Danganronpa: The Redemption Club
Tuesdays are drab. Truly and utterly boring. Mondays were famously the most complained about day while Fridays were hailed as the most beloved due to the anticipation of the weekend and as for the remaining days, well at least they each have their own merits however small. Tuesday's had nothing of any memorable value and as far as Celestia Ludenberg was concerned that was the worst sin that could be committed. To be revered or reviled ;in the opinion of the gothic gambler; was a far more desirable fate than to be forgotten due to mediocrity.
However, this specific Tuesday had been anticipated by Celeste for the most awful of reasons. For this was the Tuesday that her beloved partner would approach their homeroom teacher with what the gambler had considered to be the single worst idea that her significant other had ever come up with. It was an idea that was so uncharacteristically foolish for her girlfriend that Celeste had almost choked on her tea the first time she was approached with it. Unfortunately, no amount of convincing, explaining or begging (although she would never admit to having done the last one) would convince her beloved to drop it.
"It's fine. I can talk her out of this before she speaks to . Class doesn't begin for...a few hours which gives me plenty of time. No matter how stubborn she is Kyoko will have to see reason and get cold feet at the last hurdle"
Celeste began her morning by talking to herself, reassuring herself of the plan to talk her girlfriend out of speaking to their teacher about this silly subject. After a few minutes of sleeping in, Celes pushed herself off her bed and walked across her extravagantly decorated room to an equally expensive vanity mirror on top of a white desk with drawers filled full of makeup products she used to keep up her bourgeois look. Changing into her usual outfit which consisted of a corset (which celeste demanded be tight-laced despite her girlfriends warnings of the repercussions it would have on her body);a white, button-up shirt, a red tie; a jet-black jacket and her signature metal bone-finger. The contrast between the mirror and the reflection in it was comparable to night and day. Celeste had small, dark bags formed under her eyelids and her dark, black hair which she had recently been attempting to grow out so she could make her signature twin drill style work with her natural hair (despite Kyoko's constant lecturing that she would need to make her drills smaller in order for that to work otherwise she would risk damage to both it and her scalp) was messy and tangled; a clear by-product of her heavy sleep last night.
"It will work just fine. My hair's exceptional just like moi,"
Celes applied her makeup in the same way she did every morning. Concealer, blush, a light pink, nude lipstick, eyeliner and a little black nail polish among others. It hid her eyebags and covered her skin blemishes (which Kyoko had told her were few and far between as part of one of her many repetitive lectures on why Celeste didn't need to obsess over her appearance so much).Celeste hardly ever ,if at all, needed to apply foundation. One of the few parts of the gambler's look that was natural was her almost vampirically pale skin. It was one of the many perks of the strict diet the goth placed herself under. Speaking of which, Celeste checked upon the effects her fasting had on her weight by pulling out a set of fitness scales and a double-sided tape measure.
101lbs.
"Ugh! It's barely changed!"
It didn't matter to Celeste that she was 20lbs underweight for someone of her height. It didn't matter that most people complimented her slim figure. It didn't matter that Kyoko was getting concerned at how skinny her girlfriend was getting. Taeko might've allowed herself those extra 20 pounds. Taeko might've not missed the compliments. Taeko might've listened to Kyoko's concerns; Celestia Ludenberg could not. The gambler was the pinnacle of perfection, she was everything Taeko was not and that meant doing everything possible to distinguish herself from the ordinary for that was the business of people like her older self.
Running a brush through her hair, making sure to deal with every knot and begrudgingly clipping on her drills, the gambler completed her transformation from the dishevelled girl who had just climbed out of bed to her gorgeous, classy and sophisticated self that people expected of her. Celeste slipped on a pair of black high heels which complimented her gothic style and began to pack her handbag with the usual school supplies. Textbooks, homework, stationary and so on and so forth. However, there were a few more unconventional items. An unreasonable amount of card decks, dice, coins and other gambling equipment. Ready for the start of her school day a couple of hours before it would begin, Celeste left her dorm room to pay her girlfriend a visit.
Celeste heard her heels click as she walked across the marble floor of Hope's Peak High's corridors. Her and Kyoko's dorm were not particularly far apart however she did have a little time to think to herself before arriving at the room of her beloved.
'Now how to convince her to stop this madness? She must understand that none of her intended participants will be...particularly responsive. Nor is this an idea that will be particularly easy to implement. However, this is Kyoko I'm speaking about. She'll have ironed out all of the details inside that pretty, little head of her's. Knowing her, she's probably made a full on business proposition to present to '
The gambler continued to think to herself until she arrived at the wooden door with the name tag of her most adored person in this pitiful world's name attached to it.
"Kyoko? My dear, are you awake?" She asked after politely knocking on the door.
After waiting a few seconds she heard the disgruntled yet beautiful voice of her girlfriend call back.
"I'm up...just a little tired is all" Kyoko replied, sounding as if she had just come back from the dead.
"Is it okay if I enter?" She asked, wanting to know if her sweetheart wasn't sick. Her mind rushed to a time a little after they had begun their relationship when Celeste had made one of her regular visits to her girlfriend's dorm. Kyoko had spoken to her in a similar sort of voice and when Celeste had asked if she were ill, she was met with a tentative and rather weak lie. It had taken several more minutes of the gambler proving she wasn't going to fall for Kyoko's shoddy lie before she was granted admission into her beloved's dorm. Celeste hated looking at her girlfriend in such a state. The deep, sagging eyebags and sickly, pale skin made the goth want to do anything that would make Kyoko feel even slightly better. It was an alien and odd feeling to her. The instinctive and overwhelming desire to help someone other than herself was something Celeste had been numbed to for a quite a while. It was a Taeko feeling. It was an average feeling. It was absolutely not a Celeste feeling and yet Taeko had never felt anything like it. Perhaps because Taeko had never had anyone like Kyoko in her life.
That day was a strange one for everyone who met Celeste. She had been seen making regular trips to and from Kyoko's dorm throughout that week. She had bunked several classes in order to take care of her poor sweetheart (the bunking was nothing new however, the goal of it had completely changed) which included several bowls of warm soup, hot towels and flannels to press against her forehead and just general cuddling and movie-watching. It was what would be considered average for a pair of high-school teens to do but for Celeste it was entirely uncharted territory.
"...Yes please. Your visits always make me feel better." Kyoko's voice didn't sound the same way it did when she was ill. There was always the chance that Celeste was misremembering but for now she would chalk it up to a lack of sleep.
"Well yes I do tend to have that effect on people, have you forgotten who you're speaking about mon Cherie?" Celeste said over-exaggerating her French accent by just a tad. Kyoko adored her accent and so whenever she was flirting the goth would make it a little more prominent.
While Celeste casually boasted about herself, her girlfriend proceeded to unlock and open the door of her dorm; inviting the gambler inside. Kyoko's lavender hair which was usually done in several braids was as messy and tangled as her girlfriend's was when she had woken up. However, her eye bags were significantly worse. It looked as if she hadn't slept in a week which Celeste theorised she hadn't.
"Well, well, well. Morning sleeping beauty. I can see you've had a wonderful night's rest" Celeste teased.
"You of all people don't get me to lecture on that. How long did that Poker game with Makoto, Chiaki and Nagito go?" Kyoko reminded her beloved of her ludicrously long poker game just a few days ago
"Chiaki and Makoto gave up after the first few hours but Nagito took the game and made it last for days. He kept drawing ludicrous hands at the start but his luck would always fizzle out by the end. A shame really, other than you he's one of the most fun opponents in this school." Celeste reminisced on the time she had been roped into a poker game between several of her classmates for the simple fact that their talents seemed to contradict each other. A moronic observation that was disproven almost as soon as the game had begun. Chiaki specialised with video games specifically, Makoto's luck didn't work that way (Kyoko had theorised that it only activated in life or death scenarios), and while Nagito's luck had been a significantly more demanding challenge he simply couldn't contend with someone as intimately knowledgeable of the game as Celeste.
"Can a poker game last that long?" Kyoko inquired
"Typically a professional game lasts 2-8 hours however, poker games can technically last forever. Of course someone as skilled as moi can end a game in 1-4 hours, especially with the pitiful competition here" Celeste put her hand to her mouth and let out a small and fanciful laugh.
"Do you really need to put down our classmates at every turn?" She asked. Kyoko despised when her girlfriend would fall into her old narcissistic ways.
"You won't stop pestering me about this will you? Still trying to help me be
'a better person?'" The gambler was slightly annoyed whenever her sweetheart would try and help her improve. She knew it was done out of love but it felt like she was being made into Taeko again; something she refused to accept.
"You know I'll always be here for help. Whether you like it or not" She smiled at her girlfriend before taking her hand and dragging her into the dorm.
"Well how lucky I am to have my own little guardian angel. My knight in shining lavender," Celeste teased mentally adding the two nicknames to her list of titles for Kyoko.
"Now then as repayment for your heroic task of reforming me would you like some help dealing with the tragic case of bed head you seem to have?" She drew attention to the tangled, purple mess her girlfriend seemed to have woken up with.
"I'm not a child. I can take care of myself perfectly well...but I wouldn't object to you brushing and braiding it the way you usually do," She admitted bashfully.
"Sit on your bed and I'll get the brush and hair bands then. I assume they're in the same place as normal?" Celeste walked towards the purple table by the side of Kyoko's bed where there were a few hair bands and a brush lying on top. She also found her girlfriend's laptop left half open and when the gambler extended a hand to close it; it felt burning hot.
Celeste was one of the more observant of her peers and while she couldn't compare to Kyoko (on account of her being a professionally-trained detective and all),she could put the pieces together in her head.
"Kyoko ,my dear, you wouldn't have happened to have pulled another all-nighter, would you?" Celeste internally laughed at the role-reversal. Typically, it would've been the detective giving a lecture about the importance of a good night's sleep.
"It's not-I just-...I had to do the homework last night and may have...fallen asleep as soon as I finished it." She rubbed her eyes with her gloved hand.
"You mean the homework that we did together on the weekend? My sweet, even if you didn't look like you had just come back from the dead, do you really think you could get a lie past me?" Celeste continued to press Kyoko for the truth.
After a few seconds of deliberation the detective decides to confess.
"Fine...I was finishing off another case-but it was extremely important!"
"And just how long was the deadline for this case?" The gambler inquired.
"About one...three..five weeks but you know I need to finish my cases early. I'm the ultimate detective after all, it would be unseemly t-"
"You mean it would be unseemly to your father?" Celeste ruthlessly cut off her girlfriend while picking up a few bands and a brush.
"...Yes" Kyoko was forced to admit.
Sitting on the bed, Celeste began to brush through the tangles and knots in her girlfriend's hair; paying extra care to ensure she wasn't causing her sweetheart too much pain. Once it was in a state that fit the serious and mature detective, Celeste began the process of braiding it. She did two long braids on one side of her head using two black ribbons she had taken off the detective's nightstand (having decided to ditch the hair bands as they had been heated up by the laptop) and left the rest of it to flow down. She always loved Kyoko's hair; it reminded her of beautiful purple ribbons.
"Just because he's the principal doesn't mean he isn't also your father; he shouldn't have such harsh expectations of you." Celeste and Kyoko had never told the detective's father they were a couple out of fear of his reaction. Jin Kirigiri was a stickler for tradition and his daughter was certain he'd never accept that she loved a girl.
"Speaking of faculty members, we need to stop by the homeroom before class starts. I think I have all the details worked out and now I just need to run the idea by," Kyoko reminds herself.
"Maybe it's an idea that's best lef-"
"Celeste. You can't talk me out of this just because you don't like what it means for you. Besides, it would be good for not only yourself but for all the people I have in mind" Kyoko interrupted her girlfriend; determined not to get side-tracked.
"I just don't see it as particularly necessary. Nobody's trying to kill each other anymore and dredging up the past is only bound to make things worse" Celeste desperately didn't want the detective to go through with this plan. Her memories of the killing game involving her classmates were best left in the past, as well as that of her nearly successful attempt to murder one of her particularly weak minded peers and win ten million yen which resulted in her almost being burnt at the stake and having to confess her feelings to Kyoko in what she thought were her last moments.
"We both know that isn't true. All the members of our class walk on thin ice around you as well as each other. You act as if we didn't find out the killing game was a lie just barely a month ago. We don't even fully know of what happened between the other classes. They need to be allowed to process what happened and properly move on. The tension is just going to build otherwise."
She was right.
She was Kyoko Kirigiri. Of course she was right.
Still that didn't mean Celeste had to like it! Being forced to discuss what she had done to her classmates, being made to apologise to them for it or worst of all being made to divulge her past as Taeko Yasuhiro; it made Celeste want to throw up.
Besides, when discussing the idea Kyoko had mentioned that she was going to make attendance to these sessions mandatory for 'those who clearly needed extra help growing and processing' and Celeste was certain she was going to be on that list of people.
Well then that was just it wasn't it?
She had been so worried about this idea being accepted when really it didn't matter so long as she didn't have to go. All she needed to do was convince Kyoko she didn't require any extra help.
"Well I suppose you do have a point. I don't think about the game that much anymore so I suppose I wouldn't have seen it from that point of view," Celeste said, already putting her plan into motion.
"That's quite a change of tune. You know I'm not doing this to punish you or because I hate you, right? I want to see you become better and this is the best way to help you. I really love you," Kyoko leaned over to her girlfriend and gave her a slow kiss on the lips.
"If that's my reward for doing well then I might just join this little club of yours yet"
Author's note: This is my first story on so please leave a comment letting me know how I can improve or any ideas for it you have! I'll take almost any form of constructive criticism so please don't be shy! This is going to be quite a long fic with multiple chapters and it won't just focus on Celeste and Kyoko so if you aren't a fan of celesgiri there might still be something for you! Welp this is Mimyku signing off from my first fic, despairing and hopeful (see what I did there?) to write more!