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DRT1.5.11-12: Me and the School and I (The Second Half), sections 11-12
(Boy have I been bad about updating consistently. But at least we're approaching the end! Instead of worrying about catching up on anything "missed" I'll update next Sunday as usual.
CW THAT I FORGOT AT FIRST: Some vivid descriptions of gore.)
Find previous chapters at the Navigation Index.
Danganronpa Togami Volume 1: Multiple Counts of Attempted World Domination
Chapter 5: Me and the School and I (The Second Half)
11
As I woke with a start... Oh, dear, isn't that strange? What do I mean, "I woke with a start"? Shouldn't I have been conscious this whole time?
At some point, I had apparently lost consciousness and collapsed right where I stood, and all I could see now was the sky full of stars above me. What could have possibly happened, I wonder?
As I tried to sit up and see, something even more incomprehensible happened.
Was the whole surrounding area sliced in half?
The flowers, the telephone poles, the road signs, the cars, and even the pebbles—had absolutely everything been sliced in half? The scenery had been severed into two perfect halves of a whole.
I'd learned, during the Worst Incident in Togami Family History, the truth of abnormal situations that I've ended up in—that I wouldn't make progress no matter how much I tried to turn it over in my mind. At a time like this, reasoning was pointless. Better to use my feet than my head.
I tried heading back towards the school.
Each and every thing I encountered during my nighttime stroll had been split apart. Bugs. Twigs. Empty cans. Bicycles. Trash cans. The trash that had been thrown away inside them... Everything was in two equal pieces. Everyone was getting along and going halfsies.
An enormous, oppressive foreboding took hold of me, and my emotions felt like they were about to crumble into pieces. All I was doing was walking down a flat road, but my breathing became erratic. Not even the wind carried down the Vltava river or the refreshing cool of night could get my heart back in balance.
All I could do was walk one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other.
I finally made it back to the school, and learned of how despair had amplified.
The teaset that had been laid out on campus was in two halves. The Chief who had been enjoying her teatime, from the Hasegawa Research Institute, had been chopped vertically from the head down. The cut was clean, but her brains and other organs were oozing out onto the ground, so it didn't work out quite the way ikameshi does.[1] Kanai was dead nearby. Even the umbrella he had been holding was cut in half.
But those weren't the only casualties. A large vehicle that hadn't been on the school grounds before... the kind you would call a Jeep... had been split apart from within like a display model at an auto factory, and dead bodies were strewn around it—hunks of meat, really. The corpses were wearing Japanese-style school uniforms that looked out of place in the Czech Republic. Cruelly cut uniforms, human hearts split in two, and limbs that jutted out like young branches were scattered here and there. Some cookies spilled out from a torn stomach, still not digested.
I felt it was something of a wondrous spectacle that among these many body parts rolling around, Byakuya-sama alone, who had been dead from the beginning, was completely unharmed, almost as if he were still living.
Ssss. Sst-sst-sst-sst-sst. Sssssss.
A sound.
Ssss. Sst-sst-sst-sst-sst. Sssssss.
That sound, which I couldn't describe as either pleasant or unpleasant in itself, repeated in fixed intervals. For some reason, the stopping and starting of the sound felt disturbing.
Ssss. Sst-sst-sst-sst-sst. Sssssss.
And then, I realized—it was the sound of a blade cutting through paper. Cutting paper by moonlight? I didn't know that was a thing even if you were going crazy.
"Aaall the tiiiimes that weee have haaad, why don't we try to remeeember them..." I spotted a shadow in the innermost darkness of the campus. "When we did thiiis, when we did thaaat, waaasn't that fuuun..." The shadow was cutting the pages out of a book with a knife, sst-sst-sst, singing the first verse (and only the first verse) of "Memory Album" to themselves, over and over.
Memory Album[2]
Lyrics: Toshi Masuko
Composition: Tetsuma Honda
All the times that we have had, why don't we try to remember them
When we did this, when we did that, wasn't that fun?
The things that made us happy, and the things that caught our interest,
I'll always remember them, all the rest of my days
"Look," spoke the shadow. "Ain't that a crescent moon? This is the kind of night that makes you want to spontaneously recite haiku. 'The sky is blue-black, / the pen of the crescent moon / writes the song of death'."[3]
"..."
"It's been suuuch a long time! I'm just glad to see you're doing all right. Writing everything down just like you always did... Oh, sorry about that arm. Takes me a while to get in the groove after waking up."
I looked, to find that the prosthetic for my left arm was missing. The hydraulics to move the joints were exposed, messy with red-black oil—but, more importantly—
"What are you doing here?" My voice rasped like I'd aged fifty years. I wanted to cry, both from fear and anxiety—and then, just a little bit more than that, from nostalgia. Or, really, I was sure I was going to cry for real any moment now.
"What kind of question is that? DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The shadow suddenly burst into laughter. "Nothin' to wonder about here. You should damn well know already—
Sorry to keepcha hangin'. Why, I say, isn't that the former Super High School Level Hitman, all grown up and on the grind, Suzuhiko Ootsuki making his appearance?!"
The shadow... Ootsuki cast the book in his hands off to the side. Cut to pieces, the book was caught by the wind, fluttering in the night sky.
"Mmmmmmm~ Ain't this a nice sight? Kinda feels like, 'Never tarnishing / and never lost, the penknife / and Their Face in death.'[4] Y'don't think?"
"What are you doing in Prague?" I asked, ignoring the tears that were flowing without my consent.
"What kind of question is that, part 2... DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Like I said, there's nothin' to wonder about here. I'll go wherever I need to go to kill a client's target, whether it's the top of Tokyo Tower or the top of Mt. Everest."
"That's not what I meant..."
"I hear ya. You're talkin' about how it's weird when it's only been five hours since the World Domination Proclamation, and by all accounts I should still be on the plane right now no matter how fast I move, right? Amateur mistake on your part."
"You were in Prague from the beginning?"
"Correct. C'mon, I'm the former Super High School Level Hitman, y'know? I know the target before the order even comes in."
"What? That's it? That can't be the only reason."
"Oh really? Why don't you tell me what reason the Super High School Level Heir has for owning an artificial satellite, or what reason the Super High School Level Martial Artist has for using shukuchi? In this world, an impressive title is the ultimate get-out-of-justification-free card all on its own. Shouldn't you have already gotten with the program on that one, Miss Super High School Level Secretary...? Don't make that face like you don't agree with me. Righty-o, then, how's about I introduce you to my good friend, the status screen? Let's pull that up right now, shall we? DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
12
BORGES=LOGLOOKUP
#27119505
TITLE "HIS SPECS"
NAME: Suzuhiko Ootsuki
CLASS: Hitman
LV: 91
HP: 788
MP: 0
AVAILABLE SKILLS[5]
- Disruptive Wave (nullifies all magic)
- Falcon Slash (allows user to attack twice)
- Parry (deflect enemy attack)
- Avan Strash (see Dai no Daibouken for details)
- Ambush (with the ex-SHSL Hitman sense of smell, this ability allows the user to identify a target before the order comes in. Afterwards, the user seals away their personality like a mole hiding in its hole, and acts the part of a profiled character with motivations and connections that will allow them to approach the target, thus gaining proximity and guaranteeing the kill. This user may possess a meta-perspective if it will assist them in approaching the target... They do not even have qualms about deceiving the reader.)
Translator's Notes
[1] ikameshi - a squid rice dish where the rice is put inside the squid, and can actually stay put when it is cut.
[2] Memory Album - or "Omoide no Album", a Japanese folk song that is used in graduation ceremonies. Here it is on YouTube.
[3] The sky is blue-black ... - another quote from Kyuusaku Yumeno's Ryouki Uta/Ode to the Bizarre.
[4] Never tarnishing ... - you guessed it, it's Ryouki Uta again.
[5] skills - these all appear to be Dragon Quest references up until the end, so I borrowed the localized skill names as appropriate.
Stay tuned for the next update next Sunday (PST)!
Feel free to comment, keeping these rules in mind!
CW THAT I FORGOT AT FIRST: Some vivid descriptions of gore.)
Find previous chapters at the Navigation Index.
Danganronpa Togami Volume 1: Multiple Counts of Attempted World Domination
Chapter 5: Me and the School and I (The Second Half)
11
As I woke with a start... Oh, dear, isn't that strange? What do I mean, "I woke with a start"? Shouldn't I have been conscious this whole time?
At some point, I had apparently lost consciousness and collapsed right where I stood, and all I could see now was the sky full of stars above me. What could have possibly happened, I wonder?
As I tried to sit up and see, something even more incomprehensible happened.
Was the whole surrounding area sliced in half?
The flowers, the telephone poles, the road signs, the cars, and even the pebbles—had absolutely everything been sliced in half? The scenery had been severed into two perfect halves of a whole.
I'd learned, during the Worst Incident in Togami Family History, the truth of abnormal situations that I've ended up in—that I wouldn't make progress no matter how much I tried to turn it over in my mind. At a time like this, reasoning was pointless. Better to use my feet than my head.
I tried heading back towards the school.
Each and every thing I encountered during my nighttime stroll had been split apart. Bugs. Twigs. Empty cans. Bicycles. Trash cans. The trash that had been thrown away inside them... Everything was in two equal pieces. Everyone was getting along and going halfsies.
An enormous, oppressive foreboding took hold of me, and my emotions felt like they were about to crumble into pieces. All I was doing was walking down a flat road, but my breathing became erratic. Not even the wind carried down the Vltava river or the refreshing cool of night could get my heart back in balance.
All I could do was walk one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other.
I finally made it back to the school, and learned of how despair had amplified.
The teaset that had been laid out on campus was in two halves. The Chief who had been enjoying her teatime, from the Hasegawa Research Institute, had been chopped vertically from the head down. The cut was clean, but her brains and other organs were oozing out onto the ground, so it didn't work out quite the way ikameshi does.[1] Kanai was dead nearby. Even the umbrella he had been holding was cut in half.
But those weren't the only casualties. A large vehicle that hadn't been on the school grounds before... the kind you would call a Jeep... had been split apart from within like a display model at an auto factory, and dead bodies were strewn around it—hunks of meat, really. The corpses were wearing Japanese-style school uniforms that looked out of place in the Czech Republic. Cruelly cut uniforms, human hearts split in two, and limbs that jutted out like young branches were scattered here and there. Some cookies spilled out from a torn stomach, still not digested.
I felt it was something of a wondrous spectacle that among these many body parts rolling around, Byakuya-sama alone, who had been dead from the beginning, was completely unharmed, almost as if he were still living.
Ssss. Sst-sst-sst-sst-sst. Sssssss.
A sound.
Ssss. Sst-sst-sst-sst-sst. Sssssss.
That sound, which I couldn't describe as either pleasant or unpleasant in itself, repeated in fixed intervals. For some reason, the stopping and starting of the sound felt disturbing.
Ssss. Sst-sst-sst-sst-sst. Sssssss.
And then, I realized—it was the sound of a blade cutting through paper. Cutting paper by moonlight? I didn't know that was a thing even if you were going crazy.
"Aaall the tiiiimes that weee have haaad, why don't we try to remeeember them..." I spotted a shadow in the innermost darkness of the campus. "When we did thiiis, when we did thaaat, waaasn't that fuuun..." The shadow was cutting the pages out of a book with a knife, sst-sst-sst, singing the first verse (and only the first verse) of "Memory Album" to themselves, over and over.
Memory Album[2]
Lyrics: Toshi Masuko
Composition: Tetsuma Honda
All the times that we have had, why don't we try to remember them
When we did this, when we did that, wasn't that fun?
The things that made us happy, and the things that caught our interest,
I'll always remember them, all the rest of my days
"Look," spoke the shadow. "Ain't that a crescent moon? This is the kind of night that makes you want to spontaneously recite haiku. 'The sky is blue-black, / the pen of the crescent moon / writes the song of death'."[3]
"..."
"It's been suuuch a long time! I'm just glad to see you're doing all right. Writing everything down just like you always did... Oh, sorry about that arm. Takes me a while to get in the groove after waking up."
I looked, to find that the prosthetic for my left arm was missing. The hydraulics to move the joints were exposed, messy with red-black oil—but, more importantly—
"What are you doing here?" My voice rasped like I'd aged fifty years. I wanted to cry, both from fear and anxiety—and then, just a little bit more than that, from nostalgia. Or, really, I was sure I was going to cry for real any moment now.
"What kind of question is that? DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The shadow suddenly burst into laughter. "Nothin' to wonder about here. You should damn well know already—
Sorry to keepcha hangin'. Why, I say, isn't that the former Super High School Level Hitman, all grown up and on the grind, Suzuhiko Ootsuki making his appearance?!"
The shadow... Ootsuki cast the book in his hands off to the side. Cut to pieces, the book was caught by the wind, fluttering in the night sky.
"Mmmmmmm~ Ain't this a nice sight? Kinda feels like, 'Never tarnishing / and never lost, the penknife / and Their Face in death.'[4] Y'don't think?"
"What are you doing in Prague?" I asked, ignoring the tears that were flowing without my consent.
"What kind of question is that, part 2... DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Like I said, there's nothin' to wonder about here. I'll go wherever I need to go to kill a client's target, whether it's the top of Tokyo Tower or the top of Mt. Everest."
"That's not what I meant..."
"I hear ya. You're talkin' about how it's weird when it's only been five hours since the World Domination Proclamation, and by all accounts I should still be on the plane right now no matter how fast I move, right? Amateur mistake on your part."
"You were in Prague from the beginning?"
"Correct. C'mon, I'm the former Super High School Level Hitman, y'know? I know the target before the order even comes in."
"What? That's it? That can't be the only reason."
"Oh really? Why don't you tell me what reason the Super High School Level Heir has for owning an artificial satellite, or what reason the Super High School Level Martial Artist has for using shukuchi? In this world, an impressive title is the ultimate get-out-of-justification-free card all on its own. Shouldn't you have already gotten with the program on that one, Miss Super High School Level Secretary...? Don't make that face like you don't agree with me. Righty-o, then, how's about I introduce you to my good friend, the status screen? Let's pull that up right now, shall we? DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
12
BORGES=LOGLOOKUP
#27119505
TITLE "HIS SPECS"
NAME: Suzuhiko Ootsuki
CLASS: Hitman
LV: 91
HP: 788
MP: 0
AVAILABLE SKILLS[5]
- Disruptive Wave (nullifies all magic)
- Falcon Slash (allows user to attack twice)
- Parry (deflect enemy attack)
- Avan Strash (see Dai no Daibouken for details)
- Ambush (with the ex-SHSL Hitman sense of smell, this ability allows the user to identify a target before the order comes in. Afterwards, the user seals away their personality like a mole hiding in its hole, and acts the part of a profiled character with motivations and connections that will allow them to approach the target, thus gaining proximity and guaranteeing the kill. This user may possess a meta-perspective if it will assist them in approaching the target... They do not even have qualms about deceiving the reader.)
Translator's Notes
[1] ikameshi - a squid rice dish where the rice is put inside the squid, and can actually stay put when it is cut.
[2] Memory Album - or "Omoide no Album", a Japanese folk song that is used in graduation ceremonies. Here it is on YouTube.
[3] The sky is blue-black ... - another quote from Kyuusaku Yumeno's Ryouki Uta/Ode to the Bizarre.
[4] Never tarnishing ... - you guessed it, it's Ryouki Uta again.
[5] skills - these all appear to be Dragon Quest references up until the end, so I borrowed the localized skill names as appropriate.
Stay tuned for the next update next Sunday (PST)!
Feel free to comment, keeping these rules in mind!