Chapter Text
The press bed was cold beneath him. Kokichi could hear Kaito’s steps echoing as he walked away from the hydraulic press where Kokichi now lay. The steps stopped, and suddenly, all Kokichi could hear was a mechanical whirring as the press slowly lowered towards him. The press first made contact with his chest. Initially, the pressure is almost comforting. It’s the pressure of a weighted blanket draped over him.
But the pressure doesn’t stop there. It keeps increasing. His chest can no longer rise as he inhales. His ribs shatter. The breaks aren’t clean. They’re jagged, and they cut and press into his serratus anterior and pectoral muscles as well as his lungs.
His sternum snapped painfully and pressed down against his heart, pushing into where he assumes his aorta to be, practically pinching the artery shut. He can feel the blood flow to the rest of his body slow, his blood thrumming with stagnation. Everything is cold. He feels like he can’t think.
He vaguely feels one of his ribs puncture his lungs. He starts breathing faster, but no matter how hard he inhales, his lungs never fill.
He wonders what would kill him first if the press stopped now, the lack of air, or the lack of blood flow. Well, it’s the same thing, he supposes, both prevent his brain from getting enough oxygen, that’s what kills him in the end, either way.
The next victim was his nose. The metal began pressing it deeper into his skull until he heard something shatter. The fractured nasal bone pressed against his sinuses uncomfortably, making him bite his tongue to stop himself from screaming. He couldn’t scream. Even if he wanted to, his lungs wouldn’t hold enough air for him to let out a scream that was worth anything.
Then it was on his forehead and chin. His lower jaw was pressed into his neck. He thinks about when Maki choked him; it was a similar feeling to that. He would much prefer that to what’s happening now. How messed up is it that that memory is one of the better ones he’s had while in this damned school? At least then, he still had a glimpse of hope that they could escape.
The press is so close that he can’t see anything but the merciless metal. He wants to turn his head to the side and see outside the press. He can’t; the press has his head pinned in place, but even if he could, would it prevent his death? Would it spare him the pain?
No, it would only prolong his suffering, if that.
He can’t, however, stop his eyes from trying their hardest to steal a glance at what rests outside the press. He knows what he’d find. The cold dark exisal hanger, nothing more. But is it so wrong that for a second he imagines seeing everyone’s faces, smiling down at him, thanking him for his sacrifice?
Imagining such things is useless. This is where it all ends. He is going to die hated, alone, desperate, and afraid
Unlike his jaw, his forehead has no place to retreat to when the press envelopes it, so the pressure just builds and builds and builds.
Until he hears a crack
He barely has any time to process what’s happening and how damn much it all hurts before a shard of his now-shattered skull shrapnels and punctures his brain tissue.
And everything goes black.
Nothing hurts anymore. He can’t feel anything anymore.
When did he close his eyes? Why can he still open them?
He forces his eyes open, but it’s all still black.
Even without any source of light, when he brings his hands in front of his face, he can see them as if he were in the brightest room ever. His hands shake with adrenaline and fear as he tries to comprehend the fact that he’s not dead.
Or is he dead? He had never been a religious person, so the concept of an afterlife was foreign to him; he had just expected everything to be done. Was this hell? If so, this was kinda boring. There were no lava pools, fires, or people being tortured anywhere. It was just all black
He doesn’t have time to process that. In front of him, a screen(?) glitched into view.
GAME OVER
You have died. :(
Give Up? Try again?
What the actual fuck?
He had made his fair share of “everything is a simulation” jokes in his life, but this was insane. And why the hell was he being given the option to try again? What did that even imply? Would he be reincarnated or something?
Everything was so confusing. He didn’t want to have to deal with any of this right now. He reached out to select the ‘Give up?’ option, but it seemed to dissolve under his fingers.
The entire screen morphed as he pulled his hand back, the text changed, leaving a completely different message to be seen
GAME OVER
You can’t give up just yet…
Please, Ouma. I understand you’re confused, but we both know things didn’t have to end this way. Try again. Do better this time. Save them. I know you can.
Try again?
“What the fuck.” he said again, this time out loud.
This all felt like a fever dream. Who the hell was talking to him through this stupid screen? Could they see or hear him? A thousand questions raced through his mind as he tried to figure out what was going on.
“Hello?” he said out loud. He felt a bit stupid when no one replied, but he didn’t let the dent in his pride slow him down.
He could move, so he resigned to try to figure out where he was. He turned around and started walking in a straight line. He quickly ran into a wall. Using the wall he could not see, he walked the perimeter. The room was deceptively small. The furthest he ever got from the screen was about 2 meters.
There was literally nothing here- no door or entrance, nothing. That wasn’t even mentioning the lighting situation in this room. He was still super confused about that.
He walked back to stand in front of the screen (was it even a screen? It looked more like a projection or hologram) and tried to assess it. It looked like a basic video game end screen, well, it had before it changed.
He was actually pretty sure he had seen that exact end screen before in some game that he had played with D.I.C.E.
He sat on the floor, bringing his knees to his chest. What were his options? He had one less now than he did at the beginning, that’s for sure.
He could, technically, just not listen to the screen and just stay in this room, but that felt a bit pathetic.
That just left him with one thing. To go and ‘try again’. Kokichi drags himself to his feet and just stares at the screen for a few seconds. This entire situation really sucked.
Even in the killing game, Kokichi was at least one step ahead of everyone. Now he was in a situation where he didn’t understand anything that was going on. He had no way of knowing what would happen when he decided to try again. He had a few guesses, but nothing concrete.
He steeled himself and slowly raised his hand, selecting the ‘try again’ button. It glowed a pinkish color under his finger, and the screen flickered out of existence.
There was a moment when the room just remained black, and nothing happened.
He blinked, and the room changed, at least he thinks it did. It was still pitch black, but the lighting seemed to sort itself out. He could no longer see anything, not even the tip of his nose.
Slightly more concerning, however, was the cold metal he could feel on his back and the sides of his arms. The familiar feeling of metal against his skin sent a wave of panic through his brain. He could’ve sworn he felt the walls closing in, suffocating him.
Kokichi scoffed, really? He had just died and came back with no problem, but his brain couldn’t handle a small space? How pathetic. Whatever. What mattered right now was figuring out what was going on.
Kokichi shuffled around slightly. Wherever he was, it was very small; he couldn’t extend his arms at all, only getting his elbows to about a 45-degree angle before his hands came in contact with smooth metal.
It was quite reminiscent of… no, it couldn’t be.
Whatever, he just needed to get out of here.
Kokichi began kicking the wall at the foot, the thuds reverberating through the air. What he was kicking was either fully solid or incredibly sturdy because it didn’t give at all.
He suddenly heard someone call out, “Hello? Is someone there? Give me one second, I shall get you out of there!”
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Kokichi listened as the lockers near him began opening. There was no denying it now. Was he really back here? Goddamnit.
He braced himself as he heard the locker next to him open. Before he knew it, the door, which was apparently the wall behind him, was being opened, and he was crashing to the ground. He felt his skull make contact with the ground first and groaned, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head
K1-B0 stood over him, looking confused, “Ah! Hello there, my name is K1-B0, but you can call me Kiibo. I’m the Ultimate Robot. What’s your name, and do you happen to know where we are?”
“This is so insane…” Kokichi muttered under his breath, shaking his head and scanning the room, looking for any differences
Kiibo tilted his head slightly to the right, “I’m sorry, could you please repeat that? My hearing function is nowhere near good enough to pick up whispers.”
Kokichi just waved off his concern, standing and brushing the imaginary dirt off his pants. Right, introductions, because they’ve never met. God, this was going to get annoying fast if he had to do this for every single person again. “Right, I’m Kokichi Ouma, Ultimate Supreme Leader. And, nope! Not a single clue where we are!” He lied through his teeth.
“Hm, this is quite troublesome then.” Kiibo thought out loud. Kokichi walked over to the door and turned the handle, the door swinging open slowly. No idea why he expected it to be locked; everything else was the damn same so far. Kiibo perked up as he saw this, “Oh! Perhaps the rest of the building will have clues as to where we are! We should go look around.”
Kokichi could already hear the chatter as Kaede and Shuichi walked down the hall towards them. If he didn’t get a moment to process all this before he had to deal with 14 more useless introductions, he was going to freak the hell out. “Yeah, yeah, you can have fun with that.” He said before slipping out of the room and disappearing down the hall.
He briefly heard Kiibo calling after him, saying something about how it was safer to stick together, but he didn’t listen. All he could hope for was that maybe Kiibo would be so kind as to introduce him to Kaede and Shuichi. At least then, he’ll only have 12 introductions left.