Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Nineteen - Kakurenbo [かくれんぼ]

'I hate hospitals...'

Amaya's declaration of bitter distaste was announced during the walk back home during the early hours of Thursday morning, scarcely a handful of hours since she'd gone and woken Karma by practically throwing herself on top of him on the couch.

'Oh? With all the times you've been landing in the emergency ward this year, I thought you were trying to move in~' Karma remarked with a small drawl to the edge of his words.

And yet his expression showed very little of his usual amusement.

She bit her tongue, lowering her head slightly as she found herself falling prey to guilt.

When she'd calmed down after her small fit waking him up, he neither pinched her face in punishment for actually waking him, nor had he tried to pry any kind of explanation from her about her current condition. He was eerily patient with her, even right up to dragging her out of the house and straight to the nearest hospital once she'd cleaned up and was in a dry change of clothes.

However, in spite of how patient he'd been with everything so far, that didn't mean he wasn't about to reach his limit and unleash a hellish punishment on her at any given moment.

What was already a hellish punishment was the fact that after a two hour wait in the emergency ward, the doctor who'd been assigned to checking her injuries just so happened to be the same jerk who'd waved off her head-injury at the start of her time in Class E.

And his attitude at seeing her once again was not pleasant.

He was rough with handling her for a start, and horrifyingly enough it took Karma looking livid enough to drag the young doctor over the gurney to slug him one just to get him to tend to her properly. It was rather unpleasant knowing Karma was standing there over her shoulder for the rest of her time in the hospital, glaring daggers at that doctor all the while.

This time however, after remarking that she should have been brought here hours ago, she had been deemed to have a moderate concussion, which wasn't a surprise considering that she could guarantee twice that she'd been struck in the same place, and all the slaps from that jerk who'd spoken to her in that so called Interrogation room didn't help.

Unfortunately, the "Doctors Orders" when it came to her degree of concussion included being kept an eye on for the first few days. If, during those few days she displayed one of a set of symptoms, one including an inability to wake up at all following sleeping and another being spontaniously passing out, she was to be brought straight back to hospital.

Bad luck for Amaya, who sincerely wanted some degree of peace back in her life – She'd legitimately felt the sharp look Karma shot at her almost as soon as those words had left the doctors mouth.

The sun hadn't even begun to make its return to the skies as they'd arrived back at Amaya's house, and before she could have even pulled her keys from her pocket, the door had been flung open and Karma practically pushed her inside.

It looked like his patience might have finally run out - In fact, she was rather sure of it as he'd shut the door behind them with a rather loud bang.

She looked at Karma as he practically walked right past her to head towards the kitchen, her brow furrowing slightly as she noticed the rather tense edge about him.

He looked far too preoccupied with thought for her to call out to him – She'd surely earn that hellish punishment for trying to pry.

So while he had his attention elsewhere, Amaya wandered quietly towards her room.

The so called "Doctors Orders" were those of bedrest, with no housework or mentailly strenuous activity or exercise.

Which meant the only damn thing Amaya could do was just sit there and do nothing.