I'm Nagi, mod of askultimateluckytrash and ultimate-waifu-bait. I make Danganronpa sprite edits sometimes and do Danganronpa analysis/opinions. I often post here about my original writing projects as well as Danganronpa. Please send questions about any of that stuff!
Wow. It's been a long time since I posted on here, huh?
Long story short, I'm all good. Things are going great for me. I just left tumblr and migrated to other platforms because 1) tumblr is totally dead on the roleplay & writing scene, which is what I want to do 2) it's like, a super ""toxic"" and stressful environment to be around. Everybody's mad about everything all the time, and some people are SUPER judgemental and hateful, and it's just not fun to be here lmao.
So basically I just migrated to new platforms which are more engaging and less stressful/hateful. But, rest assured I'm still working on my writing and collaborating with others every single day (when I'm not busy chilling in the woods with friends). I pretty much exclusively do that through Discord and my Youtube channel nowadays.
Maybe if I once again have an audience or even just a small group of collaborating buddies on tumblr, I'll come back again. Or if roleplay/ask blogs suddenly boom in popularity. Idk, I don't see myself coming back for a long time. But for now, I'm very happy where I am. Just felt like I should update everyone that I'm not dead.
Hey I know I'm like, never active on tumblr anymore (I'm more present on Discord and Youtube. Tumblr's kinda dead these days, and it's difficult to get any traction here) But anyway! On the platforms I am active on, tons of people have been making OCs for my stories, so I've been drawing them free chibi art in return. Just so you all know I'm not dead, here is a collection of all the chibi art I've been doing lately. All but 2 of these are characters that my friends made for my stories! I'm super fucking flattered by that btw
All of these characters belong to people and you MAY NOT use any of them.
Hey, if you enjoy my original writing, then you might want to check this piece out! It's a slice of life short story about my OC Hazel.
Underwater
Morning broke cold in Alaska.
Hazel wasn’t sure what woke her. Her throat was kinda dry and she had to use the bathroom, but that was normal for the morning. She rubbed her hands into her fuzzy eyes insistently and shook her head. Wake up.
Her room was dark, but she could see the bright sunlight leeching in through the blackout curtains on her windows. Well, yeah, but that could still mean anything. She reached for her phone. The time was 12:45 PM. Almost one? Jeez…
Maybe that was why her head felt so thick and throbbing. She dug the heel of her hand into her forehead this time, as if she could push the heavy sleepiness away. The left side of her brain was swollen in a way that told her that she would definitely be getting a headache later. The best way to alleviate something like that was movement…but…she didn’t want to move…
With a groan of irritation, she threw back the thick feathered comforters and furs on her bed and swung her feet to the floor. Even through her thick house socks, the floorboards made her toes curl with their icy cold touch. The fire in the hearth had burnt down to ashes. But she’d re-start all the fires later, and the house would warm up more now that she was awake and alive in it.
Armored in only a big T-shirt as her pajamas, making goosebumps prickle on her legs, she padded softly over to her curtains and tugged the big velvet rope to pull them open. They were heavy and thick, and they didn’t give way easily to her 100lb frame. By the time they were folded back as much as they could go, she was huffing and puffing and had warmed up considerably.
The sunlight streamed in bright through her windows, illuminating her entire room and eliminating the need for her to turn on an overhead light. It was summer, the time for unending days and unsetting suns. Hazel always liked these months a lot better than the other half of the year. The days of complete never-ending darkness were a lot harder to deal with.
Despite getting up and moving, she could still feel the weight of sleep smothering her mind, making her pulse throb in her brain, making her eyes and her thoughts fuzzy and tired. She grunted again, an annoyed and tired grunt, aimed at her failure to clear her head and get herself moving in the morning. She could already feel the headache pressing at her temples. Maybe she was hungover?
She moved towards her bedside table and grabbed the silver flask that always sat there. The metal was icy cold from the temperature of the room, but at least the drink wouldn’t be lukewarm or tepid. Vodka was best on ice.
She took a big swig and felt the fire of the drink sear down her throat, scorching her tongue, making her stomach burn lowly. The chemical alcoholic taste sent a jolt through her nose and—hey, it probably cleared the sinuses up. It made her warmer, her whole body glowing like an ember. And the shock of pain and fumes and heat to her system woke her straight up. Plus, she knew from experience a little bit of liquor was always the best cure for a hangover.
Now that she’d had her morning coffee, she was awake, and clear-headed enough to start the rest of her day. Clear-headed enough to get dressed, at least.
Except why bother? Ran through her mind as she moved towards her wardrobe. Seriously. Why bother getting dressed? Who’s gonna see you today? Why should you put effort into a cool outfit when no one’s gonna see it?
But she didn’t want to stay in her pajamas all day long, either. That would be pretty boring.
“Well…there’s the grocery delivery guy. He’s like, what, 25? That’s still young enough to appreciate what I’m wearing.”
Yeah, but he’s not coming until tomorrow.
“He could get here a day early…”
She stared blankly at the doors of her armoire. Bother to put together a whole outfit just to not be seen by anyone, or lay around in her pajamas all day feeling lame?
In the end, she told herself that it was warmer to get dressed, and it was that and not desperation at all which prompted her to choose a black skirt, thick gray tights, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a big grey T-shirt. She looked pretty good in the mirror, even without applying her lipstick or eyeshadow. Not that anyone’s going to see it…
There was no point in being in her room anymore after she got dressed. Pretty much the only thing she did in there was sleep, and only sometimes. When she walked out the door and into the hallway, she knew she wouldn’t be back again until nightfall. What would be the point in staying in her room all day, when she had the whole house to herself?
Firstly, Hazel went to make breakfast. Her stomach was already empty and growling from a full 11-or-so hours without food. She didn’t know what breakfast would be yet, but she did know that cooking something would make the big frosty kitchen warm up, and probably start thawing out the living room too.
“Ah, crap. I probably should’ve started the fireplaces first, huh?” Hazel mumbled to herself as she ducked into the kitchen. Then the whole house could warm up while she cooked, and be nice and cozy by the time she was ready to eat. But it was snowing lightly outside, and the wood was in the shed, and she really didn’t feel like braving the freezing Alaskan air first thing in the morning. With a headache.
It’s not like the house didn’t have any central heating. But the big log cabin with huge windows got chilled easily, especially with only one small person inside. The fires were just…better. They were toastier and cozier, throwing out a homey warmth and a nice yellow glow. The crackling of the flames and spitting of the logs made for nice background noise in the otherwise silent cabin. The smell of the fire, the flicker of the light…That was all stuff you didn’t get with central heating.
Hazel made bacon and eggs, with a side of vodka-spiked coffee.
She spread out as she cooked, taking up the whole kitchen, just because she could. She fried both the eggs and the bacon at the same time, on the two side-by-side stoves, just because it was there. She used her father’s snazzy big-shot coffee maker for a high-end ristretto, then dumped a bunch of alcohol in it to ruin the taste. Black coffee and vodka. The bitterness made her tongue dry out, but she liked bitter tastes, and it definitely helped wake her up more. Same with the bacon grease that snapped back onto her arms and fingers out of the pan, leaving little red welts.
She sat at the counter while she waited for the bacon to crisp. The big strip of fancy marble-topped cabinets with all the stools in the front, all the constantly empty stools, so why the hell did they need 7 of them? Hazel occupied exactly one.
As she waited, she barely sipped her coffee, tilting the cup until the hot liquid just scarcely brushed her lips, sucking in mostly air and fumes, and then licking the taste off her lips. Every time she walked into her kitchen, she laughed. There was never a day in her life that she didn’t find it ridiculous. It was ridiculous how much money and effort her dads had sunk into this thing. By god, did it look like the definition of a ‘rich person’s kitchen’. Two stoves and two fridges, right next to each other. The big counter of stools for fancy guests. The richly stained wooden cabinets and generous amounts of carvings and moldings around the edges. It was fancy, yeah, most definitely. Fancy and useless. Why did they bother paying for all of this? It’s not like they ever had guests over to impress. No one saw the kitchen except the grocery delivery guy, who changed every couple months, and who Hazel’s parents didn’t even know. It’s not like they even used it. They barely ever lived here. The only person who got any use out of this damn kitchen was Hazel, a small tiny person in a huge kitchen with way too much stuff and too much space. So that’s why she spread out as much as she could.
She ate her bacon and eggs in the dining room, on their homey-but-fancy stained wood dining table, with the stuffed moose head staring her down from across the room. The dining room was the same as the kitchen. So many guest chairs, so much space, so much decorating, and only Hazel and the moose were here to see it. Her feet in their thin socks tapped idly against the icy wood floor.
After breakfast, she tossed her plates in the big sink. They had a fancy high-end dishwasher of their own, but Hazel didn’t eat off enough plates in one day to justify loading it up. It would be a lot simpler just to wash her own dishes by hand later. Which would be later, yes. Not only did she not feel like doing it now; she would be eating more later. She’d wash her dishes later that night, after her dinner and late-night snacks and everything else was done. It wouldn’t take long.
Which meant that the only thing left in her morning routine was to start the fireplaces up again.
The firewood sat in their little log shed, attached to the end of their deck. Inside, the wood was already cut, split, and stacked from the rare occasions on which Hazel’s dads were home and they could hire someone else to do it for them. There was more than enough for a few months, but Hazel had full permission to buy some from town, or hire someone to come cut more for her. And if worse came to worst, she knew how to use an ax.
It was only a short walk from the back door of the house to the shed, across their high wooden deck, past their pool and hot tub, looking out over the pine-filled tundra forest. But it was cold and it was snowing, so Hazel had to shrug on the pair of fur-lined rubber boots by the door, and pull on a thick downy overcoat. It wasn’t winter-cold out yet. If it was, she’d have had to put a scarf over her face before going out, because even the air she breathed could freeze her lungs. But in this spring weather, she only needed the barest of essentials: boots, coat, mittens.
The snow crunched lightly under her feet, almost drowned out by the heavy clunk of her boots against the wood of the deck. She left perfect imprints of her footsteps in the otherwise smooth carpet of snow. An impeccably sculpted stamp of ridges and falls, tracing one after another, one for every step she took up to the door of the shed. If she turned around, she could look behind her and see her tracks outlined in the snow, the swirling flakes coming down around them, stretching from where she had been to where she was now. That was something that she had always loved about snow. It stuck. If you walked through it, your footsteps would stay there. And if you lay down in it, the shape of your body would be there for days afterwards. An undeniable imprint of your existence, that remained even after you were gone, that you could look back on and know for certain—‘Yes, I was there.’
Her muffled footsteps softly crushed the snow underfoot, barely letting the wooden thunk of the deck under her soles be heard. She passed their closed-off, frozen swimming pool and shivered. Why did they even bother buying a swimming pool in Alaska? Heated or not.
The door to the shed wasn’t locked, but Hazel had to push against it with her shoulder to get the icy hinges to crack open. She and the snow both fell inward at the same time, into the stuffy wood-smelling gloom inside. The air was still cold, but stale, trapped behind the glass windows. The wind at least was cut off. Inside the shed there were lights—bare lightbulbs sticking down from the ceiling—but in the daylight like this, there was no point in turning them on.
Hazel wound her way through to the wood pile. She had to scoot past any number of abandoned tools and lawnmowers, rusted and discarded, kindred spirits waiting endlessly for her dads to come home and choose to work on their house again. The wood was inconveniently in the back. Hazel had to dig out piece after piece and toss it towards the door, so she could take heavy armfuls of it and load it into the wheelbarrow next to the shed, which she would then push towards the house, and then bring all the piles of wood into the house to fill the many fireplaces. The whole process took over an hour, and it was hard. The wood was heavy and Hazel was so small that she could only carry three pieces at a time. The splinters and grains stuck onto her mittens and threatened to pull them off. Occasionally, a sharp strong piece would pierce through the fabric and prick her palms. That was why she didn’t look forward to doing it first thing in the mornings.
But once it was done, it was done for the rest of the day. Then the house could be filled with homey crackling fires, spilling warmth and light and sound into the cabin. And she wouldn’t have to go out and get it in the middle of the night, or fall asleep with only the chill and silence of the air-vent heating. Besides, as inconvenient as it was, she didn’t really mind it all that much. It was something to do, anyway.
Though what came next was always her favorite.
After she had brought all the wood inside and stacked it in the living room, after her boots had tracked in snow all over the kitchen, after the floor was slick with melt, after she’d put the splintering logs in hearths in the living room and her bedroom and whatever other rooms of the house she thought she might use that day. After all that, then she got to light the fires.
However she felt like that day.
If she was bored, then slow and steady. Wadded up paper in the center, matches from the kitchen, light ‘em and toss ‘em, one after another. Blow and blow until it sparked up. Splinter the wood with her pocketknife if it got too resistant. She could draw it out and drag it and savor every second of getting it to go up in flames. Then the little tiny curls of yellow would pop up— almost cute, though she’d never admit it—and circle around the wood, growing and growing into a full fire. She’d feel the heat slowly warm up her face and melt her icy fingers. It would be hard work, and then a satisfying payoff.
Or if she was tired, she could swamp the whole thing in lighter fluid, use the big lighter off the mantle, and watch it explode right in front of her. It’d be easy and quick, an instant payoff, an instant rush of adrenaline snapping her awake, getting her heart beating faster, putting some excitement into her day. It would singe her eyebrows and scorch her vision. Maybe catch fire on the bearskin rug that she was kneeling on, and then she’d have to put that out, which would also be exciting. Anything could happen when you were playing with fire.
Fire was comforting, and warm, and dangerous, and exciting, and familiar. This time around, she lit it slowly, using paper and matches and kindling, savoring every moment of it. She drew it out and made it last as long as it could. It was her favorite activity of the day, lighting these fires. So why not let it go on as long as it possibly could? She used about 12 matches before she could breathe the fire to life, and a whole wad of old newspapers. It took a lot of huffing and puffing too. But eventually, she got it. And she enjoyed every second of getting there.
Once it was lit, she sat back on her heels and watched it. It was the fruits of her labor. She had done all that work, and this was her reward: to sit back, relax, and watch the fire. She let it warm her and the entire living room of the cabin. She let it bring in a wash of comfort and hominess. She closed her eyes and let the soothing crackle and sizzle of the flames. She could feel the glow waxing and waning on her face.
There, kneeling on the rug, she stayed for who knows how long. She didn’t keep track of the time. She simply stared straight ahead into the flames, watching them curl and dance around each other, watching the currents and tornadoes of fire rise and break, watching the glow of the embers pulse and recede like a beating heart—first dark red, then blue, then orange, then back again. She watched and made a note of every color that popped up. The normal reds and oranges and yellows, but the rare blues and greens and purples that only came up in thin strands toward the center. Those beautiful, exotic colors only came up in the hottest of fires. She’d built bonfires big enough to paint a portrait with them, but this was just a hearthfire. A homey, yellow, warm, orange, glowy hearthfire.
It just didn’t feel like home without it.
She really had no idea how long she stared into the fire. It was mesmerizing. She could easily watch it for hours and not get bored until the last ember blew out. It was better than any program on TV. But after a while, she did stand up and move on. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to do it. Nothing she could do around this house would be better than fire. What did she have to do here anyway? Books? Movies? TV? Video games? All boring and lame. Nothing as good as fire. But she left anyway, because some voice in her head said You can’t sit around in your living room all day and do nothing. Some voice in her head said What a waste of time that would be. How pathetic that would make you look.
And so she got up and moved away from her comfort to try and scratch out something else to do, just to give herself the illusion of being busy, the illusion of having hobbies and interests, the illusion of being interesting.
There wasn’t much to do in a log cabin on a snowy Alaskan day. She could go out, she supposed. Take a walk in the piney forest, freeze her fingers and her nose until they were red, leave her footprints across the ground and come back with snowflakes in her hair. Sometimes, when you walked out alone, the snow-covered trees and icy rocks were peaceful and quiet and nice. When it was snowed over like that, the entire forest turned silent. And in the silence, it was easy to pretend that you wanted to be alone. Easy to suppose that you had gone out for some peace and quiet, to get away from it all. Easy to imagine that this experience was better by itself. Easy to think that you were the only one left alive in the entire world, and so it was okay that you were walking by yourself.
She could do that.
She would probably feel better if she did that.
She would definitely feel better if she did that.
It was cold outside. Not quite freezing, but still. The wind had been icy against her cheeks when she was outside earlier, and that was only for a few minutes. Besides, she’d have to get all dressed up in snowclothes again. She’d look like a fat, waddling penguin out there. There were so many layers to put on. She’d just be shivering the whole time. She’d track snow in and then all of her warm clothes would be wet. She’d have to leave the glowing fires behind. She’d have to get out of these blankets and this warm air and her comfy clothes and—
For a brief second, the image glamorized her. She, out in the woods, the snow and ice forming a beautiful picturesque halo behind her. She, a dark spot in the white, noticeable and pretty. She, for a moment, comfortable and contented in the loneliness. For a moment, she allowed herself to see it, and this almost got her to her feet.
But then she remembered again the clothes, the cold, the melted snow on the floor…And she stayed put.
It was only one day, after all, right? How bad could skipping one day be?
Instead, she would just stay warm and comfortable in the house. There would be plenty to do inside, right?
It was just a matter of finding it.
It had to be here somewhere. Hidden behind books or in cabinets. This was a big house, a vacation house. It couldn’t be completely devoid of fun. A little swig of vodka would help her look and clear her head.
For a couple of hours, she read. If she started fresh, she could read for about two hours before she started to really get restless. Any time she picked up a book again after that, though, she’d be hard-pressed to make it 20 minutes. Still, that knocked out two hours of her morning. And she stretched it a little, making a big deal of picking out the perfect book from their big library. She settled on an exciting travel book—Every Death on Mount Everest. Probably her dads had harbored some pipe dream about doing that someday. They certainly hadn’t told her about it.
For two hours, she was in Everest. Hidden in the snow in Nepal, a freezing terrain that was comfortable and familiar for her. She did better than anyone else in the book. She didn’t make the same mistakes. She kept a cooler head on her shoulders. She didn’t panic. She knew the cold, and she knew how to handle it. She knew ice. And in this scenario, she was an experienced climber, so she’d know exactly what to do. And she would do it better than anyone else, and she wouldn’t die. She’d climb the slopes herself, but she’d meet people there. People who were tough like her, cold like her, into climbing like she was (at least in this book). They’d make friends as they went up, helping each other through injuries and crevices. And by the time they got their 20 minutes at the top of the world, they’d be best friends with a bond that no one else could possibly imagine. She’d go through every day climbing over challenges and hardships, come back bruised and battered and cut, and be satisfied with it. With everything. Then when she got back, she’d be known as the first Alaskan girl to climb Everest. (Probably, right? That seemed pretty specific. Probably she would be the first.) And they would write newspaper articles about her. She’d have climbing friends. People to go on similar adventures with. Yeah, that seemed plausible. She’d become a climber, and totally envelop her future in that. It wasn’t too late. She could turn her whole life around and completely devote herself to mountain climbing, about which she knew nothing, and then that would be her future.
And that was pretty nice, for a couple hours anyway.
But it still would’ve been better to do something else.
It was possible to stretch TV out a long time. Episodes of a series really blended together well. Hours could pass in a blur, from one 20-minute section to the next. The only problem was that she had watched everything in the world that was worth watching…So it wasn’t as enthralling or exciting as it used to be. No easy all-day marathons. But after a couple episodes, you could play a movie too. That would feel like a different activity, like a change of pace. You could kill another two hours pretending to be somebody else who was actually alive.
Then she would plug her laptop into the TV and watch someone else play video games for a long time. So that way it would feel different when she booted up her game systems. There were a lot of solo games on her consoles, but she didn’t feel like playing any of those today. Instead, she switched to online multiplayer games—Call of Duty, Player Unknown’s Battle Grounds, Diablo—anything with multiplayer and voicechat. It wasn’t like she was super into shooter games. She wasn’t super into video games in general. But these were the ones she felt like playing right now. Team games were fun. Playing with other people was fun.
She won some, she lost some. Sometimes her teammates were little annoying 12-year-old boys, who bragged endlessly about their in-game stats and tried to show off their cool guns, only to end up getting killed over it. Sometimes her teammates were obnoxious older guys who thought they were better than everyone, who yelled at her for being a girl, and blamed her whenever they lost. Sometimes, they just tried to very obviously show off and hit on her. She didn’t care what annoying or rude things they did in front of her. She kept the voicechat on and she kept playing.
All of that killed a few hours. Well—it felt like a few hours. Actually, it ate up the entire day. But it only felt like three hours. It was funny, how all those people talked about ‘time flies when you’re having fun’, as if boredom would make the hours drag on longer and longer. Maybe that was true if you were only bored because you were waiting to do something else. But if you had nothing. If you were just bored. Time flew by like it was nothing. Hour after hour, waiting for something to change, waiting for something to interest you, and then realizing that your whole day had passed and not once had you had fun. Not once had you even noticed. Not once did it feel like there was any point to having today at all, or that anything you did would be worth it tomorrow.
It went by in a blink, and she didn’t even notice. When she got hungry enough for dinner and shut off the TV, the past 5 hours melted away before her eyes, receding into a background of blurred and fading memories, already starting to feel like they weren’t real and had never happened. Same as yesterday, same as today, same as tomorrow. And nothing changed for all that she did. When she finished, it went back to being the same, and so it felt like she had done absolutely nothing at all.
But anyway, dwelling on that stuff wouldn’t make it any less boring or weird. She was hungry enough to cook now, and it was getting late enough to be an acceptable time for dinner, so…she would go make dinner.
Back to the fancy empty kitchen. Back to the two stoves and two fridges. There really wasn’t much left in the way of cooking. The grocery guy was coming tomorrow, so they were pretty low on ingredients right now. Most things she had either already eaten or already thrown out. But she cobbled herself together a meal of country fried steak and mashed potatoes, which wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow, the grocery guy would come, and then she would have good food again.
And maybe someone to talk to for half an hour.
No, no. She shook the thought away. “Don’t think that. You’re not that desperate.”
Her voice filled the new silence of the cabin. The silence that she had been drowning out all day since this morning, skirting around it with the TV speakers turned up and headphones blasting music and artificial voices into her ears. Now that the screen was off, so was the noise. The house emptied rapidly. It quickly froze over, turning weak and airy and unreal. A stifling, ringing silence that made her eyes glassy, that made her vision shimmer slightly, that made the three-dimensional shapes of the dining room blur into a clear but watery 2D picture.
“I mean, this was a pretty good dinner, for what I had to work with.” She shrugged. Her voice rang through the wooden house and abruptly snapped it back to being real. Put it back into context.
She stood up and went to wash the day’s dishes. “Seriously, I hope he brings everything that I ordered though.” The water ran loud and hot over her hands, which was a nice contrast to the chilling air all around. “It’d suck not to have potato chips for another week.”
It wouldn’t really, not that much. But…
“And it would be really nice if we could have a woodshed that’s actually attached to the house so I didn’t have to go out into the cold every day.”
She didn’t really mind it. She liked the snow. But…
“And I’m seriously sick of those 12-year-old’s in Call of Duty. Doesn’t anyone who’s my age play that game? Those little kids are so annoying. Constantly trying to show off and getting themselves killed. But what’s worse are the creepy older guys. Who’s still playing Call of Duty at 30? Seriously? Get a life. And just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t play games. The fuck kind of stupid logic is that? How do people still think like that in this century? It’s not my fault we lost the mission. It was just bad RNG.” She shook her head and talked herself through the task of washing and drying the dishes. This would not be her last meal of the night, but from now on it would be snacks, and she wouldn’t need dishes for those.
Now it was night-time. Solidly night-time. Like, 8 PM night-time. The sun outside the windows was still shining wanly over the snowscape, but it was night now. Hazel wanted it to be dark. She wanted it to be dark and cozy so the glow of the fire would be nicer, would be more noticeable. There were blackout curtains all over the house, and one by one she pulled them shut until darkness surrounded her.
In the inky blackness, she sat down on the living room couch again. The fire crackled and spit. Orange tongues of flame licked up the walls and on her lap—a throbbing steady glow.
The age-old question. The plaguing, annoying, irritating, itching, constant question. What now?
It was night-time. She could watch a movie.
But she was so sick of watching movies. The idea of putting on another movie made her feel like she was wearing a straight jacket.
She could play more games.
She was way too frustrated for that. Way too frustrated of the same never-changing shooters and the same annoying detached voices and the same losses over and over and over, on something that she never cared about to begin with.
She could read a book.
But she’d read so much today that her tongue was already stuffy with it, and the words blurred on the page before her eyes and filled her mouth with cotton.
It was night-time. The day was ending. Had she really not gotten to do anything fun or interesting all day? And was there not a single other thing to amuse her tonight, at all? She stared into the fire, letting her eyes melt away into the unfathomable twists and curls of the flames.
Well. When in doubt, there was always such a thing as a ‘fun elixir’. That would definitely make the hours fly by. It would at least loosen her up enough so that she could do one of the many boring repeat activities available.
The flask had been in her skirt pocket all day, but it was still cool to the touch when she grabbed it. The cold Alaskan air stuck to the metal, numbing her fingers as she gripped it tightly and passed it to her lips.
The blueberry vodka was tangy, sweet, and strong. It sent fire down her throat, up her nose, and into her belly. That should put a jolt of energy and excitement back into things. But that wasn’t all she was looking for. She gulped down draught after draught, ignoring the choking fumes and the burning in her throat. She wanted to get drunk, really and truly drunk, because that would be fun. Or at least funny.
She drank quick and deep until the flask was empty, then she sat down and stared at the fire and waited.
She didn’t know how long it took, because she wasn’t watching the clock. All she knew was that eventually the fire began to twist and blue in front of her eyes even more than it usually did. And she started to feel wobbly, and giggly, and full of energy. She stumbled over to the lights and turned them on.
“Why’s it so dark in here? Way to be depressing.” She shook her head as the cabin illuminated around her. “That’s better.” At least now she wouldn’t trip and fall on her face if she tried to walk.
She turned on the TV to some Twitch streamer and let it play. She didn’t watch. She didn’t pay attention. The volume was just there to have another voice resonating through the wooden walls. She knew she didn’t want to be lonely, and the drinking gave her the courage to admit it. As for what she was actually going to do, she plugged her phone into the stereo and put her music on shuffle.
Dancing was fun. Especially when you were drunk. Dancing and drunk made a good combo, right? Lots of people thought so. Of course, it was always better with other people, but if you didn’t have other people, then this was the next best thing.
Being drunk made it easier to shake her ass with no shame. Playing her favorites: Green Day, Weathers, Fall Out Boy, The Killers—and then jerking and jumping and thrashing around the living room in movements that only a drunk person would call ‘dancing’. It was fun. It was an aching kind of fun. Each song took her away—took her to a smoke-filled party in someone’s shoddy trailer, took her to an abandoned lot on a hot summer day, took her to a fire beneath a graffiti’d bridge. For three to five minutes she’d be out somewhere else, doing something else, with other fun people whose unknown faces blurred before her. She didn’t know them yet, but she would, and it would happen. And then the song would end and she would realize with a bleeding, hollow pain that she wasn’t under a bridge or in a vacant lot or at someone’s house. She wasn’t doing anything fun. She was just wishing for it, alone in her own house, doing absolutely nothing.
Another bottle of vodka was opened. It joined old bottles from days before, their discarded shells clanking and clattering against each other on the table and on the floor. She guzzled as much as she possibly could, breaking between each song to toss the bottle behind her lips. The dancing made her thirsty and so she drank. She wanted the nostalgia of the songs and not the pain, so she drank.
“How can you be nostalgic for something that you’ve never done?”
She knocked into the coffee table. She kicked fallen throw pillows across the room.
“Man, I wish I had a pet. They could at least give me a dog or something.” She laughed, addressing the streamer on TV, snickering when he said something back.
Eventually she stopped dancing, but she couldn’t remember why, or exactly what had led to her decision to stop. All she knew was that she was standing in front of the TV, cramming chips down her throat as fast as she could. The salt tasted delicious and stung the inside of her mouth. She was watching the streamer, and she just then realized what game he was actually playing, and it just now caught up to her that she had been watching him, and kind of paying attention, and so now that he was losing, that was definitely disappointing, right?
She found herself sick to her stomach, in the bathroom splashing water into her face. The coldness of it shocked her awake for just a moment. Her throat was sore, but was that from the drinking, or had she thrown up?
She was shivering. Freezing cold and shivering. Her clothes were soaked. She was in the bathtub, full to the brim with cold water, sloshing over the sides every time she moved. She thought it’s a good thing I woke up before I went outside like this.
For a brief moment, she was standing on the porch in total darkness, watching the snow blink down with the stars, landing on her wet clothes that were quickly turning stiff with ice. But that must’ve been a dream, because it didn’t get dark at all these days.
She was crashing through the kitchen, falling all over herself, trying to find where the hell anymore alcohol was. Where had she put it? God knows she was the only one who would’ve hid it somewhere. Her dads didn’t even bother to buy alcohol to keep here anymore.
Tomorrow was grocery day. Tomorrow was phone call day. Tomorrow her dads were supposed to do their weekly phone call. Tomorrow she had something interesting to do, even if it wasn’t fun. Tomorrow she would itchily wait all day looking forward to the phonecall. Tomorrow the rest of her day would burn blearily through until then, fast and boring. And tomorrow the phone call wouldn’t come. It would be delayed, it would be the next day, it would be the day after that. Because that’s how it usually happened, or at least sometimes happened, and always only on the days when she needed it most.
The sink was full and she plunged her whole head into it, drinking deeply. Was it full of water or alcohol? There were too many fumes on the air to know. It had to be water though. She wouldn’t have just wasted that much alcohol, probably.
That would be the last thing that she would remember. Her next moment of consciousness would be waking up tomorrow morning, to another headache and another overslept day. Her brain would skip over the rest. She wouldn’t remember the rest of what she did that night—not that she couldn’t fill in the holes based on the scant memories she had, and the mess she had left. She wouldn’t remember getting tired and slogging and falling up the stairs to her room, then passing out in her bed, leaving the fires to burn on all night long. The lights were still on, but that wasn’t the end of the world. The fires would sing her to sleep with their crackles and their comforting glow and their warmth.
And tomorrow—tomorrow would be better, definitely. For sure. At least a little. Tomorrow was grocery day. Tomorrow was phone call day. And then after that…All she had to do was get through the rest of the week, like this, and it would be phone call day again. Which wouldn’t be fun, but it wouldn’t kill her. And if she had more alcohol, well, she could make it go by without even realizing. And tomorrow she could light another fire. And maybe one after that, and one after that, and one after that. And all the days she had left until…until…
Everybody who planned to get away with murder or who tried to cover up someone else's murder also tried to kill their whole class because, you know, that's what happenes if people vote wrong in a trial. They all die. All of them. (K1-B0 is included because he was going to blow up his entire class and that time it wasn't just a lie and a bunch of fireworks tied to a truck). And before you say "but they all had motives!!!!!" I think "all my classmates are terrorists and if we survive then we might destroy the world" counts as a motive.
I'm not saying that all these characters are "the most evil danganronpa characters", I'm saying that there's a definite double standard going on and people should be allowed to decide for themselves if a character is "redeemable" or not.
Also if you argue with me about this at all then you will be insta-blocked :)
Sup? Out of curiosity, what’s your opinion of Yasuhiro?
Honestly, I don't really have much of an opinion on him. I didn't pay much attention to him during the game because he didn't really interest me. I think he's dumb, boring, and pretty annoying. It's not like I actively dislike, but he's definitely not a character I think about or would choose to spend time on.
So grateful to my sister for letting me stay with her during the holidays. I can't think of a better place to spend Christmas than a luxury cabin in a resort, meeting her cool nature guide friends and chilling in a hot tub. If I wasn't sick (again), I would've stayed much longer!
I drew all of my characters in swimsuits! (Or...whatever they would wear when swimming.) This is going to be part of a series where I draw them all in various alternate outfits.
