Danganronpa: GHOST TOWN

Chapter Eleven: Ghost Town

It looked endless. Bottomless. 

I stared at the pool on the floor seeing and unseeing it. 

Was this real? After everything, could I comprehend this?

My fingers, stained with black ink reached towards the pool. Was it real?

They sank into the sticky blood, dying my fingers a new color. The pool wasn't warm anymore. It didn't flow. 

The room around me was empty. They had all left but I hadn't found the strength yet. I wasn't supposed to get back into that elevator. I wasn't supposed to make it. 

Kyofu had carried her body back to the surface. He said he wouldn't leave her down here with him. He took her but the blood stayed.

I lifted my fingers and gazed at them with awe. So red. So much. From her. From him. So much in all of us.

A gasp echoed around me. My own. I stared at the pool as if it was her. As if it was Haruko. My lips moved. 

"I wish you didn't do it."

One truth.

"I'm glad you did."

The second.

What did I do to deserve this? This luck? This sacrifice? I thought I was something special. I wanted to be. But what was I really? With everything that was revealed I didn't know how to answer that.

Was I normal? But what was normal? Especially in the mad world we were living in?

The blood gleamed at me in the dim light. "I didn't want this." 

So what?

"I don't want this."

Too bad. This was what you got.

My eyes trailed from the blood to the instrument that created it. It gleamed too. Harmlessly on the floor. Weren't there six? That meant there were five left right?

My hand reached for it and I anticipated what the handle would feel like. Cold. Unforgiving. 

My hand stopped. I was inches away but the thought of holding a gun again was unbearable. Besides could I do this to them? Even through my consideration I knew they didn't deserve to find me like that. But it shouldn't have been by my own hand in the first place.

My eyes slid to the chair and the unmoving object in it. The bear. The symbol. Staring at it I found myself rising from the floor to challenge it. Question. Beg.

"You're the one who wanted this." My voice was foreign to my own ears. "You wanted me dead."

I stepped forwards. "Well here I am!" I threw my arms wide. "Why don't you do anything?! It's the rules right?!" I slammed my foot through the first rung of the chair. "You wanted this!" The next rung. "You wanted this!" The third. "You wanted this!"

Hysterical. That's what I was. Who I was.

"So why can't you do it!? Why can't you kill me now?!" I thrashed at the wood. "It'd be easier! So much easier... I don't deserve to live. I don't want to live." My legs brought me back to the floor. "Not with this..."

This was so much worse.

Something else caught my eye. An orange vial.

"There's enough for everyone here." Mae had whispered to me. "I leave you one if you want to drink it."

Haruko had had more than one vial stashed away.

I reached for it and held it carefully. If all I had were these torturous memories from the killing game, would my past ones make it better? Would it restore a part of me that I had lost? Maybe this was the only thing that could help me.