Chapter Text
Being a high school teacher you hear about a lot of gossip from students passing of abandoned notes, most of it is nonsense like who was caught kissing who, how the science and the history teacher where secretly in a relationship, what teacher had a quiz coming up or who was secretly gay (that was most of it). But when you hear that a faculty member passed away that's something to be worried about. This is the position that Mr. Gordon Freeman found himself in. Now hearing that the old gym teacher passed wasn't necessarily surprising, but what was surprising is that Gordon was just now hearing about it. Sure he didn't socialize with the other teachers (or anyone for that matter) much but he thought he'd at least get an email.
He decided that this is probably just another falsehood that some bored teenager came up with so he decided to go check himself. And sure enough the desk in the gym room was completely empty aside from a single box labeled "Benreys stuff, don't touch". When Gordon turned around to leave he saw someone approaching him and the desk.
He recognized this as one of the elementary teachers, one of the few people here he could pick out of a crowd.
"Oh hey Tommy, what's going on?"
"Oh hey Mr. Freeman I'm just helping the new teacher move their stuff in"
It was then Gordon noticed that the other teacher was holding a box with a matching label as the one on the desk.
"Oh uh, why are we getting a new teacher?"
"Oh did you not here Mr...Mr. Stong died...."
"Oh damn"
If he's honest he didn't really know the guy but no one deserves to die...or maybe he did, Gordon didn't know. What Gordon did know however was that “oh damn” was not the appropriate reaction to hearing that someone you worked with died. Gordon was never really great with his words. With the awkwardness in the air, he decides heading back to his class room to wait for school to start was probably the best idea.