Who Am I? The Ultimate Counselor
"Fuck... is this actually happening...?"
The second I opened my eyes, I was staring at a ceiling I didn't recognize. An unfamiliar ceiling. I wasn't even blackout drunk, so why the hell was I looking at a ceiling I'd never seen before?
Where am I? Who am I? I didn't waste time on that kind of pathetic internal monologue. Obviously that goddamn comment had dragged me straight into the Danganronpa universe.
Your average person would've been pretty shaken right about now, but I was the real deal — a brain thoroughly pickled in anime and web novels. If I started flailing around in a situation like this, I wouldn't have the right to call myself that.
First things first: I needed to see what I looked like. I hauled my stiff, groggy body upright and found a mirror.
"Oh... I look a little younger, but otherwise I'm exactly the same as I was in high school."
I'd have preferred to reincarnate as a handsome guy instead of this gloomy, scrawny version of myself, but at least I hadn't been genderbent out of my family jewels. I took that as a win and looked away.
"What's this supposed to be...?"
You have been selected for enrollment at our academy as the Ultimate Counselor.
What the hell was that supposed to mean? The Ultimate Counselor? Then again, there was no chance a guy whose life had been nothing but misfortune would wake up as the Ultimate Lucky Student. I was a talentless shut-in to begin with. But a counselor?
The only thing "counseling" brought to mind was the psychiatrist who'd always been on my ass at the mental hospital. I'd been the one sitting on the receiving end of those sessions. I had never, not once, been the one giving them.
I don't know a single thing about who I am in this world... Guess I should start by gathering information.
I needed to figure out what kind of person this world's version of me was — and how closely this world actually matched the games. So I got to work.
Well... I can't tell if this is good news or bad.
After a few hours of digging, I had a decent picture of the situation.
First off, my name was Kei. In the real world I'd had a Korean name, but in this one I went by Kei. I'd been an orphan in the Danganronpa universe, and the only thing I'd owned as a kid was a pendant engraved with the letter K, so they'd named me after it. Whether it was reality or the Danganronpa world, apparently I was the kind of guy who just winged it through life.
That said, this world's version of me was a clear upgrade. Despite being an orphan, I hadn't broken. I'd spent my time at the children's home counseling kids who were struggling with their own wounds, talking them through it, being the person they could lean on. Then the home got featured in a documentary. The cameras caught me counseling those kids — their emotional anchor — and the whole moving scene went to broadcast. I got famous. The donations that poured in after that let me keep the counseling work going, and before long I'd become a genuine public figure.
For the record, all of this was laid out in detail on wiki pages and in interviews. Seeing my own face uploaded to a wiki site was a deeply weird feeling.
The Hope's Peak Academy I'd be attending was taking in seventeen students this year as the 78th Class, myself included. That's right — this was the timeline of the first Danganronpa game. Trigger Happy Havoc.
I dropped into the Hope's Peak Academy community and found photos of people I'd only ever seen in the games, with users going at it in heated debates underneath. That was a pretty novel sight all on its own. From what I could gather, the original cast was enrolling exactly as they had in the source material — Sayaka Maizono, Junko Enoshima, that small-fry with the glasses, the whole roster. The only addition was me, the Ultimate Counselor.
There were mentions of me on the community too, and every last one of them was praise. That felt strange in its own way. In the real world, praise and I had never been on speaking terms.
One other thing I picked up while digging: I could read and write Japanese as naturally as breathing. I supposed even a half-assed reincarnation came with at least that much of a perk.
Alright. That's enough intel. Time to set some goals...
I was going to Hope's Peak. That much was obvious. "That incident" was going to blow up either way, so skipping the academy wasn't going to buy me a peaceful life. And as a hardcore Danganronpa fan — not to mention a devoted follower of Kyoko Kirigiri — the idea of walking away from a chance to attend Hope's Peak under my own power was unthinkable.
That didn't mean I could just kick back and enjoy a comfortable school life, though. Among the 78th Class was the girl who would drag the world into ruin: Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Despair.
As a fan of the entire series, my plan was simple. Enjoy academy life in moderation, tear apart Despair's schemes, and expose them to the world. No matter how much of a monster Junko Enoshima was, there was no way she could beat someone who'd cleared every game in the franchise.
Wait. Isn't this actually broken?
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if a happier setup even existed. I'd been dropped into my favorite game, I got to live out a school life with my favorite characters, and all I had to do was lean on the knowledge I'd brought from reality, shut Despair down, and graduate. After that, my life would be a straight shot down easy street.
"Has God finally decided to play favorites with me...?"
It felt like spring had finally arrived in a life that had never been anything but despair, and my eyes stung a little. I shoved the swelling feeling back down, logged into the community, and wrote a post.
"Yeah, I couldn't not do that."
And then time passed, and the day I enrolled at Hope's Peak Academy finally arrived.
"It's finally happening... my life at Hope's Peak..."
I was nervous, honestly. Most of it was excitement, but another part of me kept turning over the same questions. Could I actually stop Despair? Could I build anything resembling a decent friendship with the other students? Could I even use this counseling talent that had suddenly become mine?
Hah... get a grip. Who am I? Kei. Hope's Peak Academy's Ultimate Counselor.
The little magic spell helped. I drew in a deep breath and stepped forward with everything I had.
And then my eyes started to close. The world spun. Wait... this is... what...
When I came to, I was in some classroom.
"Fuck. I'm screwed."
Looks like I hadn't stopped Despair after all.