18:00

37 : Bed

On a regular day, Paper was a relatively calm walker. His foot placement was somewhat unreliable, but he walked softly, which didn't quite match the rest of his body language.

Though, as you could probably guess by now, today wasn't exactly regular.

His footsteps just about shook the hall he ran through. He followed shortly behind OJ, close enough to touch him as they took a turn into the lobby.

"And he just woke up like this?" Paper asked, his voice louder than expected. He looked around the lobby, both surprised and not when he saw it was near empty.

"That's what Microphone said, yeah." OJ replied, his voice just as breathy but out of breath as Paper's.

Paper felt his fists tighten, though he wasn't angry. Just frustrated. Knife had been doing just fine yesterday, Paper had walked by him yesterday enough times to know that. What could've happened in one uneventful night to cause... god, no one knew exactly what it was, but it wasn't anything good.

They took another turn, sprinting down another hall. They only stopped when they reached the infirmary's door, which was expectedly open.

Paper skidded to a halt, almost tripping as he did. He let OJ enter the room first, deciding to wait just outside the doorway to catch his breath instead. But once his breathing was steady, he followed OJ inside.

It was just as OJ had described. Knife was laid down on one of the cots, arms wrapped around his stomach. His body was tense enough for it to be visibly obvious, though it was far from still. The main sound of the room was his rugged breathing, the noise sounding forced with the effort behind it.

Microphone stood beside him, hands near her power button. She looked up at Paper and OJ, who stood nervously in the doorway. Though as soon as she saw it was them, she looked back down at Knife.

"What happened?" OJ said aloud, hesitantly walking forward. Paper followed his lead, looking almost pitifully at the cot.

Knife only now noticed the other two objects had entered. He glanced over to them, though barely moved his body to do so. His arms slowly but surely moved to his sides, as if having them wrapped around himself was embarrassing.

"I don't know. I woke up and looked over at him, and he was in pain." Microphone said, kneading her hands together.

"Relax, I'm fine." Knife muttered. He tried to sit up, though at the mere act of lifting his head, the pain alone was enough to make him flinch.

"Okay- let's not try to do that, alright?" Paper said, almost wincing from the second-hand pain watching Knife gave him. Knife had a fairly high pain tolerance, and even if something did hurt him, he wasn't the type to tell anyone unless it was major. The fact something invisible was able to land him in the infirmary overnight was shocking.

"Do we need to take him to the hospital or something?" Microphone asked, looking away from Knife for a moment.

"It's not that bad, calm down." Knife scoffed, turning away to the best of his now limited ability.

"You couldn't get yourself out of your own bed from the pain! That isn't 'not that bad'!" Microphone shouted, though her volume was shifted down so her voice didn't come out all that loud.

Knife scoffed, though it turned into a wince as he moved his throat. OJ swore he had seen the pain-staked expression on Knife's face before, but he couldn't quite tell where he recognized it from.

"Knife, do you have any idea what could've caused this?" OJ asked.

"Hey- maybe we should wait a bit until interrogating him? We just woke up." Microphone suggested.