Part 1: Junko Enoshima’s Peacetime Survival Guide
You don’t have to be a freakazoid to love Touko, but it helps.
For the first year of the plan, Junko had to find ways to entertain herself.
Most of her usual pastimes were out of the question. For a quick fix, she’d taken to keeping a collection of tamagotchis and regularly letting them starve. (This also helped with her image as a ditz.) She’d set up a few online scams to steal the passwords to people’s Runescape accounts. She’d even taken to writing RPF about her classmates living their personal worst nightmares, as well as sketching out potential executions for if they ever ended up a culprit. She even did this for people from the other classes, who wouldn’t be participating.
Nanase from Class #79, she thought, would be eaten by fire ants who were all wearing little cowboy hats.
Junko leaned forward and hit her notebook page from view as Taka walked past her. The boy would never guess she was really planning anything messed up, but her drawings could at the very least make a person uncomfortable, and that was no good for her.
Well...
It was no good for the plan.
But god did she want to taste some despair.
The bell rang the instant Taka sat down in his seat, and Junko settled in for another depressingly dull class period.
As the teacher droned on about practical methods to combat global warming, something else started to itch Junko’s attention. It took her a moment to place it. But soon she couldn’t ignore the suspicion that someone had their eyes on her.
That wasn’t good. She quickly flipped her notebook over to the decoy doodle of a puppy and some flowers. She wondered who in the class could be on to her. Did Kirigiri peg her so quickly? She knew that girl was a liability. Or could it be Chihiro? That one noticed more than she let on. Or Sakura? Junko started to fear for her life. Or could it be Hiro? Well, no, it definitely couldn’t.
Or was someone unknown hiding in this room? She began to sweat.
She sweated out the rest of the lesson on climate change, getting ready to bolt for the exit as soon as the bell rang, grab Mukuro, and go consult in one of their rooms. When the ring came, she jumped from her seat and ran for the door, but there was already a figure blocking her way. Her hand went to her concealed knife - but stopped short as she realized who it was.
Touko Fukawa was standing in the doorway. She was looking down shyly, and pushing her index fingers together as if she had something to say.
“Junko, um...”
Junko stopped in her tracks. Her face, unbidden, kicked on a blush to match her hair dye. Touko... talking to her? It’s not like she’d never fantasized about it... but Touko hated girly-girls. Even more than she hated everyone. And a girly-girl, unfortunately, was the role Junko needed to play in order to get along with everyone else.
Touko was struggling to speak. Junko found herself waiting with bated breath. Then, more quickly and more confidently than Junko expected, Touko whispered:
“W-w-w-will y-you... g-go... o-o-o-out w-with m-me?”
Junko stared, hot prickles running up her whole body. Touko Fukawa - with her awful greasy hair, sunken eyes, painful expressions, wanted her .
“Yes!” she blurted, before she could think at all.
The loudness of her reply drew eyes from the other stragglers in the class; the appearance of the scene quickly raised their eyebrows.
Junko’s insides went cold immediately. She had fucked up. She couldn’t date while keeping a secret identity! But she couldn’t take back her response either, without that in itself breaking her character. Only a few months into the first year, and she had already let her desires get the better of her. Damn it, Junko!
Touko looked at her in shock. “You... you... you... you will??”
“Um...” said Junko, hesitating.
But in that moment, looking at that desperate face, Junko decided that if the damage was done, she may as well let herself enjoy it.
She readjusted her sharp fashionista smile.
“Yep! I’d love to. When were you thinking of going out?”
Touko had obviously bluescreened. “I - I - I -”
Junko grinned. “Don’t worry about it, Fukawa. It’s Friday tomorrow - I’ll meet you after school, we can go to a cafe. Yeah?”
“Y...y...yeah!” Touko looked the way Aoi did when someone brought donuts before a test. It was surprisingly cute on her. Suppressed fantasies were already bubbling up in Junko’s mind - but right now she had to stay sharp.
“Alright, see you then, sweet cheeks.” Junko swished past the stunned Touko and out of the room, leaving the roomful of dropped jaws behind her.
As soon as Junko had rounded a few corners, she leaned against the wall and let out a deep breath. She put a hand to her forehead and slowly shook her head at herself. Her cheeks were burning, and she was grinning like a skeleton without even meaning to.
Yep... she had fucked up. But she had fucked up real, real good.
Junko unlocked her dorm room, still feeling a happy fluttering in her heart. As she walked inside, she felt something snag against her foot, and then abruptly a large hammer came down and smashed against her head.
“GAAH!!” screeched Junko as she dizzily collapsed onto the carpet. She scrambled to flip herself over and put up her arms in defense. But her attacker was standing a good several feet away, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and a deadpan expression.
“Quick question,” said Mukuro flatly. “Are you crazy?”
Junko picked herself up, trying to salvage a modicum of grace. She pouted at her sister. “Apparently I am. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Mukuro’s eyes narrowed. “Well, as juicy as it would be to ruin our master plan before we even have a chance to begin...” She abruptly changed to a barking shout. “DON’T FUCKING DO THAT!”
“I won’t!” yelled Junko, throwing a knife at her sister’s forearm. Mukuro casually blocked it with another knife she pulled out of her sleeve and the projectile clattered to the ground.
“I have to know, Junko.” Mukuro began pacing along Junko’s wall. “Is this a trick? Is this a plot? Is this anything? Because you’re not really this stupid. I know that.”
“I am this stupid!” yelled Junko, charging at her sister with a spiked knucklebuster on her fist.
Mukuro grabbed her arm and bent it behind her back, flipping her around. She held her favorite serrated knife up to Junko’s throat.
At that moment, there was a soft, hesitant knock on the door.
They both froze.
“...Who is it?” Junko called out, holding as still as possible.
“U-u-ummm...” came Touko’s voice. “I... I-I wanted to... I-I c-couldn’t wait to see you, M...M...Master.”
Junko blinked. It seemed that Mr. Togami didn’t quite own everything.
“Hm, uh...” Junko called out. “I think it would be better to wait for our date official. Okay, Touko?”
“O...O...O...Okay!" They heard her footsteps shuffle off down the hall.
For a moment, there was silence.
Mukuro sighed. “It’s not anything, is it? You just can’t resist that girl. Of course you can’t.”
Junko grinned a dopey grin as a line of blood started to trickle down her clavicle. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. She is.”
Junko sighed. “So... fuckin’... hopeless.”
Mukuro released her grip on Junko and put the knife away. She opened her arms for a simple hug. “Alright, sis. You have fun. Just make sure you don’t mess this up for us.”
Junko smiled and turned around to meet the hug. “Aw, sis. You know me.”
And with that, she rammed her knee as hard as she could into her sister’s crotch.
Junko does not have an angel and a devil on her shoulders. She has a white monobear and a black monobear.
An awful sense of unease was spreading through a small cafe in the town near Hope’s Peak. Patrons were becoming twitchy and restless. Servers were hesitant to approach the source of the disturbance, a booth where two teenage girls sat across from one another.
The dark purple-haired girl was staring at her partner with an unrestrained hunger, with eyes half-lidded and drool seeping from her open mouth.
The pink-haired girl looked overtly normal, meeting her partner’s heavy gaze with a pleasantly happy smile. But there was something wrong about it... even if only due to the obvious incongruity. There was an energy emanating from her. An energy that made you want to spend all your cash on fancy lattes in case you got hit by a car tomorrow.
The servers drew lots in the back room.
One of them was pushed out into the diner. She took a breath and boldly walked up to the offending table. She put on a bright smile.
“Do you know what you’d like to order?”
“Huh??” The purple-haired girl turned to look at her in shock, as if rudely awakened to the existence of other people.
Her date met the server with a calm smile. “Yeah, gimme a soy matcha latte. Touko?”
“C-C-C-Caramel macchiato,” the girl whispered to the table.
“Perfect. That will be right out.” The server scribbled the orders into her notepad and took off at speed.
There was a moment of quiet.
Junko twirled a strand of ponytail hair around her finger. “So, Touko...”
“Huh??” Touko’s attention snapped back, as though she’d been caught doing something wrong.
“So, uh... what’s a sweetie like you see in a ditz like me?”
A warm blush spread through Touko’s whole body.
“Uhh.... W-w... uhh...” It took her a moment to find her facial muscles and swallow her mouthful of spit.
“Uh... uh... uh... your s-smile... y-your e-exuberance... y-your boots... y-y-y-your p-pretty hair...”
Touko had started crying, possibly without noticing it herself.
Junko felt a pang of love in her chest. “That’s so sweet! You know why I like you?”
“What??” Touko jumped in shock, her eyes darting around in case cracks started appearing in the fabric of reality.
Junko giggled. “I do, Touko. I like you.”
Touko stared at her with a mix of hunger and fear. “W-what do y-you... W-what...”
Junko started. “I...”
Fuck.
Well, there were a few things she couldn’t say. She couldn’t say ‘I love the way your heart thumps with panic when other people pay attention to you.’ She couldn’t say ‘I love the way you claw your hands when your brain starts overheating.’ And she most likely shouldn’t say ‘I love the way you desperately sabotage the relationships you most cherish as a way to protect yourself from the pain of connection.’
“I like your eyes,” Junko finished.
“M...my eyes?” Touko repeated.
“They’re... deep.”
The world seemed frozen for a moment.
Then a lopsided hiccupy laugh started bubbling up through Touko’s body. “M...M...Master likes my eyes!” she squealed to herself. “M-M-My eyes! They’re deep!”
A wolfish smile bloomed on Junko’s face. The sheer desperation coming across the table in waves. Desperation was on step away from despair. God, the things she’d like to do to this girl...
A small scuffing sound startled them both.
“Here you are,” said the server, setting their coffees on the table. “Will there be anything else?” She accidentally met Touko’s blissed-out gaze and averted her eyes.
“Nope, we’re good!” said Junko with her signature wide grin. “Thanks!”
The server gathered up her tray and ran.
Touko watched Junko take a casual sip of her (still scalding) coffee.
“D...d...do you want mine too, Master?” she asked breathlessly.
Junko laughed. “No, ‘course not. The point of the date is having coffee together.”
“O-oh!” Touko cringed at herself.
“There’s nothing I want more than for you to enjoy your drink.” Junko smiled ebulliently.
“O-o-okay!!” Touko squeaked and grabbed for her cup. She rushed it to her lips and drank shakily, spilling a few wince-inducing drops down her chin. She put the cup down, swallowed the large helping, and smiled, eyes closed, basking in the feeling of love.
Junko watched her happily for a few moments. And then, all of a sudden, the devil moved her lips.
“Hey, you want a sip of mine?”
Touko gasped. “M-Master!? Y-y-you... would... you w-want...” She started breathing very quickly. “Y-y-you w-want to sh-share a c-c-cup w-with me?? You w-want - me to put my lips - i-in the s-s-same place - that your lips - !?”
Junko could hear a voice in the back of her mind yelling, Don’t do this, dumbass!! This is how you get us found out!!!
The voice in the front of her mind still had her lips, and was saying, “Yeah. No big deal. See what mine tastes like.” And then smiling.
Touko stared at Junko’s cup longingly, her lips quivering and dripping with drool once again.
Junko picked up the cup and held it across the table to Touko. Touko reached out to take it, and just as her fingers started to brush the cup, Junko let go prematurely and let it drop.
The coffee burst open on Touko’s side of the table and splashed everywhere, all over Touko’s uniform and into her lap. Many of the other patrons, who had been getting progressively tenser for the past several minutes, twitched violently at the sudden noise. Touko shrieked.
“I - I - I - I - I - I’m so SORRYYYYYYYY!”
She lunged for the basket of napkins and began mopping at the coffee in an ineffectual frenzy, mostly sloshing it around the table and onto herself and the floor, as she repeated her apology at an ever-increasing tempo. Finally she collapsed at the futility of the effort, her panic turning inward into shakes and hyperventilation, her hands tightly gripping her skull and her gaze exiled downward and away from Junko’s expression.
Junko was having a hard time holding it together.
She hadn’t witnessed a rush of despair this bad since... a long time. She was fighting to stop her body from shivering, biting hard into her lower lip to keep herself silent. A man in another booth looked around for the commotion, made eye contact with her, and instantly turned back around, keeping his attention on his pastry.
She almost couldn’t do it, but she forced herself to put a stop to this before the girl fainted.
“Touko, it’s okay.”
“N-n... I-i-it’s... N... I...” Touko gasped wetly.
“Touko. Don’t worry about it.” Junko said in a clear, definite tone.
“O-okay.”
The panic suddenly drained from Touko’s body, leaving her in a trembling aftershock.
Junko bit back a wide, ecstatic smile. She couldn’t resist. She would not be able to resist playing with her, just a little. There was no way she could resist. Having a girlfriend was going to be the best thing in her life.
Besides, no one had seen that little tiny thing she did.
No one could prove anything.
No one would ever figure out she wasn’t what she seemed.
Touko tentatively looked up at Junko’s face, clutching her own cup of coffee with both hands. “D-d-do you w-want some of m-mine now?” she asked.
Junko beamed, a bead of blood sliding down her lip.
In the back room, the servers drew lots to clean up the spill. Some of them were hiding in the bathroom.
When the two of them got home a couple hours later, Junko walked her date back to her room. She dropped Touko off covered in coffee stains, emotionally exhausted, and shaking with the leftover adrenaline that people tended to experience when Junko’s real personality showed through. Needless to say, Touko was glowing with happiness.
Junko, on the other hand, had a terrible creeping feeling in the pit of her stomach. Now that she was back at school, prudence was beginning to reassert itself, and she didn’t know what she would do if she really had screwed things up for good this time.
Touko would realize. She would look back on this tomorrow, at all the ways Junko had toyed with her deliciously volatile feelings. And then she would tell someone.
Next time, if there was a next time, Junko had to keep her despair thirst in check.
But that smile. Touko’s spacey, pervy, no-one-exists-but-you smile. It wouldn’t leave Junko’s head, even after Touko’s door had closed.
Once she and Touko parted, Junko walked the few steps down the hall and let herself into Mukuro’s room.
Mukuro was on her bed, reading a book on the Salem witch trials hidden inside a book on Statistics. She discarded the latter, seeing that it was only Junko at the door.
“You kids have fun?” she asked without looking up.
“Yes,” said Junko happily. She started pacing, skipping, and twirling back and forth through the room, unable to keep still. “We had an amazing time.”
“You understand I won’t ask any more, because you’re forcing me to trust you.”
“Come ooon, Mukuchi!” Junko pouted. “Can’t you just let me have this?”
“You’re telling me you didn’t break one bit?” Mukuro looked up at her coolly. “You were alone with that girl - with that girl - and you didn’t torture her even a little? You didn’t bliss out for a second? You didn’t say anything weird?”
Junko kept her cool and met Mukuro’s stare, even though she could feel her insides sloshing around.
“She never once looked at you strangely?” asked Mukuro. “She didn’t notice one thing wrong?”
And then, in one despair-inducingly dreadful moment, it hit her.
The thing about that smile.
It was the exact same smile Touko had shown at the beginning of their date. Nothing had changed. Nothing had broken her expectations.
She doesn’t know.
It was such a deliciously horrifying idea, it made her weak in the knees.
No, Touko really hadn’t noticed anything wrong. Not one bit of the ravenous sadism bursting the buttons off Junko’s skin. And not because Junko was slick. But because Touko had no idea that a normal date shouldn’t be like that.
The sheer awfulness of it washed through Junko’s mind like a headrush. She felt faint. She thought she ought to sit down.
“What?” snapped Mukuro. “What does that expression mean?”
Junko collapsed backward onto the bed and strained her eyes upward to look at her upside-down sister.
“It means don’t worry, little sis,” she said with spacey, pervy grin. “It means everything’s gonna work out just fine.”
God, she wished she was a despair vampire, so she could suck every drop of desperation out of Touko’s pretty little neck.
Well, she supposed that’s why people had romance.
Because they couldn’t be vampires.