Chopsticks in the Hand of the Foreign Girl Are Deadly Weapons!

Morning classes went by without a hitch for Anita, she simply sat in Yoshitaka’s comfortable office chair, blissfully unaware of the difficulty of Tani’s attempts to translate the day’s lectures and paperwork into her language.

Tani had been sneaking in yawns all morning, and at times sporadically throughout the day had seemed to doze off. During lectures where the two were to just be sitting and listening, he would even spend full minutes asleep with his head in his hand.

Anita had to nudge him awake a few times whenever the class was tasked with completing an assignment, each time he pretended like he wasn’t actually asleep and responded to her prodding with agitation.

In such a state, he’s thankful that in this day and age there are smartphones, with the aid of a translator app he was able to at least get by. If not for that convenient bit of technology there would be no way he could have pushed Anita through these morning classes. If one wasn’t paying close attention, they wouldn’t have known how much of a struggle it’s been for him.

With the toll of the lunch bell, the students begin to stir.

Like most Japanese high schools, Kokusai doesn’t have government funded meals for its student body, this one in particular doesn’t even have a cafeteria to buy food at. If a student doesn’t pack their own lunch, they can either buy junk food from the vending machine, or head outside and brave the packed queue at the food truck where one could buy things like yakisoba sandwiches.

Coming from the social democratic nation of Norway, Anita would never think that a school doesn’t offer something as basic as that, and stands up out of her cozy office seat to go get herself lunch.

It would seem that each movement she makes draws the eyes and whispers of every classmate around her, the men ogle at her physical attractiveness, and the women are inspired by how gracefully she weaves her way through the classroom.

Tani however, looks at her like a lost chicken aimlessly walking towards an unknown destination.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

Unable to understand what he just said, Anita nods her head and waves her hand before leaving the classroom.

Tani has no choice but to follow, and the two begin venturing through the hallways towards a cafeteria that doesn’t exist.

Pulling out his phone, he voraciously types on the keyboard to his translator app and repeats the question he had just asked aloud.

She does the same, and the computerized Japanese voice of her phone answers, “It’s lunch time isn’t it?”

“It is, but we eat lunch in class. Did you not pack yourself a bento from home?”

Anita jumps back in shock and shakes her head from left to right.

With a sigh, Tani types into his translator, “You’re lucky I’m as smart as I am, I had a feeling the Principal would forget to tell you about that, so I packed some extra food for you.”

“I don’t want to impose, the cafeteria is fine.”

“We don’t have a cafeteria, you’re stuck with what I made you.”

Anita groans awkwardly, but when Tani begins walking back towards the class 3-D, she shadows behind him.

“Do we have to eat inside the classroom?” she asks, her voice app asking the question in the most robotic of tones.

“Well we don’t have to, there’s actually quite a few places we’re allowed to go if we wanted to.”

“I want to go to the roof.”

“The roof? What is this, an anime?”

Anita clenches her fist and playfully puffs her cheeks.

“We probably shouldn’t, we won’t be welcome up there by the regulars. Our best bet is to just go back to class.”

Understanding that he’s trying to reject her request, she doubles down and puffs her cheeks out even more to protest.

Looking at the pouting doll-like face she’s wearing, Tani has a hard time saying no to such a high level display of begging, and with a sigh he motions for her to go along with him.

The two make their way up a couple flights of stairs and towards a double door that exits out to the top of the school.

On any normal day, the students in classes 1-3 E and F, which are on the 5th and 6th story, frequent the roof during lunch hour. The students in classes 1-3 A and B, which are on the first couple floors, go out to the courtyard. The remaining classes 1-3 C and D on the two middle floors tend to eat their lunch in the library, if not in their own classrooms.

This segregated system created a modified caste culture between the floors of Kokusai high school, ones with their own hierarchy of popular kids that gather up the biggest groups to hang out with.

In fact, this has strongly dictated the creation of friend groups. Tani has heard stories about best friends from middle school being on opposite ends of the lettered classes here at Kokusai, and completely losing touch. Some have even grown to hate one another. Tribalism is a real issue for any culture or society, so Tani spent a lot of time studying his fellow students to better understand the nuances of human psychology that will be put to use in politics.

There were two things he considered enacting to train himself.

One was sewing even more discontent between the classes by spreading fake information and pitting certain popular students against one another, this way he could test how much dirt the friends that grouped around the popular boy or girl would accept before turning their back on them.

He only recently decided against that, because he got enough evidence for a case study from simply watching the news of a certain country considered to be the main superpower of the world.

The second option was to bridge the divide between the classes, unifying the school under one giant Kokusai banner. This option branched off into two tactics.

How he would enact that came down to finding a way for all the students to have a common enemy, someone like Principal Togashi, or maybe even another rival school, and he’d be the talking head of that resistance and eventually come to power in a fascistic takeover of the student body.

He chose not to do that because it would have been too easy.

If he were to make a true attempt to bridge the divide, he would have joined the student council and made systemic changes from within the framework available to him, pushing for school reform like free lunches, more time off, less homework, or relaxed dress codes. If he did that, he’d take a more socialist approach and become a beloved leader that everyone respected and would share in the benefits of his tenure.

He chose not to do that, because he didn’t want to get assassinated.

So instead of doing anything about the class caste system, he’s allowed himself to just exist within it and create a club that would specifically bring him the recognition needed to help him into the Model UN club at TIU. He can worry about enacting societal changes when he gets out of high school.

Tani opens the door to the roof, and the spring air greets him in a welcoming breeze. But as someone coming from the middle story classes that usually eats lunch in his classroom, the students on the roof greet him as though he were a plague stricken corpse flung over the city walls from a medieval Mongol army.

If there were music playing on a record player, it would have come to a ripping scratch. All the upper story students that frequent the rooftop stop what they're doing to mean mug him.

Tani greets their nasty glares with a haughty scowl, but he quickly notices them softening up once they see Anita.

She deflects their negativity with a smile that lightens up the heavy atmosphere to the point of fluffiness. The boys stare at her like a goddess, the girls stare at her with a curious wonder. It’s eerily similar to how everyone in his homeroom class looked at her.

“This is supposed to be a really hostile environment for us middle story students, she can diffuse years of class segregation by simply being here?” Tani mutters in awe. “Are you actually a Norse God with a hidden super power?”

She acknowledges a few gawkers with a friendly wave before picking a bench for the two of them to sit. Tani hands her the extra bento that he made for her, and then opens up his own to begin eating.

The bento he made for her has tomagoyaki and a colorful salad, but what catches her eye are the little octopus shaped hot dogs. She chuckles, finding the caricatures cute.

Perhaps due to his lack of sleep, Tani has been coming across as stern and agitated, but even he would want a foreigner to experience an authentic form of Japanese culture if given the chance. He’s even added little sesame seed eyeballs and a smiley face on the wieners to make sure her first bento is a memorable one.

Seeing how much she seems to enjoy the decorative bento is proof that his effort was worth it.

She then grabs the chopsticks and reaches for some food. Tani watches her do this with the apprehension of watching a full glass of wine teetering on the corner of a table.

The electric signals he’s emitting injects caution into Anita’s attempt to pick up the first food item of choice.

“Hey,” Tani points out.

Anita’s body tenses up.

“You’re holding your chopsticks wro--- hhnnncckk!!.”

Before he could even finish that sentence, a tamagoyaki projectile hits him in the forehead so hard that the clouds in the sky behind him part ways. Tani flies off the bench and lands on his back in a daze.

“Beklager!” Anita says, guiltily looking down on his crumpled form prostrated on the ground.

“That could not have been real!” Tani exclaims while looking up at the foreign girl as though she were a demon.

She reaches out her hand to him, but he crab-walks away from her and stands up on his own as though cowering from a ghost in the corner of a dark room..

“You can’t possibly be so bad at using chopsticks that you’d break the laws of physics and create a missile out of an omelet!”

Rubbing his throbbing head, he takes some deep breaths and straightens out his wobbly legs. He then gestures for her to sit back on the bench and she obliges.

Standing over her, he places his chopsticks properly in his hand and presents it right in front of her.

“Copy me!”

Tani is left handed, so for the right handed Anita, looking at how he holds his chopsticks is a lot like looking into a mirror. Her raised eyebrows communicate her embrace of this impromptu tutorial on how to use an eastern eating utensil.

Her deliberate stare dissects the eloquent way in which he holds his sticks in his hands, she looks like she is taking this very seriously. Tani had heard how bad westerners are at holding chopsticks, so he’s moving his fingers and grabbing things out of his bento to really drive home the anatomy of the hand’s movements to her.

When she copies his form perfectly, he allows himself to feel like she just might be a quick learner after all. The upper stick fits snugly between her index finger and the base of her thumb, and the bottom stick in her ring finger and pinky are presenting a perfect form; with this, she could grab onto anything she puts her mind to.

“That’s good! Now all you gotta do is grab your food and you’re good to go!”

As malicious as Tani can be when dealing with people around him to benefit himself, the prospect of teaching someone how to do something elicits a genuine joy. Perhaps this has rekindled his long lost sense of altruism, the kind of feeling that made him start down his journey of learning languages for the simple purpose of communicating with people. What was replaced by the gritty world of politics has floated back up to the surface of his heart like bubbles in a carbonated drink.

Watching her intently, her hand’s movements towards the bento are slow and deliberate. For him, this is as close to watching a sports film where a basketball player’s buzzer beating shot takes a few agonizing seconds to drop through the net after bouncing on the rim a few times.

He roots for her success in the same fashion. Full of hope and adoration.

Watching her grab the octopus wiener brings the starry smile of a child to his face.

The octopus is lifted out of the box, pressed firmly between her chopsticks.

The magnificence of this moment adorns her in a divine specter of light as she guides it towards her mouth. Never in his life has a swelling anticipation felt more volcanic.

It looks like Anita is sharing in his reverie as well.

However…

The octopus wiener slides out from her chopstick’s grasp, and Tani can see it getting closer and closer to him.

“...Eh?”

It’s all in slow motion.

The cute smiling octopus is heading right towards him, spiraling like a bullet and leaving a trail of distorted gravity behind.

“Eh!?”

The shock of it all keeps his reflexes from properly doing their job. As slowly as this projectile seems to be hurling towards his face, and as easily as his eyes trace its momentum, his body just won’t react in time to avoid a direct hit.

The impact of the octopus wiener snaps his head back grotesquely, his cheek is hit so hard that his entire face contorts into a gelatinous mess.

“Gggbuuuuoooohhh!!?”

Tani is sent flying.

The western girl did not learn how to use chopsticks.

In any normal situation, Tani would regroup and force her into figuring it out no matter how many attempts it took her. His self perception is on the line after all, if he gives up on her now, that would mean he can’t stay composed in the face of adversity. That negative wall of self doubt, that fear of failure, is something he despises more than anything in the world.

But he also doesn’t like vicious blows to the head.

Shortly after regaining consciousness, Tani asks a fellow student to loan her a fork.

Today’s UN Lesson --- Under attack, Tani is not composed!!