Chapter 113: Lecture Building

Everyone travelled together to explore the campus, like they were on a school field trip. They constantly made stops in certain areas and explored several buildings.

As Hilda had predicted, they only managed to cover close to a quarter of the campus. Fortunately, during their exploration, they managed to find the mysterious building that was abbreviated as ’LB’.

It was a large building where both students and teachers streamed in and out. This building was known as the "Lecture Building".

Upon entering through one of the three double doors, they were met with aisles of grey lockers, numbering in the hundreds, that stretched on for a while.

They were grey and cube-shaped, each having a slit large enough for a simple envelope to enter. Beside their code labels, they didn’t look all too interesting.

"Whoa... So cool!"

Seraphine looked around with stars in her eyes. She couldn’t help but feel ecstatic about seeing this place in person, to the point that she was unable to stand still. This was especially after their exploration around the campus.

’Wow... I knew that this school drew a lot of inspiration from the Japanese, but I didn’t think it’d be this much.’ Seraphine glanced around, noticing a lot of details that weren’t fully shown in the Visual Novel.

If she ignored all the terrors and dangers in the world, she felt like she was in some kind of Rom-Com anime right now.

As Seraphine silently pumped her fist and fangirled, Nadia toured the many lockers and noticed the code labels on them.

A1. A2. A3. ...

She tilted her head at them. ’Are these student lockers?’

As if her thoughts were written on her face, Hilda, who was beside her, answered them happily:

"These lockers are for the students. One for each, obviously. They’re basically used for things you don’t want to lug back und forth around campus. You can find your locker code in the app."

Hilda then proceeded to guide Nadia through the app until she found her code.

"A... 2?"

With the app still on her screen, she tapped the locker with her phone and watched it—

Pop.

—Pop open.

Hilda watched as Nadia took a startled step back and chuckled. "It really is A2. That’s right next to mine, quite the coincidence~..."

"It... is?"

As Nadia said, she watched the German walk over to locker A1 before knocking on it. Assuming that was her locker, Nadia rolled her eyes.

She then turned to look at Callum, who had eavesdropped on their conversation, and found him opening locker ’A3’.

’He’s right next to me.’ Nadia blinked before turning to look at the others.

She found them all doing the exact same thing.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Apart from Seraphine, whose locker was tragically farther away from them, everyone else’s lockers were rather close to one another.

’It really is quite the coincidence...’ Nadia thought with slight surprise.

Once everyone checked that their lockers were working, they left the locker aisles and wandered around the building looking for room 10LB, which they eventually found to be on the second floor.

After sliding open the doors, they were met with a decently sized room with two lanes of ascending wooden desks and chairs with a stair between them; a typical stadium-seating format. Enough to fit exactly 24 students.

As everyone funnelled into the room, someone stood up from the desk at the very front to welcome them. They were middle-aged and had slicked-back brown hair; a very familiar face.

"I see that you all made it here just fine," Herman said, stoically welcoming them.

They were all surprised. Who would’ve thought that the person supervising their exam would be their teacher? Certainly none of them, except for one.

"Hoho? You’re going to be our teacher, Mr Ritchel?" Hilda walked towards him. "Greeting us und now teaching us, you’re as hardworking as always."

The two then gently high-fived.

Herman chuckled. "It was always planned, given our history. I’ve also gotten word of your request for last lesson, I’ll certainly be excited to watch it."

"Hehe." Hilda rubbed the tip of her nose.

After their brief interaction, the teacher ordered everyone to take a seat wherever they’d like.

At first, many people hesitated about where to sit, those people being the indecisive of the bunch. But they soon made up their mind when a group of people began climbing the stairs to find their seats.

Each lane had three rows of desks that could each fit four students.

Roxy and Beatrice took the very front desks on the left side.

Ross and Elias took the very back desks on the right side.

Nadia, Hilda, Callum, and Seraphine took the very back desks on the left side.

Nadia, sitting on the window side of the desk, glanced to her right.

She stared at the German, who was smiling happily at her, and sighed. "You... really like sticking to me, don’t you?"

Hilda rested her chin on her interlocked fingers and laughed. "Haha, was it obvious?"

...

Once everyone had taken their seat, they began pulling out their equipment.

Some pulled out notebooks and pens. Some pulled out electronics like tablets or laptops.

Seraphine was one of the few with a laptop. Apparently, her old self was always keen on the idea of owning electronics, and she would save all her birthday and Christmas money for them.

This was quite fortunate for someone like Seraphine. Since she was young, the girl wasn’t ever good with handwriting, always being told it was rather ugly to read. But that quickly changed the moment she hopped onto a keyboard.

’In my college days, I won a gold medal in speed typing!’

300 words per minute with very few mistakes was her record! Gone were the days of poor handwriting, and in with the days when her potential could truly shine!

As she booted up her laptop, Seraphine smirked smugly inside. ’As long as my body can follow, I’m sure I’ll reach that record in no time. And with Vitality, I’m sure I can push past that record easily!’

"Hehe..." Seraphine giggled inside, then noticed the people around her.

Callum, to her right, pulled out a notebook.

’Eh?’

She turned to Hilda and Nadia and found the two to have also brought out notebooks and pens.

’Eh?’

As she looked around, she found that, out of their cohort, only Beatrice, Ross, and she had laptops. And from what she knew, both Beatrice and Ross were the richer members of their group!

’I can’t believe I forgot about this. Wait, does this make me the 3rd richest in the group?’ Seraphine thought, then quickly concluded, ’But I’m extremely poor!’

Nadia, watching as Hilda poured out an assortment of pens, quirked an eyebrow. "You... don’t have a laptop?"

"Hm?" Hilda tilted her head, then chuckled. "Did I strike you as that kind of person? Hehe, to be honest, I’ve always found something genuine about writing on paper. Although it’s most likely faster for me to write digitally, I just like doing it this way."

She paused for a brief moment and asked:

"How about you then?"

"... I have a broken arm."

"So you do. But guessing from that reaction, you do have a laptop."

Right as Nadia was about to respond...

"Alright everyone, settle down," Herman ordered. "First of, before we get into anything, from this year over to your second year, I’ll be your homeroom teacher. This means I’ll be the one responsible for every one of you in this room.

"Secondly, since this is your first week, all the lessons for the following days will be cut down to an hour each, just so you all can settle in."

After saying all that, he turned to the screen behind him.

"For your first lesson, I’ll be teaching you all a little on the history of our government, the GOHG."