Chapter Text
Light. Blinding light, and abstract, black blobs dotting it out at the edges of his vision. Like double vision righting itself, the blurry haze started to subside and the figures began to sharpen at the edges. People. There were several people looming over him from every direction.
Shuichi raised his arm against the light.
Where was he?
Oh. That’s right.
“Is–” his words came out as nothing but a hollow croak. He attempted to swallow some spit to cure the dryness in his throat. “Is the game… over?”
His vision was still too hazy to make out the figures’ features, but as the context came back to him, he could make some educated guesses. Last he could recall, he was in Team Danganronpa’s headquarters. These people probably worked there.
“Yes, it’s over,” one staff member said.
He kept blinking against the light, trying to fully come to his senses.
“Wait, how did–” Smack. Someone slapped him in the face. The crack of it practically echoed in the quiet of the room. It was so hard and so unexpected that his head turned, cheek suddenly against the cool metal of the table beneath him.
Wow. That was one way to clear the edges of his vision. Looking up again, he could see more clearly now the disappointed faces of several Team Danganronpa staff he vaguely recognized. That woman might have been the casting director, that man looked familiar, maybe from costume design? And so on.
Confused, he brought a hand up to touch the stinging side of his face.
“Come on. Up.” The casting woman was grabbing him by the arm and pulling him to a sitting position. His head reeled at the sudden change, stars scattering in his vision. How long ago was the last time he’d stood up? “We have to get you into crisis management.”
Huh management? Crisis what now? The last thing he could remember was being put under for the game, and all things considered, Team Danganronpa treated the cast well. He’d never been handled this… curtly.
“What happened?” Shuichi asked.
“You’ll find out when you get in there.”
He let himself be ushered to his feet and to the door. He was wobbly on his legs for the first few steps, gradually finding his footing, a hand on the wall for support. One staff member held the door open and he went through, his small swarm of employees following him out and continuing to buzz around him, one of them taking a call and speaking hurriedly into the phone and another shouting for the attention of someone down the hall.
Shuichi was looking around as much as he could, trying to get his bearings as they guided him down the hall. Was this what it was like for the other casts, when the show was over? How did he do? He really, really wanted to know how he did.
A scream rang out from someplace behind them, and the whole cohort stuttered in their steps, turning to find the source. It wasn’t a scream of terror or pain or anything like that. It just sounded… angry. More evidence towards that theory: a door down the hall behind them flew open so suddenly it slammed against the wall with a crash. Shuichi flinched.
From the doorway came a girl he definitely recognized. She was this season’s mastermind. Tsumugi Shirogane.
“You!” She shouted, heading straight for him.
Me?!
Her own entourage of staff poured into the hallway after her, but a little too late, because she was running in his direction before they had any hope of intercepting her.
The people around him were of no help at all when she caught up to him, and he was so in shock at his surroundings that all he did was stand there like an idiot when she full-body tackled him into the floor. Before he could even tell what was up and what was down, Tsumugi had him pinned and delivered a fierce punch to his left eye.
Someone in the small crowd of staff screamed.
“You piece of shit,” she gritted out before winding up and having another attempt at taking his left eye out. Shuichi groaned. He was no stranger to being punched in the face, but fuck.
His ears were ringing, vision tunneled on her. There were several voices parroting for someone to stop her before she was suddenly pulled away from him, arms trapped behind her own back. He was forced back to his feet, too, and had only a second to take in the sight of her being dragged down the hall, writhing and kicking, before he was spun around and pushed forward, giving him no choice but to resume his path.
“You ruined my show!” She was screaming after him. “Fuck you, Shuichi!”
Seriously, what the fuck did I do?
“Now we have this to deal with,” someone poked under his left eye and he hissed at the pain.
“Oh my God. Let’s just get him to the room,” someone said.
“It’ll be okay.” Someone sounded like it was not going to be okay.
Shuichi was directed down the hall, then down another hall, then another, before being shoved into a dim room.
“Just wait here!” Someone ordered before slamming the door in his face.
He blinked at the closed door a few times, wobbling on his feet. His face fucking hurt. What on earth happened in the game to make him receive this kind of reception?
When he turned around to face the room, he realized he wasn’t in there alone. It was a conference room, lights still off, and in one of the desk chairs sat… Kokichi. Exactly the person he wanted to see.
“Shuichi!” Kokichi greeted him, jumping up from his chair. He got his arms halfway around Shuichi then stopped short. “Wait, what the fuck happened to your face?”
One of Shuichi’s hands drifted up to Kokichi’s waist, the other to his eye. “Tsumugi Shirogane… punched me…” He said softly, confusion clear in his tone. It was like he was asking more than he was telling. His hand moved further up, instinctually trying to pull the brim of his hat down and coming up empty because his hat was, of course, missing.
“I guess you did something that really pissed her off, huh?” Kokichi brushed a finger down the slope of Shuichi’s nose. His grin grew wider. “Maybe you killed her.”
He tugged Shuichi towards the table by the wrist. Shuichi trailed behind him with a small, lopsided smile pulling at his lips. “You think so?”
“Mhm. Probably.” They sat in adjacent seats. “We did something that got us in a lot of trouble…” He drummed his fingertips on the table.
Shuichi stopped touching the sensitive, stinging perimeter around his left eye, hands dropping uselessly into his lap. “Did you hear anything?”
“Nope,” Kokichi said. He rested his cheek in one palm, the other hand still tapping away. He was nervous. “They just woke me up and threw me in here. That’s it.”
Shuichi closed his hand around Kokichi’s to stop his anxious drumming. “It’s okay. They probably just–”
The door flew open, making Shuichi jump, his hand dropping Kokichi’s and his attention turning fully to the newcomers. Everyone needed to stop slamming doors. Seriously.
One woman came in, followed by someone who was clearly her frazzled assistant, carrying a bag on each shoulder and a phone in each hand. Scratch that, a phone in her left hand and two in her right. The woman hit the light switch, bathing the room in an offensively bright white light, and sat directly across from them. The assistant stayed standing, still practically juggling the three phones, typing quickly with a grimace on her face.
Either there really was a crisis to be managed or Team Danganronpa was a remarkably high-stress workplace. Shuichi tried to pull the brim of his hat down for a second time, tugging gently on a strand of his hair instead when there was still no hat there to grab.
They were both silent. Even Kokichi knew better than to speak first in this situation.
“Listen, boys.” She said, taking her glasses off, folding them, and placing them down on the table. “I know you don’t know this, but you’re causing a lot of trouble for us.”
Shuichi was at a loss for words. Kokichi always knew just how to pick up his slack. “You’re right, we don’t know. What did we do?”
“You messed with the game,” she crossed her arms over her chest, sighing. “We had to end it early. We actually ended up cutting transmission.” Then in a mutter: “which wasn’t what I advised.”
His heart sunk so low he felt like his entire chest was hollowed out. He loved Danganronpa. And his in-game avatar fucked with and ruined the game? That traitor.
“What does that mean for us?” Kokichi asked. He sounded incredulous, like he thought this had nothing to do with him. Shuichi felt a little embarrassed at his tone, cheeks starting to burn. He didn’t share in his incredulity.
“As you can imagine, we want to minimize the damage here. Our current plan is to have the rest of the cast proceed as though the game ended. The people who were alive when we cut the feed will be our survivors.” She said. Her gaze was intimidating, hawk-like, and she fixed it on Kokichi, then Shuichi, and back again. “As for you two? We don’t know yet. I’m gonna keep it straight with you. You’re smart boys, you can handle it.” Her words had an edge to them that made Shuichi feel that much worse. “You’re both in a world of trouble with us.”
Shuichi thought he might pass out. No, really, he was so woozy all of a sudden he practically swayed in his seat trying to stay upright. Under the table, Kokichi grabbed his leg hard, and it worked pretty well to ground him.
“But!” She said, clapping her hands together, a phony smile on her face. “We’re at the mercy of the fans, here. And you two have caused quite a stir.” She looked over her shoulder at the assistant, who handed one of the phones over. She turned the screen towards them, blindly scrolling up so they didn’t have a chance to actually read the contents of any one post. At the top of the screen, the search bar of some social media site read “Shuichi Saihara,” and she kept on scrolling, forcing the page to refresh, at which point enough new posts generated to make the phone glitch. A flood of new posts with each swipe. Again. And again.
He could hardly believe his eyes. Me. Shuichi Saihara. Absolute nobody, loser, freak. People are making that many posts… about me? Just last year, he was one of those accounts, one of the numerous anonymous fans posting a hundred words a minute about the newest Danganronpa episode.
“I’d show you yours,” she gestured with the phone towards Kokichi, “but you get the idea.”
The assistant took the phone back, and Shuichi watched it go, his eyes still trained on it like it held all the answers to the universe.
“We need more time to figure out how to approach this. So, for now, we’ll just act like everything’s normal. You’ll go out there with the rest of the cast. You’ll get to go home, you’ll have your interviews, the whole thing. And for now, we’ll act like we let you idiots do what you did. Don’t say anything to the contrary. I promise you won’t like what happens if you do.”
Shuichi’s throat was so, so dry. He opened his mouth, and words evaded him for just long enough to be awkward before he managed to say, “yes ma’am.”
Kokichi snickered. “Yeah, uh, yes, ma’am.” His tone was half-mocking, but just serious enough that he’d get away with it.
She smiled at Shuichi sarcastically. “Cute.”
What did I do?!
She stood, chair scraping, before heading for the door.
“I’ll tell hair and makeup where you are. Just stay here until they get you.” She opened the door. “Be good boys, okay?” Then she hit the light switch, dropping the room into darkness again.
“Hey, we’re still in here…” Shuichi said, half-hearted, his voice dropping off into less than a whisper as the woman took off without giving him a second glance.
The assistant was lagging behind, still in the doorway.
“Wait!” Kokichi called out to her, one hand on Shuichi’s leg and leaning over him in his chair to try to get closer to the door where she was now waiting. “Can you tell us anything about who we were?”
Shuichi looked up at her, hopeful, as she nervously glanced back over her shoulder. He was dying to know. There was casting, character development, wardrobe testing… Before the game started, they knew what they were going to be wearing and what their talents were going to be. But there was no accounting for who would naturally fall into what roles. No way to know who would become a victim, or become a blackened.
“You’re the protagonist and antagonist,” she whispered.
… What the fuck. What the fuck!
“I’m the antagonist?” Shuichi asked, disbelieving. That was beyond his wildest dreams, exactly how they’d imagined it–
“No, the other way around.” She turned and hurried out of the door, pausing enough to softly shut it behind her. At least someone had some manners around here.
The… other way around.
“Hey! What the hell, Shuichi!” Kokichi slugged his shoulder, and he brought up a hand to pathetically hold his arm where he’d been struck. “I was supposed to be the protagonist!”
“Shut up,” Shuichi muttered. They both knew they had no memory of and no control over the things they did in the game. He was still reeling… he’d have been in shock if just one of them managed to play such an important role. But both of them. In the key roles. This can’t be real life.
“Sorry, I forgot you already got punched today,” Kokichi said, gently rubbing Shuichi’s shoulder to make up for the assault.
He knew they should be talking about that thing they did. The thing that had them in so much trouble with Team Danganronpa, whatever it was. That should be the more pressing issue. But the massive loser fanboy in him could only find time to care about their roles and how famous they were. He wished he had his phone so he could waste hours and hours and hours scrolling and reading things about himself. And Kokichi seemed to share the same sentiment.
Kokichi shoved him, though gently, on the same shoulder he’d punched and then apologized for punching. He was such a sweetheart. “Protagonist Shuichi Saihara,” he said, only somewhat teasing.
Shuichi pushed him back with a wry grin despite his attempts to stifle it. “And you’re my antagonist, the Ultimate Supreme Leader.”
An equally mischievous smile lit up Kokichi’s face. He loved the talent they’d picked for him almost as much as Shuichi loved the one they’d let him pick himself. Getting callbacks, finding out they’d both been cast, all of the planning shifts… Shuichi had literally achieved his pipe dream, and did it with someone who loved the show as much as he did. And that someone was also hot. And crazy. And crawling into his lap even though they were in Team Danganronpa’s HQ building and the hair and makeup people should be coming for them any moment now.
Kokichi’s arms looped around Shuichi’s neck, one hand toying with the hair at the nape of his neck as he peered down at him, still grinning. In spite of himself, Shuichi’s hands found their place on Kokichi’s hips.
“I probably drove you crazy,” Kokichi said slowly, drawing the words out.
Shuichi tried to sit up straighter, looking up at Kokichi, staring into his beautiful dark eyes. “I probably hated you in there.”
“Don’t you already hate me out here?” Kokichi was whispering. Shuichi had that exact sort of whisper sorted into the “seductive” category of Kokichi’s many voices and tones. He wanted to cry foul play at using that at a time like this.
All he could manage to say was a hollow “yeah,” his breath catching in his throat as he said it. He unconsciously tightened his hold on Kokichi, fingertips digging into his sides.
The mischievous grin on Kokichi’s face only grew wider. Shuichi wondered what he was thinking about. What was crossing his mind in the quiet moment he spent looking down at Shuichi, studying his face? He figured that no matter how close they got, some parts of Kokichi would still be a mystery to him.
Then he tried to get up, but Shuichi didn’t let him, using his grip on Kokichi’s hips to tug him back down into his lap. Like he was expecting that to happen, Kokichi didn’t even flinch.
“Someone’s gonna open that door. Could be any second now,” Kokichi said.
Oh. Right.
Shuichi let him go so he could stand up, and he stood, too, suddenly eager to get out of the conference room. Next, they were going to hair and makeup. To get nice and dressed up in their character outfits again before they go outside. It was always a huge deal, getting a glimpse at the cast for the first time after the game ended. He could clearly recall the pictures and videos that circulated last year, and that was about to be him. Surreal.
“Should we just check..?” Kokichi started, gesturing towards the door.
“No!” Shuichi practically jumped to grab his wrist so he couldn’t make a move towards it. “She told us to stay here.” He couldn’t stand to get in any more trouble with Team Danganronpa. Things were bad enough as is. This special day was already being dampened by whatever bullshit his in-game self pulled. Why couldn’t he just play the game right and kill someone like everyone else? Like a normal person?
He was only a tiny bit aware of how strange that line of thinking sounded.
“Wow, you’re such a loser,” Kokichi teased.
Before he had a chance to defy Shuichi, as he inevitably would have, the door opened again, and they were greeted with two of the cast stylists. The same ones that did their hair and makeup for the pre-game media day. Those pictures were another thing he was absolutely dying for a chance to look up online.
“Good, you’re both here,” one said.
And just like that, they were whisked off to another part of the building and into separate dressing rooms. Theirs weren't even next door to each other’s – more like five doors apart. Kokichi’s was right next to Tsumugi’s. Shuichi was certain he was never supposed to play an important role, but Kokichi probably was. He was such an alluring, interesting presence. He drew attention so effortlessly, and to Shuichi, it was completely magnetic, impossible to ignore.
He spent a disproportionate amount of his hair and makeup time thinking about Kokichi, and their strange relationship, if just to take his mind off of how badly he needed to scroll every social media site available for information on their game. And he couldn’t shake the buzzing, excited, nervous feeling that came over him when he thought about the fact that Kokichi was living with him. The novelty hadn’t worn off at all.
Honestly, Shuichi used to be lonely. Really lonely. Then, one night, instead of leaving immediately like he always did after they fucked, Kokichi asked if he could stay for a while. And then he never left. It’s not like his parents would mind, because they didn’t live with him anyways, and hadn’t visited in over a year. They didn’t even need to know.
Now they weren’t just Shuichi and Kokichi. They were Shuichi and Kokichi, the protagonist and antagonist of Danganronpa’s third season. Barring the trouble they were in, life couldn’t be better.
“Much better,” the stylist idly remarked, taking a step back to look at Shuichi’s reflection in the mirror from a different vantage point. “Your eye was hard to cover up, but it looks pretty good, right?”
Shuichi tilted his head around, and yeah, the developing bruise was almost gone. Almost.
The stylist fished a hat out of the closet and shoved it onto his head, adjusting the brim until it obscured a good bit of his eye, casting it into its shadow. Finally, he had his hat back. His safety blanket. For some unknown reason, he felt like he didn’t really need it, just wanted it because it was something familiar to rely on in an overwhelming time.
With makeup done, he got into costume. His… everything… was fairly simplistic, so he was probably one of the first to be done. Which gave him time to kill, and since he didn’t have his phone or laptop with him, there was nothing to do but look at himself in the mirror.
So he spent some time looking at that person–the protagonist–who was both him and not him at all at the same time.
He wished he didn’t feel so disconnected from the Ultimate Detective. Everyone outside is going to think that’s him, but it isn’t.
He wished the memories would come to him sooner. In the waivers, they’d all been warned that this would happen. It would take a while, if they even came to him at all.
Eventually, there was a knock on the door. The stylist answered, opening it just a sliver and talking in whispers so the contents of the conversation remained a mystery to Shuichi, who sat waiting, restless and anxious.
The door clicked shut, and the stylist started giving him a once-over, brushing imaginary dust off of his uniform and readjusting his hat back into the exact same place it was sitting in the first place.
“You and Kokichi go out in five.”
Oh God. That’s right. He wouldn’t be going out with everyone else. After the first season, it was Makoto Naegi, Kyoko Kirigiri, and Junko Enoshima. Second, Hajime Hinata, Nagito Komaeda, and Chiaki Nanami. Third…
It was a miracle that he hadn’t passed out or thrown up or something by the time he’d been led to the front doors of the building. He was more nervous than he ever realized he’d be. But this was his dream, and he couldn’t stand to waste this moment, so he pulled himself together the best he could.
Kokichi, on the other hand, looked right at home as he was led to stand right by Shuichi’s side. He was chatting with the stylist and PA that brought him, then he was examining his nails like he was bored, before running his hand through his hair and forcing his poor stylist to run over to fix it again. Shuichi just stared straight again, glad to have his hat to hide behind in the face of this crowd.
The PA by the door reported, “thirty seconds to open.”
He shook his head, trying to literally shake off the nerves.
“Hey, Shuichi,” Kokichi said.
He looked over, eyebrows furrowed, questioning. There wasn’t much time.
Beside him, Kokichi looked oddly somber. Was something wrong? Just as Shuichi was about to ask, Kokichi’s hand came up to wave over his own face, wiping away his frown and replacing it with a winning smile. Then he turned to face front, smiling and waving at the door like a seasoned celebrity, just as it started to draw open.
Shuichi, stupidly, was still looking at Kokichi, entranced by him, when the flashing lights and shutter clicks of a thousand cameras swallowed his world whole.