Oh dear oh dear oh dear

There's a silence looming over class 2-5, where a student is missing. I used to walk by the class every day several times on the way to my own homeroom, only a short walk down the hall, but the heaviness reminds me that I'm a coward and I go the long way around now. Anything not to notice.

Nobody wanted to tell me, which was okay because I didn't want to hear. I already knew. I understand more Japanese than they think I do. But when my friends start crying and shooting me uncomfortable looks, I can see their fear of me asking what's going on. I'm just as afraid of the truth as they are. Maybe even more afraid.

But Takebayashi Sensei decided someone had to make sure I know. Of course I knew. Of course. I looked on the internet. I watched television. I listened to the teacher break the news. I thought and pieced things together, reaching a crazy crazy crazy conclusion.

"Have you heard?" he asks, broken, altered. I nod, terrified that he will continue. He does and as I listen to him talk, I realize that he is not talking to inform me. He is talking because his heart is broken. Because the kid was in his club. T. Sensei had just seen him, just helped him with his tennis. Can you believe it? He played tennis.

Sensei couldn't stop talking after he started. I lost my fear as I listened to him. I don't think I knew the kid (though I'm far too terrified to look at a picture), so I was spared a lot of pain. Sensei knew the kid well. Every day for almost two years, they practiced tennis together.

"He was so healthy," Sensei tells me in disbelief, " he had no idea." Sensei's English is getting worse by the minute, but I don't correct him.

There has been no tennis practice all week. I don't know if there can ever be again.

Police on Tuesday arrested Mitsuaki Oji, 42, on suspicion of killing his three children, who were found dead at their home Monday in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto.
Oji, who has been hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt, has confessed that he strangled sons Shota, 16, and Kenta, 14, and daughter Miho, 13, sources said.
A suicide note read in part: "I cannot do anything for my children. I cannot even let them go to university."
Police said Oji lied to his wife, 39, about working at an interior company in Kyoto which he had never worked for