A/N: Ahhhh finals are finally DONE! *slams hands on keyboard* Break is here, so hopefully that means I'll be writing more. Though I do want to spend plenty of time with my family. But hey, no college work frees up a lot of time.

Finally, a bit over a week later, Kamukura-kun decided she was vaccinated enough to go outside. Chiaki was practically bouncing in her chair as he opened the front door, one hand on her wheelchair's handles. The door swung outwards; she grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut, not having seen natural light in almost a year now.

When she thought it was safe to open them again, she did. And the smile slipped off her face.

The sky instantly captured her attention. Instead of being clear blue or overcast gray, it was a deep crimson, with darker shades indicating clouds. She stared at it, horrifically mesmerized, for a few moments, before her eyes turned to the landscape; there weren't any other visible buildings, but then again the wall completely encircling the property might have hidden them. The air was chilly and thin—they must be in a high area. Some sort of mountain retreat, maybe. The grass certainly looked healthy, if a bit less green than it should be at the tail end of summer.

"I suppose this is why you kept the windows shut?" she murmured, eyes unconsciously returning to that foreign sky as though hoping it'd go back to the one she knew. "To not alarm me?"

"Correct." He carefully maneuvered her wheelchair down the front steps. The wheels hit the sidewalk pavement with a heavy clunk.

Now that she was actually outside, Chiaki wasn't quite sure what to do. Look around more, maybe? Exploring was usually a safe choice in open-world games. "Can we go outside that wall?"

In response, he began pushing her in the wall's direction. Chiaki strained her ears for sounds of life, but there were none; no birds singing in the trees, no planes flying overhead, no buzzing of the morning cicadas. It was completely silent, like the aftermath of a battle in movies. And she was just starting to notice some smell in the air, something faint but unpleasant. Oily, kind of.

They reached the wall; it was high, taller than them, and made of stone. It would have been normal, but along the top she could see turrets. Sentry turrets, Kamukura-kun had explained earlier, when he'd asked her to wait while he disabled them. She'd been shocked he would have such things, and that was the point he'd mentioned, almost off-handedly, there were other traps that he would have to physically disarm, too.

"The world is not kind, and there are people who would attempt to kill you just for being well off," he'd said when she asked if they were really necessary, "There are times I have been required to leave this facility, and without these traps and the wall, you would be completely unprotected. It is a simple matter for me to evade them when I leave, but you lack that luxury."

He'd then warned that she should never attempt to go outside without alerting him. Not that she planned to; she wasn't a prisoner, and really, doing that in this apocalyptic world would just be stupid.

The turrets looked like something out of a military game, she thought as he pushed her wheelchair through the gate, though she couldn't be sure if they were par the norm or advanced. Had Kamukura-kun made them himself, or stolen them? What about the other traps? With his skillset, either was equally likely.

Outside the walls, she saw that she was right on both her guesses—they were in a high area, and it had been some sort of retreat, for when she looked up and back she saw mountains rising behind them. A road winded down to the valley below, where she could see rooftops. So they were maybe halfway up, and down there must be the settlement Kamukura-kun spoke of. The visible trees still looked in good condition, their green leaves valiantly clinging to the branches despite both the pollution and the approaching fall. It would have been a beautiful view if it weren't for the sky.

They stayed outside for a good twenty minutes, him mostly just pushing her around and letting her familiarize herself with their location. There wasn't much to see; isolated as they were, they didn't pass so much as a single person. The nature was beautiful, but it was hard to appreciate it when the sky was a constant reminder of how wrong the world was. It didn't take long for Chiaki to request to go back inside.

Maybe another time she'd ask to visit the town, but she'd had enough for one day.

"That girl's kind of weird, don't you think? I mean, you never see her do anything but play on those consoles all day…"

"Yeah, tell me about it. Who spends that much time on video games?"

"Only dumb gamer nerds."

"And people too stuck-up to socialize. Have you seen her parents' home? Rich kids always think they're too good for us…"

As she passed the gossiping students, she hunched her shoulders and peered at her screen harder, as if the bright colors could block out what they were saying. She'd thought the words would have stopped stinging by now, but they hadn't.

They were wrong about her being stuck-up, she wanted to say. She'd gladly talk to them if she could. But she didn't know how. All the girls her age wanted to talk about were idols and fashion and stuff she had no interest in, and all the boys scoffed at the idea of playing games with a girl. There was just no way to connect her world to theirs.

Really, though, it was fine, she told herself. If the loneliness ever got too strong, she'd just ask her parents for more games to distract herself with. Once, she'd have asked for their company, but she'd learned long ago they just didn't have time for that. So she settled for presents.

The pink-haired girl sighed, one hand leaving the console to hitch her slipping backpack further up her shoulder. Her feet mindlessly followed the trail to her homeroom, her eyes trained on her game. People milled around her, faceless students in a faceless crowd. It was just another ordinary day at high school.

As such she was completely unprepared for the floor to disappear from under her.

It was so sudden she didn't even have time to scream. One second she was approaching the door to class, the next her foot was passing through the floor, and she was falling, falling, falling—

She hit the ground with a grunt, the console flying out of her hands and disappearing into darkness. Her limbs ached from the impact. Raising her head, she saw that she was in some kind of medieval hallway? Someplace stone and dark and cold. There were monitors stuck anachronistically to the walls, glowing bright in the gloom, but the image on them was distorted by static.

As she tried to figure out how she got here—wasn't she walking to class a minute ago?—a voice spoke, feminine and soft and wrong, echoing everywhere around her.

"Run, class rep. Let's see how far you get…"

Chiaki started awake with a quiet little gasp, her heart running rabbit-like in her chest and cold sweat clinging to her skin. Tile. She was looking at white tile ceiling, not shadowy hallways. She was in her bed, safe. Her heartbeat slowed, and she let out a sigh of relief. The Ultimate Gamer wiped the sweat away and yawned.

It had been a while since she'd dreamed about her old high school. Her memories of that lonely time were ones she preferred not to look at, and her brain was usually willing to cooperate, feeding her pleasant dreams of playing with her friends instead. But that last part…what had that last part been? She frowned, but in the way of all dreams it was disappearing in the daylight. She was scared, she remembered that much. Must have been a nightmare.

Rubbing the sleep crust out of her eyes with one hand, Chiaki groped blindly for the cane Kamukura-kun had given her with the other. It was right within arms' reach of her bed, and once she had it she used it to help her stand up, legs shaking a little as she did so.

As the days turned to weeks, her progress on walking became slow but steady; she'd gradually built up how much she could walk with the cane, but it wore her out so much. The wheelchair was still her primary form of travel. She barely crossed the distance to her dresser before she had to stop and sit down to wait for Kamukura-kun. That was fine, since she couldn't manage stairs anyway. Chiaki did not like imagining having to learn how to walk up and down those again.

Despite the odd dream, the day was rather ordinary. Therapy progressed as usual, with small improvements on her end. Lunch she practiced eating on her own, and managed to feed herself a few bites before the chopsticks fell out of her shaking grip and Kamukura-kun took over. It wasn't until the afternoon that anything notable really happened.

Chiaki was trying to figure out whether Kamukura-kun would enjoy Disgaea: Hour of Darkness or the ported Dungeon Explorer more when he appeared, almost out of nowhere, and handed her a thick stack of papers. "What are these?" she asked, taking them carefully.

"You requested pictures of your friends."

That was right, she had. It had been earlier this week, and he'd said he didn't have any. She thought he'd forgotten about it. How he came by these she didn't know, but she didn't doubt his ability to get things done.

Chiaki looked through the paraphilia slowly, heart clenching. A photograph from Mioda-san and Saionji-san's latest dual performance; a newspaper article about Kuzuryu-kun and Pekoyama-san's latest raid on the Future Foundation; a magazine cover featuring Monokuma-themed food by Hanamura-kun; and other various clippings.

It hurt, to look at the proof of what her friends were doing, and it was probably wrong of her to hope the Future Foundation didn't catch them; after all, they were terrorists and criminals now. But she didn't care. They'd been her first friends, them and Hinata-kun. They meant so much to her. She wanted them to be safe and free, even if it meant they could continue doing atrocities. I guess I'm selfish that way.

The pink-haired girl swallowed and placed them aside. "Thank you."

She could feel his eyes boring into the side of her head. "You have not asked me to find your parents." A question disguised as a statement.

"Ah…" Chiaki shrugged. "They…weren't really around when I was growing up, so I don't really feel much for them. I mean, I don't want them to be dead or anything, but it's a bit hard to be concerned when I feel like I barely know them. Yukizome-sensei was more a mother to me than my actual mother."

Part of her felt a bit guilty for thinking that way, but she couldn't help it. Yukizome-sensei had been everything she imagined a mother to be, even though Chiaki knew she was only a few years older than them; kind and encouraging, yet firm when she had to. Interested in her students' well-beings and hobbies, and always willing to offer advice. Chiaki had admired her, tried to base her behavior as class rep off her. She'd been her role model.

So why was it that, when she recently thought of Yukizome-sensei, she felt a sense of betrayal? She knew Yukizome-sensei had been brainwashed with the rest of their class, but that didn't explain the way her heart pinched when she thought of her teacher, and not her classmates.

Thinking of her maternal figure and absent biological parents brought a question to her attention, and she turned to the raven-haired man. "What about your parents, Kamukura-kun? Are they doing alright?"

"I do not have any memories of them. I do not know whether they are alive or dead, and I do not care enough to find out."

"They didn't visit you during the project?" Hadn't he been underage at the time, actually? Didn't that mean his parents would have to consent to their son being used as the guinea pig of the Kamukura Project? Chiaki sorely wished she could forget that question as soon as it occurred to her. Her parents had been neglectful, but she was fairly certain they wouldn't have agreed to anything of that nature.

"They did not. After my creation all non-essential personnel were prohibited from visiting. Before does not matter, though I calculate visits would have been infrequent. Loving parents do not allow their child to partake in human experimentation."

Chiaki had to swallow the lump in her throat at the thought of poor Hinata-kun sitting in a lab somewhere, alone, knowing his own parents didn't care. Then Kamukura-kun sitting in that same lab, bored out of his mind and locked away from society like some prized animal.

She knew that feeling of being ignored by the people who were supposed to love you, and she hated it. She also knew he didn't care. And maybe that was what made her saddest of all. He genuinely did not care about how short the stick he and Hinata-kun had drawn was.

"I guess that's something we have in common," she mumbled sadly when it became clear he was done. Dungeon Explorer was looking the better option. Co-op would probably be ridiculously easy for them, but having only two players instead of five might make up for that. And she was a fan of the classics.

He took the controller wordlessly, and she inserted the disc. Then she settled down next to him and prepared to play.

Nanami was a most illogical girl.

That was the conclusion Izuru had drawn from his interactions with her. He'd already suspected it somewhat, when he saw her attempting to "help" him while bleeding to death, but more time with her confirmed it. She was prone to acts of faith and emotion, acts which had little basis in reality. And there were her constant attempts to beat him at video games so he could "have fun". It was impossible for him, he'd told her multiple times. But she persisted.

Granted, he did feel less bored when with her, which was the closest he could ever get to "having fun". So there may be something there. But then again, it was only because he was with her; playing the games by himself made them go right back to being dull.

Currently he was overseeing the end of another therapy session. They had actually gone over schedule a little; he'd suggested stopping a few minutes ago, but she was determined to continue. She felt that she could cross two rooms this time, and after a moment Izuru had calculated that she was likely to manage it within the next three tries, so he allowed it.

Just as he'd predicted, on her second try her legs held out until her hands were pressed against the furthest wall. Then her knees buckled, but she managed to turn her fall into an ungraceful slide to the floor. She seemed far too happy to notice, eyes sparkling.

"I did it!" Nanami exclaimed as he approached. She looked up and beamed at him. "Kamukura-kun, did you see that? I walked all the way to the wall!"

"That you did," he agreed listlessly. He could never look at her smile for too long. It caused fluctuations in his heartbeat. Each and every time, without fail. He'd quickly figured out it was a byproduct of his attraction to her, but somehow it failed to prepare him for the next time.

He took her upper arm and pulled her up. It felt so thin, he noted not for the first time; his hand closed almost all the way around the fleshy upper part, his forefinger brushing his thumb. And she always felt so small when he carried her. Sometimes it made him concerned she was malnourished. But whenever he checked, her weight was within healthy parameters for her height and age. She was just short.

He wasn't certain why he was always taking mental note of things like that. Why should her frame or hair color or eyes capture his attention? Multiple times, at that? They never changed from the last time he looked, but they were always intriguing to him.

But then, the fact she could prompt consistent emotional reactions from him, without them growing dull, was one of the reasons he found her interesting.

As he half-carried her back to her wheelchair, Nanami's gaze drifted to the calendar on the living room wall. Her smile faded, and her pink eyes grew melancholy. Izuru ran some quick mental calculations and soon realized why. Today is the day she almost perished.

He was not surprised by his failure to recall that before now. Some distant part of him had noted September's arrival, but he never tended to pay much attention to dates. They held no significant import to him when each day was as meaningless as the next. It seemed unreal, somehow, that a year had already passed since he'd first fought to save her life.

"Thank you, Kamukura-kun."

Her words were soft and sudden, but he heard them nonetheless. It was obvious what she was thanking him for—given the date, it had to have been his saving her life—but he would entertain her. He blinked at her, gesturing for her to elaborate.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I mean…you looked after me for a year. For you, it was probably boring, to spend most of that long time with an unconscious person." It had been. "But you did it anyway. And you've continued to help me and watch over me since. And I just realized I never said it before now, so…sincerely, thank you."

She was grateful to him. She trusted him. Izuru let her wait in the silence as he mulled this over. It was not new information, but it was still something he couldn't quite comprehend. It was just foolish of her. She didn't remember the full extent of his past association with Enoshima, but given how intricate his knowledge of the model was, she must at least suspect it.

"Your thanks are misplaced. I am not a good person, Nanami," he finally stated. "I do not care for the world, and I have plans that are not necessarily moral ones." His plan to upload Enoshima's AI into the Neo World Program to test whether despair was stronger than hope, for example, was something Nanami would definitely not approve of.

Nanami winced at his bluntness. "I know," she said after a pause. "I mean…with all your talent, you could probably have stopped Enoshima before things escalated this far. You probably had plenty of opportunity. But that doesn't mean I can't be grateful for what you've done for me. It doesn't mean I can't be grateful for getting to meet you.

"I know you aren't a good person…but I don't think you're a bad one either."

Izuru noted there was a warm feeling in his chest. This was not the first time he'd experienced such a thing, and he'd already ruled out environmental and health reasons as its cause. No, it was a reaction that solely occurred in her proximity, often at random moments. He should have tired of such a predictable thing, and yet…he had not. "…An irrational belief. You do not have sufficient evidence to support that hypothesis."

Her smile returned, and his heart did those inane palpitations again. "I told you before, didn't I? I just feel it in my heart. That's good enough for me."

A most illogical girl indeed.

A/N: Woooo look whose POV came back! We'll be seeing through his eyes a few more times, not often, but I at least wanted to establish how Izuru felt about Chiaki now that he's actually interacting with her.

My headcanon backstory for Chiaki has always been that she was a rich kid with neglectful parents who were always out on business trips and stuff. I feel that best explains how she could constantly afford new video games, her initial loneliness and isolation from her peers, and how she kind of latches on to Chisa as a maternal figure.

At least she's better off than Hajime. His parents really did fully consent to the Kamukura Project—there's (Japanese) text saying so when Chisa's reading up on it in Episode 6. No wonder the poor boy has issues, his parents essentially said they wanted to trade him out for a more talented son :(