Marionette

Oceans, Chapter Thirty Nine - Konton [混沌]

A Transfer Student will be joining you tomorrow. Their looks may surprise you, but try not to make a big deal out of it.

- Karasuma

'What the hell is this!?' Amaya muttered under her breath as she stared at the email that was displayed on the screen of her just-charged phone.

'An email, clearly.' Karma remarked.

'Whoa, I never would've guessed!' Amaya spoke with dramatic sarcasm, lifting her gaze to frown at Karma.

He was smirking despite not looking at her face - He instead has his attention on the mess of torn flesh that was the space of skin between her left shoulder and left elbow.

Her whole damn arm was throbbing with pain, and it didn't help that Karma was in the middle of inspecting the rather painful looking injury - Every time he so much as touched the edge of intact skin right next to a tear, it sent sharp, agonizing jolts of pain tearing up her arm.

It wasn't just her being dramatic either - despite the fact that he denied it, Amaya had seen the small wince that flashed across Karma's face when he first laid eyes on the unbandaged injury just ten minutes ago.

To have Karma of all people wince at the sight of an injury was sign enough that it looked quite painful.

But he was the one that pestered her into letting him have a look at her injury.

That was after she'd spent all night being shocked awake by the pain every time she'd go to roll onto her stomach like she normally would in her sleep.

'Don't deafen me.' Karma remarked all of a sudden.

'Huh?' Amaya blinked in surprise as she saw a drenched cloth in one of his hands. The scent of chemical antiseptic came to Amaya's notice at that very moment

And then Karma pressed the cloth firmly over the torn flesh of her arm before she could say a word.

Excruciating, burning pain overcame her whole arm, threatening to rip a scream of pain from her lips, however she'd managed to grit her teeth and slap her free hand over her mouth to stop herself in case she was about to.

It was only when he'd lifted the cloth away from her arm a good ten seconds later that the pain began to slowly fade.

'Owww, that hurt!' Amaya whimpered, blinking away the tears that had welled up in the corners of her eyes.

'There'd be a problem if that didn't hurt, you know.' He replied in a rather taunting manner as he discarded the cloth onto the table.

Of course, that didn't mean she missed the soft edge to his tone of voice.

'Yeah, yeah.' Amaya sighed as she tore her gaze away from him in preference of looking down at her phone, which she'd dropped onto the couch when Karma'd attacked her arm with antiseptic.

A transfer student, huh? And they were coming to Class E today, apparently.

And their appearances might surprise people.

Amaya guessed that since their Teacher's appearances were certain to surprise people, she shouldn't be surprised if a miniature Koro-sensei walked in at some point.

She honestly doubted it, but when Karasuma says something to that extent, Amaya wasn't going to expect anything normal.

Or anyone normal looking, for that matter.

'Owww! What the--?!' Amaya yelped out as pain suddenly shot through her arm again, causing her to snap her gaze to the cause of her current misery.