Ten minutes have passed since the bell rang, and the teacher still hasn’t shown up.

In college, this would automatically be a canceled class, but in high school?

“Should we go get him?”

“What if we cross paths?”

“We can just go check the teachers’ office and come back if he’s not there.”

“He’s a psycho. If we’re not in our seats when he gets here, he’ll dock our scores.”

“No way.”

“It’s true. It happened when I was a freshman.”

“So what do we do, just wait?”

“He’ll probably throw a fit about that too. For just sitting here when the teacher doesn’t show up.”

“But isn’t this the teacher’s fault?”

The students, who were quiet at first, gradually got louder.

Before my regression, I don’t think a teacher ever missed a class. Is this the butterfly effect?

I checked the timetable with a disgruntled expression.

‘Of all subjects, it had to be geography.’

A male teacher in his 50s who was notorious for blatantly favoring Woo Do-yeon.

What was his name again?

I don’t remember his name, only that he had a rotten personality.

He would constantly give students noogies and humiliate them…

‘All you brats who didn’t do your homework, stand up. The top-ranked students can sit. The rest of you will stand until the end of class.’ It was that kind of thing.

You could say he was from the last generation of teachers who could keep their jobs while behaving like this.

“Ah, let’s just stay put. He’ll probably be here soon.”

“And if he gives the whole class demerits, are you going to take responsibility?”

“Kang Da-hye, shouldn’t you go get him?”

Huh? Me?

I turned to look at who had spoken.

It was Se-in’s deskmate.

Do Ha-jun.

The very same guy who held a popularity contest for the girls in our grade last year.

If he were a little smarter, he would have created something like a “Chasebook” and rated the girls’ appearances.

Gogogo High School’s Mark Zuckerberg leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

Suddenly being singled out, I blinked.

“Why me…?”

Do Ha-jun replied as if he was dumbfounded.

“You’re the temporary class president.”

“…I am?”

Come to think of it, I think I might have been given that role at the beginning of the semester just because I was good at studying…

It was only a temporary role until the class president election, and a different student was chosen in the actual election, so I had forgotten about it.

While I was briefly recalling the past, the other students started chiming in as if they had found the answer.

“Yeah, Kang Da-hye should go.”

“You can just go to the teachers’ office, ask the teachers, and if they say the geography teacher went up, you can come right back.”

“You won’t get in trouble. Kang Da-hye is a top-ranked student.”

No, I was going to go anyway.

But being pushed into it like this doesn’t feel great.

I noticed a few students were leading the conversation.

They were the ones who had been overtly ignoring and sneering at Do-yeon. The ones who didn’t like the geography teacher or Woo Do-yeon.

It seemed that now they didn’t like me either for helping Do-yeon.

Do Ha-jun sneered in a thin voice.

“Or Woo Do-yeon can go. The geography teacher adores her.”

“Hey, I’ll go, so just be quiet.”

I sighed and got up from my seat.

It was then.

“Ah, it’s so f*cking loud.”

Seo Jae-gyeom, who had been sleeping with his head on his desk, oblivious to the students’ commotion, sat up with a frown.

Looking around with a very annoyed expression, Seo Jae-gyeom said.

“They’re trying so hard to push something they don’t want to do onto Kang Da-hye. Over something as simple as getting a teacher. Are there zombies roaming the halls or something?”

At the direct reprimand, the chattering students all fell silent.

Seo Jae-gyeom pushed back his chair with a screech and stood up, taking out the phone he had in his pocket.

“Seo Jae-gyeom, why?”

“I’m leaving too.”

“? It’s fine. Why would two of us go to get one teacher?”

“I can’t stand being in the same room with these morons.”

“Ah.”

Well, in that case.

But.

“Jeong Eun-seong, why are you up?”

I gave a quizzical look to Jeong Eun-seong, who was standing up from his seat behind Seo Jae-gyeom’s shoulder.

“Are you coming too?”

Even so, three of us is a bit much.

Jeong Eun-seong met my eyes and answered nonchalantly.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

“…Now?”

Didn’t you hear? The geography teacher has a bad personality.

“Just hold it for 38 minutes.”

“Okay.”

‘Why did he even stand up?’

I thought it was urgent since he suddenly stood up to go to the bathroom.

However, I didn’t dwell on the question for long because Seo Jae-gyeom was already walking out of the classroom with his phone in hand.

Why is he so prickly today?

“One partner is A, the other is B…”

“How ridiculous, is not my spirit dead…”

In the hallway during class, it was just Seo Jae-gyeom and me.

The only sounds were the faint voices of teachers and the tapping of chalk on blackboards, and from a distance, the sound of laughter from some classroom.

Dust motes danced in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

Seo Jae-gyeom was quiet.

He walked with long strides, looking at his phone with one hand. He didn’t seem to have any intention of matching my pace, his steps slightly ahead of mine.

I didn’t particularly feel like matching his pace or talking to him either, so I just looked into the classrooms we passed.

Classrooms, school uniforms, sunlight. My teenage years that I can never go back to.

The students looked bored to death, but I was the only one feeling a sense of nostalgia…☆

My brief sentiment ended when Seo Jae-gyeom didn’t stop at the second floor where the teachers’ office was, but continued downstairs.

“Seo Jae-gyeom, where are you going? The teachers’ office is this way.”

“The snack bar.”

“Huh?”

The snack bar? I asked again, but Seo Jae-gyeom just looked at his phone without answering.

“Hey, that’s not right. It’s during class.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Seo Jae-gyeom cut me off as if he was tired and disappeared down to the first floor.

“What’s with him?”

I shook my head in disbelief and turned around.

I was heading to the teachers’ office in front of me… when.

“What are you doing!”

I ran right into the geography teacher coming out of the staff restroom.

“Why are you wandering the halls during class! What’s your grade and class!”

“I was on my way to get you, sir. You didn’t come to class after it started.”

I squinted, looking back and forth between the restroom he came out of and his face.

You must have been seriously constipated.

“Ahem, is that so?”

“Yes.”

“You should have come sooner, it’s already been 15 minutes. You kids are getting lazy.”

The geography teacher checked his watch and hurried back to the teachers’ office to grab his textbook.

‘I didn’t expect to find him this quickly.’

What about Seo Jae-gyeom? I glanced at the stairs leading down to the snack bar and followed behind the teacher.

“You’re in class 2-2, right? Do-yeon’s class?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the class president?”

“The temporary one.”

“Ah, you’re Kang Da-hye? You’re friends with Han Ji-soo from class 1, right?”

“Yes.”

“Seo Jae-gyeom!”

The geography teacher suddenly bellowed.

I saw Seo Jae-gyeom, who was coming up the opposite staircase, turn to look this way with a blank expression.

We had run into each other at opposite ends of the hallway.

“Seo Jae-gyeom, you brat! Where are you coming from!”

Oh boy.

“Sir, that’s not it. Seo Jae-gyeom came out with me to look for you…”

“You came out together, but why is he coming from that way? Wait, isn’t that a phone in his hand?”

“…”

“You brat…”

No one wants to hear the ramblings of an agitated middle-aged man, so I’ll skip the rest of what the geography teacher said.

To sum it up, Seo Jae-gyeom ended up with after-school detention.

What was absurd was that I got detention too, for ‘not stopping Seo Jae-gyeom as the class president.’

“Don’t even think about running. I’ll call your parents right away.”

After school.

The geography teacher, after making his threat, threw Seo Jae-gyeom and me into the counseling room next to the teachers’ office.

On the 6-person table with a flat glass top, there was a huge pile of test papers printed on gray recycled paper.

“You remember, right? The geography pop quiz from the first day. You two are staying behind to grade all of these. Organize them by class and student number, and next to the wrong answers, write down the reason it’s wrong and the correct answer. In red pen.”

“…”

All of them, right now?

The geography teacher, who had passed on his own work to us under the guise of punishment, emphasized once more that he would ‘call our parents immediately if we ran’ and then left for the day.

From class 1 to class 10. I stared blankly at the table with nearly 300 test papers and a single geography textbook.

“…”

Fine, I’ve forgotten all the geography content anyway.

Let’s just consider it studying.

I sighed, sat down, and pulled the mountain of test papers toward me.

‘I mean, the students have their pride. Is it okay to make other students grade these?’

But Seo Jae-gyeom wasn’t sitting down.

I turned to look at Seo Jae-gyeom, who was standing there blankly.

“What’s wrong?”