The Waking Read Online Free Page B

here could speak English to some degree. When Sakura had done so, it had been because she’d assumed Kara’s Japanese wouldn’t be very good. Hachiro did it as a kindness.
    “And you,” she said in Japanese.
    They walked together along the corridor, near the back of the herd of shuffling students. Kara had been concerned about finding her way to the morning assembly, but even without Hachiro, she could have simply followed the parade.
    “I’m looking forward to having your father as a teacher,” Hachiro said. “Last year we had several American scholars as guest speakers, but this will be the first American teacher we have for a full term.”
    “He’s an excellent teacher,” Kara said. “He always makes me want to learn more.”
    They entered the gymnasium, where lines were forming as the homeroom teachers gathered their students. Hachiro spotted his teacher and headed toward her line.
    “I’ll talk to you later, Kara.”
    “Bye,” she said. She was sorry to part company with him. He really did have a great smile.
    After a few seconds standing around feeling foolish, she figured out which of the teachers was her sensei, Mr. Matsui. With his white hair and square face, he would have seemed grim if not for his oversize glasses and the kind eyes behind them. Mr. Matsui took her in with a glance, gave an almost imperceptible nod, and then proceeded to treat her with the same dour disapproval he showed her classmates. Mr. Matsui turned his back on them and faced one end of the gymnasium, and all of the students followed suit.
    The principal, Mr. Yamato, and several members of the school’s board of directors addressed the students from the front of the room. The sheer ordinariness of the remarks surprised Kara. So much of the culture in Japan felt entirely new to her, but it turned out that boring speeches were pretty much the same around the world.
    Numb after only a few minutes of this, she stopped mentally translating and let her thoughts and her eyes wander. Two rows over, she caught sight of Sakura and stared at her until the girl felt the attention and turned. Kara gave her a tiny wave. Sakura smirked in a way that could have meant Yeah, isn’t this boring, or Oh, great, weird gaijin girl thinks she’s my puppy now.
    Suddenly self-conscious, Kara turned her eyes front to find Mr. Matsui watching her with his eyebrows knitted together. His only comment was a stern throat-clearing; he couldn’t quite manage a glower.
    The voices of authority finished their declaration of the school’s glory and the ominous drone about their expectations of their students, and then the assembly mercifully ended and the teachers led their charges to their homerooms.
    Mr. Matsui’s classroom—2-C—was on the second floor. Kara counted twenty-seven students in 2-C, herself included. Once again she found herself thrown off by the familiarity of the first-day rituals. Seats were assigned—her desk was third row, right in the middle—and then Mr. Matsui explained that each morning began with announcements and attendance. The class would rotate those responsibilities according to a schedule called toban .
    When her teacher—her sensei—looked at her, she thought he might give her the toban duties for the first day, but instead he chose a girl from the front row named Miho. Though Miho’s glasses were much smaller than Mr. Matsui’s, Kara wondered if they were what made him choose the girl. Her long, black hair was pulled up on one side with a clip, and she sat stiffly, like she was in church. Kara listened to the names as Miho took attendance from a list the sensei had given her, but she knew she would forget most of them. One boy had dyed his perfectly combed hair a bronze color, and when Miho called his name—Ren—she blushed.
    At last, the school day began.
    At first, Kara liked the different structure of the school day. The students remained in their homeroom while, between classes, the teachers traveled. Mr. Matsui