Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Twenty Four - Onaka [おなか]

Wherever Asano Gakushu had decided to go, it mattered not to Amaya.

In fact, whatever conclusion he'd come to following that unpleasant incident with him turning up in her very house didn't matter to Amaya at all, just so long as he never turned up again.

What did matter to her right at that moment however, was that out of the blue declaration from Karma.

She had rounded upon him in a form of disbelief once his words had sunk in on her, demanding an explanation from him at the very least.

And even though Amaya should have expected the response she got, she didn't.

With a sly smirk a little strained from agitation towards the space-invader just left, he told her, 'I've been waiting for you to say something~ But you didn't and left me hanging all this time~'

She'd stared at him in shock, disbelieving in the most sincere respects as he snickered away.

And then her shock quickly escalated to outrage as she lashed out and pulled him into a pinching torture he usually reserved just for her.

Needless to say, in spite of her obvious explosion of annoyance and frustration, he found it much to his amusement none the less. He just kept snickering away without coughing up any further remark or explanation on the topic.

So Amaya pretended he didn't exist for the rest of the morning, to the best of her abilities.

There was one thing however that Asano's intrusion had brought to light for Amaya in one way or another.

The newspaper cutting he'd shown her to validate his so called interrogation had been forgotten, left discarded atop the table just where Amaya had dropped it at the time.

She didn't believe for a second that Koro-sensei was the culprit ... but having said that, once her fury towards a snickering Karma had died down enough for her to start thinking, she couldn't deny the implications.

A bizarre laughter, depicted exactly as Koro-sensei's was.

The culprit was apparently a large man with a round, yellow face. Among other small and rather inconsequential things those two were dead ringers for their octopus teacher, and in spite of Amaya's blatant disbelief for the rumors, she couldn't exactly disregard them entirely.

All she knew was there was something suspicious.

She told herself to leave it alone – if it was important, something was going to come up. She had faith in Koro-sensei, who in spite of his predominant shortcomings had done a lot for her. He'd saved her from the nightmares in Berlin and brought her home again.

There was a lot he had done for everyone, so she would give him all benefit of the doubt.

'Heh~ Someone's turning into a Hermit again~' Karma's mocking remark came sometime in the evening, after Yuta and Reiko had returned from school duties that day.

'Go away.' Amaya muttered back in response as she continued to sort through that luggage case Koro-sensei brought back from Berlin.

It was a job from the long list of things she needed to catch up on, now that things seemed to be settling down.

'Are you still mad at me for what I said?' She heard Karma question lightly enough, though out of petulance she turned her head away a little. 'Come on, Amay, it wasn't that big a deal.'

Says the jerk who turned it against her so easily when she tried to get an answer out of him.

She didn't say anything and just continued as she was.