Wataru Hibiki

Wataru Hibiki was a student at Hope's Peak Academy, and a participant of Peacock's killing game on the Island featured in Despairing Vacation 1. His Ultimate Title was the Ultimate Magician.

### **Background**

A young orphan adopted by a couple of older age, Wataru was thankful for the love and joy he received from them as he was raised and growing, wanting to find a way to repay these feelings. He decided to do so by choosing to learn talents of all kinds, and was astoundingly successful at a wide array of skills.

People were impressed by the things he could do, and the feeling of being able to delight people so much drew Wataru in. However, eventually people would grow bored with the tricks he displayed, and would demand better and greater things from him. The young Wataru, thinking that if he didn't meet their continuing demands he would be left behind, would go on to improve his skills further and further.

In the process, he seemed to lose his touch with 'reality,' and as a result had almost no connections with those around him aside from his adoptive parents until he was invited to Hope's Peak as the "Ultimate Magician."

### **Pre-Vacation**

For the first few months of his enrollment of Hope's Peak, Wataru was sparse in regards to actual class attendance. He would skip more often than not, going off on his own accord. Eventually his attendance became more regular, once he began to grow interested in learning about his classmates.

Wataru seemed to get along well enough with the class, and eventually ended up reaching out to them, feeling like he'd made real connections for the first time. While he was attached to the class as a whole, he notably spent the most time around Goro Akechi (whom he held romantic feelings for), Bendy (whom he viewed as a best friend and younger brother figure), and Peacock (whom he viewed as a younger sister figure).

He was also heavily involved in the academy's theater program, and was often noted to do outlandish things such as arriving to class through the ceilings and playing instruments at odd hours of the night.

### **Killing Game**

Initially upon Monobear's announcements of their vacation actually being a killing game, Wataru was skeptical. Even upon the reveal of their first motive, he tried to uphold the belief within the class that nothing would happen to them, even if he didn't entirely believe so himself.

Upon the conclusion of their first trial, the class having deduced the culprit, Wataru was visibly angered over the reveal that Monobear's motive wouldn't have resulted in anything happening once the timer reached zero, essentially saying that Goro had killed Noah for nothing. Despite his distress after the trial, he continued to try and uplift the spirits of his classmates, even through the implementation of the second motive.

Ultimately, Wataru becomes the culprit of the second chapter. The symptom that accompanied his forced lack of sleep was depression. Between his given symptom and the other side effects of extreme sleep withdrawal, he winded up lashing out at Daiki Takashita while they conversed on the roof, frustrated with his insistence that they were all going to die. Wataru, having believed him to be already dead as he saw blood pooling underneath the other's head and panicking, set up the scene to appear more complicated in order to appease Monobear out of fear that his classmates would be harmed. He tied Daiki up loosely with a volleyball net and put him inside the sauna; however, Daiki was still alive at the time, but ultimately met his demise after the handle broke when he tried to escape the sauna.

Wataru was voted correctly as the culprit, after insisting the class vote because a number of them refused to believe him, many thinking he was simply covering for someone. His execution was a mirror of a fairly popular and dangerous magic trick, called the Table of Death. Unbeknownst to either of them beforehand, Bendy was pulled into the execution, ultimately forced against his will to cause Wataru's final demise.

### **Personality**

Incredibly eccentric and lively in nature, Wataru is a wild card hard to pin down. His speech, movements, and actions are all inherently dramatic and theatrical, befitting his love for the theater arts. Wataru often has a habit of doing things that are considered unusual by most standards, as plenty of his ideas are unconventional and he often catches those around him off guard. It can be fairly off-putting to others at times, though Wataru himself seems to not be bothered by the fact. He seems to view the world like one would view a stage, living life as though he's a lead actor and simply trying to enjoy himself as best he can.

While he appears to be very open to those around him, in reality he's fairly closed-off. Wataru will readily admit things such as his favorite theater productions, types of food, or similar details, but he rarely ever speaks about himself as a person and his background. He also tends to keep his own real feelings and thoughts hidden in favor of supporting those around him with their issues. This tends to lead to him occasionally having breakdowns once it's difficult for him to withhold things anymore, albeit privately. While willing to assist others with their issues, it was rare for Wataru to seek assistance for himself with his own problems.

He generally tries to keep a positive outlook on his surroundings, even throughout his life in the killing game. He would rather "fill the world with love and *amazing*" rather than give in to despair and pessimistic ideals.

### **Trivia**

* Aside from magic and sleight of hand, Wataru is also skilled at acting, vocals, dance, voice mimicry, a variety of instruments, and hypnotism. He is also a fairly skilled cook, and seems to have above average hearing.
* According to Wataru himself, he received his title through "sheer magic," but considering his skill set, it's possible that Magician was a sort of catch-all.
* He has five pet doves that stayed in his room, both in the island hotel and his dorm room in Hope's Peak. They were named Nonet, Rondo, Dolce, Aria, and Mezzo; Wataru was easily able to tell them all apart, despite them all looking incredibly similar. Apparently, a joke spread throughout the class that Wataru had "at least 50 of them," but this is false.
* At some point during his time at Hope's Peak, he'd received a threat from a jealous and angered fellow magician due to Wataru receiving the HPA invitation. He never directly spoke to anyone about it, but the situation was eventually mysteriously alleviated.
* Wataru had a peculiar habit of tossing around rose petals seemingly out of nowhere, as well as falling out of his blazer whenever he fell or was tripped, *also* seemingly out of nowhere.
* Peacock often stole his phone from him to send memes and other oddities to the class's group chat.
* His favorite foods are rainbow jelly and jelly candies.
* His mask collection is exceptionally large, and most of them appear to be masquerade-like masks.
* He has a habit of saying "*Amazing,*" as well as using the ✰ symbol often in the class group chat. It became almost a running joke for his classmates to use the symbol in places it didn't quite belong or to make cracks at him.