Words: 1340
Happy AoGA House Cup!
Through the fluttering curtains that framed his window, he stares transfixed on the shadows shifting into different shapes and then molding into one in a lazy dance beneath the hazy glow of the moon. Somewhere, at the far corners of his mind, he can hear his doctor's disapproving voice, scolding him for letting the draft in, but he easily pushes it already letting sleep take him.
As dawn cracks through the window, Koko stirs in his sleep and slowly starts to wake up, blinking and dazed.
He takes deep breaths as he attempts to calm himself. Koko rubs his temples in pain; all these voices were harsh and raw, mixing together like a blended smoothie.
The voices in his head are pounding, and one of his hands grips the mint green sheets as he squeezes his eyes shut to try and squash down the pain. He is too preoccupied to hear the quiet knock on the door.
Minutes pass, and the person in front of the door becomes impatient. She stares at her silver wrist watch, contemplating whether to break in by force or to wait for the room occupant to open the door.
She decides to knock again. A weak 'Come in' comes from inside the room, and the voice is much raspier and more hoarse than she expected. She had been told the occupant of the room was Koko, a young high schooler, but the voice sounded like it belonged to a mutated cat combined with an old man.
"How are you doing?" she asks, mostly out of respect. She could already tell he is nothing but well. The tired-looking blonde on the bed seem not older than seventeen, but she could be wrong. He seems extremely weary, she notes. His fingers appear to be forcing pressure against his temple. The dark circles under his eyes contrast against the paleness of his skin.
Koko opens his eyes blearily and carefully swivels his head to the direction of the girl's voice, surroundings blurry. He pastes a strained smile on his face.
"I'm doing fine." He blinks a few times to clear his vision and looks surprised when he sees the person in the room.
"Misaki...sempai?"
"I thought I got the wrong room," she gives him a sad smile, "I'm not used to you being so…"
"Sick?" Koko fills, and then adds, "On the verge of death?"
Her brows meet into a scowl. "Don't say that," she scolds him, and decides to change the path their conversation's been heading to, so she continues, "No one bothered to enlighten me about you, so I thought it'd be polite to ask you yourself."
"Polite?" Koko repeats, his voice coated in both sarcasm and amusement.
"Don't be sarcastic with me, kid," Misaki chides. Koko gives her a small grin, like the one he used to always have plastered on his face in elemetary school, but not quite replicating it perfectly. Only then does he notice his sempai's outfit.
"Misaki-sempai... Why are you in a nurse outfit?"
The older girl winks and strikes a pose in a poor attempt to look girly. "What else? I'm your nurse, Koko! Suits me, don't you think?" She sashays her hips a little too much as she walks to the bed, making Koko cough out a chuckle under his breath.
Misaki stands by the foot of his bed, reading the clipboard that was hung on the bed frame.
"Really, though, I'm your nurse, so you have to behave or you know what will happen, right?" She cracks her knuckles without looking up from the clipboard.
Koko gulps, and in his fear, he accidentally activates his Alice. The voices come all at once, and he feels like he's drowning and quickly losing his breath.
Koko starts groaning, and Misaki hastily looks up; "Hey, I didn't actually mean that—"
"No," he interrupts her, "It's the voices."
"What?" Misaki asks, not fully understanding. She couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong with Koko— in fact, hardly anyone could. Despite having quite a common Alice, his current situation is hardly one doctors could find an answer to over afternoon tea.
"It's the voices," he repeats, albeit a little heated and much louder; he tries to compete with the talking in his head, hoping he could win over, but he barely succeeds, "They won't stop, I can't control them anymore…"
He wanted to scream. The voices are still echoing inside his head, it feels like it's going to burst. Beads of sweat flows on his forehead.
Misaki immediately appears by his side and brushes his hair out of his eyes, expression alarmed and worried. "What voices, Koko? What are you talking about?" The bed-ridden boy shakes his head furiously, once again closing his eyes and clamping his mouth shut to suppress himself from screaming.
Misaki picks up the Alice Limiting Device she brought, which came in the form of an earring, much like the one Natsume Hyuuga owns. With trembling hands, she puts it on Koko's left ear.
"Come on, Koko," she whispers. "Fight those voices."
"I can't." he stated hopelessly. "It's killing me."
She put her hand above his left shoulder as she smiled, encouraging him. "You can."
Koko, out of sheer helplessness, holds the other's wrist as he grits his teeth, mind swirling with incoherent voices and thoughts. Misaki doesn't protest and wipes his sweaty forehead, whispering encouragements softly.
"Come on, that's it, Koko. You can do it."
Misaki quickly dabs the towel folded on the bedside over Koko's forehead. His grip on her slowly pierces on her skin, which undoubtedly would leave marks later, but the thoughts quickly withdraw from her mind; Koko is obviously in pain. She's been with the kid enough to know that they are, at the very least, beyond the stage of awkward acquaintances. Although excluding calmness so as to not panic Koko if ever, she struggles to think of something to do to appease the hurt, not because of her duty as a nurse, but her role as a friend.
"Sumire," Koko murmured in pain. He repeated her name over and over again. Misaki heard this and it made her worry more than before.
"Koko," Misaki whispers after a while, when the patient repeated the name a couple more times. How is she supposed to say this properly? "Koko, Sumire can't see you. You know that."
Koko didn't reply, he's becoming weaker. His breath's paces are fast. He gripped nothing with his closed hand until it turned white.
The older girl bites her lower lip, both of her hands now clasping one of Koko's as the boy makes sounds suspiciously like pained whimpers at the back of his throat. "Shh, Koko," Misaki tries to soothe him, her tone bordering on desperation, "I'm right here. You can do it. Fight the voices for Sumire. You could do that, right?"
He hears Misaki's voice quite unclear over the voices, but he managed to catch snippets of 'for' and 'Sumire' together. Of course he'd do it. Of course he'd try. The voices are practically screaming in his head now, getting all tangled up in his mind and forming a big mess on his thoughts.
Despite this, he concentrates on remembering Sumire's voice, the way she laughs, the way she cries, when she's angry and shouting at him for being an idiot. It's the only way to shut down his Alice and prevent the voices in his head, although he's not quite sure, but he hopes. Misaki continues to talk, stroking the other's hand with her thumb. "You could do it. I know you could, Sumire knows it too." She knows she had tears forming in the corner of her eyes, but she wills them down for the boy's sake.
Her voice just mingles with the many others causing it to lose meaning in the crowd. He attempts to shake away the pain, "Sumire!"
He needs her at this moment, to reassure him, to tell him that she understands. After all, her nose bothers her at times also.