NEOWORLD

HAJIME HINATA ☼ SUPER DANGANRONPA 2

super high school level normal guy.

thinks orange juice is just alright. 

how was high school? pretty average. 

won an award for “most likely to donate body to science”.

“Indeed, I am. Young one.”

Aslan would normally chuckle and continue a lighthearted conversation with the young man, however, his paw was aching him and the longer the thorn stayed the more it started to hurt. He’s been in pain before, so it wasn’t the end of the world for the King of Kings, but it was a rather annoying pain, so he’d rather it disappears.

“I came from a good sitting spot just over yonder. Come, let us walk together. Do not mind my limp. Once this thorn in my paw is out I’ll be able to walk like a proud lion once more!”

Hajime couldn’t help but smile, a healthy mix of nerves and childish wonderment stirring giddily in his chest as the two made their way down the forest path. Ahead, as promised, a warmly lit area blanketed in clover blossoms and dandelions offered them a place to rest and sort Aslan’s paw, which, Hajime thought, looked pretty painful to walk on with the ground already so uneven. In the clearing, he hurriedly set his bag down, rummaging through its contents for a moment before procuring a thermos of warm water and a handful of napkins.

“…”

“Well, anyway. My shoes aside, I’m surprised to hear you speaking so confidently about mental health. You’ve really made progress!”

“...................”

(Hinata-kun... considering what they could have written, I think this is actually... well, I’ll just let it be.)

“No way... not you too, Komaeda. Man, that’s even more embarrassing...”

He really should be used to this by now.

[...]

“Hey… can you hear me?”

Hajime wasn’t entirely sure when he’d fallen asleep, but the moment his eyes fluttered shut it was like the world fell away from beneath him.

And then he was lying awake in his bed. Not the one on Jabberwock, with the sheets that smelled like sandalwood and mothballs and the seaside dampness that clung to everything it touched – this was his bed, the one in his parents’ house. The bed with the stiff mattress, the worn down pillows, the assembly mistake that had left a gap just wide enough for headphones, pencils, and all manner of frustrating objects to fall down the side if one was too careless.

It took him a minute to process. Had he been asleep all this time?

His body seemed to struggle to keep up with his vision, movements slow and awkward as his invisible form waded through the dense gravity. It took him a moment, but when Hajime finally righted himself and got out of bed the room seemed to shift into something less substantial, fuzzy around the edges where the seams were stitched loosest.

“Hinata-kun, come set the table for dinner.” 

A voice called out from down the hallway, echoes reverberating through the floorboards like a shift in tectonic plates. Suddenly his room smelled like cooked onions and steamed rice and every family meal that had ever made an impression on his adolescent mind, twisting together into a sensation his brain wanted to categorize into “appetizing”, but his faltering subconscious struggled to attach positive feelings to.

“Be right there!”

Is what he had wanted to say, but as he reached to open the door something snagged and yanked him backwards. All at once, the room flickered and collapsed in on itself, hippocampus scrambling to realign the space from his new perspective on the floor. Searing pain flooded through his head and he clutched it instinctively, realizing with some delay that he had fallen backwards and collided headfirst with the side of his bedframe.

Down the hall, heavy footsteps came treading towards his door – a hint of irritation in the footfalls that would have made his insides twist if his head didn’t feel like it was moments from splitting in two. There was a hesitant knock, and before he could open his mouth to say anything the door gently opened and his father’s voice, though quiet, shook the inside of the room.

“Ah. Still at school, then…” He muttered, the smell from the kitchen souring as it seeped in through the open door.

Head still spinning, Hajime tried to stand again, but before he could even make it to his knees the snag that had sent him crashing to the floor had returned tenfold. As he wrenched his neck to see what had hold of him, his body tensed, bile burning his throat. Long, tangled webs of black hair bled out from beneath his bed, twisted and snarled and spilling out in every direction like black mould eating through tile grout. Panic flooding through him in crashing waves, Hajime struggled and kicked backwards – desperately trying to pull away as the hair shot out and clung to him, yanking him closer and closer until his shoulders were the only thing keeping him from being pulled beneath the bed.

The hair parted and he felt a gentle tug at the back of his head, as if it were his own. A hand was reaching out to him. Spiderlike fingers. Chipped red nails. A cloying, sulfuric smell.

His eyes snapped open.

Blinded momentarily by the brightness of the setting sun, Hajime could only make out the outline of the figure standing over him. His pulse was racing still, though the visions from his dream were already fading away into murky obscurity. Rubbing the hypotensive stars from his eyes, he squinted up towards the familiar stranger once again. Silhouetted by the ebbing evening light, Hajime was sure the sand beneath him was going to cave in once again, focus blurring around the distinct features of someone he had long since committed to memory.

Hajime had just about convinced himself he was ready to give Spirale a second chance. After two straight days of relative panic, unsurprisingly all it had took was twelve consecutive hours of sleep to right himself and approach his new, rather daunting situation with a more flexible attitude. 

That was, until he found himself two hours in on a train route he had misread - too desperate to begin tackling the local transport system before he lost his fighting spirit to spend an extra moment rereading the city map. 

Having grown up a city kid it was beyond embarrassing realizing he hadn’t just ended up a few stations off from where he’d been aiming. No, no. Hajime had ended up in an entirely different Ward. The Fibonacci Ward, or so the map before him stated, somewhere unhelpfully referred to as “The Surface”. With a grumble he pulled his phone out again before remembering he still hadn’t figured out how to connect to the local wireless network yet. 

Wandering away from the platform and out of the station towards the sparse city streets, he scratched the back of his head, weighing his options. He had already come this far, it couldn’t hurt to explore and ask the locals for some help... but the sun would set soon. The war between the city roaming, night loving, “live like you’re going to die tomorrow” part of his brain and the more logical, twenty-something “I’d prefer not to catch a cold sleeping at the train station” part of his brain raged on, even as Hajime crossed the street towards what appeared to be a book shop.

“Maybe someone inside can help me make sense of this place...”