“Okay, ladies, let’s sing the ‘Goodbye Song’!” Momoko and Motoka promptly take each other by the hand and extend their chubby digits toward me. We make a circle and sing: “English school is over, we are going home; goodbye, goodbye, we are going home! Goodbye!”

“Sensei, bye-bye! See you again!”

After the girls leave for Lieko’s class, I head to Room Five and teach my bilingual Zone VI students, Riko and Reiji, about different school subjects. We play several vocabulary games with playing cards. Afterward, once my private lesson in Room One with Kennichi is over and I have a friendly chat with him and his mom for a few minutes, I organize my box of toys and lesson props for tomorrow. Then I grab a big City of Nishibe–approved plastic bag to go through all the empty classrooms, as per my Tuesday duty. I bypass Room Five, where Lieko is inside with a group of adults. Way too old and far too professional to be students here.

They must be from Head Office. This is new. I can only guess what she’s talking about, but whatever it is, it is not an exciting topic. One guy is out cold, and the others don’t look too far off from joining him in Sleepyland.

Well, that’s it. 7:00 p.m. The workday is over. Good; I’m hungry. I’m also a little surprised. Sotaro wasn’t all that excruciating, and I half expected one fight between the kindergarteners or at least a complaint or two from Kennichi about how tired he was, but no, everything today was … well, perfect. I sign out on the computer, yank my purse out from under Lieko’s, unsure of how it got there, and pick up my jacket.

Manager is standing right at the door when I slide it open. “Ah, Cybelle! Eh …” He looks down at my purse. “Are you going home?”

“Yes, Manager. I left the garbage in the usual place — I didn’t get to Room Five though, Lieko’s still in there now, so …”

“Ah, ah, yes …” he pauses, still blocking my path as he looks down the hall at Room Five. We can hear Lieko talking to the office workers. “Okay, you don’t have to do it,” he decides, like there was ever a choice. “Ah! Cybelle! You have emergency? Go back to Canada? Soon?”

“My sister’s getting married.”

“Ah, I see …” Manager hisses with a stern look. “So, maybe … you have to go back to Canada … before April?”

“I don’t know yet, Manager,” I say through a tight, clenched smile. “But I doubt it.”

“Ah. Hmm. I see. But … if you go back before April … hmmm, it will be, very bad, I think. Your students will miss your lessons. And you.”

Behind him, Yoshino squeezes an arm to grab something off the photocopier. She’s trying not to laugh at the constipated look I must have on my face. “Manager,” she says, “I think we should wait until Cybelle-sensei tells us when this wedding is. You know, before we start worrying about it?”