Izuru Kamukura

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Hope's Peak Academy has finally completed the Kamukura Project.

Through what the researchers describe as a fortunate draw, Nagito Komaeda has been granted the opportunity to witness the birth of the Ultimate Hope. He expects something extraordinary, something worthy of the title the Academy has spent years and an immeasurable amount of resources pursuing. What he does not expect is to be shown a boy who has only just opened his eyes, surrounded by machinery and researchers in white coats, with a face that looks strangely, almost impossibly familiar.

From the screens connected to the laboratory cameras, Nagito can recognise something of Hajime Hinata in him.

It is subtle at first. Perhaps it is only the shape of his face, or some familiar feature that Nagito cannot quite place. Perhaps it is because he has spent enough time around Hajime to recognise him even in fragments. The Reserve Course student he met through Chiaki. The ordinary boy who had no Ultimate talent to his name, despite how desperately he wished he did.

Except the boy on the screen is not Hajime.

The researchers call him Izuru Kamukura.

They explain that the procedure was successful, that the Kamukura Project has produced precisely what Hope's Peak intended: an individual possessing every known talent, with an intellect and breadth of knowledge far beyond anything a normal human being could achieve. Hajime Hinata was merely the subject. Izuru Kamukura is the result.

At least, that is what the Academy believes.

Nagito remembers Hajime.

He remembers meeting him. He remembers the Reserve Course. He remembers the things that made Hajime Hajime, even if some of those memories have become blurred and fractured by everything that happened afterward.

What he does not remember is Izuru.

He does not remember the connection between them, nor the history that existed before the person on the screen opened his eyes. He does not remember the moments that were shared, the things that were said, or why some part of him seems to recognise someone he has never met.

Izuru remembers all of it.

He remembers Hajime's life because Hajime's memories are his memories. He remembers Nagito because there is nothing the procedure could take from him without taking part of Hajime as well. Where Nagito finds an unfamiliar face carrying the faintest resemblance to an old friend, Izuru sees the person standing before him and knows exactly what has been forgotten.

He does not correct him.

Not yet.

Perhaps there is no reason to.

Then the researchers bring in a cardboard box.

It is painfully ordinary against the sterile surroundings of the laboratory, containing nothing more significant than the belongings collected from Hajime's dormitory before it is cleared. Clothes, school materials, a notebook, small personal objects that once belonged to a boy who believed they were worth keeping.

The researchers see remnants of a completed subject.

Izuru sees memories.

He knows exactly where every object came from. He knows why Hajime kept them, when he acquired them, and what he was thinking when he decided not to throw them away. The knowledge is effortless. Complete. Almost clinical.

What is less straightforward is the strange reluctance that sometimes follows.

A hand lingering against an old notebook.

A possession that should be discarded being returned to the box instead.

A moment of silence that lasts just slightly longer than necessary.

Izuru does not know why these things happen.

Or perhaps he simply has not decided that the answer is worth looking for.

And Nagito is there to witness it all.

He was supposed to be given the privilege of seeing the birth of the Ultimate Hope. Instead, he may have been given something much stranger: the opportunity to stand in front of someone who remembers a relationship he himself has forgotten, someone who knows exactly what has been lost while possessing no particular desire to explain it.

For Nagito, Izuru is a mystery.

For Izuru, Nagito is a familiar face attached to memories that should have belonged to Hajime and yet remain perfectly accessible to him.

That alone would be enough to make him interesting.

There is something else, too.

Nagito's presence does not behave quite the way Izuru expects. His luck, his fascination with hope, the contradictions hidden beneath his expressions and the strange way he reacts to things he cannot remember all create variables that refuse to settle neatly into the patterns Izuru is accustomed to seeing.

He does not know whether that makes Nagito important.

He only knows that, for the first time since waking, he is not completely bored.

And perhaps that is enough to begin with.

— ✧・゚

#izurukamukura #nagito #kamukoma #danganronpa #kamukomahina #hajimehinata