A/N: Story takes place 10 years after Class 3-E graduated from Junior High and grew up. Hinted pairings: Karma/Nagisa and Isogai/Maehara.
Warning: Swearing, Character death(s).
Disclaimer: I do not own Assassination Classroom.
Chapter 1: Reunion Time
The shrill ring of his phone came in the middle of the night, causing Akabane Karma to curse as he rolled over and glanced at the clock. 2:45am. He'd barely gotten an hour of sleep before being woken up.
Fumbling for his phone, he checked the call display. Forever 0, it read. A few taps and she was on speaker phone.
"Do you know what time it is, Kayano?" He mumbled, dropping the phone beside his face as he buried his face into his pillow. "Some of us have work at proper jobs, unlike..."
He trailed off as he heard her sobbing.
"It's Okuda," she finally said, her voice breaking. "Karma...she's dead."
An explosion caused by a gas leak. That was what the report was saying. There were other casualties in the complex she lived in, but Okuda was the only fatality.
Karma held Kayano, who sobbed uncontrollably as the coffin was lowered into the ground. The two women had kept in touch after they had graduated from junior high ten years prior, and whenever Kayano's acting schedule brought her back to town, Okuda was the first person Kayano always sought out for lunch.
He himself wasn't as close to Okuda as Kayano was, but they had kept in touch. She had called him a week ago inviting him to a talk she was giving at the university where she was studying her doctorate. Okuda was terrible at public speaking and the scientific content she spoke about bored him to tears, but he always found time to go because she was one of the few he actually talked to from back then, and he valued that effort she made.
Karma felt a lump in his throat as he looked around at the grieving crowd who had formed a line to toss flowers atop the coffin. There were many unfamiliar ones, but also a few he recognised. Isogai, Maehara, Kanzaki. Unsurprisingly, he was absent.
"Karma," Isogai greeted as the red-head left Kayano in Kanzaki's hands and approached him. The former-Ikemen had more eyebags under his eyes but his face still retained its boyish look. "It's been awhile."
"Yeah," Karma responded. "I always found it ironic that gatherings occurred either during weddings or deaths. You'd think we could have found a better time to catch up."
Isogai smiled sadly. "Didn't we say we would meet up every year after we graduated from junior high? I wish we had kept to that."
Karma shrugged. "Yeah," he said, although he could hear a hint of bitterness make its way into his voice. Of course he knew why they stopped meeting. He was the one who'd suggested the annual 3-E meet up - in honour of a certain teacher - until he stopped attending the meet-ups five years ago.
Isogai gave him a measuring look, then sighed. "Are you free tonight? A couple of us are meeting at the campus bar for drinks, in honour of Okuda. Be nice if you came."
Karma opened his mouth to decline, then paused. He'd always turned down these events because their meeting place reminded him of memories best left buried. However, he didn't have work the following day and he didn't feel like being alone that evening. Furthermore, the venue was different from the one they used to frequent. So, he nodded.
"7pm at The Dive," Isogai said, before clapping a hand on his shoulder and shooting him a warm smile. "Glad you're coming."
The moment Karma walked into the bar, he nearly turned on his heel and stalked back out. For a moment, he wished Kayano was with him; he had asked her if she wanted to join them, but she had flown out for a filming in America that evening. Hence, he had to go alone.
During his time in university, The Dive was the type of bar he would often frequent - loud, rambunctious and full of cheap alcohol. As he grew older though, he began to hate fighting with the crowd which seemed to get younger every year. Instead, he preferred the classic simplicity of an upscale bar, one where he didn't have to shout himself hoarse in an effort to make himself heard, and one where the alcohol didn't taste questionable.
Just as he had convinced himself to leave, he heard someone call out his name. A face appeared in front of his - Sugino's.
"Karma!" It had been seven years since he'd last seen the baseball player, and in that time Sugino had not only established himself as a moderately successful baseball player, but had also gained quite a bit of muscle mass from all his training. "It's great to see you! We're over this way - come on."
Weaving his way through the crowd after Sugino, he soon found himself in front of a corner table full of familiar faces who greeted him: Isogai, Maehara, Kanzaki and Nakamura were there, as were Takebayashi, Kataoka and Hayami.
"Karma!" Nakamura exclaimed, her cheeks slightly flushed. "You made it!" She rounded on Maehara, who had a somewhat disgruntled look on his face, and held out a hand triumphantly. "And you thought he wouldn't show. Ha! Pay up."
Karma made a sound as he pulled up an empty chair and settled between Kanzaki and Sugino, even as Maehara grudgingly passed her five hundred yen. "A bit early, don't you think?" He said, raising an eyebrow and tilting his chin at the number of pints in front of her. She waved off his comment.
"Us teachers get very stressed out, you know. Right, Kanzaki?" She draped an arm over the dark haired woman, a grin plastered on her face. Kanzaki had the grace to look embarrassed.
"You're a teacher?" Karma's voice was incredulous. "What do you teach? Alcohol consumption?"
Nakamura scowled. "En-glish," she said, pointing at him as she spoke in heavily accented Japanese, before rattling off several unrelated sentences in English.
"We teach at the same school," Kanzaki said, sighing as she untangled herself from the taller woman, who was waving the server over. "And yes, before you ask, this does happen often."
Karma laughed. "I hope not in front of the students," he said, prompting Nakamura to curse him in English.
"What will you have?" Maehara asked. "A beer?"
"Whisky neat," he replied. The brown-haired man nodded before ordering a round of drinks, which came in no time. The mood became solemn as Isogai raised his drink and said, "To Okuda."
Everyone else followed suit, including Nakamura, who had become quiet the moment Isogai raised his drink.
As Karma sipped his drink, he looked around the table at his former classmates as they started insisting that it was not their turn to pay. They all looked the same, just a bit older, a bit more tired. He rarely bothered to hang out with others as people generally annoyed him, but it was comforting to be among those he could call friends, even if it was the first time getting back in touch with them in years.
However, something seemed...off. He didn't think it was because of Okuda's death - he could feel an imperceptible tension that existed between the friendly bickering that went around. It was almost as if they were on edge - and Karma was determined to find out why.
"So," he said the moment they had pushed the payment for the current round of drinks to Nakamura, who was staring into her wallet sadly. "Update me. What have I missed?"
"Rinka got married!" Kataoka brightly said, placing a hand on her friend, who smiled embarrassedly.
"Last year," Hayami said. "Chiba couldn't make it today, but he sends his regards."
"Congratulations," he said sincerely, "but we all knew it was going to happen since junior high." At that, Hayami turned a bright red, while Isogai and Maehara chuckled. Karma turned his gaze onto them.
"And you two, have you made it official yet?" he said sweetly. Their laughs became identical splutters, even as everyone else stared at them,
"Since when?" Sugino exclaimed, sounding slightly accusatory. "You never told me anything about it!"
Maehara huffed. "Why do we need to tell you?"
Sugino's eyes went round. "You mean it's true?"
Karma rolled his eyes. "How did none of you realise this? I thought everyone knew from the way they acted in junior high."
"Wait, what do you mean by 'from the way they acted'?" Maehara narrowed his eyes at Karma. The red head couldn't help himself; he grinned. For a brief moment, he felt a flicker of his old self from junior high surface, the same one he had carefully hidden over the past five years.
"Oh, come on. The loving looks you shoot each other in class when you think no one else is looking. The lingering touches. Going home together after school. And oh yes, I remember this one time when I followed the two of you after school towards the gym shed- "
"You saw that?" Maehara exclaimed in horror, his eyes bugging out.
"Saw...what?" Kanzaki said slowly. Karma's grin became wider.
"The two of them were ki- "
"Please stop," Isogai's face was a crimson red as he frantically shook his hand in Karma's direction to interrupt him. No one else spoke. Sugino looked as if his eyes were about to fall out of their sockets.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Sugino finally managed to force out. Maehara, whose face sported a similar look to that of Isogai's, shrugged.
"No one asked," he finally said, a bit waspishly, then rounded on the redhead. "How did you find out?"
Karma shot them a smug look as he leaned back in his chair. "You see a lot of interesting things from the back of the class."
Maehara responded with a dirty look, even as the rest of the class started peppering the couple with questions. The mood had become lighter, more relaxed, and Karma was glad for that. Perhaps he had been overreacting earlier.
"And yourself? What have you been up to, Karma?" Kanzaki asked as the furore died down. "I think I speak for all of us when I say that we have no idea what you've been up to since we last gathered."
Seven pairs of eyes fell onto him curiously as he tilted his head. "Well. I finished Law school last year and am interning with one of the Big Four law firms downtown. Ever since Nagi -" He stopped, then frowned. The table fell incredibly silent, and Kanzaki actually looked a bit frightened. Unbidden, a stray memory flitted through his mind.
"Leaving you is not an option," Nagisa whispered fiercely as his arms circled the red head from behind.
Hearing his name brought him back to reality, and he blinked a few times before finally focusing on an anxious-looking Kanzaki.
"Karma..." She said hesitantly. "I - I didn't mean to mention - that is, I know that you don't like anyone to bring up -"
He sighed, then downed his drink. "It's fine. It has been five years. If I haven't gotten over his disappearing act, that would be pretty pathetic of me."
Yes, it had been five years since Nagisa had vanished, and he was indeed over what had happened. It had only taken him the better part of those five years to rebuild his life, but that was something they didn't need to know.
"Anyway," he said in a bid to break the awkwardness, "I haven't been doing much else besides that, so tell me about the rest. Anyone in touch with Terasaka and Itona? Last I heard a year ago, they were planning to set up some business together."
Karma saw his ex-classmates exchange looks with each other uncomfortably. A spike of uneasiness ran through him as the atmosphere changed once again, becoming strained. This time, he knew something was definitely wrong.
"Who exactly have you kept in touch with from Class 3-E?" Isogai said slowly.
"Not many people," Karma confessed after a short pause. "Okuda and Kayano, mainly. Kayano is always travelling though, and Okuda and I rarely talked."
Isogai sighed, then gently said, "Terasaka and Itona are dead, Karma. A car accident a year ago."
Karma stared at Isogai, his brain trying to make sense of what he had just heard. "I - you're kidding, right?" The red head finally said, his eyes sweeping across the table at those gathered. None of them met his gaze, and when no one responded, he raised his voice and repeated, "Tell me you're kidding."
Isogai shook his head, and Karma felt his face drain of colour. How had he not heard about this? He'd been close to Terasaka at one point, but after Nagisa's disappearance, he'd stopped making any effort to contact people. He had lost his phone not too long after that too, and never bothered to get back in touch with the rest or his classmates, save Okuda and Kayano. He and Terasaka had inevitably drifted, and the last time they had seen each other was by chance on the streets - a year ago.
"Oi, Akabane!"
The shout came from behind him, and he immediately spun around, even as the man at the pedestrian crossing became green and a sea of people swept past him. Amidst the rush hour crowd, he could see the tall, well-built man waving at him from as he wove through the other people around them. Karma felt his eyes widen.
"Terasaka?" He said in disbelief. He hadn't seen the man since they had both graduated from university, which was three years back. Terasaka still had his spiky two-tone hair, which seemed incredibly out of place when paired with the suit he was wearing.
Terasaka reached him and slapped him on his back none-too-gently. "You asshole," he growled. "Thanks for not replying to my messages."
In response, Karma punched him in the arm, causing the taller man to wince. "How could I when I lost my phone? I thought you knew."
"How the hell would I know if no one told me?" Terasaka snorted.
"Well, I'm telling you now," Karma said, grinning slightly as they both moved to the side away from the press of businessmen and workers rushing home. "How have you been? It's odd as hell to see you in a suit."
Terasaka ignored his jab and pulled out his phone. "Been busy. Itona - you remember him, surely - and I planning to open a restaurant by the end of the year. I'm on the way to meet him now, before we meet a couple of investors."
"You? Cooking?" Karma shuddered theatrically. "Make sure you have good insurance in case anyone sues you for food poisoning."
Terasaka gave him the middle finger. "I'll make sure you get charged double whenever you come by, bastard. Anyway," He fiddled with his screen for a moment, before flipping it around and passing it to Karma. "Give me your new number."
Karma tapped out his numbers before passing it back to Terasaka. "Miss call me."
The taller man was about to do so when his phone shrilled. "Oh shit," Terasaka said when he saw the caller. "It's Itona. I have to go. I'll call you later tonight, so don't do something lame like lose your phone again!"
Except Terasaka didn't call him that night, or the night after that. Karma had brushed it off as a simple slip of the mind, but now a chill went down his spine as he realised that may have been the last day Terasaka was alive.
"You didn't know?" Maehara quietly said. Karma shook his head mutely.
"It isn't just Terasaka and Itona," Kataoka's voice was sombre. "Mimura was killed two years ago in a hit-and-run, Yada in a boating accident around the same time. Kurahashi and Hazami were killed in separate mugging incidents. And two months before Okuda died, Sugaya was found dead in his apartment. Suicide."
Cold sweat trickled down Karma's back. Of the twenty-eight students from Class 3-E, there were only twenty of them left. It seemed so surreal.
"It...what are the odds?" He finally said, exhaling. "I can't believe it."
"But that's the thing," Takebayashi said, nervously adjusting his glasses. "It doesn't make sense because the odds of so many of us dying are too low. And all within the last two years? We from Class 3-E either have the worst luck possible, or..." Here, Takebayashi trailed off and glanced at the others gathered around the table. The look did not go by Karma unnoticed, and he rapped the table sharply.
"Spit it out. Or what?"
After what seemed like an eternity, Takebayashi finally met his gaze. "I...we think someone's assassinating everyone from Class 3-E."