Sanely Insane - Karma Akabane | Assassination Classroom

Chapter 4

The sun sank lower in the sky. Light of the day was draining away, beginning to give in to the velvety dark of night.

With the click of her heels, Akira turned another corner of a quiet street, immersed in the orange pomp of the setting sun as she headed home after the long, exhausting day.

A group of schoolgirls in Kunugigaoka Junior High uniforms were standing near the bus stop not far away.

Akira recognized Short, who she met earlier today and her name forgotten, talking with her friends.

“I wish she would just get off her high horse!” Short's shrill echoed the streets.

“All I did was invite them to a movie and she completely ignored me! How rude!”

“Get over it, Umi-chan. We can watch the movie together.”

“I don't even want to watch The Okajima! They just have the cheapest tickets I can find! I need a chance for Asano-kun to get to know me, and she had to ruin it!”

“But Umi-Chan-”

“She is just jealous and insecure. Why do you think she gets all the opportunities from the school? It's because everyone knows she's friends with the principal's only son! Even I would be capable of doing her jobs if I'm friends - or more than friends with Asano-kun. And she doesn't only want to be friends, everyone knows.”

Considering that she had heard enough, Akira turned away and decided to take another path home.

She tried to comfort herself, hypnotizing her mind into thinking that this was not the first time she overheard such gossips and that she should be used to it by now.

She doesn't think of Gakushuu in a romantic way that much now. Being the rational person she was, she realized very soon that it could never work out between them.

Not to mention that Gakushuu was not in the mood for a relationship, they were too similar in personality to make a pair. She would never be the right person to open his heart.

Akira had always believed that people with the strongest relationships were those that were neither the closest nor the most distant, but somewhere in between.

She wondered whether she would ever be able to find such a person. She could not imagine what kind of person that would be.

“I’m home.” Akira greeted out of convention while changing into her slippers.

“Oh, isn't this Akira-Chan!”

“We haven't seen you in a while. You must be doing great these days.”

Upon hearing the ridicule, Akira turned towards the speakers to see the faces she dreaded the most.

“What’s with that face? So you're looking down on your relatives now? Come on, we all know that you slept with the principal to get out of the classroom-in-the-mountains or something.” With that, Akira's cousin let out a dramatic exclamation of wrath and disdain.

“It’s the principal's son, not the principal, you idiot!” The girl beside her hissed and elbowed her sister who was totally out of the loop.

“Right, right. The principal's son. Did I just say the principal? That's funny.”

Akira felt hot humiliation and anger overwhelm her. She had totally forgotten that her cousins will be staying over for a few days.  

She quickly left the idle chatter of the two, already numb of the insults from her family, and escaped into her lightless bedroom.

Finally feeling that she was in a place of comfort, energy drained out of her instantly. She dropped on her bed, exhausted, revealing an almost pathetic appearance of fragility.

She opened the diary application on her phone and started typing on it thoughtlessly- a habit she had developed over the years whenever she feels stressed.

I stuttered once during my speech today.

The weird girl from school was gossiping about me in the streets. She said everyone knows I am in love Gakushuu. Haruki and Haruko said I slept with him to get out of class E.

I wonder if I was really acting that obviously last year. I don't remember.

People look down on me because of my records, but why can't they get over what has long passed? Maybe they simply don't want to.

She took out her books and revised in the dim, soothing table light until she was so tired that she could not continue.

She dragged her tired body to bed, not bothering to dine with the aggressive twins outside. Her eyelids were heavy, but her thoughts were heavier. She fell unconscious almost instantly, into a sleep full of vague, foggy dreams.

Akira might be the most well-planned person, but she could never have been able to predict that the next day, she would experience the most shocking encounter with a peculiar person she would never want to have connection with.

Events took an unexpected turn from that onwards.

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A/N :

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