Chapter 86: Old Buddy Teacher

"Don’t tell me this isn’t one of countless times those jerks have been sent here and never actually learned a thing from it. And don’t act like they didn’t pull the exact same stunt the very first time they showed up either!" Mark pressed on, Olivia’s eyes narrowing in response.

"You weren’t like this before. It’s honestly jarring seeing you react this way now," Olivia said, folding her arms. Mark’s expression tightened slightly. "It’s not like you were even my freshman homeroom teacher to actually know that firsthand. I’m just going off the accumulated record on that class."

"Now really isn’t the time for this conversation. Maybe later, but right now, you need to drop it." Olivia shook her head before gesturing him toward the classroom entrance. Mark lingered a moment longer. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

"There’s nothing else I need to say after this. Nothing. It’s fine," Mark said, finally turning and stepping into the classroom alongside the others.

Stepping inside, he found the room noticeably wider than average in every corner. The teacher’s desk sat positioned in the front corner, various pieces of equipment scattered loosely across its surface.

Studying the space further, he noticed only two windows total, though several air conditioning units had been installed throughout the room instead. Their quiet, steady hum filled the otherwise tense silence, lending the space an oddly cool, almost sterile atmosphere.

It felt almost deliberately concealed, private in a way that struck him as genuinely unusual for an ordinary classroom. A handful of students already occupied scattered seats, their numbers noticeably thin, each one sitting apart from the others.

Every one of them stayed completely silent, the resulting tension thick enough that nobody seemed willing to be the first to break it by approaching anyone else. Even the faint shift of a chair or the soft rustle of fabric sounded unusually loud against that heavy stillness.

Mark would have preferred a window seat tucked in the back corner, the way he usually sat in his regular classroom, but no such luck here, since the room lacked any windows positioned that way at all.

The total absence of natural light only deepened that closed off feeling, almost as though the entire space had been deliberately designed to keep everyone contained until the lesson officially ended.

So instead, he settled for a back row seat in the center column, immediately spotting Roman seated in the back left corner, a rigid cervical brace fitted snugly around his neck.

Victor and Jack were already seated close beside him, deep in conversation. Roman’s posture stayed noticeably stiff because of the brace, every small shift of his head carefully, deliberately controlled.

Victor gave Roman’s shoulder a friendly pat, drawing his attention. "Must be rough living with that thing, huh? How are you actually holding up?"

Roman let out a humorless scoff. "Honestly, shouldn’t take much longer. I should be cleared from this thing soon enough. Just a matter of time at this point, but tomorrow’s basically a sure thing."

"Wish it were today, though. I can’t keep living like some dog stuck in a cone collar. Genuinely pisses me off." He shifted slightly in his seat, clearly irritated by just how restricted even the smallest movement had become for him.

"You two are lucky you didn’t get anything from that guy." He glanced toward Mark with visible difficulty, given the brace. "He’s honestly a monster. Completely unrestrained, and full of dangerous surprises nobody sees coming."

Jack let out a light chuckle. "Nah, he should be thanking his lucky stars, honestly. If things had gone differently, he’d be rolling around the floor with a few broken bones courtesy of us. We love handling monsters of every kind, even the genuinely deadly ones. Putting people back in their rightful place at the bottom is basically our specialty."

"Sure, sure, you two always say that, right up until you actually see it firsthand," Roman said with a light shrug.

Victor shook his head at Roman’s shifting attitude, particularly his newfound habit of belittling others as though it were some genuine risk rather than something worth actually enjoying, all seemingly triggered by his temporary neck injury. The damage clearly went beyond just restricting his movement. It had left him noticeably more bitter than usual too.

"Come to think of it, one of his summons, that crude barbarian type, could actually talk," Victor said, expression wary. Roman only snorted in response. "So what? That supposed to be some kind of breaking news? My neighbor back home’s got a parrot summon that never shuts up either."

"Well, you keep bringing this up like it’s some major anomaly," Jack said, raising an eyebrow, though Victor just shook his head. "I know how it sounds, but there was something genuinely different about it. Real emotion in its voice, real reasoning behind the words, like it was actually sentient, not just some programmed drone going through the motions like most summons usually are."

Roman and Jack traded a skeptical glance between them, prompting an annoyed sigh from Victor. "I’m not capping here, I’m being dead serious. It happened exactly like I’m describing, not some hallucination or misread situation."

He leaned back slightly, expression settling into something more genuinely serious as the memory of the encounter replayed in his mind. The more he sat with it, the more convinced he became that something strangely, unmistakably alive had been living behind that summon’s voice.

Mark decided to distract himself by slipping his headphones on instead. He queued up My Universe, the same song Hermione had claimed as her personal favorite, the memory apparently enough to pull him back into giving it another listen.

He adjusted the headphones snugly over his ears, settling into his back row seat, letting the surrounding conversation fade steadily into background noise.

The song played bright and vibrant, carrying a subtle undercurrent of melancholy woven beneath its melody. It lent the room a strange, reflective coolness, the kind that shifted depending entirely on how someone chose to take it in.

His expression shifted slightly, head nodding slowly along to the song’s rhythm and lyrics. For a few quiet minutes, the strange classroom, the awkward gathering, and the murmured conversations around him all faded into the distance, leaving only the music in sharp focus.

After a while spent waiting for more unfortunate students to be marched in by their respective teachers, a lanky man with a slightly hunched posture finally stepped back inside, dressed in a striped jacket, high waisted trousers cinched with a belt, and a pair of polished shoes.

He carried a gray beard and thinning, freckled hair, a pair of medicated glasses perched along the ridge of his narrow, pointed nose. His movements stayed slow, deliberate, almost entirely unhurried, despite the classroom already sitting full and waiting on him.

The moment Mark glanced up and registered exactly who it was, his expression drained pale with shock, an identical reaction rippling instantly through Victor, Jack, and Roman as well. The mood across all four of them shifted at once. Even Roman, mid complaint only moments earlier, suddenly went completely, unnaturally still.

Mark let out a long, resigned sigh. This particular teacher was none other than Mr. Rakolowo, the very same man who’d taught all of them back during freshman year.

He wasn’t the harsh, strict type, nor even the stoic, unreadable type either. He was something far worse, the most lukewarm, achingly boring kind of teacher imaginable, apparently gifted with some kind of natural curse capable of lulling an entire room into drowsy submission, one practically impossible to resist even for a few seconds.

Plenty of students had historically tried leveraging that particular trait to their own advantage over the years, banking on the assumption they could get away with practically anything under his watch.

Many had taken to calling him the ghost sloth, a nickname earned entirely through his sluggish, almost lifeless demeanor, one enthusiastically embraced by every rule breaker who’d ever managed to slip something past him. His presence alone had a way of draining the energy right out of even the noisiest room.

Yet that same slow, indifferent manner also kept most students genuinely wary and cautious, uncertain exactly when one of his unpredictable little traps, decisions, or punishments might finally catch up with them. His slow, drawling teaching voice alone was enough to freeze an entire room into total stillness, almost graveyard quiet. It never came from shouting, or from demanding anyone’s attention outright.

Somehow, it was the exact opposite that made him so genuinely difficult to handle. That constant, unshakable calm always left students quietly wondering whether he’d actually noticed something they’d assumed had slipped past him completely unnoticed.

He stood, simply, as every freshman’s first real nightmare, dating back to their very first lecture at the school.

At the same time, he’d somehow become something close to an old, familiar friend for much of the current sophomore class, purely through shared history from back then. Plenty of other teachers carried their own reputations too, but his stood entirely apart, leaving behind a lingering mark on their earliest memories of school itself. Even well past freshman year, the memory of his slow voice, perpetually sleepy expression, and strangely timed punishments had clearly stuck with every one of them.

The classroom seemed to grow even quieter still as Mr. Rakolowo settled into his familiar spot at the front of the room. Several students avoided meeting his eyes directly, while others traded quick, knowing glances, silently recalling old incidents from their own freshman years. Mark could practically feel those same memories surfacing one after another, each one tied inseparably to the man’s slow movements and unsettlingly calm demeanor.

Victor shot an uncertain glance toward Jack and Roman, both sitting there with their mouths hanging open in matching, unwanted shock, no different from his own reaction. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me right now!" His lips twitched, caught somewhere between laughing and outright complaining.

Mark pulled his headphones off entirely. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me right now," he muttered firmly, staring straight ahead at the old teacher as the full weight of his freshman year memories came flooding back all at once.