From April 26th, Saturday, to April 28th, Monday

April 26th, Saturday.

Gabriel had arranged to meet a college classmate at a café on Saturday morning. He was late, and when he saw her waiting, he rushed over and nearly tripped over a chair.

His classmate, Claire, was a year older than him. She had fair skin, about five-foot-five, and must have weighed at least two hundred pounds. She wore a red beret and round glasses, her hair was green, straight, with bangs, and cut at neck length. She had large breasts and hips, and was dressed in a blue jumpsuit with a black-and-white horizontally striped T-shirt underneath.

"Finally showed up, huh? I’m already on my third cup of coffee," said Claire.

"Traffic, you know? It’s not that easy to get here so fast..." Gabriel replied.

"Come on, spill it. Tell me what secrets you want from senpai about teaching."

"What’s ‘senpai’?" asked Gabriel, narrowing his eyes at the unfamiliar word.

"We might be in the same year in college, but I’ve been teaching longer, so I’m your senpai! Now talk, boy."

"I think all that caffeine isn’t doing you any good..."

"Then next time schedule somewhere else..."

"Alright, alright, look... I... I don’t get my students. I try to engage, try to be serious—but not too much. But they look at me like I’m just wasting their time. Meanwhile, you say all your students love you..."

Claire took another sip of coffee before answering.

"Yeah, I saw the schedule you sent me. Not just languages, but also math and other subjects too. And almost always the first class of the day, right after that bunch wakes up. It’s a miracle you didn’t say they fell asleep."

"They did fall asleep, I just didn’t tell you... tell me, Claire, what do I do?"

"You gotta speak their language."

"But I already do..."

"Not literally, duh. I mean... memes," Claire said with a smile so wide it pushed her round glasses up with her chubby cheeks.

"...Memes?" Gabriel asked, eyebrows raised.

"Memes, trending songs, pop culture... teenagers are only interested in that crap," Claire said, leaning forward and grinning. "Wanna get their attention? Just start with a ‘yo, zap zap gang!’ or hit them with a ‘Zek was right!’ right off the bat!"

"I’d rather die..." said Gabriel, covering his face in embarrassment.

"Then die without respect, buddy," Claire laughed.

April 28th, Monday.

It was Monday. Time for Gabriel to put into practice what he’d learned from Claire. He arrived in class, where most of the students were half-asleep. And what better way to wake them up than with the song everyone was listening to?

"Good morning, class. It’s kinda like this: elle défile sur le podium, elle est sur la couverture du magazine..." Gabriel was trying, off-key, to sing what was currently the biggest hit.

Some students exchanged embarrassed looks. One or two giggled quietly, but most remained indifferent. Iris raised an eyebrow, and Renata kept doodling in her notebook.

"No one can stand that song anymore, teach..." said Jonas.

"Alright, fine. Let’s start class... for ooooooooour happiness..." said Gabriel, this time trying to imitate a meme that was supposedly still relevant.

"Teach... that meme’s like, six months old," said Iris.

"My grandma would laugh. Like ‘look how funny the interwebz are,’" said Bernard.

"Now this is funny, teach!" said a student, raising his phone and showing a video of a man drinking orange juice.

"You know what’s funny?" Gabriel asked.

"What?" some students replied, curious.

"This joke: once upon a time, there was an asylum, and the lunatics drooled all over the place. Then, one day, a doctor had an idea after seeing the spit-covered floor: why not put a tank for the lunatics to drool into? So the lunatics started drooling into the tank, but after a few days, it was full. Then, the next day—it was empty! Anyone know what happened?"

No one answered, so Gabriel went on with the joke.

"The doctor asked one of the lunatics why the tank was empty. And the lunatic replied: ‘I was drooling, but when I finished, there was still a string of spit in my mouth, so I sucked it back in—and before I knew it, I’d slurped up all the drool!’"

The girls were disgusted, but the boys nearly exploded with laughter.

"Teach! I know another version of that joke!" said a thin black boy with very short hair, raising his finger.

"Theophile, right? Let’s hear it!" said Gabriel.

"There was this tiny town, with an old lady who kept spitting everywhere. One day, a priest gave her a cup and told her to spit in it so she wouldn’t dirty the streets anymore. But one day, during mass, she was spitting into the cup and it was about to overflow! So the priest said, ‘Ma’am, throw that spit out or it’ll spill!’ And the old lady said, ‘I can’t leave the mass, but I have an idea!’ Know what she did?"

"What?"

"She drank all the spit in the cup!"

Once again, the girls were repulsed and the boys laughed. For the first time, it felt like the class was actually liking Gabriel. Half the class, at least. Those almost-men were still laughing at things only eleven-year-old boys would find funny.

It was recess time. Renata stayed in the classroom, lost in the world of doodles in her notebook, while the rest of the students went outside to eat and chit-chat.

Iris was the last to arrive at the cafeteria bench, sitting across from Jonas and between two other girls from their class.

"The world might be ending, but the school lunch is still good!" said Jonas, munching on a piece of chicken.

"Right? Tomato salad, roasted chicken with rice and carrots, camembert cheese, and an apple! At least in France we’ll die eating well," said Iris.

"What do you think of the joke the teacher told?" asked Diane, a girl with straight brown hair and a brown jacket, sitting to Iris’s left.

"It was wild!" said Édouard, a blond boy with large, completely black oval eyes, a cylinder-shaped face, and a rectangular body that looked like it was made of cardboard. The strangest thing about Édouard was that when he talked, his head seemed to separate from his jaw. Apparently, that and his odd appearance were normal in Canada, where he was from.

"He didn’t have to put a priest in the joke though," said Quentin, a blond boy in an orange jacket, sitting to Jonas’s left.

"I don’t know. He seems alright. The others all look stressed out, especially since the end-of-the-world news," said Iris.

"Like Mr. Sindolphe, who drinks water from a cartoon-themed bottle and yelled at the kid reading the newspaper while everyone else was asleep?" said Jonas.

During the break, Gabriel went to the teachers’ lounge. Normally, he didn’t interact with the other teachers, since they were always tense. A geography teacher sat with his head down, muttering something incomprehensible while clutching a mug—usually for coffee, but the smell coming from it was definitely alcohol.

"All these years teaching about the rise and fall of civilizations, and now it’s our turn..." grumbled the history teacher, a black woman with curly black hair and glasses, pacing in circles around the room.

"I spent years studying astronomy, and now a meteor’s going to kill us. I should’ve stayed at my dad’s bakery," said the science teacher, a balding white man with a thin nose and glasses, reading news on his phone.

"Damn it! The kids don’t listen anymore. They don’t even care about P.E. class! Not even for the hot girls in tight shorts—uh, I mean..." This time it was the P.E. teacher complaining, a muscular white man with black hair, lying on the couch scrolling on his phone. "Hey Gabriel, you’re young—have you used this app, Allumette? Gonna find me a girl before the world ends, I don’t even care!"

Would the young teacher’s remaining days be nothing more than trying to teach people who already knew they were going to die?

328 days left.