"Have you heard of the Danganronpa commercial?"
Whispers rose in the room. Surprise aspirations were heard.

" What ?! But I thought they were going to stop after the fiasco last year !"
More and more oppressive.

"They are going to put a popularity contest online. Apparently they have one last surprise in store."
Incessant, heady.

"Even if I lost interest in it at the end, I admit that I am curious..."
any, always more.

Sat in the shadow of the amphitheater, a young man with black hair watched the scene. Stress gnawed at his stomach and bile seemed to be making its way into his esophagus. Danganronpa was back.

He had received, like the other people present in the room, a notification from the official account of the series. But unlike them, he was neither curious nor enthusiastic.

His aniseed eyes scanned the replies to the post, selfishly hoping not to see his name.

"Hikaru! What do you think of this competition? Do you know who you're going to vote for ?"
A young girl approached the student, skipping slightly, phone in hand.

"Um... Well... How to say... I'm not really interested...
- Oh yes ? But you look like my favorite character ! Less glasses and with an other haircut. In addition, given our sector, it fits rather well.- W-Who is your favorite character? Do you know who you're going to vote for? »

A smile immediately appeared on her lips and stars twinkled in her eyes.

"I'm a big fan of Shuichi ! His development was incredible in the last season and he was the one who changed the license !"

The young man's heart skipped a beat.Hikaru Adashiko was a twenty-year-old criminal justice student. Although being an ordinary third-year today, Hikaru was well known last year.

"Imagine what the others would have become without him ? Apart from Kokichi and Rantaro, no one really participated in solving the problem. He even managed to move on after Kaede's death ! Oh and when he broke Kokichi in chapter four !"

The young girl continued to deliver a behavioral analysis of her favorite while Hikaru tried somehow not to dive back into the painful memories of the year before.

Hikaru Adashiko, alias Shuichi Saihara, was one of the three survivors of the fifty-third edition of Danganronpa. Although he had no physical trauma, he had to deal with the loss of his comrades and friends again and again, while unraveling the threads woven by the mastermind.

The fact that others saw his journey as a well-developed character hurt him more than he thought. He would like to make his sadness legitimate and real in the eyes of others, to make it concrete and not something virtual that a character has experienced.

However, he could not expose his other identity, the one created from scratch by the society to which he owed his injuries.He also couldn't face anything he said or did during the game.
He felt bad.

Alas, he couldn't say or do anything so he had to wait for the girl to get tired of this conversation.

.

Tapping a beat on her thigh, a woman with golden hair was waiting for her station on the subway. Lost in her scores, she was however interrupted by children who were heckling next to her.

"They published the results !"

With a contemplative expression, his friends looked at him expectantly.
" So ?! Who is the top three?! »

Interested more than she would have liked, the young lady turned her head towards them. She understood that they were talking about Danganronpa's popularity poll.
With an anxious sigh, she tightened the edges of her skirt.

" Oh ! The first is Nagito!- So coooool ! I had voted for him! »

Nagito Komaeda, one of the antagonists of the license, character of Danganronpa Goodbye Despair. She had never met him before, but the musician knew he must have been very traumatized by the experience. He was one of the actors, nobody knew the consequences at that time.

The adult had to snap out of her thoughts when she heard the rest of the list.
"The second is Chiaki ! Ohhhhh, my favorite gamer "!

Chiaki Nanami, from the same season as Nagito, was one of the license's proteges and yet one of those who suffered the most physically. Rumor has it that the Chiaki actress was unable to film season three of the series due to injuries inflicted by Goodbye Despair.
She honestly had a lot of pity for those actors who didn't know what they were getting into.However, she didn't hear the third name because her sister arrived.

"Rina ! You won't believe your ears! I got the job !"Smiling while applauding her twin, the blonde quickly signed with her hands how happy she was for her.

The discussion loomed between the sisters and soon the stress of mentioning Danganronpa disappeared as well.

Rina Ekisa, better known as Kaede Akamatsu, was also a Danganronpa participant. She was part of the same class as Shuichi but unlike him, was not one of the survivors. Following her execution in the game, she had lost the use of her voice and was seen by a doctor and a psychologist regularly. But she considered herself lucky not to have been more impacted than that physically.

However, she too hoped not to find her name in the popularity ranking list. So as soon as she got home that night, she went to check the results before crying the rest of the night. She had a silent voice, lost in the air, while her sobs persisted and a litany rang out, repeating "it's all your fault" over and over again, harassing her again and again.