Note: this is inspired by a Tumblr post called "Kayano is problematic" on a blog with the name @dreaming-of-assclass. It's a well-written and insightful read, so check it out if you're interested!
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When Nagisa proposes to find a way to save Korosensei, Karma can't deny the displeasure that stirs inside him. But it's whatever. Some of his classmates clearly agree with Nagisa, seeing as Kurahashi and Kataoka and Sugino all crowd around him eagerly. Karma can wait until they're done being all hopeful before he inevitably ruins the mood by announcing his opposition.
And then when Nakamura steps out of the trees' shadows to dispute Nagisa's idea, followed by Terasaka and Yoshida and Muramatsu, Karma feels just the slightest hint of relief. Mainly because he at least won't have to go through the trouble of arguing with the entire class.
Then Kayano steps forward to speak up.
And Karma has to dig his nails into his palm to quell the uneasiness that instantly twists inside him.
"Guys, I understand your feelings," Kayano says as she faces Nakamura and Terasaka. "But the thing is... I nearly killed Korosensei, and I really regret it."
Nakamura pauses and Terasaka narrows his eyes.
Nagisa glances at Kayano with what looks like a mix of relief and gratitude.
Karma realizes that he's clenching his hand even tighter.
"And for nearly this whole year, my only goal was to get revenge," Kayano says. "To assassinate him. It was the only thing I could think of for so long, and I was convinced that when I finally killed him, it'd be the happiest moment of my life."
Then Karma notices that his nails are gouging into his skin so fiercely that they're nearly drawing blood.
He forces his hand to relax.
"But even then," Kayano continues, "the moment I thought I killed him, deep down, there wasn't joy. There was just this horrible feeling of regret. It wasn't what I truly wanted." She takes a deep breath. "So please consider this. I don't want anyone to—"
"Those are some pretty rich words coming from you, Kayano. Or should I call you Yukimura?"
Karma doesn't expect his own words to come out as harshly and coldly as they do, but that only mildly surprises him more than anything. And right now, they certainly don't make him feel bad.
Kayano looks at him with a small frown.
"What..." she says quietly. "What do you mean by that?"
"What I mean is," Karma says, and it takes him a conscious effort to keep his voice low and calm, "I'm wondering if you even mean what you say. After all, you've practically been faking your entire personality for this whole year."
Kayano stiffens—the audacity of her to be the one looking uneasy, a small, maybe cruel, part of him thinks—and silence falls over the class. A few students shoot nervous glances between the two of them.
Finally, she says, "I don't know what I can do to make you believe me, but I'm speaking my genuine feelings right now."
"But here's the thing, Kayano—that's what we thought you were doing the entire time." Karma pushes off the tree he's leaning against. "And if there's one thing we know about you for sure, it's that you're wonderfully talented at acting." His eyes narrow. "At hiding your true feelings and intentions."
As he begins walking towards her, she turns to face him.
"What... are you trying to say, Karma?" she says slowly, and Karma realizes that he can't quite discern the tone of her voice or read her expression. Is she nervous? Angered? Ashamed?
That's an acting prodigy for you, he thinks wryly.
"I just don't know how to feel about you talking like this. Like everything's normal." He stops a few steps in front of her. "Like you're really the friend and genuine member of the class that you led us to believe you were."
Kayano meets his eyes, her lips a tight line.
"What I did was a betrayal of your trust. And the entire class's trust. I know that," she says. "But right now, there's nothing I can do but ask that you believe me when I say that these are my true feelings about killing Korosensei."
Then, to Karma's surprise, Nagisa takes a step forward. "Karma, I understand why you feel this way." He holds out his palm, almost pleadingly so. "And I know that this whole thing was a big surprise to all of us, but—"
"'Surprise' is an understatement, Nagisa," Karma hisses. "Do you not realize that she completely concealed her identity, her bloodlust, and her capabilities for the entire year? That, in any moment, she could've literally killed anybody in the class in the blink of an eye?"
"I wouldn't kill anybody!" Kayano blurts, a tinge of shock in her voice. "I swear. No matter how badly I wanted revenge, I never would've harmed any of you guys."
"And you think I believe that?" Karma lets out a low laugh. "Especially when, from what I remember, you were always more than willing to just stand by and watch the class get harmed."
Kayano freezes, her expression finally breaking into something that looks like guilt.
"Like when the Reaper was planning to drown us all," Karma says. "That was totally fine by you, apparently. Even though if it weren't for Mr. Karasuma, we'd be a pile of bloated corpses rotting in a tunnel right now."
From the corner of his vision, Karma sees some of his classmates wince—whether it's at the memory, at his word choice, or at the venom in his voice, he doesn't know and he doesn't care.
"Or is it that you knew you'd survive, with your abilities and all?" he continues. "Maybe you were planning to take the opportunity to kill Korosensei while he was drowning with the rest of us." A sinister smirk flickers across his face. "Clever of you to take advantage of the Reaper's plan like that."
"No, that wasn't my plan at all," Kayano says, almost hastily. "And I—If I knew for sure we weren't going to make it out alive, I don't think I would've done nothing."
"Well, I hope you didn't forget what happened on the island resort," Karma says coldly. "You clearly weren't planning to use your abilities to help us out back then, either. Not with retrieving the antidote we thought would save our classmates' lives, and not when Takaoka was beating your so-called best friend Nagisa half to death right in front of you."
At those words, Kayano actually flinches, and Karma feels a dark flutter of something he can't identify—some twisted combination of satisfaction and annoyance all at once.
"But I guess you just had to keep your little vengeful plot a secret. It was just too important to you, wasn't it? Certainly more important than the lives of your classmates."
There's visible remorse on Kayano's face as she takes a deep breath, although it does nothing to calm his anger.
"Karma, I was wrong," she says, "and there's no excuse I can make for that. In those moments, I chose my revenge and my personal goals over my classmates. I can't deny that."
"Well, it's nice to know you at least have the awareness to acknowledge that."
Her lips tighten. "But I truly do care about you guys and the friendships we have. And this doesn't justify what I did, but I wasn't in the right state of mind for a really long time." One of her hands rises to her nape as she lowers her gaze to the ground. "When the tentacles were influencing me, it was hard for me to even consider giving up my revenge."
Karma pauses at that—but the memory of the danger, of the literal fear he felt for his classmates' safety, is too fresh in his mind, and his fury doesn't ease.
Her hand drops. "But I'm finally free of their control. And if it's any reassurance, there's no way now that I will ever think about letting my friends get hurt for my own selfish desires again." She looks up to face him again. "I know that I can't make you believe me. But I can promise you that my words are true."
Karma lets out a small snort. "Sorry, Kayano, but any promise you make means nothing to me right now."
"Hey, but..." Nagisa says hesitantly. "Itona's been completely fine once he got his tentacles removed, right?"
"Itona," Karma snaps, "isn't the one who deceived his friends for nearly a year." He glares at Kayano. "And that's the thing. No matter how much control the tentacles had on you or whatever, it doesn't change the fact that you were never a true member of this class."
Hurt flashes across Kayano's face, but any guilt that Karma might've felt is incinerated by the seething rage inside him.
"While everybody else was working hard on their assassinations," he says, "you were hiding something that was dozens of times more deadly. This bond of assassin and target that our class is built from—it has never been real for you."
As he speaks, a bitter contentment fills him as he notices how Kayano's discomfort is now discernible from the tension in her form and the uneasy frown on her face.
"How could it have been real for you, when you were secretly sitting above us all the entire time? Everyone's assassination attempts had to have looked absolutely pathetic."
"That's not true," Kayano says quietly. "Even back when I had my tentacles, I still admired you guys and all the methods you came up with."
"And yet you're willing to just trample over it all," Karma growls. "Let's just give up and toss all the progress we've made into the trash. It must be easy for you when you were never truly a part of it."
"That's not what I'm trying to say!" Kayano says, eyes widening. "Despite it all, I know how much assassination means to our class. But I also don't want anybody to end up regretting it."
"But haven't you realized that the octopus has been working so hard to make a fun classroom that we'd give our all in?" Karma feels his voice rising. "This classroom couldn't exist if our bloodlust was blunted!"
"I know, and I'm being honest with my feelings! I really do care about Korosensei, as both a person and a teacher, and I don't—"
"And I thought you'd be able to see all of the hard work both Korosensei and our classmates put into this class," Karma snarls, "but I guess I shouldn't have expected that from a lying fake who snuck her way into here."
Kayano stiffens at those words. And then her face hardens.
"Fine," she says, and her voice is so steely that it takes Karma aback for a split-second.
The sweet, mellow Kayano never existed, he reminds himself scathingly. Stop being surprised.
"I can't force you to trust me, Karma. And maybe you're right—maybe I really don't have the right to speak on this issue," she says evenly. "But even so, that doesn't change how I personally feel about this. Or the fact that my feelings right now are genuine."
Karma tilts his head. "If you're really as genuine as you say you are," he says, flashing her a dark, taunting smile, "then why don't you prove it by beating me in a fight?"
"What?"
"Attack me with your tentacles."
Her face flickers with shock before turning into what almost looks like a glare. "What are you talking about? We both know that I don't have them anymore."
"And we also both know that your physical enhancements should still be intact." He takes a step towards her. "Be honest. I probably won't even be a match for you."
She doesn't move.
"Attack me."
He takes another step forward.
"Come on."
Another step, and this time she steps backwards in response.
"What's wrong?"
She takes another step back.
"You didn't show this hesitation when you nearly killed Korosensei."
Then Kayano's head snaps up and she meets Karma's gaze.
"You want to see no hesitation?" she says, her voice low as she places a foot back once again—but Karma realizes with both a chill and a rush of dark excitement that, this time, it's not a retreat.
It's preparation to lunge at him in attack.
"That's more like it," he hisses with a grim smile, shifting his weight to match her offensive stance. "Time to quit hiding, Kayano. Show everybody here what you—"
Nagisa throws himself between them.
"Stop it! We don't need to get into a fight right now!" he yells, raising a hand towards both of them. "What are you guys even trying to accomplish from this?"
Karma whirls to face him. "Keeping our classroom from ending up as a half-assed pile of disappointments."
Kayano turns to him too. "I was trying to—"
"A junior-high fight? Most excellent!"
The voice of Korosensei is the last thing Karma expects to intervene, but there's a rush of wind and suddenly his teacher is standing in the middle of the class—in a military uniform, of all things, full with sunglasses and a pipe.
Karma's anger momentarily wavers. He blinks in confusion at Korosensei along with the rest of his classmates.
"But for this classroom based in assassination," Korosensei says, eyes gleaming, "we should settle things with these!"
He drops two boxes in front of him. Both are filled to the brim with weapons—knives, handguns, rifles—and on the ground beside them are several tubes of BB paintballs.
Takebayashi kneels down to examine one of the tubes. "Red and blue paintballs?"
Korosensei nods. "Red for those who want to kill me, and blue for those who don't."
Ah.
Now Karma turns to face Korosensei fully. He feels the tension in his body beginning to evaporate, replaced by anticipation.
Looks like I'm getting the fight I want.
"First, everybody will state their position clearly before picking a weapon," Korosensei says. "Then we'll do battle here on the mountain. Getting hit by the other team's ink counts as death. Win by eliminating all members from the opposite team or securing their flag, and the winning team's opinion will be accepted by the entire class, no hard feelings." He takes off his cap. "I'll respect whatever decision you end up going with, as long as you give it your all to reach it."
Murmurs ripple across the students. Isogai walks up to the front and looks at the rest of the class. "Well?"
Everybody nods in agreement, and soon, people begin picking their weapons and choosing their sides. As Nagisa goes up to the blue box of weapons, Karma doesn't miss the way he casts a nervous frown between him and Kayano.
Karma's about to go pick his weapon right when Korosensei walks up to the two of them.
"You know... I do understand why you guys might be having these feelings of distrust and bitterness," Korosensei says, removing his sunglasses, "but if there's one thing I don't want, it's this class ending in conflict and discord. So if you really care about me..." He gazes at Kayano and Karma, and his smile softens. "Please promise me you won't let that happen."
Kayano glances at Karma, her expression equal parts uneasiness and guilt. Then she looks back at Korosensei. "Okay," she says with a smile. The brief flash of anxiety on her face is now completely absent. "I promise, Korosensei."
Karma doesn't say anything. Instead, he simply goes over to the weapons to pick up a knife edged with red paint.
It's not that Karma doesn't want to make that promise to Korosensei.
Even as he walks away from the weapons to join up with the rest of the Red Team, for a moment, that familiar hue of unnatural, dyed, fake green flutters by in the corner of his vision.
He just doesn't know if he'll be able to keep it.
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A/N: okay so this was probably one of the most challenging scenes I've ever written for a fic LOL
There was just so many things i felt like I needed to do right to pull this off well-from connecting the Karma Kayano distrust/conflict to the argument of whether or not they should save Korosensei, to making sure that Karma's lashing out wasn't too overboard or asshole-y, to making sure that Kayano's reaction and eventual retaliation didn't feel unjustified, either. So taking all that into account, any constructive criticism or feedback in general would be immensely appreciated-especially any thoughts about my characterization of Karma and Kayano here or my portrayal of the conflict between them. It was quite the challenge for me, and even now I'm still just a tiny bit unsure about those elements.
The plan is to write out the civil war arc for this and have a resolution between Karma and Kayano, but I can't make any promises on the timeliness because of school ;-; But anyways, thank you so much for reading, and hope you enjoyed!
