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It had become a routine, of sorts; Every morning at exactly 9:15, Kagami would finish his English lecture and leave classroom 1-C. He’d move through the hallways, still yawning from the early hour, and enter classroom 1-A. And when he looked at the lower-right corner the chalkboard, there would be a message written in clean white lettering.
Please remember to return the umbrella that Midorima-san loaned you. He has gotten irritable.
There is no more coffee in the coffee pot. Please refill it next time.
Please don’t forget to bring the grade sheets to the conference this time. They are quite important.
Kagami already knew who wrote the notes: The surprisingly short literature teacher with blue hair and wide eyes who was almost too easy to miss. Kuroko, who all his students seemed to love (or rather, Kuroko-san.) They would occasionally talk to each other, sometimes making small-talk in the teacher’s room or during the lunch break, and whenever they did, Kuroko would watch him with a weirdly analytical gaze (which, Kagami hesitated to say, might have looked cute.) At some point, as they swapped classrooms in the morning, Kuroko had started leaving him notes.
Kagami had to admit, the notes and reminders were helpful. Despite the student’s barely-restrained giggles whenever he read them (and promptly erased them in embarrassment,) he felt that having them had slowly put him on track to become a more competent teacher.
He was snapped out of his thoughts when a student called out, “Sensei, you skipped question seven from the textbook.”
Well, maybe competent wasn’t quite the right word yet.
“This job, I swear…” He muttered to himself.
“And if you look at the chart on page twenty-nine, you’ll see irregular forms of past participles,” Kagami spoke. “Some examples include the words seen, been, felt, and done.”
“Sensei?”
Kagami stopped writing on the chalkboard, and turned towards the student who had spoken up.
“You were an American returnee in high school, right?”
“I was.”
The student- a boy with messy brown hair and wide eyes- asked, “Did someone teach you these things when you were in America?”
“They did when I was young,” Kagami answered, and carefully decided not to mention that he frequently slept in class and had to relearn almost every technical term when he returned to Japan.
“So you liked it so much you decided to teach it?”
Kagami had to give his next response some thought; He didn’t hate teaching, despite the long hours and his awkwardness around people younger than him. He liked seeing his students learn, and wanted to make them prepared for a brighter future. Not to mention, there was something nice about having a career that people respected, especially when his options had been limited. It wasn’t the future he envisioned for himself when he was younger, but it was a future that he was satisfied with.
“I guess. Getting back on topic, though, the difference between a past participle and simple past tense is…”
As he continued to speak, occasionally flipping through the pages in his lesson planner, he allowed himself a moment to be sentimental. That moment lasted approximately three seconds, because shortly afterward, one of his students got a spontaneous nosebleed.
This job, I swear…
“Kagami-san.”
Kagami, who had been trying his hardest not to fall asleep while grading papers, jolted upright when he heard the almost-whisper of his coworker.
“Geez, don’t startle me like that,” He groused.
Kuroko looked at him with his usual poker face, and said, “It’s getting late in the evening, and it doesn’t look like you’ve slept much lately. Are you sure you should be grading papers when you’re unfocused?”
Kagami looked down at the papers on his desk, some pristine, others riddled with red circles and corrections. He shrugged.
“Probably not.”
“Then why are you doing it anyway?” Kuroko asked, confused.
Kagami shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts; “I’m trying to take my job seriously,” He began, and fussed with the cap of his marker, “And I know if I go home I’m not going to want to do anything. So I’m forcing myself to buckle down and finish things up here.”
“That’s surprisingly diligent of you,” Kuroko noted, just barely smirking when Kagami’s expression turned indignant. “But I admire that.”
Several moments of silence passed between the two, only interrupted by the occasional sound of sheets being shuffled and the press of Kagami’s marker against the papers. After one class’ stack had been finished, Kagami decided to set down his marker and take a short break.
“I think I need to thank you,” Kagami said after a pause, “Since you’re always… you know, writing those notes. ‘Course, it gets embarrassing when the students see it, but they help anyway. So… thanks.”
There was another silence, and Kagami realized he’d said something even more embarrassing when Kuroko’s smirk returned.
This job, I swear…
One of the conflicting side-effects of Kagami’s job was the control over discipline that he’d been given. While Kagami didn’t want to seem like a pushover (and he most definitely wasn’t one,) he also disliked the irony in dishing out punishments for the exact same offenses that he’d made when he was young and dumb.
“Tanaka, you know the rule on note passing.”
The student in question, a girl whose cheeks were turning as red as the bow on her uniform, flinched as a half-scribbled-on piece of paper fell from her fingers. Kagami moved from his position at the chalkboard, stepping in-between the desks and reaching for the paper.
“I’m sure that whatever you had to say can be saved for after the lesson. Until then, I’m keeping this in the desk drawer.”
Kagami tried to keep his expression neutral as he stowed away the note, ignoring the crudely drawn hearts that littered the paper. When the lesson ended (thankfully without further incident,) he returned the offending piece of paper, silencing the other students’ giggles with a stern glare. Note to self: Having scary eyebrows is good for authority. Sometimes.
After exiting room 1-C, he walked through the hallways practically on autopilot, getting lost in his thoughts.
“Kagami-san, are you alright?”
Kagami nearly stumbled, and looked for the source of the voice. Of course, it had to be Kuroko. Nobody else was that good at catching other people off-guard, it was almost comical at times. When Kagami actually spotted him, he tried to wave him off.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking.”
Kuroko tilted his head, silently motioning for Kagami to continue. But Kagami wasn’t sure that he could accurately use words to describe what was going on in his head, so instead, he asked,
“Did you ever pass notes in class?”
Kuroko raised his eyebrows, seemingly surprised by the question. Score one point for Kagami.
“Not very often, though when I did, I was usually transferring them from one person to another,” Kuroko said. “I never had much to write about before.”
“But you write me notes on the board all the time,” Kagami teased.
“That’s different. Besides, it’s a one-way-street at this point, don’t you think?” Kuroko responded with a glint in his eye. “I never get anything back from you.”
“Then maybe I’ll write something for you,” Kagami started, though whatever he may have said next was cut off by the warning bell.
This job, I swear…
It was shortly after issuing his response that Kagami realized he had no idea what he would write.
He wasn’t sure he could give out any reminders or teacherly advice like Kuroko often did for him, but what else would he write that would actually mean something? (Or at least, something that would look impressive?) Without a clear goal in mind, he decided to ask for someone else’s input. Fortunately (or, if you caught Kagami at a bad time, unfortunately) his coworkers were a… colorful bunch. And Kagami wasn’t just referring to their hair. So, as Kuroko left the teacher’s room during the lunch break that day, he tried to approach the most sociable one. That happened to be Kise, who was ironically enough, the social studies teacher, and possibly the favorite of all the female students.
“He’s a literature teacher, so you should write something poetic for him, like… ‘The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?’ He’ll love that,” Kise suggested.
“Isn’t that from an actual poem about love?” Kagami asked flatly.
“Eheh… maybe?”
Kagami grimaced, and turned to look at where Midorima was seated, still looking over his biology lesson plan for the afternoon.
“Midori-”
“No.”
I should have expected that, he thought. But who else could he turn to? Aomine was probably still in the gym, Murasakibara had already decimated his lunch and was setting up his room for home economics, and Akashi was… well, even for a history teacher, he just sort of gave Kagami the creeps.
That left one person to ask: Momoi.
“Hmm,” Momoi hummed in thought when Kagami explained his predicament, “Just write something that lets him know you’re thinking of him. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or elaborate. He’ll like the simplicity of it.”
Kagami mulled over the idea; Momoi always had a good analytical mind (which, he supposed, came along with a job in the mathematics field) and she was probably the one who knew Kuroko the best- wait, why did that even matter?
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Keep what in mind?”
As per usual, Kuroko’s presence had gone unnoticed until he decided to make himself known.
“How long have you been standing there?!”
This job, I swear…
The next morning, Kagami stepped into classroom 1-C, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote out a quick message on the lower-right corner of the board.
Have a good day today. What is your favorite story?
Kagami stared at the words, and decided it would be good enough. As the rest of his students poured into the classroom, he pushed any remaining thoughts out of his mind to prepare for the day’s lesson. He had planned a group assignment for each of his classes, and if his own experiences had taught him anything, wrangling the first-years into groups that wouldn’t totally slack off would be difficult, to say the least. He didn’t really think much more of it, even when he stepped into classroom 1-A to find the usual writing on the board. However, something made him pause when he read it. Instead of the usual reminder, note, or chastisement, it was a simple statement.
I look forward to your words.
When Kagami heard the not-even-remotely-restrained giggles from his students, he hurried to erase the board, and briefly wondered how the heck Kuroko was able to write so many embarrassing things with a straight face.
“Alright, alright. Calm down so we can start. Today, I’m going to put everyone into groups of four.”
A series of groans resounded through the classroom, and Kagami realized that the day was going to be more of a challenge than he had thought. By the time that the students who weren’t in club activities had all left the building, Kagami realized he had been hustling and bustling the entire day as he tried to prevent trouble and get everything organized. Oddly enough, it was refreshing. He felt like he was being productive, and his students were learning, which was a win-win situation- and he had done it with surprisingly little fuss. As he looked over the results of the worksheets with pride, he realized someone was peering over his shoulder.
“So, what is it?” Kagami addressed Kuroko. “Your favorite story, I mean.”
Bet you didn’t expect me to notice you this time.
When he turned around to see Kuroko, he was pleased to see the somewhat surprised expression on his face. Kuroko recovered quickly, however.
“The tale of the Bamboo Cutter and the Moon Child. It’s an old folktale that I’ve always found quite captivating, though the story is rather bittersweet,” Kuroko said.
Kagami merely hummed and nodded; “Well, if you like it, then I’m sure it’s a good one,” he said, not missing the pleased look that Kuroko sent his way.
And so the cycle continued. Kuroko kept writing notes on the corner of the chalkboard, but now, Kagami wrote messages back to him. It was a little difficult, since it was essentially like trying to hold two conversations at once, and Kagami might have stopped himself from writing something stupid once or twice, but overall, it was sort of like a little secret that they shared between themselves… and all of the students in their classrooms.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a little secret.
The messages they shared ranged from jokes to questions to observations to notes for the future and everything in between;
I saw a dragonfly outside this morning, it was as blue as your hair.
Why are you afraid of dogs, Kagami-san?
The vending machine is out of pocari, so don’t waste your money on it.
It was probably unprofessional, but nobody else seemed to mind (in fact, Kagami thought it was a bit suspicious that they didn’t. But hey, why jinx it?) And as time passed, he noticed that more often than not, there weren’t reminders, but rather genuine messages on the corner of the chalkboard. Not that he really needed the reminders anymore. In between the assignments and exhaustion and all-nighters, Kagami had managed to pull himself into a respectable man with a decent job.
“I’m almost surprised,” Akashi mentioned on one otherwise uneventful autumn day, “I thought you’d have tried to quit your job by now. You don’t seem like you would have been so studious in your earlier days.”
“Is that supposed to be an insult?” Kagami asked, knowing there was about a fifty percent chance that Akashi was just messing with him.
“I think what he’s trying to say is that you’ve come a long way since you started out,” Momoi pitched in before Akashi could continue. It was probably better that way.
“Ah, thanks. But I sort of owe credit to Kuroko,” Kagami said, “Since he was always writing reminders for me.”
“Yes, and now he’s just flirting with you,” Akashi nodded. Kagami stared at him in response, and Akashi frowned- “Did you not realize that?”
“Of course I didn’t!”
“That’s because Kaga-chin has rocks for brains,” Murasakibara unhelpfully supplied.
“He has a point,” Aomine added.
“No he doesn’t-- wait, what are you even doing up here anyway? Shouldn’t you be in the gym?”
“All of you are being excessively loud,” Kuroko spoke up, making everyone in the room freeze; It was unfair how easily he could eavesdrop without being noticed. He then turned to look at Kagami, and with an exasperated expression, said, “I wondered if I was being too subtle.”
Kagami looked at Kuroko, then to his coworkers, then to Kuroko again, and pinched the bridge of his nose in resigned acceptance as he tried to fight off a blush.
“This job, I swear.”