Marionette

Oceans, Chapter Thirty Five - Gekido [激怒]

The arrival at the modest Inn was uneventful, filled with nothing but griping from students towards Koro-sensei, who at that point was afflicted with motion-sickness as he remarked that he was going to make a dash back to Tokyo just for his personal pillow.

The accommodation provided to Class-E was two large rooms, one for the female students to sleep in, one for the male students. Teachers got their own rooms of course. There was a lot of excited chattering amongst the students for the larger part of the night, speckled with small moments of chaos where they'd try to assassinate a wandering Koro-sensei, or bicker with others.

Amaya had spent the conscious part of her evening reading, the futon allocated to her unused in the corner of the room a decent part away from the other girls own futons. She merely sat upon it - nothing more.

Sleeping in the classroom was one thing, because one way or another there was always someone she trusted around when she was passed out like that. But here in a shared room with all the other girls?

Amaya didn't have anywhere near enough trust for the girls of her class to let that part of her defenses down.

And the only person who would ever get her to admit that to anyone would be Karma, of course.

Amaya spent the night while everyone was asleep curled up in a sitting position with her knees pulled up to her chest, her ears trained for any sounds of disturbances amongst her classmates. She could even hear some of the boys snoring away in the room next door, because her futon was propped up next to the wall that separated the two rooms, and the walls were thin enough for conversation to be heard from either side if one knew what to listen for.

Come sometime just before sunrise, Amaya had lifted herself from her futon and folded it away, careful to not disturb any of the other girls in the room. She got changed into one of her clean sets of uniform, unhooked her charged phone from the wall, and recovered her particularly important possessions before stashing her bag beneath the folded futon, out of prying view.

It wasn't functional to wander around with a larger-than-normal messenger bag, after all.

Her Ocarina stayed in her bag, purely because she didn't want to carry it around when she could easily get pulled into a fight against meat-slabs she wasn't familiar with. Having it on her back in Tokyo would be fine, because she was familiar with the strengths and habits of those punching-bags, as well as all necessary escape-routes in case something went wrong.

Amaya wandered through the near-silent Inn, her headphones in place and her gaze tracing the darkness-filled expanses all around her.

It was otherworldly at this time in the morning. Empty, yet oddly suffocating at the same time.

Much like a little tank filled with artificial water, the darkness-filled Inn stirred up a primordial sense of discomfort within her.

She ended up setting herself in the common room of the inn, tucking herself into the corner of one of the couches while she listened to her music.

Erratic piano scores were the soundtrack to the darkness that surrounded her, just enough to draw her attention from the stifling air. It drew her into a state where she lost herself to thought right up until the sun had risen, and the teachers were waking everyone up.

It was the sudden appearance of another on the couch with her that finally jerked her out of her thoughts, however.

Slouched back into the couch lazily with his eyes drooping shut, Karma took up the space next to her with no more than a few inches between them. He looked tired, almost as if he hadn't slept yet.