Chương 5: Past Tense

Earth – The Lecture Hall Tim walked into the lecture hall at 8: 55 AM. He felt like a zombie pilot operating a meat suit that was slightly too heavy. The motion sickness pills were working, taking the sharp edge off the vertigo, but his brain felt split down the middle. While his mouth formed the words "Good morning," his mind was still replaying the terrifying conversation with Elder Cho and the sensation of navigating the sect's floating pathways.

Twenty college students looked back at him with the typical mixture of boredom and Monday morning exhaustion. They saw a tired English teacher in a rumpled shirt. They had no idea he was currently mentally processing the geopolitical dynamics of a magical martial arts sect.

"Good morning, everyone," Tim said, setting his bag on the podium. His voice sounded distant to his own ears.

"I'm Professor Jones. Today we'll be discussing... past tense constructions and perfect aspects." He turned to the whiteboard, picking up a black marker. Focus on English. Subject, verb, object. But in the other world, Lia was sitting at her simple wooden desk, opening a standard sect manual: The Foundations of Flowing Water. She wasn't trying to learn something new; she was trying to remember what she already knew.

Tim could feel the knowledge inside Lia's brain—vast, complex webs of muscle memory and qi theory—but accessing it was like trying to read files on a corrupted hard drive. It was there, but locked behind a fog of dissociation. She traced the characters for Meridian Purification. As her eyes scanned the familiar text, the disconnect snapped shut. The memories flooded in—not just the words, but the sensation of qi cycling through the twelve primary channels. On Earth, Tim uncapped the marker.

"For example," he said to the class, "if we want to describe an action that is completed, we use the present perfect." He intended to write: I have eaten breakfast. Instead, his hand moved with a fluidity he didn't possess yesterday. As Lia's mind locked onto the concept of purification, Tim's hand obeyed her muscle memory. The marker danced across the white surface, forming elegant, sweeping strokes that looked nothing like the Latin alphabet.

He wrote for ten seconds, lost in the flow of the ink, channeling the breakthrough happening light-years away.

"Professor Jones?" a voice called out from the middle row.

"What language is that?" Tim blinked. The trance broke. He stepped back to look at his work. The board wasn't covered in English grammar. It was covered in complex, alien symbols—the exact text Lia was integrating into her consciousness. The Foundation must be forged in stillness; the river of qi flows only where the channel is clear. Panic spiked in his chest, cold and sharp.

"Oh," Tim said, his voice cracking. He grabbed the eraser, scrubbing the board frantically.

"Sorry. Wrong... wrong lesson. I was practicing calligraphy last night. Must still be asleep." He erased the script until only white dust remained. Most of the students giggled or went back to scrolling on their phones. They didn't care. To them, it was just the eccentric foreign teacher having a brain fart. Except for one. In the middle row, Riku Tanaka was staring at him. She was a quiet business major who usually blended into the background.

Today she was wearing an oversized dark grey hoodie that seemed to swallow her petite frame, and jeans with fashionable tears at the knees. Her long, straight black hair fell over her shoulders, framing a face that was usually impassive. But right now, she was gripping her pen so hard her knuckles were white. Her dark eyes were wide, fixed on the smudged ink where the script had been. She wasn't looking at him like a student. She was looking at him with recognition. And fear. Tim froze. He looked at her.

She looked at him. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Then, Riku raised her hand. Her voice trembled slightly.

"Professor," she said.

"That script... where did you learn it?" Tim swallowed. The room felt suddenly very small.

"I told you, Riku. Just a dream."

"A dream about meridian purification?" she asked. The room went silent. The other students looked confused—meridian purification wasn't on the syllabus—but Tim felt a bucket of ice water dump over his head. She knew what the symbols meant.

"We'll discuss it after class," Tim said, his voice tight.

"Let's get back to the lesson." The rest of the hour was a blur. Tim taught on autopilot, sweating through his shirt. Riku didn't take her eyes off him. She sat perfectly still in her hoodie, looking terrified, excited, and desperate all at once. The Confrontation When the bell finally rang, the students filed out with the usual clatter of chairs and shuffling feet. Riku didn't move. She sat at her desk, staring at her notebook, waiting until the last student had disappeared into the hallway.

Tim closed the classroom door and locked it. He turned around. Riku stood up slowly. Standing, she was even smaller than she looked seated, her oversized hoodie making her look vulnerable. But her stance was tense, like she was ready to bolt.

"You saw it too," she whispered.

"Didn't you?" Tim walked over to the front row and sat on the edge of a desk, bringing himself to her level. There was no point in lying.

"The meteor," Tim said. Riku let out a breath that sounded like a sob. She slumped back into her chair, covering her face with her hands.

"I thought I was crazy," she muffled through her fingers.

"I thought I was having a breakdown. I saw a light... it hit me in the chest. And then..." She lowered her hands, brushing a strand of long black hair out of her eyes.

"Then I woke up somewhere else."

"Where?" Tim asked gently.

"A desert," Riku said.

"Red sand. Two suns." She looked down at her delicate hands, flexing them as if expecting them to be different.

"I'm a man there," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"His name is Varek. He's tall. He has scars. He carries a sword that burns with fire." Tim nodded slowly.

"And you can see what he sees? Feel what he feels?"

"Yes! It's like... like split-screen TV inside my head. Right now, Varek is sharpening his sword. I can smell the oil and the metal." She looked at Tim with desperate hope.

"You too?"

"Me too," Tim confirmed.

"But I'm not in a desert. I'm in the mountains."

"Who are you?" Riku asked.

"In the other place?" Tim rubbed the back of his neck.

"I'm a girl. Her name is Lia. Flowing Water Sect." Riku stopped. Her face went completely blank. Her eyes lost focus, glossing over as if she were looking at something hovering in the air behind Tim's head. She went perfectly still, her breathing shallow. Tim knew that look. It was the look he had when he was piloting Lia. She's checking, he realized. She's looking me up. A few seconds passed in silence. Then, Riku blinked, her soul slamming back into her Earth body. Her jaw dropped.

"You're Lia?" she squeaked, a hysterical little laugh bubbling up.

"The 'Ice Queen'?"

"You found me?"

"Professor!" Riku tapped her temple.

"My other self—Varek—he just searched you on the interface! You're famous! You have like half a million followers!" Tim groaned, burying his face in his hands.

"I know. I saw the follower count this morning. It's a nightmare. I have to impersonate a celebrity teenage girl." Riku started laughing. It was the laughter of pure relief, of finding out you aren't the only person on the sinking ship.

"Oh my god," she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes.

"Professor Jones is the Ice Queen. And I'm... I'm a muscle-bound warrior dude."

"Varek?" Tim asked.

"Yeah. He's cool," Riku said, a grin breaking through her anxiety.

"He's really strong. Foundation Establishment Level 4. He fights beasts in the wasteland." She paused, looking at Tim critically.

"Wait. You wrote about meridian purification. Is Lia...?"

"Level 1," Tim admitted.

"She—I—just broke through. But honestly? I have no idea what I'm doing. I nearly died three times yesterday." Riku's smile faded.

"Me too. Varek was... he was fighting a horde of beasts. It was terrifying. But also..." She looked at her hand, clenching it into a fist.

"It felt amazing. The power. The speed."

"We need to be careful," Tim said, his voice serious.

"If anyone finds out..."

"They'll lock us up," Riku finished.

"Or dissect us."

"Exactly. We keep this between us. No one else knows." Riku nodded vigorously, pulling her hood up slightly as if to hide the secret.

"Secret pact. Meteor Shower buddies."

"Let's work on the name," Tim said dryly.

"But yes. We help each other. We figure out how to survive in both worlds." Riku grabbed her bag, looking lighter than she had in days. She walked to the door, then paused, looking back at him. Her eyes went wide, and her cheeks flushed a faint pink.

"You know, Professor," she said, her voice dropping to a strange whisper.

"It's weird. Varek keeps looking at Lia's profile picture. He thinks she's... kinda cute." She shook her head, looking genuinely bewildered.

"I never really understood what guys saw in women before. But Varek's memories... they're really vivid. It's like a whole different instinct kicking in." Tim stared at her. The words triggered something in the back of his mind—not his mind, Lia's. A phantom sensation washed over him. A racing heart. A stolen glance across a training courtyard. The memory of a crush the original Lia had taken to her grave surged forward, clashing violently with his own thirty-year-old male perspective.

"Great," Tim groaned, rubbing his temples as the alien emotion flooded his chest.

"Now I'm remembering Lia's crush on Senior Brother Han. This is going to be a nightmare."

"Just saying!" Riku laughed, pushing the door open.

"Check your notifications later! Varek might send a friend request." She bounced out of the room, her long black hair swinging behind her, leaving Tim alone in the silence of the lecture hall. He looked at the whiteboard, where the ghostly smudge of the cultivation script still lingered. He wasn't alone. He let out a long, slow breath. The panic that had been crushing his chest since the meteor strike finally eased, just a fraction. He had an ally. A weird, gender-swapped, student ally, but an ally nonetheless.

"Friend request," he muttered, picking up his bag.

"Unbelievable." But as he walked out of the classroom, for the first time since the meteor hit, Tim Jones was smiling.