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ArabicClassroom of the Elite: Surviving with the Intel System — Chapter 37
Chapter 37: The Problem Teacher
Failing a single subject in the mid-term or final exams meant immediate expulsion.
That was the brutal, unwritten law of the Advanced Nurturing High School. The senior student from Class D had made it abundantly clear before she left.
“Even if you lose out to the other classes, or scrape by every month on the free meal plans, just don’t get expelled for poor grades. That would be far too pathetic.”
Akira certainly had no intention of bowing out in such a humiliating fashion. But this institution was anything but ordinary. What kind of high school mandated immediate expulsion over a single failed test?
The only silver lining was the timeline. The mid-term exams were still over a month away. Starting from scratch to drag his Japanese scores up to the passing line was theoretically possible.
But three towering obstacles blocked his path. Modern Japanese, Ancient Japanese, and Classical Chinese.
The modern curriculum was barely tolerable, but the ancient texts were practically an alien script. Despite being littered with familiar characters, their archaic combinations rendered them entirely baffling.
‘It feels exactly like the Classical Chinese I studied in my previous life… except it’s Japanese, which multiplies the headache tenfold.’
Worse still, a single character could possess a dozen different pronunciations in Old Japanese, its entire meaning shifting based on the agglutination of obscure grammatical particles. He was staring at encrypted data with a key lost to antiquity.
“My head hurts…”
The afternoon Japanese class finally ended. Akira rubbed his temples, pressing his fingers deep into the throbbing nerves behind his eyes.
Unlike Mathematics or English, which operated on strict logic, Japanese felt like sinking into a swamp. On the surface, an elementary student could read the basics. But the moment he dug into the phonetic shifts and ancient syntax, his brain turned to lead.
‘They are just characters… why do they turn into a cipher the second you string them together?’
A faint, trembling voice broke through his thoughts.
“U-um… Shimizu-kun. Yesterday… thank you for speaking up for me…”
He turned to his right. Sakura Airi, his desk mate, sat with her head bowed, her pale fingers anxiously twisting the hem of her pleated skirt. Her voice was so fragile that, had his hearing not been exceptionally sharp, he might have mistaken it for the wind brushing against the windowpane.
“Don’t worry about it.” Akira waved a hand, his tone casual and unbothered. “I was just in a foul mood yesterday, and the guy causing trouble was a nuisance who skips class anyway.”
It wasn’t entirely an excuse. He genuinely despised Yamauchi Haruki.
‘After all, that idiot is at least half responsible for Class D scoring zero points. Ike Kanji and the rest of those fools just followed his lead straight into the gutter.’Sakura fell silent. Her gaze drifted toward the pristine Japanese textbook resting on Akira’s desk. The spine was completely uncreased, the page edges stark white. It was painfully obvious the book had barely been opened.’Just as I thought… he really struggles with Japanese, doesn’t he…’
Her lips parted slightly. She wanted to offer help, to say something useful, but the courage failed her. She bit her lower lip and swallowed the words back down.
“By the way.” Akira lowered his voice, his expression turning serious. “Just to confirm one thing. You didn’t actually confess to Yamauchi Haruki, did you?”
“N-No!”
Sakura’s voice spiked in volume, startling several students in the front row who turned to look. She slapped both hands over her mouth, her ears flushing a brilliant, burning red. She peeked at Akira through her fingers for a fleeting second before ducking her head down like a frightened rabbit.
Akira raised an eyebrow, his gaze lingering on the crimson tips of her ears.
‘So it really was a misunderstanding.’He mused silently.’Then again, she is exactly the type who has zero idea how to talk to people.’
The final bell rang. After grabbing a quick dinner, Akira went straight to Horikita Suzune.
He fully expected her to reject him. After all, he had deliberately brought up her older brother during physical education class, a topic guaranteed to sour her mood. To his mild surprise, the ice queen silently fell into step beside him, her face an unreadable mask as they headed toward the faculty office to meet Chabashira Sae.
When Akira pushed open the heavy door to the staff room, Chabashira was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, a young woman in a light pink silk blouse was casually leaning against a desk. The hem of her blouse was loosely tucked into high-waisted shorts, perfectly framing a slender waist. But it was her legs that commanded the room—long, straight, and strikingly proportionate, put on full display by the shorts.
Her attire was scandalously casual for an educator, yet she sat comfortably in a teacher’s designated chair. A standard female instructor at this academy wore tailored suits and conservative black stockings, projecting the strict, unyielding authority that Chabashira embodied.
The woman before him was the exact opposite.
She was the walking definition of a parent’s worst nightmare. The kind of problem teacher who inspired angry letters claiming, “How can you dress like this! My child spent the entire class staring at the teacher instead of the board!”
But the Advanced Nurturing High School was a closed ecosystem. Parents couldn’t just drop by to complain, and the outside world was entirely cut off.
The female teacher caught the movement at the door. She tilted her head, a lazy, alluring smile curving her lips.
“Chabashira-sensei.” Horikita stated her homeroom teacher’s name with stiff formality, clearly suppressing her irritation at the stranger’s presence.
“Eh? Looking for Sae-chan?” The woman tapped her chin with a manicured fingertip. The overly familiar nickname immediately tipped Akira off. This woman was not just a passing colleague. “She was just in the office.”
The woman gestured casually, inviting them inside to wait.
Horikita’s response was immediate and freezing. “No need.”
Surprisingly, the young teacher stood up and strolled out into the hallway to join them. She pointed a playful index finger at her own cheek.
“Let me formally introduce myself. I am Hoshinomiya Chie, the homeroom teacher for Class B. Sae-chan and I have been inseparable best friends since our own high school days! We still call each other Sae-chan and Little Chie even now.”
Hoshinomiya leaned in close to Horikita, her eyes sparkling with sudden amusement.
“Your entire vibe is exactly like Sae-chan’s. But why did she specifically call you two over? How suspicious.” She blinked her large eyes, tapping her lips in mock thought. “Could it be… you two got into some kind of trouble?”
Horikita maintained her icy silence.
Hoshinomiya suddenly clapped her hands together, a sly, fox-like grin spreading across her face. “Or could it be… you need love advice?”
Horikita’s brow twitched.