Chapter Text
When Jun woke up it was to the sounds of beeping, the persistent hum of fluorescent lights, and what could only be described as a screaming match somewhere to his right.
Groggily, he opens his eyes to stare up at a stark white particle board ceiling. Blinking a few times to focus his vision, he glances around to get his bearings. It didn’t take a genius to guess that he’d somehow landed himself in the hospital, with the mint green curtain surrounding his bed like a cocoon or the IV drip perched next to him.
Sitting up slightly, he looks down at himself. He wasn’t in any pain, and the exhaustion he felt was more likely due to inactivity than anything else. Jun rubs at his bare wrist anxiously, trying to recall how he got here.
Last he remembered he’d received a strange note to go to the aerospace museum and then… fire? Falling? A boy…?
Jun winces as his head pounds painfully.
“I’m telling you pops, I don’t know how I got there!” A nervous young man’s voice cuts through his confusion. “I just woke up here! I don’t even remember what I was doing!”
“I’ve had just about enough of your stories!” Another voice calls out, high pitched and painfully scratchy. “If the doctors tell me you have even the tiniest trace of drugs in you, you’re going to be grounded until you graduate do you understand?!”
Jun can’t make out the reply.
“I said; do you understand?!”
“...Yes sir.” The son mumbles.
With a scoff, a man walks out from behind the curtain and points an accusatory finger at Jun. Jun shrinks under his gaze.
“All you Kasugayama students are no good!” The man continues his rant, carrying on and walking out of Jun’s view and what he presumes is the hall. “Should’ve made you apply to Sevens…”
The angry muttering gets further and further away, and a creaking noise sounds from behind the curtain.
“... Fucking prick.” Comes out as a heavy sigh.
“Uh,” Jun supplies helpfully, uncomfortable to have been part of that. “Yeah…”
A beat passes before the curtain is yanked back to reveal a beaming young man with dark hair and splotches of freckles. “Kashihara-senpai! You’re awake!”
“Oh, um-“ His brain supplies helpfully. Who is that? “Hello?”
“God am I glad to see you dude,” The boy continues, unaware of Jun’s plight. “I was worried you wouldn’t wake up anytime soon!”
His demeanor and voice were so familiar, why couldn’t he place who he was?
“I- hold on.” He puts a hand up in front of him. “Do I know you?”
The boy stops and blinks a few times. “Oh dude you must’ve gotten hit hard, it's me!”
“I have never seen you before in my life, I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.” Jun deadpans.
“Oh come on,” he frames his face with his hands and grins. “Everyone knows me!”
Jun stares.
With a heavy sigh, the boy pushes his bangs off of his forehead and-
“Oh my god!” Jun blurts out, recognition hitting him like lightning. “You’re Michel!”
“Yeah man!” Eikichi Mishina, death boss of Kasugayama High replies. They’d never properly interacted before, but his junior’s reputation for beating the rowdier classmates into something resembling proper students preceded him. “I know I’m not all dolled up right now but come on! Someone as beautiful as me has a face everyone’s gotta remember!”
Despite his protest, Eikichi looked drastically different without his excessive makeup and hair dye. With his tan skin and splotches of freckles crowning his cheeks and shoulders, and with his hair a natural shade of coal, he actually looked like a human being.
“Forgive me,” Jun pushes past his initial shock with the grace his mother had all but beat into him, “I’m so used to seeing you as a rockstar, I wasn’t expecting to meet you in a more casual setting.”
Eikichi snorts. “Dude we’re in the hospital,” he gestures to their smocks. “Not exactly casual.”
Frowning down at himself, Jun nods. “About that; what are we doing here? I can’t remember a thing.”
Michel shrugs. “I wish I could tell you, but I’m in the same boat. The nurse said we got found knocked out cold outside of the shrine up by Sevens, and that’s kind of where the story ends. You can press that button on your bed there to call someone, they’ll probably explain it better than I did.”
“Alaya Shrine, right? Have we been here long?” He asks, pressing the call button.
“Few days, I think?” Eikichi runs a hand through his hair. “But the last day I remember was apparently a month ago…”
Jun pauses at that, wracking his mind for the last thing he could remember. “I remember it being the 2nd of November, what day is it now?”
“Somewhere around early December? I’m not sure exactly, you’ll have to ask.”
Sure enough, a nurse came into the room soon after that. Despite what Eikichi said, the nurse couldn’t provide any more information than what he’d already been told. He, Eikichi, and a girl from Sevens he’d never heard of, had all been found unconscious outside of the Alaya Shrine. An ambulance had been called and they’d all been brought to the hospital, where they’d remained comatose until recently.
No signs of a struggle, drugs, or injury. There weren’t even any witnesses who saw them go to the shrine in the first place.
Jun thanks the nurse when she leaves, but the shock and distress of their situation doesn’t fade. Eikichi puts on a strained grin and puffs out his chest in an attempt to look confident, which is immediately undercut by his gaunt appearance in a hospital smock.
“Hey man, don’t worry about it!” He says loudly, and another patient from the other side of the room shushes him. Lowering his voice, he continues; “We’ll figure things out, there’s no use stressing over what we can’t remember right now. I’m sure we’ll find out what happened eventually.”
Jun sighs and rubs at his wrist again. It didn’t feel right and it bothered him. “Are you trying to comfort me, Michel?”
“Sure trying to,” he rests his elbows on his knees and puts his chin in his hands and grins. “Is it working?”
“... No.”
-
Despite the fact that they, along with the girl neither of them knew, were awake and lucid; the fact none of them remembered what had happened and had been out for several days was cause for concern enough that they had to stay a couple days longer in the hospital.
It was agonizingly boring and the few visits his parents could squeeze in could only keep him occupied for so long, despite the odd behavior his mother had been exhibiting (she seemed quick to anger these days, what happened last month?).
Eikichi somehow had managed to keep up a running commentary throughout their entire stay. It was as though he had an opinion on everything, and these opinions would be shared with Jun constantly.
Today the topic was the nurse who kept berating him for not eating the meals provided and keeping up his nutrition, citing that they couldn’t let him leave at the end of the week until he’d at least gained a couple pounds.
“I mean, who does she think she is?” Eikichi angrily stabs his wilted salad with the disposable plastic fork he’d been provided with. “This crap’s totally going to ruin my diet.”
“While I agree that they could’ve forgone drenching it in this much dressing, I think you’re missing the point.” Jun has to stop himself from grimacing as he takes a bite, swallowing before continuing; “We were unconscious for quite some time, and we both lost weight from not eating. Even if it’s hospital food, we should try to eat what we can.”
His junior scoffs and shoves away his half eaten meal. “It takes so much effort to maintain this figure, Kashihara! I mean, look at these hips!” He gestures to his hip bone, and Jun focuses on how wrong it looked to see the fabric of the hospital smock hang off it. “All my work’s gonna go to waste here!”
“... Right.” Jun keeps his voice as neutral and level as possible as to not give away his underlying horror. He didn’t know Eikichi well enough to berate him for putting his health at risk, but he could at least try and convince him to finish his food. “You may want to eat the rest of that, I think I hear that nurse down the hall.”
He tries not to smirk as Eikichi swears under his breath and begins shoveling through the salad with renewed vigor.
-
When the day finally came that they were released from the hospital, Jun’s father Akinari came to take him home, his mother Junko oddly absent. In the past she had blown off entire productions just because he was under the weather, so he was shocked to learn the reason she hadn’t come to pick him up was because she had an interview.
“Well, you are almost an adult now Jun.” His father says from the driver’s seat as they pull out of the parking lot, ever the devil’s advocate. “Your mother adores you, but her career’s very important to her too.”
“I know father, I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.” Jun rubs at his wrist anxiously as he stares out the passenger window. “This past little while has just been scary for me.”
“It’s been scary for all of us,” Akinari sighs. “A lot of strange and scary things happened last month, things I only ever imagined before, and when you and your mother went missing during all of it I was terrified. If anything I’m a little grateful you can’t remember any of it, I haven’t slept soundly in weeks…”
“Mother went missing too?!”
“She did… Listen son, this is just between you and me but whatever happened to her must have been very frightening. If she snaps at you, it isn’t because she’s angry.” Akinari says quietly, as if someone could possibly listen in on their enclosed vehicle. “She’s just scared, and we need to be patient and gentle with her, just as we’re going to be patient and gentle with you.”
Jun nods and looks back out the window, before something catches his attention out in the distance.
“Father, why is there a blimp out in the harbor?”
Akinari sucks in air through his teeth and grimaces. “You missed a lot.”
He blinks rapidly, trying to will away the sudden surge of deja-vu as he stares out at the half sunken wreck of a blimp off the coast.
“I guess I did.”