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“Chihiro?”
Chihiro looked up at the teacher, confused as to why they were being called in the middle of class.
“Are you using a pen again?”
They’d really hoped that their teacher wouldn’t notice, and they couldn’t help but feel a little scared once they saw the teacher take a pencil out of their pencil case, sighing and then walking over to their seat.
“You can use mine.”
Chihiro shook their head.
“No- Chihiro! You need to use pencils, or else you’re not going to be able to rub anything out, and your book will look messy, okay? Now take the pencil.”
The teacher held the pen out for Chihiro to take. Chihiro shook their heads again.
“Do you have….a….pen-pencil?” They asked, talking about mechanical pencils - a type of pencil they could at least bare. But they were struck by disappointment once the teacher shook her head.
“I’m….allergic to pencils?” Chihiro replied, it was a pretty obvious lie, as evidenced by their classmates' laughter, but it felt true somehow.
“Not funny.” The teacher was beginning to lose patience, she tore the pen out of Chihiro’s hand, putting the pencil inside it.
“It’s fine.” Chihiro thought, they can just get another pen out when she’s not lookin-
She’s still standing there.
“Now rewrite what you’ve written.” She ordered, looking down at the paper. “Go on then.”
Chihiro looked up at her, hoping she’d go away.
“Now.” She demanded.
Chihiro nervously put the pencil against the paper, they hated how it felt in their hand. The wood of the pencil felt uncomfortably dry against their skin, they already wanted to wash their hands in the sink because of it - but it wasn’t over yet.
An agonising cold shiver ran straight up their spine as they started to write the first number on the paper, goosebumps as the horrible sound hit their ear. It was like a horrid scratching, it pierced so deeply and they just couldn’t bear it. They had to grip the pencil with all their strength just to get the pencil lead to show up on the paper. Their uncomfort was more than obvious on their face, their body tensing up nearly completely.
No, no. They just couldn’t do it. They had to put their free hand onto their ear - so that at least one ear would be blocked.
The brief milliseconds between writing the number 4 and the symbol X gave them a tiny amount of relief, until it all started again. The horrible, dry and piercing sound of the pencil. They were completely taken by the horripilation, their under lip trembling from how uncomfortable the whole thing was.
They turned their head to the side so that their other ear was being blocked by their shoulder while they wrote. It offered little relief, but they had to take what they could get - and they didn’t care how stupid they looked while doing it.
They overheard a classmate mumbling “What a weirdo”.
They didn’t care.
Well, maybe they did, but they told themselves that they didn’t.
“Chihiro...?”
“Chihiro?”
“Chihiro!”
“Y….yes?”
“You need to put your hand back down on the paper instead of using it to cover your ear to keep the paper steady, or else your handwriting is going to look messy, and I’ll not be able to read it.”
Chihiro put their shoulder onto the paper.
The teacher wasn’t completely satisfied by that response, but it’ll do.
After a few horrible seconds of that piercing noise, they were finally done re-writing the sum. They took a few moments to sigh in relief.
The teacher stepped back, to the middle of the classroom - addressing the whole group who were already voyeuristically watching Chihiro suffer.
“Now, this is why we all use pencils in maths class. Because Chihiro got the sum wrong. ”
“Then why didn’t you tell me!?” Chihiro wanted to scream. They didn’t get it, they didn’t get it at all. They were usually the good kid - but here they are, being made an example to the class, just because they wanted to use a pen. They didn’t even write the sum down wrong!! 9*8 is definitely 72, right!? Did the teacher get confused because of their bad handwriting?
They saw the teacher go ahead and grab an eraser from their pencil case back at their desk, walking back to Chihiro proudly while addressing the class again.
“Now since Chihiro already thought they could be cheeky and use a pen, their book now has an incorrect sum in it that can’t be erased.
“Their working out of that sum, can’t be erased.”
She took Chihiro’s book, showing it to the class, flipping through the papers until she found one that most eloquently displayed their point.
“And since Chihiro has written their sums down wrong, in pen, they’ve had to cross out the incorrect answers in pen. Because of that, their book is now going to look messy, childish and unorganised. It’s not going to be fair on me when I have to read and mark it.”
She put the book back down in front of Chihiro, tossing the eraser down onto the paper.
“Now rub it out.”
The eraser had already been used, and the goosebumps started to feel even worse as soon it was in their hand. Their hands felt dirty, some of the pencil lead from previous uses had rubbed off on their hands.
They wished that their precious trick of covering their ears with a shoulder and a hand would work - but they knew that it wouldn’t. They had to have a strong grip on the paper for the eraser to actually rub the sum out.
The paper felt dry, too dry, and Chihiro’s eyes started to water as they took the eraser to the incorrect sum, rubbing it back and forth. The paper was starting to become wrinkled from how hard the eraser was against the paper. There was an uncomfortable cold feeling in their upper back that they just couldn’t describe. They desperately wanted to wash their hands.
Once the incorrect answer to the sum had finally been erased. Chihiro looked up at the teacher.
“Okay, now what’s 9 times 8? You should know this.”
Chihiro always struggled with their times tables, but the 9 times tables were easier. The bigger the first digit gets the smaller the second digit gets.
“72?”
“Correct!”
Chihiro felt a little angry. “ That’s what I wrote. ”, they thought.
Hesitantly, they took the pencil and sighed again as they went back to their previous position, covering their ears. They tried their hardest not to look away from the page as they wrote, they didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that they were being stared at by so many people.
Even though it was just writing down 2 digits, it felt very very long and slow. Had they’d been using a pen, they would have gotten the sum done by now and more.
At last, the sum was finished to the teacher's satisfaction. The teacher took the book, holding it up to the class.
“Look how much neater that is? That’s why we always use pencils in my class, okay?”
The teacher gave back the book, and she finally started to walk back to her desk - getting back to the rest of her lesson.
Chihiro wondered whether or not it might be a good idea to secretly swap out the pencil for a pen.
But they didn’t want to get in trouble.
Today was going to be a really long day.