I wipe my damp hands on my pants surreptitiously and step past the threshold to the dragon’s lair.
Kouchou-sensei is seated at her desk, her black glasses almost too overpowering on her narrow, powdered face. Her hair is steel-gray and pulled back into a tight bun, and she’s wearing her usual white button-down blouse. Under the desk will be a black pleated skirt that stops at mid-shin and white pantyhose. I’ve never seen her wear anything else.
“Please sit down,” she says in accented English, gesturing at the empty seat across from her. It’s a well-upholstered chair meant for making important visitors feel at ease, but it doesn’t have that effect on me.
“You wanted to see me…?”
“Yes.” She folds her brittle hands on the desk and takes her time. She isn’t doing this to figure out how to say what she needs to say in English. Her command of the language is excellent. She spent years studying, not because she wanted to communicate with foreigners, but she saw it as an intellectual challenge.
After a few moments I glance at the clock on the wall. I have perhaps twenty minutes left before I need to get going.
“I have heard some…disturbing things about your conduct, Huss-sensei,” Kouchou-sensei says finally.
“Excuse me?” Of all the things I imagined…
“One of our staff saw you entering a hotel…with a man.”
The way she speaks… It’s like I butchered a baby bunny and drank its blood.
“Did this staff member also mention it was not a love hotel?”
Japanese people have meetings in respectable non-love hotels all the time. I don’t see why Kouchou-sensei is being so weird about it.
She purses her thin lips briefly. “Yes. But it was late at night. Also, you were wearing a dress that showed…quite a lot of your body.”
The dress I had on showed some leg. But her tone makes it sound like I paraded nude into the lobby.
I have a feeling I know who the staff member is. “I’m not certain what you and Mishima-sensei think happened, but I was with an old friend from America.” My mind rebels at the fact that I’m calling him “an old friend” but I’m not going to tell the disapproving Kouchou-sensei that he is my ex-lover.
There is a slight flicker in Kouchou-sensei’s eyes that tells me I was right. “Then what were you doing at the hotel?”
It takes a lot of willpower not to laugh at her ridiculous inquisition, but bureaucratic bullshit is unavoidable in Japanese schools with their medieval attitude about sex.
“We went up to his suite and ordered room service for dinner. And that’s it.” But the second the words leave my lips, I know I’ve made a tactical error.
Kouchou-sensei is looking at me sadly. “You went to his room.”
“Yes, but I left before the dinner arrived. I had an urgent call—”
“You were in his room with him?”
Argh. The woman is like a dog with a bone. “For less than an hour.”
“Huss-sensei.” She sits back. “Appearances must be maintained if one is a teacher.”
“I swear nothing happened.” Just to make sure she understands, I say, “There was no sex. We just talked.”
She nods, but her eyes are sweeping me from head to toe. The skin around my neck starts to warm. Her silent judgment is like a fist around my throat.
“If there’s nothing else, I do need to prepare for class.” I glance at the clock. Ten minutes.
“Of course, the students come first. We will continue this later.”
I give her a bland smile and leave. We will not be continuing anything later. She has no right to act like I’ve been a slut. I know why she’s putting my behavior under a microscope. I’m a foreigner. As far as she’s concerned, if she isn’t careful, I’m likely to exert a negative influence on impressionable Japanese youth.
I’d bet my working visa that if I were Japanese, Kouchou-sensei wouldn’t have put me through the “aren’t you a little slut” interrogation.
The teachers’ office is almost empty. I spot a mug on Mishima-sensei’s desk, which sits at the other end of the room, and vow to have a quick conversation with her. If she has a problem with me, she can say it to my face instead of running to her BFF Kouchou-sensei.