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In hindsight, maybe she should have texted first.
To be fair, Leblanc closes at ten, sharp, and Ann is a known quantity to Sakura-san — Akira won’t get in trouble, if she shows up after hours to drop off something of Morgana’s. She knows that Akira doesn’t have one of his myriad part-time jobs scheduled for today, and that in maybe within the next hour or so, Morgana will be pestering him to go to bed.
None of this prepares her when the door opens before she can twist the knob, and she’s met with someone who is most definitely her homeroom teacher wearing a maid’s outfit.
Kawakami-sensei’s eyes go wide, and she stops in her tracks. “Takamaki-san…?”
Behind her, Akira covers his mouth with one hand. “Ann?”
—and in that moment, Ann sees red.
Shiho had always liked to say that Ann has a way of taking something small, and then blowing it out of proportion until it becomes a much bigger deal than it actually is. Worse, she does this only with the people she calls her friends, and never herself.
She knows that this is precisely what’s happening, as her thoughts continue to spiral well into the next day. She’d had the presence of mind to leave Leblanc before she could say something to either Akira or Kawakami-sensei that she’d regret — but as her homeroom teacher turns her back to the class to write something on the board, Ann doesn’t see the yellow shirt and denim skirt she’s come to expect from her, but the maid outfit she’d worn the previous day.
There’s only one reason anyone would wear such an outfit — and of all people to do so for Akira, it should have never been their homeroom teacher.
“It’s not what you think, Ann,” he whispers to her, between classes.
“What am I supposed to think, then?” she snaps before she can think better of it. She’s not really angry at Akira — she’d be the worst kind of hypocrite if she was — but something that is so distinctly Carmen wells within her. It’s that impulse that wants to burn everything down and put it back together so that it’s right again; it’s that impulse that had taken over when they’d brought Kamoshida, both cognitive and real, to his knees.
“I’m just helping her out with something,” Akira explains, and somehow, that’s worse.
She knows this isn’t something that she’s blowing out of proportion, because she’s seen this before — in text messages, in little favors that she would always be expected to pay back, in sickeningly sweet words that make her skin crawl. She wonders, but does not ask, how this arrangement started — what Kawakami-sensei had said to him, to convince him to comply with her demands. She wonders, but does not ask, what sort of leverage Kawakami-sensei might have over him, like how Kamoshida would lord Shiho’s spot on the first string over Ann’s head.
… oh, his criminal record and his continued enrollment in this school. Duh.
“Call me next time,” she says instead. “I don’t care how late it is.”
“Ann, this isn’t—“
“I want to be there.” The look Akira gives her is almost pained, and she backtracks. “If… if that’s not going to make things worse.”
“It’s really not what you think,” says Morgana, from his desk. “It’s not like how it was with Kamoshida.”
—except, this isn’t going to look anything at all like what Kamoshida did. It won’t, because the school faculty has been under strict watch since Kamoshida confessed. If any of them were to try something similar, they’d have to be more discreet, resort to different means — and god, how long has this been going on? How long has Akira had to deal with this?
(How did she not notice again?)
“I’m serious,” she says. “If it’s not going to cause more trouble for you, then I want to be there.”
“It’s really fine, Ann,” says Akira. “I’m handling it.”
She almost laughs at that — how many times has she used that same line herself? “You shouldn’t have to handle it.”
A strange look crosses his face then — something that’s not quite sadness, not quite defeat, but something that doesn’t feel right regardless. How many times had a look like this crossed Shiho’s face, when Ann noticed nothing? She knows, objectively, that Shiho doesn’t blame her for any of it, but hearing it from Shiho and knowing it herself are, apparently, two entirely different things.
“Hey,” she says, and awkwardly reaches over across their desks to squeeze his hand. “I’m here for you. You know that, right? Whenever you need me.”
Akira gives her a faint smile in return, and squeezes back. “… yeah. Thanks, Ann.”
(—but the thing is, it hadn’t started with text messages, or favors, or even sickeningly sweet words. Not for her.
It started with after-school cleanup duty, stretching far too long because her partner had bailed and she was one person doing work meant for two. She had a modeling shoot scheduled for later that evening, and no time to eat in what would surely be a mad dash from Shujin.
So when she stepped out of the bathroom, after splashing water on her face in hopes that it would look at least a little less oily, and Kamoshida had smiled and offered her to drive her to the shoot instead — well, that was a relief.
“Thank you so much, Kamoshida-sensei,” she said, sinking gratefully into the passenger seat of his car. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“It’s no problem at all, Ann-chan,” he’d said in response — and if there was something strange about how easily he’d called her Ann-chan and not Takamaki, then she chose not to dwell on it. He handed her a protein bar from his glove box and said, “Take care of yourself, okay?”
—and, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, it was nice to be cared for, even in this small capacity. Even if Kamoshida was little more than a teacher, then, going above and beyond to help a student.
Looking back on it, there’s a part of Ann that wants to go back and shake her past self by the shoulders and say, wake up. This wouldn’t last, because it might have started with a free ride and a protein bar but it would end with phone numbers exchanged, and a sickening sense of dread every time Kamoshida’s name appeared in her caller ID. She was sixteen and her parents were working abroad, and all anyone had to do was look at her blonde hair, so different from the darker browns of nearly everyone else, to know that she was different. No wonder Kamoshida-sensei had wanted her. No wonder he went after her.
Looking back on it, it’s a miracle that it ended the way it did — with Kamoshida on his knees, begging for her to either forgive him or kill him — and it wasn’t such a bad thing, to deny him both.)
Akira doesn’t tell her, the next time Kawakami-sensei goes to Leblanc in a maid’s outfit. Ann’s not an idiot — she knows it’s happening, and that it’s laughably easy to circumvent her protests.
It still doesn’t prepare her for when Kawakami-sensei summons her to the staff lounge, one day after school. In the hallways, Ann takes a deep breath and steels her resolve, summoning forth as much of Carmen’s flames as she can access this far from the Metaverse.
Her homeroom teacher sits there, in the empty room, wearing a yellow shirt and denim skirt instead of a maid’s outfit. “I was hoping we could talk,” she says. “About… About what you saw the other day.”
Ann knows what she should say: that it’s still no excuse. That it still looks horribly suspicious, after everything that Kamoshida had done. That Akira and Morgana both had told her time and again that nothing was happening, that they were only trying to help Kawakami-sensei out with something that’s not their secret to tell, but this is still something that Ann cannot simply let rest.
What comes out instead is: “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t tell Maruki-sensei.”
Her homeroom teacher’s face crumples. “I… I realize that it looks bad—“
“You think?” Ann snaps.
“It’s a part-time job, okay?” says Kawakami-sensei, and if she sounds tired then, so tired that it’s a wonder that she can even stay upright — Ann refuses to dwell on it. “I need the extra money, and I can do this after school without too many people knowing… Kurusu-kun found out by accident, and so he started paying for my time to give me a break.”
Akira had been comfortable, with her coming to Leblanc. He’d told her that nothing was wrong, that Kawakami-sensei had done nothing to hurt him or make him feel uncomfortable — and yet, for one absurd moment, Ann finds herself back in the passenger seat of Kamoshida’s car, shoveling one of his protein bars into her mouth, so very thankful that there was someone in this city besides Shiho that saw her before they saw the foreign blonde hair, the foreign blue eyes, the modeling career thrust upon her because years of being told that she was too different to ever truly fit in meant nothing when that difference could be marketed as exotic instead.
“I don’t believe you,” she says. It comes out bitterly, clawing its way miserably out of her throat. It was easier to face down Kamoshida, she thinks — she’d had anger on her side then, righteous and justifiable. But if Kawakami-sensei really is hurting too, enough that Akira would throw everything to the wayside to help her — she trusts him enough to believe that much — then what kind of person would Ann be to take that away?
But this isn’t something she can run to the Metaverse, run to Carmen to fix. This is something in real world. Akira is going to be hurt in the real world, if she doesn’t stop this now.
“Stay away from him,” she says, clenching her fists.
“Takamaki-san, I…” Kawakami-sensei says, haltingly.
“You think…” Ann grits her teeth, and ignores the stinging in her eyes. “I’m so… sick. Of teachers at this damn school thinking that just because they’re teachers, they can do whatever they want to us.”
“I have no intentions of—“
“That’s not good enough!” Ann doesn’t mean to shout, or to lose the battle against her tears — but her eyes are wet, and her breath is hitching, and she doesn’t care that she’s smudging her makeup when she rubs at her eyes. Kawakami-sensei is not Kamoshida. She knows this, and yet—and yet—
“Takamaki-san…”
“He’s counting on you,” Ann chokes out. “He needs to make it through the year, make sure he doesn’t violate his probation, and part of that is on you. How could you do this to him, knowing that?”
Kawakami-sensei averts her eyes downward. “I know.”
“I don’t care what it is you’ve got going on!” Ann almost shouts. “I don’t care why you need that second job so badly! But stop dragging Akira into it!”
“I know.”
“Do you think he could say no? Do you think, with his probation and with everything that’s been going on this year, you could ask him to do something for you and he’d be able to say no?”
“I know.”
“So—“
“I get it.” And Kawakami-sensei sounds so tired then that Ann almost feels guilty for pushing so hard.
Because Kawakami-sensei is not Kamoshida. Ann knows this, and yet this is still something she can’t let go so easily.
—and it ends, awkwardly, with Chouno-sensei meandering into the staff room, humming something horribly off-key under her breath. There’s no reason for Ann to preserve Kawakami-sensei’s place here, but she bows stiffly to them both anyway, before leaving.
It would have been easier, she thinks, if she’d been able to get some sort of last word in — but there had been nothing of that sort. Only Kawakami-sensei, looking miserable and guilty, as Ann charged ahead on the basis of something she still doesn’t understand all the way.
In hindsight, perhaps it’s a miracle that she doesn’t get in trouble for flying off the handle at her homeroom teacher. Were it anyone else, maybe she would have — but Kawakami-sensei says nothing when Ann returns to school the next day, and the next, and the next. Akira still looks tired, and there’s a spiteful part of her that thinks, good, because at least this time it has nothing to do with their teacher.
—but Kawakami-sensei never really looks her in the eye, and Ann knows that that much, at least, is her own fault. She didn’t do anything wrong, per se — she knows this — but Kawakami-sensei has always looked so tired and there’s not a small amount of guilt that Ann had personally contributed to it, this time.
When the last bell rings, Akira taps her on the shoulder. “Are you free tonight?”
“Yeah,” Ann answers. “Why?”
“Come to Leblanc.” He tilts his head to the side, and his eyes drift off of her and onto their homeroom teacher who’s now making her way out of the room — and Ann does her very best not to scowl because there’s a part of her that’s so distinctly Carmen that still wants to burn it all down.
—but Ann can’t do that here, not outside the Metaverse, and so she clenches her teeth and settles for, “She’s coming over, isn’t she?”
Akira looks guilty at that. “… yeah. I talked it over with her, and she figured that it would be best to explain everything to you from her end.”
She thinks about that damn maid’s costume, and almost shudders. “And that conversation can’t happen here?”
Akira shakes his head. “Definitely not.”
It’s not fair. This shouldn’t be happening at all, and yet here Akira is — caught in the middle of something that should have never concerned him in the first place, born from his chronic need to help out everyone that comes into his orbit even if it’s to his own detriment. How many people are out there, that would take advantage of that? Does he even care?
“I didn’t make things harder for you, did I?” she asks, quietly.
Akira smiles faintly at her. “No, you didn’t.”
“But I—if she talked to you about it then you should know what I—“
“You were only looking out for me, right?” he asks, so endlessly patient that she simultaneously loves him and hates him for it.
“I was, but—“
“But nothing.” And then his voice goes oddly soft as he adds, “I know why you did it, and I’d be the worst kind of person to blame you for it.”
“But—“
"What would be most helpful for me right now,” he says, softly, “is if you came to Leblanc today.”
—and that’s all Ann can do at this point, isn’t it? It’s not quite the same as asking for help — but Akira is asking something of her, letting her in even in this limited capacity, and Ann would be the worst kind of person to turn him away now, even in a fit of self-righteousness.
“… all right,” she concedes.
—and it’s hard to say what exactly will await her, later in Leblanc, but at the very least, it will be on Akira’s terms — and if Kawakami-sensei does anything to compromise the trust that he’s clearly placed in her, then Ann will be ready.