Junko Enoshima… even the name felt knife-edged and vicious as it echoed through Naegi's head, calling up too many memories for his sleep-addled brain to process. The Ultimate Fashionista, icon of the fashion world, her appearance artlessly stylish and stunningly trendy. There had been so many threads about her in the online forums he'd read before classes started, every message splashed with new pictures glorifying the girl's effortless beauty… but her looks hadn't won her the coveted invitation to Hope's Peak. No, the talent they'd recognized came from her deep well of charisma, the desperate desire she could inspire in those around her to be near her, to emulate her, to find some tiny way to bring a piece of her into their lives. She could change the course of people's thoughts without ever meeting them, as easily as changing her hairstyle.

And she had. Oh, but she had.

Staring up at the girl beside him, pain lurched up from somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. The perfect makeup, the schoolgirl outfit modified until it was more costume than uniform, every aspect of her appearance hurt him as it resonated with memories he hadn't known he had… but looking past them was worse. Her face, her face, it had haunted his nightmares ever since he'd woken into the killing game, even though the haze of his sealed memories kept him from seeing her clearly. He hadn't remembered her… but he'd known her anyway. The wounds she'd inflicted had gone too deep for neurological tricks to erase. He knew her… and he knew what she'd done.

The memories ached as they sank into his body, every grief a fresh pain as he felt it anew. Except… it wasn't just the memory of past pain that he felt echoing through his body. Real pain existed here, in the present, throbbing through his bones in time with the slow beat of his heart. It warred with the tangled hurt in his mind, bleeding into one another until he couldn't tell where one stopped and the other began.

Fuzzy-headed, in pain, and vulnerable… it was definitely not the state Naegi wanted to be in when coming face to face with his darkest nightmares. But as a sudden, brilliant smile snaked across Junko's glossy lips, he knew he wasn't going to get a choice. He scrambled desperately through the disconnected pieces of his half-asleep mind, doing his best to brace himself against whatever vicious new assault she was planning.

"Hey there, sleepyhead! Man, for a while there I thought you were never gonna wake up!"

Normal words.

"I've seen some marathon naps, but a full day is like a whole different league!"

Not attacks, or insults, or poisonous sweetness. Just an ordinary greeting.

"Sure, it's not the best I've seen, but hey, pretty impressive for a first attempt!"

She was just talking to him… talking like she was a normal person. Talking like they were friends.

Confused and off-balance by the unexpected lack of menace, Naegi's gaze darted back to her face again, skimming over the familiar features until he met a pair of pale blue eyes.

And in that moment… there was no electric shock, no burst of agony, no physical proof that the memories in his head were real. Even now, looking her straight in the face, he couldn't see the simmering hatred or wild madness that had to exist in a girl capable of the things she'd done. All he could see was… a face he knew.

Junko Enoshima. A girl who'd been his classmate… and his friend.

"W… wha…" Naegi's tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth, too clumsy to ask any of the questions he needed her to answer. What was going on? Where were they? Why was she here? Why was he here?

Why wasn't he dead?

He should be dead. Naegi couldn't quite recall the specifics of those last dizzying moments before he'd lost consciousness, but he knew that much was true. He'd been declared guilty at the end of the trial, thrown into one of those flamboyantly staged murder sequences in spite of his innocence… and executed. He should be nothing more than another crossed out portrait in their circle of classmates… so why wasn't he?

But when he managed to muster the breath to ask again, the words came out as a dry, hacking cough. Each spasm jolted through his entire body, and oh god, oh god it hurt everywhere, every injury screaming from this new assault. His left arm screamed with the almost-familiar agony of his run-in with the genocider, but now his right arm answered with its own deep rumbling of soreness. Whatever had happened between the execution and now, he certainly hadn't escaped unscathed.

"Wow, you're that desperate to talk to me?" Junko laughed — not the cruelly mocking cackle that Monokuma would have used, but a bubbly giggle that any teenage girl could have produced. "Well, I get it and all — it's been forever since we had a chance to catch up! But it sounds like you're not up to that much excitement yet. We'll have to save the gossip for later!"

Naegi wouldn't have known how to answer a speech like that even if he'd been capable of talking. It didn't mesh with the world as he knew it, a world where the horrors of the killing game were only one small part of the all-encompassing Tragedy. No one talked like that, so light and cheerful and friendly, not unless there was an undercurrent of madness in their words. There had to be one in Junko, dark enough to inspire her to twist her friends into murderers… but no matter how he searched, Naegi couldn't see it.

"Oh!" She gasped, jumping to her feet. "I was so excited to see you that I totally forgot what I meant to do!"

And with that she launched herself over to the space just behind Naegi, where his inability to move his head kept her well out of sight. He had idea what she was doing back there, but it seemed to involve a great deal of clattering, and… sloshing?

But he only had a few moments to worry before she returned, clutching a plastic thermos with a straw sticking out of it. "That's better! Man, what kind of crappy hostess would I be if I didn't even offer you refreshments?" She plopped back down beside him and held the thermos so the straw was at his mouth.

Naegi kept his lips tightly closed, eying the straw like she'd shoved a live viper in his face. His throat might be as dry as old paper, but he wasn't about to drink anything she gave him.

"Huh? You're not thirsty?" Junko tilted her head, pigtails swishing. "But you sure ought to be, after all the blood you lost! Come on, think how much better you'll feel after a few sips of water!"

The temptation of cool, soothing water sliding down his parched throat was almost enough to sway him — but still, Naegi knew he didn't dare. Why would she offer him water when she could just as easily give him some horrible concoction of poison instead? He clenched his jaw in spite of his bruised face's objections to the tension.

"You really don't want any?" Junko blinked at him for a puzzled moment. "Wait… don't tell me you think I did something to it!" She giggled again, as if the implication that she would casually murder a friend too ridiculous to consider. "Oh, come on, I thought you were smarter than that! Why would I go to all the trouble of helping you if I was just gonna off you the second you woke up?'

Helping him? Naegi frowned a hair, as much as he could manage. She didn't really expect him to believe she'd done anything to help him, did she? He knew the truth now, knew that she'd been the mastermind behind the entire killing game. Even safe in the shelter that Headmaster Kirigiri had worked so hard to create, she'd given in to the despair sweeping through the outside world. After betraying the friends who'd trusted her, after turning their last safe haven into a nightmare, why would she suddenly decide to help him?

Except… if she hadn't intervened… how had he ended up here, on the floor of what appeared to be the data center? He ought to be in a body bag after that execution, but… he wasn't. And that could only have been possible if the mastermind had allowed it to happen.

Then… did that mean she was telling the truth? Had she really helped him after the execution? He didn't know why she would've done a strange thing like that, when it seemed to go against everything she'd spent the last few weeks working towards… but he couldn't see any other explanations.

A surge of longing rose through his chest, briefly dwarfing the physical pain as Naegi was consumed with the sudden, intense wish that Byakuya were here with him. With all his experience navigating a landscape of suspicion and mistrust, the brilliant heir had grasped the new and bewildering world of despair far more easily than Naegi had. He would have known what to do.

But Byakuya wasn't here. He couldn't be. Junko had wiped him out of existence, deleted him from the world like an errant keystroke along with all the rest of their classmates. And though the boy who remained might be the same person in fundamentals… he also wasn't. This Togami had never dug through wreckage of a bombed tower in a desperate search for evidence that even one family member might have survived the blast. He'd never strapped on a heavy gas mask beneath a sky burnt orange and streaked with ashy clouds. He hadn't heard the headmaster's proposal to safeguard the last sixteen students from Hope's Peak, or agreed to spend the rest of his life locked away in a shelter to preserve what hope they could.

And he hadn't kissed Naegi in the park, in the quiet moments after sunset when the stars had just begun to shine. He hadn't arranged for a private jet to fly him halfway around the world in the middle of the night after finishing an international business conference, just so he could see his boyfriend a few hours sooner. He had never fallen in love, or let himself light up with incandescent happiness at learning that his love was returned.

And Junko had been the one to take all those things away. Naegi looked up at her, the image of a kind girl helping out a friend in need, and he deliberately locked his jaw tightly in place. Even if she'd helped him, that didn't erase all the other awful things she'd done. He couldn't just give in and trust her, even if she'd been his friend once… not when she'd used that trust to hurt so many of their friends.

Junko sighed, setting the thermos down on the floor beside him. "Still no, huh? Oh, well, guess it can't be helped." She gave him a brilliant smile, the same one that graced dozens of magazine covers. "I mean, it's not like I only helped you – I did try to kill you, too!"