Fanfic / Their Namesakes

Their Namesakes is a completed fanfiction for the browser/mobile game Bungo to Alchemist written by Peachy_Jeans.

13 people are locked in a library with no clocks, no mirrors, and no memories of their personal lives. All they have are name tags with the names of authors or poets. As time passes, they start to read about these people... and start to connect with them. Start to believe that they are them. When they start dying one by one, however, they have bigger things to worry about than their identity.

Their Namesakes provides examples of:

• Abandoned Hospital Awakening: It's a library and it's a group, but all the characters wake up in the infirmary and they're the only people in the building. Luckily Kitamura is there to keep any of them from doing anything stupid.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: From as simple as Akutagawa's hair being braided to as important as Ton cutting Chuuya's hair very short.
• Adaptational Job Change: Despite what they end up believing, none of the characters are authors.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Compared to their canon counterparts.
  • Tanizaki isn't nearly as sensual, even getting caught off guard when Kiyo accuses her of sleeping with Haruo.
  • Kitamura is less of a Fashionista. Though we don't see much of her, she makes no hurry to change out of the grey hospital gowns they started with, while the canon Kitamura would complain about anything less than a frilly, elegant dress.
  • As opposed to the calm, sleepy, mild mannered author he is in canon, Takeo is... oh boy.
  • The most serious case is Riichi, who is far more sinister and violent than his canon counterpart.
• Alternate Universe Fic: While in the source material, these characters are famous authors brought back from the dead, characters in Their Namesakes are merely called by those names because they have nothing else to go off of, and it is very much intentional.
• Ambiguously Related: Are Takeo and Ton actually brothers? Their namesake authors were, but what are the chances that carries over to these two? Takeo doesn't think they are, though.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Played straight and discussed. Kitamura Toukoku understands medical procedures and different medicines in the infirmary but isn't sure why.
• Artistic License – Pharmacology: Poison probably doesn't work that fast, especially from an implant in the hand, but they have to be killed off somehow.
• Because Destiny Says So: Subverted. Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is them dying in the order their author namesakes did in history... or so they think.
• Blood from the Mouth: A good number of characters succumb to death coughing up blood or their bodies are found with blood around their mouth.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Unlike the source material, characters in Their Namesakes die in pretty graphic ways.
• Bookcase Passage: How to get to the secret stairwell to the second floor.
• Cabin Fever: Stuck in a library with no escape and people dying isn't good for your mental health.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: A good number of people in this fic in one way or another.
  • Kitamura is poisoned and then put in a noose to cover up the true cause.
  • Doppo is found burnt to a crisp.
  • Natsume is fed poisoned human meat.
  • Chuuya broke her spine then had her head smashed in.
  • Hei fell from four stories up onto his neck.
• Dwindling Party: By the end, there are only two people remaining.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After going through hell, having their bodies impaled and witnessing the deaths of the only people they knew, Tanizaki and Ton finally escaped the library.
• Extremely Short Time Span: Despite the amount of deaths and trauma that take place, as well as the fic itself being 58 chapters long, the whole story takes place in the span of four days.
• From Bad to Worse: Waking up with no memories in a locked library is already bad enough, the sudden deaths no more than 12 hours later only make things worse.
• Game Changer: Chuuya finding the stairs to the second floor behind the Bookcase Passage.
• Gender Flip: While the canon cast consists of entirely men, the Tanizaki, Kitamura and Chuuya stuck in this library are women.
• House of Broken Mirrors: Exaggerated. Rather than just broken mirrors, there are no mirrors in the library at all. Or reflective surfaces of any kind.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Before things go From Bad to Worse, the only thing the characters are focused on is finding a way to escape the library.
• Identity Amnesia: Exaggerated, as everyone in this fic cannot remember who they are, and they take on the identities of authors instead.
• Inspired by…: While it is a fanfic for Bungo to Alchemist, it has very little to do with the actual series.
• Involuntary Suicide Mechanism: The implant in everyone's (including the mole's) hand that will poison them if they fight against their assigned identities.
• Killed Off for Real: In the original game, if an author dies, they can easily be brought back. That isn't the case here.
• Leave No Survivors: Accomplished in the first trial with everyone's implant activated and attempted in the second.
• Library Episode: Played for Horror. They're stuck there. All the books they can read, all the knowledge kept on those shelves, but they aren't allowed to leave.
• Lost in Character: Enforced by the one keeping them there. They're supposed to believe they're these authors.
  The Mole: If I played along, made you all believe your roles as authors… no one would have to die.
• Meaningful Rename: Tanizaki and Ton take on new names in the epilogue, having shed their forced author identities.
• Myopic Architecture: The doors to their rooms are meant to only be opened by the people that they belong to with an unpickable lock. Haruo can break them off their hinges anyways.
• Never One Murder: Kitamura dying is one thing, but the deaths keep coming.
• Never Ending Terror: Any of them could die at any point (or if they're next in The Order). As the plot progresses, the number of people Ton feels he can trust shrinks and shrinks either by death or by betrayal.
• No Dead Body Poops: Despite many dead bodies being seen in great detail, none of them have shown to soil themselves.
• Perfect Poison Besides for some blood coughed up, the poison in everyone's implant works pretty quickly in a small dose with few other side effects.
• Poison Is Evil: It is what whoever is keeping them here put in their implants.
• Shrine to the Fallen: Ton sets candles up in his room after he and Tanizaki escape. 11 of them, for each person he knew that met their end in the Library.
• The Unreveal: In the epilogue, Ton receives files on everyone in the trial with him. He's even told he can learn his real name if he wants, but he... doesn't. He only uses it to check Chuuya and Touson's ages.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Just like the source material, the characters' hair colours range from hot pink to blue to green to more normal colours like blonde or brown.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Discussed, as the characters all believe in the author Death Order. They talk about who the next one is to die, and even make hasty decisions because of it, getting them killed.