When I think about it now, the ethics textbooks we used in elementary school were a treasure trove of deeply unsettling stories. This is one of them that I read back then.
The protagonist is an elementary school boy. One day, a new boy transferred into his class. This transfer student was quiet and wouldn't speak to anyone who tried to talk to him, so before long, he became an outcast in the class.
One day, during art class, they were told to draw pictures. Everyone was drawing whatever they liked, and the transfer student was painting a picture of a beautiful ocean. When the protagonist instinctively spoke to him, the transfer student opened his mouth for the first time and happily told him that it was a picture of the sea in his hometown.
However, his way of speaking had a very peculiar dialect and intonation. Classmates started snickering and mocking him, calling his speech sound like an old man's. The transfer student clammed up and stopped speaking again. That was the story.
I think the reason the transfer student hadn't been talking was probably because he was afraid of being made fun of for his dialect, but because the protagonist praised the picture of his hometown's sea, he got too happy and accidentally spoke up, only to be mocked as a result... or so I interpreted it. But what made it even more disturbing was when the homeroom teacher said:
"This is 100% the fault of the transfer student, who failed to communicate with his classmates on his very first day. It can't be helped if he gets teased or bullied."
I mean, maybe so, but come on...
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