Project: Death for Classroom Zero

Chapter 3: The Secret of The Hell

Tristan went inside a room together with a noticeable blankness on his eyes.

After he finished the first lesson they played—with a twist of betting your life, he followed what the woman and the other students did earlier. He let himself be swallowed by the ground.

It was a horrible situation for him when he was the last man alive inside the white room. That time, only three seconds was the gap of the death chasing him. Had he not quickly remembered the last value of pi, and if he did not quickly scrolled through the last slot, he would be joining those men and women whose brain and head has been torn by the inelegant pirouette of metallic drill bits.

When he followed what the woman and the other students had done in order to escape the horrible room, as he descended down the floor, he found instructions on where to go next.

Red arrows taped on the white setting on the wall, laboriously pointing directions which when he followed, it leads him to the room where he was in, right now.

He saw the other surviving students also there, waiting, sitting, eyes are blank and weak just like his.

The surviving students were sitting on a typical classroom-like chair. It was a chair made of green glossy plastic that shimmers along with the scintillates of lights from the ceiling.

His stare landed on the woman who have helped him, which, in turn, was looking at him as well, even by the beginning that he entered the room. Reluctantly, he smiled at her. The return of the woman was disappointing. She shifted her gaze away of him without telling anything—even a simple smile or nod.

‘Cold,’ Tristan thought.

“Mr. Fauxier, you can take your seat beside Ms. Donnahughe.”

He faltered when he heard a familiar voice from the woman who had welcomed them earlier, at the white room. At a desk, in front of the still-flustered students, near the white board, is a woman in thick framed glass and a bun-style combed hair.

“Professor Josefina.”

“I am. But it would be disgraceful if you would just say Josefina. Instead, you can all call me Professor Buenavista. It is my last name,” said the Professor. Raising her eyebrows, she waited for the answer of the students. But no one did. No one was willing to. Nor have the energy to say.

With a sigh, Professor Buenavista said, “it’s okay. I know that you are all tired from the first game. And I know that you are all also physically, emotionally, and most especially, MENTALLY tired.”

Still, no one answered. “Was our lesson mentally challenging? Have you learned something?”

Even waiting for almost a minute, no one, even Tristan, managed to pull another strength to answer her.

Professor Buenavista smiled. Tristan saw her hands moved underneath the desk in her front, grabbing something. And he knew there was no good thing if the woman showed whatever the thing was, below.

“Y—Yes ma’am!” Tristan unhesitatingly answered which made Professor Bunavista stop her hand grabbing whatever the thing underneath. “I—It was mentally challenging. Difficult. We have to solve a problem that doesn’t even have a direct statement of the real problem, rather it was made through symbolical narration which are subtly and the other explicitly told. I—I never knew how to solve it until the last three minutes of the game.”

For a minute, Professor Buenavista did not answer. Instead, she took her time looking at Tristan with her eyebrow-raised stare.

Feeling the dryness of his throat, and the cold sweat trickling down his nape, he smiled at the professor. He thought that perhaps it was a wrong thing to answer her. Maybe there was an unwritten rule about it that he wasn’t aware of—in the first place, he wasn’t aware of the kind of learning setup the Josen High had. This deadly learning-teaching strategy.

“Very good, Mr. Fauxier! Make Mr. Fauxier be your leading model. Look, he was answering my questions even he’s pathetically afraid. I even observed that he was the one who gives you the cue so that you all could answer to me too. So when I ask, answer. You don’t know how much rage I can save when someone answers me.”

Tristan Fauxier secretly made a sigh of relief. It was not because he was complimented by the Professor, rather because she finally removed her hand underneath the desk. Whatever was under that table, Tristan wouldn’t want to see. Because he felt that something … some pairs of eyes was staring, gazing at him from that direction.

“Mr. Fauxier, go to the chair beside Ms. Donnahughe. You shouldn’t let me repeat it again.” Despite smiling, Holder could feel the threat from each word of the Professor. That if ever he would remain standing in the front, he would regret it.

But he had a problem. He did not know who is Ms. Donnahughe she’s been telling. About to ask a question to the Professor, he saw someone from his peripheral vision raising her hand.

“Yes, Ms. Donnahughe?” Professor Buenavista asked.

Like a sweet pang in the ear, he immediately looked at the woman who was raising her hand. It was the same woman who have helped him to solve the first lesson’s problem.

“Can you please help us define and learn more about pi and its related concepts? Circles, radius, circumference, anything.”

As soon as she finished the question, Tristan noticed that the woman took a quick glance at him. It made Tristan’s heart skipped a beat, for she realized she was trying to save him from the trouble of asking who among this students uniformed with the same expression is Ms. Donnahughe.

He slowly reached the place where Ms. Donnahughe was sitting. It was at the back, at the last chairs of the middle row.

“Thank you,” he said as soon as he sat beside her.

“You saved us from her wrath, that’s why I have to return it,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to see the rage of a demon.”

“I’m afraid to see it too.”

Professor Buenavista was speaking in front, discussing about the lesson they have played their lives a while ago. But neither Tristan or that woman named Donnahughe was listening.

“Was that your first name?” he asked, whispering.

“What?”

“The Donnahughe, Professors, unless you’re their pet, would never call you in your first name.”

“I know that.”

“Then what’s your name? I am Tristan. Tristan Fauxier.”

The woman did not answer. She was hesitating whether she would give her name or not. In the end, she did.

“Rain. Rain Kallixa Donnahughe.”

“Nice name there.”

“I hate rain,” said Rain.

Tristan paused and think of what Rain claimed. “Was that literal or symbolical? Your statement, I mean.”

“Both.”

When the bell loudly rang from the speaker attached at the wall, Professor Buenavista and other of the students—including Rain—started to stand up.

“Go to your quarters, class, and rest. Sleep sound and tight. Go replenish your energy. Tomorrow, we’ll be gardening. Do you understand?”

No one answered.

“Bunch of brats,” Professor Buenavista said. “Anyway, let’s just meet tomorrow.”

Rain was about to leave the room. But before she would, she looked at Tristan who was now staring blankly at the wall.

“Tristan,” she called.

The very calling of his name made him return back to the reality.

“What?”

“You’re spacing out.”

“Sorry. It’s just that, I don’t know what was really happening, or why was this happening, or what was the reason. The very thought that I was inside this horrible class does not sink through my mind yet.”

Rain turned her back to him. “If you want to know more what circle of hell you have entered to, follow me. I’ll tell you everything,” she said.