And here is the epilogue! The set-up of it is something I've been planning a while, but the finer details of course depended upon the direction the story went. So let me explain the set up.

This is meant to be a blog post from Emi Kasuragi's personal blog, posted about 10 months after they escape. The one that isn't about a particular topic, that is. So the underlined words are meant to be links to other blogs, other websites or just pictures. I'll leave you to use a combination of common sense and imagination to figure out which is which.

Anyway, I have a feeling that this is not what would be expected. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Ohayou! I should really be following my own advice and not using a computer this early in the morning, but I'm not going to be able to get back to sleep now. In any case, I'm going to be heading to the airport in about an hour or so, so I think it makes sense for me to be awake now. But I'll come back to that later.

If you're new to this blog (or any of mine for that matter), but you could swear to recognising my name from somewhere you can't remember, then I don't blame you. Anyway, about where you may have heard my name-it was all over the TV, and newspapers, but the incident was 10 months ago, after all. So, here's a refresher:

10 months ago, Hope's Peak Academy blew up. Moments before that, the building had been raided upon allegations that the school had been taken over by the model Junko Enoshima, who then proceeded to drug 72 students to the point where they were unconscious so that she could lock them up in their dorm rooms indefinitely, and forced the remaining 18 into a rather brutal game in which they had to kill each other and escape detection or risk dying themselves. Overall, 75 students were rescued-10 of them from the class who were 'playing' the game. If the rescue hadn't happened earlier, it would have been likely that there would not have been as many survivors. The culprit, however, could not answer to her crimes, for she died in the explosion too, along with 5 paramedics and 10 policemen. However, the culprit's brother-famous author Ichiro Hisanuma-survived with many broken bones, and took on the responsibility on behalf of her. Before he was sentenced, he made a formal apology to the survivors-in particular, to the 10 who escaped the game.

I was one of those 10. Emi Kasuragi: SDHSL Blogger. Kinda obvious, really.

Of course, I'm not an SDHSL anything anymore. Not technically. After all, Hope's Peak never opened again, and probably won't. But I still consider myself an SDHSL Blogger. I also consider myself an SDHSL Survivor-but that's a title I share with the others from my class. And not just because we escaped the game. It's also because 10 months later, we're still here, talking, laughing, going to school, having lie-ins, messing around with friends, doing the things we love. Surviving, basically. The experience was painful, but in a way, the aftermath was just as bad. Reliving it all through testifying in court, having to pick up the pieces of the lives we left behind, remembering what it meant to be in the wide world (I swear, I had to walk around wearing sunglasses for the first three months-my eyes had forgotten what the sun was like). Not to mention the gaps in our memories, and the grief for those in our class who didn't make it out. Of course, we were given support by our loved ones and the authorities and each other-which is a lot different to how Junko Enoshima and Ichiro Hisanuma were treated in the wake of their sister's murder. In a way, I can understand why she felt she needed to lash out, but I don't get why she needed to wait more than 16 years and involve innocents like us. And that's another thing that makes the aftermath more painful-the lack of closure. But we've got through it, and continue to get through it. But it's not easy.

For the first few months, I had horrible nightmares. True confession, right there. I would wake up screaming. It scared me, it scared my parents. Soon, the thought of going to sleep terrified me. Then, one day, I decided to watch the videos that had been taken of us and put on the internet for all to see-which until we escaped didn't quite happen , but more on that later. So, anyway, I watched them all in the space of a few days. And what I saw was just as horrible as it was to live through it, but in a way it was an exorcism. It would be a lie to say that I am no longer haunted, but I can sleep through the night again. I survived, just like we all did.

So, now I am here, constantly updating my blogs and attending college part-time. I am also gradually rebuilding a relationship with my parents. I guess me almost dying forced them to re-think their priorities. Work is still important to them, but now we talk with each other, and appreciate each other. We even make a point of going out to have lunch together every week.

Arisa Ishi is going through a similar process-although in her case it is harder, because it wasn't just a case of her parents being too busy-they just didn't really have time for a child who wasn't musical like them. Which is mean, because being good at maths is pretty awesome. In any case, she lives with her awesome older sister in America now. She attends high-school there, and seems to be enjoying it. It's an academic school, but relatively relaxed for one, so she fits right in.

Makoto Naegi went straight back to his ordinary life with his mother, father and little sister, and went back to his old high school. Except he is no longer ordinary-he's stronger, more assertive and he is also a bit of a minor celeb in his school now, even after all this time. But, Naegi-kun being Naegi-kun, he takes it all in his stride. Kyouko Kirigiri lives in an apartment opposite him, and attends the same school as him. It turned out that she had been living alone before coming to Hope's Peak, so Naegi-kun persuaded her to move near to where his family lives, so that she wouldn't be isolated. It worked, because she seems…less sad, somehow. She was always surrounded by this mysterious melancholy while we were at Hope's Peak. She still is, to an extent, but her father was murdered, so who can blame her? Either way, she's happy now, and will be going straight into training to become a police detective as soon as she finishes school. I expect that she'll probably end up dating and marrying Naegi-kun at some point (even if they insist they are just best friends, I totally ship them^^)

Akihito Watari hasn't been arrested yet. For his skill set, I mean. When the videos of our plight were brought to the attention of the population, he was hailed a bit of a hero. He couldn't stop bragging about it for ages. But for all that, I'm not entirely sure what he is up to. I do know that he makes a point of tending to Akaya Kiyomizu's grave, as she only has one surviving relative, and is in a tentative relationship with a girl from his area.

Janus Abandonato asked me specifically to not talk about what he's up to. He's the type to dwell on things, and he's been through a lot of pain already, so he's probably going to take the longest time to heal. He did allow me to say that he's still acting, and is now attempting to write a play of his own. If he manages, we're all invited to see it, apparently. I look forward to it.

Kosuke Kobayashi is in the middle of medical school, and is super busy. Infact, despite technically not being qualified, he is often made to help in emergencies. He's saved so many lives already, and I know he will save many, many more. In addition to this, he's taking a crash course in psychiatry, wanting to make sure mental health doesn't get pushed aside. I think the death of our classmates gave him that extra drive needed to be able to juggle so much, although I'm convinced it still haunts him. Like Watari-kun, he's a bit of a hero too (although unlike Watari-kun, he claims he isn't).Nobody calls him out on his mixed heritage now-in the grand scheme of things it isn't that important. He's also helped Chihiro Fujisaki in her journey as a transgender kid-she has an operation scheduled in a couple of days, actually. Her family are having a hard time reconciling it though-they wanted a son, and they thought that is what they had. Instead, they actually have a daughter. She'll be fine though, I know it. She's made of stronger stuff than one would think she is when looking at her. Besides, she has us. We'll always accept her for who she is.

Mirai Sakamoto is another one who more or less went right back to her definition of normal. She still has a tendency for sneaking up on people and scaring the teeth outta them, and enjoys wandering out at night. I have no idea what she does in relation to her education-one of the lasting effects of our captivity was that she gets very upset at anyone mentioning it to her. Somehow, I doubt she needs school anyway. In her own way, she's very smart.

Eirik Maeda surprised me the most in these last 10 months. After all the funerals were over, he made a point of tracking down Nanako Tamuro's birth family. The fact that her actual name is Kami Tarumi was revealed, but the media kept other details quiet. He found the town eventually, a quaint little coastal town that gets a lot of tourists every summer. The town does also make money from fishing, which isn't a bad thing at all. But I digress. Maeda-kun eventually found them. It turns out that the Tarumi family had three more children after Nanako/Kami left them-the eldest two are twin boys and they are 7 years old, and her little sister is 5. But in a sad twist, when the little girl was one, Nanako/Kami's father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. So when Maeda-kun found them, the household was trying hard to keep itself together, and her mother was near the end of her tether yet still trying to be upbeat, mourning the loss of her eldest all the while. As Maeda-kun was, and still is, a kid who wants a mother who loves him, he got on perfectly well with a mother missing her child. He persuaded his father to move to the town, and now they live there (You'd probably expect his father and her mother to fall for each other, but that isn't the case at all. They're just friends connected by the boy they call their son). Nanako/Kami's siblings took him on as an older brother-another thing he's always seemed to want, given how quickly Chihiro-Chan and Sakamoto-san started calling him as their 'Onii-Chan'. He uses his skills at translation to help the tourists and to assist with negotiating sales with the companies the fishermen export some of their catches to. He wants for nothing, basically, and he's certainly become more approachable now he has something resembling a family and all the translation opportunities in the world.

Anyway, now I've told you about how all the SDHSL Survivors are doing, let me tell you about someone rather special. His name is Reuben Goodrich, he is from the UK (England, to be exact) and he is the one who saved us. Sort of. To be technical, he was the one who saw those videos of our plight on the internet and continued watching them. Various events, including meeting Arisa's sister (I still can't believe that coincidence) , led him to realise these mad things were actually happening, and he then worked tirelessly to make sure someone in Japan knew what was happening. That someone was Byakuya Togami. So he didn't do anything really life-threatening or heroic, but the way I see it, the events that led to our rescue were a chain reaction that Reuben was responsible for starting. If he hadn't discovered the video and alerted Togami to them, we wouldn't have been stuck there longer. If Reuben hadn't had a habit to go on research sprees, the police would have had to start an investigation from scratch, which would again take longer. There are many, many little things that Reuben did that allowed others to do things that allowed us to escape. If none of these little things happened, there would have been fewer survivors. This, I am sure of. Of course, the Japanese media just enjoyed focusing on the fact that he made sense of the information he collected using a pin-board. If you click on that link, you'll understand what I mean if you have not already. The British media didn't pick up the story at all. Not many people from that part of the world have come to Hope's Peak. The closest was Shika Sayuri, but she was half Irish as opposed to English, and she'd lived in Japan her whole life.

So anyway, after the trial and the funerals, we've all been talking to Reuben online. He's actually in our age group (he was 16 at the time), and he has two sisters. You might compare him to Ichiro Hisanuma there, but both his sisters are younger than him. That, and one of them are adopted. Not that he has ever made the distinction. He is well liked, with many friends, but does not consider himself popular, and his family own a restaurant which is 'eclectic' according to him, and he works there from time to time. Basically, apart from being the beginning of our rescue, he is a nice, normal guy. And soon, we're going to meet him. So maybe there's romance in the cards for me…anyway, jokes aside that is why I am catching a flight today, and I'm not the only one. But it is not all of us that are going though, considering we have our own lives and commitments and some (such as Kobayashi-kun's) make no room for flying overseas. So, it will be me, Watari-kun, Naegi-kun and Kyouko-san who will be flying together. Arisa will be travelling from America, but will meet us when we land in London. London!I feel so excited just typing it. We're going to do the whole touristy thing first before meeting Reuben in person though-it'd be a real missed opportunity not to, after all(look forward to a post about it ^.^) . But the real highlight will be meeting the person who set into motion a heroic chain reaction, even if he isn't a hero himself.

Anyway, I have a flight to catch, so I'm ending this post here! See you later : )

-Emi Kasuragi, SDHSL Survivor

And now, Outsider Perspective is officially over. However, I was considering doing a few spin-off one-shots, which would add to the story, in a way. Accompaniment pieces. This isn't definite, especially as I have a bunch of other one-shots from other fandoms that want to be written, but if that is something you would all like, I'll certainly consider it. No promises though.

So, please leave feedback, and thanks for reading all the way to the end. The support was always appreciated =^.^=