Chapter 147
“Oh, Dayeon, I'm telling you, it's true! I'm with NoName right now. Yes, right next to her. You don't think that's possible? She says she's really her! Didn't you say you had class right now...? What do you mean, you skipped it and came over? Hey, Woo Dayeon!”
The call abruptly cut off, and the woman gave a bitter smile.
“Haha... Sorry. She's my little sister, but I think she's a huge fan of yours. Last time, Dayeon said she had to do a research project on some streamer or other, and even put up a bromide at home. She made such a huge fuss that I remember your face perfectly. How can you be this cute and look exactly like the photo? You're a V-Tuber, right? Or not?”
“Technically, I do stream on Twishy, but... Are you acquainted with Professor Cheon? That graduate student...?”
“Ah, Professor Cheon Gyu-jin is my advisor. You figured that out from my name tag! But what brings you here?”
“Shouldn't you have asked that question before bringing me into the building, as a matter of common sense?”
“Oh, is that so?”
Why ask what brought me here when we're already riding up in the elevator?
“Professor Cheon called me here too.”
“Wow, really? Did you come here by yourself? That's impressive!”
“It's nothing. Thank you for showing me the way.”
The elevator doors opened, revealing the bleak interior of the building.
Structurally, it wasn't much different from any other building, but the atmosphere was somehow gloomy.
Was it because the lighting was so dim?
“Geez, why'd you turn off all the hallway lights! Sorry, the kids here really hate light. It's not like they're all Draculas!”
It didn't seem to be just that, though.
“How do you know Professor Cheon? A niece or something?”
The hallway lights came on brightly.
And from the very end came the noisy sound of people chatting.
I said it nonchalantly as I walked hand in hand with the woman.
“He's my father.”
“Pfft!”
The woman, who had been drinking banana milk, sprayed its contents out.
“What... Wait, what did you say?”
She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, then stared at me in horror.
The woman stammered, apparently with a hundred thoughts flashing through her head.
“Professor Cheon is definitely single... A hidden daughter? No, the ages don't add up! Do they? Ah, shit, what is this...?”
“He's my adoptive father. I was adopted.”
Having acted out an entire episode of Love and War in that short time, the woman rubbed her chest in relief, but her eyes still held a complicated look as she stared at me.
“Ah...”
“I don't really mind, so it's okay.”
“I'm really sorry, sis... It was such shocking news... Why hasn't he said a word about it to us?”
Professor Cheon, whose research sabbatical was this year, continued coming to the lab just as usual without even traveling abroad, occasionally helping the graduate students with their research.
As a result, the students who could breathe easier about graduating cheered, but the barrage of assignments left them with mixed feelings toward our professor. Was this what you called a love-hate relationship?
Since they'd spent so much time with him, they must have exchanged plenty of personal stories too, which made it strange even to me that he had never mentioned me once.
Maybe that was how much he wanted to protect my privacy.
“When he said he'd prepared a surprise gift today, could it possibly be...?”
The lab we entered with Woo Hee-jin had several people gathered around a table.
Even without sniffing, I could tell the smell wafting through the room came from pizza.
Other than Woo Hee-jin, there wasn't a single woman; all four were men.
And at the far end, a gray-haired man stood up and raised his hand high.
“Oh, Name, you made it!”
At Professor Cheon's call, the four men who had been eating pizza spat out what was in their mouths and sprang to their feet.
Their speed was practically a conditioned reflex.
“Hello.”
Still, since we were meeting for the first time, I bowed politely.
But I didn't bow too deeply, because I worried that it would make me look like a kindergarten kid.
“Uh, hello... Who...?”
The man at the front barely managed to return my greeting.
“Why'd you take the bus all the way here instead of a taxi?”
“It's my first outing somewhere other than school in a while, and buses are nice.”
“Right, right. Why don't you sit here and have a slice of pizza? You said our guest would be a little late, so we should wait a bit.”
“I'm not very hungry, so I'll just have one slice.”
“Could you move over a bit so the kid can sit there?”
“Ah, yes, Professor!”
“No need to stand up; just slide over a little.”
Amid the commotion, I ended up sitting in the middle of the couch, clasping my hands neatly over my knees with an awkward expression.
Do they really expect me to eat pizza without saying anything?
This is so uncomfortable my stomach's going to turn.
“Professor?”
“Hmm?”
“If you could introduce me to everyone...”
Just then, one of the men worked up the nerve while carefully pouring grapefruit juice into my cup. I don't like grapefruit; don't they have orange juice?
“Ah, look at me! This is my daughter, Name. I'd appreciate it if you all introduced yourselves to Name in turn.”
“Huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“Cough! Hack!”
* * *
After the introductions were over, everyone stuffed pizza into their mouths in the heavy atmosphere at Professor Cheon's behest.
And when he left the room to greet the guest, only then did the graduate students sigh in relief like deer freed from a trap.
I hadn't realized it at home, but was he unexpectedly strict with the people in his lab?
“Phaaaaah. Wow, holy shit, she's so fucking cuuuuuute!”
“Hey, Kim Hyun-woo! Watch your mouth!”
“Right! *Gasp* I didn't say anything!”
Since our age difference would send people's imaginations all the way to Andromeda if they assumed Professor Cheon and I were biological father and daughter, Woo Hee-jin subtly told the others the truth.
“Come to think of it, it would be impossible for Professor Cheon to have a daughter like this. I mean, he's old enough to be a grandfather.”
“Hey, watch what you say in front of the kid! What if she tells him?”
“I'll make sure to tell Professor Cheon that.”
“Aaaah, no! I'm sorry, I was lying—no, kidding. You know it was a joke, right?”
“I'm definitely telling your father. He's overdue for a scolding.”
“I feel like the professor betrayed me. If he'd told me to come to work every day in exchange for showing me one picture of Name a day, I'd have come in happily.”
“I think I know why Professor Cheon kept me hidden.”
They're not exactly trustworthy people.
Still, they all seemed like good people, perhaps because they'd all worked under the professor.
“Hee-jin unni!”
“Oh, Dayeon!”
“Oh, Hee-jin's sister is here!”
“Hi-hi.”
Another woman, wearing a straw hat, burst through the door.
Who wears a straw hat in Seoul, South Korea? Her fashion sense is bizarre.
Woo Dayeon clapped both hands over her mouth.
“No way. She looks exactly the same... What...?”
The straw hat slid down, fluttered, and landed on the floor.
The woman approached as if possessed; she was also someone familiar to me.
As I picked up her hat, I asked her casually,
“Didn't we meet once last year?”
“Huh?”
“At the career-experience fair.”
* * *
Woo Dayeon was struck as if by lightning.
‘Right, that's it—the genius kid from back then!’
She had cursed so many protagonists with face-blindness in dramas and movies that she couldn't believe she was now the one suffering from it.
NoName's main avatar and that kid from back then weren't merely similar—their faces were exactly identical.
“What, you two know each other?”
“Unni, remember that incredibly gifted kid I told you about? That's her!”
At that moment, Dayeon couldn't have hated her memory more. How could she have failed to connect the two incidents?
“A genius...? Oh, the volunteer work you did last year?”
“Yes! And not just any genius.”
If it had only been the career fair, she could have dismissed her as a bright genius with the kind of quick learning that might get her onto a TV show like Gifted Discovery Team.
But what if this kid was the exact same person as the ‘NoName’ she knew?
Wouldn't this have grown beyond a variety show and into a scoop of global proportions?
She could just as well imagine that a malicious third party had breached the capsule's ethics code and copied an avatar in the child's exact likeness, but that story was just as utterly unrealistic.
Name had sat back down on the couch and was sipping her juice.
She shuddered at the sour grapefruit juice.
The internal conflict continued in Dayeon's head.
Aside from her exceptional knowledge, NoName had also appeared far too mature on stream.
Since being a genius and seeming to possess years of experience were separate things, she couldn't quite stamp out the seed of suspicion in one corner of her mind.
Dayeon happened to have a bag full of strawberry candies, so she offered one to Name, who was reeling from the sourness of the grapefruit juice.
“Name...? Here, would you like this at least?”
Snatch—
Name swiftly snatched the candy from her hand and popped the pink lump of sugar into her mouth.
Munch, munch—
“Thank you. But do you have another one?”
“Oh, I do...! Want another?”
“I'll gratefully accept it if you give me one.”
Her way of speaking was similar too.
She was mature beyond her years.
Unlike the men, who watched fondly as the child quietly accepted and ate candy beside them, Dayeon's feelings only grew more complicated.
“How much of a genius is she, anyway?”
Hee-jin poked Dayeon in the side.
“If it's true, the greatest genius in the world?”
Her sister Hee-jin had never watched internet broadcasts or V-Tubers, so she knew absolutely nothing about Name.
Even after saying it aloud, Dayeon felt it sounded a little too chuunibyou, but no embellishment was needed.
Dayeon dragged over the whiteboard that had been sitting in one corner of Professor Cheon's lab and hurriedly wrote something down.
[20,387,739*390,394 = ]
“Name, would you like another candy?”
“Yes, they're nice and sweet.”
“Then I'll give you one right away if you get this!”
“Uh... 7,959,250,979,166.”
“...?”
A graduate student belatedly pulled out a scientific calculator and was horrified by the answer Name had given.
“What? How did you get it right?”
“That really is the correct answer?”
“Holy shit, that's fucking incredible.”
“Th-then what about this?”
[ln(123,456,789)=]
“Hmm, approximately 18.6314... If I really had to give more digits, it would be somewhere between 017661 and 2? For reference, it's closer to 2.”
“How are you calculating a natural logarithm in your head? I could maybe understand multiplication, but this isn't something you can do mentally!”
“Is that... is that really the right answer?”
“Holy shit, that's fucking amazing.”
“Give me the candy already. And if you memorize log tables, anyone can do this much.”
After that, Dayeon lost five more candies in an instant.
Name happily closed her eyes and leaned back on the couch, chewing with her candy-filled mouth like a hamster.
“I knew it! You're NoName... So that was your real name?”
The kid's name, as Hee-jin had told her, was NoName.
No matter how she looked at it, wasn't that just NoName recited verbatim?
“Dayeon unni.”
“Huh? Yeah, what is it?”
“I heard you're a PD at Hicks Studio.”
That was right. Not long ago, she'd uploaded science and magic content videos based on NoName's gameplay.
“Why did you upload my video exactly as it was without even asking my permission?”