Chapter 1: Awakening

~Shuichi~

"You know, we can't stay here," I said. "We can't keep living in this fictional world."

"B-But if the outside world truly is what Tsumugi said…" Himiko stammered.

"If it is, there's nothing we can do." Maki said. "At least, while we're still trapped in here. We worked so hard so we can finally leave this academy, right? Wouldn't it be a waste if we were to stay here?"

"You have a point…" Himiko said. "Let's see if she was telling the truth."

I smiled as I led Himiko and Maki to the edge of the academy, where the only thing that awaited us was a bright light emitting from the several holes in the wall. I grabbed Maki and Himiko's hands as we stepped in through the light.

However, instead of stepping into the outside world, I felt a sudden rush of pain in my forehead and some kind of drop beneath my feet.

"W-What is this?" I asked. Two other groans told me that Maki and Himiko were experiencing the same thing.

"M-My brain! It feels like my head's going to exploooooooooooooooooooooooo-"

Pixels flew across my vision as my eyes began to painfully tear up. Himiko's words began to freeze up as I was left with nothing but a void. No sight. No sound. No feeling.

I wasn't even seeing black, because I had no sight or vision to process it. It was just… nothing.

"What's happening?" I asked. "Is this how I die? Were we poisoned or something?"

"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!" I shouted, sitting up only to whack my forehead on something hard.

"W-What?" I asked, opening my eyes. "What is this?"

Directly over me was a window of thick glass that was enough for me to see the dark ceiling of whatever facility I was in, but the rest of the lid (from what I could see) was entirely metal. The rest of my body felt warm, which made me assume I was in some kind of pod. However, due to the shape of the pod and the lid, I couldn't move my head enough to see more of the pod or the rest of my body.

"Hello?" I yelped. No one replied, so I figured that I had no choice but to get out on my own. Using the palms of my hands, I pressed against the lid and slowly forced it open. I could tell by the look and thickness of it that the lid wasn't heavy at all, but my muscles hurt and ached as if I hadn't eaten anything in a month.

With enough pressure and force, I managed to slowly push the lid off the pod and stood up, only to see several needles and wires attached all over my body.

I also noticed my lack of clothes.

"Aagh!" I shouted, grabbing the wires and yanking the needles out of my body.

"What the hell is this? Where's the outside world? Why am I naked?" I asked. I looked around at my surroundings; it seemed I was in a room by himself. I was thankful that neither of the girls were here to see me "exposed", but at the same time I felt a little lonely. Where were they? Were they in rooms like this? Were they in pods too?

Looking down at my body, I noticed that I seemed a lot thinner than I remembered a few minutes ago. Like, unhealthily thin. I could see the bones on my ribcage.

I looked around at the room. It was completely made out of concrete, from the floor, to the walls, to the ceiling. The only light source was a single light fixture on the ceiling.

The room was very empty. Other than the pod, the only other things in the room were technological machines that were completely unfamiliar to me and a metal closet.

Desperate to find some clothes, I ran over to the closet and opened it to see a blue hoodie, underwear, and a pair of shorts neatly folded and put on a shelf.

"Better than nothing I guess," I said, shrugging and putting the clothes on. "I hope these are meant for us."

I adjusted the clothes to see that everything fit alright, but were a little big for him. But I also noticed that there was a hard lump in my pocket. Reaching in, I pulled out a cell phone.

"A cell phone?" I asked. "Whose is it?"

I opened it up to see the background set to the face of some girl I didn't know.

Wait… she did seem familiar… "She- She's the girl from that one killing game… Kyoko?"

All this raised more questions for him. "Whatever. I need to see the others. I'll figure this out later."

After running to the door, I slowly turned the doorknob to see it was unlocked before opening it completely to see a hallway full of doors. Turning around, I noted that my door was marked "Subject #1".

The detective ran across the hallway to the door across from him. Subject #15. Opening it up, I saw a setup almost identical to the one in my room. I ran over to the pod and looked over the face window and expected to see either Maki or Himiko.

Instead, I saw the face of someone I hadn't seen for a whole month. I saw the face of Kaede Akamatsu.

"K-Kaede!" I shouted, rushing to the pod and looking over her. "Why is her body… here? Wasn't she smashed and pierced by the giant spiky piano?"

Her head should have bloody holes in it. Not that I wanted to see that. But no, her entire face was completely intact. Was she still alive?

I reached for the edge of the pod and tried to lift it up, but it didn't budge.

"Don't bother," a voice came from behind. I turned around to see Maki in a black and red plaid jacket.

"Maki!" I shouted. "How long have you been awake?"

"Only for around twenty minutes," Maki said. "You were in one of these pods too, right?"

"Yeah, I was," I said.

"There's a room and pod for everyone who was in our game. Everyone's body is intact. Even Kokichi, who was crushed to death. They seem to be locked for anyone who died during the killing game. I found Himiko's pod unlocked, by the way. She's getting dressed now."

"That's good to hear," I replied. "But I still don't understand everything."

"You don't need to understand everything right now." Maki said. "We need to leave this place. Wherever we are, whatever they were doing to us is clearly not good."

"But what about the others?"

"Well, judging by how the pods are locked, there's nothing we can do about it right now. Even if they weren't locked, I would say it's too risky to try and mess with the bodies. If we can come up with a solution, we could always come back for them."

I reluctantly nodded as Himiko ran into the room, wearing a grey vest and jeans.

"Shuichi!" Himiko shouted. "Do you know what's happening?"

"I know as much as you do," I replied. "So far… we're in these pods in this facility? And everyone else's bodies are intact… I… I can't come up with a deduction right now."

"Like I said, you don't need every single detail to know that we need to get the hell out of here." Maki said. "We don't know who put us here, or why they put us here, but there is no doubt that it's related to the killing game. If we find answers on the way to the exit, then sure, but once we find the exit I'm not going to spend more time in here than we need to."

I left with Maki and Himiko to begin walking down the hall. I looked inside a few of the rooms to see the sleeping figures of Ryoma, Tenko, and Miu.

"I still don't understand," I said. "Ryoma's flesh was taken off from his bones and digested by piranhas. How did they stitch him back together? I have no solutions right now."

"Maybe we were rescued from the killing game?" Himiko asked. "And those pods were for us to recover?"

"It would be possible, but if that were the case, how would that explain how all the bodies are here when some of them didn't even have bodies to recover?" I asked. "Why would they even bring the bodies here to begin with and put them in the same scenario as us when they're dead and we're alive?"

"I-I'm just throwing ideas out there!" Himiko said.

"Sorry," I replied. "Did you see Tsumugi and Keebo in there as well?"

"I saw Tsumugi." Maki said. "But not Keebo."

"This just gets more and more bizarre the more I try to think about it," I said.

Once we were clear of the hallways to the pod rooms, we found a stairwell that went down and descended to the next floor.

"Be quiet," I said. "If anyone's still here, we probably don't want them to know we're here."

The other two nodded as I slowly walked through the halls to find a massive area full of computers, desks, and cubicles.

"An office?" Himiko asked.

"Everything's empty," I said. We passed through the office to reach a cafeteria right next to it, completely furnished with tables, chairs, and trash bins. However, the only food that seemed to be inside the cafeteria at the moment was locked inside a vending machine.

Looking at the chips and candy inside the machine made me realize how ravenous I felt. Being so close to that food made my stomach growl due to the void of nutrients it was experiencing.

"Nyeh…" Himiko groaned. "So hungry."

"Do any of you have any cash?" Maki asked. "I know we're supposed to get out of here, but I feel like I could starve to death before we find the exit."

I looked through my pockets to find no cash, and it looked like the others came up short as well.

A pang of hunger surged through my stomach as I dropped to my knees as I eyed the vending machine and a fire extinguisher right next to it. Well… desperate times call for desperate matters. Besides… if anyone decent did work here, then it shouldn't be too much of a problem right? It's just a vending machine.

I walked over to the fire extinguisher door and opened it to pull out the canister.

"Shuichi, what are you doing?" Maki asked. I didn't reply as I grabbed the extinguisher and smashed the glass front of the vending machine. I picked up the first bag of chips, opened it up, and poured the salty potatoes down my throat. Maki and Himiko looked bewildered at what I just did, but they didn't complain as they rushed forwards and ate as much food as they could. In due time, the vending machine was empty and the only things that remained were empty bags and wrappers all over the floor.

"I had to," I said. "Are you two satisfied now? Let's keep looking for the exit."

Maki and Himiko nodded as they followed me through the halls and found the next stairwell. In comparison to the pod rooms on the top floor, this floor seemed to have a more variety in different rooms.

"Design room?" I asked, looking at a door. I flung open the door to see several computers and sketches lining the desks.

These sketches were a lot more recognizable than I expected. On the wall were pictures of all sixteen students of the killing game, costumes and faces, along with Monokuma and the Monokubs. On one of the tables was a huge hand-drawn map of the Ultimate Academy.

"Woah," Himiko said. "It's everything from the killing game! It's all of us in our uniforms!"

I opened a drawer to see other pictures of us, but these ones were a little different. "These are us in different costumes. Look, here's one of Himiko in some kid's animal costume or something."

"Nyeh?" Himiko asked, snatching the picture from my hand. "I don't remember wearing anything like this!"

I looked through more. One of them was Maki having a single ponytail… another of them had Kaede wearing a hat…

"This is probably the costume design," I said. "For the killing game, they wanted us to have suitable outfits to represent our talents. This is probably where they designed them."

"I think we've uncovered all that's here already," Maki said. "Let's move on."

The three of us moved out of the room and continued walking the halls. "It's really bugging me how empty this place is." I said.

"Would you rather have it be filled with people out to silence you?" Maki asked.

"N-No…"

We kept walking until I noticed a computer room. "In here." I said, going in as Maki and Himiko followed me. I powered the master computer on, and to my surprise, it booted up without any hassle or a password or anything. On the computer was one single folder, labelled Auditions. I double-clicked it to open up and saw thousands and thousands of video files with thousands of names I didn't know.

"These are the auditions, huh?" I asked. "There are thousands of them here. I don't think I'll be able to find our own auditions unless we have a week to spare."

"Do the search function," Maki said. I browsed over the search bar and typed in "Shuichi Saihara".

Nothing came up. I then typed in "Kaede Akamatsu", then "Himiko Yumeno," then "Maki Harukawa," and finally "Tsumugi Shirogane".

No results popped up.

"They must've gotten rid of our own auditions." Maki said. "Or moved them somewhere less accessible."

"I want to see one of these," I said. I clicked on the first one to see some random boy I didn't know.

"My name is Akihiko Yuuki, and I would love to be a part of Danganronpa! After these three killing games, I think I can throw some nice murders in there! Everyone's going to love it! It's so awesome!"

I closed out of the video almost immediately. I just couldn't handle it. Did we really audition like this? Were we truly fans of this game? We wanted to be put into this game? We wanted this? To kill each other? To be scarred by those we love being murdered and executed?

"I-I don't want to look around anymore," I said, feeling a queasy feeling leave my stomach. "Let's just find an exit."

"I agree…" Himiko said, clearly distraught by what we've seen.

After a few minutes of descending down staircases and hallways, we finally made our way into the building's lobby.

"An exit!" I pointed.

"We have eyes," Maki said. We all walked towards the front entrance as I stopped and looked to the lobby's counter.

"What are you doing?" Himiko asked. "Freedom's just a few feet away!"

I eyed the business cards on the counter. I grabbed one and looked at it, saying 'Team Danganronpa, 1103 Watanabe Lane'. I stuffed it into my pocket in the event that we had to return for some reason before running up to the other two and opening the door to see a forest of nothing but lush green.

"Where are we?" Himiko asked.

"I'm at a loss," I replied, looking behind us at the large building we had just come out of. Surrounding us was nothing but forest and a lone road in front of us.

"Why is this facility empty?" I asked. I reached into his pocket to pull out the phone. It listed time and date, right? I pulled it out and looked at it, saying 2:36 PM, Wednesday June 6. "That removes the possibility of today being a weekend."

"Who cares?" Maki asked. "Be glad we were able to leave with no complications. Now let's go home."

"Home? What do you mean, home?" I asked. "Tsumugi made it very clear. All our memories are fake. We're not who we used to be. She specifically said our hometowns were all just as made up as our memories are. Where will we go?"

"We don't know that for certain," Maki said. "For all we know, the meteors and virus might have been the only fake things. The only reason we believed her in the killing game was because of the 'cospox', which we didn't even see for ourselves and sounds like it could very well be something made-up. Now that we're not under pressure, if we think about it, how do we really know if Tsumugi was telling the truth?"

"You're right. We don't have conclusive evidence."

"And that's why we have to try!" Himiko shouted, jumping in the air. "We won't know if we don't go looking! If we stay here and accept our fate, our lives could just wait for us at home forever. We have to at least find out for ourselves!"

I smiled as we walked onto the empty road. "Which way should we go?" I asked. "Left or right?"

"It doesn't matter," Maki said. "If we pick a direction and start walking, we're bound to come across a town or city eventually. No one builds roads that go nowhere."

I nodded and opted to go to the left as the other two followed me.

"Did you two have any possessions on you?" I asked. "I had a phone in my pocket, but it's password-protected."

"I have a few yen in cash, but it's not much. It might be enough to buy us each a proper meal when we get to a store or restaurant, though." Himiko said.

"My pockets are completely empty," Maki replied. "I have absolutely nothing."

The majority of the walk was spent in silence until one of us decided to begin talking with random topics, then we'd fall silent again.

...

"How do you two feel?" I asked. "I feel so weak, like I haven't eaten in months."

"Same here," Maki said. "We all rushed to that vending machine. I didn't realize how starving I was until I saw the food in front of me."

"I actually think I overate," Himiko said. "But I just couldn't stop myself."

…

"What happened to our clothes?" Himiko asked. "Why do we have to wear these worn down rugged clothes? I miss my hat."

"Not sure," I replied.

"It's not that big of a deal," Maki said. "I was sick of wearing the same thing over and over again in the killing game anyways."

…

"My legs are going to give out," Himiko whimpered. "How much longer?"

"We're not your parents," Maki scolded. "We know just as much as you do."

"We've only been walking for twenty minutes," I reasoned.

"AAAAAAHHHH!"

…

"One bottle of milk on the wall, one bottle of milk, take one done, pass it around, no more bottles of milk on the wall." Himiko sang. "You're right. That was completely pointless."

"Yeah," I said.

"Let's do it again."

"NO." Maki scolded. "Shut up."

…

"Do you think these mushrooms are poisonous?" Himiko asked, pointing to a group of red mushrooms with yellow spots.

"Yes," I said.

"Absolutely," Maki replied.

"So, they'll be fine if I just roast them over a fire, first?"

"No," I said. "They're poisonous."

"So I need to boil them?"

"That's not going to take the poison out," Maki said.

"What if I-"

I grabbed Himiko's arm and continued walking down the road.

"I think we should stop for the night," I said.

"Why? We can keep going. There's enough moonlight to see the road."

"I'm tired, Himiko's tired, and I think we should just take a break for now. We'll leave in the morning."

"If you say so," Maki said. We veered off course from the road and decided to set up shop in a little clearing.

"Do any of you have camping skills?" I asked. They both shook their heads. "Well… I guess we should just sleep then. You're not cold at all, right?"

Neither of them said anything. "Let's just find something soft to sleep on."

After we dug pits and filled them with soft leaves, Himiko and Maki drifted off to sleep. However, I just couldn't drift off so easily. So many questions were flowing through my brain, and I wasn't dismissive of them like Maki was. What was that facility we were in? What was with the pods? Why was it empty? Why were Kaede and the others there and unharmed? Was Tsumugi lying? Was Tsumugi telling the truth? If Tsumugi was lying, then we'd have homes. But how would we explain what we went through to our families and friends? And if Tsumugi was telling the truth, what would we do? We have no idea what our previous lives were like. We don't know if we have families. We don't know if we were enamored in a relationship. There's just so much we don't know.

The next morning, I opened my eyes to the smell of freshly cooked meat. Rubbing the crud out of my eyes and sitting up, I saw Maki in front of a fire with fish and some other kind of meat around the fire on sticks.

"What're you cooking?" I asked.

"I caught some fish by a stream half a kilometer away," Maki said. "I don't know what kind, but to be fair it doesn't really matter. This other thing is a rabbit that decided to get too close to me."

"I see," I said, looking at the third empty bed. "Where's Himiko?"

"She's washing up in the stream I mentioned." she said. "If you decide to go check it out before she comes back you're going to be the next thing I roast on this fire."

"Okay, okay, I'm not that kind of person. You know that already."

"Can't be too cautious."

We waited until Himiko came back for us to begin eating the fish and rabbit. After eating, I decided to go wash up in the stream as well before we set off for the next day.

"Another boring day of walking on the road with nothing else to see," Himiko said. "If only I had enough mana to summon a magic carpet."

"Yeah, if only," I sarcastically said.

We continued walking for a few hours. We'd run out of things to talk about yesterday, so this walk was spent entirely in silence. Or, mostly in silence.

*HOOOOOONK!*

I turned around to see a SUV barreling towards us. I quickly pulled Himiko off the road after Maki took care of herself.

"Why are you in the middle of the road?" the driver said.

"Um… sorry," I said. "This is a very empty roa-"

"Oh, you're kids," he said. "Are you lost or something?"

"As a matter of fact, we are," Maki said. "Do you know how to get to the nearest city?"

"The nearest city? That'd be Yokohama I'd believe. But it's quite far. I have space in the back, if you're willing to hitchhike."

"That would be great, thank you." I said. The driver unlocked his door as we all stepped inside.

"You're not kidnapping us, are you?" I asked.

"Hahaha, of course not," he said. "It's a two-hour drive, so if you ever want me to pull over to use the bathroom or something just let me know."

I shut the door and buckled my seatbelt. "Thank you, sir," I said. "This really means a lot to me."

"You're welcome," he replied. "Hang on, you three seem familiar. Are you from Yokohama too?"

"Um, no," I said. "Erm, I'm from Tokyo."

I mean, my memories were all from the metropolis of Tokyo. I didn't know about the girls, but for now, it was probably best to agree with me.

"Well, Tokyo's close enough," he replied. "But still, I feel like I know you from somewhere. What about the girls? Tokyo too?"

"Um, yeah," Maki said. "We're all from Tokyo."

Maki leaned into my ear. "At least we know Tokyo's a real place."

"I guess I'm just experiencing deja vu," he said. "Don't mind me."

"Haha… that happens sometimes." I replied. But the fact that he seemed to recognize us was not good. If he knew us, he definitely watched the last season of Danganronpa.

I whispered into the ears of Maki and Himiko. "I'm going to pry for information," I whispered. I wanted to be cautious. I wasn't certain of what he would do to us if he did find out, but I didn't want to take the risk. I mean, we all looked somewhat different in our new outfits and kind of dirtied-up appearance. My hair was more flat and went everywhere, Himiko's red hair had splotches of brown dirt and mud, and Maki didn't have any scrunchies so her hair was just kind of dragging behind her.

"Is there any big news?" I asked. "Anything new that we missed? We've been out for a few days."

"Not really," he replied. "The Forsaken robbed a bank yesterday."

"The Forsaken?" I asked. "What's that?"

"You don't know about them? They've been active for over a year now in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, sometimes even in other cities. They're a group of criminals," he said. "They're extremely dangerous. They've done burglaries, robberies, and even murder. They always leave some kind of card afterwards to give themselves credit for their crimes. We don't know who they are or what their motives are, but bottom line, they're dangerous. And it's speculated that they're a big society. They always wear disguises when they go out so we can't tell who they are, and no one's ever seen then in a group larger than four, but the body types we see through those disguises fluctuate so much that there can't just be four people."

"I see…" I said. "What kinds of things have they done?"

"I don't know everything," he said. "What, are you living under a rock? They've been all over the news for the past year! Let's see… um… normally they do low-scale crimes like robbing a grocery store or breaking into houses. But last month they murdered this one scientist in Osaka, and two months ago they robbed a museum."

"Is there anything else we should know?" I asked.

"Well, I've been away from home for around a week, so I can't say things for sure, but apparently Danganronpa 3 ended yesterday." he said. "I have yet to watch it. I recorded it at home, but I have seen endless threads of people complaining about how meta it got, and threads of people praising the ending. Just gonna have to form my own opinions when I watch it, I guess."

"Oh, you're a fan?" Maki asked.

"Is that a joke question?" he asked. "I have yet to meet anyone over eleven who isn't a fan of Danganronpa. Are you fans?"

I was disgusted. Tsumugi was telling the truth, at least about the fact that it was broadcast for people to watch like a reality show. But the fact that people actually liked watching teenagers killing each other? If she was telling the truth about us, we're still real people with real bodies and real minds. Absolutely disgusting. "Um, yeah. We're huge fans. 3, huh? Did you mean 53?"

"Is that an inside joke I don't get? Is it like the 11037 meme?"

"So this is only the third season, right?"

"Erm, yeah?"

Hmm… Was Tsumugi lying about the 53 part? So, Tsumugi was telling the truth about the fact that it was a popular television show, but she lied about how many seasons there were? Why would she do that?

"What about the two seasons that came before it?" I asked. "What do you think about those?"

"I liked number two the most," he said. "Interesting cast, amazing resolution, it was fantastic. And the fact that the cast was actually the remnants who destroyed the world was an amazing twist. You know, my son wants to audition for next time."

"N-Next time?" I asked.

"Of course! It's so popular. Why would they end it now?"

I racked my brain. We ended Danganronpa, right? Well… apparently this guy hadn't seen the ending of our season yet. But his son? His son wants to be in a killing game? How insane are these people?

I was so distraught by what he said that we rode the rest of the ride in silence before he pulled over to the side of the road in a city. "Alright, here you are," he said.

"T-Thank you," Himiko said. We got out as he drove off.

"That was terrible," Maki said. "The fact that he's a fan of our death, a fan of a sick game where people kill each other. If it was like cartoon characters, then fine, but we're real people with real emotions and real bodies. Do they not realize that? Or do they just not care?"

"I can't say for sure," I said. "Whatever. Hopefully those people who saw the ending have actually changed for the better."

As we walked into the city, I pulled my hood over my head. The last thing I wanted was to be recognized by a fan. That would be awful.

"Let's find a library," I said. "Then we can look up Danganronpa and find out all we can."

The girls nodded as we walked through the streets.

"Sir, do you know where a library is?"

"Just keep going down this road and you'll see one to your left."

"Thanks," I said. We kept walking down the street until we found the modern library to our left. We walked inside and found an empty computer.

I opened up a search engine and typed "Danganronpa" into the search bar.

Millions of results popped up. Things like recaps, to clips, to summaries, to reviews. Scrolling down the page, I even noticed multiple in Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish.

"This hurts me to look at," I said.

"Click on the wikipedia page," Himiko said. I scrolled back to the top and hit the Wikipedia page for Danganronpa.

"Danganronpa is a popular reality show killing game based in Japan," I read. "The series follows a group of high school kids who are forced into a killing game."

I scrolled down to see the Installments section. "Main installments… Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony…"

"What about fifty three?" Maki asked. "Well v3 is our game, but that means 53, right? What about Rantaro? He wasn't on Jabberwock Island, right?"

I kept scrolling and reading. "Spin offs?" I asked. "Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, and Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy? Why are those spin offs?"

Below were countless manga, anime, and live action play adaptations. I scrolled past them until I reached 'Development'.

"Created by Team Danganronpa," I read. "The killing game takes applicants from all over Japan. The applicants are then put into pods and uploaded into the Neo World Program, which simulates a real world location. The Program erases the memories of the subjects and can replace them with new memories in order to give them backstory for the killing game, and make some of them more prone to murder."

"I see…" Maki said. "So we were in a virtual world?"

"It fits," I replied. "But everything was so real."

"B-But if it's a virtual world," Himiko said. "Doesn't that mean the others are still alive?"

"I don't know," I said. "If they were still alive, they'd be awake and out of their pods by the time we woke up."

I kept reading. "It doesn't say anything about the survivors, what happens to us. It doesn't say whether we can get our old memories back, or anything they do for us, nothing. And it doesn't say anything about the people who died in the game."

"I guess no one in the public really knows," Himiko said. "Let's just go home."

I opened a new tab and typed in the address I remembered.

No results.

"Huh?" I asked. "No results?"

"Is that your address?" Maki asked. "Let me search up mine."

Maki took the computer and typed in her address, yet no results popped up. Himiko took the reins after, and still no results.

"I-I guess our homes really were fake," Himiko stammered. However, the person using the computer in front of them looked up and stared at them.

"What?" I asked.

"Y-You're-" he said. "You're Shuichi Saihara!"

"No! I'm- I'm no-"

"And you're Maki and Himiko! Can I get a selfie? Or an autograph?"

"Let's get out of here," I said.

"No, come back! Let me take a photo!"

The three of us began running as the boy in the library got his friends to look after us and snap some shots of us running away.

"I hate this," I said. "I don't like attention to begin with, but the fact that we're famous because we suffered and our friends died makes it ten times worse."

"Yeah," Himiko said. "If we were famous for my magic, I would be happy, but this is just too much for me!"

"I don't know what we're supposed to do now," Maki said. "Where are we supposed to go? Are we destined to spend the rest of our lives panhandling in the streets?"

We walked down the street again, but this time, completely aimlessly. We had no destination. We had no aim. We had absolutely no idea what we were going to do.

"Hey, look! Aren't those three the survivors from the newest Danganronpa series?"

"Oh my god, they are!"

"Those three are so boring," someone said. "Terrible choice of survivors. Kaede should've lived instead of this detective!"

"Let's kick their asses!"

Huh? That's new… I turned around to the source to see around ten teenage kids around our age coming at us.

"Maki!" I shouted. "Do something!"

Maki got into a fighting stance as she socked one of them in the stomach, but seemed a little sluggish as she was overcome by the six or so kids kicking and punching her.

"Maki!" I shouted. I ran from the two or so kids coming my way, and Himiko ran up to pull Maki out of the commotion before we all ran away.

"Get them!" they shouted.

"They're faster than us!" Maki said, between grunts of pain.

"In here!" I pointed, pointing to an alleyway next to what looked like an abandoned warehouse. We ran into the alley only to be blocked off by a brick wall.

"Little idiots cornered themselves!" one of them said, coming closer to us. "And little miss assassin is all beat up by some street kids."

We all scrunched to the wall as the kids slowly advanced towards us. I mean, they weren't going to kill us, right? They're just kids; they'd probably just beat us half to death.

I closed my eyes and winced only to hear the sound of metal slamming against something and a soft buzz. Having enough courage to open my eyelids, I saw that the warehouse door had opened and there was a woman who was shooting tasers at our ambushers until they were nothing but a twitching heap.

"Thank... you?" I said.

"Don't mention it," she replied. "Shuichi Saihara, right? Himiko Yumeno? Maki Harukawa?"

"Ugh. Another fan." Maki groaned. "Just leave us alone, okay? We don't want the attention."

"I'm not your average fan," she said. "Look at me."

I looked at her face to see something I didn't expect. I saw the smiling face of Kyoko Kirigiri.