Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Forty Five - Uchinaru Akuma [内なる悪魔]

The words that could have reached out to her were mute in the light of her inner turmoil. Spiraling once more, the faint sense of stability Amaya had managed to gather had been dashed, leaving her struggling to even understand why;

Why did every attempt at doing something for herself become so wrong? Why did it have to be so hard for her to even stand up for herself and what felt right to her?

Why did she even bother, anymore?

The rest of Koro-sensei's visit passed Amaya by without her truly taking in any of it, and by the time the octopus had let himself out to head up to the classroom to commence homeroom, all she knew was that she was tired.

She didn't know if Koro-sensei had accepted her answer, or if he'd told her to take another day to think on it. It had more or less passed her by with nothing sinking in on her as soon as those words had left her mouth.

She honestly didn't know what was going on anymore, both inside her head and around her.

As far as Amaya knew, there were no more visits from classmates wanting to reason with her, nor were there any questions from Karma when he'd eventually emerged from wherever it was in the house he'd been in while Koro-sensei was around. He didn't even remark on the octopus' visit or what the talk was about, though Amaya merely surmised that he'd either guessed the reason, or overheard the whole thing and had his answers.

She cloistered herself back in her room when she found herself to be all alone in the dining room, letting the corrosion slowly drag her to an empty, black slumber.

And perhaps that was the main reason she remembered nothing specifically beyond her answer to Koro-sensei.

Because the blackness drowned everything else from her grasp.

The gentle sweep of a cool autumn breeze caressed her skin as it swept through the opened window at the side of her bed, eventually drawing her conscious with every passing minute. The world was dark she soon realized, and she found herself struggling to care that she had missed yet another whole day alone in her room.

Her thoughts didn't traverse very far as she gingerly righted herself into an upright position to lift the glass of water she'd had sitting on her bedside table since she'd locked herself up.

She scarcely acknowledged that her siblings would probably be back from school soon, and beyond that she guessed she probably should wander out of the room to go and figure out what could be done for dinner. But she was far too exhausted, and soon she found herself carefully lying back down, with the blankets pulled up over her shoulders.

However, Amaya found that she wasn't alone in the house before she could truly fall back to sleep.

A soft knock echoed at the bedroom door somewhere within the span of minutes, though she didn't bother to answer. She heard the door click open before long, and a mere second later she could feel the irritation of incandescent light against her closed eyes, filtering in through the open door.

However, unlike the similarities with the afternoon before, Amaya heard the telltale sound of a heavy breath escape who she knew to be Karma as his footfalls lead up to the side of her bed. He didn't immediately call her name to try and get a response, either.

She felt the tiniest shift of the blanket over her, as if he'd reached out to shake her awake by the shoulder but caught himself just before he would have properly touched her. And she had felt the grazing of a hand ever so slightly against her neck, almost as if he was about to check her pulse but thought better on it, of all things.