The Perilous Changing Room

The third period finally dragged to an end. As the dismissal bell rang, I finally pinpointed the exact location of the ‘Three Heroes Battling Lu Bu’: Hulao Pass.

That’s right, Hulao Pass. I double-checked it several times, engraving the answer into my memory. I would finally have an answer for Teacher Huang by lunchtime.

“Buddy, buddy, next up is swimming class! Ahhh! I’m so excited! Come on, come on, come with me to the dorm to grab the ‘nuclear weapon’.”

Ma Chao, who had looked like a wilted eggplant just moments before, sprang back to life with renewed vigor, pulling me out of the classroom.

“‘Nuclear weapon’?” I asked, utterly bewildered. Ma Chao offered no reply. He just kept rushing forward. Aside from swimming, he seemed to drift through every other class in a daze, though I wasn’t much different myself.

By the time I finished speaking, I had already followed Chao to the dorm. From his personal locker, he retrieved a high-tech device that resembled a telescope.

This dark, cylindrical object was about a meter long and as thick as my thigh, with several tripods attached to its base. It certainly looked like a telescope.

“Why would you bring a telescope to swimming class? There are no stars to see during the day!” I tried to lift it; it weighed about ten pounds. The device was quite substantial, making it rather strenuous to carry.

“Ouch! Ouch! Buddy, you take it to the swimming pool first. I’ll be right there!” Ma Chao suddenly yelped, clutching his stomach as he dashed away.

“Hey, hey, you’re not trying to use me as your personal porter, are you? If you dare to trick me, I’ll…” I brandished my rather small fist in a futile threat. But my best friend didn’t even glance back, sprinting toward the restroom. It seemed his stomach ache was genuine.

The massive contraption before me looked incredibly cool. I’d seen similar ones in documentaries, used by astronomers to observe the stars. Was Chao planning to use this telescope to stargaze with a girl tonight? That would be quite romantic, I mused.

I carefully carried the telescope down the stairs. Fortunately, the swimming facility wasn’t far. After leaving the dorm, I headed towards the basement of a nearby academic building.

Swimming class was held only once a week. This applied not just to our class, but to the entire first, second, and third grades as well.

I’d heard that the swimming instructor certification was extremely difficult to obtain, making such teachers quite rare. Our school had been trying to recruit more swimming teachers, but so far, there was only one.

The swimming teacher was always busy; most of the time, they would give instructions and then disappear. To this day, I only remembered the teacher’s name was Lin Dan; their appearance had long since blurred in my memory.

I swiped my student ID card against the glass door’s sensor, and it promptly slid open. Once I stepped inside, the door closed behind me. The school had invested heavily in the access control system due to the privacy concerns surrounding students in the pool.

If it wasn’t our class’s designated swimming time, my card wouldn’t have been able to open the door.

The basement was spacious, easily the size of three basketball courts. In the very center lay a fan-shaped pool, surrounded by seven or eight long benches. The deep end of the pool was three meters deep, while the shallow end was merely half a meter.

Yet, for me, even that half-meter felt quite deep. The bottom of the pool was adorned with numerous oval-shaped white pebbles, which, under the shimmer of the water, resembled white duck eggs.

The enormous pool was currently empty except for me. I glanced at my watch; class hadn’t started yet, so it seemed no one else had arrived.

‘Surely the telescope won’t get stolen here, right? After all, we’re all in the same class.’ I looked around, folded the telescope, and placed it on a bench before heading toward the changing rooms.

To my confusion, the right side, which should have been the boys’ changing room, now clearly displayed a girls’ sign above its entrance.

‘Strange, have the changing rooms been rearranged? There was no notification at all!’ So, I walked to the other side. Upon entering, my suspicion proved correct. Not only had it been rearranged, but it had also been renovated.

The layout and wall colors were entirely different. It was like stepping from a primitive tribe directly into the Industrial Revolution. The walls were pink, adorned with images of Pikachu and Hello Kitty.

The lockers, which should have been on the left for storing clothes, were gone. In their place stood a withered tree, resembling a Christmas tree, with a few scattered green leaves.

My jaw dropped when I saw colorful swimsuits hanging from its branches. The sight left me utterly dumbfounded.

‘It’s not Christmas today, is it? This, this… why is there a Christmas tree?’

The Christmas tree indeed held an array of vibrant, varied-sized garments. I distinctly remembered this being the boys’ changing room. Could Christmas have come early this year? Did Santa Claus even know about our adolescent mischief?

Santa Claus was too terrifying! If Chao were here, he’d probably be excited to the point of shock.

“These, these…” My breathing grew heavy. Just looking at these swimsuits and trunks, a dozen beautiful girls in bikinis materialized in my mind.

It could be a prank, and a highly probable one at that. I consciously suppressed my thoughts, keeping my hands behind my back to appear less perverted.

To my astonishment, the prankster had paid meticulous attention to detail. Each garment varied in size and scent. Moreover, each hook on the tree branches bore a number.

The red one carried a tingling mint scent, the blue a delicate jasmine, the black a subtle orchid, and the white the fragrance of June lotuses…

I spotted a very, very tiny, number 9, linen-colored bra. It was pitifully small, not even as large as my palm. If a girl were truly to wear it, I imagined only Yamashita Izumi, the petite loli in our class, would fit.

Besides number 9, number 33 also caught my attention. Not because the black color looked sexy, but because it was enormous. Truly enormous. Even with both my hands spread wide, I couldn’t fully cover that single hemisphere.

Such astonishing fullness! It could only belong to… only our busty queen could hold it. That would be Chenxi, the new transfer student. Coincidentally, with Chenxi, our class now had exactly 33 students.

If this was indeed Santa Claus’s doing, then he must have been a long-term undercover agent in our class. But, but, who could it be? Who would have known Chenxi was transferring today and immediately made this extra-large bra?

I extended my pinky finger and gently pushed it. The garment swayed back and forth like a pendulum.

“Zhou Yu, have you seen Chirp? I need to talk to him.” My best friend’s voice suddenly echoed from the adjacent room.

I turned in confusion, looking toward the other side of the wall. Why was Chao’s voice coming from there? Had I misheard?

“No, I haven’t! When I came in, it was just me and an unfamiliar girl. Let me tell you, that girl is gorgeous, not at all inferior to the class monitor or the mixed-blood student. She’s incredibly fresh-faced, with a figure, and a chest, and especially those legs… how do I describe them? Have you seen Liu Yan? They’re long and shapely, easily rivaling the class monitor’s!”

“Really? If she’s not from our class, then she must be the swimming teacher. I’ll have to take a good look later. Today, I brought my ‘nuclear weapon’; no beauty can escape my discerning eyes!”

‘Ma Chao and Zhou Yu entered the girls’ changing room? How audacious! They’ll be beaten to death if they’re discovered. Well, perhaps it’s for the best; they can cross over to the Three Kingdoms and meet their master.’ I was thankful for my own timidity and adherence to school rules, otherwise, I’d suffer a far worse fate than them.

I didn’t call out to them to leave immediately. After all, they chose their path. If they wanted to peek at girls, they must have been prepared for a beating the moment they snuck in.

I shook my head, pondering my locker number, and reached for my own swimsuit…

*Crack!* A thunderbolt struck my mind. An absurd thought flashed through my brain: ‘This can’t really be the girls’ changing room, can it?’

Boys’ changing rooms had lockers with numbers; mine was 12. Since there were no lockers, my gaze shifted to the numbers on the Christmas tree. My eyes swept over the modest swimsuits, from top to bottom, then bottom to top, searching three times. My number wasn’t there at all; they were all odd numbers.

*Boom!* My mind felt as if it had been struck by lightning. Yes, this was indeed the girls’ changing room. It wasn’t Chao or Huang Gai deliberately sneaking into the girls’ changing room; it was *me* who had mistaken the girls’ changing room for the boys’.

Because girls’ student IDs, or any other numbering, followed the rule of odd numbers for females and even numbers for males.

I hurried toward the door. Just as I took a step, I heard a cascade of footsteps outside, like dumplings being dropped into boiling water. “Which scoundrel changed the signs on the men’s and women’s changing rooms? Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Terrifying, truly terrifying! The girls were coming in together. If I were discovered, I’d surely be squeezed dry, no, beaten to a pulp. With quick reflexes, I hastily retreated, opened the nearest cubicle door, and darted inside. I slammed it shut behind me, my back pressed against the door, my toes braced against the wall tiles. This way, no girl could enter, and I wouldn’t be discovered.

“Wow! As expected of the mixed-blood girl, Xi Xi has such a great figure!” A girl’s envious and sharp voice echoed through the entire room. I couldn’t immediately recall who this girl was, but her voice sounded remarkably like a Japanese girl’s. Her voice wasn’t loud, but at this moment, it felt astonishingly amplified, as if she were speaking right into my ear.

“Thank you!” Chenxi, praised by a classmate, actually said thank you. This gave me a deeper understanding of her, as my previous impression was that she acknowledged mistakes but never admitted them, and loved to throw tantrums.

“Whose swimsuit is this? Why is it so small? How could anyone even wear this?” Chenxi’s voice came again, not with contempt, but with bewilderment at such a tiny garment. She must have been referring to swimsuit number nine, which meant… my guess was indeed correct.

“That one? Oh, that’s Yamashita Izumi’s, of course. She always comes in after we’ve changed.”

The high-pitched voice spoke again.

“Why doesn’t Yamashita Izumi come in with us?” Chenxi’s condescending tone rang out again, grating on my ears. Her tone always made her sound like she thought she was the boss.

“What, you… have an opinion?” This voice spoke slowly, not softly, but with an unusual coolness and dominance. If I wasn’t mistaken, it had to be the class monitor, Shahu Wu.

If Chenxi deliberately acted like the big sister, Shahu Wu was the undisputed leader. Every action, every gesture, exuded an aura of leadership from within.

The moment the class monitor spoke, the noisy room suddenly fell silent. Her words were laced with too much gunpowder, reeking of a looming fight. If a brawl broke out, I believed Chenxi, the mixed-blood girl, would surely lose miserably, perhaps even transferring schools by tomorrow.