Marionette

Skies, Chapter Thirty One - Hiki Nami [ 引き波]

The world outside the hospital was dipped in soft afternoon colours as Amaya left the hospital following her compulsory checkup.

The city was filled with its usual sounds, traffic, footsteps, the sound of voices speaking endlessly.

Her head hurt from all the chemicals that existed in a hospital, the smell disorientating her.

Two hours worth of x-rays and scans later, Amaya was given the go ahead to return to physical activities at a reasonable discretion - If her body started to ache or her ribs started playing up, she had to stop, but other than that, she wasn't at any risk of rebreaking her ribs, and there was no internal bleeding. She didn't have to wear those stupid bandages anymore, either.

Which was a good thing, because she had so much trouble with them today.

She pulled her phone from her pocket as she began to walk down the street towards the station, her breath escaping her as she found no emails or missed calls.

There was nothing there that showed anyone had tried to get in contact with her.

Amaya's fingers traced the familiar pattern to unlock her phone.

She felt like she should see how Reiko's day went before she got home - She wanted to know if it went well or not, and if things didn't, she'd pick up Reiko's favorite food for dinner.

Well, no, she'd already come to that decision - She was just impatient to find out how things went at school.

It was contrary to her preferred means of letting her siblings be to their own lives, but too many things were going wrong.

Walking back up the streets to station, Amaya found herself glancing over at one of the family restaurants that lined the street opposite the station.

She thought she'd caught a glimpse of a familiar creature, though she couldn't be sure.

She did however spot someone else that tugged at her curiosity.

Kataoka Megu was sitting at one of the tables next to the window, seeming to be talking with a black-haired girl wearing the Kunugigaoka uniform.

Curiously, the girl was one that Amaya could immediately tell was not from Class E, and further more, the Class Representative did not look happy to be talking with her.

What was more interesting was the fact that the said girl from the main campus seemed to flail around in a dramatic show of being all buddy-buddy with Kataoka.

The sight bothered Amaya greatly, and she would have made a move to reprimand the girl in her own way, had she not already caught a glimpse of three familiar forms hiding behind one of the benches of a nearby table as they eavesdropped on the exchange.

Kayano, Nagisa, and Koro-sensei were all wearing sunglasses and huddled away so they were inconspicuous.

Unfortunately, not only were the two students hair colours rather eye-catching, but Koro-sensei was still his particular shade of sulphur yellow all over.

So Amaya let out a breath and clacked away at her phone, selecting Koro-sensei's contact number from her phonebook.

[Sensei, you should know being bright yellow doesn't help hiding in a family restaurant.]

She pressed send, before she pocketed her phone and watched the scene in the family restaurant, just to see what Koro-sensei would do.

It was not two seconds later when Koro-sensei seemed to bob his head down to look at his phone, and then she saw him jump from fright.