Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Dear Father,

I hope this letter finds you well! I myself have made it to Hope’s Peak perfectly safely!

I must say, the school is amazing! I see why they say it’s graduates are set for life! Not that I’m going to take that for granted, of course! I’m not going to squander this opportunity like Grandfather did!

But… it really is an amazing place, Father! It would have been wonderful if you could have seen it… Even the front gates manage to be impressive, somehow! It’s odd… they’re just bricks and iron, but here in person they seem to give off this, I don’t quite know how to describe it, it’s like an AIR of grandeur possibility!

Hah! The gates Takaaki’s looking at now certainly aren’t giving off an air of grandeur or possibility! The bricks are crumbling, the iron’s twisted and the air’s think with pollution… Hope’s Peak hasn’t been an opportunity for almost two years…

Nowhere has, not since the Tragedy. Not since the day he’d been about to leave the station and a man he’d thought was the super intendant had called him over and drugged him, leaving him to wake up in a strange apartment with nothing but his uniform… and his gun…

Ah… the gun… He’d spent eighteen mind-numbing months trapped in that apartment with it… Eighteen months with nothing to do but eat the same three meals pushed through the tiny slot in the door every day while wondering why he’d been put in there, what was happening out in the world, if anyone had tried to find him… and if he could stand to spend another day alone with his thoughts and questions, or if he should use the gun…

But then he’d wonder about his son… Was he alright? Was he doing well in school? Was he looking for him? Had he almost found him? Would he be disappointed to find his corpse, holding his own gun to his head…

He couldn’t have done that to Kiyotaka… not after all the pressure the boy had taken on from such a young age… always studying and working hard to improve himself, to show everyone that he could surpass the shame of their family and restore the honour his grandfather had stupidly squandered… and even with all that work he took it upon himself to do, he’d still always had the time and energy to talk to Takaaki with a smile and nod in commiseration when he’d complained about problems at work.

Takaaki had probably done a bit too much complaining, in retrospect, especially since Kiyotaka only rarely complained about his problems at school… instead he was always talking about his plans for the future, nice things they’d get to do if he succeeded in his goal and they didn’t have to worry so much about money. He’d wanted Takaaki to go camping and fishing with him and whatever family he ended up with, to make up for neither of them ever having the time before. He’d wanted them both to be able to go out for nice food in restaurants when he had a victory to celebrate. He’d wanted Takaaki to watch with pride as he was inaugurated as Prime Minister, and proceeded to make the country better for everyone…

But none of that would happen now. Kiyotaka isn’t here to do any of it with him. And even if he had been, there’s nowhere safe to camp and fish that isn’t being carefully regulated by Future Foundation, most restaurants are barely functioning as cafeterias and the position of Prime Minister is completely defunct… There is only one thing Kiyotaka had wanted him to do that is even still possible to do…

And that’s why Takaaki takes a moment to steel himself, then walks through the crumbled gates of the last place his son called home… Because Kiyotaka had wanted him to see it to… To see the place that he’d written about excitedly almost every day for a year. So when Future Foundation had managed to get the air purifier up and running, and had offered him and some of the other ‘captives’ a chance to say goodbye to their departed loved ones, how could he possibly have refused?

…Going in was… odd! I was worried at first, because they knew who I was even before I showed my ID… But once I proved who I was, they just smiled and said they were glad I’d arrived safely! No mention of Grandfather at all! They just let me through to the entranceway! And what an entryway! Marble flooring and pillars holding up the arched ceiling… very spacious just for students to enter the school and check the notice board! But at least the sunlight coming through the windows will make the noticeboard easier to read…

Takaaki’s first experience entering Hope’s Peak is very different from his son’s. There’s no sunlight around here, and even if there was, it wouldn’t get through the thick metal plates bolted to the windows. And while he’s recognised by the Foundation guards manning the front door, there’s no smiles or requests for ID, just a solemn bow and respectful gesture to go through…

“How do you know I’m not an imposter?” Takaaki demands. He can easily imagine this place being targeted by some despair-crazed lunatic, desperate to finish… her plan to destroy all it stood for.

“That guy’s been caught!” One of them announces cheerfully… Takaaki assumes he’s talking about that… remnant or whatever they were called who is the Ultimate Imposter, but…

“That doesn’t mean there’s no one else who can put on a disguise! You should be being more diligent!” Takaaki tells him before heading into the hall to look at... at where a noticeboard might have been, if this room hadn’t been completely revamped by that woman…

“Yeesh, you can see where his kid got it from…” One of the guard thinks he’s whispering.

“Really? He was the last one to get here… and I heard he didn’t even cry when he found out what happened to his kid…”

…That’s true. He didn’t. He still hasn’t. Perhaps because he’d already known it, deep inside himself. Even if the fact that he’d been missing for eighteen months and no one had come to help hadn't convinced him Kiyotaka was no longer able to help, then it would have become clear once the wall to that apartment broke and he just about saw that the sky was black with pollution before he’d been caught by robot bears and forced to participate as a target in some insane ‘demon hunt’ by a group of lunatic children who’d dropped him out of the sky just as he’d been about to panic and shoot them.  He couldn’t imagine Kiyotaka letting that happen… so after that Hagakure woman had him brought to a secret hideout and told him Kiyotaka had been trapped in Hope’s Peak and murdered…

Well… he’d felt numb, of course, but there was a distance to the shock and sadness. He’d gradually seen less and less of Kiyotaka ever since he’d started at Hope’s Peak. Takaaki gone from talking to the boy every day, to reading letters from him every day, to wondering what had happened to him every day… what was one more step from there to remembering him fondly every day? He’d spent that first year imagining Kiyotaka happily striding around this school while he read those letters, and now here he is, imagining Kiyotaka happily striding around the school while he remembers those letters… There’s no difference.

Except that Takaaki’s not sure where he should be going. The entranceway leads out into a T-junction, and he has no idea which way anything is in this empty and somewhat foreboding place…

Empty, that is, except for one other person. A thin, young looking, blond and spiky-haired boy is striding down the corridor on his left towards him, carrying a pickaxe over his shoulder and a grim look on his face…

He looks so angry that Takaaki’s first thought is to wonder if the pickaxe is meant to deal with him. But much to his relief, the boy barely gives him a second glance as he passes him and heads down the corridor to his right…

Which is the point at which it occurs to Takaaki that he could have possibly asked the boy for directions… Or perhaps he could just follow him and see where he’s going? There must be something relevant over there, where ever it is…

His quick strides are barely enough for him to catch the boy up, but Takaaki still doesn’t run… he wouldn’t want to get given detention from his own son anymore than Kiyotaka would want to get arrested by him, after all! He’s lucky the boy he’s following had to wait for a lift, or Takaaki wouldn’t have managed to slip through the doors just before they shut and the lift starts moving…

…The boy still doesn’t pay Takaaki any heed. Instead he’s just swinging his pickaxe experimentally, forcing Takaaki to move off to the side to avoid the risk of getting hit. What on Earth could he need that thing for? And thinking of which, where are they even going? This lift has been moving for too long to have traveled less than five floors… so that means they’re going down? But… what is there below Hope’s Peak…?

Oh… oh no… the answer occurs to him, and his legs turn weak at the thought just as the elevator finally stops and the door opens to reveal a ring of wooden podiums, with signs next to most of them…

This is the courtroom… where those cruel class trials and executions happened… They showed him a video of it… the first one at least… the one that ended with the boy Kiyotaka used to nag to do his homework being chained to a pole and bludgeoned to death with a thousand baseballs…

“Two hundred and twenty four…! Two hundred and twenty five…! Two hundred and twenty six…!” Takaaki’s recollection of that horrible, sickening scene is thankfully broken by the sound of a girl counting angrily, the numbers punctuated by the sound of metallic clangs… He turns to look, only to be reminded once again of the baseball player’s demise by the sight of a girl who would likely be quite pretty, if her makeup wasn’t currently smudged and she wasn’t scowling furiously as she throws baseball after baseball back at the machine that had shot them during the execution…

Takaaki looks away… he doesn’t need to see that! But instead, he’s now looking at all the other contraptions in this room… a wired sphere with giant tigers in front of it, a firetruck, a construction digger, a fake classroom… had those all been for executions? A different execution for each child… so which one was Oowada’s…

No... he doesn’t need to know that! Takaaki barely waits for the boy to get off the lift before he’s pounding the button to get it to go back up… after all, those trials and executions aren’t part of Hope’s Peak! Kiyotaka wouldn’t want him to see that…

[*click*

“I don’t need to see this…”

“Ah… Ishimaru? But… don’t you want to see what happened to…”

“I already know! He won’t speak again after Oowada’s executed, will he?”

“Well… He… he DID speak again… but… he was acting like Mondo…”

“…I see. Thank you… But I don’t need to watch that, thank you…”]

That’s right… he doesn’t need to be reminded of his son’s grief-stricken screams… Kiyotaka wanted him to see the wonderful school he’d been accepted into! The one he talked about in all his letters. So once the lift is back up, Takaaki turns back towards the school entrance. Obviously hei should have turned left back there, so he’ll head that way now! And he can almost imagine how nice it must have been to walk around here when the windows weren’t blocked…

…The hallways are all very spacious, and with the reduced class sizes here, it’s a lot easier to walk around, although of course people have to try and take advantage of it by running through them, even though they know full well that often leads to accidents! But there’s always people who take advantage, aren’t there? Take the bottom floor of the school, for example! There’s a AV room for watching educational DVDs, but every time I go in there, someone watching some frivolous action or romance movie instead! And the nurse’s office is supposed to be for emergencies only, but the number of times I see people pretending to be ill in order to skip a class or two! Well, either that or they try to hide in the toilets…

Once he’s looked inside the impressive AV room, checked the well-stocked nurse’s office and made his way past the toilets Kiyotaka had been complaining about, he’s faced with the stairs to the second floor ahead of him, and a corridor to his right… That must be the entrance to the dormitories, right?

…As it is, the only thing at the end of the hallway is the gym… The gym where that damn ‘Monokuma’ had assembled them all and announced the rules for her ‘game’…

The gaudy red carpet is still spread over the gymnasium floor, but there’s nothing left of the podium or flag up on the stage except for a pile of splintered wood and ripped fabric. Takaaki isn’t usually one to approve of destruction, or mess… but in this case, he can make an exception, even if he doesn’t feel any desire to add to it himself. Mindless damage to pieces of furniture is not going to let him see his son again, and it’s not what Kiyotaka would want him to be doing, either… But thinking of that…

…I really wish you could see what I’ve done with my room! It was a good room in the first place, but I’ve made a lot of improvements to it…

Where are the dormitories then, if not here? He’s sure they were all supposed to be on the bottom floor, but hasn’t he checked everywhere now…?

No… wait, there was one corridor that he skipped, opposite that room with the lift...

Indeed, that is where Takaaki finds the black sign at the entrance to the dormitories, although it’s currently displaying white text reading ‘Despair Hotel’…

Now that he isn’t going to just leave standing as it is. It’s wrong, and it’s obviously not school property! But the cheap pen he’s brought with him probably isn’t going to be enough to fill in the words, and he’s got no way to repaint the correct ones…

…The dormitory area is where we can find pretty much everything we could ever need! A kitchen and dining room is right by the entrance, and then opposite that is the laundry room and even a sauna for socialisation! And we each get our own room, instead of having to share! Not to mention the storeroom right by the rooms has everything I’ll ever need and more… clothes, more food, stationary, even paint for us to decorate our rooms, although I won’t waste my time with anything as frivolous as that!

Luckily for Takaaki, there’s still black and white paint in there, even if there is one pot less of the black than the rest of the colours, and he’s able to locate some paintbrushes to go with them, so it’s not long before he’s painted over the incorrect text… It will, however, be some time before the paint is dry enough for him to write the correct words in white. Perhaps he should look around the rest of the school while it dries and come back and paint the correct words before he leaves…

He starts with the kitchen, and feels a pang of disappointment as he sees that the plethora of fresh fruit and vegetables that was on display during the killing game is now gone… It’s Kiyotaka’s favourite part of the room. But, of course, who would be bothering to restock the food now that woman’s plan has failed? Hopefully now the air purifier is functioning again, Future Foundation will start to keep the kitchen stocked to his standards once again.

From there, he heads across to the washroom, which then leads to the sauna…

…Dear Father, You’re probably not going to believe this, but…

…He really hadn’t believed it at first. Kiyotaka, best friends with the Ultimate Motorcycle Gang Leader!? Just because they’d had a childish competition to see who could sit in a sauna for the longest and had ended up talking to each other for once? Takaaki had though Kiyotaka was playing a joke on him at first, and then he’d worried that Oowada might have been playing one on his son instead… but as time progressed, it soon because clear that there were no jokes being played whatsoever, and it was no surprise to Takaaki when Kiyotaka admitted to thinking of Oowada as more than just a best friend…

Who’d have thought managing to sit in a sauna for over an hour would lead to him falling in love? Takaaki’s sure he wouldn’t last half that long, especially not fully clothed like Oowada did… Although he can’t help but try…

…He doesn’t even last five minutes before he starts to feel ridiculous. What’s he trying to prove, exactly? He’s far too old to be putting himself through this, even if there was a reason for him to do so! He should stop messing around and go see Kiyotaka’s room, like his son wanted him to!

…I’ve very happy with my room! It’s the first one on the left, which means I’m closer to the dining room and classrooms than most of my class! I know it’s not much of an advantage, but all those extra seconds will add up over the year…

…In lieu of a nameplate on that first room on the left, there’s a small, pixelated picture of his son that Takaaki smiles fondly at for a moment, before the reality sets in that Kiyotaka is not here and that is nothing more than a picture on his door…

A door which has been left unlocked, something that would have irritated Kiyotaka to no end. But Takaaki is glad to have the chance to step inside and see the place his son had spent the happier times of his life inside…

Charts. That’s the first thing that grabs Takaaki’s attention. The walls are all festooned with the types of charts you’d expect to see hanging up in a classroom; important equations, encouraging mottos, common grammar guides… Takaaki suspects that every bit of useful information he’d want to have close at hand when sitting down to do his homework is somewhere on these walls. And if it’s not, then it’s probably somewhere in the collection of think textbooks lining the desk…

Kiyotaka’s amazing… Even trapped in a bizarre and dangerous situation, with no help available whatsoever, it had barely taken a suggestion from Naegi for Kiyotaka to have buckled down and written out all of these charts, mostly from memory, and started working towards figuring out life’s lessons all by himself. Most ordinary students would have used the situation as an excuse to relax, or just cowered in fear in their rooms, but Kiyotaka had done everything he could to encourage his classmates to band together to overcome their situation, even if the situation had just been too much for some of them, regardless of his encouragement…

It’s no wonder people keep telling him that he must be so proud of his son… Kiyotaka must be the best thing the Ishimaru family has ever had to offer to the world, and raising him is the proudest achievement of Takaaki’s life. It’s no wonder Kiyotaka wanted him to be able to see this place… being in this room is making Takaaki feel like the proudest father in existence… if only Kiyotaka was here for Takaaki to tell him so…

But, if Kiyotaka was here, he’d probably barely get any chance to look around the place properly, as eager as Kiyotaka would have been to show it all to him. It’s probably for the best that he’s guiding himself around this tour of the school, as he doesn’t have to worry about racing his son up the stairs to the second floor, and he already knows what Kiyotaka would be telling him about all the rooms here.

…As you go up the stairs to the second floor, there’s a swimming pool on the left. I’ll probably go there quite often, as Asahina has offered to give me swimming tips, and how could I possibly turn down the chance to train against the so-called ‘Ultimate Swimmer’! Then between the two class rooms (same set-yp as the first-floor) is an absolutely wonderful library, with all sorts of books and even some classified information files! Although Togami insisted on pointing out his family has access to all of it already! But the joke will be on him once I’m able to crack on and use all these new resources to close the advantage his money gave him…

They are a nice pool and library. And Kiyotaka had been correct when he said he’d probably end up spending a lot of his time here… but incredibly incorrect as to the reason why he’d do so. Not that that’s a bad thing, not at all. Takaaki’s much happier that he learnt to spend time enjoying his classmates company, not just seeing them as yet more obstacles in his life that he had to fight his way past. He only wishes he could have met more of his son’s friends for himself, as Kiyotaka had often suggested in his letters.

But that’s yet another thing that Takaaki can’t do anymore. The only wish of Kiyotaka’s that he can fulfil is the wish for him to see the rest of Hope’s Peak…

…Up on the third floor is an entire room just for recreation! I doubt I’ll spend time there… although Naegi is remarkably insistent that I at least go in there once and see…

There’s someone in here already.

He’s so quiet that Takaaki almost doesn’t notice him. It’s only the sheer paleness of him, contrasting with the dark room, that draws Takaaki’s eye to the man sat in meditation on the chair... Everything about him is pale white. He’s wearing a white karetegi, has long white stringy hair and his skin is so pallid it’s as if he’s a ghost… or a corpse.

In fact, he doesn’t look like he’s breathing... “Err… Excuse me…?”

To Takaaki’s relief, he opens his eyes and looks at him with the barest amount of surprise. “…Yes?”

“Erm…” The sheer amount of quiet confidence in the man’s weak voice throws Takaaki off for a moment. “…I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dead…” He tries to explain.

“Ah…” A small smile of amusement dances across his face momentarily, “No. I have spent too much of my time fighting death to willingly walk into it’s arms now… Even if that was the path… she felt was best...” He takes in a deep breath and lets it out heavily, “I am just… contemplating what her last thoughts might have been, as she sat here…”

…Takaaki might not have seen the last events at Hope’s Peak, but he’s heard enough to work out that the man in the chair must be talking about the suicide Oogami is being revered for… Even if he seems somewhat… disappointed with her.

“…I see. I’ll leave you in peace then...” Takaaki tells him. Kiyotaka was never particularly fond of this room, even after he’d made more friends and they’d convinced him to relax a little more often…

In fact, there’s not much on this floor he was ever concerned with…

…I doubt I’ll be going to the third floor at all! Not that it’s not of good quality, it’s just… the rooms there are the Art room and Physics lab! Necessary additions to the school, just not… things I’m likely to have the skill or knowledge to take advantage of quite yet…

Is it worth even looking at either…?

…Yamada suggested I come to the art room, and then showed me his current works, as well as explaining some of the other works his fellow artists are working on… I think I’m starting to learn to appreciate art a little more…

Well, there’s no Yamada to explain the works to him, but Takaaki’s only going to have one opportunity to see what his son was talking about, before Future Foundation start using this building for whatever they have planned and want him out of it…

The Art room looks gaudy, with the mess of multicoloured pictures lining the back wall clashing with the simplicity of the stone statues taking up the front of centre of his view. Everything here seems well made and nice to look at, but not so much so that Takaaki would be willing to pay anything to keep it at home… much the same as he’s always felt with art… Perhaps if Kiyotaka were here to explain it to him, he might understand why his father had been willing to pay such stupid amounts for some of the pieces he collected before his downfall…

There’s another door at the back of the room, so he might as well go see what’s there…

It turns out to be a much simpler room, lined with storage cabinets containing various folders and books and a tool rack holding various sizes of wooden mallets for chiselling, one of which has fallen to the floor. Off to one side of the room is a plump, brown haired girl meticulously flicking through the folders while being watched lazily by the fattest cat Takaaki has ever seen…

The girl is unmistakably a relative of Yamada’s, probably hoping to find any of his work left behind in this room… but then, what’s with the cat…?

…I tell you, Father, I can’t understand some of my classmates at all! I mean, Enoshima asked us all today who the most important person to us was, and Ludenberg named her CAT! And Yamada’s so obsessed with her he kept trying to argue that it’s perfectly reasonable to care more for a cat than one of your fellow humans…

Ah… that makes sense. Yamada has taken it on herself to look after Ludenberg’s cat, the same way her brother wanted to look after it’s owner…

Well, there’s nothing Takaaki needs to see here… although that mallet on the floor is irritating him. He goes to pick it up and put it back on the rack in the proper place…

“HIIISSSSS!” As soon as he holds it up, the cat suddenly springs into action and lets out a hellish noise, back arched and fur standing upright so far it’s almost cartoonish…

“Huh? What is it Grand Bois…?” Yamada quickly turns from her work to see what the thing is getting worked up at, and her eyes widen when she sees it’s Takaaki, although she’s not looking at his face, but to the side of it, and she recoils backwards in fear, starting to plead with him… “Ah… N-no! Please don’t hurt us!”

“Ergh…” He freezes in confusion at the worst time… Why would he hurt them!?

“I… please! I d-don’t want to die! I just want people to remember the good things he did…!” Who is she talking about…? Why is she still not quite looking at him? Why is she scared of him!? “I… I’m SORRY!”

[“Oh gosh, I’m sorry! I didn’t think you were coming!”

“I’m sorry I got held up… But why are you apologising?”

“Ah… my book…”

“Your book? Ah! That’s one’s of Yamada’s isn’t it!?”

“Yes… I’m sorry…”

“Err… for what!?”

“Well… I mean… Didn’t he kill your son?”

“…what?”

“Well… I mean… Enoshima killed ALL of them… but… he was the one who hit your son with the hammer…”

“No… no, it can’t be! Yamada wasn’t a killer! He wouldn’t have done something like that without any reason!”

“You don’t know? Well… it was because Ludenberg told him he’d assaulted her and took pictures… She was the one who came up with the plan…”

“…That… that doesn’t sound like her either…”

“Did you think Oogami did it then? She was only other person who didn’t survive…”

“No! Of course not! I… I didn’t think ANY of them did it…”]

She’s the sister of the boy who allegedly bludgeoned his son to death with a hammer, standing in front of the cat belonging to the woman who supposedly ordered him to do it… and Takaaki is holding a hammer…

There’s a thud as it drops to the floor. “I was just going to put back in the right place!” Takaaki explains, hands up in conciliation… “I… It didn’t occur to me that… that it might… I mean, how it would look…” He’s doing a terrible job of explaining this… “I wouldn’t kill anyone!”

“Oh… ha… Okay… haha…” She laughs out of nervous relief. “I’m sorry, I just… You’re Ishimaru’s father, aren’t you? I thought… you probably blame Celeste… Or Hifumi…” She looks away guiltily.

“No. Not at all… They were his friends…” He still doesn’t quite believe they did it, but even if they did… “And they were trapped in a strange place with complete strangers encouraged to kill each other… and some of them already had… of course they were getting scared and desperate…”

After all, Ludenberg might have said she was doing it for the money, but he couldn’t believe she wasn’t suffering from a growing sense of fear about her situation, regardless of how calm and composed she acted, and how people reacted to that was always unpredictable! After all, he’d always said he’d never want to use his gun, but he’d barely even thought about pulling it out on those children…

“You… you think so?” Yamada sniffs in surprise, “I mean… I know he must have been scared, especially of Ishida, but I didn’t think you’d…”

“Err… Ishida?” Who was that? Kiyotaka had never mentioned having a classmate with that name, had he…?

“Umm… You don’t know? How your son…? After Oowada…” She doesn’t seem to want to be the one to explain this to him…

But… It’s something to do with Kiyotaka? There is a similarity in the names… Ishi…da…, The start of Ishimaru and… the end of Oowada…

[“He was acting like Mondo…”]

“Oh… you mean… When Kiyotaka started acting like Oowada, he… mixed their names up?”

“Yes.” She clarifies, looking confused that he had to ask… “Didn’t they show you the video of what happened?”

“Ah… well, they did, but… I stopped watching when Oowada was proclaimed guilty.” Takaaki admits, “I didn’t need to see what happened next…”

“You’re more sensible than me then…” She sighs, “I watched the whole thing and kept expecting Hifumi to break the narrative and turn out to be alive at the end… even when they’d already told me he was dead…”

Break the narrative? As if it was just a story or some sort of TV show? “…That’s understandable. The whole… ‘game’… it was just so… unreal!” Everything about this whole Tragedy has been unbelievable...

“I know!” She seems pleased someone agrees with her… “I mean, Hifumi was killed in here, but…” She looks around the room…

It’s clean, tidy, everything’s packed away in an orderly manner, aside from the dropped mallet and the stack of folders she’s looking through… “You’d never know it…” Takaaki summaries.

“Exactly.” She nods, “It’s the same with the Physics rooms…”

There was a murder in the physics room? “Who died there?”

“Umm…” She cringes with a mix of guilt and concern in her eyes…

“Oh... Kiyotaka…” That’s why she doesn’t want to say it…

“Sorry! I…” She starts to tearfully apologise…

“No, it’s fine… I should have been able to figure that out.” After all, he’s seen it’s not any of the first five, Oogami died in the rec room, Yamada’s just told him her brother died in here and Ludenberg would have been executed…

“I still shouldn’t have said it though…” She sighs sadly.

“Well… I shouldn’t have scared you with this…” Takaaki picks up the mallet to emphasise his point, before putting it back in it’s proper place like he’d intended to… an action that causes the cat by her side to glare at him cautiously the entire time he has the mallet in hand. “I’ll leave you to your search now…”

“Okay…” There’s a small amount of resignation in her agreement as she turns back to her folders. Does she not want him to leave, or is she merely feeling that her task is hopeless?

…It’s probably best not to presume she wants his company. And the cat is still glaring at him warily. It continues to do that as he leaves them alone together…

So now the only room remaining on this floor is the Physics room… where his son was apparently killed…

Perhaps it’s a good place for him to pay his final respects?

Unlike the other rooms, there’s a guard outside of this one…

“…Are we not allowed in here?”

“This is the room containing the air purifier, sir, so it’s better not to touch it while we’re all still here!” The guard salutes him… goodness knows why, it’s not as if he’s done anything to deserve it… “But… as it’s you, I’ve been told you can enter on the condition that you go straight to the side room, sir!”

A side room? Presumably that’s where Kiyotaka… was. “Understood.”

The guard opens the door and Takaaki quickly makes his was past another guard, standing in front of the giant cylindrical machine humming steadily away in the centre of the room, towards a simple door. He pauses for a moment to prepare himself for whatever he may see once he goes through the door…

…It turns out to be nothing, really. Just a dark green room with various plain looking boxes, so many that they’ve built a shelving unit for them at the back, and some rolls of paper and a pile of blue tarpaulins.

It’s as Yamada told him. There’s no sign whatsoever that his son was killed, no evidence to prove a murder happened at all… He can’t even imagine what it would have looked like if he had been… Kiyotaka lying still in this room, blood pouring from a blunt force to the head… Takaaki’s seen the odd corpse in that state before but… he just can’t imagine Kiyotaka in that state… It just doesn’t seem real…

Perhaps it’s just as well. He doesn’t need to be thinking of Kiyotaka in that sort of state. Better to focus on the happy memories they had together… of Kiyotaka’s almost constant source of cheer and energy… Kiyotaka running up to give him a tight hug after time spent apart… Kiyotaka assuring him that things would get better… Kiyotaka’s excitement over everything within the school…

…The fourth floor specialises in subjects I don’t excel at either, namely Music, IT and Chemistry. But I should be visiting it more often than the third floor, because it’s where the staff and Headmaster’s rooms are located… I’m sure student council members have to spend a lot of time discussing things with the teachers, and the headmaster has said we can feel free to discuss any problems we have with him, although I doubt I’ll need to…

…The headmaster’s office door has been broken open and hangs slightly ajar, but the rest of the office is still in pristine condition, aside from a few files that are scattered on the floor, which Takaaki picks up and shuffles together neatly before looking around the room more closely. Most of the room is taken up by two sofas, each facing a long coffee table in the centre of the room. They’d be identical if it weren’t for a groove which has formed in the one on the right, suggesting it’s sat on more frequently than the other one.

Behind that is a typical office desk setup, somewhat pompously decorated with two flags bearing the Hope’s Peak logo. Both sides of the room are lined with cabinets, the right one chock-full of various books and folders and the left proudly displaying various trophies earned by Hope’s Peak’s former students…

…I ended up studying less than I intended to this evening! I had some class rep business to discuss with the headmaster, but partway through my report he suddenly insisted on making me a cup of coffee and asking me how I’m finding the school, in copious detail! Then he ended up showing some of the more impressive trophies Hope’s Peak’s students have earned, and telling me stories about how hard they had to work to earn them… I’m wondering if my assuming that all the other students here just geniuses was perhaps a little unfair...

…Takaaki doesn’t know much about Jin Kirigiri. He’s heard rumours that the man was involved in the experiment that resulted in school’s downfall and tried to cover it up, but he’s also heard accounts saying he was against the project the whole time and only agreed to the cover up to stop the school from falling even faster. He’s heard people say he was a fool for not spotting what that woman was up to, while others insist that she was so cunning that no one could possibly have guessed it…

All Takaaki knows for sure is that the man often took time out of what must have been a busy workload to sit on a sofa and make an effort to get to know his students personally, even if the student in question complained about it eating into his study time, and try to give them useful advice for dealing with life outside of classes, good grades and rules. Whatever part he might have played in all of this, Takaaki will always be glad he was here to convince his son to allocate some of his time into having fun and forming happy memories during his short time before it all happened.

…Next to the headmaster’s office is a staff room, although all that Takaaki takes in is the sight of over a dozen wilted flowerpots before he shuts the door mournfully…

…The staff here are so helpful! I was starting to think I’d NEVER understand my calculus homework and they were going to throw me out of the staff room for wasting their time, but they all kept at it, even though it took me almost an hour to finally get it…

It wasn’t just the headmaster who was killed… all of the teachers who’d helped Kiyotaka with his homework, all the security staff who’d kept him safe, the cleaners who vacuumed his room even though he insisted he could do it himself, the porters who assured him everyone locked themselves out of their room on occasion… they’d all been brutally murdered as well. And the perpetrators were the ordinary students next door who had then all committed mass-suicide… And Kiyotaka and the other children had had to live with that knowledge for almost a year…

…How the hell did they cope? How did they not go mad as soon as that happened, let alone think to barricade themselves in here and then manage to live together in confinement for nearly a year? Takaaki’s starting to hate being in this place, with all these reminders of what happened here, and he’s barely been in this school for an hour!

…Perhaps they just avoided this floor, in particular. As Kiyotaka said, there’s not much here of note other than the two rooms Takaaki has just looked at, and he doubts they’d have wanted to be anywhere near them if they could avoid it. He’ll just make his way up the stairs to the fifth floor…

The fifth floor… the final floor… It’s starts with a small hallway, with two classrooms on the right-hand side and a T-junction up ahead… Kiyotaka never mentioned having classes in room 5-A of 5-B, but while he’s here…

(“I mean, what the hell were you thinking, you stupid bitch!?”)

Takaaki pauses… did he just hear someone shouting…?

(“I mean, I get it! I got trapped to! And it was fucking terrifying wondering what the fuck was going on out there and why no one was coming to help me!”)

He did! It sounds like a girl screaming at someone… he’d best go make sure that it’s not going to turn into anything more serious than that!

(“But did you really think you’d be able to keep being a star after you fucking murdered someone!? How the hell did you think that’d work, when they asked you how you got out and what the fuck happened to Kuwata!?”)

It sounds like it’s coming from up ahead… the right hand turn… and then off to the left, the room at the far end of the corridor… yes, that’s it. He can definitely head the voice more clearly now…

“And speaking of which, Kuwata!? Really!? If you’re gonna be dumb enough to try and off someone, don’t pick someone stronger than you, you idiot! Even I could have told you that! Where the fuck was that ‘good intuition’ of yours when it came to picking an easy kill!? Why not go for that tiny computer programmer!? Then at least your dumb plan would have got you to the damn trial!”

The girl’s voice is getting louder, and the air slightly colder, as Takaaki quickly walks towards the room at the far end. The door has been left open, but at this angle he can only see the girl who’s shouting, not who she’s shouting at…

“…But then Kirigiri would probably have seen through your plan anyway, or Naegi would have sold you out once he realised all your lives were on the line, so the whole thing would have been pointless and you’d still be dead…”

…It’s then that Takaaki gets close enough to the door to see what’s going on… To see the entire wall that’s full of small doors, and that girl is yelling at a body on the gurney that’s coming out of the open one…

“Sayaka… why? Why the fuck did you do it!? Why didn’t you just wait!? I know they showed you that video of us… but couldn’t you have just trusted us to look after ourselves and be safe? What did you think you were going to be able to do that the police and everyone else wouldn’t already have done!? How far up your own ass was your head if you thought you’d actually make a difference to what happened to us!?”

This is a morgue… and that body is Sayaka Maizono… His son’s school friend…

 “‘Cause I heard that shit you said to Naegi, you know! All that crap about how you had to chase your dream constantly, and you might get left behind while you were trapped… Did you seriously think we’d have let that happen!? Alright… I know we didn’t always get along, and I said I was gonna steal your spot while you were gone… but that was a fucking joke! Did you really think I was gonna be able to do that!? Did you really think we’d all be willing to just fuck you over after everything you’ve done for us!?”

…And there’s nine doors that are active… nine dead bodies… Nine dead students from Kiyotaka’s class…

“You were part of the band, Sayaka! You were always gonna be part of the band! But now there is no band! Everyone’s dead and I can’t even make a goddamn double act anymore, because someone couldn’t wait more than three fucking days before trying to stupidly murder the most stupid person she could pick in the most stupid way for a stupid reason because, like I said, no one was gonna be your fucking fan anymore after you’d murdered someone you stupid, stupid BITCH!”

This is a morgue… Kiyotaka’s in here…

“Haah… haa… ha… Ah! Hey! W-who are you? How long have you been there!? How much of that did you hear!?”

…He can’t answer that… because his train of thought has reached its destination, and is well and truly stuck there. In this moment in time, all that Takaaki knows is…

“…My son’s in a morgue…”

“What? Well, yeah… They all ended up in here! Didn’t you get shown the killing game!? I mean, I only got rescued by Future Foundation two weeks ago and even I’ve seen it already!”

“…I didn’t need to see it…” He didn’t need to know his son was in a morgue… He doesn’t need to imagine his son’s corpse, cold and wrapped up and tagged like so many other corpses he’s seen in the past. He needs to see his son, not just a piece of evidence…

“Fair enough, you didn’t miss anything… people have weird ideas of what’s good entertainment, if that’s the thing everyone watched last summer!” This time the girl’s words drag him a little closer to reality, as she shrugs and brushes past him out of the door, “Anyway, I’m done in here. I’ll leave you to see your son. Can you put Sayaka back for me? I had enough trouble getting the door open in the first place…”

“…Alright…” He should be able to shut the door… to put the body of the girl who happily taught his son how to project his voice better back into a cold, dark freezer…

…GODDAMIT! WHY!? Why had this happened!? She was his friend! One of the only few he had! She was a young girl who’d achieved her fame, and wanted nothing more but to be able to work towards making people happy for the rest of her life! And now instead, here she was, lying dead with a knife sticking out of the abdomen in a cold morgue in the school that she’d attended in the hope of making her dream a reality along with eight more of her friends…

…including Kiyotaka…

…He closes the door. And then he looks at all nine of them, the green lights humming almost innocently at him…

Behind one of these door, should be his son… And he should probably take a look at the boy, shouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be right if he left without at least… saying goodbye to the boy, before he goes… But which of these doors is it…?

…He starts at the top left, and has to suppress his urge to gag at the sight of a half-charred body with multiple stab wounds… That must be Ikusaba… how the hell could that bitch do that to her own sister…? From what Kiyotaka has told him, the girl absolutely adored her and would have done anything for her…

…He doesn’t need to see this… And the door underneath hers is the one he just closed, so now he opens the one to the right of it instead…

It’s Kuwata, body bruised and mangled by the mass of baseballs he had shot at him, a cruel punishment, given he’d been thinking he didn’t want to play baseball anymore, even though in reality he’d actually played, and enjoyed, several games with his class since making that decision…

But Takaaki doesn’t need to be thinking about this… He opens the door below Kuwata’s…

It’s Fujisaki, although it doesn’t look like him in that dress. He’d come to peace with his appearance and started wearing  more masculine clothes over the course of his first year, before he came to visit Kiyotaka over the summer holidays… He’d been such an happy, polite boy, even when he’d ended up spending most of the visit helping Takaaki and Kiyotaka with various computer woes…

Now his face is twisted in fear, and there’s congealed blood from his crushed head coating one side of his face… Takaaki really doesn’t need to see this…

Next door, to the right of Kuwata’s…

…is empty.

Takaaki stares at it. In his shock, he even closes the door and reopens it, in case it’s some sort of trick or he didn’t open it properly. But there’s still no corpse in here. That’s not right, is it? There were nine doors active, and there’s nine students who died… so all these doors should be full…  Unless one of the nine dead students isn’t actually dead…

…Maybe it’s Kiyotaka.

…It’s so easy to believe it. It makes muck more sense that Kiyotaka isn’t dead. He was a healthy lad, and Yamada was both shorter and weaker than him! He probably survived a hammer blow. Then he would have woken up here and activated the failsafe to get out once she was defeated. If Takaaki opens all these doors, one by one, then he’ll see that Kiyotaka really isn’t in a morgue, but is instead out… somewhere.

But where, that’s the question? He’s obviously not at Future Foundation, but if he didn’t get out until after he ‘game’ was over, he wouldn’t have known any of what was going on, would he? He probably would have just walked out of the school and started trying to figure out what had happened… and he wouldn’t have settled for just figuring it out, he would have started trying to fix the problem, probably by telling off everyone who was contributing to it, regardless of how minor the damage they were causing was…

But that might be dangerous… surely Kiyotaka had more sense than that… Maybe instead he’s hiding somewhere, and settling for writing detention slips to the rioters instead… And while he’s at it, he’s probably still writing Takaaki daily letters, even if he doesn’t know where to send them, because Takaaki’s not done anything important enough to be noticeable since getting rescued...

Well… if Kiyotaka can’t find him, he’ll just have to find Kiyotaka! It might be a lot of work, but Takaaki won’t rest until he’s found his son! And the first step is to just confirm to himself that his son is definitely out there waiting for him, by opening up the rest of these doors with his friends in them and…

…Oh… no… There he is. Takaaki just needed to open the door underneath the empty one to find him…

Kiyotaka…

The baby who never wanted to sleep, the toddler that ran him ragged, the child he corralled into helping with the housework, the kindergartener who threw himself into every book he could find, the school boy who slaved to make sure his fellow students had every opportunity to succeed, the teenager who jumped at the chance to take every opportunity his grandfather was given and make a hundred times more than he had out of them, the young man who laughed and smiled with pure joy as he talked about his friends and all their wonderful goals, the man who was going to make the world better, to make his life better, to fix everything…

Is lying in this freezer, face twisted in pain from the wound in his head, absolutely still…

No… he wasn’t still… His son was never still… even when he slept he tossed and turned and murmured, as if his brain was busy scolding the rest of him for daring to stop working when he had so much he needed to do, or perhaps he just had so much energy it was physically impossible for him to stay still? That was more like it… his son just had so much energy, too much to keep to himself… it pulsated out of him, infusing itself into everyone around him… Takaaki had probably been living off of that energy for years… The lectures from Kiyotaka that got him out of bed after sleepless nights, those infectious smiles that brightening his mood during the worst of times, the insistences that no matter how bad it got, they could work to make it better… Kiyotaka would always work to make it better, he wouldn’t rest until he was…

…he was…

…he was dead. He IS dead.

He isn’t hiding somewhere, writing Takaaki a secret letter to let him know he’s safe. He isn’t out lecturing the rioters until they start tidying up the mess they’ve made. He’s not working to make the world better, to fix everything, not anymore…

Because he’s here, dead, his head bashed in by one of those few friends he had, his face twisted in the expression he’d held as he struggled to stay alive, his body covered with the coat belonging to the man he’d loved, his whole form starting to blur as Takaaki’s breathing becomes ragged and his legs shake and tears start to well up in his eyes…

He lets out a sob as he collapses to his knees, arms clutching his son and face buried in his chest, holding him tightly… maybe if he holds him tightly enough he can give back some of that energy he’s been borrowing for all these years… just enough to jump-start the boy back into life…

It’s a stupid, fleeting thought. His tears of grief won’t bring his beloved son back from the dead. It’d be like something from a fairy tale… and neither Takaaki or Kiyotaka were ever one for fairy tales. They were both too grounded in the harsh reality of life…

And in reality, Kiyotaka Ishimaru, his pride and joy, his source of energy, his hope for the future…

Is dead. GONE. And nothing can ever bring him back. He’s going to spend the rest of time lying in this cold freezer, dead… doing nothing. Not until the power eventually gets cut off and he rots away to nothing…

Was that really it? There was absolutely no other possibility? After all that hard work his son had done, he’d have no effect on the world whatsoever? What a waste…

He’d hate that. He’d always hated waste… This was a boy who asked to be put on the organ donor list when he was eight, he’d have wanted his corpse to do something… but there were no transplant surgeons anymore, and so many corpses that most of them just got thrown into piles to rot, without so much as a passing glance…

Kiyotaka deserved better than that… he deserved to do something… even if it was just being buried, and helping flowers grow. No, maybe not flowers… food! He’d have thought that was more practical…

Yes… he can do that. He can take his son’s body somewhere, lay it to rest, plant some seeds and then…

And then…

And then he can use the gun, and escape this dark, joyless, hopeless world that he doesn’t have the energy to face anymore. And what little energy he has will seep into the ground and mix with his son’s again…

Yes. That sounds nice. That’s what he needs to do. He just needs to pick up his son, and…

“HEY! What the fuck are doing!? Leave them alone, asshole!”

Takaaki turns… the boy from the elevator is stood panting angrily in the doorway with the, now cracked, pickaxe in his hand. What is he talking about though?

“Uhh… oh, shit! You’re…” The boy’s anger fades when he sees Takaaki’s face, “Uhh… I’m sorry! I didn’t realise you were… I mean… He’s with yer son, so…”

Why is he speaking as if there’s someone else with Kiyotaka?

[“Well… He… he DID speak again… but… he was acting like Mondo…”]

“You… you really think their souls…?”

“What? No, that was bullshit!” The boy seems indignant at the mere suggestion, but then looks guiltily at Kiy… at the body. “Uhh… no offence!”

“Then why are talking as if Oowada’s’s… here!?” Takaaki gestures to... it.

“Oh! I, uhh… Mondo promised your son he’d always be with him…” He sighs, “So... I put the tub in yer son’s arms.”

“The… tub?” What tub!? He wasn’t aware of Oowada having a tub that was special to him… wouldn’t it have made more sense to give Kiyotaka the pickaxe, if he’d wanted his son to have something belonging to the biker…?

“Wha…!? Y-y’know! The tub! Tha… that fucking tub!” He explanation is rapidly turning into angry snarls, none of which is helping Takaaki understand what he’s talking about... “What, did they not show the fucking Killing Game!?”

Oh… this must be about something that happened after Oowada’s trial… “They did… but I stopped watching once Oowada was declared guilty.”

“Eh!? But… Yer son was still alive then!” The biker cries, “Didn’tcha wanna know what happened ta him!?”

“I could tell what was going to happen… I didn’t need…” No… that wasn’t actually true, was it? He’d spent all this time in limbo, not quite believing the reality of his situation, subconsciously thinking that if he waited long enough Kiyotaka would rush back into his life with a smile on his face and start chivvying him into action again… That’s why he’d stopped the video… “…I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to believe he was… is actually dead.”

“Haaa… Yeah… I… I get that alright…” The boy’s shoulders slump as he lets out a sigh, “I didn’t believe it either… kept telling everyone Mondo musta jumped outta there at some point without ‘em noticing… wasn’t until they showed me a better version and I watched it frame by frame, saw him actually fucking melt, that I…”

“MELT!?” What…!? What the fuck did she do to him!?

“Uhh… Yeah… They put him on a bike… made it drive inside a cage so fast he… he…” The boy starts to shudder.

“I don’t need to know.” The words shoot out of Takaaki’s mouth, even though he probably does need to know. “I mean… you don’t have to tell me…”

The biker considers it for a moment, then turns back towards the door. “Just… look under the coat. That oughta give you the gist of it…”

A sense of dread rises in Takaaki’s heart as he reaches down to lift the coat currently covering his son. But it’s overruled by a morbid sense of curiosity as well… and a desire to understand just what his son had been forced to watch happen to his one and only love…

Under the coat is… it looks like a cheap tub of margarine, something unremarkable at first glance. It’s not until he makes a closer inspection that he sees the familiar ridiculous hair, gaudy eye make-up and stern expression his son had spent a summer insisting combined into the face of the most handsome man he knew… and that makes it perfectly clear what Kiyotaka saw after that trial, even without the superfluous words printed next to it…

Mondo butter… MONDO BUTTER!? Like it was a fucking joke brand name or something! How could that sick bitch DO that!? How could she stand to prey on old weaknesses that Oowada had spent over a year overcoming, to pressure him into killing one of his closest friends!? Where did she get off on calling it justice, executing a man she’d all but forced to murder someone! And how could she even dream of doing it in such an evil, FUCKED UP way!? And what had possessed her to do it in front of all his friends, to make them watch his life get… get melted down into nothing but a goddamn JOKE!?

Was this what despair did!? It made you think things like that were normal, acceptable even, fun perhaps!? How in hell’s name could anyone fight against that…? He couldn’t even imagine trying… not without Kiyotaka…

“Did ya look yet?” The biker asks, quietly.

“Yes.” Takaaki drops the coat back down, he doesn’t need to keep looking at that…

“So… what’re gonna do…?”

“I want to give him a proper burial.” Takaaki tells him. No need to go into the details.

“Like… with your family?” The boy asks, “…Could ya take Mondo? Be nice for him ta be with a family…”

“Ah… no… My family couldn’t afford a plot…” Takaaki admits, “But… Oowada has a brother, doesn’t he? Kiyotaka would probably have liked to be with the pair of them!” Yes… he’d have probably liked that more than the food idea, wouldn’t he? Being part of his new family… Part of his boyfriend’s whole gang of friends…

“Ya won’t be able ta get there. First thing I did once I got outta Towa was try ta ride there… reckoned that’d be where any of the gang ended up. Thought they mighta been riding around on their bikes still, patrolling the place, keeping it safe from despair…” The biker sighs, shrinking with sadness, “And there were bikes alright… fucking black and white ones that giggle and try ta shoot at ya… I barely had time ta get outta there… no chance of burying anyone… Ha…! Not unless it’s under your own corpse!”

“…Saves me a bullet.” He could even give the gun to someone el…

“The FUCK was that!?” Ah… did he just mutter that thought out loud…? Presumably he did, because the boy is now staring at him in horror. “You… you’re planning ta shoot yerself!?”

“…Yes.” There’s no point in Takaaki denying it, the boy would probably try to stop him regardless, but perhaps he can persuade the lad not to...  “I… I wouldn’t be of any help in this fight… I’m getting old and tired... Better to…”

“Yer, like, forty-something!” The kid snaps, “That butler dude’s twice that and he’s still helping!”

“He’s got someone to help!” Is the first counterargument Takaaki thinks of, “I haven’t got anyone left!”

That leaves the boy speechless for a short while, but then his sets into grim determination… “Alright then.” To Takaaki’s surprise, he nods. “Let’s do it.”

“Err…?” Why did he phrase it as if he’s going to…?

“Let’s go get fucking killed!” The damn fool practically cheers it! “All five of us together, sounds good to m…!”

“Don’t be stupid!” Takaaki orders him, “You’re just a kid! You’ve got your whole life…”

“SO!? I ain’t got anyone left ta live for either!” He screeches, “The gang’s gone and Mondo’s a tub of fucking butter! Why the fuck should I stick around!?”

But… he’s a child… He must have someone who’s looking after him! “…What about your parents?”

“My…!?” He snorts, before laughing hysterically, “Ahahahaha…! Why’d ya think I joined a gang, you old dumbass!? My parents never gave a shit about me! Ah… ahaha…haaa…” His laughter trails off, leaving nothing but cold despair in his eyes… “I don’t think anyone ever did…”

“That can’t be true…”

“No… No, it fucking is!” He insists, “My family didn’t give a shit, the gang ever only listened ta me ‘cause Daiya told ‘em to and then he got himself killed for Mondo!”

“But… you wouldn’t have been captured if Oowada hadn’t…”

“All that meant was that I meant slightly more ta him than anyone else in the gang!” He scowls, “It didn’t make fuck all difference once he fell in love with him!” He points at Kiyotaka, “That… that lucky bastard there that had friends that didn’t just wanna suck up ta him and... and you! Having a fucking father who fucking loved him so much yer gonna off yerself just ‘cause he ain’t here anymore! Whereas my old man probably doesn’t even remember I exist, let alone love me! So why the fuck should I…!?”

…The boy’s started crying.

He needs a hug.

… Takaaki strides over and pulls the crying teen into his arms… It’s almost the same as when he used to comfort Kiyotaka, the same odd sense of concern and warmth that he hopes will channel into the boy and cheer his mood, however slightly. The only difference is that the biker doesn’t hug back, whereas Kiyotaka used to grab him so tightly it was hard to breathe. Instead he just falls still, blinking rapidly as his tears subside.

“…What’re you doing?” The boy asks him, after a moment of silence.

“I’m giving you a hug.”

“I know what a fuckin’ hug is! Why the fuck are ya giving me one!?”

“I thought you needed one.” Takaaki admits.

“What!? No! I’m a fucking gangster! I don’t need a damn hug!” He makes a feeble attempt to squirm out of Takaaki’s arms, “’Specially not one from an asshole whose planning ta off himself…”

…He’s got a point. If everyone he’s ever cared about has ended up dying, then it would be rather unfair of Takaaki to do something like keep hugging him until he cares about him as well, and then go get himself killed.

…That thought doesn’t stop him from refusing to let the biker out of his arms, though. The boy needs a hug, regardless of how much he’s protesting right now, and Takaaki can give him a hug…

But it’s more than that. He… he’s missed this. He’s missed knowing there’s always at least one thing he can do to help, even if it’s just the simple act of providing a shoulder to cry on. He’s missed being needed, even if he’s only needed to help someone else. He’s missed having a purpose, even if that purpose is to help a child grow and fulfil their own purpose…

He’s missed being a father… And this boy’s never even had one...

“Perhaps I could live for you, instead…” He offers.

“What?” The boy finally pushes himself out of Takaaki’s arms, “Dude! You’re twice my fucking age!”

“Err…!” That… that obviously sounded better in his own head that it did out loud! “I meant I could look after you!” …Wait no, that still sounds creepy… “As a father!”

“I’m NINETEEN!” He shrieks, “I’m too old ta need fuckin’ looking after!”

“That’s not true…” Takaaki can’t help but smile sadly at his naivety, “I’m twice your age and I still wish I had my parents to look after me, sometimes…”

“…Hah…” Takaaki’s not sure if that was a sob, a laugh, or a mixture of both from the biker, “Well… if it stops your dumb ass from killing yerself…”

“…It probably would.” Takaaki admits, selfishly. This is emotional blackmail, isn’t it…? And he’s practically a child…

…A child who suddenly launches his face into Takaaki’s chest and wraps his arms around his back before crying so hard the tears wrack his entire body…

Takaaki puts his arms around him… Perhaps it’s less emotional blackmail, and more that they’re just two men desperately looking for something to cling to, now everything else they’d loved has been wrenched away…

After several long minutes, filled with tears and muffled screams of anger, the biker loosens his grip and straightens…

“If you tell anyone I did that I’mma kill you myself, old man…” He mutters, embarrassed.

“Of course…” This would probably be a good time to call the boy by his name if he knew it… “Err…”

“What…?”

“…I just realised I don’t know your name…”

“…Bahahaha! Oh my fucking god!” He starts laughing at the insanity of all this… “It’s Takemichi Yukimaru.”

“Thank you.” Takaaki extends his hand to Takemichi, “I’m Takaaki Ishimaru.”

“Hah! Good ta meet ya, ‘Dad’!” Takaaki can’t help but smile at that, even though it’s painfully clear he’s being sarcastic.

“Thank you…”

“Course… now this means we’re back to square one…” Takemichi looks down at he remains of Kiyotaka and his boyfriend with a sigh, “Did ya have any other ideas?”

“…I was thinking Kiyotaka would probably like to help food grow…” Although it sounds silly now that Takaaki has to say it out loud…

“Yeah… sound’s right.” Takemichi shrugs, “Maybe up in the school garden? Mondo always liked to nap up there…”

The school garden…?

…This school even has an indoor garden! There’s all sort of plants here that I’ve only ever read about in textbooks, all with notes on them written by the Ultimate Botanist! A perfect learning environment… …The weather outside was poor today, but my classmate Naegi suggested we go for a walk in the gardens, and then he said he wanted to learn about me and listened to me talk the whole time!… …I’m sorry father! I don’t know what to say! Detention for PDA, I’ve never been more ashamed in my life! I don’t know what came over me! I was just having a picnic in the garden with Mondo, and he felt hot and took off his coat…

“Yes… Kiyotaka liked that place as well.” Takaaki remembers…

The soil in the gardens is easy to dig, but it still takes the pair of them a few hours to dig a hole big enough to hold the boys and some seeds. And then there’s tears and failed attempts from both to say words good enough to truly honour the pair before they fill the hole back up and say their final goodbyes to the dead… Both the humans and the school they’d called home…

“So… I guess we’re joining Future Foundation permanently…” Takemichi decides as they’re reaching the front entrance, “Guess I get to keep that apartment they gave me…”

“It does seem the best chance to… make things better, I guess.” Takaaki agrees… It’s the sort of place Kiyotaka would have nagged everyone he knew into joining.

“What do you think they’ll have us do?”

“Hmm…” Takaaki considers it, he’s not exactly sure what use a policeman would be, exactly… other than being reasonable with a gun, and somewhat calmer than most in hostile situations, what skills does he have, exactly…?

“Future Foundation are ooking for new art… Maybe I’ll be able to help with that?” His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Yamada’s voice, from outside the main door. “What do you think Grand Bois Cheri?”

“Merroow…”

“Is she talkin’ to a cat!?” Takemichi scoffs quietly.

“Shh!” Takaaki scolds him, “That’s… Yamada’s sister and Ludenberg’s cat...” Hopefully that’s enough for him to understand…

“…Oh…” It seems it is, as Takemichi looks guilty.

“…Do you think they’d believe me if I tell them that he said it wasn’t Hifumi’s fault? Or even Celestia’s?” Yamada continues as they come close enough to see her, sat forlornly halfway between the front door and the gates, with the cat in her lap… “No… I guess they wouldn’t… They’ll just keep saying I’m in denial about what they were really like, won’t they…? That she was a greedy witch and he was just some perverted idiot who deserved what he got…”

What!? Was that why she’d been so convinced he’d try to kill her!? He can’t let that sort of idiocy stand! Kiyotaka would have been horrified to find out that his friends were being vilified and Yamada’s sister was being bullied in his name!

“Who are these people?” Takaaki strides past the guards and out of the door to ask, “If they won’t believe you, then I’ll tell them!”

“Huh!?”, “Hiss!” Yamada jumps at the sound of his voice, dislodging the cat from her lap, who turns to hiss at him for it.

“I asked who is it who’s been saying those things about your brother?” Takaaki repeats less angrily, “I’ll go talk to them myself.”

“Umm… I appreciate that, but… well… it’s not like it’s one or two people who’ve said things…” Yamada sighs, hugging her knees. “It’s… lots of people… your son was the Ultimate Moral Compass after all… they keep asking me how Hifumi could possibly have believed someone like that would abuse a girl… And they don’t always say it to my face, but I hear them making comments about how they were glad when Celestia killed Hifumi and wouldn’t have cared if Celestia had only murdered him because all he did was draw weird doujins…”

“…I cared.” Takaaki can’t help but voice the first thought to enter his head as he watches the tears well up in her eyes. Hearing the list of names of Kiyotaka’s friends who had been cruelly murdered had been heart-wrenching, even if he’d hardly met any of them…

“…Why? You never really met him, did you?”

“No… But… every time he drew something with a politician in it, he made it look like Kiyotaka.” Takaaki remembers fondly, “And even thought they weren’t always good politicians, the fact that Yamada always thought of him instead of any actual politicians… well… I guess it gave him hope for his future. There’d be times when he’d worry that he wouldn’t actually be able to reach his goal, or couldn’t imagine himself in the role… but seeing it drawn out, even if he knew it was a fake drawing from by one of his friends, made it seem more realistic.”

“Oh…” Yamada is starting to smile through her tears.

“And… well, Mondo never talked about anything he did at that school, specially not all his carpentry shit, so I dunno much about how he got on with your bro…” Takemichi begins trying to cheer her up as well, “But when I was going through his stuff, I found a book on learning to draw people and animals, and how’re they’re shaped and stuff, that had your bro’s name in it. So I guess he was helping Mondo learn to carve that kinda stuff?”

“Probably… He always wanted to encourage people to be able to express their feeling through art, like he always did…” Yamada shuts her eyes and smiles fondly, just for a moment, “I just wish I could make everyone realise he used to do those things for his friends…”

And there’s the problem… It’s not as if Takaaki can follow her around everywhere she goes and talk to anyone who makes a snide comment about her brother. And he doubts its possible for him to make a broadcast along those lines either…

“Well… Me and ‘Dad’ here are gonna stick together from here on out…” Takemichi sounds as if he’s trying to hide his nervousness underneath sarcasm, “D’ya wanna join us…?”

Yamada blinks and turns to face him ponderously. “…Are you… offering to be my new brother?”

“EH!? N…No!” Takemichi’s instinctive shriek sends a wave of disappointment crashing over Yamada’s face, and he guiltily changes his tune straight after... “Errrg… I mean… I wouldn’t say I could replace your bro or anything… I mean I hardly know ya for a start! But… I guess… if ya wanna try thinking of us as family, I could go with that…”

“R…really?” Yamada smiles hopefully up at the boy… and Takaaki.

It appears he’s being included in the offer, or at least that’s how Yamada’s taken it. Meaning if he accepts he’ll have gone from having no son to having a son and a daughter in the course of one day, assuming responsibility for two young adults he barely knows. Thinking of it logically, it sounds completely crazy, but…

“…Of course.”  He can’t deny that there’s a surge of joy as he does accept. He knows he’ll never be able to replace Kiyotaka, but there’s some comfort in the thought of having people to think of as family again, even if the only commonality between the three of them is the tragic situation that brought them together.

“Th…thank you!” Yamada stands quickly and runs towards himself and Takemichi, then wraps her arms around them both and pulls them together into a forced hug, burying her face into their stomachs… “I… I’m sorry… It’s just… I’m not used to being alone… and… it’s nice to have someone…”

“I understand… It’s alright…” Takaaki tells her as he puts his free arm around her shoulders and pulls her slightly closer, while Takemichi awkwardly pats her arm with a look on his face that implies that he thinks she might explode at the contact.

It would appear he’s not used to female contact, especially not in an affectionate sense, although this makes sense, given what Kiyotaka told him about Oowada, and how he suspected many of the Crazy Diamonds were the same. Hopefully he won’t be too uncomfortable around his new ‘sister’ for too long…

“Umm… I just realised…” Yamada relaxes her grip as she breaks the silence, sounding embarrassed.

“You don’t know our fuckin’ names either, do ya?” Takemichi guesses, voice dripping with exasperation at their situation, “I’m Takemichi Yukimaru, he’s Takaaki Ishimaru…”

“Thank you!” Yamada lets go of them both so she can stand and give a proper introduction, “I’m Fujiko Yamada, and…”

She turns back towards the steps and quickly picks up the cat, who is glaring at Takaaki again… or has been for the entire time, possibly. It certainly looks as if it hates him enough to.

“…This is Grand Bois Cheri Ludenberg!” Fujiko cheerfully carries the cat over to them, a stark contrast between her smile and the look of furious indignation on the cat’s face, “We’re looking forward to being part of your family!”

...Of course. Of course she wants to include the cat. Even if it does look like the meanest, fattest most difficult cat Takaaki’s ever seen, and appears to think just as lowly of him as he does of it…

“Hah… yeah!” Takaaki is slightly relieved to hear that Takemichi’s agreement is somewhat forced, “What’s a family without a pet, right…? Haha…”

“Yes! That’s right!” Fujiko doesn’t seem to pick up on his somewhat reluctant tone, “So say ‘hello’ to them, Grand Bois Cheri!”

The cat narrows its eyes, giving them a look that indicates that, if they are lucky, it may be willing to merely tolerate their presence…

“Umm… he takes a little while to warm up to people…” Fujiko excuses the cat, apologetically.

“No kidding…” Takemichi mutters, “Well, I guess now we gotta… What’s all that yelling about…?”

Yelling? Takaaki hasn’t heard anything… although now the boy mentions it, he can just about hear two voices approaching and raised in annoyance.

“…pulling! There’s no way you’re gonna be alright just wandering around out there without help!” A girl’s voice is the first one Takaaki is capable of understanding, it sounds somewhat like the one who he briefly saw down in the… underneath the school.

“If I’m not capable of looking after myself, why is it you’re failing to stop me?” And that sounds like the young man who was meditating over Oogami’s death…

“Because I just got done throwing a thousand baseballs at that bastard machine! I can barely move my arms!”

“And you accuse me of poor stamina…”

“Don’t gimme that nonsense! I found you unconscious!”

“I told you, I was resting…”

“The hell you were! No one rests on a damn floor right outside a room with chairs in it!”

The arguing pair enter the foyer, both looking far different from the last time Takaaki saw them. The girl now looks immaculately pretty, having fixed her make-up and hair bow at some point. The man, however, looks as if he can barely breathe and is swaying wildly as he moves, so how he’s managing to walk at all despite the girl pulling him backwards is a complete mystery to Takaaki, even if she is a full foot shorter than him.

There’s a brief pause as the two of them notice the two guards at the door, and possibly the three of them beyond it. Then the man suddenly twists his arms so fast that Takaaki can’t quite see what he actually does with them, only that the result is the girl being pushed backwards away from him…

“Hey!” She takes a moment to recover, as the man quickens his pace and heads towards the two guards, “Don’t let him out! He’s sick! He should be in the medical bay!”

A scowl of irritation crosses his face as the two guards and Takaaki all move to block his path…

“She’s exaggerating.” He forces himself to speak calmly as he slows to a stop in front of them, “I have a heart condition, but I’m still capable of walking around by myself…”

…He might be capable of it, but it certainly isn’t doing him any good to be doing it right now. Even with his best attempts to look healthy, he’s still having to breath heavily and looks like Takaaki could knock him over with a feather, even if the man is half a foot taller than him…

“Come on, lad. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” Takaaki sighs, “I’m no doctor but even I can tell you need rest and should probably see a doctor about getting some medication…”

“I have medication.” He scowls at Takaaki’s suggestion, “Unfortunately, it’s not easily made, so I’m having to be sparing with it…”

“Then that’s all the more reason for you to be resting!” The girl who’d been attempting to drag him back to the medical bay cries in exasperation.

“You’re the one who can barely move…” He retorts.

“Well I’ll be happy to go and lie in the med bay for a while, just as soon as I know you’re not going to go outside and collapse again…”

He still appears to be reluctant to rest…

“Look, lad…”

“My name is Kenshiro.” Takaaki is interrupted immediately.

“Alright, Kenshiro. No one is going to think less of you for needing to rest more than you usually would until you have better access to your medication…” Takaaki starts…

“Y-yeah! I mean, you’re the strongest guy alive!” Takemichi excitedly shouts a fact that Takaaki was unaware of, “No one’s gonna give you crap for anything!”

Kenshiro looks slightly mollified, albeit in a bemused way, at the look of reverence that Takemichi is giving him. But it still doesn’t look as if the point has been driven home quite enough…

“We will, however, consider you a goddamn fool if you keep insisting that you’re perfectly fine when you look like you could topple over at any second!” Takaaki says in the sternest voice he can muster, “So stop being stubborn and go rest!”

Kenshiro attempts to stare him down for a moment, but it’s nothing compared to the fierce looks Takaaki used to exchanging with both his father and son, and the taller man relents before Takaaki even needs to blink…

“Fine. I’ll be in the nurse’s room…” Kenshiro turns back on himself.

“Finally… Same here…” The girl who came in with him groans and starts to walk back towards the corridor…

Well, good. Now that’s settled…

“Err… but this isn’t in our orders…” One of the guards sheepishly admits.

“Whaddaya mean it ain’t in your orders?” Takemichi snaps, “What’s it matter if there’s two extra people in the school for a day or two? Didn’t you guys bring any extra rations?”

“It’s not that… we’re all supposed to be leaving once you’ve finished.” The guard explains, “There won’t be anyone here to guard them if there’s any attacks…”

“What!? But… This is Hope’s Peak, isn’t it!? It’s supposed to be a big deal!” The girl at the back of the room points out, “Won’t this place be a huge target!?

“That’s why they want us out… they think Hope’s Peak is too high profile to keep safe for long! If any more remnants of despair show up, they’d be sure to target it, especially if they knew Future Foundation were occupying it! It’d just eat up too much resources…”

“But… what about the air purifier?” Takaaki can’t believe his ears, what’s going to happen to the garden if everybody just up and leaves!? “Why did you bother setting it going again if no one’s going to be here to need it!?”

“They only got it working again so they could figure out how to copy Towa’s technology.” The guard explains, “They weren’t even going to bother keeping it going, except someone from Division 14 kept insisting you all be allowed to come...”

That’s probably Naegi… dammit… if he’d known Future Foundation weren’t intending to keep the place running, he would have picked somewhere else to bury Kiyotaka…

“But… but what about all the stuff that’s here?” Fujiko is asking worriedly, “Like the art, and the tools and what’s left of the students’ work, and the stocks of food!? Isn’t anyone keeping it safe… or even taking it somewhere else?”

“…We don’t have time to transport it all…” The guard says apologetically.

“So, even though this place is supposed to stand as a symbol of hope, and even with everything that has been lost because of that… Your organisation thinks it’s too much trouble to stop it from being overrun by despair?” Kenshiro asks disappointedly.

“Well…”

“Fuck that shit! I ain’t letting that happen!” Takemichi angrily cuts the guard off, “Even if I havta stay and beat the shit outta those Monokuma bots by myself!”

“…You’ll only be by yourself for a day.” Kenshiro tells him, before once again turning towards the medical room. “Once I’ve recovered I’ll help as well. Sakura gave her life for this place. I will as well. Now if you’ll excuse me...”

“Yeah… I’ll stay as well!” The other girl nods determinedly, “…I’m not done with that piece of crap yet…”

“…Well, I guess it’ll be nice ta have a girl around ta cook and clea…” …Takemichi really isn’t used to women, is he?

“I have a HACKING GUN, you little brat! And I’m good with it, to! Haven’t you heard how Kanon Nakajima helped rescue one of Future Foundation’s most important members!?” She snaps, waving what looks like a megaphone at him, before wincing at the pain in her arms… “But I guess you can borrow it until I can move my arms again…”

“I don’t need some dumb gun to beat those things!” Takemichi replies stubbornly, “Give it to Ishimaru, he’s the one who can actually use a gun!”

“Well, if he’s staying to, sure! But he hasn’t said anything yet!” Kanon rolls her eyes at him.

“Okay, fair enough, but him and I are sticking together with… Fujik-ooohhh…” Takemichi hesitates and turns towards Fujiko, apparently only just realising why Takaaki hasn’t declared that he’d be staying as well…

Fujiko is clearly not a fighter, or even someone who deals well with dangerous situations. She looks uncomfortable enough merely being the centre of attention from all the people in the room…

“Umm… Well… There’s not really anything I can do about robots or anything like that…” She tells them all, apologetically, “But I’d still like to stay and sort out all the art and writing and everything that’s here, so if you’re all able to keep it safe, then I’ll try and help out where I can… I-if that’s alright…?”

Takemichi and Kanon look at each other briefly, then welcomingly shrug at her.

“In that case I suppose I’m staying here as well…” Takaaki is pleased to announce. This way he can look after Kiyotaka and what’s left of the school he loved so much… and perhaps they can even try to rebuild it a little while they’re here…

“So… you’re all staying here? None of you need a lift back?” One of the guards asks, getting nods of confirmation in response…

“…Man, that pop star chick’s gonna be pissed when she realises we coulda left hours ago like she asked…” The other mutters.

“Urrg, gawd, no kidding…” The other holds his face in his hand, “And she’s been sat in the van all that time too…”

“…Pop star…?” Takaaki isn’t sure who they’re referring to.

“Oh! You mean Miss Ayaka?” Fujiko asks excitedly, “She was here because of Sayaka Maizono…”

“Ah… right, I saw her leaving the… cold room hours ago…” Takaaki remembers.

“Oh yeah, just before I came in, right?” Takemichi confirms it, “...She’s just been sat waiting to leave this whole time?”

They fall silent as they consider what her reasons for wanting to leave so quickly might be, until…

“Umm… Do you think we should let her know we’re all staying?” Fujiko asks, “I mean… I know she wants to leave, but given we’ve all had the same thing happen to us, maybe she’d like to stay with us, if she knew?”

For some reason, Fujiko, and now everyone else, turns to face Takaaki. As if it’s his decision… or maybe perhaps responsibility is a more accurate word. The number of ‘children’ he’s playing parent to seems to be rapidly increasing…

“…I’ll go and ask her.” Takaaki turns around towards the vehicles just outside the twisted school gates. Fujiko has a point. Even if the girl seems to have little love for the school, it’s only polite to let her know what they’ve decided to do…

It’s quite obvious which van the guards were referring to, as there is pop music coming from inside of it, and the girl he briefly saw earlier has her face pressed against the front passenger window and is peering out towards the school when Takaaki first makes his way out of the front door, although she quickly sits back up once she sees that Takaaki is heading towards her, meaning he still has to knock on the window to get her attention, even though she knows full well he’s there…

“Are you guys finally done in there, now?” The window opens and she’s irritably asking questions before Takaaki even gets the chance to greet her, “If I’d know you were all going to be in there so long, I could have found a bikini and gone for a swim!”

…He’s honestly hoping this girl won’t want to stay, not with that sort of attitude… “…Most of us were thinking this was a chance to properly say goodbye to our loved ones… It’s not something that’s easily rushed.”

“W-well…” She stammers in the face of his annoyance, “Do you know if they’re almost done, or would I be better off going back inside for now?”

“Actually, we’ve all talked it over, and we’ve decided to stay and look after the school together.” Takaaki tells her, even though he suspects she has too little concern for anyone but herself to understand, “We thought we ought to let you know, in case you wanted to join us as well.”

“Huh… Well, I guess having a pool would be nice…” As Takaaki thought, she’s completely misunderstood their reasons, “But Future Foundation offered me a whole apartment all to myself, so I don’t need to be house-sharing with you lot!”

The girl seems to be under the mistaken impression that being offered her own apartment is something unique, which perhaps it would be if it was some kind of fancy penthouse, but the chances are she’ll be given a tiny, boxy place like Takaaki has been living in for the past few months. “Future Foundation offered all of us our own place…”

“Then why are you staying here!?” She interrupts him incredulously,

“Because we want to keep the school safe, and Future Foundation aren’t intending to…” Takaaki explains, although she still looks bemused by their decision, “And… well, I suppose everyone else here has been through the same experience… being kidnapped for eighteen months and then finding out the person closest to us is dead…

“Oohh… I get it… you’ve all decided to stick together because none of you have anyone else anymore, and you can’t stand the idea of being by yourselves…” She laughs dismissively, “And you’re inviting me, because you think I’m probably in the same boat and will want to join in with your little ‘happy family’ thing.”

“…We thought it would be unfair if you were the only one excluded, just because you happened to be sat outside while we were discussing it.” Takakai can’t help but want to contradict her summary somehow, just because of how desperate she’s making his decisions seem…

“Well, thanks for the thought, but I was a Pop Idol… I had to struggle all by myself to get where I was, and even in the band I had to fight all the time, just to get my fair share of the spotlight!” She complains with pride in her voice, “Frankly, I’m looking forward to being a solo act!”

…It’s amazing that she can talk about her old band with no sense of grief in her demeanour whatsoever. From the way she acts, you’d think she’d merely had a falling out with them all and they’re all moving on to solo careers for now, not that the world she knew is destroyed and her old bandmates are all dead…

…Could it be that she’s still in denial? That she hasn’t been out of Towa City enough to realise what’s really happening out here? That she has no idea what it’s like waking up every morning in a tiny, empty apartment and opening the curtains to dark polluted skies day after day. Is she still following the same direction her old life had, not realising that all that has been stripped away and now the only goal left is to survive day after day, all the while wondering if it’s even worth it anymore…?

He has a feeling he’ll end up regretting the words about to come out of his mouth, but, bad attitude or not, she is in the same situation as the rest of them… “Well, you’re always welcome here if you change your mind.”

“Sure, I’ll keep it in mind.” She tells him before starting to wind the car window back up, clearly intending to forget the offer the second it closes… “Good luck with the new family, old man!”

…He knows she’s being sarcastic. He knows she thinks he’s a desperate fool who’s probably still in denial about how much of his life was bound up in Kiyotaka’s. He knows she thinks trying to replace the son he raised for a decade and a half with a small group of young adults who are just as lonely and lost as he is is probably insane… But…

“Thank you.” …He can’t help but take the words at face value. Even if it is dripping with sarcasm, hearing someone else say that he has a family again is still giving him hope that perhaps he actually does…

…And so, it’s with this slightly more hopeful mood that Takaaki turns around and walks back through the twisted, broken gates towards the entrance to Hope’s Peak. And this time he can’t help but agree with Kiyotaka, that there really is an air of possibility surrounding this old school…

Epilogue:

It takes a week after Future Foundation leaves for anything significant to happen.

Not that it’s been the easiest week of Takaaki’s life. It turns out that none of them are particularly good cooks, with Takaaki being the only one capable of consistently making edible food from scratch, even if he has to admit that said food is somewhat… basic fare compared to what the kids are used to eating, especially Fujiko. Kenshiro requires more rest than anyone expected, but still keeps impeding his own recovery by refusing to admit it and insisting on going outside on patrols with Takemichi, who’s apparently too enamoured with the fighter to refuse. That and various other minor behaviours of his seem to put him and Kanon at each other’s throats on a near constant basis, and there’s already concerns over how long the ammo for the hacking gun will hold out, even though they’ve hardly had any Monokuma bots attack them so far. And to top it all off, Takaaki is certain that the goddamn cat views him as a rival for dominance over the ‘household’ and is secretly trying to kill him, although the girls both thought he was joking the one time he said as much out loud…

But even with all the chaos and the stress, it’s still been better than being alone in the tiny apartment. They’ve been able to set up a schedule of chores, so he’ll no longer be waking up in the mornings with no clue as to what he’s supposed to be doing that day. The dining room might not be the most comfortable place to eat, but their ‘family’ meals together are still nicer than sitting on a sofa in front of a blank television. And while Fujiko’s attempts to catalogue the work in the art room are slow going, at least there’s a sense of progress as she’s beginning to steadily display them around the hallways of Hope’s Peak, whereas Takaaki doesn’t think he made a single change to the place Future Foundation gave him over the course of the months he spent there.

He didn’t realise how much he’d been stagnating by himself, until this fresh start had hit him full in the face. He’d been too content to just sit around and wait for Kiyotaka, or Future Foundation or someone else to change everything for him… and he could imagine Kiyotaka scolding him for it from up in Heaven, telling him to get off his backside and do something to change his situation, no matter how small it was, because ordinary people making small changes day by day would be what changed the world…

…And some of these walls are starting to look a bit faded… perhaps he could see if there was any paint in the storeroom and decorate the place? Plus, he’d like to try and fix the front wall, but it’s unlikely that’s there’s anything like bricks or cement in there… They’re going to have to go and get supplies from somewhere outside of the school at some point, if only because Kenshiro needs his medicine and the leftover tinned food won’t last forever, but the question is how? The only vehicle they have is Takemichi’s motorcycle, and they won’t be able to get much on that… unless they can get a trailer for it, perhaps? He should try to ask Takemichi if that’s possible sometime today…

*bing bong, ding dong…*

Takaaki’s breath catches in his throat for a moment as the sound effect preceding ‘Monokuma’s’ announcements from the killing game rings across the room… but then he remembers that Kanon figured out how the control room worked and asked Kenshiro to take guard duty in there yesterday…

“There’s a van outside the front gate.” As he expected, Kenshiro’s voice soon follows the bell, “It looks like Future Foundation, but I’m going to go and check…”

…Which completely negates Kanon’s plan to stop him from getting up and going outside… But Takaaki suspects that they’ll all want to see why Future Foundation, if that’s really who it is, has come to check up on them… He certainly does!

By the time he gets to the entranceway, Kanon and Takemichi are already there, peeking through the front door of the school, and Fujiko and Kenshiro are just catching up to him. Of course, the cat is nowhere to be seen…

…At least not until Takaaki’s foot catches on something that then hisses at him as he’s sent stumbling forward and has to catch himself on the wall. Then the fat lump has the audacity to glare back at him, as if it was his fault it purposefully walked right in his damn path!

…But never mind, they’ve got something more important to worry about right now.

“Can you see who it is in the van?” Takaaki asks the pair by the front door as he carries on walking as if nothing just happened.

“…Pretty sure it’s just that dweeby guy from Mondo’s class…” Takemichi replies.

“Makoto Naegi.” Kanon corrects him, patronisingly. “He’s one of the highest members of division 14!”

“Well, he’s still a dwee…”

“Let’s see what he wants, then!” Takaaki cuts off the beginnings of yet another argument and strides out through the main door, followed closely by the rest of the group, out to the front gates, where Makoto Naegi is standing awkwardly in front of his van…

He looks happy to see them all coming towards him, though, and waves cheerfully at them as they approach. “Hey! Great to see you guys are all okay! Have you been having much trouble?”

“…Not too much… Although we have been targeted by a few stray Monokuma bots…”

“Yeah… we noticed that. Some of the division 2 guys have been monitoring this area to see if anyone’s noticed that Hope’s Peak has people in it again, but as you say, there’s not been anything yet…” Naegi summaries, “Which is actually partly why I’m here! The division heads have discussed it, and as you’re all guarding the school already, they’re willing to put some resources into helping you do it! I’ve brought a couple more hacking guns and some ammo, more of Kenshiro’s medicine, some fresh foods and spices and also the latest news bulletins and some other reading materials Future Foundation have developed recently…”

Food, bullets and Kenshiro’s medicine? Well, that’s Takaaki’s major concerns out of the window, and if Future Foundation are intending to make regular supply trips, then there’s no need to worry about making supply trips for themselves… This is fantastic news!

“Kickass! Thanks, dude!”, “Great, we were already running low on ammo!”, “Ooh… some proper fruit would be great!” The others seem to be in the same frame of mind as well…

“…And what’s the other part of why you’re here?” Except Kenshiro, who picks up on Naegi’s throwaway comment instead.

“Oh, that? Well… There’s someone who’d like to join you guys, now…” Naegi announces, looking back toward the van. “And she said you’d already told her she could…?”

“You mean Ayaka?” That was the only person he’d offered to let stay, and no one else had been in contact with anyone here… “But, it’s only been a single week…”

“Well it’s not my fault Future Foundation are full of crap!” Ayaka’s voice cries out angrily from the front of the van, which Takaaki quickly realises has been slightly open the who time they were talking to Naegi, “I mean, they dumped me in this crappy little place with tiny rooms and a bunch of machines I don’t know how to use and just left me there, by myself!”

The door to the van opens fully, revealing that Ayaka is looking much more disheveled than when she said goodbye to them all… She herself is perfectly clean, but her clothes look as if she’s been wearing them constantly all week without washing them, and her confident demeanour from before has been replaced with an angry mask of defiance, presumably to hide the shame of having had to come back here just because…

“You don’t know how to use a washing machine…?” Kanon observes.

“It’s not my fault! My parents never bothered teaching me how to do laundry or cook, and once I was famous I had people to do all that crap for me!” Ayaka snaps in response, “But now nobody cares about that anymore! They wouldn’t even let me try and sing or put on a show in exchange for doing stuff for me, because ‘the noise might attract attention from the Monokuma Bots or Remnants of Despair’! I mean, what sort of excuse is that!? What’s the point in staying alive if they’re just going to cower in fear instead of doing anything fun!?”

So, she has no practical skills whatsoever, not to mention no patience or humility and an attitude that’s liable to cause even more arguments in the school…

But she has had the same experience as the rest of them, and a desire to work to make the world better again, even might not know the best way to do that yet…

“Well… as I said before, you’re welcome to stay…” Takaaki told her, pleased that no one was openly contradicting him, “But, you are going to have to pull your weight, which means learning to do laundry and cleaning at the very least.”

“…I guess I’m not getting any better offers than that.” She mutters, her eyes looking over the group stood behind him. “I can deal with it.”

…Why is she staring at them when she says it? Is she intending to get someone else to do her fair share of the work…? He’s getting the feeling he might have to keep an eye on her, especially around Fujiko, but it would be unfair to accuse her of it before she’s even tried living with them all… “In that case, welcome to Hope’s Peak… You can start by helping us unpack the supplies from Future Foundation.”

“Are you…!?” She begins to cry out in exasperation, then stops herself with a sigh as she looks over the expression of the rest of the group behind him. “Alright, fine… Pulling my weight!”

Takaaki thinks she’s starting to mutter something about slave drivers under her breath as she turns back towards the van and looks at Naegi to open the back doors up…

“Well… that’s that sorted!” Naegi smiles, “But, now I’ve got a free seat, do any of you want to go back to Future Foundation…?”

That one sentence is all it takes for Takaaki’s blood to run cold as time seems to halt in its tracks… They can’t leave! He only just got a family again!

“…No one…?” Time and Takaaki’s breathing both resume their normal rhythm once it becomes clear that no one is agreeing to take Naegi’s offer, and he opens up the van. “Guess I’ve got a quiet drive home, then, hahaha!”

“…Are saying I talked too much on the way here!?” Ayaka snaps at him.

“N-no… I just meant I’m usually driving with someone, so it’ll be odd!” He explains apologetically, although that doesn’t stop her from scowling suspiciously at him for the entire time the group of them spend unloading the van…

“Well, that’s everything then!” Naegi announces, as he gets back into the van. “Sorry I can’t stay to chat, but I’m on a schedule! You guys stay safe out here, alright?”

“And you look after yourself as well.” Takaaki reminds him, “Drive safely.”

“I will!” Naegi nods as he starts the van’s engine, before turning to face the window for one last wave goodbye... “Enjoy your new family, guys!”

…And then he’s shutting the window and driving away, before any of the ‘family’ can say anything back to him…

“…Family…?” Kenshiro repeats, sceptically.

“This’d be a pretty damn weird family…” Kanon agrees.

“Hey!” Takemichi takes offence at that, “It’s better than nothing you prissy, stuck-up…”

“Takemichi…” Takaaki cuts him off warning, “She’s entitled to her opinion…”

“…And I didn’t say it couldn’t be a family…” Kanon backtracks, “…Just that it’d be a weird one.”

“Well… life’s pretty weird in general, now!” Fujiko points out, “So maybe it makes sense?”

“…I’d say it feels more like we’re creating a dojo together…” Kenshiro argues, “Thought those often become family affairs, from what I’ve heard…”

“Well, whatever we are…” Ayaka looks around the group with an air of begrudging acceptance. “At least we have a pool! Right!?”

“Yep! And we’ve got a pet, to! Have you met Grand Bois Cheri…?” Fujiko excitedly picks up the fat lump and shows it to her new ‘sister’, “Ooh, he likes you!”

She’s not kidding, this time the cat purrs and happily lets the girl he’s being introduced to scratch him under the chin and behind the ears… And thinking back on it, he had a similar reaction to Kanon…

…So, their ‘family’ consists of a womanising, fancy hellcat, a motorcycling gangster, a manga artist who specialises in illustrating foods she can’t actually cook for herself, a baseball manager who seems to be better with her hacking gun than managing sportsmen, a former world’s strongest man who’s attempts not to be a burden are more of a burden than anything else, an ex-popstar who currently has no useful skills whatsoever…

…and a desperate old fool who’s hoping that being near all these crazy, energetic kids might just make up for the loss of the most energetic kid he ever knew.

…Whether it’ll work or not, only time will tell. At least for now, this new ‘family’ of his has a need for him…

“Alright… now let’s get all these boxes unpacked and sorted out!”

…Even if it’s just as someone to groan at when he tries to corral them into doing chores.