Is This Really My Workplace?
Thinking back on it, something had felt off since that morning. I woke at six sharp to the alarm I’d preset, packed the lesson materials and personal items I’d prepared the night before, finished getting ready, and left the house. Up to that point everything had been normal. The trouble started the moment I stepped outside.
It was a quiet dawn hour. The academy sat in an area with low foot traffic, so I rarely encountered anyone on my way. Yet every single person I did meet was female. And not only that—they all stared at me so intently that I couldn’t help thinking, Why on earth are they looking at me like that?
Still, with my head full of worries, nerves, and excitement about my new teaching post, I dismissed it as a trivial oddity. Now that I’ve run face-first into the truth, though, it’s clearly not something I can brush aside.
“This is driving me insane.”
My reporting time was almost here. If I’d come to the wrong place and had to turn back, I’d be late on my very first day. My mind churned with overlapping worries. What the hell was I supposed to do…?
“U-um… excuse me…”
A timid voice came from behind. When I turned, a woman with long, straight blonde hair was looking my way. Her youthful face made me wonder for a second if she was a student, but as far as I knew every academy in the country required students to wear the standard uniform.
…The biggest problem, of course, was that the Magical Girl Academy had never been on that list.
“B-by any chance… are you the new teacher assigned this year…? Teacher Jang Geon-woo…?”
“Ah, yes! That’s me.”
What a relief. I really had come to the right—wait, had I?
My expression brightened at once, and the wary look on her face eased a fraction.
“So it really is you… Well, it is your first day. I suppose it’s natural to feel a little nervous. After all, nothing like this has ever happened before…”
“……?”
I couldn’t make sense of her murmured words. Sure, my abilities were on the low side for an academy instructor, but there had been precedents. And who exactly was I supposed to be afraid of?
“S-should I walk you in?”
“…Ah, yes. Since we’ve already met at the front gate. You’re faculty, I assume?”
“Y-yes. I teach combat physical education for the second- and third-years. My name is…”
“Teacher Nia?”
“H-huh? How did you…?”
“Your staff ID is sticking out the front of your bag.”
“Aah, I must have left it out when I rushed this morning.”
She hurriedly stuffed the ID back inside and straightened her clothes, looking mortified. The sight made me chuckle despite myself. Who was the real newcomer here?
Besides, combat physical education meant she was a martial-arts type Awakener, yet her delicate hands and slightly hunched posture made her look anything but. Everything about this situation was bizarre; I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“S-shall we go, then?”
After fidgeting for a long moment she finally spoke, gesturing awkwardly. It was the sort of stiff, overly polite motion a medieval knight might use when addressing a noblewoman.
“…Sure. Let’s go.”
It was true that Awakeners had a higher percentage of eccentrics than the general population, but this was a new one even for me. She moved like a broken doll, all jerky and mechanical. I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or worry.
“Oh, right. Teacher Nia.”
“Y-yes?”
“Is the Magical Girl Academy part of the Central Awakener Academy? I asked because I’d never heard the name before my appointment.”
I figured I might as well ask what I needed to know. But the moment the words left my mouth, she gave me an utterly bizarre look and asked a question of her own.
“W-what is the Central Awakener Academy?”
“……? So you’re saying this isn’t the Central Awakener Academy?”
Even as I said it out loud I wanted to shake my own head. Whether this was that academy or not, not knowing the name at all simply didn’t make sense.
“H-have you… visited a monster spawning ground or dungeon recently?”
Nia’s expression was dead serious. I understood her meaning perfectly. In plain terms, she was asking if I’d lost my mind.
“…What the hell is going on?”
I sat in the lounge with my head in my hands. The entrance ceremony didn’t start until nine, so at Nia’s earnest persuasion I’d agreed to rest here for a bit. She had actually panicked and tried to drag me straight to the infirmary, but I refused. I lied and told her the strange talk about the Awakener Academy had just been nervous babbling.
“It was perfectly normal until yesterday…”
After making enough excuses to reach the quiet lounge tucked in a corner of the fourth floor, I started searching the internet. The first thing I looked up was Central Awakener Academy. Every single result that came back contained the words National Central Magical Girl Academy or fragments of “Awakener” and “academy.”
That was only the beginning. The growing sense of wrongness I felt from those limited results soon became unmistakable.
There were no men in this world.
…To be precise, men were extremely rare. The gender ratio was roughly seventy-to-one. Supposedly it was the result of a curse cast by the Demon King who had descended upon this realm—an event I had zero memory of.
Not only that, the entire world was fundamentally different from the one I knew.
The National Central Awakener Academy and the National Central Magical Girl Academy were eerily similar. Both held the undisputed top spot among academies worldwide. The obvious difference was that every single member inside the latter was female. It hadn’t happened for any special reason; it had simply come about naturally because of the single greatest disparity in this world—the male-to-female ratio.
On top of a male population only one-seventieth the size of the female population, the proportion of male Awakeners was even lower. Male Awakeners capable of fighting monsters numbered roughly one in a hundred thousand men. Since the Demon King’s curse, only about a thousand official male Awakeners had ever appeared in the entire world. In Korea, there were nine.
…And it looked like I was one of them.
A quick search flooded the screen with articles about me. There was no way I could miss it. Thankfully it seemed certain personal details were restricted—my face wasn’t circulating—but it still sent chills down my spine.
Awakened at age 12. Graduated from Prodigium and enrolled at Salamander Magical Girl Academy. Thanks to his enrollment, numerous male-only facilities were created; they are now used as shared facilities. Graduated with outstanding grades, but it was later revealed that he had received special treatment throughout his studies, causing a major scandal. Only the involved staff were disciplined; the student himself was cleared of all charges.
During his time at the academy, members of his official internet fan club caused a disturbance and broke in without permission. After he announced his desire to become a teacher, multiple academies offered him special appointments, all of which he declined. Passed the national teaching examination on his second attempt and was appointed to the National Central Magical Girl Academy.
I let out a long sigh. “Ha…”
It seemed that was my new life story. The path was strangely similar yet completely different from the one I remembered. What unsettled me most was that every single step of that path was being watched by the entire nation—no, by people overseas as well.
“What the hell did I ever do?”
Intellectually I could understand that the unique conditions of this world had created such a massive gap. Emotionally, however, I understood nothing. Just yesterday I had been an ordinary young man losing sleep over his new appointment. Overnight I had become some kind of celebrity.
What frustrated me most was that I had no way to discover the cause of this phenomenon on my own. Unless, as the blonde teacher Nia had suggested, I really had gone into a dungeon or tower… But ever since I decided to prepare for the teaching exam I hadn’t taken part in any real combat. My abilities were specialized so heavily toward “education” that it was almost comical.
“Haaaa……”
A deep, heavy sigh rolled out of me like thickening fog. If this was the kind of information I could dig up in a few spare minutes, how long would it take to truly adapt to this world?
…I suddenly missed the cigarettes I had quit.
“I wonder if they even sell them to men.”
The thought was so absurd it actually made me laugh. In this world, “man” had become something akin to a living national treasure. Men were the top priority in every possible scenario, regardless of age, and simply existing as one was treated as something inherently noble.
That was probably why my own career had drawn so much attention. A man? Working? As a dangerous Awakener, no less? That seemed to be the general reaction. And the people here didn’t even find it strange. To someone with normal sensibilities, it was enough to drive a person insane.
“No… in this world, I’m probably the abnormal one.”
And not just mildly abnormal—more like a three-headed, six-armed monster. I’d be lucky if they didn’t treat me like some kind of sideshow freak.
Thud!
“…What was that?”
I had been about to stand when a dull sound came from outside the door. I flinched. After that, though, I sensed nothing. Am I too on edge? I’d never thought of myself as lacking courage, yet after a single morning I felt like I’d turned into a coward.
I gave a small, self-deprecating laugh and reached for the doorknob—right as a young girl’s voice shouted from the other side.
“Hey, hey! I told you not to push…!!!”
“…Huh?”
The door burst open. At the same time I heard high-pitched shrieks—Kyaa! Kyaa!—and a chorus of girlish screams.
There was clearly nothing in the empty air, and yet—
“Uwaaaaaah!”
Crash, clatter, thud!
With a bizarre scream, several somethings tumbled to the floor in a heap. I felt the faint trace of mana. The previously invisible figures gradually grew hazy, then solidified.
“……”
“……”
They were a dozen or so students. All wearing neat academy uniforms, they lay tangled together on the floor. Most of them had frozen in embarrassment, but the girl at the front—with her hair tied in twin tails—looked up at me sheepishly.
“…Hello, teacher. Hehe.”
It was the same voice that had yelled at the others not to push. She clearly knew she’d been caught; she kept glancing at me nervously, shoulders hunched.
“……”
Faced with that sight, the words nice to meet you refused to leave my mouth…