Danganronpa Extra Life

The Awoken Girl

Nanami's pupil was small, contracted so as to not be blinded by the light shining into it. But when Izuru waved his hand in front of her eye, it did not track the motion. He gently released her eyelid, turning off the pointer light and setting it aside; his daily examination was finished. He hadn't left the gamer's side again since his encounter with the amnesiac Enoshima two weeks ago. Physically, her injuries were mostly healed by now; the scabs had fallen off, leaving healthy scar tissue in their wake. He massaged the muscles in her limbs to keep them from atrophying, but she would still be very weak, and unfortunately there was no way for Izuru to test whether she'd suffered any neurological damage. Not until she regained consciousness. As he'd predicted, Nanami's brain had slowly started showing signs of activity shortly after his trip outside. She experienced a somewhat irregular sleep-wake cycle, and her face would sometimes twist and grimace without cause. But she did not respond to outside stimuli; verbal commands were ignored, and any movements she made were instinctive, involuntary, not purposeful. She couldn't eat or speak. She was neither fully aware nor fully unconscious, but halfway between.

Logically, Izuru knew there was no pattern to someone in a persistent vegetative state waking, and that all things considered her recovery was progressing well enough. But he still couldn't help feeling slightly impatient. That itch inside him, that need to know her, to see her fully recovered, was becoming difficult to ignore. Mentally, he rifled through his archive of knowledge and talent for any possibility he might have overlooked.

Ah, here. Medical studies reported that speaking to vegetative patients sometimes helped them leave the state; the sound of voices stimulated certain nerves in the brain, making it more alert and active. Theoretically, that helped spur it to wake up faster, and apparently offered some modicum of comfort besides.

...well, he supposed he could try just to see what would happen.

"Nanami," he began, and halted. Interesting—attempting to speak now was making him feel foolish. Was it because of the person he was speaking to? No, he hadn't been struck by this emotion either of the times he'd spoken to her before. Then it had to be because of the situation. Understandable; for all his talent, idle conversation was not his forte. He spoke only when he saw reason to, which was rarely, and couldn't recall ever speaking casually with anyone in his existence. His teachers had only spoken to him to test him, in questions and answers and riddles, and Enoshima was perfectly content to just talk over his silences. What was he supposed to say to someone unable to respond?

Play to his strengths. State the facts. It was in man's nature to find the unknown frightening; logically speaking, then, facts were reassuring. "...You are safe," Izuru continued, fingers of discomfort crawling like spiders up his spine, "your body has healed well, and the one who wished you ill does not know you are alive. I have been tending to your recovery for the past five weeks."

She did not respond. Of course she didn't, it was foolish and illogical to assume she would magically awaken at the mere sound of his voice. This was real life, not a romance novel.

He searched for something else to say, and remembered what he'd watched only a few days ago: Enoshima, stabbing Matsuda and then stomping on his corpse until it was nothing but pulp. "...You have nothing to fear from me. I am not going to harm you." Her brow crinkled, then smoothed over. An automated response caused by the irregularities in her brainwaves, nothing more.Izuru rose, fingers automatically curling around her hairpin in what had quickly become a habit. "...Take as much time as you need to recover. I will not leave you."

He spoke to Nanami's body a few more times after that, but before long stopped—he simply ran out of things to say, and the embarrassment that came with it became boring. It was months before Enoshima called on him again, months since her experiment had come to an end. He'd watched it all with boredom, seen the panic of the school board and the bloody corpses of the Steering Committee left in Ikusaba's wake. The Despair Sisters were back in action; the Ultimate Soldier was currently out doing dirty work for her sister, but he still locked and trapped Nanami's door before leaving.
Enoshima was waiting for him in the room she'd held Mitarai in, spinning around in a chair and still dressed in the outfit she'd adorned during her amnesiac phase. He came to a halt inside the doorway, waiting until she slowed enough to see him. A large grin spread across her face, and she stuck a foot out, stopping the motion of the chair.