Ryota Mitarai (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lovedanime) wrote2018-08-27 11:12 pm
lovedanime) wrote2018-08-27 11:12 pm
diary
A fuzzy rug dominates the floor of Mitarai's room. The bed is made and hosts a blue stuffed animal. There's one chair behind the desk, which has a very tidy array with multiple types of paper and pencils including three different mechanical ones. The centerpiece is a notebook.
Most apprentices have seen the notebook Mitarai got at the first afterparty thrown by Monika. The flame animations, perhaps, or some exchanges with Rantaro. What's less obvious is that these pages all come from the latter part of the notebook... the first few pages of the notebook are sequentially occupied by letters.
Most apprentices have seen the notebook Mitarai got at the first afterparty thrown by Monika. The flame animations, perhaps, or some exchanges with Rantaro. What's less obvious is that these pages all come from the latter part of the notebook... the first few pages of the notebook are sequentially occupied by letters.
First Letter. Week 2 Saturday Night
This is Mitarai. I'm writing from Fayflower University. If these letters reach you in time, PLEASE send as much help as possible to the sending location. Several people are in GRAVE DANGER!!!
We're in another country at the very least, though, so getting through to you seems all too unlikely... The sky is blue and not polluted red - maybe another world. Many of the "Apprentices" claim to be from different years, or that they aren't even human!
In one way this world is all too similar to the Japan we were protecting, though. The entire atmosphere outside the wall surrounding Fayflower induces "hijacking", which is very similar to the despair infestations. And the administration of this ersatz university offers us motives to kill each other.
They say we should work together as a highly specialized team, and some of the administrators don't even seem particularly fond of torture, so maybe their goal really is to weed out the Apprentices who could fall into despair. But this is just as bad! It's nothing more than what an educator who fell into despair would do! And even people who fell into despair shouldn't be executed if there's any other way to help them! Let alone the innocent victims of their crimes! I hate watching this so much...
I'm not proud to write this but I have to. At first I was totally in denial about the situation. I really thought you all would come to rescue us soon, just like you recruited me, just like we took in the survivors of the 78th class. After all, when they knocked me out, we were all together for the meeting, weren't we? Over a week pased, though,
We received a motive from the administration, and that was when I decided to fight back. I began drawing a new amazing anime. This might have been a little extreme, but at this point I thought at least showing the administration was worth the risk. Apparently there was an entrance exam in the past where they coerced "Mishima-kun" into committing murder and getting executed, among other casualties. So you can see there's been no time to waste.
As I started working in earnest, I ran into Yoosung Kim, the Apprentice of Gaming. He was worried about me working so hard, and he felt a void in his life without the video games he played. At that point I insisted only a real talent like my anime could get people out of a void like this place.
Why did I say that to him? Kim-kun was just trying to be nice to me, to everyone, and I pushed him away. I was just as bad as the detractors say the future foundation is! I don't even mean to dismiss the virtues of people without talent, or gaming as a talent... you could have found a place for Nanami-san, I'm sure of it, if only she was still here, right? And it's not like working together and checking on each other is wrong. Everyone tells me to take better care of myself, not least you. Back then I was so frustrated, though, I just ran away to make more anime.
The next day, we discovered the body of Kim-kun.
Grantaire, the Apprentice Revolutionary, murdered him and made his corpse into a work of art. Living up to his title, he described his motive as resources for the French revolution as led by "Enjolras". A radical sect, presumably. I wonder, though - would Munakata-san have done the same thing? Or maybe... Sakakura-san because he was so inspired by Munakata-san? But I think even if they didn't take a bloodless path to protect people, they would understand a killing game like this is precisely what the Future Foundation must prevent.
At the trial, everyone suspected me, because they found out about my stupid fight with Kim-kun. We had a very hard time solving the case. The main reason they didn't vote for me was because moving the body took so much strength. And eventually they found ropeburn on Grantaire's hands.
I need to be stronger, but obviously my anime wasn't finished in time to prevent any deaths. Which means I have to get stronger in other ways even faster... which I've never known how to do... Will I have to solve the cases if there's another murder? If! I must hold on to hope! We have to keep pursuing as peaceful a resolution as possible!
Without anime or the rest of you, though, I don't have any hope to hold onto... For lack of better options I've selected a temporary commanding officer, Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Nobody has a position like yours, Tengan-san, but at least he's the eldest of us. An experienced policeman, he claims to be in despair despite doing his best to help all of us. Perhaps he uses that term liberally to describe a milder disaffected condition like Kizakura-san? They certainly have similar preferences in beverages.
A lot of people here are supporting me in spite of everything, and I am very grateful for that! Poe-san and Waver-san believed in me at the trial, Terra is going to be my friend in honor of Kim-kun, and Monika-san gave me this notebook! She encourages everyone to share their real feelings with her. I usually only do that through anime, but people keep asking me to explain things and obviously won't exactly be impressed with draft anime, especially after how I was so prideful at Kim-kun. I just decided to pretend I was talking to you. Thank you for always understanding me and making me feel useful. Please rescue us. I really wish you could just pat me on the head and smile knowingly, one more time.
Respectfully,
Mitarai
Week 3 Thursday Night
The night after writing my first letter, I remembered some of what happened after the sleeping gas was released in the board room. This explains why all of you weren't with us. It seems so unlikely we'll both survive long enough for these letters to be of any help... but they do help me organize my thoughts like Monika-san suggested. I want to write down what I remembered so I can try to think about what to do next.
You were there for most of it. I woke up in the boardroom with just you and Kirigiri-san. Bandai-san and Yukizome-sensei were there too - dead. We were trapped in the headquarters with bracelets. Mine told me not to use my talent. It's a bit of a shame... I still had my cell phone with that video back then. Sakakura-san was being aggressive, and my video could have pacified him. Instead I tried to protect Kirigri-san and just injured her more in my clumsiness. I couldn't find a way to be useful at all... Asahina-san patronized me, that I saved her own life too. I can't remember what she was talking about, but there's no way I could have helped someone that much.
Kirigiri-san was investigating the bodies - Gozu-san was killed as well - and I couldn't make head or tails of anything. Maybe it's for the best in one way that I couldn't show my anime. Kirigiri-san comes off like she wouldn't understand. Not when she's working together with Naegi.
I don't mean to say I oppose him entirely, though! Munakata-san captured Naegi and threatened to execute him, and I don't support that at all! I knew that Munakata-san was harsh on despair, and it did seem like this situation meant there was sabotage from at least one member of the Future Foundation, but we should still work together...
You went off to fight him. I'm scared. Please survive, Tengan-san.
That situation has very little connection to the events at Fayflower University. The time limits are totally different. By definition of the time limits, the Future Foundation will be stuck in their torture for less than forty-eight hours. Here we approach the end of the third week. Some members of the Administration claim this is a test of our patience, and we shouldn't succumb to their incentives at all. The current motive does certainly fit with this theme. We have to live with hallucinations of the people missing us, until someone kills.
I really doubt their good intentions, though. D-756 ("hijacking") by itself could drive people to kill with extended exposures, and so could the hallucinations, really - I've even seen a couple of people who are downright violent as a direct result of them! Why not wait for just that much killing? They encourage us so explicitly with the promise of immunity for a murderer who gets someone else voted as the blackened - and then give us the chance to execute the murderer anyway, as colorful as Enoshima ever rendered it. They really are shooting to lower our numbers, I think. I hate them for it...
If Munakata-san was wrong to think we have to kill every trace of despair with our own two hands, isn't the administration even more wrong? Then again, our vision of hope and despair after the tragedy really isn't what most people here think. I want to practice putting that ideal into words... I wish I had you to actually talk with. You could guide me, everyone.
Hope is the prospect of a future where good things happen to yourself and others.
Despair is the prospect of a future where bad things happen to yourself and others.
In mild forms a person in despair might refuse to watch the second season of an anime adapted from their favorite manga because the first season was bad. Or say mean things about the new girlfriend brought home by their annoying uncle. But these grievances pile up and escalate.
When I talk about "falling into despair", I mean someone whose main priority is causing so much harm to the environment, themselves, and innocent victims, that it's inhumane to not do something. Some people are so strong and so patient that they never do anything of the kind. Like Naegi, the Super High School Level Hope.
But most people, when confined or tortured or deprived long enough, will fall into despair. I don't want to just tell those people that everything will be okay in the end. I need proof to show them.
Thursday night is when I write this. The same time last week that Grantaire murdered Kim-kun. The motive was announced Tuesday last week and this week too. Does the administration really have it down to a science like that?
Yukizome-sensei told me it was my birthday today. It was just an illusion, and the date was different when I left - at least, I think so, though obviously there could be more gaps in my memory - but the weather is very much like late August. At night you can still take off your blazer, listen to the cicadas, and look up at the sky. For a little while before the next culprit goes on the prowl, at least.
I hope our world has a shining future like that someday.
Respectfully,
Mitarai
Week 3 Saturday Night
I write on Saturday night after another body discovery and execution. We got through the trial faster this time, which is why I have time to write this right away even though we seem to have made a tradition of always taking dinner together after these events. I want to think I was helpful, but on the other hand this culprit struggled much less than Grantaire.
Henry the Apprentice Cawmunicator was dead. During the entrance exam, he was roommates with Kim-kun. He took great delight in collecting the head of Grantaire after the guillotine went down. He bothered me after the trial like many of the others.
I misjudged him so much! Despite all his eccentric sadistic dark magic, Henry was just a soldier looking at the situation with a tactical eye. He brought the head to the administration, and he was armed. This was unwise, of course - we've been informed this person is not on the very top of the chain of command, and laying a hand on any member of the administration means death. Still, Henry was trying to help, and I never acknowledged him properly, just because he was a little spooky and I'm a coward.
This is where Viral, the Champion Survivor, comes in. A towering nonhuman man with claws, he was our de facto leader in several "adventures" like scaling the walll. All hopeful in spirit, yet all unsuccessful so far. When he saw Henry and Todd fighting, Viral believed that breaking up the fight would mean Henry would be judged as not breaking the rules. There's no pretty way to describe what happened next... despite his lack of intent to use the lethal force of his sharp claws, the force of his body still killed Henry.
I can't put into words how disappointed I am! We all believed in him, and this is how he repays us. The others were even tempted to not vote for his execution. The biggest lesson of this whole debacle is that we can't violate the rules lightly! That's literally all he was trying to protect Henry from doing!
I'm really starting to worry that we'll never fight back with the talents we have. I'm going to ask Connor, an android and the working partner of Lieutenant Anderson, if he thinks his abilities are going to help with anything besides homicide forensics. Terra is hosting the party, anyway, and I'm socially obligated to attend. At least I didn't say anything this trial that got people to hate me... too much.
Respectfully,
Mitarai
Week 4 Tuesday Night
It's Tuesday now. I've remembered more of the Final Killing Game. Is it worth writing down at this point? We lost many others, including Kirigiri-san. Naegi is just fine, somehow. He got a hold of himself and confronted Munakata-san. You weren't with him... I fear the worst, but we had already moved on. I wonder what it's like in the mind of Naegi Makoto. Before meeting him, I never understood how viewers could overlook the difference between anime series drawn on twos and threes.
We received a new incentive. They imposed a disability on each of us, such as muteness or blindness, to be lifted once someone murdered. I lost my ability to see color, which is hardly debilitating compared to some of the others, but it has forced me to take a break from making anime. Strictly speaking I could continue linework in this condition, but I might as well only stay up working when I can be fully productive. It's agonizing being this useless... The only alternative is volunteering to help the others more impaired by this event. Kim-kun might laugh if he saw me now: Filling the void not with anime but helping the weak in simple ways.
I have my theories about what's going on here. They refuse to expose us to D-756 directly, in fact preventing us from doing so as much as possible, so they can't intend us to literally build up antibodies. That said, D-756 obviously provides an intense, direct psychosomatic stimulus. The Administration can provide similarly intense psychosomatic stimuli. Therefore, they probably intend to translate our psychosomatic reactions to these stimuli into some kind of curative steroid. You know the techniques I use to make my anime the best - red to induce anger, ocean wave sound effects to calm the viewer. Likewise the removal of memories, the restoration of personality, that's all possible in the New World Program. I really think they have similar ways to mimic the instinctive revulsion of seeing a corpse or ghost. This direct action mechanism of complex reasoning is why Apprentices without human biology are still affected, even without "neurons" that would react to the ingestion of a psychoactive drug or neurodegenerative disease.
Speaking up about my expertise isn't so wise in this group, though. The last few meetings I've tried to articulate my ideas and gotten a lukewarm response to say the least. The precise consequences aren't safe to write down; suffice it to say I have reason to believe this peace won't last. You would know what to say that would bring harmony to the group. The future they need to reach for.
Respectfully,
Mitarai
Week 4 Saturday Afternoon (cw forced suicide)
For several reasons there isn't much point to writing this letter. Maya Fey was murdered by Stuart Pot, also known as 2-D, and execution ensued. My color vision has returned. I've remembered you're dead.
2-D was the Apprentice Horror Lyricist, the member of a world famous band, and he had lost his hearing during the motive. With no prodrome for the ailment, he was completely unable to keep contributing to his band... and apparently he wasn't very good at anything else either. He sincerely believed he could inflict lethal blunt force trauma with a guitar. Then when he resorted to a knife, he believed the death of Maya Fey would be more swift and painless if he stabbed her 28 times. 2-D was a Buddhist who had been a vegetarian, one of multiple Apprentices who required that the Administration change the menu, because he believed that deeply in the sanctity of all life.
Maya Fey, the Apprentice Falsely Accused, was an innocent, lovely person who did not deserve to die. I can't blame 2-D for her death, though. The Administration removed a pillar of his psychological stability and he fell into despair, just like Oswald Hale's evasive maneuvers disoriented a limb of Viral's and he fell onto Henry. We had the same theory about the Final Killing Game, that we should only hate whoever chose to broadcast a video that forced each of the viewers to commit suicide.
I'm tired of all this falling. Ever since Naegi Makoto went on record that he saw the members of Super High School Level Despair as victims of brainwashing by the leader Enoshima Junko, I've imagined my former classmates as little figures like Issun-bōshi, whom she scooped up into her arms and blew out onto the wind like dandelion seeds, falling to the ground in shambles and spreading despair wherever they went.
Respectfully,
Mitarai
Week 5 Monday Night
[On the rest of the page, sentences stop and start and strike themselves out. Keywords like "photograph" and "Han" and "administration". Most of all, "psychosomatic stimulus", over and over again in a wide variety of different contexts. This can't be called a proper letter; there's no signature.]
Week 6 Sunday Night
Week 6 Tuesday Night
Mitarai Ryota