Bandaged with Lies

Here in the Garden

Kokichi's POV:

I find myself in a familiar situation once more: being deathly bored in class. Only a whisper of the excitement from yesterday remained in the air, as everyone who was intent on being here gave all of their attention to the teacher. I was the polar opposite to that, my head planted firmly in one hand as I stare dully at the door.

I begin to tune out the rest of the class, as my thoughts engulf my world for a moment. My mind floats from subject to subject, ranging from possible things to do later today, to pranks that I can instruct my group to perform while I'm away. Thinking about my group brought my thoughts around to the events of yesterday, and that heist that number 2 had mentioned. And thinking about the events of yesterday had me thinking about...

How oddly Mikan had been acting.

At the time my initial thoughts were that of "who am I to take away somebody's lies", but I'd be lying to myself if I said that I wasn't at the very least interested in finding out. I mean whatever happened had her shaken to the core. Now, maybe she was telling the truth: Maybe she really did just attend an internship at a hospital, and maybe she saw something there that shook her up. But little ticks in her body language that I still remembered lead me to believe otherwise. Such a jumpy person being scared easily isn't all that surprising: However, someone as seemingly truthful as her lying for any reason was all too intriguing.

I wind up becoming fixated on this idea, the more thought put into it the more it sucks me in. It wouldn't hurt to give our local nurse a visit now, would it? Nah, it wouldn't. So I decided that once more, I would walk out of the classroom in search of the nurse's office. I'm sure it was late enough in the morning that she would be there by now. And the open door when I got there seemed to support that theory. So thinking of an ailment to use as an excuse, I open the door prepared to ham it up and-

"...where is she?" I wonder to myself. When she wasn't in the nurse's office, Mikan usually had the door locked thanks to all the medicines in there. So being able to walk in, and not find her? It was odd. But maybe she was just out for a moment, and forgot to lock it. She's certainly clumsy enough to do that. So I further walk in with the intent of sitting down to wait for her. But as I walked in, I noticed yet another odd thing: a trash can, placed just beside one of the beds. And the bed itself seemed to have a bottle of some kind of... well it looked like antiseptic.

My curiosity piqued, I look inside the trash can.

"Bandages...?" I say aloud, piecing together these parts of information. That was all that was inside the trash can. Used bandages... really used. With that question answered, albeit only raising more questions, I go to a chair to sit and wait for Mikan to come back, and look around the room, bored. Other than that one bed, there wasn't much to look at in the office. Just simple and standard medical supplies, accompanied by a refrigerator. I was starting to think that coming here wasn't worth it.

Funny thing though, the way timing works. Just as I began to think that, Mikan walked into the room. She seemed to be pretty cautious as she did so, meaning that the unlocked door was probably an accident. When she finally notices I was already in the room, she screams. "K-Kokichi?! What- w-what are you doing here?!" she asks. That was my queue to start the show.

I stand up, sniffling and rubbing my nose. "I think I'm siiick. Everything hurts, a-and I've been *cough* coughing n-non stoooop" I say, putting on the waterworks for some added effect. Mikan begins to freak out, doing her normal fussing. She starts to ramble about stuff that she needs to get, and instructs me to sit on one of the beds. I do so, and observe her as she gets supplies to check my condition. She really does have an entirely different persona when she's taking care of somebody, doesn't she? But then I notice something...