It was nearing two o’clock, and dismissal was eminent. Dr. Hayata was lecturing at the board; I listened, but in the back of my mind I knew that I had already heard it all. My eyes scanned the room. Sometimes, I settled to watch certain friends struggle to comprehend what it was that the teacher was talking about or I stared at others to figure them out based on their behaviour or some feature of their appearance. Fuchida, for instance, had a mop of black hair that he did not bother to tidy, and from this I determined that he was probably intellectually impaired or limited. Mai was always darting her eyes around and glaring at anybody who happened to be looking at her or any of her things, and from this I determined that she could never truly befriend anybody and that the strength of any friendship she did maintain would be proportional to the gullibility of her friend. Another classmate was Hitoshi, who was simply so morbidly obese that I could not determine anything else about him.
At times I allowed my eyes to focus upon what the worn man in the front of the room was writing. He was markedly old, and he composed himself tidily and conservatively; for these reasons, I respected this man, but despite all the respect I had for him I could not get myself to focus upon anything he ever said. The only thing that ever interested me about him was his handwriting, which sometimes inspired the right half of my brain and wrought forth my fascination; the utensil in his hand glided naturally and seamlessly across the surface of the board as though it were created for the sole purpose of being wielded by his hand, which in turn had the sole purpose of blessing us with the relics of Hayata’s mind in the form of writing, and the end result was always artistic, unique, unseen before and, once wiped clean, never to be seen again.
When I was not trying to judge my peers or evaluate my teacher’s handwriting, I found time for more interesting and meaningful gestures. For example, after vaguely identifying that the clock had moved three minutes past the point it had been at the last time I checked it, I took a moment to lean back in my chair and straighten my tie out. How you handle your tie speaks volumes about you; if you allow it to simply dangle around loosely and be a tie, it says that you’re a liberalist. A tie is meant to be tightened around your neck, and it is meant to be tied, not clipped. Furthermore, the knot is supposed to be neat and structured into a near perfect triangle; wrinkles at the knot (or elsewhere on the tie, for that matter) speak unfavourably toward your character. Two strands are supposed to drop below the knot, but only the outermost one ought to be visible; wearing the strands at the same length or in a non-overlapping fashion proves that you are disorderly and cannot handle organization. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and there I found my watch and checked the time; it had been another minute since the last time I checked....
