This too is long ago: on Mount Hiei there was a temple boy.
When the monks, to pass an idle evening, said, "Come, let's make rice cakes," the boy listened eagerly. "But staying up waiting for them to be done would look greedy," he thought, so he went off into a corner of the room and pretended to sleep while he waited. It seemed they were done, and the monks were chattering noisily.
The boy waited, thinking, "They'll surely wake me," and when a monk said, "Excuse me, please wake up," he was glad, but thought, "If I answer the first time, they'll think I was waiting," and resolved, "I'll answer when they call again." While he lay holding back, a voice said, "Now, don't wake him. The little one has fallen fast asleep." "Oh no," he thought, and lay listening, wishing they would wake him once more, but there came only the sound of steady munching. There was nothing for it, and long afterward he answered, "Yes?" The monks laughed beyond all measure.
Boys from noble and warrior families were sent to Enryakuji on Mount Hiei as temple boys to learn scholarship and manners. A child's heart that worries about looking grown-up, and the laughter of monks who seem to have seen right through it: a warm little tale familiar from Japanese school textbooks.