Before Joining Danganronpa
Maki Harukawa was a normal talentless high school girl who participated in the 53rd Season of Danganronpa, a famous worldwide reality show made by Team Danganronpa.
During her high school days, Maki attended Brave Heart Hall High School (勇心館高校). However, it is unclear if this memory of her is a part of the fabrication made by Team Danganronpa or if it was genuine.
Fabricated Past
After she successfully participated in the 53rd Killing Game, Maki's memories and past were fabricated by Team Danganronpa as follows:
Maki's parents were gone before she could even remember. As a result, she was raised in an orphanage. She was made to help take care of the younger children at the orphanage because the older kids had to help take care of the younger ones. Even though children liked her, she did not like them back nearly as much and wasn't even particularly fond of taking care of them. Nevertheless, the children at the orphanage still adored Maki.
Maki was close friends with a girl of her age. As children, they had lots of fun together, wearing matching outfits as well as baking sweets and exchanging them. They talked so late into the night that they would get in trouble. They often played House with the other kids, her playing as the mom while Maki was the dad. Maki considered the time with her the happiest part of her life and like a dream. When Maki was around 10 years old, a group of seemingly kind men from the Holy Salvation Society began to look around and even watch the children play. In reality, they were scouting for potential candidates to train as assassins. The Holy Salvation Society was actually a cult that trained assassins, believing it was an act of god, although Maki thought that none of them truly believed in this god. They threatened Maki's orphanage that they would lose their funding if they did not do what they said. They had their eyes on Maki's friend because she was more talented than Maki. However, her personality was very sensitive and kind, crying and feeling lonely easily. Maki believed the assassin's life would destroy her, and volunteered to take her place despite not knowing what was in store for her.
Maki was moved into a training facility and begun her training to become an assassin, which she herself described as "the beginning of hell". The training she described as being excruciatingly difficult - vomiting every day and crying every night. She was physically beat to help her withstand torture and taught how to die quickly in case a mission failed and she was caught. She learned to wield a huge amount of different weapons. There were several assassins besides her, but none of them got along nor were truly devoted to the cult's cause, a fact they couldn't mention to each other or else they would be cut and disposed of. Maki was repeatedly broken both physically and mentally, to make her feel empty, but she endured the horribly harsh conditions and was desperate to do her best, knowing that her friend from the orphanage would die if she was put in Maki's place.
During one of her first missions, she had to gather personal information and then assassinate a target, a "nerdy" man who was into cosplay. Maki eventually decided to follow the target, carrying a real katana in a prop carrying case. However, it turned out the target went to a cosplay event held in a hall. People around Maki assumed she was cosplaying a popular katana-wielding character, and she was quickly surrounded by excited people with cameras. Maki had to leave and was unable to carry out her mission. After the incident, she decided she would never use swords.
After everything she went through, Maki's heart gradually became empty, and she adapted to the lifestyle of killing people. She stopped asking questions in her head and killed anyone on her orders list, including those who could be considered good and innocent people. She even had to kill friends from her school, including a daughter of a yakuza leader and a mistress with no ties to the gang, greatly loved by her father. The other members believed the rival gangs could use her against their leader and thus she was assassinated. Maki came to believe that killing was simply her job, and she did what she had to in order to live. She did not want to blame anyone else, but she still did feel repressed guilt for the yakuza daughter's death. And while she eventually became numb to it all, she still couldn't help but wonder what her life could've been if she never became an assassin.
After Maki's training was finished, she went to see her friend from the orphanage right away, only to find out that she had died. She died in a car accident while saving a child, and, after the initial shock, Maki figured that she must have died happy, knowing she had saved someone. Maki's memories of her and the rest of the orphanage continued to motivate her and she continued to be an assassin for the sake of keeping her orphanage up and running.
