Disclaimer: I don't own any Azumanga Daioh characters.
Note: I'm back. Should I have even bothered to update this story? These 26 chapters have taken me nearly a year to complete. Ah well. For what it's worth, enjoy.
Chapter 26
Chiyo-chan leaned forward against her desk, pencil gripped tightly in her right hand. Along with the rest of the class that had formerly been under the supervision of Ms. Yukari Tanizaki, she was beginning to warm up to the new teacher.
Mr. Sato was young, not outwardly attractive but very nice and very patient. He usually came to his classes dressed more casually than other teachers in khaki pants and pressed, button-up shirts. However young he may have been, his black hair was thinning and his physique was threatened with frailty. He always carried with him a pocket dictionary and an extra handkerchief to clean his shoes with, no matter the day of the week. Very different from Yukari, he was an avid transcendentalist who loved to start thought-provoking conversation among his students. In his opinion, it wasn't enough for students to simply learn the hows and the whats of life, but that they should also wonder about the whys, even though those answers were rarely ever as clear.
Mr. Sato stood by the chalk board, chalk in his left hand touching to the board underneath a poorly rendered image of a frog in a pot.
"Can anyone tell me what we learn from this example?" he questioned the class with a curious grin.
For several moments the class was silent before an arm gradually extended above the others with five fingers pointed straight towards the ceiling.
Mr. Sato's gaze focused in on the arm and his expression softened when he registered the identity of the arm's owner.
Ayumu met the teacher's look with a blank one of her own. Seconds rolled on to an eternity while the various gears in her mind picked apart the existence of the frog as a comparison to the pot. The pot's existence was something irreversible and constant, very different from the variable amphibian. Her arm was kept suspended into the air like a trigger. If ignited, the trigger could reveal any number of theories depending on when it was touched.
Mr. Sato felt his lips quirk. Every profession had pros and cons, and Ayumu Kasuga was the type of student who reminded him of why he had chosen to become a teacher. Her methods of reasoning and drawing conclusions were not conventional, but she was a voracious intellectual appetite at work.
"Something that isn't how to cook frogs," he added with a playful downward arching of his brow.
Slowly Ayumu lowered her arm back to her desk.
The teacher turned his back to the board and folded his hands behind him. He rocked forward on the balls of his feet, scanning the class for another attempt.
"Anyone?" he prodded, "What does this frog's situation tell us?"
Yomi raised her hand and waited for the teacher's responding nod before lowering it once more.
"I think it's saying something about change and reaction," she ventured with the confident tone of a student who read ahead in text books.
"How so?"
"Like people notice big changes that happen quickly and they respond to them a lot faster, just like the frog jumping out of the boiling pot. But things don't usually change over night, and a lot of the time people don't even realize what's taking place."
"Very good," Mr. Sato nodded and walked around to the front of his desk. Leaning back against the desk, he folded his arms loosely. "As an example, say that there's a library that you go to every day. One day you go there to find all of the books missing. That's something that you would notice right away. However, you wouldn't notice right away if only one book disappeared per day. You would probably only realize that there were fewer books when half of the books were already gone."
Again Ayumu raised her hand and Mr. Sato recognized her with a lift of his eyes.
"So change," the girl began carefully, "It's something bad then?"
"Not necessarily. What's bad is the inability to notice and adapt. The important thing that you need to remember from this is that change is constant and you should be prepared for it. Don't expect anything to remain as it is forever. Fashion trends, laws, taboos, cities, societies, all change. Take a moment and look around at your classmates."
The students did so, each casting a momentary glance to those sitting beside and in front of them.
"Remember your classmates as they are now because I can guarantee you that they will be very different a few years from now."
"Is this going to be on the test," Tomo exclaimed as she thrust her hand into the air.
The teacher directed his gaze towards Tomo and watched her patiently.
Tomo remained sitting straight up with her arm rigid in the air and an expectant smile on her face. The clock on the wall ticked for fifteen seconds before her grin faded and her posture slumped, arm lowering back down to her desk. A moment later she raised her hand again and waited for Mr. Sato's friendly acknowledgment.
"Is this going to be on the test," she tried again in a more appropriate tone.
"No, the test will cover chapters eleven and twelve, including all vocabulary and two of the ten essay questions you were given last week. Yes?" He turned his attention towards the back of the room where another arm had risen.
"About the frog," the boy who had been called on folded his arms on his desk and leaned forward, "You're saying that it got boiled because it didn't notice the changing temperature. So how is it supposed to pay attention to something that it doesn't notice? No one can go around just looking at everything with the specific purpose of detecting change. There are too many variables and our time would be completely consumed."
"That's a good point, but I'm not exactly saying that the frog was boiled because it didn't notice the rising water temperature. It might have been that the frog noticed the change and either chose not to or didn't know how to react to it. Try not to see this in terms of the frog in the water. Focus more on the frog itself. Actually, just imagine that the frog is a person. The frog is a person living in the water pot of society. People react differently to change, and this is partially where we get into the Type A and Type B personalities."
At that moment the chime rang and signaled the end of another day. Students straightened from their slouched positions and began gathering papers and notebooks from their desks. Ayumu was the only one who continued to scribble notes furiously. If she paused for a moment then her entire train of thought would explode.
"Frog…water…change…Type A/B…boiling…" she mumbled the words as she wrote them before suddenly stabbing the tip of her pencil down into the paper. "No!" Her eyes went wide and her fingers clenched her writing utensil like a dagger, twisting it slightly. "What about intensity? What about a small change that happens quickly? Would it still matter as much?"
"Hey," Yomi approached the troubled girl and rested a hand to her shoulder. "Ease up, all right? He already said that it wasn't going to be on the test so it doesn't matter."
"But you don't understand! It's-"
"Who's up for a hamburger," Tomo, one hand holding her book bag slung over her shoulder, helped herself to perching on the side of Ayumu's desk.
"Speaking of things that don't matter," Yomi sighed and gave Tomo a forceful push back from the desk's surface.
"Real harsh, Yomi," Tomo retorted without a chance of her feelings having actually been hurt. She dropped her arms to her sides and smirked.
Ayumu slowly gathered her notebook together and slipped it into her bag along with her now broken-tipped pencil. Without a further word to the other girls she stood from her desk, grabbed her bag, and made her way from the classroom.
"Uh, Miss Osaka?" Chiyo-chan who had also stood up looked after the contemplative girl, but drew no response from her.
"Oh leave her alone. She'll come back to the Earth later," Tomo rolled her eyes before turning towards the back of the room. She waved her hand to get the attention of Kagura who was busily copying down notes she had borrowed from Sakaki. "Hey, Kagura! Hamburgers?"
Outside in the hallway, Ayumu walked along with the steady flow of students heading towards the stair well.
"He said…He said that everything is in constant change."
Down the stairs and out into the front area of the school yard she walked. She made it half way to the sidewalk before finally she could no longer think and walk at the same time. She paused in her tracks and tilted her head back to look up at the cloud-speckled sky.
"Does that mean me too?"
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In the teacher's area, Nyamo sat quietly at her desk. Her gaze was fixed in front of her on the cover of her roll book, on both sides of which rested her hands. She had been sitting in such a position for fifteen minutes and had neither the motivation nor energy to move when she heard the last chime of the day.
In the row of desks behind her, Mr. Kimura too sat at his desk looking intensely at an open book in his hands. So intensely did he stare at the book that even his mouth had closed and behind his glasses his eyes had narrowed.
The door to the room opened and Mr. Sato walked in, carrying his textbooks under his arm. He went to his desk to set the books down and grab his briefcase from one of the bottom drawers. It had taken him forever to get the desk into a condition that he could work with. When he had at first seen the small space that was to be his work area, he hadn't thought that the vice principal was serious. However, after a few days of organizing books and cleaning out all the garbage from the drawers, he was able to use the space as easily as the other teachers used theirs.
As he lifted his briefcase, he cast a tentative glance towards Nyamo. For reasons that he didn't entirely understand, she was the only teacher who had given him a rather cold shoulder upon his arrival. She had not been outwardly mean to him in any fashion, but she had not made any attempt to get to know him and seemed rather indifferent to his presence. Her behavior contradicted what other teachers had said of her. He had expected that she would have been the first to wish him a pleasant experience at the school.
Rather than let the tension remain, he made the decision to break the ice, or at least make an attempt. He straightened, cleared his throat, and tightened his grip on his briefcase before stepping over to the woman's desk.
"Ms. Kurosawa," he started softly, lest that he startle her from whatever she had been thinking so deeply of.
Slowly Nyamo lifted her head. Mr. Sato was not someone she wished to speak with. It was nothing that she held personally against him, but it was difficult nonetheless to watch him come into the school and take Yukari's position. She wanted to blame him for what he was doing. His presence was only making things more difficult if Yukari were to ever get her job back, which she probably wouldn't. However, Nyamo was well aware of the way in which life worked. The world revolved around no individual. Mr. Sato had needed a job, and the school had had an opening.
"Yes?" she replied just as softly with a hint of open friendliness.
Mr. Sato faltered slightly. For a moment he could do nothing but look at the back of the woman's head and wonder what in the world he had had in mind.
"You look a little distant. Is something wrong?" He nearly stuttered the words and couldn't remember a time that he had sounded more unintelligent.
"No. I would just prefer to be left alone right now."
"Um…If this is about the other teacher, I mean the one whose…the one who was here before me…I heard you were good friends. I'm-"
"Please don't apologize for anything. Things happen, and I would like to think that they happen for a reason. From what I hear the students say, you're a very good teacher and they are lucky to have you," Nyamo replied concisely and without removing her gaze from the far wall. "But as I said before, I would prefer to be left alone right now."
Nyamo did try hard to believe that every event in life happened for the sake of a greater purpose, possibly a greater good, though sometimes it was difficult to see things in such a light. She still did not know for sure whether her actions so many years ago were the cause of Yukio's recent involvement in Yukari's life, but she knew well that Yukio followed up on his threats. As hard as she tried, she couldn't forget the day that everything had fallen apart in her life and the last remaining thread had been Yukari.
"All right then," Mr. Sato nodded slightly and stepped back, "But just remember that I'm here if you need anything."
"I'll do that. And thank you," Nyamo looked back down to the cover of her roll book. The color was a dark, forest green, somehow soothing on the eyes.
Mr. Sato took his leave of the room and Nyamo continued to sit passively at her desk, losing herself in thought. Unseen by either of the two teachers, Mr. Kimura momentarily peered over the top of his book.
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"You could have gotten a real guy to practice on ya know," Yukari sighed but kept her head tilted back.
"Oh, be quiet. I promised you ice cream didn't I?"
"True, but you didn't have to do that. You could have just given me the money instead."
"This isn't your job," Nyamo replied, "Now scoot to the edge of the table."
"You can reach me fine from there!"
"It's awkward! This is hard enough as it is."
"Are you sure you don't want me to go find a guy for you?" Yukari smirked playfully, nonetheless inching towards the edge of the kitchen table where Minamo had told her to sit. Her knees came just to the sides of Minamo's hips, her fingers gripping the counter's edge.
"Don't be an idiot. I can imagine how that conversation would go," Minamo grinned with one arching eyebrow. Her hands were lifted in front of her, fingers busy with a black neck tie that she attempted to fasten correctly around Yukari's neck.
"Hey! I have a great persuasive technique. You've seen it."
"Yeah, and I've seen you in the detention hall afterwards. The 'or else' method isn't always the best one."
"Like you would know. What do you do when you need something from someone?"
"I-"
"I'll tell you what you do. You're like 'Hey can you do this for me if it's not too much trouble? I'll do something for you in return.' So weak!"
"It's called asking for a favor and not treating the other person like it's their obligation to assist you."
"Like I said, it's weak. What're favors anyway?"
"They're-"
"I'll tell you what they are. They're crutches! When you ask for favors it's like you're telling the other person that in some way you are looking to depend on them. What you need to do is just say 'Hey! Do this!' That way they know that you're in control!"
"And if they say no?"
"Then you make their lives a living Hell until you get your way, even if making them miserable takes more effort than simply doing things yourself."
"Some philosophy. Hold still."
Minamo pursed her lips as she tried to worm her index finger and thumb out from the amateur knot she had made. The knot of the tie was too big and slightly crooked.
Yukari looked down at the knot and could hardly keep from biting back a pleasant little smile.
"I want to complement you, Minamo. Really," as she spoke, her nod of approval looked absolutely serious. "What an accomplishment! This is really your finest moment yet. Congr-aght!"
The sarcastic quip was cut off by Minamo's quick fingers that loosened the tie and tightened it farther up against Yukari's throat.