Chapter 3: Mitarashi Dango (Part 3)

Eventually, the first period started without a hitch, with our social studies teacher unaware of the unstoppable force and the immovable object clashing just earlier. I kept my eyes glued to the board, not daring to turn to look at Yuuya. If I did, I knew it wouldn’t end well. He’d probably just throw me off the classroom and scream at my guts, and I could only vividly imagine what kind of violence he’d do afterwards.

After that, our teacher handed out our respective assignments with little ceremony. The papers were distributed neatly to our desks by Kuroda Chiya, Tsurugi-san's vice. He was nice and all, but he wasn’t a particularly charismatic student. Or, at least, that’s how I saw it at first glance. He was probably just after Tsurugi-san's steps like an assistant manager.

"This is to be submitted next week..." as he pointed at the stack in front of me. I thought that ended there, but he placed another stack beside it. My eyes scanned the papers quickly out of curiosity, but contrary to my expectations, it was just the same thing.

"And..." he continued, as if mustering his courage.

I raised an eyebrow. “There’s more?”

He shook his head. “No, um—it’s just that…these are for Kousaka-san. Could you…pass them to her?”

I don't know if it was just the air conditioning or my body completely lost all of its temperature. I want to say nothing but 'Damn you, Yuuya!' for making this situation inevitable.

“Why me?”

"Um..." His eyes darted around the classroom, probably eyeing for someone to vouch him. However, the students that he landed his sights on visibly stiffened after the mention of her name. Others looked away entirely, it didn’t take a genius to read the mood.

“Well… you know how everyone is still a little…” He struggled for the right word, then settled on, “...uneasy. Not just about what happened earlier but you know, a month ago. After that, nobody wanted to bother her. Or, um, hospitalized.”

I could only stare at him as everything started to make sense.

“…I’m not exactly her common denominator, you know.”

“I know, I know,” he whispered hurriedly. “But out of everyone here, you’re the one she’s—well—not hostile to.” He gulped. “At least, not visibly.”

Denial won't do justice either. Chiya just gently nudged the stack closer to me like it was a cursed artifact he wanted to sever ties with immediately.

“So…if you don’t mind,” he said, forcing a hopeful smile, “could you help me out just this once?”

I glanced toward Kousaka-san's direction.

Lucky me, the designated sacrifice.

I sighed. “…Fine.”

The relief on Chiya’s face was so intense he nearly bowed. “Thank you, Shimizu! I—I owe you.”

“You owe me dinner, then.”

“Please remind me so I can cater to my promise. Not now though, I'm quite short on budget…”

“Noted.”

Then he scurried away like he had narrowly escaped a natural disaster.

I looked at the twin stacks in front of me. Now I was the postal service for a delinquent artist, great.

***

Later on, I tried seizing for opportunities to approach her. The best idea I had in mind was to wait for lunch break and seize her absence to put everything on her desk, but that didn't happen. She had her bento ready, and didn't need to leave her seat. That left me no options and I was left re-strategizing in the cafeteria.

I returned to the classroom without a hitch, and let the droning voice of the fourth and fifth period melt into background noise. Then, I reviewed formulas for the term exams during the rest time between periods, maximizing whatever time I had left to prepare. This school wasn’t an exception to a life I lived like a routine.

A while ago, I realized that being a second year student at Shonan High School puts you in the middle of the opposite poles high school life offers: the first being that fiery curiosity to taste what being a highschooler is, and the second, the looming fear of graduating and navigating the merciless adult world outside the confines of the campus.

But if you're going to ask me, I don't fear the latter. I lived through enough bad experiences and losses to be hinged.

Once you go through the worst nightmares, the next would be the lesser, as they say.

Then again, I don't regard myself as a supremacist, but I believe that those who were introduced to struggle at an earlier age will be more resilient in the challenge of the outside world.

And the struggle, if I were to transform it into a tangible event, was Nakabeni-sensei drawing bizarre algebraic expressions on the blackboard.

An outsider can call this a 'typical' school last period, but to us Class 2-1 and Nakabeni-sensei's students, her subject would be a mountain to cross before we get home.

This already played out a dozen times before. She's going to drawl about complicated rules of solving this and that, then write equations long enough to fill half of the board. Then surely after that, she'll turn around and scan the room.

Make eye contact with her and find yourself on the board answering everything she had just written.

So today, the usually loud Class 2-1 classroom became hushed when she turned to look at us. Even the normally rowdy, sometimes overly excitable girls and brash delinquents in front of me stopped talking altogether.

Only Tsurugi-san and the other nerds had the joy of being challenged by her questions, and they were the one that saved this classroom from mathematical demise.

But today, she was absent. The nerds aren't even willing to volunteer. It meant only one thing—the classroom will become Nakabeni-sensei's hunting ground.

And here I am, hoping that she'll choose the most detached student, the one that doesn't care about classes, whose mind is always preoccupied by the desire of going home and doing nothing.

Coincidentally, her eyes found the target, it was behind me. Two rows, three meters.

"Yes, Kousaka-kun?" she sounded almost pleasant, but it carried the complications of her math problems.

Eh…looks like my wishes backfired. But wait…Kousaka-san wanting to participate in class? I don't know what kind of anomaly this is, but my instincts screamed that I should turn around and confirm reality.

My head turned towards the back, and to no surprise, Kousaka-san wasn't raising her hand. She was probably called out for recitation just because everybody in the class was paying attention. Either way, this wasn’t going to end nicely.

“Kousaka-kun,” the teacher repeated, with her marker tapping the board, “Would you kindly solve this?”

She stepped aside to reveal the equation: 

(3x - 2)(x + 5) - (x² - 4x - 10) = 0.

At a single glance, I already caught on the structure. It’s a classic foil-expansion and simplification type. Not really impossible to answer—one just needs to slow down and make sure to select the right factors. But it looked aggressive by how it was sprawled across the board in big, bold strokes.

“........”

I think it fell on deaf ears. I turned to the sketchpad-obsessed porcupine behind me, and she wasn’t even glancing up. She kept sketching, her pencil swishing softly across the page and tapping on invisible rhythm.

“Kousaka-kun?”

"I’m doing something.” she said flatly.

With fresh memories from earlier, a couple of snickers sparked around the classroom. Class 2-1 wasn’t particularly brave, but they appreciated good entertainment when presented itself. They knew Kousaka-san wouldn't budge at all.

In response, Nakabeni-sensei pushed up her glasses with terrifying calm.

“Sorry but, can you spare me some time and answer these problems? You can draw again unbothered after this. Please come to the board.”

The porcupine’s spine visibly bristled. With her sharp exhale, I can say that she was finally annoyed.

“You’re condemned to be free, thus you're responsible for everything you do. You created that problem on the board yourself, I am not the one responsible for solving it.”

The temperature in the room dropped. A few of my classmates actually gasped, including me. I don't know if she embodied herself in Sartre's philosophy or this is her narcissism taking place overtly. For us watchers, the delinquency of Kousaka-san is on premiere once more.

“But Kousaka-kun, your responsibility, as a student here, is to engage with the material and participate in that learning process. The moment I write a mathematical statement on this board and present it to the class, it becomes a potential object of study. This equation isn't that hard though, and as a teacher, my responsibility is to guide you to correct answers too.”

I don't see this situation escalating because of Nakabeni-sensei’s practiced tolerance and leniency, and the good counterargument.

"A duty to engage, perhaps, but not a forced obligation to perform.”

Blinking once, she closed her sketchpad and crossed her arms.

“You, as the creator, have an authority over the content, but that authority does not negate my autonomy as an individual learner.” she continued. “The problem is a proposition; my engagement is a choice. It is my understanding of the material, not my ability to recite the answer to an ad hoc problem, that is the measure of my learning.”

The argument itself sounds reasonable for both sides, but both of them are just shifting the blame onto the other person. Creator versus solver and whatnot.

By creating the math problem, sensei is just simply creating a necessary condition for Kousaka-san’s growth and learning, which is the universal purpose why schools were created. When questions are formed, we have an obligation to fulfill the sufficient condition—the act of solving it. And by obligation, it’s not born from sensei’s authorship of the problem, but from our agreement being students in this space.

But I'm not going to stick around and waste my time listening to this ridiculous back and forth just because one side thinks so highly of themselves.

So before I could stop myself, before I could calculate the pros and cons, before I remembered that this wasn’t my problem—I raised my hand.

“If it’s alright, sensei…I’ll solve it.”

Nakabeni-sensei blinked, like she never expected anyone to intervene. There was a twitch at the edge of her mouth. Amusement, maybe. Or relief that she won't have to deal with the immovable object sulking behind the classroom.

“But this was directed at Kousaka-kun…”

I gave her a weak smile as I grasped my own pen.

“It’s okay. You can give the performance marks to her instead.”

Collective hushed laughter echoed in the room. Am I crazy for suggesting such a stupid idea? Well, if it moves the class forward, why not?

“Eh—? Very well…please proceed.” She seemed hesitant but gave in to me nonetheless.

For so long I stayed invisible in these four walls, I can’t blame them for reacting that way.

I stood, walked to the board, and took the chalk from her hand.

I ignored the strange silence behind me, the subtle tick of pencils pausing, the hushed whispers of conversations suddenly stopping. Of course who wouldn’t be piqued by a wallflower dango seller suddenly playing hero?

I focused on the problem on the board. The first step was to expand, combine then subtract the second expression. Lastly, factor out. The computations went smooth, like I was a scientific calculator propped with red hair.

My mind worked quietly and methodically, practiced from years of calculating grocery money and budget allocation. By the time I reached the final calculation, the answers already settled in.

Final answer: 

x equals zero…and negative eight point five.

When I capped the marker, the room heaved a collective sigh. Acknowledgement isn’t really part of my expectations from them, but at least my intervention wasn’t entirely in vain. Each one of us knew better if no-one tried to volunteer.

“Well done, Shimizu-kun.”

I placed the marker down to Nakabeni-sensei’s table gently, and returned to my seat.

That didn't end there though. A couple of whispers floated throughout the classroom.

"Did he just save Kousaka-san from Nakabeni-sensei?"

"I heard he's as dumb as Yuuya. What if we’re wrong?"

"Yeah…I can’t believe it…"

"I mean…I’d still copy notes and assignments from Tsurugi-san, but still…"

“Maybe he’s secretly a genius?”

“I'd still prefer Tsurugi-san over that weirdo.”

The praises and skepticisms were quickly drowned by more chatter than ever. I don't care if they respond with hostility or fascination, or if they'll laugh at me if I fail. I wanted to remain invisible like I used to, though I can't say the same for Nakabeni-sensei who surely placed me under her radar.

“Kousaka-kun, I hope you followed the calculation’s steps. This would appear in our term exams.”

A few of the braver students shot an awed glance at me as I wordlessly stared upfront.

Behind me, I didn’t hear Kousaka-san sketching anymore. Her chair was finally turned forward now, and she was introspectively fixed on something far beyond the windows.

I don’t know if my heroic ploy did her good, but seeing her completely abandon what she’s doing just earlier made me feel slightly guilty.

I didn’t mean to ruin her moment—but it seems like I can finally feel the essence of what I just did.

At least I returned the favor, although unappreciated.