People Pleaser

A Chance of Happiness Chapter 4: People Pleaser

Both of the boys were completely still from the shock of what just happened.

“Dude, that was AWESOME!” Vernon finally broke the silence. “Chino-sensei’s the coolest!”

Jin turned to Vernon, who was now grinning like an idiot. “Didn’t you just say he was terrifying a minute ago?”

“Pssh, that was then, this is now! I’ve never seen anyone talk back to Maddy like that since… well… ever! He completely shut her up!”

“He did. I’ve never seen a teacher ever talk that way to a student either. Is that even ok?”

“Who cares? It’s more than ok with me!”

In front of them, Maddy had a clearly frustrating expression on her face.

“Why didn’t you warn me the teacher was right behind me?!” She gave Midori a confused look.

“I tried…”

“Troublemakers in the back, feel free to let me know when you’re done with your conversations. I’ll make sure to keep you after class for double the amount of time you take away from it.” Ryuji called from the front of the room, tapping on the desk he was sitting on impatiently.

The classroom simply responded with silence.

“Better.” Ryuji got off the desk and walked over to the board. “You have until the last 10 minutes of class to finish my equations. Use the paper you picked up to show your thought process. Get to work.”

A series of confused murmurs flowed throughout the classroom.

Ryuji let out a sigh, noticing the confused looks he was getting. “Each of you are capable of completing this with time to spare, I’ll be checking your work at the end of the class. I can guarantee you have all the tools to succeed within this room.”

“Why did he say it like that?” Jin thought to himself.

Turning his attention to the equations, Jin observed them in an attempt to solve them.

“Psst.” Jin felt a pencil prodding at his arm. “I have no idea how to do this.” Vernon whispered.

Jin gave him a blank stare, looking at him as he clearly became increasingly anxious about failing the very first quiz.

“It’s wrong.”

“What is?”

“The equations.”

Vernon tilted his head. “You’re not making any sense.”

Jin gave a curious look as he analyzed each of the equations on the board.

“They aren’t technically wrong… just out of order.”

“Simple terms please.”

Jin quickly turned to Vernon with a concerned expression.

“Kidding.” Vernon waved his hands, then turned to the board. “Now that you mention it, none of them are labeled.”

Jin looked at the questions again, noticing the same thing. None of the six equations had numbers next to them to signify which was which.

“There aren’t six questions.”

“Listen, even I can see there’s six equations on the board.”

“At a glance yes, but there aren’t any numbers designating them or letting us know where one question ends. But the ones next to each other have the same variable. Which means they could be a pair.”

“So he just forgot to label them?”

“He didn’t forget.”

Jin looked over at Ryuji who was back on the desk sitting nonchalantly, however, this time he noticed him carefully looking at the students as they worked.

“It was on purpose. It’s a part of the quiz, but there’s something more to it.”

“More to it? Jin, my mind’s already at its limit for the year. What are we supposed to do?”

Jin glanced up to see Midori walking up to the front of the room, seemingly talking to Ryuji.

“I… I’m not entirely sure…”

“There’s gonna be homework too?!” Vernon head slammed into the desk as he saw Ryuji give Midori another paper.

The class continued to work on their quiz, some of them wearing confident expressions, others were confused, and a couple were sleeping.

“Time’s up. Pencils down.” Ryuji finally spoke up, breaking the concentration of the class.

He looked around the room as if he were analyzing everyone’s performance from their expressions.

“Who thinks they passed? Raise your hand.”

“Me!” Maddy quickly stood up.

“I believe I said raise your hand, not yourself. Come up to the front and bring your paper.”

Maddy confidently walked to the front of the room and stood next to Ryuji.

“Now, I need one more.” Ryuji’s eyes fell on Jin. “Delinquent. Bring your paper to me.”

Jin gave a surprised expression before getting out of his seat and walking to the front of the room with Maddy.

“Hand me your paper.” Ryuji took Jin’s paper, taking a moment to look it over. “You failed.”

“Ha!” Maddy held up her hand to her mouth in an attempt to contain her laughter. “Of course he failed, do you even know who you’re talking to?”

Maddy’s laughter began to slip as she turned to Ryuji. But immediately stopped as soon as she realized he wasn’t addressing Jin.

“You misunderstand Ms. Dai, you’re the one who failed. He passed.” Ryuji stated, pointing to Jin.

Maddy gave him a shocked expression. “Excuse me?! But you didn’t even look at mine!” She grabbed Jin’s paper out of the teacher's hand and compared it to her own, analyzing it thoroughly.

“This… this is the same! The answers are the exact same! Why did I fail if we had the same answers?! And besides, there’s no way he could figure this out on his own so he must’ve cheated by looking up the answers! Doesn’t that me–”

“Then he still passes, and you still fail.” Ryuji cut her off.

“What?! Why?!” Maddy questioned, clearly becoming more frustrated.

“Because the method you used to solve the questions was incorrect.”

“But the answers are right! Why should it–”

“They aren’t.”

“But… you just said…” Maddy began to look confused.

“Both of your answers are wrong, as a matter of fact, only three of you in this entire class have the correct answers to the correct questions.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Now, Maddy wasn’t the only one who looked confused as most of the class began to have the same confused expression.

“Then let me simplify it for you.” Ryuji raised his hand. “Midori Sakurai, please bring your paper to the front please.”

Midori slowly got up from her desk and walked to the front of the room, handing Ryuji her paper.

“These are the correct answers.” Ryuji showed Maddy the paper.

“But these… these aren’t even the questions on the board. What were the questions on the board for then?!”

“I don’t understand… the equations don’t fit together and they aren’t properly written either…” Midori glanced over at the clock and back at her paper, which she had yet to write anything on.

Midori shrugged shyly. “I don’t know what to do…” She slowly got up from her desk and walked to the front of the room.

“Did you have a question?” Ryuji asked as Midori approached.

“Um… I… I’m sorry but I don’t quite understand what you’re wanting us to do for this quiz…” Midori stammered. “I know it’s a quiz, but I wanted to see if you could clarify a few things for me…”

“Sure.”

“Sure…?”

Ryuji went behind his desk and grabbed a paper, handing it to Midori. “Here’s the quiz, complete the three questions and fill out your name with your preferred pronunciation on the back.”

“This is the quiz? But what about the equations on the board?”

“They were never part of the quiz to begin with.” Jin finally spoke up.

Ryuji shrugged. “Correct. I share this room with another teacher so it was probably left up from a previous class.”

Maddy clenched her fist, clearly agitated. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?!” Maddy turned to Midori.

“Because it was against the rules. Had you asked, you’d know there were two rules. One, like I said before, you have until the last 10 minutes of class to finish my equations. And like most quizzes, as I’m sure you’re aware, once you’ve received them, there is no talking or sharing answers.”

“Thats… thats just…”

“Speak up.”

“Then why did I fail and that delinquent pass?!”

“Because he worked with another classmate to try and figure out the answer. Or he tried to work with him at least. At best his friend over there was moral support.”

“Hey! I’m great moral support!” Vernon blurted out from the back.

“But you just said that once you started on the quiz you couldn’t talk or share answers!”

“True, but they weren’t working on the actual quiz. And even though they got the quiz incorrect they still passed the exercise, which was the main point of today.”

“You didn’t say anything about an exercise!” Maddy continued to become more and more frustrated.

“Because that would defeat the purpose, plus, for you, I doubt it would change anything. This entire class was devoted towards seeing where each of you were as individuals. And as impractical as many of you might see it, it accomplished its primary goal.”

Ryuji handed Midori her paper. “Thank you, you can go take your seat now.”

Midori quickly walked back to her seat.

“Mathematics is more than just following a formula and solving the equation. The level of thinking required increases as the problems become more complicated and as such, you require a different set of skills to solve them.” Ryuji turned to Jin and pointed his thumb at him. “The delinquent over here used his own general knowledge, his friends' lack of it, as well as deductive reasoning to come to a reasonable conclusion. Sakurai-chan took it upon herself to ask questions when she felt it wasn’t something she could figure out on her own. And that young man in the second row simply looked up the answer on the internet.”

The boy in the second row jolted up in surprise.

“The list of skills go on and on, however, as it stands…” Ryuji turns back to Maddy. “You have none of them. I told you at the beginning of class that you had all the tools needed to succeed within the classroom. That includes your classmates, internet resources, and me. But you can’t set your ego aside when you really need help. You degrade others and that blinds you to their capabilities, which may even be greater than yours. With the fact of the matter being that they’re willing to learn, despite not knowing and ending up confused.” Ryuji sighed, looking at Maddy’s blank expression. “Getting the picture now? As of now, you’re nothing but a people pleaser. Showing people what they want to see based on your own abilities to prove that you're better than others. And you were so self-absorbed in having the need to prove yourself superior that you couldn’t even ask for help.”

Jin tapped on Ryuji’s shoulder. “Don’t you think that’s a bit… harsh…?”

“Absolutely. But this is reality. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s rather harsh, isn’t it?” he responded, glancing back at Jin.

Jin’s eyes widened as if he’d just seen through him completely.

“Both of you can take your seats. That’s it for today's exercise. Hopefully you’ve all learned something.”

Jin and Maddy return to their seats as Ryuji props himself back on his desk.

“For those of you who didn't pick up the quiz, grab it on your way out. Congratulations, you’ve earned yourselves some homework on the first day of school.”

As the bell rang dismissing them, several thoughts coursed through Jin’s head, including the fact that he was barely halfway through his first day of school.