43. Together

"Sorry," Nao coughed harshly into his pillow, lifting his head weakly to choke out his next words into his phone. "Can't make it. I'm dying."

And then he hung up.

He will interest himself in the thoughts of the school going ballistic while he tries to fall asleep again.

(Later, Isogai came by with a care package and warm tea, so that was nice.)

Apparently, Nagisa was in trouble with his mother and the understandably common E-class dilemma of being pressured into returning to campus, so there was a parent-teacher conference arranged. Nao had to go, he should be going, since he's literally the one in charge and approving-- but hey, he can't go when he's coughing up a lung, can he?

Well, even Nagisa's mother will have to accept if they say Nao's absent. Everyone knows about Nao's condition in this town, and she's met him before.

("Huh?" Nao takes a slow sip of his tea. "You're going to make him disguise as Karasuma-san instead? Wow, you guys sure love chaos.")

("You don't have any right to say that to us, Kuma-sensei!" Isogai says, brightly.)

The problem with Nagisa is fixed as soon as the day comes. Korosensei had it handled, and Nagisa seemed to walk straighter the next day, greeting with a smile, like his shoulders were no longer heavy from the weight of the world upon his shoulders.

("Get well soon, Kuma-sensei," Isogai stands up, getting ready to leave. "I'm sure everyone wants to share their career choices with you too, not just with Korosensei.")

(Nao chuckles. "I try my best.")

-

Nao enjoyed his wagon-ride up the mountain, tasting a macaron that Hara, also sitting in the wagon for some reason, was too eager to share with him.

"This is really good," Nao savoured every bite, because holy heck these were hard to bake and resident class Mom nailed them.

"Really? I might start selling them in my aunt's bakery."

"Do it, do it. They'll be an amazing sale."

Kimura and Yoshida were suffering, since they had to lug an adult man and a girl on the heavier side up the mountain at once, but neither of them complained. Kimura was pushing from behind and Yoshida had the front, struggling to pull.

Okajima and Fuwa were beside them, cheering them on.

"Stand up! STAND UP, JOOOOOEEE!!" At some point, Fuwa started shouting like a frantic boxing coach, because Yoshida crumbled and wanted to give up.

"I'm not in the mood for some of your references right now Fuwwaaaa!!!" Kimura grunts, shoveling on forward. "Yoshida get up, before my arms give in! Please hurry!"

Eventually, Karma and Terasaka walk in on the morons, and with their help, they make it up the mountain.

"Seriously, Karma, where do you store your strength in those twig arms?"

"My arms aren't twigs, you're thinking of Nagisa."

"Your arms are definitely twigs."

Nao and Hara continue to talk about macarons in the wagon itself, completely undeterred by the drama around them. Nao adjusts the navy scarf around his neck, looking toward the skyline-- and sighs, content.

"Isn't that scarf the one Ritsu made?" Kataoka approaches, walking along the wagon as Kayano and Nakamura hurry alongside, greeting cheerfully.

Nao cradles the wool in his hands and smiles. "It is. Nice, isn't it?"

Ritsu had finally deemed a scarf 'perfect enough' to be worn by Nao, and with autumn rearing its chilly head, Nao supposed it was fine to start wearing it daily.

"I'm digging it," Nakamura smirked, observing with narrowed eyes, framing it with her fingers like a photograph, "give me a killer smile, Bishounen Sensei!"

"Eh?" Nao flustered instead, "oh, don't," he covered his face, only to come right in the face of Kurahashi's camera-- no wait, that's Okajima's, but Kurahashi is holding it-- as it flashed right in his face.

Kurahashi cheered, "I got a picture!"

"Unsolicited pictures are not allowed!" Nao argued, blushing furiously, "and Okajima, I told you not to bring your camera to class!"

"I can't live without peeking in the girl's locker room at least once a day, though."

"Okajima-kun, meet me in my office after this, and bring the bleach."

"SCARY!"

"The school is in sight!" Karma interrupted to dramatically declare, somehow finding himself a spot in the corner of the wagon to rest as he pointed forward, "onward, my minions!"

"Karma, GET OUT!" yelled Terasaka, absolutely feral.

When the girls burst into laughter at their expense, Nao couldn't help but join in as well. Someone drags Karma out of the wagon, and then Nao and Hara get out to let Terasaka, Yoshida, and Kimura into the wagon as they force Karma to drag them up the rest of the way.

It was just too much fun.

-

Autumn meant the cultural festival was upon them.

The forests were golden, browned by the rich winds and christened with the coming of harvest. The bouquet of flowers in his arms seem dull against the bounty of the mountains, the crunch of leaves under his shoes quiet against the life of students, foraging across the hills in search of the treasures of the woods.

"Kuma-sensei, try one!"

Nao turned toward the door when the class came by with a small bowl of their freshly-made menu. The cooks of the classroom had long approved them, but somehow, they still wanted Nao's opinion.

"The food is good, but..." he took a sip of the sweet juice, inspecting the prototype menu. "Sugaya designed this, right? What about the pictures?"

"Okajima's working on those."

"So we're just missing the food descriptors, huh..." Nao considered the options, "Kayano and Hazama, how about you work on the food descriptions together?"

"Eh??" came the rather explosive reaction.

Nao did not expect that. "Wh- What's wrong with that?"

The two in question give each other an awkward side look, before Kayano chuckles nervously. "I don't mind!"

Hazama nods, "I don't either, but..."

"But sensei, you're having the class's most polar opposites work together," Okajima emphasized. "Like, the only further you can go is if you asked Kurahashi instead."

Ah, true.

But Kanzaki and Kataoka are on the gathering team, and Yada is on the service team... so these two were quite literally the only ones he had left that he wanted to leave it up to.

"Won't you try working together anyway? Having conflicting interests in a project is something you guys will need to learn to work through in the future, anyway."

The two looked at each other again, but this time their gazes lingered longer.

"Well," Hazama says, "I suppose your mere presence would greatly decrease the need for research on dessert descriptors."

"Oh, that is definitely one thing I'm entirely confident about!" Kayano grins.

The class looked over at them and sighed. They supposed, with Kayano's dedication to simplicity and Hazama's abundance of dramatisation, they might actually manage to achieve a good balance.

"It goes for all of you as well," Nao turns to the class, "it's fine to have fun, but if you try to work together with people you don't usually work with... sometimes, the results can be surprising."

"Gah, Kuma-sensei, you're going to turn this into a lecture again?"

"No complaints, you're the ones that came to me," Nao chuckled, finishing the soup of his acorn ramen with a smile.

If the efforts of this motley classroom could make something as wholesome and fulfilling as this single bowl of ramen-- then Nao couldn't wait to see what other beautiful things could come of different combinations.

(Ah...)

(...has Nao, too, personally, contributed anything significant to this classroom? Something invisible, something so woven into the seams, he himself would never notice as long as he was looking from the inside out?)

(He doesn't know. He's not sure.)

(But for now... just being here is enough for him.)

-

-

-

"So, who's the crazy little kid that went and got sponsors?"

"It's okay, I'm dealing with all the paperwork on my own."

"Exactly. You're insane. Give them to me."

"What? No. You're not even my teacher."

The 3-A classroom was empty. They rented a hall for their activities, so this classroom was to be used as a waiting room on the day itself. Right now, though, most of the students were working in the hall, decorating-- and Gakushuu was here, dealing with the leftover paperwork.

"I'm impressed. I thought you'd take full advantage of the Chairman's insane credit, but you're not really spending as much as I'd thought," Nao mused, inspecting the budget list.

"Hey, give that back!" Gakushuu lunged for it, but Nao raised it just a little too high for Gakushuu, who was sitting down. "I'm still doing the calculations! Now I'll have to start over."

"Oh, my bad," Nao smiled, mischievously. "Guess you should've written them down instead of doing it all in your head. How about you let me handle them instead?"

"Absolutely not. Please go home, Kuma-sensei."

Relenting, Nao set the papers back down, pulling a chair by to look into Gakushuu's laptop, at the letters he was working on. There were a variety of things, from sponsorship agreement contracts, to letters of invitations, requests toward entertainment centers, and various release forms for the ones who were performing.

"I'm surprised you know what all of those are," Nao says, looking through a release form for an idol group. "You're going to use footage for advertising?"

"Of course. What use is that huge wall on the school entrance if we don't project the best thing that's happening in school grounds on the day?" Gakushuu says, picking up a pencil to write down calculations for the budget list.

Nao chortled, "posters, Asano-kun," he says, "but well, if you balance between your content and the content of the other festival highlights, it might be a good thing to practice for the following years."

Gakushuu hums, some sort of conversation-ending attempt that Nao picked up on immediately.

Nao rested his elbows on the table, his chin against a palm as he stared at Gakushuu.

"Want me to proofread those letters?"

"No," immediate answer.

"Too bad," Nao's hand crawled toward the laptop, "this here. I know you're using the same format for most of them because they won't notice anyways, but for the thank you letters, do a little better."

"I said no," Gakushuu sneered, but he leaned over anyway, checking the document and adding a few new lines about ensuring their equipment would be prepared accordingly. "How about you fuss about Class E instead?"

"Class E has a teacher dealing with the guidance already."

"What about paperwork?"

"Minimal. We're self-sufficient on nearly everything we need."

Gakushuu grimaced at that. "And they still think they can beat Class A with that? Great. I'll just crush them without any regrets."

Nao simply smiled at that. 

They worked into the night. It wasn't as if they were the only ones-- there were some students staying the night, and others worked into the night to make their decorations and props in time.

It wasn't quiet at all in Kunugigaoka Junior High, just hushed.

Nao wished the Class E students could have enjoyed this sort of comfort as well-- a normal, day-before of the cultural festival, where everyone worked to the bone getting things in order.

(But he supposed they enjoyed it anyway, up there on the mountain, together.)

(They can still find an amazing cultural festival experience when they're in high school, so that was something.)

"You're a workaholic, aren't you?" Nao teased.

Gakushuu took absolutely no offense in it. "I just like to do my best."

He's pulling all the stops, doing everything he can with all the connections he has-- because he didn't think Class E was an easy defeat.

"If I win without doing all I could... then it wouldn't be me that won this war," Gakushuu said. "If I won without doing all this, then it would simply be the obvious difference in battlefields that brought me this victory. I don't want that kind of victory."

If he went easy on Class E, they would lose. They already knew that.

So now he was pulling no punches, to honour Class E's efforts. To prove that Class E needed this much to be taken down.

"Tell them to come on up, so I can crush them beneath my feet," Gakushuu said. "If they can't stand up against this much, they were never worth fighting to begin with, and I don't like to be proven wrong."

Gakushuu was not fighting against them, but against the idea of them.

(Against his father's ideology of them being entirely beneath them.)

"Plus this isn't even the real fight!" Gakushuu slammed his hand against the desk, oddly riled up now, "it's literally an uphill battle for E Class. I can't be satisfied just winning this," he throws his hands down dramatically, "I'm sure midterms was something like this too. It was too odd to be true. But finals. Finals," he stressed, his words turning into a hiss, "that's when the fight is real. That's when."

Nao smiled at his overly emotional spiel, kind of proud.

"Are you listening, Kuma-sensei?!" Gakushuu whirled on him.

"I am!" Nao beamed, too sunnily.

"Why are you so happy? This is my declaration of war to your homeroom!"

"I know! That's exactly why I'm happy!"

"Take this seriously!"

"I promise, I am!"