Danganronpa: Locked Doors of Despair

Ch.5 Daily Life Part 7: Of Goings-On, Grandiosity, and Glow Sticks

Ren

"Ahem! Everyone report to Meeting Room A for this week's main event!"

"I guess that means it's quiz time. Ready?"

"No... yet, I suppose I am about as prepared as I can possibly be," Azumi confirms. She adjusts her hair sticks in determination, and I tug on my collar lightly.

We make our way to the Meeting Room. "Puhuhu! Perfect! Everyone's arrived! Scurry onto your seats now! There's more than one way to use the simulation machine!" I buckle in wordlessly. "Before we begin, we need to hook everyone up with their shock collars!"

"Can't ye just simulate pain, ye picaroon?" Wakumi points out aggressively.

"Well, sure! But I think we could do with some pain that would actually LAST if you guys decide to run out the clock too many times!"

The pods close around us, and we see in front of us a screen. With oldschool narration, we have explained to us that there will be forty-eight questions split up into groups of sixteen, and we cannot answer questions about ourselves. After we answer sixteen, we find out the right answers, receive any secrets we might have earned, and see everyone's current scores.

And it begins with the "Easy" round. It gives us a question at a time, in big, bold letters. At our fingertips are sixteen buttons, with a cute, anime-esque drawing of each of us. Mine is darkened out. The first set of questions really is pretty easy. I don't know all of them, but at the very least, I'm fairly confident about most of the people still here. I wind up getting thirteen right, so I missed two— mixing up Hachi's and Joanie's— and couldn't answer for my own. Gou comes swinging right out of the gate with a perfect score, which doesn't surprise me— since he tries to learn everyone's talents, it makes sense that he would have surface-level knowledge of everyone. These secrets, as befitting of very basic questions, provide mostly trivial secrets, so I'm not at all worried about whatever anyone could find out about me here. This round, for example, tells us that Fujiko finds the Easter Bunny traumatizing, that Gou's parents don't completely approve of his talent, and that Sayuri accidentally bought an adult movie when she was a preteen and watched it out of curiosity. Simple, light stuff.

The medium round is interesting. They're questions that require you've spent a bit of time with the person, unless you know their personality enough to be able to accurately guess. I get nine of these. Interestingly enough, Chimon does the best in this round, which I think makes sense. He may not always actively engage with everyone, tending to stick to a few people, but he watches diligently and seems to remember a lot of whatever you tell him. I learn that Keiji failed an important paper for Japanese class last year and didn't leave his room for a week, that Kana lost a meaningful present from her sister and paid to make a replica, that Haruto ruined a childhood friendship by impulsively sharing someone's secret (and, of course, leading to said secret getting out).

The hard round lives up to its name. The most anyone gets is four, which Azumi gets, as the approachable parental figure. And, though these secrets are the biggest, they're also the most vague. Azumi's stage fright is the result of some kind of major accident, Nari called CPS on her own parents once out of desperation.

And then shit hits the fan: Tozen lied about the conversations he heard before the last trial. I find myself heaving, panicking because I know what that means.

And one more question pops up. It's a very simple True or False question about Azumi. I check the timer to see if I can just wait this one out, because it feels like a trap— there's no timer for this one. I answer or I'm stuck here. I almost choose to answer wrong on purpose, but I can't make myself. I guess the worst parts of me need to figure out what else I'm missing.