Start of E-class and I'm so excited for this arc! (≧∇≦)/
Third person POV
Well, Nagisa thought tiredly, watching the students walk towards the run down campus lifelessly. So this is the E-class, huh? He trudged forward, exhaustion gradually creeping up on him as he stood in front of the rundown house.
The wood looked unfurnished and the sickly pale shade of brown made Nagisa grimace. Even some of the parts of the building looked like they could fall off any moment now.
"Hello, class! I'll be your homeroom teacher this year!" The cheerful voice of their teacher clashed against the gloomy atmosphere of the classroom. "My name is Aguri Yukimura. Let's have a fantastic year together, alright?"
Yukimura-sensei, for one, was a very eccentric teacher. Always ready to help the students and somewhat clumsy but very kind at heart. Unlike the teachers at the main building, she radiated no ill intention, only a genuine desire to help.
She was clumsy and ditzy at times but neither Nagisa nor the students in the classroom had ever seen any teacher as dedicated to their education as her.
"Look! Look! I bought this shirt the other day!"
Yukimura-sensei gestured at her shirt and everyone sweat dropped.
"Err.."
"That's..."
Everyone sat in a speechless silence, staring at the clothing ahead of them.
"Err..that's a.." Isogai paused to search for the right word while gazing at the clothing with a wobbly smile, "..very unique sense of fashion."
Everyone had to agree with him in a way. But the thing that Isogai forgot to mention was that the shirt wasn't just a 'unique sense of fashion.' It was an abomination masquerading as a piece of clothing.
"Heh? Really?" Yukimura-sensei questioned as if she were surprised by his comment. "I find the clothes this brand produce really great."
"You definitely shouldn't." Maehara muttered discreetly, narrowing his gaze at the offending clothing.
"Well, enough about me!" She pratically materialized a book in her hand out of nowhere. "Let's start with our lesson!"
A collection of groan erupted.
~
"Huh, Akabane-kun still hasn't got out of his suspension. I guess I'll go and visit him." Crystal eyes widened and glimmered with hope at the teacher's statement. Because, had he heard that right? Karma was also to be in this classroom along with him.
Watching his teacher gather her belongings and some books, Nagisa almost opened his mouth to stop her and tag along with her but a part of his conscience reminded him of their current state like a bucket of cold water.
His mouth snapped shut immediately
What was he thinking? Tagging along his teacher just so he could see Karma who most likely didn't even want to hear his name. He forced himself to get a grip of inexorable reality.
An unprompted sigh escaped his parted lips and his lips curled sadly. Well, he thought clutching his bag, at least he'll get to see Karma right? It was supposed to be more than not seeing him anymore, he could live with it.
Apparently, his smothered sadness wasn't missed by Okuda who flashed him a look which obviously asked him if he was okay.
He didn't know anymore. Was he?
~
"Shiota-sa-"
"Please call me by my first name."
Yukimura-sensei furrowed her eyebrows in question at the request and Nagisa sighed, "Well, my parents don't really have a good...connection so I'd like to be called by my first name." He hoped she would understand.
"Ah.." She let out a sound mixed between pity and understanding before trying again, "So, Nagisa-kun, was it?"
She placed the open notebook before him, "Your English is really nice. Your punctuations, grammar and wording skills are at point." Nagisa flushed slightly at the praise.
"But you really need to work on your spellings." She soon pointed out, the red underlined words and the real spelling written beside them with a short explanation. Nagisa chuckled awkwardly before his face twisted in a confused manner as he noticed that the explanations of the spellings were different than her usual ones.
He shrugged it off. Eh, it was probably her trying a new style of description. No need to look into it much.
~
"..and my sister's really annoying, kinda.." Yukimura-sensei tried her best to give them a clear picture of her sister. "..but she's nice too sometimes."
Nagisa sweatdropped at her attempt to describe her sister. Yukimura-sensei could give the longest lectures and sermons about binomials, albinism, civilization, history and Japanese poems without getting unmotivated. But when it came to real life, she was all but a jumbled mess on front of the class.
And it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Not at all. It just showed how willing she was to get closer to them and it warmed his heart.
"..the only thing similarity we have is our black hair.." She continued, chuckling awkwardly and perking up when questions were asked.
Today, the classroom was mostly vacant because of the seasonal flu and Nagisa and a couple of students were the lucky ones who didn't caught it. Yukimura-sensei was dead set on teaching only after the majority of the class was present so here she was, telling them about her life.
From the jumbled and blurted out mess of a description she was giving, Nagisa could pick up a few interesting ones.
Number one, Yukimura-sensei had a sister whom she loved dearly but had, like every sisterly bond, a complexity to not praise her too much. Number two, she had a fiancé whom she did not particularly like but she had no other choice but to be engaged to that one and number three, she worked as a part time teacher and researcher.
"Oh!" Miss Yukimura snapped her fingers, drawing attention from him again, "I'm also doing a really interesting research these days."
Sugino, one of the students Nagisa had been talking to recently, spoke up for everyone, "What kind of? What's it about?"
"It's about the secondary natures and how those natures directly affect our physical, mental, emotional and social health." She spread her arms wide, "And it's being tested in this super huge faculty with many scientists."
"My fiancé's also there." Her hands dropped to her sides.
A unanimous 'oh..' was sounded in the room and Yukimura-sensei swiftly changed the subject to her life status again.
~
"Yukimura-sensei! Are you okay?" Kataoka, the female class representative, asked, worry lacing both her expression and voice.
Nagisa was worried too. The whole class was. It had been the fifth time in a row that Miss Yukimura had had violent fits of cough and she even puked on the fifth one. That definitely wasn't a good sign.
Isogai looked like he was about to ask again but Hinano stopped him with a move of her own. "Are you sure Yukimura-sensei?" She rubbed her back soothingly while the older woman vomited in a polythene bag.
Isogai gazed at the figure of their slumped teacher who was trying to reassure them, "You should take a leave if you're sick, Yukimura-sensei."
Her warm hazel eyes widened in horror at his advice. "B-but, what about your studies? Your grades won't improve if there's no teacher here to teach you."
Hara frowned, "You shouldn't really put our studies before your health, sensei. Your well-being's more important." And it looked like everyone agreed with her.
"B-but.." She tried again, only to keen over and clutch her stomach.
Kataoka and Isogai helped her stand properly, with her wobbly legs and Tōka took out her phone, dialing a number as quick as possible.
"Miss Yukimura, the people from the hospital will be here soon. You're gonna be alright." Hara comforted her softly.
After a couple of minutes and a couple of coughing fits again, some people clad in white uniform carried the woman away, assuring them that she was in good hands.
Nagisa and the whole class hoped so dearly.
~
Yukimura-sensei had disappeared. Without a trace and hint of being kidnapped or escaping from the hospital where she was registered.
The police checked and rechecked the CCTV cameras for clues but all that they could find was when she was still in bed without any supervision and suddenly she's vanished with the curtain next to her waving wildly.
Some believed it was the work of some witchcraft because how the hell does a person vanish out of nowhere?
They slowed the footage to the slowest they could manage but the only thing they could see was the curtain flapping in slow motion and her breathing before her the IV's on her pulse were on the floor and the monitor showed a flatline.
After finding no hints of her hypothetical kidnapper or Yukimura, the police declared her dead.
The students were the ones affected the most, both academically and mentally. Her disappearance made them lose all the confidence they had finally gathered in her tutelage, the main building students not letting up with their bullying and mocking.
A substitute teacher took their classes in the most boring way possible and they weren't even consistent with their teaching. Then suddenly, a chunk of the moon got vaporized somehow after a couple of days after that incident, the lab where Miss Yukimura used to work destroyed in its wake.
"Hah.." Nagisa sighed wearily, exhausted from catching up on all those events. He heard the door opening and turned around to see a green-haired girl with a hundred mega-watt smile bouncing next to his seat.
"Hi! My name's Kaede Kayano! Nice to meet you." Nagisa was taken aback when he realized that she was talking to him, so he hurried to relpy, "Uh..yeah, Hello."
Her golden gaze landed on his hair as she pratically skipped to her seat, placing her bag on the desk. "Your hair's quite long, isn't it?"
He chuckled awkwardly, what was he supposed to say? "Yeah, I can't cut it..for reasons." He evaded the subject whenever it was called out, so his best bet would be to do the same now, new student or not.
She cocked her head slightly before reaching out for him. He instinctively flinched but a hand going through his hair made him open his eyes and look up.
"Tada! Now we match, don't we?" She cheerfully said, presenting his new hairstyle and it wasn't bad at all.
Although the lack of coverage made his scent glands be out open, this new hairstyle was refreshing like a fresh breath of air after such a long time in fumes of toxicity. It was bound and bunched up in two pigtails similar to the green head's hairstyle.
Moreover, it made him feel less insecure and feminine.
"Ah, thank you." He really was.
She smiled sweetly, "No problem! We're gonna be deskmates after all." Nagisa found her optimism something to admire in a situation like this one. He didn't really remember smiling much lately.
His lips quirked up in an unpremeditated curve at her buoyancy.
Hopefully, she wouldn't wither like all of them in the classroom after seeing the harsh treatment they go through.
Qotc: Which continent do you live in currently? I'm an Asian all the way~
This chapter, I procrastinated so much for this damned chapter and I'm not even sorry, lol. I rewatched some anime episodes for dialogues and dates of specific events so my mind's still a mess.
(I guess I'll be rewatching this anime for the tenth time but who cares? (*ﾉ▽ﾉ)
The next chapter's gonna take a whole year so don't even bother, lol. Jk, maybe. Idk.
Words: 1966 words
Stay tuned, don't forget to vote and comment~!
Bye~! ( ' ▽ ' )ﾉ