Chapter 1
When Junko was four, she came across a dead cat.
It was horrifying looking; probably had all sort of diseases, looking back on it. There was a worm where it's eyes should be, and it stunk . Mukuro looked at it in disgust and tried to pull her baby sister away, plugging her nose and turning it up at the stench of it. Ironic—considering Mukuro means corpse, and in life, she was just as smelly as that cat; ironic, because now Mukuro is just as dead, except her corspe is so pretty and prestine its honestly a bit infurating, kept at perfect temperature in her fucking freezer. (For a while, Junko thought that when they died, it would be ugly—like that cat, left on the streets to rot as everyone sneers at their dead bodies. A mess no one cares enough to clean.) Of course, back then, Mukuro wasn't named Mukuro, and Junko wasn't named Junko, but that's—irrelevant. This is Junko's story; she'll tell it how she damn well pleases.
Junko had broken free from Mukuro's grasp; running up to the kitty and staring at it in fascination. She had never seen something so grotesque, and it was ugly, but there was a certain beauty in horror that Junko has always appreciated. She got on her knees; pressing her face close with wide, curious eyes, and reaching her hand out to pet. That was enough to jumpstart Mukuro again; she ran to her, pulling her away with frantic yells.
“[][][][][][], why would you do that?!”
And Junko had pouted. “I just wanted to pet the kitty!”
Mukuro's face had crumpled, then, with the prospect of explaining death to her. “The cat… he isn't safe to touch—he was really hurt.”
“Then why don't we bring him home, and you can fix it?” Junko had suggested. “You always fix my boo-boo's, so—”
“I can't.” Mukuro had denied. “He's dead, [][][][][][], you don't come back from that.”
But Junko was stubborn; stamping her foot and insisting she fix it with tears in her eyes. When Mukuro couldn't, Junko had sobbed. Bratty, spoiled sobbing, in her white poofy dress and blue and pink sweater. (Pastels. She hates pastels now, but they were once her favorite.) Ruffled and frills all around her, wailing on the side of the road and stomping her foot—convinced if she just threw a tantrum loud enough, she could get what she wanted.
When it didn't work, she hated Mukuro in that moment. She had always fixed things before; why not now? She had sniffled, wipping her tears. “Then… then…! We need to give it a funeral, then! He has no one to mourn him, so he must be lonely…!”
Mukuro didn't want to. She didn't see the point; all things die. It was just a cat. Was it really worth the fuss? But Mukuro gave in, anyway, because she always did when it came to her.
And so there they were, holding a funeral for a cat in their mansions backyard as their parents threw dishes at each other in the other room. Junko was sniffling, holding an umbrella even though there was no rain, because “that's what you do at funerals.” Her white dress was stained; she insisted on carrying that maggot infested cat all the way home, and her dear dress had paid the price. Caked in blood and mud and pus (and, honestly, a little bit of piss and shit, because that's what bodies do when they die), she looked like she was out of a horror movie. She had shed the sweater earlier, wrapped around that cat as Mukuro placed him in the hole they dug.
She had a plan in her head. A speech. Taking about how important this cat was, how profound, how unfair it all was, except when she opened her mouth, there was nothing. She didn't know what to say.
That was the first time she realized how little a life weighs to the world.
But she's seen a lot of bodies since then. She doesn't care. Well—that's not quite true. She still cares , it's just… It's like eating. You do it everyday. You don't think much of it. But you still react when you eat something awful, right?
Death was that. Mundane. Toys break all the time; and so do people die. Once they're broken, that's it. There's nothing to them. They're no longer fun. And Junko loves breaking her toys; but she also hates it. Because once they break, there's nothing more you can do with them. The only thing you can do is discard.
(Yasuke was like this. So was Mukuro.)
Breaking them is fun, sure. But she doesn't want them to break. She wants a challenge. She wants them to fight back. She wants to break them forever—over and over again. But you can't. People only break once.
(That's not quite true. You can break many, many times. Junko knew that. You can only die once, though, and that was the ultimate form of breaking.)
Sometimes that girl crying over a stupid cat of all things feels like a stranger. Because really, most people would ignore that cat as roadkill and go about their day with no problem. There's only really two people in the world: people who run over cats, and people who ignore them.
(That's not exactly true, either. There's many subtypes of these people. People who run over the cat on accident, because of their own carelessness and neglect, and people who run over it on purpose. And there's as many reasons to run it over as there are fish in the sea. But do you think that matters to the cat?)
Kyouko Kirigiri is someone who is both.
She would run over the cat, but only if the cat was in a trolley problem she felt responsible to solve. (And she always felt responsible.) She would run over the cat, but she'd feel bad about it. She would run over the cat, but only to save herself. (Makoto Naegi is the cat.) And if someone else ran over the cat? Well, she may step in, but only after the fact—and what good is that to the cat? She's a detective, sure—but she is beholden to her clients. If no one hires her, there's no case to solve. It isn't under her jurisdiction.
She watched the Reserve Course riot with a frown, of course, like it was a shame, like it was distasteful , but she didn't step in. She investigated the incident, but only when she was hired to—the moment they told her stop, she stopped. She watched Junko, too, with narrowed eyes, and yet remained silent under the cafeteria lights as Junko laughs and tells her about that forgettable cat without a name.
Kyouko Kirigiri does nothing as she watches the world burn down around her.
And Junko? She lights the flame.
Because Junko is both, too.