Danganronpa! The Genetic Opera

Legal Assassin

        The repo man stood at the end of a dimly lit dead-end alley. His target was backed up against the wall. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. The steps he took towards the boy were calm and measured as the computer in the visor of his mask highlighted the target for him, and then zeroed in on what needed to be repossessed.

     "Sir... s-sir, please, please don't- I- I'll pay when I can afford to, I swear! I-"

     He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a slow breath. This happened every time, and it had long since stopped bothering him, but... this target was nineteen. The youngest target he'd ever been sent after. His own son was a mere three years younger than him.

     Nausea crept through his stomach as he approached the boy, his mask showing him what needed to be removed. The heart. Heart removals were always a pain. And yet, as always, work was work. Within moments, he had the target restrained, and his visor began to show him where to cut as if he didn't already know.

     It was a strange feeling, closing his hand around someone's still beating heart, and knowing what came next. It was so easy. Just a few snips, and his target was deceased, a debt was repaid, and his work night was over. The heart was carefully packaged in the high-tech cooler bag that GeneCo had provided him with, and returning it was a simple matter of getting back to his car and taking it back to his boss. Such was the nature of his thankless job.

     The nausea still gnawed at his stomach, but he attempted to ignore it. The job was done, the organ had been recovered, and most importantly, his son was safe at home. He had made sure of that.

     After the car ride to the GeneCo building, it was finally safe to remove his mask, tool belt, thick gloves, and heavy, bloodstained coat. The removal of these items was all that it took to revert him from the feared and hated repo man to the ordinary Hajime Hinata.

     Hajime knew exactly where he was going. Up the stairs, left, right, the room with the silver doors. Leave the container on the table, write up a report for his boss, and then he can go home. Hajime was a creature of routines and habits, and he liked it that way. His routine was rarely broken, and tonight should have been no exception. He was eager to get home. Makoto was waiting for him, after all, and seeing him safe would get rid of that awful gnawing feeling.

     But when he pushed through the silver doors, he found his boss waiting for him, sitting casually on a cold steel tabletop.

     "Hello, Hajime."

     Hajime bowed his head slightly. Even after all this time, he couldn't bear to look Nagito in the eye. "Hello, Komaeda."

     "Oh, please, I've told you so many times that you can just call me Nagito."

     "Yeah, and you'll have to keep telling me that. You're my boss, and you have been for years. You should be used to this." Hajime knew he was likely the only person besides Nagito's own children that could get away with speaking to him like that.

     "But I wasn't always." There was a purr in Nagito's voice that Hajime knew all too well. Something teasing, playful, and sexy-

     No. No, he wasn't allowed to think like that anymore. Annoyed with himself, he shoved the thought aside. "Did you need something?"

     "Oh, dear Hajime. Always so professional. So clever. I have another job lined up for you."

     "...another job? A repo job, or something else?" Nagito never personally gave him the repo cases, so this was already unusual.

     "A repo job, yes. Your most important one yet." He handed Hajime a file.

     Hajime looked down at the photograph of the teenage girl paperclipped to the file,and that creeping nausea came back all at once in an intense rush. He knew her. He knew her. His son had watched every single one of her performances on television. If there was one person in the world that Makoto adored, it was Sayaka Maizono. She was his idol.