It was one of those days where school let out early.
Usually, the students were the first to scramble out the door, with the teachers trickling out one by one right after them.
I belonged to the latter group.
"Sigh..."
Bounce. Thud.
Stray basketballs, abandoned soccer balls.
Normally, we'd make the students clean this mess up. But since they had already bolted the moment the bell rang, there wasn't much I could do about it now.
"If you use it, you clean it—that's basic manners... I'm definitely giving them a piece of my mind tomorrow."
Grumbling to myself, I realized I'd actually finished tidying up the entire storage room.
"Well, at least it's clean."
I locked the storage room and headed back to the faculty office to grab my stuff for the day. As I expected, I was the only one left.
Guess everyone else already took off. Can't blame them—if you get the chance to leave early, you take it.
Ah, naturally. No one asking to grab a drink or dinner to celebrate the early finish. No one waiting to walk to the station together because we head the same way.
Even after becoming a teacher, I'm still just as much of a loner as I was back in school.
Shoving those thoughts down, I slung my bag over my shoulder and locked the office door.
"Haaam..."
I was getting off work earlier than usual, yet my body felt heavier than lead.
Was it because I cleaned the storage room by myself? My eyelids felt incredibly heavy, dragging me down. I couldn't fight the drowsiness.
Right there, as if my strings were cut, I collapsed into sleep.
...
"Mmm..."
When did I pass out? I yawned and looked around. It looked like a school hallway... wait, did I fall asleep in the corridor?
"Thank god no one saw me...?"
I paused. I was startled by the sound of my own voice. It felt... off.
Was I still half-asleep? I decided to test it out again.
"Ah. Ah."
I knew this voice. I'd definitely heard it somewhere before.
Specifically, in an anime I watched recently.
Right. This was Nakamura Yuichi's voice.
"No way."
I immediately scrambled to my feet and rushed back into the faculty office to find a mirror.
I threw the door open and stared at my reflection in the full-length mirror near the entrance. What I saw was impossible.
"Is this... Gojo Satoru?"
I couldn't believe it, but every sense in my body was screaming that it was real.
I had become Gojo Satoru.