Paper Blossoms - Teething
“What seems to be the problem?” Shouta grumbled, annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his class, again. Suzume visibly wilted under his gaze, but motioned him to come out into the hall anyway, her expression urgent.
Sighing, Shouta resigned himself to whatever was to come. “All of you have Study Hall until I say otherwise,” he drawled, slouching his way out of the class to follow the twitchy caretaker. He pretended not to notice that his class erupted into a series of screeching chairs and loud whispers as he slid the door shut behind him, the wall nearest the entrance thudding with the press of numerous bodies. Nosy brats.
He stopped dead at the sight of Kaiza, her face pressing against the hallway window, a low keen warbling from her throat and fogging the glass. She looked ill, her cheeks a dark pink, eye hazy and unfocused as she stared vacantly, her mouth appearing unusually damp. Shouta darted to her, his hand immediately going to her forehead as he checked her temperature, the throbbing heat telling him that she indeed had a fever. Kaiza growled wetly, jerking away, only to thud her head back to the glass with a groan.
“She won’t let me touch her,” Suzume fretted, hands wringing helplessly as Shouta continued the process of inspecting his charge, ignoring the girl’s pissy mood, “I tried seeing what was wrong, but she kept hissing at me and trying to burrow in her blankets and wouldn’t accept any medicine. It’s obvious she’s in pain, but if I don’t know what’s wrong and if she won’t let me, what can I do?”
“How long has she been drooling?” He asked clinically, cradling Kaiza’s face and gently massaging his thumbs across her cheeks at the most inflamed point, feeling two notable lumps under her cheekbones which aligned perfectly with her jaw, following the line until it stopped on either side of her nose. Her glaring eye fluttered closed at the attention, a pleased hum filtering out as she rested her little head heavily in his hands.
Suzume stumbled at the question, her words stuttering as she was caught off guard, “I—well—uh—It… must have started at around the same time. Yes, she’d begun rubbing her face against any object she could find when it got too much. It was about that time it started. Why?”
“Teething,” Shouta stated, subtly lifting a corner of Kaiza’s lip to see that her gums were very much inflamed and the silvery tinge of a new tooth was splitting the soft tissue, “Or at least, a form of it.” Curiously, the new tooth was breaching above the natural gum line, between the canine and the first premolar… an unexpected spot, but he supposed it wasn’t too surprising.
After all, he’d seen the x-rays of her face. It was hard to forget two snake-like fangs poised menacingly above her already wickedly sharp teeth, hinged like a separate pair of mandibles and waiting to descend. Whoever planned this kid’s development had a sick sense of humor. It was like something out of a horror movie.
Kaiza’s plaintive whine reminded him that he’d stopped his ministrations, so he continued rubbing her face, contemplating, and feeling the slight vibration in his hands as she purred contentedly. The sound pausing only for a moment as she swallowed, before picking back up again.
“Teething?” Suzume murmured, audibly confused and sounding just a bit aghast at the mere suggestion—not that it was one. “But she’s six, she shouldn’t be teething… Right?”
Shouta didn’t bother replying to that, instead turning to pin Suzume with a stare, her body automatically stiffening under his scrutiny. “I’ll keep an eye on her for the remainder of the day,” he said, noting the way she almost visibly deflated at that, “She’ll need cold food and probably something chilled to chew on. If you can get those for me, it’d be much appreciated.”
“Ah y-yes, right away!” Suzume squeaked, hopping right to the task with a nervous energy that just made Shouta sigh.
That woman made him tired.
He turned back to Kaiza, noting how lethargic she was, a far cry different from her normally cautious attentiveness, her eye barely keeping open. “What am I going to do with you?” He wondered aloud, not an ounce of irritation in his tone, just resigned fondness.
She tilted her head, mushing one of her cheeks further against his palm, her voice faint and slightly slurred as she whispered, “I’m… ssssorry.”
Shouta clicked his tongue and picked her up, cradling her close. “You’re not in trouble, you silly thing,” he grumbled, walking back to his classroom without even a hitch in his step, “Just be ready to be bored for the next hour and a half.”
