Danganronpa: GHOST TOWN

Chapter Nine, Part Four: The Last of Us

"Wait so how did you become an Actor again? You never finished your story." I walked beside Toshiro the both of us heading towards the square. The day had grown late with darkness only a few hours away.

"Oh!" He rubbed his neck. "Like I said I got lost and ended up stumbling into the college theatre. There was a cast there running scenes from Julius Caesar and one of the actors was missing. Before I knew it I was on stage with a script in hand reading their lines." Toshiro grinned. "I haven't escaped the theatre life since."

"So it was an accident!" I laughed at the idea. "I always thought it would be fun be in a play." I said thoughtfully. "But hard. They sound like lots of work when you're part of one."

Toshiro nodded. "Absolutely. If you're not committed you're replaced."

"That's the other thing." I said glancing at him. "I'd never want to screw up and be responsible for something like that."

To my surprise he laughed. "Hon'yomi if you were in a play you'd try to organize everything and make it your own version of perfect!"

I stared at him with amused disbelief. "I would not!" I crossed my arms. "Besides, no matter how hard you work nothing will ever be perfect."

"That's why I said it'd be your own version." Toshiro replied shaking his head with a smile.

"Still." We had reached the center of the square and I walked to the oak tree, lowering myself beneath it. "Do you think I could be in a play?"

Toshiro followed, sitting on the vibrant glass beside me. "I don't know." He grinned. "How good is your acting?"

I rolled my eyes. "Well I've always thought I was good at lying when I needed to be."

He raised a brow. "Acting is more than just lying. All of it has to come from something real inside."

"So you mean you put a piece of yourself in each character?"

Toshiro nodded. "Something like that." He pointed back towards the way we came. "If you want we could go search the library for a play and see what you can do?"

My eyes grew wide. No thank you. Like I had felt with Chikara, it wasn't exactly comforting to try out some elses Ultimate in front of them. "You see I've read Shakespeare but the thing is I usually interpret it wrong so that's probably not a good idea."

He frowned. "First, Shakespeare isn't the only guy out there who wrote plays, second as Poet shouldn't you be used to interpreting complicated literature?"

I copied him. "First, fair enough. Second, the meaning of true poetry varies from reader to reader. There may be a core message but how it's applied is never the same in each person and neither is the feeling of it."

"What's the feeling behind your poetry?"

I sighed. "I just said it varie-"

Toshiro shook his head, and laid back onto the grass. "I mean your feelings."

"Oh." I picked at the grass. "It depends on the poem."

"How about To Tell?"

I frowned. That one was ancient. "To me it's calm and empowering. It's also brave because it inspires you to declare to the world the things you love." I watched the dimming light filter through the leaves and found that I wasn't worried about anything in this moment. It was the calmest I had felt since the trial.

"Hmm..." I could practically hear Toshiro flipping through pages of poetry in his head. Did he memorize everything? "What about No. 17?"

I blinked. He remembered the unnamed ones too? "That one is sadness." I recalled the day I had written it, in a sketchbook of all things. I never used it to draw much since I didn't have much patience for it. I could see the house of my old friend in my mind. "Nostalgia and the innocence of childhood. A memoir of friendship."