Expulsion
Tokaku had stopped crying because her body had run out of tears. She'd never known that could happen, but it must do because eventually her tears had stopped even though her sobbing hadn't. Her dry eyes had burned then as her sobs went on unchecked, coming so fast she was almost choking; the harsh sound rending the air of this sunny room that was otherwise too quiet, too still.
How long that went on for she couldn't say. It was an endless Hell of inescapable pain and Haru being dead, of seeing her fall to the ground over and over, with Tokaku's knife in her chest. Finally she came back to herself enough to feel her eyelashes brushing the salt still crusted on her cheeks as she blinked. She realised, slowly, that her breathing was becoming more normal, that her sobs had followed the tears into oblivion. She was too exhausted for either anymore.
She lay curled up on Haru's bed, not her own, staring at her right hand covered in Haru's blood and the jagged red lightning strike cut into the palm of her left. Every now and then her hands still shook, warning tremors of sanity under siege. In a way, it was almost funny. She, who had always had such steady hands, lying here with fingers so limp she couldn't have held a pencil, let alone a knife.
Her phone was buzzing madly but she refused to look at it. She wanted no riddles today. No congratulations. No reminder of what she had just bound herself to forever by taking someone's life.
Tokaku knew that the staff here changed the sheets daily, but she still pretended she could smell Haru's scent, the dusty scent of sunlight, on the pillow pressed to her cheek. If she closed her eyes, she could nearly imagine she was folded into one of Haru's impulsive hugs, the ones that she used to grumble about but secretly long for as she watched her charge from the corner of her eye. Haru would no longer smell of the bright, sunny world though, if Tokaku could see her now. She'd smell of rotten death, just like the rest of them.
Looking back, Tokaku tried to pinpoint the exact moment when it had all gone wrong. When this situation had spiralled out of her control and she'd lost the indifference that had always been her greatest comfort; the impenetrable wall between her and the world. When protecting Haru had become more than a half conflicted sense of duty to keep her alive.
It was at the school festival. That was when it happened. What had Tokaku been doing, wandering around the stalls with her like they were just two girls together? She remembered how Haru had been ridiculously happy when Tokaku won some stupid cat ears for her in a dart throwing game, as if that was something that was hard for her; she'd been throwing knives for as long as she could walk. And then Haru had dangled snacks enticingly in front of her face and Tokaku's reflexes were too fast for her to pull away before she snatched them neatly with a snap of her teeth. Haru had laughed, delighted, and Tokaku had grinned back with her deadly assassin's smile while something strange and gentle she'd never felt before stirred in her chest.
It had almost been like a date. It was as close as Tokaku's life had ever gotten to normal. And nothing she'd done that day had been required by her self-appointed role as protector. Haru's life wasn't in danger when Tokaku was winning cat ears and eating snacks. She'd done those things purely to make Haru happy, because seeing Haru happy made her happy too.
If she'd had any sense Tokaku would have realised what was happening and killed Haru back then, before she got in any deeper. Before she fell any more in love with her.
There was a soft knock on the dorm room door. Tokaku didn't bother to move, not even when she heard the door open and footsteps began to draw closer to the bedroom. Since coming to this school she'd been slashed with knives, shot at, nearly stabbed in the eye, thrown out of a window, blown up, drowned, crushed by a chandelier and beaten multiple times but somehow none of those things had killed her. Assassins died every day; hers was not a profession with a long life expectancy. If someone had finally come to take Tokaku's life, they were welcome to it. The only thing she'd ever had to fight for was gone, destroyed by her own rotten hand.
"Azuma-san."
Tokaku barely glanced towards the chairperson. It hurt too much to look at her. She was too similar to Haru; the same chestnut hair and rose coloured eyes. Maybe she looked how Haru would have looked, had she ever gotten the chance to grow up. Except that the chairperson was cold, like ice, and she stank of dead things, and Haru had smelled of sunlight and happiness and been warm as a fire on a dark winter's night.
"If you've come about the reward again I'm going to fucking kill you," Tokaku said in a low, lethal voice, not caring what the consequences might be.
It wasn't an idle threat. God, how she wanted to kill this woman. Stick her full of blades and carve the beauty of her face into a horror better resembling what she truly was.
The chairperson smiled at her like she knew what Tokaku was thinking. "I'm afraid you won't be receiving any reward, Azuma-san."
"What do you mean?"
"I just got word from the hospital. Haru is going to live."
Tokaku vaulted upright on the bed, staring intently at the chairperson for any sign she was lying.
"How?" she whispered, not believing her yet still wanting to be seduced by the impossible fantasy she offered, anything to stem this awful flow of pain, if only for a few precious moments.
"An earlier attempt on her life left Haru with a rib of titanium. It made the edge of your knife stray from her heart, just a little. Just enough."
The chairperson delivered her message with unruffled poise, giving no hint as to what she thought about any of this; whether she was glad or not Haru had survived, whether she cared that Tokaku had just been saved from living in Hell.
"It might not matter to you, but Nio survived as well."
Nio. The chairperson was right. Tokaku didn't care whether Nio was alive or dead. There was no room inside of her for anything but Haru. Haru smiling, Haru laughing, Haru looking out at the world with her big, trusting eyes. Haru hating her, probably, but Tokaku could deal with that if it meant Haru got to live. They'd been in different worlds all along; Tokaku should have known she'd taint what they had with her dirty assassin's hands. She should be glad this had happened, sooner rather than later, so that Haru would realise what she was. So that she'd be able to escape.
"One final thing," the chairperson said when Tokaku made no answer.
"What?"
"Your assassination attempt failed. Under the rules of engagement, you are now expelled. Leave this school by the end of the day."
She turned and walked out of the room.
Leave, thought Tokaku. Leave and go where? Back to Academy 17? Unthinkable. Tokaku couldn't go anywhere that Haru wasn't. Even if Haru did hate her now, she was still going to protect her from whatever came next. At least her filthy hands would be good for something then.
The Azuma fortune. Didn't that exist somewhere, and wasn't Tokaku the heir to it? She'd never really thought about money before, never cared, but she'd make sure to stake her claim on that fortune now if it meant she could do what she wanted. If it meant she could stay near Haru and tell the world to go to Hell.
That afternoon, Tokaku left Myojo Academy for good and checked herself into a hotel right next door to Haru's hospital. She had no idea what else she was supposed to do, and for the first time in her life there was no one to tell her.