10. Assemble

"Holding down the fort, ma'am?" Nao called out soggily to the female teacher impatiently tapping beats at the windowsill.

"That Karasuma told me to stay," Irina growled rebelliously, " treating me as if I'm something feral, how dare he!"

Nao let out a hearty laugh, dropping his bottle on the table and pulling out a chair.

The kids were down the hill, hanging by main campus for what was their once-in-a-month school assembly. Karasuma had followed after as their chaperone and representative homeroom teacher, but he had given the female teacher stern reminders to not go down.

"What about you, not going?" Irina cast a cold glance over.

Nao raised an eyebrow at that. Irina hadn't much talked to him after their very first conversation-- one of an uninterested assassin speaking to a gullible civilian-- so to think irina was bringing up a conversation to him?

Irina had slowly transitioned into being a part of the class, but her first impression with Naomasa was one thing she had yet to fix. Maybe this was her first step.

"I won't be able to make the trip down and back up, so," Nao sighed, "I thought I'd join our mollusc friend for a chat of some sort, but he's nowhere to be seen either."

Irina hummed, not too amused. It was normal and boring, mundane. Did Kunomasu Naomasa ever have anything interesting going on with his life?

With a speedy octopus, a government combat agent and a high-class assassin as teachers, the normalcy of this teacher was something that stood out like a sore thumb. It was debatable if he even was necessary in their course. After all, with the careful balance of student-assassin teacher-target relationship in this school, Naomasa's presence may end up toppling the scales.

"Wait--" the thought suddenly hit her, "where's the squid?"

"He's an octopus, Ms Jelavic," Nao perked up lazily, eating something with a spoon-- was that ice cream? Where'd he get that-- "and I said, I couldn't find him, so,"

"He RAN!!" it hit her like a screaming train. When did that happen? Well, she wasn't exactly in charge of looking after the target but still, she was told to stay home why did he get to go-- "that's unfair! I'm going down there too!"

"For all we know, he could've just made a run to Bohemia or something, but--" Naomasa mumbled after the woman who was stomping right out the door, "--and, she's gone."

  ー  

Taking another scoop of the strawberry ice cream he stole from Korosensei's ice box stash, he hummed, finding the situation all but amusing.

This situation seemed familiar. Oh, is this the episode that--

"Oh! what's that, Kuma-sensei?" Karma came hanging by the window, leaning over casually as he cheerfully piped up.

Nao leaped, heart skipping a not-so-happy beat at the sudden ambush. Because holy hell if you were on an isolated mountain building thinking no one's around and suddenly a voice just comes out of nowhere who does not just scream and freak out--

"A-Akabane..." he held a hand over his chest, trying to calm the racing staccato of his frightened heart, "where did you come from?"

"I was sleepin' over there," he jabbed a thumb in a random direction, "what's that?"

Oh, right, Nao recalled, he skipped out on this supposedly compulsory assembly.

"Check out the Octopus' desk," Nao gestured with his chin, "hidden in the second drawer, under the secret compartment."

"Oh, sweet!" Karma clambered in, "you found where he hid it?"

"Shoes off, red devil," Nao murmured absent-mindedly, taking another generous scoop and swinging it under his tongue, "that Octopus can't lie for the life of him. Hush though, not a word about what I'm eating here."

Karma found himself a spot on Karasuma's seat, having dug up vanilla ice cream to match his daily dose of strawberry milk. Digging in quickly and excitedly like a child with a new candy, Naomasa found this side of the boy oddly endearing to witness.

"What're ya staring at?" Karma's attention swung to the teacher, who seemed surprised to have met his eyes. 

A smile crawled up. "No, just thinking that it's nice to just laze about sometimes," Nao sighed, "carefree, without worry."

Karma leaned in his seat, contemplative. He eyed the teacher as if carious-- yet, he made no move to show hostility against the teacher.

"What's that look for?" Nao chuckled.

"Kuma-sensei, you're a strange person," Karma's words surprised Naomasa-- "you always seem so deep in thought, so honest and yet so deceptive-- you talk like you know a lot, but at the same time, you seem to know little about a lot of things, too."

"Well, if that ain't an oxymoron," the teacher sighed. "You're being quite ambiguous, Akabane, it's hard to catch the point you're bringing across."

Karma seemed to laugh right back at that, "well, that's exactly how I feel about you, sensei!"

His cheer brought Nao's mood crashing right back down.

Ambiguous, obscure, and unsettling. Conflicting and elusive-- ah, was that what Karma felt about him? Or maybe it was something less negative. Something less... dissenting.

"You were on campus with the rest of those... that society," Karma chose his words carefully, "but you didn't fit in. You were the one teacher that had sanity, surrounded by the insane."

Nao gulped. Karma's eyes were sharp, gold and cold.

"Even up here, you're pretty much the same-- you're the reason in the madness. But a different kind of craziness, if you get what I mean," Karma chortled, amused at his own comparisons, "it's hard to say you fit right in here with the all of us."

Nao clenched his fist.

Yeah, he internally acknowledged, I don't belong here.

I was never supposed to make it up this mountain. To slot myself into this classroom that's so much complete as it already is. To become the odd one out that contributes nothing to this storyline-- I'm quite an unnecessary cog in this mechanism called the Assassination Classroom--

"Hey, sensei," Karma's voice sang in a sort of childish curiosity. Was he being mean? Was he being a bully? It was hard to tell-- maybe he was just being the blunt and honest smartass he was. And Nao was just an interesting specimen to him. 

Nao felt torn.

"Kuma-sensei, where on earth could you fit into?"

The ice cream in his hands had melted. All left of it was the milky, pink shade of manufactured pigments, and the strawberry-like sweetness of artificial flavours.

I don't know, he realized.

Where can I ever fit into, in this world?

She was dead, brought to life as another person. Among everything, that was anomalous. yeah, it sounded like a totally different kind of story. Even his genre stood out as alien in this world.

Nothing he had fit in.

He was a complete outsider.

"That's everyone's mission in life, Akabane," he scrounged for a teacher-like answer, keeping his calm, steadying his heart, "to look for their place in this world. I'm probably still trying to get there, y'know?"

His speech was fast. Rapid-- discomposed. If he looked up at the boy, perhaps, he would realize that he was near tears.

"That's super cheesy," Karma blanched.

And regardless of Nao's emotional discourse, they both busted into laughter, mutually acknowledging just how awkward  the previous conversation had flowed. Seriously, they were never going to do that again.

  ー  

"Seven days. That's how long I want you to stay in the hospital," Matsukawa was firm and accepting no rebuttal.

But Naomasa was going to give one anyways, "my students have their mid terms coming right up and--"

"Well, get a replacement," Matsukawa threw his hands up, exasperated.

"It doesn't work that way, you want me in tomorrow," Naomasa argued, pointing rudely, "you're supposed to hand in a letter of advance notice a week--"

"Ah, yes, that's about the time since my first call getting you in here," Matsukawa growled, "your students," he repeated, "are of lower priority than your heart."

"My heart isn't giving me nearly as many problems as my students right now!" Naomasa growled right back.

"So you would rather it start killing you before you start crawling in here?" Matsukawa raised his tone, "fuck-- I've contacted your boss and he's given me the green light!"

"You called my- what?!"  Nao jumped right up, "You called the Principal? Matsukawa, I'll have you know that that man--"

"Told me that your class has got teachers well capable of handling the language classes you're dealing with," Matsukawa gritted his teeth.

Nao flinched, realizing that that wasn't all that false. Irina could handle English-- and to begin with, Korosensei would be adapting the studies to a cram session from now on anyways--

Sitting down, he begrudgingly gave in.

He really didn't want to sit through the hospital surgery again. A hand clutching over his chest almost instinctively, he let out a shaky breath.

"Alright, then," he resigned himself.