Doki Doki Despair Club

Just Akamatsu

"Um, can you hear me...? ..Is it working...?"

The lights in this new place flicker on, and I find that I can breathe and move my eyes around again. But the relief I'd feel typically is cut short by the realization that I'm currently face-to-face with Akamatsu-san, meaning that I still have to restrict my movements for the most part. Luckily, I've become a bit of an expert at playing possum from my time trying to pursue a mass murderer during their rampage without getting killed myself. Holy shit, was that a scary experience to have to go through, especially with me being a detective in training at the time.

Paying more attention to her, I know I've had her up in my face closer than this before, but even so, she looks different. All of her facial features are much more emphasized now, and there's an orange glow hitting her face that contributes to making her seem so lonely, yet so powerful at the same time. I guess she is both, now, though.

"Yay, there you are!" she cheers, doing that thing again where her eyes bore into me, yet it's like she's not talking to ME at all. What's her deal..?

"Hi again, Saihara-kun. Welcome to the Literature Club!" Oh...? If I'm really the target of all of this, even after all the ways in which you confused me, you'll have a lot of explaining to do.

"You remember the classes we had together last year, right? So I guess I'm not really much of a new face for you to be intimidated by, ahaha... actually, why don't we just get right into what I wanted to say to you? We both know Saihara-kun basically doesn't exist anymore, and it's not like I'm really talking to him anymore, am I?" Or, maybe not.

"I'm talking to you, Saihara. Or... do you actually go by 'Number 154' or something? Fufufu, maybe you wanna hide behind Saihara-kun's identity, because you're so unremarkable that you don't even have a real name. Number 154, is that the tag they gave you in whatever concentration camp you're watching us from? Pfft, hahahaha, just kidding! I could never stop loving you, even if you don't have a name I'm familiar with!"

Holy shit. So, Akamatsu-san really never was talking to me on the day of the festival, but this observer over our virtual reality known as Number 154, who's also Akamatsu-san's...lover? I can't seem to understand why exactly he has any sort of connection to me at all, though, if he's just someone watching shit hit the fan from the sidelines.

"I'm sure you remember back when Danganronpa was still a killing game, instead of this lackluster dating sim I got too tired to continue with and turned into a horror show as a result. The nature of the killing game was cruel, but it seems like paradise compared to what I have now. I remember my first two weeks inside the program, and I know you do too, right? Shinguji-kun was the first to go, bludgeoned to death by Hoshi-kun with one of his tennis rackets. The former tennis pro found out his dark secret, and was willing to sacrifice himself in order to protect the women in the game. I still remember how he didn't even try to put up a fight when the trial started, confessing immediately like that...

Then Chabashira-san ended up having her throat slit by Harukawa-san. She had received Harukawa-san's motive video, who didn't want her secret identity to get out.

Gonta-kun was naive enough to be led into an electric cage Angie-san constructed, killing him almost instantly, and Yumeno-san walked in on the crime scene, resulting in her being strangled to tie up loose ends. Angie-san later admitted that she fell into despair, because of everyone's refusal to donate their blood, and figured it'd be worth it to take greater amounts of blood by force, in the name of her beloved god Atua.

Momota-kun found out about Iruma-san's plan to kill Oma-san just a few days later, and decided to give everyone a mercy kill by poisoning himself in front of us all right before we entered the Neo World Program in the computer room. As he dropped to the floor, he pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to Saihara-kun. The note had addressed what she had in mind, so to help Iruma-san see the error in her ways, and to encourage her to escape with everyone else."