Neo Killing Game - Danganronpa x My Hero Academia

Epilogue : Sakura Blossoms at Dawn and Dusk - Part 2

Yaomomo strode briskly down a white and green hall, passing through a pattern of light to shadow to light again. There was a vase in her hands, a clear, glass vase with three branches of delicate, pastel sakura within. With her white sundress swaying around her, she halted at a door to her left. The plate read 3-A, a number and a letter engraved in an enamel plaque. She took the doorknob in her hand and entered.

"Hello, Shouto." The door shut behind her, leaving her alone with flowers, machinery, and the shell of a man frozen in time. Through the curtain-drawn windows, the crimson rays of the sunset cast a rosy glow over the painfully white walls. Yaomomo walked around to the far side of the bed and placed the vase on the table by the headboard before sitting down in her black plastic chair, as usual.

There were flora everywhere, in jars and vases alike, red spider lilies and vermilion camellias, amethyst wisteria and chrysanthemums with petals lighter than a cadaver's sheets. None were wilted; she always made sure to change the graying flowers. After all, there were never dead flowers at a dead man's party, right?

"How are you?" Yaomomo took his cold hand, lying on top of the sheets, and turned her gaze to his face. He looked as delicate as ever, pale skin scarred by long-ago burns- a patch over his left eye, and a newer, jagged stripe down his right temple. His lips, smooth with balm, were parted in sleep. He was as still as ever; the heartbeat monitor on his other side beeped regularly as blood stubbornly flowed within his corpse. "It's been a while."

She carefully readjusted her hand, lacing her fingers with his. "The sakura are at their peak," she continued. Behind her, the dying flames of the day burned against her back, outlining everything in red and orange. Her hair glistened, tied up in a ponytail and adorned with a silver music note hair clip. "I went boating with Yuga and Hitoshi for viewing in the morning. We had fun- Tsu's only just started having therapy with him recently, so we split up the group. In the afternoon, I joined Nejire and Tsu. Eri was there, too. We had a picnic together." She smiled, turning to glance at her vase of sakura, petals like glittering, cherry rubies in the dusk. "It was so nice... you would've liked it."

The date was April seventh, precisely five years after the students had been rescued from the League of Villains' Killing Game. The villains had maintained a steady hold on society, but with the aid of the heroes, life was mostly normal. Well, as normal as life could be for the survivors, but it worked out alright.

"I'm glad you're here, though. At least I can talk at you," she murmured, turning to stare out the window. The cityscape, the same stone jungle she'd glimpsed the day she arrived at the hospital, was basking in fiery hues. The smoky, white clouds were ablaze. She fell silent, her eyes fixed outside. Beautiful... flames.

A flicker of a cage of cerulean, a burning body crumpling before her.

A library turning into nothing but ash and blood, cinders waltzing around a scorched corpse.

She pushed the faint memories away, instead focusing on the gently drifting clouds and the cold sensation of Shouto's fingers against her own.

They sat there until she'd forgotten all sense of time, the room quiet spare for the white noise that was the steady beeping of the machinery. "I do wish you could've seen this sky, though, if only just once," she mumbled, dragging her eyes away from the dozing sun and back to him.

A pair of hazy, mismatched eyes met hers.

"...huh?"

Yaomomo blinked, once, twice. Shouto stared back up at her, his eyelids fluttering as he attempted to reaccustom to the golden light of the room instead of the cold darkness of death.

Death.

He's supposed to be dead, he's- he's been dead for years..!

She wrenched her hand from his, wrapping her arms around her chest instead. "Sh-Shouto..?"