Chapter 1: A Confusing Start

*Little note: Hello to anyone reading this, I'm glad you've clicked on my story! This story is inspired by Danganronpa and Juni Taisen so if you want more stuff like it go check those out. None of the places or people are based on real places or people and this story will have gore and cursing as well as discussions of mental health. I am not claiming to be a mental health expert but I will try my best to treat the topic with respect and just note that my character's opinions are not always my own. Have fun reading!*

My eyes slowly flutter open as I stare at the ceiling above me. It's not the familiar gray ceiling I've been used to waking up to for years. I sit up, my head twitching in pain, as I glance around the room. It looks like a fancy hotel room with a single bed, a nightstand with a lamp, a dresser for clothes, and a connecting bathroom. I stand up carefully and find a note on the nightstand. I walk over and read the text scrawled across it.

Your role is Tiger

"Well, that's not cryptic at all," I mumble. I flip the paper around but there's nothing on the other side. I try to think back to what I was doing before this, the fancy hotel room aesthetic is completely different from the gray box I've been living in. A bright burst of pain rushes through my head as I think back but I push through it to arrive at a memory, a man walking into my room and injecting me with something.

Fucking great, I've been kidnapped. I turn around and head toward the door, passing by a full-body mirror on my way to it. I take a second to study my appearance, I'm wearing a soft and breathable gray hoodie (no laces) some gray sweatpants, and yellow grippy socks. The only thing different is my hair, it's tied up in a ponytail but the shaved side has been dyed black and a few strands are now a shocking white. Oh, and a collar that's attached to my neck, but the hair thing is more important.

"Ah, like a tiger I get it." I chuckle to myself. I grasp the door handle and turn it, opening the door and sticking my head outside. The hallway also looks like some sort of fancy hotel with plants and desks lining the hallway between each door to what I assume are rooms like mine. The carpet is a trippy array of reds and browns and the ceiling lights give off a dim yellow glow.

I walk through the hallway, dragging my hand along the wall as I go, I'm even in a good enough mood to whistle a tune. I turn a corner and find myself face to face with someone else, he has a blank-faced stare, like he's looking through me and not at me. He has black hair tied up in two low buns, he's wearing a blue t-shirt with thin straps and some ruffles near the top. The same collar around my neck is also firmly situated around his. He has on black skinny jeans and tennis shoes with laces…laces! I haven't seen shoelaces in forever, all the nurses and doctors allowed into my room were forced to take them off. 

"Ah, hello." I wave at him awkwardly, my voice raspy. I wait patiently, and just as he opens his mouth to speak, I hear a crackling noise to my upper left. I turn to see a loudspeaker placed there.

"Ahem! Attention guests, would you please make your way to the dining hall, thank you."

There goes my chance to have a conversation with Random Guy I Met In The Hallway because he quickly turns around and stalks off to a map at the end of the hallway. 

"Hey! Where are you going off to so fast, wait up!" I call after him, running to catch up. I barely had a chance to look at the map before I followed him to wherever the dining hall was. I assume that's where we are going but I have no idea as I didn't get a chance to look at the damn map.

I guess we end up finding the right place because after walking down some stairs he opens a set of double doors and now we're in a fancy-ass dining hall with a huge table set up and posh paintings and statues lining the walls. There are also seven people already in the room nervously standing about, it makes for an interesting sight. They all have the same shock collar that the other guy and I were wearing, so I assume we are all here for the same thing…whatever that thing is. 

"Do either of you happen to know why we are here?" A pretty middle-aged woman asks. She has long wavy blonde hair and a cropped white shirt with a cropped black short-sleeve jacket over it. She has a tie connected to her collar and is wearing a black skirt with ripped black leggings and heels. 

"Nope, I just woke up." I smile at her but she just turns away from me with a tsk. 

"Now, let's not fight everyone. This is a delicate situation, and we should be working together, " A girl around my age says. She has choppy gray hair put up in a ponytail. She is wearing a gray T-shirt with black suspender shorts, tennis shoes, and fingerless gloves. 

"I agree. It seems we have all woken up here, and my last memory before arriving here was of someone injecting me before it all went dark. Is that the same for everyone else?" A man asks. He has short fluffy black hair with two long braids on the sides of his head. He's wearing a shoulderless camo shirt that connects around the neck and black cargo pants with combat boots. Everyone in the room nods their heads at his question. 

"Right, and did anyone else wake up with a strange note?" A young woman asks. She has long curly brown hair in a half-bun with glasses. She's wearing a fluffy brown sweater over a white crop top and black sweatpants with brown boots. 

"Oh! Oh! I got one! It said that my role is Boar!" A young boy shouts excitedly. He has short blonde hair, a yellow jacket over a white T-shirt, black shorts, and tennis shoes. 

"Mine said Rooster." The pretty middle-aged woman states.

"On mine, it said my role was Rat." The girl with the ponytail says.

"I got the Ox." The man with braids tells us.

"Horse for me." The girl with glasses adds. 

"It seems I ended up with Tiger, they even dyed my hair to match." I show them the shaved part of my head. There are a few people in the group who haven't spoken up yet so we turn to them. 

"I was given the role of Dog." An old man supplies. He has flowing white hair down to his shoulders and a bushy mustache, he's wearing a gray tank top with a green sweater tied around his waist and black pants with sneakers. 

"R-rabbit." A shy-looking girl stutters. She has blonde hair tied up in pigtails and is wearing a white shirt with a blue skirt covered in pins along with mismatched blue and pink socks up above her knees and white tennis shoes. With that, we all stare at the last person who hasn't answered the question or even said a single word since we got here.

"Snake." He answers. 

"D-do you guys think this is based on the Chinese Zodiac signs or something?" Rabbit girl asks. 

"What's that?" Horse girl questions, staring at the Rabbit girl intently. 

"U-um, it's based on the year you were born, there's twelve animals that go with it and they match up with the notes we've been given." She squeaks. 

"If it's based on that then where are the other three? There's only nine of us here right now." Rooster girl points out. Just as she says that the door opens revealing three more people. We go through the whole "Did you get kidnapped, was there a note" process and eventually find out the latecomer's roles. Dragon goes to a man with red hair and tons of jewelry who's wearing a red t-shirt and black shorts with sneakers and a gold bandana.

Sheep ends up with a young man with white hair tied up in a side bun a white long-sleeve shirt spattered with paint and black pants and socks. It seems I'm not the only one wandering around with no shoes, I take comfort in that fact. Last but not least the title of Monkey goes to a young man with uneven brown hair wearing a cropped brown jacket with a skin-tight black shirt and black cargo pants and boots. 

CRACKLE

"Now that everyone has shown up you are probably wondering what you are doing here. I'm here to answer that question, you have all been chosen to take place in a game. You signed the terms and agreements for a certain product and you people were the lucky twelve chosen by raffle to compete in this game. You have all been given roles and you will use those to refer to each other instead of your names. That being said there are a few rules I must tell you, first, don't even try thinking of telling someone your real name as the shock collar you wear around your throat will zap you and it won't be pleasant. Second, there are cameras around this hotel watching you but they aren't in any bathrooms to keep your privacy. And third, do not harm any of the staff here, they are here to help you, and if you attempt to injure them in any way you will be given a painful shock. The game will be revealed in three days so for now you may explore the hotel and converse with each other, thank you." 

The announcement on the loudspeaker comes as a slight shock. I try to remember signing up for anything with terms and conditions but my memory is shot. It was probably sometime last week as that's when I was allowed on my phone for the day but I did tons of shit on there so I barely remember signing up for anything specific. 

"This is crazy! They kidnapped us and now they want us to stay here! I'm leaving!" Rooster shouts, storming out of the room. 

"I'll try to talk to her," Rat says, following behind Rooster.

"I think the rest of us should stay and talk over our situation before exploring, does everyone agree with me?" Ox questions, glancing around at everyone. I watch them all nod before turning to Snake, who I walked in with.

"I'll be heading out." He states calmly. I watch him leave and then turn back to everyone else who is staring expectantly at me.

"I'm going with him, see ya later!" I call out cheerfully before taking off at full speed to catch up. I manage to leave the room just before he turns around the corner and I run after him. 

"Wow, you sure do walk fast, so what do you make of this situation?" I ask him. 

"Why are you following me?" He replies bluntly. 

"Hm, you sure are honest and to the point. I just find you interesting. Is that a good enough reason?" I question him. It's true; I do find him interesting. Or maybe I latched onto him because he was the first person I saw. I don't know. He seems to show no interest in the situation at all. His face has been completely blank this entire time, and not an inch of emotion can be heard from his tone. 

"Are you crazy? That's a horrible reason." He tells me. 

"Oh? How did you guess?" I ask him. He must be really smart if he can see right through me like that. But the question makes him do a double take…I think. He pauses in place and turns to face me with his face all screwed up like I'm some sort of puzzle, which is kind of rude. But I've also never been stared at with this kind of intensity before, it's making me blush.

"If you keep staring at me like that I'm going to think you have a crush on me or something," I tell him, staring at the ground and fiddling with my hands. That definitely made him do a double take, a look of utter shock crossing his face before it returned to the blank mask.

"Look…I don't get you…like…at all…but you can follow me if you want." He eventually spits out. 

"Thanks! Let's go investigate then! I wanna know what this place is all about!" I exclaim, grabbing onto his wrist and trying to drag him through the hotel.

"Personal space please." He says, ripping his arms away from my hand.

"Whoops, sorry, I just got a little excited hehe." I chuckle, backing up a bit away from him. We spend the rest of the afternoon walking through the hotel. It's the fanciest place I've ever been to and despite the kidnapping circumstances it might be nice to stay here. Through our investigations, we found out that there are only two floors in the entire hotel.

On the first floor, there's a ballroom, a gym, a locker room, and an indoor pool, followed by the dining room and kitchen where you can eat or make yourself a snack. Then we have the laundry room where you can wash your clothes and the lobby where you can rest on the chairs. The second floor holds individual rooms, a recreation room, and a bar.

We also found there are no windows or doors of any kind, the only light we get is from the overhead ceiling lights, and the only way to keep time is these little digital clocks hanging on the walls at almost every turn.

"I wonder what happened to Ms. Rooster when she tried to leave." I chuckle, imagining her walking around and not finding a single exit. 

"They clearly want to keep us in this place, the walls are pretty thick so there's no way to break through it, but there are plenty of amenities to keep you from dying. It must have cost a ton of money to make this place." Snake muses. 

"They made this whole place just for us, isn't that kind of cool?" I ask him, taking a seat in one of the chairs in the lobby. They're comfy chairs made for relaxing in, not the plastic ones you'd usually find in a lobby. 

"Maybe, but I highly doubt anyone else is going to find being kidnapped cool." He tells me, sitting down in a different chair. 

"Haha, but don't you find this situation interesting? I haven't been out in so many years so seeing a new location like this is nice, and we get to play a game." I ramble on excitedly. My relief at being away from my gray prison slips through into our conversation. I didn't mean to talk about it but I forgot in my excitement of talking to this person. 

"You said you were 'crazy' before and you talked about being locked up, were you in prison or something?" Snake asks. My face scrunches up for a second before I forcefully relax my features into an easy smile. 

"Nah, I was in a psych ward, not a prison, and I'm not technically crazy I mean that's not what they say I'm there for but I certainly feel crazy sometimes," I explain. I can see him contemplate my answer, but the loudspeakers crackle again as he opens his mouth to say something.

"Dinner will be served soon, please head to the dining room."

The voice over the loudspeaker fades away and we both stand up to head over, the conversation abandoned. When we reach the dining room everyone else is already there and seated, so I take one of the two remaining spots and wait. Everyone is dead silent as we glance around nervously, nobody knows what to expect but they're all on edge after having investigated the hotel and found no escape.

At the other end of the dining room, opposite the double doors we enter by, two doors suddenly open to the left and right of a giant painting and a bunch of people in animal masks and suits enter the room carrying plates. We watch in silence as they place them on the table, lift the metal covers off to reveal the food, and then exit the room. 

"They really are going to treat this place as a fancy hotel, huh." Monkey exclaims, prodding a fork into the chicken at the center of the table. 

"Are we really going to trust the food given to us by kidnappers?" Rooster questions. 

"Food is food and this looks delicious so don't mind if I do," Dragon states, taking off a chicken leg. Watching him dig in seems to set the others off as they all start shoveling food on their plate. I already had a few potatoes in my mouth and was trying to hoard the pork spread in front of me. Snake wasn't making it easy though as he slapped my hand away every time I tried to take more than a few pieces. After the meal is over the table plunges into an awkward silence again. 

"So…I'm sure we all looked around the place a bit and found that we aren't able to leave at the moment." Ox takes the lead, piping up after a few tense minutes.

"Are you sure we'll be able to leave ever!? This is insane! They kidnapped us and locked us in here and are now treating it as if it's some fancy hotel!" Rooster shouts. 

"Look, there's nothing we can do about it right now so we should at least appreciate that we're not locked in cages or something," Rat says diplomatically. 

"Someone has to know we're missing by now and will come looking for us," Monkey states confidently. 

"I'm not so sure about that." Horse frowns.

"What do you mean by that?" Dragon questions. 

"Well, I'm with the police and if an officer goes missing they do a full-scale investigation, if nobody has shown up yet then what they said about the terms and conditions might be true. We might have willingly signed up for this." She explains. 

"S-so you mean we're stuck here and nobody will come looking for us!" Rabbit sobs. 

"That's not fair, I want to see my auntie!" Boar tears up as well and now we have two crying children on our hands. Or, well, one crying child and one crying teenager. 

"Let's table this discussion for now, I'll take these two to bed, and let's discuss stuff tomorrow," Rat says, standing up to comfort the children. I take that as my chance to leave and immediately exit the dining hall, turning to find that Snake has done the same. 

"I guess this is where I say goodnight." I smile at him. 

"Goodnight to you as well." He answers cordially, and we both take off to our rooms. Ah, this place sure is interesting, I wonder what tomorrow will bring.