Matsumoto Sensei. Base of the pine tree. Solid, stable, unmoving. A solid foundation to build upon and for unbounded growth to occur. He had been my homeroom teacher for a year now and yet I could still barely look him in the eye without fear of embarrassing myself. There was just something about him, stern features, yet his eyes were kind. He was the kind of man who you could trust, who you could depend upon. And did I ever need someone like that.
I live alone with my mother. I never knew my father, he had passed away before I was born. All I had of him were photographs and the stories that my mom told me. From the sounds of it he had been a good man but fate had not been good to him. It was difficult for her to talk about him so I didn’t ask her much but still I felt as if there was a hole in my heart, something missing from my life. I remember the day I met Matsumoto Sensei yet the emotions remain too complicated to process. Like meeting someone you had been missing your whole life. Somehow or another, life had gifted me the father I never had. I remember bowing to him and looking at his shoes, how they shimmered at me so perfectly. I longed to have him notice me, to look at my work and tell me what a good job I had done. I had worked hard all year long and yet my efforts never seemed to be enough. Even now I was struggling to keep up with his dictation, scribbling as fast as I could but always remaining just a step behind, always just out of reach. I felt tears well in my eyes as I listened to him. His voice, always so confident and deep. I closed my eyes and allowed myself a few moments to just listen to his soothing tone. I hadn’t even realised how fast my heart was beating but could feel it already beginning to slow down as I listened, allowing the sound of his words to reverberate in my mind, calming me down. I was just overthinking this, it was just a matter of mind over matter. Mind over matter, mind over matter...
I heard him call my name and I snapped my eyes open to look at him, trying to cover up the fact that I had been all but sleeping in his class. On Teacher’s Day no less, after we had just presented him our gift. But somehow things felt different, I felt too… light. Practically weightless. And the world around me seemed oddly blur, distorted, distant. I saw Matsumoto Sensei’s face grow annoyed as he raised his voice, calling my name again. I responded, or tried to but my words felt barely more than a whisper. I tried again. I was as good as mute. My hand went to my throat, and passed right through it. I saw the anger drain out of Matsumoto Sensei’s face as worry filled its place. He began to walk towards me but his movements seemed off. In fact, everyone else seemed to be moving in slow-motion. To make things even weirder, I couldn’t even feel a hint of panic, somehow my body didn’t seem to agree with how crazy my mind was finding everything. I looked down, and saw myself.
At this point I was certain I was screaming but was only met with further silence. I seemed to be dead, slumped over on the desk and yet I was also floating in the air, halfway to the ceiling. Nothing was making sense. I saw Matsumoto Sensei shake my shoulder, heard him calling my name but my body didn’t move an inch. In front of me, he checked my pulse, and started yelling to others to call emergency services, to fetch other teachers, to let people know that something was very, very wrong. I watched, frozen, as people panicked, as they moved around me, as they moved me, my body around. All I could think of was to stay by Matsumoto Sensei, he would know what was going on, he would know what to do.
And then an odd thought came to me, and the thought became an urge, and the urge became a movement, and the movement became an action. I moved close to him and hugged him from the side, tentatively at first. I… felt, for lack of a better word, some hint of the strong muscular body he was hiding beneath his clothes. I thought I detected a scent, ever so faint, of what he smelled like. An oddly pleasant mix of coffee, paper, cologne, laundry powder. I buried my face in his shirt sleeve, relishing the brief snatches where I could almost feel what it was like. When he didn’t respond I moved my head from his sleeve to his back, pressing my face as closely as I dared against his back. I wanted to be close to him, to press myself as tightly against him as possible, to feel his warm, strong presence, reminding me that everything would be all right.
And then slowly I felt feeling return to my limbs, and it was the feeling that I had been longing for, the feeling of his clothes covering his body, how it wrapped around him and clung to him. I felt the distant pump of a heart in my ears as it grew louder, moving closer to me. I felt a surge of strength, and for a moment I felt almighty, invincible, omnipotent. I struggled to open my mouth and when I finally did I gasped, breathing deeply, hungrily sucking as much air as I could into my lungs, my chest heaving away as it worked to inhale, exhale, keep me alive. Alive. I felt so alive. I blinked, and realised that I was suddenly looking through glasses again. I felt tall, towering over the floor but not floating anymore, instead my entire body seemed to have extended to a new height that I could only have dreamed of. I blinked again and the world came back into focus, colour rapidly returning, and a face came into view. I blinked, the face seemed unfamiliar and yet I knew they were a teacher.
“Matsumoto?! Matsumoto, are you alright?!”
I blinked again. Recognition sparked in my mind and I knew they were the homeroom teacher from the adjacent class. But I had never spoken to them in my life, and why was she calling me Matsumoto? And for that matter where was Matsumoto Sensei? Her voice came again, urgent.
“Matsumoto, please respond! Let me know you’re alright!”
“Uh-.” I began. “I-.” Something felt weird, something was different about my voice, it wasn’t supposed to be so low, it wasn’t supposed to sound like… Matsumoto Sensei.
“I-I’m alright” I managed to stammer out, the bass of my voice shocking me even as I spoke. She flashed me a concerned look. I held her steady gaze, despite everything being beyond my understanding, something in me felt, solid, stable, unmoving.
“Yes, I’m alright.” I affirmed, and somehow I knew that I was speaking the truth. I was alright. Things were going to be OK. I just needed to find Matsumoto Sensei. He’d know what to do.
She looked doubtful but turned to face something else, apparently there were more pressing issues at hand then a student who had been mute up to this point. I… was a student right? Somehow I had thought for a moment that I was a teacher, but that couldn’t be right. She walked off in a direction of some commotion and I followed closely behind her. A crowd of people were gathered around what seemed to be an ambulance, and being loaded into that ambulance, was me.
I stood there, dumbfounded. That didn’t make any sense. I tried to make my way through the crowd, but there were too many people. Suddenly a buzzing came from my pants. When had I put on such a pants and belt? This wasn’t my school uniform. This sleeved shirt wasn’t mine, it was what Matsumoto Sensei was wearing… Dazed, I pulled my phone out. But it wasn’t my phone, the model was different and the background was cherry blossoms instead of my favourite band. I looked closer to see the message was from ‘Principal Kobayashi’, asking about my whereabouts. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to know. I swiped to the forward facing camera, and saw Matsumoto Sensei looking back at me.
I was stunned but somehow not truly surprised. Somehow I had known before I had seen, that somehow or another I was not myself, and that I was Matsumoto Sensei, in his body. A call came in then, from the Principal and I answered. For a moment I worried about what I was going to say but my body seemed to know, answering rapid-fire questions as I made my way to the front of the crowd. Now they readily parted for me as they saw who I was, bowing quickly out of the way. Principal Kobayashi motioned to me to get into the ambulance and I obliged. He began talking to me, asking what had happened and I told him about how I had fainted in class, how I had checked my breathing, called the ambulance. It all seemed surreal, how calm and composed I was acting but I couldn’t feel anything but, Matsumoto Sensei was an experienced teacher and I was Matsumoto Sensei. We arrived at the hospital and I followed still in a daze, absentmindedly looking at my phone now and then, seeing the same face I had come to know staring back at me in the black glass. I was Matsumoto Sensei. I was him. Somewhere inside me, he was here as well but I was the one in control. As I moved I studied my hands, studied my arms, so different from mine and yet I felt completely comfortable moving, using them. I became aware of something heavy in my shirt pocket and pulled it out to reveal the wrapped mochi we had gifted to him earlier.
Someone was talking. They were telling me and Principal Kobayashi about how I was in a coma. Principal Kobayashi did his best to hide his shock, as he reached into his pocket to call my mother. But I was barely listening, scarcely paying attention. I was Matsumoto Sensei and I felt amazing, I didn’t want to go back, not yet. Instead, I peeled the wrapper open and took a tentative bite of the sweet dough, Matsumoto Sensei’s, my favourite. I read the note, “Happy Teacher’s Day.”