BEN Drowned | Hopes And Dreams

Chapter III

School. Has. Never. Been. A. Pain. In. My. Ass.

Up until now.

My body jerked as my professor in Statistics slammed the table across us with piles and piles of worksheet.

Holy crap.

Been gone for a week or so and this is the welcoming I get. Some of the subjects I've missed out on didn't have this much work during the past few weeks.

The mid-to-late 30s man that stood athwart me huffed and sat on a swivel chair on his side. "These," he started, fixing his glasses to have it sat perfectly at the bridge of his nose. "Are the worksheets of your classmates." He told me as I gaped at the crap load of papers that confronted us.

"You are to help me check each paper thoroughly," he narrowed his gaze at me through the piles of papers as he said the last word, "as payback for the past worksheets you have missed."

I scrunched my eyebrows at this, "Why couldn't you just give me the worksheet?"

"Because," he sighed exasperatedly as he took a piece of paper and started checking it at the speed of light. Scribbling correct answers, writing a slant line on others that indicated a correct answer. "I need help." Was all he uttered as he gave me an answer sheet.

"Use that to guide your way through . . . all of this."

And I did. Papers after papers. Scores after scores. Ascending and descending numbers flashing before my eyes. Lines after crosses. Correct answers after wrong ones. Until the papers were already at tolerable height.

After agonizing minutes of pen scribbling on paper, I spoke up, "So," this caught the attention of the man in front of me, "what makes you become a prof?"

He stifled a wry chuckle as he place an already-checked paper to another pile. "This question. It never does die down."

My head tilted to one side, "Do you want to?" He shook his head.

"For some reason, I don't. I never do get tired answering, but I am tired of hearing the question." He admitted and I stared at him with expectant eyes. "Well, if you must know," he carried on, "I became a professor with the sole purpose of returning what needed to be returned."

Confusion brewed at the back of my mind and as I said, "Return the money-taking school does to children?" at the same time as he said, "To return the knowledge I was given."

He gave me a hardened glare as I shrunk in my seat, "Carry on." I uttered and he did, thankfully ignoring my obtuse remark.

"You see, Asriel," he paused as he took another piece of paper from the pile, "once you've grown older and stopped attending school, you realize that everything you've ever learned aren't as necessary as your professors taught you to be."

Turning my head to the side to possibly hide my reaction to him, I hissed out, "I knew it." But he heard as he gave me another glare.

"Anywho, being that kind of person, I wanted the knowledge that they involuntary shoved into my mind to be shared."

"So you decided to become a professor to do the same thing your past professors did to you?" I interjected and he gave me an uneasy stare.

"Well, it could be cruelly put that way."

I crossed my arms across my chest, "Uh-huh." I huffed.

He shrugged and muttered, "There couldn't be any other way to rephrase that at the moment. But either way, yes, I did thought of that. But the more I taught and the more they learn, it started to become a hobby. A passion that drives me to wake up everyday to see these students brimmed with knowledge they never knew existed." Then, he leaned onto the table and I did the same.