Chapter Text
As far as living spaces went, a hospital was maybe not the best one for a borrower.
In Takumi’s defense, he couldn’t exactly afford to be picky. The hospital was where he ended up, which meant the hospital was where he would stay. To its credit, there was at least a room almost nobody went to where he could set up camp unnoticed, as well as a myriad of convenient hiding spots. The sharp smell of antiseptic that clung to everything was unpleasant and hospital food wasn’t the most flavourful, but he was warm and dry and not starving. Pretty good, all things considered.
He did sometimes wonder what those big machines were for, though. They didn’t seem like normal hospital equipment, since he only ever saw them in this room, and on the odd occasion he’d gotten a good enough vantage point to see inside they looked like they had humans in them. He’d given up on getting any answers from the hospital staff that occasionally visited the strange room, too—they never said anything, and never left out any notes or documents that might tell him something, either.
Oh well. No need to worry about it. In the grand scheme of Takumi Sumino’s life, whatever the humans were doing in here was thoroughly not his problem, anyway.
…or so he thought. Much to Takumi’s dismay, it seemed that the unknown purpose of the strange room actually was his problem, and the worst kind of problem at that: the kind that upended the comfortably boring, routine life he’d established for himself and threw his entire world into chaos.
He watched as a weird egg-shaped creature pulled a human body out of a capsule, dragging it by the ankles to the open doorway while cursing under its breath. (Did it breathe? Its heart and brain were visible, but Takumi couldn’t see any lungs.) It looked like the thing had already emptied out a couple other capsules earlier, while Takumi was still asleep.
He needed the egg thing (seriously, what was it? It didn’t look like any kind of animal Takumi knew of, not that he knew of many) to get a little further away before he could investigate, though, and every second that he had to wait made his skin feel like it was crawling with ants. He allowed himself to move to a spot behind the door once the egg creature had left the room.
At one point, the creature’s footsteps stopped. There were sounds of shuffling and an impassioned “fuck” before the footsteps resumed, getting fainter and fainter all the while, and Takumi took this as his sign to start investigating.
There was another important entry on his list of reasons the strange room didn’t make sense: the air vents didn’t connect to the rest of the hospital. They only went between that single room and the outside. Fortunately for Takumi, there was a vent nice and close to the ground right outside the door that he could use to—
He froze when he stepped into the hallway.
This wasn’t the hospital.
His legs were already moving before he could think. There was enough clutter in the hall that hiding spots were plentiful, but the only vents he could see were on the ceiling. Not good. Being out in the open like this was a death wish.
He crouched behind a bizarre statue as the egg creature came back. It walked into the strange room, then after a few minutes and several noises that sounded kind of painful, it was dragging another limp body down the hall to wherever. Takumi couldn’t help but wince at the sight. If any of these people woke up with mysterious bruises, he would know why. (Not like he could tell them.)
Following it seemed like his best course of action. Or maybe it was his worst. Either way, it was his only alternative to wandering around this new place aimlessly and hoping he found something. Fortunately for him, the egg creature was pretty slow (most likely on account of it being weighed down by an entire human, Takumi figured) so it was easy to tail. He followed it into a classroom and, to his immense relief, found a vent he could access.
Thank goodness.
His first thought was that he should go looking for supplies, but dropped the idea as soon as he shimmied through the vent grate. All the tension left him as soon as he felt safe, and an intense wave of sleepiness forced him to slump against the wall.
It was probably a better idea to stay, anyway, he reasoned as he made himself comfortable—as comfortable as he could be when the walls and floor were all made from cold metal, at least. Maybe when the humans woke up, he could figure out what was happening.
***
Takumi hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the sounds of voices startled him awake. He felt a brief jolt of panic, but calmed down once he remembered that he’d made it to the air ducts. He was safe.
He couldn’t see much of anything from where he was, so he pulled his hook out of his bag and started his journey towards the ceiling vents. He was a little worried about his hook breaking—it was pretty old, and made from a paper clip instead of something sturdier because that was all he could find—but it thankfully held up, and he managed to make it to his destination. He had a bird’s-eye view of the room now.
It was kind of funny. They looked so much smaller when he was up this high.
Not much happened at first. The humans introduced themselves, each one a varying amount of confused at their situation. (There was one girl who kept insisting this was all a “killing game,” and Takumi didn’t quite know what that kind of game entailed but he was sure he never wanted to find out.) When the egg-shaped thing showed back up, all he learned was that the humans gathered there were all supposed to defend this building (which was apparently a school? Takumi had never been to one but he was pretty sure they didn’t look like this) for one hundred days. So nothing particularly relevant to him.
He just hoped, as he hefted his bag over his shoulder and turned to leave, that nobody would mistake him for one of these so-called “school invaders.”
***
The first few days were uneventful. Takumi explored the vents, making a mental map of the school, and managed to find a spot to make his home base for the foreseeable future. (He didn’t want to call it “home,” because “home” implied he would be staying there long-term. He hoped that wasn’t the case.) He located consistent sources of food—there was a dining hall with plenty of non-perishables that were a bit of a pain to access but not impossible to reach—and gathered frustratingly few materials for tools and basic necessities. Most of the random clutter he could find was either completely useless or too big for him to move. He resigned himself to his inevitable back pain from a lack of a proper bed and moved on.
On day 3, he finally worked up the courage to go up to the roof. He’d already known about the lack of a ceiling from some conversations he overheard, but seeing it himself—seeing the sky, vibrant and blue and stretching so far up that Takumi worried he would fall into it if he stared too long—was enough to overwhelm him. (He looked at it all day.)
There was a commotion on day 6. The sickly boy, Eito, had to be rescued from outside the school… but more importantly (to them, not to Takumi), the little egg-shaped creature, Sirei, was dead. The only thing interesting about the conversation to him was that Sirei was not, in fact, some sort of translucent organless egg-shaped animal, but a robot, which made a lot more sense. (He wondered briefly if any of Sirei’s parts would make for useful materials, but figured that if he took any, the residents of the academy would definitely notice.)
Aside from that single instance of robot murder, not much else happened in the first two weeks. After getting properly settled in, he spent most of his free time seeing what all the humans were up to. They were an odd bunch, but Takumi found himself strangely endeared to them. When he wasn’t gathering food or supplies, he tried to help them out where he could—mostly retrieving lost items he himself didn’t need, like pens or erasers or, in one case, a sock.
Takumi hoped things continued to go this smoothly. They probably wouldn’t.
***
On the night of day 15, Takumi had a feeling. A bad feeling. The kind that sunk into him bone-deep and filled him with a buzzing discomfort. Something in the back of his mind told him he needed to go check on Hiruko. He didn’t know why—Hiruko had seemed to be doing just fine (better than usual, even!)—but if there was anything Takumi had learned, it was to always trust his instincts. They’d gotten him out of a tough situation far more times than he could count.
…which was how he found himself standing guard in the air ducts above Hiruko’s room. She was fast asleep—it was the middle of the night, what else would she be doing—and everything seemed fine. He was sure she’d be furious at finding him there (she struck Takumi as the paranoid type), and the thought almost got him to dismiss his earlier concern as pointless anxiety and leave.
Key word being almost, because he heard something. The sound of the floorboards creaking was miniscule; likely inaudible to anyone without Takumi’s finely tuned sense of hearing. It jolted him out of his half-asleep haze, and he looked back down into the room. His breath hitched.
Eito stood beside her bed, his hemoanima weapon hanging over her neck like an executioner’s blade. Takumi didn’t have time to think—no time to consider the consequences, no time to come up with a better plan—so he did what he did best and followed his gut.
“HIRUKO!” he yelled.
She was up in an instant. Within seconds, she had Eito’s arms pinned behind his back, his scythe clattering to the ground.
“I knew it,” she hissed.
Takumi expected Eito to deflect, apologize, come up with some half-baked explanation as to why he was in Hiruko’s bedroom in the middle of the night in what could only be interpreted as an assassination attempt. Instead, his lips curled into a smile… and he laughed.
“You’ve caught me red-handed! Quite impressive, really. I thought my plan was foolproof,” Eito purred. “I wasn’t expecting you to have a lookout, Hiruko. You honestly struck me as the solitary type. A grave oversight on my part, I suppose.”
“I don’t have a lookout.” Hiruko’s tone was still ice cold, but Takumi caught a hint of confusion in her words. “I don’t know what that was… but I can look into that later. First I need to figure out what to do with you.”
Takumi watched as she dragged him out of the room—at least, that’s what he’d been expecting. In reality, Eito followed her without issue. The scythe on the floor dissipated once the door slammed shut behind them.
It was tense, waiting for her to come back. Only when he saw Hiruko step through the door, alive and unharmed, did Takumi relax enough to finally fall asleep.
***
As it turned out, she’d locked Eito in the strange room. Takumi heard the commotion on his way to the cafeteria. (The humans gathered there every morning. Takumi decided it was a great opportunity to gather intelligence. At least, that was how he justified it to himself. In reality, he was just lonely bored.)
Everyone was gathered around Eito at the entrance save for Hiruko, who seemed to have been forced into the strange room in his place.
“I just told her I didn’t agree with how she was treating the non-combatants… I suppose this is how she punishes those who disagree with her.” Eito clutched his chest. “Please, Hiruko, this has gone too far.”
Hiruko scowled. “I’m telling you, he was trying to kill me. I was just lucky enough to get woken up in time to avoid it.”
“Uh.” Gaku glanced at Eito, then Hiruko, then Eito again. “You know that this is Eito you’re talking about, right? I, uh, don’t think he could kill anyone, dude.”
“Gaku’s right.” Takemaru cracked his knuckles. “First you threaten to throw out a buncha people and force ‘em to fend for themselves, and now you’re over here throwin’ wild accusations at the first guy to try an’ stand up to you? That’s fuckin’ cold.”
“It’s not a ‘wild accusation’, I—he—there was a witness.” Hiruko clenched her fists. “I told you I got woken up. It wasn’t by Eito, or anyone else. There was a voice I didn’t recognize.”
“Are you trying to imply a ghost woke you up, Ms. Shizuhara?” one of the twins said.
“Are you mocking me?” Hiruko narrowed her eyes, before her shoulders slumped and her expression fell. “Fine. Whether you believe me or not isn’t my problem. If you want to keep that would-be murderer on your team—” A sharp glare at Eito, who, to his credit, did a very good job at looking just the right amounts of confused and distressed, “—then it’s your funeral.”
The others seemed to take this as their cue to leave. They filed out of the room, Takemaru clapping Eito on the shoulder and asking if he was alright, Eito replying in a thin voice that he was fine, thanks to his friends’ help. Only one person didn’t move at all—the pink-haired one with the bow. Kako, if Takumi remembered correctly.
“Sister Dearest?” called her twin brother—Ima, he reminded himself—from the doorway.
“I’ll be with you in just a second, Brother Dearest,” Kako replied. “I just wanted to talk to Hiruko first.”
“Really? Her?” Ima leaned against the doorway and scrutinized Hiruko. “I guess she’s unarmed… fine, you can talk to her, but I’m staying here to supervise. If she lays even a single finger on you, she will regret it until her dying breath.”
“Brother…” Kako muttered, turning away from him in… embarrassment? Seemed like it. “I’m sorry, Hiruko, he gets like this sometimes. He’s just overprotective.”
“What did you want to tell me?” Hiruko replied in a hushed voice.
Kako followed her lead and lowered her voice to a whisper. Takumi moved closer to the vent covering to hear them better.
“I had a vision,” she said, expression grim. “I think it might have been about that mysterious voice you mentioned.”
“A vision?” Hiruko replied.
“Yes!” Kako squeaked and placed a hand over her mouth, glancing behind her to check on Ima. He was still staring at the two of them with uncomfortable intensity, but he didn’t seem like he’d heard anything. “I’m clairvoyant. Sometimes I get visions of the future. I… can’t control them, though. They just kind of happen.”
Hiruko leaned forward. “And what was this… ‘vision’ of yours about?”
Kako took a deep breath.
“There’s someone else here,” she whispered. “Someone we don’t know about. He’s living in the walls.”
Takumi didn’t stick around to hear the rest of the conversation. His blood rushed in his ears.
They knew about him.