Chapter 6

Chapter 6: An Seri (1)

I came to two days later.

While I'd been unconscious, Lee Yeeun had called an ambulance and cleaned the office, she told me.

As expected of a capable slave—I mean, student.

"Seriously, what happened to you?"

"I had an epiphany in the middle of the night. Got carried away training."

It was a flimsy excuse, but Lee Yeeun bought it easily.

"As expected, you're in a league of your own, Professor. Training without even taking care of your own body."

"The drive to improve is an important thing."

I said it with a face of steel, brazening it out shamelessly.

The more I lied, the better I seemed to get at it.

"I've heard something like that before. They say the higher the wall you break through, the greater the shock to your body. How high must your level be to end up coughing blood?"

"Oh, well... let's just say it's beyond what you can imagine."

"Wow, that's so annoying."

It wasn't a lie. Who could imagine that the professor teaching them was a complete beginner who'd just barely formed a mana heart?

"In any case, I apologize for delaying the research with my sorry display. Ready to show me your results?"

Lee Yeeun smoothly pulled the report out of her bag.

It was a clean report—no flashy embellishments, just black text on white paper with only the necessary diagrams. I liked the attitude of letting ability speak for itself, without relying on presentation tricks.

I flipped past the cover to the first page.

I heard Lee Yeeun gulp. Having her professor evaluate her report must have been nerve-wracking.

"Hmmm... oho."

When a heavy groan escaped my lips, Lee Yeeun's expression stiffened in turn.

When I let a sound of admiration slip, her expression brightened.

"Tsk."

One click of my tongue, and Lee Yeeun's face went pale.

Lee Yeeun, experiencing emotional roller-coasters in real time based on my every reaction. It was quite entertaining to observe.

If she was like this on the outside, the inside had to be way worse, right? Her heart was probably pounding, her nerves fraying.

Once I'd turned through to the last page, Lee Yeeun waited for my evaluation with both hands clasped together.

"I've read your report, Miss Yeeun."

To confess the truth: I didn't understand a single thing.

Then again, I hadn't understood when she'd explained it verbally, so what difference would reading it make?

But brushing it off carelessly felt wrong with Lee Yeeun staring at me like that.

Just look at her—she wasn't being obvious about it, but her face might as well have read "I did well, right? Please praise me."

I wanted nothing more than to shower her with compliments and send her on her way, but what if this report was actually wrong? My reputation as a professor would be finished.

Maybe because my silence was getting awkward, Lee Yeeun tilted her head.

"Professor?"

Change the subject? That was the worst option. Lee Yeeun showed no signs of letting this go.

In the worst case, dodging the question might make her doubt my competence.

If she started digging in earnest, there was no way my half-baked abilities could fool her. A few basic questions would have me stammering and evading.

What should I say?

In that moment, a memory flashed through my mind like lightning.

—How wonderful. Child, you are a genius born by the heavens to save the world.

—Th-thank you......

—I don't say this lightly. I've met countless people over my long years. You are the most special among them all, child.

An event you could see when the player recruited Lee Yeeun as a companion. A scene where Chancellor Ryu Jeonga recognized Lee Yeeun's talent and became her patron.

From that point on, Lee Yeeun's true value began to emerge.

—One piece of advice. Read Professor Yagao's paper, "The Relationship Between Mana Dynamics and Natural Science."

Lee Yeeun would later reveal that, more than any material support Ryu Jeonga had provided, that single piece of advice had helped her the most.

Maybe this could be the key.

But did that paper actually have anything to do with the current situation? I didn't know.

I had only one card in my hand.

Play it, or fold without even trying?

Obviously, the former.

"Miss Yeeun, have you ever read Professor Yagao's paper, 'The Relationship Between Mana Dynamics and Natural Science'?"

"No. This is the first I've heard of that paper."

"Read it and then revise your report. I'll hold off on my evaluation until then."

"...Okay."

She answered obediently, but her face wasn't one of acceptance.

All I could do was hope she'd find the answer in that paper.

"I'll revise it and bring it back."

When I silently nodded, Lee Yeeun stood from her seat.

It wasn't a long-shot gamble. The odds were at least fifty-fifty.

I couldn't just sit around doing nothing either.

I called the nurse beside me.

"How much longer do I need to stay?"

"Your condition is quite poor right now. You can be discharged in about three days, and you'll need to rest for a week."

It was a firm answer, but I couldn't afford that.

If I'd wanted to take care of my body, I would've quit being a professor long ago.

"I'm checking out now."

"What? You can't! You need absolute rest right now......"

The nurse was horrified and tried to stop me, but I pulled out my IV and gathered my things.

The doctor who came in afterward also urged me to rest, but I refused.

My body getting worn down still bothered me less than not being able to review the report my student had worked so hard on.

***

"I'm home."

Lee Yeeun's voice echoed through the empty apartment.

She hadn't said it expecting a reply. It was just force of habit.

"I'm hungry. Food first......"

Lee Yeeun opened the fridge and pulled out half a can of leftover ham, market kimchi, and a single pack of instant rice. A pitiful spread.

She popped the rice in the microwave and set the ham on a frying pan.

Even as her hands moved busily to prepare the meal, she'd already started running simple calculations in her head.

Her current bank balance and living expenses—how to budget this week's spending, what to do about next week's.

The conclusion Lee Yeeun reached was that she didn't have enough money.

"Ugh, I hate this......"

She'd managed to get into a lab by the skin of her teeth, but the scholarship application period had long since passed.

It was all because of those professors.

"Those sons of bitches—I hope they all go bald."

Her former advisor was a bastard who deserved to die, that went without saying. But she also resented the professor who'd strung her along as if he'd take her in, only to dump her.

If not for that man, she could've found another advisor before the scholarship deadline.

Still, she was grateful he'd at least introduced her to a new advisor at the end.

If she hadn't gotten into Cha Eunwoo's lab... she didn't even want to imagine it, but she might have gone crawling back to her former advisor.

Lee Yeeun had been desperate enough to consider throwing herself away.

Thankfully, it never came to that.

"The new professor, he was kind."

Cha Eunwoo seemed like a good professor.

He wasn't overbearing or self-centered.

Most professors didn't regard students as equals.

This wasn't simply a matter of having a good or bad personality. Professors operated under the fundamental assumption that they were entirely correct and their students were ignorant.

Every professor Lee Yeeun had encountered refused to tolerate students challenging their established concepts. But Cha Eunwoo had tried to understand.

Plus, he was handsome.

She had no intention of pursuing anything with her advisor, but still—being handsome was never a bad thing.

The brief smile that had crossed her face crumpled again as the bleak reality set back in.

"What am I going to do about next week's living expenses......"

Lee Yeeun finished her hasty meal, then opened her laptop and navigated to an academic paper search site.

She typed the title Cha Eunwoo had mentioned into the search bar: "The Relationship Between Mana Dynamics and Natural Science."

She'd had a bad feeling about it from the moment she heard the name, and sure enough.

Next to the paper was a label reading "Paid."

"Oh, come on! What kind of paper costs 20,000 won?"

As a considerable bookworm, Lee Yeeun had already sought out and read most well-known papers.

However, she had one principle when selecting papers: she never even glanced at paid ones.

If it was a paper Lee Yeeun hadn't even heard of, it was almost certainly behind a paywall.

"Ugh, I'm already broke......"

Swallowing her tears, she paid with money that felt like blood.

If it turned out to be nothing special, she was going straight to Cha Eunwoo to give him an earful.

But maybe because it was an expensive paper, the quality was substantial. It broke down the difficult subject of mana dynamics in accessible terms through natural science.

Lee Yeeun, as if she'd never been grumbling at all, read the paper with genuine interest.

By the time she turned the last page, the thought that it had been a waste of money hadn't crossed her mind once.

Simply being able to read a paper of this caliber felt like a stroke of luck.

If it hadn't been on a niche topic like mana dynamics, she thought it could've been a massive hit.

It felt like time well spent, and she was satisfied.

But one question lingered.

"Why did he tell me to read this?"

Obviously, there was no shortage of well-written papers out there.

Papers were, after all, the refined conclusions of professors who stood at the pinnacle of their fields. It'd be hard for them not to be informative.

She'd assumed Cha Eunwoo had recommended it because it was relevant to her research, but what was this?

"What a weird professor."

Lee Yeeun sighed and opened her report file.

She'd been told to read the paper and then revise, but she had no idea what to fix.

She slowly retraced the report, paragraph by paragraph, but the most she could find were typos.

"He couldn't have been messing with me, right? Was it just for a change of pace?"

No matter how much she thought about it, she didn't get it. She got up, washed the dishes, tidied the trash, then sat back down in front of the laptop and read the paper again.

"Mana dynamics... there's nothing to connect this to."

Maybe focusing on the mana dynamics was the wrong approach. She started her third full read-through of the paper.

But if you took the mana dynamics out of a paper about mana dynamics, what was left?

If she removed the mana dynamics, what remained was......

There it was.

The methodology used in the paper's development. When the phenomena observed in mana dynamics were plugged into general physics formulas, they matched perfectly.

Lee Yeeun opened her own report as if possessed.

The numbers she'd written in red, estimated because she hadn't known the actual values. Her original argument had been that even though these figures didn't match up exactly, they produced approximate values, so the theory was likely correct. Even Lee Yeeun herself had found that reasoning somewhat forced.

When she plugged in the newly obtained values, every single one matched. Lee Yeeun broke into a wide, gum-baring grin.

"Yes! I knew I was right!"

Lee Yeeun revised the report without pause.

If her previous argument had been speculation with potential, the revised version looked like a legitimate, well-supported claim.

It felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest.

With this, even the professors who'd dismissed her would have no choice but to acknowledge her work.

"Just you wait. When this research is done, I'll be the one laughing."

She'd been secretly worried all this time.

What if it wasn't that the professors had been too authoritarian and had silenced Lee Yeeun's opinions—but that Lee Yeeun had been too arrogant to trust the professors?

After all, they were professors. If all those brilliant people unanimously said it couldn't be done, was that really just because of pride?

If she simply accepted that Lee Yeeun herself had been chasing a pipe dream, everything fell neatly into place.

But today, she'd gained certainty.

She hadn't been wrong.

"Hehe......"

Lee Yeeun giggled to herself as she pictured Cha Eunwoo's face.

It was all thanks to Cha Eunwoo. If Lee Yeeun had been on her own, she wouldn't have trusted even herself enough to walk the right path.

She was truly glad that Cha Eunwoo was her advisor.

Tonight, she felt like she could sleep soundly, without dreaming that nightmare again.