A Secret Santa gift for Keba Si Rota! You asked for Assassination Classroom and mentioned that you like Koro-Sensei! There's a bit of melodrama and a touch of cliche, but I hope you enjoy it! ^-^
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“Nagisa.” Koro-sensei, with just a few months of classroom experience, had nailed the perfect pitch of a disappointed teacher. He shook his head and pouted as much as he was able. “Kill me like you mean it.”
Grip loose on the green knife, Nagisa wiped sweat from his forehead. Nearby, Karasuma kept a careful eye on their alien invader; though Nagisa knew the agent was just as helpless against him, his presence helped to relieve some of his fear.
All the other students had already given up. Karma likely would have, as well, had he not decided to ditch class again. Some lounged in the shade, skin glistening only from the heat. A few of them watched Nagisa with intent. There was something strange in their stares now, like they were appraising his worth.
Nagisa swallowed, straightening his stance to give himself more leverage. He wanted to quit. His arms fought against each futile swing.
Still, he lunged.
His teacher laughed and easily dodged the attack, letting some of his tentacles waver around the boy to taunt him. “It’s no fun when you don’t try, Nagisa-ku—”
A bolt of terrible energy coursed through Nagisa, and he spun in his advance, bringing the blade down on the finger-like digit at the end of the closest tentacle. It burst into yellow goo at first contact, and Koro-sensei barely had the mind to flee, leaving a faint afterimage with his hasty exit.
Silence swept over the clearing. Blinking, Nagisa found his sight hazy, though he could have sworn his focus, in the moment, was crystal clear. His gaze fell to his hands where sticky remnants clung to his knuckles and fizzled against the green material.
When Nagisa realized what he had done, what he had accomplished, his body sank as though anchored to something deep beneath the earth, and his knees nearly dented the ground, wet earth soaking through his jeans. Nagisa could feel every pair of eyes on his back, and the sensation made his skin crawl.
From the trees, the students heard a bubbling laugh that shook the branches and encircled them. “Not bad, Nagisa-kun,” Koro-sensei said, appearing before them. He had covered the oozing tentacle with a particularly delicate-looking handkerchief, and the students figured this was to prevent them from getting squeamish. “Lucky shot.”
“That wasn’t luck.” Arms crossed and expression unreadable, Karasuma sounded almost proud, though the students had long abandoned the pursuit of being able to understand him. “Nagisa, keep it up.”
Though his limbs shook from exertion, Nagisa’s posture righted, eyes sparkling with gratitude.
Still, Koro-sensei appeared smug, bearing a face his students knew all too well. “It’s taken you this long to nab a single tentacle,” he said, tapping his chin. His eyes seemed to flash. “So it should only take you, oh, about a thousand years to really kill me.”
On a normal day, the students would have fought him, chastising him for his arrogance, even if it was based in truth. But this was the closest they had come. What they felt now was the thinnest shred of hope.
Nakamura offered a hand to Nagisa, and he pulled himself up, granting her a humble smile. “That was impressive. Probably a fluke, but still impressive.”
Already convinced of the improbable nature of his success, Nagisa cracked a shy grin and laughed. “Yeah. Not sure how I managed it. If it was luck, we could use a lot of it.”
As they neared the classroom, the sky became saturated with the colors of sunset. Frowning, Koro-sensei paused and glanced at a watch strapped to his tentacle. “Must have lost track of time. We won’t be able to cover polynomials today, after all.”
He was not deaf to the subdued cheers of his students, but he chose, just this once, not to acknowledge their audacity.
With a jovial smile, he turned to the class. “I won’t keep you here longer than you need to be. A good teacher shouldn’t need to. Head home and get some rest. I want you all ready to try again tomorrow. Let’s shoot for two tentacles!”
Nagisa paled a bit at the comment but smiled anyway, jogging past his teacher and waving goodbye. The other students, some eying him with moderate disdain, passed by, as well.
An odd but not altogether unpleasant feeling seldom arose in Koro-sensei, but moments like these seemed to summon them. It was not quite an ache, not quite a pain, not quite a longing. Something sweet and sad and lost would sink inside him like coins catching bubbles as they fall to the ocean floor. He never let them reach the bottom.
“Koro-sensei?”
“Mm, yes, Kurahashi?” He beamed at her to disguise his surprise. “What’s wrong?”
The girl before him had chosen not to duel him, not because she was frightened but because she’d twisted her ankle doing something in the woods. She wouldn’t confess what activity had caused her to be so careless, but Koro-sensei knew her fondness for the creatures that crawled under moss beds and around gnarled branches. No doubt she had sought a prized bug and failed to take proper precautions.
He said nothing about this, of course. Embarrassing her would do him no good. Not yet, at least.
She frowned, one hand resting on her hip. “Sensei, where do you live?”
Taken aback, he tried, yet again, to dismiss his own humanity. “Ah, well, Kurahashi, if you want to write me fan letters, you can just leave them in my mailbox—”
“No, sensei.” Her blunt comment nearly made him swallow his tongue. Noticing his chagrin, she waved her hands to dispel his concern. “What I mean is, I guess I can… write you letters, but I just wanted to know if you had, you know, a place to sleep.”
He dropped a tentacle on her head with just enough pressure to make ruffle her hair. “Would you like to know a secret, Kurahashi?”
Without trying to hide her excitement, Kurahashi rose up on her toes and grinned. “I won’t tell a soul!”
She was a bad liar, but it didn’t matter. “I can’t settle down,” he confessed, raising a tentacle as though to shield his mouth. “So I don’t. I go everywhere. Paris, Milan, St. Petersberg, Quebec, Rio. You name it. I can live wherever I want. There are houses all over the world with my name on them.”
“I find that hard to believe, Koro-sensei.”
“Well it’s true!”
“And you stay there all by yourself?”
The question gave him pause. After a moment of consideration, he nodded. “I spend every day with a bunch of rowdy teenagers,” he said, folding a few of his tentacles across his chest. “I need my alone time.”
Kurahashi giggled, then shook her head. “Whatever you say, sensei. I’m just glad you’ve got a home. See you tomorrow!”
He lingered in the pasture just before the school until all the students had left. Karasuma locked the door behind him, but when he saw Koro-sensei still standing there, he raised the keys inquisitively before sighing. “Guess you wouldn’t need these even if you left something inside.”
“Oho, that’s where you’re wrong, Karasuma,” Koro-sensei said devilishly. “You’ve finally found my weakness. Locked doors!”
The keyring was flung directly at the center of his head, its metal circlet leaving a temporary indentation in its wake. Koro-sensei’s triumphant grin wavered almost imperceptibly.
“You could have dodged that.”
“Yes, yes.”
Karasuma gave him a hard look. With a shake of his head, he flicked his hand in farewell. “Goodnight.”
When night fell around him, Koro-sensei inspected the keys in his tentacles. He didn’t need them, but in a way, he felt he had been granted a new responsibility. Tucking them away in a secure pocket, he lifted his face to the sky and hesitated, not knowing where to go.
He hadn’t lied to Kurahashi, not really. He could fly anywhere in the world. He could spend the night in the Taj Mahal or Buckingham Palace if he wanted. There was nothing holding him back.
His tentacles remained, as though rooted, on the ground.
Growing agitated, he whipped a few stubborn appendages at the soil, churning it up in a cylindrical wall around him. Separated from the world, if only for a moment, he felt more isolated and alone than he had before, and his decision now seemed impossible. And yet, with the classroom out of sight, he found he was able to launch himself into the air, wind lashing around him, until everything below was nothing more than a blur of lights and shadows.
Home.
The word haunted him. Hovering above the city, Koro-sensei located his students, some racing to sports practice, some attending extra classes, a few venturing into an arcade for the fourth time that week—he resolved to give Terasaka and his friends a lecture in the morning.
The remaining students, however, were reaching their homes, gathering the mail, fumbling with keys, and calling out greetings. This ritual was normal. Koro-sensei would have forgotten how it felt to be acknowledged every morning had it not been for Yukimura. And he would have allowed himself to forget again had it not been for his students.
He circled the city without thinking, gliding along the outskirts at a slow speed, though most jets would still have had a difficult time keeping up. The night was clear. In spite of its vibrance, the city below seemed somewhat peaceful, even when basking in the dim glow of the crescent moon.
Koro-sensei was not tired. It took a great amount of effort for him to feel the slightest twinge of exhaustion. Even so, he descended upon the mountain, allowing the forest to shroud him from the view of the city.
He approached the dark classroom. Without the students, the building lived up to its reputation. Small in size and remarkably decrepit, it was hardly fit for any living creature, let alone young students. But Koro-sensei could so easily picture his class rushing toward the doors, racing one another, laughing and brightening the atmosphere with their spirits alone.
At one point, he had vowed he wouldn’t get attached. It would be too difficult to part ways when the time came, he reasoned. Best to keep his distance. Best to stay aloof.
Best to keep his distance.
He unlocked the door.
His students would mock him if they learned where he had decided to sleep that night. But he imagined he could keep it a secret. They didn’t need to know, not yet, where he finally felt at home.
