Sheldon's Bad Luck

The next day, after Schiller finished teaching, he collected assignments on time as usual. But today, he found that all thirty-two assignments had been handed in neatly, and judging by their thickness, they all seemed to meet the word count.

He found it a little strange. Although he had always been strict about chasing down assignments, there were usually one or two people who did not turn theirs in. Among those who did, many would half-ass it, scribbling two pages and stuffing a pile of blank sheets in between, or simply copying some random article and handing it over.

But this time, standing at the podium and flipping through them roughly, he found that everyone had actually written their papers seriously. Some were not very good, obviously written by people who had never written a paper before, but at least they had tried to stay on topic. Their wording resembled that of desperate illiterates, but at least they had tried not to go off-topic.

When the students saw him looking through the assignments, they barely dared to breathe. Usually, class would be almost over by then, and the students would be packing up. But now, not a single person moved. They all sat obediently in their seats, waiting for Schiller to speak.

The reason for this was simple. The previous night, the entire class had learned that Schiller had gone straight to Falcone, Gotham's King of Gotham's Underworld, just to chase Evans for an assignment.

In the era before Batman—let us call it the "pre-Batman era"—Falcone and the twelve Mafia families under him held the most power in Gotham.

Just how powerful were these Mafia families? Sal Maroney, the tyrant of the East End, was no more than a dog of the Lauren family, and the Lauren family ranked near the bottom among the twelve Mafia families.

The Falcone family ranked first, and the Old Godfather Falcone held absolute authority over all twelve families.

In that era, you could fail to know who Gotham City's mayor was, or even who Bruce Wayne was, but you had to know the names of Falcone and the other twelve Mafia families. Otherwise, you simply could not survive in Gotham.

Ever since they learned that Schiller had chased an assignment all the way to the Gotham Godfather, every student's make-up assignment ordeal the night before had been truly harrowing.

Schiller was unusually pleased, so he said, "This batch of assignments looks quite promising. It seems everyone completed them fairly seriously. Once I finish grading them, I will give everyone an additional ten points toward your regular grade. As for the few who wrote particularly well, if you have no intention of attending graduate school, you may come to my office and talk to me about recommendation letters..."

To everyone's surprise, the classroom suddenly erupted in enthusiastic applause. No one knew whether it was for the reward Schiller had promised, or for their own survival after the disaster.

And Sheldon saw all of it.

As for Sheldon, put nicely, he was persistent. Put less nicely, he was stubborn to the point of obsession. Once he set his sights on someone, he would definitely find every possible way to deal with them. Schiller's tough attitude had prevented him from making a move immediately, but he had been searching for an opportunity all along.

As principal, Sheldon could access the surveillance cameras in every classroom at Gotham University and observe the teachers' lessons. This became his best method for watching Schiller.

Over the next few days, every student in Schiller's class was quiet as a mouse. Evans automatically took on the role of class monitor, collecting assignments, handing them in, distributing them, and maintaining classroom order every day. The entire class ran in perfect order, leaving no fault for anyone to find.

This gave Sheldon an illusion.

Back when he worked in the Dean's office at Princeton, most students had been roughly at this level. After arriving at Gotham University, he had been busy establishing himself and had not taken the initiative to understand the students' actual standards. In his view, doing assignments was a student's duty. Gotham University might not rank as highly as Princeton, but its students did not seem much worse.

At least, that was how it looked in Schiller's class.

Sheldon focused only on observing Schiller's class. In Schiller's class, all the students were quiet and completed their learning tasks quite well, allowing Schiller's teaching plans to proceed smoothly.

So Sheldon began entertaining other ideas.

As everyone knew, the campus prohibition policy he had pushed through had reached an awkward stalemate.

At present, most of those willing to comply had already turned in their alcohol. But those unwilling were die-hard holdouts. They would rather resist with guns than let the school interfere with their right to drink.

The students could resist with guns, but Sheldon, as principal, could hardly hold a gun to their heads and force them not to drink. He was not a native of Gotham, and his thinking was still stuck in civilized society. Thus, the plan had stalled in an extremely awkward position and could not be pushed any further.

When Sheldon realized punishment would not work, he decided to try persuasion instead.

Before taking on administrative work, Sheldon had also been a professor. He had graduated from Oxford with a Literature major in modern literature and had taught at both the University of California and Metropolis University.

Sheldon believed that if he wanted to control Gotham University, he had to blend in with the students, becoming as popular as Harvey. That seemed like a good path too.

Therefore, he decided to teach a course himself.

As it happened, Gotham University's Literature Department was practically nonexistent. There was only one teacher handling a basic course, and the literature and philosophy majors had not admitted students for years. After all, this damned place simply had no soil for literature or philosophy to grow in.

Reviving the Literature Department and leading the resurgence of the Literature major—if he could recruit a group of Faculty of Arts students and teach them himself, then he would have his own loyal faction within the university. That was Sheldon's plan.

And Schiller's classes appeared quite relaxed, with his teaching objectives being carried out well. In short, the sky had cleared, the rain had stopped, and Sheldon thought he was capable again.

Though he was a university professor, the process of teaching a class was not all that different from teaching elementary school. Sheldon was like a Player watching videos, observing Schiller's classes through the surveillance feed and thinking it looked easy.

Schiller's teaching process consisted of nothing more than entering the classroom, waiting for the students to settle down, taking out the textbook, and beginning the lesson. There would be one or two discussion sessions in the middle. Afterward, Schiller would either ask questions or have a representative from each group speak. Once they finished speaking, Schiller would summarize, teach some more material, collect assignments near the end of class, and begin the next session by reviewing the assignments.

University classes in the twentieth century were like that. There were no fancy slideshows. Most teachers simply taught from the textbook, especially for subjects like psychology, where theoretical knowledge required extensive memorization. If the book was not thoroughly explained, then there was no hope of truly understanding anything.

Watching this process through classroom footage, it really did not seem difficult. If the students cooperated, the teaching objectives could even be completed early, leaving time for some casual conversation before class ended.

After the students began behaving especially well, Schiller was also willing to tell them about the insane murderers he had encountered in the past. Although Schiller had lost his memory and could no longer recall many details, those legendary experiences still captivated the young men. They discovered that this unusually strict professor truly had something exceptional about him.

When the Faculty of Arts was announced, Sheldon fired the teacher responsible for the basic literature course and took over the teaching himself.

Like most Players who watched game videos, he had thought that he could do it too while watching, wildly criticizing everything from God's perspective. But once he actually entered the game, he was immediately beaten to a pulp, quit, deleted the game, and demanded a refund in one smooth sequence.

Sheldon was no exception.

Once he truly began teaching, he discovered that Schiller's classroom had been nothing but an illusion. There was not a single obedient student here. Basic literature and basic psychology were somewhat similar in that both required extensive memorization and essay writing.

The first time assignments were due, only two out of several dozen were handed in, and one of those had only reached half the required word count.

Sheldon adopted his tough politician's style and harshly condemned this refusal to hand in assignments during class. So when assignments were due a second time, not a single one was submitted.

For science courses like mathematics and physics, there were at least people naturally interested in them. But for a tedious and dull course like basic literature, not a single Gotham University student would listen properly.

The students did everything imaginable in class. Sleeping was already considered one of the better hobbies. Some ate, some chatted loudly, some hammered away at game controllers, and some even smoked weed openly.

No matter how Sheldon shouted, not one person paid attention to him. Even when he stormed out and slammed the door in rage, the class merely turned into an equally chaotic study session.

Sheldon did not understand Gotham either. If he had, he would have known that the students were already well-behaved enough. In this city, anyone who could attend university already possessed exceptionally high standards.

There were no students threatening classmates with guns, no one physically blowing up the school, and no one kidnapping teachers or professors. Gotham's students could already be called model citizens of this city.

But Sheldon was still nearly driven to death by anger.

Especially since quite a few students knew that the damned prohibition policy had been Sheldon's doing, they began protesting in his class. Someone brought an entire crate of champagne, popped the corks in the front row, and sprayed Sheldon wildly, soaking him in alcohol. They even organized a drinking party in class.

Sheldon shouted that he would deduct credits and expel them, but they did not care in the slightest. Sheldon expelled two students, and the rest became even more unhinged. Then, on one pitch-black night, as Sheldon walked through the school, two bottles thrown by someone hiding in the bushes smashed his head open, sending him to the hospital.

No matter how hard he thought about it, he could not understand why students who were as meek as quail in Schiller's class turned into insane extremists in his.

Perhaps he had simply never heard Schiller say one thing: in this place, only criminals could deal with criminals.