[Cram School x Episode] Looking Up at the Stars ❇️ A Miraculous Time 🌃 | As an examinee. As a third-year junior high student.
◆ The Earth Rotates
“Wait, teacher. Is the movement of the stars clockwise? Or counter-clockwise?”
Uchiyama, a third-year junior high girl with entrance exams just around the corner, tilts her head while solving practice problems. As the classroom manager, I also use the little precious time left to resolve the anxieties that examinees carry.
A question asking whether the movement of the stars is “clockwise” or “counter-clockwise”… It might seem like a simple question, but I feel a sense of malice from the side that created it. It feels like they are intentionally trying to confuse the examinees… Am I the only one who thinks so?
I have decided to use the entire room to explain this problem.
“Okay? First, this is north.” I point toward the north. “And remember, stars move from east to west.” I move my arm in a wide arc, slowly drawing a curve from east to west. “Okay? Remember this movement.”
Uchiyama nods firmly.
“Now, look toward the north. Which way is this movement?” I draw the arc again.
“Counter-clockwise.”
“That’s right, it moves counter-clockwise around the North Star. But, look at the southern sky.”
“Ah. Clockwise.”
“Exactly. The answer changes depending on the direction you are looking. That’s why it’s better not to memorize it as clockwise or counter-clockwise. Just remember that they move from east to west.”
Uchiyama wears a satisfied expression.
◆ What is important as an examinee
“Come to think of it, the boys who were studying on their own. The three of them haven’t returned from their break yet, I wonder what happened.”
That’s right. It has been over an hour since they left the self-study room around 5:00 PM. The members are the usual Yamamura, as well as Matsuura and Watanabe.
Yamamura usually finds some excuse to wander in and out of the classroom, so I’m not particularly surprised. However, even Watanabe, who is usually diligent about his studies, hasn’t returned.
What on earth is going on? The entrance exam is in five days. What will they do if they catch a cold in this cold weather?
“I can’t believe it! It’s right before the entrance exam!” Uchiyama shouts. I completely agree. There is no sense of seriousness at all.
This is… I’ll have to lecture them when they get back.
◆ Planets revolve
Two hours later, they returned with smiles on their faces.
Hey.
With entrance exams just around the corner, you left your studies behind.
What were you doing out until this hour?
However, I was dumbfounded by the words
Matsuura blurted out as soon as he returned.
"Ah~. The stars were so beautiful!"
Hey, hey. You've got to be kidding me...
Are you telling me that you guys, whose grades are by no means good,
carelessly wandered around,
and spent two hours just staring blankly at the sky?
If you had that much time,
you could have finished a year's worth of past exam papers!
Don't you have any sense of urgency...?
Just as the emotional words were about to come out of my throat,
Watanabe immediately interrupted.
"Did you know, teacher?
Today,was a planetary alignment!
I was momentarily confused by the unfamiliar term.
Huh?
Planetary alignment...?
What's that? I don't know it...
▼ February 28, 2026 Planetary Alignment
That's right.
This day was February 28th.
I didn't know at all, but
it seems this was a very rare day when six planets
could be seen above the horizon.
Huh. Was it such an amazing day?
Can we still see them?
Just as I was about to ask that, I suddenly realized.
Oh, right! We can't see them.
Because...
Venus, the evening star, is
an inferior planet that orbits inside the Earth.
In other words, it can only be seen at sunset.
At 7:00 PM, when it had already gotten dark.
Venus must have surely set into the western sky.
That was, ironically,
something I had taught them.
◆ Planets in a row
Cram school teachers teach studies.
Of course, wishing for the students' success.
However, I realized it then.
What I was teaching was knowledge from textbooks.
It could never compare to the wonder they witnessed firsthand.
“It looked a bit reddish, didn't it? What planet was that?”
Matsuura says with a smile.
“No idea.”
When Watanabe answers,
the three of them burst into laughter together.
For them, the names of the stars they saw at that moment
might not have mattered at all.
What will surely remain in their memories is
this moment when they could laugh together.
Days spent obsessed with the approaching entrance exams.
If it weren't for the planetary alignment, it would have been just another ordinary day.
But it was precisely such an ordinary day that
was an irreplaceable day when I met them—
they taught me that.
Just like that sky where the planets lined up in a row.
And, for me too, the
day of partingwith them is drawing near.
◆ What is important as a third-year junior high student
“I even saw a shooting star!”
Yamamura says excitedly, but
his words aren't sinking in.
I don't know if it's hay fever or what, but...
he has tissues stuffed into both nostrils.
First of all, please do something about that look.
To talk to them while they are so gleeful
about what it means to be an examinee
now feels tactless.
They surely know.
That they must study.
However,
while they are examinees,
they are also third-year junior high students who are sad to part ways.
The time they have left to spend together until graduation
is by no means long.
February 28, 2026.
That day, when they tossed their study materials aside at the cram school,
the memory of watching the starry sky with their friends
will surely becomea treasure they will never forget for the rest of their lives.
Studying is certainly important.
But this day, this moment, is just as important.
On the day they can see the planetary alignment again,
the three of them will surely remember.
This 'moment' that will never come again.
There is just one thing I regret.
Why didn't you include the teacher in that miracle?
#Essay
#Youth
#TeacherAndStudent
#EntranceExam
#PlanetaryAlignment
#Graduation
#AnOrdinaryDay
#AMiraculousTime
#Science
#CelestialBodies
#MarumoriHappaSpringEvent