Gamer in the Fog

by Francis456

Full summery inside. Nanami Chiaki, a girl who's into video games is dumped onto her uncle in the rural country town of Inaba while her parents are working overseas. While in Inaba, she encounters a strange mystery that she and her new friends must solve with the power of Persona. However, unfortunately the mystery in Inaba is just one of many things that has been set into motion.

2. A Velvet Prelude to Destiny

Gamer in the Fog

A Velvet Prelude to Destiny

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.

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Date Unknown

It was dark, and the surrounding area appeared to be enveloped in a thick heavy layer of unrelenting fog. That was all Chiaki could register at that particular moment in time. She had no idea where she was, or even how she got there. All she knew was that she was alone in the darkness, and was surrounded by this somewhat ominously and somewhat sinister fog. Much to her surprise though, she found that she could see perfectly fine despite the darkness. Looking down, she found that she could see her own body as if the surrounding area was well lit, and she also noticed that she was walking along a hard grey tarmac surface with long white rectangles painted periodically along the middle, and that appeared to indicate that she must be in the middle of a road somewhere, though she had no idea where since she could not see anything else due to a mixture of the darkness and the thickness of the fog. She honestly had no idea how long she had been walking for. She had started walking ever since she had become aware that she was in this mysteriously dark foggy place.

Another thing she noticed was that she was currently wearing her casual clothes that she usually wore outside of school, and she also had her backpack on her back. Her attire consisted of pink slip-on shoes with straps going over the tops of them, black thigh-high socks that went up halfway between her knees and hips, a pale brown coloured plaited skirt that had curves instead of points and a white shirt with a black streak running down the front where it was buttoned up. She also had a pink ribbon tied around the top of her shirt that was tied to form a bow at the front, and over her shirt, she wore a one-buttoned bluish grey hoodie with plaited cuffs at the end of the sleeves and a plaited band at the bottom, and the hoodie was open at the front, exposing her shirt. Above the bottom-band was a pink line that ran around the entire width of the hoodie and two pink lines ran around the sleeves just above the cuffs as if they were armbands. There was also a sort of greyish pink insignia on the left side of the hoodie that was level with Chiaki's breasts, and the hood of the hoodie had two pointed cat-like ears at the top along with two pink vertical rectangles that gave the appearance of eyes, and the centre of the hood's front came to a point like the down button on an elevator.

Feeling the left side of her head, she confirmed that she also had her hairclip, which was styled in the shape of a spaceship from the Gala Omega video game that she loved so much. Her backpack, including the straps that were over her shoulders, were mostly pink with a white pouch, and at the top of the backpack, there was a stuffed toy like head in the shape of a pink and white cat with black eyes and a smiley face. The border between the pink and the white formed an upward hump at the front with the white at the bottom and the pink at the top, and the border also went through the eyes. Beneath the cat's head, the backpack's top was tied shut with two pieces of thick pink string attached to the backpack itself.

Anyway, she felt as if she had been walking for hours, though for all she knew, she could have only been walking for a few minutes. She honestly had no idea since the darkness, along with her growing sense of fearful anxiety, seemed to be playing havoc with her concept of time. In all the time she had been walking, she had not come across another soul. Heck, she had not even seen a single car driving along the road. Here she was in the middle of a deserted road, alone, in darkness and surrounded by an eerily ominous and somewhat sinister fog, and it did not seem like there was anyone else around for miles around in any direction. Realisation suddenly hit the gamer girl like a battering ram had just smashed into her, the realisation that she was totally, completely and utterly alone in this mysterious place.

A sense of panic had been welling up inside of her since she realised that she was in this mysterious place. It was terrifying for her to think that she was so completely and utterly alone without another soul to keep her company, and the fear that was festering inside of her was now threatening to overwhelm her. One of the things that absolutely terrified her beyond anything else was the thought of being so alone. Sure, she knew that she had no friends, and that her parents viewed her very existence as an unpardonable crime against humanity itself, and that they liked to pretend that she did not exist most of the time, but she had always taken some degree of comfort in knowing that despite everything, her parents had not thrown her out onto the streets and left her to fend for herself, though she knew that they had their reasons for keeping her around despite not wanting her, and she already knew what those reasons were. Perhaps she was deluding herself and was holding onto some small slither of hope that her parents really did love her deep down, even though she had long since realised that that was not the case, but despite that, she could not help but hope that by some slim chance, she was wrong. Nonetheless, she had always taken comfort in knowing that she was around other people, even if hardly anyone talked to her.

However, here in this mysterious fog-filled darkness, there was not a single soul other than Chiaki herself. It was that sort of loneliness that terrified her, the fear of there being no one else around, and right now, that fear gripped her heart tightly, and she found herself frantically looking around her in desperation, hoping to find at least one other person to keep her company. She did not care who it was, or even if they would come to like her or not. All she wanted was just someone to talk to and keep her company, even if that other person ended up doing nothing but berate and insult her. It was better than this despairingly depressing loneliness.

Looking ahead of her, despite the thickness of the fog hindering her sight's visibility, Chiaki's eyes widened as suddenly, she could just make out what appeared to be a silhouette in the distance. Unfortunately, due to the poor visibility on account of the fog along with the darkness in the distance, the gamer girl could only just make the silhouette out, and she was sure that whoever it was had not been there before, though due to a mixture of poor visibility and distance between them, Chiaki could not make out their shape entirely. They appeared really small, but Chiaki could just make out some movement, and they appeared to be slowly crossing the road rather than walking along it.

"Hey!" Chiaki found herself shouting out as she burst into a run towards the silhouette, her sense of fear and panic quickly abating, and being replaced with a sense of relief, excitement and hope.

However, the silhouette had made no indication that they had her, as they just continued walking across the road.

"Hey, over here!" Chiaki shouted over to the silhouette, seeing that they did not seem to have heard her, though she did not stop running.

Unfortunately, the silhouette still made no indication that they had heard her, either genuinely having not heard her or they had deliberately chosen to ignore her. Nonetheless, Chiaki just continued to run towards them, determined to catch up with them. However, as Chiaki continued to run, the silhouette suddenly appeared to suddenly vanish into the fog as they reached the other side of the road, which caused Chiaki to stop running, and she bent over, placing her hands on her knees as she panted for breath.

"No," she said quietly to herself, shaking her head as the feeling of disappointment quickly washed over her.

She just could not understand why this was happening to her. Surely whoever that was she had seen had to have heard her. It made no sense for them to have not heard her, since she was pretty sure that her voice had carried all the way over to where they had been. Could it be that they were simply too far away to have heard her or perhaps they had heard her, but she was so far away that her voice had been very faint to them and that they had just assumed that it had been their imagination, or maybe even it was that they were just that callous that they had chosen to deliberately ignore her? She honestly hoped that it was not the latter. Sure, she could tolerate them not liking her and insulting her, but she would have preferred if they had come over to her and insult and demean her to her face. She hated it when people ignored her when she tried to get their attention, despite how rare it was for her. It made her feel as if she was not really there, like she was invisible or a ghost, and that depressed her.

"Or could it have been my imagination?" she thought to herself in an effort to explain why the silhouette had seemed to ignore her.

That could be plausible, she figured with a nod. Yes, perhaps she had been so desperate for someone else's company that she had imagined the whole thing. Perhaps there really had been no one there to begin with and the fog was just playing tricks on her mind. She then let out a rather deep disappointed sigh.

"Maybe I just shouldn't get my hopes up," she thought to herself, shaking her head as she took her hands off her knees and righted herself, "After all, even if they had been real, why'd they feel the need to hang out with a freaky gaming fanatic like me? They'd probably only make fun of me or find me weird."

She knew that she was, in effect, contradicting herself, since she never really cared if they had taken to her negatively or not, but she figured that it was just a coping mechanism to deal with her disappointment in that she had been unable to get their attention, that is, assuming that they had been real in the first place. Shaking her head, feeling too disappointed for her fear and panic from before to come back and dominate her thinking once again, she just continued to walk down the road in the direction she had been going, and a small part of her hoped that the silhouette would appear again or failing that, someone else would come along instead. Part of her really hoped that the silhouette had not just been a figment of her imagination and that they would double back and manage to find her or someone else would happen to find her. However, unfortunately for Chiaki, the silhouette did not appear again, neither did anyone else.

After what seemed like an eternity, Chiaki suddenly stopped, shaking her head.

"Just how long does this road go on for?" she said to herself, feeling rather frustrated.

Just how long had she been here? All she could see was the road in front of her and nothing else, well nothing else aside from the fog as least. Anything else that could possibly be around about her was shrouded in a mixture of darkness and fog. Thanks to the incident with the mysterious silhouette, Chiaki was no longer feeling fearful, but her fear had since given way to annoyed frustration.

Letting out a frustrated groan, she stomped her foot on the tarmac and glared ahead of her.

"Where on Earth am I and just how on Earth did I end up here?" she practically shouted in a rather loud voice, not caring that there was no one around to hear her, though on a subconscious level, she hoped that there was someone out there that would be close enough to hear her and come over to her, "Why am I here?"

Unfortunately, her questions went unanswered, and she let out another disappointed sigh as she shook her head. She then started to walk onwards, not really caring where she ended up or how long it would take to get there. However, she had no idea how long she had been walking, perhaps only a few minutes had passed or perhaps it had been a few hours, since she had long since lost all concept of time, but eventually, she could hear, or at least she thought that she could hear what sounded like a low whirring sound, causing her to stop. At first she thought that perhaps her imagination must be playing tricks on her again, since whatever it was sounded so quiet and in the distance, but just as she shook her head and was about to start walking again, she could hear that the noise was getting louder.

"Huh, so it's not my imagination this time?" she said to herself, turning to look behind her, since that was where she believed the noise was coming from.

She could just manage to make out a light through the fog in the distance, and judging from the way it seemed to be getting bigger, she guessed that it was coming towards her. After a good few minutes, in which she just stood there watching as the light got closer, Chiaki realised that what she was hearing was the sound of a car engine, and she suddenly heard the sound of a car horn. She then moved to the side of the road as the light became big enough for Chiaki to see that it was actually coming from the front of a velvet blue-coloured stretch limousine that was trundling towards her. To her immense surprise, she saw that the limousine was actually slowing down, and she could even hear the tires grinding along the tarmac, though she quickly guessed that it must be because the driver wanted to make sure that they did not run her over by mistake.

"That's the first car I've seen on the road since I came here," the gamer girl thought with a hint of relief, though she was surprised that the car in question was a limousine that looked as if it belonged to a billionaire.

Studying the limousine, Chiaki noticed that the light that she had seen was coming from two pairs of circular headlights, one pair each on either side of the front of the limousine running horizontally and parallel to one another. Judging from the appearance of the front of the limousine, Chiaki guessed that it was probably a Rolls Royce model. The entire front, aside from the top, which was the same velvet blue colour as the rest of the limousine was metal and grey in colour, and the licence plate displayed, "CH-8700", indicating that it was probably a privately owned, and possibly even a foreign-owned limousine. The top of the metal grill was a bit triangular with a small pole sitting at the top, and atop the pole was a metal carving of a laurel wreath with thick leaves, and in the centre of the wreath was the letter, V. The top of the limousine's roof was slightly curved, and it also had five windows on either side with metal decorations placed vertically between each window that looked a lot like handles, and also, there were horizontal handles beneath both the windows at the front and the windows at the back, which were the same velvet blue colour as the limousine itself, indicating that that was where the doors were located. Looking at the back of the limousine as it ground to halt, she saw two vertically rectangular rimmed brake lights with rounded corners. There was one break light at each side, and a small piece of rounded metal attached to the bottom of the rim went up the centre of each break light. The trunk was looked to be so small that Chiaki had to wonder if it was possible to fit anything inside it.

In any case, realising that the limousine had stopped, Chiaki looked on with a mixture of wonder and curiosity, wondering if it had stopped because of her.

"I wonder what some rich guy would want with me," she thought to herself curiously in wonder and a little bit of confusion, "After all, I'm just a gaming fanatic that mostly everyone else finds creepy to be around."

The front door on the right side of the limousine opened up, and someone, whom Chiaki assumed must be the limousine's driver, stepped out, though, after taking a good look at them, she noted that they looked as if they were dressed for a job as a hotel porter rather than someone's chauffeur, and they turned to regard Chiaki, who just so happened to be on the same side of the limousine as they were.

"Greetings, my dear," the limousine's driver greeted in a polite tone, bringing his arm over his stomach before he gave a rather polite bow, "My name is Theodore and I'm delighted to make your acquaintance."

Chiaki just blinked in confusion, unsure what to make of this Theodore character. He definitely looked as if he was a foreigner with short, neatly-combed platinum blonde hair, though she could not help but wonder if it was dyed, and he also had brownish orange eyes. He wore black shoes, black trousers with two thick blue lines, separated by a thin black line running vertically from the waistband down the outer sides of his leggings. He also wore a black shirt, a blue necktie, and over his shirt, he wore a rather complicatedly designed coat. The coat itself was at least two different shades of blue, the darker shade being at the back and sides, and the lighter shade at the front. It was also black on the inside with blue outlining at the collar. Two thick stripes of a lighter shade of blue, separated by a thin stripe of a darker shade of blue ran along the tops of the shoulders and down the sides of the sleeves that had black cuffs, each one hand four buttons acting as cufflinks arranged in the shape of a square situated at where the backs of the hands emerged. There was also a black back belt at the back that was pinned in place by two golden buttons. However, the oddest looking feature about the coat was the four buttons at the front, arranged in the shape of a square with the borders between the light and darker shades of blue running up the centre of them. Each button was gold in colour and was at the centre of a black circle, which had a light blue rim running around its circumference, and that was followed by a black rim running around it as well. In addition to that, Theodore also wore white gloves and a blue hotel porter's hat with a dark blue stripe running vertically along the centre, and on the left side of his hat was a small silver-rimmed circular plaque with the letter, V in silver lettering against a black background.

"Um…" Chiaki said, unsure how to proceed.

"I take it that you're probably confused, yes?" Theodore said as he stood upright and brought his arm back to his side, "You have no idea where you are or even how you got here, am I right?"

Chiaki's eyes widened in surprise, though she could not help but nod. Just who was this man, and how did he come to know of her current situation? A sense of fearful wariness started to creep into her mind, as she regarded Theodore suspiciously. Despite not having a good relationship with her parents, they had had enough sense to drill some of life's lessons into her brain, even though their reasons for doing so were not out of love for her, and one of those lessons was regarding strangers. She figured that this Theodore character was probably going to offer her a ride, and she remembered her mother, as well as a few of her teachers at school, back when she was just a child, teaching her not to trust strangers. If someone she did not know tried to come up to her or offer her a ride in their car, she was to say no or try to get in contact with the police. This Theodore was definitely a stranger to her, and the fact that he seemed to know of her plight only made her even more suspicious of him despite his polite sounding tone.

Theodore then sighed with a frown, obviously having guessed that Chiaki was wary of him.

"I know that this must seem suspicious to you, but I can assure you that I mean you no harm," he said, giving Chiaki a mixture of an apologetic and a pleading look on his face, and it was clear to the gamer girl that he was begging her to accept what he had just told her, "And I realise what I'm about to say may sound even more suspicious, but I have to request that you trust me. My master has been waiting for you."

"Your… master…?" Chiaki said with a mixture of fear and confusion in her voice, as she suddenly realised that since Theodore was the limousine's driver, he was probably just a lackey of whoever was in the back of the limousine.

Despite Theodore sounding sincere, and she could tell that he seemed sincere just by looking into his eyes, she still did not know if she could fully trust him. After all, it could all be just an act. She could not really tell if someone was acting or not. Due to spending most of her time alone, she had not bothered studying people's body language in order to get to know them, since she was mostly too engrossed in her handheld video games to notice their body language, even on the rare occasions when those people were talking directly to her. Could she really take a chance and risk having something awful happening to her? She really had no idea if she should, but then again, as she started to think over her current situation, she came to realise just how little of a choice she actually had. She could decline Theodore and his master's offer and remain stranded in this mysterious fog-enveloped place or she could accept and see what they had to offer, and risk them having unsavoury intentions for her. However, at the same time, she could be wrong and they genuinely intended to help her.

"Oh well, what have I got to lose?" she said with a sigh of resignation, accompanied by a shrug of her shoulders, "It's not like anyone will miss me if something were to happen to me. I wouldn't be surprised if my parents ended up throwing a massive celebration party if something did happen to me."

That much was true, she figured. After all, she had no friends and just about all her family that she knew of all hated her guts, her parents because she just so happened to be born as their daughter, and her Aunt Kasumi and her family because her parents tended to dump her on them whenever their jobs demanded that they go elsewhere and work, which was pretty frequently. Everyone else either did not know her all that well to have an opinion of her, and those few that did generally ended up eventually finding her behaviour in regards to video games off-putting, and were quick to excuse themselves just so they could get away from her. So, summing up all her options, she figured that she absolutely had nothing to lose in going with Theodore and his master, whom she guessed must be in the back of the limousine, or maybe Theodore had just been sent to pick her up and bring her to his master, whom she could not help but envision living in a big beautifully immaculate mansion, the sorts of which billionaires tended to live in.

Theodore nodded, confirming that he had heard Chiaki's statement, and he walked over to the back door and opened it up, though he gave her a rather apologetic look.

"I'm so sorry that fate hasn't really been kind to you so far," he said in a sympathetic tone, giving her an equally sympathetic look, but then his tone took on a rather hopeful turn, "But hopefully, with what my master has in store for you, it could hopefully help with that."

"Huh?" Chiaki said in confusion, has eyes widening in shock, "Just how do you know so much about me?"

"All will be explained in due time," Theodore responded with a bright warm smile, gesturing her to enter into the back of the limousine with his hand.

Chiaki hesitated for a brief moment, a part of her still wondering if this was a good idea, but upon seeing the genuine warmth in Theodore's smile, she quickly quashed the lingering doubt in her mind and climbed into the back of the limousine, taking off her backpack and sitting it next to her on her right as she sat down. Theodore then closed the door and Chiaki saw him start to walk back towards the front of the limousine. The first thing she noticed when she entered the limousine was that she could hear a rather soothing piano melody, and after a good few seconds, a woman's voice started singing, though she could not make out any lyrics. She also heard a violin every now and then. However, from what she could see, there was no radio anywhere inside the limousine and she could not accurately place just where the tune was coming from. In fact, if her ears were not playing tricks on her, she could have sworn that the tune was coming out of the walls, the floor and the ceiling, since the tune could be heard all around her, and not only that, but there was something soothing about it. Listening to the tune helped Chiaki calm herself down as she placed her hands on her lap and started to take in her surroundings.

Mostly everything appeared to be different shades of velvet blue. The floor was blue and a strangely shaped light on the ceiling bathed the room in a gentle velvet light. There were designs at either side of the light that ran the length of the room and at the sides by the windows was a row of circular blue lights, one row at each side. The windows all had dark blue drape curtains hanging from them and even the end of the room opposite Chiaki that had no windows at all, and served to separate the room from the driver's cab had drapes. The wall opposite her was a very deep shade of blue with three drapes running along the top. There was a depression in the wall underneath the central drape with the edges at slight diagonal angels and at least three screws on either side that came up to meet the drapes on either side of the central drape at the point where they started to curve towards the central drape. There was also another depression in the depression just underneath the central drape, only this depression was rectangular, and in the rectangular depression in the centre was a thin grey-rimmed rectangular line with rounded corners that were so round that the ends did not look like a rectangle at all and it looked more like a thick line. There was also a small line that Chiaki could just make out running along the centre of this particular feature and there was also a circular object right in the middle, and Chiaki guessed that it must have had something to do with communicating with Theodore while he was in the driver's cab. To Chiaki's left beneath the windows were two shelves with small blue tiles and a TV, or what appeared to be a TV, situated in the centre of the top shelf, and one each shelf was an array of wine glasses with the odd bottle or two. The edges of the shelves as well as the top were black and the small bit of wall between the shelves and the windows was a dark blue with diamond shapes on it. Opposite Chiaki was an L shaped sofa that ran off to her right and then a small black table with a wine glass and two bottles of alcoholic beverages, which was on her right, and then another sofa with a space for the door that she had just entered through. She noticed that she was also sitting on a similar looking sofa. Each sofa had black outlining decorating their tops and corners and were of curved designs. They also had diamond shapes as well as rectangular depressions on them, with the rectangles making one big rectangle at the L junction where the vertical and horizontal portions met. Also opposite Chiaki was a round table with the legs positioned in a diamond shape, at least from her perspective and the bottom of each table leg curved outwards. There was also a blue tablecloth with a light blue-almost white outline and what, to Chiaki, looked to be the designs similar to a stag beetle's antlers at the corners, draped over the table in the shape of a diamond, at least from Chiaki's perspective. Basically it seemed like the inside of a regular limousine with a minibar and a built-in TV. Looking outside the windows, all she could see was the thickly heavy fog outside, though the windows made it appear a tad bit lighter than it really was.

After studying her surroundings, Chiaki then noticed that she was not alone in the back of the limousine. There were two others in the limousine with her, an elderly gentleman that sat opposite her, and a woman who sat to the old man's left, which was Chiaki's right, and she sat with the table separating the two sofas to her left, and both of them had their eyes closed, seemingly unaware of her presence in the room. After a brief few moments of awkward silence, since Chiaki was unsure how to get their attention without coming across as being rude, the woman suddenly raised her head slightly as she opened her eyes, but she just stared straight ahead of her and still did not make any indications that she was aware that Chiaki was in the room with her. In fact, she seemed to completely ignore Chiaki altogether. Her expression was rather blank and betrayed no emotion she may have been feeling at that particular time. In fact, her expression was so stoically devoid of emotion that Chiaki found herself wondering if she was some kind of robot. Her eyes did hold a somewhat lifeless look to them.

To Chiaki's great surprise, she saw that the woman had the same platinum blonde hair colour as Theodore, though it was somewhat wavy, combed to the left, leaving her forehead exposed and at the back, went down to just beneath her shoulders. She also had the same brownish orange eye colour as Theodore, and she even dressed similarly to him as well, which led Chiaki to wonder if they were related somehow. From the redness of her lips, Chiaki guessed that she also must have put on some lipstick. She wore blue high-heeled shoes, black leggings that may or may not be part of a one-piece bodysuit, since she also wore a blue trenchcoat that covered nearly all of her body, and Chiaki also noticed the collar of a black garment coming up from under the trenchcoat around her neck that came up to just underneath her chin. The front of the collar had three golden buttons lining down her throat with a fourth actually on the trenchcoat itself.

However, studying the trenchcoat, Chiaki noticed that it was even more complicatedly designed then Theodore's coat. The trenchcoat came down to just above her knees and the front appeared to be separate from the rest of the trenchcoat, and seemed to be held in place by eight blue oversized circular buttons with grey rims. The front also had black outlining with another black line further in that ran parallel to the outlining that formed a corridor of sorts that went up, giving the appearance of a smaller rectangle inside a bigger one with the inner line going up through the centre of each button. The buttons themselves were arranged in four rows of two with four running down her upper torso, with the top two covering the corners of the inner rectangle, and the last four buttons running down her lower torso, and separated by a rather thick blue belt with black outlining and a massive grey buckle. The trenchcoat also had black lines that separated the sleeves from the rest of the main coat and on the shoulders were rectangular flaps that were pinned in place by smaller versions of the buttons that held the front of the coat in place. There were all black-outlined flaps running around the ends of the sleeves that were also pinned in place by smaller sized buttons on one side and a smaller golden button on the other, though Chiaki had to wonder if it really was a button, as it looked as if it was tugged into the sleeve. Chiaki also noticed that the main coat had slight lined depressions crisscrossing each other and forming diamond shapes and they also ran down the sleeves, though from a distance, this was unnoticeable. The woman also had a blue hairband running from the sides and over the top of her head halfway between the front and the back.

She sat with her hands clasped over a deeply dark purple coloured book that had a gold border running slightly within the edges, and had the letter, V, in gold lettering in the centre of the book and surrounding the V, was a golden laurel wreath, much like the one on the front of the limousine, and above the V and laurel wreath, in gold lettering, were the words, "Le Grimoire" spelled out in the Roman Alphabet. The book also had two gold parallel lines run over the side near the top and two others near the bottom.

Once she was sure she had taken in the woman's appearance, Chiaki turned to regard the elderly gentlemen sitting opposite her. The man had his elbows resting on the table and his hands were clasped in front of him. However, what surprised Chiaki was that he did not look as if he was entirely human with a pair of pointed ears like a goblin, gremlin or any other mythical creature those stereotype featured pointed ears, and he also had an inhumanly long nose that, from the angle Chiaki was looking from, seemed to be curving downwards like a toucan's beak. In fact, to Chiaki, it appeared as if he was resting his nose on the tops of his clasped hands.

Like the woman before him, he also opened his eyes, but unlike the woman, he stared directly at Chiaki and regarded her with careful scrutiny. He had short greyish white hair running along the sides and back of his head, with the top of his head being completely bald. His eyes appeared to be bloodshot with no irises, just two black dots for pupils that appeared so small that they were only just noticeable and no more. However, his eyebrows differed from his hair in that they were a dark grey-almost black colour.

"Whatever he is, I doubt he's human," Chiaki thought to herself, "Unless it's some sort of Halloween Costume."

She wisely decided to keep her opinion about this strange looking man to herself since she did not want to offend him. She guessed that he must have been the "master" that Theodore was referring to since he looked different from Theodore and the woman who was accompanying him, and he also dressed differently. According to Theodore, he had been waiting for her, and though she was unsure just what he had in store for her, whether he was planning on helping her or had some sinister intentions for her, she figured that she had nothing to lose accepting whatever offer he had for her, so offending him was not in the gamer girl's best interests. Chiaki figured that if he genuinely was intending to help her, then to offend him would mean that he would throw her out of the limousine and abandon her out in the fog-filled darkness outside.

In any case, looking him over, she saw that he wore black shoes, those ends were pointing upwards at a forty-five-degree angle leaving Chiaki to wonder just how on Earth he was comfortable wearing them since she was sure that anyone else that tried to put them on would have trouble putting them on and walking around in them without breaking a few bones in their feet, but then after remembering his pointed ears and long nose, she mentally kicked herself since this man, whatever he was, was most definitely not human. Anyway, he also wore dark grey trousers, a white shirt with a black ribbon tied around the collar, and the knot at the front with both ends of the ribbon running down his front like neckties, though they split going off in slight diagonal down angles in opposite directions, and over his shirt was a grey coat with a breast pocket on the left-hand side that was stuffed with a white napkin. He also wore white gloves over his hands.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room," the elderly gentleman spoke in a rather soft and somewhat soothing tone, though Chiaki noted that he sounded a bit like a stereotypical Dracula-like character in American vampire films, as he spoke with a slight stereotypical Transylvanian accent.

In any case, almost immediately after he finished speaking, Chiaki felt the limousine start to move, and she guessed that Theodore must have gotten back to the driver's cab and was now continuing on his way. For some strange reason, despite the elderly gentleman's sinister looks, Chiaki found herself strangely feeling comfortably at ease in his presence. Alarms bells were not ringing in her head, and she now somehow realised that whoever this was, he did not have anything sinister in store for her despite his appearance saying otherwise. Perhaps her ease and relaxed nature were both due to listening to that soothing tune that seemed to come from the room itself. Chiaki could not put her finger on it. She was sure that anyone else looking that this elderly gentleman would be wary of him since he looked as if he was ready to jump at her and attempt to molest and violate her at any given moment, and yet, the gamer girl could somehow tell that he was not going to do either of those things to her. Rather than getting bad vibes from this man, the vibes she was getting from him seemed to help more in setting her at ease.

"I wonder if that tune has some kind of hypnotic effect that puts its listeners at ease," she could not help but think to herself, a part of her still a little sceptical, but that almost quickly faded the longer she stared at the elderly gentleman.

"Ah, it seems we have a guest with an intriguing destiny," the elderly gentleman playfully chuckled with a wave of his hand, unaware of the gamer girl's thoughts, "My name is Igor…"

He then paused and seemed to catch his breath, after another wave of his hand as he introduced himself.

"And I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, my dear," he then said, finishing what he was going to say.

"Nice to meet you to, Igor-san," Chiaki said with a polite bow, or as much of a bow as she could manage from her sitting position, though she could not help but wonder why he had referred to her as a guest.

"Thank you, I don't think I've ever met a guest as polite as you before," Igor said, waving his hand again, and he sounded rather grateful, but then the gratefulness vanished as he continued to speak, "Anyway, this place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter."

"Huh, what's that supposed to mean?" Chiaki thought to herself in confusion, clearly not understanding what Igor had just said.

"It is a room that only those bound by a "contract" may enter," Igor went on explaining, once again waving his hand and ignoring Chiaki's confusion, "It may be that such a fate awaits you in the near future."

"Huh, just what's that supposed to mean?" Chiaki said in confusion, unable to wrap her head around what she had just been told, "What's this "contract" supposed to mean? I don't remember signing any "contract"."

"Now then, my dear, why don't you introduce yourself?" Igor asked with yet another wave of his hand, completely ignoring Chiaki's queries, much to her surprise.

"My name is Nanami Chiaki," Chiaki said, deciding to play along with Igor for now, since he seemed like the best chance for her getting out of this fog-enveloped place, "And in case you're not aware, in Japan, the family name comes first, so Nanami is my family name and Chiaki is my given name."

"Hm, I see," Igor said with a nod, "And don't worry. I am aware of the Far-Eastern Asian naming order. You're not our first Japanese guest."

"Okay, but what was all that about dream and reality and "contracts" because I don't remember signing any "contract"," Chiaki said, looking for Igor to explain.

"Do not worry about that too much, my dear," Igor said with yet another wave of his hand, and Chiaki realised that it must be a habit of his, but hearing what he just said caused her to open her mouth to protest, but he continued to speak before the words could come out of her mouth, "That is completely irrelevant at this particular moment in time, and if you want proof, then let me ask you, what is the last thing you remember before you ended up here?"

"Eh?" Chiaki said in confusion, her protests dying in her throat as a result of Igor's question, and she had to admit that for the first time since she found herself in this mysterious place, she realised that she had never really thought about it.

Since ending up here, all she had thought about was how she ended up there and how she was going to get out. She had not even considered what she had been doing beforehand. In fact, she had been so caught up in trying to find answers on how to get out of her predicament that she had just plain forgot exactly what she had been doing before that. However, with Igor's question stopping her protests dead in their tracks, she seriously started giving it some thought.

"I'll give you a clue, the answer lies in what I just told you regarding this place's location," Igor said with another wave of his hand, giving the gamer girl a hint, "Once you find out what it was I explained and what you were doing beforehand, it should become clear to you."

"Huh," Chiaki said as memories started to come back to her, and then her eyes widened in shocked realisation, "No way, the last thing I remember was falling asleep in my bed. I'm supposed to be going to live with my Uncle Dōjima tomorrow. You said, "dream and reality", so does that mean I'm dreaming?"

"I said that this place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter," Igor explained in response with a nod of his head.

"So, what you're really saying is that I'm in some sort of limbo between reality and Dreamland?" Chiaki said as she tried to understand what Igor was telling her.

That seemed to be the most logical explanation she could come up with. She must really be dreaming. However, this also gave her more questions than answers. In the past whenever she was dreaming, she never actually realised that she was dreaming, and when she woke up, she could never entirely remember all the details in her dream. Sure, she remembered bits and pieces, and some had such an effect on her that the remained in the conscious part of her brain, like a dream she had when she was only six involved her being completely alone on a subway train that seemed to be travelling through a never-ending tunnel and there had been periodic flashes of white light out in the tunnel. However, dreams like that were few and far between. She mostly forgot the majority dreams by the end of the day. One thing she did hate about dreaming though, was that when she was having a really good dream and she found that she would often wake up just as it was getting to the best part, and sometimes, her dreams were so good that when she woke up, she found herself disappointed that it had all just been a dream and she had wished that it had been real.

Whenever she was dreaming, usually, on the rare occasion she did realise she was dreaming, it was enough to wake her up, but this did not seem to be the case this time, and she could not help but feel a little a little scared as she remembered hearing about the American movie series, Nightmare on Elm Street, which was about a serial killer that harnessed supernatural powers in order to murder people in their dreams and their murders also caused them to die in real life as well. Yes, she definitely was dreaming, she had established that much. Igor's strange appearance made no sense otherwise, and neither did that dark fog-enveloped road outside. However, her thoughts drifted back to that mysterious silhouette she had seen, whom she had called out to, and who had ignored her. Could that have been another soul who had fallen asleep and had somehow ended up in this dream limbo? Given what Igor had just said, she was now fairly certain that whoever that silhouette had been, they had not been spawned by her imagination.

"It's very complicated to explain," Igor spoke up, answering her question and bringing her out of her thoughts, "However, I will say that you are fast asleep in the real world, and don't worry, my dear, I'm not a Freddy Kruger type of fellow."

Chiaki let out a sigh of relief, somehow being able to tell that Igor was telling the truth.

"Now, moving on, let's take a look into your future, shall we?" Igor went on with another wave of his hand, deciding to move things along, and Chiaki decided that it was best to just to let things play out and see where they ended up.

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" she thought to herself with a sigh, though she could not help but admit that was curious as to what he had in store.

Igor then placed his hand over the table, the same one that he had been waving with, and Chiaki realised that it was his left hand, which told her that Igor must be left-handed. Anyway, once he placed his hand over the table, there was a brief flash of white light between his hand and the table, and when the light vanished, in its place was a deck of cards that had not been there before.

"If this wasn't some sort of dream, I'd chalk that up as some kind of illusion," Chiaki thought to herself with a nod, "However, I guess in this dream limbo, anything, even real magic must be possible."

"Do you believe in fortune telling?" Igor asked her with another wave of his hand.

"Not really," Chiaki replied honestly, shaking her head, "I had a run-in with a fortune teller while my parents and I went on vacation nine years ago to Paris, the capital city of France."

"My, I wasn't expecting such honesty," Chiaki heard a female voice chuckle quietly to themselves, and Chiaki turned to regard the woman sitting to Igor's left.

If Chiaki was honest with herself, she had to say that she had just about forgotten that the woman had been in the room with them since she had remained perfectly silent and seemed perfectly content to let Igor do all the talking. It did confirm once and for all that Igor was the one in charge, and that Theodore and this woman were probably his subordinates. For a brief moment, Chiaki thought she saw the smallest hints of a smile adorning the woman's lips, but it vanished so quickly and she was back to her default emotionless expression that Chiaki had to wonder if she had imagined it.

In any case, she vaguely remembered that time in Paris when she was only seven. She and her parents had gone on vacation, though their idea of vacation had been to continue with work related to their careers in the hotel they were staying at while throwing her out of the room to do her own thing. Since it was a vacation and not due to their jobs, her parents had brought her along with them instead of leaving her with her Aunt Kasumi. However, she remembered one day, she had been wandering the streets of Paris near the hotel where she and her parents were staying at, which was pretty near Paris's Gare du Nord railway station, when she met a French woman, who had appeared as if she was of Romani descent, and she had taken into her caravan and read her fortune. She did not remember much about what the fortune teller had said, but she did remember that she had been told that she was going to die at some point after she turned eighteen and that would not live to see her nineteenth birthday. Of course, Chiaki had not believed her and had accused her of lying to her, but the fortune teller did not seem to be all that bothered about the fact that the gamer girl had been sceptical of her, and she had even been kind enough to escort her back to the hotel. After that, she never saw the fortune teller again, though she had to admit, what the fortune teller had told her and her dismissive nature over her scepticism did scare her a bit.

"Ahem," Igor's voice came, bringing the gamer girl out of her thoughts to find him glaring at her.

"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry, Igor-san," she said apologetically, following it up with an apologetic bow, "I did not mean any disrespect. I just got caught up thinking about some old memories."

Igor's glare quickly vanished and he let out a light chuckle. He then waved his hand over the table and then the top six cards appeared separately on the table in two rows of three with the centre cards elevated slightly higher than the ones at either side. The back of the cards had a strangely designed outline. Chiaki found that she was unable to make out any of the designs. In fact, it looked more like a mixture of blue and white. There was a second light blue-almost white border within the first border, and a third darker shade, but still fairly light blue border within that as well. There were also diamond shades depicted on the cards within the three borders that were the same colours as the inner two borders, and also there were greyish blue designs running along beside the borders. In the centre of the cards was a half-and-half circle, one side white and the other side black, and with that circle was the depiction of a face that was slightly vertically ovular with jagged triangles between the face and the circle's circumference. With the half-and-half nature of the circle, everything that was white on one side was black on the other and vice versa.

"Each reading is done with the same cards, yet the result is always different," Igor went on, once again waving his hand, and then let out a chuckle, "Life itself follows the same principals, doesn't it, my dear?"

"I guess," Chiaki said with a nod, deciding to just go along with whatever it was Igor was planning.

Igor then reached for the upper left card, or from Chiaki's perspective, it was the lower right card, and he flipped it over to reveal the depiction of a bolt of lightning striking a tower with people jumping from it and the lightning also appeared to knock the top of the tower right off and underneath the depiction in white letter was the symbol, XVI, the Roman numeral for sixteen.

Chiaki looked on nervously. She could tell that Igor was doing a tarot reading, and though she did not know much about tarot cards or their meanings, she had picked up enough information to know that what she had just seen was the Tower, and that it was a card that did not bring about good news.

"Hm… The Tower in the upright position represents the immediate future," Igor went on, and for once he did not wave his hand, "It seems that a terrible catastrophe is imminent."

Chiaki found herself suddenly shaking her head in denial, clearly not wanting to believe what she had just heard.

"The card indicating the future beyond that is…" Igor went on, now back to waving his hand, and he ignored the gamer girl, who refused to believe what he had just said.

He then reached for the upper right card, which from Chiaki's perspective was the lower left card and flipped it over to reveal the depiction of a small black lobster above a circle and in the circle was a yellow crescent moon facing off to the left with a face on it, and underneath that in white letter was the symbol, XVIII, the Roman numeral for Eighteen.

"The Moon, in the upright position," Igor went on, causing Chiaki to stop shaking her head and look on curiously, and went he spoke next, he also waved his hand again, "This card represents, "hesitation" and "mystery" … Very interesting indeed."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Chiaki said in a rather loud voice, and she found herself glaring at Igor for the first time, and she also sounded more demanding than she had intended to be.

"It seems that you will encounter a misfortune at your destination, and a great mystery will be imposed upon you," Igor replied, appearing not all that surprised or put off by the gamer girl's sudden change in attitude.

"Huh, destination… what're you talking about?" Chiaki said in confusion, her previous anger put on hold for the moment.

"In the coming days, you will enter into a contract of some sort, after which you will return here.," Igor went on with another wave of his hand, ignoring Chiaki's question, and the gamer girl felt her anger from before return, "The coming year is a turning point in your destiny… If the mystery goes unsolved, your future may be forever lost."

"W… what?" Chiaki said, her eyes widened in shock and horror, her anger suddenly giving way to terror as she went over what the long-nosed man had just said.

"My duty is to provide assistance to our guests to ensure that does not happen," Igor finished up with a wave of his hand, and then he waved his hand over the table, and cards on the table disappeared.

"Huh, hold on, Igor-san, you're not done, what about the other cards?" Chiaki asked in confusion, noting that he had not flipped the rest of the cards over.

"Well, that is all I am able to decipher at this present moment in time," Igor explained with another wave of his hand, "What lies ahead beyond the Moon is entirely up to you, my dear."

"Uh huh, and can you explain to me what that was all about?" Chiaki said, deciding that that was probably as best an answer she was going to get from Igor at the moment, "What do you mean that I'll encounter a misfortune at my destination? Are you saying that something's going to happen to me after I arrive in Inaba?"

As she spoke, she felt the anger, and volume, in her voice raise as she found herself glaring at the long-nosed man once again. In all honesty, she did not want to believe what she had just been told. However, as much as she wanted to convince herself that this was all just some sort of cruel and twisted prank that Igor cooked up, she could not help but fear that perhaps there may be a seed of truth in his words, as cryptic as they were. It was the same as with that fortune teller in Paris nine years previously. She had wanted to dismiss it as some sort of cruel prank made to frighten her, but considering that the fortune teller had not seemed all that concerned about her scepticism when she called her a liar, she could not help but wonder if perhaps there was a seed of truth in what she had been told. Was she really going to die before her nineteenth birthday? She did not want to believe it, and yet, she remembered how she had a hard time getting over to sleep for a good few weeks afterwards fearing that what the fortune teller had said had been the truth.

Igor was similar, though the difference was, this was some kind of dream realm whereas what happened in Paris had been in the real world. Like the fortune teller, Igor did not seem all that concerned about her scepticism. However, when she went over what he had said, she realised an inconsistency between what he had told her and the fortune teller back in Paris had told her.

"Wait, you said that if this mystery went unsolved, my future could be forever lost, is that right?" she said, as she found herself calming down, in the knowledge that she was still just sixteen, and if what that fortune teller had told her was indeed true, then she still had about roughly two years of life left in her.

"That is correct," Igor said with a nod.

"Then I guess it means that I will solve this mystery," Chiaki went on, somewhat arrogantly, since she was nowhere near the point at which the mysterious fortune teller had said she would die, "As I said before, I had a run-in with a fortune teller before, and she said that I would not live to see my nineteenth birthday, so if that is indeed the truth, which I honestly doubt, then I still have roughly two years to live."

"Your emotions at this point are entirely understandable, my dear," Igor said with a nod and another wave of his hand, "You're wanting to dismiss everything as one big joke, but at the same time, you're fearful of there being truth in my words. Your scepticism and anger only serves to hide your growing fear. However, as I said before, that is just one possible outcome. I realise what Mademoiselle Lozé said to you, but she did not specify a specific date. After all, foreknowledge of one's fate can greatly affect the outcome. Rest assured, my dear, in most cases, fate is not set in stone."

"Huh, are you trying to…?" Chiaki started to ask, but Igor just interrupted her with a chuckle.

"I realise that you may not understand everything that I'm telling you," the long-nosed man went on with yet another wave of his hand, "However, I will say that in time, you will eventually come to understand everything. The answers that you seek are difficult to put into words. You can only find those answers through experience, and once you do, I promise you that you will understand. I'm not sure if this misfortune will befall you or someone else, but I can definitely say that something will happen at your destination upon your arrival, and as for your question about the "contract", I will say that you are correct in that you have not signed anything, but as I stated before, it the coming days you will enter into a "contract" of sorts. When next you come here, you will have already agreed to it."

"Okay, I'll take your word for it," Chiaki said, though she was a bit sceptical, but after hearing Igor's statement on how fate was not set in stone, it did give her some hope that perhaps she could possibly survive to see her nineteenth birthday, not that she actually believed that that fortune teller had been truthful, but she still could not help but subconsciously wonder if perhaps her words did indeed have some seed of truth in them.

For now, she decided that she had no choice but to trust this mysterious long-nosed man. After all, he did say that he was going to help her. She supposed that it was in her best interests to accept his offer. However, thinking over what he had just told her, she realised that that was probably as much of an answer as she was going to get out of him.

"Though if he said that this place was only for those bound by a "contract", how is it that I'm here before I signed anything?" she asked herself in her thoughts, but kept them to herself, since she doubted that Igor was going to provide her with a suitable answer.

"Ah!" Igor said as if he just realised something, though he emphasised it with another wave of his hand, "I have neglected to introduce my assistant to you."

"Your assistant?" Chiaki said, and then she suddenly remembered the woman sitting to Igor's left and turned to regard her once again.

Once again, she had started to forget that she had been there at all, since apart from that one quiet comment, she had remained silent while Igor did all the talking.

"This is Margaret," Igor said with another wave of his hand, though this time he also seemed to be gesturing towards the woman, whom he had just introduced as Margaret, and turned to look at her as well, "She is a resident of this place like myself."

"Resident, wait, you mean you actually live in a limousine?" Chiaki said in surprise, her eyes widening in disbelief.

"My name is Margaret," the woman said, speaking up loud enough for Chiaki to clearly hear for the first time, though her tone sounded rather monotone and as devoid of emotion as her expression, as the gamer girl's question went unanswered, "I am here to accompany you through your journey."

"My journey…?" Chiaki said, even more confused than before.

"We shall attend to the details another time," Igor said, and it was then that Chiaki realised that he had pretty much brought their discussion to an end, and with one final wave of his hand, continued speaking, "Until then, farewell…"

"Hey, hang on a minute!" Chiaki shouted in alarm, wondering what was going to happen to her now that their discussion was over.

However, before she could even think, she felt her vision fading to blackness and that she could not do anything, not even think, before she felt herself in a lying position, and then she felt something slamming into her, causing her vision to explode in a sea of light.

---

Monday 11th April 2011

"Wake up, Chiaki, you meaningless sack of flesh!" Chiaki heard the voice of her mother practically scream in a rather agitated tone.

Chiaki suddenly found herself back in her bedroom, lying in her bed with a black duffle bag lying on top of her.

"Huh…?" she said in confusion, sitting up, ignoring the duffle bag as she tried to get her bearings.

She then started looking around, and for a few seconds was unsure whether she was back in her own room or not. She remembered having a strange dream in which she was in the middle of a road surrounded by a rather eerily ominous fog, and then this velvet blue coloured limousine happened to come across her, and she met with this long-nosed elderly gentleman with pointed ears named Igor, along with his two subordinates, Theodore and Margaret, and they discussed her future.

"Oh yeah, them," she thought to herself, as she remembered exactly what they discussed, "So something's going to happen when I arrive in Inaba, huh?"

"Hey, are you deaf or something, you rotting pile of excrement?" Chiyoko's voice screeched, bringing Chiaki out of her thoughts, causing her to turn her head to her right and see her mother glaring down at her with her arms folded over her stomach in contemptuous annoyance.

"Eh?" Chiaki said, still feeling rather confused, since she still was not entirely sure if she was fully awake or not.

"What, you had a nightmare or something?" Chiyoko went on with a rather condensing sneer, as she continued to look down at her daughter, "Nothing can be done about that. Now get your repulsive ass out of bed, you're due to meet Ryō-chan, your Uncle Dōjima, at Yasoinaba Station at four o'clock this afternoon."

Chiaki responded with a sigh as she moved the duffle bag to her left and threw off the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed before standing up. She guessed that her mother must've thrown the duffle bag on top of her, which probably explained why she felt the sensation of something slamming into her before she woke up, since it also felt as if whatever had slammed into her had also fallen in top of her, and judging from the look on Chiyoko's face, she looked rather impatient as she glared disdainfully at her daughter. Looking over at her clock, she saw that the time read "06:55".

"Isn't it a bit early?" Chiaki said in confusion, surprised that her mother had decided to get her up so early, "My train's not for at least another four hours, and besides, I thought you and dad were taking a night flight over to New York."

"Don't you talk back to me, you disgusting piece of shit!" Chiyoko practically shrieked as her glare intensified, and Chiaki realised that she had only served to infuriate her mother even more, "The sooner you're out of our hair, the better. Besides, you've got breakfast to get, which you'll be buying in the city because to be perfectly honest with you, neither Yoshirō-kun or I feel like feeding you today, you reeking mass of manure! Now hurry up!"

Well, that was new, Chiaki noted. Despite her completely non-existent relationship with her parents, they always had the decency to at least give her breakfast in the mornings. It was mostly lunches and dinners that she had to buy for herself. However, it was the first time she had actually been sent out to meet the person she was going to be staying with, whereas in the past, her parents had always taken her round to her Aunt Kasumi's place, considering that she and her family did not live too far away. In fact, the Arisawa Family lived just outside Tōkyō in the suburb of Kusakawa in the northeast. By contrast, her Uncle Dōjima lived way out in the countryside in another prefecture somewhere southwest of Tōkyō and it would probably take most of the day to drive to Inaba and back, which was why her parents had decided to send her to Inaba by train since it was pretty much impossible for them to drive all the way out to Inaba and make it back in time for their flight. However, even on days when they took her to stay with her Aunt Kasumi, they had still seen the need to feed her. Just what had changed?

"You're a big girl now," Chiyoko said in mock proudness with a look to match, as if she had read her daughter's mind, "Besides, Ryō-chan's a lousy cook, so you'll be probably end up buying the majority of your meals while over in Inaba, so I guess that means that nothing has really changed for you in that regard, has it, since you buy most of your meals anyway. I swear, that lousy brother of mine couldn't cook even a simple meal to save his own life. He has to rely on that miserably disgusting bag of vomit that just so happens to be his daughter to buy in dinner for him. What a disappointment. Honestly, I can't believe that he's my brother."

"He has a daughter?" Chiaki said in surprise.

However, this only seemed to sour Chiyoko's mood even more, as she glared furiously at Chiaki.

"Don't butt into affairs that don't concern you, you decomposing bag of meat!" she shouted furiously as her contemptuous glare returned, "Now hurry up! The sooner you're gone, the sooner Yoshirō-kun and I can start enjoying ourselves without putting up with such a miserable excuse of a human being such as you."

"C-can I at least take a shower?" Chiaki asked with a slight shutter after flinching at her mother's comment.

"Make it quick!" Chiyoko stated forcefully, "You've got five minutes! Any longer and I'll toss you outside in the nude, then perhaps we'll get the excuse we need to finally get you out of our lives permanently!"

To translate, basically what it meant was that Chiyoko was threatening to disown her. Chiaki knew this. However, the way she spoke about her brother surprised her, considering that when she overheard her on the phone with him the previous day, she seemed rather sweet and flattering. Now she was putting him down and insulting him, and even had the audacity to insult his daughter in pretty much the same way she and her father constantly insulted her, and not only that, but the affectionate nickname she had used before now sounded anything but affectionate. In fact, it sounded rather sarcastic and mocking. Maybe Chiyoko had been putting on an act when she spoke with her brother over the phone. She did not know the story between her mother and her Uncle Dōjima since Chiyoko never mentioned him before, but from the way she had heard her mother talk about him just now, it was clear that she had a very low opinion of him, and Chiaki could tell just by the tone of her mother's voice that she did not love her brother in the slightest, just like she did not love her in the slightest either.

However, if that was the case, then could it be that the sweetness she had displayed while on the phone was all just an act? Chiaki wondered if her mother had managed to somehow sweet-talk her brother into agreeing to look after her. However, she knew that trying to ask her mother would only serve to infuriate her, so with that in mind, she quickly ran out of her room and went into the bathroom where she took a quick shower, and after that, she went back up to her room and changed into her clothes, the same clothes she remembered wearing in her dream, and all under the intense watchful glare of her mother.

Once she was fully-clothed and had picked up her Game Girl Advance from the bedside table before putting it in her backpack, she then put her backpack on her back, then she picked up the duffel bag on her bed after opening it and putting her nightdress in it before closing it again, and then she slung it over her shoulder.

"Your stuff is already at Ryō-chan's house," Chiyoko said as she produced a wallet and a piece of paper with some writing on it from her skirt pocket and shoved it somewhat violently towards her daughter, who brought her hands up to receive it, but Chiyoko kept going as Chiaki grabbed the wallet and piece of paper, thrusting both it and her daughter's hands into her daughter's stomach, earning a wince of pain from Chiaki, "This should be more than enough to sustain you till you arrive in Inaba. There's about half a million yen inside and that piece of paper has Ryō-chan's address on it in case you forget."

"Half a million yen," Chiaki thought to herself in surprise, not daring to speak up for fear of further antagonising her mother, "More than enough is a massive understand, that's way too much."

"Now, as I'm sure you're aware, you'll probably be spending lunchtime on the train, so make sure to buy something to eat on the train," Chiyoko went on, and to anyone listening in, it seemed like any other parent giving their child some friendly advice, but Chiaki knew that her mother was not telling her this out of love, and she was proven correct when her mother's expression turned sour and she continued to speak, "Not that I particularly care for you or anything. Heck, you could run away and starve to death for all I care. However, neither Yoshirō-kun or I would be too pleased if you ended up causing trouble that we'd have to deal with ourselves, and while we're on that particular topic, should Ryō-chan ever get too nosy about certain things… Let's just say that it'll be in your best interests to keep your damn mouth shut. Things can become a whole lot more unpleasant for you when we all return here, you know."

"If he's anything like Aunt Kasumi, I doubt he'd care," Chiaki thought, keeping her mouth shut, since she knew that speaking aloud would only serve to further infuriate her mother.

It was always like that for her. Her parents did not approve of her talking to them unless they expected an answer from her. Another thing that was normal for Chiaki was that when they were talking to her, and they were referring to each other, they never referred to one another as "your mother" or "your father". They always referred to one another by their given names, followed by their respective honorifics, "Yoshirō-kun" and "Chiyoko-chan" respectively. It seemed they really detested the fact that she was their daughter and did not like to be reminded that they even had a child in the first place, and when she had overheard them referring to her during conversations, they did not refer to her as "our daughter". Instead they always referred to her as "that girl" or with a variety of derogatory terms. To them, she was more of a stranger that they felt they were being forced to look after rather than their own flesh and blood. They also hardly ever addressed her by her name, the name that they, themselves, had given her. Instead they addressed her with a whole variety of different derogatory phrases and names. Sure, they did address her by her actual name every now and then, but those instances were few and far between.

"I understand," she said in response to her mother's statement with a sigh and a nod.

"Good," Chiyoko said with a sharp nod and a sharp look that pretty much said, "You better not go back on your word or else".

Basically what Chiyoko just told Chiaki was that if her uncle started to pry too much into her home life, then she was not to say anything about how they treated her. Despite not liking the fact that they had a daughter, Chiaki knew that both her parents were very self-conscious about their social standing in society, and they feared that any negative publicity that came their way could potentially jeopardise their reputations, which is why they grudgingly put up with her and had not publicly disowned her since she had done nothing to warrant being disowned. However, they did not bother looking out for her, and Chiaki often wondered if they had been hoping she would turn to crime so that they would have a valid excuse to disown her. That would make sense, she supposed, but at the same time, she knew that they did not want their neglect of their daughter getting found out, so they told her that if anyone enquired about it that she was to keep her mouth shut. Not that anyone did enquire about it, after all, family issues were for the family members involved to sort out themselves. That was how it was in Japan. Hardly anyone paid any attention to her whenever she was out, though she did get the odd curious glance every now and then and the few that did bother talking to her were mostly scared off when they discovered her love of video games, usually as a result of her ramblings, but other than those few instances, she was mostly left alone, and that was the way she liked it. She knew that she would end up being the one her parents would take it out on if they had gotten into trouble. In other words, she was their scapegoat, and she remembered quite a few times in the past when she had been at the helm of her parents' verbal assaults whenever they were in a bad mood, usually due to something not going their way.

"It's not like Uncle Dōjima will actually care or anything," she thought to herself sadly as she made her way downstairs with her mother closely following behind her, "After all, neither Aunt Kasumi nor Uncle Yūma did."

Once she reached the genkan, she put on her shoes and opened the door before walking out. However, just as she stepped out the door, she felt a pair of hands press against her back and then shove her to the ground.

"Your five minutes are up," Chiaki heard her mother say, and she realised that she had been the one who had pushed her to the ground, and she turned to see her mother glaring hatefully at her, "See you next year, you irritating infestation of puss, and Yoshirō-kun and I better not have to cut our stay in New York short because something happened to you, otherwise you won't like the consequences."

With that, Chiyoko slammed the door shut, and Chiaki just picked herself up. Shrugging her shoulders, she took off her backpack after she took the duffle bag off her shoulder and placed it on the ground, and opening up her backpack, she put in her hand and took out her Game Girl Advance before she closed it up again and mounted it back on her back and she then picked up the duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder once again, and then turning on her handheld, she started to walk towards the bus stop.

---

Chiyoko walked back into the living room with a rather smug and proud look on her face to find her husband sitting on the sofa reading the morning's newspaper. He then glanced towards the hallway that led to the genkan after hearing his wife come back.

"You know, you really didn't have to shove her to the ground like that, she was already out the door," Yoshirō said simply, though his tone was devoid of any care that one would expect from a parent after their child had gotten into trouble, sounding more bored tha anything.

"Humph, I just felt like doing it," Chiyoko scoffed remorselessly as her face twisted into a disgusted sneer, "I swear, I wish we could just get rid of that disease-ridden infestation and be done with it."

"So do I, so do I," Yoshirō responded in agreement with his wife, "Heck, if it wasn't for the law, I'd have killed her the moment she came into the world."

"Not if I had beaten you to it," Chiyoko said with a light chuckle as she folded her arms, and then her expression became one of pure disgust, "I swear, I find her very existence excruciatingly annoying. This was not meant to happen. We were not supposed to have a child."

"Is that my fault?" Yoshirō said as his look turned into a glare, feeling that his wife was accusing him of something, "Remember, you were as drunk as I was, and it takes two to tango."

"Of course it's your fault," Chiyoko said accusingly with a glare of her own, clearly not willing to own up to her part in the incident they were talking about, "You were the one that suggested that drinking contest in the first place. What was it, something about proving that women tended to get drunk a lot quicker than men?"

"And you agreed to it," Yoshirō shot back, his own glare intensifying, but then he sighed and shook his head while closing his eyes, "Anyway, let's not argue about that again. Besides, we can always hope that something fatal happens to her. At least if something does happen and she dies as a result, we'll both become three million yen richer."

"I doubt that anything bad's going to happen to her considering that she didn't turn to crime, which would've been good for us, as it would've provided the perfect excuse to get rid of her for good, but I guess we can always hope," Chiyoko said with a sigh, deciding not to argue with her husband, since they had had this argument many times before and every time they always reached a stalemate with their disagreement on who exactly was to blame since neither of them believed that they were to blame and tried to implicate the other despite the fact that they were both to blame.

It was true than neither of Chiaki's parents actually held any amount of love for her in their hearts. In fact, they downright hated and despised her with every fibre of their beings. Heck, their marriage was not one born out of love either. Both Chiyoko and Yoshirō were high-earners and had married for the sake of their careers. They basically saw one another as a means of advancing their own careers, and had not intended on having children. Basically, their marriage was more of a mutually beneficial partnership than an actual marriage However, during their wedding night, Yoshirō had gotten into an argument with his new wife after she had found him telling a group of his business colleagues that women tended to get drunk a lot quicker than men, and feeling that he was being sexist, she had objected. Yoshirō had then dared her to prove it, and it led to a drinking contest between them that resulted in them both getting drunk, and they had lost themselves in a spontaneous fit of passion, which resulted in Chiyoko becoming pregnant with Chiaki.

As much as both of them hated it, they had found themselves stuck with a child. As much as they wanted to get rid of her, both found that they could not bring themselves to either disown or kill Chiaki. However, it was not out of a sense of conscience that they had decided to grudgingly keep Chiaki. Like Chiaki had figured, they were very self-conscious about their standing in society and feared any negative publicity that could potentially ruin them. They were not among the super-rich, but they were high enough in the social hierarchy in that society would closely scrutinise everything they did, and if their negative treatment and neglect of their daughter ever became public knowledge, they feared that it could potentially ruin them. Disowning her would probably lead to a scandal of some kind, and killing her would probably amount to suicide since neither Chiyoko nor Yoshirō were confident enough in being able to kill her and get away with it. They both liked to watch police documentaries, and in some cases, the police somehow managed to get their man even when it seemed that all chances of securing a conviction had been lost. It seemed that no matter how thorough the perpetrators were in disposing of evidence, they always seemed to overlook something. That was why they had not resorted to murder, for fear of overlooking something in the clean-up, and remembering those police documentaries, in some cases, the perpetrators sometimes ended up being convicted due to something they noticed before, but did not realise its importance until it was too late.

So, with that in mind, they had grudgingly put up with her, hoping that something bad would happen to her since Yoshirō had filed out a three-million-yen life insurance policy on her with both him and his wife as the beneficiaries without her knowledge, or that she would end up giving them a proper excuse to disown her. The fact that that neither happened had seriously started to test their patience, and they were fearful that they would eventually snap and do something that could potentially ruin them.

"A pity that sister of yours backed out," Chiyoko spoke up, breaking the silence, "What an ungrateful bitch."

"I have to concur," Yoshirō said, agreeing with a sigh, "All those years I've been nice to her, even after my other sister, Yuriko, betrayed us and married some dirt-poor bastard, and she cuts me off."

In Yoshirō's mind, he believed that to be the truth. He had been rather nice to his sister over the years, at least before she had gotten married, and he had helped her out whenever she had gotten into difficulty. However, rather than helping her out of a sense of love, in reality, he only helped her out so that he could extort favours out of her, which is why he had her take care of Chiaki over the years. To him, Kasumi taking care of his unwanted daughter was just her paying him back for all the times he had helped her. To him, Kasumi was just a servant for him to boss around at his own convenience, and whenever she expressed doubt, he had just simply reminded her of all the times he had helped her in order to force her to comply with his wishes.

Unfortunately, this time, she had refused, even after he had reminded her of her "debt" to him, and he decided that if she was not going to bow to his whims willingly, he would force it on her, but then her husband, Arisawa Yūma Sr., had gotten between them and threatened him, and despite Yoshirō wanting to persist, he grudgingly stood down, since Yūma Sr. had been a bodybuilder and he was not all that confident in defeating him in a straight-out fight. It infuriated him that his sister had married someone that could defeat him in battle, and if that was not enough, Yūma Sr. had been a graduate of Hope's Peak Academy, enrolling under the title of Super High School Level Bodybuilder. That particular fact really grated on his nerves, though for the most part, he kept it under control and managed to remain civil with him, at least until that incident, and another thing that infuriated him was that thanks to marrying Yūma Sr., Kasumi did not need him anymore.

"How ungrateful of her," Chiyoko said, bringing her husband out of his thoughts and back to reality, "After everything you did for her, this is how she goes and repays you."

Yoshirō just nodded, thinking about Yūma Sr. and how much he hated him, since because of him, he had effectively lost control of his sister. If it were up to him, he would have killed Yūma Sr. to ensure his sister's continued dependence on him so that he could continue to extort favours from her and bring up everything he had done for her in the past should she express doubt in catering to his whims, but unfortunately, like with Chiaki, his fear of getting caught and his lack of confidence in covering the crime up prevented him from following through on it.

"A pity your other sister's dead, otherwise we probably could've dumped our trash on her instead," Chiyoko went on with a sigh.

"I doubt it," Yoshirō scoffed in disgust as a look of revulsion materialised on his face, "Even if she was still alive, I highly doubt she'd have wanted to take care of our garbage. As I've told you before, Yuriko-chan was disowned by our father after she decided to get in with some dirt-poor bastard, I can't remember the asshole's name, but he was so poor that he could barely afford a roof over his head. To think that a member of my family would go and forsake their obligations, and all for some flea-infested ratbag. It's insulting."

"I heard that both of them were murdered in their home two… or was it three years ago?" Chiyoko said to her husband, curious about his input, "I honestly can't remember when. Anyway, I also heard that they had a miserable excuse of a daughter of their own who became orphaned,"

"Yeah, well, I'm glad that sack of manure was sent to an orphanage and we weren't forced to take her in," Yoshirō replied, not really caring that he was insulting his own family, "Can you imagine what life would have been like if we had two infestations instead of one?"

"I shudder just thinking about it," Chiyoko said with a shudder as if emphasising her point, "Anyway, what happened to them, I wonder."

"Well, from what I heard that Yuriko-chan was forced into a tub of boiling hot water, judging from her injuries, and that bastard of a husband of hers had boiling water poured down his throat, based on the autopsy report," Yoshirō said with a shudder of his own, though he shuddered more at the method in which they died rather than the fact that one of the victims had been his sister.

It was true that Yoshirō did not really care all that much about his family in the slightest. They were nothing but tools for him to use and discard when their usefulness had come to an end. All that mattered to him was himself and his career, and he did not care what happened to anyone who were unfortunate enough to get in his way. After all, in his mind, other people were just ants for him to step on and crush at his leisure. Even his wife was just another tool to him, but the thing was, she felt the same way about him, basically their marriage was just a means for them to use and take advantage of one another. They slept in separate beds, and aside from their wedding night that resulted in Chiaki's birth, their sex life was non-existent.

As for his sister, Yuriko, it may have been their father, Nanami Yoshiaki, who had disowned her, but Yoshirō had been in agreement with him on that matter. After all, it was the purpose of every human being was to work towards coming out on top above everyone else. That was what he believed and he just could not understand why Yuriko was content with the choices she had made. Even after being threatened with being cut from the Nanami Family Inheritance, it had not been enough to dissuade her. She had been willing to become "dirt-poor" if it had meant being with her husband. It was unthinkable that anyone would be content with their current standing in life. As far as Yoshirō was concerned, one had to push to get ahead and raise as high as possible on the social hierarchical ladder, and anyone that did not do so had to have something wrong with them.

He had heard of Yuriko and her husband's murders, but the only thing that horrified him was the methods in which they were murdered, and not the fact that they had been murdered in the first place. He could not help but shudder just imagining what Yuriko's body must have looked like after being pulled from the bathtub and what her husband's insides must have looked like during the autopsy since boiling hot water had been used in both cases. However, with the horror of their murders aside, he saw the fact that Yuriko was dead as a massive favour to him, since he had downright hated his sister for her defiance.

"I don't know who did it, but if I ever met them, I'd want to shake their hand," he boasted rather arrogantly, "Since father disowned her, it just means a bigger share of the inheritance for me when he finally expires."

"By the way, where is your father, anyway?" Chiyoko asked curiously.

Yoshirō just scoffed in disgust.

"He's taken control of the very institution that rejected him when he was that girl we have the unfortunate courtesy of calling or daughter's age," he said angrily as his face twisted in rage-filled hate.

"You mean Hope's Peak Academy, don't you?" Chiyoko said, knowing that her husband had a particular hatred for the institute she had just mentioned.

"Uh huh, though it's downright hypocritical if you ask me," Yoshirō said before calming down and the put down his newspaper and stood up, "Anyway, just how did you convince your idiot of a brother to agree to take our garbage in?"

Chiyoko blinked in confusion for a moment, surprised that he had abruptly changed the subject, but then realised that the topics of his father and Hope's Peak Academy were ones that Yoshirō hated talking about due to painful memories, and decided to indulge him.

"To be perfectly honest with you, it had been a lot easier than I thought it would be," she said with a devilish smirk, "I can't believe how gullible Ryō-chan was, what a chump."

"Care to explain?" Yoshirō asked curiously.

"Well, about a year ago, his cheater of a wife, Hiraoka Chisato was killed in a hit-and-run," Chiyoko started to explain.

"Hold on, isn't Hiraoka that bitch you always complained about?" Yoshirō cut in.

"Yep, the very same," Chiyoko said with a nod, and with bile in the depths of her voice, "I can't believe that Ryō-chan actually married that cheating whore!"

However, as sooner as her anger and rage appeared, it had vanished as she calmed herself down.

"Anyway, that Hiraoka bitch was killed, and I basically just stepped in and offered my support," she went on to explain, "I took a page out of your book when I noticed what you were doing with Kasumi-chan."

In other words, she had basically offered him support so she could extort favours from him.

"And he bought it?" Yoshirō said in surprise.

"Mm hmm, when I heard that my former arch-enemy had bit the dust, I just turned up, acting the part of a concerned and supporting sister, and the rest, they say, is history," Chiyoko boasted triumphantly, "I was surprised as well. I mean, Ryō-chan knew just how much I hated Hiraoka's guts, and yet he believed everything I said. He must've been too consumed with grief to realise anything was amiss, though I have to say, I totally despise the fact that Hiraoka had to go and produce that little mini-version of herself."

Her face darkened as she referred to her niece. Honestly, she really could not stand Chisato. It went back to her school days. Chiyoko was a fairly talented piano player, and she took an unhealthy amount of pride in her skills with the piano, and she always liked to rub her skills in everyone else's faces at every given opportunity. However, along came Chisato, who proved to be a lot more talented than her, making her skills seem just plain average in comparison, and she just could not accept that. She had become envious of Chisato's skills, and as a result, she had constantly gone out of her way to bully and insult her at every given opportunity, but unfortunately for her, her brother, Ryōtarō, ended up coming to her aid and stood up for Chisato, which infuriated her. Not that she particularly cared for her brother, after all, she was basically just a female version of her husband in that she had viewed her family as just mere tools to use and discard at her leisure, and she saw her brother standing up for Chisato as an act of defiance since she was the older sibling, and in her mind, it gave her a sense of superiority over her brother, and if that was not enough, Ryōtarō had to go and fall in love with Chisato, which only further infuriated her. Despite Hiraoka Chisato was now Dōjima Chisato, Chiyoko just refused to accept that her arch-nemesis had become family, and still insisted on addressing by her maiden name.

It was because of Chisato that she gave up on piano and started on her quest to climb the social ladder in a bid to prove to Chisato that she was better than her at something, but much to her horror, Chisato had not really cared whether she was better than her or not, and her dismissiveness of her, only served to infuriate Chiyoko even further, since she viewed Chisato's dismissiveness of her as a slap in the face and that she was looking down on her. It was then that her priorities changed. Instead of proving herself to be Chisato's superior, she would climb the social ladder in order to gain the resources she needed to financially ruin Chisato, and also her brother for his "betrayal". To her, it was the ultimate revenge, since in her mind, Chisato had practically ruined her life, since ever since she had started bullying her, Ryōtarō had started to defy her, not that she had particularly liked him to begin with. After all, he had been their parents' favourite, which infuriated her. In their childhood, Chiyoko remembered that she used to bully him, and though she did not shed her self-centred behaviour as they got older, she had learned to tone down on the bullying and keep a reign on her hatred for her brother. She took solace in the belief that because she was older, she had seniority over her brother despite her parents telling her multiple times that that was not how life worked. However, she just wilfully ignored them in favour of living in her own warped little world.

However, despite Chisato's untimely death, Chiyoko's plan had not changed, since her brother and niece were still alive and she was still planning on amassing enough resources in order to ruin them, her brother because he dared stand up for her arch-enemy against her, and her niece, whom she understood was called Nanako, just because she happened to be Chisato's flesh and blood, and the fact that Nanako was related to her by blood only served to increase her hatred of her.

"I don't know who ran her down," she said with a conflicted look on her face, "However, if I met them in person, I'd be conflicted on whether to shake their hand or beat them to death. On one hand, they got rid of my arch-nemesis, which is good, but on the other, I feel that I was robbed."

That was true. She did have mixed feelings about Chisato's death. She was glad that Chisato was gone, but at the same time, she was furious that she had perished before she could enact her plan for revenge. She had been planning on driving her to commit suicide anyway. Nonetheless, it did provide her with an opportunity. Taking advantage of Ryōtarō's grief, she had called him up after hearing about Chisato's demise and managed to sweet-talk her way back into his good graces believing that he could prove useful to her at some point in the future, and with Kasumi's refusal to look after Chiaki, that plan had finally paid off.

"Yeah, well as for me, I'm just counting down the clock till my old man expires," Yoshirō said smugly, "I don't know what he's up to, but I know he's up to something. However, he's so old that he'll undoubtedly be dead in a couple of years, so I doubt he'll be around see the fruits of his own labour, but when he dies, I'll end becoming a whole lot richer."

"And I know just how to put that money to good use," Chiyoko said with a sadistically evil smile on her face as she thought about her brother and niece.

"Foolish Ryō-chan, you should know better than to defy your older siblings," she added in her thoughts, "A pity I can't get at Hiraoka, but considering that she left behind a mini-version of herself, I'll take that as compensation for her demise."

---

Author's Notes – That's it, chapter 2 is done. As for Chiaki's clothes, anyone can tell that they were the same clothes worn by AI Chiaki in Danganronpa 2. I believe that when the AI scanned Class 77B's memories of Chiaki, she probably modelled her clothes after the clothes that Chiaki herself was probably wearing when she arrived at Hope Peak's as in both games, everyone had been wearing regular clothes when they arrived. Another thing I wanted to highlight was just how awful Chiaki's parents are as people, and how uncaring and self-centred they are. Also I was originally planning on having both this chapter and chapter 1 as one chapter, I felt that it was taking too long, so I decided to split the chapter in two. I had even started on the Velvet Room segment before deciding to split the chapter, and splitting the chapter also allowed me to add additional scenes.