Dangan Heights - A Danganronpa Slice of Life Story

3 - The Detective, the Computer, and the Idiot

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Kyoko Kirigiri

My name is Kyoko Kirigiri, and for the past few years, I've been working on a very special project.

After the Future Foundation disbanded and we all went our separate ways, I decided to resume work on the Neo World Program, a device designed to revive and purify the Remnants of Despair. This program had been previously corrupted by a virus, so the act of reawakening the Remnants proved to be much more difficult than we intended. Still, with the help of Alter Ego, an AI created by an old colleague Chihiro Fujisaki, we managed to successfully nurse all of the former Remnants back to health.

All but one, that is.

Today was going to be another day hopelessly trying to drag this idiot back into the real world. I knew that, Alter Ego knew that, and deep down, we both just wanted to give up and leave him stuck in the virtual world forever. But no, that's not how we do things, at least, that's not how he would have done this.

I was sitting at my desk, almost through my coffee, and staring at the monitor in front of me, my eyes slowly starting to drift away. 

"How's he doing, Alter Ego?"

Alter Ego's image flashed onto another nearby monitor. 

"Same as yesterday. He refuses to leave."

"Can you mic me up?"

Alter Ego nodded, and the screen in front of me sprung to life with live footage from inside of the Neo World Program. I pulled a microphone closer to me.

"Hajime Hinata, once again, all of your classmates have been successfully revived. As such, there is no longer any reason for you to stay in the virtual world."

Hajime looked up toward the camera, as if he could see me through the screen. He waved, his smile vacant but his eyes full of unknown determination.

"I'm not quite done yet, so no thank you."

I groaned and put my head in my hands. This had been routine for weeks now. I turned back to Alter Ego.

"Do you have any idea what he could be doing in there?"

"I'm not sure, all of the other Remnants seemed excited to leave."

I turned back to the monitor, seeing Hajime sitting alone in the library. He had in his hands a copy of Computer Programming for Dummies. Next to him was a stack of other miscellaneous programming books, their spines weak from overuse. I spoke into my microphone once again.

"What exactly are you trying to do here, Hajime?"

Hajime sat his book down and looked back up, unusually serious.

"I said I wasn't going to leave until everyone made it out okay."