Small Room Of Pain

I've always disliked teachers who exact physical retribution on their students. I think it's cruel, unprofessional and down right detestable. Unfortunately, one of my students was subjected to physical pain in one of my lessons. This student is a pale 10 year old called Yushin. I teach him, along with his twin sister Mao, every afternoon. Their English is non-existent, so I have adopted a basic approach to teaching. The lessons are normally a sedentary affair where I use various visual aids to assist their learning. For the benefit of Yushin, Mao and myself (for I was becoming bored of constantly sitting in one place for an hour) I decided to change the structure of the lesson by introducing a game which promised running about in a reckless manner. I named the game Find it!
This involved me placing various animal picture cards around the room then bellowing to Yushin and Mao to find a particular animal card. They would then joyously search for the picture card. The first person to find it would get a point. Unfortunately, I had misjudged the room size for this game. You see, the room I teach these kids in is no bigger than a hamster cage. Finding interesting places to put the cards became a chore because there were no places to hide them. There was the desk, the white-board and the door. That was it. To obviate this problem, I asked Yushin and Mao to close their eyes and count to 50. This had the duel purposes of practising numbers and allowing me much needed time to plot where the hell to put the cards. The tiny interior of the room, however, restricted any cunning card concealment. The only option open to me was placing the cards in dangerously precarious positions. I placed cards next to a mouldy bin, inside a pair of vacant slippers, under the low-lying table and on top of a cactus plant. I felt bad, but I had a masochistic curiosity to see how this game would unfurl. I asked Yushin and Mao to open their eyes.
Mao had been uncomfortable about this whole arrangement from the start judging by her unsettled face. She had been quick to realize that a game of Find-it! inside this tiny room was a suicide mission. Yushin, on the other hand, was beside himself with delirious anticipation. He was like a wild beast on a leash waiting to be set free. I duly obliged. "Find the.....elephant!" I said, and he was off like a rocket! Mao, in contrast, half-heartedly roamed around the small confines of the room, not wishing to commit herself to bodily harm. Meanwhile, Yushin was oblivious to his surroundings. The only thing that concerned his curious mind was to find the elephant, and to hell with anything that stood in his way, even if that thing was the prickly cactus plant.
"AAAAAHHHHHhhahahahahahah!" he screamed, as he impaled his hand on the plant when he lunged at the elephant card. I couldn't decide whether he was in pain or having fun. Perhaps he thought pain was fun.
Much to Mao's rightful chagrin, I continued this game.
"Find the...rabbit!"
Whooosh! Off went Yushin on his expedition of pain. He clattered into the door, the white-board, ducked under the table and banged his head on the under-side as he got up, all for the purpose of finding a ripped card with a smiling rabbit on it. Mao spotted the rabbit in a slipper and slowly shuffled towards it as Yushin was climbing the walls like Spiderman.
Mao picked up the card, lazily waved it at me, and sighed as she sat back down.
Yushin was slamming into the bookcase at this point, with his head inside his bag.
"Yushin, Mao has found the card," I said.
He was still searching for the rabbit card inside his bag, whilst standing up.
"Yushin! Mao has found the card. It's not in your bag," I reiterated.
He yanked the bag off his head and looked to Mao who was slumped in her seat and showed the rabbit card to him. He looked crestfallen. He had all those wounds and had nothing to show for it, even if the prize was a ripped picture of a rabbit.