Soup

"Hey, are they still selling bread?" I ask my JTE.

"I think so. Hurry. Run!" She answers.

I hurry. I run. I get to the bread desk (I don't know what it's really called, but they sell bread at a desk). I see fried rice onigiri. Sweets. Melon bread. Chocolate bread. Nothing lunch-worthy. No sandwiches.

I buy a coffee and go back to the teacher's room, defeated.

Some time passes, and the teacher comes up to me.

"Did you get your bread?" She asks.

"All they had was sweet stuff," I answered.

"Oh, the sandwiches sell out fast. Would you like some soup?"

"Would I like... what?" I ask, confused.

"I have a lot of instant soup packets. Look, I have pumpkin, corn, clam chowder... would you like one?"

"Uh, sure," I answer. "Pumpkin sounds good."

She gives me the soup packet. I make my pumpkin soup over in the break room. Despite being instant soup, it's really good, probably better than any conbini-tier sandwich would have been.

"Thank you so much," I say.

"Anytime," she says with a laugh and a smile.

This isn't the first time I've been shown such kindness. This particular JTE is always helping me out. She's given me fruit before when I said I hadn't eaten all day. She gave me a translation of grocery items when I said I had trouble finding certain things. She helps me practice my Japanese. She tells me about interesting things to do and places to go when I tell her I have no plans for the weekend. She talks to me every morning and every afternoon, on the way to and back to the bus stop.

All voluntarily, and all with a laugh and a smile. All without me asking for a thing.

It's really nice to work with kind people. They can make or break a day or a job.

Update: Mere hours after making this post, another JTE came to me, bearing a gift.

"It's pumpkin soup," she said. "You can make it in the break room if you'd like."

I love my co-workers. Double soup in a single day. Jackpot.