Chapter Text
He’d normally feel tinges of guilt and worry as fresh bandages are wrapped over his wounds. He’d only let so many people do this, or none at all. Each time he’d get that same lingering anxiety. He thinks I’m pathetic, he’s going to run away.
But this time, it’s nothing to worry over at all. Those thoughts don’t even bother to cross his mind.
Self inflicted. Harmless, mostly, but if Shuuichi is going to have a panic over it then maybe he went a little too far. He’s laughing as if he’s having the time of his life.
He can’t deny that holding a knife in the first place made him feel more queasy than needed. Did that stop him? Of course not. Shuuichi just does things to him, that’s all.
Shuuichi finds it foolish, carefully wrapping a plaster over Kokichi’s cut. Not too deep (to him), but enough to break skin. Kokichi calls it a scrape. Shuuichi asks, “Are you blind?”
(Not exactly, but that’s what the look on his face told him.)
That sort of thrill is what keeps him going. It’s all he’s ever sought. Through Shuuichi, through DICE, through all he’s ever known.
He sits in his cluttered dorm, scrap paper and product design away from his mind. Ridiculous horse mask shoved at the far end of the room. All he can focus on now is Shuuichi, the current thrill of the present, and that well-fitted plaster over his ring finger.