My Teacher is a Tanuki

章九 Nine

"What happened to your hand Shouta?!" My mom shrieked when I came home that evening, despite my best efforts to hide it, it was useless because she could smell blood.

"It's alright, mom." I say calmly. "I just...hit something a little too hard..."

"Hit something!? Hit what? Another person!? Shouta! Are you getting into fights at school?!" My mother interrogated me hysterically, looking at my purple and black knuckles that were caked with dried blood.

"No, no!" I quickly interject, realizing my choice of words. "I was just goofing off at school and hit the side of the building, that's all."

My mother didn't look convinced in the least, but because the rest of me looked fine, she had no choice but to give up on me fighting anyone. For now. "Okay then...we need to get your hand cleaned up; and next time be more careful."

"You don't have to tell me twice..." I say bitterly under my breath. If I ever did something so stupid like that ever again, it would only be too soon.

After I washed away the blood and applied some antiseptic and cream that helped with bruising, I then wrapped my hand up with some bandages and left a cold compress on it, which my mother had brought for me while I tried to do my homework assignments with my left hand – which was a struggle.

When my father got home and noticed my bandaged hand, he asked who I beat up and if I won in the joking manner he usually had, but my mother didn't appreciate his humor. I wonder how funny he would think it if he knew the real reason my hand ended up in this way was because I pummeled a fat, smiling tanuki statue.

That night I lay awake staring up at the ceiling as I thought about what Ponchi had said to me. Would I really fight someone over Hiyori if it really came down to it? My answer was immediately no; I mean, I've never in my life seen two guys get into a brawl over a girl – at least not in real life and in Japan; that just wasn't how humanity worked –most of the time. But the question it really boiled down to was: would I be willing to risk things for the chance of Hiyori knowing that I love her? My answer this time...was unknown...I mean, of course I was willing to give my all into getting Hiyori to know how I felt about her, but what if there was someone in my way who was blocking me from achieving that goal? The thought of that made me feel a little anxious – maybe I should try and start leaving her hints? Maybe I could leave her a note in her shoes? No, that all sounded too cheesy, that was something that happened in manga or an anime not in real life! I rubbed my face in frustration. Maybe I should sleep on it – that always seemed to help me when I had writers block.

The next morning I was interrogated by Makoto about my injured hand, but like I told my mom, I had told him that it had just me messing around. Unlike my mom though, he was more difficult to convince, and he started going off on one of his crazy antics about how I, quote on quote, really got my injury.

I noticed that when I got to school this morning that Aki Sakamoto was not here. I had overheard some of the other students talking about how her absence was linked to some sort of emergency, but they only knew that much. I was kind of glad that she wasn't here because I was certain that she would be staring at me uncomfortably again today if she had shown up – which I couldn't stand another day of. Tomorrow was Saturday, which meant the weekend off from school, so maybe Aki would forget whatever she was mad at me about by Monday.

Next Wednesday was Golden Week. My family had decided that we were going to go down to Kyoto to visit my grandparents on my father's side. I wasn't very ecstatic to be doing this, and I had two good reasons why; my family looked upon me as being unable to amount to anything, and – if I went on this trip – I would be missing out on my lessons with Ponchi. And trust me, between the two, I would much rather be with a tanuki than my own family.