Danganronpa: Doomsday/Entry 1

Shingo Kirishima, that's my name, I can certify that much. About the rest, I'm not so sure.

It's been several months since it all started, since the apocalypse started. We don't call it like that, but it has all of the aspects : countless bodies scattered across the streets, surounded by burning buildings while the few survivors are crying, pleading for some sort of help. If you won't call this mess the world is currently in the apocalypse, I don't know what you will. The world as we know it has fallen, destroyed by riots, violence, terrorism and war on a global scale.

To think it all started back in Hope's Peak main campus is actually frightening. It happened so fast, in just a few days it extended to the entire globe. From what I've heard, a single high schooler, calling herself the Ultimate Despair, started everything in ways I'm not sure of, but eventually she became the empress of evil, leading armies of rioting men and women in the streets, ravaging everything and anything in her path. The media were replaced by gruesome footage of people dying in extremely gory ways, including persons who seemed to be Hope's Peak Students. Later, we'd learn it was the Student Council, but what led to this destruction would forever remain unknown.

Thankfully, nothing of the sort erupted in the annex; but we lost communication with the main campus around the moment a teacher mentioned a riot caused by the Reserve Course, and despite our best efforts, nobody was able to restore the radio. The younger students started to panic, worrying about their families and friends back on the main campus, as we practically permanently lived in the annex, but there was nothing we could do, besides sealing the entrance, barricading it with furniture. The noises never stopped : explosions, screams and sobs, hopeless sirens in the distance, guns and fights. Most of us had nightmares for weeks after this.

And so, eventually, the noises were replaced by silence after a few days, besides the weeps of everyone trapped in the annex for our own safety. A dreadful, gloomy silence. We decided to barricade the windows as well, and those tasked with it were the first to discover this new world. I was one of them. When I looked through the dirty glass, I saw desolation : burning ruins, corpses, despair, not a single living soul. Tokyo was barely recognizable, emptied from all its life by the catastrophe, and we were having the front-row seats to observe the aftermath. Deciding to seal the windows was wiser than leaving this desolation unfolding before our eyes every morning. Our mental health already took a great toll.

After completely cutting ourselves from the exterior, the teachers gathered us in the gymnasium. There were about sixty of us, and maybe a dozen of teachers, although they didn't live here, unlike us. They were probably the most unfortunate ones, trapped far from their family expecting them to return in the evening. Once gathered, a meeting was held, trying to determine the best course of actions. One suggested to leave the radio permanently turned on, in case of a broadcast from the school or government officials. Although in hindsight, the government was probably already destroyed by that point. Another was sure that someone would come and rescue us, be it the police, army, or even another country. A third hinted it would be necessary to accommodate the annex to long-term habitability, as leaving school's grounds was currently out of the question.

The adults discussed between them, while the students simply waited. A few were still sobbing, desperately trying to reach their loved ones, others talked, but overall the atmosphere was tense. Finally, the maths’ teacher of grade 11th stood up from the small assembly to announce a lockdown of undetermined length of time, and that nobody was allowed to leave the annex under any circumstances. The crowd agreed, relying on their teachers to guide us through those dark times, and the meeting ended.

Soon afterwards, the teachers organized groups to rearrange the annex : the bedrooms, the classrooms, even the garden. We already had a small vegetable garden, maintained by a 9th grader named Haru Hanabe, the ultimate gardener, but widening the surface would be necessary. Regarding the water, we were filling containers as long as we had tap water while building a reservoir outside, next to the vegetable patch. Slowly but surely, we rearranged the garden to supply enough food for everyone.

We tried our best to maintain a semblance of life and order amidst this chaos, and most of the time it worked. But even with our best efforts, tensions would soon arise. Roughly one month after this all started, a group of students forced their way out, tired of waiting and dead worried about their family : they broke the front gates with improvised weapons and ran outside, followed by a teacher, neither of them have been seen since, probably killed by whoever was still roaming Tokyo’s ruins. A few other incidents followed, but it was the main for several weeks, up until someone was killed over a petty argument regarding some food.

Cohabitation was starting to become difficult for some of us, locked in here since two months already, so I wasn’t really surprised when someone was murdered over food. We never discovered the culprit, and the atmosphere became even gloomier, distrust gaining ground. It was at this moment that in the lower grades, one student then started to be seen as some kind of leader amongst his fellow classmates, inspiring hope and optimism around himself. He became a sort of guiding light for those confined within the annex, and even I have to admit he was pretty good at this. We reorganized ourselves after that.

Another pair of months then passed, without anything extraordinary happening. To avoid another incident like the one leading to the doors’ destruction, we instored shifts to look over the critical spots in the annex, including the entrance hall, the gymnasium and the dormitory. Having several athletes in our ranks, including a few able to use weapons, finding guards wasn’t a problem, even if at first they were pretty intimidating. Regarding myself, I wasn’t really fit for physical duties, being the ultimate trainee doctor, but my role was essential nonetheless, overseeing the nursery and the occasional injury. Being in last grade certainly had its perks, being taken seriously even by adults was one of them.

Personally, I had it easy, compared to some of my classmates and juniors. I spent most of my time in the nursery, tidying up the place, studying some medical cases and treaties I borrowed from the library or watching over the medicine. Most of the injuries I had to treat were without importance and easily curable, grazes or the likes, the most serious cases were food poisoning or broken limbs, nothing out of my abilities. Overall, the hygiene wasn’t that bad, despite us missing running water. We often used dry shampoo, soap and edible toothpaste, and it was sufficient enough to keep us from sickness.

But more than anything, I had to look after my dear friend Akemi, although she was best known as Kawasaki-san by our classmates. We were close enough to call each other by our first names, we’ve been together since our childhood after all. I really enjoyed her company, and so did she. But her health was fragile, she had a heart condition that could easily kill her in case of prolonged effort, and so she was often out of breath. Therefore, she hung out with me in the nurse’s office most of the time, where I could easily look after her, laying on the bed reading her books. When Akemi wasn’t with me, you could definitely find her in the kitchen, baking some sweets or cakes for our next meal, she was the ultimate baker after all, and her creations were delicious.

Besides Akemi, I was good friends with the rest of my classmates, including those twins, a boy and girl, respectively the ultimate clockmaker and the ultimate doll maker. They were pretty nice and considerate, even though they weirded me at times with their strange mannerisms. I’d rather be around them than this smug asshole living on the main campus, heir of a rich corporation I forgot the name of. I couldn't help but wonder if anyone survived there, they could’ve locked themselves in like us. Though, the footage released showing the Student Council brutally murdering each other left little room for doubt, a feeling reinforced by the fact the apocalypse started at Hope’s Peak. But still, I had a lingering sensation we weren’t the only survivors of this academy.

And I wasn’t the only one dealing with those thoughts, as we'd soon found out.