[ CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET ] CLOSED; AU HINATA
"Hey... Hey, are you okay? It looked like you fell out of the sky, but that's impossible, right? Hey, come on, wake up, if I have to call the police they'll never believe me."
Crap. This guy wasn't waking up, was he? He didn't look dead, but then, the deaths Komaeda has been closely acquainted with had been much more... messy. Maybe this was how people looked when they died peacefully? Like they'd just... landed in the middle of a field out of nowhere... No, his head was playing tricks on him. He hadn't seen anything like that, if anything he had just seen this guy go from standing up to passed out on the ground, there was no blood or obvious broken bones or anything, so...
Oh. Oh! Komaeda could check his pulse! That's how it worked, right? When someone was dead, they didn't have a pulse. So all he had to do was find this guy's pulse and he'd know for sure he was alive. Now... where was a pulse supposed to be?
Now on his knees next to the stranger, Komaeda lifted his hands to start searching for signs of life, but hesitated before he actually touched the person. Where could he even start? He didn't know where any of the pulse points were, and he couldn't just start feeling up a guy he didn't know, that'd be rude.
"Well... I don't really have a choice in the matter. Sorry about this." After only another few seconds of hesitation, he put a hand on the stranger's chest and waited to feel something.
A breeze rustled the overgrown grass around them, but the only sensation under Komaeda's fingers was the material of the boy's shirt. No pulse. ...No pulse. Oh god, he was actually dead!?
"H-hey, no more joking around, you have to wake up now!! I-- I've never dealt with a body on my own!" What kind of bad luck was this!?