Danganronpa: Frozen Mayhem

4-3: Daily Life

Seishiro was surprised to have actually woken up without having been impaled by Monokuma the night prior. Tentatively, he felt around in the pile of clothes dumped on a nearby chair for the sachet of gunpowder.

Huh. He survived that. Either nobody had seen that, or he was simply allowed to dismantle his motive.

Leaving said motive sitting, still abandoned, on the desk, he rather optimistically decided to greet the new day.

~~~

Seishiro was about to leave his room, intending to meander aimlessly like a wandering spirit, until Watanabe Etsuko barged rather explosively into his life.

And by explosively, he meant that he had opened the door just as she was about to knock aggressively on it, resulting in the comedian sort of punching him in the chest. It wasn't the punch that knocked him over, but more the shock of random-person-unexpectedly-in-your-face.

It took half a second of stunned silence before Etsuko burst into hysterical laughter.

Seishiro shoved himself up from the floor and dusted himself off quickly. "What did I do?! Wait, what are you doing here?"

Etsuko twirled in a circle. "I'm bored! Well, not anymore, but you get the gist."

Seishiro knew that every week, at around this time, Etsuko held a Keiji-approved comedy session - which often devolved into an idle gossip/chit-chat session. He never quite worked up the confidence to consistently attend, being a self-professed awkward lump when it came to larger groups, but he knew why she was doing it - to raise morale. And yet, instead of doing her typical socialisation thing, she was here.

"Don't you normally have something to do?" Seishiro blinked. "A-and besides, I'm practically the definition of boring."

"Naaah," she replied, twirling about. "Also, no. You're funny! It's just that most humour comes at your expense. Let me in?"

"Why."

Etsuko shrugged. "I wanna talk?"

"Uh, okay...?" Seishiro raised a tentative eyebrow.

Cheering, Etsuko propelled herself across the room and dove into the wheely chair in front of his desk, continuing on her trajectory until she careened into the far wall.

"Do you do this to most people?" Seishiro flopped down in the armchair in the corner.

Etsuko poked out her tongue. "Yeah. And I did want to talk."

"About?"

"Anything!" She threw up her hands and spun her chair about.

"Oookay," replied Seishiro awkwardly.

As it seemed, Etsuko did mean literally everything - he found himself getting awkwardly grilled on how he felt about all sorts of random topics, and learning equally as much useless trivia about her. Her favourite colour was purple (no, really? She practically oozed the colour purple), she liked chocolate and crepes (and chocolate crepes), and she once binge-read a multi-volume boys' love series (why he needed to know that, he had no idea).

Seishiro, on the other hand, was thoroughly bamboozled. Sure, talking to Etsuko did make his life a little livelier, but it wasn't typical of her - or anyone - to barge straight into a random conversation such as this. At last, he could no longer take the growing curiosity nagging at him.

"Okay, okay, wait. I asked you before, but...don't you have something to do? Your whole comedy chitchat shenanigans whatever." He paused. "Eugh, word vomit."

For a moment, Etsuko's cheery expression dropped. "Um, yeah, about that. Y'see, no one really wants to hang out right now, especially with the whole...fact that someone's trying to murder us all through traps."