Chapter 20

Kunugigaoka's third year started, and Gakushuu became the Student Council President.

The start of the school year was even more chaotic than usual. Their third year was the time of the greatest academic stress, and achievement. For the newest 3-A class, it was even more so.

They had been together for two years. They already knew each other's habits, interests and backgrounds, and the first week was busy for all of them, meeting back up after a long time.

While the school time was the busiest time for Gakushuu, it was the opposite for his classmates.

Their vacation was the time they used what they learnt from their school, from their friends, and the real world. Sometimes they got into trouble, sometimes their friends did and many of their vacations were surprisingly active. Even for the students who could be said to have average home lives.

Their groups were unique and rich kids weren't exactly lacking in Kunugigaoka. Random trips for some event or the other happened every so often, some of his friends came by to see Gakushuu playing or went for the open invite given to all his classmates for study sessions.

And when classes started, the class met up again and showed off their achievements. After all, class A was made of people who saw and achieved the most results. They held pride in their ranks, but even more pride in the real life results they had produced for themselves.

If being an overachiever had a lower limit, all of class A had crossed it, even Akira who had been the most reluctant or Koyama who followed Gakushuu fanatically, but hated to waste time doing anything but studying or experimenting.

And the closer they got to Gakushuu, the more they admired him. He was someone within their sight, someone achievable and yet still almost unbelievable in spite of it.

Gakushuu called himself human, but similar to how he viewed his father, so too did his classmates view him. A lifetime of perfected knowledge was drilled into Gakushuu, after all.

Gakuhou was the best at education, bar none.

It was just fortunate that the education system did not just run on who the best educator was, but also on many other aspects. 

Gakushuu's first week was a blur of work, similar to last year. Unlike last year, he was working with the class representatives instead of the students.

His Vice President was Kiyoko, someone he once admired for her relentless personality and athletic sense. She was in class B and her leadership skills were impeccable.She had gracefully come under Gakushuu when he was selected as the President, and he was glad he didn't have to do politics against her.

Kiyoko looked simple, but her force of personality was created in the heat of summer, under the training of her father, a renowned coach.

Unlike Gakushuu however, she didn't have complex feelings about her father nor a continuous manipulation to look out for.

Her criteria for judging people was also simple. If you saved people, you were a good person, no matter how many you hurt.

It was a surprising take that induced complicated feelings in Gakushuu. Feelings he would rather not have. But she was a good leader, and she admired Gakushuu far more than he probably deserved.

Was it kindness when he couldn't even feel it? He didn't feel anything in particular saving someone from an abusive home, or stopping any bullying.

They were just some guidelines he had thought that he should follow when he still felt like a person with the capability for kindness.

Now, the lines felt like they were blurring more often. Was it kindness or cruelty?

Gakushuu wasn't someone who changed his mind, but his path blurred sometimes. And he couldn't be sure if he was going what he wanted or what his father did. Or maybe it was what his past life had wanted?

His memories were a blur so he couldn't even tell what kind of person she had been. Someone who laughed easily, he was sure. Someone who took joy from the small things.

Someone a little like Hinata.

But, he wasn't her. He had always tried to fit himself in awkwardly to what he had been before, but he didn't really need to. If he was a girl sometimes, wasn't it okay to be the same?

There wasn't a mold he needed to fit into. No one remembered her, and no one wanted Gakushuu to be her. It was a relieving thought.

Kiyoko and Gakushuu got along well. Ren became his secretary, and many of the students of class A took up positions of leadership if they hadn't already.

Third year was the time where they were pushed the hardest. The school semesters ended when they finished their final exam, but there was still another final semester that was exclusively managed by their teacher.

Until their high school examinations finished, they were still students of Kunugigaoka and Kunugigaoka took particularly good care to remind them of it.

Sometimes, if a class did particularly badly, Gakuhou would take over educating them until graduation. Which was a particularly different level of hell than simply Kunugigaoka.

Gakuhou took particular care of the third year students of class E and the main school students.

From the inter class competitions to the school festival, everything was set against the class 3-E. It was the main reason for the fantastically consistent failings of class E.

Even if they mustered up some amount of fighting spirit, by the end of year 3, it would be long gone. Gakushuu worried.

He worried for Karma, for Nagisa, for the teacher. He worried for the new class rep, Isogai, and a little for the end product of the hill with Karma up on it with little to no supervision.

Gakushuu wondered what made his father think it was a good idea to send delinquents into a place where they could do whatever they wanted. Not to mention, a place that held such precious memories.

Gakushuu, once again, despaired at his odd sentimentality.

Time passed and his father got busy with school as well. They reached the last year's uneasy peace and Gakushuu settled into a slightly new schedule where he went by to check on the cats occasionally and sometimes met Karma too.

Karma seemed to have a new found habit of feeding Gakushuu for some reason, but he enjoyed the delicious food though he still hadn't managed to give a compliment on it.

Every time he tried, Gakushuu would feel his face start to heat up and he would end up arguing about something or the other, in a fluster.

Thankfully, Gakushuu hadn't ended up blushing in front of Karma aside from that night, and they both had been flustered enough that neither of them brought it up.

Karma was restless often and Gakushuu took him out for baseball batting practice once and laughed himself into a coughing fit when Karma failed, barely managing to hit it correctly.

Karma got irritated at his laughter, ignored Gakushuu's non-subtle demonstrations and hints, and then improved drastically in the next half hour out of sheer spite.

Gakushuu laughed at his pettiness. Then admitted that he wasn't that good at baseball either.

They relocated to a basketball court the sports center had, and they played around, bumping into each other, committing a few fouls, half-fighting and half trying to get the ball from the other.

They weren't strictly playing basketball, but Gakushuu was surprised to find that Karma was more his match than their first year. Not only that, Gakushuu thought, as he looked at a slumped over sweaty Karma drinking water after they called quits trying to outdo the other, Karma had become stronger in general.

Gakushuu and Karma were the same height now. They had slightly different physiques, where Gakushuu looked deceptively thin, Karma was more fit, and his muscles were slightly more obvious.

Karma could actually be called pretty, when he wasn't showing off his god awful personality, that is. He looked more delicate.

Where no one would ever call Gakushuu delicate, if someone didn't know Karma, they could call him so. His features were sharp, and his hair threw them into contrast, making a pretty picture.

Gakushuu resisted the urge to take a picture of him.

Karma, sensing Gakushuu's gaze, turned to look at him with a raised brow. Gakushuu wordlessly shook his head. Karma's lips turned into a teasing smirk and he mentally sighed.

There it was. The reason no one sane could even think of Karma and 'delicate' in the same sentence.

"Aww Shuu, were you admiring my pretty face?" Karma teased.

"I will, the moment you stop sweating like a pig," Gakushuu shot back. Karma let out a short laugh.

"But I am prettier this way, Shuu~ you're definitely prettier this way too!" Karma casually complimented Gakushuu while he tried not to choke himself on thin air.

"I'm prettier, sweaty?" He asked, unable to help himself. He felt slightly flustered at the sudden compliment. But he also liked it.

"You're pretty when you're not trying to be a perfect," Karma said, gazing back at Gakushuu with warm, very much non-teasing eyes.

Gakushuu felt hot. It might be a little hot. It was a sports center after all.

"Oh. Hm." He cleared his throat, looked away and tried very hard not to blush. He missed the slightly smug look on Karma's face.

"How about we try the gun range?" Karma said, interrupting Gakushuu's thoughts of their next target.

Gakushuu scowled. He looked at Karma who gave him his best innocent look.

"We're at a sports center," he pointed out. Karma smiled smugly.

"There's one close to here," Karma replied. Gakushuu narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"Who told you?" He asked. Karma gave him another wide eyed innocent look.

"Was there anything to tell? Am I missing something, Shuu?" He dragged out his name, a knowing smile at the edge of his lips.

"You-" lying scheming conniving bitch, Gakushuu conveyed with his expression, "-how about we try out the archery, if you feel like long range?" He tried.

"But you chose the first and the second one. I should be able to pick the third and forth at least, right?" Karma countered, his lips raising the more Gakushuu protested.

"Do you want to just let me have a day of my pick then?" Karma asked, his grin getting even brighter.

Gakushuu felt a shiver of dread at the thought of a full day before he resigned himself to a few hours of being teased instead. At least, he wasn't going to risk getting fed beetles or grasshoppers for lunch then.

"No," he sighed. "Let's go then."

The gun range was exactly as much of a disaster as Gakushuu had expected. Karma was new at it, but Gakushuu had years of attempted practice.

Karma rolled on the floor, laughing, after Gakushuu's fifth failed shot.

"I can't believe- you just- hit my target!" He laughed so hard he couldn't even speak and Gakushuu attempted to concentrate and hit his target at least, at his next shot.

He could at least hit the target, normally. But Karma was distracting him.

Karma let out another peal of laughter when Gakushuu missed his target yet again. He sighed in frustration. But there was a slight smile on his lips too.

He didn't particularly like getting laughed at, but he liked knowing that his friends had another reason to laugh, even if it was for one of his own flaws.

No one was good at everything, but it was funny that Gakushuu failed so miserably at something, when he was pretty great at others.

But it was still nice because Karma watched him. His attention was a heady, heavy thing that Gakushuu enjoyed even as he steadied his aim, got into the perfect posture and then failed miserably yet again.

Gakushuu still felt good because-

"You don't get hand tremors," Karma pointed out sharply. Gakushuu smiled, then tried again.

A slight tremor starting from his fingers, tensed up his arm, and the shot went wide. And suddenly Karma was holding Gakushuu's hand, pulling the gun out of his grasp and then staring at his hands. It was normal- no unsteadiness or tremors.

"Are you scared of guns? " Karma asked, his tone more worried than incredulous.

"It's more of a subconscious fear of guns," he explained, his voice quiet.

Well, his past life would probably be able to explain more but, even Gakushuu had no idea why she was scared of guns. Maybe she died of a bullet wound or maybe she killed someone.

The thing was, none of his friends had actually figured out the reason. They took it as a severe lack of talent in this one area, and no one has actually seen him try out long ranged items aside from guns in general.

Gakushuu felt pleased that Karma had gotten it right. That he would notice was par for the course, but that he would accurately assess the reason correctly had still been up in the air.

Karma frowned at Gakushuu's hands then kept the gun with him.

"We should leave then," he said. The range was empty, but someone could come in anytime. Also, technically, they were minors with no licence so they weren't really allowed in the range in the first place.

Of course, rules had never applied to people like Karma or Gakushuu.

"Okay," he said agreeably. He followed Karma out.

Then, the moon exploded.

It was night, and Gakushuu spent maybe a little more time outside than he should have but.

The moon exploded.

People started stopping in the streets to point and stare. Some took out phones to record the view.

Gakushuu and Karma gaped .

They stared at the half shattered moon.

"What the fuck, " one of them said.

Gakushuu's phone started ringing, and he pulled it out, still staring at the moon.

"Hello," he said, feeling slightly faint.

"Come back right now," a cold voice demanded. The call was cut off immediately after.

Gakushuu paled, his brain functioning again.

"Fuck," he breathed out.

Then he grabbed Karma's arm and started running.

He tried to call his father back but he was busy. He called other people- people in the government, children of powerful political figures, geniuses who were known in the scientific community.

People weren't panicking yet , but they would .

The people who picked up were already being informed about being put in safety, temporarily, some were theorizing the reasons and Gakushuu was trying to hold a million conversations at once.

He was panting by the time he reached home with Karma. They had already seen one accident, and he didn't want to see any rioting.

Mass panic was not a pretty sight.

When he saw his house and his father standing in front of it, he sighed in relief.

"Father," he breathed out. Gakuhou's eyes roved over him then at Karma, who he was still holding on to. He didn't say anything to them, still on call. He tilted his head to the car pointedly.

Gakushuu didn't move.

"The shattered pieces." He said, still breathing hard, as he pointed at the broken moon.

Gakuhou shook his head.

"It won't hit Earth," he mouthed the words, his voice silent, and he went back to talking to whoever was on the other side.

Gakushuu sighed in relief, his panic abating a little and he dragged Karma away from his father and to the car.

They could already see a meteor shower in the sky, and Gakushuu guessed that there were also weapons the nations were deploying to shatter the larger pieces or something.

Because Gakushuu could see the shattered pieces form a ring around the moon.

Maybe they had found a way to increase the gravitational field. Gakushuu wasn't well versed in space related phenomena, but he was sure he knew the space programs that were shown to the civilians at least.

Whatever had happened, was either an alien, a really crazy natural phenomena, or the government.

He wondered which one he preferred. He looked at Karma who had basically dragged right into a safe house with him, and saw him frowning at the sky.

He sighed. Then he picked up another call.

Gakuhou was busy, and so was Gakushuu. He was listening in to his father, while talking to a few other people, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

The school shut down for a little while, and the rioting and mess outside eased. Karma was sent back to his home on day 3, when the mass panic eased up with the government's handling of the situation. The religions riled up with Armageddon and it was a messy social situation.

But.

The streets went mostly back to how it was, even if there were still people talking about the world ending, or wasting away their life savings.

The odd thing was, he was pretty sure his father was angry . And the government side was actually oddly hushed up.

It was suspicious.

Gakushuu had found a private undocumented research facility that was destroyed into rubble . But he couldn't find anything suspicious about it aside from the sheer amount of destruction at the place.

It was swept clean.

There was no left over research or no bodies, no odd items lying around. Which was what made it even more suspicious.

Unlike the other buildings or hidden research facilities that were hit hard by the protesting people, this was almost bare.

Gakushuu could find hints of what was happening in the other buildings. But if he hadn't known the place was a research facility from the beginning, he wouldn't have even suspected it.

The place was owned by a private organisation, under Yanagisawa. He subtly dug deeper. He found the place far too suspicious after all.

When school restarted, he heard news of Yukimura Aguri's death, and he connected a few dots. The destroyed private research facility was under Yanagisawa, Aguri's fiance. Aguri worked there occasionally, and Gakushuu had looked into it before because he actually found her to be a kind teacher.

Then to confirm his hypothesis, he asked his father about Aguri's death.

His father didn't do something as plebeian as twitch but he had a reaction. And that was enough for Gakushuu to confirm.

It had been a far fetched thought, but.

Private research facility, meant that it might or might not be government approved. The sheer amount of destruction meant something had gone wrong. And 'undocumented' meant it was something bad.

It was destroyed the same day as the moon shattered and Gakushuu was pretty sure, that if the government didn't fix whatever the cause was, they might actually be a little fucked.

School started again, and people got used to the moon. His father got increasingly suspicious, meeting every day with more people, some from the government, some not, and that was what Gakushuu could see.

Gakushuu sneaked in surveillance of his father, sometimes by himself, sometimes putting in a device that his father might or might not notice.

After the first attempt, where he was able to gather the most information, his father started to get more thorough about combing through any changes he spotted. Similarly, Gakushuu's chances of gaining new information decreased, but it didn't completely become impossible.

As long as he did some things more blatantly, his father would disregard his exaggerated attempts as true attempts. It worked a few times and Gakushuu gained another piece of information.

A being made for antimatter research.

It was a human experimentation gone wrong.

They had gone almost a week without the world ending. But human experimentation…

And antimatter on top of that?

Gakushuu wasn't exactly the pinnacle of human morality, but both were things he held severe distaste for.

Antimatter was a delicate field, and the research for it was given to very very very few facilities. Human experimentation, a taboo, on top of antimatter?

There was no way it was government approved. And even if it was , it certainly shouldn't have been done on Earth.

Or maybe…

Gakushuu looked at the shattered moon and let out a slightly hysterical laugh.

They were so screwed, it was almost funny.

After Gakushuu calmed down yet again , he noted something important.

If it was a human , that meant there was a direction to channel that power. It hadn't immediately exploded Earth, so either it didn't have the ability to, or it didn't want to.

If it didn't have the ability to, the government would have found the person and buried both the person and the research. And since the government was still being secretive of even more related things, he could conclude that the person hadn't been caught yet.

So, whoever had the power, was pretty strong, and wanted something (maybe a last request?) before they died, but didn't want all of humanity to die. Or at least, not die just yet.

Then Gakushuu sighed.

It was all just a reasonable hypothesis, but likely not true.

It wasn't exactly possible for the government to condone experiment on such a decent human being. They wouldn't just pick a person off the streets for research on antimatter .

Whoever it was, probably had it coming, but unfortunately, that person might just have the world in their hands.

They probably wanted to fulfill their own cruel desires before blowing up the planet to kingdom come. Talk about reaping what you sow, he scoffed to himself.

Gakushuu narrowed his eyes.

Either way, he had a point of entry with his father, and he didn't trust him enough to leave the whole thing up to him, or the government, who created the mess in the first place.

He would get involved, he just needed to find a point of contact first.

And he would get it, come hell or high water.

The fate of the world wasn't going to rest on the decision of a negligent government, if he had anything to say about it.