“Well! I’m gonna fail my English class,” Sano announced as he shed his backpack, sat down heavily, and placed squarely in the center of the table his tray full of tacos.

Sano’s companion, immediately pushing the tray away from where it encroached upon his own lunch space, glanced up through spidery bangs and remarked, “You were already saying that before you took the final.”

“Yeah, well, now I know for sure. Stupid little mini essays…”

“You don’t seem terribly concerned.”

Sano shrugged. “It’s hard to be really worried about anything this close to break.”

With a scowl, Saitou returned to the task of applying mustard to his sandwich. “That attitude seems to be contagious, if my last class was any indication.”

Sano always observed Saitou’s lunch with some amusement. The older man seemed to have a stock of frozen sandwiches, comprised only of meat and cheese (which would be thawed by lunch time), onto which he would then put lettuce and tomato from a ziplock and mustard from a packet. What entertained Sano most about this was the mental image of Saitou at home painstakingly laying out the meat and cheese on twenty sandwiches at a time in order to freeze them to take to work every day. Sano had long since run out of energy to tease him about it, however, so today it didn’t interrupt their conversation. “I seriously can’t blame anyone for trying not to think about the kind of finals I’m sure you give,” he grinned as he unwrapped one of his tacos. “Taking one of your classes is probably about the same as suicide.”

“So you’ve theorized before,” Saitou replied — somewhat sourly, Sano thought.

“Well, I’ve just got one more final at 1:45,” the younger man said through a mouthful of spicy beef and lettuce, “and then I’m done! Then it’s home for Christmas!”

“Idiotic song.” It seemed at first that Saitou’s statement was an answer of some sort, and Sano blinked in confusion before he realized what he’d last said had overlaid the same words emanating in wavering, sonorous tones from the speakers above.

At these latter he glanced up pointlessly as he wondered, “Is it?” He hadn’t really been paying attention to the music.

“He says he’ll be home for Christmas,” the teacher elaborated in some irritation, “that whoever he’s talking to can plan on him being there. But at the end he admits it may only happen in his dreams. With as slowly as he’s singing, they might already have made all of their plans by the time he gets around to letting them know he may not actually come home.”

Sano chuckled. “You’re right,” he admitted; “seems pretty rude. Which reminds me I forgot to email my dad.”

“You mean,” Saitou wondered with exaggerated expression and tone of incredulity, “you haven’t mentioned your plans to him every day for the last two weeks?”

“I don’t talk to my dad every day,” retorted Sano. “And I’m excited to go home, OK? You know, since my dad can afford to eat more than, like, three times a week?”

Though Saitou’s monosyllabic laugh reiterated his attitude toward poor college students — especially, Sano was all too aware, poor college students that didn’t budget very well and spent half of the week’s food money on one day’s lunch at the cafeteria Taco Bell — still he seemed to be in a worse mood than usual. Was it just because of finals?

Even in retrospect, Sano was unsure what had prompted him, that cool day back in early September, to go sit down across the little table from what was obviously a teacher ousted from the faculty lounge by the construction then in progress. He was equally uncertain why said teacher had put up with him when a mere half hour’s conversation had evinced the man’s disliking of the human race in general and freshmen in particular. How it had then become a custom for the two of them to eat lunch together every weekday, exchanging news and insults and the occasional joke, was as much a mystery as the other points. Sano liked to think there was a subconscious and perhaps precognitive explanation for it, but always reminded himself firmly not to get his hopes too high.

Of course, his hopes had to have some sort of elevation today, given what he proposed to propose… and he feared that nearly an entire semester of repressing his optimism might be responsible for the complete unpreparedness he felt for the task.

All of a sudden Saitou rolled his eyes, the motion of the irises seeming very pointedly directed toward the ceiling (and therefore, presumably, the speakers therein and the music the latter were playing).

“What now?” Sano wondered, sucking on his drink.

“Why would any sane person want to be wished a ‘merry little Christmas’ like some kind of backwater idiot?” Saitou shook his head and finished with muttered disdain, “I’m surprised the song doesn’t use the word ‘y’all’ in it anywhere.”

Leaning his chin on his fist Sano replied with a grin, “Not much into making the Yuletide gay?”

Saitou just rolled his eyes again.

Then as silence fell but for the continuation, above their heads, of the song in question, Sano took a surreptitiously deep breath, working up his courage. Finally he said, as casually as he could manage, “Speaking of Christmas, I got you a present.”

This caused Saitou to look up from his meal rather abruptly. He expressed no surprise at the announcement, however, merely stared.

Sano tried not to let Saitou hear him clearing his throat as he bent and retrieved the wrapped package from his backpack. He wasn’t exactly heartened by Saitou’s immediate raising of an eyebrow as the object changed hands.

“It’s a tie,” Saitou said flatly. It wasn’t even a remotely inquiring tone; he wasn’t guessing.

“How the hell do you know that?” demanded Sano.

“Because you were as uncreative packaging it as you were selecting it.”

“Hey, it could be anything!” Sano didn’t want to admit that, being fully conscious of the possible implications of a present, he’d chosen as generic a gift as he thought would still be even the slightest bit meaningful. “Just because it’s about the size and shape of a box a tie comes in doesn’t mean…” But he trailed off as Saitou removed the wrapping paper and disclosed the tie within.

The eyebrow rose even higher as Saitou looked, and the expression of wordless incredulity now turned toward Sano bordered on the reproving. Finally Saitou demanded, “And what on earth makes you think I would be caught dead wearing something like this?”

Despite the premonition that his gift might provoke this precise reaction, Sano felt, in addition to a little crestfallen, the stirrings of irritation. “I swear every teacher here’s got a Christmas tie except you,” he explained. “You always wear those boring ones with diamonds or those little bent teardrops with shit all over them.”

“Nobody expects the Japanese teacher to wear a Christmas tie.” Saitou glanced again through the clear plastic at the chaos of candy canes that covered the article in question, rolled his eyes, and bent to stow the present away in his briefcase. Well, at least he hadn’t refused it outright.

Sano was about to protest that Christmas was celebrated in Japan as well, but stopped himself before he’d said a single word to that effect… it really would be too embarrassing if the discussion turned to the romantic nature of that particular holiday in that particular country. Instead, he continued to defend his choice. “Hey, at least I didn’t get you one with Santa or some shit on it, OK? I mean, I saw some pretty horrible and scary ones at the store. You should be thanking me for not getting you any of those.”

With a slight smirk that seemed to arise almost in spite of himself, Saitou shook his head and returned to his food. After a few moments he said grudgingly, “I suppose I should thank you for the thought, at least.” He didn’t actually thank Sano, but, really, that was close enough… and more than Sano had expected anyway.

Saitou usually brought vegetables to eat alongside his sandwich. As with the latter, Sano had long since run out of verbal ammunition to make fun of him for his elementary-school-healthy selections (and, since Saitou never ran out of ammunition, proper eating was a subject best avoided when Sano was having tacos). But he was tempted to dredge up some of the teasing statements he’d made back when he’d still been able to think of new ones, just because the silence was beginning to feel rather heavy. Logically he knew it wasn’t any more uncomfortable than any silence between them on any day, but it seemed worse because he still hadn’t managed to ask what he really wanted to ask.

He was on his last taco, still vacillating, and Saitou was finishing off his iced tea, when the teacher made his next comment. Predictably this was, “People who write Christmas music all seem to be morons.”

“Hey, I like this one,” protested Sano.

“‘Giddy-up, jingle-horse, pick up your feet,'” Saitou repeated in a drawn-out tone of utmost scorn, and Sano had to admit that the words sounded even stupider than usual in that dark, serious voice. “It might be less irritating if the idiot who wrote it had a basic grasp of the syntax of the original song.”

“OK, when you start using words like ‘syntax,'” Sano laughed, “that’s when I really stop caring.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot too,” Saitou muttered.

Sano didn’t bother getting annoyed at this insult (which was typical in any case), mostly because he thought he knew by now what really had Saitou so irritable — and was fairly certain it wasn’t the music itself. To test his hypothesis, he actually listened to the next song that came on, and voiced the first complaint about it that sprang to mind: “If he’d take off those blue suede shoes, I bet his Christmas wouldn’t be so blue.”

Saitou lifted an eyebrow in obvious disdain. This could merely have been a criticism of Sano’s powers of criticism, but Sano felt his theory was confirmed. “I just thought you could use some help in your Grinching,” he explained.

The eyebrow rose even higher, now in skepticism. “‘Grinching?'”

“Well, you’re all kinds of hating Christmas today.”

“I’m not hating Christmas,” Saitou contradicted. “I have no feelings one way or another about Christmas. It’s this stupid music I can’t stand.”

“And my present.”

The slight shift in Saitou’s expression interested Sano; he wasn’t quite sure he could pinpoint what exactly had changed, but somehow its annoyance stood out distinctly from the previous. “If you were going to waste money,” the teacher admonished, “you might as well have bought me something useful.”

“How the hell is a tie not useful?!”

“A tie I’m likely to drop off at Goodwill next week is–”

“You wouldn’t!” Sano scowled at the other man, pounding a fist onto the table so the remains of his lunch jumped. “I know you’re a jerk, but seriously.”

Saitou’s ambiguous answering smirk indicated he was slightly cheered. This didn’t last long, however, for the moment some incredibly obnoxious chorus of kids and a consequently very creepy-sounding adult singer burst out of the speakers with the beginnings of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Saitou stood abruptly. “I need a cigarette,” was the only explanation or invitation he offered, leaving Sano to clear up the table and hasten after him as quickly as possible.

By now Sano definitely believed he knew exactly what was wrong, and also exactly how to handle it; the only remaining point of uncertainty was exactly how Saitou would respond. This resulted in a return of his nervousness as he continued to attempt to decide exactly how to word his statement. Heartened as he was by the apparent accuracy of his hypothesis, his state of encouragement had been largely canceled out by the extended response to his present. How the hell was he supposed to put this so it sounded appealing and casual and… not-stalkerish?

The issue, luckily, largely left his hands. As he joined Saitou in the frigid shadow of the building on the north side, snow crunching beneath his feet and his breath as visible as the smoke Saitou was already exhaling, his pocket gave a chirp indicating that the lack of signal inside had caused him to miss yet another call. Withdrawing his cell, he noted that this had actually been someone he wanted to talk to. Turning away from the teacher, who was watching him wordlessly, he called back. As he conversed, he couldn’t help being acutely aware of how the discussion must sound to someone that could only hear half of it:

“Hey, dad, what’s up? …nah, I just had no signal… …no, I got one more this afternoon… …pretty good, all except English, but I knew that would suck… …yep! So I’ll probably be there around three or four… …nah, I’m good… …hey… um, do you mind if I bring someone home with me? …no, not even a girl, actually; it’s a friend from school — well, sortof — actually he teaches here… …nah, he only teaches Japanese history and boring shit like that… …yeah, he is, and his family’s all still over there — and he hates them all anyway — so he’s got nobody to spend Christmas with… …no, he doesn’t have any except me, far as I can tell… he’s kindof an asshole… …nah, he pretends not to care, but you should hear him whining about the Christmas music on the radio… …no, no, you’ll like him… …really? OK, cool… …see you tomorrow, then… …yeah, bye.”

Snapping the cell phone shut, he replaced it in his pocket and took another subtly deep breath, bracing himself, before turning to face his companion. Saitou was staring at him with the same skepticism he’d displayed a couple of times already today, but now there was a touch of something else to it — curiosity, perhaps? Sano had spent a lot of time studying Saitou’s facial expressions since he’d met him, but feared it would take a good deal longer than a single semester — years, maybe — to understand them completely. And he refused to allow himself to believe there was some kind of pleased surprise in that look. Just in case.

“Well?” he asked, trying hard not to allow his tone to express his uncertainty. The precise interpretation of Saitou’s arrangement of features still eluded him, so Sano added, “Your last class is done by eleven tomorrow, right? Think you can stand to sit in a car with me for, like, four hours?”

Finally Saitou’s stillness broke as he raised his cigarette to his lips, but his eyes hadn’t left Sano’s face; Sano thought his expression was more contemplative now than anything else. At last he said, “That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you’re going to play any Christmas music during the drive.”

A huge wave of relief and joy washed over Sano at these words, but, remembering that he wanted to seem not-stalkerish, he restrained himself from any overt display of any such emotion. “I thought you wouldn’t care so much,” was his reply instead, “now that your Christmas isn’t going to suck.”

“You have an inordinately high opinion of your own entertainment value.”

“Hey, my family’s plenty entertaining,” objected Sano with a grin.

“And you think your dad will like me,” the teacher mused, stepping to the ash tray to dispose of his cigarette butt. After this, however, he made no motion to go back into the building.

Cold as it was, Sano felt his heart warmed by the thought that Saitou didn’t mind standing out here in the snow, with him, all alone, making plans with him to go home with him and meet his family. That seemed like considerable progress for someone that didn’t think too highly of the human race in general and freshmen in particular; actually, it seemed like the best Christmas present Sano had received in many years.

“He’ll like you better if you wear that tie,” he said, grin widening.

“You’re already getting me to help you celebrate a holiday that means almost nothing to me,” replied Saitou, his smirk also widening slightly. “Don’t push your luck.”

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