VOLUME #2 - EPISODE 6
[NARRATOR: You know what's worse than watching someone self-destruct? Watching someone self-destruct while eating socks and convincing themselves they're fine. Today's episode: comedy, tragedy, and the introduction of a teacher who looks like he's been personally victimized by existence itself. Buckle up. It's going to hurt.]
The Week Of Escalating Madness
Wednesday morning began with Riyura discovering that Smelly Socksiku had broken into the school gymnasium overnight and consumed approximately forty-seven pairs of gym socks.
The evidence was everywhere—sock fragments scattered like confetti, bite marks on shoe locker doors where he'd apparently tried to reach more socks, and a note written in what appeared to be laundry detergent that read: "I'M FINE. TOTALLY FINE. NEVER BEEN BETTER."
"He's not fine," Riyura said, staring at the carnage with his star-shaped yellow pupils wide with concern. His purple hair was disheveled from running here immediately after getting the panicked text from the gym teacher, his crooked red bow tie hanging even more askew than usual.
"Obviously not fine," Yakamira agreed, examining the bite patterns with analytical precision. "These consumption marks suggest increasing desperation. He's spiraling."
"We need to find him before—" Riyura started. A crash echoed from the hallway. They ran.
In the main corridor, Shoehead and Socksiku stood facing each other like gunslingers at high noon, except instead of guns they held footwear items and looked equally unhinged.
"YOU CAME ONTO MY TERRITORY!" Shoehead shouted, holding a boot like a weapon. "The gym was MY hunting ground!"
"HUNTING GROUND?!" Socksiku's eyes were wild, his blond fuzzy hair even more chaotic than before, sock fragments clinging to his immaculate uniform like evidence of his breakdown. "This whole school is FULL of footwear! There's enough for BOTH of us! But you—you want me GONE!"
"Because you're DANGEROUS!" Shoehead shot back. "Not to me! To YOURSELF! Look at you! You've eaten so many socks you're TWITCHING!"
"I'VE ALWAYS TWITCHED!" "NOT LIKE THIS!" They lunged at each other.
What followed was less a fight and more a chaotic ballet of two deeply traumatized teenagers using footwear as both weapons.
Socksiku threw a balled-up sock that somehow hit Shoehead square in the face with surprising accuracy. Shoehead retaliated by hurling a sneaker that missed completely and smashed through a classroom window.
"STOP!" Riyura dove between them, his arms spread wide. "Both of you! This isn't solving anything!"
"HE STARTED IT!" they both shouted unison. Then they looked at each other, realized they'd said the same thing, and their rage intensified because even their anger was synchronized.
[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: This is like watching two mirrors have an argument. They're so similar it hurts. Both broken. Both using objects as shields against emotional pain. Both convinced they're alone. And neither of them can see it because they're too busy fighting their own reflection.]
"Listen to me!" Riyura's voice broke with desperation. "You're not enemies! You're the SAME! You both eat footwear because it's safer than connecting with people! You both use objects as substitutes for the relationships that hurt you! You both—" "DON'T PSYCHOANALYZE ME!" Socksiku screamed, and something in his voice broke completely. "You don't GET to understand me! Nobody gets to understand me! Because understanding means CARING and caring means LEAVING and I CAN'T—"
He collapsed.
Not dramatically. Just... folded. Like someone had cut his strings. Sank to the floor with his back against the lockers, clutching a sock to himself, his whole body shaking with sobs that sounded like they'd been trapped inside him for years.
"I can't keep doing this," he whispered. "I can't keep pretending the socks are enough. I can't keep eating my way through emptiness. I can't—" His breathing became rapid, shallow, panicked. Shoehead stood frozen, watching his mirror image break, and something in his expression shifted from rage to recognition to devastating empathy.
The Conversation That Should Have Happened Years Ago
Shoehead sat down.
Not next to Socksiku. That would be too close, too threatening. But close enough that the distance felt intentional rather than accidental. He pulled out a shoe from his bag—a worn sneaker that he'd been working on for days—and took a slow, methodical bite. Socksiku watched through tears, confused.
"When I started eating shoes," Shoehead said quietly, his voice stripped of all rage, "it was after my mother died. After I accidentally—or thought I accidentally—killed her during an argument. The memory was so traumatic Letace Brain had to erase it just so I could function."
Socksiku's crying quieted slightly.
"I ate shoes because they were solid. Reliable. They didn't scream at me. Didn't die. Didn't leave." Shoehead took another bite. "They were my way of controlling something when everything else was chaos."
"That's—" Socksiku's voice was hoarse. "That's different. You had a reason. I'm just—I'm just broken—" "You ARE broken," Shoehead said bluntly. "So am I. So is literally everyone at this school. Riyura got bullied so badly he developed a host persona to survive. Miyaka hides behind anime poses like her brother because she hates her ideals being seperate from her brother and that terrifies her. Headayami obsesses over rules because chaos reminds him of his loneliness."
He looked at Socksiku directly. "Being broken isn't special. It's just being human. The question is whether you're going to let it destroy you or learn to exist with it."
"I don't know how to exist with it," Socksiku whispered. "The socks—they're all I have—" "They're not." Shoehead gestured at the gathered crowd—Riyura, Miyaka, Subarashī, Yakamira, even Cartoon Headayami, all watching with various expressions of concern. "You have options. Scary options. Complicated options. But options. Not just eating socks. And competing with me over who's better at eating footwear. Because It's rather stupid but also interesting in my opinion."
Socksiku stared at them like they were aliens.
"Why would any of you want—" His voice broke. "Why would any of you want someone like me? Someone so messed up they obsess over socks to the point where they eat SOCKS?"
"Because I eat SHOES," Shoehead said flatly. "And somehow they kept me anyway." Despite everything, Socksiku laughed. A small, broken sound, but genuine.
"We're ridiculous," he said. "Extremely ridiculous, and very strange to. But that's how are stories roll to the crowd." Shoehead agreed. They sat in silence for a moment—two footwear-eating teenagers surrounded by the debris of their battle, finding something like understanding in the wreckage.
Then Riyura spoke, his voice gentle:
"Socksiku, I can't fix your trauma. Nobody here can. But we can—" He paused, choosing words carefully. "We can exist alongside it. Be present while you figure out how to heal. No pressure. No forcing friendship. Just... being here. Because everybodys unique in their own ways."
Socksiku looked up at him with red, swollen eyes. "What if I'm too broken to heal?" "Then you're too broken to heal," Riyura said simply. "And that's okay too. Healing isn't required for deserving kindness. And overtime that truama that caused you to start to eat socks may be healed. But seeing you at this point i doubt you will stop eating socks though. But that's okay Socksiku, alright."
[NARRATOR: And there it is. The overall statement of Jeremy High. You don't have to be fixed to be worthy of care. You don't have to have your life together to deserve friendship. You just have to exist, messily and imperfectly, and trust that someone will choose to exist alongside you anyway.]
Socksiku cried harder. But this time, it felt different. Like release instead of drowning.
The New Teacher Who Looked Like Death
The intercom crackled to life with Principal Jeremy's voice—measured, professional, only slightly caffeinated:
"Attention students. We have a new homeroom teacher starting today. Please welcome him warmly and try not to traumatize him within the first week. We've lost three teachers this semester already and HR is getting concerned."
The announcement ended. Everyone exchanged glances. "New teacher?" Miyaka said. "In the middle of the semester?" "That's unusual," Headayami noted. "Typically teacher assignments occur during scheduled breaks to maintain institutional continuity—"
"NOBODY CARES ABOUT INSTITUTIONAL CONTINUITY!" Subarashī shouted. "NEW TEACHER MEANS NEW POTENTIAL FOR CHAOS, AND A NEW ANIME ARC!"
They made their way to homeroom, Socksiku walking with them tentatively, still clutching a sock but no longer eating it, which Riyura decided counted as progress.
The classroom door opened. Everyone fell silent.
Standing at the front of the room was a person who looked like he'd been personally victimized by every moment of his existence.
He was tall but slouched, like his skeleton had given up on proper posture years ago. His hair was dark, unkempt, falling across his face in a way that suggested he'd stopped caring about appearance around the same time he'd stopped caring about everything else. His eyes were the eyes of someone who'd seen too much—hollow, distant, carrying the weight of memories that refused to fade.
His suit was wrinkled. His tie was crooked (though not in the charming way Riyura's bow tie was crooked—more in the "I grabbed whatever was closest and barely remembered to put it on" way). His hands trembled slightly as he wrote on the blackboard.
Yachaziku Muzaki
He turned to face the class, and the silence deepened into something uncomfortable. "I'm your new homeroom teacher," he said, his voice flat and exhausted, like he was reading from a script he'd memorized but never believed. "I don't expect you to like me. I don't particularly like myself. Let's just... get through this." He sat down at his desk.
Didn't elaborate. Didn't introduce himself further. Just sat there, staring at nothing, looking like a person who'd lost a battle with existence and surrendered unconditionally.
"Um," Riyura raised his hand slowly. "Sensei? Are you... okay?" Muzaki's eyes focused on him with surprising sharpness. "No," he said honestly. "No, I'm not okay. I haven't been okay in years. But I'm here, and I'm functional, and that's apparently enough for the school board."
He pulled out a stack of papers—lesson plans, maybe—and stared at them like they were written in an alien language. "Let's talk about... poetry. Or math. Or the existential dread of living in a world that continues spinning despite your complete inability to keep up with it." The class exchanged deeply concerned glances.
"Is he having a breakdown?" someone whispered. "I think he's BEEN having a breakdown," someone else whispered back. "For years."
Muzaki heard them. Of course he heard them. The classroom was small and his hearing, apparently, was the only thing that still worked properly. "Yes," he said calmly. "I've been having a breakdown for approximately six years. Ever since a field trip bus I was supervising crashed into a ravine and I watched half my students die while trying desperately to save them."
The room went dead silent.
"I managed to pull out eight kids," he continued in that same flat tone. "Twelve others died screaming while I tried to break open doors that wouldn't open. I've attended their funerals. All twelve. I remember their names. I see their faces when I close my eyes."
His hands were shaking harder now. "So no, I'm not okay. But I'm here. Because apparently, despite being a walking disaster, I'm still qualified to teach. The bar is surprisingly low."
He looked around the classroom at all the stunned, horrified faces. "Any questions?" Nobody moved. "Good. Open your textbooks to page forty-seven. We're discussing metaphors. Or trauma. They're surprisingly similar."
[NARRATOR: And that's how Jeremy High acquired its most damaged teacher yet. A teacher so broken he'd stopped pretending to be whole. A teacher whose pain was so visible it made everyone uncomfortable. A teacher who, ironically, might be exactly what these equally broken students needed—someone who proved you could survive devastation and still show up, even if you showed up wrong.]
The Afternoon Of Uncomfortable Truths
Lunch period found Riyura sitting alone in the courtyard, staring at the sky, processing everything that had happened.
Socksiku and Shoehead had reached a tentative truce—not friendship exactly, but acknowledgment. They sat at opposite ends of the cafeteria, occasionally making eye contact, occasionally nodding. Baby steps.
The new teacher situation was... concerning. Muzaki-sensei had spent the rest of class staring out the window, occasionally remembering to teach, mostly just existing in a space of profound sadness.
"He's going to be a problem," Yakamira said, appearing beside Riyura with his usual silent precision. "He's traumatized," Riyura corrected. "That's different from being a problem. Plus It's not like we've not delt with people who basically have truamtic needs for footwear, which is already stupid and dumb and already enough to deal with."
"Trauma that severe affects teaching ability. His presence destabilizes classroom dynamics—"
"His presence reminds us we're not alone in being broken," Riyura interrupted, his voice sharper than usual. "And maybe that's more valuable than perfect teaching."
Yakamira was quiet for a moment.
"You're right," he admitted. "I apologize. I'm still learning to prioritize empathy over efficiency." They sat in companionable silence, watching winter clouds drift across the pale blue sky.
"Do you think Socksiku will be okay?" Riyura asked quietly.
"Eventually," Yakamira said. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. Because he's found people who understand that 'okay' doesn't mean 'fixed.' It just means 'surviving with slightly less pain.'"
Riyura smiled—small but genuine. "When did you get so wise Riyura?" "When I learned more about the people I care about. And more than ever." Somewhere across the courtyard, Socksiku sat with a sock in his lap but wasn't eating it. Just holding it. Like a security blanket instead of a meal. Progress measured in millimeters.
And in the teacher's lounge, Yachaziku Muzaki stared at his coffee cup, wondering if he'd made a mistake coming back to teaching, wondering if his brokenness would infect his students, wondering if survival was really enough or just a prolonged form of dying.
The afternoon sun painted everything in shades of gold and shadow—beautiful and melancholy in equal measure, like existence itself.
[NARRATOR: And so ends another chapter in the Jeremy High saga. Socksiku's immediate crisis resolved but his healing just beginning. Shoehead finding unexpected kinship in his supposed rival. Muzaki-sensei arriving like a walking warning about untreated trauma. And Riyura learning that sometimes the best you can do is witness someone's pain and not look away. Not exactly a happy ending. But an honest one. And at Jeremy High, honesty counts for everything.]
TO BE CONTINUED...