Teach me!

It had started off rocky enough, between Benjiro being a referee between Daitan and Saori being his two mini gameshow contestants. Saori was majorly confused as to what she was being roped into, but picked up on the rules of the game fairly quickly. Daitan acted difficult at first, not wanting to give Benjiro any leeway to actually teach her. A minute or two later, just as the lanky tutor had predicted, or at least crossed his fingers over, Daitan's competitive side kicked in full force. After Yamanaka guessed correctly on three English words and phrases, while Haruoka had none, she refused to take that lying down.

Every so often, when the game seemed to hit a wall with both of the competitors not being able to remember all the vocab terms, Benjiro would pick up his guitar again and sing the song he wrote for review. Yamanaka was thrown for a loop seeing that the nervous boy, could not only sing and speak English so well, but that he could do it without stuttering.

In the back of her mind, Daitan realized she was being taken advantage of, but her hatred of losing was trumping her pride. Glancing at the clock, Benjiro didn't realize just how much time had flown, "Oh, t-times up, y-you t-two. We sh-should wrap up h-here for today."

"What", Daitan exclaimed, "We can't leave things here, I just need two correct guesses and I can tie up the game. And we can end this on "

Benjiro's face remained nearly expressionless as usual, but inwardly him and Inei were puffing on victory cigars together, 'We've got her on the hook now, eh?"

'I was a little skeptical of your approach there, kid,' Inei admitted, 'But I will say, nice job. You not only managed to get her engaged, but actually forced her to remember the things she's been trying and failing to memorize for weeks now.'

'Yeah, I don't know if I can keep this up, but I think that I've at least kept her interested for another week. Like I told her, if you don't feel like you're being forced to learn, you're more likely to learn.'

"We'll m-meet here ag-gain tomorrow and do th-the next section. I d-don't think the libr-ray would be the b-best spot. S-So you should r-review that t-tonight."

Suddenly, the look on Daitan's face, of being almost happy, changed back into her usual annoyed and contemptuous, "Who said I was going to do this again?"

In his head, the two consciousnesses snapped their cigars, 'Well, it was nice while it lasted. Tough break, kid', Inei condoled.

"Today was fun and all, but I can't say I'm all that interested in doing this again."

It took a considerable amount of Benjiro's effort to not scream, 'She's just saying this to get under my skin, isn't she? She has a little amusement, and then refusing to learn, she shuts down any chance of future interaction.'

Fortunately, a certain would be comedienne piped up, "C'mon, don't be like that. I was watching you while we were playing that game. You won't admit it, but you were genuinely enjoying yourself, weren't you?"

Daitan turned a sharp gaze and directed a few choice threats upon Yamanaka which she promptly shrugged off, making the tomboy confused as to what she should do. Usually jumping into a conversation during a pause is frowned upon, but Benjiro, seeing an opportunity, jumped, "L-Look, we're st-stuck together f-for another week and a h-half. Like Yamanak-ka said, you w-were having fun th-there. And, you w-were actually l-learning."

"What I do with my time is my business. I only came here because I was bored with studying and needed a distraction."

"You w-were studying j-just now", he said a little desperately, "And y-you weren't d-doing half bad."

"I'll admit, your song is amusing, and that game you came up with, was pretty fun, but beyond that, there's no point in continuing this. We'll just go back to our usual routine tomorrow. Today was alright, but if you do anything like this again, we'll have a problem, and you don't want that."

Yamanaka could sense that there was some tension running between tutor and pupil, "OK, everyone just calm your mammaries and let's think about this."

After both of them appeared to be a little more calm than before, "Alright, Ms. Haruoka, what seems to be the issue with why you don't want Mr. Nojiri to teach you?"

"He's a creep, a pervert, a retard and I don't like him", she answered almost immediately.

"Three amazing qualities and a glowing review already. Glad we're finally making progress."

'And people think I'm the weird one', Benjiro thought.

"Nojiri, do you have anything to say in response", Yamanaka asked.

"N-No to everyth-thing you described and I can l-live with that last one."

"What are you going for, Snoozefest", Daitan asked.

'Oh, how nice', Benjiro thought, 'She's already given Yamanaka an endearing nickname.'

"I said that I was fine not doing anything besides self study and occasionally making the Scarecrow here get me a soda every now and then. I don't need his pity or his condescending lessons."

Benjiro knit his eyebrows together in confusion, "What d-do you m-mean condescend-ding?"

"Oh come on, don't play stupid, you know", Daitan accused, "Although considering you're asking, maybe I should explain this simply as I can", She straightened up crossed her legs, "You can't tell me that you thought up that dumb song and game because for any other reason than you thought I was too dumb to understand English any other way."

She stood up and walked slowly towards Benjiro, like a cat cornering a mouse, "And when I think of it like that, it just makes me angrier thinking that you want to keep up these stupid lessons just because you want to feel better about your own retardation by claiming you taught me a few basic words that I already had a handle on."

Yamanaka was about to step between the two to try and defuse the situation, but to her surprise, Benjiro did it for her, "I d-don't think y-you're stupid!"

Daitan halted and folded her arms, giving him a chance to continue.

"Y-You just have problems remembering things. And it's t-tough to concentrate on learning wh-when you're just sitting and listening to s-someone drone on and on-n and then they give you a b-boring worksheet and s-say you need to know the wh-whole thing. I kn-know how frustrating that can be."

Daitan's hard expression didn't change, but she uncrossed her arms.

"The w-work is boring, the t-teachers are no help, so you figure y-you'll just cram as much as you can int-to your brain and h-hope for the best", Benjiro voice heightened as he began ranting, 'B-But that's not learning, so I th-thought I'd try to m-make learning fun. I f-figured since you like games, I'd m-make one for English, and s-since it's easier to m-memorize through music th-than forcing yourself to l-look at a paper, I'd wr-write something. Th-That's one of the reasons I learned English so w-well."

It was difficult to tell, but for a second Benjiro could've sworn he saw Daitan's eyes soften.

"Why are you putting yourself out there so much", Daitan asked.

Benjiro's voice deepened as he finally spoke with something, Daitan hadn't heard from him yet, "Because I kn-know how degrading it is, to h-have everyone th-think you're stupid. I'm n-not a genius by any m-measure, but I'd be damned if l-let anyone say I c-can't think on my own."

Daitan's lips were minutely trembling but she turned away, "Ah, would you look at the time! You've already kept me here for like ten minutes longer than usual."

Haruoka went to gather up her supplies and Yamanaka went to make sure Benjiro was mentally in one piece. Daitan slung her backpack over one shoulder and was about to leave the music room when she paused, "We'll meet in front of the library tomorrow after classes, this room is too damn stuffy to spend an entire afternoon inside. Don't worry, I'll find a spot where people don't come by often."

Benjiro slowly rotated his head to look at eyes the size of dinner plates.

"If you make me wait and if you try to make me stay any longer than usual, I'll break your finger so you can't play guitar again."

Without any further ceremony, Daitan closed the door and left the two remaining students in a confused silence.

"I don't know about you, but I think you finally gained yourself an English pupil. Nice job there, Scarecrow", Saori congratulated.

"Don't y-you start or I'll start c-calling you Snoozefest", Benjiro retorted.

As the two began a minor bickering session behind closed door, Daitan was doing something she tried not to do too often, thinking deeply. Like earlier that day, she wasn't sure why she was going along with the stick figure's absurd lesson plan of music and games. She wanted to take things seriously so that she could get back to soccer, but she had to admit, despite her best efforts, she wasn't coming far, compared to that day. As weird as his song was, the dumb thing was stuck in her head and the words and phrases she could only vaguely were much clearer in her memory.

Despite the fact that for once she had learned something academic and didn't feel like jumping off a tower, that wasn't the reason why she let him continue. What compelled her was the way the stuttering mess spoke to her. Yes, it was choppy, but despite that, he spoke to her in a way that almost nobody had before, with sincerity and conviction.

'He had better do his damn job right', she thought to herself.