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First Time:
Okuda is there alone, she knows she’s probably not supposed to be there, but she’s used to doing things on her own and it’s not like the government was encouraging very legal things of them right now.
She wants to help the class and this is the only way she knows how. So, she sets up the glassware and pulls out the most basic chemicals in the lab. They’ll be simple – mixtures that mostly harm because of the amount rather than toxicity, but she’s calculated the right amount for Koro-sensei’s size and he did say he was an earthling, so it should at least be a start.
She’ll make the three poisons, store them for tomorrow’s science lab, and pray Koro-sensei was kind enough to listen to her straightforward plea.
Karma Time:
As large as the mountain was, Karma didn’t actually take his naps outside when it was time to ditch PE. Rather, he always made his way to the frequently empty science lab and hitched himself up onto one of the long, clear tables before bundling up his cardigan to make a decent pillow.
The chirping birds outside, the warmth of the sun, and the faint smell of chemicals mixed with traces of lavender and vanilla lulled him to sleep.
Accident Time, Period 1:
Okuda’s hair looks like a rat’s nest and her face is smudged with black after Karma handed her sodium acetate instead of acetic acid. He was standing a little bit back, so he was really no worse for wear and the worst of the mixed-up chemical concoction was the flaming puff that marked the ceiling above them. They’re both wearing masks and its just them, so they open the windows to air out the room and step outside to avoid inhaling any fumes.
Karma takes a quick moment to snap a picture of his glasses wearing companion when she takes off her mask and he can plainly see the outline left by her darkened complexion. He makes it her screensaver.
Accident Time, Period 2:
This time was all Karma’s fault and its why he doesn’t do anything nice for anyone ever. Okuda’s always making him things and being his listening ear and defending his reputation, even to their own classmates, so he thought it’d be nice to make her something like an incense or perfume. He even brought some of his own favorite spices to school to use in the mixture.
But here he is now, guessing that there was something in his favorite spice blend he didn’t think was large enough to calculate for, with a table on fire and the edges of his hair burnt. Koro-sensei was quick to smell the burning and put out the fire before anything too bad could happen, but now Karma’s getting an ear full, smells like burnt spice, and his teacher is giggling maniacally while writing in his ‘Boys Book 3’ and waving around hairpins and a blow dryer.
Argument Time:
When Karma hears about students from the main campus bothering Okuda, he storms into the lab like a man on a mission. Its enough to startle the chemist before she’s set up the vials to make him another batch of chloroform.
Karma’s normally aware enough to channel his emotions into a controlled and scary calm, but he’s so out of it he goes straight to yelling when he asks her why she didn’t come to him before, during, or after her harassment. Why didn’t she go to anyone else and decided to go alone when she knows the main campus has no reservations against hurting E class and she is by far one of the worst when it comes to physical combat and expression.
Okuda shouts back about how she doesn’t want to drag anyone around. She’s proud to pull her weight by being a chemist, so if she needs chemical info from the library or more supplies, she’ll be the one to go get them. Besides, she is still an assassin and while she had to hide against the rough high schoolers during their school trip, she should be able to take a couple of book-smart-not-street-smart main campus kids.
Karma kicks over a few chairs but leaves to vent by kicking around a few delinquents instead. Okuda’s mood is sour, but she vents by finishing his chloroform anyway and then pulls out enough ingredients to melt some anti-sensei BBs and mix them into more concoctions than usual.
Makeup Time:
The 3E lab is Okuda’s domain. This is known by the whole class. She goes there virtually every day after school.
Lately, she’s just been going home.
Today, Okuda went in to store some more failed poisons and finds Karma waiting for her, fiddling with his phone and holding the box of her second trial of smoke bombs – designated for testing.
He’ll deny that he’s been there every day since their fight and protest anyone who might equate the quick turn of his head with that of an eager puppy. He was Karma Akabane, leisure bad boy and smartass, not some whipped school kid.
She doesn’t say anything and lets Karma take the lead, as he always does. He holds his hand out and requests her phone and talks about plans to test her latest experiments on the very same main campus kids who harassed her at the start of it all. Its her choice, though, as it is every time he makes a request from her, but he hopes she’ll let him have some fun while he runs the test for her.
They walk out together, with Karma’s name in her phone labelled for ‘in case of emergency’ and theories on ways to mix the anti-sensei serum into a smoke bomb potent enough to work.
Tranquil Time:
Its no longer just Okuda’s lab or the place Karma goes to get away. It is Okuda and Karma’s space. The lab at the top of the mountain is where they go to have peace regardless of the other’s presence, plan their assassination attempts, and generally be themselves.
Karma brings books and games he thinks Okuda would enjoy – to expand her horizons beyond chemistry because she wants so desperately to fit in. Okuda brings snacks and drinks because Karma’s sweet tooth is endless and she’s tired of her chemistry time getting cut short just to hike up and down the mountain to feed his bottomless, teenage boy stomach.
Skip Time, Period 1:
Karasuma should have seen it coming as they got closer, but Karma eventually convinces Okuda to skip PE with him on the day he planned more marksmanship training.
He doesn’t bother going to get them from the lab where he knows they’ll be and he doesn’t bother giving them detention either. He grumbles when Karma’s bad habits start pulling Okuda away more consistently, but they were at least using the lab to work on poisons because Okuda was insistent that they should use the class time to contribute to the assassination.
Skip Time, Period 2:
They’re in the middle of paired knife drills when there’s an explosion from the lab and a window opens for smoke to billow out. Karma climbs out of the window first, quick and agile, but turns around to gently help his companion the rest of the way out. They’re covered head to toe in ash and everyone has to wonder what they were doing in there before deciding it isn’t worth it to ask.
Maehara cries while the teachers lecture the red and purple duo because he’s pretty sure the world isn’t going to end thanks to Koro-sensei, but the budding relationship between the sadist and chemist.
Watch Time:
Koro-sensei doesn’t always spy on them, he’s far too busy ensuring the well-being of his other students to follow this constant pair around, but they’re certainly a reliable fallback plan for when he gets bored.
At this point of the year, Karma and Okuda are together almost every night, talking about meaningless nothings as she mixes her chemicals and he trots about fetching her whatever she wants. Koro-sensei already lectured her multiple times about unsupervised chemical handling, but her safety measures are top notch and he can’t get too mad when she has a lab partner.
The issue before was about her being by herself, anyway.
But here she was, giggling away just the same way that Koro-sensei was giggling into his notebook while Karma snuck around to set down some hydrochloric acid for her, leaning down just enough to blow teasingly on her ear.
It wasn’t exactly safe lab behavior, but Okuda knew what she was doing and Koro-sensei was fast enough to intervene if need be. He’d talk to Karma in the morning about choosing better times to be flirty.
Chocolate Time:
Generally, you’re not supposed to have food in a lab, but where else was she supposed to make cyanide-laced chocolates?
Karma’s blunt request for valentine’s chocolates caught her off guard and she was just a tad disappointed he wanted them for a prank and not – you know – for the actual meaning of the holiday, but she was still happy to make him whatever he wanted.
She worked all night to make the chocolates, box, and cyanide by hand and even threw in a few strawberry and raspberry flavorings even though she knew the poisoned chocolates would be making their way to Terasaka’s shoe cubby.
White Day Time:
Karma was waiting in the lab, right where she presented him with his valentine’s day cyanide with reciprocal, non-poisoned, honey flavored chocolates. It was only right for him to do after all that she does for him. Besides, valentine’s chocolates are still valentine’s chocolates, even if he covered his personal request with a prank, he could only hope the amount of handmade effort meant something more between them than just partners-in-crime.
Confession Time:
Chemistry might not be his subject the way that it is Okuda’s, but he understands it well. Science and math have always been paired topics and he can’t think of anything that would get his point across better than being straightforward and using some of the skills he’s picked up by her side to aid in his mission this night.
He knows her favorite smells, her favorite colors, her favorite foods, even her favorite chemical reactions and she enters the lab that evening, having been successfully distracted by Nagisa and Kayano, to find every table laden with experiment set ups that encompassed everything he knew she loved.
In the center of it all Karma stood with some of her favorite flowers, dyed red and purple, and a relaxed, but genuine, smile that he always reserved for her.
Ranking Time:
Bitch-sensei’s lessons were far from conventional, and the entire class highly doubted they were appropriate, but most of their assassination classroom was unconventional.
On the afternoon of Bitch-sensei’s introduction to the kiss of death, the two regular occupants made their way through their normal routine in the 3-E lab in the most awkward silence either of them had felt with each other. They’d only just had the technique explained to them and only Bitch-sensei would be grading them, but the idea of French kissing their teacher in front of the whole class, even when everyone had to do it and they were somewhat used to Bitch-sensei’s antics, would be unnerving to any teen.
Between Okuda’s worrying and Karma’s bravado, their latest batch of prank pills were left forgotten in the name of practice in a safe, comfortable, and secluded environment where no one would stumble on them except the God-forsaken blushing, pink octopus.
Class Time:
The class long accepted that Karma would remain a missing entity on days that he skipped class. A missing Okuda, however, could always be found in the lab.
It’s when they open the door to the lab, looking to invite Okuda off campus for a group outing, that the class finds the girl dozing in the class devil’s arms and both teens look unusually peaceful compared to the normal anxiety that riddles the chemist and the intimidation of the sadist.
They decide its better for their safety to leave the two in the science lab.
3-A Time:
Class 3-A decides to take a trip up the mountain after all of the issues with Principal Asano and to find out just what is going on to improve 3-E so much. Gakushuu doesn’t say much, but his four friends can tell their top student is just as eager as they are to figure out just what is so different about this year’s underdogs.
When they arrive, the students are playing some volleyball and shouting about ‘serves’ and ‘kills’, but they’re pretty sure that those titles belong to different volleyball plays than the ones they call for. The teacher sees them and signals for the E class to stop and the two groups draw closer together.
There are two people missing from 3-E’s ranks, however, and its obvious and confusing to all of the newcomers. There are a few glances thrown around by the E class students before a few point in the direction of the open windows of the science lab, where Karma and Okuda are only focused on each other, blissfully unaware of their doubled audience as they giggle over a flask of bubbling purple liquid.
Karma pours a smaller vial of something red into the flask Okuda holds and they both lean out the window with the now smoking glassware. Karma’s arms automatically wrap around the top science student to keep her grounded as she holds the flask as far out as possible – the 3-E students have had a few weeks to grow used to this since there are no fume hoods in their lab and Okuda had been complaining to Karma about some of the more volatile reactions she needed to get through some experiments.
3-A leaves the mountain disturbed by the unexpectedly calm reactions to something simultaneously dangerous and unnatural, especially for those who knew Karma was not a person to smile without ulterior motive. They learned absolutely nothing.
Okuda Time:
Okuda still managed to spend time alone in the lab after all that’s happened between her and Karma. They know they spend a lot of time together and they also know that they both need breaks, especially with their introverted tendencies. Karma walks to his empty house with Nagisa that day and Okuda spends hours just fussing about with her chemicals and letting her mind relax.
Daydream Time:
As helpful as Karma tries to be when he’s in the lab, he spends an equal amount of time just watching Okuda be in her element. She is comfortable enough around him that she doesn’t mind or question his dazed stare.
Tutoring Time:
In between heated, bubbling chemicals and glass apparatuses, Karma would talk Okuda through some of her more troublesome coursework. He was patient with her while she struggled through language arts and history, and he listened while she ranted about how much easier anything science related was compared to their Japanese homework.
Sometimes he read aloud while she made adjustments to the experiments around them. Sometimes he had her read while he cleaned up for her. Sometimes they put away the chemicals and it was just the two of them, side by side, working through the latest assignment because they focused best in the lab.
Last Time:
Okuda and Karma stand in the science room just before it's time to trudge down the mountain with their friends – their family. She’s one of the two science specialists and he’s the top student from their now graduated assassination classroom, but this single room means so much more to the two of them than anyone else who has ever trodden through these wooden halls.
It was a place filled with firsts and lasts, a place that watched their moments together and their moments alone. There were still scuff marks on the ceiling and tables with burnt edging and even some chemicals marked with their names in the storage.
Class 3-E’s science room was witness to a lot and it was a bittersweet day to see Karma take Manami’s hand as they slowly shut their door and followed the light of the new day – towards their futures. Together.