Chapter 25 : SEÑOR CHANG'S LAST STAND
Annie's voice carried across Room 203 with the precision of a prosecutor closing an airtight case.
"You never had Spanish credentials. The degree you claimed came from Universidad de Guatemala doesn't exist as an accredited institution. You've been teaching a language you don't actually speak fluently for eight months."
Chang stood at the front of the room, frozen behind his desk. Every student in Spanish 102 had gone silent. Jeff leaned forward in his chair. Britta's mouth hung open. Even Pierce looked up from whatever offensive doodle he'd been working on.
I sat three rows back, watching a man's life collapse in real-time.
"That's— that's ridiculous," Chang managed. His hands gripped the edge of his desk. "I have documentation—"
"Your documentation is forged." Annie held up a folder thick enough to kill a small animal. "I've traced the letterhead. The signatures don't match any administrator at that institution. The institution itself has no record of you ever attending."
Dean Pelton materialized in the doorway like bad news always knows when to arrive. Dalmatian-print vest today. His expression said he'd already been briefed, probably by Annie herself an hour ago.
"Señor Chang." The Dean's voice lacked its usual theatrical warmth. "Could you step into my office, please?"
Chang's aura exploded.
I'd read anger before. Jeff's controlled burns. Shirley's righteous heat. Even Pierce's sputtering orange irritation when he felt dismissed. But this was something else entirely. Crimson rage swirled through Chang's outline like blood mixing with water, violent and expanding. Gray shame threaded underneath, the color of old ash, of things that should have stayed buried. And beneath both, a sickly yellow-green I'd never seen before — the specific shade of someone who'd been alone too long and had just realized the last bridge was burning.
A maelstrom. That was the only word for it.
"You can't do this to me." Chang's voice cracked. The performance was gone. This was real. "I am EL TIGRE CHINO. I have given EVERYTHING to this school—"
"Ben, please." Dean Pelton's expression flickered with something close to pity. "Don't make this harder."
Chang looked around the room. His eyes swept over every student, searching for a single face that might defend him. Jeff stared at his phone. Britta had her arms crossed. Annie clutched her folder with the satisfied righteousness of someone who'd just finished a crusade.
Nobody moved.
Chang's gaze passed over me, and for one second his aura's chaos focused into something coherent. Recognition. We'd studied together in his office. I'd seen the cracks in his armor when nobody else was watching. I'd brought food. I'd listened.
I could have warned him.
The thought sat in my chest like a stone. A week ago, when Annie started pulling records and asking questions, I could have tipped Chang off. Given him time to run, or fabricate better documents, or just disappear before the humiliation hit. I didn't.
Because Chang-as-student meant Chang-as-security-guard meant Chang's-coup-in-Season-3. A known disaster I could anticipate. Chang-as-teacher-with-a-grudge-against-whoever-exposed-him was an unknown. And unknowns were worse than disasters.
The math was correct. The feeling was poison.
"Fine." Chang's voice dropped to something quiet and broken. He grabbed his bag from behind the desk — the one with the tiger stripes he'd painted himself — and walked toward the door. Dean Pelton stepped aside.
At the threshold, Chang turned back. His aura was dimmer now, the rage settling into a colder burn.
"You think you're better than me? ALL of you?" His laugh was hollow. "I'll be back. And when I am, you'll wish you'd shown SEÑOR CHANG some respect."
The door slammed behind him.
The room stayed silent for three full seconds. Then Jeff exhaled.
"Well. That was uncomfortable."
Annie closed her folder. Her hands were shaking slightly, but her face held steady. "He was lying to everyone. Teaching a language he barely speaks. That's not fair to the students who actually need these credits."
"No, you're right." Jeff stood up, gathering his things. "It's just... more uncomfortable than I expected."
Britta muttered something about systemic abuse of power. Pierce said something offensive about immigrants that made Shirley's eye twitch. Troy looked at me.
"You okay, man? You look weird."
"Just processing." I grabbed my own bag. "Think I need some air."
The parking lot at 11 PM was empty except for one car.
Chang's Honda Civic, parked under the broken streetlight at the far end of the lot. Engine off. Lights off. The silhouette behind the wheel hadn't moved in the ten minutes I'd been watching from my own car.
I could see his aura even from this distance. Not the maelstrom from earlier — that had burned itself out. What remained was worse. Gray. All gray. The color of someone sitting alone in a dark car with nothing left to lose.
My hand reached for the door handle.
I could walk over. Knock on his window. Offer something — food, conversation, just presence. The same things that had worked during our study sessions, when Chang let the mask slip for five minutes at a time and I saw the genuine loneliness underneath the performance.
But if I did that, the timeline shifted. Chang's trajectory changed. Instead of enrolling as a student, nursing his wounds, eventually finding his weird path toward the security guard job that led to the takeover that led to the resolution — he might do something else entirely. Attach himself to me. See me as an ally. Make decisions based on gratitude that I couldn't predict.
Unknowns were worse than disasters.
I pulled my hand back from the door handle.
Chang's gray silhouette didn't move. The empty parking lot stretched between us like a verdict.
I started my car and drove away.
My phone rang at 11:47 PM. Shirley's number.
"You awake?"
"Yeah." I was staring at my apartment ceiling, watching the shadows from passing cars outside. "Can't sleep."
"Mm-hmm." A pause. Shirley's pauses always meant something. "I saw your face today. During the... the Chang situation."
My chest tightened. "Saw what?"
"You looked like you knew it was coming."
Silence stretched between us. I could hear her breathing, patient as always, waiting for me to fill it.
"I just had a feeling," I said. "Annie's been digging into his background for weeks. It was obvious something would break eventually."
"Mm-hmm."
That sound again. The one that meant Shirley wasn't buying what I was selling but wasn't going to push — yet. Filing it away in whatever internal ledger she kept, the one that tracked who was being straight with her and who was full of it.
"You want to talk about it?" she asked.
"About Chang?"
"About whatever's making you sound like you haven't slept in a week."
I rubbed my eyes. "I'm fine, Shirley. Really. Just a long day."
"Alright then." Her voice softened slightly. "But you know where I am if 'fine' stops being enough."
"I know."
"And Ethan?"
"Yeah?"
"Whatever you saw coming — if it was more than a feeling — that's between you and God. But watching something fall apart and choosing not to catch it... that weighs on a person. Don't carry it alone."
She hung up before I could respond.
I stared at the phone for a long time. The shadows kept moving across my ceiling. Somewhere in a dark parking lot, Chang was still sitting in his car, and somewhere in my head, the math was still correct.
The feeling stayed poison.
I closed my eyes and tried not to see the gray aura behind my eyelids. It didn't work. Chang's emptiness burned there until something that looked like sleep finally came.
But it wasn't rest.
Greendale was entering the final stretch of the semester. The air tasted different — charged, expectant. My skull-hum had been louder all week, background static building toward something I couldn't quite name.
Somewhere in an administration office, Dean Pelton was arranging a prize.
Somewhere in the building, genre pressure was gathering like weather before a storm.
And somewhere in the parking lot, a man with nothing left to lose was making plans I couldn't see.
Chang's maelstrom aura burned behind my eyes long after I was home — shame and rage and abandonment swirling in someone who would come back to Greendale one way or another.
The only question was what shape he'd take when he did.
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