in her room, then she was to go outside, which she did on a regular basis. Well, at least they had the decency to feed her whenever she happened to be in the house during mealtimes, but more often than naught, once her parents were sure that she was old enough to buy food for herself and could take care of herself on her own, she found herself buying her own meals. Her parents were considerate enough to make sure she had the money to do so. She found herself astonished at how healthy she managed to keep herself despite mostly having to buy the majority of her own meals.
Anyway, whenever her parents had to leave home for an extended period of time, they always shunted her onto her father's younger sister, Arisawa Kasumi, her husband, Arisawa Yūma Sr. and their two children Yūma Jr. and Aki, getting them to take care of her, which happened very frequently, and at first, they had not really minded, but as time went on, and her Aunt Kasumi found herself and her family having to take care of her more and more often in her brother and sister-in-law's stead for a good portion of the past couple of years, their attitudes gradually soured and eventually became not so different from the attitudes of her parents in that they did not like having to look after her all the time. They had eventually come to resent her just as much as her parents did. However, at least they still had the decency not to neglect her whenever they were forced to look after her and grudgingly took care of her, though they made no secret of just how much they hated it, and had already made it quite clear that they did not want her in their home.
Even her two cousins, Yūma Jr. and Aki, hated her, in fact, they both had hated her right from day one when she first came over, finding her interest in video games, and the fact that she was mostly engrossed in whatever handheld game she happened to have at the time rather unnerving and a bit intimidating. They also had video games of their own, but would not let her play with them, and they regarded her as if she was some kind of disease in human form and even called her names such as, "freak" or "gaming nerd". They, or at the very least, Yūma Jr. seemed to have a passionate hatred of her, with Aki just seeming to follow her brother's example, as she often saw them playing their video games, but whenever they noticed her, they would often stop what they were doing and chase her away, and when she confronted them on it, they often repeated their cruel remarks to her, saying that she was some sort of gaming freak, in essence, she figured that they, though it was mainly Yūma Jr. rather than Aki, were rather envious of her skills in video games. They no doubt felt that if they let her play with them, then she would win all the time and they feared that they would never be able to beat her, and as a result, they resented her for it, though she had no idea why they would think that, since when she first met them, all she told them was that she was good at video games. She had no idea how they could possibly think that she would beat them all the time.
It was because of her parents that she had developed a love of video games in the first place, as the first games she got were from her parents, though it was not out of the kindness of their hearts that they bought them for her. They only bought video games for her in order to keep her occupied so that she would not pester them while they continued to immerse themselves in their careers, and they kept buying her new games until, like with when it came to feeding her, she was old enough to buy them on her own, and after that, they switched to giving her money instead so that she could take care of herself. All in all, her family life was pretty much non-existent with her parents pretending that she did not exist most of the time and her Aunt Kasumi and her family viewing her as an uninvited intruder in their home despite them grudgingly being a bit more caring than her parents.
"And unfortunately, my school life isn't any better," she thought with yet another sigh.
Unfortunately, life at school was not any better. Like her cousins, her schoolmates found her love of video games weird, and though they never bullied her over it, they avoided her like the plague, and she often heard them talking about her behind her back. The fact that they often saw her mostly engrossed in whatever handheld she happened to be carrying at the time as if she was in some kind of trance unnerving and intimidating, much like Yūma Jr. and Aki, plus there was also the fact that she was naturally shy and nervous round other people, as she did not know how to interact with them, which only served to fan the flames. Also, her parents were fairly wealthy thanks to their high-earning jobs, and though they were not as rich as Western-style billionaires, they were wealthy enough to be noticed, and that caused her schoolmates to mistake her shyness for a snobbish attitude, and also, she was of the Nanami Family, a family well known for producing highly talented individuals. With the exceptions of her father and grandfather before him, each generation of the Nanami Family had at least one member scouted to attend the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy, an exclusive government-sanctioned school for those high-schoolers who just so happened to possess exceptionally high talents. That only served to add to the number of reasons why her schoolmates believed her to be a rich and arrogant snob, despite the fact that neither her grandfather nor her father were scouted and invited to attend Hope's Peak.
As for her abilities in playing video games, Chiaki had to admit that she was phenomenal, though she did not let it go to her head, and in all honesty, she did not really care all that much for how good her abilities were. Even as a toddler hardly anyone could match her talent, well there was one girl whom she met back in kindergarten that managed to match her, and even defeat her from time to time, but after her time in kindergarten was over, her parents ended up moving away due to gaining higher-paid jobs, and she never saw that girl again. Anyway, when it came to video games, anyone seeing Chiaki play them would find it hard to believe that she was just a beginner if she just so happened to be playing that particular game for the first time, as she breezed through every game she played. Heck, even on her first run, in games with a difficulty setting, despite never having played the game before, she always set the difficulty at the highest possible level and still managed to beat the game as if she had set the difficulty to the lowest possible level. In games that involved health-bars, she mostly managed to clear an entire level without suffering a single hit, though there was the odd occasion where she did suffer a hit, but those were so few and far between that they were basically one-offs, and it was also exceptionally rare for her to lose a life as well.
In any case, she had developed a liking for video games, as they managed to keep her occupied and offered her an escape from the reality of her situation, and unlike most people, she never grew tired of games, no matter how long she played them. Her favourite game was Gala Omega, a classic shooter game from the early 1980s similar to Space Invaders that was already over a decade old when she was born, and despite that, along with the fact that it was the first game she ever played, she still was not tired of playing it, despite having played it on New Game Plus multiple times before. She even remembered one time when she managed to play it on a New Game Plus ten times in a row without stopping. It was the game that she was currently playing on her Game Girl Advance.
However, noticing that her stop was coming up, she got up out her seat, picked up her backpack and pushed the button on the wall of the bus between two of the windows in order to tell the driver to stop, and then she looked away from the screen of her Game Girl Advance and up at the fare display screen above the driver that displayed a number of fares, and she then took the ticket she took when she first entered the bus out of the pouch on her backpack before looking at the number displayed on it, and once she matched her fare to the number on her ticket, she took out a thousand yen note and walked up to a change machine beside the driver and fed the note into the machine, which caused it to dispense a good number of coins that Chiaki took and placed three of the coins, along with the ticket she had into the fare dispenser next to the driver before she moved to leave through the door beside the driver.
Once she was out of the bus, she put her backpack on her back and turned right and started walking down the sidewalk as the bus closed its doors and then drove off. However, Chiaki paid the bus no mind as she turned her attention back to her game and walked towards a street corner where she planned on turning left. Her house was just a seven-minute walk from the bus stop, so she did not have to worry about anyone mugging her, especially considering that the street was well lit and that the lights in the houses on either side of the street were on, indicating that there were people inside them, so if anyone did try something, then she could rest easy in knowing that someone would undoubtedly alert the police, even if just because of the noise.
However, as Chiaki passed a gateway to a house to her left, she just so happened to notice a strange bluish white butterfly sitting on top of the metal gate out of the corner of her eye, which caused her to stop and pause her game.
"Eh?" she said aloud, as she turned to look at the butterfly as it started flapping its wings and rose up off the gate and flew right towards her before circling her repeatedly, and Chiaki had to admit that she could not help but feel a bit intimidated.
Her eyes widened in disbelief as she saw that this particular butterfly seemed to be giving of a bright phosphorescent glow and small particles of light appeared to be falling from its rear that fell for a bit before fizzling out. What she found most intimidating, however, was that it looked as if she was being showered in those light particles. However, after a few seconds of circling the gamer girl, the butterfly suddenly flew off, leaving behind a rather confused and somewhat shaken Chiaki, who shook her head and closed her eyes. Once she opened her eyes again, she noticed that the butterfly had already flown out of sight. After she managed to calm herself down, she then shrugged her shoulders, chalking the experience up as a trick of the light as she stared up at the streetlight sitting at the edge of the sidewalk beside where the gate that the butterfly had been sitting on was and nodded to herself in reassurance.
She then turned her attention back to her Game Girl Advance, but just as she was about to resume playing her game, the screen suddenly flickered, much to her confusion and then a blank grey colour suddenly replaced her paused game on the screen, but before the gamer girl had a chance to even contemplate this, though she decided that it must be due to some glitch or something, crimson red Roman Alphabet text started scrolling along the screen that read, "I am thou, thou art I" in English before fading away, and then the screen displayed nothing but static as if it were a TV monitor, and before Chiaki could even register this, a silhouette suddenly appeared among the static. Despite the silhouette being shrouded in shadow, the longer Chiaki stared, the more the silhouette came into focus, and the clearer the silhouette became, Chiaki came to see that the silhouette was that of a long-haired woman wearing a one-piece dress and holding a box in her hands at stomach-level with one hand resting on top of the box and the other holding it at the bottom. However, before the woman on the screen became clear enough for Chiaki to identify any other features, the silhouette and the static on the screen both vanished and was replaced with the display of her paused game.
"Huh, what was that just now?" she said to herself aloud in shakenly frightened confusion, unsure what to make of what had just happened as she examined her handheld rather hesitantly, "It's never glitched like that before."
She spent the next few seconds looking over her Game Girl Advance somewhat fearfully, as if expecting something else to happen, but after a while, when she saw that nothing else was happening, and she was sure that whatever it was had passed, she rather hesitantly pushed the pause button and resumed her game, though she was still confused as to why it had glitched the way it did, and she had to admit that she was also still a bit frightened as well. Just what was with that text and that mysterious woman with the box in her hands? The whole thing was confusing, and also a bit intimidating. Sure, she got the occasional glitch every now and then, but incidents like those were few and far between, and they always seemed to correct themselves rather quickly, but they had been nothing like what she had just seen. There was just no possible way to explain it. Evidently still a bit confused and shaken, she had taken her game rather slowly, as if expecting another similar glitch to happen, but after a few minutes of no further interruptions, she just shrugged her shoulders as she started to calm down, putting it, along with the mysterious glowing butterfly, down to her wild imagination and continued to walk towards her house.
"So I guess what's going on with that Namatame guy is the latest big thing, huh?" a male voice came, causing Chiaki to look up slightly from the screen and glance ahead of her, since the voice was coming from in front of her.
She noticed two teenaged boys that looked about as old as she was, if not a bit older or a bit younger, walking towards her, but did not look to be particularly interested in her, as they seemed to be engaged in their own conversation. She just kept on walking, not paying them any attention, though she kept her ears tuned in to their conversation.
"Yeah, that's right," the boy to Chiaki's left in response to his friend's statement, "He married some enka singer and then started banging a reporter on the side."
"Ouch, that's rough," the boy that had spoken first said simply, "I heard that that enka chick's not too happy and is out to ruin her rival."
"So you saw that interview?" the second boy said questioningly, obviously referring to the interview that the Kanedas had been watching while Chiaki had been waiting for the bus back in the city.
"Yeah, though I wonder what that means for what happened to Yukan," the first boy said with a sigh, bringing up the previous story before the Namatame Scandal.
"You're still focused on that?" the second boy said in confusion, before letting out a scoff, "Get over it, that's yesterday's news. Besides, if you ask for my opinion, she has no one to blame but herself."
"How can you say that?" the first boy said, sounding rather flabbergasted, just as Chiaki walked past the two of them, though they both continued to ignore her since they did not stop to regard her.
"Well, it's obvious that she had to have been pulling some sort of prank," the second boy said in his own defence, "Though, just how she thought that interrupting another performance while naked was a fun thing to do is beyond me."
Hearing this caused Chiaki to tense up as she bristled with an unexplained anger that seemed to wash over her like a tsunami from out of nowhere, causing her grip on her Game Girl Advance to tighten, but rather than stop and confront the two boys she just increased the pace of her walk, and she was quickly out of earshot of the two boys.
"What do they know?" Chiaki thought to herself furiously with a slightly red face, "Sometimes it's best to keep your opinions to yourself."
She had no idea why, but for some reason, the boy suggesting that Kaneda Yui doing what she had done deliberately infuriated her. That boy did not know the full story. Just who was he to state such a thing? Chiaki definitely had her own opinion on the matter, but unlike that boy, she kept it to herself, especially considering how little she knew about the incident herself, and she knew that there was a chance that she could be wrong. However, in her opinion, she did not think that Kaneda Yui did what she did of her own freewill. Why anyone would pull a stunt such as that intentionally while believing that it was just a joke was beyond her, but like what she directed at the boy that suggested it, what did she know? Who knows, for all she knew, he could be right, even though she sincerely doubted it.
It did cause her to recall Mrs. Kaneda's comment about how she believed that "that Maizono bitch" had something to do with her daughter's disgrace. She guessed that she must have been referring to Maizono Sayaka, the leader of the all-girl pop-band, though Chiaki had no idea why she would make such an accusation. Could Kaneda Yui's disgrace have been initiated by Maizono Sayaka, in a bid to eliminate a potential rival? Were there idols in the Idol Industry willing to go that far in order to get ahead of their rivals? Chiaki knew a little bit about the competitive nature of the Idol Industry and that idols, even those from the same agencies, competed with one another for popularity, but she had no idea about the ins and outs of the Idol Industry, so she could not say for certain if Mrs. Kaneda's statement had any truth to it. Nonetheless, her lack of knowledge only served to reinforce her lack of interest in the incident. It had nothing to do with her, so she kept her opinions to herself, and if it did indeed turn out that Yukan's disgrace was a result of some kind of foul play, then that was for the parties involved to uncover and deal with, not her.
Shaking her head, deciding that she had strayed too far off topic, she continued to make her way home with the incident involving the mysterious glowing butterfly and the inexplicable glitch on her Game Girl Advance both forgotten about.
A few minutes later, Chiaki arrived back at her house, opening the front door and entering into the genkan, a traditional Japanese entranceway where those that entered were required to take off their shoes before entering the house proper. Chiaki removed her shoes, leaving them on the floor of the genkan, pointing towards the door and then walked into living room to see her mother, Nanami Chiyoko, sitting on the sofa talking to someone on the phone. Chiyoko had long brownish grey hair that was tied into a ponytail that went down to behind her waist and her eyes were a pale reddish brown colour. She was currently dressed in her business attire that consisted of dark brown pantyhose, a black skirt that went down to just above her knees, a white shirt and a black coat that went over her shirt. She also had a thick black string tied at the back of her head that held her ponytail up.
"So I understand that all her stuff has arrived, right, Ryō-chan?" Chiyoko said into the phone before she turned and noticed her daughter standing in the small hallway that led to the genkan.
Glaring at her daughter with a disgusted scowl on her face, she silently pointed towards the stairs, and Chiaki only nodded with a resided sigh, understanding that her mother was telling her to go to her room.
"I see," she went on to say into the phone, her expression now back to what it was before she noticed her daughter, after the person on the other end had replied to her comment, "So you're agreeing to take her in while Yoshirō-kun and I are away overseas in New York then?"
As Chiaki walked towards the stairs, she could not help but listen in on her mother's conversation with whomever she was speaking to on the phone, and from what she heard, it seemed as if they were talking about her. It did cause her pace towards the stairs to slow to a crawl, as she was curious as to what they were discussing, though she did have a fair idea, and she also had a fair idea as to who her mother was talking to.
"Really, I honestly can't thank you enough, Ryō-chan," Chiyoko said as her face brightened up happily, "You're a real life-saver, you know that. Honestly, for a while I was unsure on what to do, considering that Kasumi, Yoshirō-kun's ungrateful bitch of a sister refused to play ball this time around."
"I knew it," Chiaki thought to herself, shaking her head, her mother's comment having confirmed her suspicions.
However, just then, Chiyoko happened to glance her way and noticed that she was still there, which caused her to glare disdainfully at her.
"Hold on just one moment, Ryō-chan," Chiyoko said into the phone, keeping her tone pleasant before she pulled it away from her ear and put her hand over the mouthpiece, and then her tone became a lot harsher as she raised her voice when she continued to speak, "Just what do you think you're still doing here, you pathetic waste of space? I already told you where to go, so go!"
Chiaki just flinched, but just did as she was told and rather hurriedly made her way upstairs without saying a word, knowing that it was pointless arguing with her mother, and that arguing with her would only serve to infuriate her even more. However, rather than go straight to her room, she stayed at the top of the stairs in order to listen in on her mother's side of the conversation she was having on the phone.
"Sorry about that, Ryō-chan, our neighbour's cat somehow managed to get in the house and I was just scaring it out," she heard her mother lie.
She then let out another sad sigh and shook her head. This was just another aspect of her home life. Whenever her parents were on the phone and they saw fit to scold her, they always made up some lie in order to explain the interruption to whomever they had been talking to rather than admit to the truth, though she was not sure why. She was sure that she was not the only person to be scolded while their parents were on the phone. No one would hold it against them if they spoke the truth. She was sure that some children were disruptive enough to annoy their parents while they were taking an important phone call. There was no need to lie about it. However, she berated herself for being so surprised since it fitted in with their parents' personalities perfectly. They liked to pretend that they did not have a daughter and all because of their careers. However, the person on the other end of the phone obviously knew who she was, so it made no sense why her mother would still feel the need to lie unless it was just a force of habit.
"Once again, thanks a lot," she heard her mother saying, "She'll be coming tomorrow. I trust that you'll be there at the station to meet her."
Chiaki nodded, reaffirming her own confirmation that her mother and the person she was speaking to were indeed talking about her. However, the sound of a toilet flushing, followed by a door opening a few seconds later caught her attention and she turned to see her father, Nanami Yoshirō had just came out the toilet to her right, and when he noticed her, he shot her a rather contemptuous glare, which caused Chiaki to tremble, and she wisely ran past him and towards her room with his gaze silently following her till she had gone into her room and shut the door.
Her father had light red, almost pinkish hair and the same pale pink eyes as his daughter. He also had a small mole just above the left side of his upper lip. The mole itself was so small that it was barely noticeable, but if one were to concentrate hard enough, then they would notice a small black dot just above the left side of his upper lip. Like his wife, he was also dressed in business attire that consisted of white socks, black trousers with a black belt around the waist, a white shirt with a black necktie and a black coat over his shirt with a series of three buttons running vertically along the ends of either sleeve.
Once she was in her room, Chiaki sighed miserably, shaking her head as her hands tightened their hold on her Game Girl Advance. She hated her current situation, she just hated it. Her parents hated her guts, treating her as if her birth was some sort of unpardonable crime, and she had no friends to rely on, since all her schoolmates viewed her as a freakish stuck-up snob due to her love of video games, shy nature and the fact that she was from a well-known family of Hope's Peak alumni, despite her grandfather and father not being alumni of Hope's Peak, and that they found her being engrossed in her handhelds rather unnerving and intimidating. She felt so alone in the world. She did remember that she had made one friend during her time in kindergarten, well, actually two friends. She had befriended a pair of fraternal twin sisters during her second, and final year in kindergarten after the youngest one noticed her and took an interest in the game she had been playing at the time on her handheld, and out of the kindness of her heart, Chiaki let her play, and to her surprise, the girl had managed to completely demolish her high score, which motived her to play harder, and before either of them knew it, they had befriended one another over their rivalry, as neither one of them could score an absolute permanent victory over the other.
Her lips curved into a smile as she remembered those times. Those were the only fond memories she had. She remembered that during the first day they met, the girl's older sister had marched up to her, initially believing that she was antagonising her little sister, having misunderstood her statement of "I'm going to beat you" as "I'm going to beat you up", and tried to chase her off. Thankfully, the younger sister cleared that misunderstanding up, and before the three of them knew it, they were all having fun over Chiaki's video game, though the older sister was nowhere near as good as Chiaki or her sister. However, for the duration of the year, it was just the three of them, and at the end of the year, the younger sister had been upset to see Chiaki go, since it was her final year, but Chiaki made a promise to try and find her when she started attending elementary school, since both sisters were a year younger than her.
Unfortunately, it was not meant to be, as Chiaki remembered how her parents disapproved of her friendship with the two girls due to their poor backgrounds, and after she arrived home on the final day of kindergarten, her parents had informed her out of the blue that they were moving away, since they both had gained new jobs that paid them higher salaries, and that upset her greatly, but her parents had been completely cold and uncaring on the matter and so, they moved away with Chiaki suffering from a broken heart, since she would not be able to keep her promise to the younger sister. She remembered that afterwards, she had cried herself to sleep for more than a week, much to her parents' displeasure.
"That was so long ago," Chiaki thought to herself, shedding a few tears as she thought about the two girls, wondering where they were and how they were doing, though it was mostly the younger sister rather than the older sister since she had been the one that Chiaki had spent the most time with, "Gee, so much has happened since then that I can't even remember their names."
Shaking her head, she brought her mind back to her current situation. Her parents' jobs now required them to work overseas for a whole year, and as expected, they were going to leave her behind. However, this time, rather than go and stay with her Aunt Kasumi and her family, she was going to go and stay with her mother's younger brother instead. She guessed that that was who her mother had been talking to on the phone. Basically, her Aunt Kasumi and her family had had enough of taking care of her all the time and refused to cater to her parents' whims this time. Besides in the past, the time she spent with her Aunt Kasumi and her family varied depending on what her parents' jobs required of them. However, she had never gone to stay with them for an entire year. The longest she recalled staying with her aunt was about one, maybe two months at the most. A whole year was just too much for them and they had no qualms about letting her parents know where they stood.
"No, not this time," she remembered hearing her Aunt Kasumi say to her parents, "We've had enough. Why can't the pair of you take care of her yourselves? We have our own lives to live you know. Besides Yūma-kun and Aki-chan can't stand her. They don't want her anywhere near them. We can't be expected to put our own lives on hold just to cater to your every whim."
Needless to say, her parents had not been pleased, as her father had clearly expected her Aunt Kasumi to do whatever he wanted, and when she refused and put her foot down, it had led to a massive falling out between them. He had clearly viewed his sister as nothing more than his personal servant whenever Chiaki was involved, due to him being her older brother, and believed that she was obligated to bend over backwards for him, so he did not take her standing up to him very well. In fact, he even admitted to her that he was not asking her, but he was telling her and tried to threaten her into submission, but her husband, Arisawa Yūma Sr., had gotten between them and reiterated his wife's statement and then threatened him if he tried to force them any further. Needless to say, Yoshirō had gotten the message since Yūma Sr. did not look like someone he could have easily bested in a fight.
It was also not surprising to the gamer girl that her parents blamed her for her Aunt Kasumi's refusal to take care of her. Whenever something went wrong with her parents, she was always the one to take the blame as their verbal punching bag, and she had long since given up standing up to them, since doing so only served to infuriate them even further, and it was worse whenever Chiaki pointed out the flaws in their logic and explained just how whatever it was had not been her fault. So with that in mind, she had silently just resided herself to their verbal lashings.
In any case, it had left her parents scrambling to find alternative arrangements till her mother remembered that she had a younger brother that they could dump her on. Dōjima Ryōtarō was his name, and Chiaki knew that that was who her mother had been speaking to on the phone. Ryō-chan just so happened to be an affectionate nickname that Chiyoko addressed him by, and she had been surprised that he had actually agreed to take her in. Right up until her mother remembered him, Chiaki never knew that her mother had a brother since she had never mentioned him before, and she was sure that her mother had not bothered trying to get in touch with him before. So for him to agree to take in his sister's daughter after she called up out of the blue, and not having heard from her in years was surprising. She had expected him to decline due to the longevity of the lack of contact between him and his sister. To her parents, it must have been nothing short of a miracle that he had agreed. She did not know what they would have done if he had declined. That thought made her shudder as a wave of fear washed through her.
Sighing to herself, she turned off her Game Girl Advance and placed it on her bedside table. She then took off her backpack and dropped it to the floor before changing out of her clothes and into her nightdress and then went to bed after turning out the light.
"Starting tomorrow, I'm off to the countryside, huh," she said to herself with a depressingly unenthusiastic sigh, "I wonder if anything will change while I'm there. Probably not, but I can always hope."
She then started to close her eyes, but before they closed completely, she caught sight of a familiar glowing bluish white butterfly rest on the ceiling above her and particles of light appeared to be falling off it and on top of her before vanishing.
"No way!" she thought in alarm as her eyes shot open and she bolted into a sitting position with memories of what happened before she arrived home coming to the surface once again, and started to look around her room frantically looking for the mysterious butterfly.
However, when she looked up at the spot she had seen the butterfly, she found that it was no longer there, and she could not find it anywhere in her room despite the fact that the door to the hallway was shut and her window was closed. She then calmed herself down with a sigh, deciding that she must have been tired and that her mind was playing tricks on her. She definitely felt rather tired. Deciding to contemplate this at a later date, she lay back down and closed her eyes, and it did not take long for sleep to claim her.
Author's Notes – This is my latest fanfic. I got into Persona 4 back in 2014, and after a while since I got into Danganronpa, this new idea popped in my head with Chiaki replacing Yū as the protagonist, though I will say that it's not just a copy and paste of Chiaki in Yū's place, and Chiaki will not be the only Danganronpa character to appear. Some Social Links will be different with Danganronpa characters replacing their respective characters, and also, it won't just touch on the goings on in Inaba as well, and there'll be original scenes involving both Persona 4 and Danganronpa characters as well. I know that Danganronpa is supposedly set in 2012, two years after it came out in the real world, but for the purposes on this fic, this is before Chiaki entered Hope's Peak and what happens here will have an effect on her enrolment and how she interacts with her classmates in future. Also, with the exception of honorifics, I've decided to forgo using Japanese words this time around due to how complex the Japanese language is, and as it's been pointed out to me in the past, it can get confusing.