Chapter Text
For a little while, Kokichi just sat there and felt disgusting. Being awake was already proving to be exhausting, and he wanted nothing more than to just give up for the rest of the day and go back to sleep, but he tried his hardest not to. He looked around the room he was in, trying to assess his situation. The room was completely white and had no windows. There was a little desk by the door and a row of beds, little green curtains separating each one. None of the curtains were drawn, though, considering no one else was in the room. There was medical equipment next to each bed, the wires and screens hovering over them like a robotic guard angel.. His angel was holding him too tight, desperately pressing his chest up and down to prevent him from crossing over. He tried to speak, but the machine had a grip so tight on his throat that he couldn’t get a single word out. He tried to lift the soiled hospital gown off his body by himself, but his arms didn’t move. His fingers didn’t even twitch, which made him feel a strange sort of fear he hadn’t felt since he was a little kid. Maybe something supernatural was sitting on his shoulders, weighing them down. He never believed in the paranormal before, but considering the fact that he had died and apparently been brought back to life, he supposed that anything could be possible. He wanted Kaito to come back.
Kaito would have made him believe in himself so much that he would have been able to rip the tubes right out of his face and stand up out of the stupid hospital bed. He would strip the hospital gown straight off his body and run right out the door, free to never see any of these people again. Maybe they would stand at the door and watch him run, knowing that none of them would ever be fast enough to catch him. Maybe they would try, but he would be so fast that he would slip from their fingers. He would run to where no one would ever find him, he would run away and rebuild his life and no one would ever know who he was. Kaito would never tell anyone that he was the one who helped Kokichi run away, it would be their little secret forever. He would fade to a mosaic of features in everybody’s mind, sometimes a face and sometimes a name and one day he would be nothing at all to them.
He got so wrapped up in his little daydream that he forgot he was still laying in the hospital bed, so much so that he got startled when a nurse walked into the room. Kaito didn’t come back with her.
“Oh, sweetie, are you feeling sick?” She cooed, gently undoing the hospital gown. She folded it up and lifted it off his body, then dropped it in a little trash can by the desk. Her fingers gingerly crept around his face, removing tape from his cheeks and pulling the tubes from his mouth and nose. The nausea stopped the instant they were gone.
“Here, I’ll get you cleaned up, and then the doctor will be in to see you.” She rubbed a warm washcloth up and down his body, the soap leaving a little trail on his chest. He looked down at himself, trying to remember if this was what he looked like before. He looked thin and weak, like his muscles had completely disappeared while he was sleeping. Once the nurse was done with the soap and water, she picked him up and laid him down on another bed, wrapping him in a towel that felt fresh out of the dryer. He let himself fully relax again, before the nurse shook his shoulders and tried to sit him up straight. She had already taken the sheets off the other bed and discarded them.
“I need you to stay with me, okay? You can’t go to sleep yet.” He couldn’t even protest. He just squeezed his eyes shut tightly, hoping she would leave him alone and he could go back to sleep. The nurse let go of his body and he slumped down, like a discarded rag doll.
Kokichi had only gotten to spend a few minutes asleep, and it wasn’t a particularly good rest either. He woke up to the sight of an old looking man, with grey hair and a sort of artificial tan that only looked strange on older people. His hands were covered in spots from age. He didn’t shake Kokichi to try and wake him, rather he gently knocked on the side of the bed.
“Hello?” Kokichi blinked, taking in his surroundings again. He was still curled up in the towel, his head tilted uncomfortably so that it rested on his shoulder. The doctor messed with the settings on the bed and grabbed Kokichi underneath his arms to straighten his spine. His hands were a lot firmer than the nurses’ hands were, like he was commanding Kokichi to sit rather than asking him to.
“Kokichi Oma. We have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?” The doctor asked him, like he was able to respond. Kokichi didn’t say anything, just let out a feeble squeak. It was all he could manage at the moment. The doctor took this as a conformation, as a sign to continue. Already, Kokichi liked the doctor a bit more than he liked the nurse. His stance was commanding and serious, but he wasn’t mean. He talked to Kokichi like he understood.
“Kokichi, you were a participant in an experiment done by the boarding committee at Hope’s Peak Academy. You were offered a full ride scholarship to the school due to your ultimate talent, despite the fact that the school’s ultimate talent program had shut down many years prior due to the school’s history of violence. Your scholarship was… under the table, so to speak. It wasn’t approved by the government, but the school had enough money from its reserve course program that it was able to fund the scholarships for the sixteen students it admitted. There’s a full police investigation regarding the school right now. It’s likely that the school as a whole will be shut down, but we can discuss that later. Does any of this sound familiar to you?” Kokichi felt that some of this sounded correct, but he couldn’t confirm this with the doctor. He remembered his talent, but that had nothing to do with the decaying school and the whole world blowing up. The doctor raised an eyebrow.
“Blink. Blink once if you’re following me.” Kokichi did as he said, deliberately blinking exactly once while making eye contact. The doctor nodded.
“Good. Anyways, the goal of the school was to try and re-create their failed experiment from several years ago. In fact, they tried to perform this experiment multiple times with multiple different classes and they all ended up with similar results. They were trying to create a virtual reality therapy program. You were selected as a member of their ‘experimental’ group, meaning you suffered, or rather suffer, from some form of mental illness. I understand that you were aware of your diagnosis, correct?” Kokichi blinked once again. Maybe saying that he knew about it was an understatement.
“Well, you were recommended by a family member to participate in the experiment. Don’t hold it against them, they didn’t know that this would be the outcome. In fact, they were trying to help you. Anyway, with the high amount of recommendations for fellow ultimate students, they decided to just split your class in half to create their control and experimental group. They just wanted to attempt to lessen the symptoms of your illness so that you could live more comfortably. However, someone uploaded a virus to the simulation and locked it from the inside out, attempting to re-create Junko Enoshima’s famous killing game. The person who created the virus, however, must have been inexperienced in programming, because they made the near fatal error of translating your virtual deaths into the real world. Due to the violent nature of your virtual death, you’re going to experience very painful symptoms. The paralysis you’re experiencing right now might wear off to some extent, but it’s highly likely that you’ll never walk again.” Kokichi’s stomach lurched, almost like he was going to throw up again. He searched the doctor’s face for any tell, any possible trace of a lie on his face, but there was nothing. He was gravely serious as he continued to speak.
“You also suffered multiple seizures while you were comatose. We are unsure whether or not these seizures will continue, but based on what we’ve seen with other patients, it’s highly likely.” He started to cry silently. Tears rolled down his cheeks and splashed onto the towel, creating a neat little puddle below him. He didn’t want to live the rest of his life like this, silently and in pain. The doctor brushed his thumbs against Kokichi’s cheeks, wiping the tears from his face.
“Kokichi, I know this is a very difficult adjustment, but I want you to know that you’re going to be okay. I’ve worked with countless patients before in very similar situations to yours, and they’ve all been okay. It’s perfectly normal to feel upset, but I don’t want you to feel as if your life is over. We’re going to work with you, okay? Breathe.” The doctor took a deep breath, instructing Kokichi to do the same. He did, but it didn’t make him feel any better. It wasn’t like breathing deep was going to magically fix him.
“Your guardians are aware of the situation. You’re going to stay here in the hospital for a bit, while you recover. It’s just to make everything easier for you. Now, I understand that you’re feeling very tired. It’s going to be disorienting to transition between your comatose state and this one.” The doctor flattened the bed all the way down. “Go ahead and rest for now. We’ll start working tomorrow, okay?” Kokichi could barely hear him. The lights in the room flicked off, and Kokichi’s consciousness flicked off with them.