The True Man!

And speaking of Nao. Jinsei swiftly composes himself, pushing his fringe out of his eyes and lowering his hands to his sides. The boy who meets his eyes is… cool. Douchebag shades don’t suit many people, but they somehow find a way of suiting him. His mouth quirks up at the corner as Shades slowly moves from a pseudo-fighting pose to a more casual one.

Then, a split second before Katsuie says it out loud, he realises who he has just embarrassed himself in front of – the one person in this dump he kind of wanted to impress.  

All thoughts of murder and motive flee from his mind.  He almost covers his face again, to stop the blush that’s no doubt spreading across his cheeks from showing. Ever since childhood, Jinsei has been painfully susceptible to blushing, and while adoring fans might find it cute he’s personally of no such persuasion – it’s just another way of making a bad situation worse. Instead, he bites his lip and forces his hands to stay down. Say somethin’ before he thinks you’re a fuckin’ weirdo!

He swallows the huge lump in his throat, deliberately doesn’t question why talking to this guy makes him more nervous than talking to girls ever has, and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

“It’s really cool to meet you, Hagane-san! I’m a big fan. Of the magazine, I mean.” He sticks out his hand to shake, as if on auto-pilot. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’s aware he’s too stiff and, most importantly, not being cool.  But it’s like it’s happening to somebody else and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

Now you tell him your name, idiot. Jinsei trips over his words in his haste to follow up. “I-I’m Yuuhara Jinsei, but just Jinsei is fine, really! I’m a voice actor. I mean, I was a voice actor. Now I’m just a kid stuck in a shitty dungeon. But yeah, prior to that, voice actin’, that was, uh. The thing that I did…”

So, maybe graciously for the fawning over his trade, Hagane responds to the offer of a handshake with acceptance. The leather of his glove is slick and cool against Jinsei's palm, and his grasp relaxed and more cradling than shaking. The kid parts his hand after the usual three seconds, and tucks the hand into his pocket.

It’s like being punched really hard in the stomach, he figures.  Like being ejected out of an airlock into the cold crush of space.  Struggling to suck in a breath, grasping for air, only to find yourself choking on it -

Like what drowning must feel like.  That’s probably how Jinsei would try to describe it, were he so inclined.

What went before is secondary, and something he can put aside to process later.  The bear, the knife, even the coffins and the awful stench… there’s nothing in this world that’s hard to fake, and talk is cheap.  No one knows better than he does.  He can remain calm through all that.  Logic can still win the day here: even if it is legit (and as much as he was staunchly for this theory before, he’s beginning to doubt it, what with the cheesy black comedy presentation), what good reason is there to kill them?  If some sick fuck wants their murder game, all they have to do is capture a bunch of nobodies.  Why risk their own neck by kidnapping the country’s best and brightest? They’re worth far more as ransoms, he keeps reminding himself. We’re worth far more alive.

What hits him like a train to the goddamn gut, unsurprisingly, seems to have elicited roughly the same reaction from almost everybody – but Jinsei doesn’t take any notice of that. This book… he fights to wrap his head around its very existence. It’s one thing to know the official version of his life story – anybody with an internet connection could dig up that one – but between the crimson covers of this pathetically small book lies something quite different. Unabridged, and merciless. It’s enough to make his skin crawl just to read it.

But worst is the realisation of what it means. He can’t have made this himself, and yet it contains information privy to only his family or, in some cases, restrained to the confines of his own mind.

Things he has never told another living soul.

His instinct is to destroy it, and he almost does. Instead something compels Jinsei to slam the book shut – insofar as you can slam something so tiny – and he clutches it so tight his knuckles turn white. He tries for a shaky breath. Use your brain, idiot. Very quickly, and without the further examination he’s going to need to give the situation later on, he joins up the dots. Headmaster. Vacation. ID cards.

One hand releases the book, slides down to his pocket to retrieve the card. This much is probably real – he feels safe in that assertion. The hologram looks pretty convincing. It’s definitely his face, though a photo he doesn’t remember having taken. He grits his teeth.

A small voice in his head asks: why, then, couldn’t it all be just as real?

Oh, a thousand reasons, the rest of him screams. A thousand reasons.

But probably safest to act as if it is.

He swallows thickly, his desire for a drink redoubling. Be calm. Would you kill for this book? Jinsei cringes. Wait, don’t answer that, just ask yourself: would anybody else? He glances around the room, the stricken and horrified faces of his classmates meeting his eyes. How can you know? These people are strangers to you. The last thing you want is to give them an easy target.

So for fuck’s sake, play it cool.

Slowly, he returns his ID to his jeans pocket. The book gets slightly better treatment, slipping into an inside pocket of his jacket – with any luck, no one saw. Jinsei takes the deepest breath he can manage, and turns on his heel - almost walking straight into somebody. He reels backwards, blinking.

He could mull over the horror and sociopathy of it all, a twisted design of some mad genius who managed to rent a castle for some Battle Royale fuckfest, with or without copious amounts of seemingly nonchalant humour, but isn't everybody else already doing that? A true man doesn't fret when all the others do. He only lets his knees bang together like chimes when the Manly Solitude is found.

The Manly Solitude was a topic he had covered many times in his editorials: it could refer to a place where one's hobbies are kept safely, or a location away from prying eyes. The arms of a lover, even. The concept was that for being strong in this world of hardship, everybody deserved a happy hour of some sort. To find it is part of manhood.

Sadly, the only thing he could find in the midst of this situation is macabre decor and some places that stunk slightly less than the others.

Much to Katsuie's ignorance, however, he would find a likeminded soul, similar to depths he would not immediately recognize. This discovery would culminate through a near-clash of body that, if realised, would probably make both of them shout in panic.

That is not the case, however, and instead he backs away just as well as Jinsei had, and rather than immediately resort to apology or retreat, assumes a position vaguely reminiscent of lucha libre. He had not so much as gone to a gym in two years, but that doesn't stop him from posturing.

"Fuck, man, I hope you are. I was about ready to demonstrate the Jaguar Bomb. Sadao ain't the only feline in here." Though his own voice quivered with a downplayed fear, the ring of amusement still sounded in his sardonic voice in spite of it. Slowly, his arms went from aggressive to folded behind his head, the non-threat holstered for now. His own shaggy style of hair is a small comfort, something warm and rich to bury his gloved fingers in. The tingle of the fur could still be felt behind the fabric.

This advice on dress and style rambled on as Hagane closed the distance to join the fellow at his side, squinting an eye up out of the trappings of his shades so he could look inside of the mugs, rather than just smell them alone, and decipher their story from there.

It’s frightening. not having even that tiny little bit of control, and she presses herself a little further back against the bars. The stranger’s voice is calm, and he flicks those glasses down to look at her with the casual practice of someone totally unfazed by this situation. She wishes she could do the same — smooth down her skirts and step forward and give him the gracious, chippre introduction that Himekomori-sama should.

But she can’t. Not when she doesn’t know —  not when she can’t know what to say, what to do.

The silence drags on for a few long moments, Himeko opening her mouth to speak once, twice, and failing both times. The third time, she manages to coax a sound from her shaking throat. It catches and halts, but she drags it back, kicking and screaming. Something, anything.

"…Who— who are you?"

That’s all she needs. A name she recognizes. Something familiar.

For this reason, he kept his distance, the only move he made being to lift his head up so he could briefly scratch at his neck and yawn, the cold doing little to stifle his typical slow awakening after a rough evening and morning after. Stretching does not normally act as a catalyst to a transformation into a demon, and for this reason, the publisher hoped she had nothing to fear.

"...'nother person who's just as clueless as you are. Though, I haven't formed a solid opinion on what to feel yet. In this indecision, I am enlightened: encompassing all it takes to not know the hell's going on."

He brought his head back down in a weary fashion, letting it bob and rock for a few moments before stabilizing it into steadiness so he could continue to stare listlessly.

"I'll assume it's the panic making you forget. Kinda of a big deal and all... Katsuie Hagane. SHSL Magazine Publisher."

"Oh, nice to meetcha Katsu-chan! A magazine publisher, huh? What kinda magazines are they? I don’t get around to readin’ non-sports magazines, but if any of yours sound interestin’ I’ll definitely give it a gander once we get outta here."

She was still curious as to why he kept his shades on when the lighting was bad enough as it were; what if he tripped on something because he couldn’t see? He could break his shades, sprain his ankle, or at the very least, get some really nasty bruises; and she didn’t want anything like that to happen to him-or any of the people in here, really. However, she couldn’t just ask him at the moment; not when the current topic was yet again on how they came to be stuck in a dungeon. Perhaps another time…hopefully soon and once they were out of said dungeon.

It was endearing, however; the girl wasn't to be sporty, exuberant, and a ditzy sort of determined even under circumstances considered to be dire by so many other people. The scent of 'you go, girl' was so strongly and figuratively reeking from her chattering and bouncy form that he metaphorically felt the urge to clamp down on his nose.

But being lost in poetic device over the eccentricities of just one person seemed like a waste to him. There were over a dozen of others present, if his guess was right, and certainly something more appallingly unique was just around the corner.

However, that didn't discount the fact that she was refreshing to talk to. Not everybody needed to be some broken-up weirdo and flip their shit over matters of damp, dank, and dim dungeonry. After wriggling his gloved fingers some, Katsuie placed a leathery palm into the wall beside him and leaned some of his weight into it as a replacement for using his back. He smiled once more in spite of his own cynicism.

"Pretty radical nicknames you're throwing out, all of the conspiracies about our reason for being here ignored. Nari-chan you'll be, then. Somebody handing out nicknames like you deserves one her self."

The formalities of truncating names then put aside, Hagane would then have to deeply consider just why they're here. Go-getter as he may have been within his business, he preferred to flow along with just about everything else. This made deducing the objective of whatever doofus put them here an exercise in self-denial. His head hung, groaning softly. Here comes the part where things are less carefree. Always the worst part of a conversation.

But, much to a combination of relief, disappoint, and total lack of surprise, Hagane did not discover an impending inferno ready to stifle all hopes of escape. There was some smoky residue coating a dead fireplace, for one, more blackened than gray due to neglect after a good stack of flames. A slow turn of his head to the right, and he discovered another person too.

At least, he thought they're a person. Though he was mocking of panic in others, there was the potential that this was some sort of bestial demon ready to rear its ugly head and rush towards him in the hopes of a meal to go with what smells like some dank-ass ale, straight outta Fyeodorin's cellar of pillage.

But, upon seeing the look of very human distress, alongside some whining-like noises, the publisher deduced that this was yet another classmate in the throes of anxiety over being tossed into the worst renaissance fair ever. 

Still stoic, but with a hint of unease at the rather-childish expression of dismay, he spoke calmly to his cat-furnished associate, raising his hands to slowly lower them. Bring it down, is hands said. Bring it doooooown.

"Really? I mean yeah, I’ve woken up in weird places with strangers next to me before, but none of those places included a dungeon or rats so this is kind of new to me. Hmm, it looks like maybe even this is new for ya too if you don’t know what the heck’s goin’ on either. I mean it’s most likely some overly mean initiation prank, but seriously, they kinda went too far with the decorations and…reality of it all,haha."

She vaguely wondered just how many times she’d repeated herself; ‘this is an orientation prank, just an initiation joke gone really wrong’. How many times would she repeat it and more importantly how many people would even believe her? Everyone was hell bent on making this situation so much worse than it really was. As she wondered about that, the thought that she didn’t even know the new classmate’s name crossed her mind, so she turned to him, intent on remedying that solution immediately.

Shades-chan, however, made him smile again. It felt rueful, to him; always the shades they noticed. They say that eyes are the windows to the soul, so it's fitting for so many people to come to the conclusion that he's a cool guy from putting up such fashionable drapery, and comment on it after the realization. Still, he thinks a lot of other aspects of his uniform were nice too. If eyes were windows to the soul, tops should be the banner of your internal organs. And the symbols of his radical jacket should signify him to be even more cool, though perhaps of questionable health.

Hagane feared he'd digressed into himself again, having shared several moments of silence with the impetuous Narita. The result was a soft cough from him before he actually spoke, rather than look lost in self-indulgent thought. 

When Himeko opened her eyes, it was dark.

It should have been light; every image of Hope’s Peak Academy she’d summoned, both in reality and in her head, had been bright, welcoming; a pinnacle of hope.

But here, in this room, it’s dark, and it’s cold, and her head hurts she doesn’t know where she is and the first delirious, dizzy thought that rises to her head before she drifts back into darkness again is a plain and simple ‘I never should have left’.

She only passes out again for another minute or two, before her headache reluctantly drags her into consciousness again and, after a few seconds of fervent hope, forces her to open her eyes. 

It’s still dark. It’s still cold. She’s still somewhere she shouldn’t be — and, worse still, not alone.

The presence of another next to her catches her notice suddenly, and her breath catches haltingly in her throat; wide eyes scan the other with a terrified urgency as she draws her hands inward to her chest, clasping her hands together instinctively, so hard her knuckles go white.

A girl? A girl. Asleep? Maybe, maybe not. Himeko thinks her clothes might be traditional (save for, perhaps, the cloak), but she can’t tell. It’s too dark, it’s too cold, and then a drop of water falls on her nose and she lets out an involuntary sound; a quiet whimper of fear.

This is a nightmare. It has to be. So she has to wake up. And that’s not going to happen if she stays here. With a rustle of petticoats and another frightened sound (because she could have sworn something, Oh God, ran over her foot) she rises from the poor excuse to a bed she found herself on and tries the bars to her cell. 

They open, much to her surprise, with a little force; she chooses to interpret this as a good thing, despite the fact that no nightmare would make it that easy to escape your prison. From her cell, it’s only a short jaunt left past some others (and she isn’t going to think about that, if she sees their faces too closely it might make it more real) to another gate, and this one—

…Doesn’t open. Oh. Oh, dear.

At a loss for anything else to do, Himeko tentatively grips the bars, and gives them a half-hearted shake; but not for long, not when she hears footsteps exiting a cell and approaching in her direction, and her heart seizes and she whirls round, backing up against the locked gate keeping her here. Eyes lock on the stranger in front of her, and they could be anyone, and she tries to say something and can’t, opening her mouth and getting only a high, tremulous gasp, becoming aware her hands are shaking. 

A nightmare, a nightmare. Eyes closed. "It’s— it’s only a nightmare." Hands clasped tighter, voice addressing more herself than her company. "Only a nightmare— a nightmare, a nightmare—"

Yet when she opens her eyes, the other person — other people, really — are still there, and she’s still here, and her terrified gaze takes on a tinge of defeat. Unable to deny it any longer, Himeko falls silent, her wary eyes fixated on the person across from her as if they’ll turn into a demon before her very eyes if she lets them leave again. 

It's not that Katsuie didn't understand the basis of fear in a sordid situation like this; to more sheltered and fearful personalities, but to so instantaneously resort to that animal panic just felt unseemly. He wasn't the type to turn away, however, as much as common sense dictated that she should. After all, being in a narrow dark passage with somebody unstable and hyperventilating was a recipe for either looking shady, or looking mauled.

Hagane stood his ground to face the trepidation head-on and impassively, lazily adjusting a hand to reach over to the opposite arm and pinch it. No shattering of the perceived reality, no awakening, nothing. "Seems that your hopes are misplaced. That always does the trick."

The hand then rose to his face to lower his sunglasses some, trying to get a better glance at the person some space away from him. Yeah, she seemed familiar. Hell, he could probably come up with her name if he tried hard enough. But acting like one is in the know right now? Seems to make even his common sense question things. Better to play it cool. Always is.

The funny thing about this entire scenario was that none of this was exactly surprising or new.

Waking up in an unfamiliar place? Check. Waking up next to someone she didn’t know? Been there,done that. Having a rat run over your hand? Okay maybe not, but a cat counts, doesn’t it? Not knowing how you got here, or why? Hold the phone, something’s not right here.

Rubbing her eyes and stretching, she slowly took in her dismal surroundings, noting the cells, the dim lighting, and the imposing hallway. It looked like something straight out of a television show and was actually pretty impressive. But this was not the time to be admiring how utterly miserable this place was.

She tried to remember how she’d gotten in this situation, but try as she might, she couldn’t recall anything. The last thing she knew, she’d been bounding into the doors of Hope’s Peak Academy, ready to start her new school life and then…then? Her mind went completely blank, only to skip right to where she was now. Strange; she knew her memory wasn’t the best, but even this was a little odd. Upon seeing the other person in her cell, however jolted all thoughts of questionable memory out of her mind as she rushed over to the other person. Were they okay? They hadn’t moved yet.

"Hey…! Hey, are you okay? Can ya hear me? Move around or something if ya can!"

No response. She began to worry for them and started shaking them gently but got no response. The only thing she learned was that whoever they were had really green hair…oh, and they weren’t actually dead or anything, just incredibly unconscious. She’d probably been that way not too long ago as well. She’d better let them wake up on their own. In the meantime, she could find a way out for both of them. She stood up, brushed the errant hay off her knees, before addressing the still form of her new-found companion.

"Hey, I’m gonna go find us a way outta here, okay? If you wake up don’t fret or nothing, I’ll be right back."

She tried the cell door, found it unlocked, and ended up pacing up and down the hallway in an attempt to find a way out. Along the way, she encountered other cells with other people in them; they must all be in the same boat as she and her cellmate. There was a door that seemed to lead out of this room but it was locked, and no amount of banging, pulling at the doorknob or trying to bust down the door would work. Another quick jog up and down the hallway confirmed no other way out; they were stuck here for the time being.

Sensing someone leaving their cell, she turned towards the new person with a smile and an outstretched hand. Hey, if they were going to be stuck here, might as well make some new friends, right?

"Still, probably not the case for you, so, yeah, this is pretty weird. And while it's tempting to be the skeptic to your optimist, I don't really have a clue one way or another about this whole thing. And it's only a real jerk who forms overly negative opinions before he has an idea of what's going on."

This was… unprecedented. Though in reality, not entirely; Katsuie Hagane was some manner of party god-slash-sunglasses wearer, which should’ve kicked his body into banter level seven. Maybe it was the tinge of anxiety that had settled in his stomach that had knocked him flat on his ass. And on his ass he remained. 

"So, uh… I’m not following. Have we met before…?"

Akira reclined against the wall for a moment before he felt a dampness against the back of his coat, and quietly resigned to shuffling back over to his own lovely little pile of straw. The cell wasn’t large enough that he had to raise his voice any to continue pestering Katsuie, but that seemed to serve as a problem, as well; therein came the chattering of other students who had been similarly imprisoned.

Well - the first logical thought one should have after ascertaining that an entire class of students was spirited away to some godawful dungeon was that something was seriously wrong. Unfortunately, Akira preferred to see that glass as half full. Dungeons were also seriously fun, right?

Clearing his throat over the murmurs of another student, Akira continued his probing.

"Since you fancy yourself a smartass, do you know why we’re here? You know, for real. I’ve never ended up somewhere this… rudimentary… with—"

Akira paused and attempted to size up the class from where he sat in his corner of the room, which did not provide much of a vantage point.

Akira had woken up in strange places before, but… this time things felt exceptionally dangerous. You didn’t just wake up in prison cells, did you? Shaking away whatever had scampered across his hand and dragging himself to the other side of the room, Akira did indeed make sure to invade Katsuie’s personal space and squint right at him.

Would it not be rude to go gallivanting out into the hallway without scrutinizing your new friend? Or perhaps a not-so-new friend… whatever had happened at least 24 hours previous seemed to be a gaping black hole in Akira’s memory, and this was almost never a good thing. Though… who had time to worry about ambiguous memory loss! 

Sitting up and placing his hands in his lap, Akira mulled it over a few more minutes before he spoke—that’s right, he was probably off to Hope’s Peak, last he could recall. Did he end up at a mixer? Oh, no. 

"Ahh, okay… you are… hmmm… no, I got it. Hagane-kun. Hello."

He beamed down at his cellmate.

"First thing’s first. I’m Akira Sakai. Maybe… we’ve, uh… met before? I mean, I just know of you. Or maybe… I do know you…”

After a pensive silence that didn’t last longer than a beat, Akira picked up right where he had left off.