Chapter Text
My name is Hajime Hinata. I'm 20, and I work for the Future Foundation. It's a boring job-painfully boring. Most people here investigate cases, they try to understand what happened in all that chaos and why, but out of the fourteen of us who survived, I ended up stuck with paperwork. Reports, files, endless writing... the kind of work no one else wanted. The other ones got other jobs, more interesting than filling papers.
I don't complain. I just do what I'm told.
People probably think I'm lazy, but the truth is I'm just tired. After everything we went through-the killing game, losing Chiaki... and then Komaeda disappearing two years ago-I don't have the energy to care anymore. I still think about him sometimes. "Sometimes" actually means "a lot". He keeps popping into my dreams, and I don't know why. I mean...he's insane. A maniac who tried to kill us all. So why does he keep showing up in my thoughts?
I shake my head and push it away. It's Saturday, and I'm off until Tuesday. I should rest.
Rain poured relentlessly that night, hammering against rooftops and flooding the streets. The city had gone quiet, people staying inside to avoid the storm, windows shut tight against the cold. No one was out in the open.
No one-except for a single figure stumbling through a dark alley, completely drenched and covered in...blood
I couldn't sleep. The rain was too loud, too constant. Almost louder than my thoughts. I checked my phone-11 PM. Still not tired.
I turned on the TV, hoping it would distract me, but it was nothing but news about murders, accidents, and deaths. I turned it off almost immediately. With a sigh, I grabbed a piece of bread and walked over to the window, staring out at the storm. The rain blurred everything outside, and for a moment I just stood there, half-lost in thought, grateful I wasn't out there.
Then I noticed something moving.
At first, I thought I was imagining it, but no-there was someone out there. A figure, walking unsteadily, like they were limping. I tried to see better, wiping at the fogged glass, but it was too dark. Probably just some drunk trying to find their way home. I should ignore it. Anyone else would.
… But I didn't.
In my heart I felt like there was something wrong, that I needed to go there and see who that poor stranger in the rain was.
Before I could stop myself, I grabbed an umbrella and threw on a raincoat, stepping outside into the cold downpour. I stood there for a moment, staring at the figure, attempting to make out any details. Then I saw it-white hair, messy and slightly curled.
My chest tightened.
No way.
I started running towards him and slowly figured out who was in that soaked green coat and white shirt and covered in blood. I only could be dreaming again, that's the only possible explanation, or I was dead and gone to heaven. After all, I was seeing a dead man.
"Komaeda?! Is that you?!" I got close enough to grab his shoulders in an attempt to make him stand straight and look in my eyes.
The figure looked up, eyes widening in shock, and then collapsed right into my arms. For a moment I just stood there, stunned, but then I remembered the blood. There was too much of it.
Without thinking, I lifted him and rushed back inside. I quickly dried him off as best as I could, careful not to touch the worst of his injuries, then laid him down on the couch. Up close, it was even worse than I thought. He was full of cuts and bruises all over his body, an accumulation of old and new ones, his clothes were practically torn apart, wet, and dirty.
I grabbed some bandages and medicine, working carefully, doing what I could to treat him. When I finished, I sat there, staring at him, my mind racing but also completely blank. After two years, he was here, and out of nowhere a Nagito Komaeda popped in my street. Like a Christmas miracle, but we were in the middle of June. I should start believing in miracles.
The silence felt heavy.
After a while, I let out a quiet breath and leaned back against the couch. The rain was still strong, and now I had a dead man on my house. Not the thing I was hoping for on my days off
After everything that happened at Hope's Peak, I ran. It was the only thing that made sense. No one would want to deal with a lunatic like me after all. My actions, my thoughts… they didn't exactly make me easy to be around.
That was fine. I didn't like myself either.
If my death could become hope for someone more deserving, then maybe it would finally mean something. But my luck never lets things end that easily.
When I went back to the place I used to call home, there was nothing left. Not like I was expecting anything. Everything was completely destroyed. Just another reminder of how my luck works-good and bad, survived but alone, always intertwined. It didn't matter. I had nothing, and I was too ashamed to call my "friends" for help, they were better off without my bad luck.
And then, I was kidnapped. Again.
Not so surprisingly, I was abducted twice, well, thrice if you count the whole Monokuma thing, and honestly? I expected worse. I had nothing and no one, so they couldn't do much with me. Instead of killing me, they kept me around like a servant. That bit was kinda old to me, but it was something I already had, so it wasn't hard. They demanded a lot less compared to my work with Master Izuru, but it was certainly more boring, but there was nothing I could do, and as long as I was being useful to someone, I am fine with it. I stayed like that for a year. I got food, a place to sleep, and human interaction, but I felt like the kidnappers were not giving me enough work, so I was not useful anymore and someone else could use me in a better way, so I slowly worked to gain their trust. Eventually, they trusted me enough, and escaping was easy.
After that, things only got worse.
I lived on the streets, eating whatever I could find, sometimes digging through trash. I asked for help and offered my service, but most people ignored me. Not only that, but I got beaten more times than I could count-by police, by strangers… It all got blurred together after a while.
Another year passed like that. My sense of time was not there anymore, sometimes a gang would spank me and leave me unconscious for days, but I also found plenty of resources in the trash that I could use to keep myself alive. Not alive. That life was not being alive. I was conscious enough to go through a whole year of that hell. "It's going to be worth it", I kept saying to myself, but I was tired of waiting and just wanted to die every day, but I kept telling myself that was my punishment and I deserved all of it.
Pain became normal.
And then one day, after falling onto a wall lined with barbed wire, everything finally caught up to me. My body ached, every movement hurt, and for the first time in a long while, I didn't feel like getting back up. It was raining, and I started to walk in random directions. I was looking for a place to stay and sleep, since my little camp had been destroyed by the storm. I didn't know how long I had walked and how long I could keep going.
I didn't want anything complicated anymore. I wanted to get better. I wanted the luck I had to finally do its job.
I just wanted a normal life.
… Or maybe I just wanted it to end.
"KOMAEDA?! IS THAT YOU?!"