Rita and Sadanandan walked through the silent corridors. Since the students attended the morning assembly in the school grounds, the silence was formed. Else, it would've been a noisy mess out there.

Since they were walking silently through these already silent corridors, Sadanandan felt slightly awkward. So, he tried to break the ice between them. "Hey, I got a question to ask."

"Oh, shoot!"

"Well, two months have passed since this academic year began, am I right?" He asked.

"Yea." Rita nodded her head.

"Then that would mean the assignment of class teachers to all the classes is already a done deal, right?" He asked.

"You're right." Yet again, Rita nodded her head in agreement.

"Yea.. So, why is the twelfth grade without a class teacher now? Did something happen to their class teacher?" Sadanandan wondered.

Rita sighed. "Well, we tell people that the twelfth grade's class teacher was fired due to his actions and behaviors." She replied.

"So? What really happened?" He pried.

"Ah.. He ran away." She answered.

"Ran away? What made him do that?" Sadanandan bombarded her with questions.

"Sheesh! You sure are interested in fishing out past events, aren't you?" Rita asked. She looked as if she didn't want to explain that part of the story.

"Of course! He's my predecessor, after all. I would like to know what made him run away. Like, if it's the kids or something like that.." Sadanandan replied.

"Oh, no! It's not his students that made him run away. Actually, kids love this guy. Like, he's really a good teacher, but an awful human. His students don't know that though. He hates taking in responsibilities. So, when he was assigned with a class, he couldn't care less about it. Moreover, if we add his inappropriate behavior towards the fellow teachers even when he has a wife and kid waiting for him back in his hometown , he was truly a recipe for disaster. We're kinda lucky that he decided to run for it!" Rita sighed.

"Wait, why didn't you fire him beforehand then?" Sadanandan asked.

"Didn't I talk about his insane popularity amongst students? We didn't even want to imagine the backlash that we would face if we were to fire him! So, we reprimanded him. Like, you should have seen the parent's reaction when they learned that we said that we "fired" him to cover his sudden disappearance." Rita replied.

"Damn, that's kinda low! You should've fired him the time he started showing his real behavior." Sadanandan suggested.

"Well, we should've.. And would've if we had a trustworthy backup like you, Mr Sadanandan." Rita smiled. "Oh, seems like we've reached our destination." She pointed towards a classroom.

Sadanandan nodded and entered the classroom. He was shocked to see the number of desks in the class. "Hmm, are you sure we're in the right class?" He turned towards Rita and asked.

Rita stared at Sadanandan's confused face before breaking into laughter. "Ah, I get what you mean! Don't worry you're in the correct one. There's just thirteen students in the twelfth grade. It's the school's record breaking number though!" She said with a proud look on her face.

"Like.. the record for the lowest number of students in a particular grade?" He asked.

"Ah, no. This is the most students we ever had in twelfth grade." She corrected him.

"Damn. Is this the case for the other grades as well?" Sadanandan asked, dawning a sad look on his face. In his point of view, it seemed as if the school wasn't making a profit from teaching. Now, it made total sense why the principal offered them jobs without even considering prior experience or that they were construction workers.. She had to save money as much as possible, from the looks of it.

Rita got the gist of what Sadanandan was thinking from his expression. "Mr. Sadanandan, you're mistaken! It's just the eleventh and twelfth grade in this sorry state. Every other grade has a minimum of hundred students. It's just that both these grades are relatively new ones for our school, since we didn't have the license for teaching those grades till two or three years ago. So, even though we are a pretty credible school for teaching students till the tenth grade, people still don't trust their kids with us for eleventh and twelfth grades, since we haven't shown anything particularly mind blowing in that sector." She replied.

"Wait, you can't show what you guys are capable of unless you're allowed to, am I right? Unless you have enough students to teach, how can you even show what you're made of." Sadanandan was baffled by the parent's mindset.

"That's exactly what we say to the parents! Only a few actually understand what we're talking about and enroll their kids to our school though. And how would they? When there's some teachers among us who specifically ask the parents to transfer their kids to other schools after tenth grade.." Rita's emotion meter just went on a turmoil in a matter of moments.

"An enemy within, huh? You got some crazy roster of teachers in here. Did you find the person who did it?" He asked.

"Yea.."

"And?"

"She's still working here." Rita replied.

"So, let me just sum it up. There's some teacher that bad mouths your school and its reputation and not only did you find out about her, you still let her have her job?" Sadanandan asked, surprised about the idiotic actions that the school management seemed to take.

"Well, if you don't know this already, we're seriously understaffed. So, every helping hand is welcome, you know? Even if the hand extended is an enemy's." Rita explained her stance.

"Damn, why not post an ad on the newspaper or something? You could get a few people interested that way." Sadanandan suggested.

"As if! You really think people would be interested in working for ten thousand rupees per month?" Rita asked.

"Hey! I feel like I'm being attacked. But yeah, there's gotta be guys like me who's in dire need of the job they are actually proficient at." Sadanandan replied.

"I'll take your suggestion into consideration. Anyway, it's high time that the assembly's gonna disperse. So, the students are gonna come running soon. So, I hope that you'll manage the thirteen kids under you from now on. They might be a bit ticked off, since their favorite teacher's gone.. Or at least, that's what the substitute teacher said. So, handle them with care, I guess? And if you need some help, feel free to ask me about it. I'll make sure to help you whenever I can." Rita spoke in a cheerful tone.

"Sure. Thank you, Miss Rita." He bowed his head and they went their separate ways.

#

It was as Rita said. Just after the morning assembly was dispersed, the kids ran towards their classes like crazy, even though they were strictly asked to keep their discipline. Even the senior most kids were busy finding out who could actually get to their class as fast as they could. Taro sighed at the sight of those little devils running around. Wados or Earth, the kids in the age group of thirteen to eighteen were eerily similar in both the planets.

While he reminisced about the annoying brats back in Wados, while seated on the seat reserved for the class teacher, a small horde of kids barged into his classroom as well. However, upon seeing a totally unknown man in their class, the students rechecked whether they were in the right class.

Once, they made sure that they weren't mistaken about their class, they cautiously entered the classroom, avoiding the gaze of the man before them. Taro looked around and noticed that only the boys had arrived and waited for the girls to arrive as well.

While waiting, he suddenly locked eyes with one of the students. The guy looked almost as tall as him and had a dark brown tan as if he was sunbathing during the entire year. He looked pretty handsome as well, but the arrogant look he had on his face made him look ugly. It seemed like he thoroughly hated Taro for some unknown reason.

Soon enough, the girls arrived as well. Surprisingly, the number of girls were more than the boys in this class. And they came in making all sorts of ruckus, not realizing that the existence of an unknown man in their classroom waiting for them.

The first one to notice was the class leader, Shivani; she was surprised to see her neighbor who was supposed to be working in the construction sector seated in the teacher's seat. The second one was Abhirami; she was pretty excited to see one of the few hot construction guys that she wanted to kinda scream.

Other than those two and the guy who locked eyes with him before, everyone else in the class had a mix of disinterest and hatred written in their faces. Taro sighed. "Damn, I haven't even introduced myself and they seem to hate me! Hell, hate me after getting to know me! That would make sense." He screamed inside his mind before calming himself down. Once everyone was seated, he finally got up. "Hello, everyone. I'm Sadanandan, your new class teacher."

#