After a few days of watching and waiting, a minor incident occurred. It happened just as we were getting anxious to nail down our next plan.
I was in third period, and the teacher was just wrapping up our homework progress check and getting to the actual lesson.
Just then, Class 2-5 was shaken by a single person’s simple mistake.
“…Hey! Hey! What the hell?!”
The teacher was yelling at a student three seats in front of me. I peered ahead and soon realized why he was so furious.
The student was sleeping. Not just nodding off, either. Fatigue must have caught up with him; he was lying flat out on his desk, draped over his textbook, sound asleep. That would do it.
The discriminatory policies our school ran on—the SaiHigh Laws—declared sleeping the worst sin of all. Even the least awful teachers would never stand for that. They were guaranteed to force the sleeper awake, chew their head off, and dole out some punishment or other.
They might force them to stand in the hall, or forbid them to sit down, or make them kneel for the rest of class. Corporal punishments like that were on the light end. The worst outcome was having to write an apology essay. The choice came down to the teacher’s mood… What would we see today?
I gulped and kept watching. What transpired was my personal worst-case scenario.
“Dammit! Wake up, you piece of crap! You gonna sleep all day?!”
A series of loud thuds, like mortar shells, rang out. The raging teacher was kicking the sleeper’s desk from the side. In the end, it fell over. The student’s textbook and pencils went everywhere. With nothing to keep him upright, the student lost his balance and was dumped onto the floor. Then, as if the mess at his feet wasn’t enough, the teacher dropped some printouts on top of it.
“What the hell is your problem? I’m taking the time to teach you, and you dare act like this? Your parents pay good money for these classes! How could you do this to them?!”
“…Sorry.”
“Screw it. That’s enough. I can’t stand the sight of you. If you’re not motivated, why should I care?”
He gathered up his things and left the podium. When he got to the door, he threw it open and stormed out of class.
There it was. The worst of all the teachers’ stunts: boycotting their own classes.
I couldn’t stand the sight of this. Did our teacher realize how flimsy an excuse that was?
Let me spell it out for you, just so we’re clear: We were paying money for lessons the teachers weren’t attending. How could they do this to our parents?
Maybe if they were teaching little kids, they could argue that storming out would teach them the value of taking classes seriously. But we were in high school. We could think for ourselves—for better or worse, we were set in our ways. What would this boycott accomplish?
And summer lessons were supposed to be voluntary. Did this make sense from a business perspective?
Boycotting had been reduced to a routine expression of anger. It literally served no purpose other than to protect the faculty’s pride. It was completely ridiculous.
And it wasn’t just the teachers whose actions had become standardized.
“…Let’s all go apologize together. Come on.”
The class rep led the way, and students started filing out of the classroom.
They’d go to the teacher and say, “We’re so sorry, we’ll take class seriously, please come back and teach.”
Screw that. We all knew how it would go. All of this was just a waste of everyone’s time.
“Natsume, come on,” Tanaka said, getting to her feet.
I really couldn’t be bothered…but I didn’t want to be the only one not playing along. I forced myself to get up and joined the end of the procession.
In the hall, I took out my phone and sent Kurumi a text.
“Got a plan of attack.”
As I was about to put it away, her reply came.
“You okay?”
…Oh, what’s this? Not “What is it?” or “Go for it!” but concern? Nice one. She totally blindsided me.
To a stranger, her response might not make much sense, but to me, it felt natural.
No matter how awful this school might be, if Kurumi was worried about me—I could handle it.