VOLUME #2 - EPISODE 7
[NARRATOR: There's a specific kind of sadness that comes from watching someone who's already drowning try to teach lessons. Today we meet that person. Today we learn that some wounds don't heal—they just learn to exist in different shapes. And today, Riyura discovers that his signature optimism has limits. Sharp, painful limits that cut when you press against them.]
The Teacher Who Existed Wrong
Friday morning math class with Yachaziku Muzaki was less a lesson and more a meditation on existential despair with numbers occasionally mentioned. He stood at the blackboard, chalk in his trembling hand, staring at an equation he'd written ten minutes ago and apparently forgotten about. "Quadratic formula," he said eventually, his voice distant. "X equals... negative B plus or minus... something. Square root. I forget. It's in the textbook. Page... a page. One of them."
He set down the chalk. Sat at his desk. Stared at the wall.
The class exchanged deeply uncomfortable glances. This was their third day with Muzaki-sensei, and each day had been progressively more concerning than the last.
Yesterday he'd started explaining geometry, gotten to the word "angles," and then spent fifteen minutes staring out the window muttering about "wrong angles" and "metal that wouldn't bend" before a student gently reminded him where he was.
"Sensei?" Riyura raised his hand carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. "Do you want us to work on problems from the textbook?" Muzaki's eyes focused on him slowly, like a camera lens adjusting. "Problems," he repeated. "Yes. Problems. Page forty-seven. Or fifty-seven. Numbers. They all look the same after a while. Speaking of problems, I've delt with the death of many students and that's already a problem enough. Do you wanna hear another story to get to know me more."
His hands were shaking harder now.
"Everything looks the same after a while. Faces. Places. Days. Just a continuous stream of existence you're supposed to navigate despite having no idea where you're going or why you're going there. So I guess there's no point of me telling a story."
"Sensei—" Miyaka started, concern clear in her voice.
"I'm fine," Muzaki said automatically, though his expression suggested he'd stopped understanding what "fine" meant years ago. "Just tired. I'm always tired. Even sleep doesn't help anymore. You close your eyes and the memories are waiting. Open them and reality is worse. So you just... exist. In between."
He stood abruptly, knocking over his coffee mug. Brown liquid spread across papers he didn't seem to notice or care about.
"I need to—" He gestured vaguely. "—be elsewhere. Do the problems. Or whatever. It doesn't matter. Nothing really matters in the grand scheme of things. We're all just counting down to the inevitable endings anyways. We all die from old age someday anyways. And sometimes the best thing to do is shove coffee down your own throat if you're stressed. Because that works for me. Or at least, it used to."
He walked out. Just left. The classroom door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded like giving up.
[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: That's not normal teacher behavior. That's not even normal human behavior. That's someone operating on autopilot while their actual consciousness is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere dark. Somewhere they can't escape from.]
"Should we tell someone?" a student asked nervously.
"Tell them what?" Cartoon Headayami replied, making notes on his ever-present clipboard. "That our teacher is experiencing severe psychological distress? The administration already knows. They hired him anyway. The bar for employment is apparently 'still breathing.' though this is a real problem for are learning. Except for Shoehead. Who never listens and just eats shoes all class."
"He's barely breathing," Yakamira added quietly. Riyura stood, his crooked red bow tie catching the light from the windows. His star-shaped yellow pupils reflected something between determination and fear.
"I'm going after him." "Why?" Subarashī asked. "He's a teacher. An adult. He has his own support systems—" "Does he?" Riyura interrupted. "Because from what I can see, he has nothing. No support. No systems. Just trauma he's carrying alone until it crushes him completely."
"You can't save everyone," Yakamira said, echoing his own recent advice. "I know," Riyura replied, already heading for the door. "But I have to try anyway. That's kind of my whole thing."
[NARRATOR: Ah yes. The classic protagonist flaw: believing that kindness and determination can fix anything. Spoiler alert: they can't. But watching him learn that lesson more than ever is going to hurt like hell.]
The Rooftop Where Memories Live
Riyura found Muzaki on the school rooftop—because of course he did, because every emotional crisis at Jeremy High eventually led to the rooftop, like it was some kind of trauma magnet.
The teacher sat with his back against the chain-link fence, knees drawn up, staring at nothing. The winter wind pulled at his unkempt hair. His hands still trembled.
"Sensei?" Riyura approached slowly, carefully. "Are you okay?"
"No," Muzaki said without looking at him. "But you already knew that. Everyone knows that. I'm the teacher who's visibly broken. The cautionary tale. The example of what happens when you don't deal with trauma properly. I wish I could shove a giant apple down my throat."
The teacher laughed—hollow and bitter.
"They hired me anyways. You know why? Because they're desperate. Can't find enough teachers. Standards have dropped so low that 'shows up most days' counts as qualified."
Riyura sat down nearby, not too close, giving space but offering presence.
"What happened?" he asked quietly. "Everyone knows it was a bus crash, but—" "But you want details?" Muzaki's voice sharpened. "You want the full horror story? Fine. I'll tell you. Maybe saying it out loud will finally make it feel real instead of like an endless nightmare I can't wake up from."
He took a shaky breath.
"Six years ago. A field trip. Twenty students. Beautiful day. We were going to a museum. Nothing dangerous. Nothing risky. Just kids excited to be out of school for a day. And me excited to just teach them about the thrills of the outdoors."
His hands clenched into fists.
"The bus driver had a heart attack. Just—just collapsed at the wheel. We veered off the mountain road. The feeling of falling—" His voice broke. "—that feeling of falling seemed to last forever. Like time stretched. Like the universe wanted me to really experience every second of terror."
Riyura felt his heart tighten.
"We hit the ravine bottom. The sound—metal crunching, glass shattering, students screaming. The bus was on its side. Doors jammed. Windows broken but too small for most kids to fit through."
Tears streamed down Muzaki's face now.
"I managed to break open the emergency exit. Pulled kids through one by one. Eight of them. Eight I saved. But there were twelve more. Twelve who were trapped in the back where the metal had crushed inward. And I tried—" His voice rose with desperation. "—I tried SO HARD to reach them. Broke my hands trying to bend metal that wouldn't bend. Screamed for help that wouldn't come fast enough."
His breathing became rapid, panicked. "They were screaming my name. 'Sensei! Sensei, help! It hurts! I'm scared! I don't want to die!' And I couldn't—I COULDN'T—"
He doubled over, gasping. "The fire started. From the engine. Spread so fast. And those twelve kids—they stopped screaming. Not because they were okay. Because they—"
He couldn't finish. Riyura felt tears on his own face now.
"By the time firefighters arrived, it was too late. They pulled out bodies. Twelve bodies. Children who'd been laughing about museums and lunch and whatever kids laugh about when they're alive and happy and not burning to death while their teacher watches helplessly."
Muzaki looked up at Riyura with eyes that held nothing but emptiness.
"I attended all twelve funerals. Parents looked at me like I was a murderer. Like I'd killed their children. And they were right. I should have saved them. Should have been stronger, faster, better. Should have died trying instead of surviving with eight when there were twenty."
"That's not—" Riyura started.
"Don't," Muzaki said flatly. "Don't tell me it wasn't my fault. Don't tell me I did my best. Don't try to make this better with platitudes about survival and trauma. Eight people lived because of me. Twelve died because of me. That's just math. Simple, horrible math."
When Optimism Meets Immovable Grief
Riyura sat in silence, his signature cheerfulness completely inadequate for the weight of Muzaki's trauma.
[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: What do I say? How do I respond to pain this deep? Usually I can find something—a joke, a perspective shift, some way to inject light into darkness. But this? This is darkness that's learned to breathe. That's made a home in someone's heart and refuses to leave. And I—I don't know what to do with that.]
"Sensei," Riyura said finally, his voice small. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that happened to you." "Everyone's sorry," Muzaki replied. "Sorry doesn't bring them back. Sorry doesn't stop the nightmares. Sorry doesn't make me functional."
"But you're here," Riyura tried. "You're still teaching. Still trying. That has to count for something—" "Does it?" Muzaki looked at him directly. "Because from where I'm sitting, 'trying' just means prolonging the inevitable. I'm not healing. I'm not getting better. I'm just... existing. Badly. While everyone else pretends not to notice how broken I am." He stood slowly, joints cracking like an old persons despite being only in his thirties.
"You seem like a good kid, Riyura. Optimistic. Cheerful. You probably think you can help me. Make me smile. Remind me life is worth living." His expression was devastating in its emptiness.
"But you can't. Nobody can. Because the problem isn't that I forgot how to be happy. It's that I remember exactly how happy I was before everything burned. And that memory—that gap between who I was and who I am—it's insurmountable."
"But—" Riyura stood too, desperately searching for words. "But people heal from trauma all the time! They go to therapy, they work through it, they—" "I've been in therapy for six years," Muzaki interrupted. "Six years of talking, medication, coping strategies, exposure therapy, group sessions, everything. And you know what I've learned?"
He smiled—a terrible smile that held no warmth. "I've learned that some traumas don't heal. They just become part of your infrastructure. Load-bearing grief. Remove it and you collapse completely. So you carry it. Forever. And pretend that's the same as living."
The rooftop wind howled, carrying away words that didn't help anyway.
"I appreciate your concern," Muzaki said, his voice gentler now but still distant. "Really, I do. But don't try to fix me. Don't make me your project. I'm not one of your friends who needs saving. I'm just a broken teacher trying to make it through each day without completely falling apart in front of my students." He walked towards the door. Paused.
"You can't save everyone, Riyura. Sometimes the kindest thing is knowing when to stop trying." He left. And Riyura stood alone on the rooftop where so much trauma had occurred, feeling something he rarely felt: Helpless.
The Conversation That Broke The Host
Lunch period found Riyura sitting with his friends, unusually quiet.
His purple hair lay flat instead of its usual spiky chaos. His crooked red bow tie seemed more crooked than usual, like it was reflecting his internal state. His star-shaped pupils stared at his untouched food.
"He's really not okay," Miyaka said, watching Riyura with concern. "I've never seen him this quiet." "He tried to help Muzaki-sensei," Yakamira explained. "And failed. It's his first real encounter with unfixable trauma." "All trauma is fixable," Subarashī protested. "With the power of FRIENDSHIP and DETERMINATION and—"
"No," Yakamira interrupted. "It's not. Some pain is permanent. Some wounds don't close. And Riyura just learned that lesson the hardest way. He learnt and faced it before. But this time that flaw is harder to get through more than ever." Shoehead, quietly eating a boot lace, spoke up: "Muzaki-sensei told me once that he doesn't sleep anymore. Not really. Just closes his eyes and waits for morning. Because dreams are worse than being awake."
"That's horrible," Miyaka whispered. "That's PTSD," Shoehead replied. "Real, untreated, bone-deep PTSD that therapy can only manage, not cure." Riyura finally spoke, his voice rough:
"I tried to make him laugh. Told him my best jokes. He just stared at me like I was speaking a language he used to know but forgot." His hands clenched. "I tried to tell him life was worth living, that there was still beauty in the world, that he saved eight kids and that matters. And you know what he said?" Everyone waited.
"He said: 'Eight people get to grow up knowing their teacher let twelve others burn. That's not a victory. That's a different kind of failure.'" Riyura's voice broke. "How do you respond to that? How do you help someone who's constructed their entire identity around guilt that won't heal?" "You don't," Cartoon Headayami said quietly. "You can't. Some people exist in spaces where help can't reach. Not because they're refusing it, but because their pain is in a format that compassion can't translate."
The table fell silent.
[NARRATOR: And there it is. The lesson that breaks every optimist eventually: you can care deeply, try desperately, offer everything you have—and still fail. Still watch someone drown while standing close enough to touch them. Still feel the weight of your inadequacy like stones in your heart.]
The Evening Of Acceptance
After school, Riyura found himself back on the rooftop—the place where conversations happened, where truths emerged, where the sky held enough space for feelings too big to fit inside.
Yakamira joined him without being asked. They sat in silence for a while, watching winter clouds move across the pale afternoon sky like slow thoughts.
"I failed him," Riyura said eventually. "Yes," Yakamira agreed. "You did."
"You're supposed to say something comforting." "I'm not good at lying." Despite everything, Riyura almost smiled. "The worst part," Riyura continued, "is that I always believed—really believed—that kindness was enough. That if you cared enough, tried enough, showed up enough, you could help anyone. And now—"
"Now you know that's not true," Yakamira finished. "And it hurts." "Yeah." They watched clouds drift.
"But," Yakamira said carefully, "maybe helping isn't about fixing. Maybe it's about witnessing. Being present for someone's pain without trying to take it away."
Riyura looked at his brother. "When did you get so philosophical?" "When I stopped trying to be perfect and started trying to be honest," Yakamira replied. "Also, I've been reading therapy books. For both of us."
"That's... actually really sweet." "Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation." This time Riyura did smile—small, sad, but real. And he had learnt and had gotten through another meaning of a lesson today once again. And this time he learned kindness can't fix everyone he runs into, that has really dealt with truama to deep for words to express.
"Muzaki-sensei is going to keep suffering," Riyura said. "Probably for the rest of his life. And I can't fix that. Can't make it better. Can't even make him want to try to make it better." "No," Yakamira agreed. "You can't." "So what do I do?"
"You show up. You exist alongside him. You don't flinch when his pain becomes visible. You prove that brokenness doesn't make someone unworthy of basic human thought. Even if you can't fix their truama."
Yakamira's pale gray eyes reflected the fading light. "That's all any of us can do, really. Be present. Without expectation. Without agenda. Just... there." Riyura nodded slowly.
"That feels like not enough." "It is not enough," Yakamira said. "But it's still something. And sometimes something is all we have to offer."
The sun began setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple and that particular blue that only exists in the space between day and night, between hope and resignation, between trying and accepting. Somewhere below, Yachaziku Muzaki sat in an empty classroom, staring at twelve names written in his notebook—names he'd memorized, names he'd never forget, names that followed him like ghosts made of guilt and grief and the terrible weight of surviving when others didn't.
And on the rooftop, Riyura learned that being the cheerful host, the optimistic friend, the person who brought light—sometimes it meant acknowledging darkness you couldn't dispel.
Sometimes it meant sitting with someone in their pain and not trying to make it go away. Sometimes it meant accepting that your help had limits. And that was the hardest lesson of all.
[NARRATOR: And so concludes our introduction to Yachaziku Muzaki—the teacher who forgot how to breathe, who carries twelve deaths like stones in his heart, who exists in a space between living and dying that has no name. He won't get better in this volume. Maybe not ever. But his presence serves a purpose: reminding everyone around him that survival isn't always triumph. Sometimes it's just the absence of death. Sometimes it's just showing up despite every fiber of your being screaming to disappear. And that, in its own terrible way, is a kind of strength.]
TO BE CONTINUED...