The next morning, Denki looked at his jacket in despair. Of all of the things that had happened the day before, the second worst thing was the string being removed from the hood of his jacket.
His parents hated when he pulled the strings out of his clothes. He was actually doing a good job of keeping the string in that jacket so far. Every time he thought about pulling on it, he reprimanded himself, worried that he would accidentally pull it out the whole way and make his parents disappointed in him again.
Now, all he could think about was the way the worker just pulled the string out of his jacket on purpose. It looked kind of freeing, actually, and he made a mental note to do that one day. If his parents thought this place was going to be a good influence on him, they were sorely mistaken! He planned to laugh maniacally as he ripped the strings from all of his clothes! Who cared if his parents screamed in horror and agony! That's what they get for sending him to this place! Who cared if his sweatpants fell down with no drawstring to tighten them?! That wouldn't be the most embarrassing thing to happen to him that week, or probably that hour if he was being honest…
The tragic removal of the string was second only to the devastation he felt when his mother told him that he wasn't hearing his soulmates. Denki had never been a lucky kid, but to have two soulmates would have felt like all of his bad luck before was just to even the playing field for the good luck to come. He had always felt like there had to be some kind of balance, but maybe the balance wasn't for individuals. Maybe he would get all of the bad luck so that other people, like the smart and talented students in his class, could have endless good luck without having to fear that the bad luck would eventually come for them to even it out.
Denki hated thinking that way because it mixed his emotions all up. He was mad that he wasn't one of the lucky ones or that it wasn't balanced and even and fair. On the other hand, he kind of felt like an underdog hero, taking all of the bad luck so that others didn't have to worry about it. He just wished that the bad luck would take a break when it came to his soulmate of all things. Even the person who carried the worst luck in the world deserved a little bit of happiness, even if that means that a few of the luckiest people had accidentally stepped in gum on their way to work one morning to keep the balance.
The technicians had gathered everyone from their rooms and lined them up at the med nurse's window. Denki looked at the little pills in the white cup he was handed. The med nurse explained quietly that there was a vitamin, a quirk-nullifying drug, and an antipsychotic to try to get the voices to go away. Denki shrugged, tipped the cup against his lips, and swallowed the pills whole, much to the surprise of the med nurse. He had been a med nurse for a few months, and the patients, even the young ones, usually had questions at the very least. It was also pretty common for patients to outright refuse them as well. Denki handed the cup back, and copying the patient who had gone before him, opened his mouth for the nurse to check that he had swallowed the pills, stepped out of line, and made his way into the group room where everyone else was heading.
He felt out of place in his borrowed clothes that the technician who had woken him up that morning had given him to change into after his shower. He didn't feel like himself at all as he wrapped his jacket around him tighter, thankful that they didn't take that away to wash at least. His fingers fidgeted with the ends of his sleeves after he reached up to fidget with the string and came up empty, stupidly grasping at the fabric on the chest of his jacket to find the ends of the string to pull on and run his fingers over only to remember that the string had been confiscated. His cheeks had darkened against his will as he redirected his hands down to his side and fiddled with the jacket sleeves instead, but thankfully no one seemed to have noticed his little internal conflict or embarrassment.
The others must have sensed his awkward mood because they didn't stray over to introduce themselves, opting to keep to themselves until the technician that was situated in the middle of the room called them over one by one to get their vital signs checked. When it was Denki's turn, he thought it was weird that he had to tell her his name and birthday when it was right there on the chart that she was writing on, but he guessed that she had rules to follow, too, so he answered and allowed her to take his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure.
The technician gave him a little cup of juice and a muffin for breakfast, and he sulked over to the furthest table away from everyone else to eat, content with being alone as he observed his surroundings and made a plan of attack of how to best make friends with the other patients.
Music therapy was interesting, Denki had to admit. He thought it was actually pretty cool that instead of being in his math class at 8:00 a.m., he was sitting around a circle playing music trivia with the other patients on the unit. Denki wasn't much of a singer, though. He would much rather erratically grind on his air guitar as backup instead of taking center stage with actual vocals leaving his mouth. And that's exactly what he opted to do instead of singing along to the trivia samples.
Everyone else had been singing along softly, brows furrowed and hands moving rhythmically as they tried to recall the name and artist of the song, but he strummed his imaginary guitar instead. One girl who saw him out of the corner of her eye turned to full on stare at him with a weird look on her face.
"Are you serious?" she the purple-haired girl had sneered, turning her nose up at him.
Denki froze, heart jumping up into his throat as he looked at the girl sitting next to him, bracing himself for whatever insult that was to come and deciding if he should back down or stand his ground.
The music therapist started to intervene, "Kyoka—"
Kyoka had ignored the music therapist in favor of continuing her harsh criticism of Denki.
"I know you're new here and all, but that's no excuse!" she growled, putting her hands in loose fists in front of her as she adjusted her posture to sit up straighter. "How are you supposed to keep on pace without a drummer? Don't you know anything?"
Her hands started to move to the beat of the music playing from the portable stereo. To Denki, it looked really convincing, too. He remembered thinking that she probably actually plays drums when she's not stuck in a hospital. Denki was utterly relieved and couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face at the unexpected friendliness coming from the girl with the conflicting harsh demeanor.
She was technically calling Denki stupid. He was used to that, but it didn't sting like normal, maybe because it wasn't deep and malicious. It was a nice kind of accepted warmth that enveloped him as he started strumming the invisible guitar once again, trying to out-do her expertise with enthusiasm alone.
Her eyes sparkled as she picked up the theatrics, but always stayed on beat. Denki went off-beat to strum even faster, but Kyoka just moved her arms even higher. Denki was extremely impressed as she even remembered to hit the invisible symbol the same time it tinged in the song.
The others quickly followed their lead. His roommate laughed as he strummed his own imaginary guitar, kindly allowing Denki to be lead guitar and following him up with bass, faded red hair swishing as he bobbed his head to the beat. The brunette girl who was not musically inclined laughed as she held up her invisible triangle: "the only instrument that might actually make the sound it's supposed to if it's coming from me!"
The pretty girl who had been there for a week, who still rocked a sleek ponytail despite the cheap, drying shampoo offered to the patients, pulled up an imaginary microphone, belting the next lyrics into her fist as she stood up and started jumping to the beat. Her eyes sparkled as her ponytail bounced as she jumped. Denki was impressed that she could jump like that and keep her breath enough to sing loudly and clearly at the same time. The others quickly followed her lead, standing up and giving all of their energy to the impromptu concert.
The music therapist was smiling and laughing and clapping along. Eventually, she had the idea of becoming the impromptu band's paparazzi.
Denki struck a cool pose with the bass guitar player, leaning with their backs together and really giving their invisible guitars everything they had. The music therapist turned around the group, snapping pictures on the imaginary camera and giving each kid the chance to shine. The vocalist had posed for a pretty shot that, if any of it were real, would have been the shot for the poster for the upcoming events. She then wrapped an arm around Denki's shoulders and shoved her fist in front of his face, and he had no choice but to belt out the lyrics that shifted from the soprano female voice to the tenor male voice into the invisible microphone. He probably sounded horrible, but he was pleasantly surprised that they all seemed to just love that he was going with the flow and participating and making their concert one to remember. He had to admit that he felt like a rockstar while strumming his guitar, belting out the words (that he actually knew!) into an invisible microphone, and posing for pictures from the relentless paparazzi.
The vocalist quickly moved on to the bass player to give him a shot at the next set of tenor vocals after her own two lines that followed Kaminari's verse.
When the song ended, they were all a little breathless and in a good mood.
"Okay!" the music therapist said loudly, regrouping the youth back to the activity at hand. "So, who knows what the song was called and who it was by?"
Denki wasn't even mad when the pretty girl with the ponytail got it right. She got every single one of them right, but now it almost felt like they were all on the same team anyway. He offered her a high five for answering correctly and she returned it with no hesitation, flashing a huge smile with perfect teeth at the praise from her peer.
At that point, if his parents had changed their mind and had come to bust him out of that place, Denki would have refused. Even with the rough start the night before, it was a pretty good first day so far. He got to have a concert with an attentive adult acting as the paparazzi instead of reprimanding him for not following directions and all of the kids joining in his antics instead of rolling their eyes at him.
Next, instead of reading class, was free time.
"I'm Momo," the pretty girl introduced, holding out a hand for Denki to shake.
"I'm Kaminari Denki," he said, returning her handshake.
"Oh, no!" she whispered, pulling him in by his hand to whisper the correction as to not alert the technicians that he wasn't following the rules. "We don't use family names here. We aren't allowed. Just Denki, okay? Didn't they tell you this when you came in?"
"Oh, sorry," Denki said, rubbing the back of his neck. "They probably did tell me, but it was so late, and I was so tired… and scared…"
Kyoka had come up behind him.
"So that was you last night?" she asked, inserting herself into the conversation.
Momo didn't seem to mind the intrusion, so Denki affirmed, cheeks darkening in embarrassment when he thought that they might have heard him screaming.
"What? What happened last night, Kyoka?" Momo had asked.
Maybe Denki was in the clear after all. He relaxed just a little.
"The lights were flickering like crazy!" Kyoka said, crossing her arms as she studied Denki. "Is that your quirk?"
"I tried to escape," Denki admitted in a mutter, puffing out his cheeks and looking down at his lace-less shoes. "I used my electric quirk to jam the door and tried to run, but they caught up right away."
Kyoka drew in a breath through her teeth. "That's badass."
"Kyoka!" Momo reprimanded. "That is pretty cool, Denki," Momo altered when she noticed that Denki was reprimanding Kyoka's thought process instead of her language. "Don't let the technicians hear you use that kind of language," she directed toward her friend. "You won't be able to go to the cafeteria for lunch!"
"Yeah, yeah," Kyoka responded, rolling her eyes but smiling all the while.
"You get to leave this place to eat?" Denki asked, eyes sparkling with hope of looking around without the frantic desire to escape.
"Not you," Momo said sadly. "You tried to escape, so it would be too risky to take you off of the unit, at least for the first few days."
Denki deflated. He knew this meant that his new friends would be able to leave, and he would be left behind. He was already feeling the walls close in on him at the prospect. He vowed, then, to follow all of the rules so that he would be allowed to leave and eat with his new friends as soon as possible. With the new self-imposed mission on his mind, he perked up and joined his friends in a game of cards, betting promised drawings instead of money or poker chips. When Denki had won by pure luck, he was blessed to be given a beautiful drawing of an apple by Momo. He didn't know how even making such a life-like replica was possible with only the off-brand crayons offered to them, but it looked like he could just pick it up and take a bite.
What wasn't Momo good at? … Besides card games, apparently.
Denki offered endless compliments to his new friends. Momo was just good at everything and Kyoka was so likeable in a blunt, honest type of way. The others drifted off to play among themselves, but there was no tension between the two groups that just kind of split off naturally. While Denki's group entertained themselves with card games, the other group preferred board games. The groups reconnected when both wanted to draw at the same time, all gathering around the same table instead of spreading apart around the other tables scattered throughout the room.
Momo showed Denki which off-brand crayons were better than other off-brand crayons and tried showing him how she drew the apple. Denki tried to copy her step-by-step, but his attempt was laughable.
"Can I have that?" Momo had asked, pointing toward his deformed, miscolored attempt at an apple. "Even though I didn't win any card games?"
"Sure," Denki said, shrugging as he passed it over.
Honestly, though, he was jumping for joy on the inside. His heart could have exploded when she had requested that he sign his name at the bottom. He felt so happy and accepted, even with his mediocre apple.
His mood crashed when the others left for lunch, and it was only himself and three technicians on the unit. He went from feeling on top of the world to crashing back down and staring reality in the face once again. He was alone, locked in a strange place, and didn't really have the whole picture of what was actually going on, yet.
And he didn't even have the string from his jacket's hood to fidget with.