"Alright class, take your seats!" Nagisa-sensei called cheerfully as he entered the classroom on the fourth day of the semester.
He heard no shuffling of movement, no scrape of chairs across the tile floor, nor did he sense the heat or energy of twenty teenagers.
He sighed, then mumbled miserably to himself, "They're not here."
A moment later he heard harried footsteps coming down the hallway, and the classroom door slid open abruptly. Asui walked in quickly, breathing heavily, a thin sheen of sweat on her round face, excuse prepared.
"Thanks for waiting for me, I was—" but she cut herself off when she realized no one was there. "Oh, no one's here yet?" She stood silently for a moment, tugged absently a one of the paperclips she wore as earrings, weighing her options. "I'll come back when I'm actually late."
"Yeah... I don't think so." Nagisa appeared behind her as she turned to go and grabbed the back of her collar to keep her from walking away.
"N-Nagisa-sensei, I... I didn't see you there."
She turned her head to meet her teacher's eyes and plastered on a smile, trying to figure out how she could have possibly been so oblivious as to not even notice that her teacher was in the room. He had bright blue hair, for kripe's sake! That wasn't exactly the stealthiest feature.
"Where is everyone?" Nagisa asked, letting go of her collar after a gentle tug to face her fully toward him.
Asui was one of only two students shorter than him, and he subconsciously drew himself up to his full height to emphasize that fact.
"I don't... know?" It turned into as a question halfway through when Asui suddenly remembered her classmates' plan to ditch today and go to the movies. They had been organizing it before Nagisa-sensei showed up on the first day, but since she didn't like going to the movies, she'd opted out of the group chat, along with a few others, initially planning to just stay home instead, which hadn't happened.
"Asui." A tone of warning permeated Nagisa-sensei's voice. "Where are they?"
"They went to the cinema... er... most of them anyway." She rushed her words out as quickly as possible, shame crawling up the inside of her sternum for ratting out her classmates. She thought her teacher might get mad and yell at her, he would hardly be the first teacher to do so, but instead he just sighed and made his way out the door, gesturing for Asui to follow.
"Come on. We're going to get them."
Asui nodded, and followed curiously.
They walked in silence until they reached the cinema not too far from the school—Asui side-eyeing her teacher, awaiting some form of punishment, which she thought was inevitable, but never came.
The cinema didn't open until nine, so when they arrived they saw only a very small crowd of people waiting for the doors to open so they could catch the earliest showings and sneak into later showings as the day progressed without paying admission. That was the plan anyway. And Asui knew that was the plan because the crowd consisted exclusively of the students of class 3-5.
"Good morning class," Nagisa said casually, joining the group as if he was supposed to be there all along. "Funny, I don't remember planning a field-trip today."
Nobody turned to look at him, but Shirota, one of the more sociable students, who was pulling off the dark, bad-boy look rather well since he wasn't in uniform, thought fit to respond while he took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket.
"What do you mean? We all decided to skip today, and I'm glad we did because the new teach is kinda scary." Shirota said offhandedly. "I mean I'm not afraid of him, but I know some of these guys think he's really creepy."
"Is that so?" Nagisa frowned.
Then he did something—and though none of the students could say exactly what it was, all at once his presence was impossible to ignore. Slowly, all eyes turned to the small bluenette. "I don't think I'm that scary at all."
"Nagisa-sensei!" Shirota said with a start, and the cigarette he'd been attempting to light fell from his lips.
"You shouldn't smoke those," Nagisa told him with a stern, disappointed tone, and a frown to match. "They're a gateway drug that can wreck your body and lead to all sorts of seriously harmful addictions, not to mention putting you in major debt when you'll do anything to get your next fix. I want better than that for you, Shirota, and you should too."
"Uh..." Shirota, unsure of what he could even say to that, picked up the cigarette that had fallen and tossed it into a nearby waste-bin.
He wasn't really committing to anything, he told himself. After all, the remainder of the carton was still in his pocket. But he couldn't remember anyone telling him something like that before. Not about cigarettes being bad—he heard that all the time—but about wanting better for him. His fist clenched around the half-empty box in his pocket. He wanted to deserve that.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
"Now," Nagisa said. "You're all coming back to class with me, and once we get there, I have a project for us to do."
There was a collective groan from the teens, but, however reluctantly, they followed Nagisa back to the school, dragging their feet and texting those who had opted against the movies that they'd better haul-ass to school because somebody snitched, and now they were all in hot water.
There were few people in the halls, but those who were there stared at the group in shock and awe as they trudged by. Twenty or so delinquent teens, most of them not wearing their uniforms, led to class by a teacher who barely looked as old as they were.
Nagisa led them all into the classroom, then took roll. The only person still absent was Kiya, which was unsurprising, as much as it disappointed her teacher. Anyone who knew her knew that after the first day of school, when she had to attend or else get kicked out, she pretty much never came to class.
"I'm impressed at how well you organized yourselves," Nagisa admitted, and he didn't even seem particularly begrudging to do so. "I don't know of many high-school classes that could get almost every student to cut class and go to the same movie theater at the same time, especially on only the fourth day of school. A skill like that is definitely something you could use for assassination."
There were some whispers among the assembled students along the lines of, 'did he just praise us for ditching?' and, 'he's really serious about the assassin thing, huh?' and, 'I wonder what that project he mentioned is. I hope it's not too bad.'
"Now that I've got you all back, however," Nagisa continued with a sly smirk, "we're going to get this place cleaned up."
There was another, louder groan from the class.
"Buck up, and quit complaining. I'm not gonna let you guys ditch anymore, as you may have noticed, and that means you'll be spending a lot more time in this classroom, so I'm sure you'd much prefer it if it didn't look like a trash heap."
"Maybe," Marihara scoffed, rolling sea-blue eyes behind red-framed glasses, forgetting she was in the front of the room for once and not just entertaining the back row. "But we're all trash, so it feels like home."
There was a round of stifled laughter, to which their teacher responded with a sigh.
"Regardless, this room will be clean before you leave for the day," Nagisa said firmly, and then went to retrieve some cleaning supplies from the closet down the hallway. "This is your space. Don't you want it to be clean and comfortable? Besides, I'm not gonna let Ms. Hanji clean up this mess when the ones responsible are the ones most affected."
Ms. Hanji was a brilliant and energetic woman who resembled nothing so much as a cockatiel. She occupied a trial position of 'faculty assistant', which the school was testing to see if it was worth it to have an extra set of hands around to help teachers when they needed it. They'd been testing it for nearly six years and still not officiated anything, despite the fact that it was obviously beneficial.
Nagisa passed around brooms, buckets of cleaning solution, wash rags, sponges, dustpans, fresh towels, and metal scrapers to get gum off the desks.
"Alright everyone, let's get to work," he said with a smile, and promptly began scrubbing marker off a desk with a damp, soapy cloth.
The class followed suit, sighs, groans, and grumbling bouncing from student to student like an irritated echo.
Just before lunch break, while cleaning the desk behind Nagisa, Fuyu saw his opportunity, he signaled his twin sister Natsu, and they put their devilish plan into action. He flicked open the switchblade he carried with him and aimed it at the back of Nagisa-sensei's neck.
Nagisa sensed it, swung his arm around, grabbed Fuyu's hand, and twisted it until he dropped his blade and it clattered to the floor.
For a fraction of a second, when Nagisa moved, Fuyu felt an unexplainable, but overwhelming sense of fear. He was a field-mouse trapped in the gaze of a viper. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.
The moment the knife fell, Natsu jumped on Nagisa from the other side, and wrapped her arms around his neck in a choke hold, but Nagisa used the toe of his shoe to toss the knife back into the air like a hacky-sack, and caught it, aiming it at her forehead once he had done so.
She felt that same instant of fear that her brother had, and immediately released her teacher.
Thwarted, the Ryouma twins stood next to each other, heads bowed, sure they'd be in trouble. Despite being different genders, they were identical, from their fiery red hair, to their shoe size. If not for the fact that they dressed differently, it would be quite difficult to tell the two apart.
The whole class held their breath, waiting for the twins to be yelled at, ready to laugh or console, but they didn't get the chance.
"Well done, you two," Nagisa-sensei praised with a smile, much to the surprise and bafflement of every student present.
They had been so certain that the assassination thing was some kind of trap, to trick them into getting themselves expelled or something. But now it seemed that Nagisa-sensei's offer may have been absolutely genuine.
"That was excellent team-work. Keep practicing and that will be a major advantage. I think in the future, we should start using fake knives, though. I'll be sure to supply you all with some by next week." He handed Fuyu's switch blade back to him. "Now let's get back to work."
"Yes Nagisa-sensei!" the students chorused and returned to their work. They would never get used to their teacher's strange methods. Encouraging assassination was one thing, but the fact that he encouraged them was in some ways even stranger and more foreign to this particular group.
"Hey, Nagisa-sensei?" Kirasaya asked as she scraped at wads of dried up chewing gum.
"Yes Kirasaya?"
"Where'd you learn to fight like that?"
"Like what?" He was trying to avoid the question, and she knew it.
"You know." She glared, having no intention of letting him play dumb. "Hand-to-hand, close quarters, martial arts. That thing you did with Fuyu's knife. You weren't even fazed by Natsu's choke hold."
"Well, neither of them are very experienced," Nagisa pointed out. "Natsu's hold was hardly blocking my windpipe at all."
"That doesn't answer my question," she persisted, increasingly annoyed, still not letting him evade. "Where. Did. You. Learn. It."
"Oh, you know," he said vaguely. "Here and there, movies, friends, odd acquaintances. Practice makes perfect."
"Thaaaanks." Kirasaya's words dripped with sarcasm. "I love it when people answer without answering. What a great teacher, you are, refusing to share information your students ask for. How am I ever supposed to learn anything under such conditions?"
"Well perhaps, Kirasaya," he said beginning to grow irritated. "If you asked for information about something other than my personal life, I would be more inclined to share it with you. Alas! If only you showed as much interest in calculus as you did in poking your nose in where it doesn't belong."
He tapped her nose gently with his finger, and moved on to scrubbing the next desk.
Huffing in exasperation, she went back to work, knowing she wouldn't get a better answer than that any time soon.
About an hour after the end of school came around, the room was beautifully clean. The desks were scrubbed and straightened in neat rows. The lockers in the back of the room had been hammered back into the correct shape, and closed properly. The floor had been mopped, the bulletin board had been organized, and all old flyers thrown out, and the chalkboard had been washed so it shone as black as the day it was made.
Everything was still old and worn-out, but now it was clean, and orderly, and the classroom didn't feel like a place fit only for rejects and lost-causes anymore.
As reluctant as they had been to clean in the first place, not one of the students could honestly say they weren't pleased with the work they'd accomplished, as well as the result. And when Nagisa-sensei released them from the prison that was Paradise, each of them left the classroom grudgingly satisfied.
[No major changes in this chapter, but I added some details, and I altered Ms. Hanji's title since Japanese schools don't have custodians. Love y'all.
<3 Raaor!]