Marionette

Oceans, Chapter Twenty - Fukakujitsusei [不確実性]

Unfortunately for Amaya, she hadn't been able to accept Maehara's offer to hang out on Saturday afternoon with him and Isogai.

It wasn't due to a rather difficult red-head, either.

Well, not directly, in any case.

When Reiko and Yuta had returned come Saturday morning bright and early, they insisted that she stay in bed and rest up for the whole weekend. Amaya had her suspicions of Karma's manipulation of course, but without concrete proof she couldn't really do anything but begrudgingly listen to her siblings, and send Maehara an apology email in return.

It didn't help that Karma turned up sometime Saturday evening just to be a thorn in her side; He took control of the remote to the television and kept on changing the channel whenever Amaya would begin to become interested in what was on the screen at the time. Once or twice he would stumble upon a documentary on birds or dinosaurs and immediately switch it over with a malevolent grin.

She wondered if this was some kind of psychological torture for something she wasn't fully aware of just yet, but ended up falling asleep before she could formulate a retaliation plan to rescue the remote from his evil clutches.

Amaya's Sunday was spent in a similar fashion, though thankfully Karma didn't turn up just to annoy her. In fact, he didn't turn up at all, though he did make his presence felt by calling her.

There really was no point to him even calling her to begin with, though by the time she'd hung up on him five minutes later, a vivid blush had appeared across her face and she felt thoroughly annoyed.

She did not like being threatened with a litre of caramel being forced down her throat, after all. Either wasabi or mustard were better because it wasn't a thick sludge that adhered to her throat like glue, and they were at least something she could tolerate in large quantities.

So Amaya begrudgingly behaved herself and spent the whole day reading whatever manga Yuta would throw at her on the couch.

Just in case her traitorous brother decided to sell her out.

Despite the irritations, bright and early on Monday morning, Amaya was feeling quite well. In fact, she felt great.

She didn't feel lethargic or off-colour at all, and in fact she felt very optimistic. There was no uncomfortable cold sinking into her bones, either, so she was in her normal clothes. The gashes in her hands had finally scabbed over, and she'd gotten Yuta to carefully help her remove the stitches before they ended up fused in her hand that morning.

Right now she had a plaster over her hand, and she was finally able to wear her fingerless gloves again.

She had her headphones in place as she walked up the Class E Mountain at a stroll, a baked sweet-potato in her right hand as she looked around. A song called Akatsuki wo Utsushite played with pleasant, deep bass, and Amaya found herself feeling like she just wanted to actually run around and have fun all day.

However it was a school day, so she just hummed along with the song as she munched on her rather odd breakfast.

The sunlight was nice and warm today, and it was bright enough where Amaya knew she was probably running a little late for class.

Not that it really mattered too much to her right now - A few minutes wasn't too bad.

Koro-sensei was probably going to be upset with her for not turning up to school on Friday, though.

Amaya let out a soft breath as she reached the clearing, and noticed that a large portion of the student body was already seated inside. Oddly enough she could see that Maehara, as well as another boy with bright hair, and a boy with very short dark hair was standing with Anti-Sensei knives in hand.