It was a warm Tuesday in April when Matt Teetcher, math teacher at Jiangning University met his unfortunate doom. He had come to the library, like always, to make sure that none of the students were being unproductive with their studies. “Unproductive” meaning, of course, doing anything other than studying quietly. He would come between classes and marking papers, walking through the tables and stacks, hoping to catch someone sleeping, or talking, or playing on their phone, or reading something other than a textbook, so that he could criticize them and “put them in their place.”

“A student’s only job is to study, so that is all that they would do,” he would lecture them, and he knew that they appreciated it. Maybe not now, maybe not next week, but in twenty years, when they were sitting in their Vice-president offices, they would look back and remember that he was the one who pushed them to work hard, focus, and study, which gave them the ability to get that position.

“Resent me now, but appreciate me later,” was his mantra, and the way that he approached everything in life, from dating, to interacting with his colleagues, to teaching his classes. This teaching philosophy compelled him to assign volumes of homework to his students, because “more work makes for better understanding.” It also caused him to have a disproportionately large failure rate for his students; only twenty-five percent of the people who took his class passed it. Any other teacher would have seen this as a cause for concern, but he took it as a matter of pride. “I fail them so that they can get better at it,” he would tell himself, and his departmental head, at the end of every term when he was drowning in red ink from failed exams.

Lost in thought, he came around a corner in the Picture Books section of the library and ran directly into a table. Quickly he picked himself up, straightening his business suit. He was very concerned with how he looked, and swept the remains of his short hair over the growing bald spot where the top of his hair used to be. He frowned at the thought of going bald before the age of forty and adjusted his glasses. Once upon a time, he was considered an absolute catch. Taller than the average man, at 190 cm tall, with flowing locks of black hair, all of the women wanted to be with him. Unfortunately, he started noticing more and more hair in the sink once he turned thirty, and two years ago, at the age of thirty-six, he decided to give in and shave his head. The women, obviously intimidated into silence by his ultra-sexy smooth head, stopped calling, and his resentment started to grow.

“Mr. T., I need to talk to you about my grade last term.”

He looked up from adjusting his tie to see a woman standing in front of him looking agitated and annoyed. She was young, about eighteen or nineteen years old, so was probably a student. Angry that he had been disturbed from his musings, he glared at her.

“What do you want, student? And why are you being so loud? This is a LIBRARY, where people are trying to STUDY, so why don’t you stop disturbing everyone and GO! BACK! TO! STUDYING!”

“You failed me last term. I want to know why; I did all of the work and did well on the midterm and final exam. I need to pass that class to stay in my major, will you please help me?”

He didn’t recognize her. Maybe she was one of the students that he had caught who had been hiring other students. Maybe he was getting old and his memory was fading. Maybe she had lost weight, gotten a haircut, maybe, maybe, maybe… No, he thought to himself, I have a photographic memory, and would remember her; she obviously wasn’t there.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“OK, what was your name?”

Matt had an extra sharp and accurate memory for everything, as a result of his far superior intelligence, but had a difficult time attaching names to faces. The fact that so many of his students picked silly names like Apple, Chloe, Happy, Juliette, Kobe, or Anne instead of good, proper manes like Minerva, Cleopatra, Veronica, Josephina, Bartleby, or Bernadette made him eventually stop trying to learn all of their names. Instead, the way that he took attendance, and knew who the students were, was by having a seating chart with the students’ pictures, names, and student numbers.

“Stacey Zhang, student number 1915010101. Like I said, I did all of my work correctly last term and came to all of the classes. You failed me though, and I would like to know why. I had an 87% overall grade before the final, so how did I fail?!”

Half listening, Matt unlocked his iPad, looking for his grading chart while lost in thought. Dealing with failed students, unfortunately, was an all-too-common part of his life. Why a student would complain about it to him, instead of simply teaching themselves how to better study was something that he would never understand. This was supposed to be a top tier university, so why didn’t it have students that were able to pass a basic math class?! Do the homework+study+come to class=pass; not a difficult equation in theory. Maybe people just weren’t as smart as they were when he was in university. Maybe the standards had been lowered to the point that people didn’t actually have to learn anything to get degrees. Maybe… Maybe… Maybe…

“Ah, there you are… Yes… I see… You tried to cheat on the final exam by sending someone else to take it, which of course, got you a 0% on it, and because it was worth 40% of your total grade, you failed the class,” he pointed to her entry, smugly. “Grades are final for cheaters, Sorry-not-sorry! I Hope you learned your lesson: work hard and don’t try to cheat!”

“I came! I was there! You even said “Good afternoon” to me and took a picture of the class! I don’t know why you think that I wasn’t there. You spoke to me!”

“No, I didn’t,” his words dripped with condescension. “I greeted your decoy version. It wasn’t even a good decoy. If you’re going to send someone to pretend to be you, then you should at least use someone who looks like you. You have long black hair, and the fake “you” had short blonde hair. Really insulting that you think that the teachers are too dumb to notice the difference.”

“Mr. T, I had just received a haircut and dye-job that day. I do cosplay and was in a cosplay competition the day after. I have pictures, look.”

“I don’t need to look. I know that you’re lying. Grades are final, that’s all that I have to say.”

“Asshole!” She violently smacked the iPad out of his hand, sending it flying against a precariously stacked pile of books in the corner and walked away. This wasn’t the first time that his academic integrity elicited such a response from a failed student, and he didn’t expect it to be the last time. (He was wrong…)

He walked to the corner to retrieve it and was surprised to discover that it was wedged firmly into the pile. It was going to take all of his strength to pull it out, and he was going to have to be careful not to topple the stack over. He pulled… Nothing, no movement. He yanked… Nothing, no movement. He twisted…

*Crash*

*Crack*

*Crunch*

He was under the pile! “Death by book” was never a way that he expected to die. Adored to death by students, maybe. Poisoned by a jealous colleague, maybe. Crushed by books though?! NEVER. He had to at least have some clever last words, and racked his brain.

NOTHING! Nothing was coming to mind, and he could feel the dark edges of death creeping in on him. There had to be something, anything, for him to say, but his brain was stuck on empty.

“Nothing. I. Have. Nothing. To. Say.”