Happy Halloween. I've emerged from my witch's cauldron to bring you this.
Monday. November 13. Thirty-nine days 'til finals. The board ominously counted down.
Nagisa sat in his seat, watching all twelve faces he knew so well trickle in. He couldn't suppress a smile. He'd spent the entire weekend doting on his fiancée. The word made him giddy. And he looked around at the classroom. The repairs were finally finished. The room looked brand new, there were no broken items, no dirt or dust, no more insects skittering around on the ground.
If Nagisa could use one word to describe his class as of recent, it would be… very imbalanced. They were bouncing off the walls one day and totally sedated the next. Was there something in the water in this damn town? Whatever, maybe it was just teen hormones. He remembered being that age. Oh boy, the time he and Akari went to the sweet shop and he couldn't think straight the whole time because her short skirt was too distracting… Ah, high school.
Nagisa's phone buzzed. He looked at it, it was an email from the disciplinary committee.
Dear Nagisa Shiota,
3-5 student Kimiya Shisaki must be sent to the front office today at one p.m. Please make sure he gets there.
Best,
Disciplinary committee of Paradise High School
Huh? He didn't get there the last time he allegedly went? Nagisa made it a point to talk to Shisaki during their lunch period.
Pulling him aside, Nagisa handed him a paper copy of the email he received. "Care to explain?"
"I swear I have a good reason." The student suddenly became very interested in the ground.
"Well, why didn't you go? Where did you go instead? What were you in trouble for?" Nagisa tilted his head to the left.
"Reasons." He muttered.
After the weekend he had, Nagisa had nothing but patience today. "What reasons?"
"Did I fucking stutter?" Shisaki returned to his seat.
Hmm… The student teacher was left with his thoughts. This was another puzzle to solve. He was facing the same issues with Azuki and Aida. Some of his students were very secretive. He had been spoiled by his interactions with Toshima, Hamada, and Kasegawa, who trusted him immediately.
It was now almost one p.m. Time for Shisaki to go to the front office. Nagisa knew if he just sent him, they'd have a repeat of last week. And if he asked another student to walk him, they might be sympathetic to his issue (whatever it may be). So, against his better judgement, he walked Shisaki to the office. He was sure this was an embarrassment to his student, but Nagisa couldn't think of another solution. "If I come back to a chalkboard full of crude drawings of my assassination, I'll assign double the homework." With that said, the blue-haired effeminate man took his bag (so it couldn't be used as a weapon against him) and left with Shisaki in tow.
The tension could have been cut with a knife. Shisaki kept giving him side glances of the go to hell type. But he looked away whenever Nagisa turned his head to look at him. They arrived at their destination, the front office.
Shisaki stood for a moment, breathing deeply. Then he walked in, looking terrified.
Nagisa stayed for a moment, to make sure that Shisaki didn't bolt from the room. He heard a voice he didn't recognize. "Ahh, Mr. Shisaki. I'm quite glad to that see you decided to show up today. This is regarding…"
As much as Nagisa wanted to know exactly what this was about, he couldn't leave his class alone for too long. So back he went.
The room was covered in shredded paper, broken lead, and the bookshelf was pushed over. Kagato and Tsukuda were in a screaming fight, Aida and Azuki were playing monkey in the middle with Banno, and Kazama had evidently fallen over and took his desk with him. They did indeed obey his request, no crude drawings of anyone were on the board.
"I was gone for five minutes…" The teacher rubbed his temples. "Okay. You're all going to clean this up. Or double the homework all week."
Shisaki came back an hour later. Once again, he looked furious. He refused to even look at his sensei. The class shot him sympathetic looks.
"Uh, I hope everything… went well." Nagisa was fumbling for words. It was true, he did hope everything went well. But he didn't even know what was happening.
Nagisa decided to do the standard to get to the bottom of this. Cleaning duty for him after school.
"Do I really have to?" Shisaki asked. "The damn room was just fixed. There's not much to clean."
"Oh, this is a different type of cleaning." The student teacher shut the windows, blocking the cold draft. "Cleaning out your soul. Y'know, getting rid of what's pulling you down."
"You sound like a hippy."
"Call it what you want." Nagisa pushed his seat in, then leaned against the desk. "You know exactly what this is about. Why are you getting in trouble?"
"Okay, the jig is up." Shisaki sighed. "I was sent to the office because I threatened to beat up one of the 3-1 students."
Wow. The class with the highest grades in the year. This was giving Nagisa flashbacks.
"Why did you do that?"
"Because he said I'd never amount to anything." The delinquent gave a small shudder. "Me and the rest of 3-5."
Nagisa felt a wave of sympathy. He knew how that felt.
"And how did that make you feel?" Nagisa grazed his fingers across the papers that were handed to him (thesis statements for the upcoming paper), inadvertently giving himself a papercut. Nagisa reached for a first aid kit he kept in his desk.
"What are you, my fucking therapist?" Shisaki raised his eyebrows. "Speaking of therapists, Aida just started seeing the one you recommended back in June."
"I'm surprised he told you about that." The bluenette frowned.
"There are no secrets in 3-5. That's rule one of 3-5. And the second rule of 3-5 is, you don't talk about 3-5."
"Haha." Nagisa pinched the cut in attempt to end the bleeding. "You're telling me all this, yet you seemed the secretive type."
"Only with my own secrets. Everyone else's are fair game. Wanna hear what Kotori does on the weekends?"
"No. That's none of my business." Nagisa applied some antiseptic to the cut, and placed a band-aid on it. "But, really. Did you do that out of hurt? Embarrassment? Anger?"
"Little of column A, little of column B, Little of column C." Shisaki swept the floors. They were quite clean, much to Nagisa's joy.
"Listen. I know what it's like to be in your position. I was in the special placement class in junior high. Everyone just treated us terribly. I heard what you quoted in those exact words many times." Nagisa paused. "Is this how you usually react to hearing things like this?"
"Yeah. And I always get reprimanded for it. The disciplinary committee knows me all too well."
"And what are they going to do to punish you?" Nagisa saw that the sun was already setting.
"Ha!" Shisaki snorted. "As if there's anything they can even do at this point. I'm already in 3-5, the worst they can dish out. I mean, I guess they can call the cops, but the disciplinary committee is too busy with their thumbs up their asses to do that. They just told me to knock it off."
Was the disciplinary committee really that weak? Things were different when Nagisa was in school. "So why, then, were you reluctant to go?"
"Because I'm sick of hearing the same old lecture. Sometimes they even make me apologize to the bastard. Ugh."
Nagisa met Kawaguchi after school on Wednesday, for the first time in a while. They were in Kawaguchi's room, after his final student had left.
"I'm the teacher of 3-5." He explained when one of Kawaguchi's students gave him a quizzical look.
"I thought you were a student…" The pupil muttered as she walked off.
"And a girl." Her friend added, following her. Nagisa felt a sweatdrop.
"I can't believe how old I'm getting." Kawaguchi sighed, staring out the window. "Did I ever tell you, you're young enough to be my grandson?"
Another pause. "Really?"
"Yes. I wish I knew my grandkids."
"You don't? That's so sad!" Nagisa straightened out the books on his shelf.
"Yeah, I had a rough divorce, she took the kids, and I haven't seen them in almost forty years." He looked wistful.
"… Wow." Nagisa's issues with his students not immediately trusting him seemed small.
"But, I don't want to burden you with my struggles." The old man pushed in his chair. "How's your room? Did you do the repairs?"
"Good as new now. You wouldn't believe how far the money went."
"Did you hear they cleaned up the art room as well?"
"I did. But it's been clean for a while. Months, in fact. Yet they don't want anyone in it. It's still locked most of the time." Nagisa pondered deeply. Time for more investigation. "Has anything like this ever happened before?"
"Well, yeah. Once in '09. There was a vandalism in the chem lab, but they got it cleaned up before any of the students saw what had happened." Kawaguchi sighed. "But it was nothing really exciting. Two punks who thought they were tough. Not a mystery like this."
A mystery to you, Nagisa struggled to keep his mouth shut. He knew for sure who was behind this. But it would do no good to reveal that just now. He was just a student teacher, fresh out of college. Who would believe him, over the charming and suave Nakagawa? Or the seemingly innocent and shy Shibata? He needed to find some way to stop them himself, or else catch them red-handed…
It was now Thursday. November 16th. 36 days 'til finals. Nagisa wrote it on the board, rubbing his hands together to get rid of the chalk dust. Except, instead of doing that, it went flying everywhere. Nagisa sneezed a few times. An outside observer would deem it cute, but there were no observers to speak of. It was before class started.
He had read his email when he got up that morning. Voting for teacher of the year was about to start. The blue-haired man had overheard that Narayama was automatically disqualified, though he didn't know why. He hadn't seen him since the art show. Maybe the Shibata and Nakagawa duo had something to do with that…
In fact, Nagisa hadn't seen nor heard from Nakagawa or Shibata since the play. He counted his lucky stars, but he still wanted to know what they were up to. And if they came anywhere near Akari, he'd put that assassin training to even more use…
"Shiota-sensei?" Toshima's voice derailed his metaphorical train of thought.
"Huh?" Nagisa hadn't even noticed that his students had walked in and taken their seats within the past 30 seconds. Nor did he notice that he had snapped the chalk in his hand into crumbles while thinking about his suspicions.
"Was it something we did…?" Kagato looked scared.
"Ah, no." Nagisa regained his composure. "Just… Things are happening. Anyway class, open your Chemistry books to page 291. I hope you remember dimensional analysis."
School had ended for the day, and Nagisa went straight home. The flat was nice and warm, a great change after stepping in from outside. He was now sitting on the couch, reviewing lesson plans for next week.
"Ow!" Akari's voice sounded from the other room.
Nagisa shot right up and dashed towards her. Paternal instinct just seemed to take over recently. Everything was about protecting Akari and the baby. "Is everything okay? Oh my goodness, did you go into labor!?"
Akari laughed a bit. "Kaede's been very active recently." She rested her hands on her belly. "But while you're in here, the future Mrs. Shiota could go for a foot rub…"
It was Friday morning once more. The key sat on Nagisa's nightstand. He had to keep it safe. No way it could fall into the wrong hands. But he had to figure out what Shibata and Nakagawa were doing, so he placed it carefully in his pocket and went onward to school.
He greeted his students with a big bright smile. They had wisened up though. They knew he was hiding something. He was too over the top happy for the average day. But there were only two who intended to take advantage of this.
Kasegawa and Hamada very much thought alike. Everyone else attributed it to them having been best friends for years. Or maybe it was just the experiences that they had respectively been through that bred a similar mindset. But either way, they shared a glance at the beginning of homeroom, and with that they understood that they had the same idea. And when and where it would be put into action.
The day just dragged on. Nagisa was waiting for his opportunity. He couldn't do it during the lunch break, because he could be caught in front of his students. That couldn't happen. And if he did it before class he may not have been able to start homeroom on time. So that left after school. He didn't assign cleaning duty and just sent his pupils home.
The adorable twenty-three year old headed towards his destination with tunnel vision. The storage room. There was bound to be something there. It was where everything clandestine happened. People just seemed drawn to its secrecy, the hideaway it evidently offered.
The storage room was dark. He unlocked the door, cracked it open, slid in, and shut it tight behind him. Using his phone as a light, he began his search. Pencils, pens, magnifying glasses fell out of tin cans. Old art sat in the corner, waiting to be picked up by their owners. But none of this was meaningful right now. He moved to the corner, where the books were stored and it looked like some props from the play last month were. These were things used frequently by the English and drama teachers, yes? The short man moved around big copies of Gone with the Wind, earning a groan. Even training with Karasuma didn't prepare him to lift that kind of weight.
Something dropped to the floor. It made a loud thump. Nagisa picked it up, only to drop it in response to how cold it was. He picked it up again. An iron bar. And it had brown, almost rusty stains on the end of it. Oh crap. He went back in his mind to a conversation overheard between Shibata and Nakagawa. I have friends in high places. Want one of them to drop by your house? Maybe with a tire iron?
What to do with this? If he brought it with him, those two would definitely suspect him and would not react kindly. Hell, why was it even left in here as opposed to either of their houses anyway? Was that stain blood?
So Nagisa did what he thought was best and took a picture of the iron with his phone, then placed it back where it came from. He was sure to arrange the books and props in the exact pattern that they were in before (he had taken a picture of that too). Exiting the room hastily, Nagisa caught his breath and headed home. If he was lucky, his suspects wouldn't even know that he had been there.
But luck was not on Nagisa's side today. The key fell out of his pocket without him noticing, and Kasegawa and Hamada were hiding in the corridor for a chance to pounce. They waited until their sensei was out of sight and snatched the key. They didn't know what they expected, but they were satisfied with this result for now. After a round of silent high-fives and fist bumps, the pair went home.
For once, they had gotten the best of the scariest teacher that they had ever had.