Chapter Four

Contrary to the beliefs of many jealous girls and rejected boys, Nagisa Shiota wasn't stupid. In their classroom, she saw and heard a lot. All of the rumours, all of the stories, all of the lingering gazes on her as well as the unspoken words shared between the pair of conflicting best friends she had torn apart.

Of course she would notice these things, any person with half a common sense would. For a lot of the time though, she was unsure of how to react to them. Boys and girls calling her names... she could ignore that. Gakushuu trying not to be too obvious in his blushing, stuttering stares... that could be ignored as well. But the small crush she believed he had on her tearing apart his friendships... there was no way she could let that go on without feeling partly to blame.

It was without a doubt herself at fault, even if she tried to make herself appear content with her boyfriend. Even if she tried to have minimal conversation with him and turned a blind eye of innocence to him that told him they weren't going anywhere. The boy still hadn't bored of her. This couldn't go on.

Recently, Nagisa appeared to be even more consumed by her daydreams. But her sight was apparently not the slightest bit less amusing, as Gakushuu's gaze burned into hers from beside her, merging with Karma's and making every movement for her feel like it came with a consequence.

Should she tell him he was making her uncomfortable?

No. Not with Karma here. She was too afraid of making things worse.

"I don't see you two talking together that often."

"That's because you're always here to distract me~" The Akabane responded.

"D-do you think I'm coming between your friendship?"

He cocked his head to the side carelessly, "Is it really that important?"

"I don't know. You're the one whose been friends with him for years."

"I don't need friends Nagisa. I have you to keep me company."

She sighed and rolled her eyes. It was always such a struggle to get through to him. "Well, what if one day you don't have me, you would miss him as a friend, you would be angry that you had thrown him away wouldn't y-"

"Nagisa." His voice was low, stepping towards her and closing the gap between them. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"N-nothing, this is a purely theoretical situation."

"Good." His hands curved around both sides of her face like he was framing a picture. He had to tilt her up a lot for their gazes to meet at this proximity. "Because if you decide to leave me, I'll hurt someone you love every single day until you come back to me."

He said the words like he had recited a simple poem about roses and sunflowers. The blue haired girl would have shuddered if she wasn't so used to it by now.

She nodded, pouting her lips up to him until he gave her a light peck and released her. She prayed that her Dad hadn't seen them from the window.

"You two aren't speaking?"

"I wouldn't go so far as that. He's speaking to me alright, but we've slipped into a kind of silent agreement that I won't say much back." He snorted like the whole thing was a childish joke. Nagisa new better than that, he knew the boy had been humiliated in some way, and found himself mentally scolding the redhead who of course was absent now for his least favourite teacher's lesson.

"Are you sure it's not just you not wanting to talk to him?"

"Why are you asking this, did he say something to you?" He frowned, trying to change the subject away from himself speaking.

"No. I've just noticed the drift between you two. Personally, I don't think he's the one that's angry with you."

"He's made himself pretty clear. You... you know how he is. How he makes it easy for people to get mad at him.."

"I know he struggles with not appearing threatening. Maybe him acting aggressively is just his way of showing affection?"

Nagisa thought she had been successful with Gakushuu's thoughtful silence. Clearly, she had been wrong.

"I'm glad you're speaking to me about these, I've actually been trying to ask. Is Karma ever..." He searched for the right word, "Violent towards you. Do you enjoy being 'with' him?"

She frowned up at the boy. "He's aggressive by nature I think, that doesn't make our relationship any more difficult."

"That's not want I meant. I mean... when you have sex-"

At this, Nagisa couldn't contain his attack of laughter, hiding her face with her hands as she tried not to come across as condescending.

Gakushuu's eyes showed confusion, but mainly he was awestrucken, unfortunately this was one of the times where she was unaware of his almost perverse stare.

"I don't know what he's said to you, but I've never had sex before. Neither has he." She explained, eyes smiling at him honestly, cheeks pink shyly. Gakushuu felt something in his stomach drop, flip, and then rise up with a new sense of anger.

On one hand, Nagisa was till pure, on the other hand, a lot of his truculence had come from something that was even true to begin with.

Karma had been lying this whole time to make him uncomfortable. He had lied about having this victory over him when he really didn't. It was one thing for him to tell tales about himself, but for him to drag Nagisae down with him made him want to do something worse to him than what he had done to the other liars who had told similar tales.

"We can't go home, dad's gonna be there all day."

"Why don't we just go to mine?" Karma suggested.

Nagisa blushed shyly, playing with one of her pigtails as she spoke coyly, "Actually, I found a huge unlocked cupboard yesterday on an errand. I wanted to go and... explore it."

The way she spoke was so irresistible, Karma found himself lead on the immature journey to the mysterious store cupboard he had never heard about, blindly trusting the girl until he landed in the dark room.

"I don't see what's to explore," He announced, noticing the shallow end of the regular sized dark room, "You had other intentions didn't you, Nagisa~"

There was silence and darkness.

"Nagisa?" He frowned, body tingling with the anticipation of being attacked from his blind spot.

That was until he heard the door click from the outside.

"Nagisa? What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry Karma, just wait here patiently until I come back please."

"What am I supposed to do? Nagisa?!"

"Where did you say it was? I can't see anything?"

The door slammed shut behind him. On the other side of it, Nagisa grinned in victory as she leaned against the door, but not without locking the door before either occupants could try to escape.

"Nagisa? Wha- Why did you lock me in?"

"I know this is unorthodox but... I'm not opening this door until I hear you two talking about your problems and coming to some kind of agreement!"

"Two?"

Gakushuu turned around sharply in the darkness, eyes scanning and adjusting to see Karma leaning against the shelf on the back wall with his arms crossed over his chest and his face stoic.

He backed up against the door, remembering their last encounter in a similar environment and cringed.

"Nagisa, you're crazy. There's no problem with us!"

"Nice try, but I'll believe that when I hear the evidence!"

He turned back to the strangely calm boy parallel to him and frowned, "Are you just going to let her get away with this messed up cliche scheme?"

He sighed, eyes rolling up from the ground to meet his, "What are you expecting me to do about it that you can't do? The girl wants us to talk, she'll get her way."

The silence that followed was so awkward, neither knew what to do with their eyes.

"C-Come on Nagisa, don't you have to get home at some point?!" Gakushu tried.

"Not today!"

"Well I do so if my dad comes down here looking for us..!"

"I guess you'd better get talking then!"

Karma laughed from opposite him, "You're still afraid of that old guy?"

His eyes narrowed uncooperatively, "I'm not. Just trying to buy us out of here." He muttered.

"Come on then," Karma mocked, "Lets talk. What's the problem between us? What could it possibly be?"

They both snorted out awkward laughter. Eventually, that died down to quiet again.

"So uh... we're friends right? There's no reason for us to be in here any longer?"

Gakushuu tried once more.

"Hmm." Karma chewed his cheek, "Or we could do as the princess likes and battle it out for real."

The horror at the idea was so clear on the strawberry blonde's face it made Karma laugh.

"So you don't even want to fight?" he scoffed,"How are you ever going to please Nagisa, no wonder she's not with you."

"She's not with me because she's your girlfriend - I don't want her to be my girlfriend!"

"You're pathetic, don't try and lie to me when your face is lit up like a flame."

He drew back in embarrassment, hand over his face in the least conspicuous way. "Don't talk to me about lying. I don't even know what to believe from your mouth anymore."

"Don't you sound upset." He drawled.

"You're not even going to ask what I'm talking about?" He sneered.

"I don't really care. But go on, tell me what you think I've lied about so badly to you?" He snickered with his lips twisted up defiantly.

"Nagisa told me you never had sex with her. I should have known, there's no way she would let you touch her like that."

Karma stared at him with his mouth open and his face still. Then, he laughed loudly, the sound so dark and menacing it could hardly be called a laugh at all.

Gakushuu was still, feeling remorseful for bringing the subject up at all.

"I-I don't know why you're so proud, virgin." He condescended the same way Karma had done to him. It backfired by setting him off again.

When he calmed, he faced a very annoyed looking boy with his golden eyes curiously gleaming.

"She lied to you." He sounded almost amused.

"What?" His head jerked in offence at the accusation. "Don't you dare try and cover your own lies by pinning the blame on Nagisa."

"I'm not." he was tranquil in a way that was concerning, hands in his pockets, eyes not too fixed or too averted.

"Why would she lie? Why would I believe you?" He glared.

"Maybe she was embarrassed, I don't know. But trust me, we've had s-"

"Enough!" He yelled, fists clenching at his sides.

"Does that make you angry? I thought it was obvious we fucked frequently." He taunted.

Suddenly he felt hands tightly around his collar as his hand was slammed back roughly into the solid wall behind him. "I told you to shut the fuck up."

"So now you want to fight?" His body tensed as Karma's hand viced around his arm, pulling him back with every ounce of severity in his face saying that Gakushuu would get hurt if he wasn't careful. "You're so easy to play you know that Gakushuu?"

He frowned, but pulled back, eyes looking down guiltily.

"I still don't believe you."

The following moment of silence let him clear his head. It was an obvious lie, he didn't know why he let the other's confidence affect him.

"Ah~ Ah...! Karma!~ Ah!..."

His eyes shot up, seeing Karma's phone held in line with his eyes, his vision landing on what was thankfully only an audio tape. He didn't need a video to tell him who it was though. The airy, pleasure crazed moans that rang out like a song could only ever belong to one girl.

He felt, that if the video had been any longer than the torturous 17 seconds it lasted, he would have felt sick.

Karma's phone was slapped from his hand, Gakushuu going still after that, looking whiter than he had ever been seen before. This amused Karma enough to make him smile.

"Can you guess what we were doing?"

He swallowed. His skin felt sweaty and his eyes struggled to see any of reality, he could only imagine what was being done it his Nagisa, things he had never done himself, never been seen before, never even been imagined by him.

He felt like his knees would give out, so he sunk down slowly, pinching his temples to try and block out the pest before him.

"I have a small collection of pictures if you're still not convinced. Though, I wouldn't want you getting a bit too excited.."

"You're vile." He hissed, glaring up.

Karma laughed, nodding his head in agreement, "You will be too one day if your lucky."

"I wouldn't ever want to be like you. I'd never want to do something as repulsive as that."

Karma laughed at his innocence. Or was the word naivety?

"Come on. I'm sick of you. Lets get out of here." Hands landed on Gakushuu's shoulder and hoisted him up, patting the dust off of him so he was standing.

"Nagisa," Karma called out. "I think we can open the door now."

"Are you guys friends again?"

"Didn't you hear anything?"

Karma knew their voices had been too low, but also knew that Nagisa wouldn't let them know that. It wasn't long before the door clicked and light poured in with Nagisa her sight blessed them.

Like rechargeable batteries, Gakushuu felt his body being refilled at the sight of her.

"Come here Nagisa, I've missed looking at you~"

She walked over obediently, her boyfriend capturing her with his arms around her torso and his lips against hers.

"Did you hear us fight?"

"I didn't hear too much actually... I'm just glad you guys have sorted things out." She smiled at Gakushuu, and he smiled back.

Catching this, Karma's hands slipped up her body, coiling around her neck. She looked over at him with inquisitive innocence, only to find her lips captured again, this time, the kiss lingering for so long it was impossible not to stare.

Nagisa tensed, pulling her slim body back, only to find his hand around the back of her head forcing her near, he leaned in, what was going on behind that mouth was hidden from third party eyes, but as Nagisa gasped and flinched, Gakushuu could only guess with flushed cheeks what was going on.

Blue eyes flickered to his nervously. Karma pulled away, letting them catch their breath for barely two seconds before kissing again, visibly prying open her lips and locking their tongues together.

"K-Karma..!" Nagisa cried out, eventually stopping to look at the villainous boy before him. The girl knew he had been trying to make his best friend jealous, and knew with a sinking feeling that this meant they hadn't made up.

"Why did you-" The door slammed shut, leaving them in darkness.

"Why did you do that in front of Gakushuu!?" She exclaimed in disapproval. "Didn't you fix anything? He had to run aw-"

"I'm still in here."

Nagisa gasped at the voice, backing up until she hit Karma. The redhead coiled her into a trap immediately and wouldn't let her out.

"Did you just lock us in?" Karma asked, eyes narrowed to try and make out the figure of his friend.

"It's not locked." He said. "We can get out anytime. But nobody should come in."

"What are we-"

"You think I'm so useless, you think I'm so unappealing to Nagisa, but I can show you otherwise." His eyes were glazed over with reckless anger.

Once more, Karma found himself smirking in amusement at his best friend and his naive determination.

"What are you going to do?" He encouraged derisively, looking down as his eyes finally adjusted, his grip on his girlfriend didn't lighten as the purple eyed boy began unbuttoning his shirt...