19. Rain

A hand clenched over his heart, he sucked in a breath.

The muscle tightened painfully, tearing like it was trying to squeeze it to gooey bits-- it hurt like a searing burn that only got worse with each breath, each flow of a single red blood cell, each pump of a heartbeat only thrummed an agonizing gong in his chest.

Doubled over the desk, his knees losing strength, his eyes squeeze shut as the pain overtakes his sight, and blinds him to his surroundings.

He hears something crash, and realized his arm had knocked something over. His lips bleed from how hard he's biting them, but the laceration inside his chest is so great he feels nothing.

He wavers, knowing he should clean up that pot that shattered-- but his head was on the ground, and he didn't get back up.

  —  

"We can keep trying to fix you, but--"

"I'm fine," Naomasa firmly insisted, sitting up on his bed, watching his IV end, "it's fine."

Matsukawa didn't like the sharp response, but he didn't have anything he could speak back. He didn't have an alternative, a remark, a lecture prepared-- not even a consolation.

"Just don't," Nao considered with hesitation in his core, "don't... tell Ms Sakurai."

Matsukawa's grip on his pen tightened, a stiff edge to his scribbled notetaking, irritated. He didn't have to right to keep such a promise-- but Naomasa was his own legal guardian, and he had no more family to speak for.

Naomasa was an adult, no longer a child.

"Then, who can I tell?" he challenged, hopeful. "Your older brother?"

Nao's teeth gritted, and he frowned, "don't tell him," the answer came almost expected. "I don't want him to know. I don't want him to come," he seethed, "I want him to come back, see me dead, and wallow in his disgusting regret for leaving me behind."

Matsukawa actually laughed at that.

"Sibling rivalry is present even in this family, eh?"

Matsukawa fucking hated all of the Kunomasu family. 

First, the free-range older sister that held no concept of self preservation. Then, the older brother that jumped into hellfire like a suicidal maniac and somehow ended up with a medical degree. Matsukawa now had to deal with the youngest sibling, who was mentally a teenager in his rebellious phase but was probably some monster (zombie) in disguise.

However, he guessed he should at least tell Naomasa's colleagues about it, so they'd know to watch over him.

  —  

"You seem to haven gotten rather... attached to the students in the satellite campus," Asano Gakuho mused, hands folded under his chin, his slick grin making him more serpentine than ever, "please, tell me what you think about them."

It was raining outside, loud and sharp like pelting hail in the dead of the monsoon-- yet, on a weekend, Naomasa found himself summoned to the office, and with the weather, he couldn't leave anytime soon. Well, he guessed it was alright...

Naomasa kept his hands at his lap, sat down on the chair he was provided. 

The chair, something about how he'd heard his health was deteriorating and the board chairman was concerned for him, thus didn't want to strain his well-being when it wasn't necessary to--

Naomasa cleared his throat, swallowed, and took a deep breath.

"If you were to ask me simply what I thought about them," Naomasa began, nervous but deciding to be honest, "in an educational perspective, I do think they could become decent pupils in a normal government school, at their current state. However, as they are, they do nothing but bring down our school's ratings."

Asano hummed, indicating he should keep talking.

"In contrast, students in main campus who had originally been on the weaker end of the story are getting increasingly pressured by their studies," Naomasa stated his observation, "the fear of the E class becomes void, and they seem to lose their academic motivation, if they believe it hopeless to keep striving. It rather pains me to admit, but if the E class keep improving, it may result in consequent troubles for the hierarchy system in this school, and for the students' individual futures as well."

Nao didn't look up to see Asano's face this time, lost in a thread of thought--

"It may be effective if we abolished the E class system for now and see how things play through, but the situation with the Target on the Hill seems to make it impossible," he muttered, "after all, I can vouch clearly for the fact that that Octopus is the main cause for this change-- he is, at the end of the day, a passionate, yet skillful teacher."

Naomasa turned toward the cabinet of trophies at the corner-- and somehow, the empty, large room seemed lonely. It described the principal very well. Large, powerful, and full of treasures-- yet, to the eyes, it seemed hollow as the image of solitude.

"Kunomasu-sensei," Asano spoke up, alarming the younger male. "You are quite an enigma, aren't you?"

Nao flinched to face the Board Chairman, "wha-- why, do you say so... sir?"

Asano chortled rather amused by the younger teacher's nervous reaction. It was a rather interesting contrast to the previous muttering bout.

"You don't seem to be fully in agreement with my methods," Asano didn't doubt this at all, "and you also seem rather fond of your students and coworkers in Class E." 

Nao's fist clenched, did Asano think my answers were much too textbook?

"You are a passionate one yourself, and you make the effort to teach wherever I command you to go," Asano was, perhaps, praising the young teacher, "yet, I sense no lies and no dishonesty in your tone as you speak of your class negatively."

Nao was riled. He was being doubted? 

Actually, he also feared the aspect of accidentally offending the Board Chairman and getting fired from the job, actually he was already a nervous wreck thinking this meeting was just for a sendoff notification letter to be passed--

"Sir, I respect you," he clarified quickly, "your experience, your school, it is a wondrous educational platform right out of fantasies, and it wouldn't have been a possible creation without you, who excels at what you do. I admire you sincerely, despite my utter dislike of the discrimination in this school."

Asano was a smart man, just terribly misguided by lost hope, and odd luck. Warped by a painful lost, terrified by past mistakes.

In a way, Naomasa felt emotionally empathetic for this man.

They were both pathetic little crybabies that were afraid of getting hurt again.

At that, Asano actually chuckled, "well, that is rather frank of you!" he was greatly entertained, "you flatter me very much, don't you?"

"In any other situation I would love to stand by your side," Naomasa shamelessly declared, "I might have worked my way up if I could, just to see if I could change anything from another perspective. There are no flaws in your concept that necessarily need to be changed, after all."

"Then," Asano eyed Naomasa clearly, a stern challenge directed in that scrutinizing gaze, "why do you still stand on the other side of the court?" 

Why do you still go against me, when you've proven yourself worthy of being up here with me? Driven to your last candles, why do you still stand and pretend to be strong? You are a feeble being fighting your last round on the field-- yet, you stand with the less hopeful?

An oxymoron, Naomasa mused. Ironic.

"If the moon hadn't blown up," Naomasa admitted, "and this school was without that strange situation in the mountain, things would never change. Not for you, not for me... and not for that old school building."

The image of Korosensei flashed to mind, and Naomasa burned with a slightly different resolve now. 

"But, that teacher up there is... different," Naomasa didn't have a better word to describe this at all. "He's stronger than me, stronger than you, and he's capable of protecting things he doesn't want to lose again. He's going to change and disrupt everything you've worked to create-- and I'm afraid, it's inevitable."

"So, you're implying... I would lose?" Asano didn't sounded rather offended-- "you?"

Naomasa flinched. Now, his breath held painfully, nervous. Letting it out shakily, he didn't manage to come up with the will to lift his head.

"You've changed, Kunomasu-sensei," Asano was stoic. His smile was one that seemed to never fade, yet changed rapidly. It grew eerie, creepy-- then, happy, yet, rather sad. Disappointed? Or perhaps, oddly pleased?

Naomasa couldn't understand him.

"I haven't changed," he could only offer a sad smile, and hope the emotions would pass through words-- "I've always been sitting down, in one spot," the rain seemed a little too loud, "going with the flow, like the coward I am."

How Asano took that line, Naomasa didn't know. The flicker in his expressions was of a brief confusion-- then a dimming of something akin to understanding--

"What do you think, honestly," Asano decided, "of Korosensei?"

Naomasa paused. He was rather sure he'd answered something similar already. Was this a test? Or perhaps-- Asano was expecting something more? Something out of the educational perspective... an honest, personal opinion?

Thinking his answer through once more, "he's a kaleidoscope," he decided to say, chuckling in embarrassment at the childish metaphor, "we all see through it differently, yet, we're endlessly awed by it."

"Unfathomable," Asano supplied like it was a question.

"Yet, its beauty is fleeting," Naomasa agreed.

Asano chortled in a casual laughter, standing up from his seat and approaching the teacher in an easygoing manner. Without hostility, laid back-- 

brimming with the authority of a murderer.

"He is much like you in that manner, Kunomasu-sensei," Asano put a hand on the teacher's shoulder, like a jolt back to reality.

Naomasa was stiff, and his throat was sticky. His neck was drenched in cold sweat, and his eyes feared to blink. His heart-- he felt a painful pulse, and focused to calm it down.

"Your doctor, Mister Matsukawa, was he?" Asano brought up the topic, "he's informed me of the details of your condition, and I would extend my greatest condolences to you, Kunomasu-sensei."

Naomasa clenched his heart almost on instinct, "please, sir, it is of meager importance," he justified, "I'm grateful enough that you still take me in as a teacher in this school, but--"

"Kunomasu-sensei," his hands slammed hard on the chair's back, both arms secluding the younger teacher as he leaned in much too close for comfort-- "do you know why I sent you up to that class?"

Naomasa's eyes were barely an inch before the Board Chairman's-- near enough to feel his breath, and the teacher clenched the bottom of the seat, terrified.

It was like being cornered prey.

"I wished to retain our principle even up there," Asano was firm, "but it seems, you've lacked the conviction and your heart is too soft for those children-- who should be treated as rightful maggots in our presence."

Naomasa felt a flare of anger burn in him, but he suppressed it, not brave enough to let it out.

"Have you, perhaps, become one of those?" Asano was threatening, "have you sunken to become someone that holds the standards of staying in that building?"

I've always been there, haven't I?

"I'm just trying," he choked out the words, much too old to be crying over this, "to be the man you were," Nao turned to the principal, "when you taught on that mountain, sir."

If Asano wondered how Naomasa knew anything about that at all-- he didn't consider it.

"You," Asano's grip was on Nao's face, turning the man to face him straight on, "are trying to be an idiot, that's all there is," he warned.

It seemed he was irritated.

And Naomasa-- he sat still, only seeing. Those eyes, he last remembered-- they were compared to only the most disgusting things-- centipedes, serpents, monsters and beasts--

An earthen shade of brown that looked violet in the dim light. A shade that was mystique, calm-- confidence, yet so broken. A colour so entrancing, yet so empty.

Naomasa decided he was to be calm.

"I am only a feeble little outsider," he told the Board Chairman, "I cannot be anything, and I cannot be anything's replacement or representative."

With a slight smile hidden with a fool's giggle, Naomasa was upset.

"Compared to the Target, you're but a side character," Naomasa fiddled with his fingers, "...fated purely to make someone else shine so much brighter."

 Oh, but isn't that what teachers are?

"I don't have long," Naomasa admitted, "so if you want to fire me, go right ahead right now." He clenched his hand over his chest again, as if returning to reality.

Asano swung himself out of his trance, standing back from the man and breathing out to compose himself.

"You speak large words despite your position," Asano reprimanded, "is this the bravery of a dying man?"

"Perhaps," Naomasa chuckled, "but I know that if I stay up there, there might be a chance I'll live through this."

This earned him some interest from the principal.

"Even if they call it terminal, or they call it paranormal. That illogical octopus... I know he'll find a way out of it," Naomasa was uncomfortable, "I don't want to take advantage of what he is. That wouldn't be fair, would it?"

"Is it a bet you're wagering your own life on?" Asano raised an eyebrow, picking up the papers on his desk, arranging them, "if Korosensei would destroy the earth; if he would be killed before then-- if your life would end, or would a cure miraculously surface before then?"

Naomasa considered the crude phrasing.

And promptly nodded, smiling as he realized that was true.

"Do you not fear death?" Asano asked again, "or do you simply dislike living?"

Do you not fear death?

"What I fear," Nao admitted, "is that death won't be the end."

What I fear, is a life after death.