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Shuichi has his senses perked as Ouma Kokichi walks into the room. He usually has to be on a watch whenever the little boy with the purple hair shows up- chaos or shenanigans often come in his wake. This time, Kokichi seemed avid to show everyone in the classroom something.
"Hey guys! Look at this thing I found!"
This piques Shuichi's interest and he actually turns around to see Ouma holding what Shuichi assumed to be his phone. Whenever did Ouma get a phone? He questions internally but dismisses for more pressing matters.
He can hear everyone's interested [or skeptical] inner reactions, and, more clearly, Maki's verbal one: "You can scream forever in your head because you can't run out of breath? That's stupid."
Yet, as it seems to Shuichi, nobody really cared about that,
because there were suddenly a very large number of screams bouncing around Shuichi's skull.
Fourteen whole people screaming in an enclosed space would be too much for any one normal person to happen, but it’s worse for Shuichi. It’s isolated in his head, confined to and bouncing around in his skull. Plus he’s a telepath, and that seems to increase the volume of whatever was happening in his head when he was anxious anyway.
Shuichi's eyes press shut as Ouma's gaze falls on him, he sees it, barely, as the latter had been avidly scanning the room for everyone's reactions. As if he knew, Shuichi thinks vaguely, barely coherently. The telepath sinks quickly from standing to gripping the back of his chair to sliding to the floor, where he’s now curled up. He feels pathetic and he can’t do a single thing about that.
The ringing dies down eventually, but is still there, everyone growing aware of their accidental foul play, after he vaguely hears Kaede yell "Stop!" to the people in the room.
"Shuichi!" someone calls afterward, detached and spacey in Shuichi's head, which is still ringing.
"Shuichi!" His name echoes again, louder and clearer and decidedly not feminine.
"Oh my god, Shuichi-"
Wait a second.
Was that Ouma?
This thought gives Shuichi enough curiosity, momentary as it is, to slowly and carefully [and painfully] crack open one of his eyes.
He works for a moment to register the figures nearest to him- Kaede, on her knees, Kaito, crouching, and-
Kokichi, shifting from where he was next to Kaede to move next to Shuichi and gently take his hand.
What on earth is happening?
As his head starts to clear, he can also register quiet, hurried conversation and footsteps tapping out of the classroom- by the lightness of them it’s likely Maki but could be Tenko as well, probably to go fetch an adult. Shuichi closes his eyes again and blinks slowly, attempting to work up the guts to open his eyes fully. "Shuichi, are you ok?" Someone coaxes. It's Kaede, he can tell, and he musters a weak nod. "G- gimme a minute, ok?" He stammers. Shuichi registers, blankly, a nod.
He feels circles being rubbed into his hand. Shuichi remembers Kokichi's holding his hand. That’s still a mystery, but it's soothing. that's probably what he meant for it to be, didn't he?
Shuichi accepts it for a moment, before he hears more footsteps, definitely more than one pair. It’s likely whoever went to get an adult and the adult.
He painstakingly opens his eyes fully, takes the hand Kaito offers him and stands up, and looks around the room. Kaede hugs him gently and apologized profusely, he whispers over and over it’s not her fault, Tenko looks like she might be about to kill Kokichi more so than usual, and Maki is standing next to a professor, who asks him to come over and he does, with Kaito’s help. Shuichi straightens as he explains himself. Tries to defend Ouma, to the best of his ability, but either the professor or Kaito cuts him off most of the time. He almost, almost huffs when he’s sent to the nurse’s office. But Shuichi’s not brave like Kaito or dismissive like Kokichi, so he stands in the doorway and watches as Kokichi is scolded and too-nearly dodges a too-accurate air-punch from Kaito. Then he’s walking over and-
“Hey, Saihara-chan.” the mystery with the purple hair murmurs. “They want me to walk with you to the nurse’s office. Since it’s along the way to detention anyway.” Kokichi raises his voice just a little bit, chuckles, at the last part. It’s a charade, obviously.
So he bluntly nods, smiles just a little bit, and attempts to walk straight out the hallway. Kokichi doesn’t hesitate to loop his arm through Shuichi’s when he sees he’s still a little dizzy and light-headed and Shuichi can’t help but smile and he looks over at Kokichi, who’s grinning as much as he is inside.