Chapter Text
There's an envelope going around the staff room.
It’s standard yellow, recycled, crinkled and creased. Signs of wear from where it has been emptied and opened, over and over and paleness on one side from where it has laid in the sun too long. There’s tape running down the left-hand edge and light stains from someone’s large fingerprints.
The flamboyant scrawl on the front, as curvaceous as its scribe, reads.
"Pair Assignments."
It passes over every staff member's desk, once a week. Sometimes the envelope is heavy with the sound of many fine things rustling against each other, like hatchlings restless in a nest. More often than not, it is light, a single document within its unassuming exterior.
As always, at the end of the week, as the teachers clock in overtime and the dark falls upon the campus, Midnight, post grading papers, opens the envelope at the end of the Friday review meeting.
The others know not to bother her. As curious as they are, they all have a stake in its contents and have sworn themselves (some by blood) to its rules.
"Hmmm?"
Midnight tilts her head, hair brushing the nape of her neck. She crosses her legs and she leans back in her chair, moving slightly back from the weight change. Her eyes glint with curiosity.
This week, unlike any other, there is new but recognisable scrawl.
"What do you know, Eraser Head?"