A/N: This was the hardest chapter to write so far, hence why it took so long to come out. But don't worry! The story is still continuing, and it's almost over.

"You hate me," Nanami moaned, childishly, five minutes later. It was the first time she'd talked since the crying stopped.

"I don't hate you," Hinata said.

They were sitting on the couch, the dinner forgotten. Hinata was holding Nanami tightly, and she was trembling; she looked thoroughly miserable, so he was trying his best to comfort her. The betrayal was only in the back of his mind- the most important thing was Nanami. After a minute or three of being held, the crying stopped.

And then they'd sat in silence, with only the distant rumble of thunder. Hinata could feel Nanami's heartbeat, and feel her chest rising and falling with her haggard breathing. "You hate me," she moaned again. "I'm your enemy."

"I… I love you, Chiaki, you know that," Hinata said. Personally, he felt at a loss for words. "And you don't have to be my enemy-"

"Manipulating me, Hajime," Nanami said. She shifted slightly. "That's what you're doing-"

"That's what you did to me," Hinata said harshly. Nanami fell silent, and Hinata felt terrible. Why? something inside said, she was cruel to you. She stopped Koizumi from telling you more. She tried to get your mind off of Nakejawa by having sex with you.

"How long have you known?" Nanami whispered.

Hinata thought for a second. "For a while, now," Hinata said. "Really, thinking back, it was obvious."

Nanami, who'd started looking at Hinata, stared away from Hinata. Hinata kept quiet, letting her think, and after a moment or two, she took a deep breath, and began telling her side of the story.

Chiaki Nanami looked down at her phone. "Meet me, same place, same time- JE".

JE. Junko Enoshima, the mysterious underclassman who'd called Nanami one day before the Kirigiris' wedding and invited her to a high-end coffee-shop to discuss wedding dresses and body armor. At the time, she had not yet disappeared off the public face (although she would soon), and she was increasingly an icon of the entire Japanese model industry.

Nanami had not met Enoshima alone; the entire female classes of the 78th and 79th classes were invited. It was a fun day for Nanami, even though she didn't care about fashion and usually slept through these kind of events; Enoshima had a captivating air about her. She was very… charismatic.

Then the wedding occurred, and Makoto Naegi got shot, and everything began spiraling out of control. Enoshima had arranged for a one-on-one meeting with Nanami, a very short one that listed only ten minutes, where Enoshima told Nanami point-blank that she might as well leave Hinata to keep him safe. And then Hinata himself had suggested it.

She was getting less sleep, and her coworkers thought that she was sick. Her skin was paler and she had bags under her eyes. Hinata, who looked no better, made few comments and, if necessary, would give her a hug and a kiss before work.

And now, Nanami had a date with Enoshima. Hinata had already left for work (he wasn't there this morning), but Nanami had to rush out the door to get to work, barely having time to shower and brush her teeth, and had to work extra hours. All in all, even without the meeting with Enoshima, it was an exhausting day, and she was counting down the hours until she could be home with Hajime and get some much-needed sleep.

She entered the shop and looked around for Enoshima. Upon not finding her anywhere, Nanami sighed and sat down at a table.

"Nanami-san?" Nanami glanced up to see a stylish-looking waiter, who winked at her, and then continued, "I have a message from your friend, Enoshima-san." The waiter pulled a piece of paper out of her apron and then sashayed away.

The paper was folded over, but Nanami quickly opened it- and then stared at it with cold horror.

"Hajime Hinata has left for Osaka."

The door to their apartment slammed open, but Nanami's search was fruitless.

Hajime Hinata was gone. But he left one thing behind: an engagement ring on a piece of paper on the kitchen table. "Stay safe- Hajime." And that was it. Not even an "I love you", or an, "I'll come back when we're safe." No, just… just "stay safe." Nanami clutched the engagement ring and sobbed.

To make things worse, her father died in the hospital the next day. It seemed to be too cruel of a coincidence.

Between Hinata and her father, Nanami felt dead inside for the next week or so. Her voice was perfectly flat. Her skin was even paler than usual, which just made the bags under her eyes all the more prominent. People told her to just "get over it- he left" or "things'll get better!"

Things didn't get better.

"C'mon, Chiaki-chan, if that good-for-nothing bas-" Koizumi would say, but Nanami would simply get up and walk away. Hinata meant nothing to her now.

Nothing meant anything to her now.

Enoshima didn't help. On the news, they talked about the missing fashion star in the wake of the Kirigiri shooting, but Enoshima kept calling Nanami's phone. And Nanami kept answering, since it was expected to answer the phone, and Enoshima would taunt her. "Give in to despair," Enoshima would say, pointlessly, since Nanami already had.

Many nights, Nanami would go into the bathroom and just stare at the cleaning supplies underneath the sink, stare at the warning labels. They gave her ideas.

She began acting more cheerful in public. Koizumi was fooled. Others were not. Hinata had left behind some paperwork, and Nanami delivered it to Kirigiri at the hospital, but with one glance at Nanami Kirigiri's face had slipped into a mask of suspicion. "Don't worry, Nanami-san. You should see a nice therapist," she said, and then her face returned to its normal, impassive look. Nanami did notice that she held her sleeping husband's hand tightly the entire time.

She returned home one night, the first in three days since Koizumi had insisted she stay over with her, and instantly headed for the bathroom. She'd spent the whole day acting as cheerful as possible in front of Koizumi, but it was, well, an act.

It was easy to find the bathroom in the dark- the lights were not coming on for some reason- and it was easy to find the cabinet. She opened the door, and groped around for the chemicals.

Nothing.

"Nothing?" she whispered hoarsely. She began grabbing around the bathroom, but everything was gone. The soaps, the shampoos, the shower-curtain, the towel. She wandered through the apartment, but everything was gone.

"Nanami-san."

Nanami turned around to see Kirigiri, a stripe on her face illuminated by the outside. "Where is everything!?" Nanami wailed, "Please! Just let me- just let me die!"

Nanami looked up at the ceiling of her apartment. She was stretched out on her sheetless bed but she could not get to sleep. Kirigiri had already left, apparently content that Nanami wouldn't kill herself now. The detective in the corner- a Reiko Honda, Hinata had told her about Honda once- would apparently make sure of that. She'd volunteered.

The next day, Nanami did not go home to her apartment. She went to her cousin's apartment instead. Chihiro Fujisaki greeted her cheerfully and left for dinner with his own fiancé Kiyotaka Ishimaru. Once he left, Nanami ripped through his bathroom and found something very interesting: sleeping pills, the same exact brand that Hinata had used.

She pulled them off their shelf and opened the lid and then…

And then…

Nanami could not continue after that point, only stare blankly, fresh tears still glistening on her face, at the television. "Don't worry, Chiaki," Hinata whispered, "I-I-"

But he found that he had nothing to say. And why should I? That something inside him said. "I was in the hospital after that," Nanami said in an unstable voice, "and that was when… when she came."

"It was a hospital-bed visit. Dr. Matsuda introduced me to her. Dr. Ryouko Otonashi, the rising star of the Japanese psychiatric world!" Nanami said. She gave a shaky laugh. "She was sympathetic, yes, and she… and she…"

Nanami stopped talking. Rain began drumming against the window, and a bright blue light temporarily illuminated the room before the building shook from the very loud bolt of lightning. The rain beat harder, which made Nanami's next, whispered words hard to hear: "She convinced me to join Despair, and made me Germany."

Hinata half-expected another lightning bolt, but nothing happened. "The weather's what they were waiting for," Nanami added, still whispering, in an uneven voice, "it makes it easier to capture us. To send us to Hope's Peak and start the game of mutual killing."

Hinata swallowed. He didn't want to be reminded of his conversation with Komaeda earlier in the day. "Nanami would be killed by a mole, Hinata would become Izuru Kamukura, permanently…" still rang through his mind. "You didn't kill anyone, did you?"

"I helped plan the game, that will kill too many people," she murmured. "But I never killed anyone. Most people in Despair don't kill anyone, Hajime. We work through other people. Well, not me, but you saw people like Athens or Sparta."

"Was there something wrong with them?"

"Brain damage, a long time ago." She curled up closer to Hinata. "Please understand, I'm not a killer. I don't want to be a killer. I really didn't know that Chihiro-kun killed Ishimaru, he wasn't supposed to get his hands dirty," she said.

"I believe you," Hinata replied, as tenderly as he could. "A-anything else?"

"I- well, yes…"

Three years passed. Nanami was alone in her room, playing on the PS3, when she heard someone knocking on the front door. She sighed, got up, and answered it. Athens and Sparta were standing there, Sparta holding an unconscious Hinata in his arms, Athens with his arms crossed looking smug. Nanami's immediate impulse was to slam the door; after all these years, she wanted nothing to do with Hinata.

"We've got a delivery courtesy of Britain," drawled Athens before she could close the door. Sparta shoved Hinata into Nanami's apartment, and then both he and Athens tipped their hats.

Nanami sighed and moved to begin dragging Hinata out of the entryway. Merely grabbing his arms again and pulling still brought up memories of the past, and made her feel somewhat… uncomfortable, to an extant. She shut the door and then dragged Hinata into Tsumiki's old room, where she tucked him in.

She called Kirigiri and made up a story, then circulated it to Komaeda and Masaru. Then she waited for Hinata to wake up. When he did, the next night, she put on her best game face and calmly talked to him. He seemed to be uncomfortable and his thanks sounded genuine, but she tried to limit her conversations with him.

The next day, she went with him to the Kirigiris- they suspected nothing at that point- and agreed to officially allow Hinata to live in her apartment. Then she waited. She talked with him, fed him some lies, and generally did what Otonashi ordered her to do. Then something strange had happened- Hinata had told her about Komaeda's warning. She hadn't expected that.

And after that, things had begun to change. She told Komaeda, of course, about Hinata's warning- passed it off on some unseen bug the police had somehow missed. It had been Nakejawa, of course, who planted the obvious bug, though Nanami had posted the Monobear note; Nakejawa knew very little about the Monobears.

Then the wedding invitation from Komaeda and Sonia happened, and Nanami decided to tell Hinata about what had happened once she'd left, to show him that she had not been loyal to him, to try and sink his hopes, but it didn't work. She had told the truth, of course, although she was still afraid to check up on what happened to her last, would-be abusive boyfriend.

But from there, things had begun spiraling out of control again. Nanami could tell that Hinata still cared for, still liked her, and while she had partially cultivated that on Otonashi's orders, the truth was that she was starting to like him back again. This was, of course, a prospect that terrified her; she became nervous of just being around him.

Finally, Koizumi had brought her to the side after work. "If you're going to do the thing Dr. Otonashi wants, you two are going to have to be friends again!" Koizumi said sternly. Nanami nodded, and that night she "reset" her relationship with Hinata. But Hinata took it all in stride. He had no idea about what Otonashi had in store, and then he began going out of his way to try and rekindle his previous romantic relationship.

And Nanami couldn't believe him.

Nanami stopped talking again. "Ch-chiaki?" Hinata said, but she pulled away from him.

"I'm sorry," she said simply. "I'm sorry…"

She stared at him, but to Hinata, the stare looked dead. "Please talk to me," Hinata said. "Please, just let it out."

Nanami closed her eyes, very slowly, and Hinata could see tears beginning to form. "I hated you," she whispered. "I hated you for running away. I hated you. And you were trying so hard to fix things, so I took Koizumi's advice and pretended to be friends, and then… well, after the 'reset' I began looking forward to going home."

"You did seem to be talking to me more," Hinata said. Nanami nodded. "What about my fight with Chihiro?"

She swallowed. The lights flickered ominously. "Well…"

There weren't enough video games at Sonia's party. There weren't any video games at Sonia's party, for that matter. Fortunately, Sonia had forgotten that Nanami often fell asleep and thus was concerned by her falling asleep during the middle of a loud discussion about "adult toys" whilst everyone else was simply uncomfortable. This meant that Nanami ended up in Sonia's room, playing a game on her phone, when the call came in.

She didn't recognize the caller ID and talked to Hinata about Sonia's party discussion, the conversation with Spain, Komaeda and number four, and the fight with her cousin. Then she told him the work excuse and told him to talk to Chihiro, and hung up.

Nanami turned to Sonia's bedside table and fished through it until she found the Monoscope. She put it on, leaned back and closed her eyes, and announced quietly, "Venice Monobear." Instantly, she could see a table filled with party food, all manner of distinguished guests in various states of drunkenness, and Hinata and one of the Tsujis on the back balcony. Byakuya Togami entered the room and moved over to the Mono Ego console to begin typing into it; Nanami knew he was trouble ever since Celes had defected and handed over security codes to him, but fortunately he could not get very far.

With a swipe of her hand, she was able to push open the glass door. Then, with another gesture, she was able to cross the room and jump up onto a windowsill to watch Hinata and Tsuji. With some zooming and sound filtering, it was easy for Nanami to find out what was being discussed. Tsuji was actually the missing Gundam Tanaka, who Persia wanted dead so that he couldn't be useful to Kirigiri anymore. What was he doing out of prison?

But Tanaka noticed the Monobear and ran away, leaving something with Hinata. Togami got off of the console and stalked off. Then Nanami let the Monobear reenter the Mono Ego network and pulled the Monoscope off, and just in time too as Chihiro called.

"Something wrong, Chihiro-kun?" Nanami said.

"Can I use your shower? I need to wash off, I got dirty," her cousin said.

"Where are you?"

"Residence A."

"Do you have a key?"

"Yes."

"Was it for work?"

"Yes."

"Then you can use it. Just… just don't tell Hinata. I don't want him to get involved," Nanami said. She was a little startled by her concern.

She could almost hear Chihiro narrowing his eyes. "What's going on between you two, anyway?" he said.

"It's nothing," Nanami squeaked, "just… just work. L-lift him up and then drop him, like she said. That's all."

Chihiro was quiet for roughly a minute. "I'll just tell him I was drunk," he finally said. "Goodnight."

"You really weren't suspicious?" Hinata said. Nanami shook her head.

"He wasn't supposed to kill anyone. He just ran the Mono Ego network," Nanami said. She sighed and glanced at the TV. "It was based on Alter Ego. An autonomous AI in a series of computers that controlled the Monobears and followed the direct orders of Junko Enoshima herself."

"And the wedding?" Hinata said.

Nanami looked at Hinata, and then back down. "Hajime, I really was concerned about you. And I didn't just stay with you because I needed to for Dr. Otonashi's plan. I stayed because I… because I guess I really did love you again." While Hinata knew this wasn't the time or place, he felt a happy swooping in his stomach, and he could feel his cheeks, and see Nanami's, turning red.

Nanami remained curled up on the edge of the couch. "And then, with Netherlands, well…"

"You slept with me to keep my mind off of Netherlands retreating when you showed up," Hinata surmised. Nanami nodded. "I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologize. It was fun," Nanami said, "if anyone should apologize, it was me. I manipulated you."

"And that's any different from what I did to you?" Hinata said fiercely. Their eyes met again, and then they both broke off again. "I guess we're perfect for each other, then: two people, broken by each other."

"Yeah. And, well, you know the rest." Nanami looked down. "Hajime, I just don't have my heart in Despair anymore. I told Chihiro about Gundam-kun, and then Chihiro became a murderer. They killed the old Chihiro that we all knew, and then they killed the new one, and now they're going to kill a lot of people. I just… I just don't know what to do, though…"

"Let Germany die."

Nanami looked up at Hinata. She looked startled. "Hajime-"

"Let Germany die," Hinata repeated, and he reached out a hand, "and let Chiaki Nanami live. You'll be safe with me, I promise, regardless of what you did. I'll vouch for you."

Nanami looked at him, and then she reached out her own hand and took his. "Hajime," Nanami said, "why would you do this? I'm not the woman you knew and loved…"

"Chiaki," Hinata replied, "I'm not the man you knew and loved. But that doesn't change the fact that we're still family, like you said all those years ago." With his other hand, he wiped his eyes, and was surprised to feel tears. He gave Nanami a smile, and she returned it.

"Thank you," Nanami said. She stood up, and Hinata stood up with her. "I guess, in our own ways, we're better now," she said. "The game's tomorrow, but I don't think I'll follow Dr. Otonashi's orders."

"Oh?"

"I guess I love you more than I have despair," Nanami said. "I guess I'm finally cured." She tugged at his hand and lead him towards the door. "C'mon. It's late, and we have a busy game tomorrow. I think I'll be a good teammate."

And before she opened the door, she shared a kiss with Hinata. It was brief, fleeting, much like the ones in their more innocent school days; and yet, for Hinata, it was more powerful than the one he'd shared the night Netherlands attacked. They broke off when another lightning bolt illuminated the room.

The power went off.

They stepped out into the hallway, their hands intertwined, while Nanami felt along the walls. There was a clunking sound, and for the briefest moments in a flash of light coming from his room, Hinata saw the pink-and-white Usami standing in the doorway, a canister leaking white gas spinning on the ground in front of it. Nanami gasped. "I wove supwises," the rabbit said in an unnaturally monotone voice, "Welcome to the game, twaitors!"

The world went black.

A/N: So, how did I do? This took quite a bit of writing and rewriting, but I think I'm happy with the final product. So, fun fact: originally this story was from Nanami's point-of-view and was going to feature Kuzuryuu as the main villain. When I decided that Nanami was going to be initially villainous, though, I had to change plots and viewpoints.

This chapter was also difficult because I was writing about a depressed and eventually suicidal character. The section from three years ago is short because I don't want to talk too much about something I've never been through, although I based Nanami's depression off of real accounts of depression I've read. I wasn't sure about including it, but I still did because it felt like a natural extension of what happened. I was worried that it might also come off as too codependent, but to be fair to myself, he left only a few weeks before the wedding and her dad did die in a very short period of time.

Anyways, next time: the game begins and quite possibly ends. Please review for any questions, comments, or concerns!