あずまんが大王- Azumanga Daioh, Azuma Kiyohiko
"…only works when x isn't equal to 0. Because you can't divide by zero."
It's a work period. Yukari-sensei is snoozing at her desk, and there's some chatter throughout the classroom. Osaka is sitting at her desk with a mechanical pencil in her hand. They're doing math right now. So she writes "85 / x" onto the blank piece of paper in front of her.
The chatter continues, unabated.
Then, Osaka writes "; x = 0".
In the distance, almost too quiet to be heard, an ominous ambience sounds. The sound lasts for less than a second. Nevertheless, all of the students in the class somehow notice and suddenly stop talking. They look around nervously.
Osaka looks up, confused. The class never quiets down this quickly. This is very strange behaviour.
A pin falls onto the ground. It's perfectly audible to everyone in the classroom. The ringing sound takes an abnormally long time to fade away.
Tomo stands up and spots Osaka's paper. She walks over to the desk and grabs the paper.
"Oh no. You didn't." Tomo's eyes widen in shock, and then fear.
"Huh?" Osaka tilts her head in confusion. "What did I do?"
Tomo's hands are shaking. "Guys, we're all doomed," she announces bluntly.
"You can't be serious," Yomi shoots out of her seat in disbelief.
Chiyo turns around in her seat. "But... It can't be..." Her eyes begin to water up.
"Eh…?" Osaka begins to feel a sinking sensation in her stomach. "What happened?"
Tomo turns around and holds up the paper for the class to see.
There's a long pause.
"Shit," Yomi says.
Some students begin to curl up in their seats. Some others begin shivering in fear.
Yukari-sensei somehow senses the atmosphere and wakes up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "What happened?" she asks drowsily. She must have sensed that something is amiss from the suddenly silence.
"Osaka here divided by zero," Tomo says.
Yukari-sensei jolts wide awake. Her eyes narrow in slits. "You idiot..."
"Wha?" Osaka frantically looks around in confusion. "What do you mean? How's that bad? I just wrote something on a paper..."
"Yeah, she just wrote it on paper!" Chiyo jumps up to defend her friend. "It could have been worse. She—"
"No matter where she did it," Yukari-sensei says in a clipped tone. "It's still enough. She's doomed us all."
Osaka gulps. How could writing something on a piece of paper doom anyone at all? Are they joking? But everyone in the class looks very dreadful right now. It doesn't seem very likely for everyone in the class to participate in a joke like this…
The ringing from the pin finally fades away to below audibility.
"You divide by zero?" Yukari-sensei says, crossing her arms. "You get zero. You forfeit your math mark."
"Ehh…" Osaka sighs.
"In any case!" Sakaki takes a stand. There is a very urgent tone her voice. "It's too dangerous to stay here any longer! We need to proceed to evacuate!"
"She's right." Kagura stands up. "Let's go! Hurry!"
Yomi nods grimly.
The students of the classroom stand up and begin rushing towards the door.
"Why not?"
Yukari-sensei gives Osaka one last glare before heading towards the classroom door as well.
Osaka just sits there with a stunned expression on her face. She glances down. The piece of paper is still on her desk. Tomo must have left the paper behind in her haste to leave.
Chiyo turns to Osaka and places a hand on her wrist. "Come on, Osaka-san. We need to leave."
Osaka nods numbly, staring off into space.
Chiyo tugs on Osaka's sleeve until the older girl stands up and begins shuffling towards the door after her. They're the last two to leave the room.
"Because you just can't, that's why. I said so. Yukari's word is law.""
News starts to spread about Osaka's actions through the panicked chatter of Yukari-sensei's students. People from other classrooms poke their heads out of their classrooms.
"Wait, really? No way."
"What should we do? Should we run?"
"We… we gotta get out of here!"
"Hurry! We don't know how much time we have left!"
"Somebody pull the fire alarm!"
Chiyo, still pulling Osaka through the hallways, claps her free hand over her ear just as the very loud alarm begins clanging.
Crowds of students flood the hallways, rushing towards the exits.
"It's a good thing we have outward-opening doors," Chiyo mutters, looking at the chaos ahead.
"Huh?" Osaka is already out of breath.
"The fire doors," Chiyo says louder. "With outward-opening doors, even if students get crushed against the door by the stampede of people behind them, the applied force will safely push the door open, instead of asphyxiating the students as would be the case with an inwards-opening door."
"I've heard that… word before," Osaka pants. "Breathing…"
Then, something explodes behind them.
Osaka and Chiyo are the only two students still remaining in this hallway. Chiyo stops to turn around and stare at the scene behind in shock. Osaka is a little slower in reacting, and so stops a few paces ahead of Chiyo.
Behind them, a swirl of plaster, brick, and papers is being engulfed by a blinding light. The center of this vortex, the blinding light, is centered at where Osaka's desk used to be.
Osaka hears a continuous roaring or whirring sound. It's loud.
"Don't look directly at it!" Chiyo shouts over the sound of the vortex. "Osaka-san! It's like that magnesium experiment… Use your peripheral vision."
Osaka nods, staring paralyzed at the whirl of materials.
The whirl is slowly growing. It begins covering more and more area, approaching them.
"You're not even our math teacher, Yukari-sensei. Why did you start talking about exponent laws all of a sudden?"
Chiyo gasps, feeling a force beginning to tug at her. She suddenly turns around and lunges forward, shoving Osaka away from the vortex with as much force as she can muster.
Adrenaline.
Osaka slams into the stairwell door just as Chiyo falls backwards from the recoil of her push, slamming into a wall outcrop at the side of the hallway.
"Ah!... Chiyo-chan!" Osaka struggles to her feet, turning around.
The cracks on the wall outcrop behind Chiyo slowly grow larger. It's as if gravity had rotated by 90 degrees for her. She's lying against the wall.
"I… I can't move, Osaka-san," says Chiyo. "Y... You need to leave now, before the sphere of influence gets to you as well!"
"Huh?... But?..." Osaka flounders.
"There's no point if we both die!" Chiyo yells.
"Ah!... You said the D word," Osaka says. "That's not good." She grimaces. "That's never good."
"I literally can't move!" Chiyo's face strains visibly as she attempts to step forward, but she doesn't budge a centimeter.
"Wait… literally or figuratively?" Osaka frowns.
"Literally literally!" Chiyo's shouts. "Listen! If this wall wasn't here, I would already be sucked into that… vortex thing!"
"I'm sorry, Chiyo-chan!" Osaka looks horrified. "I didn't know …"
Sheets of paper are flying down the hallway directly into the whirling vortex.
"Meh. I'm bored. Why not?"
"Well, hurry, then!" Chiyo shouts. "It's getting closer."
"Um…" Osaka begins pushing open the stairwell door. "What am I supposed to say in this situation? Am I supposed to ask you for your last words, or…"
Chiyo closes her eyes, smiling. "Just go already!"
"Ah, okay…" Osaka keeps hesitating.
"Bye-ni!" Chiyo shouts, straining to be heard over the roar of the wind.
"…" Osaka nods, closes the door, and then rushes down the steps as quickly as she can.
She rushes out the school without changing into her outside shoes. There's a scattered crowd of people standing a fair distance away from the school, staring in dumbstruck at the vortex.
Osaka pauses for a moment, taking a look at the vortex, too. Then, she turns around and continues running farther away from the school.
"Osaka!" Tomo runs up to her with an angry expression on her face. "Where's Chiyo-chan?"
"Um…" Osaka can't answer this question.
Sakaki shoots her a threatening glare.
Osaka gulps.
"You said so yourself. You suck at math."
She hears gasps. She turns around and sees the vortex start growing faster and faster, accelerating, quickly consuming the entire school.
Osaka's stomach does a flop.
Some people start running away. A few even get into their cars and begin driving away. The rest just stare at the vortex like deer in headlights.
"When did it get so dark?" someone asks.
Osaka looks up at the sky. A few minutes ago, it had been cloudless, bright blue, and sunny. Now, the entire sky is obscured by angry black clouds.
CRACK.
A violent lightning bolt shoots down, striking the branches of a nearby tree. A large portion of the tree falls off aflame.
Flammability or combustibility?
More lighting strikes.
CRACK. CRACK.
Osaka looks around warily. There's way too many lightning bolts for this to be normal at all. There's tens of bolts flashing at any given moment.
"Tomo-chan… Sakaki-chan…" Osaka turns to them, about to say something.
Then, another bolt flashes through the air and strikes Sakaki, the tallest among them. Smoking, she falls over.
Osaka's eyes widen.
"A dream?…" she murmurs.
"O. SA. KA." Tomo glares at her just as a nearby tornado tears a tree apart and the wooden splinters spray into the air.
Osaka watches numbly as Tomo falls over, stabbed all over by numerous wooden splinters.
"Psh. Trivialities."
"Okay, I've decided," Osaka says aloud. "If this isn't a dream, I've got some serious complaints to make."
Suddenly, the ground shakes violently. The earthquake throws Osaka off her feet. She slams into the ground on her front.
Struggling into an upright position, Osaka sees the ground beneath the school crack open into an enormous crevice. It stretches hundreds of meters long, and tens of meters wide. What remains of the school falls into the darkness below. That doesn't stop the blinding anomaly thing, though. It falls with the school, continuing to suck up chunks of rock and dirt.
She looks up. In the air, she can see the black clouds swirling and then suddenly dispersing very quickly.
In the distance, beyond all of the lightning bolts, a meteorite the size of a city begins glowing red and descending into the atmosphere. Osaka's ears pop from the change in air pressure. That huge thing will hit in the east, not too far from here. Osaka struggles to her feet and starts stumbling in the opposite direction.
"Uh…"
The impact is too loud to even register as sound to Osaka's ears. She's thrown into the air by the Earth's violent reverberations.
"Okay," she says aloud, trying to struggle to her feet again. She taps her ears. There's that roaring sound from the anomaly. Now, there's also that annoying ringing sound, too. In addition to the sound of thunder. And the sound of earthquakes. And the sound of trees being torn apart by tornadoes. Are they some special kind of tornado specially designed for ripping up trees? These are really good at it.
A shadow forms. Osaka looks towards the east. A tsunami is growing. It's getting taller and taller. Even though she's nowhere near the coast, she can easily see it approaching.
"Okay…" she says. A bead of sweat trickles down her face.
The tsunami hasn't even hit yet when the ground begins tremoring, quaking, and then right at where the school used to be, at the same location as the giant crevice, the ground cracks and then slices open in a direction perpendicular to that of the crevice. Except this crack quickly becomes orders of magnitude wider and deeper than the crevice.
It's an Earth-splitter.
From horizon to horizon, as far as Osaka can see, the slice widens, the ground splitting open. It splits wider and wider…
How large could this possibly be? Osaka slowly crawls to the edge of the slice to see. She peeks over and looks down, gripping the earth firmly. She can't see the bottom.
"Uh… okay…" she whispers.
"You're supposed to be teaching us English, not math. Math is for next period."
Then, there's another earthquake. It's similar to the one that happened when the city-sized asteroid struck, except sort of weaker. Maybe it's another asteroid, except one that's hitting further away.
This quake is all that's necessary for Osaka to lose her grip. She's thrown forward—her heart skips a beat there—and then she plummets into the depths of the Earth. And she keeps falling. And she keeps falling.
The roar of the wind as she falls into the Earth is deafening. She looks up, and past her streaming, fluttering hair, she can make out the sky quickly getting further and further away, until it's basically just a thin blue line. On either side of her are walls of rock and dirt, quickly rushing past her as she continues to fall.
She looks down, and the bottom is still nowhere in sight.
"Okay…" she says.
The walls around are looking hotter and hotter as she falls deeper into the Earth.
"That's lava?" she asks no one in particular. The bright orange gloopy stuff is rushing past her as she continues to fall. But the lava (magma?) doesn't seem to be leaking or exploding into the gap between the walls, though. Something is keeping the super-hot substance contained.
It's difficult for Osaka to ponder this situation while in freefall. The unpleasant feeling of falling is very distracting. Her stomach keeps trying to escape her ribcage.
In addition to the sound of the wind, the roar of the whirling anomaly is still loud in Osaka's ears. It's as if distance doesn't matter and the anomaly still sounds as loud as if she were standing right in front of it. But at least the sound of the lightning and asteroids and stuff are far away now, making it somewhat quieter. A small comfort.
Something flashes above Osaka. She looks up.
"Aw, come on, leave off her. Why not learn some math in English? S'fun."
Something blurs past Osaka at an enormous speed— zooming into view from above, roaring past her, and then fading away into the depths below in less than a second. It was cutting another slice. The walls around her reverberate violently.
In a direction perpendicular to the walls on either side of her, another slice begins cracking open as a direct result of that knife… thing.
"Now there's four." Osaka stares as the new quadrants of Earth begin slowly inching away from each other as well.
She falls for a while.
"What's going on!?..." Osaka wails. "Is this really all because I…?"
She looks around at the walls of molten stuff rushing past her as she continues to fall.
"I can't keep falling forever," she says, clenching her fist. "I should oughta do somethin'." She maneuvers herself close to one of the glowing walls. She reaches out with her left hand to try and bring herself to a stop.
HISSSS…
Osaka pulls back her left arm and her hand isn't there any more. Just a wrist.
"Not again…" she says, frowning.
She's still freefalling as fast as ever.
She stares at the blackened tip of her wrist. "Someone once said that eating these black burnt things might contribute to cancer…"
She stares at the wrist some more. "Smells like chicken…" she says.
She stares at the wrist as she hurtles past the centre of the inner core of the Earth and starts falling up the other side again.
"Oh… Right… Chiyo-chan said that," Osaka remembers. " 'Don't eat black burnt things.' Chiyo-chan."
She falls.
Then, the walls around her quake and then a third slice is cut into the Earth, this time at a diagonal to the previous two cuts.
"Heh. Exactly, Tomo. S'anyway, there's lots of reasons why you can't divide by zero."
And then the Earth is sliced a fourth time. Then a fifth time.
Osaka is disoriented. "Which way is up?" She looks around. There's still walls of molten— no wait, really dully glowing hot— no wait, lots of rocks and stuff shooting past her.
Something explodes in one direction, above her head. She looks that way. There's a faint yellow glow that's already fading away… But wait, that blue line appeared again. Why is it at her feet now? It's widening…
Whoosh.
Osaka shoots out of the slice at an enormous speed, hurtling into the air.
"Ahh!?" Osaka's world spins confusingly for a moment (dark blue! light blue! horizons!) before it snaps into focus and she orients herself again. "It changed directions…" she comments breathlessly.
The same supernatural force also seems to be preventing the oceans from spilling into the slice.
"I came out the other side?" Osaka stares downwards at the slice in the ocean that's quickly getting further and further away.
The air shakes.
WHOOMPH.
An enormous flaming ball of… what? whizzes into sight from behind Osaka and slams into the ocean just a blink later. The flyby blasts Osaka into a dizzying, tumbling spin.
The wide endless dark blue ocean below— no wait, now it's all steam. And is that an shockw—?
BOOOM!
Another deafening explosion fills Osaka's field of view. Giant fireball. And there are enormous steam clouds now. The shockwave is blasting Osaka upwards, and she hurtles upwards with renewed speed.
"Another asteroid?" Osaka has both of her hands clapped over her ears. So that's what that giant fireball was.
There's that annoying ringing sound in her ears again.
She's slowly spinning in the air. Her field of view is constantly panning from the giant steam cloud below to the horizon, to the sky, to zenith (more or less), to the other horizon, to the steam cloud, to the horizon again…
She has no sense of scale. Just how large is that explosion below?
Oh, the sky's quickly darkening. Altitude. Dark blue. Deep blue. Really dark blue. Indigo? Is that a colour?
And then South America comes into view. That's... a really large steam cloud. Compared to South America… It's enormous.
Osaka looks at the world below as she continues to spin in the air. In some places, there are giant storm clouds. And those clouds over there look like a hurricane. A really, really large hurricane. And flames. There're flames everywhere. Well, not everywhere. Not in the water, of course. Water can't burn. Or can it? But all of the forests are on fire. That entire forest area in South America is bright orange. Yellowish whitish. Flame. That can't be good for the environment.
Oh, and the slices. The Earth is pretty badly chopped up. See, there's one slice, two slices, three, four, five, six, seven…
Even from this height, the slices extend all the way to the horizon. Do they extend all the way around the Earth? It looks like it.
"Isn't one divided by zero just infinity?"
Something flashes out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head and sees more red dots in the distance quickly descending towards Earth. "More asteroids?" she sighs heavily as she spins in place.
Hawaii is coming into view from over the horizon. Those islands. Oh wow, the sea around them is completely red. Did all the volcanoes erupt or something? Whoa, that's a lot of lava. Magma. No, lava. Magma. Lava. Magma. Lava.
The Earth is falling away faster and faster now. Why is that? She's getting a speed boost.
As she continues to spin around in an erratic pattern, she has gotten far away enough from her home planet for her to be able to see entire face of the Earth all at once. A small square surrounds the Earth. 10⁷.
The Earth is in terrible condition. Osaka frowns. There are noticeable chunks missing from the Earth. The planet doesn't look very spherical anymore. The damage must have been caused by the larger asteroids. There are giant plumes of ash and steam coming from the impact sites. Osaka tries to count them. She quickly loses count. "Definitely more than thirty," she says.
The Earth is also horribly cut up. She can see a lot more Earth slices from this height than before. It looks creepy. Each slice is so thin. "Sixty?" Osaka wrinkles her nose. "Seventy? Eighty? Eww…"
Hurricanes, molten lava, windstorms, sandstorms, drought, grasshoppers, wheat rust…
Osaka exerts her willpower and manages to bring her spin to a stop. She stares in horror at the scene below.
She senses some motion in her peripheral vision. She flips her body around and sees the moon moving. The moon. Moving. She can actually see the movement of the moon.
"I don't remember it being that fast…" Osaka frowns. She mopes. "Is this another effect? Of my actions?..."
The moon glides through the dark sky, getting faster and faster. And faster. "Why's it getting faster!?" she asks no one in particular.
She holds out her hand at arm's length and spreads her fingers wide. The moon travels across the width of the hand in less than few seconds.
"Oh," she says. "That can't be good."
She moves her hand to the right to where the moon is and spreads her hand wide again. This time, the moon travels the width of her hand in less than one second.
Sudden realization strikes Osaka. She turns around and stares at the Earth. Then back at the moon. Then at the Earth. Then at the moon again.
"It's…" she puts her hand to her mouth. "It's heading directly towards the Earth."
No. "No, you can't do that!" Osaka mopes. "So many people have already died! If you crash into the Earth, you'll destroy everything!"
The moon continues on its trajectory towards the Earth.
"No. Bad moon. Bad." No effect. Osaka struggles to try to think of something persuasive enough to get the moon to stop. "Please stop that. I command you. Stop right this instant." Still no effect.
Osaka grimaces. She can't remember anything useful from that lesson about persuasive paragraphs from few years ago. What were the steps again? Persuade… Uh…
"Hold it right there!" The moon is getting even faster. "Go to your room!"
Osaka gasps and turns her head to follow the distant moon as it blurs across the sky. It covers the remaining distance in the blink of an—
RMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-…
Blinding light. Osaka holds up her arms to shield her eyes just as the moon violently slams into the Earth. She flinches as the Earth— well, Earth slices—crack apart. Enormous chunks fly away at enormous speeds and most of the Earth is now just countless tiny chunks of molten lava spraying everywhere—
[Female student # 42 Koyomi: Dead]
[Female teacher # 13 Minamo: Dead]
[Female student # 85 Kagura: Dead]
[Female student # 69 Kaori: Dead]
[Female teacher # 24 Yukari: Dead]
Osaka starts shivering as floods of death notifications start coming in.
"Th… they're all dead," Osaka says despondently.
The remains of the planet Earth and its moon explode. About a quarter of the molten stuff flies outwards fast enough to completely escape gravity. Even more are in the process of flying away when something blinding white flashes.
Osaka's eyes are a bit teary. She looks up with a gasp as the molten remains of the planet and moon suddenly begin imploding, compressing, contracting…
Then, all of it completely disappears inside of that blinding white anomaly vortex, which has eaten enough matter to be visible even at this distance. A spherical shockwave bursts out from the blinding light right after the last bits of her home planet get sucked in.
Osaka flies backwards with ever-increasing speed as the blinding anomaly flares.
She looks around, disoriented, as she gets further and further away.
10⁸.
That is an oval. Because it's green, it must be Earth's orbit. But it's starting to pinch inwards at the edges. It deforms more and more drastically, vanishing into the blinding anomaly. "It got sucked in too," Osaka moans.
10⁹.
10¹⁰.
10¹¹.
If she looks around, she can see some other lines, too. Orbits? Except they aren't nice and round anymore. "Them too?…" The roaring sound is still loud in Osaka's ears.
That's the sun. Osaka has a glimmer of hope. She remembers that the sun is huge. Really really huge. Surely the sun is large enough to resist the pull of this vortex. The sun is a million times the size of the Earth! Or was it a hundred? Or… ten thousand? Or one hundred fifty million?
"All that matters is that it's a lot bigger," Osaka says, trying to keep her hopes up.
Then, with a sinking feeling, she realizes that the sun is slowly drifting towards the bright vortex as well, just like all the other planets. From this distance, all she can see are the two bright points, slowly drifting closer to each other. When the two bright points finally meet, there's a brief pause, and then Osaka's entire vision goes pure white.
When Osaka's vision clears again in a few seconds, a bunch of other ovals are rapidly shrinking into the distance as she hurtles even faster out of the solar system.
The bright anomaly shimmers.
Stars. The stars in the background are moving.
10¹ⁿ.
The stars are accelerating towards the vortex at a tremendous speed. There's a swirling disc of glowing hot star stuff around the vortex now. It's swirling around faster and faster as it gets absorbed.
"Black… holes…" Osaka remembers hearing about wheelchairs from somewhere. She feels a feeling of dread. "If… If I get sucked in that… I'll… I'll…" Self-consciously, she looks around. "Am I moving fast enough? To get away in time?"
She's shooting out of the Milky Way. By now, the entire galaxy beginning to perceptibly move and nudge around. It gradually spins faster and faster, and then the entire galaxy is swirling around many times a second, turning into another one of those accretion disc things around the vortex.
Osaka stares at the scene, speechless.
"No, it's not. There's like a bunch of reasons why, but I can't remember. But I'll show you. Look, see what happens if I try to divide by zero in this calculator."
The swirling disc must be incredibly dense. Too dense. The pressure's too great. It's too much. She feels the beginnings of panic.
CRACKKKKKKKK.
Osaka flinches as the areas above and below the disk violently crack open. Shards of space fly everywhere. As she thought, it was too much for space to take…
Green numbers begin leaking out of the crack.
Osaka continues hurtling away.
10²³.
All of the other galaxies—they're like pinpoints of light from this distance—begin drifting towards the central vortex crack thing with the speed of eye floaters.
Those are galaxies? That's amazing speed. For galaxies.
No, they aren't like eye floaters anymore. They're…They're like train lights now. The lights of trains in the night traveling at top speed across a bridge.
Another super vision-filling white flash.
Hundreds… maybe thousands… Maybe millions… Maybe milliards?... Or was it billions? Billiards?... There are so many galaxies are speeding towards the vortex now. Her vision flashes white every now and then as more and more galaxies get absorbed into the vortex. The galaxies are moving at super-speed now. They're starting to look more like long lines than points.
The crack in space cracks wider and wider, spreading out in different directions. An ocean of green numbers begins diffusing into space. The broken space.
The roaring of the anomaly is still loud in her ears.
Osaka clutches her head. "Uwehhh…" she moans.
She looks at the devastation with despair. This is too much. Reality…
Osaka flinches as the universe tremors. The crack is cracking wider and wider in violent bursts.
0x000000007A (0xC…
Some numbers flash in her peripheral vision when she blinks, but they're fleeting and she doesn't have time to make sense of them.
SIGSEGV (0x0...
A terrible high-pitched whining sound fills Osaka's ears.
cpp12:85: invalid `...'
Osaka is spinning around helplessly, and bright lights keep flaring and flashing. Leprosy? No, stereoscopy? Epilepsy? That thing that someone said happened in a Pokemon episode or something. The flashing lights. That thing. The brain— thing.
"Uh… Oi, Osaka. You… you all right?"
The high pitched whining. It just keeps going.
"M… Make it stop!" Osaka cries, clutching her ears.
A deafening scraping buzzing screech fills the air.
ENOMEM (0x0...
EDEADLOCK (0x0...
ESHUTDOWN (0x0...
The sound is unrelenting. Osaka has stopped spinning and stopped moving. Her body is frozen in place, and the scene around her is locked up and glitching.
10⁶⁵⁵³⁵.
!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!
!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!
!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!
10¹⁸⁴⁴⁶⁷⁴⁴⁰⁷³⁷⁰⁹⁵⁵¹⁶¹⁵.
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!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!
!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!
()
Osaka shoots upright in her bed, gasping for breath.
Still panting, she puts her hand to her chest. Her heart is pounding rapidly.
She remains sitting like this for a while, looking around, disoriented. Her body is covered in sweat.
She clutching her covers. Her breathing calms down somewhat. She looks at the window. It's still dark outside.
"Isn't one divided by zero just infinity?" Tomo asks, shooting up her hand.
"No, it's not," Yukari-sensei says immediately. She crosses her arms and closes her eyes.
"Why?" Tomo asks.
"Ehhh, I don't remember." Yukari-sensei waves her arm dismissively. "There's like a bunch of reasons why. But here, look." The teacher holds up a standard scientific calculator. "See what happens when I try to divide by zero?" She starts typing in numbers on the calculator.
"No, stop!" Osaka cries, jumping out of her seat.
Yukari-sensei stops, staring at Osaka with a puzzled expression. She's already inputted '4' and 'divide' into the calculator. Her finger is currently hovering over the '0' button.
Everyone is staring at Osaka with bewildered expressions on their faces.
Then, Osaka collapses back onto her seat and then starts shaking. Her eyes go blank.
"Oi, Osaka, you all right?" Yukari-sensei looks very bewildered.
"Moon, stop that…" murmurs Osaka, staring vacantly at the board.
"Uh…" Yukari-sensei scratches her head.
Chiyo hesitantly turns around in her seat "O…Osaka-san, are you all right?"
"C...Chiyo-chan?" Osaka tilts her head, her eyes unfocused. "Aren't you dead?"
"Geh!?" Chiyo shrinks back into her seat in shock. "Um…"
"Oi, Osaka, if you're not going to participate in class because you're not feeling well, you can just go to the nurse's office," Yukari-sensei says.
Kagura raises her hand. "Can we get back to literature now, Yukari-sensei?"
Yukari-sensei's face hardens. "No."
"I'd really like to do math in math class, and literature in literature class," Kagura says, frowning.
Chiyo talks to Osaka in a low voice. "Would you like me to help you there?"
"I'm your homeroom teacher!" Yukari-sensei says. "I can do whatever I want."
"She has a point though, Yukari-sensei!" Tomo exclaims with a bright smile. "I'm sure the principal would be mad if you supplied us all with misinformation!"
"Hmph," Yukari-sensei crosses her arms. "I may not look it, but I remember some math."
"You just told us a minute ago that you suck at it," Tomo points out enthusiastically.
"Nothing's stopping me from teaching it, though," Yukari-sensei says.
"We can!" Tomo shoots up her hand. "Democracy rules!"
"This isn't a democracy." Yukari smiles smugly. "It's an autocracy!"
Chiyo pats Osaka on the shoulder. "I know how you feel," Chiyo says softly. "That traumatized look... But you mustn't stay like this forever! There were some recovery techniques that I used to overcome the memories of that experience with the Yukari-mobile." She shivers, and then shakes her head, as if clearing her thoughts. "I think they can help here, too."
Chiyo puts Osaka's arm around her shoulder and then slowly helps her out of her seat. They slowly walk towards the door.
"What about a constitutional monarchy?" someone else pipes in.
"I don't know what that is," Yukari-sensei retorts. "Well, in any case, fine. Let's have a vote. Who thinks I should stop generously teaching you about math now?"
Twenty-seven hands immediately shoot up.
Yukari-sensei counts all of the hands. "…twenty-six, twenty-seven. I see."
She crosses her arms, smiling. "However, I vote no. Since I'm the teacher, I get special privileges. I count for twenty-eight votes. Therefore, I win! So, let's keep learning math."
Groans fill the classroom.
"Now, as I was saying." Yukari holds up the calculator. "If I divide by zero here—"
"NO!" a voice cries from outside of the classroom.
A sweat-drop forms on Yukari-sensei's face. She turns to the doorway. "If I just divide by zero here—"
"NO!" Osaka scrambles out of Chiyo's supportive hold and wobbles back towards the classroom.
"Ah!" Chiyo tries to stop her friend. "Osaka-san!"
Yukari-sensei frowns. "You're not even in the classroom, Osaka!"
Osaka whimpers.
"I'm just going to push a button—"
"NO!" Osaka's arms wave wildly as Chiyo tries to hold the girl back.
"…It's just going to—"
"NO!"
"…It's not like—"
"NO!"
"…Nothing will—"
"NO!"
"The numbers—"
"NO!"
"Just listen—"
"NO!"
"The display—"
"NO!"
"But what—"
"NO!"
"How could—"
"NO!"
"Since when—"
"NO!"
"You can't—"
"NO!"
"It won't—"
"NO!"
"If you—"
"NO!"
"Your MOM—"
"NO!"
Yukari-sensei grabs her hair. "Augh! Fine!"
Chiyo drags Osaka out of the classroom. Yukari-sensei huffs, crossing her arms.
あずまんが大王- Azumanga Daioh, Azuma Kiyohiko