Alright…! Here comes a massive post-game infodump…!
First up is a link to the app! Some things like personal OOC information and the execution prompt were removed. (The execution was very similar to the one used in-game, but it's cut due to some triggering elements that were removed or downplayed in the final version.)
Next is some information about an early-game history that never got solved: Do you recall the brief confusion over "Jaejin" having old bruises on his shoulder? That was Kenichi's doing, and completely unrelated to Jaejin's later death.
One of the first items Kenichi received from the Monomachine was Peko Pekoyama's shinai, which he carried around in the first few weeks for his own protection. Kenichi encountered Jaejin – in reality Minoru Kawaguchi – in the arcade room of In Regis Decretum. He started questioning him about the killing game that had been broadcast all over Japan, particularly about the deaths of two students: Fumiko Wakahisa and Mimi Arakaki, icons in the culinary industry.
I forgot the exact reasoning for what happened next, but the gist of it was that not only were Jaejin's answers unsatisfactory (giving a very barebones "yeah they died" response and generally being guarded about what he knew), but as they kept talking Kenichi only grew more and more suspicious of him, already stirred up by what Monobear had said about him earlier. This hit a breaking point and turned into a physical confrontation, and Kenichi lashed out in perceived self-defense, striking Jaejin several times with the shinai before running away. Kenichi would not see him again until his corpse was unearthed some days later.
The shinai spent most of the game hidden behind Kenichi's dresser, lined with cracks that hinted that it had been used with excessive force. Despite being somewhat easy to find, few people knew he even had a shinai, and even fewer had taken it out of the sheath and found out it was damaged.
Aside from that, Kenichi's story was more or less all revealed in chapters 3 and 4 – neglectful biological parents, a near-death experience, and an urgent adoption by his grandparents to keep him in the family. Cooking became his solace, his outlet for all the loneliness and boredom and frustration he lived through as a child and even in his adolescent years. (This does mean he has practically no other outlet once the events of chapter 4 make working in a kitchen an upsetting experience for him for many months.)
Post-game, though? He is an absolute wreck.
[ tw: Emetophobia, self-deprecation, heavy focus on PTSD and depression, mentions of drug use (not by any named character) ]
There is truth in the fact that he came out of the whole experience with someone he loves, but it doesn't erase all the ways his emotions (and by extension those of the people he cares about the most) were jerked around and exploited, including but not limited to:
The entire lie of his enrollment into Hope's Peak Academy, the false hope given to him and his family, and the stain it will leave on his career prospects when it inevitably comes out that he didn't even attend the school.
The outrage that after all this, it's Tobio and Haru, the perpetrators, that will still be able to move on and apparently even get to attend the academy if they so choose. (He doesn't care about their own pasts and traumas, their remorse and potentially barren futures – nothing they say or do will ever justify it to Kenichi. He sees it as them getting to go on to achieve all their dreams, leaving behind a broken list of candidates that will surely never be accepted now. In his mind, they actively sabotaged everyone's shot at the academy and inflicted unforgivable damage to them all, and they get away with everything while leaving behind everyone they've walked on top of to get there.)
The stress of having his past dragged out in increasingly invasive ways, from the scavenged box from his ex-parents' home, to the fog warping his perceptions of the world just to set off his cleithrophobia, and of course ending in his execution.
In particular, thanks to the execution he now associates certain loud mechanical noises with his "death", and even the sound of a food processor brings back severe faintness and nausea.
He still holds himself completely responsible for Daisuke's suffering during his own "death" and has come to doubt his own abilities as a chef. Which, y'know, is now further exacerbated by the revelation that he wasn't even a real student of the academy – candidacy alone means nothing to him, and once again he believes that the scandal of what happened means that the academy will never accept him now. (Not that he'd actually attend HPA after all this, but it's a matter of principle.)
Basically, Daisuke Fujiwara and Shion Tsuzuki are the only good things that Kenichi leaves the mansion with. He also leaves the mansion with a lot of bitterness and resentment towards the "class" as a whole (chiefly over the motive votes behind the scenes and over all of chapter 4's trial), some hot new trauma and insecurities (including a complete inability to cook and serve food to other people without having a lot of flashbacks to what he did to Daisuke), and an uncertain future where he can't see any employer ever taking him in now.
It's going to take years for Kenichi to heal from all this. Possibly a decade or two.
In the immediate weeks following their return to society, he goes back home to his parents – the ones in Hakodate, who might still have a slim chance of loving their failure of a child. Chances are, by now, that they already know something's gone horribly wrong. Their son loses all contact with them for months with no warning and no reason, and when they try to contact the academy itself to figure out what's going on, they're either rebuffed at every turn or, worse, told that Kenichi Kagata has no involvement whatsoever with the school.
(What does Hope's Peak Academy do in the aftermath of what happened, anyway? Considering what they've done time after time with every class that suffers, they're probably trying to cover this whole thing up, too. Not that they or their associates are actually at fault this time, of course, but under the circumstances they surely can't risk such a rumor turning into a scandal.)
(I imagine that no matter what they did, there are a lot of families of the "students" who figured out something was terribly wrong, whether or not they assumed the worst of the academy or any of the superpower organizations.)
Kenichi would have tried to hide the truth behind his disappearance in shame forever, if not for Osamu and Kazue mentioning that the school kept denying he was a student… Still, they do not force him to tell them everything. Their son is alive, and healthy, and safe. That's all they can ever ask for. For now, they just want him to stay home for a while – they're even more than happy to take in Daisuke, whom they warm up to very quickly.
The two of them probably spend months living there in Hakodate, just slowly trying to come to terms with it all. Kenichi keeps trying to bottle everything up and not show his pain to anyone – because he has to be strong so that Daisuke has someone to lean on. Because his parents have suffered enough in their lives and don't have to worry about their son's kidnapping on top of that.
The first big hint that he can't hide it all forever is when he tries to help his parents with dinner one day. The evening ends with him throwing up in the bathroom, the sound of a blender bringing him right back to the early morning in Kaze where he was sent to his death.
It's very difficult to keep hiding the truth from his parents after that. No one in the house gets any sleep until nearly three in the morning, when they're simply too exhausted to keep listening and talking and weeping. Until then, over the course of the night Kenichi admits to everything – the virtual reality, the killing game. The way he had accidentally killed the love of his life, and was executed for it in turn, and how until he was convinced it was all completely real until he finally awakened in a pod. The discovery that it was all a trap to begin with, the plot of two students preying on the dreams of prospective academy candidates. The revelation that everything Kenichi Kagata had ever done was for nothing.
No one is ready to let him accept that last part, and his parents try again and again to remind him that it hasn't changed how they're so goddamn proud of him. They might not ever be able to truly understand how he feels after all this, but they do know that none of this was his fault, and they don't need him to be a Hope's Peak graduate to be proud of him – they loved him even before the letter came, and they'll always love him.
There is no single grand epiphany that erases Kenichi's newly-formed self-doubt – he'll nod and smile and thank everyone for their words, but now and then he'll slip back into that abyss of hopelessness. Any progress is welcome, however, and slowly but surely life starts to improve: He's happier for longer periods of time, and he's regaining confidence in old tasks. Yes, even cooking, ever though for a while he prefers to take the role of assistant or adviser.
Kenichi still tries to help those who survived that hell with him, though there are very few people he's willing to make the first move for. Daisuke has a family too, after all, but reestablishing contact with them is so much more awkward and painful. It takes a long time before Daisuke is ready to visit them, and that first meeting is not without conflict. Nor is the second one. Bit by bit, though, he starts to rebuild everything he ruined before he left, and every time he goes back to his old home, he brings Kenichi along so that at least one person can keep him grounded. On other occasions, the two of them go out to visit Shion and make sure she's doing alright, too. There are probably more than a few outings the three of them take together, even if it's just to sit together at a park and take a moment to remember that they're going to be okay.
(There's a lot that can be said about Kenichi and Shion; after all, she had kept her faith in him to the very last second, and that meant more than words can express. It's a little more complex than that, but…well, the full explanation is just going to have to be a story for another day. For now, suffice it to say that Kenichi was willing to give Shion another chance after what happened in the trial, and in the end she is one of the few people from the killing game that he has unconditional trust for.)
In a year's time, Kenichi will make an attempt to return to the culinary industry, but it will be a troubled return. His connections have started to decay in his absence, and worse still is the confusion over just why he disappeared in the first place – is he or is he not a student of Hope's Peak Academy? And if not, why did he claim he was selected as a student? Telling Kazue and Osamu Kagata about the kidnapping is one thing, but as always, Kenichi is uncomfortable telling acquaintances and total strangers about his traumas. It always just leads into more questions, always invading his life with no regard for his personal comfort. Who'd even believe the tall tale of simulations and mass abductions, anyway? They'll probe and probe and call him a liar at the end anyway.
And so, Kenichi has no choice but to start from the bottom up once again. He doesn't even have the child prodigy angle to give him a jumpstart anymore. Sure, once in a while he can still get exposure on television shows, just as he had done before, but his career in professional restaurants is stagnate, if not dead. Kenichi tries his best to quell his anxieties as best as he can, and to an extent it works, but his concentration is slipping and he's making more mistakes than he used to make years ago and he can just feel himself heading towards a burnout quickly.
He remembers the snide remarks that adults made back when he was younger – he's a talentless child, a hack that only gets by on gimmicks instead of being a real chef. He'll never survive the real world once he stops being cute and young and marketable.
And upon remembering it all, the progress he's made in recovery begins to slide back down the spiral. Kenichi realizes that he cannot keep this up forever, and after about fourteen months of struggling to regain his old reputation, after being sent home because a burned sauce is the final straw that sends him into a complete emotional breakdown – he quits his job and leaves the kitchen once again, knowing this may have been his last chance.
(Professional chefs are already at-risk for burning out just from their working environment alone, and Kenichi's known that for years. He's grown up hearing stories about the addictions, the wear and tear on the joints, and the loss of any familial connections. Kenichi has enough issues as it is with PTSD and depression, thank you, and he's not going put his health at any additional risk. Not anymore.)
What happens to Kenichi after this is more up in the air, and dependent on what decisions Daisuke makes concerning his own career and family. Whatever happens, though, the two of them are intertwined now, walking on the same path – they'll move into their own apartment, and eventually their own house, and one day Kenichi Kagata will become Kenichi Fujiwara.
(The one upside of life slowing down is that they don't have to account for media attention and a massive guest list, and they can keep the invitations limited to family and friends. Shion still lavishes them in gifts more expensive than their entire net worth; Ai still has to intervene and call Kenichi away to give him an excuse to escape from Nori's unwanted attention; Toshi and Momoko still end up trying to cut their own extra cake slices and causing a bit of a mess at the table, but Kenichi still hugs them both and subtly glares at anyone who dares scold his kid siblings; and Daisuke still frets over everything at the venue going as planned – geez, let someone else take care of the logistics for a while, it's your wedding!)
They'll spend years agonizing over the decision to adopt a child, because what if they're wrong about it all, what if they can't be good fathers after all they've been through? They both remember day after day of absent parents, and the strain it put on everyone. Daisuke remembers a father who was so exhausted by his job that he couldn't spend enough time with the family he worked so hard to support, until the moment his heart finally gave out and he died still holding a briefcase and still dressed in a suit – Kenichi remembers a mother that used work as an excuse to stay away from the dirty and "shameful" house she did nothing to maintain, and a father who was abandoned to sink deeper into his illnesses, in turn abandoning his son to fend for himself.
They start chipping away at the paperwork and interviews, though. Every passed inspection is a little more reassurance that maybe they could be parents, some day. And one day, that thought becomes a reality. One day they get a call that we have a potential match and they go visit a young boy no older than two and by the time they're on their way home they're excitedly whispering that this could be it. There are more visits and more interviews, and after months the final approval is given and they can bring their son home for the first time – and there's some chuckling over the fact that his name is Kensuke but they refuse to get his name changed because they love him as he is now. Even through the difficulties of balancing work and family, it isn't long before they can't imagine a life without him.
(Kazue and Osamu live just long enough to meet their newest grandchild – great-grandchild, if you look at it a certain way. Though neither of them has more than a few more years left in this world, they'll pass on without a single regret. There is no question in their mind that Kenichi will be happy.)
And that's where they end up, eventually: A house, a grumpy old cat that sheds twice his weight in fluff, and a bright-eyed son who will never be forced to grow up with an absent parent. Kenichi changes his career goals a bit – he might not land anything as prestigious as the head chef of a Michelin Star restaurant, but at least wherever he ends up, he won't have to struggle with more pressure than he can live with. Kenichi thrives best in the spotlight, but he'll learn that he doesn't need to ruin himself physically and psychology just to be worthy of attention and love.
It'll take decades to get to that point, but he'll be alright in the end. Not necessarily better than he would have been had his life not been derailed but… Well, twenty years down the road, he won't be able to imagine anything else.
Finally slams in a pre-execution relationships update well into Week 5.
Warning: Kenichi is very, very hostile and makes assumptions and accusations towards some characters. These do not reflect my views. i am so sorry, i love you all and i love your characters ;-; please stop kenichi kagata
(This update doesn’t include any Week 5 info, including Ri’s death and the merge!)
Not even twelve hours since the merge and I’m already sinning with weird Doubt Academy dreams.
The short version was that the time hoops went haywire a second time, and then began to gradually spit out people from old roleplaying games*. And they were here to stay, and had partly joined the murdergames, although I’m not sure if they themselves could get murderer credits. Certainly their deaths would count for others, though.
* Supposedly only Doubt Academy, but the intro post for this also included two characters from a really really really old game I was in, that had nothing to do with DROCs and everything to do with too many people trying to be edgy in a canon that didn’t need it. (yes it’s That One RP i’ve talked about before to some people.) Mostly I was just impressed that the mods put in enough effort to go that far back into our histories to bring back characters from our pasts.
I think the whole situation ended with Ayako Itou murdering a bunch of people, including her now-ex-boyfriend, and also their child turning out to be a younger version of my SHSL Rollerskate Waiter. Also all her post titles came from JubyPhonic’s translation of Outer Science.
I’m Asia! I play Kenichi Kagata, who accidentally killed his boyfriend and now rests in literal pieces! mfw my character dies right before the merge :^)
I’ll be following everyone to keep track of normdays threads and the like! You aren’t obligated to follow back, though; if it matters, I’ll probably be pretty quiet on the dash now that my trash boy has been destroyed.
EDIT: I am in Tsuchi OOC chat, though, so hit me up if you need anything!
i was looking through a folder for unrelated songs and such and somehow i found this old thing i made when we all heard that Blingee was closing (tho they changed their minds later)
I drew this a lil while ago to make up for the fact that my 3DS isn’t here with me and thus I couldn’t dress my characters up to make Kensuke ACNL pictures.
While I’m still working out some of the details of how the fog will affect Kenichi and those around them, I definitely suggest talking to me first so I can give warnings and explain what might happen when trying to talk to him! There’ll be unreality and dissociation in general, especially once the fog has been settled in for a while, but there’s more than that that will come up much sooner.
(Which brings me to my second point, that Kenichi will be spending the first day almost exclusively in the spa to try and avoid this as long as possible! Afterward it won’t really matter where he is and he’ll probably move back into Kaze. Maybe.)
