NOTE: If you haven't noticed this yet, anime characters seem to have this habit of speaking with their eyes closed or when smiling, just to explain something in this chapter.
Chapter 2
The class walked after the cheerful Mr. Tschumi who waddled down the corridor, the register tucked under an arm. He stopped and turned around to face them, beaming at them all. He waved a podgy hand at the door to his right, his eyes closed as he beamed at them.
"This will be our home room for this entire year! Let's fill it up with a friendly atmosphere right from the start, shall we?" he said, waving his arms to emphasize the friendliness.
"Hai." The students chorused loudly and happily. The teacher's smile grew impossibly wider and he turned the door, pulling it open and waddling in. The students followed after him as he lifted his stumpy little legs over the two small steps up to the desk at the front of the class, with the black board behind. But this time the board was white, the students stared at it curiously. The big teacher sat down in the teacher's chair, it was a wide chair, with arms presumably for the big man to sit in comfort through the long school days. He followed their gaze to the white board and clapped his hands happily, smiling at them all again, his chubby face filled with joy as it always seemed to be.
"Ah, yes the school was outfitted with new equipment especially for your first year! Aren't you all so lucky? Now if you all take your places, any seats will do. It does seem to help when friends are together even if you make a little trouble you seem to be a lot happier and that can lead to better working standards! Now hurry, hurry, I want to explain about all this new equipment! Gosh, it's so exciting isn't it?" he said, standing up and waddling back and forth, practically skipping even on his stubby legs and with his huge bulk. The students instantly took up their old seats, the students outside of the old class group from the Elementary filled in the gaps in between.
"Sa, we're all comfortable now, yes? These chairs were brought in to make learning a more comfortable experience, they even have cushioning, take care of them won't you? It's a precious privilege, back when I was in your year we had to sit on wooden seats as hard as rock!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms up into the air.
"Ah, onto the new teaching equipment. According to the schedule I should be teaching you something I choose but I think it's better if we have a great big discussion on silly little things, it'll help me learn all your names and I'll be able to help you all individually, yes? Sa, this board here. I expect you're all used to blackboards and chalk, as was I back in the day and my teachers before that, when they could get to school anyway. Now we have these nice looking white boards, they're completely different, no chalk either! The material's all nice and smooth and shiny, a bit of a pain when the light gets on the way but I think we can have the lights off early this term with such great weather outside, yes? Now, like I said there's no chalk, so you won't have to clean the board rubbers or anything, good for you, isn't it?" he said, a smile filling his jolly face.
"Sensei, what do you write on the board with?" someone asked near the front. The teacher grinned, opening a desk drawer.
"That's the good part! You all write with pens in your books, yes? And when you write you can't just wipe it of, if it's still wet it will just smudge and if it's dry then it won't go at all, ne? Well, this board is different. You write on paper in your books, and that's not very smooth is it, it absorbs the ink, but you need those notes and work for the exams at the end of the year, don't you? Now, we teachers don't need to make those notes, since we already have them written down or in our heads so we can teach you! We don't really have exams but now and then we get dragged off to these things and people come in to see how well we teach you so that they can be sure we're not teaching you rubbish or anything. It's like those sciences, who needs them, ne?" he said, laughing. The class laughed with him, his jolly manner was infectious.
"So we write on the boards with pens like you write in your books. But watch!" he said, pulling a pen out of the drawer, it was fatter than their pens, when he took the lid off they could see the nib was thicker and soft.
"Our pens are thicker so you can see, even from the back of the class, as long as the teacher's handwriting isn't awful you should be able to copy down notes. Now I'll tell you this, some teachers will be boring and just make you copy down notes and things, desperate to force all this knowledge into you at once but not teaching you at all! I would just write a bit on the board so you can copy that down so everybody thinks you've done some work and then we can talk about it, you can ask me any question you want about it, or even a question not about the work! Then you just write what you want in your books so you've got things that will actually help you when the exams come, you'd be surprised how many teachers do that nowadays, before they were all boring and would make you write all day long!" he said, throwing his arms up in indignation, as if it was a greater tragedy than it really was.
"Sa, watch this!" he said, he began writing on the board, when he stepped away something was written on the board, although it was going across and wasn't in Japanese characters. He beamed at them all.
"It looks better than chalk on a white board, doesn't it?"
"Now, let me show you how we get rid of it!" he said, reaching into the still open drawer and pulling out an eraser, much like the ones for the blackboards. He wrote his name again, this time in Japanese characters and in the small square it made between the words he wrote some meaningless gibberish in the same characters he had used to write his name the first time. He stepped away a little so they could all see and wiped the writing away in a few, quick, light strokes. The board was white again.
"No marks left by that awful chalk, just a nice and clean board! This way everything we write will always be clear! And you don't have to clean the board rubber, you can't unless you use water and ink washing stuff but that would damage it or so the cleaners say, so when it gets too dirty, we just do this!" he tossed the board rubber towards the bin, it missed, bouncing off the wall and then into the bin, bouncing around the edges until it hit the bottom.
"Ah, now there's one more thing I need to do before we begin our silly discussions! Although you're all new I suppose a lot of you know each other, yes? At least everyone knows someone here; we even have a pair of twins in the class, the only ones in the entire school!" He waved at the still open door and a boy stepped in. It was hard to see him with the door partially in the way but the students nearer the windows on the opposite side of the room could see him clearly. He wasn't especially tall, but neither was he short, just a little above the average height in the class which was pretty level. His hair seemed a little blonde, a light blonde. His eyes were ice blue and he was well built, not overly muscled but his frame was neither skeletal nor flabby, showing he was fit and exercised regularly.
His eyes were kind, not soft but kind and seemed to be smiling at them all, his skin wasn't pale but it was more of a light tan colour. His face was happy and cheerful. He walked in, he was holding a school bag over his shoulder in one hand, some of the students seemed incredulous at this, they had been told to pack their uniform bags with various items, making it almost full and rather heavy for the first day of school, yet this new boy was casually carrying it as if it weighed nothing.
He walked into the class room, out of the darkness of the hallway. As he stepped into the lighter class room the class saw that his hair was not light blonde, it white, with a light tinge of blonde or yellow, not unhealthy, in face it looked pure and clean. He strode to the front of the classroom, next to the desk. He stood straight, confidently as he gazed at the students in the class, smiling gently, radiating warmth. Mr Tschumi waddled up to the boy who stood at his height, if not a little above it. The chubby man gestured at him, beaming at them.
"This is a transfer student from our good friend England." Sakura looked up.
Wasn't Eriol-kun from England?
She glanced at Syaoran who nodded, thinking the same thing. The twins in the class could barely conceal scowls as they saw the boy at the front. He bowed and rose straight again, his movements smooth and graceful. He smiled at the whole class, ready to introduce himself.
"I'm Julius Ragnar. It's nice to meet you all, I hope I can be friends with all of you." He said, tilting his head to one side, his eyes closed as he smiled at them. Their round teacher glanced around the room, looking for a seat. He spotted one next to Syaoran's, next to the window. Sakura sat in front of Syaoran and Tomoyo sat on the seat to Sakura's left and next to the window, in front of the empty desk.
"Ah, there's an empty seat their at the back by the window. If memory serves, your partner next to you was also a transfer student from Tomoeda. Does my memory serve me properly?" he said, asking the last sentence as a question to Syaoran.
"Hai, sensei." Syaoran said, his usual stiffness to teachers had gone, like everyone else he like this easy going, care free teacher.
"There you go! Foreign friends, eh?" he said, Julius smiled.
"Sounds like fun." He said, stepping down from the raised platform and walking down the aisle to his seat. He stopped next to Sakura's desk, he smiled at her.
"You are Kinomoto-san, yes?" he asked politely, smiling.
"H-hai." She said, wondering how he knew her name, no one in the class she knew had met this boy so how did he know her name? Most people called her by her first name so even if he had been listening in on their conversations, which she doubted anyway, he wouldn't have known her surname.
"Eriol-san told me a lot about you, I hope we can be friends." He said, continuing to his seat and seating down swiftly yet without haste. He placed his bag carefully on the floor and interlocked his fingers like into a big fist onto the desk, as if praying; although he was plainly not as his face showed he was listening keenly to what Mr. Tschumi was saying.
"Eriol-kun…?" she murmured, a little stunned. Syaoran hadn't heard what had been said in the small exchange and gazed at her in a questioning look. She shook her head and smiled at him. He blushed a little and turned his attention to the teacher, like the rest of the class. Sakura did the same, not wanting to be caught out on not listening on the first day.
The morning break bell rang; Mr. Tschumi finished answering a student's question and held up a hand, forestalling further questions. He stood up and picked up the register, which he had taken as he had asked people's names when they had said something, which everyone had.
"Sensei, can I ask one more question?" someone asked, the jolly teacher sighed in mock exhaustion.
"All right, I supposed we have time for a quick question." He said, beaming.
"Sensei, what does it say on the board?" the student asked. Mr. Tschumi turned around and looked at it. He laughed and clapped both hands on his large stomach. He waddled down the small steps off the platform and walked towards the door which had been left open to give some ventilation to the class room.
"Why don't you ask Ragnar-san? It's in his home language after all." He said, waddling out the room. Everyone turned to look at Julius who grinned and rubbed the back of his neck at the sudden attention, he laughed slightly.
"What does it say, Ragnar-san?" the student asked him the same question.
"It says: 'Have a great first day.'" He said, reading off the board.
"Wait, why would Tschumi-sensei know any English?" Someone asked. Julius looked a little confused.
"What, he didn't tell you what he teaches?" he asked. Everyone shook their heads. "He teaches English here, since its one of the most common languages in the market and many tourists speak English we're supposed to know it for help in later life or something like that."
"Ohhh, you're lucky Ragnar-kun." Chiharu said.
"Why is that, Miharu-san?" he asked.
"You come from England so you can speak it really well, ne?" she said. Julius nodded and smiled.
"Ah, but that means you're lucky too. You can speak Japanese really well, which is of equal value in the world market. My guardians are both merchants of a sort so I get taught a lot about stocks and something and let me tell you, it is so boring!" he exclaimed. Chiharu laughed.
Most of the class gathered around Julius, asking about England. Sakura, Syaoran and Tomoyo were able to slip away almost unnoticed. The two twins saw them leave and slipped out of the classroom after them. Julius saw them all leave as he talked, his mind not on the conversation. He stood up and stretched.
"I've been sitting in here too long, my body yearns to be outside in the sun!" he said, glancing outside, the sun was still rising to its highest point, there wasn't much of a gap between morning break and the lunch break, even though the morning break was quite long, almost half an hour and the lunch time break was just over two hours, and a lot of the lessons were loose, students could do things they wanted as long as it furthered their education, including physical education. Often there would be people from all the years of the school merging together until a teacher had to come out and take them for a proper lesson, which usually consisted of a football tournament for the boys and cheerleading practice for the girls.
Julius walked out, a few other students followed him but turned off to go and explore elsewhere. He stood in the sunlight outside the school and yawned, he was tired from his flight from England, and after all, he hadn't been able to sleep on the flight.
He glanced around and saw the twins rounding a corner, presumably after the trio; it looked like they were sneaking. He headed after them, jogging as if trying to loosen his muscles after the lesson, aware that some of his classmates were still in view. He rounded the corner, slowing down suddenly to a walk to make it look like he wasn't hurrying anywhere. The trio were sitting on a small hill, in the shadow of the trees near the fence boundary between the elementary school and the high school. The twins were hiding behind a bush, one of them was holding a flute, the other held a small bell.
He grimaced, recognising the instruments and why they had them, although he couldn't take action against them without breaking his cover fully or showing himself as a violent student, that would make him stick out even more, also he didn't want to look like the bad guy, he liked to think of himself as one of the 'good guys'.
He strolled on towards the trio, they didn't notice him at first as he walked by, as if not noticing them but Sakura saw him out of the corner of her eye and stood up.
"Um…. Ragnar-san?" she asked, Syaoran glanced down suspiciously at Julius who looked up, faking surprise.
"Ah, Kinomoto-san. Oh, this must be Li-san and Daidouji-san." He said, looking at Syaoran and Tomoyo in turn as he said their names.
"Sakura-chan, do you know Ragnar-san?" Tomoyo asked, Sakura shook her head.
"I don't think so." She said. Julius smiled.
"No, we've never met before now, a friend told me about his experience here as a transfer student." He said, glancing towards the bushes. He could see movement through the leaves; it looked like the twins weren't going to stop with another witness at the scene.
"Would that happen to be Hiiragizawa-kun?" Tomoyo asked, Syaoran tensed a little, Julius smiled.
"Hai. Eriol-kun has been a close friend of mine for a long time." His eyes narrowed a little, not dangerously but enough to show he was a little more serious. "Or should I call him Clow Reed?"