Melissa's eye twitched like it was trying to escape her face.
She stared at the clove of garlic in David's hand like it had personally insulted her education degree. Her voice came out tense, clipped, and barely holding itself together.
"David. Where. Did. You. Get. That. Garlic?"
David blinked, then replied with a straight face, "Well, I noticed the cafeteria wasn't serving that mystery stew today, so I took a walk around school. Just so happened to see a bunch of garlic growing in one of the flower beds. No one was watching it. So, I figured... finders keepers."
Ding!
[Negative emotion value +50 from Melissa…]
Melissa's entire body went stiff.
No one wanted it?
That garlic was planted by the principal as part of the school's "eco-friendly learning" initiative. It even had a little wooden sign that said: "Please do not touch."
Melissa clenched her fists so tight she nearly cracked her marker in half.
Just as she opened her mouth to verbally launch David into orbit, David must've sensed danger, because he quickly held up both hands in surrender and backpedaled with record speed.
"Wait—wait! I wasn't stealing it!" he said, waving the garlic like it was a peace offering. "I just wanted to… demonstrate."
Melissa narrowed her eyes. "Demonstrate what, exactly?"
David cleared his throat, stood up straighter, and gave her a look he clearly thought was sincere.
"I wanted to show everyone why Bulbasaur's nickname makes sense. You know… visual learning? It's like a live-action diagram." He nodded seriously, as if this was a normal thing to say during homeroom.
There was a pause.
Melissa stared at him. David blinked at her. Twice. Really wide. Like a cartoon owl trying to fake innocence.
Unfortunately, his blinking didn't help. He looked more like he had something stuck in his eye than a remorseful student.
After trying and failing to force a tear out for extra sympathy points, David gave up with a sheepish grin and scratched the back of his head.
"So… yeah. Just trying to help spread the nickname Garlic bastard."
When David said the words "garlic bastard" again, it was like setting off a landmine.
Melissa, standing at the front of the classroom, visibly twitched. A thick, pulsing vein bulged on her forehead in the shape of a tic-tac-toe grid. Her eye twitched. Her fingers clenched around her pointer like she was about to use it as a weapon.
"DAVID!"
Her voice shot across the room like a drill sergeant discovering someone had peed on the barracks floor.
"It's called Bulbasaur! Bul-ba-saur! It's a frog! Not garlic! Not a damn vegetable!"
David flinched, caught between fear and amusement. He could hear a few students snorting behind him. He wasn't sure if they were laughing or choking. Maybe both.
But then—pop!
It happened fast. The force of Melissa's rage-induced chest heave sent two buttons from her blouse flying across the room like tiny missiles. One hit the whiteboard and pinged off. The other landed somewhere in someone's open pencil case.
Silence fell across the classroom.
The top of her blouse gaped open just enough for the entire front row—and let's be honest, at least the next two rows behind them—to see the lacy edge of her bra and a fair bit of the, uh, "geography" underneath. The boys stared. The girls stared. Even the class hamster in the back corner stopped running on its wheel.
David blinked. He was technically being yelled at, but even he couldn't help but glance—purely out of biological reflex, of course.
It didn't help that Melissa was too focused on shouting to realize what had just happened. She planted both hands on the desk and leaned forward, breathing heavily from sheer anger, still yelling.
"WHERE are you LOOKING, David?! HUH? DO YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE?! You think my class is a comedy show?!"
David's eyes snapped back up to her face. Sort of. His lower half although betrayed him.
"Uh, Teacher…" he said cautiously, scratching the back of his head. "You… you dropped some buttons."
Melissa froze.
The room was dead quiet.
She looked down slowly… then realized.
Her head snapped up again. She saw a dozen pairs of eyes that were definitely not focused on her face. She even spotted Megan in the back row standing on tiptoes to get a better view.
Then came the sound.
Gulp.
Multiple gulps.
She turned around so fast her pointer clattered to the floor. She yanked her blouse closed with one hand, red-faced, and hissed through her teeth like a kettle ready to blow.
"You didn't need to remind me!"
David stared straight ahead, very carefully not smiling.
Melissa turned her back to the class, one hand still clutching her collar while the other reached down and awkwardly picked up the runaway buttons from the floor. She slipped them into her pocket like evidence at a crime scene. Then she turned back, this time standing bolt upright, her expression frozen somewhere between rage and mortification.
She took a deep breath. And then, calmly—too calmly—she said, "Let's continue."
David nodded solemnly, like he was at a funeral.
Melissa pointed at the chalkboard with her now-bare hand and said slowly, "Bulbasaur… is a frog. A frog. Not a turtle. Not garlic. Not anything else from the grocery store."
David tilted his head slightly, pretending to be confused.
"Ohhh… he's a frog? Not a turtle?" He nodded, putting on his most innocent expression. "Thank you, Teacher. That clears up a lot."
The class giggled. Melissa's eye twitched again.
Somewhere in the background, the system pinged softly in David's mind:
[Melissa's negative emotion value +50]
[Jake's negative emotion value +10]
[Megan's negative emotion value +10]
[Class mood: Chaotic neutral]
David sat with his hands folded neatly on the desk, looking like a choirboy. Inside, he was trying very hard not to laugh.
Melissa wasn't buying it.
She narrowed her eyes, pointing the now-useless pointer at him like a sword.
"David, if you say the word 'garlic' one more time in this classroom, I swear—"
"I won't," he said quickly, raising both hands in surrender.
Melissa stared for another full five seconds, then slowly moved on to the next part of the lesson. She began explaining Pokémon stat growth and starter balance, her voice sharp and clipped. No one dared to interrupt.
David sat back, still fighting the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
He'd survived.
Barely.
And he still had the garlic bulb hidden in his pocket.
Victory.
For now.
After returning to the podium, Melissa took a long breath. Her eye twitched slightly, but her voice had calmed down—mostly.
"Alright, David. You can sit down. Just… watch your words next time. This is a school, not a comedy club."
David nodded solemnly and took his seat, keeping his mouth shut—briefly. He tried to act like he was reflecting on his life choices, but the longer he sat there, the more something bothered him.
Melissa had said Bulbasaur was a frog, not a turtle.
Which meant his earlier statement—calling it a garlic turtle—was scientifically inaccurate.
David stared straight ahead, nodding to himself. As the saying goes: a trainer without rigor is just a guy with a bug net.
He stood back up.
"Teacher," he said seriously.
Melissa froze mid-sentence and slowly turned her head. "…What now, David."
David straightened his back, voice righteous and clear. "You're right. It's a frog, not a turtle. So, in the name of science and factual accuracy—"
Every student's head slowly turned toward him. The air tensed.
"We should call it… garlic toad."
You could've heard a Poké Ball drop.
Several students clutched their heads. One girl let out a small gasp of horror. In the back, someone dropped their pencil with the same weight as dropping out of school.
The blackboard still had Bulbasaur's happy face projected onto it. The beady eyes. The wide smile. The leafy green bulb on its back.
And now—now all anyone could see was a smug little toad squatting in a garlic patch.
David didn't even flinch. His eyes were sharp. He believed in what he said.
The class? They were spiritually broken.
Especially the kids who actually picked Bulbasaur as their starter. A few looked like they wanted to throw their Poké Balls in the trash. Others just stared at the garlic bulb in their minds, trying to unsee it.
[Gain negative emotion value +30…]
[Gain negative emotion value +40…]
[Get negative emotion value +50…]
The system messages scrolled like a slot machine.
David didn't even need to turn his head. The atmosphere around him was enough. If hatred were a Pokémon move, the classroom was using Hyper Beam.
Melissa's jaw clenched. Her expression twitched like she was trying to hold her soul inside her body. Her hands trembled slightly—not from fear, but pure rage.
It wasn't just the nickname anymore.
It was the principle.
It was the fact that this boy—this irritating, loud, garlic-wielding boy—had the audacity to double down.
The room dropped a few degrees in temperature.
And then Melissa exploded.
"DAVID! OUT! OUT OF MY CLASSROOM! STAND IN THE HALL! REFLECT ON YOUR LIFE CHOICES!"
Her roar echoed off the walls like a Dragon Rage.
Pidgey scattered from the windowsills outside. Somewhere in the distance, a student sneezed and muttered, "Damn, who's dying in Room 3-B?"
David flinched like he'd been hit with Thunderbolt. He grabbed his textbook and practically sprinted out the door, narrowly avoiding being blasted through it.
But as he stood in the hallway, he checked the system log.
[Total negative emotion value: 4250 points.]
His eyes lit up.
"Forty-two fifty?" he whispered, almost in disbelief. "That's… forty-two draws."
He wanted to scream in triumph. That was practically jackpot territory. If he was lucky, he could land at least one rare ability. Maybe even something broken like "Insta-Tame" or "Egg Hatch x100 Speed."
He was about to burst out laughing when a final notification popped up:
[Get negative emotion value +50 from Melissa.]
He paused.
"…Wait. That's still going?"
He slowly looked back at the classroom door.
Through the glass window, he could see Melissa standing stiffly, her face blank, but her aura was pure death.
The kind of look someone gives when they're imagining flipping a table. Or launching a Hyper Beam point-blank into someone's mouth.
She was smiling, technically—but that smile looked like it came with a shovel.
Even the students inside had gone completely quiet.
David quickly shut up, stepped away from the door, and leaned against the opposite wall with a totally casual whistle. Like he had no idea what just happened.
From inside, he could still hear Melissa's voice, tight and furious, trying to pretend she was still in control.
"Now, class, let's move on to the advantages of type matchups."
One poor soul raised a hand. "Uh, Miss Melissa, I—"
"IF ANYONE SAYS THE WORD GARLIC, YOU'RE JOINING DAVID."
The class nodded in perfect silence.
Back in the hallway, David smirked.
He might've lost the classroom battle—but forty-two draws? That was a strategic win.
He carefully took the garlic out of his pocket again and looked at it fondly, as if it were a treasured family heirloom.
"Garlic toad," he whispered.
The bulb gleamed slightly in the sunlight.
Somewhere in his heart, he knew he would one day pay for this moment.
But for now?
Totally worth it.