The rowdy chatter and behaviour of classroom 3A is put under immediate pressure as the door to the classroom slides open ending in an audible click.
Mr. Russel enters the classroom, shutting the door behind him.
It is not that the students of classroom 3A particularly fear Mr. Russel or that they are even wary of reproach, moreso, that he is just one of those teachers with an indomitable presence. His demeanour was easy going, yet somehow commanded respect, this despite the goofy print of an apple on his sweater with the words ‘best teacher ever’.
Although truth be told, he definitely ranked amongst the favourite of teachers in the school, with regards to student opinion.
Mr Russel casually walked over to his desk, his shoes making soft tapping sounds on the polished wooden floor, before resting against the back of his desk in a casual pose, facing his classroom.
The man had a handsome, if not mildly ‘pretty boy’ face, with a styled beard and full head of grey hair. Not the gray of old age, but rather by stylish choice. The mole under his right eye helped to complete his ‘theatre worthy’ appearance. The precise stripes cut out from his left eyebrow and tiny shaped moustache, combined with his styled hair definitely put him in the category of ‘trendy’. This was especially true as far as lecturers go.
Even his clothes showed off a stylish yet mildly youthful fashion sense. The greyish green patterned sweater with the apple print on it, covered a cyan collared shirt, with a textured black denim pants to complete the look. He folded his arms with their slightly up-turned sleeves as he waited for the class representative to call attention.
Neye Gonzales stood up from her desk, adjusting her glasses while calling out: “All rise”.
The rest of class stood up as a show of respect.
Mr. Russel acknowledged them in turn, “Good morning class”.
♪ Good morning, Mr. Russel ♪, The class cooed unanimously, almost appreciatively.
After everyone took their seats once more Mr Russel announced: “I thought we’d do something a little different today.”
He paused for only the briefest of moments, seemingly for effect, or capturing attention, maybe both. “We’re going to play a little game.”
“It’s called ‘Truth or dare’”
There was a quiet murmuring throughout the class as confused students hussled amongst themselves in an attempt to discern his meaning. A wasted effort as he was about to explain anyway.
Neye, both feeling responsible as class rep. and a little uncomfortable with the concept of playing a game when you should be studying, voiced what for her was a quiet objection, even if it was framed as a question, “A game sir?”
“I should rather say that what we will be playing is less the original ‘truth or dare’ and more a variant that allows for players to actually win the game as opposed to it being just an endless and pointless party game.”
“The rules are as follows:”
“The game will be played in rounds. Every round will be used to eliminate players. Each round every remaining player will be given one chance to ask another player of their choosing: ‘truth or dare’”
“The target can then answer: ‘truth’, ‘dare’ or ‘pass’. Now before I explain the details here, I feel I should mention that we will be playing the game with points in order to keep track of who is winning in any given round.”
“If the target answers ‘truth’, then the player whose turn it is, can ask him any one question. The target is obliged to answer truthfully. If he refuses to answer, or lies, he has to give one of his points over to the other player as punishment. If he answers truthfully, he instead earns himself two new points.”
Neye, whom had been paying rapt attention up to this point, in case anyone would need assistance following these rules, suddenly interjected, “How will you know if they are lying?”
Mr. Russel simply smiled at her and responded with a ridiculous amount of confidence and charisma: “I’ll know.”
The certainty of his statement left no room for argument or doubt and she was forced to abort that line of questioning, even if the answer had been entirely unreliable.
“Carrying on then… If the target chooses ‘dare’, the player can dare him to do something. The dare can be anything and he/she must do it and meet all conditions stipulated. If the target fails to perform the dare for any reason, then he/she must once again, hand over one of their points to the other player for failing. If they succeed in the dare, then they earn themselves three new points.”
“Finally, if the target answers ‘pass’, then the player who asked him, simply loses one of his own points and nothing further happens.”
There was an unsteady rustling in the classroom at the mention of that last rule, clearly confusing a few students to the logic behind it.
“At the end of every round, each player automatically loses one point each. If at any point you go below zero points, you are immediately out of the game. Also at the end of the round, the player or players that are sitting in the lowest point bracket are also out of the game. It is essentially a game of elimination”.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“The game ends as soon as there are three or fewer players remaining and they automatically win.”
“Lastly, there are a couple of extra precautionary rules.
First, if you attempt to interfere with another person's dare attempt, you are automatically kicked out of the game.
Second, if you steal another player's points you are also disqualified.
Third, if you physically harm another player you are disqualified.
And lastly, you cannot target the same player two rounds in a row, you can target them again after that however.”
There was another uncomfortable shift in the classroom and some rather shocked expressions when he mentioned the rule about harming other players.
“So, are there any questions?”
His question hung in the air amidst a silent classroom. Russel knew that when you said ‘any questions’ and nobody asked a question it did not mean everyone understood you but rather that no one actually did, normally meaning a very bad thing for someone that just gave a presentation. He did not however care as he had already expected this and had a contingency in place.
“Neye, please hand two of these out to each student.” Neye did as he requested, while he continued to explain.
“You will each start with two points. We will use these tokens as a way of keeping track of the number of points in your possession.”
“Since some of you look confused, we will take it slow and start with a warm up round.”
By this point Neye was done handing out the strange tokens and was once more seated. She stared at her own two tokens curiously. They were long rectangular wooden sticks that reminded her of old wooden mahjong scoring sticks. Each had the same letters engraved into them, ‘VITA IN MORTE SUMUS’. Her latin wasn’t great and she was certain that attempting to translate it without context would yield egregious results, but it was something along the lines of ‘life in death’, or ‘in death we live’. All in all a little distasteful and morbid for a school.
“So every round I will randomly choose the order of the players. For the first round, let’s go with you Yuki”. Russel addressed Yuki Sarawano directly.
Yuki stood up. She was a tall girl with long blue hair. She brushed off her checkered, pleated blue skirt with its small rustling decorative gold chains. As she faced the teacher and looked directly at him with her cold grey eyes, her light pastel grey-blue top pulled tight around her ample bosom.
“I choose you Mr Russel.”
The teacher simply laughed at her antics. “That’s not how it works Yuki, you must choose one of the students, I am not a part of this game.”
Russel just brushed it off as Yuki being Yuki. She had earned herself quite the reputation in school for being cold and ruthless, her eyes and demeanour not exactly helping her, with titles like ‘Ice queen’ being thrown around. In truth all he saw was a determined young lady. Perhaps a little too determined. Even now the game hadn’t even started and he could tell she was already trying to work an angle and get a leg up, by testing boundaries.
“Eh. Was worth a shot.” Yuki shrugged in an uncaring fashion attempting to play it off as more of a joke than anything else.
“Hmmm.” She scanned the classroom for a suitable target. After a short while, she settled her gaze on an idiot in a peach t-shirt with the outline of a pair of boobs and the words ‘oppai’ boldly emblazoned upon it.
“Jansaint Sullivan” She spoke the miniature insect’s name.
“Since you are so eagerly volunteering”, she practically sneered at him, her disdain for him, palpable.
And he was indeed volunteering. Jansaint had his hand up waving like a loon excited to be picked. The spiky blonde hair on his head bobbing a bit from his exhilaration only making his small frame and freckled baby face look even more diminutive than it already was. All of this sat in sharp contrast to his bright green eyes that instead gave him an air of excitability and vigor of youthfulness.
Of course anybody that knew even the slightest thing about him, knew he was so excited to be picked for hopes of being asked to do something perverted. In fact his head had been filled with nothing but erotic thoughts ever since the word ‘dare’ had first been mentioned.
Jansaint in response, bowed down with one hand in front of his abdomen like some kind of formal butler, “I am at your command”
“Truth or dare?”
“Dare” Everyone present of course already knew this would be his answer, Yuki included, the question only being a formality.
Yuki, did not hesitate to bring out her sadistic side in full force and commanded him: “I dare you to climb on top of your desk and bark like a dog!”
Like the dog you are! Were the unspoken words that never left her mouth, nor did they need to. Her expression conveyed every ounce of one looking down upon a fly that just vomited all over your food and now you are busy pulling its wings off in retaliation.
As for the rest of the classroom, although many were happy to see the infamous Yuki so thoroughly dealing with the equally infamous Jansaint, many could still not help themselves and mumbled comments to each other, the likes of:
‘Woah man! So cold!’
‘Long live the ice queen!’
‘So mean!’
‘This is going to be so entertaining!’
Contrary to expectations however, or probably exactly as some expected, Jansaint did not hesitate for a second to climb on top of his desk on all fours, ass in the air and start barking like a dog in heat.
“Woof Woof Woof!”
“Woof Woof Woof!”
“Ahwooooooo!”
“Woof Woof Woof!”
The slight blush on his face would be recognised by any normal person as sheer mortifying embarrassment, but for those in the know, it was simply a clear sign of his perverted masochistic pleasure.
In the end Yuki clearly recognised the little turd was actually enjoying himself somewhat and she deflated back into her seat, rather dejectedly. There goes her fun, right out the window!
While the little bugger carried on with his best bitch in heat impersonation, Yuki wondered about the strange rules.
‘You are out the game if you steal another player's token’. There is clear intent and meaning in these rules beyond telling people to behave like civilised human beings. But if that’s the case, what then of, ‘You are out of the game if you physically harm someone’? That rule then becomes incredibly ominous. Whatever the case, it’s clear not all is as it seems here. There is something very wrong with this situation.