There's No Shade in the Shadow of Expectation

Today’s UN Training --- Make the ‘Institution’ you operate within work for you

In one form or another, all of us operate within, or are dictated by a pillar of ‘Institution’ in whatever location we happened to be born in and currently live. Our lives are not so delicately intertwined by an organization founded for a religious, educational, professional, or societal purpose. Our personalities are formed as we progress through them as we age from children to adults, and these traits can change radically depending on which of those four pillars of ‘Institution’ we spend most of our time in.

In the modern age it has become an inescapable standard that everyone has to go through.

Well, unless you live off the grid in an isolated forest somewhere. But that's neither here nor there.

These pillars of ‘Institution’ have supposedly been put in place to assist us and make life easier. It has been said that this is what was needed for humanity’s evolution from hunter gatherers, to being able to eat cheese puffs and lazily pass time playing video games.

Because these pillars are there to make life easier for most people, there are those among us that take advantage of them to benefit themselves at the expense of others who may not be keen on just what it takes to do that.

Diplomats and politicians are seemingly born to rip off the pillars of ‘Institution’ they impose on the masses; and coming to believe that there is no other way to get to the top, Tani is committed to being the best at such dastardly deeds. If he wants to be the top diplomat in the world, he has to train himself in that abhorrent artform in whatever capacity available to him.

In this case, the pillar of ‘Institution’ he is currently encompassed by is Kokusai High School, and the seeds of his schemes have already been planted. He will use this school to make his colossal leap to the top level as easy as possible.

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Our newly minted third year student Akihiro Tani arrives at the courtyard of Kokusai High School; it is alive with activity as hundreds of students greet all those who enter with shouts of advertisements for their respective clubs. Today is the first day of club initiation week, and every club in the school has expended all their effort in gathering new recruits to replace those that left in last year’s graduating class.

The task is certainly arduous, and Tani can only imagine just how shameless the loudest extroverts among them must be. They so outrageously dress up and shove pamphlets into the chests of passersby with such relative ease that he assumes embarrassment must be a distant emotion for them.

The baseball club is here, with their shaven heads and burgundy uniforms shouting out the team’s chant in perfect unison, hoping to draw people in with their display of camaraderie and school spirit.

The drama club is reenacting lines from a Shakespeare play as though they were on their own theater’s stage despite the rousing dhin of voices cascading over their performance.

The chemistry club has some dangerous looking contraption made of liquid filled glass bulbs that are secreeting smoke, and multiple members have stopped people walking by in an attempt to explain what it is they're working on.

Tani puffs, and with an arrogant nudge of his glasses higher up the brim of his nose, he addresses the commotion as if talking to a great rival.

“Ha! I sure am glad that I had the wherewithal to use wits to promote my new club. There’s no way I’m lowering myself to peddling for members like a common beggar.”

This declaration instills a sense of superiority, and the effort expended by the other clubs adds to his exultant gait as he makes his way inside of the school.

He shouldn’t be feeling so cocky however, because unlike all the students he is so smoothly insulting in his mind, his Languages Club doesn’t have a single member yet.

But, he has enacted a plan to jump right over everyone’s efforts by going to the highest authority figures in the 'institution' that is this school, and 'convincing' them to do the promotion in his stead.

The calculated effort to get others to do his dirty work has been going on since the start of the most recent school break, and he’s excited to see the fruits of his labor come at the end of today’s classes in the form of wide eyed students thirsting for the knowledge he will provide them.

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Akihiro Tani sits astute at the helm of a U shaped desk in his new clubroom. The room is adequate in size, perhaps even bigger than most other rooms afforded to the majority of after school clubs. It could be the shady nature of how he attained the creation of it, the Principal could very well have given him such a fine space in fear of his toilet escapade leaking, or it could just be that the last available spot happened to be perfectly suited for him and his members.

There’s no doubt that he will be able to teach his fellow students one of the many languages he knows with the help of the large black chalkboard on the wall; the breeze coming through the big rectangle windows that gently dances into the room will bring fresh air to keep them all energized. The golden orange hue of the twilight hours will certainly help paint fond memories for the members as they dive into their studies.

Deep in Tani’s mind, he fantasizes about such gayety as though he could reach out and touch it. It’s all like a dream to him, a centralized location for the building blocks he’s set in place that will guide him up the ladder to the top spot in the UN.

It all seems so perfect.

Except for one major problem…

There’s no one here.

It’s been two hours since the end of classes for the day, and he’s sat in silence, postured perfectly in this classroom the entire time just waiting for someone to poke their head through the door. Hearing the steady commotion of lively students meeting and greeting each other in their respective clubrooms down the hall has made the silence of his large room feel all the more malicious.

“Okay…” Tani says to himself, taking a deep breath in the process. “There has to be a logical explanation for this.”

He takes another deep breath.

“I did everything right on my end, I was assured by the teachers I spoke to that they’d promote my club to their students directly…”

One more deep breath.

He thinks back on what could have gone wrong, and what first stands out in his mind is 2nd year World History teacher Wakanda Shinichiro.

Tani picked the history teacher because he figured that the style of his club would draw in students mostly interested in world history; if promoted right, the brightest students in that class would certainly wish to further their grasp on the world by learning new languages. He had even hoped to find a kouhai to give the club to once he graduated by choosing the second year class instead of third.

Wakanda-sensei is a newly divorced 58 year old man that has a penchant for gambling at seedy pachinko parlors to pass the time now that he's single; having gone to graduate school in Italy, Tani decided to take advantage of that.

One day late at night, Tani followed Wakanda-sensei into a pachinko parlor, waited until he lost all his money and left, and then proceeded to block his path in a long dark alleyway

Tani had slicked back his brown hair, dressed in an oversized suit and wore dark sunglasses to disguise himself when he confronted this lonely teacher.

Speaking in Italian, he claimed to have owned the pachinko parlor and was a member of the Sicilian mafia named Don Mazzoli.

Telling the teacher that a colleague outed Wakanda-sensei as a gotokoi was all it took for Tani to convince him to promote the club as a 'favor' to make the problem go away.

When asked why a Sicilian mob boss would care about a club that hadn't even existed at that point, Tani said a family member of his was enrolled in the school and needed to learn English, so he had enlisted the help of the Principal to get it started.

By claiming communication with his boss, Wakanda was left feeling that a grand conspiracy was in place that he had just been thrust into that not only put his physical well-being in jeopardy at the pachinko parlor, but also his financial well-being at work

Apparently, that amount of explaining was all that Wakanda-sensei needed to agree.

Could he have found out it was an outrageous lie and decided against supporting the Languages club?

Thinking back on it now, Tani still doubts that this could be the case. He is even more certain that the teacher was frightened enough that night not to go back on his word. He shrugs away that possibility.

Tani takes yet another deep contemplative breath, his perfectly postured shoulders rising and falling in a peak and valley.

The next scam our resident high schooler committed was against 3rd year English teacher Shirai Keiko: 27 years old and single.

He chose 3rd year English for obvious reasons, he believes that many of the students would want whatever help they can get in order to ace that class. After all, statistics say that English speakers fare much better in the job market upon graduation.

How he got his hands on Shirai-sensei’s commitment wasn't nearly as nefarious.

Shirai-sensei has a penchant for sweets, French sweets to be exact. Because of that, Tani got a part time job at a French patisserie by her house that she frequented, and began using psychological tactics to get her to associate him with the dopamine provided by the gift of treats.

Shirai-sensei visits the patisserie shop daily and orders the same thing, an espresso and plain croissant with a cup of mixed fruit and yogurt. She had always so longingly gazed at the freshly made sweets put out in the display bar in the morning, but never pulled the trigger on buying one for herself.

One day, Tani asked her why, and she brought up the fact that she can’t afford to indulge herself in sweets if she wanted to avoid continuing her life as a bachelorette. She is under the impression that as she ages, blowing up in weight to a degree that men would find her unattractive is a legitimate cause for concern.

As a daily scale watcher, she has always been disciplined with her diet and workout regimens to keep herself as eligible as possible and avoid becoming a 'parasite single'.

Instead of insisting that such outdated thinking serves no other purpose than to damage her mental health, he saw her insecurity as an opportunity to weasel his way into her emotional state like a ball of slime down a drain.

It started one morning where he made a special French sweet called a petit four. Varieties of these are favorites for people not wanting too much sugar in the morning, but also desire a counterbalance to the bitterness of the espresso.

She didn’t notice his smooth handed addition to her takeaway bag at first, and thought nothing of it before realizing just how delicious it was to finally indulge in a thing she genuinely enjoys. Every day, Tani would add a different variety of petit four and noticed that she began expecting one even though the reason why it was added was never discussed between them.

This hidden treat was put in specifically for her to feel special, and it was put there to allow her to cheat on whatever skewed dietary rules she placed on herself. By having it there for free, she would feel worse about throwing away a perfectly good treat that was so graciously gifted to her.

After a couple weeks of this, it became the connecting force that glued their transactional relationship together.

But then one day, Tani didn’t put the sweet in her bag.

Thinking it must have been some kind of one off mistake, Shirai-sensei found herself feeling an odd sense of dread when it wasn’t included in her bag for the second time in a row.

Third day passed, and no sweets were added.

Fourth day, nothing again.

By the fifth day, she couldn’t take it any more and finally had to confront him about the daily gift she had grown accustomed to.

Tani explained to her that since school would be starting up again soon, he'd no longer be able to make the sweets for her in the morning, so he wanted to let her down softly.

She was devastated, she was so enthralled by her daily routine that the prospect of losing it never even crossed her mind.

She would have to suffer through sugarless mornings from that point on, or buy the full sized sweets and torture herself for it.

Unless…

She could do Tani a little 'favor'.

He had offered to wake up extra early in the morning before school to personally make the sweets for her, if only she would volunteer herself to be the sponsor of his new club and help him recruit members to join.

She immediately agreed.

Tani was confident she would, so confident in fact, that he already had a written application that just needed her signature for him to present to the principal.

Having her commitment would help his cause should he not have had to go through with the blackmail, it also gave his club legitimacy right off the bat by having the English teacher on board.

From that point forward, he had been making Shirai-sensei her favorite varieties of small treats and brought it to school with him since the start of the school year. It has served as a constant reminder of what she needed to do for him if she wanted it to continue.

So why is there no one here now?

He takes a final deep breath, but his inhale comes in as more of a desperate gasp for air and catches on an invisible wall on its way out.

His impeccable posture collapses into a heap.

“Oh my god!” Tani grasps at his hair. “What if no one ever comes!?”

By himself in the clubroom, he drops his facade.

His usually confident demeanor takes on the shape of a puddle. Everything had gone so smoothly for him that this sudden change in what was expected strikes him like an anxiety inducing laser beam.

“If I don’t get enough members to join this club, my dreams will be dashed before I even graduate high school!”

Standing up abruptly, he pays no mind to the chair he had just flung across the room in the process.

He must find out just what has gone wrong.

He races through the sunlit hallways and does his best to block out the noise of the activities in the other clubrooms; the mere sound of voices are returning the insults he threw their way earlier in the morning and are now pelting with the force of lethal arrows shot from a bow.

Coming upon Wakanda-sensei’s classroom, he slides open the door and looks inside. The chairs are flipped upside down and it has long been empty, but Tani isn’t here to find anyone, he’s here to find evidence of the promotion of the Languages club promised to him.

There’s a bulletin board in the back of the classroom where representatives for each club leave flyers and posters hung up to draw attention. It was understood that Tani’s poster would be guaranteed a spot directly behind the teacher and in front of the students.

But there is no sign of his poster at all, it wasn’t put in the agreed upon location.

Making his way to the bulletin board and shuffling through the dozens of posters, he finally finds his flier buried way out of sight within the sea of paper. The other clubs simply plastered their advertisements right over his without a care in the world.

He doesn’t blame the competitive ruthlessness of the other clubs however, he immediately targets his ire toward the person who was supposed to keep this exact thing from happening.

“Wakanda-sensei you worthless bastard! You deserve a sleepless night for this!”

Ripping his poster off the wall, he walks in a huff towards the teacher’s podium.

Pulling a red marker out of a pen-jar from the drawer, he slams down his poster and begins writing in Italian.

‘LE AZIONI HANNO CONSEGUENZE!’

With that threat written, Tani leaves his poster on the podium like a landmine out in the open before gathering his senses and exiting the room.

Just a short distance away is the English class of Shirai Keiko, and Tani doesn’t hesitate to storm in.

“Oh? Akihiro-san, good afternoon.”

The third year teacher greets him as if she were expecting him.

Dressed professionally in a gray tie-neck ruffle popover shirt tucked into a tight black skirt, she sits on top of her desk facing him with her stocking covered legs crossed in an almost seductive fashion.

This catches Tani off guard.

Clearing his throat to dispel the affect of her appearance, he manages to calmly say, “Shirai-sensei, there’s something I would like to ask you about..”

With a gentle tilt of her head, her pinkish hair dances across her smiling face before she gently tucks it back behind her ear.

“Akihiro-san, I’m flattered by your feelings for me, but I couldn’t possibly date a student.”

Tani squints at her.

“...Pardon?” 

“Now now, there’s no need to be embarrassed. I noticed how much effort and affection you’ve put into making me the sweets every day, it’s been on my mind for quite some time really.”

“Hold up, I think you’re misundersta--”

“Truth be told!” Shirai swiftly interrupts. “I’ve been starved for affection for so long that I had even found myself exploring the idea of waiting for you to graduate.”

She’s spilling her guts to him.

“Wait a second!” Tani protests.

But before he could get through to her, she trails off in a tangent.

“In the end, I just don’t think we could make it work. I don’t know how I would explain it to my parents, or how I could possibly look my colleagues in the eye. Oh my, I think I’d have to quit and transfer to another school!”

By now she’s essentially talking to herself while emphasizing her point with dramatic hand gestures.

“Oh the scandal! My new students might become suspicious, stalk me on social media and find out I was dating you! How devastating that would be for the both of us, I don’t think we could survive that! Unless of course we move to another country, maybe the US? California perhaps?? Ahhhn I don't know what to do!”

Tani takes powerful steps towards her desk and slaps his hand down, the noise breaking her out of her stupor.

Finding herself in a real life kare-don with the bespectacled student that she thinks is in the process of confessing, her body temperature skyrockets.

“..Eh?? U-Umm…” she stammers and fumbles with her fingers as her eyes awkwardly look in any direction but his.

“Listen to me, Shirai-sensei.”

She feels like she’s melting. She’s watched scenes play out like this in romance mangas and television dramas, but never would she have thought this would actually happen to her in real life.

Depending on what Tani says next, she just might be in a fragile enough state of mind to allow herself to be swept away in the moment.

She awaits his next move with the alertness of a pilot flying straight into a lightning storm.

Tani opens his mouth and says…

“You’re too old to be this dumb, snap out of it!”

Any silly thought of those fictional worlds where the two of them run away together shatters into a chill that abruptly sweeps through her body in a phantom blow.

“Huh?”

Now she’s freezing cold.

“I’m not here to confess to you!”

Tani’s voice is so resolute that the sound waves entering her ears turn her into a block of ice before shattering in a million pieces of disbelief.

“Ehhhh!?!?”

Even though he has technically just been rejected by this beautiful young teacher, and it’s something a normal Japanese high school boy would at least be flustered about, Tani glosses right over it as though it didn’t even happen.

Our ambitious student only cares about one thing after all.

“I need to know why no one from your class has joined my club! I thought we had a deal??”

Quickly shaking off whatever misunderstanding she dove right into involving a student 9 years her junior, she now tilts her head confusedly.

With a finger on her chin she ponders aloud,

“Your club?”

Her genuine look of bewilderment is felt like an anvil landing on Tani’s head.

“The Languages club that you’re the faculty sponsor of!”

“Ohhhh that’s right!” Shirai-sensei clasps her hands together and smiles. “I totally forgot about that.”

“You what!?”

“You see, I didn’t get my sweets today, the last time that happened, you expressed your feelings to me by offering to make them at home. So because of that I assumed it was finally time you were going to confess. I’ve spent all day stressing over how I would respond, it’s really worn me out!”

Shirai-sensei leans back on her desk and feigns exhaustion.

Tani is in disbelief, but as angry as he is at her for forgetting to help him, he had done the same thing to her. The two have a mutual agreement and he had forgotten to uphold his end of the bargain. He had gotten distracted by the blackmailing of Principal Togashi yesterday, and was so overcome with excitement at the prospect of his new club that he left his house this morning without making treats for his club’s sponsor.

It has turned out to be a colossal blunder.

“Sensei! Our school has a time limit to recruit the minimum number of members, if I don’t get at least five by the end of next week, the Languages club will be dissolved. Even if I could convince the Principal to make an exception, TIU would laugh my application right into the trash bin if I can’t at least do this. My future is at stake here!”

“Oh my!” she says, her mauve eyes gleaming with mock empathy. “I know just what we need to do to make up for the lost time!”

Desperately needing the answer to that declaration, Tani puffs up in eager anticipation.

“You get yourself up early tomorrow and make me two sweets!”

“...Hah?”

“I’ll get a nice sugar high if I get a double dose tomorrow, and that’ll replenish the energy I lost today so I can recruit for your club at full power!”

Tani is confused... is she playing a reverse uno card on him so she can con her way into more sweets? Was the confession rabbit hole she went down just a ridiculous ruse?

Tani’s phycological tricks were meant to program her into needing him to provide for her as though she were a dog; but perhaps she has flipped the script and has Instead programmed him to provide for her the way a cat does its human?

If that’s the case, there’s only one way to respond.

“Then it’s two sweets you’ll get!”

Tani is totally okay with being played like a fiddle so long as he gets what he needs out of it.

“Thank you!” she graciously says with a warm smile.

Allowing himself to be swept up in her pace, he responds in kind with a smile of his own and a thumbs up gesture as though they were on the same sports team ready to compete for the shared goal of victory.

With that, the deal is struck, and Tani leaves the classroom twice as optimistic as when he came in.

However, once he takes a moment to regain his composure and think upon the potential calamity of a zero member club, he’ll realize how unreliable the two teachers are and will most certainly abandon that optimism.

He will have no choice but to come up with a new scheme to recruit people on his own.

Today’s UN Lesson ---- Never trust the Institution to work for you!!