EDUCATING MR MOTOMIYA - PART 1

"And that’s how you find y given x and an equation," Mr Hamasaki dusted his hands off on his trousers before turning from the board to face his class. As usual, most of them were staring at him with their usual looks of blank incomprehension, eyes glazed and mouths slightly open. One or two were desperately jotting down a few, final notes; others looked as if they were playing games under the cover of their desks; still others were having whispered, giggly conversations with their friends. According to the principal, he thought sardonically, these were Odaiba’s best and brightest. These were the people who were going to represent their school in the intellectual arena. Riiight.

He paused, taking his seat and surveying the class, "Onto other things, how many of you have heard of the Brainbuster Challenge that takes place at TTN every year?" For a wonder, most of the children sat up straighter in their seats and raised their hands. A low, excited buzz went around the classroom, "Well, for the benefit of those who haven’t, it’s a quiz show hosted by TTN where groups of students answer general knowledge questions and compete for money for their school. Your principal has asked me to select a team of three people from your class to go on the contest. Do I have any volunteers or shall I have to pick you?"

"I’ll do it," a girl’s voice came from the middle of the classroom. He did not need to look to see who it was. It could only be Yagami Hikari. He recognised her voice from a hundred, murmured interruptions during his lessons that year.

"Thank you, Hikari. Who else?"

Unsurprisingly, the blond boy, with whom she shared a desk, also raised his hand.

"And thank you, Takeru."

Naturally, there had to be a Ishida to go with a Yagami, even if this one was officially a Takaishi by Mr Hamasaki’s register. It seemed that you couldn’t have one without the other. It also seemed that the combination was trouble. The two friends spent more time talking and laughing in class than doing their work. He was constantly having to tell them to be quiet. What was even more infuriating was that they managed to be his star pupils without seeming to concentrate on a single word he said. Takeru was a gifted writer, with whose compositions Mr Hamasaki could find very little fault. He always led the class in both Japanese and English. Hikari, on the contrary, had a natural talent for maths and science. She had a quick mind when it came to numbers, and solved the assigned problems in a fraction of the time it took the remainder of the class. At which point she would inevitably begin talking to her deskmate again.

Compared to their older brothers, however, the two were a pair of angels. Between them, Taichi and Yamato had managed to turn the school upsidedown. Their antics were still spoken of in hushed, fearful tones in the staffroom. Like the time they had ‘accidently’ released rats in the classroom and claimed they were unable to catch all of them, then spent the rest of the day making squeaking noises. Or the time they had wired the school’s PA system to play hard rock whenever the principal had pressed the button to speak into it. Or the time they had climbed to the top of the ropes in the gym and had refused to come down because they said they were afraid of heights.

Deciding he had better stop thinking about them before his twitch redeveloped, he turned his attention back to the task at hand: "Now, who is going to be the last member of our team?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daisuke’s arm shoot up in the air. Mr Hamasaki battled to suppress a sigh. He should have known that he would volunteer, if Hikari was on the team. Daisuke had been hounding him for months now about switching seats with Takeru, and it was not because he could get a better view of the board from there. Still, he had ostensibly ignored him then; he would do the same now. The boy was not Brainbuster material. The kindest way that he could have described Daisuke was 'consistent'. In other words, he could always be relied upon to get the lowest mark in every test and assignment. Mr Hamasaki had had a theory that the goggles the boy wore cut off all circulation to his brain. He would have believed it too, if it were not predicated on the assumption that Daisuke had one.

"Do we have any other volunteers?" he said desperately, looking around the classroom, "What about you, Miyako?"

The purple-haired girl paused in cleaning her oversized glasses to look at him, "I’m sorry, but I’m supporting the other team. My boyfriend’s on it."

In a painful instant, Mr Hamasaki saw his team’s chances of winning the competition disappear, and not only because Miyako’s boycraziness meant that he would have to put Daisuke on the team. Her boyfriend, who had been the subject of every composition she had submitted and one very embarrassing show-and-tell, was Ichijouji Ken. And Ichijouji Ken was an acknowledged child genius, who had been the subject of more documentaries and articles than he wanted to remember. Alone, he probably knew more than Mr Hamasaki’s entire class. It did not matter whom he selected his team now. They had lost before setting foot in the television studio. He looked back at Daisuke with some despair.

"Me! Me!" the boy was bouncing up and down in his seat by now, waving his hand over his head.

"Thank you, Daisuke," he said reluctantly, causing his student to beam happily at him and shoot a triumphant look at Takeru. Not that the other boy noticed. He was too busy whispering something to Hikari, who was laughing. Daisuke’s face grew stormy, and a vein began to throb visibly in his forehead.

Not only were they going to lose, Mr Hamasaki thought, but his team was probably going to kill each other in the process . . . .

1) Taichi and Yamato are probably a bit out of character, but teachers always remember mischievous students as far worse than they actually were.

2) Takeru and Hikari do talk in class. In the first episode, they’re chatting and laughing, while Mr Hamasaki is trying to teach. As to them being top of their class, eh . . . I need them to be for the story. It’s not entirely unbelievable.

3) This is based on an old episode of ‘Family Ties’. Mallory ends up on Alex’s quiz team, and he decides to coach her for it. Loved that show. Love the reruns. J