“What’s with all of you, crowding around the door like this!”
Wearing a pair of purple square-rimmed glasses, her hair tied in a neat ponytail, and dressed in the typical teacher’s attire—this classic image of a stern educator could only be the homeroom teacher.
As she stepped into the classroom, the first thing she saw was a group of girls huddled at the entrance, frantically slapping their own faces.
Watching them continue to slap themselves even as their cheeks swelled up, her expression shifted from stern and strict to utterly bewildered.
“You all…”
For a moment, she was at a loss for words.
“Have you all lost your minds today? What’s gotten into you that you’re resorting to slapping yourselves?”
Normally, when a teacher encounters students slapping themselves, the first thought would be that they might be having some sort of mental breakdown, and she’d have to worry about them heading to the rooftop and saying something like, “Teacher, the wind up here is so strong, I’m scared.” But this group of girls was different.
The homeroom teacher was absolutely certain that even if the usually gloomy Xia Xi in the class decided to jump off a building, these girls wouldn’t even think about it.
What could she do? After all, these were a bunch of troublemakers from relatively well-off families. Students like them, the rebellious types of their era, would never actually be driven to despair.
After twenty slaps, the girls stood still, their eyes dull and lifeless, staring straight at the homeroom teacher. A chill ran down her spine.
“How strange… Could these students have been possessed or something?”
She muttered under her breath.
“Cough, cough!”
Suddenly, Xia Xi coughed twice from his seat.
At the sound of the cough, the leading girl sprang into action.
She walked over to Xia Xi’s desk, picked up his thermos, and headed to the water dispenser in the classroom. She filled it with hot water and, to make sure it wasn’t too hot, thoughtfully added a bit of cold water to bring it down to a warm temperature.
“Master, please drink.”
She hadn’t even opened her mouth earlier, but now that she had, the entire class was stunned once again.
Everyone had already thought it was insane enough that these usual school bullies were slapping themselves. But hearing the ringleader of that group call a student they normally picked on “Master” was beyond belief.
“Mm, not bad at all. Truly teachable.”
The act of fetching hot water wasn’t voluntary on the leading girl’s part—it was a command Xia Xi had silently issued in his mind.
That’s right, the system’s hypnosis technique could even work with commands given entirely in one’s thoughts, without saying a single word out loud.
Xia Xi glanced up and noticed the homeroom teacher’s expression wavering. He quickly issued another mental command, telling the girls to return to their seats.
From the fragmented memories the system had implanted in him, this homeroom teacher didn’t seem like a particularly good person either. Whenever she happened to witness him being bullied, she would just look the other way and walk off.
In Xia Xi’s eyes, someone like that didn’t deserve to be called a teacher. She had none of the qualities befitting an educator.
Seeing that the mentally unstable girls had all gone back to their seats, the homeroom teacher chose not to press the matter further.
Sure, she thought the girls looked like zombies from a horror movie with their vacant stares—but what did that have to do with her? She just needed to show up on time for class, leave on time, and finish her daily teaching duties.
“Class begins!”
“Stand up!”
“Good morning, teacher!”
The standard three-part routine.
Usually, after the students stood up and greeted the teacher, they’d sit back down on their own. But the leading girl remained standing, and even after the homeroom teacher called out for her to sit several times, she didn’t budge.
Xia Xi tapped his index finger lightly on the wooden desk. Instantly, the girl understood. She strode up to the podium and stood face to face with the homeroom teacher.
“What… what do you think you’re doing?”
The homeroom teacher was clearly flustered. This was the first time she’d dealt with someone acting crazy like this, and she had no idea how to handle it.
Her usual gruff approach might work on ordinary students, but it never had much effect on this group of troublemakers—especially not now, when they were clearly off the rails.
“What are you?”
The girl asked mechanically.
“Excuse me?”
The teacher froze again.
She had never expected a student to be this bold, asking her, a homeroom teacher, to her face what she was.
“I’m not a thing!”
Driven by her pride as an adult, she shot back angrily, but then realized something was off.
“No, wait—I am a thing. No, no, no, I… Ugh, forget it. Wang Qian, what in the world is wrong with you? This is class time. Get back to your seat!”
The teacher knew that Wang Qian came from a somewhat wealthy family, so she’d often turned a blind eye to her excessive behavior. But this was different—now, Wang Qian was blatantly stomping all over her dignity.
Wang Qian didn’t say a word. Instead, she looked toward Xia Xi.
Without any visible sign, Xia Xi issued another command in his mind, and Wang Qian responded immediately.
She raised her well-maintained, fair-skinned hand and—smack!—slapped the homeroom teacher across the face. The sound was crisp and sharp.
The students’ nerves were rattled once again. Their mouths dropped open, and their eyes widened in shock.
As students, the people they feared most were their homeroom teacher, the disciplinary director, and their parents. But now, someone had stepped up—someone who dared to defy the homeroom teacher herself!
Who says our student body has no champions?!
“You… you…”
The homeroom teacher clutched her cheek, sputtering with rage.
She hadn’t done anything to provoke Wang Qian lately, had she? Why would she just slap her out of nowhere?
And the worst part was—in front of the entire class, under the watchful eyes of all these students—she, as a teacher and homeroom instructor, couldn’t even fight back.
If she did, she’d lose all moral ground.
She could already imagine the headlines on campus social media or some shady little news site the next day: “Shocking! A Homeroom Teacher Does THIS to a Female Student!”
That’s right—those heartless reports would definitely emphasize the phrase “female student.” After all, gender-based outrage is the ultimate clickbait these days. Even though she herself was a female homeroom teacher, the story would inevitably twist into something like a male teacher mistreating a female student. And if things escalated, they might even accuse her and other teachers of favoring boys over girls, saying she bullied this girl just because she was female.
“What do you mean, ‘you’?!”
Under Xia Xi’s mental control, Wang Qian shot back insolently, and then—smack!—slapped the teacher across the face again.
“All this time I’ve been bullying others, why didn’t you ever stop me?!”
Wang Qian fired off a soul-piercing question.
The teacher’s mind went blank.
Wait… hold on. You bully people, I don’t interfere, and now you’re blaming me for it?
If I did step in, you wouldn’t be happy either…
