Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Sixteen - Zetsubō [絶望]

After that small run-in with Takebayashi downtown, Amaya had thought that was the end of it.

She assumed, after everyone had decided to interrogate the spectacled, ever-serious boy, that her last run-in with him was the last she was going to ever hear or see of him until graduation.

There was nothing that had occurred to her that might convince her otherwise.

The evil incarnate who she called her best friend had ended up wandering over a short while after Amaya had gotten home, and half an hour after that, Yuta and Reiko had returned with a sulking Samuel in tow.

And just like the walk to school that morning, all Karma did that evening was complain excessively about how he didn't like the couch.

In fact, as she locked herself away in her room after dinner, she could have sworn she could still hear the jerk complaining that she was buying terrible furniture just to sabotage him.

He was driving her insane with all this confusion and complaint.

Even worse, she knew that his confession wasn't a delusion of hers, but he was still acting like he never said it at all.

The confusion was hard on her heart, and all she wanted was to be left alone in her room and sulk.

She'd turned the photograph Koro-sensei had left lying on her desk yesterday in her hands, her expression falling more and more with every repetition.

She couldn't bring this up with the redhead at all – All he would do if she did was mock her relentlessly, or, he would avoid her.

So she tucked the photograph down the side of her bed and resigned herself to leaving it alone for now.

And the tentative touch of sleep snatched up her consciousness as she fell into the void of absent-minded dwelling.

Though it wasn't to last, she eventually discovered.

The strangest sensations of warmth in the middle of the night drew a frown across Amaya's sleepy face as she found herself waking up. Something had happened, strange enough that she knew something had changed while she'd been asleep.

Amaya opened one eye groggily, blinking through the darkness of her room as she tried to figure out what was going on.

She legitimately cursed the fact that her eyesight wasn't adapting to the dark as quickly as she wanted – It wasn't uncommon for Yuta or Reiko to adapt quickly enough to see her stumbling blindly through the dark.

Thankfully, she'd evaded the devil's notice, though she didn't know how long that would last.

She squinted sleepily, her brow furrowing as she tried to grasp her current surroundings.

She was in bed, which she vaguely recalled to an extent, she was tucked beneath the covers, which was something she didn't recall.

And, there was a source of warmth right in front of her, and her sharp nose picked up on the presence of another, too.

So, with carefully measured movements, she propped herself up on an elbow and groped through the dark for her phone.

The smallest illumination came as she pressed her thumb over the screen, unlocking the phone with her print and lighting up the screen just a little.

It was there that she spotted the faintest outlines of something that was horribly out of place, to the point that it struck fright into her and brought a burning sensation to her face.