Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 10 (section)

===Record 6: Is That Your Voice?===

'''03/11/1997

'''8:40

Our final exams ended today.

With that over, we only had to wait for the exams to be returned and then graduate. Since these were the last final exams of middle school for us, everyone in the back of the class was exciting themselves with some gamble confinement and other cheating methods that were too difficult to actually pull off.

You had your textbook open for once in the seat next to mine.

You had a really serious look on your face, so I asked about it.

“You already got into the high school you wanted, so what does the exam matter?”

“I don’t like the thought of using that as an excuse to goof off just like the adults assume I will.”

Yeah, that sounded like something you would say.

I sighed and opened my modern Japanese book.

“Our next exam is drawing a flipbook in the corner of our modern Japanese textbook, right?”

“Yes. I’m doing mine on World War Two, but what about you?”

“Like I said before, I’m going to draw someone eating an extra-large serving of tempura but in reverse. They’ll be pulling more and more food out of their mouth with the chopsticks and lining it up on the plate. How does that sound?”

“What is it with you and those gross things?”

“Jealous, aren’t you?”

Not even I was sure why she would be, but then I took a look around. The class was getting pretty unruly, but today was a special case. This might be how we always wanted to act, but we couldn’t contain ourselves today. And there was no going back either.

That was the thought on my mind when the door opened and our homeroom teacher entered.

“It’s time for your exam, but flipbook topics in this category are banned for being vulgar.”

He wrote “anything in reverse” on the chalkboard.

''Who’s the spy?'' I wondered as you started laughing.

'''Author Comment:

School textbooks are mostly just for doodling in, if you ask me.

I can’t remember a Japanese or music textbook where the faces of the authors and musicians remained unmolested.

Bach’s was detailed and large, so it was a common target.

A friend of mine in film studies did the reverse eating thing. The guy pulled the food from his mouth, lined it up in his lunchbox, wrapped that up, carried it to the convenience store, and received money for it.