Fumio was sitting outside of Tanaka-sensei's office in the chair nearest the window, enjoying the sunlight pooling over the sill. It was a cool winter afternoon, just chilly enough that one might consider an extra layer of clothing. Aside from last week's half hour of feeble ice rain (not nearly impressive enough to be called snow, or even hail), there were few indications that the season had recently changed. In her chair by the window, she could see some of the road and an unbroken line of trees that signaled a training ground just beyond them. The dark green canopies, a staple of the region, remained as full as ever. Only the youngest of leaves, growing in pale from last month's brief period of balmy weather, had browned and shed themselves.
Konohagakure was a village that looked and felt very much the same, no matter the season.
The view didn't do much to improve her mood. This was not the first time she had been pulled away from her lunch hour by sensei, and made to march to the office with the musical accompaniment of her schoolmates insipid giggling—
…in any case, not the first time. And likely not the last.
No matter how few students there were waiting for chastisement—and even when, like today, she seemed to be the only person in trouble—sensei always had her wait a long time before she was called in. It was a common interrogation technique, or so Tatsuma had once told her.
If they were expecting her to become unruffled, they would be disappointed. To their presumed dissatisfaction, she seldom showed any outward signs of anxiety, even when pressured by authority. If any of her mother's lessons had stuck with her, it was the woman's gentle insistence to be still.
Quietly, though, Fumio had to admit that no matter how many times they pulled this trick, it was fairly effective. She was an impatient person.
Sensei's door slid open in her peripheral vision. Keeping her face trained towards the window and moving only her eyes, she glanced back at him through dark lenses, and waited to be addressed.
"Aburame-san? You may enter now."
She stood, composed, and strode into Tanaka-sensei's cramped little office. He shut the door behind them and sank heavily into a squeaky chair. She remained standing, the usual practice. He seemed to scour your face for any trace of emotion—guilt, perhaps, or worry—before narrowing his eyes and wilting a bit. Tanaka-sensei looked awfully tired as of late.
Rather than meet his disappointed stare, she chose to focus on Sensei's buckling desk, laden with heavy stacks of paper and the odd scroll or two. A full minute passed as she stood and waited, the suspense of the moment carving away at her. Another one of his little games.
Finally, he spoke.
"Do you know why I've called you here, Aburame-san?"
She had a decent idea, yes.
"My last paper, Sensei," she said. Tanaka-sensei smiled ruefully and casually flipped open a folder, exposing a stack of completed assignments topped with a stapled set of familiar, hand-written pages. Tight script, blue pen, unlined paper, and twice as many pages as the others—it was her work, unmistakable. There was more red splayed over her report than blood in her veins. A very bad sign.
"That's right, Aburame-san," he said, beginning to tap on the paper's upper left corner where she'd written her name. "Now, why do you think that might be? Go ahead and give me your best guess."
Tap, tap, tap.
She shifted her weight from leg to leg as subtly as possible.
"…I accidently went a fair bit over the page requirement, Sensei."
His fingers curled tightly to his palm, and in a motion almost too fast to see, he brought his fist down onto the desk. A mug full of calligraphy brushes clattered to the floor, but thankfully didn't shatter. It took more self-control than Fumio would care to admit to not flinch.
"That you did! Why, one might think you'd limit yourself to only three pages of slander targeting one of our founding clans! But no. You accidently wrote no less than five pages of this libelous garbage. Five. Pages."
This… wasn't going to be one of those simple lectures.
"Sensei. It wasn't slander. The assignment was—"
"Not slander?" he sneered, snatching up her assignment and reading it aloud, "—'and as the prevalence of first cousin marriages among the Uchiha continues to rise, it becomes clear that the holders of the Sharingan may have returned to their tradition of inbreeding to preserve their doujutsu—' "
"The, the assignment was—"
" '—we can easily attribute this startling resurgence of such an antiquated breeding tactic to a rumored fall in Sharingan users, both in terms of late manifestation in children and, though seldom, a complete failure to manifest in adults. The arranged marriages of closely-related clan members are likely in response to this trend—' "
"Sensei, I… followed the instructions."
" '—however, it may be prudent to remember that the genetic quagmire that produces wonders like the Sharingan is far more likely to create defects than jutsu, overtime. In their efforts to maintain their status, they might well doom themselves.' Doom themselves."
Sensei slumped forward and let the paper fall from his grasp back unto the desk. They let the silence carry on for a few seconds.
"The assignment was…"
"I know what the assignment was, Aburame. Just how did you get from 'three pages on noble clans modern contributions to Konoha' to calling the Uchiha inbred? Were you trying to start some kind of feud? For heaven's sake, why didn't you just write about their role in the police force? Do you really have so little sense?"
She felt the impulse to ask him if there was any credence to the rumor that he was courting one Uchiha Satsuki, and bit her tongue.
"Genealogy… is a hobby of mine," she answered.
Sensei responded with a glance filled with contempt, and Fumio faded inward. There was no helping it, no defense of her work he would accept. Her real reason, that she knew Tanaka-sensei rarely graded the papers he assigned and preferred to hand that job off to his aide, Kimura, who found her work amusing—to say that she hadn't actually expected Tanaka-sensei to read it at all would please him no more than her other answers had. She simply hadn't expected Kimura to take sick leave. The trouble was in the timing.
Fumio would not be making this mistake again. She tried once more to appeal her teacher.
"Everything I wrote... it's based on fact, Sensei, you can go look up the birth records yourself. This information is publically available. I was simply extrapolating from available data," she said, as sincerely as she was able. "I didn't mean any offense."
Without breaking eye contact, Tanaka-sensei ripped her paper in three and dropped the ribbons in the trash.
"You will be receiving a zero on this assignment. Your guardian will be hearing about this as well, Aburame-san."
She left the room without waiting to be dismissed.