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Daiki had been acting.. off for the past few days. His voice raspier, coughing as if he had a dog's bark in his throat, it was pretty obvious he'd gotten sick.
Atsushi had been bothered by it at the very least, mainly because he shared a classroom they used as a bedroom with a walking germ, but partly because he cared a little about said germ. Just chicken stock wasn't going to heal him, but Daiki refused to go to Shingo for help, claiming that all doctors did was make you more sick. That was obviously an idiotic claim, but it was hard to argue with the redhead without him getting on your nerves. Atsushi prayed that if nothing went wrong, if no one did anything wrong or died, they'd get out in a week and Daiki could get some actual help. It was bad enough that everyone in detention got trapped in this hellhole, it was bad enough that he barely had enough cigarettes to get through the week, and now he has to sleep in the same room as a sick dickhead.
2:34am
Atsushi woke up to Daiki coughing like he was gonna spit out a lung. He immediately went over to pat his back and help him, because if he chocked and died because of this it was game over for all of them, only to be met with the other swatting at his arm.
"D-Don't fuckin' touch me.." was the first thing to come out of the sick one's mouth, just hearing his voice made it obvious how sore his throat was from coughing.
"What was I supposed to do!? If you choke and die we're all dead. And cover your mouth for god's sake when you cough, no one wants whatever you're sick of." the pink-haired was visibly irritated at being woken up in the middle of the night and get told off for trying to help.
"Yeah sure, am I supposed to cover my mouth when I yawn too?"
"Well, yea"
"oh.. Well, I'm going back to sleep, I don't care." Daiki was caught off guard that sometimes you had to cover your mouth, his father never taught him that, but ultimately decided to lay back down on the floor and use his jacket as a blanket.
"Not before I get you some goddamn medication first, you're not getting better with just Yaitabashi's chicken stock."
"Wait- wait- no-!" Daiki tried stopping Atsushi from going to the nurse's office, but as soon as he called out he was already out the door.
He searched through the medicine cabinet and found throat lozenges, paracetamol and cough syrup. The pink-haired brought them back to their shared classroom along with a bottle of water.
"Here." Atsushi placed them infront of Daiki, waiting for him to use the medication.
"..how am i supposed to use these?" the sick one asked, his voice meek out of embarrassment.
"Enough with the jokes, Ikeda, take the meds so we can go back to sleep already." the part-timer thought he was acting like he didn't know, any 11th grader would know how to take medication when sick.
"my father never really taught me how to do.. that.." Daiki admitted, his face growing redder than it already was from the illness. He just sat and stared at the boxes as if you handed him a 4D object.
"Your father never gave you medication? And never taught you how? What the fuck." Atsushi was taken aback by that fact, he could tell it was the truth because if it had been a joke the other would've been smirking already.
"Alright, alright, the lozenges," he picked up 1 of the boxes "you take one and just keep it in your mouth until it completely dissolves. There should be a spoon in the cough syrup," he pointed at the tallest box "so take that much, and if there isn't use the cap, as long as you don't drink straight out of the bottle."
"Why shouldn't I drink out of the bottle? Afraid of an "indirect kiss" or whatever dumb shit you romantics come up with?" and Daiki was back to his snarky self, poking fun at people who actually want to share saliva with others and be all gross.
"Anyone who has to take cough syrup couldn't care less about an indirect kiss, it's that you can't rinse the bottle if someone else has to take it and having 2 illnesses at once isn't a good idea. And because I don't trust you to drink how much you're supposed to." Atsushi explained.
"Won't taking more make my cough go away faster?" Daiki asked as if the other was preventing him from getting better faster.
"No, you could overdose and die a different way." Atsushi deadpanned as if it was common sense. It was, just not to Daiki.
"That's a possibility!?" The redhead was shocked that taking too much of something good could result in something bad. He'd never been allowed to take enough of a good thing to know that.
"Yes. Anyway, these pills," Atsushi pointed at the last box "are paracetamol, or pain-killers. Hirose gives you similar ones but stronger after Monomoko's trials. It helps with infections and sickness too. Have you ever swallowed a fruit seed?"
"What's that gotta do with anything?"
"You put the pill in your mouth, drink some water and swallow it with the water, so it feels sorta similar. I think you should start with paracetamol or the cough syrup soo you can leave a lozenge in your mouth overnight."
"..alright, i guess." Daiki was a little scared, he'd never had to take pills before.
He took a pain-killer, opened the bottle of water, put the pill in his mouth, downed some water and by some miracle he swallowed it without his tonsils getting in the way despite how swollen they felt
"See? It wasn't so bad." Atsushi said, nudging the cough syrup towards him.
Daiki opened the box and saw that there wasn't a spoon. He opened the bottle and poured some into the cap, drinking it quickly.
"EUGH- THAT TASTES LIKE RAT POISON" he yelled, he expected it to taste like anything but that.
"I promise it isn't poison." the part-timer replied, picking up the cap and going into the hallway to rinse it in a bubbler nearby.
Lastly, Daiki took one of the lozenges, it having a pleasant minty taste, and lay back down on the floor with his jacket to cover him. By the time Atsushi was back he was already snoring, granting them both peace for now. He put the cap back, moved the medication onto one of the nearby desks and went to sleep himself.