"You really don't need to do this," Gakushuu whispered.
Karma stirred the curry he was in the middle of making. He added a little more spices, and continued stirring.
"You hurt your arm. Of course I do," Karma rolled his eyes. Gakushuu huffed.
"In case you forgot, I also have a housekeeper. Who regularly cooks for me," he said slowly.
"And you also have meal times for them," Karma poured in water, then closed the lid. He turned to look at Gakushuu, "where you need to sit in front of your father and eat."
Gakushuu fell silent.
"What happened?" Karma asked.
"Nothing," Gakushuu said quietly. "Nothing happened. Nothing ever happens. He never yells at me, he never slaps me. He never does anything. "
Karma pulled Gakushuu into a hug.
"Words hurt more than anything. And sometimes, silence hurts more still. He doesn't need to hit you to hurt you. He doesn't need to injure you to make you bleed. He did hurt you." Karma spoke from his own experience.
Of course, he could tell what Gakushuu was going through even without thinking about his own problems, but the thing was Gakushuu would know what Karma meant.
Just like Karma understood him. He understood Karma too.
"I don't want to talk about it," Gakushuu whispered. Karma felt his heart twinge at the tone.
"Then how about you set out Yuki and Mirai's food while I set out ours?" Karma asked, inserting humour into the words. Normally, he wasn't the one in this role, but he could tell how upset Gakushuu was.
Not knowing what Gakuhou said to Gakushuu didn't decrease his desire to gut him like a fish. And Karma had gotten very good at getting blood off his clothes after all these years.
"I'm sure you'll find it funny to know what kind of things our class has been up to nowadays. Koro-sensei gave us a class-wide punishment and I'm getting oddly good at fixing up old buildings now. The place…"
Gakushuu watched Karma go back to cooking and talking to Gakushuu about his day with a faint smile.
He had just been released from the hospital and Karma was a welcome sight. He didn't want to go back home at all.
He didn't want to see his father, or Kevin, who was still going to classes and had come by to thank him and apologise and whatnot.
Alejandro didn't even try and Gakushuu was just grateful. He didn't…
He didn't want to deal with anything.
He refused all other visits.
His father didn't even try to see him.
Gakushuu felt like he had been holding onto a vain hope. And it was pulled right from under him.
He got up halfway through dinner and when Karma asked him if he wanted to sleep there, Gakushuu nodded.
He stayed the night in Karma's room, getting comfort from the filled in walls, the messy books and papers, stuffed just out of view. Karma's smell that seeped through everywhere, and Karma's warm warm body, holding him while he cried.
Gakushuu came back to school looking no worse than before. And everyone commented on his arm.
Without his extracurriculars to take up his time, Gakushuu was far more free than he knew what to do with.
He studied, did Student Council duties and watched Karma entertain kids.
They had been so wary to see Gakushuu pop up. They had subtle discussions about him, and they stopped themselves from doing anything that was too out of the ordinary for a middle school student.
But their views were so far screwed already.
They would talk about assassinating all the time, casual references to death that would almost be eerie to someone else's ears but Gakushuu found it funny.
Karma would occasionally look at him, surrounded by excitable kids, and laugh. So that was also good.
Gakushuu was good with the kids.
They drew on his cast, and he fixed up this old guitar and taught a few how to play.
They hadn't even heard someone play a guitar before.
Art was always Gakushuu's thing. He loved the arts. He wouldn't go as far as to say, art was the cultural center for humanity but it kind of was.
Gakushuu liked music, he liked martial arts. He liked to sing too.
He used one hand, a repaired guitar and his voice to entrance the kids into letting class E get work done.
It…was fun.
And while Gakushuu got insight into class E, he suspected that they got insight into his and Karma's relationship too.
They were far more casual with touch than Karma ever was with anyone else. Karma would wrap his hands around Gakushuu's waist, teasingly pull him into a dip for the princess play he was doing, tease him, pull him close by his clothes and even when they didn't do anything else, their intimacy was far too obvious to see.
Also, Gakushuu was pretty sure he was being photographed by someone throughout. He didn't see anyone, so he suspected it was actually Koro-sensei.
But he made sure to stare at suspicious spots whenever his sixth sense tinged at him. Or at least he would, if Karma wasn't always distracting him with food or physical affection.
And it was very distracting.
When the exams were about to start, his appearances became brief, but he still left with a much lighter heart.
Maybe it was the children, or the teachers, or maybe even class E's antics. But they made him feel like the world was less miserable than he had been stuck thinking.
Shit happened.
But that was fine.
Because life would keep moving on.
Even though Gakushuu wouldn't always be there, there would always be people like Gakushuu, Koro-sensei or Akari who would help people out.
Gakuhou wouldn't always be the ruler. He would be usurped, and even if it wasn't by Gakushuu, it would be by someone.
No one could constantly hold onto power for a long period of time. Not in politics, and certainly not over other human beings.
It was his third year of middle school.
It was only his third year of middle school.
He was young.
He was a teenager.
And he certainly didn't deserve to get tied down to something by his own father.
It was Gakushuu's choices in life that mattered. It was his choices that would form his future.
Fighting his father wasn't his choice, but something he was being forced to do.
And he didn't like it at all.
Midterms were supposed to be pretty easy, and Gakushuu, allegedly, had more time in his hands than normal.
It wasn't too surprising, to see the result of that in the glaring 500 that stared Gakushuu down from his first rank place.
His teacher congratulated him and Gakushuu stared at the name right below his.
Karma had spent all his time at the nusery school. Not to mention Koro-sensei's restriction.
How did he…?
Gakushuu bit the inside of his lip to stifle the smile.
He felt unbelievably smug.
His boyfriend was amazing, wasn't he?
He deserved something nice after all that effort too.