Chō Fujimoto

Chō was born in Osaka, Japan to rather collected and formal, but kind parents. As a child she constantly expressed a wide-eyed curiosity, one of those kids that asked ‘why’ about everything. She was the apple of her parents eyes though as she began growing up, her parents would fight. It began amping up when she started school, whenever Chō returned from home they would be engaged in a screaming match. The pair began physically injuring one another, a broken bottle, a baseball bat, bare hands. It frightened young Chō, the sight of blood disturbed her young mind. 

 
When she was barely nine, it had been discovered that her mother had been cheating on her father. They attempted to stay together, but the violence was increased, Chō had to lock her door to hide from their outbursts, police were called by neighbours from time to time. It took a few months, but eventually there was a divorce. Neither parent won custody, determining that both sides were too violent and possessed poor histories, and instead she was tossed in with her aunt and uncle, on her father’s side, living up in the beaches of California. They were curious people, filling her head with wild stories and tall tales. But being a kid who just wanted to have something to cling onto and be able to listen to, she drank it up.
Going to school in California, Chō was exposed to a completely different crowd, sun-kissed girls with blonde hair that she was smitten with. She envied their looks, and pleaded to dye her hair, which was granted. When she began middle school, Chō had figured that it was not envy, but admiration that she looked at other girls with, and came to swift terms that she was a lesbian. She decided to keep it hush, unsure how her uncle and aunt would react. 

By thirteen, in a sudden turn of events, her father was murdered, and her mother was the culprit. She then turned the gun on herself, but not before leaving a note, detailing everything.
After being used to close the case, the note was delivered to her, she read it. It detailed every minuscule phrase of hatred, a motive. Chō quickly dove into obsession, trying to decipher why, looking for more than what she was given. Though she didn’t know it, Chō had been so adamant on researching murder as a whole because she had wondered if she could’ve prevented it.
She began searching up all kinds of killers, serial, spree, and everything in between, studying the cases and the victims, trying to decipher similarities. Chō preferred studying cold cases, and she did join quite a few theorist clubs at her school. Provided, she took multiple infamous history work, specifically gorier, darker themes that her teacher didn’t appreciate. 

When she turned fifteen, Chō decided that writing her findings and theories down weren’t enough, so she started her own podcast. Upon discovery that Chō had begun a public podcast about murderers, she was grouped in with the popular youth, she was surprised, but content.

Sometime around Chō’s sixteenth birthday, one particular episode on her podcast had gone viral, which stated that her wild accusation- was proven correct. Her podcast had solved a murder. After that, people worldwide were tuning in to listen to her next big breakthrough. It was just hard to be pushed so high, and her fun turned into work. The hours of research turned to dreaded hours, the airing of the podcast felt more like a chore. Chō almost gave up at that point, too stressed with all the pressure to make every episode as good as the one before. 

Fujimoto took a break from the serious, murder-based analysts, and moved onto far-fetched ones, which her audience initially humoured. Eventually, her fame began to die down, as worldwide decreased to country-wide. Chō was taken less seriously, and she was eventually just another person who had their five seconds of fame. 

Though five seconds were enough for Hope’s Peak Academy to have their eye on her, and she was invited to the academy under the title, the ultimate conspiracy theorist.