Chapter 27

Karma was lazily walking back to the boys room, a drink from the vending machine in his hand, his mind still on the events of the day.

"Nagisa, who did you vote for?" A classmate voiced the question. Sugino, as ever friendly as ever, covered for Nagisa after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"Maehara, what about you?"

"Ah, it's a secret," he could almost hear Maehara smirk.

"Stop pissing me off. Even the thought of you being the most popular guy pisses me off!"

Karma snorted quietly. If it was the label of 'popular guy', wasn't Gakushuu farther ahead than all of them combined?

Then he remembered Gakushuu looking at him through his lashes, an unnamed intensity that pulled at Karma closer.

Then it was offset by the sudden irritation that besieged him at the next words.

"Speaking of, did you hear?" The one speaking lowered, and everyone subconsciously leaned in, "I heard Asano came down from his room with a woman hanging off him," he whispered conspiratorially.

"No way, Asano Gakushuu?"

"I heard she seemed like a high school student!" Someone pitched in.

"Yeah, she was pretty hot. I heard she kissed hi-"

Karma slammed open the door.

"What are you guys talking about?" He asked, the can in his hand had finger imprints from how hard he was gripping it.

"Hey Karma, nice timing!" Unknowingly, someone seemed like they were walking the path to hell, or Karma's list of future victims, that is.

"Oh?" Karma responded.

Ignoring the sudden widening of eyes and the head shakes directed at him, he continued, "we were talking about the girls we liked in class, what do you think?"

Karma took a sip of his drink and closed the door behind him casually.

"Hm. Okuda Minami, I guess" he took the paper from his classmates and looked over the votes people had given to the girls. Unsurprisingly, Kanzaki Yukiko was the most voted.

His classmates shot him confused looks at that.

"Wow, that's surprisingly honest."

"Why her though?"

Karma sat with them.

"She can whip up chloroform and other poisons. Combined with my ideas, it sounds like a match made in heaven," he shrugged.

His classmates shuddered at the thought and quickly changed the topic. Thankfully, everyone was too distracted by Koro-sensei's sudden appearance and him taking notes on them that no one talked about Gakushuu again.

"I thought you were pining after Karma."

Gakushuu's heart almost jumped out of his chest when he heard a voice speak to him while he was relaxing on the terrace. He whipped around to see Anaya relaxing on the chair hidden in the shadowed corner.

She had her cheek resting on her knee, and her gaze was positively boring into Gakushuu.

"I didn't expect you to bring a random woman up to your bedroom. So who are you playing?" She asked, her tone was monotonous, but her words were sharply accusing.

Gakushuu, surprisingly, didn't feel too offended.

"So you were helping Karma," he confirmed instead.

Suspicions were just suspicions without solid enough evidence to back it up. He had been pretty sure, but this exposed their emotional involvement too.

"Gakushuu…" she warned.

"Don't pull that tone on me, Anaya," he rebuked lightly. Then he explained, "I'm not playing either of them. Iriya is practically married to her work, she won't even bother looking at me even if I begged her."

There was a moment of silence. Gusts of cool wind blew at them.

"And Karma?"

Gakushuu smirked in response, before turning away.

"I think it's time you go back, Anaya. We're leaving Kyoto tomorrow." He said, amused.

Anaya was as into gossip as the rest of them. She just hid it better. She was definitely going to go to Ren and spill the whole conversation.

As expected, Anaya left with a slight spring in her step. Then turned in the wrong direction to be going to her room.

Gakushuu shook his head and closed the door behind her.

The classes met back up again on their journey back. Thankfully, Gakuhou had to leave a day early so Gakushuu was allowed to relax.

On that note, Gakushuu texted Karma and wandered off nearer to the class E's section of the train.

"Hey," he greeted Karma, who had been standing by the door looking outside. He visibly startled at his voice.

Gakushuu slowly raised an eyebrow when Karma stared at him. He opened his mouth once and then shut it, shaking his head.

The silence dragged on.

"Hi," Karma replied after a while.

They stared at each other a little more.

"So," Gakushuu started, choosing to ignore that moment.

He had pushed quite hard last time, it would be better to just go back to normal first, he decided.

"How are your classmates?" He asked.

"Hm?" Karma made a confused noise at first. Then he realized, "Right. Kanzaki and Kayano were kidnapped. They seem to have gotten closer through it at least," he shrugged.

"Nothing like shared trauma to bring people together," Gakushuu mumbled wryly.

Karma's lip twitched.

He disagreed with that. Kanzaki and Kayano hadn't seemed the least bit traumatized. They had been glad to see them, but they hadn't really been sobbing their hearts out due to gratitude or anything.

Well, if 'shared trauma' was past trauma, maybe that qualified. He had seen Kanzaki take out a picture of herself, dressed up, from one of their pockets.

"Something like that," he said aloud, instead of the nitty gritty details about his classmates. He noticed Gakushuu take a barely-there glance at him before they went back to leaning on opposite sides of the wall, staring outside.

"Last-" Karma started, before he stopped. Gakushuu kept looking outside.

He could feel the atmosphere between then becoming different- a nervous tension rose as they both determinedly avoided looking at the other.

The silence stretched oddly. Like time was and wasn't moving at the same time.

"Was it," Gakushuu felt his cheeks heating up as he whispered, "too much?"

Karma took in a sharp breath.

"...No," came a hurried reply a few moments too late. Gakushuu glared at the empty floor between them.

His heart was beating too hard. And he hated that he could hear the lie in Karma's voice.

He could feel the bitter regret already taking root.

Karma took a step towards Gakushuu. He didn't look up.

The space between them had decreased. Karma was a half step in front of him.

"No," Karma repeated, this time his voice was steadier.

Gakushuu looked up.

His face was red, but he was looking straight at Gakushuu. There was confusion, and uncertainty but.

He looked like he wanted to pull him closer, like he wanted to shake him or maybe punch him but to Gakushuu, it looked like, he just wanted to hug him.

His fingers pressed harder against the wall behind him. Suddenly the walls behind him felt incomparably steady when compared to his legs.

…he wasn't going to fall, right?

Karma took the step back.

Then the two boys looked at the floor with their faces burning red, neither moving farther away or coming closer.