Marionette

Skies, Chapter Fifty - Kitai [鬼胎]

The so called trip was arranged for the next Monday, spanning for three days and two nights – they were to return home on Wednesday night. They were to leave Tokyo by Bullet Train bright and early on Monday, where they'd eventually transfer onto a boat to complete the rest of the journey.

Which unfortunately meant that this wasn't merely a trip to an Ocean-view resort like Kataoka had said. If it was, then they wouldn't be catching a ferry just to finish the second-half of the trip.

By all means, this was a trip to an island.

And that alone had Amaya consider actually dropping out from the class trip entirely.

The only reason why she wasn't, was because Koro-sensei would probably drag her along kicking and screaming, anyway. So it was better to accept her fate and come along silently.

Her feelings had been hurt greatly by the fact that the majority of the class had kept this from her, and in spite of whatever good intentions they had for it, it didn't change the fact that she really did need to know what this trip was.

If she had never of been told and she found herself face to face with the revelation that she was going to be on a boat heading for an island, she'd freak right then and there.

She needed to know, so she could spend as much time bracing herself for the trip as she could.

She'd done well on her promise to Shigure and turned up right at the start of Wednesday morning – She'd left a note stuck to Karma's phone while he slept on the couch, like he often did when he couldn't be bothered walking across the street to go home.

Training went for longer than the three hours she usually spent, though not because she was slacking in the slightest. Her endurance and stamina were much better than before, so she could push herself further.

And from Wednesday, Amaya managed to land her first solid strike against Shigure – she managed to land a good enough hit to give him a black eye, which drew out the strongest look of approval she'd ever seen him wear.

Unfortunately, he took that as the go-ahead for starting her up on the next step of her training – Defending against an armed opponent using just her own limbs and the expanse of open ground.

Never had Amaya realized just how lethal a stalk of hollow bamboo really was until Shigure snapped one from the bamboo patch in the back garden with a rather pleased smile.

It was all Amaya could do to dodge and parry as best as she could.

Shigure had remarked that he'd like to take her training up a little onto the mountain to make use of the trees and rockery, but there was a group of people up there every day from dawn until dusk of late.

Amaya guessed it was everyone who'd been in that family restaurant getting practice and planning in.

There honestly wasn't any other explanation she could come up with.

Unlike his taunting and tormenting all Tuesday afternoon, Karma didn't spend all his time at her apartment like he'd said – He'd come around sometime in the evening to blackmail her into eating whatever he decided to put in front of her, but other than that, she had space.

Space enough to do what she needed to.

The lead up right up to Monday morning was spent entirely in training every day for the same hours that classes would normally take up, enough sleep to carry her through the next day, and the small pockets of time Karma actually turned up to mess with her otherwise rather routine day.

He probably got bored turning up in the mornings to find her already gone, so he went to find something else to occupy his time.

A sense of foreboding plagued Amaya, more and more the closer to Monday she got, pointing out to her just how vulnerable she felt about this whole situation. And when she felt vulnerable, paranoia was exceedingly quick to take hold next.