“I heard you were sick,” said Ashikita-sensei, throwing me a casual lifeline. “How’re you doing? All better now?”
“Ah, yeah, I am. Thanks for asking,” I replied with a grateful nod.
“Is it just me, or do you have a completely different attitude with him than you do with me?” Daimon-sensei interjected.
“Well, I mean, yeah.”
“‘Yeah’? Whaddya mean, ‘yeah’?” She glared at me so hard, I could practically hear the sound effect. Kunugi-kun is paralyzed! He may be unable to move! I mean, really, of course I’d have different attitudes towards the two of them, considering that Daimon-sensei was consistently strict with me and Ashikita-sensei was consistently nice. High school boys are really sensitive like that.
Ashikita-sensei laughed. “You two certainly are close, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think that’s the best way to describe a teacher’s relationship with her student, for what it’s worth...” She started out strong, but by the end of her sentence, Daimon-sensei’s tone had grown substantially less forceful. No surprise there—it’s hard for an almost-thirty-year-old to take a firm stance against a fifty-something-year-old.
“Oh, I meant it in a good way, of course! From my perspective, it looks like Kunugi-kun’s opening up to you. Having a teacher to confide in is really important for students.”
“I-Is that how it looks?” Daimon-sensei seemed slightly bashful. Guess she wasn’t upset hearing that from him after all. I-It’s not like I actually opened up to her or anything, though!
“By the way, Kunugi-kun,” he said, turning to me. “Mind if I ask you something off topic?”
“Uhh, sure.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Huh?”
“Wha—Ashikita-sensei! Why would you ask a student about that?!” It really was off topic, and incredibly abrupt to boot. The question smacked me senseless, and Daimon-sensei immediately jumped in to admonish him, but he just smiled his way through her protests and ignored them.
“I, ahh, don’t...?”
“Oh? You’re a second-year, so next summer you’ll be hitting the books for your entrance exams. That makes this summer the last one you’ll get to play around, don’t you think? The school trip’s coming up right after vacation ends, as well. I met my own wife back in high school, you know? It might be hard to appreciate at your age, but it really is possible to find yourself a partner in school who’ll stick with you for a lifetime.”
“Okaaay?” His sudden, self-centered ramble left me and Daimon-sensei completely bewildered. Never thought that the fifty-something-year-old gentleman Ashikita himself would more or less openly endorse students getting into the sort of questionable relationship that most schools have policies against! Then again, if his story was to be believed, he ended up marrying the lady, so I guess it might’ve been aboveboard by somebody’s standards?
A low growl rumbled through the air. Oh, crap! Ashikita-sensei’s careless words had scored an accidental critical hit on a certain almost-thirty-year-old!
“So, Kunugi-kun?” he continued, apparently not caring at all about Daimon-sensei’s current state. Or maybe he just didn’t notice her?
“Y-Yes?”
“Do you have a type? When it comes to girls, I mean.”
Hoooly crap, this old dude just doesn’t stop! You can’t just go throwing the staff room into chaos like this, man! And yet he kept the same placid, almost saintly smile on the entire time as he casually committed some fairly unambiguous sexual harassment. But it didn’t feel like he meant anything bad by it at all, so it was really hard to call him out on it.
“Okay, now it’s starting to get interesting. Go on, spit it out, Kunugi.” Miss Almost-Thirty jumped into the conversation to finish me off while I was on the run, smiling in a strained sort of way that made it clear she’d taken plenty of damage herself. Was she just trying to drag me down with her? She probably thought she’d be able to make me say something really embarrassing and then tease me about it! So much for thinking about her students!
“Umm...”
I had to figure something out. I could go with a generic answer and say something like “I like nice people,” but I didn’t think Ashikita-sensei would let me slide on a cop-out like that, not to mention Daimon-sensei. I could see their “And? What else?” coming a mile away.
C’mon, think, think! Work those brain muscles! Power that light bulb! If my goal was to get out of this incredibly fruitless conversation as quickly as possible, then the best response would be something that puts them off so thoroughly it ends the whole thing in a flash, even if that means a bit of temporary humiliation. I had to be a huge poser!
Something ridiculous, something over the top... I was, unfortunately, working under a time limit. The longer I thought about it, the more painful it would be to actually go through with it. What I needed was speed and force! As such, I plucked out the first words that crossed my mind and spat them out without even stopping to think about what they were.
“I’m into the sort of girl who would never fall for me under any circumstance, I guess!”
It felt like the very air in the staff room froze solid. Ashikita-sensei’s gentlemanly smile and Daimon-sensei’s bloodthirsty one were exceptions, though. They’d both shifted into expressions of dumbfounded amazement.
“U-Umm...” I think I was even more bemused than they were. Honestly, I hadn’t anticipated that reaction at all. I was expecting an “are you kidding me?!” or a “quit trying to act cool, kid!” or something to that effect. I didn’t know how to deal with a “we just heard something we’d have been better off never learning.” I had to dig myself out of the hole I’d jumped into.
“U-Uhh, I mean, you know how a bit of hardship always makes passion burn all the brighter, right? Or something along those lines?”
Ashikita-sensei thought for a moment, then nodded, smiled, and threw in an “I think I understand.” Phew! Looks like he bought it... “In other words, you’re aiming for Daimon-sensei?”
“WHAT?!” The two of us shouted in simultaneous indignation. His remark had broken new ground in the field of incomprehensible logic leaps.
“A forbidden love between student and teacher...” he continued. “Heh heh, I sympathize. That’s an easy fantasy for high schoolers to fall into.”
“Ashikita-sensei...” said Daimon-sensei, choosing her words carefully. “Are you serious?”
“I’m just kidding, but whether or not Kunugi-kun’s serious about it is anyone’s guess.” His grin took on a sort of suggestive, teasing hint to it. I was finally starting to realize where he was going with all this. “Come to think of it, you’re not seeing anyone right now, are you, Daimon-sensei? What do you think of that, Kou-kun?”
“Umm, honestly, I don’t think it matters one way or another...”
“Oh? That’s a surprise. You’re not denying it?”
I hesitated again, choosing my words carefully. “It’d be unethical, for one thing, and even if it wasn’t, this whole thing stinks of sexual harassment.”
“Oh, pardon me!” he laughed, returning to his usual good-natured smile. “You start losing perspective on that sort of thing when you get to my age; it’s a bad habit.”
Daimon-sensei was frowning, making absolutely no effort to hide how displeased she was with him. As I checked her expression, she happened to glance over at me as well. Our eyes met briefly, but an instant later she looked away again.
“I’m, ah, pretty hungry, actually!” I exclaimed. “I’ll be heading out here—thanks!” An awkwardness of a very different variety was setting in, and I decided to beat a hasty retreat. I excused myself, left the staff room, then paused for a moment to sigh.
Seriously... What did I do to deserve that? All I could do was pray that none of the other teachers had been listening in. Worrying about that wouldn’t accomplish anything, though, and I genuinely was hungry, so I decided to get out of there on the double.
“Oh ho ho!”
And no sooner had I decided that than a voice rang out behind me! It was like the world itself was dead set on not allowing me a second of time to indulge in listless ennui. I didn’t even have to turn around. Out of all the bright and exemplary fifteen-to-eighteen-year-olds who attended Oumei High, I only knew one girl capable of packing that much audible stupidity into a single laugh. She was exemplary, all right, but only in the field of idiocy.
“Fancy meeting you here, Kunugi-san!”
“This is a curse. It has to be; nothing else makes sense anymore.” The second I step out into the hallway at lunchtime, this runt somehow manages to catch me every single time. How could that be anything other than a curse?
As you’ve probably surmised, the voice belonged to none other than the kooky little numbskull Yoshiki Yuu.
“I was just waiting for my friend to show up, but you’re my friend too, so I guess you’ll do!”
“Great...” I’ll “do” for what? My incredibly unenthusiastic reply probably made my doubts pretty clear. A normal person would instantly pick up on the fact that I wasn’t in a great mood, but needless to say, the Li’l Dummy in front of me was completely oblivious. I gotta get out of here...
“Hey, where’re you going?” She dashed around me and cut me off!
“The school store, then back to my classroom. Problem?”
“Problem! Come on, let’s chat! Why waste the opportunity?” What opportunity is there to waste? Your encounter rate’s been so friggin’ high since we met that walking into the hallway and not seeing you would feel like more of an opportunity than anything else!
Of course, no matter how I replied, there wasn’t the slightest chance she’d actually listen to me. She grabbed on to the side of my pants too, meaning I had no way of getting away from her—the munchkin thought this through; I’ll give her that.
Unlike Ashikita or Daimon-sensei, Yuuta had a childish, innocent smile that would make me feel really bad about kicking her halfway down the hallway. I’m not that savage. I sighed, partially out of resignation and partially because I’d developed the habit of sighing every time she turned up. Naturally, she didn’t pick up on any of the emotions that sigh carried in the slightest.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
“Ooof, yikes. Like, seriously, just yikes.”
So, I failed to escape from Yuuta. I ended up squatting down face-to-face with her in the hallway by the staff room, completely locked into her textbox. I didn’t exactly have anything pressing to take care of, so when she decided to be uncharacteristically caring and say, “By the way, that was one big sigh a minute ago! Are you worried about something?” I decided to indulge my curiosity, take the bait, and ask for her input on all the stuff that’d happened to me just a few minutes before.
The result: my stupid little kouhai cringed super hard at me.