Danganronpa Extra Life

Having Fun

Finally, a bit over a week later, Kamukura-kun decided she was vaccinated enough to go outside. Chiaki was practically bouncing in her chair as he opened the front door, one hand on her wheelchair's handles. The door swung outwards; she grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut, not having seen natural light in almost a year now.

When she thought it was safe to open them again, she did. And the smile slipped off her face.

The sky instantly captured her attention. Instead of being clear blue or overcast gray, it was a deep crimson, with darker shades indicating clouds. She stared at it, horrifically mesmerized, for a few moments, before her eyes turned to the landscape; there weren't any other visible buildings, but then again the wall completely encircling the property might have hidden them. The air was chilly and thin—they must be in a high area. Some sort of mountain retreat, maybe. The grass certainly looked healthy, if a bit less green than it should be at the tail end of summer.

"I suppose this is why you kept the windows shut?" she murmured, eyes unconsciously returning to that foreign sky as though hoping it'd go back to the one she knew. "To not alarm me?"

"Correct." He carefully maneuvered her wheelchair down the front steps. The wheels hit the sidewalk pavement with a heavy clunk.

Now that she was actually outside, Chiaki wasn't quite sure what to do. Look around more, maybe? Exploring was usually a safe choice in open-world games.  "Can we go outside that wall?"

In response, he began pushing her in the wall's direction. Chiaki strained her ears for sounds of life, but there were none; no birds singing in the trees, no planes flying overhead, no buzzing of the morning cicadas. It was completely silent, like the aftermath of a battle in movies. And she was just starting to notice some smell in the air, something faint but unpleasant. Oily, kind of.

They reached the wall; it was high, taller than them, and made of stone. It would have been normal, but along the top she could see turrets. Sentry turrets, Kamukura-kun had explained earlier, when he'd asked her to wait while he disabled them. She'd been shocked he would have such things, and that was the point he'd mentioned, almost off-handedly, there were other traps that he would have to physically disarm, too.

"The world is not kind, and there are people who would attempt to kill you just for being well off," he'd said when she asked if they were really necessary, "There are times I have been required to leave this facility, and without these traps and the wall, you would be completely unprotected. It is a simple matter for me to evade them when I leave, but you lack that luxury."

He'd then warned that she should never attempt to go outside without alerting him. Not that she planned to; she wasn't a prisoner, and really, doing that in this apocalyptic world would just be stupid.

The turrets looked like something out of a military game, she thought as he pushed her wheelchair through the gate, though she couldn't be sure if they were par the norm or advanced. Had Kamukura-kun made them himself, or stolen them? What about the other traps? With his skillset, either was equally likely.

Outside the walls, she saw that she was right on both her guesses—they were in a high area, and it had been some sort of retreat, for when she looked up and back she saw mountains rising behind them. A road winded down to the valley below, where she could see rooftops. So they were maybe halfway up, and down there must be the settlement Kamukura-kun spoke of. The visible trees still looked in good condition, their green leaves valiantly clinging to the branches despite both the pollution and the approaching fall. It would have been a beautiful view if it weren't for the sky.

They stayed outside for a good twenty minutes, him mostly just pushing her around and letting her familiarize herself with their location. There wasn't much to see; isolated as they were, they didn't pass so much as a single person. The nature was beautiful, but it was hard to appreciate it when the sky was a constant reminder of how wrong the world was. It didn't take long for Chiaki to request to go back inside.