Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Twenty Two - Hashiru [走る]

The pudding fiasco had left Amaya not only feeling a little sour, but perturbed by the possibility that her trust issues were still very prominent, and in excess.

Nobody else seemed to have found anything odd or peculiar about Kayano's declaration that even one's closest friends don't know where one hides their hidden blades, and yet Amaya could honestly say she found that declaration to feel entirely wrong.

To announce it with such blinding conviction, all it did was have Amaya feel like there was something the greenette was hiding.

And her paranoia over such things was one to grow and creep incessantly in the back of her mind.

It was worse that she was the only one that seemed to find anything wrong with it.

Just like with Itona, and Takebayashi's circumstances for leaving 3-E, Amaya felt like there was something there that nobody was seeing.

Being a part of the class assigned to assassinate a Mach-Speed creature of sulphur-yellow colouration was probably a large cause of her paranoia.

And yet, even knowing that, Amaya couldn't bring herself to trust Kayano's demeanor of being entirely innocent anymore.

She would greet the girl when spoken to, but beyond that, she maintained her distance as much as respectably possible.

Class came and went, their PE lesson dabbling on the beginnings of free-running as a major core of their second-term assassination skills beyond explosives use.

A demonstration came from Karasuma, who, after being given an estimation of a minute to cross from the top of a sizable cliff to a tree up on another by Mimura, made a point of reaching that very same place in no more than ten seconds.

With the class' interest piqued and secured, the lesson began with the basics.

Everyone was talked through how to do this in small steps, except for Amaya.

In fact, Karasuma didn't bother following his inquiring question.

'Katsuragi-san, I believe your guardian would have already started teaching you the basics. Is this correct?' He'd questioned, just after he had instructed everyone on how they were to throw themselves into perfectly-coordinated tumbles over an obstacle.

He asked with no shadow of doubt in him – He was matter of fact and knowing.

And there was honestly nothing much Amaya could say.

Nothing other than the meek 'Yes,' that escaped her, none the less.

In truth, that was one of the first things Shigure's rather Spartan-like teaching methods had basically ground into her – Her rebounding back onto her feet from any angle was sign enough.

His way of hurling her across the Tatami Room all that time practically forced her to learn quickly.

So, after a quick demonstration of three attempts falling well beyond acceptable, she was given instruction to go practice getting from ground level up to the top of the cliff with the tree with haste.

Needless to say, it was a very boring task, though the odd spectator here or there found it interesting enough to watch between barrel-rolls over small thickets of grown grass. Though eventually, she would get so bored just on her own that she'd take the next opportunity to disappear into the woods, which would then lead to her practicing other things that Shigure had been getting her to learn that last training session before Okinawa.

This was repetitive for the majority of the week, stepping up until Karasuma had decided everyone had progressed enough to begin proper free-running attempts.