A house is only as fun as your house mate

Chapter 7 and 2/3: Lance

I was late for class. I entered my year eight lesson to see kids throwing paper airplanes at one another and broken pieced of pens and pencils. The odd piece of gum flying and narrowly missing hitting someone in the face. “Oi!” I called out, while placing my laptop down on the desk. Everyone fell silent. I stood in front of the classroom, watching every single one of my students scuttle towards their seats. A few kids testing the waters and throwing the airplanes that they had in their hands at me. I caught one mid flight and chucked it in the bin. “i can’t believe you all, I am five minutes late and I walk in to this. You guys are often so good.” The front row of kids melt under my gaze and sink further into their seat. “whats going on?” I asked. A small girl with dark hair raised her hand tentatively, without taking her eyes off of me. “yes Fuji.” I answered. “sir, your fly is down.” She pointed. That earnt a few sniggers from the back and a few whispers who then shot their glances to me. Sadly, thirteen year olds weren’t the best at whispering. “sir was late and he comes in with his fly down? Woah.” A few more sniggers followed that one comment. Unsure of what to do, I excused myself and left to go and sort myself out. When I returned from zipping up my fly and fixing my hair, which had just become a habit now, everyone was still in place and had seemed to gotten over the little fiasco. “so, who can tell me what we learnt yesterday?” I asked, desperately trying to get the lesson back on track from the disruptive behaviour previously. I was not one for telling off my kids badly for disruptive behaviour. We all had a mutual respect with each other that I was super 'chill', as they would say, if nobody got in the way of letting me do what I had to do. I had seen so many teachers in my life tell kids off left right and centre to just get the same respect that they give thrown back in their face. Because they give them no respect. I was always one of those kids who would go above and beyond what I should have done. It was never in a good way, I mean, the flight simulator in the garrison should be proof enough of my statement. Being a prize student was never what I was and I never got respect for it, ever. I am not about to let someone else go through that just because they actually want to do something that makes what they do a little more fun.

I was thankful that this lot were so good at English, I hardly ever had to speak in Japanese to them, they all understood what I was telling them well, and they were able to respond perfectly. Fuji threw up her hand again. “we learnt colloquial language within English.” She stated matter of factly before shooting a boy behind her a look. “and can anyone remind me what that means?” Fuji was first again. No-one else dared to raise their hand forcing me to pick on people. I hated having to do it, because everyone always felt so hard done by in the end. You would here them discussing with friends that ‘mr McClain doesn’t stop picking on me’ or ‘mr McClain never chooses me’. “akito?” I called. He raised his head from his spot in the crook of his arms. “oh uh, colloquial language is slang right?” he answered, dropping his head back in his arm. I couldn’t bothered with the fight today so I left him be and continued to teach my next lesson based on the same topic. I normally liked teaching slang since it was fun to look at the different terms that were used in different periods of time. I for one was from the age of ‘wicked’ yet used altean slang more than English. I wrote a few on the board and got people to sound them out individually, getting them to guess how they sounded and then telling them. I hated more slang words than others but I had to teach them regardless, it was part of the curriculum after all.

Once class had finished, I went to meet up with Clavis yet again. We sat together at lunch and ate while talking. He asked about Keith, interrogating me deeply about every little detail. “did you end up kissing him again?”

“No” I sighed.

“So what did you do?” he demanded.

“Well, I nearly killed us by swerving the car off the road and then we got back home silently.”

“that it?” the silver haired man said, sounding oddly surprised by my response. Yet he did not seem affected by the fact I had mentioned that I had nearly killed Keith and I. I nodded. “he said that I was a mistake to him though.” I breathed.

“are you sure that’s how it went down?” he offered, brushing through his fringe and pushing it back. Mr Yamazaki had noticed that action and blushed profusely at it. God, he was such a weirdo, he was married for goodness sake. “i don’t know, I’m going to bring it up at dinner with him later.” I explained.

“oh are you going out?”

“Yeah.”

“sounds nice, well good luck okay. It sounds like he really does like you so I’m sure you shouldn’t worry.” I thanked him yet again and left for last lesson.