Chapter Text
Ouma caught on to many of Shirogane's lies, but not all of them.
The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy happened. Class 78 existed and took part in a killing game as well. The Remnants of Despair existed, though the Future Foundation confirmed that Ouma was not one of their ranks.
Danganronpa was indeed a reality show. However, unlike Shirogane's claim that it was broadcast around the world, it was only accessible from the dark web. Apparently, some people saw Enoshima Junko's broadcast of the School Life of Mutual Killing and actually enjoyed it. The demand for killing games gave rise to Team Danganronpa, a powerful underground organization that kidnapped high school students to host killing games.
According to the Future Foundation, Team Danganronpa was not despair. Despair was a very distinct condition that caused its sufferer to hurt those close to them. If Team Danganronpa was despair, they would use their own family members and friends for the games, but they chose instead to kidnap students from around Japan that were unrelated to them.
Team Danganronpa fetishized despair, but were unable to dedicate themselves fully to it.
They could not confirm if Yumeno Himiko was her real name. Nothing about her existed on paper. The Future Foundation promised to look into it, but everyone knew that their resources were already spread thin. Yumeno declined the investigation politely, deciding to remain as Yumeno Himiko for the rest of her life.
Harukawa Maki was her real name. She was nineteen, and had dropped out of high school to support her orphanage even before The Tragedy started. She obtained her assassination skills not from the Flashback Lights but from defending the younger children from the hordes of despair-ridden people that threatened the orphanage. Team Danganronpa did not take her without a fight, but that only made them want her in the game more. They kidnapped children from her orphanage and forced her into the killing game with them as leverage. The Future Foundation could not find any trace of the children in the Team Danganronpa headquarters.
Saihara Shuichi was his real name. He was eighteen, though because of The Tragedy he was only attending his second year of high school. He did have parents, but they were not actors and movie screenwriters and they died protecting him during The Tragedy. His uncle took him in after their deaths, but he passed away too. He had no siblings and no surviving relatives left.
Ouma Kokichi was his real name, or at least was the name he went by. He was sixteen and attending second year of high school despite the Tragedy holding most students back from studies. He was an orphan who lived on the streets with nine other children. When The Tragedy struck, they used the opportunity to assimilate back into society despite having no birth certificates or proof of identification and took the chance to attend school for the first time. The Future Foundation found him in their databases immediately because he was wanted for murder.
Ouma Kokichi. King-horse, little-luck.
Yumeno joked that Ouma should be renamed Daikichi (big-luck), because it took more than a little luck to survive the killing game in his condition. Yet, against all odds, Harukawa managed to find help in time to save Ouma's life.
Saihara remembered the sheer relief he felt when he saw professional medics stem Ouma's bleeding and carry him away on a stretcher. They managed to get to a hospital, where Ouma underwent emergency surgery to remove the debris in his abdomen and stitch up his injury. Harukawa and Yumeno, despite suffering minor injuries (and major emotional trauma), volunteered to donate Ouma their blood to keep him alive during the surgery.
Saihara volunteered too, but his blood type was not compatible with Ouma's. He had never felt so useless.
The illness that Ouma caught from Momota was still in his system. They pumped Ouma's frail, thin body full of antibiotics, but there was still a trace of it in his blood. The doctors said it was likely because Ouma's immune system was weak from all the trauma that had happened to his body, and only time would tell if he would make a full recovery.
The doctors also told them that even if Ouma did wake up, it was unlikely that he would ever walk again. The boulder that crushed his lower half was not the cause of his paralysis, however; it was a smaller rock that lodged itself in his lower back and caused a fracture in his spinal cord. The cruelest bit was that the rock did not completely sever his nerves, so even though Ouma would never regain use of his legs he would still feel jolts of pain periodically. There was a surgery that could fix his spine and relieve the pain, but because of Ouma's fragile health he could not undergo the surgery in his current condition.
(The surgery would not restore the use of his legs, the doctor stressed. Just stop the pain.)
They fell into a routine.
Yumeno would wake up first and prepare breakfast for them. She did the domestic chores; grocery shopping, cleaning the house, doing laundry, preparing meals. She learnt to care for Ouma's many needs, changing the IV drip and checking his catheter and giving him sponge baths. Her implanted talent was the only one that was not useful to the Future Foundation, so she took on the role of supporting her friends from the sidelines as much as she could.
Harukawa would wake up next and start her training routine. She would go back to the apartment to have her meals, but she spent most of her time preparing her body for battle. It was only a matter of time before the Future Foundation requested she join their ranks, and Harukawa wanted to make sure she would return to her friends alive and unharmed.
Saihara would have a hard time getting out of bed. He would usually get up in time for lunch, then spend most of his time at Ouma's bedside, falling asleep by the smaller boy. He looked at cases given to him by the Future Foundation with a kind of condescending amusement, solving them without even having to go to the crime scene. They grudgingly let him stay beside Ouma and registered him in the DSC as a triple zero detective.
Two months later, Ouma opened his eyes.