Marionette

Oceans, Chapter Thirty - Kutsū [苦痛]

Yuta and Reiko were horrified when Amaya returned home Tuesday evening.

Not only did Amaya come walking inside with a bag of take-out for dinner in hand, but her messenger bag was stuffed to the point of bursting its seams with books. Needless to say that the very moment Amaya cracked open an English book and proceeded to study, the twins had actually asked her if she was suffering from some terminal illness.

Of course Amaya shot them both reproachful looks and told them to eat their dinner as she looked back to her books.

She cursed Koro-sensei the whole night for putting such a spin on their midterms like that - she was actually looking forward to sleeping through them, until now.

Right now, she had to make certain that she could cram as much information inside her head to try and maximize her scores, lest she be the only one who doesn't make the top 50 and costs them the destruction of their classroom, and for their assassination target to suddenly take off to while away the time until the end of the school year.

Come ten that night, Amaya picked her books up and relocated to her bedroom, where she took up residence on her windowsill and continued self-study there.

On and off through the late hours leading into Wednesday morning, Amaya would glance over at Karma's apartment.

Like she'd expected, the smug bastard was just lazing about in his room doing whatever, and she expected he'd still do really well in the midterms anyway. There was one point where she'd glanced over, where the smart-ass noticed and shot her a mocking look in response.

Sometimes she really hated just how capable at anything and everything the jerk really was.

But of course that was only because she was horribly flawed in comparison.

Once she had finished studying as much as she could, she re-emerged from her room to begin her morning preparations.

Yuta had finally forgotten all about his little tantrum and banning her from making obento every morning, as she knew he would. So with a sleepy yawn, Amaya set to work.

Amaya had no idea how midterms were going to turn out for Class E, however she did remember from the way midterms ended up last year, and how last year's Class E turned up right on time without going to the mountain campus.

So she guessed it was the same for this year.

With a yawn from a lack of sleep, Amaya got herself organized shower and all, and proceeded to leave for school.

It was purely by coincidence that when she boarded the train at her station, that she bumped into Isogai and Maehara. The duo of course were on their way to Kunugigaoka, and Isogai confirmed that they were to just head straight up to one of the classrooms with a sign reading "End Class" on the door.

It was walking from Kunugigaoka station to the main campus that the three of them bumped into a large portion of the rest of the class.

Most greeted Maehara and Isogai fondly, and the average response to Amaya was a polite nod of the head with a 'hi'. Of course it didn't necessarily bother Amaya, who was a bit too tired to notice much to begin with.

She felt about as drained as when the twins ambushed her with an Algebra assignment last Thursday.

There was a single, battered and unkempt pin-up board displayed in the main courtyard of Kunugigaoka's main campus, off to the side where it didn't come to the notice of anyone except for Amaya and the rest of Class E.

The pin-up board had a single timetable on it, that of which Amaya could read without even wandering the three or so meters over to it.

End Class Midterms