Chapter 87: Detention Class

"Oh fuck, just when I was finally holding up with detention classes, he comes in. Really, the day I always asked for," Jack said the last sentence with sarcasm, his face twisting into an expression of disbelief as he glanced toward the front of the classroom.

"Don’t you know that he might hear us from all this silence? We need not to be caught by speaking too loudly." Roman shushed Jack, who scoffed quietly in response. His eyes briefly shifted toward the front of the room, where Mr. Rakolowo remained standing with the same sluggish calmness that had already become familiar to them.

Victor folded his arms, his lips twitching slightly. "Caught by who? The old man who only sees with his glasses? Please, he’s only good at sending the class into a kind of stupor that seems like a nightmare which I don’t wanna have."

"Whoever did this to us must really have an edge to his mind," Roman said in a low voice. His hand moved briefly toward the cervical brace around his neck before stopping himself, as though even adjusting it had become an unnecessary effort.

Rakolowo walked slowly over to the teacher’s desk at the corner before wiping his glasses with a cloth and adjusting them for a better view of the writing inside the book he had opened to study for a while. The classroom remained almost completely silent during the process. The soft scraping of the cloth against the lenses seemed strangely loud in the quiet room.

He turned one page with a slow movement, paused, and continued reading as though the students weren’t even there. Several of them shifted uneasily in their seats, waiting for him to finally acknowledge them. The longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable it became.

There was a lingering silence that stretched on before he finally turned to face the class. His eyes moved slowly from one student to another behind his glasses, taking his time as though he wanted to make certain that everyone had been noticed.

"Hello, everyone. I guess I’m not a familiar face here. That’s because things changed when I was appointed to take over the detention class for the time being. Reports of the increasing victims for this class were scandalous, but today seems to say otherwise with the few numbers of you," the teacher stated, but every single one of his words sounded like the longest syllables to the ear.

His voice wasn’t loud, nor did he make any particular effort to project it across the classroom. Yet every word traveled through the silence with a slow, drawn-out quality that made several students blink heavily. Mark immediately recognized that familiar feeling from his freshman year.

"Well, I’m Rakolowo Vonius, the geography teacher, the staff member of student guidance and counselor. I’m sure some of y’all must recognize me." His voice was like slow motion to the nerves. "But you can just call me Mr. Rakolowo."

Some of the students glanced at each other in an unusual manner after his statement. Their expressions carried a mixture of disbelief, resignation, and old memories. A few of them seemed as though they already knew exactly what kind of afternoon they were about to experience.

But no words were uttered, except for one quiet mutter.

"Yeah, right, we remembered you, alright. None of the boring moments are ever forgotten," Mark muttered to himself.

Victor sighed while Jack facepalmed. "There’s really no difference in the name preference. It’s literally long and still annoying that we don’t have to call him by his surname." Jack told both Victor and Roman, shaking his head in annoyance.

Roman gave a quiet grunt, while Victor simply looked toward the front again. Even after all this time, Rakolowo’s presence still carried the strange ability to make them remember every sleepy afternoon they had endured during their freshman year.

"Okay, I’ll take that. Now that we’re at the beginning of the class, there’ll be an anthem as usual by reciting every one of the rules and regulations, starting with the ones for my class here." He raised a finger in a warning manner, though even that motion came slowly.

An Asian girl with a disheveled black hairstyle rolled her eyes dramatically. Her messy hair hung around her face in uneven strands, and the irritation in her expression was impossible to miss.

"Fuck off, you death-deprived sloth!" She growled with an infuriated middle finger.

Several students immediately lowered their gazes or turned their heads away, not wanting to become involved. A few others stiffened in their seats. Even if she seemed to be a freshman, she radiated the most threatening presence that Mark wouldn’t want to be messing with at all. Her expression carried the kind of confidence that suggested she had no interest in backing down simply because a teacher was standing in front of her.

But then, the teacher never seemed to be bothered by the aura of aggression or anything else in the slightest. He merely adjusted his glasses and gave his next statement in that same slow, haunting voice.

"That’s going to be a huge minus in your grade points, an extended detention, charged as teacher assault, and you’ll be taken to the principal’s desk."

The girl’s face instantly paled with terrifying shock at the thought of the consequences. Her eyes widened to the limit as her once-tight grip over her desk loosened. The confidence she had displayed only moments earlier seemed to drain away almost instantly.

The other students remained quiet.

Rakolowo didn’t raise his voice or even look particularly angry. He simply turned his attention toward the next part of the class as though the threat of punishment was nothing more than another ordinary rule.

"So let’s begin the song. We don’t have enough time, or we’ll stay till dark dusk," he said while Mark snorted slightly.

"More like it’s you that’s going to make us stay till then," he said to himself, keeping the words low enough that they wouldn’t travel across the room.

"🎵 Detention Class is a reforming program, not a punishment, and during so, one must follow each rule there. No loitering, no side talks, no shouting, no blinking, no playing, no littering, no assaulting, no lying, correct answers to questions, no stealing, no fighting."

The singsong anthem rang across the students in a forced and bored tone. Some barely moved their lips as they recited it, while others stared blankly toward the front. The entire classroom sounded like a group of people being forced to sing something they had memorized against their will.

"No sleep..."

The moment this particular rule was uttered, Mark’s ears perked up to confirm the suspicion that had been forming in his mind ever since Mr. Rakolowo had stepped into the classroom.

He knew that there had been something behind the teacher’s unusual appearance here. If it wasn’t for the violation of any other rule, it would be to fall for his sleeping trap of stupor, which he carried with him whenever he taught students.

Mark narrowed his eyes slightly. The memories were already coming back to him. Rakolowo had always possessed that strange teaching style that could make even a restless student feel as though their eyelids had suddenly become weighted down.

This was a well-devised scheme by the school for people to fall into more punishment during detention. Sleeping was one of the rules one could sometimes get away with under other teachers, but not with the current one here. Under Rakolowo’s supervision, falling asleep would lead to additional charges when one was undoubtedly caught.

The anthem ended with applause as usual, though it came weakly and unconvincingly from the students. A few clapped with barely any enthusiasm, while others simply tapped their palms together for the sake of appearing obedient.

Mark had only been lip-syncing through the anthem because he didn’t even know any of the lyrics. He lowered his hands after the applause ended and settled back into his seat, already feeling the heavy atmosphere beginning to settle over him.