Ah, but in that context the eyes are wandering, not wondering 
has nothing else useful to add
slinks away again
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I said what I meant!
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That’s exactly right! 
If someone has a 不思議な顔 they have a strange, funny looking face. Depending on the context it can also be mysterious or even wonderful. You can find various examples of 不思議な here and here. For a specifically suspicious face I would rather use 怪しい顔 
On the other hand, if someone has a 不思議そうな顔 they have a wondering face, or a face with a wondering look (looks can be wandering and wondering! Also at the same time ). You can find examples of this translation here and here
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Come here often?
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I fell into this trap. At first I thought the teacher had a mysterious look… Like he had a secret plan or something. But I’m fully on board with with your explanation now. Now “on the contrary” also makes more sense to me. If the students are puzzled, the normal thing would be to be sympathetic to their confusion… but instead he is mystified and that’s contrary to what one would expect.
But… that is the meaning of 不思議そうな顔…
Like, making a face as if you are seeing something 不思議. I assume that’s 灯里’s resting face in ARIA
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Maybe I’m not understanding something about そう then. Why would 不思議そうな顔 mean a face as if it’s seeing something 不思議, rather than a face that seems 不思議?
Let’s take another adjective instead of 不思議 for a moment since I’m having trouble with that in this sentence. Let’s say 優しい. A 優しい顔 is obviously a kind/gentle face. I would have thought a 優しそうな顔 would be a face that seems kind/gentle, but based on the above explanation of 不思議そうな顔 it would mean a face that is seeing something 優しい. Unless it depends on the situation/adjective used. Or unless I just don’t understand how to use 不思議. Please help. 
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I’m confused too. -そう is used earlier in that same sentence to say that Kazuko looks like she’s going to cry.
Maybe it has to do with the perspective? The teacher is the topic (福島先生は), and maybe he can’t observe himself with -そう so it wouldn’t make sense that way?
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I guess I just think of it as a 顔 looking at something and thinking: 不思議ですね・・・
The そう makes sense somehow in my head, I swear, but it’s hard to explain.
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It does! The basics is that it changes based on whether you have to “guess” the target state or not. In the case of 嬉しい or 悲しい, you cannot know for sure that they are happy or sad, so そう reflects that guess.
In the case of adjectives that refers to something directly visible (so no guess), you cannot use そう with that meaning. The standard example: かわいい. Putting a そう in there would definitely not have the intended purpose.
So, with all that, I think 不思議 also falls in that category. As is, there’s no guess involved in deciding that they look weird or not. In any case, 不思議そうに is an expression in itself (e.g. 「不思議そうに」の英語・英語例文・英語表現 - Weblio和英辞書), so I might be retro-fitting it in the previous explanation, I don’t know. There’s a bit of curse of knowledge at work; once you know what it means, you can’t really see it as anything else 
(same with 可哀想)
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Just caught up last night after being a few chapters behind due to a holiday.
I sorta get the gist of what’s going on as I know of most the vocabulary used.
However. my grammar is pretty poor, so I have to piece a lot of things together.
I’m enjoying it none the less!
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Okay, thanks. Knowing that the meaning is different in different situations is good enough for me right now. I’ll just leave it at that and try to internalize it later as I encounter it more.
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Awesome, I find that a satisfying answer.
Also I searched for just 不思議そう on weblio and the first hit uses it in the same way as the book.
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Damn, he looks good.
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Except that would be 摩訶不思議そうな顔 
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I totally missed your edit! 
Now that you edited, I can like your post 
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Tough crowd.
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