One Year Later

1 | Prologue

was planning for this to be a oneshot, but this way i can include
what i've finished, since it's taking so long. it's just to let you guys
know that i haven't abandoned the dr fandom. ;) i should also specify
why this took me so fucking long: i was finally getting around to sdr2.
more about that later. but i thought i should mention in advance that
certain aspects of this fic/au seem a little odd with what i now know,
(SDR2 SPOILERS) mostly that hope's peak ISN'T a crazy shady school
that does horrible experiments on children and covers up murders
and that jin kirigiri is a totally nice guy with good intentions (i haven't
seen the dr3 anime or read dr0 yet, so for all i know he wasn't super
involved in the shadiness). just dismiss that as being part of the whole
"non-despair au" thing.

Kyouko Kirigiri wasn't sure why, exactly, she was in her father's office. A promise was a promise, but it would've been nice to have known what she was supposed to be arguing in favor of.

She'd been approached in the halls by Kiyotaka Ishimaru, who had asked her to meet him in his dorm. She'd done so, and he'd informed her that he had delivered a rule change proposal to her father and that he would appreciate it if she could back him up.

"I will tell you after it gets approved," he'd replied when she asked him what the proposal was. "I do not wish to get anyone's hopes up. But it's something that has been suggested to me by other students more than once, and I feel it would be very beneficial for some of our more troubled peers."

Whatever was in that folder on the desk was clearly something very important to Kiyotaka. He'd tried to act like it was only in the interest of his fulfilling his commitment to the other students, like it was just a part of his job as a prefect, but Kirigiri had easily spotted the glimmer in his eyes when he talked about it.

Jin Kirigiri offered his daughter a seat and a snack and some coffee, and she took the chair and accepted the offer of a hot drink. She could use the caffeine. The start of the new semester meant that she, like everyone else, had been bombarded with essays and tests left and right.

Schoolwork. She smirked as a certain biker came to mind. He'd been getting pretty serious academically, and she was sure she knew who to thank for that. Since he had started dating Hope's Peak Academy's most well-renowned prefect, Mondo Oowada's attitude and school performance had drastically improved. The two were nearly inseparable, and went everywhere and did everything together. She'd worried it was co-dependency at first, but had been dissuaded from that by asking the boy himself.

"Nah, ya don't have to worry about that. He's still my best friend. I can do stuff alone, but why wouldn't I wanna hang out with my best friend?" Mondo had replied, his grin wide and bright. The innocence of the sentiment was...

...Well, it was cute. A lot of people stopped being friends once they became a couple, but both of the boys were insistent that it was an important part of a healthy and happy relationship. Kirigiri felt like they were right about that. How long had it been, anyway? Time seemed to fly at Hope's Peak.

"So what was it that you wanted to talk about?" Jin asked. His relationship with his daughter was somewhat strained, so he didn't assume she was there to talk about the weather. He handed off one of the coffee cups in his hand as he took a seat.

"Did you receive a proposal earlier this week? From Ishimaru-kun?" She asked the question casually just before taking a sip of coffee. The instant rush of warmth was nice, even if it was a little too sweet for her tastes.