The First Event Begins

“Mom… no, uh, yeah, I just thought I’d call and see how you’ve been.”

[What’s gotten into you? Is work as a teacher that hard? Still, your mom believes in you. Honestly, you were such a handful when you were a student—how did you even end up a teacher? …Haneul, I’m proud of you.]

“……”

After getting through my first day at school, I went home and checked a few things.

And what I found was that I hadn’t been possessed by the game itself.

“So my whole environment changed, that’s all.”

In the usual possession stories, don’t you take over a character inside the game?

But I was still me, and this world was still this world.

The only things that had changed were my job and the existence of a brand-new high school called Geumbit High School.

I’d been an ordinary salaried worker at a small-to-medium company for two years.

Then I opened my eyes and found myself a second-year teacher at Geumbit High School.

“Even my studio apartment turned into an officetel….”

It felt like my life had made a quantum leap from lousy company employee to private school teacher.

But I couldn’t exactly celebrate.

Because I’d become a teacher at Geumbit High School in True Teacher.

Chaplin once said that life was a comedy when seen from a distance, but a tragedy when seen up close.

My situation was exactly that.

True Teacher?

When I was playing it as a game, it had been a blast.

I’d happily blown off every so-called happy ending and gone straight for bad endings instead.

That way, I got to feast my eyes on plenty of steamy CGs with cute girl students.

But now?

I can’t… absolutely can’t let a bad ending happen….

If even one student hit a bad ending, then it wouldn’t be the game character suffering—it would be me.

Because the default outcome was social death.

Obviously, right?

You become a teacher, get caught doing something with a high school girl, and then what?

That’s the end of your teaching career, and probably the end of any decent job prospects too.

Even the original game character had wound up drowning himself in alcohol and doing grunt labor for the rest of his life.

“First things first… the status window.”

“Hmm… very familiar.”

The exact same screen I’d been staring at in the game not long ago appeared before my eyes.

Apparently the game’s system had been fully carried over too.

Which meant this was probably the same system as the one I’d played.

“I’ll leave the gacha shop ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for after I’ve saved up some money….”

The one difference was that I’d never even once reached the True Ending.

Still, the basic structure was the same.

The True Teacher strategy was simple.

Raise the teacher’s stats.

Build relationships with students.

And don’t be a freak—lead them down the proper, healthy path.

If you crossed the line in that last part, you’d fall right into one of those ahn-ung? bad endings people always talk about.

So what did I need to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠do right now?

Obviously, raise my stats first.

“I’ve only got one year… I’m going hard from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠day one!”

I headed straight out of the house and made for the MMA gym near my place.

Why an MMA gym all of a sudden?

You might wonder that, sure.

But in True Teacher, the things you needed to steadily build from early on were stamina, strength, and agility.

No, seriously—why the hell would a teacher need physical stats?

That was what I’d thought at first too.

A teacher just had to educate students properly, right?

Except that wasn’t how it worked.

On the surface, True Teacher was a pretty standard academy love-comedy.

But what made it special was that each heroine’s events could veer off into whatever genre nonsense they felt like.

…I really hadn’t expected that in a school-life sim, I’d end up training like a maniac just to guide students.

That was why it was important to keep all your core stats evenly high from the start; it let you handle whatever random event came up later.

And the abilities that spawned from those stats could sometimes let you bulldoze events with absurd ease.

“How many months are you looking to train?”

“A year.”

“……All at once? You could try a one-month trial first….”

“No, a year.”

So I started with the MMA gym right away.

If you don’t build stamina, strength, and agility from the beginning, you’ll just regret it later when you don’t have them.

“Ow… everything hurts….”

What you are seeing now is a teacher who’s been thrown into the wilderness known as Geumbit High School for one week.

His main diet is rice, and he has an extreme aversion to mating with females wearing a certain type of clothing.

Look at the way he walks, all awkward and clumsy.

Apparently this male teacher overdid it with exercise yesterday.

It’s, in a way, a perfectly natural survival instinct for living in the wilds of Geumbit High School.

Thanks to that, the teacher’s current stats were:

Looks like I’d at least crawled out of the complete-bottom-rung tier.

“Not bad for a week, I guess….”

Before heading to class, I stopped by the teachers’ restroom and checked the status window.

Right now, I was steadily raising stamina, strength, and agility.

Beyond those, there were Charm, Speech, and Talent.

For the record, the most useless one was Charm.

Back when this had still been a game, I’d focused on raising that stat to increase the students’ favorability.

But if I did that now, it would be suicidal.

Anyway, I had to be careful not to raise Charm at all.

“Good morning, everyone. Please take your seats.”

And so I started the morning homeroom for Class 1-C, a routine that had already begun to feel familiar.

So far, no students had triggered any events.

And aside from Lee Seung-ah, whose favorability had gone up on the first day of the new semester during self-introductions, no one had gained any affection either.

If only it could stay like this until the end of first semester….

The True Ending could be achieved just by guiding only the students who had triggered events to their happy endings.

“Then I hope you all have a free and lively school life today as well. Work hard, everyone! That’s all!”

After morning homeroom, I moved through the rest of the day according to the schedule.

For the record, our school didn’t have after-school study sessions.

That was because the whole concept of True Teacher was modeled after Japanese high schools.

So after work I can just go straight to the gym and beat the hell out of my workout….

It was the same routine I’d followed for nearly a week now.

Compared to the days when I’d been stuck at a crappy company and buried under overtime, this life felt downright blissful.

“Ah, maybe I should start reading some books too.”

Since I’d spent the whole week just working out.

I’d been so focused on raising stamina, strength, and agility first that I hadn’t had room for anything else.

But now I had at least a little breathing room to devote to the other stats too.

So what should I raise next?

Speech, obviously.

Words matter.

Sometimes just talking a student out of trying to jump you on the spot was enough to send them back home.

That was why, right after finishing my workout, I headed straight to the bookstore near my place.

The easiest way to raise Speech right now was to read books related to Speech.

And while I’m here, maybe I’ll browse the manga section too.

The smell of books in a bookstore always made me weirdly excited.

Maybe that was why I wandered around looking at shelves like I was shopping.

Then—

“Hic… ngh….”

“Huh?”

In a corner of the bookstore.

I spotted a Geumbit High School student crouched there.

At the same time, an alert rang out.

Damn it.

I came here to relax!

Was there really a system that could force an event on me in a place that wasn’t even school?!

I wanted to shout that out loud, but this was a bookstore, so I had to keep quiet.

Clenching my fist, I looked over at the girl crouched in the corner.

She was probably one of my students.

That must be why an event had popped.

“Um….”

“Ah…!”

Since the event had started, I spoke to her first.

When there was no choice screen, that was the correct move.

Then the girl looked up.

Her name was definitely….

The moment our eyes met, I opened the status window and checked the student roster.

When the status window opened, time stopped.

That gave me plenty of time to look carefully.

Hong Si-hyeon.

A girl with glossy black hair like fine silk and eyes that carried a faint reddish tint.

From her usual appearance, she seemed like the calm, elegant sort of model student.

The kind of girl who looked as though she’d stepped straight out of an Eastern historical drama as some princess or another.

“Haha, I saw a student from our school and wondered who it was. So it was you, Si-hyeon?”

“Ah, um….”

“Sorry, I just barged in and spoke to you. …But is something wrong?”

What on earth had happened to her that she’d ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ended up crouched here, crying her eyes out?

And in the manga corner, of all places.

“I-I, it’s just….”

Si-hyeon flustered, cheeks turning red, clearly embarrassed at having been caught crying.

She looked like a proper student now, all flustered and awkward.

There was no trace left of her usual composed, lofty air.

“I’m sorry…! It’s nothing…!”

“Wait….”

“I’m sorry!”

Then she stood up and hurried away.

“Huh….”

Usually she was a model student who knew how to mind her manners.

If she was running away with me right there in front of her, she must have been seriously rattled.

Come to think of it, if I were caught crying in a bookstore, I’d be embarrassed too.

“Why was she crying…?”

No choices appeared.

And no event completion message showed up either.

Which meant the event had only just begun.

I didn’t know what it was about yet.

Still, for today, I’d probably just need to finish my usual routine.

And then, the next day—

“……”

“……”

For some reason, all morning long.

From homeroom right through every break.

A strange gaze kept following me around.