Kayano's flaming tentacles chased Koro-sensei at Mach speed.
He dodged, but he wouldn't leave her range. He was already taking damage.
Mimura stared at the fire.
"Wow… they're like volcanic bombs…"
Kayano laughed and held up a torn piece of tentacle.
"Hahahaha! I plucked off a piece! It's still moving!"
Itona watched her face, not the fire.
"In a mere ten or fifteen seconds of all-out battle, the tentacles are already starting to take over her mind…"
Kayano kept laughing.
"Hahahahaha, what's the matter, Koro-sensei? My head doesn't hurt anymore! The pain feels so good now!"
Akira frowned.
"So, does she feel pain, or did she just start liking pain? Choose one. Because if it's the latter, that's a different kind of problem."
Everyone looked at him.
Dude?
But he was still joking. That gave them a little hope.
Nagisa turned toward him.
"Akira-kun, can you remove her tentacles like you did with Itona-kun?"
Akira watched the flames.
"Well, I can. But right now, she's heated her tentacles until they're like fire, so I can't grab them the way I did with Itona… Wait. Tentacle fire…"
He shouted toward the fight.
"Koro-sensei! If she can become a Fire-type, you can too! Just heat up your tentacles and use Flare Blitz!"
The class screamed.
"What, is he a Pokémon?!"
Koro-sensei's voice came back through the dodging.
"Akira-kun, please don't treat me like a Fire-type Pokémon!"
Akira shrugged.
"I mean, you look like one."
No one could deny that. They fell silent.
Kayano's laughter broke into something else.
"Die, die, die, die…"
Her eyes were turning black.
Itona spoke flatly.
"It's too late if they've already taken her over this much. Whether or not she accomplishes her revenge, I think she'll die a few minutes after the battle ends."
Sugino looked at the ring of fire.
"Can't we do anything? Do we just stand by and watch her get eaten away?"
Okuda tried to reason with her.
"If she could just listen first—"
Akira cut her off.
"She can't stop herself now."
Nagisa looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
Akira kept his eyes on Kayano.
"The tentacles aren't simply giving her power. They're amplifying what their host desires. They find the strongest fixation in the host's mind and reinforce it."
He nodded toward Kayano.
"Her desire to kill Koro-sensei isn't just an emotion anymore. The tentacles are reinforcing it every second. The more she fixates on revenge, the harder it becomes for her to act against it. Even if she wanted to stop now, she couldn't."
The class went quiet.
Then Koro-sensei's face flickered into the air in front of them.
"Class!"
Everyone jolted.
"Whoa!"
Nagisa stared.
"Koro-sensei?!"
Sugaya blinked at the floating face.
"Why is it just your face?"
Koro-sensei answered quickly.
"It's a clone. I don't have much leeway with Kayano-san's ferocious attacks. It's all I can do to leave an afterimage of my face!"
Sugaya still looked impressed.
"Still… that's pretty nifty."
The face didn't smile.
"We have to remove her tentacles ASAP! They're only generating all that abnormal heat because she's not giving any thought to her own survival! At this rate, the tentacles will suck out all her life force, and she'll die! But as long as her bloodlust matches that of her tentacles, they'll remain rooted to her nerves and become impossible to remove!"
Akira nodded once.
"Koro-sensei, I can take them out of her. As long as I can touch her. But I need someone to distract her or reduce her bloodlust."
The head answered.
"I can use myself as bait. Let her attack my heart. Then someone has to distract her. If her bloodlust is broken, the tentacles' bond with her will momentarily weaken. Then Akira-kun can remove them with minimal damage."
Kimura stared.
"And Kayano's tentacles would be on your heart the whole time? Wouldn't you die first?"
Koro-sensei didn't dodge the question.
"If I'm lucky, I'll be able to postpone that final, fatal moment… but I'd say the odds of me dying first are fifty-fifty."
Kataoka snapped.
"No!"
Koro-sensei continued.
"But you know… for me, the entire class not being able to graduate uneventfully is even worse than dying."
Koro-sensei took a direct hit, and the face vanished.
Akira spoke into the gap.
"Actually, I think I can distract her just before she strikes your heart. I can calculate the timing so it won't be a fatal hit. But someone still needs to distract her or reduce her bloodlust."
Erika looked at him.
"How will you distract her before she hits Koro-sensei?"
Akira smiled.
"Believe me. It will definitely work."
They decided that was better than a fifty-fifty chance and started thinking anyway.
Yoshida pointed.
"Mimura… play some air guitar."
Mimura stared.
"Huh?"
Yoshida turned his face away.
"Show her your badass skills."
Mimura screamed.
"She'll turn her bloodlust on me!"
They were still arguing when Nagisa went still.
He had made his decision.
Kayano's tentacles drove toward Koro-sensei. She was still screaming the same words.
"Die, die, die!"
She found an opening to his heart.
Akira moved.
"Kayano! If you die right now, you'll never beat the forever-flat allegations!"
The class looked at him in horror.
Her bloodlust immediately switched targets, and she missed Koro-sensei's heart.
Koro-sensei still managed to catch her.
His tentacles locked her down while she thrashed.
"Let me go!"
He held on tightly.
"I swore to your sister… that I wouldn't let any of you out of my grasp."
Nagisa walked toward her.
The class watched in anticipation and fear.
Sugino breathed his name.
"Nagisa."
Karma's voice was quieter.
"Nagisa-kun."
Nagisa closed in like a snake and kissed her.
Some students looked shocked. Others were flustered. Irina looked proud, while Nakamura and Karma were already recording.
Nagisa kissed Kayano, pouring into it everything he wanted to say to her and all the emotions he had been holding back.
The kiss broke her bloodlust in a ten-second, fifteen-hit combo.
Kayano passed out, her face flushed red.
Nagisa looked up at Koro-sensei.
"Koro-sensei, will this work?"
Koro-sensei answered.
"Full marks, Nagisa-kun! Next—"
Akira stepped forward.
"Alright. My turn."
He touched the nape of her neck.
---
Akira was floating in a white room.
That was the closest way he could describe it. It wasn't really a room. It was a mass of signals, the waves that made up what people called consciousness.
Most living beings appeared in colors. A whole disco of them. But this one was pure white.
That told him enough. The tentacles possessed a consciousness, though not a complex one. A parasite, perhaps. Or worse, a mass of organic life that didn't even know it existed.
He felt a question. The same one he'd encountered with Itona's tentacles.
What do you want to be?
Akira's answer hadn't changed.
"Just who the hell do you think I am? I'm already perfect. You're just a nuisance. Get lost."
His will struck the white and overwhelmed it. The room filled with his presence, a purple aurora spreading from edge to edge.
The tentacles couldn't withstand it. They began to die, just as Itona's had.
Akira didn't want them dead just yet.
He pulled his will back.
The purple aurora thinned, and the white returned. The connection remained, half-open.
Akira looked around.
"Alright. Now, where is that thing?"
He searched for the strange sensation he'd felt earlier.
It was there. Weird. Directionless.
He turned toward it but found nothing.
"Maybe I should go a little further."
Then he felt it again.
Far away, a black dot.
Akira frowned.
"What is that?"
He moved closer.
The dot grew larger, and the connection to the tentacles grew stronger with it. Frequencies different from the ones he'd just touched began to appear.
He closed his eyes and sorted through them.
The tentacles shared a portion of their core frequency. This place seemed to be where those common signals converged. He could even sense Koro-sensei's tentacle frequency among them.
But the black dot was deeper than that.
Akira ignored the other signals and kept going.
The dot became a circle. A portal, if a portal could look as though it were eating the white around it as it expanded.
He stopped a few feet away.
No readings. Nothing.
He closed his eyes again. Calculated. Sensed.
Still nothing.
No signal.
No consciousness.
No energy.
No darkness.
No light.
This was actual nothingness, which was physically impossible.
Even he felt unsettled. Nothing wasn't supposed to be possible.
Then he sensed something familiar within it. He couldn't quite put a name to it.
He examined it more carefully. A signal. Emotions, perhaps.
A mass of nothing clustered together. A cocoon.
An eye opened within it and looked straight at him.
Then, suddenly, a signal struck him in binary.
Zeros and ones arranged into a single sentence.
Found you.
Akira's eyes widened.
Selena's voice cut through the silence.
"Get away from there!"
The white disappeared.
He was standing in a black space filled with stars. Their shared mental space.
Selena was already there, breathing hard. She sighed.
"Sorry about that. I had to forcefully pull you in here."
Akira stared at her.
"Sister. What is that?"
Selena didn't try to dress it up.
"That's… I don't know, okay? I think it's nothing."
Akira frowned.
"Yeah. It is nothing. But that's impossible."
She shook her head.
"Not that. What I meant was, it felt like nothingness. The Sea of Nihility from the records."
Akira's frown deepened.
"The Sea of Nihility? The opposite of the Imaginary Tree? The place where our family's enemies, the Oblivions, come from? But wasn't that place supposed to be sealed? I thought our family was fighting a never-ending battle to protect that seal."
Selena nodded.
"Yes. That's why I don't know how something like it could be here. It should be impossible."
Akira looked back at her.
"And what's its relationship with the antimatter tentacles?"
Selena already looked tired of the question.
"I don't know, okay? I'm not an expert in this either… I need some time to analyze it."
He was frustrated, but he also knew he wasn't going to get an answer here.
Selena glanced past him, toward the way out.
"You should go back first. It's been a while. Everyone's worried."
Akira sighed and nodded.
"Alright."
He turned to leave, then stopped.
"By the way, Sister. That eye… I think I remember it. Back when I passed out after my heart was destroyed, I saw it… along with visions of other worlds. It was the furthest one away. And just now, I think it sent me a message. It was in binary. It said, 'Found you.'"
Selena's frown deepened.
"I don't know about that either. I'll look into it further."
Akira nodded and disappeared.
His consciousness returned to his body.
Selena opened her eyes in the throne room.
From afar, she watched as Erika began scolding Akira for worrying her.
Selena sighed.
"What's happening now…? I didn't expect this plot twist. What should we do now?"
The scolding continued.
She sighed again.
"Well, it seems we'll have to change the plan for now."
---
Akira opened his eyes and came face-to-face with Erika.
She looked extremely worried. Everyone else had gathered around him.
He blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"Hai?"
Erika pinched his cheeks.
"Hai? What do you mean, hai? Do you have any idea how worried I was? You weren't responding. Even after Kayano's tentacles came off, we were still worried about you!"
Akira looked at Kayano lying on the ground and tried to explain.
"I was just caught up with something, okay? It's not dangerous."
She pinched harder.
"If you keep pulling stunts like this, just you wait and see what I'll do to you."
He was back. They were already back to their usual antics. The class sighed in relief before turning their attention to Kayano.
Okuda asked carefully, "Does this mean Kayano-san is all right now?"
Koro-sensei looked at her.
"Yes… probably. She'll need absolute rest for a while."
Nakamura and Karma closed in on Nagisa with wicked grins.
Nakamura beamed.
"Hey, Prince Charming. Shutting her down with a kiss, huh? Nice!"
Nagisa couldn't quite bring himself to look at them.
"I thought it was a good way to make her forget her bloodlust. I'll apologize to her later."
Irina leaned in and lifted his chin.
"Fifteen hits in a ten-second kiss? You're not there yet."
Nagisa blinked.
"Hits?"
She didn't let go.
"I trained you in forced, indiscriminate French kissing. You should have been able to make forty!"
Maehara considered that.
"Hmm. Twenty-five's tight for me."
Okajima nodded.
"Yeah."
Kataoka looked at all of them.
"God, I hate this place. I can just about make it to twenty."
Akira turned toward them.
"What are hits, anyway?"
Erika pulled him back.
"I'll tell you later."
Koro-sensei knelt down.
Yellow liquid gushed from his wound.
The class shouted in unison.
"Koro-sensei!"
He breathed heavily.
"I'm fine. It'll just take a while for my heart to recover, even though it wasn't a direct hit. I'm sure there's something you'd like to hear me say, but please, wait just a little longer."
A sniper shot cracked through the air.
Koro-sensei ducked, and the bullet missed.
Everyone turned toward the source.
Shiro stood there. Another masked man held the rifle.
Shiro didn't raise his voice.
"Quit playing up the deathbed angle. You're still alive enough to dodge."
Itona frowned.
"Shiro."
Shiro glanced at the unconscious girl.
"Useless girl. She'd give her own life for that revenge narrative of hers. You'd think she could have done a bit better than this."
His eyes returned to the teacher.
"You're quite the monster. Just how many assassins have you driven away in a single year? But there are still two of us right here."
He opened his mask, revealing one eye.
"I'm the last one. You took everything away… and I'll make you pay for it with your life."
Koro-sensei recognized him immediately.
"The genius scientist, with a concealed face and altered voice… So it is you… Yanagisawa."
Yanagisawa turned away.
"Come, 2.0. March will bring a perfect death for an accursed life."
He left, and the masked sniper followed him.
They were still staring after the two men when Kayano stirred.
Her eyes opened.
"I…"
Koro-sensei leaned toward her.
"Kayano-san… Thank goodness."
Nagisa was already beside her.
"Kayano… are you okay?"
She blushed and turned away. For a moment, she said nothing.
"It was pure bloodlust at first… but as I spent time with Koro-sensei, I started losing my conviction in that bloodlust. Like, doesn't this sensei have some circumstances I don't know about? And shouldn't I find out what they are before I kill him? But that's when the bloodlust in my tentacles swelled forth. They wouldn't let me stop. How dumb. Everyone was genuinely enjoying their assassinations while I wasted the whole year on plain old revenge."
Silence settled over the field.
Nagisa began talking about the time they'd spent together.
Akira, however, was somewhere else entirely.
What are hits, anyway? I knew they were related to kissing, but…
Erika whispered, "What are you doing, you idiot? There's an important situation going on here."
He whispered back, "This is important too, you know. Otherwise, what if all my kisses are bad?"
She pinched him.
"Why are you like this…? We can talk about it later. Look. Koro-sensei is about to reveal his backstory."
Akira straightened up immediately.
Kayano was crying.
"Thank you… I can stop acting now."
Akira wondered what he'd missed.
Isogai turned toward the teacher.
"Koro-sensei… whatever happened in your past… we'll accept it, as long as it's the truth."
Koro-sensei sighed.
"I wanted to avoid talking about my past for as long as I could. But I see I have no choice. I don't want to lose your trust or the bond we share. This past summer, on that southern island, Karasuma-sensei said of Irina-sensei, 'The better the assassin, the broader her skill set.' I think that's relevant here."
He looked around at them.
"This E Class is the first class I've ever taught. Even so, I've managed to teach you just about every subject without a hitch. Why do you think that is?"
The students gasped as they understood what he meant.
He nodded.
"That's right. Until two years ago, I was the assassin known as the Reaper."
Before they could recover from the first revelation, he delivered another.
"And one more thing… even if you do nothing, I'll die come March. Either I die alone, or the Earth dies with me. That's the only part of the future an assassination can change."
Under their stunned gazes, Koro-sensei began to tell his story.