Chapter 65
After Dad made a phone call,
Aunt Jina said she'd make time to come over to our house.
Since she was coming by anyway, she said she'd also give advice about my school enrollment issue.
Ding-dong—.
When the doorbell rang, Arin and I both sprang off the sofa and ran to the front door.
Pitter-patter-patter—!
When I opened the front door, Aunt Jina was standing there.
“Aunt! You’re here?”
“Hiii—! Aunt!”
With a box of donuts in one hand!
The moment Aunt Jina saw us, her expression changed.
“Aww, our cute Ayeon and Arin! You came out to greet Aunt? I’m so happy!”
Then she set the donut box down and grabbed both our shoulders, pulling us toward her.
Rub-rub—!
Aunt Jina mercilessly rubbed our soft cheeks.
“Eeeek!”
“Waaah!”
“Heehee—! You’re cute no matter when I see you! Can’t you just stop growing forever for Aunt? Hm? Hm?”
About ten minutes passed like that.
I was almost drained dry and turned into a Yu Ayeon mummy.
Glancing to the side, Arin looked just as drained, with a tired face.
“Jina, you got here early?”
“Ah, sis-in-law. I hurried through work because I wanted to come see our cute nieces.”
Aunt Jina picked up the donut box she’d set down and handed it to us.
“Thanks for promoting my law office on your stream last time, Ayeon! Thanks to that, we got a lot more clients! Aunt brought some sweet donuts as a gift!”
What Aunt Jina brought was an amazing gift set with ten donuts in one box!
When we opened the box,
colorful green and pink donuts filled our eyes with color.
and the sweet smell of chocolate filled our noses.
“Hee... looks yummy...”
Saliva started streaming from my mouth.
And the two of us looked at Mom with pitiful eyes.
Because we needed Mom’s permission before eating sweets.
“I guess it can’t be helped. Two each at most, okay?”
The moment Mom gave permission, Arin and I both made our eyes sparkle.
“Yay—!”
“Thank you very much!”
Then we gripped the donuts tightly with our hands and took a big bite.
Munch-munch—.
Nom-nom, chomp-chomp—.
The sugar from the chocolate coating covering the donut’s surface assaulted my taste buds with a flurry of thwacks.
As a result, dopamine exploded out of the hypothalamus in my brain.
“Waaah, it’s so sweet and yummy!”
Fancy course meals you can eat only after paying a fortune are nice, too.
But I also like sweet snacks with that junk-food flavor!
A little chocolate got on my hands, but I licked every last bit off, too.
How can the topologists claim that such delicious donuts are the same as cups?
That’s an insult to donuts!
Seriously, they don’t know what tastes good!
✒️✒️✒️
Aunt Jina sat down at the table.
Mom brought out steaming-hot coffee.
“Sis-in-law, how was France? The photos you sent were really pretty.”
“It was even better because we went when the weather was nice. The food was delicious, too.”
Aunt Jina and Mom happily nibbled on donuts while chatting away.
Oh, and for the record, the “story flower” is supposedly an actual living plant, the kind that blooms on a plant from the Story-and-Story-Within-Story family.
The claim that our chatty little stories actually came from that plant is practically accepted as academic consensus.
Actually, I just made that up.
There is no such plant.
“Ayeon and Arin also made me really happy by entering a chess tournament and placing.”
“That’s right, I saw that too. Arin got first place and Ayeon second. The sight of them smiling with medals around their necks was adorable.”
After saying that, Aunt Jina looked at Arin.
“Arin, you beat your sister? That’s impressive. To think you beat genius Ayeon.”
Arin shrugged.
“Yeees—! I barely beat my sister—!”
“Amazing!”
Aunt Jina looked ready to get up and rub Arin’s cheeks right then and there.
“Heh!”
Arin caught on to the sign and took a small step back.
Her instincts are top-tier.
You really have to be that good to beat me.
We kept chatting like that, and before long, Dad came home from work.
Seeing the donut box on the table, he made an “oh” expression.
“Oh, oppa, you’re here?”
“Oh, what’s this, Jina? You bought donuts? As expected of my little sister. Your sense of style is killer.”
“Hurry up and eat. Before we finish them all.”
Munch-munch—.
After Dad polished off the last two, the donut box was completely empty.
“Jina, have you thought about Ayeon’s school enrollment issue?”
“I was just about to talk about that.”
Ahem-ahem—.
Aunt Jina cleared her throat and changed her posture.
That meant she was switching into work mode as a lawyer.
What a magical-girl-level costume change.
Could Aunt Jina actually be a magical girl?
If she’s twenty-eight, there’s still plenty of possibility.
If you peeked over her shoulder, wouldn’t a cute little mascot pop out?
Arin! Try peeking over your shoulder!
“I heard about it from my brother. Could you show me the school enrollment notice?”
Aunt Jina spoke in the calm, lawyer-like tone she always used.
Mom handed over the notice.
Aunt Jina took it and skimmed it quickly.
“Next year’s admission, then.”
Then she pulled a notebook from her breast pocket and started scribbling notes.
“First, let me confirm the client’s wishes. What do you want to do about elementary school, Ayeon?”
“Aunt... I don’t want to go to elementary school!”
“Okay. Confirmed. We’ll go in the direction of minimizing how much of the regular elementary-school curriculum Ayeon completes.”
Aunt Jina nodded and wrote it down.
Dad chimed in.
“I want to avoid just sending Ayeon to school. But if we don’t send her, we’ll run into legal problems.”
“Right. If you don’t send her without a valid reason, you’ll get fined. If you keep ignoring it, it could even move on to child-abuse-related provisions.”
Dad nodded.
“Isn’t there a good way?”
“There are several ways.”
Aunt Jina said, looking at the notes she’d prepared in advance.
“First, I’ll introduce the ways to avoid a regular elementary school.”
Our family sat side by side and listened.
“The first is homeschooling.”
Aunt Jina explained.
“It’s a method where the parents educate the child directly at home, but in Korea it isn’t completely free. Every year you have to submit a plan to the education office detailing what education the child is receiving, and you also have to write a report on the results. Approval is required, too.”
Mom said,
“So that means paperwork every year?”
“Yes. It’s pretty annoying, honestly. Sometimes the education office even comes to your house to inspect things directly.”
Dad nodded and said,
“What’s the second?”
“Alternative school. You send her to a school with a different curriculum instead of a regular elementary school. But that’s still a six-year program, so the length is basically the same. Only the content is different.”
Either way, six years wasted.
I shook my head back and forth.
“The third is overseas residence.”
Aunt Jina continued.
“If the parents move overseas with the child, they’re cleanly and legally exempt from the domestic compulsory-education requirement. If overseas residence is recognized, not sending the child to a domestic school isn’t punishable.”
The moment I heard that, I thought,
‘My family living overseas...?’
Especially in places like the United States, there are well-developed special-track professor hiring systems.
Even without a degree.
With my level of credentials, I could probably smash through the front gate of some famous university, become a professor on the spot, and then puff out my chest with an “ahem.”
But.
I couldn’t make my whole family bear the inconvenience of leaving Korea just because of me.
If Mom and Dad had already been thinking about living overseas, I could consider it with them, but that didn’t seem to be the case either.
It would be inconvenient to leave the country they’d lived in for decades.
The language, the culture, and even the food preferences are all different.
And.
Most of all.
I love Korean food!
If I went abroad, I wouldn’t be able to eat bulgogi and spicy stir-fried pork!
Or the tteokbokki, fried snacks, and sundae I sometimes get at the snack shop near our house!
I shook my head back and forth.
“I like Korea...”
Aunt Jina gave a small smile when she saw my expression.
“Well, what I just mentioned are legal procedures an ordinary child can take. But Ayeon’s case is different from an ordinary child. You’re a genius among geniuses. You’re already a worldwide celebrity for solving the Riemann Hypothesis.”
Then, setting down her notepad, she continued explaining.
“There are systems like early promotion and early graduation for exceptional children, but even those usually just shorten six years to three. It’s more about compressing the curriculum; it isn’t really skipping it.”
“Mm, three years is still long...”
“So for super-geniuses like Ayeon, we need to look into other systems. I looked into it hard yesterday, too.”
Pat-pat—.
Aunt Jina stroked my head and said,
“There’s something called the Gifted Education Promotion Act, and if Ayeon is recognized as a gifted-education special case, she can skip all of compulsory elementary and middle school education!”
“Gasp! Really?”
I widened my eyes.
“Yes. The scale gets pretty big, though—big enough to get the Minister of Education or the city superintendent of education involved. But come to think of it, you’re at the level where you can boss around a minister, aren’t you?”
“Heehee. Right, right?”
I puffed out my chest and wore a proud expression.
“Aww, you’re cute.”
Aunt Jina poked my cheeks.
Poke. Poke. Poke.
My soft cheeks must have been strangely addictive, because she kept poking them.
“There are also institutional measures like the Academic Recognition Review Committee and various other systems for skipping compulsory education. Ayeon is such an unprecedented case that I don’t know how the education office will respond, though.”
Dad tilted his head and said,
“Jina, then what should we do?”
“For now, I think the fastest thing is to go directly to the nearby Office of Education and talk it over. If needed, I’ll go with you as your legal representative so we can file a complaint straight with the higher-ups.”
Mom looked worried.
“Will that be okay, Jina? Aren’t you busy?”
“Oh, it’s fine, fine! Ayeon is our office VIP!”
Clap—!
Aunt Jina clapped and switched off lawyer mode.
Dad expressed his thanks.
“Thanks, Jina.”
“If you’re grateful, buy me something delicious next time.”
“Sure. Stay for dinner tonight.”
“Yay—! I get to see my sister-in-law’s cooking skills again after so long!”
“Hehe, I’ll cook right away. Wait a sec.”
Aunt Jina tapped the table, showing how excited she was.
And a few minutes later.
Stuffing ourselves in a hurry—munch-munch, gobble-gobble—.
Aunt Jina’s eyes practically went wild at Mom’s full-power cooking, and she shoveled the side dishes into her mouth.
Of course, we were shoveling them down too.
Even though we’d already eaten donuts as a snack, we couldn’t resist Mom’s wholehearted cooking!