"What are you both doing outside while class is going on?" Miss Steven said.
"We were going to the washroom," the guy replied, his voice a little meek.
"Oh? And where are your hall passes then?" Miss Steven asked.
Both of them quickly pulled out their passes and held them up.
Miss Steven took them and examined them carefully. For a brief moment, she looked disappointed.
After checking them, she handed the passes back.
"If you have permission to go to the washroom," she said firmly, "then go there. Don't wander around the hallway."
With that, she turned and walked away.
I blinked.
That was it?
No yelling. No lecture. No threats about calling parents.
What the hell?
That was not how I remembered Miss Steven at all.
I clearly remembered something different.
Before… Well, in the future, she had caught two students kissing inside a classroom. She'd blown up at them, dragged them to the headmaster's office, and they ended up suspended.
And now?
Here she was catching two students practically glued together in the hallway, and the only thing she cared about was their hall passes.
I frowned as I watched her walk away down the corridor.
That was it?
No lecture. No threats. No dragging them to the headmaster.
Just a reminder to go to the washroom.
Shaking the incident off, I started looking for my classroom again.
If I remembered right, it should have been room 304.
I walked down one hallway, then another, checking the numbers beside the doors as I passed.
301.
302.
Then suddenly it jumped to 306.
I stopped and frowned.
"Wait… what?"
I turned around and checked the doors again, just to be sure I hadn't missed it.
Nope.
No 304.
I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck.
Maybe my memory wasn't as reliable as I thought.
As I turned around to check another hallway, I caught a familiar face.
And apparently, the face had caught me too.
A girl was walking toward me with a puzzled look.
Jane Winters.
For a second I just stared.
Her light brown hair was braided into a single tail behind her back, exactly like I remembered. She wore the uniform neatly, the grey skirt and white shirt fitting her the same way it always had.
She stopped in front of me.
"What are you doing here, Joe?" she asked.
Up close, the details were even clearer. Fair wheat-colored skin, light brown eyes that matched her hair, freckles scattered across her cheeks, and soft pink lips pressed together in mild annoyance.
When I didn't answer right away, she continued.
"You've been gone for twenty minutes. The teacher sent me to look for you. Why are you just standing here?"
"I… uh… I was going to class," I said, pointing toward the door labeled **304**.
Jane frowned slightly, creasing her forehead.
"Did you hit your head in the bathroom or something?" she said. "We have a lab right now. You just came from there. Did you forget already?"
Well… I did hit my head a little.
"Oh, right," I said with a sheepish laugh. "I guess I forgot and walked back here on instinct."
Jane stared at me for a moment.
Then she laughed.
"What a dumbo," she said, shaking her head. "Come on. Let's go back. It's almost time for the last bell."
She turned and started walking down the hallway, clearly expecting me to follow.
I followed her, "what were you doing that took you so much time?" she asked.
I lived through graduation, wasted four years of my life, cursed my luck, and somehow ended up back in the past.
At least… that's what I thought.
I didn't say any of that out loud.
Instead I said, "I saw two students making out in the hallway."
I glanced at Jane, expecting her eyes to light up with interest.
She just looked back at me with a blank expression.
"Oh," she said.
No interest at all.
Huh?
If I remember right, she used to love this kind of gossip.
Trying again, I added, "Then Miss Steven showed up and caught them."
Still nothing.
"So?" Jane said.
I frowned. "So… she didn't yell at them or anything. She just checked their hall passes and walked away."
Jane tilted her head slightly.
"Why would she yell at them?"
"Because they had their tongues down each other's throats," I said, completely baffled.
Now she looked confused.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
For a moment we just stared at each other.
Then the bell rang, echoing through the hallway.
Jane blinked and shook her head.
"Come on," she said quickly. "Let's hurry and get our stuff."
She picked up her pace and headed toward the classroom.
Still confused, I followed after her.
When we reached the lab, everyone had already left.
The room was quiet. The stools were pushed in, and the faint smell of chemicals still hung in the air.
Someone had already gathered our things and placed them on our bags.
I blinked.
Huh. I had some pretty nice classmates.
As I packed my notebook and pen into my bag, I was still thinking about Jane's reaction earlier.
"Are you really not interested in what I told you?" I asked. "I thought you liked that kind of gossip."
Jane looked at me like I'd said something strange.
"I do like gossip," she said, "but somebody making out and a teacher asking for their hall passes isn't gossip."
I frowned.
Then what the hell counted as gossip?
And then something clicked.
Miss Steven.
The same Miss Steven who, in my memory, hated students being in relationships. If she saw someone holding hands, a lecture was guaranteed. If she caught a couple kissing, it was practically a suspension.
But just now she had seen those two practically glued to each other in the hallway…
And she didn't react at all.
No anger. No lecture.
Just a quick check of their hall passes.
And now Jane was acting like the whole thing was completely normal.
A strange thought slowly formed in my head.
…Wait.
Is this one of those worlds where the morals around relationships and sex are different?
Did I not just regress…
Did I somehow transmigrate into a world where the social rules are completely different?