Yuta and Reiko were horrified when Amaya returned home Tuesday evening.

Not only did Amaya come walking inside with a bag of take-out for dinner in hand, but her messenger bag was stuffed to the point of bursting its seams with books. Needless to say that the very moment Amaya cracked open an English book and proceeded to study, the twins had actually asked her if she was suffering from some terminal illness.

Of course Amaya shot them both reproachful looks and told them to eat their dinner as she looked back to her books.

She cursed Koro-sensei the whole night for putting such a spin on their midterms like that - she was actually looking forward to sleeping through them, until now.

Right now, she had to make certain that she could cram as much information inside her head to try and maximize her scores, lest she be the only one who doesn't make the top 50 and costs them the destruction of their classroom, and for their assassination target to suddenly take off to while away the time until the end of the school year.

Come ten that night, Amaya picked her books up and relocated to her bedroom, where she took up residence on her windowsill and continued self-study there.

On and off through the late hours leading into Wednesday morning, Amaya would glance over at Karma's apartment.

Like she'd expected, the smug bastard was just lazing about in his room doing whatever, and she expected he'd still do really well in the midterms anyway. There was one point where she'd glanced over, where the smart-ass noticed and shot her a mocking look in response.

Sometimes she really hated just how capable at anything and everything the jerk really was.

But of course that was only because she was horribly flawed in comparison.

Once she had finished studying as much as she could, she re-emerged from her room to begin her morning preparations.

Yuta had finally forgotten all about his little tantrum and banning her from making obento every morning, as she knew he would. So with a sleepy yawn, Amaya set to work.

Amaya had no idea how midterms were going to turn out for Class E, however she did remember from the way midterms ended up last year, and how last year's Class E turned up right on time without going to the mountain campus.

So she guessed it was the same for this year.

With a yawn from a lack of sleep, Amaya got herself organized shower and all, and proceeded to leave for school.

It was purely by coincidence that when she boarded the train at her station, that she bumped into Isogai and Maehara. The duo of course were on their way to Kunugigaoka, and Isogai confirmed that they were to just head straight up to one of the classrooms with a sign reading "End Class" on the door.

It was walking from Kunugigaoka station to the main campus that the three of them bumped into a large portion of the rest of the class.

Most greeted Maehara and Isogai fondly, and the average response to Amaya was a polite nod of the head with a 'hi'. Of course it didn't necessarily bother Amaya, who was a bit too tired to notice much to begin with.

She felt about as drained as when the twins ambushed her with an Algebra assignment last Thursday.

There was a single, battered and unkempt pin-up board displayed in the main courtyard of Kunugigaoka's main campus, off to the side where it didn't come to the notice of anyone except for Amaya and the rest of Class E.

The pin-up board had a single timetable on it, that of which Amaya could read without even wandering the three or so meters over to it.

End Class Midterms

Room 205, East Wing

1st Period: Maths

2nd Period: English

3rd Period: Japanese

4th Period: Science

5th Period: Home Economics

Of course it was Maths for first period - Amaya sighed as she made her way along with everyone else to their allocated classroom, which would of course be accompanied with a disgusting swine of a so called teacher she'd love to kick in the face.

She did wonder in an offhanded manner if she was developing an anti-teacher habit.

Stair after stair, Amaya felt her heart continue to sink into her stomach.

At least until she got to the magical door labeled 205 with a scrap piece of paper with the words 'End Class' written on it, and saw which teacher was apparently going to be supervising their exam.

In all his egotistical, swaggering pollution was Pseudo-sensei, who was leaning against the teachers desk with his arms crossed over his chest as he leered at the students already taking their seats inside.

Amaya couldn't help but blink, stunned at the door as Maehara and Isogai entered inside without even noticing her hesitation.

Pseudo-sensei was supervising?

For real?

Was this some kind of joke?

Amaya struggled to comprehend why it was organized this way, but as she began to break out of her stupor, a grin began to appear across her face.

This must be some kind of screw-up with the teacher allocation for the day. There was no way this was done on purpose.

Who in their right mind would put this teacher in charge of supervising Class E when the very girl who'd humiliated him so badly was a student of said class?

But she wasn't complaining.

In fact, she was starting to get really, really excited about the screw-up.

There was no doubt in her mind that this was going to be even better than the idea of tormenting him at Assembly - The guy couldn't run away without it being obvious that he was uncomfortable around her!

Instead of this asshole tormenting everyone for the next hour, Amaya got the opportunity to mess with him instead.

This was probably the one and only Maths Exam she would actually enjoy.

She was immediately thanking Karasuma for banning her from that Assembly after all.

And now she knew exactly what kind of evil she was going to be today.

Plastering the biggest, most sweetest smile she could manage, Amaya linked her hands behind her back and strolled comfortably into the room.

'Ehh? Pseudo-sensei!' Amaya called out in a bright tone of voice, causing a few of her classmates to look over at her in surprise. 'I didn't know you were going to be supervising our class today!'

However her intended victim actually turned rigid where he stood, that smug look replaced immediately with grim understanding.

A suddenly present Karma snickered as he walked past Amaya to go take his seat in the back of the classroom.

'Did Katsuragi-san just call Ono "Pseudo-sensei"?' Sugino asked in a hushed whisper as he looked at Nagisa.

The blue-haired boy nodded his head cautiously as Amaya walked right up to the rather nervous looking teacher.

Well, that answered the ongoing curiosity of what this disgusting man's name really was.

'How are you doing, Pseudo-sensei?' Amaya asked in the very same jovial manner that Koro-sensei almost always spoke in, her smile growing as she saw the man twitch at the sight of her.

'K-Katsuragi ...' Ono spoke grudgingly as he glared at her in a rather desperate attempt at intimidating her. 'I thought you were expelled.'

Of course Amaya could smell the nervous sweat that was beginning to overcome him, and from the snickering in the back of the room, Amaya knew it wasn't just her who could tell the man was nervous right now.

'Nope! As you can see, I'm fine and well! I didn't even get suspended or any detention at all.' Amaya responded, laying on the pleasant tone of voice real thick as she saw Ono's eye twitch. 'I am sorry you didn't succeed in getting me expelled - Would you like me to give you another excuse to try?'

Amaya saw Maehara whirl around to gape at her from the corner of her eye.

It looked like he just joined the dots.

However, much to everyone's alarm and Amaya's amusement, Ono actually flinched in response to her words whilst a hand flew up to point frantically at the desks behind her.

'Take your seat right now!' Ono practically yelped out, causing Amaya to snicker.

'Aww! I just--'

'RIGHT NOW!' Ono yelped out at the top of his lungs, causing a snicker to escape Amaya as she linked her hands behind her back.

'As you wish, Pseudo-sensei~!' She drawled out as she turned on her heel to head to her seating placement next to Karma.

The redhead was thoroughly amused - He was actually trying very hard not to start laughing at the nervous waste of space in the front of the room.

'Having fun?' Karma asked her quietly, mischief dancing in his eyes as he turned to look at her.

'You have no idea.' Amaya responded, still snickering to herself as she leaned back in her chair.

'He's going to panic every time you make a sudden move, you know.'

'Even better~!' Amaya hummed out as she turned her head to look at Karma. 'I was going to ask if you wanted to help torment him.'

'Eh? I don't think I need to.' Karma remarked as he glanced over at the nervous man almost cowering behind the desk. 'It's more fun watching you mess with him right now.'

'Huh. And here I thought you liked to be the one humiliating people.' Amaya responded with a wry smile.

'Well yeah, but I'm not the one he's actually scared of.'

'True.' Amaya agreed, casting a glance towards the front of the classroom as the starting bell chimed with gross familiarity.

'Your time starts now --- Pass those around and get started.' Ono barked from the front of the classroom as he carelessly dropped a thick wad of paper onto Isogai's desk.

Amaya felt herself glaring at the disgusting swine, who was making a purposeful act of keeping his gaze away from the back half of the classroom.

Yep, she was going to do poorly on this test anyway, so might as well keep this waste of space in check so that everyone else can concentrate.

It was as soon as Amaya had been passed her maths papers by a nervous Okuda that Ono had decided to make his first move into screwing with Class E.

He sat all lazily in his chair at the front of the classroom, eagle-eyeing everyone as they began to work on their papers.

Exams were supposedly like monsters to the nervous, and it was true to an extent. Each question felt like a separate monster to the nervous, intimidating beyond belief and likely to break one's concentration at any moment.

Amaya would be in the same boat for this exam, if she had not already reasoned with herself that her maths was going to be terrible anyway, so there was no point in stressing too much about it.

Just fill in the answers that she knew, give a short minute's thought to the others, and then just leave the ones she couldn't answer blank, or fill in some smart-assed comment in the answers place instead.

In fact, filling in smart-assed comments for all the answers was actually very tempting, but she wouldn't do that.

She needed the answers she did know to be marked correct.

Again, for what was probably the tenth time that week, Amaya was cursing the brainy red-head sitting next to her, who was just casually filling in the answers on his paper without so much as a thought.

Smug bastard was probably going to get 100pts for this one.

However everyone else in the classroom was beginning to stress.

It was probably the whole deal where Koro-sensei was going to bail if they didn't do well.

She swung her feet slowly, a small tune echoing in the back of her head as she filled in answers and flipped to the next page.

At least until a loud, annoying tapping began to echo from the teachers desk in the room.

Amaya lifted her gaze curiously to find that Ono was still eagle-eyeing everyone except for her, a disgusting, obnoxious smirk across his face as the odd student or two twitched while they tried to focus on their exams.

It was only a matter of moments until he'd -

'Just because you're in class E doesn't mean I'll let you cheat!' Ono barked all of a sudden, causing a good half of Amaya's classmates under pressure to flinch. 'We real teachers are keeping an eye on you so you won't pull anything.'

Immediately in response to those words, Amaya started snickering in her seat.

And hilariously enough, the teacher actually looked up at her with an edge of belligerence.

He still continued his tapping, which seemed to get louder out of petulance.

Hah, it was oddly appropriate for an obnoxious, disgusting teacher like that to become petulant when his so called authority wasn't acknowledged by the one student he had a problem with.

So, after recalling Karma's remark about sudden movements for a few seconds, Amaya lifted her arms above her head and stretched.

It was as she suddenly dropped them back to her table that Ono jumped, and his tapping stopped.

Karma glanced up curiously, however a wicked smile touched his face as soon as he realized what was going on.

That obnoxious tapping resumed a few minutes later, when Ono had obviously felt comfortable enough that he wasn't going to get a foot to the face for breaking their concentration.

It was on Amaya's second flick through the exam to make another attempt at the questions she skipped, when everyone seemed to calm down, and they began to fill in the answers of their exams as their confidence began to return.

Much to Amaya's amusement, Ono actually looked rather startled, glancing around at the many students that were making headway into their exam.

His eyes seemed to widen in fright as he glanced at Amaya and found her staring at him with a mocking smile.

She was exhausted beyond belief from all that studying, and the day had just begun. So she was going to take her frustrations out on this man, and make a mockery of him.

She wanted to force the facts into his skull and make sure he remembered for a fact that he was not as important and great as he believed he was.

She wanted to make damn sure that he understood she was going to forever make his life a living hell on these small instances that he had to deal with her class.

From right next to her, Karma cast her an amused smile as he flicked to the next page of his exam.

However it was as everyone else seemed to turn the page of their exam that their confidence came crashing down on them.

Amaya wasn't entirely sure why, but that was probably because she'd accepted the worst for herself anyway. It wasn't like she was getting her hopes up on this single exam, so she wouldn't understand, anyway.

All she guessed was that they'd found a trick question that the administration would have hidden away in the exam.

She shrugged to herself as she filled in the answer for Question 11, and moved onwards.

As everyone's despondence came crashing back down over them, heavier and heavier the more time passed, that obnoxious tapping resumed, and more-so, Ono started snickering to himself as he resumed his act of terrorizing the class.

'What's the matter?' He eventually asked in a patronizing, mocking tone after a good ten minutes of non-stop tapping and snickering, gloating at the poor students who were crumbling under the emotional strain. 'Didn't your pathetic excuse of a teacher cover this with you?'

Yep, there was obviously questions thrown in deliberately to ruin their chances of having a true reflection of their knowledge.

It was disgustingly obvious to Amaya as she decided to put a stop to this man's disgusting noise-pollution.

She let out a breath as she lifted herself from her seat, ignoring the curious look Karma shot her.

Immediately, the tapping stopped, and Amaya felt a wary gaze fall upon her as she straightened up and began to walk towards the front of the classroom.

She buried her hands in the pockets of her pants as she trained her gaze upon the man's face.

However it was much to Amaya's amusement to note that she didn't need to get more than half-way towards the front of the class before the familiarity got too much for Ono.

In a frantic attempt at putting more distance between himself and a student who'd physically sent him to hospital before, he ended up falling backwards over his chair.

Of course Amaya came to a stop in front of the sprawled man, her hands still buried in her pockets as she stared down at him.

'Do you mind keeping it down, Pseudo-sensei?' Amaya asked quietly, placing her weight on her right foot as Ono stared up at her. 'Everyone's trying to concentrate on their exam, and here you are, trying to reenact some kind of terrified school-girl tripping over her own feet. Are you practicing for an audition or something?'

Ono kept his mouth glued shut as Amaya shot him a rather malicious grin.

'If you'd like, I can help make your little act as realistic as possible? Easy as -- It won't be very different from when I tried to help you get me expelled, after all.'

Silence - Amaya felt certain from the look of understanding across the man's face that she'd managed a job well done, so she shot him a sweet smile as she turned on her heel to head back to her desk.

The room was deathly silent, however it wasn't because everyone was staring at the scene that had just unfolded - apart from a thoroughly entertained Karma, a horrified Isogai and Maehara looking like he wanted to hug her right at that moment, everyone else was focusing on their exam.

Sugaya shot her a thankful glance as she walked past his desk to return to her own.

Amaya sat down in her seat, pleased beyond belief with humiliating Ono yet again in front of a class full of students. She made it her goal in life to continue making his life a living hell whenever she had the opportunity.

Deciding her work was done for now, Amaya made a half-assed attempt at finishing her exam before the bell rung with deafening clarity.

Ono made a very quick job of snatching up all of the exam papers before rushing out of the door, obviously quite wary of Amaya and her very honest threat.

He knew from personal experience that when she made a threat like that, she would honor it.

Much to Amaya's amusement, the disgusting man never came back to supervise the next exam. Sakamoto, who was Amaya's homeroom teacher last year came instead to supervise the class.

And unlike how Ono mocked and taunted the class, Sakamoto remained silent for the remaining four periods that Ono was obviously supposed to be supervising instead.

Which was good, because Amaya needed to concentrate for the other exams in order to do her best.

By the end of the midterm exams come the recess between fifth and sixth period, there was an uncertain edge to the air about the class as they made their way to their classroom, minus Isogai and Kataoka, who had to stay back to bring the marked exams back with them. Amaya stifled a yawn as she followed at the back of the group, several paces behind Karma, who was walking with his hands linked behind his head.

Amaya didn't know what questions were new and what weren't after her straight nine hours worth of extra study, but from the gloom that she could detect in some, there were a lot of them, and everyone's spirits were low, except for Karma of course who just looked bored.

The smart ass probably only got ten questions wrong all day.

She'd be horrified if he got more than twelve wrong, and if he couldn't get a perfect score in Maths then she would know for a fact that the exams were marked wrong.

After what felt longer than normal to get to the classroom, Amaya wandered inside and collapsed at her desk.

She let out a yawn as she folded her arms over the coarse, wooden surface and rest her head upon her arms before she closed her eyes.

Amaya was determined to sleep through the entirety of sixth period before making her way back home to collapse.

'Man I'm tired...' Amaya groaned out as she yawned for what was probably the fifth time in just as many minutes.

'That's what you get for not sleeping at all, Amay.' Karma's mocking voice echoed in response, causing the sleepy girl to peel open her eyes and squint at him.

He had taken up his seat at his desk, and was looking at her in amusement.

'What are you? A stalker?' Amaya mumbled as she closed her eyes and snuggled a little more over her desk.

'I'm not the one who spends all my time at home siting on the windowsill.'

Amaya let out a small mumbling groan of annoyance as she felt Karma poke the exposed part of her face that wasn't buried in her arms right at that moment.

'Shut up, it's comfy ...' Amaya mumbled.

Unfortunately for Amaya, her attempt at sleep was ruined by Kataoka and Isogai's return with the marked exam sheets.

She knew this, because she heard the uncomfortable silence in the air appear in an instant.

'Katsuragi-san.' Isogai's voice spoke up all of a sudden, causing the sleep-deprived girl to groggily lift her head up.

The Ikemen was casting her a kind smile, a bundle of exam papers in his grip.

'Ohai ...' Amaya mumbled as she rubbed her eyes with one hand.

'Here, this is yours.' Isogai responded as he gently handed her an envelope with her name on it.

'Th-thank you ...' Amaya responded, her words broken by an impatient yawn that escaped her.

Isogai didn't say anything in response, and before Amaya knew it, he had moved on to continue handing out the results.

Amaya rubbed her eyes absent-mindedly as she opened the envelope and began to glance over her papers, too tired to notice the gloom that began to overcome the class one student at a time.

She paid no attention to the cover-sheet that had intricate, size ten font and squiggly handwriting that she had no energy to decipher.

Instead, she looked at the top right corner of each page for a couple of seconds.

Mathematics: 37pts

English: 92pts

Japanese: 96pts

Science: 76pts

Home Economics: 80pts

She was surprised she even scored above 10 points in maths, let alone managing 37 points, and after a few long seconds of sleepy thought, she just shoved the pages back in the envelope and slumped back over her desk.

Right now she didn't care what she scored or even what placement in the total 186 students she got.

She just wanted to sleep.

'Amay?' Karma's voice spoke up almost as soon as she closed her eyes.

She tried to ignore the guy and pretend she was asleep, but of course he wasn't falling for it.

She learned of this with the sharp jab of a poke to her side, though for once she didn't respond.

'What...?' She mumbled.

'What'd you get for all that studying?' He asked her, his tone oddly thoughtful despite his usual move towards mocking her relentlessly for her scores.

Instead of actually answering him, Amaya just passed him the envelope without even opening her eyes.

'Eh? Did you even read them?'

'Nap time now ...' Amaya responded, snuggling her face into her arms yet again.

There was no real response to her words, and at long last Amaya could feel herself beginning to fall asleep.

At least until the door slid open, and the small moment of chattering in the class cut off suddenly enough to jerk Amaya out of her daze.

Realizing that one of the faculty have entered the classroom, Amaya sleepily dragged herself upright to prop her chin upon an upturned hand instead.

She blinked sleepily as she found that Koro-sensei had returned to the classroom, however he wasn't jovial like normal, neither was he even facing the class.

The air of gloom was increasing ten-fold over the room, causing a sigh to escape Amaya.

Someone obviously didn't get into the top 50, and Amaya was willing to bet it was her.

Though just herself not making the top 50 of 186 students didn't fit the overwhelming gloom that had overcome the room.

So what had happened?

'I take all responsibility. I seem to have underestimated the system at this school.' Koro-sensei eventually spoke up, his tone grave as he kept his gaze upon the blackboard.

Gosh, he was talking like one of the students had died while under his care.

'I can't bear to face you.' Koro-sensei trailed off, and silence remained in the place of his words.

Amaya could feel her eyes once again drooping closed on her, when she heard the chair right next to her shift ever so slightly.

And then a startled yelp escaped Koro-sensei had to side-step an Anti-Sensei knife flying straight for his head.

'You sure?' Karma drawled out in a taunting tone of voice as he rose to his feet, causing everyone to look towards him as he began to approach the front of the class. 'If you can't face us, you can't see us coming to kill you.'

'Karma-kun!' Koro-sensei exclaimed as his face turned just as red as the boy's hair, an arm-tentacle raised as he tempermentally retorted. 'I'm very depressed right now, and- Hmm!?'

He cut himself off as Karma just dumped a set of papers on top of his desk, his face immediately changing to his natural yellow as Amaya slowly closed her eyes.

'Nyuwah!?' Koro-sensei exclaimed as he actually looked at the pages.

'Changing the questions didn't matter to me.' Karma remarked in a rather matter of fact way, and immediately there was a chorus of voices letting out shocked gasps, and sounds of awe as they all rose to their feet.

Amaya however remained seated at her desk, her eyes closed as she began to nod off to sleep once again.

'Whoa!' One student sounded in awe.

'100 in math? No way!' Isogai stated in amazement.

'With my grades, you taught more than you had to.' Karma explained to a shell-shocked Koro-sensei as everyone else listened in silence. 'So I could handle the questions even if they'd changed their scope.'

Of course ...

'Still, I won't be leaving. Assassination is way more fun than going back to my old class.'

'Really?' One of the boys asked in surprise.

'And there's something else you should know, Koro-sensei.' Karma added with a smirk in his tone of voice.

There was another set of fluttering sheets being tossed through the air, only to be caught this time before they hit the desk.

'Is this ...!?' Koro-sensei seemed shocked at whatever it was that Karma had shown him.

'There's someone here who's never studied once in her whole life until yesterday.' Karma spoke up, a smirk playing in his tone of voice. 'And yet after your announcement yesterday, she hasn't slept at all just to make sure she could make the cut regardless.'

'Katsuragi-chan got placed at fifty?!' Maehara exclaimed in shock.

'Wait - Those are her papers?!' One of the girls gasped out.

Amaya groaned as she realized that nobody was going to damn well let her sleep, so she opened her eyes to frown at the mass of students staring at her from around Koro-sensei's desk.

'So, what's the plan? You gonna use our not all making it into the top fifty as an excuse to turn tail and run?' Karma spoke up as he leaned in to smirk at the stunned Koro-sensei as he stared down at the mass of papers on his desk. 'You're just afraid of being killed, that's all.'

Amaya smirked sleepily as she watched.

It appeared that the other students had caught on to what Karma was up to from the smirks they were shooting each other, especially when Kataoka elbowed Maehara in the arm gently.

'Oh, is that it? You were afraid!' Maehara taunted the shocked teacher as he linked his hands behind his head with a smirk.

Thus began a whole chorus of teasing remarks from the students, each word causing more annoyance to overcome the yellow creature with visible effect - His face quickly turned bright red again.

And then his composure vanished on him, his tentacles flailing dramatically in the air as he let out an exclamation of 'I am not running away!'

'Oh? Then what?' Karma questioned in mock curiosity.

All of a sudden, Koro-sensei regained his composure in reaction to those words, and he held up an arm tentacle, with one finger lifted as he spoke.

'We'll get revenge on them twofold in the end-of-term exams!' He announced.

Immediately, everyone burst into laughter, startling Koro-sensei with little effort.

Amaya let out another yawn as she began to filter everything out.

Well, at least their teacher wasn't going to run away, just yet.

Amaya finally nodded off to sleep as everyone resumed their previous task of teasing Koro-sensei.

---=[Authors Note]=---

Aaaand guess what? Because I was itching to humiliate Pseudo-sensei some more, here is the next chapter in less than 12 hours. I'm certainly on a roll, huh? xD I hope y'all enjoyed xD

Still itching for votes on the question of english chapter titles or keeping the romaji - lemme know so I have a greater idea of everyone's preferences xD

Chapter dedication this time around is for Tanilovesanime, who's voted on every chapter, and even commented and followed me as well :D Thank you very much for the story love, hun! I hope you've enjoyed this chapter :D

Anyways, just one word translation for this chapter:

Kutsu - Translates as Torment, written as 苦痛 in Japanese :D