The Lecturer Room's Door

"Brissia Niverte, forty."

A cold, loud voice instantly drove my drowsiness away. An old townscape, filled with people dressed in classic clothes like actors in historical films, vanished just as I opened my eyes.

When I pulled my face off of the table, all pairs of eyes in the room suddenly fixed on me. I could feel a sense of concern centering on me, although at first, I didn't understand what it was for until I remembered the number that came after my name.

"HUUH?!"

My scream widened the eyes of dozens of people in the room, except for one. A man in a black shirt with neat brown hair in front of a whiteboard glanced at me indifferently before walking out of the classroom. That's the senior who the faculty assigned to be the teaching assistant in my class. Then, my friends got up from their seats and walked toward the classroom door. Gosh, did I really oversleep until the class was dismissed?

"Nicho! Ji!" I held back my seatmates from getting to their feet. "Why didn't you wake me up before that devil spelled the cursed number loudly?!"

In contrast to me, both of them were placid while giving me a flat gaze. It was as if they were saying that the curse came on my behalf, not his. However, that wasn't what I wanted to hear.

"We did TRY to wake you up, but you hit our hands instead of walking out of your dreamland," Nicho replied as he rose from his seat, no longer looking calm. His slight annoyance astonished me a bit. I had zero memory of it, so I stayed quiet for a minute.

"Speaking of which, what dream you had that made you slept so soundly? It was an almost impossible sight," Ji chirped and walked beside me down the hall. Her eyes slightly narrowed as she held back her laughter, seeming to recall my silly action before her eyes.

Though it might sound as funny as it would, I would say it was an extraordinary dream. It felt like I had just been thrown back in time, long ago and far away from this big city. My chest was burning up with a mysterious longing. A harmony of conversations that I never heard in modern society was ringing in my ears, singing a lullaby that was probably the one that put me in a deep sleep.

Oh, wait a second. There's something more important than that.

"Brissia! Where are you going?!" asked Nicho.

I squinted at the echo of his voice filling the hall. He couldn't be any louder, could he?!

"To cancel the curse!"

"What?! Why would you want to cancel the course?! Don't leave us alone in this hell, Bris!"

Several passersby turned their attention toward me, perplexed and annoyed. In all situations, that was the most I hope I could calm her down. Geez.

Whatever. Perhaps I wasn't that calm, too. The world before me has been moving swiftly. It must've been great if I could slow it down for a moment, or be at the side which has a slower pace.

Finally, I found the figure of a man in a black shirt and brown trousers walking his back ten meters from me. His quiet presence resembled an angel of death walking down a graveyard. But as he spoke, he turned into a cold-hearted devil that rose straight from the inferno. That's what I believed as long as I enrolled in his professor's Financial Accounting course.

"Excuse me!" I called rather loudly as soon as I successfully clutched the hem of his shirt.

As he turned to me, half-surprised and half-upset, I held my breath for a moment. But then, I mustered up the courage to ask him to speak in private with me. Some people might think it wasn't a big deal. But to me, forty is the least I expected to hear and to possess in a university where the students hardly ever remedial.

Next to the staircase that led to the corridor of abandoned classrooms, there we were. Face to face, with a person who has an irritated expression that has perfectly sculpted on his already stony face.

"Hurry up. I have a class to attend after this."

It's not like you were the only one suffering, duh.

"I would like to ask for a remedial assignment."

The teaching assistant raised the left corner of his lips while rolling his eyes. "There would be no remedial for this semester. Haven't I made that clear?"

I clenched my fists as he turned away from me towards the lecturer room. He didn't know that one of my friends told me she got a grade improvement from him because her test score was less than fifty.

So, I spoke firmly, "I'll take whatever assignment you give! Please... you can't just leave me like this."

I repeatedly called him while running after him, but he arrogantly continued to walk among the students who were passing by. Until I had taken twenty steps and he still ignored me, I stopped.

My vision became blurry when he entered the faculty room without even turning to me. Not only has he never been nice to me, but what would I do if my parents find out about the bad score?

I rushed to the door, not caring if I looked impolite in the eyes of the lecturers later for entering the room without knocking first. I held the knob of the lecturer room's wooden door, turned it, and pushed it rather roughly forward. My heart swelled at the thought of exact revenge on him for humiliating me.

However, when the door opened completely, it wasn't a large room with minimalistic desks and floor-to-ceiling windows I stepped into. I found myself standing before four old-fashioned desks with typewriters on each one, surrounded by reddish-brown walls, and next to shelves filled with envelopes and papers.

What on earth? Or was I even on Earth? I smelled a fresh fragrance coming from the desk where I used to turn in late assignments for my Financial Accounting course. As I got closer and observed the yellow flowers in a small table vase, I could faintly hear the conversations of many people outside.

If it weren't for my brain yelling at me that I had to pursue my remedial opportunity, I would never have considered turning around. It was such a relief to see the door I opened was still behind me. But as I opened it for the second time, the opportunity vanished along with the office view that I remembered from my university days.

My heart was pounding hard. Sweat dripped down my palms, making me clench them so tightly that I forgot I had to breathe.

There were mop and broom only. No single door disguised as the walls, no matter how hard I pushed every side of it. At first, it stunned me. However, someone's arrival brought me to my senses.

"Who are you?"

A deep voice behind me sounded alert. The moment he asked, there was no more squeak. However, I could hear his voice loud and clear. Could he be standing in the doorway? I remembered the floor creaked a little when I first set foot in that place.

Silence undermined my confidence for a moment, drowning me in invisible words from my head. Letting him know I wasn't a thief was crucial, but explaining my presence was a more complicated matter.

"Don't make me repeat it. I don't want to act like the cops."

I gulped. Hearing his voice was calmer than before, he seemed merely curious about whether I had business in his office. Therefore, I turned around slowly, facing the man in a white shirt, brown trousers, and dark brown vest. A round glasses hang snugly from the bridge of his nose.

Definitely, he was not a man from my school or my neighborhood.

"My apologies. I seem to have lost my way in chasing someone behind this door," I said before leaving the room immediately, although there were still hundreds of questions haunting my head.

I was fortunate enough that he only responded with a nod and let me out without further questioning. Although it was temporary luck due to what happened later. Walking on the footpath by the river, well-dressed people stared at me inquisitively. A moment that I had expected since I was in the room full of antiques earlier.

Instead of continuing to wonder why a bunch of people dressed in classic clothes in a classic setting were staring weirdly at the only modern-dressed girl here, I turned to my right. The wide, clear blue river stretched from the southeast to the northwest. An arched stone bridge adorned with streetlights spanned across an industrial zone from where I stood.

It was the moment I realized I had the same view as the one I had in my dream. Therefore, I turned around, planning to find the other way...

"Ouch!"

... Until I bumped into someone and fell onto the cobblestone street.

"Sorry! Are you alright?"

To think that I was the one who bumped into someone and heard them apologize first was a bit uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he sounded truly worried that it left me no choice but to nod languidly.

However, the next thing that came to my mind was the face of my teaching assistant I planned to see. The more I thought about it, the more similar the person's voice to him. Did he follow me here and finally realized how necessary that remedial opportunity was to me?

I looked up to confirm. Well, he indeed had 'his' face. Precisely if that cold-hearted devil could slightly express his worries. Even so, he had a dark, long, blue cloak attached to his shoulders and covered his dark blue uniform. His appearance was resembling a member of royal special forces, although the crest on his chest didn't have a crown, but a crow.

I grabbed his outstretched hand. Strangely, my irritation didn't appear when I saw his face, even if briefly. I would've gotten mad just by looking at his figure from afar.

Their resemblance had distracted me, but I quickly turned away and didn't linger. But, until the sun almost set, I did not find my campus building.

It almost felt like the town was inviting me to play hide-and-seek for an unknown time being.