Elegy For Chiyo-sensei

"Yo, Mi!" shouted Tomo, seeing her friend enter the room. Yomi sighed. Undoubtedly, she'd picked up such greetings from some pseudonymous internet poster.

"Hey Tomo," she yobisuted, sitting down.

"Did you see the show with the thing where the stuff did it to you-know-who?"

"No."

"Pity. It rocked! See, like this!" Tomo commenced her own reproduction of the previous night's televised events.

Yomi just sighed. She'd hoped not to get into tsun mode before ten o'clock this time. Luckily, someone else's entry rescued her from the necessity of yelling something rude. "Morning!" Chiyo voiced brightly.

Tomo spun. "Hey! Did you see it, Chiyo-ch--"

"STOP!"

Both girls' eyes went wide. They'd seldom seen the chibi high-schooler erupt like this.

"Not one minute! I didn't even get one minute here before being condescended to, per routine! I'm tired of it!"

"Like when we use the term Chiyo-ch--"

"Yes! No more of it! Stop using such diminutive honorifics for me!"

Both girls were composed of solid huh. Yomi ventured, "Is Chiyo still OK?"

"Sure."

"How's life, Chiyo?"

"Swell!" she replied, chipper once more.

Further discussion of this or other points would need to occur some other time: their instructor entered. She dropped some books on her desk. She herself followed, using them for pillow purposes. Snoring echoed.

"Hung over?" whispered Chiyo.

"Gee, you think?" replied Tomo. "It is miércoles."

Tomo's desultory injections of Mexico-words continued to peeve Yomi, but there were more pressing issues. "Do you need help, sensei?"

"With?" she emitted, the old blue rum tinting her speech.

"Beginning the lesson. Getting upright. Respiring."

"Oh, right. The JOB." She lifted herself very slowly for one full minute. Then, suddenly, she jerked into cheerful edu-mode. "Good morning, everyone!"

Chiyo shuddered. She'd never get used to this, even though it occurred every third morning or more.

"How is everyone tod--" She stopped, looking left to right. "Huh?"

"Something wrong?" uttered Chiyo, whose helpfulness rose within her like Mount Fuji.

The instructor thinned her eyes. "This is punking, right? I'm being punked?"

"How so?"

" 'How so?' " she echoed in mocking Chiyo-voice. "Three! Only three students!"

"Ohhhh," understood the girls.

"Well? Where is everyone? My ire insists upon fulfillment!"

No response.

"I'll get to the bottom of this!" The grownup pulled her roll list from the pillow. "Let's see. Tomo, here. Koyomi Mizusomething..."

"Present," rued Yomi.

"Chiyosuke..."

Chiyo combusted.

"Huh? Don't like it? How 'bout Chihu--"

"Chiyo! Just Chiyo!"

"Wevs." She looked down the list. "There should be lots more people! Where's the big one who doesn't converse?"

"There's some kind of zoo in town," expounded Tomo. "Limited time. Multitudes of critters, supposedly."

"She likes those?"

"Yep. We might or might not know this."

"Very well. Where's the one with the infinite girl-crush on her?"

Yomi rolled her eyes. "Where do you think?"

"Oh. How 'bout Sporty Spice?"

"Trying to become the new Prince of Tennis or something."

"Then, uh..." She tried to remember others. "Oh! Where's the furriner?"

Long silence. "She's not foreign," Chiyo replied in the end. "The business/loping-speech district is still within this country."

"Oh, you know. The flighty one. The weirdo. The ditz. The nut. The one whose mind is out in left field. I've got more."

"She did come," responded Tomo. "But then she took off. She muttered something like 'Durn. Not even my birth monicker will work for this.' "

"Just like her to go text-conscious," sighed the instructor. "No boys?"

"No." Yomi this time. "Besides, I'm pretty sure we've only got one boy. He just moves quick."

"I think I remember one more girl. She's got... ugh, the word isn't coming to me... pigt-- no, twint-- er, h-- let's just go with two long strings of follicle juice."

"Very hung over," commented Chiyo.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. We don't know where R-- er, the follicle girl is." Humouring her often constituted the best defense, Chiyo found.

"Terrific." The Englishist struggled to remember more, but couldn't. "I guess everyone's covered then. Just three students."

"I'm here!" Chihiro piped up. No one listened.

"Now then," spoke She Who Must Be Obeyed For Eighteen More Months, "it is time once more to begin edumizing you twerps in the fine, fine tongue we refer to by the descriptor 'English'."

Tomo snorted, "Sure. Like you could edumize us one single thing."

Yomi went white. This could not be good -- Tomo'd just questioned the one skill their sensei honestly did possess. She tried to hiss something to deter her...

...but when Tomo got on one o' them rolls, she kept rollin'. "Let's confront it, Yukers, you suck. You're the worst X ever where X is unrestricted. I know less English every time you open your word hole. Heck, I bet Chiyo could do your job tons better!"

Yomi steeled herself for the impending bonkling of the Bonkler. She would try not to enjoy it too much.

But... "Wow! Perfect! Why didn't I ever think of it?"

"Uh?" spurted Tomo, who'd been fully expecting to get bonkled.

"Chiyo!" the still-tipsy edumizer yelled. "Rise up! It's your moment to shine! You will be the new English sucker! I will sit monitoring your progress, bemused in the extreme!"

"Is this something you're permitted to do?" (Yomi, unimpressed.)

"Who's going to stop me? You?" (Instructor, unconcerned.) "Now come, Chiyo! Enlighten these fools with your wisdom!"

Chiyo seemed unsure. "But Miss, I could never usurp your role..."

"Sure you could! Isn't it respect you seek? Don't you wish to be considered Big? Here's your opportunity! You'll be the chibikko sensei, the diminutive guru, the mighty GTC!"

Chiyo's eyes shone. Her wing-tresses stuck up in unison. "I'll do it!"

While Yomi plus one observed wonderingly, Chiyo strode up to the front of the room. The true instructor slid behind one of the desks, smirking proudly over her successful hoodwink.

"Good morning, students!" quoth Chiyo-sensei.

"Good morning... Chiyo... sensei," Yomi forced herself to reply.

"Word up in the hizz, G!" incomprehensibled Tomo.

The new boss turned to the old. "Where should I begin the lesson?"

She snorted. "I never got nothin' through their skulls. Go right from the beginning."

"So... verb tenses? Text comprehension?"

"The beginning! Rudiments! Ground up! Pretend they know zilch, for they do!"

Chiyo-sensei pondered. "I guess we should begin with letters. Not much is possible without them."

"We know the letters. Well, I do," corrected Yomi, noticing Tomo's undisguised curiosity.

Miss Town Drunk, enjoying every moment of this, noticed too. "We must go over them once more for our beloved Tomo's benefit. No child left behind!"

Professor Chiyo sighed, but her resolve to prove herself lost no momentum. "Then let's begin. Pencils out, everyone! English constructs its words with twenty-six letters. The first one is --"

DING DING DING went the bell.

"Nuts," muttered Miss Y, who'd been hoping to get more miles on this engine. "We'll resume the experiment some other time."

She left for lunch. Chiyo's spirit, it seemed, left too. Her big moment... gone. She slumped. She wilted. Something within her, likely not the trolley, went zing zing zing.

Yomi melted. "Poor Chiyo. Cheer up, little -- uh, big buddy."

"It's not over!" Tomo reminded her. "More opportunities will come rolling to you, like bowling pins into the gutter."

"Your similes help," Yomi grumbled, hugging Chiyo.

"Hey, she's not the only one suffering," whined Tomo. "I'm let down too. Now I'll never know the story on these 'letter' things."

Yomi sighed the sigh of the infinite tsukkomi. "Tomo, you know English letters. We put them on everything here. You even told me once you prefer Hepburn style to Kunrei-shiki."

Silence. Tomo chuckled, curtly, then pulled Yomi to one side. "FOOL!" she hissed. "Don't you think I know I know them?"

"But then why --"

"I'm trying to reinforce Chiyo's self-esteem! To shore up her belief in herself! To rescue her from the bitter depths of misery! I'm out to preserve her very soul! Nice job sucking!"

Guilt swept over Yomi. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

"Good. Now return to the kitchen where you belong, bi--"

"DOUBLE CHOP!"

The girls fought. They broke bones. They tore follicle juices. They motteked seifukus. (3 pics incoming, courtesy of Chihiro's cellphone.) The violence blew out the windows, overturned the desks, destructed the environments.

Months went by, but the girls fought on, tireless, undying. Their berserk struggle consumed the world itself. Not one innocent survived. But it counted for nothing -- Tomo felt no pity, Yomi no mercy. For endless eons they sought triumph in blood.

Sighing, Chiyo settled in to observe. This, too, constituted "routine".

In the end, the girls simply tired out. They fell to the floor together, gulping for oxygen. "Wow!" spouted Tomo once her strength returned. "Definitely one of our best fights yet!"

Yomi couldn't help smiling too. "Pretty intense."

"I should get you this ticked off more often!"

"DOUBLE... oh, forget it. I'm not up to more. Besides, it's lunchtime."

Tomo hopped to her feet. "Let's get cherry pie! You coming, Chiyo-sensei?"

"Chiyo-sensei is gone," sighed the micro-student. "I give up. I give up forever. Until I die, I'll just be Chiyo-ch--"

"Nonsense!" interrupted Yomi. "You're the genius of the universe. If you give up on your hopes, why should the rest of us even bother trying?"

Tomo helped out. "Until you die, eh? Chiyo, I just thought of the perfect solution!"

Yomi silenced her. Twice, to be sure.

"Well... OK," replied Chiyo, feeling better. "I won't give up."

"You will be big!" urged Yomi.

"I will be big!"

"Right!" Yomi grinned: "Me too! I will lose weight!"

"I will get noticed!" some girl chimed in.

"I will crush Little Miss PE under my heel!" yelled their supposedly-long-gone instructor from the corridor.

"I will --" Tomo stopped. "No, forget it. I rule in everything. But I hope you guys get your stuff."

"Go us!" yelled the girls together, their optimism renewed. Joy filled their souls to the brim. They knew the future would be rosy.

Of course, in mere moments, the meteor would strike. But good intentions count for something.