Before I moved to the US, I spent the majority of my life back in my home country: Japan. I currently work as an elementary teacher here in Maine. I was a troublesome kid back in the day; a delinquent to be precise.
I lived in Aichi Prefecture during my High School days, I had a teacher whom everyone admired, myself included. Her name was Rena, and she was quite scary, to be honest. She was very stern with everyone, and I rarely saw her smile at school. I couldn’t even count the number of times we troublemakers got walloped by her.
But despite this, students were utterly smitten with her, finding her strict and cold exterior attractive. Because Sensei was just that beautiful. Hell, she even had a fan club within the school.
I never held anything against her, she was the one who inspired me to become a teacher in the first place. I could always tell that she greatly cared about her students and was very passionate about helping us with our education.
However, I always had one issue with Sensei; that being her son, Gouya.
I try not to judge people based on their looks, interests, or outward behavior. However, there have been a few exceptions to this rule. The one that stood out the most was Gouya Nakano. He was Sensei’s eldest son, and as I later discovered, she also had five younger daughters attending elementary school at the time.
Sensei enrolled Gouya in the same school as me at the start of 2nd year to keep a better eye on him, as well as keep track of his academic performance.
Gouya was fucking weird. Like I said, I try my best not to judge people. But he was legitimately strange, there was always something off about him. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who had these feelings. My friends, a lot of students in the school, as well as Sensei’s fan club, disliked Gouya Nakano. He was tall, standing at around 6 feet, towering over his mother, and had a good physique.
Gouya lacked any semblance of a social filter, didn’t know how to read the room, and had a knack for inserting himself into conversations that he had no part in.
It’s difficult to describe, but he always seemed to have this ability to make the room extremely uncomfortable and suffocating. Not to mention that he would pull off pranks that were more unsettling than they were funny.
When I first met him, I tried to have sympathy and befriend the guy because I thought that he might be on the autism spectrum, or suffering from an illness. That all changed when he stole all my gym clothes and dyed them black for a prank.
He feigned innocence and denied that he did such a thing. What made it worse was that Sensei took his side over mine.
One day, me and my friends were enjoying our lunches on the school roof. The door suddenly opened, we thought it was a teacher and braced ourselves for trouble, but what we saw was way worse.
Lo and behold, it was Gouya standing there at the door, carrying a lunch tray. He stared at us with a beaming smile on his face as if we were long-time best friends.
“What do you want Gouya?” I said. My annoyance was evident in my voice. I didn’t wanna deal with this creep at the moment.
He didn’t seem affected at all, in fact, his smile only got happier.
“Shimoda, Hana, Kenta. Just the guys I wanted to see!”
He sat down on the floor near us and began munching on his food. Me and my friends were already preparing to leave, after he swallowed, his focus shifted back to us.
“Anyways, I wanted to show you guys a magic trick.” He stood up and pulled out a small blue box, with a string attached to it, from his pocket, and approached us.
“Fuck no, get the hell away from me!”
“Why? I promise, this time it’ll be fun.”
He twirls his finger around the string and gave it a few tugs, before ripping it off. The box sprang open, releasing a swarm of hornets.
Me and my friends were screaming in panic as the airborne bugs circled around us. Gouya on the other hand was laughing like a maniac, tears streaming down his face, while watching us scramble around trying to escape the hornets.
Thankfully, we managed to escape without a scratch. We were already getting fed with Gouya, a lot of people were.
The hornets that Gouya had unleased
“That’s it, next time I see him I’m fucking him up. I don’t care who his mom is.” Kenta declared, his anger and evident.
“That bastard needs to be taught a lesson. This is getting ridiculous!” Hana piped in, the anger and irritation in her voice growing more evident.
I don’t blame him, our patience was running thin with that creep. However, we couldn’t risk angering Sensei to the point of failing us, for roughing up her son and having to repeat the school year…again.
One thing that particularly irked me about Gouya was how he could easily put on a facade of normalcy and innocence whenever his mother was around. It was frustrating how Sensei bought into his act and never suspected him of wrongdoing.
Throughout my time in High School, I would always hear Sensei refer to Gouya as a ‘kind’ and ‘intelligent’ boy. It honestly made me want to hurl.
-
I could share more of the story with you, but unfortunately, it’s getting late. Everything will be continued in Part 2, I promise.
Until then, stay safe.