Of Comedies and Tragedies
Part 4 - Old fools? I admit I am one.
Warning: senseless jokes.
Trowa was early for school today. He sat at his usual seat (last row of the class, second column from the windows that showed the field three stories below), staring at the seat next to him. He sighed inwardly and promptly stood up to the backdoor of the class waiting for people to show up. He knew he was getting impatient, and there was no telling when that control he had was going to run out.
He leaned against one side of the door, arms folded, eyes staring off in space.
It had not took him long to think before the class was filled up gradually. He greeted and waved to a few. Some patted his shoulder on their way in class and one managed to push him by his back into the class. The usual practice. But.
Their original form teacher was on maternity leave since the previous day. The whole class would have been quite pleased because they thought they could finally escape the clutches of Evil Une (or so they called her). The woman swing between both extreme ends of the mood bar like a child on a swing (a speed addict at that), thus the class had to be kept at the edge of their seat nearly all the time. It was only now they realized how wrong they were to have thought Une as the worst. They unwittingly challenged the power of worse and gotten themselves stuck with a teacher whose temper seemed to be fueled by the surface on the wrong side of Mars (in normal circumstances, any side of Mars would be hot enough, but it did not work for her that way).
Taking Evil Une's place was Irascible Noin. IN, in short.
When Ms. Noin stepped into the class, she was greeted with silence. A scowl decorated her would-have-been-pretty-without-that-scowl face. Her black short hair was kept in place today, it seemed that she had gel her hair back to keep any from falling in her face. Her brows were knitted as she glared about in the class suspiciously.
"Row Call." She said.
If one had known Noin before she had taken up this class, they would have known her to be sweet and caring like any other aspiring teachers were before they stepped into another side of hell called school, filled with devilish and scheming kids plotting daily horrendous pranks to drive them to the point of desperation where they had to rely on feeling the grounds for any misses with toes. And oh, that was her, by the way.
"Duo Maxwell!"
"Absent!" the voice loud and too cheerful for liking.
"Again?" An inquiring brow rose.
"Err...Ye..yes Miss Noin." The voice trembled slightly. He gulped. And then a pause.
"Well, Next. Ray Myers!" The relieved figure slid down his chair a little.
Trowa suddenly hit a revelation. He knew why she always sounded so familiar; she sounded exactly like his Dad, the military man. (Or aspiring-military-reject-turned-police-officer.) Well, that certainly explained some things.
He turned to the empty seat beside him and shook his head. He had better do something about it.
The list rolled on. And then, it ended.
"Class. Before we start, I would like you to meet a newly transferred student all the way from California."
The class rose in excited whispers. A glare from Noin set the class back to normal again.
"And this is new student, Quatre Rabera Winner. You," She turned to him, "introduce yourself and then grab a seat."
The new boy nodded and smiled graciously at the Ms. Noin. The class gasped. That had to take guts. Then what happened next took them by surprise - the IN managed a small smile in return!
Of course, this was no surprised. As said, if there had been more of Quatres in the previous school she taught in, she might have been what this class could have bullied into her present state.
The Quatre guy talked politely and vaguely about himself before bowing slightly. He then proceeded to walk in the direction of an empty seat.
Trowa watched as the new boy walked towards him. He knew what he was going to do and the day Trowa stayed, he was not going to let him do what he was going to do. He raised a hand to stop the new boy. The new boy was taken aback as he looked at the held up hand. He stepped back with a slightly hurt look.
Well, that startled Trowa. He stood up and quickly explained himself.
"Sorry, the seat is taken by my absent friend. But if you want this place, you can always take it till he returns."
The new boy looked up at him in relief and smiled back.
"I see, but if I were to do that, I will have to switch seats again. Thanks for the offer but I think I will rather take the seat over there." He pointed to the seat diagonally left of Trowa's. "What's your name, by the way?"
"If you want to socialize, please do so after class. Now get back to your seat and we'll get things going!"
Feisty Noin was at work, Trowa noted dully. He was half expecting a 'drop ten' countdown(1) for the new guy if he walked any slower.
Quatre hurriedly sat in his newfound place and dug out his book for his first lesson in a new place.
It was an uneventful almost-an-hour before the bell rang. Noin walked out and the next teacher came in dutifully on time.
It was a painful hour. There were several growls of stomachs in the class. Many were dozing off. And Quatre was having a hard time trying to keep his eyes open. Though one stuck on his mind uncomfortably since that second teacher did a row call.
It was recess when Quatre decided to approach Trowa.
"Hello," a friendly tap on Trowa's shoulder.
Trowa's head snapped back and blink at the new student.
"Hey."
"I caught your name at the second row call. So you don't have to tell me now. I am kind of alone at the moment and you seemed like a nice person, so can I join you for lunch?"
"Sure." Trowa smiled and replied casually.
And it was when they bought their food and settled at a seat that Quatre popped the question that had him troubled since the second class.
"So, is Duo Maxwell your friend?"
Trowa raised a suspicious brow and answered, "Sort of."
"Oh good! May I ask if you know why isn't he back in school yet?"
"Yet?" The other brow was raised but hidden under his bangs.
"Oh. I am guilty of... You see, I nearly knocked him over when I first reached the town. So I sent him to hospital and found out that he was from my new school as well. I called the school and left him in their care since I had lots of work to do. I came to school today with the intention of apologizing to him but I found out he was in our class and incidentally, not at school. So I think he could be in worse condition than I thought! It's being bothering me since that row call and I thought you were the best person to ask since you were the only person to speak to me today besides the teachers."
It was all said in one breath.
"Oh." Trowa's look had already turned amused, midway of Quatre's speech. "He'll survive."
"But... you know what happened to him?"
"No. But don't you worry."
That ended the conversation with Trowa eating in comfortable silence and comfortable silence eating away at Quatre.
Finally, it was at the end of the class of the next day that Quatre felt stupid.
The last teacher called Trowa to stay back for a while as the rest went off. Quatre had taken a much longer time to stuff his books about the desks and his bag. Therefore, with his back to them, he overheard the conversation.
"Trowa, would you mind taking these assignments to Duo?" her hands shifted a pile of paper onto Trowa's upturned hands.
"Sure. No problem." Their hands brushed slightly as the teacher beamed at Trowa and left.
Quatre turned towards Trowa who was all alone now. Wasn't Trowa supposedly a casual acquaintance of Duo?
Trowa turned to look at him. Did he say that aloud?
"That is if you think they had steered clear of each other's path since nursery. Best of friends ever since." The voice was oddly familiar. Anyway, that promptly cleared Quatre's doubt of the former.
"Wufei." Trowa greeted.
"Wufei!" Quatre gasped at the figure standing outside the classroom door.
"Hi, Quatre." he turned to Trowa, "Barton, I need you to pass Duo something, will you?"
"Sure, since I have to head that way, anyway." he waved the pile of papers in his hand.
Wufei passed an envelope to Trowa and growled when Trowa tried to open it "Read it and die."
"I won't. No death wish." he piled the envelope on the assignments and patted it assuringly.
"Good." Wufei smirked at both of them and left.
Under normal circumstances, Quatre would find the entire conversation amusingly. And this was one normal circumstance, except he was sore at being played a fool.
"Trowa! You didn't tell me you knew Duo that well! For two days that I have been asking about him!"
"I didn't? Well, now you know."
Quatre gave an exasperated sigh. "Well, you are right. There's something I would like you to do for me."
"Why not? Three good deeds in a day and I am two step ahead of scout's honor." he said without betraying any humor in his expression.
Quatre laughed lightly and guided Trowa towards the direction of the school parking grounds. Leaving Trowa under the porch, Quatre moved towards a car (it looked like a white Benz from afar) speaking to the driver. He gotten a white envelope(2) out of the car.
"Would you..."
"Sure. To Duo, of course."
"...pass it to Duo... Right." he laughed, "Thanks a lot! Though I would like to visit him myself but I don't think it would be nice to call on him just like that."
"It's no problem." Trowa found out that Quatre's politeness was infectious when he instinctly smiled in return again.
"See you in school tomorrow then?"
"Bye."
And they both walked in opposite directions.
I do not own Gundam Wing or anything of it. I only own the plot (if it exists).
Notes -
1. In local military, drop ten would mean doing ten push-ups on the ground. Sometimes, Sergeants will count drop ten, drop twenty, and then drop thirty and onwards to hurry recruits into action or conformity if they don't want anymore extra 'exercise'. I don't know if it works that way elsewhere though.
2. Seems to be selling quite well in that area. But it's also the only thing their local stationery shops sell (besides the usual paper, pen, pencil and eraser). It is well rumored they have a hidden white envelop making factory in their small town.
A/N: It's a big change of style from chapter 1 and 2. The previous two chappies were more clouded with emotions and written from the characters' point of view. They were more stylized. I was originally planning to experiment with different writing style per chapter, but the results would be disastrous. So from chapter 3, it will be in the style of prose. But I wonder why chapter 4 seemed so quirky compared to the previous one. I tried toning my sarcasm down, yanno. Really. A question. Is it roll call? or row call? or an entirely different thing? Can we just call it taking attendance?
Working on the plot and this is essentially a filler chapter. To fill up the gap between chapter 3 and 5, else they don't flow. The attempted humor (see notes 2.) was, honestly, pretty lame. But I hadn't had the heart to take them out. All chapters were checked for spelling and grammar.