Marionette

Skies, Chapter Thirty Five - Kentō-chigai no [見当違いの]

Given in earnest were the words she longed to hear.

Of words she wished more than anything else the kin would give to her.

And yet, she always found herself standing here, watching everything turn and continue on without her consent.

It was almost like her own presence did nothing more than decorate the space of time that she resided within.

Misguided, perhaps?

Or perhaps she was just delusional?

She would probably never know, in the end.

Amaya Katsuragi let out a breath as she stood in the bathroom, repeatedly combing through and trimming Reiko's hair to clean up the untidy and haphazard chunks she'd cut out.

Reiko sat upon the stool she'd brought in, watching with great interest as Amaya worked on her hair.

A small mist of water, three comb-throughs before a well practiced cut using the fingers of her left hand as a guide before moving onto the next small lock of hair. It was merely to tidy up the mess that Reiko had made of her hair, she wasn't changing very much of it otherwise.

This was one of the very few well-developed skills she had.

After all, she always cut Yuta's hair for him when it was getting too long.

The way that Reiko had managed to cut her hair was different to how Amaya's was, cut quite a bit shorter at the back of the neck than the front, so Amaya did what she could to fix it.

In the end, while Amaya's hair came down to just above the shoulder all around, Reiko's had ended up a layered short with just the bangs around her face being the longest, reaching just to her chin.

She seemed particularly happy with the look, so Amaya guessed she'd done a good job.

Breakfast and morning preparations went by as normal, and Reiko left for school with Mako and Kouichi when they'd arrived to pick her up.

Such as the other times since Yuta had taken a sudden drastic change in behavior, they were nervous around her – Mako in particular avoided even looking at her.

However, with a reassuring smile from Reiko, Amaya watched the three elementary-school students leave.

And a pensive look soon crept across her face as she looked back into the other parts of the apartment.

She was supposed to check Yuta's room for anything that didn't belong to him, or anything out of place, more to the point. But Koro-sensei had basically demanded she come to school today, so that would have to wait for when she got home.

So with a small check-over, Amaya had grabbed her belongings, and left for the day.

It appeared that today was going to be another unpleasantly warm day, though Amaya would rather that than being dragged to the pool.

She would leave her swimming gear home, if it weren't for the fact that Koro-sensei would just magically whip one out of the main campus for her to use before she could get half her sentence out.

So leaving it behind served no purpose to her at all.

While waiting for the train at the station, Amaya did her part and called Shigure like he had asked her to.

She watched her surroundings with a cautious gaze, listening to the dialing tone as she waited.

And, on the fifth tone, the line clicked.

'Good morning, Little One.' Was Shigure's greeting, just as he always spoke.

'Hey... You wanted me to call?'