As you slowly, and then seemingly quickly grow old, even sunrises can lose their charm. For kids, they show you the world's beauty, and the magnitude of the sky above you, and herald a new day to make your own. But when sunrises only represent the start of another day, a day which is exactly the same as yesterday, another day you’ll eagerly wait to end; sunrises lose their charm.

Taking chairs off the tops of tables, unrolling the projector screen, and erasing yesterday's schedule from the whiteboard before rewriting the same schedule all over again. That was Mr Lee’s sunrise.

“Hello, Mr Lee!” A student smiled cheerfully as she walked in. Normally Mr Lee would have finished setting up his classroom before any students came but getting out of bed had been harder that morning.

“Oh, Sylvia, hello. How was your weekend?” He asked, taking a final swig of his coffee before he put a soft smile on his previously blank face. Even after his third cup, however, Mr Lee’s eyes still looked half asleep, as they had most days recently.

“It was great! I went to get tacos and study with some friends on Saturday, then yesterday I spent most of the day either studying or cleaning, you know how spring is–” Her voice trailed off in Mr Lee’s mind as he finished rewriting the schedule on the whiteboard.

“Well, I’m glad you had a fun and productive weekend.” He said turning around, making sure that his smile was still displayed. “You’re a little early for class, so I’m going to get another cup of coffee while your classmates arrive. Hold down the fort for me?”

“Sure thing Mr Lee!” Sylvia smiled as he left. Her smile was sweet and genuine. If you looked, it wouldn’t have been hard to see a difference between their smiles, namely that Mr Lee’s faded as soon as he left the room, where Sylvia’s stayed while she pulled out her notebook.

Walking toward the teachers' lounge, a mug with Gengis Kahn’s faded face in hand, Mr Lee took in some ‘box breaths’. They were meant to help you relax, but more so for Mr Lee, they were a distraction. He would do them, get irritated by the concept of their existence, and by the time he was done being irritated by box breathes he would usually have forgotten what made him so upset to begin with. Usually, that is, because this morning he couldn’t quite forget his weekend.

It hadn’t been different from many others before it –full of liquor and microwaved TV dinners– but those bad habits were slowly catching up with Mr Lee.

“Good morning Mr Lee, how was the weekend?” Clare asked. Clare, the librarian at their school, had been hired the year after Mr Lee and the two became close soon after. Granted, Clare was friends with everyone while Mr Lee kept to himself these days.

“Oh, Clare.” Mr Lee said, turning to his side and briefly flashing her a weak smile. “It was the same as always, nothing to complain about. And yours?”

“Nothing too exciting. Neatened my garden a little on Saturday and then went shopping for stationery on Sunday. Mind if I walk with you?” She asked. Although they walked to get coffee together almost every day she still would ask.

“Sure, sure. Stationary, hm?” Mr Lee mused, picking at his knuckle with his mug-free hand. “Going to start scrap-booking again?”

“Well yes, but not for me. Some girls asked to start a club to make a ‘school scrapbook’, and that’s just too cute to turn down!”

Mr Lee didn’t reply to that, not with words. A simple “Mhm,” was all he gave as he mindlessly walked towards the teachers’ lounge. Even if he had eight more cups of bitter coffee, however, his eyes would still look sleepless, and the bags beneath them wouldn’t dissipate either. Even if he boxed, triangled, rounded or even hexagoned his breaths, he wouldn’t forget the weekend. Because even though he might have hoped it to be so, Mr Lee’s raging headache wasn’t just caffeine withdrawal.

For the rest of their walk together, Clare and Mr Lee were silent, save for Clare’s quiet humming of a sombre song. Mr Lee filled his mug to the brim with black coffee before he returned to his classroom. When he did return, only a few minutes remained till class started, yet the room was mostly empty. Sylvia was now sat by a friend of hers chatting, who both waved to Mr Lee as he entered. There was a scattering of other students in the room too, but at least a third of his class was missing.

Sitting down at his desk, Mr Lee opened his binder of lesson plans for the semester and flipped to the day’s date. It was May 3rd, and only a few weeks were left in the semester, but Mr Lee wasn’t sure if he would make it until summer. Today was the last day his class would spend on Rome before the test, and then the last unit of the year would begin,  closing out what had altogether been the most exhausting year of teaching.

Of course, there had been some sweet students, gems who made Mr Lee feel fulfilled in his profession, but most of this year's students –his senior classes in particular– made Mr Lee question if he should feel any pride in the next generation he was ‘educating’. Luckily, this morning’s class was with juniors; they were marginally better than the seniors. They were generally too stressed to be troublemakers, with college applications picking up for them in the spring. 

As the bell tolled, and at the last moment four boys tumbled through the door together, Mr Lee stood from his desk and moved to the board. ‘Augustus, Nero, Hadrian’ he wrote their names out on the board. 

“Talk with the person nearest to you about which emperor had the greatest effect on the Roman empire, and then which had the greatest impact on our perception of the empire. Be prepared to explain yourself.” Mr Lee instructed, before sitting back down at his desk and taking attendance. Surprisingly, all but two students were at class on time, which for Monday morning wasn’t half bad. Not by Mr Lee’s recent standards at least.

While he marked students' attendance, Mr Lee watched as the four boys late to class sat huddled in a group. Their loud voices rose over all other discussions of Roman expansionism and Nero’s descent. 

“–and did you see her on Friday? I mean he totally got her drunk… no man no, she was fine after it.” one said. 

“I mean she went to his party by choice, no one can say she wasn’t expecting,” a second one chimed in before Mr Lee walked up behind them. 

“What Emperors are you guys discussing?” He asked.

“Nero, that crazy bastard, I mean he is why we think of Rome as a violent empire.” The first boy replied, his face smug. He knew there was nothing Mr Lee could do about what they had been talking about just a moment ago.

“Have a better answer prepared for when I call on you, one without vulgarity.” Mr Lee sighed as he walked through the classroom listening to his students' discussions. He had reported those boys to the administration countless times, but nothing was ever done. The leader of their group, the one who had replied to Mr Lee, his mother was a helicopter. The type to believe her son could do no wrong, and armed with her husband’s finances, she always donated just enough money for the school to forget her son was quite a horrible person.

It was Monday, not even nine A.M. yet, and Mr Lee was already sapped of his energy. The rest of the class passed by without much of a hitch, he didn’t end up calling on those boys for an answer to the question he posed, he was much too tired. By the time he passed out review packets for the test next class, Mr Lee was sure he could sleep for twelve hours straight and still need another ten. But the day had barely begun, he had two more classes to teach today and then papers from his senior class to be disappointed about as he read them over. 

“Mr Lee?” Jasmine walked up to his desk just as he sat down again. She wasn’t great when it came to history, but she did well in Mr Lee’s class. History wasn’t easy for everyone, but she listened to every lecture and copied every word he wrote on the whiteboard. 

“Yes, do you have a question?” ?” He asked, once again putting an unconvincing smile on his face. 

“Oh, no. I found this over the weekend when my mom and I went shopping for my brother's birthday.” She said handing Mr Lee a chocolate bar. “‘Nero’s Nougat’, I don’t know how good it will taste but I thought you would find the wrapper funny.” She smiled as Mr Lee examined the chocolate bar, it was certainly something. It depicted a marble statue of Nero eating chocolate while Rome burned behind him. 

“Thank you, Jasmine,” Mr Lee said, as the fake smile he had put on grew genuine for a moment. “I’ll pin it to my bulletin board.”

“See you next class!” She called as she headed out the door. Mr Lee looked down at the chocolate bar with a soft smile, before grabbing a thumbtack out of his desk and pinning it next to a spoofed drawing of Cleopatra that a student had made him earlier in the year. It’s funny how long the gifts students give you stick around, his mug which he used every day, that silly drawing, this chocolate bar, and countless others.