Marionette

Skies, Chapter Forty Four - Konran [混乱]

Those long-kept keys were now discarded.

Tossed aside, three new keys were allocated; One to Reiko, one to the Building Manager, and one Amaya kept.

There was nobody else she knew who had a key to get inside, now.

She would pass one to Shigure when she went next.

Reiko had been surprised to return home to find Amaya in the process of replacing the locks, though she didn't ask why - She just skipped inside to forage through the fridge for anything sweet to eat for a snack.

Amaya still had no idea what Maehara was planning. She was honestly a little scared of asking, after she saw Isogai cast her a rather odd look.

It wasn't pitying, but it still conveyed that he was feeling sorry for her future self.

But, she had a very long day to tend to, and worrying about whatever Maehara had planned wasn't going to help.

So she did her best to push it from her thoughts, tugging her headphones on as she left through the door.

The sun was uncomfortably bright as Amaya made her way across Kunugigaoka's main campus, almost bright enough where Amaya had to squint a little bit to actually see where she was going.

She wished for Autumn already - With the main things to love about summer being some of her least favorite things ever, it made everything else feel even worse.

But then again, there wasn't much point in complaining about it, now.

'Oh! Maya-chan!' Maehara greeted her the moment she'd opened the classroom door, drawing her attention with little effort. 'Morning!'

He was standing in front of Isogai's desk, seeming to have been in mid-conversation with him when she'd arrived. There didn't appear to be many others in the room - a glance at the clock told Amaya that it was actually a little early, which would explain a few things.

'Good morning, Amaya-san.' Isogai greeted as well.

'M-morning...' Amaya mumbled in response as she ambled towards her desk.

She was starting to get a little apprehensive of the situation, even though nothing out of the ordinary had happened yet.

It probably didn't help that she didn't know what to expect, so now everything felt uncomfortable.

People filtered in one by one over the span of just as many minutes, slowly filling the classroom up.

And then just as Nagisa had walked into the room, Maehara had come walking right up to her desk.

'Oi, Maya-chan~!' The Playboy spoke up, a grin echoing in the tones of his voice as Amaya looked up at him from her notebook on her desk. 'What were you doing last night? You look more tired than you were yesterday.'

Perplexed, but otherwise not finding anything wrong with his rather odd remark, Amaya chose to answer him.

'Fixing things at home, and studying.' She answered.

'Oh? Are you sure that's all?' He questioned, a cheeky grin across his face. 'I thought for sure I'd be on your mind all night~!'

Amaya stared at the smirking playboy in bewilderment, at a loss of words of what was going on.

'Umm ... no, not really.' Amaya responded hesitantly. 'I already told you yesterday, I was going to study...'

'That's a shame.' Maehara sighed, a little dramatically as the door of the classroom opened. 'Then I'll have to make sure that I do leave an impression on you, today.'