Multi Fandom Madness

the popular fanon that yasuhiro was looking out for taka in his catatonic state does play out here. seeing the normally energetic and smiling kiyotaka all the sudden silent, blank and defeated stirs something within yasuhiro. something compels him to look after kiyotaka (could have something to do with those suppressed memories of their 2 years spent together). he hovers around him a lot, making sure he eats and isn't by himself in such a vulnerable state. he tries to get him to talk, but kiyotaka never says anything. yasuhiro has no trouble filling the silence with one-sided conversations, but that concern never goes away. a silent kiyotaka is a broken kiyotaka.

what really gets on his nerves is how little the others seem to be helping him. this is where yasuhiro's tendency to be more emotionally driven than logically driven really stands out here. some of the others see kiyotaka as a lost cause, a murder victim waiting to happen. it's better to just detach themselves now and focus on how to save the rest of them. the discovery of alter ego makes that an easy task.

what i think would be really fun is if it's revealed that yasuhiro was the one that told kiyotaka about alter ego. because, if you can recall, kiyotaka was left out of the original encounter everyone had with alter ego at the beginning of the chapter, but he somehow found out about it and went to makoto to ask more. what if yasuhiro, who had already been trying and failing to get kiyotaka to engage with him for the past few days, tells him about alter ego to get some sort of reaction out of him. maybe he brings up that they look just like chihiro, and that talking to the program can bring kiyotaka some sort of closure for the events of the last chapter.

it's what finally gets kiyotaka to speak to him. he asks to go, to please speak to chihiro (not calling them alter ego, which yasuhiro decides to ignore). yasuhiro tells him they can, but it's night time already. they can't go breaking the rules they established, so they'll go after breakfast the next day.

his first mistake was bringing up alter ego to taka in the first place. his second mistake was leaving kiyotaka to sleep by himself in his own room that night. while yasuhiro is asleep, kiyotaka is restless. he can't let another moment go by knowing chihiro is there and that he can apologize for everything that happened. so, he goes to the one person he knows will cave and take him to chihiro: makoto. that scene plays out exactly how it does in the game, ending with ishida and everything.

when yasuhiro sees kiyotaka as ishida, he feels torn. on one hand, kiyotaka is not okay. he's acting unlike himself, and is clearly erratic and still struggling. on the other, he's talking and emoting and eating. maybe they can make better progress this way. he still hovers around, but this time, kiyotaka can call him out on it and actively avoid him, which makes trying to keep him safe all the more difficult.

there are moments, though, where the real kiyotaka comes out. where he stops pretending to be ishida and just faces the reality he's in for a few minutes before snapping back. yasuhiro, being the only one to actively spend time with him, is the only one to witness these moments. he sees that kiyotaka is not a lost cause, that there's still hope for him.

then celeste's plan gets carried out.

what if, instead of a random anonymous note, yasuhiro gets a note that night that was forged to look like kiyotaka wrote it? it feels vulnerable, and yasuhiro gets the sense that kiyotaka needs someone to be there for him before he does something stupid, so he lets all suspicions go and goes to the meeting place. what's waiting for him there isn't a kiyotaka who's ready to open up, ready to talk, but celeste and hifumi with the robo justice suit and a rag with chloroform.

when yasuhiro is broken out of the locker and taken out of the suit, kiyotaka is dead. not only does he have to deal with the reality of the boy he's been looking out for so much having died, but he has to deal with the fact that he's been blamed for it. he's wearing the same suit that the suspected perpetrator was wearing, he was no where to be found during the discovery of both taka and hifumi's deaths, and it's even brought up that yasuhiro spending more time with kiyotaka could've been in favor of finding a good time to kill him. the motive checks out too. yasuhiro is very open about much debt he's in, so of course he would kill someone for a boatload of cash.

what if hiro doesn’t get a moment to properly grieve taka because everyone is so suspicious of him that they keep him from interacting with the corpses?? and when the get back from the trial, taka is gone??

the consequences of taka's death and how yasuhiro deals with it is something i feel carries over into chapter 4. it might play into his reaction to sakura being the traitor and working with the mastermind, instead of his actions being fueled solely by cowardice.

his big "arc" that he goes through in the canon game (if you can even call it that because it's just a line he says at the end to sort of give off the impression that he learned something) is that he learned to trust his gut more and try to be more rational instead of solely relying on his future-telling abilities. what if that's something he learns from kiyotaka?? a character who moves head first into things and fights until the bitter end if it means he gets closer to a goal he believes is worth fighting for. a man who's emotions empowered him to move forward instead of kept him back out of a fear of the unknown. a man who wanted to help others instead of only looking for his own self-interest. idk i think someone like that could help a character who was established as lazy and selfish at the beginning of the story go through some major changes. do you think yasuhiro (and the other survivors) could help rebuild the world into the society kiyotaka thought was possible? one that rewarded hard work instead of natural talent and status?

idk this is just me putting out some ideas i had. this is very kiyotaka-focused, but there's still more that can go into a better-written yasuhiro when it comes to chapter three. i didn't even touch all of the potential parallels between him and celeste (which would of course come in to play). i just like kiyotaka and yasuhiro a lot so i focused it mostly on that aspect of it.