1st in Class Hides Regression - Chapter 14

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Top Student Hides Her Regression
Chapter 14
Ten minutes have passed since the bell rang, and the teacher still hasn’t shown up.
At university, a class would automatically be cancelled. But high school?
“Should we go get him?”
“What if we miss each other on the way?”
“Just check the Staff Office. If he’s not there, come back.”
“That guy’s crazy. He’ll dock points if we’re not at our desks when he arrives.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, seriously. It happened first year.”
“So what do we do, just sit here?”
“Then he’ll throw a fit about that too. Say we were just loafing while the teacher was gone.”
“Wait, isn’t this the teacher’s fault?”
The students’ voices, quiet at first, grew louder by degrees.
Before the regression, I don’t think the teacher ever missed a class. Is this what the butterfly effect looks like?
I checked the schedule with a dampened expression.
‘Of all things, it’s Geography again.’
A man in his fifties who openly favored Woo Do-yeon—widely disliked for it. The Geography Teacher.
I couldn’t remember his name.
All I remembered was that he was a personality wreck.
Always flicking students on the head with his knuckles, humiliating them—
‘Everyone who didn’t do the homework, stand up. Grade 1 students, stay seated. The rest of you, stand until class ends.’ That sort of thing.
He was almost the last generation of teachers who could carry on like this and still keep their jobs.
“Ah, let’s just wait. He’ll be here soon.”
“And if he gives the whole class demerits, you’re taking responsibility?”
“Kang Da-hye, shouldn’t you go get him?”
Me?
I turned to look at whoever had spoken.
It was Se-in’s desk partner.
Do Ha-jun.
The same guy who’d run a popularity vote on the girls in our year last year.
If he’d had slightly better judgment, he’d have built something like Facebook ages ago just to rate girls’ looks.
Go-Go-Go High School’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg leaned back in his chair and looked at me.
Suddenly singled out, I blinked.
“Why me?”
Do Ha-jun shot back as if it were obvious.
“You’re the Temporary Class Representative.”
“…I am?”
Now that I thought about it, I vaguely remembered taking on that role at the start of the semester just because I was good at studying—
It was only supposed to be temporary until the official class election. Someone else had been elected as actual class representative, and I’d forgotten all about it.
While I was retrieving those memories, the others seemed to have found their answer and chimed in.
“Yeah, Kang Da-hye, go and come back.”
“Just go to the Staff Office, ask the teachers where the Geography teacher is, and come straight back.”
“You won’t get in trouble. You’re Grade 1, after all.”
I wasn’t against going, but—
Something about being pushed into this didn’t sit right with me.
I noticed a few of them were driving the conversation, adding their voices one after another.
The same ones who’d been openly dismissing and mocking Woo Do-yeon. They didn’t like the Geography Teacher, didn’t like Woo Do-yeon, and seemed to dislike everything about this situation.
Apparently they didn’t care for me now that I was helping Do-yeon.
Do Ha-jun smirked.
“Or Woo Do-yeon could go. The Geography Teacher loves her anyway.”
“Never mind, I’ll go and come back. Just keep it down.”
I sighed and stood up from my desk.
That was when it happened.
“Damn it, so noisy.”
Seo Jae-gyeom, who’d been sleeping face-down on his desk regardless of the chatter, rose up with a scowl.
Looking around with visible irritation, he spoke.
“You all hate going yourself, so you’re pawning it off on Kang Da-hye? Over one teacher? What, are there zombies roaming the hallways?”
At his blunt reproach, the chattering students fell silent all at once.
Seo Jae-gyeom pushed his chair back and stood, pulling his Mobile Phone from his pants pocket and gripping it in his hand.
“Seo Jae-gyeom, why?”
“I’m coming too.”
“No, it’s fine. We just need to get one teacher — why do we both have to go?”
“Everyone in here’s so stupid I can’t stand being in the same room.”
“Oh.”
Fair enough.
But then.
“Jung Eun-sung, why are you getting up?”
I gave Jung Eun-sung a puzzled look as he rose from his seat behind Seo Jae-gyeom’s shoulder.
“You’re going too?”
The three of us going together seemed like overkill.
Jung Eun-sung, meeting my eyes, answered calmly.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“…Right now?”
Didn’t you just hear? The Geography Teacher’s in a bad mood.
“Just hold it for thirty-eight minutes.”
“Got it.”
‘Why’d he stand up?’
When he suddenly said he needed the bathroom, I thought it was urgent.
But Seo Jae-gyeom, already gripping his mobile phone, was heading out the classroom door, so I didn’t dwell on it long.
Why’s he being so sharp today?
“One partner gets section A, the other gets section B…”
“How ridiculous—is my spirit truly dead…”
The hallway during class held only Seo Jae-gyeom and me.
Only the teacher’s voice and the occasional scrape of chalk against the blackboard seeped out into the corridor, and somewhere distant, laughter drifted from another classroom.
Dust suspended in the air glimmered in the sunlight streaming through the windows.
Seo Jae-gyeom was quiet.
He walked with long strides, eyes on his mobile phone, making no effort to match my pace—his steps kept pulling ahead of mine.
I had no intention of keeping up with his speed or starting a conversation, so I simply glanced into the passing classroom next to us.
Classroom, uniforms, sunlight. A decade of youth you could never get back.
The kids looked bored out of their minds, and here I was feeling wistful about it all…
My brief reverie ended when Seo Jae-gyeom passed the second floor—where the Staff Office branched off—without stopping, heading down further.
“Seo Jae-gyeom, where are you going? The Staff Office is this way.”
“School Canteen.”
“What?”
The School Canteen? I asked again, but Seo Jae-gyeom just kept his eyes on his phone, giving no reply.
“Hey, come on. We’re in the middle of class.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Seo Jae-gyeom cut me off tiredly and disappeared down to the first floor.
“What’s his problem?”
I shook my head in exasperation and turned around.
I was about to head toward the Staff Office ahead when—
“Hey, you!”
I ran straight into the Geography Teacher coming out of the staff bathroom.
“Why are you wandering around during class? What grade and class are you in!”
“I was coming to get you, sir. Class started but you hadn’t arrived yet.”
I studied the bathroom door the Geography Teacher had just exited from, then his face, narrowing my eyes slightly as I switched between the two.
Constipation issues, I see.
“Ahem, is that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You should’ve come sooner. It’s already been fifteen minutes. Those kids are probably running wild.”
The Geography Teacher checked his watch, hurried back to the Staff Office, and gathered his Geography Textbook.
‘I didn’t expect to find the Geography Teacher this fast.’
I glanced down at the stairs leading to the School Canteen, wondering what Seo Jae-gyeom was doing, then trailed after the Geography Teacher.
“You’re in Grade 2 Class 2? That’s Do-yeon’s class?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you the class representative?”
“I’m the Temporary Class Representative, sir.”
“Ah, so you’re Kang Da-hye? You’re close with Han Ji-su from Class 1, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Seo Jae-gyeom!”
The Geography Teacher’s voice cut through the air suddenly.
I saw Seo Jae-gyeom ascending the opposite stairwell turn toward us with an expressionless face.
Of all places, we’d run into each other at opposite ends of the hallway.
“Seo Jae-gyeom, you punk! Where have you been?”
Oh no.
“Sir, that’s not it. Seo Jae-gyeom came out with me to look for you too…….”
“You came out together, so why is he coming from over there? Wait—is that a mobile phone in his hand?”
“…….”
“You little…….”
No one would want to listen to an agitated middle-aged man’s rambling, so I’ll spare you the rest of what he said.
The upshot was that Seo Jae-gyeom ended up staying after school to face punishment.
The absurd part was that I got punished too—for “failing to stop Seo Jae-gyeom despite being the Temporary Class Representative.”
“Don’t you dare step out of line. I’ll call your parents right now.”
After school.
The Geography Teacher, having made his threat, shoved us both into the Counseling Room next to the Staff Office.
The rectangular wooden table with frosted glass paneling—seating for six—was piled high with test papers printed on gray recycled paper.
“Remember the Geography Pop Quiz from first period? You two are going to stay and grade all of these. Organize them by class and number, and write both the reason for the error and the correct answer next to each wrong question. In red pen.”
“…….”
He wanted us to do all that now?
The Geography Teacher—using punishment as a pretext to dump his own work on us—emphasized once more that if we tried to leave, he’d contact our parents, then clocked out.
Classes 1 through 10. I stared blankly at the table where roughly 300 test papers and a single Geography Textbook sat stacked like a mountain.
“…….”
Right, I’d forgotten all the geography content anyway.
Might as well call it studying.
I sighed, sat down, and pulled the towering pile of test papers toward me.
‘I mean, even if the kids have their pride, is it okay for him to ask their own classmates to grade them like this?’
But Seo Jae-gyeom didn’t sit down.
I turned to look at him, standing there motionless.
“What’s wrong?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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