Chapter Text
Kokichi always remembered just how much it hurt.
They'd usually start off with a right hook. His head would snap to the side, he'd stumble, and the second he'd collect his bearings, he’d be kicked down behind his knees. Afterwards, it was a series of amateur blows to the stomach and shins, each one shooting corrosive jolts throughout his body that made him buckle and writhe against the pavement. On a good day, he'd only flinch, keeping the yelps that threatened to tear from his throat bottled up as he felt both shoe and fist collide with his ribs.
But today wasn't that day. He wasn’t sure what made him more nauseous; the stabbing pains that were bone deep in his gut and spidering throughout his limbs, or the fact that he had heard his own voice begging for them to stop from what felt like an onlooker's perspective. The words were foreign to his ears, but the desperation was familiar enough that it made him want to cough up his vocal cords in the hopes that he'd be rid of such weaknesses.
Concrete didn't feel good on the skin, but there he was, lying limp across the sidewalk and staring half-lidded at the cracks between panels where roots were trying to crawl up from underneath. He could feel something thick dripping down from his nose, which felt as though it wasn't fitting on his face quite like the way it was before. It was quiet, save for the harsh cackles from a murder of crows nearby.
It seems like they'd left.
Despite this knowledge, Kokichi remained frozen where he lay. Everything was foggy, and there was that special type of stillness in the air that only seemed to arrive after the worst kinds of storms. He couldn't bring himself to move, third period be damned. Was it because he didn't want to or simply because everything hurt too much to even try? Perhaps it was both. He was tired, and his eyelids felt just about as heavy as his limbs did.
He let out a breath, wincing reflexively at the shock it triggered throughout his bruised abdomen. Eyes fluttered shut, and his senses melted to mush around him. Maybe he'd just lie here forever. Maybe if he stayed here long enough, he might come up with some half-hearted reason to peel himself off the ground and stumble into the nurse's office.
I have a paper due tomorrow, don't I?
What about the new DR episode premiering next week?
Isn't there a project coming up?
Who's going to replace the flowers?
But none of those goals stirred the motivation he needed to brace the aching in his body and keep his sorry ass going.
Amidst his own self-pity, a muffled voice superseded the ringing in his ears. He twitched when he felt something cold against the pulse point in his neck. Flesh, definitely the skin of someone's hand… Were they checking to see if he was still alive? If he wasn't trying to numb himself to the pain he felt, he probably would've laughed. Had they seriously meant to kill him this time, and this was just someone coming back to finish the job?
He didn't bother opening his eyes, even when two hands hoisted his pathetic self off the ground. The only thing he could manage was a hissed swear or two behind his teeth as a pair of arms hooked underneath his battered legs.
Were they planning to drop him off at a nearby dump or something? Was bleeding out on the sidewalk not embarrassing enough? He wanted to tell them he'd rather be left to die right where he was. It'd be his final message to the world, a big middle finger to all the kids at that brain-dead academy who thought they were above consequence. Above him.
But as he slumped against the stranger's back and felt his arms dangling off their shoulders, he realized he didn't have the energy to. His consciousness was already slipping into a spent slumber.
When Kokichi eventually came to, his body still felt like it had been used as a boxer's gym equipment, but the aching had died down to something a little more tolerable. Through spotted vision, he stared up at a dull, white ceiling. As recognition set in, he regarded the corner desk to see if that harpy was lingering behind it, ready to give him a whole myriad of reasons as to why the beating was his fault.
And predictably enough, she was. Her head cocked the second he propped himself on his elbows, and a scowl that stretched impossibly far pulled at her sunken face. “Look who’s still hale and hearty. I’ve had enough heart attacks this week without you giving me three more, you know.”
“Considering it’s your job, I’m sure you have the training to deal with all of those just fine…” he grumbled all too audibly beneath his breath.
“Funny,” she said in a way that definitely betrayed her lack of amusement, “I suppose it’s good to know you didn’t get your snark hammered out of you. So what did you say this time?”
Kokichi had half the mind to flop back down, yank the paper-thin blankets over his head, and go right back to sleep. “I don't remember,” he deadpanned, because it genuinely hurt to recall anything about the encounter at the moment. “I’m sure it was nothing she didn't deserve to hear.”
She didn’t bother asking who. “Deserved or not, I really thought I'd have to call the hospital this time.” Her heels tapped about the room, the sound making his headache impossibly worse. “You're lucky someone with a clean nose found you when they did.”
That's right... Kokichi forced himself into a proper sitting position so he could scan the rest of the room, his limbs akin to lead. Someone found me.
“Yeah, super lucky,” he mumbled, frowning at the lack of life other than himself and the matron. It seemed that whoever it was didn’t feel like sticking around for very long.
“I mean it.” She strode up to Kokichi and examined the patching on his fresh injuries. His face was a mural of both new and old ones, a morbid painting only he and the nurse were able to interpret. “It was bad, very bad. You were heaving about as much as a fish out of water.” A shadow passed her features, one she quickly shook off like a bird would to ruffle its feathers.
“You need to keep your head down, lips together, and stop stirring up fights.”
Perhaps a teen of a different upbringing would have been more intimidated by her reprimands, but for Kokichi, it was a tone that he'd grown used to. It was the same one he received every time something like this came about; the one that blamed him for having such punchable features.
“Definitely will,” he muttered those noncommittal words for what was probably the dozenth time that semester. Knowingly, she clicked her tongue and returned to her sanctuary behind the desk.
It's not that he meant to start fights or get beaten up… he'd simply open his mouth, and then it would happen. Misfortune followed him relentlessly, vigorous in its attempts to punish him for whatever he was doing wrong in life. Perhaps he was to blame for some of those compulsory tendencies he ought to have stamped out early on, but he had far too much contempt to start being humble about it now.
Kokichi's fingers bunched the sheets that were doing nothing to warm his frame. “Who brought me here, anyway?”
The woman scribbled away at the papers that recorded his unanticipated visit. “A third year, Saihara Shuichi. Lanky, nervous type, he's been in here for reasons not too dissimilar to yours. He doesn't go asking for it, though.”
‘Saihara’… The name felt familiar, though he couldn’t place where exactly he’d heard it from. Perhaps a classmate he didn’t care to pay any mind to, or some poor sap who'd stumbled upon his body and felt it necessary to move him somewhere he wouldn't be seen. Regardless, the kid obviously didn’t feel like staying long enough to see if he was alright in the end.
He swatted the air. “Probably didn't want me blocking up the path to his next class.”
“Save me the sob story, Ouma. I had to usher him back to class myself.” She slipped his records into one of the filing cabinets against the back wall. “He seemed adamant on lingering around here and making sure you weren’t going to kick it.”
“What?” Kokichi shot back like an irritated fuse. Miraculously, even when the news should be pleasant on his conscience, he always managed to find something to be angry about. “He wanted to stay? Why? How long was he here for?”
“What do you mean by ‘why’? I just told you to check up on you.” She shook her head, sighing deeply. “Definitely didn’t look the shape to be carrying another person around, came in sweating buckets, but he still took the time to haul you over here. Didn’t leave until the bell.”
The scoff he let out earned him a poisonous glare. Like a balloon deflating, he slumped back down onto the cot and stared at the ceiling again, allowing the clinking of medical supplies to lull him into senselessness.
He wasn't sure why the sentiment bothered him so much. How was it that he was more upset at the thought of this mystery kid staying at his side than he was at the idea of them just dropping him off and leaving it to chance? Then again, perhaps he was just irritated at himself for not waking up sooner to see who they were.
No. No, this was definitely not his fault.
It was ‘Saihara’s’. For not staying, or rather, for not just leaving him here and ditching. Better yet, not just letting him be worm food on the pavement.
He rolled onto his side, hissing as one of his bruises brushed against the frame before forcing his muscles to relax once more. The matron usually let him stay here until the final bell rang, which was fine by him. He’d lie down as he always did and brood. He’d pick up his classwork at the end of the day, or perhaps tomorrow, whenever the pain in his body reached an equilibrium.
At times, Kokichi liked to believe he had the world's shortest end of the stick and that he deserved exemption from every ill outcome because of it. Other times, he liked to imagine the people he hated had sticks shorter than his own just to make himself feel better. Call him sadistic, sure, but genuine pity was a seldom spoken treasure. No matter how much ‘sympathy’ was tossed his way, in the back of their minds, they’d boil down every mishap to being some fault of his. Regardless of facts, he was to blame. Everyone around him screamed that law of the universe to his face a hundred times over.
No one felt for a scapegoat, and that was that.
He roused himself again an hour or two later, by which point the nurse seemed to have found priorities elsewhere. No matter, it was always better when he was the only one there. He sat up, mumbling petty swears now that he was in the safety of his own company.
But he went dead quiet when he heard the office door open with an all too familiar ‘clu-clack’. The matron would have scolded him relentlessly had she caught an earful of him cursing, so it was merely habit that he shut himself up. But he found that he was instead peering over at a fellow student's face, and the teen's eyes bulged when they caught sight of Kokichi.
Or rather, caught sight of him awake. And staring at him.
A gangly, anxious boy averted his gaze, pulling the brim of a hat down to his nose. There was a beat of silence, then he glanced up to see if Kokichi was still looking at him.
He was. Of course he was.
The boy hung his head once more and clambered across the office to linger near the back. Kokichi watched him with a knit brow and a skepticism he didn't feel like hiding. It was obvious the kid was deliberately trying to avoid eye contact, rooted where he stood, and keeping his head turned in the complete opposite direction.
When the atmosphere in the office became downright suffocating, he finally let out an agitated breath. “You're not subtle.”
As though he'd been prodded with a red-hot poker from behind, the boy straightened up and bumped into the desk as he turned. “Huh? Subtle? But I wasn't… I wasn't doing anything…” he trailed off, voice folding in on itself like brittle origami as their eyes met.
“Yeah, that's part of the problem,” Kokichi replied, leaning back on his hands, “no one usually stumbles into the nurse's office by accident.”
The other seemed tongue-tied, so he resigned himself to staring at the floor. Kokichi groaned, “I’m not dense, so don't bother playing dumb with me. You're Saihara Shuichi, aren’t you?”
Shuichi twitched as though his name was a foul word. Gradually, he began nodding. “Are you here to get a nurse's note for your stomachache?” he drawled, leaving no room for half-baked excuses.
“No, no- nothing like that. I- I was just…” he spluttered, trembling fingers harvesting the already tattered bill of his hat for loose fibers, “I wanted to, uhm, make sure you… That you were alright.”
Kokichi's expression soured at the confession, something that the other didn't seem to catch as he prattled on. “You were in a pretty bad state, and no one else was helping you. I- I would have stayed longer, but- I come in late pretty often, so I have more absences than I probably should have, and the nurse said that—”
“Why'd you bring me here?” he urged, dismissing his rushed explanation and leaning forward on the cot. Although Shuichi seemed far taller and broader than Kokichi, he felt a twinge of satisfaction when the boy shriveled on the spot.
“I… I saw you on the pavement between bells,” Shuichi tremored with the cadence of someone reliving the memories of a war. Kokichi would have mocked him for his squeamishness if he weren't eager to hear his answer. “You- You had a bunch of bruises and your nose was bleeding… but no one else was doing anything. I got worried, and I wanted to help you, so I—”
“Hee hee!” Kokichi interrupted with a sharp laugh, “So you just carried me here out of ego, makes sense.”
“Ego?” Shuichi repeated, his bafflement only making Kokichi snicker again.
“You helped me here just to feel good about yourself,” he explained, lying back down on the bed and leering at the ceiling where imaginary patterns were staring just as bitterly back at him. “Well, you got the everyday hero points you were looking for, nerd. So you can leave now, I'm fine.”
The second the assessment left his mouth, a weight had sprouted wings and took flight off his shoulders. Another act of selfish pity, that’s what all of this had really been.
The office was quiet. He could hear the uneven breaths Shuichi was conjuring from across the room, as well as the noises of the boy trying to form half-hearted sentences, though continuously falling short on what exactly to say. Perhaps he was stunned that Kokichi had figured out his intentions just like that.
Yes, that was probably it. Kokichi was always rather perceptive, wasn’t he?
A second or two later, the sound of departing footsteps echoed out and fell short near the doorway. Kokichi's jaw set as, just before the door closed, he heard the boy mutter out a few withdrawing words,
“I'm glad you're okay.”
Alone again. Kokichi's fingers coiled and relaxed into fists, gnawed nails digging shallow crescents into his palms.
Saihara Shuichi... or, as he'd heard him called far more often, ‘Sketchy Saihara’.
He recognized the name now that he had a face to put to it. One of those kids that, based on looks alone, you were told to stay away from because he'd probably follow you home and climb through your window when you least expected it. There were plenty of kids who got their reputations raked through the mud as Sketchy Saihara did. After all, Kokichi was one of them, though he was prone to getting a swift fist to the stomach since bad mouthing his existence simply wasn’t enough.
As his classmates had so kindly put it, Saihara was a nerdy freak who breathed too loudly, smelled like sweaty socks, and stared at others far too much. Mention anime around him, and he'd perk up like a skunk who was ready to let off its warning spray. He was a repulsive creep and a total nut job. Associate, and you'd be asking for a target on your back.
Kokichi lazily tilted his head, gaze trained on the closed office door. They weren't totally wrong. His breath was loud, the scent of the room had changed, and he'd definitely stared at Kokichi too hard. There was also the unmistakable vibe of a reclusive nerd who'd be far too invested in things no one cared about, such as algebra or bad shounen anime.
But despite all of his initial judgments, the kid seemed… decent. That was about as much credit as he was going to earn from Kokichi. Who knows, the guy could still show up at his house unannounced.
On his way out of school, he dropped by each of his teachers' offices to receive his missed classwork and a day's extension for them. Had he been some other student with a better track record, they probably would have given him a week. Perhaps exempted him from it entirely with a kiss on the cheek to boot. But he wasn't graced by the gods' left pinkie like everyone else seemed to be.
By the time the following week came around, he had almost forgotten about Sketchy Saihara and his flamboyant show of ‘pity’.
Almost.
“Dismissed!” their teacher called out, almost inaudible over the deafening final bell. Kokichi had spent most of the class period tuning out the lesson, fixated on the assignments he was still scrambling to make up. He had stared at the page, randomly bubbled in a few answers, then folded the paper and crammed it into his bag as he stood up alongside the rest of the class.
But just as he'd been about to hitch his bag over his shoulder, a movement from the corner of his eye made him falter. An all too familiar form slinked its way through the rows of desks like a boa probing through the jungle for its next victim. And unfortunately for a meek little skunk, it seemed to have found its prey wearing a frayed hat near the back of the classroom.
No wonder he had never noticed the guy before. It was honestly impressive just how invisible he made himself, cornered in the very back at the furthest desk from the door with the bill of his cap tilted down to obscure his features. Unseen to the naked eye unless you were specifically searching for him. And honestly, who would be?
That was, unless you were Akamatsu.
The boa slithered up to the front of Shuichi's desk. She stood over him, eyes pinched as though she was scrutinizing an antique that didn't belong with the rest of the decor. Even from his own desk, he could see the way Shuichi's muscles contracted, head hanging low, and his pen shivering over a fresh notebook page.
In what felt like slow motion, she brought up a forefinger and flicked the underside of his hat in one clean movement. It tumbled off his head, hit the back of the chair, and fell onto the floor behind him. Shuichi flinched, head whipping around to stare at it as he reached a hand to card through his mop of flat, greasy-looking hair.
“I think you dropped something,” Kaede tittered, causing a nearby gaggle of students to glance over and stifle their laughter at the sight of Shuichi scrambling out of his chair to retrieve it.
As he did so, she picked up the gray messenger bag by his desk and peeled back the flap. Shuichi's gaze snapped upwards, eyes round as she withdrew his wallet and inspected it. “A- Ah, wait! I need that for—”
“Don't kid yourself. You won’t be needing it for anything important,” she interrupted, “humanity’s a whole lot better without stains like you funneling their money into raunchy figurines, anyway.”
She then tipped the bag over, and Kokichi's stomach turned with it. The contents all came spilling out, clattering down onto Shuichi's head and the floor around him as the remaining students howled. Kokichi's grip on his own bag tightened, whipping around to try and locate a teacher or at least someone with an ounce of reason. But as usual, no one.
Of course. There was never someone of authority around when Kaede made her move.
Kaede watched Shuichi linger on the floor, frozen and staring at his belongings, while her face remained sickeningly neutral. Strangely enough, the only shift in her demeanor resulted from the giggles bouncing wall to wall. None of it seemed to motivate Kaede; with how strained her jaw was, you would have thought that she was the one being made a spectacle of.
She crouched down in front of him, and Shuichi braced himself as though he was expecting to be hit. The air intensified, her voice dropping to something only Shuichi and a few kids in proximity, Kokichi included, would be able to hear.
“Now pick them up,” she instructed, “Prove to me you can still face the world.”
“Take your ego trip somewhere else, Akamatsu,” Kokichi spat, mustering the gumption to come up behind her.
Kaede didn't look over her shoulder, not that she'd need to; she knew his petulant voice well enough. Her attention swiveled from Shuichi as she stood up, her full height already stoking the uneasy fire in his gut.
Stupid! The word echoed in his head and rattled his chest. Stupid, why the hell are you interfering?
He steeled himself, reminding his conscience of that one important fact that drove him to intervene in the first place:
She never takes any real swings inside school walls. She wouldn’t lay a finger on me here.
Kaede stared at him, then chortled softly. It was the kind of laugh you'd let out when running into an old friend by chance. “Ouma the Ostracized.” Her voice clung to every syllable of the cliche title he could never seem to shake. “Once again butting his head into things that don't concern him… Color me unsurprised.”
“You can save everyone your empty-headed speech, alright? He's done, already down for the count,” Kokichi bristled, gesturing to Shuichi, “so wrap it up and give him back his wallet.”
Kaede's smile had always unnerved Kokichi. It was twistedly doll-like, not in the sense that it was ‘too pretty to be real’ but too lifeless to feel candid. “Alright,” she said, her eyes drilling into the top of Shuichi's drooping head, “just after he pays a small donation.”
She popped open Shuichi's wallet and fished out the bills inside, spreading them with the air of someone who had done this one too many times today. “Take it,” Kaede ordered, holding the leather pouch out to a frazzled Shuichi who plucked the empty wallet from her hand, too resigned to argue.
Kokichi fought the urge to grind his teeth together as Kaede counted them out in front of him, the money sliding easily from one hand to the other. “Since when did you start taking ‘donations’ like you're some charity case?”
Kaede took her time feeling the texture of the money between her fingertips. “You don't remember?” The look she gave him as she turned didn't make him feel nearly as queasy as what she said. “Oh, Ouma, you were the first donor. I got your cut the other day. Momota must have kicked it right out of your memory.”
Kokichi chuckled hoarsely. “Must've blocked it out after his embarrassingly amateurish beatdown. I’m getting pretty used to his same-old tactics, you know.”
“Amateurish?” she echoed, as though trying to see how the word tasted in her mouth. “I see. Is that why you were pleading when we left you outside the gate?”
Kokichi paled at once, and he hated the way Kaede visibly savored it, stepping forward and reaching out. For one bone-chilling moment, he thought she might just try to choke him. But of course, Akamatsu always found a way to be much worse.
Her fingers ghosted over the side of his face in a way that made him recoil, briefly cupping his cheek with all the tenderness of a mother to her firstborn. “If you want Momota to make sure your teeth stay in that smart mouth of yours, I trust you'll have another donation for me next week.” Her smile vanished, the warning lingering in his mind like an unwanted phantom as she slid past him and out the door.
From a football field away, he could hear the shuffle of the other students filing out, recognizing that their entertainment had come to an end. Kokichi stared forward, the color sluggishly bleeding back into his face. He barely even registered the boy still fetching his possessions and reiterating meek ‘thank yous’ between breaths.
When he felt something brush his leg, he flinched, jerking back and glaring at Shuichi, who automatically yanked his hand away. “Sorry! I was just trying to get to—”
“Shut up.” The words slipped out before he could think twice, disregarding Shuichi's attempts to point out the highlighter near his foot. After a beat of silence, he added, “Don't thank me. I didn't do any of that for you.”
Shuichi blinked a few times, then nodded his head. “I know!” he confirmed, which really only served to piss Kokichi off more. Shuichi abandoned the highlighter and moved to scoop up some pencils that had scattered underneath his desk.
He let him fumble on his knees for a bit, the sight equally as pathetic as Shuichi looked, before wordlessly kneeling to pick up a few supplies nearby. He tried to tune out Shuichi's loud breathing, which seemed to have picked up once he noticed that Kokichi had started helping. The sound of it was made painfully obvious now that they were the only ones left in the classroom.
With a final shove, Kokichi forced the last few pencils into the others’ hands. Shuichi flusteredly stuffed them into his bag and opened his mouth, no doubt to flood his ears with more brain-numbing apologies and words of gratitude. But Kokichi had already stood up, snatched his bag, and had begun bee-lining it toward the door.
“Ah, please- please wait!” Shuichi’s voice fired across the room in a panic, and the pure desperation of it made him begrudgingly halt his paces.
“It’s… It’s Ouma, right? I think I heard the nurse mention it last week, and- and Akamatsu just now, but… I wanted to be sure.”
Kokichi’s face hardened, not that Shuichi would be able to see it. An avalanche of possible replies immediately tumbled across his tongue:
It’s none of your business.
And why should I tell you?
Figure it out yourself, if you think you’re so damn smart.
But instead, the image of the deplorable face that was surely still staring at the back of his head created a sort of barrier against his usual snarky retorts. With a sigh that squeezed his chest, he muttered, “It’s Ouma Kokichi.” Then left Sketchy Saihara to stare out after him.
Just another act of selfish pity.
