A clear display of knowledge

“You two.”

Dr. Tanaka’s stern voice made Suzume freeze in place. Their plan to sneak into class without being noticed foiled when the doctor’s strict gaze pierced their backs from behind the rounded glasses, obscured by reflecting sunlight from the window. She turned around, shrunk in place and bowed deeply with a trembling form. “D-dr. Tanaka…”

The crown of his head nearly blinded her with the bright rays, shining off of it. Even if that wasn’t the case, she still wouldn’t have met his gaze.

“What is the excuse this time? The corridors changed shape?” He mocked and snickers erupted from the large classroom with dozens of stares mocking Suzume and Arihira.

Arihira kept his cool. Not a muscle twitched from the snarky remark or the relentless taunting from the students. He smirked. “Is there a problem?” Amber eyes flickered with challenge, piercing through the rounded spectacles.

“You’re late.” Tanaka slammed his briefcase on his desk, voice trembling with anger he struggled to hold back. “Your class starts at 9!”

Arihira tapped his chin in thought, which seemed to infuriate the professor even more. “Please, look at the clock above the board.”

Tanaka staggered back. Nobody had ever back talked to him before. As if to prove his own point, his gaze shifted from them to the clock and lo and behold… The minute hand clicked into place onto the number twelve, while the hour hand steadied at exactly 9.

“It appears you’re early, professor.” Smug, Arihira hummed in amusement.

The professor grunted, mouth twisting into a scowl of disdain. Unintelligible noises broke from between his parted lips, but not a word to reply with. His long fingers tapped against the wooden desk. The students held their breaths in anticipation.

“W-well… take this as an example.” He murmured, face flushing red, half in anger and half in embarrassment. “And as a warning… Take your seats.”

Conspiratorial whispers followed them behind their backs with every row of students they passed by. Arihira reveled in the attention, but the girl next to him shrunk in embarassment, keeping her head bowed low. A group of girls giggled quietly, turning their heads to follow his path with sparkling eyes, while he gifted them with arrogant ignorance. He grabbed Suzume’s wrist and pulled her down to sit on the second last row of desks. Two girls glared, seething with jealousy, and Suzume heard them whispering gossip about her without so much as knowing her name. Tanaka cleared his throat with a loud groan, fingers tapping on the desk to call upon their attention. “That will be enough disruptions!”

Arihira’s amber eyes sparked with mischief, as he stared straight ahead, lips curled into a flashy grin, revealing two flawless rows of teeth. He rocked back and forth on the chair. “Behave!” Suzume’s elbow stabbed into his ribs, knocking him off balance and both him and the chair smashed into the laquered ground with a crash that echoed throughout the classroom and called every pair of eyes back to them.

Slam!

“Arihira, are you starting with your antics again?” A heavy folder of papers struck Tanaka’s desk and his voice boomed again with a blood-chilling cruelty.

Arihira settled back into the chair, not losing an ounce of his composure.

“If you outright refuse to pay attention, then you must know more about the topic of deep-sea chemosynthetic ecosystems than the rest of us.” The professor folded his arms over his chest, tilting his head down, which made the rays, reflecting off his glasses to shift smugly. Hushed whispers and cackles filled in the silence, that had settled. “Tell us,” Tanaka continued, “why hydrothermal vent communities can sustain entire food webs without relying on sunlight.”

Arihira tilted back again. The chair screeched, balanced on two legs. He held his chin between his thumb and forefinger, eyes narrowed in thought.

“They don't need sunlight because photosynthesis isn't the only way to make energy.” Tanaka’s face drained of color, let alone smugness. “The base of the ecosystem is chemosynthetic bacteria. Instead of harvesting light, they oxidize chemicals released from the vents, mostly hydrogen sulfide, but also methane and hydrogen in some systems. The energy released from those reactions is used to fix carbon dioxide into organic compounds…” All the triumph between them siphoned from Tanaka to Arihira with every word that flowed freely from his mouth, like he took the spotlight as a lecturer.

Suzume buried her crimson face in her hands. Dead silence. Only Arihira’s voice carried a semblence of weight in this room.

“So while almost every other ecosystem on Earth depends on photosynthesis, hydrothermal vents are powered by chemistry instead.” He shrugged his shoulders, the smug smirk never faltering off his face. 

Tanaka’s face flushed as red as Suzume’s, with the only difference being, he looked like a tomato in his anger. “That’s… correct.” Was his final, begrudging verdict.

“I hate you…” Suzume hissed, face still hidden from the world.

More awe crowned Arihira in a shroud of adoration from his new fan club.

“You're so smart, Arihira…” One of the girls turned around to whisper. Her eyes sparked with impression and the desire to be noticed. Arihira’s grin widened. "I could never learn all that, even if I sleep with the book under my pillow!"

"I doubt you could, too, especially if you never open it."

"But I read books!" She insisted with an offended frown. "I just have memory issues."

“Reality is more flexible than people think. You'd be amazed what you can become once you overcome your victim mentality. You think your memory issues are the only reason for your bad grades, so you just stop yourself from even trying. But that's not how it works in this reality. The law of manifestation, I believe. You can be whatever you set your mind to be and believe in yourself.” The row in front of them erupted in gasps and giggles. “I believe there was a psychological experiment about that, conducted in the year..."

His face contorted in pain. Suzume kicked his shin under the desk. “Ow…”

“You deserve worse.” She hissed.

“Don’t be jealous!”

“That’s enough!” Tanaka’s voice boomed. “This isn’t a café or a philosophy course. Arihira and Suzume, leave my classroom in this instant and don’t come back until I see a twenty page report explaining every hydrothermal vent field discovered in the northwest Pacific, including their geology, chemistry, and biological communities. One from each of you!”

“I’m actually going to kill you…”

Suzume spewed curse after curse with trembling limbs in quiet acceptance of this walk of shame she had to endure, while Arihira treated the path between desks like his own personal runway.