The problem of reading the entirety of 100 gurlfriends to ensure you get details correct for your omake born from rereading Oregairu is that more ideas are spawned. Send help.
Kawasaki Saki can be cool, too
UA was well known for being Plus Ultra with it's schooling. Anecdotes from both the famed graduates of the Hero Course and the relatively many General Course prove that. Slightly less known was that the Management and Support Course had, on top of that, a skewed curriculum. Business students needed to grasp geopolitics, catch literary references and do finances, while Support students needed to map musculoskeletal systems, program code and calculate dynamic motion. But that level of mastery has to come at a cost, which was why it was tacitly accepted that Management students could be a bit lax for the sciences, and Support students for the humanities.
Which was why the entire of 1-H tensed up when Miss America, their Japanese teacher, walked in without either a "Howdy!" or aggressively chewing some fast food. For the already overburdened class, Naddy-sensei was the ideal Japanese teacher: understanding of their difficulties in engaging a subject orthogonal to their core work yet good enough at keeping their attention that their grades were decent anyway. It was, as my new gossip loving friends informed me, due to her tragic story of being forced to be the perfect Yamato Nadeshiko and then being disowned from her family for not reaching their ridiculous bar, before finding new cause in the USA, that led to her teaching in a holistic cross cultural manner to make sure none of her students would break like she did. Or so Kinuko said.
Instead of the usual witty Engrish that would spice up the lesson, there was a perfect unaccented Japanese recitation. Worse, it's of a new topic, the Pillow Book. I was about to tune out when the person seated in front of me, Yoshimoto Shizuka, handed me a note.
'Naddy sensei is being audited! Do your best or she'll get sacked!' In true 1-H form, someone (probably Yuuhi) has silvered the corner of the note. Angling it, I could see a stern looking teacher at the back.
Despite having been volunteered for the position of class representative, I wasn't normally the kind to join in on these spontaneous displays of class solidarity. However, there was one critical issue.
Hikigaya Hachiman liked Japanese literature.
As with all things about the famed hero-in-training, he did not expressedly say that. However, in our conversations, I had noticed enough references and quotes to figure that out. References and quotes that I only knew because of Miss America's teachings. What's more, I knew from my other sources (Yuigahama) that he regularly hung out with other intellectuals, including a black haired beauty who was just as capable in that subject. If Miss America was to stop teaching, my already tenuous grasp of Japanese was likely to freefall, meaning...
"The moon is beautiful tonight," he says, looking at me meaningfully. Unsure of what he was saying, I tilted my head in puzzlement.
A black haired beauty with a knockout figure whose face I couldn't see embraced him from behind. "Oh Hachiman, even though she asked you to confess to her, she couldn't even tell when you gave her one. Instead of a dullard like her, why don't you date someone as capable as you, like me?"
No way! I wasn't going to lose out my chance like this. All I had to do was pay attention for one lesson. How hard could that be? I do that all the time! Filled with determination, I sat straight, and also passed the note to my right. I could do it!
I couldn't do it. It turns out it wasn't just a matter if willpower, Miss America's proper teaching mode was deep, detailed and completely outside of my frame of reference. Bluntly speaking, despite her being a model teacher, most of us were not model students. From my position near the back, I could see the usual sign of Support inattentiveness: note taking that looked suspiciously like code or equations, building small items out of stationary and 'spontaneous' Quirk use. It's a far cry from the engaged and active class discussing the Essays in Idleness as burger ingredients.
Miss America appeared to sense it too, and brought out a fortune dispensing wheel-box, last used for the I am a Cat and Terminator crossword bingo. Unfortunately, this appearance was a more traditional and painful one. "And now, we will use this randomiser to determine your group members for a short presentation."
The placid tone it was said belied the true horror of the statement. Randomised group presentation! A tool used by unpopular teachers to compel forced learning through fear of shaming! Worse, while I could get past most group projects through the law of large numbers (spending more time), my Quirk was useless in this situation. I stared at the tiny, yet horrifying device, hoping that my Quirk would develop some ability to change fate. Please, let me be on the same team as a friend. Please, Nohohon or Yuuhi or even Kinuko, someone I know and can trust!
"Aijou Rentarou," Miss America announced, and everyone sat up. In a class full of quirky, eccentric genius, the ideal team member was a hardworking, down-to-earth person able to harmonise the wild ideas and present it in an acceptable manner. And Aijou was precisely that ideal team member. Working with him was a free pass and everyone wants it.
"Nohotoke Honne," my normally sleepy friend pumps a floppy sleeve into the air. Despite her coming to school in a partial kigurumi, she was actually quite capable; apparently, she was a registered maid (I didn't dare ask) and had the work ethic of one. The team was looking increasingly stacked.
"Inda Karane," the 'ultimate tsun' couldn't resist giving a soft 'hmph' despite the looming menace at the back of the class. She was still a dependable teammate unless you set her off, which I was fairly confident I wouldn't, so at this point I was flat out praying to get my name drawn.
"And Hatsume Mei will be Group 1." The most eccentric genius of a class of eccentric geniuses barely aborted a triumphant whoop, and everyone else deflated. Team 1 was now 3 dependable and 1 troublemaker, which given the class was not a good trade for everyone else.
"Next, Eiai Nano," and now everyone tensed but for a different reason. The named person showed no response, besides her usual heteromorph expression of square chunks of her surface displacing. The top scorer of the class, Eiai was infamously dedicated to 'efficiency', which everyone learned from poor Aijou on the first practical biology class meant that she was the kind of person to draw cell scans from memory instead of using the microscope. Basically, she would ignore ungraded assignments and plagiarise for graded group ones, and couldn't find the spirit of the exercise if it headbutted her.
"Yoshimoto Shizuka," the tiny, lightweight mute sat up straight. For some reason, she only ever communicated by pointing at lines from a fantasy book, though thankfully she acquired a finger mounted text-to-speech device so now you don't need to strain your eyes to understand her. For a more physical project, I wouldn't mind, as her Indexing Quirk was surprisingly flexible in what it considered a valid thing to find, but for a presentation? She was a dead weight, doubly so here since any help she could give for literature would essentially be translated twice over.
"Kakure Meme," miraculously, said girl didn't vanish. Despite our theoretical overlap, I've never managed to get a conversation with the terminally shy girl, even for something as simple as asking what material she used. Forget dead weight, she was a flat out boat anchor for any team project. This team was stacked in all the wrong ways, and everyone was praying to not land there.
"And Kawasaki Saki will be Group 2." What? Why? Did I use up all my karma on getting a maybe-date with the most popular guy in the year? Is this divine punishment for stringing along a real Hero despite him opening up to me? This group had two people who would do no work and one that would do negative work! Where was the hardworking, down-to-earth person able to harmonise the wild ideas and present it in an acceptable manner?
Oh. Right. Me. My head met the desk.
I raised my head to see Team 2 gathered at my desk. Although we had a scant 15 minutes to put together a 5 min presentation on a completely new topic, I couldn't find it in myself to start. Did it really matter? It's not like the other three would give me anything useful, so I might as well just work it all out in my head.
Yoshimoto ends up speaking first. Or, well, 'speaking'. <<The Knights knelt before their queen. Your majesty, what is your command?>>
"Just pick me a good section of the book and I'll come up with the presentation myself." At the very least, I could outsource all the decision making here.
Yoshimoto pages through the phone copy of the Pillow Book, then retrieves her speaking book. <<This thing is an abomination against nature! Destroy it!>> And now I have to translate that into regular Japanese.
"The 22nd section, on Things that are at odds with Nature. It's a mix of things that are past their useful date, things which run afoul of societal norms and personal dislikes, mostly on delays and broken promises. Discussion could be around the coflation of the three things, and how this casts the nobility of that era." Wait. Was this Eiai offering actual useful advice, and not just copying some text verbatim? And does this mean she can translate Yoshimoto?
"T-the nature of the Pillow Book as a personal diary does affect this conclusion. Um, because she didn't intend for it to be read, we should think of this as how nobles thought of themselves instead of how they present to others I think." And now Kakure was speaking up! Softly, and I still wouldn't trust any of them to present, but I wasn't going to do this all by myself!
"Why are you helping? Normally the three of you are, well. Um. Not very good at group work." Even though it was looking at a gift horse's mouth, I couldn't help but ask.
"Efficiency... is not always the best, I learnt. For precious people... I will do my best"
<<When people's lives are at stake, there is no cannot do>>
"I dont want to be a burden. Even though I'm scared, she must be even more so."
Naddy-sensei really is loved, huh. "Well, if we're going to do this, we'll do this Plus Ultra then."
The presentations were done in reverse order, one of those weird psychological tricks that probably were in some teaching for dummies book or something. The prior teams, well, they had 15 min on an unfamiliar topic.
Mine, I thought, was rather good. Yoshimoto practically wrote the script herself, with assistance from Eiai translation. Kakure, well, she only vanished twice, and actually had some good thoughts, which Yoshimoto was able to hear.
No, the real issue, as I concluded my presentation, was the teacher frowning at the back. She had the kind of look of a person who had made up her mind, and not in a good way.
I could just stand back and let Aijou present. But... my group had worked so hard on this, pushing past their comfort zone. Everyone had. And we were going to lose it all because one woman had a chip on her shoulder?
Well, I knew one class rep who would stand in front of villains with body counts and tell them off. Could I bear the same title as him if I backed down against someone who wouldn't hurt me?
"Sensei. This topic is a new one for our class. Yet, under Miss America's guidance, we have managed to analyse it this thoroughly within so little time. Is this not proof that she is a good teacher?"
"That is no excuse, for a Japanese teacher in thus institution. One's student should deeply understand Japanese literature, such that all literature is interlinked. The fact all of you could only cover what was directly taught today is proof her teaching is insufficient."
The worst case scenario. The teacher had an idea what the ideal Japanese class should look like, and the fact that 1-H could never be that meant we had failed before she even met us. You couldn't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
But I remembered. Hikigaya's speech during the Sports Festival, and then his fight against the Hero Killer. I had rewatched both enough time to memorise them. By positioning himself as a 'bad hero', he exposed the shallowness of those who desired only 'good heroes'. And what did I have to lose? Dignity?
"Perhaps that is true. The normal Miss America doesn't teach like this, after all. No, you surely know, her normal way of teaching is not one that has depth. For a 'good student', that may be a demerit." I could see Miss America tense up next to me, and the other teacher smile darkly.
"But you see, I am not a 'good student'. No, I shall say, I am a 'bad student'. Depth and interconnectivity are wasted on me. It is Miss America's 'shallow' teachings that has allowed me to learn. You could say that she teaches bad students, but as a bad student she is a good teacher for me. And isn't that what being a good teacher is about?"
There was a chilly silence for a moment, then Aijou stood up and turned around. "I am a bad student as well! And I think Naddy-sensei, who put in so much effort to teach us differently, is a great teacher!"
"I agree!" "It is the logical choice." "Senseiiiii is gooood..." <<To forge a decent sword from bad steel us a sign of great skill>> "Don't try to get rid of Naddy-sensei!" "Its not like ibreally care, but i just dont like other people deciding whats good for me, you know?" Following Aijou, the rest of the class stood up and turned around. Even though not all spoke up, the numbers lent weight to my argument, a forest of 'bad students' that the observing teacher had to dismiss or disparage to push her arguments through.
As expected, she yielded. "... Very well. Your point has been made. I will retract my complaints against Miss America."
She got to the door before turning around for a bit. "It looks like you have good students after all, Naddy." Then she left the classroom.
For a moment, everyone was silent. Then the students at each corner pulled down the noise dampening curtains, and then everyone started cheering.
"Naddy-sensei!" "We're saved!" "Hooray!" "Faak iiesu!" "Party!" As expected, people were celebrating the return of the 'normal' Naddy-sensei, hugging each other and letting loose with all the held back engrish.
And then someone hugged me. "Class Rep!" "Kawasaki, so cool!" "Yay for class rep!" Suddenly, I was lifted by Yasashiki like I had won a soccer tournament. Not that I knew what that was like, but still. As I was put down then tackled by our crying sensei, I wondered,
Was I able to live up to him for a little bit, this time?
