Chapter Text
A small breeze flew in through the opening in Makoto’s window. He deliberately left it ajar to let in just the right amount of air. It passed around his computer, over his desk and kicked a small red envelope from there to his bed. It wasn’t there when he was last inside. In fact, it had just appeared since he left his room to go downstairs for breakfast. He had thought he had left it empty. Well, while the room was “empty” in the sense that it didn’t have any occupants, it was far from empty in terms of objects. Plants swayed from the ceiling in their little pots. Collectables were cobbled together on a few shelves and, save for his computer, Makoto’s desk had his whole school year’s worth of work spread across it from last year. He was about to enter a new course in highschool so had no reason to keep any of this work. The bin was also full; the main motive for not clearing anything out.
The door to this room opened. But it wasn’t Makoto, but his younger sister, Komaru. She was looking for him but her attention was quickly caught by the red envelope. The wax seal that glowed faintly in the shine from the window bore a decal she thought she recognised. She pinched the envelope and flipped it. A name and address for her brother. Back to the side with the seal. She was right.
“Makoto?” She called the house at large. She heard a begrudging mumble from downstairs. After her feet flitted down the staircase, she pressed the red envelope to Makoto’s chest as he tried to make his way through his ramen. A noodle sprawled itself across his shirt like hair on the side of a shower as he fingered open the letter. The wax made a crisp “tap” when it unstuck. The sheet of paper inside was as red as its casing. With his sister peering over his shoulder, Makoto thumbed his way down the page:
Dear Mr Makoto Naegi,
We are incredibly pleased to inform you that you have been selected to be a student this year at Hope’s Peak Academy. As you are aware, we select one fortunate every year to attend our school based on a lottery. This year, we have chosen you. We have entered you under the name ‘Ultimate Lucky Student’, since all attendees possess a talent for which they are named ‘Ultimate.’ Term will begin on 20th of August and we expect you to meet in the main hall at 8 am.
Yours most sincerely,
Jin Kirigiri, Hope’s Peak Headmaster
While Makoto drew his eyes across the few sentences printed on the red piece of paper in front of him, Komaru paced up and down the kitchen. She was texting her parents the news, her fingers dancing across her phone screen. Makoto shook his head and turned to Komaru as she hit send on her tenth text.
“So, how much do you know about Hope’s Peak? I didn’t enter so how did they choose me?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “It’s completely random; the whole of Japan of eligible age gets entered. I’ll be entered in a couple years from now but I doubt we would be as lucky as to get two lucky students from the same family. So I’ve been working on my own talents! I was thinking of either Ultimate Musician or Ultimate Yoga Instructor. I’ve been practicing that and Tai Chi recently!”
“Right.” Makoto said. He was glad she was so enthusiastic but, at least from what he had heard about the school, it sounded really challenging. Komaru seemed a way better fit as a candidate but of course, she wasn’t old enough yet. Makoto set his bowl down on the table, dusted off his pants and trudged upstairs. Komaru called out to him and brought up a note on her phone.
“These are supposed to be the new arrivals this year! I've been doing my research. That basically means your classmates. Not all of them were super famous but that usually means they didn’t expect the letter of acceptance as much as you did. You’ll be with some real celebrities though! I doubt I found all of them but it looks like the class is around the right size--”
Komaru’s voice trailed off as Makoto scanned the list. His eyes were a bit too hazy to be reading so much this morning but between the cobwebs of his tiredness he could spell out the few words on the screen.
Aoi Asahina- Ultimate Swimming Pro
Byakuya Togami- Ultimate Affluent Progeny
Celestia Ludenberg- Ultimate Gambler
Chihiro Fujisaki- Ultimate Programmer
Hifumi Yamada- Ultimate Doujin Author
Junko Enoshima- Ultimate Fashionista
Kiyotaka Ishimaru- Ultimate Moral Compass
Leon Kuwata- Ultimate Baseball Star
Mondo Owada- Ultimate Biker Gang Leader
Sakura Ogami- Ultimate Martial Artist
Sayaka Maizono- Ultimate Pop Sensation
Toko Fukawa- Ultimate Writing Prodigy
Yasuhiro Hagakure- Ultimate Clairvoyant
Makoto definitely recognised some of the names on that list. Junko Enoshima was a huge name across all sorts of magazines. Anything she wore, he would surely see out in town the next day on somebody. All sorts of hairstyles and trends he had attributed to her since both of their childhoods. And now she was his contemporary in class with him. Makoto felt something turn in his stomach at that thought. He had the image of Junko in his head standing above him, laughing at him then muttering something to her friend, equally as famous swimming in his brain. He knew that at some point he would have to talk to her, his mind frantically piecing together things she might say to him, excuses she’d make to leave as soon as possible.
Then there was Leon Kuwata. He was an internationally famous baseball champion at only the age of 16. A lot of teams in the USA already have their eyes on him. Every picture that Makoto had seen of him had him pictured with shaved ginger hair and an all white jersey jumpsuit. It seemed to Makoto like Leon basically lived his life on the field. There were a few interviews done with him in the USA about how he felt about being a child prodigy already on the bench to be recruited by some teams but they were all in English so Makoto couldn’t understand them. Leon being able to speak English was a skill that Makoto really wished he possessed. He’d always been so terrible in English lessons and had no idea what was going on. He wondered how many of his future classmates knew how to speak the language and therefore how many of them could talk around him without them knowing what they were saying.
There was another name he’d recognised too. Sayaka Maizono. Anyone would know her as the lead singer of her internationally renowned pop girl group but Makoto really wished that was the extent of his knowledge. He turned slightly green at the thought but Makoto and Sayaka went to kindergarten together and were boyfriend and girlfriend in the childish way kids often are at that age. The only person who knew him at this school was someone he knew he could hardly bring himself to speak to. The worst part is she probably didn’t even remember who he was or why he wouldn’t want to meet her eyes whenever she spoke to him. She had also grown up to be very pretty incidentally. His friends at his current school teased him about this whenever her name made headlines. Tabloids not worth anyone’s time would talk about which male singer she might be dating and they’d always buy him copies of those magazines. It was fine for him as an inside joke but to actually meet the girl in real life again after they’d been together as kids as young as four was bound to be torture.
He’d decided he’d thought about it enough. He turned to his sister.
“Komaru, I can decline can’t I?”
“Well yeah, I guess you could,” Komaru responded, “But you’d be the biggest idiot of all time! This is an opportunity of a lifetime and they basically guarantee success for you once you graduate.”
She was right, he thought. Plus, his parents knew now and there was no way he would want to disappoint them like that. Even though he was nervous, he told himself, surely it wouldn’t be that bad. Komaru even said she didn’t find everybody so there might be some other students like him who weren’t famous but just as intimidated by the prospect of joining this school. He repeated that idea to himself like a mantra to justify his decision. Of course this wasn’t going to be the right school for him but what would be? This one just had over achieving students.
The next few days were largely spent with Komaru info-dumping on Makoto all that she knew about Hope’s Peak. She listed clubs he could join, societies that fit his interests, even electives that were just like the ones he was already doing at his current school. Makoto mostly had his head somewhere else whenever she would do this, not because it was useless information but because by far the most interesting parts of Hope’s Peak were his future classmates. Most of them had huge claims to fame that Makoto had never heard of before. Celestia Ludenberg attended a huge underground gambling competition and cleaned out all of her opponents. A lot of sources said she was laughing as she did it which Makoto thought warranted a hint of skepticism but either way she had earned the nickname “Queen of Liars” from that.
“I’ve heard of her,” Komaru said, “I’ve done my research and cannot get a read on her at all. She’s so peculiar.” This made Makoto raise his head from his phone for a moment. Komaru was a professional at this sort of thing; if she couldn’t find anything on Celestia, who could?
Sakura Ogami, the martial artist, had never lost a single martial arts match despite competing in national and international championship competitions. She was supposedly 193 cm tall which seemed like a stretch but some of the sources Makoto read quoted her having said that. She was also a victim of a barrage of cyberbullying online from people speculating that she was the “missing link” between humans and primates to people just calling her “ogre”, somehow not noticing the problem with that.
“God,” Komaru said, “Just because she’s a girl who has beaten so many men in the past, these people think they have the right to slander her for being so bulky and masculine! So many men look like that and she’s the ‘missing link’? Gimme a break.”
Makoto couldn’t help but feel like she had a point. Not a lot of concrete information online gave way to what sort of personality Sakura had, however. He thought this was a good sign; reporters would jump on the opportunity to call a woman like her aggressive or mean so if she wasn’t like that at all or was smart enough not to entertain that sort of thing, she was likely to be a nice person, despite what tabloids would want him to believe about her.
Not everyone had tons of information about them online. Makoto was careful to sift through the online speculation forums and the factual information about the people on the list. He re-read the list a couple times on Komaru’s phone before he noticed what seemed to be an inconsistency.
“Komaru, aren’t there supposed to be more people here?”
“Hm?”
“Well it just seems like… well according to the forums… there’s supposed to be 16 students admitted each year. Counting me and those on the list, that’s 14. How come no one has identified the other two.”
“Well no one besides me, mom and dad even knows that you’re going!” She smiled, “They’re probably just like you: not famous enough for there to be anyone recognising them. It’s not surprising that there could be students that the internet hasn’t found yet. Besides, there are sometimes smaller classes anyway. 15 isn’t uncommon though I’ll admit 14 is pretty small--”
Makoto turned back to his phone. He hoped that at least one of the students was just as nervous as he was about joining a school like Hope’s Peak.
On the way to Hope’s Peak on 20th of August, Makoto had forgotten most of the anxiety he’d been feeling for the past month. Maybe it was because Komaru had insisted on joining him, maybe he’d become so desensitized to the idea of going after reading and rereading articles about his classmates. How he’d imagined his life at school was so cemented into his subconscious that he felt it in his dreams. His peers’ names felt like a jumbled mass of characters, sliding across his eyes whenever he closed them. The fantasy he’d constructed of Hope’s Peak came from his anxiety but he had spent so much time thinking about it that it felt almost wasteful to just abandon it. How could he?
When he inevitably had to start speaking to these people, he wasn’t sure how he’d react. Not if they didn’t perfectly reflect the caricatures of them he’d extended from details he’d read about them online. This was dumb, he thought. These guys deserve more respect than a speculating obsessor. He slammed his hat down to the seat next to him in the car.
“Not looking forward to this, honey?” his mom called from the front.
“It’s ok to be nervous. I would be in your position.” his dad said.
Makoto would have to make this journey everyday now but with new anxieties about his life with the people in his year, however many there were. His parents and Komaru would prod him for information about these children and about Sayaka and whether or not he’d made any new friends. Did you have plans this weekend? How’s that group assignment? He’d have to insist Komaru come just this once; while he loved her, he didn’t think her obsession with Hope’s Peak would be a good environment to be around at least once a day. She could walk to her school but since she wanted to be at Hope’s Peak that morning, she insisted everyone get up extra early for the journey. They were about 5 minutes away by now and it was 07:20. He sighed and his breath fogged up the window. He drew his finger across the vapor to make a little X as they pulled over to the building. He heard his mother shout “We’re here” but he still waited a minute before exiting the car. He didn’t want to be the first one there and be with his family among a group of people who only needed security guards.
“Wow! It looks so cool!” He heard Komaru’s muffled voice through the car door just well enough to pique his interest and look up. The building was certainly impressive. Countless floors of brick with ivy spiraling up the sides. The glass on each window was so shiny it felt like it could burn him if the sun shone at the right angle. The logo was at the very top, the same coat of arms that was printed on the letter he’d received so long ago except this time you couldn’t hold it in your hands.
Makoto got out of the car to stand beside his family marveling at the institution in front of him. His arms were folded. He really didn’t want to go in now but there wasn’t really any going back.
As he stared up at the crest at the top of the building, his sight twisted, folding in on itself. His head gave way to a black void and he was blinded by a pair of invisible hands pinching his eyes shut. It felt like his brain was being sucked through his ears and refunnelled back into his skull. What was this… feeling? There was so much happening he wanted to hook his conscience to a sense but it was as if so much flew by at once he couldn’t catch anything to focus on. Then he felt his head touch cold wood.