An Error-Ridden Sentence
《Let Your Young Wings Carry You to New Skies》
Our school (founded in the early Showa Period as 15th Prefectural Girls’ Secondary, then converted into a metropolitan high school during the post-war educational reforms) boasts history, tradition, and student freedom. In the year 1994, the curriculum was largely altered to allow students to select their own classes based on their desired path in life. Class content has likewise been tailored in many respects to foster each student’s individuality and preference.
Jindai Municipal High School’s uniform and gym outfits were designed by school alumna and renowned clothing designer Doujy Shiki. Its tasteful and classic design features a simplicity beloved by the current generation and remains popular with our students to this day.
Additionally...
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Tsuboi Takako paused in the middle of her writing.
Additionally...
She was working on the prospective student pamphlet that the school gave out every year. As principal, she was writing the manuscript for it personally... but she’d already found herself running out of inspiration.
“Additionally...” she read back. Then she thought, additionally... what? Did she even have anything else to say? Were these really her school’s only selling points?
Eighty percent of their students eventually moved on to university, but about half of those took one or more gap years, and only about ten percent of the students moved on to prestigious colleges directly after graduation. Their baseball club had lost in the second round. Their rugby club’s glory days were over ten years ago. Their tennis, basketball, and soccer clubs weren’t particularly strong, either. Their kendo club had done fairly well last year, but the leader who had propelled them to success had graduated soon after.
Jindai did have a few distinctive aspects to it. For instance, their student council had an unusually high degree of influence, and the school hosted a surprising number of “unique” individuals who did things like bring firearms and explosives to school... But she couldn’t exactly put those things in her prospective student pamphlet. The fewer people who knew about them, in fact, the better.
But aside from those elements, Jindai had become an extremely average high school. It was difficult to think of what it had that would appeal to the local middle schools in the district—about the only thing they were known for was their cute girls’ uniforms.
While Tsuboi Takako racked her brain over the problem, there came a knock at the door.
“Come in,” she responded, and Kagurazaka Eri, a young, slender teacher from the English department entered. She was dressed in a suit and had a bob haircut.
“Excuse me,” she began, “regarding next week’s guidance session... Madame Principal? What’s the matter? You seem upset about something.”
“It’s nothing, really...”
“Oh? Is it about the prospective student pamphlet?” asked Eri, casting a glance at the manuscript on the desktop.
“Yes. I’d really like to express our school’s appeal... But every time I try to write something, I struggle.” Tsuboi sighed. “I’m a math teacher, you know? I hate using it as an excuse, but I’m just no good at this sort of thing. General affairs asked me to do it, and I agreed without thinking it through... I’m really at a loss.”
“Ahh...” Eri’s response was rather disinterested.
Nevertheless, Tsuboi looked at her with upturned eyes. “Kagurazaka-san,” she begged, “would you write it for me?”
“Er?”
“You’re an alumna, aren’t you? You spent most of your young life here, and if you stayed, you must have more attachment to your alma mater than most.”
Eri winced in response, which was understandable. Who would willingly take on such an awful chore? “Ah... well, I’m not exactly a skilled writer either. And my lack of objectivity could be an issue... Besides, I’ve been quite busy lately.”
“Busy,” the principal repeated. “Busy, you say?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so...” Eri responded hesitantly.
The principal removed her reading glasses and began to studiously polish the lenses. “Yes, I see. You might be able to wake up early every morning to pack a lunch for your coworker, but you don’t have time for this. I see.”
“Erk!” Eri choked out loud. She froze up, her eyes open wide as if to ask, How did you know that?!
“And while you do seem to have time to stop at said coworker’s studio to help him clean and prepare his dinner on your way back from work... Yes, I see. You certainly wouldn’t have time to help me.”
“Ah... w-well...”
“I don’t mind you having a workplace romance, but it’s important to keep public and private lives separate,” the principal reminded her. “And illicit fraternization is forbidden by the school rules, as you know. It would be a bad example for the students. It’s quite a problem.”
“It’s... It’s not illicit. It’s... It’s just... Do the other teachers know?!”
“No,” Tsuboi said, and Eri sighed in relief. “And I fully intend to keep the matter to myself. You don’t have to worry there, Kagurazaka-san.”
“Thank you for—”
Interrupting her, Tsuboi thrust out the manuscript. “So I’ll need you to take care of this. You can ask for help from others if you like, all right?” Tsuboi Takako gave her a glowing smile.
After class that day, in the nurse’s office...
“I feel like she’s been harder on me lately,” Eri muttered to Nishino Kozue, her kohai from their high school days who was now the school nurse. “She was so friendly when I first started working here, but lately she’s been forcing the worst jobs on me and saying the meanest things about whatever Sagara-kun’s been getting up to lately. I’ve borne it in the past as a trial from God, but... I wonder if she’s jealous now that she knows I have a boyfriend.”
“Oh?” Kozue prodded her, replacing the small glasses on her face.
“I really admire her, of course. But she’s been a spinster for so long—fifty-some years without a boyfriend, I’ve heard.”
“So you think she’s taking it out on you?”
“I don’t know,” said Eri. “What do you think?”
“I’ve never known what it’s like to be unpopular with men, so I wouldn’t know,” Kozue said with an innocent smile.
“You really are something, you know?”
“Oh, I get that a lot... mostly from men.” It would be an impressively snotty thing to say, but part of Kozue’s natural personality was to say that sort of thing without any malice at all. And she really had been popular with men as long as Eri had known her. They seemed to find the juxtaposition of her childish face and ample bust appealing.
Eri sighed. “Lord Almighty, forgive this debauched kohai of mine,” she whispered in prayer.
Kozue just smiled and sipped her tea as she glanced sidelong at Eri. “So, did you write the pamphlet text?”
“Not yet. I took it to my desk, but... the words just weren’t coming. Iori-san wrote last year’s pamphlet, so that’s no help...” Last year, the art teacher, Mizuhoshi Iori, had overseen the creation of the school guide pamphlet. It had started like this:
《Consistency, Perfection—Undefined Concepts in Education》
For as long as we, positioned in the field of secondary education, have been forced to deal with isomorphism between the codification of regulations and the real world, then no matter how we attempt to define such concepts, we must examine this system of forms in its relatively simple context. To paraphrase from Hofstadter’s masterpiece, the interpretations of code that lie at the bottom of human linguistics, mediated between an isomorphism that lies deeper than the mere archetypal code interpretation of systems of forms...
And it went on and on that way.
No pamphlet had ever received such a poor reaction from students, but for some reason, the instructors and parents hadn’t complained. It was possible that adults—particularly those who’d received secondary education themselves—didn’t want to admit they didn’t understand it. (In allegorical terms, this was known as a ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’ phenomenon.) But all that aside...
“Senpai, if you’re struggling with writing it that much...” Kozue put a thoughtful finger to her chin. “How about this? Hold a contest for the students to write it and submit the best entry.”
“There’s an idea... But do you think any students would voluntarily take on a chore like that?” Eri wondered.
“Just make sure there’s a prize, like a DVD player, a cell phone, or a mountain bike.”
“I can’t afford any of that. Besides, I can’t sully the sacred profession of teacher with bribery,” Eri said firmly.
“But Senpai, you won’t get anywhere just relying on the kindness of others.”
“Ugh...”
“Besides, you should offer compensation for services rendered,” Kozue reminded her. “It’s not right to put the burden on children.”
“Y-You’re not usually this sensible... But I suppose you’re right.”
“Right?” The kohai she’d known for eight years smiled brightly at her.
In the end, Eri partly accepted Kozue’s suggestion. She’d hold a contest among the students, but the prize would be a 2,000-yen ‘book ticket’—a gift certificate for use in affiliated book stores. She’d paid for it herself, of course, but it would be within ethical bounds. Although she remained dubious, she did end up printing out a contest guideline draft on her word processor.
“The prize is a book ticket?” Kozue asked as she reached for the draft. “You think that’ll get you submissions?”
“I think so.”
“I wonder...” Kozue scowled at it for a moment, then brightened again. “If you like, I’ll make copies and put them in each class’s box!”
“Oh, that’s so kind. Thank you.”
“Anything for you, Senpai.” Kozue walked right out with the printed page in hand.
Something about the interaction nagged at Eri, but she decided not to worry about it and to instead wait a few days to see how the students reacted.
“Yeesh,” Chidori Kaname groaned as she read one of the copies they’d been handed that morning. “Ms. Kagurazaka can do some nutty things...”
“Yeah, it’s surprising. I always thought she was more sensible than that,” Tokiwa Kyoko said, nodding along beside her.
The printout laid out a request for the written text for a prospective student pamphlet and offered a reward. The issue was the nature of that reward:
Reward: 2,000-yen book ticket and illicit extracurricular one-on-one tutoring with Ms. Kagurazaka
The part about “extracurricular tutoring” looked a bit squeezed in, though, as if it had been added after the fact.
Ms. Kagurazaka was their class’s homeroom teacher, but as far as Kaname could see, she’d been acting perfectly normal all day. She hadn’t even looked at the printout, just made an offhand comment about hoping for good submissions.
“You think the boys are gonna leap at a prize like that?” Kyoko asked.
“Dunno. She gives off a weird vibe, like she’d use the tutoring session to make you memorize English sentences... Even if I were a guy, I’d probably pass on it.” Besides, if the draft they wrote made it into the pamphlet, everyone at school would read it. It would be like admitting you were a teacher’s pet. Kaname had no interest in embarrassing herself like that.
“I guess. But I never pegged Ms. Kagurazaka as the teacher-you’re-hot-for type...”
“The what?”
“You know, in dramas and manga, the young female teacher with the knockout proportions, the short skirt, acting all confident and provocative.” Kyoko used hand gestures to illustrate what she meant, and in the end struck a sexy pose with a finger to her lips.
“I don’t know what kind of manga you’ve been reading, but... I’d say Ms. Kagurazaka is as far from that type as you can get,” Kaname agreed.
“Yeah. Even though it’s more popular with girls than with boys. I wonder how that happened... By the way, this is a tangent, but isn’t it weird how many professions just sound kind of fetishy when you add ‘female’ to the front? Lawyer, surgeon, police officer, spy...”
Ignoring Kyoko’s weird little rant, Kaname turned to the other person in their group. “What’s wrong, Sousuke? You seem really interested in that handout...”
The student in question, Sagara Sousuke, was indeed staring hard at the handout. He wore his usual sullen expression and tight frown, but there was a wrinkle between his brows as he read and reread the submission form. “I’m interested in the reward.”
“Uh?”
Sousuke didn’t clarify, but instead looked off into the distance. “A prospective student pamphlet... It might be worth trying.”
Kaname fell silent. Was Sousuke... interested in Ms. Kagurazaka? Feeling an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, Kaname just sat there, gazing at him from the side.
Whenever she felt like she wanted to crawl under a rock and die, Eri usually found her way to a bed in the nurse’s office. Now was one such time.
It had taken several days for her to notice the “reward” now listed on the print-out, at which point it had long since reached the students’ hands and couldn’t be taken back. I’d thought students were looking at me strangely of late, she thought. If only I’d realized it sooner...
And so she lay there, hiding under a sheet in the nurse’s office, face buried in a pillow as she wailed at the top of her lungs.
“Senpai...” Kozue said concernedly.
Eri just sobbed and choked in response.
“Senpai, please cheer up. I’m sure it’s not that bad. Honestly, what happened?” And the next thing Kozue knew, a pillow hit her in the face. “Mph!”
“How dare you ask me that when this is all your doing!” Eri flew out of bed and grabbed the lapels of her kohai’s white coat.
“Eh? What are you talking about?”
“The reward for the pamphlet contest! You added that part about going on a date with me!”
“Ahh... Well, I just didn’t think the book ticket would be enough. Is it that bad?” Kozue looked confused.
“Of course it was that bad! Now I sound like a sex-crazed idiot! Iori-san has been bedridden from the shock and hasn’t come to school for two days!” Eri howled. “Do you realize how hard I had to work to straighten things out with him?!”
“E-Excuse me, I’m having trouble breathing...”
“You are just incorrigible! You’ve been like this since high school!”
“H-Have I?” Kozue asked back.
A vein in Eri’s forehead throbbed with rage. “You don’t remember? You sent that vulgar love letter to my crush, Asano-senpai, without even asking me! With that embarrassing picture of me from our training camp!” It had been a shocking picture of a seventeen-year-old Eri asleep, with the T-shirt she was using as pajamas rumpled in a way that showed her panties and belly button.
“I... I did that to help you,” Kozue protested. “Because you were such a late bloomer... I thought it might help you win him over...”
Incidentally, the love letter she’d sent on Eri’s behalf went like this:
Please forgive my boldness in sending you this letter. I just can’t stop myself anymore. Just thinking of you makes my body burn like fire. I might look reserved, but I’m a very naughty girl deep down. I hope you’ll look at my picture and [censored]
“Yes, and it certainly did... right until he threw himself at me on our first date! I thought the world was going to end!” Eri shouted, her tears gushing like waterfalls.
“Oh yeah,” Kozue mumbled. “So you hit him and ran away...”
“It ruined my first love! And gave me an abiding fear of men until I realized what actually happened!”
“That’s right. I’m sorry, Senpai. I just... I did it to help you. I never even dreamed it would turn out... like that.”
“You’re not allowed to play the victim after doing something that evil!”
Kozue’s sudden bout of tears abruptly stopped, and she slumped over. “But Senpai, a book ticket really wouldn’t be enough to draw in submissions. I thought if you added in a little date as a reward...”
“I get it! I completely understand what you were thinking!” Eri whispered in aggravation, eyes pointed downward. “But let’s assume that I was even okay with the date. The fact that it’s been five days since the ad went out, and nobody’s even talking about it—” Her hushed voice began trembling. “—let alone turning in a single submission... that just makes it worse!”
“Ah, I see.” If she’d been swamped with eager submissions from the boys, it might have at least been flattering enough that she could have dealt with the embarrassment. But the world wasn’t so kind. “I guess that would hurt. A humiliating one-two punch brought about by the tricks of human psychology,” Kozue said calmly.
Eri glared at her balefully... then sagged, sighing. “It’s just so pathetic. I can’t believe not even one person wants to try...”
Just then, there was a knock on the nurse’s office door.
“Excuse me.” The door opened and a boy came in. It was Sagara Sousuke. “There you are, ma’am.”
Eri quickly wiped away her tears and sat up.
Sousuke walked briskly up to them, then clicked his heels together and stood at attention.
“S-Sagara-kun... What is it?”
“Please accept this.” Sousuke held out an A4-sized envelope.
“What is it?”
“My submission for the prospective student pamphlet,” he told her. “I worked quite hard on it. I hope you will find it acceptable.”
“Th-Thank you...” Stunned by the abruptness of it all, Eri took the envelope from his hands. She was so surprised by the person making the submission that she couldn’t even feel happy about it.
Eri and Kozue cautiously read the “New Student Pitch” that Sousuke had written.
《Fear, Pain, Suffering—It Is This Adversity That Will Make You Exceptional Soldiers.》
Let me begin with a preface: Our school is not for the faint of heart. It is only the best of the best—those with the potential to become the ultimate soldiers—who will prove capable of passing our strict entrance exam and seeing our narrow gates open for them.
You have the right to choose. You can go to Chofu West High School. You can go to Fushimidai High School. You’re even free to attend the cowardly ranks of Komaoka Academy (smirks). But true men choose Jindai High, where thrilling trials and adventures await.
The history of Jindai High can be traced back to the early Showa Period. Despite taking multiple air strikes from the US military during the Pacific War, its unparalleled survival instinct allowed the school to endure. This was wholly due to the lofty fighting spirit of its student body of the time.
That tradition carries on to this very day. Through constant training and refinement, our school has achieved an astonishing record of zero deaths in combat for over fifty years. Out of the many schools in our district, it is clear that Jindai High School is the invincible school chosen by God.
Trust in God, trust in your mother school, trust in the student council president. Ask not what your school can do for you, but what you can do for your school. And always challenge yourself.
Jindai High School, now recruiting ambitious young people.
And that was just the opening.
Eri and Kozue looked up from the draft, glassy-eyed. “Um... this is a prospective student pamphlet?” Eri asked.
Sousuke snapped back to attention. “Yes. Is there an issue?”
“Er... well... W-Well done. Thank you.”
“It was my honor. Excuse me.” Sousuke turned around and moved to walk out... but he stopped and turned back just before reaching the door. “Ma’am?” he said, sounding like he wanted to confirm something.
“Yes?”
“Do not forget the compensation you promised.”
“...”
His voice was quiet but intense. It almost seemed to say, ‘If you break your promise, be prepared for the consequences.’ His gaze was extremely sincere.
“Er... Sagara-kun? It was Ms. Nishino here who wrote—”
“Ms. Nishino?” Sousuke peered at Kozue intensely, causing her to freeze up as if threatened. “What did Ms. Nishino do exactly?”
“Oh, er... nothing.”
“I see. Goodbye, then.” Sousuke left the nurse’s office behind.
An uncomfortable silence fell across the room as Eri and Kozue looked at each other in silence for a while.
“What do I do?” Eri asked despairingly. “He’s so serious about it...”
“And that terrifying look in his eyes...”
“I... I suppose he is a teenage boy, after all...”
“Do you think he’s going to take you out... and go into beast mode when you’re alone together?” Kozue wondered.
“He’s got those modified toy guns, knives, and more...”
“And even without those, he’d overpower you!”
Both of them felt a chill run up their spines.
Meanwhile, Sousuke walked out into the hall, his imagination soaring about the reward Kagurazaka Eri had promised.
Just what kind of ticket is a ‘book ticket’? he wondered. He knew well about meal tickets, but he’d never before heard about tickets designed for the distribution of paper documents. Does this country have serious periodic paper shortages?
A book ticket. What did it look like? Was it round or square? Was it hard or soft? What color could it be? He was intensely curious. Yet at the same time, he felt hesitant to simply ask Kaname about it. She was always mocking him or rolling her eyes at his ignorance. He was hoping, for once, to apply independent effort, acquire the thing, and boast that he knew exactly what it was.
He could picture the scene: unobtrusively whipping the shining gold train ticket-sized object, stamped with an issuance date (which was the form it currently took in his imagination) out of his pocket and saying, as casual as could be, ‘I’m heading for the distribution center now.’
The girls would be rendered agog by his social acumen. It’ll be perfect, he thought. This was his sole motivation. He’d also noticed some mention of a kind of extracurricular tutoring session alongside it, but had no interest whatsoever in that.
“Sousuke,” Kaname said as he returned to the student council room, “are you really going to submit a prospective student pamphlet?”
“I’ve done so already. I expect to receive the reward.”
“I see,” she responded dryly, pursing her lips slightly for some reason. She almost sounded rather angry. “That’s a surprise. I didn’t know you were motivated by such things.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sousuke.
“Hm? Oh, nothing. Do what you like. It’s a free country, after all. None of my business.”
Unable to fathom her meaning, Sousuke just stared at her in confusion. But Kaname refused to say any more, silently turning back to her laptop and resuming some kind of paperwork.
“Ms. Kagurazaka. I thought you were a more serious person than this,” Principal Tsuboi said when she arrived in the principal’s office, called there via PA. “I saw your recruitment print-out. An ‘illicit extracurricular tutoring session’? How in the world did you come up with such vulgar wording?”
“I’m so sorry. There was a little mistake...” Eri made herself look as small as she could. It was to her credit, though, that she didn’t just blame the issue on Nishino Kozue.
“I know I said you could delegate, but there are limits to the sort of conduct I’ll accept. We have an image to maintain. It seems to me you’ve been growing rather lax of late. How am I supposed to count on you? It seems like it’s one thing after another...” The lecture continued for the next ten minutes, punctuated in the end with, “Do you understand?!”
“Yes ma’am...”
“So? Have you received any submissions?”
“Well, actually... just one. I was thinking I’d scrap it and just write the draft myself from scratch.” It was a very practical suggestion.
The principal didn’t seem to take kindly to that, though. “Don’t you dare! You asked for submissions. Be a teacher and take responsibility.”
“What... What do you mean by that?”
“Use the student’s draft,” the principal told her sternly. “A promise is a promise.”
“B-But...!”
“Obviously, direct them to fix any inappropriate grammar or spellings. But you can’t squelch a student’s passionate effort just because it didn’t turn out the way you hoped. Is that understood?!”
The world went black around Eri. How was she supposed to make Sagara Sousuke’s draft appropriate?
Back in the nurse’s office...
“That is a tricky one...”
“Seriously. How am I supposed to ask him to alter it?”
Eri and Kozue were looking hopelessly down at a sheaf of paper—Sousuke’s submission, of course. His “prospective student pamphlet,” packed with hostile and combative terms from start to finish, felt more like a recruitment pamphlet for the Marines. It had come with layout and font suggestions as well as picture attachments. And the instructions were so detailed...
“It’s always the submissions that have no hope of being accepted that go overboard with the instructions and attachments...” Eri observed mournfully.
“Like the newcomer award at a certain publishing company,” Kozue put in.
What made it even more awkward was that there were no grammar or spelling errors to be found. In other words, there wasn’t much to complain about.
“Why not black parts of it out?” Kozue suggested.
But Eri shook her head. “That won’t work.” The problematic parts far outnumbered the acceptable ones... Adding censor bars to the script would create something that looked like like:
《■■■■, ■■■■, ■■■■■■■■■—It Is This ■■■■■■■■■ That Will Make You Exceptional ■■■■■■■■.》
It’s creepy. Who wants to be an exceptional ■■■■■■■? I’d never go to a school like that would be the natural response. And yet, the principal had told her to accept a student manuscript. With the deadline tomorrow, and Sousuke the only one who had submitted one...
“W-Well... I’ll have to increase the reward,” Eri decided. “Maybe if we add a date with you, Kozue, we’ll get some submissions! I’ll increase the value of the book ticket to 5000 and add a karaoke pass...”
“I’m starting to get invested in the outcome here,” Kozue muttered.
They kept talking on and on like that until...
“Excuse me. Is Ms. Kagurazaka here?” The nurse’s office door opened and a third-year boy entered. It was Hayashimizu Atsunobu, the student council president.
“Hayashimizu-kun?”
“I heard you put out a call for prospective student pamphlet submissions. I was hoping to submit my own draft.” Hayashimizu nudged his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose.
“Y-You?” Eri stammered. “Why?”
“Why not? I’m still a student here, after all, and the cost of books remains prohibitive. I’ve no interest in that joke about extracurricular tutoring sessions, of course. Ha ha.” He spoke without the slightest sense of shame.
Eri and Kozue brightened simultaneously. Their salvation had arrived—the school’s best student, a tasteful, witty young man, would surely submit something they could use. And Sousuke would never object to her taking Hayashimizu’s manuscript over his.
“Thank you! That would be a huge help. I never expected you to submit a draft...”
“It was easily done. And the prospective student pamphlet is very important to my alma mater’s continued prosperity.”
“Yes, very much so.” Eri laughed in relief. “So, is that your draft?”
“Yes. I attempted to make it as appealing as possible to the new generation. Have a look, if you please.” Hayashimizu handed his freshly printed draft to Eri.
《Get the Most Out of Life at Jindai High!》
You only get three years in high school! If you want to spend them having fun, Jindai High is the place to be! There are barely any rules, and our teachers don’t really care that much what we do. So if you just want to do what you want all day, this is the school for you!
Did I mention it’s co-ed? We’ve got girls and boys studying side by side, which means lots of chances for romantic chemistry! Our data shows that 80% of new entrants start dating someone within three months of coming here! You’ll never get a chance like that at an all-boys or all-girls school.
The place to meet your soul mate... that’s Jindai High!
We’ve also got lots of cool events like culture festivals, sports festivals, school trips, athletics tournaments, and more!
*Now running an entrance exam bonus campaign!
Recommend a friend for the Jindai High entrance exam and receive this lavish prize: for every friend referred, you get five points added to your score in each subject! Don’t miss these limited-time bonuses. Sign up today!
“Obviously, the students and teachers in the pictures will be hired from a modeling agency,” Hayashimizu added, his detached tone a stark contrast to the giddy tone of the text. “I have a connection with a photographer, so don’t worry about the cost. I’ll be sure not to include the run-down southern school building in the pictures. I also believe that padding the images with pictures of the swimming club or swimming class will greatly increase the number of male test-takers. My rough surveys suggest that these efforts combined will result in a fifteen to twenty percent increase in testing applicants compared to previous years... ma’am?” Hayashimizu frowned as he saw Eri beginning to tremble. “You don’t seem pleased.”
“Of course I’m not pleased!” Eri screamed, tears streaming from her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?! What’s with this ridiculous commercialist pitch?!”
“It’s not commercialist. It’s realist. I feel that this strategy will genuinely let us recruit a great number of students—”
“Even if it does, an educational institution can’t put out a pamphlet like this!”
Hayashimizu looked back at her, his gaze pitying. “If I may, ma’am, it’s that sort of thinking that leads to organizational atrophy. It’s an archetypal malady of bureaucracy. Flexibility and survival instinct is important in an educator—you should be more willing to engage with the turbulent seas of capitalism.”
Eri couldn’t fully argue, but at the same time, she couldn’t agree. “For the love of...” Feeling the blood rise to her head, Eri clung dizzily to her desk.
Hayashimizu waited for her to straighten up, then asked, “Can I assume I’ve been rejected?”
“Yes!”
“Hmm. What a shame.” Hayashimizu shrugged and left.
“Ah, I’m finished...” Eri groaned. “I’m not going to get a single decent pitch. And I’m not allowed to write it myself... What in the world am I going to do?”
“Maybe just write it off as karmic retribution?” Kozue responded breezily.
Eri hit her with a pillow and strode back to the teachers’ office.
There was nothing else for it. She had to submit the pamphlet’s draft within the week, and there was no way she’d receive a decent submission by then. If she just explained things to the principal, she’d get another tongue-lashing. Worst of all, if she accepted Sousuke’s manuscript, she’d have to go on a date with him. He seemed like a nice enough boy, but he was always so inscrutable. And then...
“Do not forget the compensation you promised.” The intensity in his statement at the time was strangely anxiety-inducing.
She let out a sigh and returned to her desk in the English department.
On top of her desk sat a brand-new envelope. It was anonymous, though the handwriting was vaguely familiar. It said, “Prospective Student Pamphlet—Draft Submission.”
《A Laid-Back but Fulfilling Life》
When you hear the words ‘high school life,’ what do you think? Maybe you picture something more mature than your middle school days. But the truth is, it’s not that different. You get up in the morning, you go to school, you learn things, you have fun with friends, you go home. I suspect that’s more or less the kind of life you want to lead, too.
Actually, if you had to name one thing you wanted, you’d probably say you want a little more freedom. The teachers at our school aren’t too strict. They let you take responsibility for yourself, more or less. The kind of things that seem like they should go without saying really do go without saying here.
There’s no cutthroat entrance exam battles. There’s no backbreaking club competitions. That also means we don’t have any of the amazing accomplishments that pamphlets like this one usually boast about. It’s just a normal school filled with normal people living normal lives.
But I really like this very normal school.
●
The next week, in their classroom...
“So they took that anonymous draft, huh?” Kyoko asked as she read a story about the contest in the Jindai High News.
“Looks like it. Not that I’d know,” Kaname said indifferently.
“Hmm... You think the anonymous writer went on a date with Ms. Kagurazaka?”
“Read it again. It says that whole thing was just a joke.”
“Oh, you’re right. Boo!” Kyoko said with mock disappointment, then laughed.
Kaname sighed and whispered, too softly for anyone to hear, “Sheesh. If I’d known it was a joke earlier...”
“Eh?”
“Mm. Nothing,” she responded carelessly, then turned her eyes to the corner of the room.
Sousuke sat there, slumped over as he stared at his own copy of the Jindai News.
“How does it feel not to make the grade, Sergeant Sagara?” Kaname said teasingly as she walked up to him.
Sousuke sagged even further. “Awful. I felt so confident in my victory.”
“It’s because your motives were impure. You shouldn’t have been so eager to seek that gross reward.”
Sousuke hesitated for a minute, then seemed to steel up his nerve about something. “Chidori,” he asked, “is a book ticket ‘gross’?”
“Huh?”
“I have a confession to make,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen a book ticket. I didn’t know it was a gross thing... That’s why I applied.”
“I... I see...” At last, Kaname understood. Sousuke had never cared about the weird extracurricular tutoring session. I guess I did a cruel thing, she thought. “You can have this one, then,” she said, reaching into her uniform pocket.
Sousuke looked up at her questioningly. She then handed him a 2,000-yen book ticket.
“I got it from a relative. I probably won’t use it.”
Sousuke just stared at the dollar bill-sized ticket, hard enough to drill holes through it. When he spoke, his tone was one of deepest admiration. “This is... a book ticket? It doesn’t look gross to me at all. It looks like a wonderful thing.”
Kaname gazed at him and smiled. “Really? Take care of it, then.”
〈An Error-ridden Sentence — The End〉
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