'You're not coming to class anymore, are you?' Maehara had asked her before he left to return home that night.

It had been dark outside when he had eventually left, once Amaya had regained her composure and it had grown late enough for his mother to email him and request he return home right away.

The question had come out of nowhere, spoken with a brief pause of hesitation that didn't escape her notice.

Her answer was given with no thought, no true pause beyond the small breath that had escaped her.

'No.' She told him. 'I'm done with that place.'

He seemed accepting of that answer. In fact, he didn't seem all that surprised by her response at all.

'Are they... going to come erase your memories?' He then asked her.

It was a question that hadn't graced her thoughts in quite some time, prominent in some sense. But honestly?

'Probably not...' Amaya answered him before long. 'They didn't erase Takebayashi-kun's memories, after all.'

Toji was connected to Shiro, or whatever his name really was, and therefore, was connected to the classroom. Too many lines between her own nightmare of existence and that classroom was blurred.

She honestly doubted they could properly erase any memories she had without leaving gaping dead ends they couldn't fix. Hell, the threat of memory erasure may very well have been an empty threat, because how would kids know what secret technology was possible to call that bluff.

But if they actually could...?

It might be in her best interests if they did erase memories.

Maehara's departure was silent after that, pensive, apprehensive in spite of how he tried to keep his expression moderately blank. This whole situation was a disaster, a nightmare of hurt and betrayal, and there was nothing either of them could really do.

There was nothing she could do but try and stand her ground. And with every passing moment, every minute she tried, she hoped at the very least she could keep herself from drowning.

Her siblings didn't ask where Karma was when she walked back inside, or why all of his things were absent from the house.

They didn't ask why Amaya had new house keys for them, either.

Any any time Reiko had obviously slipped up and been about to mention his name, Yuta was swift and vicious in cutting her off before the words had fully escaped her.

It was clear that Yuta had either heard Maehara and Isogai talking about what had happened, or he figured out the basic gist of it all on his own. The older twin had clearly worked out a way they were going to manage this situation, and she wasn't inclined to interfere with whatever it was he had planned. Amaya wasn't about to ask, either.

But she appreciated it, none the less.

The rest of the night was cold and miserable, a perfect reflection of the discord inside the bounds of Amaya's sense of self. The hours trickled by sleeplessly, stretching onwards at a snails crawl until she eventually nodded off somewhere in the early hours of the morning.

Come morning, she was greeted with the cold, empty silence of apathy.

Through this curtain of apathy that numbed her emotions and stifled her wayward thoughts, Amaya's motions became calculated, her whereabouts routine.

She tended to her siblings needs and escorted them to school in person. She only left once she saw the three children walk through the main entrance of the very building itself, departing to spend part of the school hours locked away in the Tiger Fang Gym, where the presence of her classmates had already been banned. And when her exhaustion grew too much for Amaya for the day, she had relocated to a cafe nearby her siblings school and curled up in a booth in the back corner to wait for the hours to tick by.

Then, when her siblings were due to finish their afternoon activities at school just before dusk, Amaya was already standing out front of the school, waiting to escort them home.

And when they all arrived home, Maehara was sitting on the brick wall out the front of the house, patiently waiting for their return.

He stayed long enough to check up on her; he was worried after all. She understood why he was doing this, she understood he was concerned for her. But it was just digging in one of Karma's spat criticisms of her.

That she was liable to kill herself by accident if nobody checked in on her.

And it hurt, in spite of the fact that she understood that her friend really just wanted to be there for her.

Anger tainted things, poisoned thoughts and kindly intentions. She knew that, was aware of it moreso than she should be. It was why she had wanted to prevent Karma from going into that battle drowning in it, to prevent him from doing something he would later regret.

And in turn, his anger had poisoned her emotions and rend her thoughts to wire and rust.

Perhaps Maehara knew that, too.

Maybe that was why he checked in on her, but in a far more restrained, less involved manner than Karma would have done. Waiting for her to reach out to him instead of forcing his hand in hers to steer her elsewhere.

Eventually, Maehara had to bid himself farewell when the hours began to slip by, leaving with a warm, well-meaning smile and a gentle ruffling of Amaya's blackened hair on his way out.

The next day repeated in much the same manner.

Hours spent escorting her siblings to their various destinations, wasting the day away before returning to escort her siblings home.

The apathy had set in, leaving her numb.

And it compounded, strengthening with every passing hour.

She knew she couldn't keep going like this, wandering, wasting the passing days when she felt she had so few of them left to her name.

Day three passed her by in the same manner, with the same doubts and concerns peppering her bouts of numb wandering as she tried to keep herself as functional as she could. The day had been marred with Reiko and Samuel's questions about Karma's whereabouts, along with Yuta's frantic attempts at cutting them off before they could properly ask her.

And each afternoon, Maehara was casually sitting on the brick wall outside her house when Amaya returned. He never pushed the matter at hand, in spite of his usual upfront and adamant demeanor. He never got frustrated with the fact that she just, wasn't getting over this. But she could see that he really wanted to say a few things.

Though, for whatever reason, he was choosing not to.

'Have you got any plans tomorrow, Maya-chan?' Her friend asked her from his spot on the windowsill of her attic come Saturday evening, the fourth day since Amaya had begun this hollow routine of keeping herself afloat.

It hadn't even been a week since she had been back at that classroom, and yet it felt far longer.

'I don't know...' The girl had eventually answered. Her siblings didn't have school commitments on a Sunday, and she wasn't comfortable leaving them unsupervsed right now, so her movements reflected their own right now. 'It depends on what the siblings end up wanting to do.'

'You don't have to escort them absolutely everywhere, you know.' Maehara promptly remarked. 'Aren't you usually a lot more open to letting them do what they want?'

'Samuel is an eight year old boy who has only been in Tokyo since August.' Amaya informed him.

'Who happens to have the best pair of twin siblings to look after him while his biggest sister is busy.' He added.

It seemed like he really wanted her to say that she definitely was free, for whatever reason that was, she didn't know.

But admitting the main reason she wasn't comfortable with letting her siblings be unsupervised of late was a hard thing for her to do; the act of doing just that was akin to actually accepting the fact that she really had unwarranted paranoia controlling every action she took.

Having an attempted kidnapping take place recently wasn't excuse enough, apparently. Being "pursued" by Heinrich's friends in an attempt at getting in contact with her wasn't any better, either. And being from a classroom where assassins and whatnot of questionable morals frequented didn't hold any weight, either. These things weren't enough to shake her from the "paranoid" title, apparently.

...Well.

This mountain of issues she needed to work through was getting bigger by the second.

'If they're at a friends house, that's fine, right?' Maehara spoke up in question before long, slicing straight through Amaya's wandering train of thought instantly. 'Being within their sight every second isn't the problem, but the whole being unsupervised in public?'

'Hiroto-kun... I don't...' Amaya hesitated briefly as she struggled to find the words she needed. 'I need them in my sight outside at all times so I can drag them out of the way in time... I just don't have enough left in me to fix any catastrophes that happen anymore...'

She didn't miss the way he seemed to wince in response to her words, as if she had reminded him carelessly about a terminally ill relative. But faster than the grimace had appeared, it had vanished completely from Maehara's face. Immediately, Amaya knew without a shadow of doubt that Koro-sensei really had informed the whole class of her background... and more.

'That doesn't answer my question.' He informed her with a rather forced grin. 'If they're at a friends house, then you're fine to do other things, right?'

'I guess...' She admitted.

'Then you're free to come hang out for a while, right?' He pressed for her answer.

Silence.

Amaya wasn't going to pre-emptively agree to anything without fully knowing what she was signing up for.

'Maya-chan--'

'Don't force my hand on it.' She cut in quickly before she would wind up giving in; She could feel herself beginning to struggle to keep to her refusal with every passing second he urged the matter onward. 'Just... let me choose what the answer is going to be... please...'

Maehara was silent at first, before a sheepish look touched his features.

'I was starting to sound like him, wasn't I?' He seemed remarkably more upset the longer he stewed on her words. 'I'm sorry... I honestly wasn't going to twist your arm into anything.'

Maehara's brow furrowed all the more following Amaya's silence in answer.

'I just want you to do something other than forcing yourself into this isolation so much. It's not good for you.' He explained, furiously running a hand over the back of his neck as he struggled against the urge to curse himself, it seemed. 'A healthy distraction for a few hours is kind of an important part of bouncing back from a breakup, you know...'

Amaya could see the way her friend was trying to keep his words to the point without his bountiful wall of assertive energy propelling everything into chaos, and she appreciated it.

'You speak as if a breakup officially happened.' Amaya wryly pointed out.

'What he did practically was breaking up with you.' Her friend muttered sourly. 'Unfortunately, I'm rather well versed with how these things work.'

'Ah yes.' Amaya humored the bitter male as she reclined back in her egg-chair, forcing herself to ignore the pang of hurt the comment had inflicted. 'Isogai-kun did tell me about your rather long list of respective girls in the past.'

'See? I know how these things work.' Maehara huffed sourly from his spot on the windowsill. 'So you need to list--'

'He also told me about someone called Iwazaki--'

'HE DID NOT!!!' Maehara practically shrieked out in horror, startling the girl with little effort.

It didn't take Amaya long to adopt a sly smirk as she watched her friend march himself across the three meter space to glare down at her from close proximity.

'Oh yes, he did.' She reaffirmed as her friend practically glared daggers at her. 'Apparently Iwazaki-kun cosyed up to you to try and get close to Isogai-kun, but he wound up preferring you in the end. First year in Kunugigaoka, right? Around tanabata?'

'When did Yuuma tell you this?!' Maehara demanded.

'But am I right?' Amaya instead pressed for an answer.

'Maya-chan!'

'It was an offhanded conversation while you were running off to find a vet to look after the kittens over summer break.' Amaya answered after deciding she'd pressed enough of her friend's buttons for the time being. 'I think it was petty revenge for you outing him and Kataoka-san like you did.'

It was a few seconds before a dramatic graon escaped Maehara, and he dropped himself onto the edge of the egg-chair just by Amaya's feet.

'Okay, that's harsh... maybe.' The playboy grumbled, and his petulant mood was accompanied with a dramatic pout to go with it. 'He outed me for outing him. Actually, that's ... fair. Damn it...'

Amaya wasn't going to press for more information about this Iwazaki person, but she definitely filed the piece of information away as a good means to get a rise out of her friend in the future.

But as to his prior question...

'Let me think on it for the night.' Amaya eventually answered, earning a confused look from Maehara. 'I'll call when I have an answer... Is that good enough?'

'Oh. Yeah, it's fine.' The energetic male agreed with a small smile. 'That's better than an outright no.'

After her friend had left for the night and Amaya had consulted with her siblings about their plans, she eventually sent him an email informing her that she was free in the afternoon. It was promptly met with an assortment of celebratory emoji and an adamant demand that she had to meet him at a specific park nearby Kunugigaoka at 12pm sharp.

The following morning was spent in chaos, or at least, as confined a form of chaos as Amaya could maintain.

Her siblings gathered their belongings for a sunday slumber party at Mako's house following a chaotic breakfast that lead to more mess Amaya had to clean than fed siblings. Her already lacking patience following another sleepless night earned no ease from Reiko and Samuel's rowdy companionship, and following what was the fourth crash from upstairs, Amaya was about ready to call Mako's parents and cancel the whole outing altogether.

The only reason she hadn't was simply because she could actually hear Yuta trying to get the rambuncious two under control as best he could.

However, as soon as the bags had been packed, Amaya escorted them out the front door as quickly as she could manage, before Reiko and Samuel's whims wound up throwing the house into even more chaos.

The air was frigid as Amaya walked behind her three siblings, bringing a shiver over her as she huddled more within the material of her hoodie. Having her hands buried in her pockets did nothing to help the encroaching chill, no matter what she did. Unfortunately, the only clothes that she owned that weren't familiar to prying eyes was a mid-thigh skirt and leggings, much like what she wore that unfortunate trip from Moscow to Berlin. Her boots however, were the only shoes she owned that could keep up with any scuffles she may get involved in.

Perhaps she should look into some new clothes.

Her siblings chattered as they walked, all the way up to Mako's front doorstep several city blocks away from Karma's place with no pause between their words. Even as Mako's mother happily invited them inside, Reiko and Samuel's chatter continued with naught but a brief chorus of greetings before they scampered inside. Yuta paused briefly to say farewell before he too was safely behind the front door. Mako's mother had spared little more than a remark that she have a good day and shut the door in her face.

No surprise there.

The woman had never liked Amaya and her delinquent ways, and she made no effort to hide it when her siblings weren't in earshot of them.

A sigh escaped the girl as she checked the time and realized it was time to head back; It would take her easily half an hour to get to Kunugigaoka, and it was nearing 11.30 now.

If she turned up late, she was never going to hear the end of it from Maehara.

It was a short trip to reach the station, and thankfully the train itself was rather empty for a sunday. She'd taken the opportunity to sit herself down in one of the seats free and had taken to keeping her head down and browsing on her phone.

And it was for the best, she soon realized.

For as soon as the doors to the train had begun to close, a painfully familiar form had scooted straight through the very door just a few meters away. Even through the thin curtain of hanging hair veiling her view of her surroundings, she immediately recognized the glimpse of red hair she'd caught before she frantically snapped her gaze away.

This wasn't good.

She wasn't ready to face him, and he was definitely going to recognise her if she wasn't careful.

Quickly, Amaya's fingers worked to set her phone on complete silence to prevent any wayward glances if Maehara decided to call her, all the while she remained hyper aware of the redhead sluggishly dropping himself into one of the spare seats to her left. Just four seats away.

Amaya had to bite back against the flinch that threatened to shoot through her when he'd done so.

But she soon noticed that he seemed preoccupied, paying far to much attention to his own phone in his hand to have even looked up at her had she failed to keep her flinch in check. She found herself reluctantly glancing over through the gaps in her hair when he seemed to just stare down at his phone for longer than he normally would. Eventually, she saw him raise his phone to his ear, and she had to stop herself from wondering who it was he was calling.

But then her phone in her very hands lit up with an incoming call, immediately snatching up Amaya's attention within an instance.

Oh god...

He was calling her!

Amaya remained motionless as she stared apprehensively down at her phone, struggling to decide whether she should let the incoming call time out, or bite down on her hesitation and reject it. Let it ring out and risk him glancing over in time to see the screen of her phone? Or immediately reject it and have him actually put two and two together?

However, before she came to that decision, the call had timed out.

Amaya had to refrain from letting out a relieved breath when her phone's screen had returned to its dormant state, had to keep herself from looking away from it as she waited out this painful, uncomfortable train ride back to Kunugigaoka.

'Hey... Amaya?' All of a sudden, Karma's voice had pierced straight through the girl's thoughts, causing her breath to hitch painfully in her throat.

It took her a few seconds for her to realize he still had his phone to his ear.

'You're still ignoring me, huh?' He continued quietly, and it was now that she realzied that he sounded exhausted, and perhaps a little bit depressed, too. 'I don't know if you're listening to these or not, but it's the only avenue I've got right now... I get that you won't let me be around you right now... Yuta-kun's even told me to stop trying to reach you...'

So half of those messages on her phone were voicemail notifications, then?

'I know I messed up... there's nothing I can even do to try and make up for that. And at this point... sorry isn't going to cut it. I got that message loud and clear...' She heard the distinct hint of a waver in his voice, the exhausted edge in his tone shifting slightly as he took a shaky breath. He legitimately sounded as if his world had crashed around him over the span of the past week. 'You're... okay, right? Physically, I mean... You're not injured and you haven't starved yourself, have you? I know you don't eat when you're upset...'

It really hurt to overhear all this as he placed this voicemail to her.

It was painful to push this indifferent front to try and stop herself from giving in.

But she couldn't give in this time.

Not now...

'I'll give you as much time as you want... I promise... Days, weeks... months even, if that's what you want, Amaya...'

Liar...

He was far too impatient to wait for so long.

'Hurting you was the last thing I wanted... but I did, and I don't know what to do anymore...'

Amaya winced as she heard his voice tremble, bringing her to bite the inside of her cheek to maintain her silence.

'Amaya... what do you want?' He asked of her. 'What can I do...?'

She didn't know.

She couldn't even truly function anymore.

'Can you tell me...? Please?'

She didn't have the answer he was looking for.

And that haunted her more than the undeniable pain she could hear in his voice.

---=[Authors Notes]=---

Written roughly and unedited. Please forgive the errors.

I apologise if the chapters feel slow and unmoving. There is a certain set of pacing that this needs to go in. It's not filler, it's Amaya development.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed and I will hopefully have the next chapter out by Christmas. No promises though. I'll do my best though. And I will reply to comments later (I'm uploading on my lunch break at work so I don't have enough time sorry).

Kowareta Chinmoku - translates roughly as Broken Silences, written as 壊れた沈黙 in kanji if I'm not mistaken.

All the best everyone~!

<3 SnappyCockatiel / Amaris