Work Text:
Sometimes, if you tell a particular lie often enough it begins to taste true, doesn’t it? Repainting over reality with something new. Something better, maybe. But maybe not.
Sometimes, if you slip on a blank-eyed rubber horse head mask often enough… for shock value or anonymity or to make your teammates snort and go, “Aw you’re ridiculous…” it eventually decides it doesn’t wanna let you go. Kokichi put that rubber horse head mask on day before yesterday, to record a playfully threatening video, warning a bank that his notorious clown gang DICE has their eye on ‘em. So they’d better straighten stuff out with their wronged customers if they don’t want to become the target of a splattery vault-explode-y joke! Sound good?
Yeah, sounds swell.
But then, when Kokichi sighed and stretched and switched off the recording… when Kokichi reached up to pull off the rubber horse head mask… it wouldn’t come away. It was impossibly stuck. His flippy purple hair gets itchy, under this dang thing, and it’s stupidly hot already. Sweat-damp and toxic-plastic-smelling and just asking for new pimples. But… welp.
Kokichi tried to yank the rubber horse mask up and off of him from below, where it met his neck, but it had melted into his skin. He tried to snip it off with the knife tucked up his sleeve, but he only made himself bleed and had to fumble around with colorful comic-themed bandaids. Pretty hard to do, too, looking out of a rubber horse head mask, I’ll tell you what.
A DICE member called through the door, asking if he was doing alright — if the recording’d gone okay — and Kokichi tried to keep the panic from his voice, saying oh, yeah, absolutely. Haha. If they didn’t hear back from that bank soon they’d better gather their glitter-paint water balloons and dynamite. Prepare for the strike!
Nice work, boss. We’re on it.
So.
Kokichi spent a while longer battling with the horse head mask, but it wouldn’t slide off like he knew it should. Pinching it felt more and more like pinching his own skin. Breathing got stranger and strangled, from inside the rubber. Kokichi laughed, helplessly, and it echoed of the mask. He stalked over to the mini-fridge and took out a soda, raised it to the horse’s lips. Of course it couldn’t drink. He couldn’t drink. And later, when DICE gathered on the couch for dinner and a movie, he might not be able to eat, either.
Spoilers: he wasn’t. He skipped the movie, too.
Researching similar phenomena, Kokichi decided to try butter… something to make the mask slippery? But that didn’t work. He tried to pluck the rubber apart piece by piece, but it stayed just one solid fact. An undeniable, impossible truth. That was also a mask. That was also a lie.
Kokichi was torn between two extremes. On one hand, it was his duty as the fearless Supreme Leader of DICE to keep them in the loop about important things. To trust them, yeah? If this was the end of him… if he was warping into something else, some kind of Yokai or whatever… his team deserved to know. But on the other hand, his heart was beating super fast and it was claustrophobic as hell in the World of Rubber Horse Head Masks. This whole situation was vulnerable and embarrassing, and Kokichi flinched, imagining the potential disappointment on his team’s faces when they realized he wasn’t just playing some kinda game. Disappointment to bafflement to horror. Was this how he was gonna die? Really?
Kokichi figured he should tell DICE, but he put it off for a while. He spread his research out across the room, sticking articles all over the walls with more of those colorful bandaids. He read books about Yokai transformations online, published by this weird, rambling anthropologist. Dr. Shinguji said that one of the wonders of humanity is its malleability. The ability to absorb pieces of the world, or nature, or emotion, and become consumed by them. Changed. He seemed to think it was completely possible that someone might come to rely on a mask-symbol too much, such that it’s a part of them. Or they’re a part of it. He seemed to think spells and prayers and willing-things-to-life were all mercilessly real. And who knows?
Kokichi called Dr. Shinguji’s office at a folklore museum across the country a couple times, but he never actually explained the problem. The first time, he left a generic prank call, “Is your refrigerator running, better go catch it!” kind of message, and next he cut the call short because his boyfriend called him.
Well. Not officially Kokichi’s boyfriend, but the only person he’d really want to be anything like that. The person that captivates him, almost catches him again and again. A detective, Shuichi Saihara — and yes, he has Kokichi private number, though they never use that sort of thing when they’re playing their cat-and-mouse games. Sometimes, Shuichi’s trying to catch DICE in the act, to stop an art theft of thwart a prank or rescue a kidnapped CEO currently being forced to work a shift at Burger King. But other times… right now… Shuichi approaches Kokichi as just a guy. As someone to wear disguises and go to an arcade with. Get ice cream.
Someone Kokichi’s kissed, before, and been kissed by. On his forehead, gently… on his startled lips, fiercely. When he wasn’t wearing this stupid rubber horse head mask.
Kokichi ended his call to Dr. Shinguji and picked up for Shuichi. He felt the frustrated, exhausted words gathering in his chest — the truth about what was happening to him. The inexplicable, trapped, nightmarish day he’d been having so far. But he shoved those words down, chirped hello. Asked Shuichi what was up, Mr. Detective? Got anything juicy for him, today?
They chatted for a while, and Kokichi kept his voice so calm, so easy. A lie, another lie, as his hair got sweaty and itched worse, as he grew dizzier and dizzier from the smell of rubber. He agreed to meet Shuichi for dinner in a couple days…
Today. He agreed to meet Shuichi for dinner today, but even after all this time he hasn’t been able to crack it. He hasn’t been able to eat, either, even when DICE bring him food, chuckling to find him opening the door in his rubber horse head mask. Telling him he should probably take a shower; he should probably get some sleep. They love him. He doesn’t sound so good, and he’s a little wobbly on his feet, and what is he even doing in there for so long?!
Kokichi’s thirsty, incredibly thirsty, though he did stick an emergency IV in his arm. So, he shouldn’t die just yet. The warm, taunting bottle of grape Panta he took out of the fridge a while back sits between his piles of papers, mocking him. He’s furious. The rubber horse head mask feels like it’s breathing along with him, sometimes, taking on a life of its own.
It’s getting closer and closer to the time Kokichi’s supposed to meet Shuichi for dinner. He’s got to be able to do this. Find the spell, or the prayer, or the right angle to gently snip this mask off with scissors, maybe starting up at the ears so he doesn’t slice his neck again. No big loss, he thinks, if he accidentally trims some of his hair.
A bad haircut, Shuichi and DICE could both understand. All of this? This mask-become-face?
Kokichi groans, too tired to scream. He rips some of his papers up, throws them like confetti. Hunts around for his phone. He’s gotta call Shuichi to cancel, he thinks. His detective’s probably got enough on his plate. Would he even believe it if Kokichi tried explaining this nonsense, anyway?
“Hey, Shuichi,” Kokichi starts, trying to make his voice sound chipper. “I’ve got to… I’ve got to…”
The IV needle stings, in his arm. The eyeholes of the rubber horse head mask cut off so much of the world.
“I’ve got to tell you something.”
Against his best judgment… feeling like an idiot, like a house of cards tumbling over… Kokichi explains his situation to Detective Saihara, the guy he actually really wants to call him his boyfriend, for real. He hears angry tears in his voice, tastes them in his throat. Maybe Shuichi will think he’s only fake-crying, again.
But whether Shuichi believes him or not, he says, “Okay.”
“Wh —?”
“Okay, I’m leaving work early, and I’m coming to your base. Yes, I know where it is. No, I haven’t told anyone. We’re going to figure this out, Kokichi.”
Kokichi almost drops the phone. He crumples to his knees, arm curling around himself, messing up his papers.
Yeah, okay.
When Shuichi arrives, DICE lets him into the cozy, circus-y steel tunnels, cooing over him a little, trying to peek inside the striped clue-notebook he carries in his pocket. Kokichi demonstrates the cruel power of the rubber horse head mask — yup, that sucker is stuck. He shows how he tried to cut it off, and when he nicks himself again Shuichi yelps.
“Boss… careful,” one of Kokichi’s DICE members says. Not disappointed in him so much as worried. Protective.
And, “Come here. I believe you,” Shuichi says.
Kokichi slips the knife back into his sleeve. Slouches over to meet him. Shuichi feels gently around the edges of the rubber horse head mask, and… after a moment… gasps. Soft surprise. The thing is loosening under his fingers. Becoming just unfeeling, unassuming rubber again. The truth, disentangling itself from the lie.
Shuichi pulls the rubber horse head mask right off, spell broken. The fear melts away on his face, seeing Kokichi’s shock and relief. Asking for help shouldn’t have been all it took. It doesn’t make sense. Unless it does.
The rubber horse head mask drops to the floor with a plastic whoosh of air. A shed skin. A lie proven wrong, like “Whoops!”
Kokichi’ll have to clean himself off… and drink that warm, flat Panta, as a matter of principle… before they go to dinner.