Chapter 293.


    <strong>Chapter 293. End of the First Year. (2/3)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">As I’d been held up by Zale outside, most of the seats had already been filled. All of the end seats were taken and I didn’t want to get stuck in the middle. These ceremonies were notorious for turning into saunas. With so many people packed into the gym, the air conditioning did jack shit to keep the ce cool.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Since there weren’t any end seats, I chose to lean against the wall and watch from there. If I got tired of standing I’d crouch down.


    <span style="font-weight:400">One might think it was more tiring to stand against the wall for hours, but it was actually much better than sitting in the middle of that human sauna. The wall at the very least remained nice and cool, same with the floor.


    <span style="font-weight:400">The pitiful graduates forced to wear graduation caps would definitely be sweating bricks by the end of this.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why don’t you take a seat? There are still a few avable.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I was a bit startled when someone I hadn’t seen in quite a while asked me that. It was Ms. Gene, my AP biology teacher. Obviously she’d be here as a teacher responsible for third-year courses.


    <span style="font-weight:400">About a week after the Valentine’s Day school dance, she tracked me down, forcefully stabbed a syringe into my arm, and extracted some blood samples. She also took some hair and saliva samples too. It was awful. I hadn’t seen her at all since then. I was a bit scared and jumpy around her because of how she treated me as ab rat. I’d done my best to repress my memory of it too.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Is something wrong?” Ms. Gene questioned me when I failed to immediately respond.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“N-No… nothing’s wrong.” I nced to my side at her and noticed dark bags under Ms. Gene’s eyes. Her current appearance reminded me of the times I pulled consecutive all-nighters in university. Though many of those all-nighters were the result of too much anime, manga, light novels, and web novels. It was a rather unhealthy addiction and I definitely had problems.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If nothing’s wrong, why not take a seat?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’ll die from heatstroke if I jump into that sauna. The wall and floor are nice and cool.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh, you must have a good amount of experience to recognize it''s a trap to make parents who dump their kids’ problems on us teachers suffer.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What? It’s intentional?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Of course not, it’s a joke.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… should you really be dressed in just ab coat?” I couldn’t help but ask. She’d dressed the same way for my graduation ceremony too.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just ab coat? Excuse me, this is not just ab coat, it’s my bestb coat, thank you. It’s theb coat I have reserved specifically for graduation ceremonies.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haha… right…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You just thought I’m a weirdo, didn’t you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Of course I did.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What about you? You came in just a sweater of all things. For someone whoined about dying of heatstroke, don’t you think that’s quite the contrary?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just a sweater? Excuse me, this is not just a sweater, this is my best sweater, thank you. It’s the sweater I have reserved specifically for graduation ceremonies.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh, is that so? Well, my apologies then.” I peeked her way again and noticed a faint, amused smile on Ms. Gene’s face. It was an extremely rare sight to see on this particr woman’s face.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So, is there a reason why you’re in this sort of disguise?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">My entire body stiffened up.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“D-Disguise? What do you mean?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You seem to be pretty good at changing your voice, but I don’t get along with very many people. There’s only one oddball that looks your age, is the same height as you, and gets so witty with me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Well, it seemed my cover had been instantly blown.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I really have no idea what you’re talking about. This is the first time we’ve met, you’re probably just mixing me up with someone else, don’t you think?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Would you like me to pull on your hair to see whether I’m mistaken or not?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I did my best to cover it up by denying it, but it seemed my effort was futile. She looked pretty convinced that she was correct.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t you think it’s inappropriate to suddenly yank at someone’s hair?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, if I’m mistaken, I can always apologize after the fact.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She raised her arm up toward my face. I grabbed her wrist and grumbled, “Aren’t you a bit too unreasonable?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Grabbing my wrist to stop me, is that admission of your guilt?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, yeah. Guilty as charged. You got me. You happy now?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes, my curiosity had been satiated. Now, why are you in disguise?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I became infatuated with a pretty teacher. I missed her so much but I was too nervous to see her face to face in my usual appearance so I came in disguise hoping she wouldn’t recognize me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Bullshit. What’s the reason?” She took zero damage and didn’t believe my words at all.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaah. I’m helping someone out with something and there’s someone I don’t want to recognize me. That’s all.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That’s it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Why do you suddenly look so disappointed? What were you expecting to hear me say?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I thought it’d be something more interesting. Like maybe you were actually some sort of rare specimen that escaped from an underground facility conducting illegal inhuman experimentation and you’re now hiding from some crazy mad scientists who want to track you down to conduct further research on your gics.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Why is that so oddly specific? What sort of strange delusions does this weird teacher have?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t you think you’ve been reading too many weird storiestely?” Wait… actually… isn’t that pretty damn close to Wisteria’s back story! At least, the whole illegal inhuman experimentation part was.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It was a joke. Was it not funny?” Ms. Gene tilted her head to one side with her usual expressionless face.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Is illegal human experimentation something people would usually make jokes about?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I think it’s quite the popr joke among those majoring in fields rted to biology and medicine.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haha… is it now?” I guess I wouldn’t get it since my field of specialty was engineering and math.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Would you like to hear some more popr biologist jokes for reference?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No thank you. I have a feeling they’d be grotesque in nature.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then how about one that isn’t grotesque?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well… if it’s not grotesque… then sure.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How do you make a hormone?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t pay her.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">My body trembled. What the hell? That actually wasn’t that bad.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Sorry Ms. Gene, the only cleavage I want to see is at a cellr level.” I shot back at her with my own stupid joke.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Her facial expression didn’t change, but she raised her hand and covered her mouth. She remained silent for a short moment before she asked, “How do you make your girlfriend scream during sex?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Is that something a teacher should be asking a student?” I retorted.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Call and tell her about it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I paused for a solid three seconds and thought about it. When it clicked in my head I stiffened up. It was a joke too inappropriate for this sort of asion. The inappropriate timing was what made me want tough the most though.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What the hell? That was more of a sex joke than a biology joke.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Sex is part of biology.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Fair enough I guess. What does one saggy boob say to the other saggy boob?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I take offense to this. They’re not sagging if that’s what you’re trying to imply with your boob jokes.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">"If we don''t get some support, people will think we''re nuts."


    <span style="font-weight:400">Ms. Gene closed her eyes, looking as if she’d entered a state of deep thought. A minuteter she asked confidently, “What does the receptionist at a sperm bank say as clients leave?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How would I know that? I’m not even old enough to donate.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">"Thanks foring.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Kohoh. Kohoh.” I eased my desire tough by coughing.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Ms. Gene… what does the sign on an out-of-business brothel say?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’ve never been to one so I wouldn’t know.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Beat it. We''re closed.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What''s long, hard, and full of semen?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">My penis. “There’s no way I can answer that here!”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A submarine. What else could it possibly be other than that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I squeezed my forehead with my left hand and conceded, “I give up. No more jokes.” Judgemental eyes from the crowd seated in front of us had gradually honed in on us. It seemed they’d made out bits and pieces of our little back and forth just now.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Certainly, I suppose you’re right. We did get a bit carried away there with the jokes.” Ms. Gene nodded in agreement when she opened her eyes and noticed the res directed toward us. There were definitely uptight dissatisfied parents among the attendees who didn’t think our private jokes were appropriate for the asion.


    <span style="font-weight:400">The two of us fell into silence. After we shut our mouths, the res directed at us eventually subsided as everyone lost interest.