Zhou Lei did not get out of his seat as the bell rang. Instead, he pulled out the lunch box filled with two sandwiches that his sister had made for him.
As a result, almost none of his classmates headed out of the classroom, instead looking at him with either a grin or a frown.
"...Who made these sandwiches?" The question in everyone's minds, whether they be in ecstasy or in jealousy.
The sandwiches that made Zhou Lei smile.
The holy sandwiches.
They needed to find out who made the sandwiches!
With this, the bell rang before any of them got the chance to eat. A few students entered the classroom, wiping their mouths. These were the ones mostly unaffected by Zhou Lei's charm.
Their next teacher was history, which made everyone groan.
Essentially no one listened to the old teacher, even sleeping while she lectured.
The Sleeping Princess was one of the few who listened diligently.
Ironic, you say? Hehehe, how about if your clothes were crumpled? Would you need an iron-y to straighten them out? Are you stupid?! I'll be here all night folks.
While thinking about how to get away with sleeping in class, the door opened.
However, contrary to everyone's expectations, the old female teacher did not enter the room. Instead, a man who looked like he was in his thirties entered.
The man wore black rimmed glasses and the traditional teacher uniform, with the addition of a tie. He had quite the handsome face, although when compared to Zhou Lei, it was nothing.
"Hello, everyone. Unfortunately, your old history teacher is hospitalized right now, which is why I am here now.
My name is Zhang Liu, and I am what you would call an alumni of this school. You can call me Mr. Zhang."
Everyone didn't respond. It wasn't that they didn't want to respond, it was just that they didn't know how to.
The man in front of them had a voice that was charming and menacing at the same time. In other words, the new teacher rendered the students speechless.
Zhang Liu turned around, opened his marker with a pop, and wrote his name on the whiteboard for everyone to remember.
"So to start things off, we will be... let's see here..." Zhang Liu opened his lesson plan and adjusted his glasses to read what he wrote.
"...Since I will be your teacher until the end of the year, we will be introducing ourselves first. We don't want to have an awkward atmosphere until the end of the year, right?"
As he displayed a light smile on his face, he pointed towards the student in the right corner of the classroom. "Let's start with you... What's your name?"
The student stood up, looking visibly startled. "Uh, I am Guo Zhen. I-"
Before Guo Zhen could continue, Zhang Liu interrupted him. "Stop. Now the person beside Mr. Guo, please stand up."
With Zhang Liu's order reaching her ears, the person beside Guo Zhen stood up, acting all stiff.
"Tell me, how old is Guo Zhen, and what does he aspire to be?"
"Er, umm, uh... He is... 17? And, uh... I don't know his dreams..."
Guo Zhen watched as his seatmate mumbled her way through answering. They weren't really close, and only talked when needed.
But only now did he feel that despite the closeness of their seats, the distance between them was farther than he imagined.
'The only thing she knows about me is my name and age, probably.' Guo Zhen turned his head away.
Zhang Liu watched as the student had difficulty introducing her seatmate to him. "Stop. Take your seat, both of you."
He cleared his throat before he continued speaking. "Now I'm guessing that the rest of you will do the same thing as she did, with a few exceptions."
"As such, we'll do this again next week. I expect all of you to know your seatmates, enough that you can introduce them to me."
Hearing Zhang Liu, the students groaned. This was such a troublesome teacher.
"Anyways, what topics have your teacher discussed already? At what topic are you currently?"
The students answered Zhang Liu, to which he responded with a sour voice, "Ah, you're still there? How slow were you?"
At this point, the students were starting to get irritated. We aren't slow, okay? The teacher was just really sickly, always absent.
Zhou Lei didn't care one bit about this, however. His head laid on his desk comfortably, his black hair shining with the light coming from outside the window.
Even with his sloppy figure, he looked more elegant than lazy.
Zhang Liu scanned the class before he started the lecture. He spotted the sleeping Zhou Lei on the corner of the classroom.
"Who's that sleeping over there? Please wake him up."
The teacher pointed at Zhou Lei's seatmate and gestured for him to wake Zhou Lei up.
The seatmate got startled, but shook his body anyways.
"Ah, wha-huh?" The half-asleep Zhou Lei raised his head.
As his vision got clearer, he saw a middle-aged man staring at him from the front of the classroom, with his arms crossed.
Zhang Liu sighed before he walked towards Zhou Lei.
"Student, tell me your name." Zhang Liu asked the barely awake Zhou Lei.
However, Zhou Lei answered his question with another question. "Who are you? Where is Mrs. Fang, that old hag?"
It was clear that Zhang Liu's face twitched when he heard Zhou Lei. "...What do you mean, student?"
"I said, where is Mrs. Fang? I bet she got hospitalized again, hehe~" A smile appeared on Zhou Lei's face.
Zhang Liu's face distorted once more. A menacing aura leaked from his body, giving the students the creeps.
Suddenly, he grabbed Zhou Lei's chin!
Zhou Lei snapped out right at that moment, staring wide-eyed into the man in front of him. His spine shivered as he gulped slowly.
Zhang Liu let go of his chin and walked back to the front, his expression back to square one - indifference.
It was as if the incident didn't faze him at all.
'S**t... we got a scary substitute... Mrs. Fang, please recover soon!'
Zhang Liu adjusted his glasses as he sighed.
'Hai, what a troublesome class.
Fang Jinlian...
First, you make me lie that you are hospitalized, even making me forge medical certificates...
Then, you take a trip abroad, for "research purposes"... Research purposes, my ass!
Goddammit, if I didn't owe you one, I wouldn't have accepted to supervise your history classes.'
"Okay, class. Quiet down."
The class was already extremely quiet, but it got even quieter when he spoke. Even the smallest sounds like breathing could be heard within the silence.
Zhang Liu finished setting up his projector. He opened the file on his laptop and displayed it on the whiteboard for everyone to see.
Expect major rewrites of old chapters in the coming weeks (or months, depends on how lazy I feel).
Don't worry though, I'll still be publishing new chapters along with rewriting the old ones.