Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Twenty Seven - Nukumori [温もり]

Out of everything that could have been said or done, Amaya guessed that was fine.

The next morning, after she'd reemerged from the attic and found her way to school, Itona's presence was center stage.

Everything had calmed down, and Itona now took up presence in the classroom as part of Terasaka's group, with a particularly brutal brand of honesty to his person. He took up the seat between Karma and Terasaka, just as he had when he first bust through that wall just after the time Koro-sensei had taken her, Karma and Nagisa to Hawaii for an evening. Even though Amaya didn't necessarily have a problem with the ex tentacle host, she didn't want to sit next to him, so in one way she was rather relieved.

His presence, although distorted by brutal remarks about Muramatsu's family ramen recipe, still reminded Amaya of glimpses in Berlin, of those lashing glimpses of white in the mere seconds after Genivierre had died right in front of her.

Though the jab that kept on being issued towards Muramatsu about his family's ramen recipe had Amaya feeling more and more sympathetic towards the blond.

She honestly felt she could relate, given all the jabs she received about her own cooking.

Even if the recipe wasn't the best, that didn't mean one appreciated being constantly reminded of and insulted for it.

Beyond that, everything was relatively uneventful.

In spite of Karma's rather mild teasing for once, Amaya still had the annoyance of the past few weeks events gnawing away at her, though she did her best to try and forget all about it.

Her return to the house along with the increasingly normal presence belonging to Karma had her learn however that those rules and instructions she had given to her siblings the afternoon before appeared to be ignored by Samuel and Reiko. Yuta however, at the time of Amaya's return home was not present, however Reiko and Samuel were.

The fridge had been ransacked, like it often was when she returned, with many of its contents left on the countertop exposed to the warmer air, and while there were less of them, sweets wrappers and shreds of plastic covered the counter tops and dining table.

And she could see immediately that shoes had not been taken off at the door like they were supposed to, if for no other reason than the presence of muddy shoe prints leading straight towards the kitchen.

A heavy sigh escaped Amaya as she deposited her stuff before moving to correct the mess that had been made of her house.

'Damnit ... it hasn't even been a whole day.' Amaya huffed as she tossed out warm cheese, room-temperature sandwich meat, among other things.

By the end, a small moment of relief overcame Amaya as she found that there were a couple of jars that hadn't been left out long enough for their contents to spoil.

She'd picked them up, opening the fridge to deposit them safely inside, when one of the most frequently repeating nightmares found its way back in her life.

There was next to nothing inside the refrigerator; no fruit or vegetables, no milk, nothing besides the jars of mayonnaise, crushed ginger, and the single piece of raw chicken Yuta had set aside to treat the kitten.

Everything else had either spoiled, been consumed in its entirety, or was currently held within Amaya's grip at that very second.

Amaya's immediate reaction was to legitimately hurl the items in her grip into the fridge and slam the door shut, though she struggled to hold herself back.