Author's Note: Shout-out to DoctorHaifisch on AO3 for their amazing (and I mean amazing) fanfiction, Amalgamate! This chapter is from Kaito's perspective, so, when describing Kaito's… situation, I took some pointers from it! Hope that's okay!
Kaito, breathing out a sigh of exasperation, leaned back against a wall.
That insufferable little— of course he ran off. He would never trust anyone to lead him around.
Ignoring the nauseating feeling of blood boiling in his lungs, Kaito pulled himself up. He needed to find Kokichi before he got himself hurt.
Kaito hadn't had to search long.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Kaito asked.
Kokichi nodded, and flashed Kaito a strained grin.
"Yyyep! Perfectly fine!" Kokichi said, voice a little too cheerful to sound real.
Kaito nodded suspiciously. He knew the kid was a liar, but it had never been this obvious.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Kokichi asked. He crossed his arms and glared.
"Because—" Kaito started, but couldn't finish before breaking into a fit of coughing.
Crap, Kaito thought, looking down at his blood-splattered hand. This is…
"You okay?"
Kaito looked up. "Uh-huh!" he replied, forcing a grin, hand behind his head. "Of course!"
"Are you lying?"
Kaito shook his head. He was fine, really.
The room dropped into an awkward silence.
"Since when do you care?" Kaito asked after a minute. "I thought you'd be mocking it."
"Wellllllllllllll," Kokichi explained. "I don't want everyone to die in, like, 15 minutes. That would end the game waaaay too quickly to be interesting."
"Huh?!" Kaito shouted. "What do you freaking mean, 'interesting'?! D-death is never— I— I mean—"
"Whaaat?" Kokichi asked. "Did you really think I just suddenly became one of the good guys? Ah, Momota-Chan, if only it was that easy."
Kaito shook his head. Of course the little brat hadn't changed a bit. Of course he just saw this as another game, just another show to watch, just another way for him to watch everyone suffer for his entertainment. Even having just found a dead body— a real dead body— the boy was still just as much of a horrible person as he'd always been.
"Momota-Kun," someone said. In came Kiyo, arms crossed. "Have you found anything out?"
Kaito shrugged. "Only that Oma-Kun found a dead body and sees it as entertainment."
"I'm sitting right here," Kokichi interrupted. "I can speak for myself, Momota-Chan."
Kaito facepalmed. "Let's just get to searching. We don't have all day."
At the end of the day, the group still had nothing.
"This isn't getting us freaking anywhere," Mondo groaned.
"We can do this!" Taka shouted. "It's not over 'til it's over!"
"But we've searched basically everywhere," Fuyuhiko said. "It can't be in the school."
"Can't we just leave?" Ibuki asked, shrugging. "We aren't registered to any class or anything. We won't get in trouble."
"Oh, suuuure," Kokichi drawled. "Surely nobody will question seven people about the right age to be students randomly leaving campus. We most certainly won't be expelled."
Kaito cleared his throat and asked a question. "What happens if we're expelled? Would that really be that bad?"
"Of course— why wouldn't it— YES!" Kokichi cried. "If we're expelled, we stop coming to school! We don't have any character assets!"
"And that means?" Mondo asked.
"You'll see," Kokichi said. "Follow me."
"Ibuki thought we weren't leaving school?" Ibuki asked as the group walked down the road. "You're confusing, Oma-Kun."
Kokichi silenced her with a glare. "Alright, here's the place where the player is stopped if you try to leave school in the middle of the day," he explained, lifting his hand. "Watch this."
With that, Kokichi plunged his hand into the threshold with an agonized scream.
What the group saw was… very hard to explain. As the trickster's hand crossed the unseen border, it looked as if it was beginning to distentegrate. in other words, not a pleasant thing to watch.
A few moments later, Kokichi pulled his arm out of the threshold, and his hand (thankfully) reformed.
"Holy—" Kaito exclaimed. Wait a minute. This was weird. If this was all a game to Kokichi, and he didn't care about the group, then why—
Kokichi laughed, but the look on his face was one of pure pain. "Welp. Th-that hurt. Y-you see why I didn't wanna l-leave school now?"
Everyone seemed too stunned for words, instead choosing to nod feverishly.
Kaito gritted his teeth in frustration and anxiety, but tried to remain nonchalant. "Well," he said, "Guess we're not leaving that way.
