now that the game is over, here’s some backstory things about ayan if your’e curious! it’s a little long tho just to let you know
As a child, Ayano was born into a long line of gangsters who were part of the infamous Akiyama Clan. The Akiyama Clan were infamous amongst other gangsters of the underworld due to their long reign of crime and power since the Meiji Era. Of course, Ayano didn't care about that kind of thing. She spent the most of her childhood blissfully unaware of the going ons within her family, and spending most of her days playing with her younger sister, Tomoe. Her father, Toru Akiyama, was the current head of the Akiyama Clan with his wife, Akane Akiyama, as his right hand (wo)man; both doing their best to make sure Ayano and Tomoe didn't get exposed to the yakuza side of their family. Their uncle, Takeo Akiyama, however, had other plans for the girls.
Despite the protests from her parents, her uncle was determined to see which of the two girls were a better fit to become the next heiress of the Akiyama Clan, often pitting them against each other without them noticing. It wasn't until Ayano was around 9 years old that a brutal act had taken place within the Akiyama Manor: A double murder. The once reigning leader of the Akiyama Clan and his wife, were brutally murdered in their own bedroom. The manor was thrown into disarray, trying to figure out who, how, and why were they killed.
Ayano and Tomoe were confused and scared upon discovering the deaths of their parents and were heavily guarded until they could track down the killer. Unknown to them, it was their uncle who murdered their parents after a particularly heated argument. Their uncle argued that their father shouldn't have been a leader of the clan in the first place, and that HE himself should have been in charge. In a fit of rage, he ‘removed’ their parents from the clan with his own hands. Of course, no one suspected he was the murderer, and the girls were taken under his custody. He later became the head of the clan and continued his little tests on the sisters with none the wiser. About a year later, he decided to make one last test to finalize his decision. He was going to make the sisters kill each other.
He took the girls into his office, handed each of them a gun and ordered them to shoot the other or he'll kill the other himself. Tomoe refused, and her uncle quickly grabbed her and pointed her same gun to her temple, ordering Ayano to kill her sister or he'll do it for her. It was then that Ayano snapped and shot her uncle in the shoulder, making him release Tomoe. Ayano quickly rushed to Tomoe to make sure she's alright, when she was suddenly yanked back by her uncle, where he had used a knife on his desk and slashed her left eye in a fit of rage. As Ayano had started to lose consciousness, all she could hear was Tomoe screaming fearfully and her uncle ordering their family doctor to take the girls to the infirmary.
When Ayano woke up with her eye stitched up, the family doctor, Kaede Kido, explained the situation and told her that her uncle was going to train her into being the next Akiyama Clan leader. Ayano, of course, saw her uncle as a monster and refused. Kido warned that her uncle will make her do it, regardless if she consented or not, and he suggested it would be best if she went along with him considering his position of power. After he left, Tomoe entered the infirmary and broke down into tears, apologizing over and over again about Ayano's eye, despite it though not being her fault in the first place. Despite Ayano’s constant reassurance, Tomoe was consumed with guilt and kept crying whenever Ayano talked to her, she even went nearly two days without eating due to guilt. On the third day of her recovery, Ayano made the decision to be trained as the next Akiyama heiress, with the condition that Tomoe will be sent to live with her aunt as to lead a normal life, as well as have her memories “erased” of the Akiyama Clan.
Her uncle agreed, and had Kido “erase” Tomoe’s memories (in actuality, he only had suppressed her memories rather than completely erase it) and sent her to live with their aunt on their mom’s side of the family. It was then that Ayano threw away her birth name and became “Akane Usui”. Since she was ten, her uncle put her through rigorous training so that he could mold her to be the ultimate hitman, despite the fact that Ayano was worn down emotionally and physically in an effort to please her uncle in fear of punishment for not upholding his standards. She was trained to be a hitman since every leader of the Akiyama Clan were experienced assassins, and Ayano would be no exception. By the time she was 12, she was enlisted to be part of the Akiyama Clan’s own group of hired guns who called themselves the “Red Eye Society” for their red coloured eyes, and is lead by a veteran assassin, Ryuichi Karasuma.
The reason why the Akiyama Clan hasn’t been arrested is due to them selling off the Red Eye Society to the government to be their Special Forces (under the alias of the “Crimson Corps”) and as a way to keep their activity under the radar. While the Red Eye Society are made up of master assassins, they act more like a rag-tag bunch. Despite that, Ayano felt more at home with them compared to her life in the Akiyama Manor with her uncle. A year later, she ended up getting the red eye implanted in her blind left eye as a symbol of officially being part of the group. Despite having only been a hitman for about two years, she’s managed to get a confirmed 52 hits internationally, making her a prodigy among assassins. When she was 15, she was given the mission to assassinate the headmaster of a famous school called Hope’s Peak Academy.
Ayano accepted of course. She managed to infiltrate the school with ease, despite the constant surveillance as well as the teachers and students wandering around inside. She found the Headmaster’s office and searched around for signs of her target, only to get ambushed by security guards. Despite being able to hold her own for a bit, she was ultimately overpowered by them. She was suddenly greeted by the headmaster and the leader of the Red Eye Society, Ryuichi Karasuma. As it turns out, this was a test to prove Ayano’s skills so she could be admitted into Hope’s Peak, and she managed to impress the Headmaster that he invited her to be a student at Hope’s Peak as a form of rehabilitation and to use her skills to become a “hope for the future”.
At first, Ayano thought his talk about being a “hope for the future” was weird, but she agreed, since that would mean she could be far away from her uncle. When news reached her uncle, he was surprisingly compliant, but let her go under the condition that she'd be watched in case she “tries to act up”, which is just her uncle's way of saying that he wants to keep an eye on his weapon so that she doesn't run away from him. Ayano continued her new life at Hope's Peak under the alias of Akane Usui, the SHSL Sniper. Her time at Hope’s Peak wasn’t much to talk about, considering she hasn’t been at school since she was in elementary, it was hard for her to talk to people her own age, so she kept her distance from her classmates. It didn’t really bother her as much as she thought it would, and she often found solace in the Greenhouse on the fifth floor of the school, and was glad for at least a period of her life, she wasn’t in a kill or be killed situation.
