Editor: Crimson Spider Lily

Why is everything so dark?

Why does my body feel so cold?

Where am I?

Am I….dead?

The soothing melody of what seemed to be ocean waves and the harmonious rhythm of the aquatic life lilted me into a comatose state of slumber. I felt both relaxed as well as uncomfortable, two things that didn't really bode well together. It was a very puzzling feeling, mysterious and enigmatic in nature.

I slowly opened up my tired eyes, which shuddered rapidly, almost as if they were adjusting to the new change in lighting in the room. I eventually awoke from whatever drugged state I was in and found myself somewhere unfamiliar and unknown, almost alien to me as a whole.

I rubbed my head weakly, brushing my skinny fingertips through my messy hair and massaging my forehead and temples softly with careful strokes. A sharp pain throbbed in my head, almost as if someone hit me in the back of my head with a hot frying pan or some blunt metal object. The seething pain was unbearable and made just looking around the area a chore in of itself with how how many times I squinted from pain.

My mind was a blank slate; hazy and wiped of anything that I could vaguely remember. I didn't really know who I was or why I woke up in this strange room I'd never been in before. I don't even know how I got here in the first place. It felt like a dream that never ended, but I wasn't sure if this was reality or some fictional world I made up in my mind.

I rubbed my eyes, opening them slightly as I got a hazy picture of how the room I was in looked like. It was very simple in design with nothing much of note that would have caught my attention.

The floors had dark aquamarine tile pattern and felt cold to the touch, like freezing metal. I spotted a bed with purple covers in the far right side corner of the room, with neatly folded blankets tucked into the corners and a fluffed white pillow inside of a silk violet pillow case over. I also saw a full sized brown oval shaped mirror in the left corner of the room and next to it was a closet built into the wall. The walls were a plain light blue pattern with some weird fish-like decals plastered onto the wall in many exotic colors and hues, but it was too hard to make out due to my blurred vision and sore headache.

Finally getting some of my senses back slowly, I felt my body laying on the cold floor, trying it's very best to move and help me ascend upwards to prevent hypothermia. My body quivered like a leaf as a cold shiver spider-walked down my spine. Moving a muscle was painful, almost as if there were a thousand needles sticking into my skin. I was able to get myself up to a waist-level seated position. I rubbed my shoulders, trying to get some warmth going through my system, as I noticed that I wasn't wearing any clothes, save for a black and purple pair of spotted briefs that was kind of loose fitted.

"Huh...wha?" I shook my head a little to get my mind up and running.

I touched my pale skinned face, turning my body around and spotted something that took me completely by surprise. As I looked up, where the ceiling should have been, I realized there wasn't none as a dim light peered into the room. I squinted my eyes, hoping to avoid getting another headache from the light above and the view that I saw was both breathtaking and astonishing to say the least.

Instead of a solid opaque ceiling, there was a clear glass alteration with what looked to be a clear view of some type of underwater ocean life, similar to that you'd see in an aquarium at a theme park.

The water's rich azure colors shone brightly and magnificently, despite the dim lighting. The crystallized sparkles radiated against the glass, refracting some artificial light into this tiny room. I spotted a few sea creatures such as fish of all shapes, sizes and colors swimming above my head, all passing without a care in the world and with a dead stare in their black soulless eyes. Green seaweed and multicolored coral rested neatly next to underwater rocks and pressed against the glass ceiling snugly; almost knocking on the glass and trying to break through with little success.

"W-What is going on?" I asked, hearing the meek, soft spoken tone in my voice, "W-Where am I?"

I then tried moving my legs, shaking them awake and feeling the pins and needles on my feet and the blood rushing through my veins slowly as I shuddered. It was a very cruel and sickly feeling as I felt my body crying out in pain from the sudden jolt of movement and circulation throughout my system. It was like marching up a tall rocky hill, using only sheer willpower to maneuver your body upwards, it was a task in of itself just to move around properly.

I shakily rose to my feet, my legs wobbling as if they were made of jelly and my body swayed randomly, feeling too weak to respond to the sudden stimulation it was receiving after a long slumber. Standing was difficult in the sense that I felt like a newborn infant. It appeared my body forgot how to balance itself on two feet as I ended up leaning on one of the walls, fumbling my way to the mirror trying my best not to trip over.

"Oww….oww.." I winced in pain, the sharp stinging in my feet growing intensely with each cold footstep, "W-Why is this s-so hard…"

I slinked slowly towards the full-sized mirror, pressing the right side of my body against the oddly colored wallpaper as I felt a colder sensation tingle on my already shivering pale skin. I didn't know which felt worse: the pain of getting up or the pain of walking a simple short distance to another part in this small room.

I made my way to the mirror and once my feet had adjusted to standing up properly,I blinked a few times and looked at myself in its reflective gaze, getting a closer image of what I really looked like.

My black raven hair was short and looked almost unkempt with how many strands kept sticking up and off to the sides of my head, along with a few locks of hair swept to the sides near my ears. My sleepy, sad hazel colored eyes had a few black bags underneath, indicating a lack of proper sleep and grogginess. I was very skinny, but not the appealing or attractive kind; I was gaunt, scrawny and had an unhealthy complexion to my pale skin tone. I had no muscle mass or defining tone on my body and my overall facial features looked round but almost angular in shape as I looked at it from both sides. I was barely naked, bar for the aforementioned black and purple spotted underwear I was wearing. Even though this was who I was, I felt almost uncomfortable staring at myself in the mirror, as if I saw something horrifying in the reflection. I wanted to avert my eyes, but I took one more look at my figure reluctantly.

"W-Why am I n-near n-naked?" I wondered timidly, rubbing my cold stomach, "W-Where are m-my clothes?"

Looking deeper into the mirror's glass, I spotted a wooden table desk in the back corner of the room, as well as a few particular items resting on top of the table. I turned my body around and limped weakly to it, trying my best to keep my balance while wobbling like a mannequin doll on strings.

I made my way to the desk, resting my arms on the edges of the hard, polished countertop and eased my body onto a nearby wooden chair, which had intricate carvings indented in the sturdy frame.

"Strange….w-what are these?" I pondered, observing the weird items on the desk.

The items in question consisted of a square brown, blank picture frame with no picture inside, a small blue notebook with a black cow outline on the front cover and two black ink pens resting next to the notebook, a dark purple, black and white patterned owl shaped backpack made for little kids resting on the side of the table next to the drawers and lastly there was a set of neatly folded clothes resting on the opposite side of the desk next to the notebook.

"A-Are these m-mine?" I tilted my head in confusion, bewildered by the mysterious items laid out for me.

I perused the contents of the notebook and noticed it was blank, having no words written inside as I flipped through the pages and coming across nothing. However, what was the most bizarre item out of the bunch was a stuffed toy, that of a teddy bear resting next to the notebook.

The teddy bear was a light brown color with its fur feeling soft to the touch as I held it in my hands. I noticed that, wrapped around the bear's neck, there was a dark purple ribbon fashioned with a cute little glittering purple bow on the front. The bear's stomach was a dark pink color along with the inner paws and to finish off the almost adorable design, the bear's eyes were a dark chocolate brown color almost as lifeless and empty as the fish's eyes.

"W-Why is t-there a teddy b-bear here?" I asked myself, holding it in my hands and staring at it intensely, "Why d-do...argh!?"

As if on cue, another piercing headache entered my head, making me drop the teddy bear onto the floor as I recoiled painfully. I clutched tightly at my head, almost pulling at my hair and felt a rush of emotions pervading my mind and filling me with a somber sense of dread and anxiety. It was a rollercoaster of disheartening emotions and I was too paralyzed to stop it.

"Oww!" I yelped in pain, "W-What is this!?"

After a few minutes of what seemed to be murderous torture, a sudden realization washed over me like a crashing wave. The endless pain ceasing for a short moment as a bout of clarity escaped from my lips.

"I-I remember…" I mumbled softly, "M-My name….is.."

I slumped over in my seat, my body trembling and debilitated with each failed attempt at movement. As I was on the verge of passing out, I muttered a few words, while the rest were too indistinct to make out, I was able to hear these specific ones.

"Kazumi….Toriyako…"

After that, my hazy vision blurred and the room started to grow darker and darker. My body slipped off the chair as it thudded loudly against the cold hard tiles. My eyelids grew heavier as I closed them weakly and passed out from overall shock.

A/N: Hello hello hello lovely people, and welcome to the reworked and finalized edition of Salty Waves and Bloody Coral. YAY! It's finally here, after so long QwQ. It's been an arduous struggle, but I did it guys, I finally got this all sorted out. Are you all proud of me?
*crickets chirping*.

All jokes aside, I am so happy to announce that Salty Waves is out of submission hell and I can finally say that it's here to stay after such a long wait and a lot of drama. This was one of the hardest decisions for me to make regarding my stories, but overall, it was worth it.

For those who don't know and are new to this story, here's a little bit of context for as to why this story got reworked and why the cast is already sorted:

Ever since making this second story in my saga, I've been a bit overambitious and a little too hasty when it came to getting cast submissions. I can fully say that I was a bit of an excited fanboy and got a bit more than I bargained for in terms of characters. As a person who is very passionate about Danganronpa as a whole, the reason I made this second story as well as my third story, Laughable Rejects, is not only because of that passion, but because I love to write.

As a writer, I take my writing and my OC making very seriously. However, I always look for ways to improve upon both aspects. After meeting and making a few new friends online and raising my standards, I can say I've kind of grown a little as a fanfiction writer, which doesn't say much since I've been only doing this for two years as of this posting XD.

But down to the real meat of the issue with this story. Now that I have a more keen eye when it comes to OC making and writing, I've been reading a few more stories and came to a shocking realization that some creators have recycled OCs and sent them into my story without notifying me of their status.

I will not name these creators, because I don't encourage people to go out and attack other people for stuff like this, but I will say that these aforementioned creators have disappointed me with their dishonesty and their deceitful submissions. I know I haven't been strict on this before, but when it comes to my stories, I take them very seriously and since they are connected and in the main canon of Danganronpa, recycled OC don't really work if they're seen in multiple stories etcetera.

Since one of the recycled OC was potentially going to be the mastermind of SWBC - not going to say who it was since they don't deserve that recognition -, I had to remove them from the cast and rethink my entire order of events on who dies and who lives. So yeah, that was kind of a kick in the teeth moment for me, very cathartic but relieving that I found out before it was too late.

One creator even decided to boldly resend an OC who was in the original SWBC cast lineup to one of my friends' stories, to which I am glad that they told me when that happened. For me that was the final straw, since that person had no excuse for recycling since they knew my story was being reworked and potentially knew about the constant updates since my story was on the top page a few times, as some of you might have noticed these past few months. So yeah, that was very eye opening for me.

That being said, if the OC was rejected or the story was discontinued, I will give some leeway if you show me proof that the story isn't running anymore and that you have contacted the author about it beforehand. To those people I won't hold that against you, I like giving people second chances and who knows those OCs might be interesting to write in future stories.

For the people who have resent their OCs to other stories, have OCs that have died or were accepted into other stories and are trying to get a different outcome for their OC, that is beyond disrespectful in my opinion (unless the author states they allow recycled OC, in that case, this doesn't apply to you). It's not only duplicitous to me, but to the other authors you entrusted with your OC and to write to the best of their ability. If you're unhappy with your OCs outcome, then tough luck, we don't always get what we want and complaining over a fictional character in a fanfiction story, berating the author for taking creative liberties or re-sending them to other stories really says a lot about you as a creator.

Forgive me for potentially scaring off people due to my sort of aggressive tone, but that's just how I am as a writer. If you can't commit to my stories then I'm sorry, I can't help you out there. I've been manipulated and used in the past before and I draw the line when it comes to something I hold dear to my heart and pulled me out of a depressive state in my life.

Now that that's all squared away, I am finally happy to announce that SWBC is finally going to be posted and have regular (ish) updates. Since I'm juggling three main stories as well as an AU story (which is more of a side project I can update whenever) I think I have a lot on my plate as we speak XD.

I will not start another new story until one of my other stories is close to completion and if you're interested in the other stories I have mentioned on my profile, then shoot me a PM and I will make those forms available to you or you can ask me on Discord, just let me know what your Discord link and account name is in the PM and I'd be happy to help you out.

Enough of my annoying rambling, I am happy to announce the finalized and new cast of Salty Waves and Bloody Coral. It consists of old and new faces, so I hope this is okay. Out of the 20 something plus OC I have received, this is the final roster.

NEW SWBC CAST LIST:

MALES:

Kazumi Toriyako - Ultimate ? (Me!)

Dragomir Kita - Ultimate Zoologist (tobi-is-an-artist-too)

Wayne Fukumoto - Ultimate Knitter (JessJess1818)

Terrence Hill - Ultimate Communicator (EskiLobo)

Yoshikazu Aomori - Ultimate Auctioneer (Lupus Overkill)

Sakai Shojiro - Ultimate Hairstylist (ninjedi)

Sato Shizuo - Ultimate Lifeguard (KISL)

Akio Ito - Ultimate Gambler (alucard deathsinger)

Torakusu Chihiro - Ultimate Sniper (Shyjoker)

Kimiya Iwasaki - Ultimate Ice Sculptor (Crimson Spider Lily)

Lev Moroz - Ultimate Fashion Designer (RubyLeo)

FEMALES:

Yumeji Motome - Ultimate Oneirologist (mayurie)

Lou Kiko - Ultimate Roleplayer (R3dLuvSingin)

Aphrodite Zhang - Ultimate Pageant Queen (legna wsit)

Nomi Hitomi - Ultimate Gardener (ninjedi)

Vivienne Morris - Ultimate Trader (Knight Hospitaller)

Ushio Isobe - Ultimate Surfer (zephryr)

Takara Hamasaki - Ultimate Sailor (Abitat Eco)

Moriko Ishii - Ultimate Doll Maker (SanityRequiem)

Stella Belvedere - Ultimate Pub Manager (TheRoseShadow21)

Iena Kaya - Ultimate Judge (Ziggymia123)

OTHER:

Astatine (AI) - Ultimate Ethical Hacker (YellowTheWriter)

If you guys notice some new faces to the cast, I will say that this is now a twenty-two person cast. I know, I am such a mad man XD. I will admit it was a little difficult choosing which OC was good for my story, but in the end this is the end result and I hope it's okay.

To the creators who have stuck with my story since the beginning and their OC are original, I commend you and thank you for all your love and support, you don't know what it means to me that you trust me even with all the tiresome updates and constant jumping to the top of the website XD. Thank you all so much.

Also to the people who sent me the new OCs, I thank you too as well. I loved your OC and I hope to portray them to the best of my ability in this new updated version of my second story. I loved each new submission and I hope to make you guys proud X3.

Enough of those cheesy sentiments, I hope you all are doing well and thank you once again for supporting me with my shaky uploads and clunky schedule. I know my writing isn't really as good or is posted as often, but I hope it's alright.

I hope you all have a lovely day, night or whatever holiday it is you're celebrating and I will see you all in the next update or whenever I decide to upload next. I will say that posting for this story will be fun and challenging, so wish me luck XD.

As of this posting it's almost close to Christmas, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all and I hope you have a good few weeks off from school or work X3.

Happy reading my fellow readers, authors and otaku alike. I wish you all the best and I will see you guys next time! Bye bye!