I Became a Kindergarten Teacher for Monster Babies!

Sable hesitated, then nodded very, very slowly. Quietly, like a kitten testing water, he climbed onto the back of the banana. Boo cheered, "Banana power, activate!!" and zoomed forward.

Sable's eyes widened in wonder as the banana floated around the room, his small fingers gripping Boo's shoulders tightly. His mouth opened in the tiniest smile, and Alina's heart melted behind her camera.

She chuckled softly to herself. With Boo's dramatic shouts and Sable's quiet amazement, the whole scene looked straight out of an anime.

Meanwhile, Drake shouted, "I CALL NEXT TURN!!" and tried to chase after them, only to trip over Rocky, who was busy arranging three pebbles in a perfect line.

***

Alina clapped her hands, her cheerful smile lighting up the room. "Math time!!!" she announced brightly.

The reaction was instant.

"NOOOOO!!" Drake groaned, throwing his head down dramatically on his desk and hugging it with both chubby arms. "My poor dragon brain can't do numbers today!!"

Boo gasped, then flipped upside down and floated toward the ceiling, pretending to faint. "Teacher!! Boo is dead!! Math killed Boo!!!" he wailed, spinning slowly like a tragic ghost.

The whole class burst into giggles.

Vlad Jr.'s elegant little nose scrunched, and he crossed his arms with a sigh. "Math is uncivilized," he muttered like a tiny prince who had been deeply wronged.

Felix slumped back in his chair and covered his face with one arm. "Teacher, my hand already hurts just thinking about math," he said dramatically, as though the very word had cursed him.

Luna slammed her palms on the desk. "Math is evil!!" she declared, puffing her cheeks in fury.

"Evil??" Rocky blinked, wide-eyed. "Then why do we have to learn it?"

Kelpie gave a tiny nod, backing Rocky up. "Yes, teacher, why not more art time? Or swimming time? Swimming is better than math."

Alina's lips twitched as she tried to stay serious, her hands resting on her hips. "Alright, alright, enough groaning. Math is not evil, and it certainly hasn't killed Boo."

"YES IT DID!!" Boo howled from the ceiling, still upside down. "Write my funeral speech, teacher!!"

Drake gasped, suddenly perking up. "Teacher!! Can I do the speech?? I'm good at speeches!" He stood dramatically on his chair. "Here lies Boo! A ghost who fainted because of numbers—"

"Drake, sit down!" Alina chuckled, clapping her hands again. "Math is not scary. And I promise it'll be fun today."

"Impossible," Vlad Jr. muttered.

Alina shook her head, amused.

Maybe she should give them something easy, Alina thought with a sigh. Something no one could possibly mess up.

"Alright, everyone! For math today, you all have to count how many objects are in the classroom," she said brightly, sitting back at her desk to watch.

The babies froze for a second, then scattered like puppies.

Luna immediately shifted into her wolf form, tail wagging furiously as she padded from desk to desk, tapping each one with her tiny paw. "One! Two! Three!" she barked proudly, her ears twitching every time she moved.

Meanwhile, Drake couldn't resist making it dramatic. He shifted into his dragon form with a little pop of smoke and stomped through the room, poking each classmate's head with his snout. "One! Two! Three! Four—HEY!! STOP MOVING!!"

Boo shrieked, zooming in circles to avoid the dragon nose. "Nooo!! Teacher, he's cheating!! He's counting my ghost butt!!"

"I'm not!!" Drake argued, chasing him between the desks. "Hold still so I can count you!!"

"Never!! Boo cannot be numbered!! Boo is infinite!!" Boo shouted, spinning upside down and nearly crashing into Luna.

The wolf pup yelped. "Hey!! You ruined my count!! Now I have to start over!!"

"Teacher!!" Vlad Jr. called out dryly from his seat, arms crossed. "This is chaos. You should've asked me. I would've counted in poetry."

Kelpie was meanwhile standing on tiptoe by the window, pressing his nose to the glass. "…Do clouds count as objects?"

Rocky, sitting cross-legged on the floor with three pebbles lined neatly in front of him, whispered, "…I'll only count these three. They're enough."

Sable was at the back, carefully pointing at every sticker Alina had put up on the walls. "…One…two…three…," his quiet little voice steady as he tried his best.

Felix leaned back in his chair, not moving at all, smirking at the chaos. "Why bother counting? Teacher already knows the answer. We should just copy it."

Alina clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. What was supposed to be the easiest math exercise had turned into a dragon-versus-ghost chase, a wolf re-counting the desks for the fifth time, and Vlad Jr. composing rhymes about numbers.

"Alright, alright!!" she finally clapped her hands, raising her voice over the noise. "Everyone come back to your seats before the classroom explodes!!"

However, everyone still seemed far too busy with their own versions of counting.

"Drake!!" Alina finally shouted when the baby dragon nearly poked her forehead with his snout.

The little dragon froze, blinking his big eyes innocently as if he hadn't just been about to bonk his teacher. "Teacher, don't worry—I was only going to count your head! That's number twenty!"

"TWENTY?!" Boo shrieked, zooming upside down in the air. "Teacher's head can't be twenty! Boo counted it already and it was banana!"

"BANANA IS NOT A NUMBER!!" Luna growled, slamming her little wolf paw on the desk.

"Then why did Boo say it?!" Drake roared back, puffing smoke from his nose.

"Because Boo's brain is broken," Vlad Jr. muttered, rubbing his temple like a tired old vampire lord.

"HEY!!!" Boo gasped, floating dramatically onto the chalkboard. "Boo's brain is a genius brain! Banana math is the future!!"

Kelpie, who was crawling under his desk with watery droplets dripping down his cheeks, piped up softly, "Um… I counted seventeen legs."

Everyone paused.

"What??" Felix finally drawled, his red eyes gleaming with mischief. "Seventeen legs? That's creepy. Whose leg is missing?"

Kelpie blinked innocently. "I don't know… but maybe Boo doesn't have legs so the number changed…"

Boo was in ghost form so he was using his ghostly tail.

The class exploded in giggles. Boo clutched his chest like he'd been insulted. "Boo has legs!! They're just invisible!! Want Boo to show?!" He started to wiggle threateningly.

"NO!!" the whole class shouted at once.

Alina pressed her palm to her face, trying so hard not to laugh as the chaos kept spiraling.