Chapter 92

Chapter 92: The Paper (2)

The lab was a disaster when I arrived for my early-morning shift.

Lee Yeeun, collapsed with blood trickling from her nose.

It looked like she'd pushed herself through the night writing the paper.

"This idiot."

My mistake.

No matter how much I trusted Lee Yeeun, I shouldn't have left her unsupervised.

Lee Yeeun had a somewhat emotional side.

With her father's situation tangled up in this, I should've anticipated how far she'd push herself beyond her limits when she couldn't make rational judgments.

Today wasn't the first time—the closer the presentation date came, the harder she must have been driving herself.

I should've stopped her sooner. Her current physical state was painfully predictable.

"Hah......"

First, I carried Lee Yeeun in my arms to the office, laid her on the sofa, and draped a blanket over her.

For simple overwork, an Awakened's natural healing was more than enough to recover—no need to go to the infirmary.

That was what experience gained through the Mentor skill from an S-rank priest told me, so it was reliable.

But even though my head knew she'd be fine, seeing my student collapsed didn't sit well in my heart.

I wanted to call a doctor right away, but a healer better than me was hard to come by in all of Korea, so there was little point.

"Mmm......"

Fortunately, Lee Yeeun woke before long.

She announced her presence with wheezy, deflated sounds from her mouth.

I brewed a mild tea with hot water and handed it to her.

"Drink up."

Lee Yeeun took the cup and gulped down the tea.

She must have chugged too fast and burned herself—she stuck out her tongue and scrunched her face.

Being Awakened didn't dull your sensitivity to temperature. She could resist it with a tolerance skill, but Lee Yeeun didn't have one.

When I poured cold water and brought it to her lips, Lee Yeeun dribbled it into her mouth like a baby bird.

"Phwa! I feel alive again now that I've had water......"

"That's what you get for pushing yourself."

"......"

Embarrassed, Lee Yeeun ducked her head and clamped her mouth shut.

Better to give her a bit more time to stabilize.

"Drink the tea. It'll give you some energy."

The tea had the effect of clearing the mind.

Brewed by someone deeply versed in alchemy and medicine, its effects were even more potent.

"I don't like bitter things."

"Bitter is good for you."

"I want something sweet."

Lee Yeeun shook her head stubbornly.

When I brought out sweet tea as requested, Lee Yeeun's lips jutted out.

"Why can't we get away from tea?"

"Because it's good for you."

"Haaah, fine. I'll drink it."

Apparently unwilling to trouble her teacher a third time, Lee Yeeun blew on the tea and drank it down.

She still grumbled about not tasting any sweetness, but she was better than before—at least she wasn't scrunching her face.

After finishing the tea, Lee Yeeun's expression wasn't great.

She was the one to speak first.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For making you worry for nothing......"

She wore a repentant look, aware she'd done something worth scolding.

Instead of scolding her, I patted Lee Yeeun's head.

"Ah......"

"It's fine. You were trying hard. I'd rather praise you than scold you."

"But I got greedy over something I couldn't handle......"

"It's okay. There's still plenty of time."

Lee Yeeun's face was deep in deliberation.

She hemmed and hawed before finally, with great difficulty, speaking.

"Should I give up on the paper? Instead of clinging to a topic beyond my ability, maybe I should learn from the failure and prepare for the next presentation."

Lee Yeeun had poured her all into this paper.

Given that effort, the words "give up" couldn't have been easy to utter. I could see the agonizing, repeated deliberation behind her decision.

"If that's what you think, I can't stop you. But I believe you can do it, Yeeun."

"...Really? Can I really do it?"

"Hmm, it might be tough on your own, so I'll give you a small push. Try approaching it with a slight change in perspective. Think broader. Think in higher dimensions."

"Broader? Higher......?"

"Yes. Now get your energy back and give it another go."

"Okay."

She still didn't look confident, but at least she'd pulled herself out of total despair.

Watching Lee Yeeun's back as she left the office, I silently cheered her on.

***

"Haah......"

Lee Yeeun returned to the lab she was so sick of.

Her body had recovered, but her heart was too heavy.

If she collapsed from overwork, at least her heart might find some peace.

Being Awakened meant her body was annoyingly healthy, which was inconvenient at times like this.

'Can I actually do it?'

The professor believed in her, but Lee Yeeun lacked confidence in herself.

A full month with zero progress—what would change now?

"Hey, Yeeun."

Researchers running simulations in one corner greeted Lee Yeeun.

At first, she'd disliked them because they'd come from Professor Yun Seongyeop's lab—a man she had the worst relationship with. But on reflection, those kids bore no blame.

If anything, having suffered under that horrible man made her pity them. Once she changed her mindset, befriending them came easily.

"Hey."

"Did you sleep at all last night? You look like you've got some energy today."

"Yeah."

Lee Yeeun's condition had been at rock bottom recently—bad enough to worry the other researchers.

Part of the reason she'd been digging pointless holes was probably the poor condition.

She felt pathetic and embarrassed for not even managing her own health.

"How's the paper prep going? The presentation's almost here."

"Oh, well......"

"You're the ace of our lab, Yeeun. Expectations are high."

Starting from someone's comment, the researchers piled on one after another.

"Right? The professor's got to be excited too."

"Everyone's saying our professor will win Best Paper in the professor category. If we want to live up to his name, the researcher category's Best Paper should come from our lab too!"

"You're not even the one doing it—don't put too much pressure on Yeeun."

"What does it matter? Where in the entire Academy is there anyone better than Yeeun?"

"Fair point."

The unexpected wave of expectations left her a bit flustered.

The lab, and on top of that, the professor's reputation.

They had a point.

She'd always called herself the professor's top student—if she couldn't produce results to match, she should be ashamed.

The top student of the Academy's best professor should naturally be the best student in the Academy, or better yet, in all of Seoul.

Right.

Let's become the best.

Lee Yeeun fashioned a grin and bluffed.

"Just trust me. I'll flip it all upside down."

"Ooh! That's more like it."

"We're putting all our faith in you, Yeeun!"

"Why only Yeeun? You're not writing a paper?"

"I'm already a lost cause, so I'm on Yeeun cheer squad duty."

"Bullshit."

With everyone's encouragement, she couldn't exactly whine and say she couldn't do it.

In a manner of speaking, she'd burned the bridges behind her.

Lee Yeeun steeled her resolve to absolutely finish the paper.

But things in life didn't go as easily as the heart wished.

A full week passed with no progress in Lee Yeeun's research.

"Haah."

If there was no progress from here, it was truly dire.

At this rate, making the presentation was out of the question. A do-or-die crisis.

"Help... I need help......"

After racking her brain, only one thing came to mind.

What the professor had told her that day.

"He definitely said to think broader, in higher dimensions."

The professor had said it was a hint.

It was a cryptic remark, but he wasn't the kind of person to say something meaningless. If she thought hard enough, she'd surely gain something from it.

"Hmm, hmmm......"

Was it some kind of riddle?

She couldn't even begin to grasp how to interpret it.

Still, at this point, the professor's advice was the only thing she could rely on.

A researcher beside her asked.

"Yeeun, is there something you're stuck on?"

"Just... something I don't understand."

"Huh? There's something even you don't know? Why not ask the professor?"

"I already heard what the professor said, but I don't quite get it. He gave me some kind of riddle-like hint."

The other researchers listening in tilted their heads.

"The professor, a riddle? Hard to picture."

"Why?"

"Because the professor has never directly given the answer, but he always places it right next to you. I've never heard him wrap things up multiple times over."

That was true, now that she thought about it.

When he'd told her to read the paper on mana dynamics, the answer had come from thinking simply.

Maybe this time was the same?

Lee Yeeun emptied her mind and resolved to look at it more simply.

"He placed the answer right beside me......"

Perspective and dimension.

Broader, and higher.

She emptied her thoughts, trying to grasp what those words meant and how to apply them as simply as possible.

"Ah......!"

A single idea flashed through her mind.

Lee Yeeun clapped her hands, pulled out paper, and spread it open.

"Maybe... maybe......!"

Her hands flew, and the white paper was covered in ink in an instant.

The other researchers stared at her motor-driven hands as if seeing a ghost.

"I've got it!"

She'd found it.

The Magic Circle, which had seemed to be drawn randomly with no rules whatsoever.

The rules weren't absent—she'd simply been looking from the wrong angle to find them.

Opening her eyes wide and looking, the true nature began to peek through.

What had once looked like an incomprehensible foreign script now felt as familiar and easy to understand as reading her mother tongue.

"I've got it. I've got it......!"

Lee Yeeun grabbed the hands of the researchers beside her and started jumping up and down.

The researchers, having no idea what was happening, stood there with dazed expressions, staring blankly at each other.

"Just you wait! I'm absolutely bringing back the Best Paper award!"

"Uh, um......"

Lee Yeeun's eyes were ablaze.

Like water bursting from a blocked dam, Lee Yeeun's passion and her paper exploded forward.

***

The long-awaited day of the Seoul Academy Paper Presentation arrived.

Actually, "long-awaited" wasn't being used in the sense of "eagerly anticipated"—it was short for "go-dae," meaning "go figure, I'd rather not deal with it face-to-face."

Once this presentation was over, things would inevitably get annoying in one way or another.

All sorts of entanglements I had no interest in would pile up.

"Why did I have to start this stupid paper."

I'd originally planned to scrap the paper and bring something more mundane, but Lie Xiao and Zhuge Soyon vehemently opposed it.

They said trashing it would be disrespectful to the people who'd helped, and I had no rebuttal.

"Hoo... I'm nervous. What if people laugh at me?"

Lee Yeeun seemed quite worried about attending her first paper presentation.

I tossed out something random to ease her nerves.

"So what? You laugh right back at them. Tell them their eyes aren't even worth a knothole if they can't tell a gem from a pebble."

"Pfft, isn't that a bit much?"

"Am I just any professor? I'm the best professor, and I say it's good—so you can trust me. Anyone who reads that paper will be captivated."

The reaction when Lee Yeeun's paper was revealed to the world was the same no matter which direction the story took.

Every mage in the world praised her in unison, calling it a great paper that would advance all of magic by a century.

The predetermined story had been changing frequently lately, but there was no reason every mage in the world would simultaneously become stupid—so this was one future that was set in stone.

Lee Yeeun, looking around, spoke with excitement.

"Wow. So many famous professors are here."

Aside from the professors I'd seen at Florian, most of the faces were new to me, but Lee Yeeun seemed to recognize many of them.

"Don't stand around gawking at others."

"Huh?"

"They should be gawking at us."

In reality, an enormous amount of attention was indeed directed our way.

With slight exaggeration, every person in the venue had their eyes on me.

"It sounds so obnoxious when you say it yourself."

"I'm not wrong though."

"True."

Just then, an announcement rang out from speakers placed around the academy.

─In fifteen minutes, the Paper Presentation will commence. All participants, please gather in the Main Auditorium.

The Seoul Academy Paper Presentation.

The arena where Korea's most brilliant professors gathered to show off had begun.