Berserkers are loud. Zhongshan are quiet. The rest of the vampires and witches leave Anish a little more on edge than he normally is. He finds Yuisa and hands her a thin flute of champagne from the bar. "It's too stuffy in here for me." It reminds him too much of family parties, company get-togethers, but with way more stakes at play.
But there's at least one plus side here, the attention isn't on them. It's all about that damn jewelry - he thinks. "What's the plan? I can go see about getting in with some of the Norse ones, if you think it'll help. Harford's.. being loud again." / @mangemaw
Summary: In a world where Yui survives, does the Tragedy change?
for @danggirlronpa's Femslash February event!
Rating: T.
AO3
Yui Samidare still remembers the events leading up to the moment she died.
One of her girlfriend’s best friends asked the two of them to look into certain mysteries surrounding Hope’s Peak. Her girlfriend, Chisa, took on a teaching internship that quickly became a full role so that she could do some light digging, with the understanding that if things got too dangerous, Yui would be called in. Of course, Yui wasn’t unknown to the headmaster the way that Chisa herself was, which meant Chisa could get in deeper than Yui ever could. Still – there wasn’t much to see that they hadn’t already, and even Chisa (and her best friend’s boyfriend) weren’t able to find much.
Then, a few months before the end of the school year, one of Chisa’s students, Chiaki Nanami, hired Yui to look into a missing person’s case. A fellow student (from the Reserve Course, oddly enough) disappeared halfway through the school year, shortly after the murders of two of the other students. (Yui wanted to ask Kyoko to look into those, but she knew better. Besides, the school covered all of that up, and any attempt from a real detective wanting to poke their nose into things…. Well.)
Yui finally decided to pull some strings and step into her own internship, presiding over Kyoko’s class.
She…wasn’t very good at it.
But they were good kids, all of them. A little troublesome at times, often at odds with one another, more than a few egos – but that’s Hope’s Peak! She’d graduated from here, too, after all. She knew what it was like! And every single one of them knew about her relationship with Chisa, a fair few of them guessed at her semi-familial relationship with Kyoko, and two of them in particular kept giving her advice about ways she could propose. One of those was harmless, but the other….
Junko Enoshima always felt familiar to her, but she was never able to put her finger on why.
Now she knows.
When Mikan disappeared – no, not disappeared, simply did not show up to class for multiple days – Yui searched for her, too. This was easier; people had seen Mikan much more recently than they’d seen Hajime, and all routes to Hajime pointed towards Hope’s Peak in a way that seemed…bad. (Kyoko helped look for him. Then her father asked her to look for someone named Izuru, and Kyoko asked Yui to join her – not because Kyoko wasn’t a good enough detective in her own right, but because disappearances and missing persons was Yui’s specialty. Kyoko eventually got distracted with the murders of the student council members, and Yui found—
Sometimes, it feels like Junko is lying to her.)
Yui found Mikan. She found Mikan and Hajime and Izuru because Hajime and Izuru were one and the same, and she has always been a sacrificial lamb for someone else’s slaughter, so of course, it would be that way, too, when she sent the other students away and stayed behind.
But Junko didn’t attack her. Just tilted her head to one side and murmured, “Yui onii-sama, I believe you still owe me a kiss.”
Now she knows.
~
Chiaki dies to break her classmates.
But Chisa’s death would not break Yui in the same way that Yui’s death would not break Chisa.
It’s the impossible choices that break Yui. She cannot save anyone, not even Junko herself, but she’ll try. Because Junko could be good. Lico could be good. She’d seen it. Maybe, if she’d done a little better, then Junko – then Lico—
Yui knows and says nothing, and the saying nothing breaks her.
Chisa knows that something is wrong that Yui won’t say, and that unspoken thing between them breaks them both.
When Yui forgets everything in the Killing Game that Junko starts, she remembers three people: Kyoko, Lico, and Chisa. She doesn’t know why she remembers them. The new headmaster tells her to kill someone to save them. (Yui is a sacrificial lamb. She dies instead, unaware just how much of this Game was her design.)
He flicks the half-chewed toothpick between his fingers towards the ground. Without thinking about it, he's going to his pockets to fish for a piece of gum. Something to work his teeth into while he thinks about how to approach this particular little problem. ..or large, rather, considering the size of the woman.
They were somewhere neutral, out of Cartel territory, which was just fine by him -- Made for easier negotiations. He plopped down onto the seat next to Yuisa, all limbs and easy smile. "Would say I've gotta bone t'pick with ya, but.. we both know why we're here, eh?" He thumbs his noses, chews the gum. "Heard you were the one that did a lil' damage to m'boys."
[yuisa_0uchae] hello this is yuisa.!!
thank you for following me and waiting for me!!! you all must be really suprised...
i'm so happy i was able to meet you as yuisa and though the time we spent together was short i'll never forget the happiness i received!!! i plan on showing showing you a better side so i'll be thankful if you give me a lot of love in the future!!! i hope you always take care, stay healthy, and laugh a lot ☺️ thank you i love you 😘
Kyoko tilts her head back and looks directly into Yui’s eyes. She’s grown in the years they’ve known each other; she doesn’t need to tilt her head back any longer; she could just meet Yui’s eyes, but she doesn’t. Acting like this, there’s a bit of obstinateness, stubbornness. Like Kyoko knows best, when she doesn’t.
(Or maybe she does.)
“I’m not going in there without you. Not with him.”
Over a year of study at Hope’s Peak, and Kyoko is no closer to her father than she was when she started. Yui had hoped that the close proximity at least would help things along, and she’d told Kyoko multiple times throughout to give him a chance, but….
Well, who can argue with why should I give him a chance when he didn’t give me one?
And it’s not like Yui doesn’t understand being abandoned by her parents. After her sister’s death, she practically stopped existing, as far as her parents were concerned. They barely acknowledged her presence with all of their fighting, and the boarding school where she’d gone for middle and high school was a peaceful reprieve. She’s certain they’d forgotten her while she was there.
That’s not the same.
“Kyoko, if you don’t go, you’ll die.”
“And you won’t?”
There’s no weight of emotion in Kyoko’s voice. She’s not being overcome by anything; she’s simply pointing out the logic of the situation. And to be fair, she’s not wrong. If Kyoko is at risk in the world marred by the Tragedy, then Yui is, too. It doesn’t matter that Yui’s older than she is; the Tragedy affects all of them equally: young, old, male, female, and everything in-between.
But that’s not the point.
“They are offering this chance to you and your friends—”
“Yui Onee-sama is my friend.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
Yui reaches out to ruffle Kyoko’s long lavender ice hair, but Kyoko bats her hand out of the way. She remembers, when Kyoko was younger, when they’d first met, how Kyoko kept her hair in matching braids, one on either side of her head. As she’d gotten older, she’d retired the braids but still woven at least one black ribbon through her hair, sometimes leaving her hair down and using the ribbon to hold it back out of her face, at other times tying her hair back so that she can think without having to worry about the distraction a single strand could cause. Her hands are still just as dainty and porcelain white as they were when they first met, just now she covers them with gloves whenever she works, refusing to contaminate the evidence with even a single fingerprint. (She’d gotten Yui ones to match with hers, but Yui doesn’t wear them very often. Her detective specialty isn’t quite as fastidious. It doesn’t matter that Kyoko doesn’t agree with her.)
A fond smile traces Yui’s lips, and she reaches around to ruffle Kyoko’s hair anyway.
“You’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going without you.”
Yui knows as Kyoko says it that it’s a lie. It isn’t a battle. Kyoko doesn’t want to go, but she will. She’ll hate every moment of it, but she’ll still go. It isn’t about friends or survival or everything going on outside, it’s—
“You have to take care of the mysteries in there,” Yui murmurs, “and I have to take care of the ones out here.”
“Yui Onee-sama is no good at—”
“Hey!” Yui props her hands on her hips and leans over Kyoko. This shouldn’t work, now that Kyoko’s grown taller, but somehow it still does. “I’ll have you know that I found that Izuru guy—”
“He got away again—”
“But I found him!” Yui’s gaze grows firm. “You couldn’t even do that.”
Kyoko pouts. Not like most people pout – it’s just a downcast of her eyes, an averted gaze, a slight pursing of her lips. At least she isn’t trying to change the subject now, as is her way when she wants to draw focus away from something she doesn’t like.
Not for the first few seconds, anyway.
“What if something happens?”
That’s not exactly what Kyoko means. She’s not putting words to the harder fears – What if you need me? What if something goes wrong? What if you die? But they’re all encased in that singular question, and they’re all valid.
Yui isn’t going to lie to her. She won’t say she’s going to be okay. Because she doesn’t know that she will. Something could happen. To either of them, maybe! And with Kyoko locked away, Yui won’t be able to help her either. Won’t be able to do anything.
(Maybe she could, if she were there, but—)
“You won’t need me. You’ve never needed me, Kyokyo.”
Kyoko’s lips purse in disgust, and her next words come out in a hiss. “Enoshima-san is a plague.”
“You like her.”
“I don’t.”
Yui brushes her fingers gently through Kyoko’s hair and tucks it back behind her ear. She notes when Kyoko blushes faintly and smiles – fond, knowing. “You’ll have Enoshima-san in there with you, and I’ll have Chi-chan out here with me.”
Don’t say we’ll be okay.
So Yui doesn’t say it. She only notes when Kyoko’s gaze drops. That’s the thing – Kyoko doesn’t cry. She’s never once seen her hurt enough to get to that point, but if she looks closely enough, she can see something like a tear curling at the corner of Kyoko’s eyes. That’s probably just her imagination, though.
She won’t say they’ll be okay, but she can say the next best thing.
“When you get out of there,” Yui says instead, “when the Tragedy is over, I’ll be right there. Waiting.”
Kyoko turns away from her, and her hair falls in front of her face. A curtain.
“I’ll make sure the world is cleaned up out here. So you can come back. Okay?”
“Yui Onee-sama will take a hundred years, and she still won’t clean everything up.”
Not without me.
“It’s a good thing I’ll have plenty of help, then!” Yui pushes a bright smile on her face as Kyoko turns to her. “There’s a whole group of us! Chi-chan and me and Munakata-san and Kimura-san and—”
“And I can’t join you?”
Yui’s smile falters. “If you’re here with me, who will take care of your classmates?”
Don’t say your dad sits on the tip of her lips, although Yui won’t say it. They’d fall into familiar banter then – the inadequacies of Kyoko’s father in the face of everything that is going on, specifically. He hadn’t investigated into anything himself; he’d hired Kyoko and Yui to do it for him, and although he’d fired Kyoko from the job, Chisa Yukizome found more in her investigation into the Steering Committee’s corruption than Jin Kirigiri had in the years he’d invested in the job. He was an utter failure of a man in all respects, and having him head up this measure….
“They’ll need you.”
Because Jin Kirigiri certainly wasn’t going to protect any of them.
“You’ll keep them safe. I know you will.” Yui leans forward. “You and Enoshima-san both.” She tries to smile. “Okay?”
Kyoko shakes her head once and looks up to meet Yui’s eyes once more. “No.”
Summary: Yui shouldn't be at Hope's Peak, but she is.
Which means she can learn how to clean with Chisa.
Or something like that.
For DR WLWeek 2024: Prompt Six: Happy Ending.
Fic Rating: T.
AO3
next fic
Hope’s Peak Academy.
A shining bastion of hope to the masses.
A school that seeks out its students based on a thinly defined concept they call Talent.
Unfortunately, the Talent they seek is not always what the student wants to do or be known for, but the prestige of being at such an academy, where every student goes on to fame and fortune and stability, at the very least, can be so appealing. More appealing than pursuing whatever they want when they want it. Besides, it’s just a few short years, and then—
Likely a lifetime of being locked into whatever their Talent is – whatever brought them to Hope’s Peak in the first place.
(So a bit like college, only with significantly less choice.)
Not that Yui Samidare is here for any of that.
If Yui’d told her parents she’d been scouted, they would have pressed her for those very reasons – fame, fortune, stability – but she doesn’t talk to them more often than not. They don’t know her day-to-day life; they don’t know her life at all. They wouldn’t understand. She wants to be – no, she is – a detective, but she would never be scouted for that. Even before meeting Kyoko, she knew that. She’s not great, but she’s trying, and for every person she helps, the world is a little bit brighter. A little bit more hopeful.
Yui Samidare seeds more hope in the world just through her simple acts of dedicated kindness than Hope’s Peak ever will through its desperate desire for control.
But we’re not talking about that.
(Not right now, anyway.)
We’re talking about Detective Yui Samidare, the Ultimate Leaper, who changed her mind on accepting the invitation to join Hope’s Peak not because she wanted fame or fortune or a possible future Olympics grab – leg strength she might have, but she’s not an athlete by any means – but because Kyoko’s father is here, because Kyoko’s father is choosing this stupid school over his daughter, and because Kyoko didn’t ask her to do any investigative work, but Yui’s going to do it anyway. She’s entangled with the Kirigiri family enough; why not go this one step further? It’s not like she’s going to die, or anything.
Yui Samidare, who stands in front of Hope’s Peak, shifts the strap of the backpack she’s wearing that none of the other students are, and presses forward.
~
Some Time Later.
Yui plops down on her mattress, arms splayed to either side of her, and lets out a huge huff as she stares up at her popcorn ceiling, backpack sliding down to the floor beside her bed. Hope’s Peak is both exactly what she thought it would be and nothing like she thought it would be. She’d imagined intensive classes covering everything under the sun, but there’s nothing of the sort, just free reign to do whatever she wants as long as she passes her exams – and they aren’t exams in the normal school sense of the word, just attempts to gauge improvement in her skill.
Her skill is leaping. How do you test improvement in that? Just jumping higher? Potentially making friends with one of the other Ultimates in athletics to…to what, exactly? Study the effects of leg strength under….
Ugh, she doesn’t even care.
Then the knock comes at her door, followed by the cheery call of “Housekeeping!”
This, at least, is almost exactly as Yui expected, but more so. As she pushes herself out of bed, she considers her belief that each class at Hope’s Peak must be tightknit, that in a school with so few students, everyone must know everyone else, even if only in passing. They recognize each other in the hallways – when they use hallways – and they’re familiar enough that unless someone keeps entirely to themselves (as Yui suspects Kyoko will do when she, too, is a student here (and she doesn’t even consider that Kyoko won’t be here (the idea that Lico might doesn’t even cross her mind)))—
Unless someone keeps to themselves, they’ll be so entrenched with everyone that they’ll naturally have friends, rivals, family.
And even if they do keep to themselves, it’s frequently on the students themselves to make sure that their dorms and meals and everything are perfect, provided there’s an Ultimate to cover that.
Which is why—
“Yukizome-senpai,” Yui says with a tired smile on her face as she opens her door. “I’m fine, really, you don’t need to—”
Chisa Yukizome, a girl who might be brighter than the sun itself, reaches up and boops the tip of Yui’s nose. “I know!” She props one hand on her hip, the other carrying a tub full of cleaning supplies. A peacock feather duster sticks its head just above her back, one thin white ribbon crossing her chest to hold it in place. “But you athletes tend to have the smelliest rooms.” She pokes her head into the room and sniffs twice.
“I’m not an athlete,” Yui says, wriggling her nose. “I’m just unnaturally good at jumping.” She glances over her shoulder to her desk, which is covered with papers related to her primary case. Sure, sure, she’s paired up with Kyoko once or twice since becoming a student here, but the Black Challenges seem to have quieted down (worrisome, but she doesn’t want to think about that right now) and Kyoko seems to be doing just fine on her own. Her primary case, of course, is focused instead on Kyoko’s father. Something at Hope’s Peak made him choose to stay here instead of with Kyoko; it has to be pretty big because she can’t imagine just leaving Kyoko behind.
But Yui can’t talk about any of that with Kyoko.
And she can’t talk about any of that with Chisa either.
“Unnaturally good doesn’t lead to being an Ultimate,” Chisa remarks. She places a hand on Yui’s arm and gently moves her to one side. “Besides,” she continues, “cleaning everyone’s dorm is kind of my thing.” After she sets the tub down on the floor in Yui’s room, she holds a timer aloft – just like the sort a coach might. “I’m speed-running things today. Hope I can beat my best score!”
“Ah.”
Yui glances over her shoulder, spins on one heel, and then faces Chisa again – or her back, while Chisa levels her hands on her hips and scans Yui’s not that dirty room. Disorganized and a bit chaotic, yes, but not dirty. (It’s impossible to have a dirty room here, in her opinion. Chisa’s around so frequently that she doesn’t have time for anything really gross to build up. Not! That it would!) Her lips press together. “Yukizome-senpai, you…want to speed-run cleaning my dorm?”
“Mmhm!” Chisa gives a firm nod. “How’d you like the organizing last time?”
“It was okay, I guess.” Yui rubs the back of her neck and lets the door shut behind her with a gentle click. To be quite honest, she hadn’t really needed everything organized, but it was interesting to see how Chisa’d chosen to arrange things. She moves to her desk and starts compiling all of her papers together. “Yukizome-senpai, do you really need to—”
“Chisa.”
“Hm?”
Chisa reaches over and places a hand on Yui’s back. “Chisa, please. We’re all friends here.”
Are we?
But Yui blushes anyway and nods once as she stuffs her papers into a drawer without thinking too much about it. “Why don’t I…why don’t I help you?”
“With cleaning?” Chisa’s eyes widen. Then her head tilts to one side. “That could cut my time down. But it could make it worse, since you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Then it’s a learning curve.” Yui pops her knuckles and turns to Chisa, forcing the blush down (and failing) as she meets her eyes with a determined gaze. “But with my leg strength and my jumping ability, maybe I’ll have an easier time getting stuff higher up than you do!”
Chisa holds her gaze, but her expression sours. “Are you saying I’m short.”
“No!” Yui shakes her head frantically, hands out as a defense. “Not at all! I—”
“Just kidding!” Chisa pats Yui’s arm with enough force that it really doesn’t feel like she was kidding. Then she pulls out a pair of heavy duty gloves and hands them to Yui with a grin so menacing that it makes Yui reconsider her words. “Let me show you how to help!”
~
More Time Later.
Chisa clicks the top of the timer and reads the numbers as it stops. Then she pulls a notebook from within her apron, flips to a page in the very middle, and examines it. Her brow furrows. She pencils something on the page and then snaps the notebook shut.
“How’d we do?” Yui asks, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. (She’d learned a while back not to use the back of her hand while she’s cleaning; that’s a good way to transfer something from it to her eyes, which only makes the stinging worse. Unbearable, even. The first time, she thought she was going to die. Chisa bought her a pair of goggles after that, but Yui refuses to wear them. She might be a lot of things, but she’s not a Goggle Girl.)
((Also the goggles look really weird over her glasses. She doesn’t want to look weird around Chisa.))
“Shaved off thirty seconds!” Chisa taps the notebook with her pencil and then tucks both back into her apron. “We still haven’t beaten my top score—”
Yui groans. “Don’t mention it.” She tucks her cleaning towel half into her pocket.
Chisa removes one of her gloves and pats Yui’s back. “It’s our best score together yet.”
“Yeah, I thought I had some time save dusting the ceiling if I jumped just right—“ Yui cuts herself off and flushes. She sounds like a housekeeper. She sounds like Chisa.
That said, there are benefits to helping Chisa clean. It’s relaxing. It helps stretch her legs after she’s spent a long session pretending that she’ll improve her leg strength when really she would rather be investigating. Even more importantly, it’s likely that Chisa cleans some of the other rooms, too – not just the dorms, but the classrooms or other rooms where important information for Yui’s investigation might be found – and if Yui gets good enough at helping Chisa for her to take her with her, then maybe she’ll pick up on something that she wouldn’t be able to get to on her own.
(Or could, maybe, but that would involve jumping through open windows and shoving them even more open to propel herself in, and Yui…doesn’t want to do anything strictly speaking illegal while she investigates. Getting expelled would defeat the whole purpose of being here, after all.)
As they gather their things (something which is insistently not included in the speed-run cleaning, since it’s technically speaking not part of the cleaning), Yui asks, “How are things with you and Munakata-senpai? He asked you out yet?”
“Nope!” Chisa answers cheerily, either not noticing the blush that spreads across Yui’s cheeks as she asks or pretending she doesn’t. “It’ll probably take him a few months. He’s the sort who wants to get everything just perfect first. All that control, you know?”
Yui shrugs. She doesn’t know, if she’s really honest, since she hasn’t spent much time with the Ultimate Student Council President. She’s seen him in the halls now and then, and she certainly knows who he is, but he’s never really appealed to her. Something about him just throws her off. (Not to mention that his friend – Sakakura – makes her uncomfortable in a way she can’t put her finger on. Like he’s the sort of punch first, ask questions later sort of person. And that doesn’t sit well with her.)
Then Chisa turns to her, one finger up between them. “That means you still can. Get your foot in the door! It’d be fun.”
“W-what?” The blush that had been fading from Yui’s cheeks grows bright all at once, and she can feel her short hair standing all on edge. “Me? Ask you out?”
“Sure!” Chisa beams with that smile that’s brighter than the sun, her hands clasped behind her back as she leans forward. “I spend more time with you than I do with him anyway, and if it doesn’t work out, we’re still friends. Dates don’t have to be a bunch of pressure! And they definitely don’t have to be perfect.”
Yui licks her lips, and before she even realizes what she’s saying, she asks, “So why don’t you ask me out, then? Seems like you have some ideas.”
She wants to turn away. She wants to be focused on taking her gloves off – that cold snap of the plastic as they come off and drop into the tub with the rest of her cleaning things – instead of standing here facing Chisa. She wants to be looking anywhere else but at Chisa’s face, but she can’t avert her eyes.
(She thinks she can’t breathe, but here she is, standing still, breathing like she doesn’t have any other choice.)
“I’d say I’m not that kind of girl, but….” Chisa’s voice trails off. She hums. “Alright! Let’s go on a date!”
Yui startles. “That’s not a question!”
Chisa meets her eyes and steps closer. “Were you going to say no?”
Now Yui looks away, unable to maintain the contact. She’s sure her whole face is red, sure the tips of her ears are. “No.” Then she tugs her lower lip between her teeth and asks, unable to look up, “Would you have?”
“No.” Chisa reaches out and takes Yui’s hand, but it kind of sucks because they still have those stupid cleaning gloves on. (She still feels the squeeze anyway.) “Why would I ask when I already know your answer?”
Yui glances up, resisting the urge to push her fingers through her hair. Chisa’s expression is warm and inviting. “I guess…I guess you wouldn’t.” Her brow furrows. “You’re good with kids, right?” (She doesn’t know why she’s asking. She can’t imagine that Chisa isn’t.)
But Chisa shrugs. “Depends on the kid.” She leans closer. “Why? You have one?” Then she holds up a hand and steps back. “Not a conversation for now. A conversation for later.” She takes a deep breath and holds up the timer again. “We’ve got to get to the next room; once we’ve gotten good times for all of the rooms, we’ll have to go straight through all of them and once and time that—“
“Ugh.” Yui knocks into her. “If I’d known this is how you were going to be—”
“—you would have helped anyway. Just to keep me from going through your stuff.” Chisa grins. “Now, c’mon! The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can plan our date.”
Yui blushes again, and she can’t get a word out for the next three rooms.
