Chapter Text
Miri was a rambunctious child. That much was clear to any caregiver she had ever had, and that fact was not lost on her first elementary school teacher.
In recent years it became obligatory to have a parent-teacher conference at the halfway mark of the child’s first educational year, mainly to catch the parent up to their child’s academic prowess, or lack thereof. Unfortunately for Unasaka Miri, she fell on the… latter end of the spectrum. Tanaka Tsubame sighed as she leafed through the files that had been aimlessly dropped on her desk. It wasn’t unusual for a child to be a little behind the rest of their cohort at this age, it just weighed on the woman to be the one to tell the parents that little fact. Thankfully the school provided a packet for the child to go through at home, to catch up to the rest of her class.
Tsubame prided herself on being a friendly but rigid teacher. She followed the protocol and tried her hardest to keep the class at a neutral level in order for them to learn their characters and sums. Little Miri was like a mento dropped in a coke bottle. It took everything in her to keep that class from following that girl into absolute anarchy.
Because while Miri struggled with reading, writing and counting, she was a little demon when it came to commanding a room. Tsubame wouldn’t put it past the girl to lead her classmates off a cliff in the name of curiosity.
The thought made a small smile drift across the woman’s face.
Hopefully the parents were amenable to the criticism. She’d only ever seen the father—and what she assumed to be a family friend—picking the young girl up, as she had never seen the pair together. From what she gathered from Miri; her mother was ‘faraway’. She was listed as an emergency contact though, so that meant she was at least alive.
The entire family was an enigma. For how much the young girl liked to talk, she was incredibly tight-lipped about her family, barring many, many comments about how her ‘Papa did things differently’. The woman could only hope that a few questions would be cleared up tonight.
There was a knock at her office door. She stood up and straightened her blouse, adjusted her glasses and called for the knocker to enter.
The door opened cautiously, and an immaculately styled head of dirty blond hair poked his head around the door.
“Tanaka-san?” he asked, as if he were a little nervous.
“Yes! Do come in Unasaka-san.” Tsubame’s voice came out very professionally, she mentally patted herself on the back.
“Oh! Uh—it’s Kurusu Kazuki, sorry for the inconvenience. Miri took her mother’s name.”
Tsubame felt her hands become sweaty; how could she mess that up so quickly? She forgot that the father was listed differently! “Ah! I am very sorry, Kurusu-san. My apologies, I must have read the contact details incorrectly. Will Unasaka-san be joining us?”
Kurusu-san’s face soured. “No. She doesn’t have any contact with Miri currently.”
Tsubame felt her own face heat. How could she have misinterpreted this so horribly? She needs to save this now, or the man will go to Human Resources and have her sacked!
“Of course!" Her breathing became a little laboured. Her glasses felt too big for her face all of a sudden. "Well... do come in. I hope Miri is having lots of fun in the kids room?”
The man’s face brightened as he walked in properly. The door swung fully open, and a much darker man walked in behind the brightly-dressed father—who was chatting amicably about how his daughter had seized the opportunity to corral the kids to play a large game of hide-and-seek.
Tsubame took in the newcomer’s features and identified him as the family friend that picked Miri up irregularly. She found it odd, but didn’t question it, lest HR be called for any untoward comments. Homura could be a real bitch sometimes.
“—can’t believe how many of them could fit in there, it must have been Narnia!”
Kurusu-san swept his arms out with a grin. Tsubame took that as a sign to chuckle lightly at his… joke? She hadn’t been listening, the family friend was staring at her. Maybe he was waiting to introduce himself?
“And you are, sir?” Tsubame gestured to the man in dark clothes. He looked incredibly uncomfortable in his lightly ruffled suit.
He grunted under his breath and lazed back into the seat.
“Oh, uhm—I didn’t quite catch that…?”
Kurusu-san glared at him. Then turned to her with a bright smile. “This is Rei, Suwa Rei. No need for honorifics. He doesn’t deserve them.” With the last sentence, Kurusu-san emphatically kicked Suwa-san in the leg.
The man straightened, but still wouldn’t lift his gaze from the floor.
Tsubame elected to ignore all that, men were incredibly rude to their friends, in her experience. “I’m sure Suwa-san wouldn’t mind sitting in for this meeting.”
“I should hope not!” Kurusu-san chuckled. “Anyway, how’s Miri doing? It seems all she can talk about when she gets home is her friends at school!”
Tsubame let herself smile at that. “Yes, young Miri is very adept at making friends. Many of the other students’ parents are grateful to her. They’ve really come out of their shells since Miri got her hands on them.”
Kurusu-san beamed, and Tsubame could almost swear she saw a quirk of Suwa-san’s lips.
She’s in.
She folded her hands on the desk. “Though as this is a school, we have to be a little pragmatic. Miri is brilliant in social settings, but when sitting her down to work… it’s an entirely different story.”
Kurusu-san sighed. “Don’t we know it?” he muttered.
“But please don’t take that at surface level!” Tsubame waved her hands to reassure them. “I can see Miri is a wonderful child, and honestly quite clever, but if something is not of interest to her, it’s like pulling teeth.”
The men nodded in solidarity.
“So, as the rest of the class needs to move forward. We have put together a little packet of all the things we feel she may need help with.” Tsubame pushed a pink folder toward the couple. “If, of course, she wants to stay in her grade.”
Kurusu-san grabbed it. “We want her to be with kids her own age. She had a little bit of a rough upbringing; we don’t want her to fall behind.” He flipped through the folder, narrowing his eyebrows at the colourful worksheets.
Tsubame smiled sympathetically. “We understand that. Which is why we have taken the time to pull this folder together. There are some very easy exercises to keep her engaged.”
Kurusu-san smiled back at her. “Thank you so much. I honestly don’t have a clue about this stuff.”
Tsubame raised an eyebrow. “You can’t read hiragana?”
She almost froze. This is what Homura was talking about with her blabbermouth. Engage brain-to-mouth filter Tsubame!
Suwa-san snorted from his perch and Kurusu-san spluttered. “No, no, no! I mean teaching the… youth? I wouldn’t know where to start! I—would you stop laughing?!” He kicked the man next to him. “We’re just…uh— thank you for putting this together. We’ll try and bring her up to speed.” He acquiesced, bowing his head.
Tsubame relaxed and chuckled from behind her hand. “It’s all fine Kurusu-san. You would hardly be able to write your contact details if you had no clue how to read.” Shit. She did it again!
That made Suwa-san start heaving big breaths and Kurusu-san went beet red. “I—uh. Yes. Mhm.”
“Anyway, you’ll find everything in that folder. I know how little children like to feel a sense of achievement, so I’ve taken the liberty of adding some stickers we use to signify a job well done. Young Miri loves them.”
Kurusu-san laughed a little harshly. “Yep! We have a whole wall in her room dedicated to her ‘cheevy sticks’.”
“Like ‘cheesy sticks’?” Tsubame grinned slyly.
“Exactly!” It seemed Kurusu-san had gotten over his earlier embarrassment. He chuckled again. “Anyway, will that be all?”
Yes, please. “That will be all, for tonight anyway. There’s not much else to say at this age. I hope you have a pleasant evening!” She put on a pleasant smile and waved them out.
They went without much fuss, though she could just about make out Suwa-san’s bored voice take on a teasing manner.
As soon as they were gone, Tsubame dug the contact details out of her desk drawer. She normally prided herself on her memory, how had she gotten the guardianship so wrong? Her finger trailed down the list of names until she realised that she had read the mother’s name wrong for the emergency contact details. What she thought was Unasaka Rei was actually Suwa Rei. She had just assumed that Rei was a woman’s name and hadn’t thought to look closer at the family name’s kanji. Though now she could see the obvious discrepancies.
Then Tsubame paused.
- The two men lived at the same address.
- Suwa-san had come to Miri’s parent-teacher conference.
- Miri rarely spoke of her mother, but spoke of her ‘Papa’ at a very disproportionate rate.
She ran through the conversation again in her mind. Kurusu-san made any excuse to touch Suwa-san, and was so uncomfortable at the mention of the mother. Suwa-san was uncomfortable the whole time, but she had only seen him after she made the comment about the mother!
She couldn't help the gasp of despair that erupted from her. Oh no, it was so obvious! She let her preconceived bias assume that Miri had a mother and a father! She must have made that lovely couple so uncomfortable!
Tsubame resolved to beg for forgiveness via a letter. Though she would have to run it by HR in order to send it… oh god. HR was going to murder her!