Chapter 7: Time for a Refreshing Drink

Korosensei wraps up a chemistry lesson on drawing dye out of sweets and pockets the leftovers, prompting the class to grumble that a world-ending creature still budgets like a salaryman. Manami Okuda then steps forward and openly hands him vials she says are lethal, admitting she has no talent for sneak attacks. He obligingly downs each one, sprouting horns, then head-wings, then freezing into a flat emoticon face as he identifies the sodium hydroxide, thallium acetate, and aqua regia inside. Worried that she is mixing toxins unsupervised, he proposes they develop a poison together after class.

Talking with her, he learns she excels only at science and struggles badly with Japanese and with reading people, trusting formulas because their answers stay fixed. He sends her home with a preparation recipe. The next morning she proudly delivers the finished flask, which he swallows and praises for helping him evolve, only to liquefy and ooze into a desk and through the room, boasting that he now slips into any gap. Okuda realizes the whole exercise was a setup.

Korosensei turns the prank into a teaching point: a killer who is too honest lets the target exploit her, so persuasion through words matters as much as chemistry. Asked how a poison should be offered, Nagisa suggests hiding it inside a drink the mark already enjoys. Korosensei urges Okuda to sharpen how she communicates so her talent can actually reach people, and she takes the advice while Karma chuckles at the earlier stunt. Outside the building, Karasuma fields a call from a defense ministry official who admits the state never believed the class could win, and who is now sending in a hardened professional despite the risk to the students. The chapter closes on that operative, Irina Jelavic, lounging over a man she has just shot and running her tongue along her gun.

Published on August 20, 2012 in issue 38, the installment carries the Japanese title Doku no Jikan, literally poison time, and runs nineteen pages within the first collected volume, Assassination Time. It sits between chapter 6, It's Time to Make a Choice, and chapter 8, Time for Titillation, and marks the first billed appearance of Irina Jelavic.