Marionette

Skies, Chapter Forty Five - Koe o hankyō [声を反響]

Thanks to an excessively obsessed creature of Mach Speed, the afternoon was spent with a painful barrage of flirting from Maehara and a strangely upset Okano throwing glares at the playboy in mention, all speckled through the gaps between Mach-Speed tutoring that Koro-sensei insisted upon.

And all the while it felt like there was a heated glare coming her way, though for the sake of trying to keep to herself, Amaya never looked to see who it was.

It was probably for the best, too.

Her heart just wasn't up for talking with anybody – she honestly wanted to be left alone.

Though Amaya had noticed three things that were rather peculiar, or rather, peculiar enough for her to notice it.

First of all, Nagisa had been doing a lot of writing in his book, and it was a different book to his one on Koro-sensei's weaknesses.

Secondly, Maehara returned to his more normal behaviour towards her the moment Karma was nowhere to be seen.

And finally, that Isogai seemed to be rather exasperated – much more than he had been during that talk in the cafe. The majority of the girls were outrightly sympathetic, too, though most often when Maehara was coming onto her.

Amaya had decided she wouldn't ask about it.

There was just too much going on right now, and she had enough to deal with as it was.

There was no need to invite more chaos into her head right now.

Her night had been spent in the throws of trying to sort through the many instances of chaos, to collectively decide what she needed to think about, what could be put aside for later, and what should be forgotten.

No studying had been accomplished – She couldn't manage it, even if she had tried.

Instead, the words that had been surfacing in the back of her mind from the sea of memories she had kept locked away were scrawled down, pictures transferred to pages in crude, talentless sketches. The wall that her bed stood against was adhered with the pages, a collective visage of glimpses she would research the very instance she was freed from the plaguing torture Asano Gakushuu's lackeys had forced upon her class.

Her apartment was locked from now on, no unexpected visitors with a prying nature would come wandering in to stumble upon her wall of scrawlings.

Koro-sensei never came unless she was already here, and Reiko was already somewhat aware of the torture she had yet to forget.

Nobody else had a key anymore.

And so the girl inside the world of oceans danced, so that on the outside she could continue to function amidst the chaos that threatened to pull her under.

Morning came much faster than Amaya would have liked, and she hadn't got a single moment of sleep – She was too wound up to even manage it, though the exhaustion was likely to catch up with her at some point during the day, like it usually did.

Just one more day of school until the end of term exams tomorrow, and then she could hide in her room for however long she wanted.

A sea of voices rung out around her, while another reverberated within her head.

She just wanted all this to stop.

She wanted a chance to regain a sense of normality – Or at least of something she could comprehend.

But she wondered if it was much too late for that, now.

Greetings from classmates were what she was greeted with, though the majority of them had changed to calling her Amaya instead of Katsuragi. Perhaps she'd finally told enough people, and they all decided to just go with it.