Motionless at 9:10am [Gokusen, girl!au]

Gokusen!girl!au, Yamaguchi-sensei meets class 3-D for the first time. Character names: Sawada Sen, Uchiyama Harumi, Kumai Tomoe, Noda Takako, Minami Yuri. 905 Words. Prompt: 31_days, 7 January 2008.

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motionless at 9:10
(freezing time when it happened)

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Sawada Sen walks into the room amongst the others, somewhere in the middle where she won't be noticed especially for being the leader at the front, or the one trailing, bringing up the back. Other girls in the class have already spread the rumours outside the school this morning, on the corner by the park where they all stand and smoke just waiting for someone to comment or worse; try to tell them they can't, mustn't. Sen, even turning up purposely late as always already knows there are two new teachers starting today.

She knows the five of them are being stared at by this new teacher - fresh out of university too if the gossip is true - what a chump, and Sen checks her out in return without appearing to. They warned her to wear a tracksuit, and she actually listened. It's a little pitiful that she expects to be run out of her own classroom, but Sen has to admire the fact that she listened. She won't regret it when her trainers carry her away quicker than the rest of them can manage on their ridiculously high heels. They're in this season. Never mind school regulations because what's the point of wearing a heel at all if it's less than two inches? It doesn't even count.

Yamaguchi Kumiko, her name is written up on the board helpfully for everyone to see. She keeps watching until Sen and the girls make their way to the very back of the classroom, their own particular seats. Her mouth is a little open, as though she can't believe the gall of it, but she doesn't say anything. Afraid?

She looks down at her register, counting up the names she'd left blank and fills in the mysterious five. Even if she doesn't know who is who yet she knows everyone is in attendance this morning. Yamaguchi-sensei takes heart from that; if they were really as bad as everyone had told her wouldn't a few of them at the very least have skipped class entirely? She doesn't stop to think that perhaps they might just give up later and go home - her mind isn't designed to follow those kind of negative paths.

"So!" She says brightly, looking around the room. Only half the desks are turned in her direction, and that seems coincidental. "Let us begin! I'm your new teacher, Yamaguchi Kumiko, and you're my very first class so I hope to make lots of wonderful memories with you, enough to last us a lifetime!"

"Yours will certainly be shorter than ours," Noda points out, long red manicured nails fiddling with one of the gold hoops in her ears. Half the class erupts into snorts and giggles while Yamaguchi-sensei manages only to look vaguely confused; at 23 years old she's only a few years older than they.

"I dunno, those pigtails make her look younger than my little sister, and she's not even at school yet!"

All of a sudden it seems like a hundred eyes are upon her accusingly. Kumiko squirms under the scrutiny. She quites likes the pigtails, they keep her hair right out of her face and everything.

"Not like 3-B, have you seen their new teacher?" Harumi asks, "when we went past the classroom she was sitting their doing her nails while the class all had their heads down reading books, idiots! Now that's more the teacher for us, why don't you get lost?"

They all turn on her, and suddenly the plumpest, bustiest girl of them all is stalking down to the front of the classroom, knee socks pulled up to cover chunky calves. Hands on her hips she glares right into Yamaguchi-sensei's eyes.

"Yeah, get lost!" She yells at Yamaguchi, and then waves a fist in front of her new teacher's face, "or you just might regret it!"

She may be a buxom girl, but she's quite short enough to go with it that Yamaguchi-sensei has to look down on her to meet her eyes, enough to make her want to laugh. She thinks she is threatening, wearing this plaid skirt and kneesocks? Kumiko wants to laugh right in her face, after flicking her off like the little meaningless fly she is, but she tries to keep her teacher-head on. She even has pigtails of her own, but hers are tiny and spiky, poking out from the top of her head, and maybe that's the difference?

She is just deliberating how to solve this in a teacher-like manner when the stand-off is interrupted.

"Tomoe, quit it," Sen says, eyes on her magazine and seemingly not even aware of what is going on. Immediately the girl stands down and shuffles her way back to her seat, huffing the entire way as though the morning isn't properly begun without punching someone out - and perhaps it isn't, for her.

Sen has to all at once pretend to look natural reading her magazine, and to keep it unforced, while Yamaguchi-sensei looks up to glance her way properly for the very first time. There is a recognition in her eyes Sen can't see while avoiding meeting Yamaguchi-sensei's eyes, but she knows how it feels already - it was the look in her eyes when confronted with Tomoe that made Sen speak out in the first place.

Something about her warned Sen silently that Tomoe might just have been about to go up against someone she couldn't take.

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The Best Article in the Market [Gokusen: girl!au]

Gokusen!girl!au, Yamaguchi-sensei listens in on one of Fujiyama-sensei's classes. Character names: Sawada Sen, Uchiyama Harumi, Kumai Tomoe, Noda Takako, Minami Yuri. 567 Words. Prompt: 31_days, 13 January 2008.

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the best article in the market

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She almost can't believe it when she passes by; on the way to the library to pick up text needed for her own class, next, but that's all forgotten when she sees it. Kumiko presses her face up to the glass of the window and peers into her own classroom and sees a sight she's never seen before: the 3-D girls are all sitting down in their chairs properly (thank goodness for that, because Kumiko by this point has had enough flashes of teenage girl panties to last her several future lifetimes as possible old, perverted men), facing forward and listening to the lesson! Fujiyama-sensei is smiling as she talks, and not the nervous 'are they going to eat me or just hurt me?' smiles Kumiko saves just for class 3-D.

She can't help it, she just has to know what Fujiyama-sensei is saying or doing to make her class behave so well. Nothing is coming through the glass, so Kumiko rushes inside the building to press her ear up against the classroom door while the class is still in session.

"Here, take this one and try it out," Fujiyama-sensei says, and a chorus of surprised mumbles follow, a lot of excitedness but none of the selfish fighting and grabbing that usually happens when an item everyone wants to see is handed out. Kumiko wishes there was a way to both see and hear what was going on. She reaches slowly for the handle, hesitating several times before twisting it as quietly as possible and opening the door a crack.

Fujiyama-sensei is leaning against the desk, one leg crossed over the other in an overly casual way. Some of the girls appear to be copying her somewhat at their desks. Kumiko peers across the girls until she can find out what object it is they're learning with.

"Shizuka-sensei, this stuff is wicked!" Yuri pipes up, brandishing... A scarlet lipstick. Fujiyama-sensei sends a pearly pink smile in Yuri's direction; she obviously hasn't parted with something she uses regularly, but it's her own lipstick nonetheless.

"I told you!" Fujiyama-sensei replies, clapping her hands together and almost laughing, but not quite because she doesn't ever truly seem to laugh in a real way. "You use that and you'll have all the boys watching you. Dark red lips like that, with this colour-"

She doesn't even have to finish her sentence because they're all laughing as though sharing some in-joke. It has to be dirty, Kumiko thinks sternly to herself, because they never laugh like that for any other reason. They're supposed to be learning! And here they are taking make-up tips and reading Fujiyama-sensei's magazines in class! No wonder they like her so much, most of them want to be her when they grow up, minus the actually having to get a job and do some work part. Except it suddenly seems Fujiyama-sensei isn't working so very hard after all.

Kumiko is so annoyed she practically slams the door on her way back to the library where she was originally headed. It doesn't quite bang enough to startle everyone, but it catches Sen's attention. She lifts her head from the desk where she's been dozing through class and stares at the door as though she can see through it. She smiles; she believes she caught sight of a pigtail streaming behind the person who just walked away from the door.

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