As soon as the bell rang, Class 2-3 immediately went into a flurry of tense activity, not even bothering to say goodbye to their Math teacher. An act that irked the old man to no end.
"Hey, did you review our lesson last week?"
"No! Did Ms. Tanada say we have to study that too?"
"Idiot! She said the test would be something from what we've covered so far! I studied everything from the start!"
A vein popped out on their departing teacher's forehead. They had never shown that much enthusiasm over one of his exams! He eyed them balefully as he closed the sliding door with an audible click.
He turned around and met Ms. Tanada walking along the hall. She smiled at him. He frowned. He fought the very strong urge to pull down his eyelid behind her back. She was young and quite popular, but those things never made a teacher. It was the dedication to discipline, the passion to teach, the—oh what the heck!
He blew her a raspberry before hurrying back to the teacher's lounge to rant.
— 0 —
Ms. Tanada smiled at the muffled exclamations from within the room of her next class before pushing the door open.
"Good morning class! Please settle down."
It was proof of how much the class respected (or feared) her that they settled down immediately even though she was five minutes early.
"Okay, as I said yesterday we're going to have a little seatwork today."
She pulled out a brown envelope from her big bag from which she extracted several sheets of paper.
"Now, this will involve you and your partners for the Playing House project so can you please sit with your teammates while I distribute these?"
The students complied. This took several minutes because some students couldn't decide which partner would exchange seats.
"I am not changing seats fox! You change your seat!" Hanamichi bellowed to his slightly snoozing partner. "Hurry up or the gori teacher will get mad!"
Ms. Tanada raised an eyebrow but ignored the redhead who was sneaking glances at her, gauging her reaction. She noted that Rukawa just stared at his partner, rose, went over to Youhei's vacated spot, and promptly settled his head on the table. His seat was instantly a battlefield of who-will-occupy-the-chair-Rukawa's-rump-has-been-warming-for-the-past-hours.
Ms. Tanada watched the girls (and some boys) fight before taking pity on the almost mutilated chair.
"Oi! Stop that! Mr. Mito stay in Mr. Rukawa's place. Ms. Seishirou stay beside him. The rest of you take your seats. NOW!"
After several more minutes, everyone finally settled down and the teacher began to distribute the work she had brought.
"I will be giving you three papers each. The first one is has a table which you will fill out. The other two are bills that I photocopied. Now," she turned back to the front of the class and smirked at the stunned faces of her students, "your little seatwork will be to organize these bills as compared with the budget that you submitted before. Are there any questions so far?"
Mina slowly raised her hand then pulled it back down quickly.
"Yes Ms. Seishirou?"
Mina looked around then leaned over Youhei and whispered something to him.
"Teacher," Youhei said after she finished, "Mina says these bills will almost cost all of our money and will be beyond our budget."
Ms. Tanada smiled.
"I've told you many times, I've researched this and these bills are what my friends actually get with the salary you're virtually getting every month. So, if they can budget these, so can you. Now, I suggest you get cracking."
No one moved. She sighed.
"What you really have to do is to just put the amount of the bills on one column of the table and put your budget in the other. You can cross-charge or delete some things from a budget. You can write your notes in the third column. I just want to see if you can manage an actual budgeting session with actual bills. Theory is good, but I believe that you will learn something more with practice. So…?"
She sat down on her chair and smiled at her class beatifically.
"Now class," she said. "You have until the end of the period to do this."
That galvanized the students. Some got cracking. Some shook their heads.
"Hey, teacher can we use a calculator?"
"Sure."
"Anybody got a calculator?"
"Here use mine."
"Hey cool! This looks really hi-tech! Look at all those buttons!"
Ms. Tanada watched as the student who borrowed the calculator stared at the equipment for a while with a very puzzled look on his face. The boy turned tot his classmate and asked, "Uhm…how do you turn it on?"
The owner shrugged. "I don't know."
"Eh?! You carry around a calculator that you can't even use?"
"Yeah. I bring it with me hoping somebody would show me how to use the damn thing!"
Ms. Tanada shook her head and looked around the room, her eyes automatically searching for her two most annoying yet charming students. Her eyes widened when she saw them actually WORKING! Hanamichi was writing something while Rukawa was glaring at the paper and muttering something.
She looked outside the window to check if the sun was still in the sky or if some other catastrophe had settled over Kanagawa. Nope, everything was bright and sunny outside. She stood up and decided to roam around, her rout leading her to the back of the class.
When she finally reached her destination, she peeked over Hanamichi's head. When she read what the boy was writing down she had to fight a chuckle that almost erupted from her mouth. She coughed several times before putting on a stern face.
"Rukawa. Sakuragi."
The two stared at her.
"Bullying the bill collector so that he won't give you the bills won't solve your problems. The electric or the water company might just cut off your supply if you don't pay your bills. I suggest you just start with your budgeting instead of finding ways to beat up the bill collectors."
She turned her back to and continued going around the room. She heard snippets of arguments from the two but dismissed them as the norm.
"Rukawa that's not correct. This genius knows what he is doing so this should be here!"
"We can still pay that at the end of the month stupid! This is more important."
"Yeah but if we take this out first then we can pay this and still have money for that at the end of the month!"
"No."
"Rukawa!"
"Moron."
"Fox!"
Ms. Tanada shook her head and went back to her seat. She stayed there, answering questions once in a while, and only stood up ten minutes before the period ended.
"Okay, class, wrap it up. I have something for you to ponder on this weekend."
Her students obeyed and she pulled out a bag containing several strips of paper.
"As you hand me your work, please get a piece of paper from this bag, okay?"
One by one each of the representatives came to the front until only the terrible duo remained not moving.
"Hey, Rukawa, you go give this. I was the one writing the whole time so it's time for you to do something!"
The whole class heard a snort as Kaede shifted his head.
"RU-KA-WA!"
A wall of concerned admirers ™ suddenly surrounded the sleeping boy.
"You shouldn't harm Rukawa when he's taking his beauty sleep!"
"You're so beneath him that it's only natural for you to do all the dirty work for him!"
"Why you…!"
Ms. Tanada coughed and everyone fearfully faced her.
"Sit down."
They sat.
"Mr. Sakuragi please come to the front and hand in your work."
Hanamichi scowled at her then back at her still oblivious teammate. He cursed underneath his breath before approaching his teacher. He slammed the papers on her desk and pulled out one of the strips of papers inside.
Ms. Tanada nodded before smiling again.
"Now, you will notice that the papers you took have strips of colored papers wedged inside them. I want you to pull those strips out and look at what color you have gotten."
She waited as her order was obeyed.
"Hey cool! I got a red one! My favorite color!" Hanamichi yelled from the back.
Ms. Tanada almost choked. Her eyes widened and she almost backed out of her plan. She closed her eyes for a moment and squared her shoulders before continuing, her eyes opening again to sweep over the assembly.
"Okay, now I know most of you have heard of HPTs or home-pregnancy tests from your other subjects. For all those who got red strips of paper."
She took a deep breath and smiled crookedly.
"Congratulations, you're about to be parents."
— 0 —
Hanamichi and Kaede (who had awakened from Ms. Tanada's stern voice) stared at the red strip of paper in the redhead's hand. The rest of the people inside the room stared at them. Slowly Hanamichi shook his head and held up his hand.
"Yes, Mr. Sakuragi?"
"Teacher, will our baby come from a cherry blossom or a peach fruit?"
-TBC-
1. From now on I will call this section my author's rant corner. ARC for short. Cool huh? If don't wanna read the arc, just skip on over to that blue button at the bottom and click on it. For the rest, please read on. ^___^
2. For all those who asked me to update, Update, UPDATE! UPDAAATTTTEEEE ALREADY!! I'm sorry this took so long. I have the usual reasons: writer's block, my life was in a rut, my dog ate my word processor. The ultimate reason however is this: close your eyes for a moment and picture a small blue dragon in a black trenchcoat trying to inconspicuously do research on human pregnancy tests in the middle of a grocery aisle full of humans! Now do you see how hard I have been working all along?
3. Anyway, thanks again to all those who have reviewed. You really inspire me to go on despite my depressed existence right now. Hope you like this chappie, it's really for you guys.
4. To all those wondering what Hanamichi meant with his last question, that's going to be answered in the next chapter. See you there!