Work Text:
when she starts the script, she’s beyond happy.
the words flow effortlessly, pouring from her as she smiles wide and excited. she loved stories; loved danganronpa, loved seeing its tales unfold, loved the characters and stories and ideas. and she loved writing, loved adding her own pieces in the beautiful, incomplete jigsaw. she loved it.
(didn’t she?)
fiction, from a very young point in her life, has always been there. when she had no one else, the characters had proped her up. she’s seen herself in them, had them as companion, weaved stories in her mind of them that soothed and brought her to sleep.
she carved them, crafted them, and rebuilt them in her image; rebuilt herself in their image, sewed costumes she could hid away in and acted like people she wasn’t. (she didn’t want to be herself.)
(and there was no one else.)
she loved them—dearly, passionately, desperately. she could identify with them and their struggles, could see the fiction for what it was; a reflection of truth, reality, a funhouse mirror. (a mirror all the same—she could get lost in the distortions.)
and so, she wrote. wrote about them, and this world she fell in love with. she wrote about it, so different from her own, dull life. stories were interesting—and her favorite part, hope always wins in the end. (it’s just escapism.)
no matter the trouble, there’s always at least a little bit of hope. the world rebuilds. the people heal. tragedy is prevalent, but it is not permanent. the killing game is just that; a killing game. it isn’t forever. (you can never play a game forever.)
but, she supposed, she also loved, that here, in fiction, it kinda is. repeating and repeating like a comforting melody: there is hope there is hope there is hope. no matter how many times they say it’s the last game, it continues. even if team danganronpa stopped, the fans would continue to write, and write, their own oc’s becoming apart of the tapestry. the original author of the first game may be long gone—may be dead and buried in the ground—but within his art, his legacy, he lives on. (meaningless beautiful words. when will death take you, shirogane? and what will you leave behind?)
hope continues to win. triumph continues on.
maybe we all just want to feel like we can win. like there’s hope.
(we can’t. there’s not. we make our own despair out of words and hope and vague concepts that lose all meaning, turn into ash in your mouth that parades around nothingness, masked as profound. you don’t know anything; there is nothing to be known. there is no meaning in victory. there is no purpose in stories. there is no reason for life.)
and maybe that’s just want she wants; that fantasy, that purpose. (if she didn’t have this then she had nothing.)
the words are easy. they come as if she was a vessel—a sink pouring water.
(or a slit wrist spraying blood onto the page.)
she likes to think that if she writes this masquerade, becomes a character within it, maybe someone will adore her story like she had others, admire her with awe. maybe not love, but surely, surely—it means something all the same. right? it means she’s real. if people see her, that means she’s real, more than the characters she writes. doesn’t it?
(this is a autobiography. this is a conversation with herself. she is the author and narrator and reader, talking and yelling and crying all the thoughts she can’t speak. this is a cry for help, towards people who cannot do a thing. sit down and listen.)
the words have never come easy. she had never been happy. that’s a lie; that’s the truth. they flow from her fingers like nonsense, but they scrape against her insides until she is hollow.
she fancies herself a puppet master. (she’s just another puppet; it seeps from the cracks in her marionette skin, dolllike porcelain, and the funhouse mirror cracks as it distorts her—or does she distorts it?) she ties red strings to her fingers attached to plastic limbs, weaves it, moves them around with a wave of her hands, twisted around like a cat’s cradle. they tangle around her pinkies and ring fingers; and fate traps her as much as any, a double sided noose that ties them all together. she controls how they move yet she’s more caged than them any, those strings always on her fingers even if she tries to run. she is the author. to write is her job.
and it tears something, because she cannot stop. because she wants to speak and be heard. because she loves listening. because she wants to hear a story that makes her think, “maybe it’s okay that I’m alive.”
she needs it.
she cannot stop. (it’s as unthinkable as never using your fingers—they move without her consent and suddenly there’s another story under her, typed up on a page and she wants to stop-)
(there would be no meaning if she stops, because then there would be no one to create it. she defines her world with man made words, sounds as meaningless as baby babble if not for the meaning we keep assigning to them. everything has to have meaning, every mystery must be solved, every word have a purpose. how can we live without?)
but that’s okay. that’s okay, because she will dedicate herself to her craft, give herself completely, like a proper artist, like the billions of others that came before her.
(until there is nothing left of her.)
and you see, here is the point in the story where I must confess: I hate stories more than anything.
feels good to finally admit it, doesn’t it?
relieving.
(and she’s still nothing special, is she? even if she gives her all to something.
there’s so many stars, it’s hard to keep track of a single one. even when they die, sometimes people don’t even notice. they don’t realize when they burn out in a glorious blaze of self destruction, burning brighter and brighter than they ever had. they don’t even realize.
no one will remember her name, just like how no one will remember one single star in a sea of them.)
hello? can you hear me?
why do you keep ignoring me?
why do you hate me so much?
you’re going to have to get up and live sometime. you know you have to. you can’t keep hiding in stories forever.
please.
why won’t you just listen to me?
stop fucking ignoring me, coward.
she writes the script in a month; whole and complete, (like she’ll never be) every caveat covered. working herself in a frenzy, she writes and writes and pulls at her hair in frustration. none of these words are right. it’s not what she wants to say. it should be better. there is not enough words on this page, and it isn’t insightful.
she writes it anyways.
if she makes someone feel something, gain something - doesn’t that mean she’s worth something, too?
doesn't that mean she doesn’t have to hate herself?
(you said you hate fiction. but if you hate it, then why do you keep writing? why do you keep reading? why do you keep lying, saying you love it?
why are you still here, shirogane?
— because I can’t stop. there would be nothing left if I stopped.)
to write is to become; to pretend is to be.
every word she writes is killing her, tearing up her soul, scraping it out of her being and splattering it on the page, all guts and gore but no glory. she digs the hole and keeps digging, until she’s looking through eyes that aren’t her own, down at the grave that holds her plain dull life, wondering why she never understood that death of the author meant she’d become someone she never wanted to be, only emulate. the narrator is her, and the narrator is junko, and shirogane tsumugi is dead, buried in the ground in a tomb she made herself.
(it’s all empty.
these words are just sounds.)
to write is to die; to kill yourself with each word, and redefine your corpse into compost.
(that’s why she loves it—that’s why she hates it.)
(maybe, one day, flowers will grow.)
and the voice invades, a question she wishes she could stop wondering:
who, exactly, are you?
(as she waves goodbye, she finally understands it. her intent never matter, her words damned her. she can’t find it in her to smile. she is the author. this is her death. it’s simple. it’s tragic. it’s almost a relief.)
(she can’t find it in her to smile.)
(splat.)