NOVEL NEXT Chapter 69: 69
"Bruh, she is odd. I once passed her on the staircase and I didn't even know she was a teacher here. Why can't we get substitute that are busty like Miss Tanaka?" Jun chipped in, walking towards the closet. He shoved one or two things that fell out from the clustered up closet and took out his towel, wrapping over his waist.
"They are your teachers Jun, not some women to moan over during lectures. I got a little gossip from my source that we are going to have a test. Who is ready amongst us to fail?"
"Shit! Fuck!"Pissed off, Yuki covered his head with the blanket, screaming against the fabric. Surprise tests were the worst especially when he didn't even know how many modules have been taken this semester. Jun paused, towel slung around his shoulders now, his expression frozen somewhere between disbelief and denial.
"Wait, who said we were having test? The actual heck, how come no one knew about this? And what kind of test is it? Like... paper test or digital?"
"Paper," Haruto muttered grimly. "Miss Aizawa's style. Pen, brain, and sweating under tensed, hard questions that crushes one's soul."
Yuki groaned louder, covering his ears in disgust. Aizawa was the worst teacher to even mention to any student. If there was an award for being the most hated, she probably would have multiple of it.
"We just finished a practical two days ago. Who the hell schedules a written test right after that?" Haruto shrugged, reaching for his towel on his bunk. He took off his shirt and proceeded in covering his bare self with a towel.
"The kind that loves to punish her student for not coming to class. Out of 250 student, only 10 showed up yesterday. I was one of them but my mind was on what I'd eat later."
Jun hissed in unison, joining the convo. "Nah, man. I'm not about to go down like this. We need a plan. Haruto, you're the nerd—start revising out loud. Yuki, make coffee. I'm gonna shower and mentally prepare for academic war. How many minutes do we have?"
Haruto chuckled under his breath, grabbing his backpack. "Aproximately, twenty minutes. Ten to shower and dress up and the other ten to hurry to class and hear her say her famous sentence..."
As if it were planned, Jun, Haruto and Yuki echoed in unison. "My assessments are not to punish you but to keep you on your feet." And once again, they gritted their teeth, micmicing how her teeth were badly arranged in her mouth.
"I swear if she says that, I'm fake fainting." Jun pointed dramatically toward the bathroom foor. "Ten minutes! Then we assemble and cram like our lives depend on it."
"Because they do," Haruto muttered, already pulling out his notes. Haruto sat cross-legged on his bunk bed, flipping furiously through the pages of his notebook—only to find doodles, half-written sentences, and random game cheat codes.
He threw his head back and laughed, shaking the book over his head. "Damn, I spent all night grinding on Valor Arena and didn't jot a single word from yesterday's lecture. Man… we are absolutely doomed."
Yuki groaned from under his blanket, then pushed it off and sat up with a stretch. His hair was tousled, his eyes puffy, but his tone was calm and oddly resolved. "I'm just gonna shower and go write that test. Whether I fail or pass, I'll still show up. It's a general course anyway—computer science, accounting, business admin, everyone's taking it. The lecturer won't fail the whole university."
"Ha! You're putting faith in humanity too early, bro," Haruto muttered, tossing the useless notebook to the foot of the bed.
From behind the closed bathroom door, Jun's voice echoed over the loud noise from the bathroom faucet. "I have to pass this one! I can't afford another F. If I do, that's two carryovers, and I am not repeating second year. No way!"
Yuki grabbed his towel and walked toward the closet, chuckling. "Sounds like someone needs to pray to the goddess of GPA."
Then, mid-rant, the sound of the tap in the bathroom sputtered, dripping bit by bit until it finally stopped completely. There was a short, stunned silence from Jun as he closed and reopened the faucet but no water came out. "Oi! The water ain't coming out!" Jun yelled from inside, struggling to speak with the shampoo foam falling down on his face. "What the hell happened?! How is there no water? I have not even gotten to the best part of my showering!"
Haruto perked up, slid off the bed, and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. "Hold up, I'll check the dorm group chat. Maybe a memo was passed and we didn't see it."
He said, already unlocking his phone. He scrolled to Line—the campus's go-to messaging app—and typed quickly into the dorm's group chat, "BLOCK B ALL BOYS":
"Hey guys, is anyone else not getting water? Jun's tap just died mid-shower. What's up?" He dropped it at once followed by a frustrated anime character sticker to show how annoyed he was.
A flood of replies came almost instantly, each message tagging Haruto's post with the bright blue highlight.
"Bro, I'm not in the mood for this. I thought it was just my faucet. I've been trying to get water out for 10 minutes. I thought the pipe rusted overnight. Why of all days when I and my bae will be going out?"
"SAME. Water refused to come out after I literally poured my last bottle of Pocari Sweat on my toothbrush."
"Bruhhh I have a test in 30 minutes. Somebody tag the dorm leader in Room 306. We need a damn explanation!"
"I swear if they shut off the water for "maintenance" again without warning I'm rioting. Who's with me? This can't keep going on. It's like the third time in this semester."
Haruto snorted, reading aloud, "Kenji says he's gonna riot if it's maintenance again."
Yuki rolled his eyes, tying his towel around his waist. "They better not. First surprise test, now water supply isn't certain? Must be the universe screaming at us not to take the test."
From the bathroom, Jun banged the wall with a soapy fist. "I still have shampoo in my hair! What do I do?! I'm gonna start foaming like a rabid animal in here!"
Haruto typed again, laughing.
"My roommate says he's halfway to becoming a shampoo demon. Please, someone help this guy."
More messages poured in.
"I passed through the hallway and saw that the dorm leader just posted in the main hall noticeboard that some valve burst this morning. They're shutting off the water till the next day to fix the mess. Sorry for the "inconvenience."
"Jun, you better start washing with bottled water, bro. Or go natural and embrace the foam.
Yuki chuckled as he read the comments out from Haruto's phone in his mind. He walked to the bathroom door, knocking once on it. "Are you fine there? Just clean off the shampoo, we are already late. Looks like I'll be skipping the shower and heading straight for the test room smelling like damn knows what."
"Wait for me!" Jun yelled frantically, squeezing off the soapy foam from the strands of his hair. "Someone get me a towel before I walk out looking like a shampoo ghost!"
"Here you go bruh." Yuki tossed Jun's black hair towel at his face and Jun caught it with his eyes closed before it fell to the ground and dirtied. Jun wiped off the foam from his face, sighed and looked at the messed up bathroom. "Damn, who's on the bathroom washing roster for today?"
"You asshole," Yuki retorted, picking his clothing for today. Jun groaned, rubbing his face and hair roughly with the towel.
"I swear, the universe really has it out for me today. First a test, now this mess. If this was an anime episode, the title would be 'The Day Everything Went to Crap.'"
Yuki chuckled, now fully dressed in his black jeans and a shirt that suspiciously had a ketchup stain near the hem. "You'd be the comic relief side character who thinks he's the main hero."
"Watch it," Jun muttered, stepping out of the bathroom barefoot, his hair damp but silk. "At least, I washed my hair."
Haruto raised an eyebrow. "That's bold coming from a guy who still has bubbles in his ear."
Jun grabbed a tissue and aggressively wiped the side of his face. "Man, I'm just gonna spray deodorant and hope for the best."
"I sprayed cologne on my armpits," Yuki admitted, grabbing his phone and checking the time. "We have seven minutes to be in class if we don't want to be embarrassed by her long questions.
Haruto threw his hoodie over his head and zipped up his bag. "I already accepted my fate. I'm not even sure what the test is about. Did she say anything last class?"
"She talked about economic systems, something about capitalism and post-war Japan. And then she went off-topic and started talking about her cat," Jun replied, shaking his head. "I was too busy wondering why she wore the same scarf three days in a row."
"Bro," Haruto said, pausing. "That scarf has a name. She mentioned it. It's called Mittens. Apparently, her dead grandma gifted it to her."
Jun blinked. "Damn. Now I feel bad."
As they stepped out into the hallway, the chaos of dorm life at peak stress hour greeted them. Boys were running shirtless with towels around their waists, some brushing their teeth with water bottles, others arguing from their bathroom. "If you have spare water, I'll trade you my breakfast coupons!"