Chapter Text
On December 1st, 2014, Gakushuu Asano hung himself.
There were no letters, no phone calls. Nothing left to indicate why. The family’s maid found his body in the morning, dangling from the ceiling with a tight belt around his throat.
The news, when reached by the student’s schoolmates, was met with incredulity and disbelief. The police found out that the 14-year-old boy had been the student council president of his junior high and had been favored by all.
They asked themselves: Why would a boy with stellar academics and such a bright future hang himself?
***
Gakuho Asano knew he should have picked up the phone.
He’d been driving, one hand on the wheel and the other calling a business partner’s number. A sudden ring sounded and his family cleaner’s number flashed on the screen. Ito never called: she knew that her employer had a full schedule, and even a few minutes of tardiness could cost him.
He stared at the screen, thumb hesitating over the accept button. He paused, then shrugged it off. It was pure ignorance, but he’d thought at the time that a business deal was infinitely more important than anything Ito could have said.
He declined the call.
***
Ren Sakakibara knew something was wrong the moment he strolled into 3A’s homeroom and couldn’t spot the usual flash of strawberry blond.
He scanned the classroom once more, eyes lingering on the empty desk at the front of the class where his friend usually sat. Gakushuu (Asano, his mind reminded him. It’s Asano, now) never missed class. He’d once come to school with a forty-degree fever, forehead burning to the touch. The teacher had insisted on sending him home, but he’d desperately refused.
The desk now sat empty.
Ren stared, a sense of dread slowly creeping from the back of his mind. He forcefully squashed it down and wandered to his desk with a single-minded focus.
By the time he’d sat at his seat, he'd half-convinced himself that Gakushuu was simply out negotiating with some white, foreign students.
Akemi, one of the girls he’d previously been interested in, was also staring at the empty desk. Her voice trembled as she asked. “Is it the principal?”
No one answered.
***
Tadaomi Karasuma walked to the main campus of Kunugigaoka only to be met with the colors blue and red. Four police cars were parked at the curve by the front of the building. A man in all black, with a service cap hiding his eyes, was talking into a walkie-talkie.
Tadaomi rushed over, cursing his grey peacoat for hindering his movement. He demanded. “What’s the situation?”
The young man snapped to attention. He knew when a commander had spoken. He fumbled with his bullet-proof jacket, then quickly opened a file.
“This morning, a student from Kunugigaoka Junior High was found dead.” The officer reported, handing the file to Tadaomi. He looked nervous, knees wobbling slightly.
Tadaomi snatched the file from him before opening it. He prayed that it wasn’t one of his students, that one of his idiotic, brainless, reckless children hadn’t been killed. The ministry promised that any harm to the students would automatically cancel the bounty, but assassination was still a dangerous field of job.
Please, he’d whispered in his head.
His wish had been granted, and Asano Gakushuu’s face stared back at him.
***
It wasn’t shock nor horror that met the students of 3-E at the news of Asano’s death.
It was understanding.
The media, holding no understanding of the word ‘privacy,’ had reported the death by the following week. It didn’t make the headlines, but the second page instead. The article reported that the gifted son of famously-known Gakuho Asano had died by suicide. It was short, blunt, and left nothing to the imagination. The text ended with a question, asking why someone who has had everything handed to him would kill himself.
Kunugigaoka High was thrown into panic and shock. They had also fallen to the façade of Gakushuu Asano, the brilliant leader who never failed.
3-E, on the other hand, received the chance to witness death first-hand. They thought to themselves: If this is how it feels to lose an enemy, how would it feel to lose a mentor?
School continued as normal, as though the suicide never happened. As though Asano hadn’t been an integral part of their lives and, instead, was a distant memory, longing to be forgotten.
The bell rang, and rang, and rang.
The calendar pages were ripped, page by page.
Finals came and went, everyone, lost in their feelings of grief yet not daring to speak up. The main school lost to 3-E, the virtuosos had fallen, yet no sense of victory was gained.
Koro-sensei tried to approach the subject delicately and taught them the importance of communication. He was serious and caring, yet the feeling of wrongness never went away. The main school still fought tooth and nail, yet their spirits were long lost.
Their leader was gone, and no one had the tenacity to replace his empty throne.
***
Karma Akabane slouched in his chair, twirled a pencil using his index and middle finger.
He was bored.
He was angry.
What was the point of studying if there was no one to surpass? What was the point of fighting if there was no one to defeat?
He stood up, his chair banging against the floor, and cut off Koro-sensei by leaving the classroom. His pseudo-teacher stared worriedly at him, holding his hand using one of his tentacles.
Karma honestly just wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want his entire thought process and feelings to be announced to the class.
He felt betrayed, angry, at a guy who suicided. That was messed up, even in his book.
He didn’t miss Asano, he missed their rivalry – the intense need to defeat someone, to utterly crush them.
He had no one with whom he could play with, could seriously fight. Assassins? Maybe physically. Yet, on an academic level, no one stood as his equal.
The octopus gave a speech about unity and friendship, love and kindness, and how moving on was the best option in their situation. Karma wondered to himself: Moving on from what? He wasn’t grieving - he barely knew Asano. Maybe he’d teased him in the hallways, laughed at his annoyed expressions, and looked forward to the final exams.
To their final showdown.
It was pathetic that his so-called rival couldn’t even make it.
Karma wanted to know, was desperate to. What made Gakushuu Asano give up his life? What made Mr. Perfect, the boy wonder, wrap a belt around his neck?
What gave him the power to ruin Karma’s satisfying victory?
He slapped the octopus’ tentacle away and shoved his hands into his uniform’s pockets. Then, quickly spinning on his heels, strode out of the classroom without so much as saying a word.
He marched down the mountain’s pathway, wanting to scream at the critters littering his way. He wanted to punch someone, to fight. To feel the adrenaline rush into his blood and focus on something else.
Then, he caught a flash of strawberry blonde.
Karma froze.
“Asano?”
The head of the person snapped to him, incredulity flashing in their violently violet eyes. Karma had always thought them pretty.
The blonde gaped at him, amidst the shadows of dying snow-covered trees, as time seemed to freeze. The redhead’s breath seemed more apparent, more noticeable, as everything in the world focused on the one teenager standing across the pathway from him.
“You can see me?”