Chapter 167
“Name, this is a little sudden, but since fate has made us family... It’s nice to see you again.”
Semin awkwardly extended his right hand toward me.
“You must have had a lot of fun, huh? Enjoying an entire drama from such a great seat.”
“No, it wasn’t on purpose...! How was I supposed to get out of that situation, then!”
“That’s what you think, oppa. No, Mr. Semin.”
“Hey, that hurts...! Since you called me here anyway, keep calling me oppa.”
Wouldn’t it have been nice if Korea had a culture of calling each other by name, too.
People ought to adopt good customs from one another.
“We’ll see how you behave. But aren’t you busy? Isn’t it exam period?”
“When is it ever not exam period? Just... don’t tell me you’re sending me away?”
“You aren’t completely oblivious, at least.”
“We’ve only ever met in VR, and this is honestly our first time meeting face-to-face, but you’re being really cold, Name.”
“Still, I’m grateful that you submitted the request for reinvestigation in my place. I guess your offer to help wasn’t just empty words.”
My head hurt, so I brought some ice from the freezer, wrapped it tightly in a plastic bag, and placed it on my forehead.
The chill spreading across my scalp was welcome.
[Cast: Diagnosis]
“What are you doing?”
“Checking my cortisol levels.”
“You know what cortisol is? Wow... you really know everything, don’t you?”
“I don’t know everything. I only know what I know.”
At least, this was within the normal range.
So I could regard the crying just now as an effort to return my body to its normal state.
“So where did Professor Cheon go?”
When I went to the bathroom to wash my face, Professor Cheon talked with Semin about something, then hurried out of the house.
“He probably went to meet my dad.”
“Why would Professor Cheon meet your father?”
“Well... my dad was probably the prosecutor in charge of the Walpurgis case...”
What?
Carried away by excitement, my hand shot out before my thoughts could catch up.
Before I knew it, I was grabbing the young man by the collar and shouting.
“Why are you only telling me that now! Ha, so the villain was right here all along...! No wonder they say it’s always darkest under the lamppost...”
Wasn’t this exactly like the plot of the novel ‘I Married the Enemy’s Son,’ which the young ladies of debutante age loved to read in my previous life?
But what could I do? I was prepared to kill even the parents of the benefactor who had saved me.
“That’s a misunderstanding! My dad was handling a case on Jeju Island then, okay? He was at the Jeju District Prosecutors’ Office from the start...”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, he was probably the deputy chief prosecutor there. Look him up.”
I gently let go of his collar. Since his shirt collar was wrinkled, I didn’t forget to smooth it out with a little aura.
“...I’ll let you live.”
“Wow, you’re completely shameless...! Hmm, anyway, since it was a major nationwide incident, I guess you’re going to see your dad, who’s now the chief prosecutor of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.”
“Chief prosecutor... If he’s gone as far as becoming the chief prosecutor of Seoul, you can’t exactly say he has nothing to do with it, can you?”
“Could you stop painting my dad as the villain...? Personally, I really don’t like him either, but at least I do think he’s a moral and incorruptible person.”
I heard him talking on the phone with Professor Cheon.
His voice at the elevator was loud enough to penetrate the front door.
I considered using aura to listen in, but decided against it. He must have his own reasons.
“...”
“...”
The two of us continued staring blankly at each other in silence.
“If you’ve seen everything, go home now.”
“That’s harsh, seriously. I rushed out in the middle of my PK (poly-clinic) after getting a call from your father.”
PK? In context, it couldn’t mean a penalty kick, right? No, even if it did, that would still be a problem.
“I don’t know what that is, but is that okay?”
“Of course not. So play with me for a little while. I was asked to do it by my uncle.”
True, he wasn’t the sort of person who would leave without worrying about me.
He must have earnestly asked Cheon Semin to look after me. That was why he had been dragging out his stay all this time.
“Then help me film a video.”
“What video? Oh, are you planning to expose everything by entering a competition?”
“Yes. So don’t just lie there—help me a little!”
I grabbed Semin’s arm and pulled him to his feet.
Then I pointed to the camera sitting on the highest part of the bookshelf and asked him to get it down.
I had no need to use aura for something like this. It would be a waste of labor.
While I checked whether the camera was powered on, Semin sat on the sofa and continued looking me over as if observing me.
“Name.”
“What now? Stop bothering me.”
“It’s just fascinating watching you. You do consider yourself a genius, don’t you?”
“It’s just that my mind is mature.”
“Really? I don’t think that’s it...”
“Then feel free to decide it was a side effect of the mana potion or whatever.”
“If that were true, it would be something the entire academic world would have to hear about. Is the academy treating you well? Have you seen any geniuses like you there?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It was a question asked by a cute junior who had been vice president in high school. It suddenly made me curious.”
“You were in the student council, too?”
“I was student council president back in the day, you know?”
“Wow... The school’s standards must be something else...”
My hand setting up the camera paused for a moment.
If someone asked whether I had ever seen a genius even once in my life, I could confidently answer yes.
Maria Euphrasia Terraluby.
The Tower Master of the Black Magic Tower.
She was the most outstanding talent in the Kaizen Empire, an inhuman being who had mastered not only magic, the foundation of all academic disciplines, but also economics, politics, statistics, astronomy, logic, algebra, physics, and medicine.
She was different from the blue lizard, who merely knew a great deal because he had lived for hundreds of years.
The ivory tower of knowledge she had built over fifty years in a human body was utterly beyond reach.
So whenever I tried to challenge her with the shallow knowledge I had picked up in my first life, such as relativity and quantum mechanics,
[I heard some kid who liked to strut around bragging about having a good memory had come to the academy.]
I would painfully come to realize that the modern theory of genius was wrong.
[So it was you, dumbass?]
In exchange, God had fairly bestowed on her the traits of a deeply warped personality and alcoholism.
Of all people, she was the one I respected most.
“She’s not at the academy right now. There might be one among the people I know. Here.”
Enough with the small talk, I handed Semin the camera.
Click-
“Don’t take pictures... No, wait, take one first and let me check the framing. I want to see how it comes out.”
Click-
Click click click-
“Are you sure you’re taking them properly?”
“Ah! My camera!”
I looked back through the pictures we had just taken.
Among several normal pictures, I found one zoomed in so close that my nostrils filled the entire screen. Delete.
“Stop fooling around and do it properly. I’m serious right now.”
“Okay, okay! But what are you going to say? Do you have anything prepared?”
“I’m thinking about it right now. Try coming up with an idea or two.”
I had always been poor with words.
There had been no end of misunderstandings caused by things I had said, and quite a few problems caused by things I had failed to say.
Just as drawing up a magic circle from a given mathematical formula was a talent, I thought composing sentences that persuaded the public by combining words was a talent, too.
If my eloquence had been dazzling as well, I could have become Hitler in my previous life.
Though I suppose I would have ended up dying after being dogpiled anyway.
“I’m a science-track person, too, so I’m terrible at writing.”
“You aren’t helpful at all.”
“It really hurts an oppa’s heart to hear that from a seven-year-old.”
“Don’t think you can slyly prod me into calling you oppa. In the end, it all comes down to how you start.”
There is a saying that starting is half the battle.
No matter how badly the latter half turned out, if I could somehow make the beginning well, the video might still turn out fine.
If I ended up being interviewed, what would the public see first when they played the video I had prepared in advance?
And what would be the first thing they thought of when they saw me?
Wonder? What, specifically, would they find wondrous? It certainly wouldn’t be the same emotion as seeing a giraffe at the zoo.
Denial? There were plenty of people who wouldn’t believe me even if I said I was fourteen, so could the public really accept it just because my avatar matched?
When something outside the bounds of common sense happens, human nature is to deny it first.
In the end, it was important to reproduce my usual self exactly as I was in reality.
“What was your first impression of me?”
I asked Semin.
He was at least someone who could look at me objectively. Professor Cheon was a bit unreliable, too.
“That I wanted to find you and beat you up?”
“...Not in LoL. Just when you found out I was seven.”
“I thought someone was scamming me. I only barely believed it after going to the orphanage and confirming your name, too.”
“So that’s how everyone feels, I guess?”
Yeah, it was absurd.
The fact that I had survived seven years trapped in a capsule since birth was too unrealistic for the public to accept.
“Appealing to emotion has always been a good method, since ancient times. What you did to my uncle today would be perfect.”
“...”
“Ah, sorry...! You don’t want to do that, huh? Then what should we do? Hmm...”
Cry again?
Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever cry again.
Except when I meet Seola.
“The living room feels a little strange, so why don’t we film it in your room while we’re at it? Wouldn’t that feel more natural?”
“I don’t know what difference it would make... Fine.”
I led Semin to my room.
The desk hadn’t been tidied yet, and papers were strewn all over it.
There was enough space to stand, so it shouldn’t matter much.
“What’s all this? Numbers?”
Semin pointed at the yellow Post-it notes and asked.
“Oh, these? 1049 and 1051. Can you guess what the two numbers have in common?”
“Hmm... They’re both prime.”
Semin’s answer came immediately.
“Correct. Primes whose difference is 2, like these, are called twin primes.”
I liked the names given to things in mathematics and physics.
If the difference was 2, they were twin primes; if it was 4, cousin primes; and if it was 6, sexy primes.
“No... That’s not what I’m asking.”
Semin stepped away from me again.
“Oh. You can’t write on the walls, so I used Post-its.”
He slowly walked around once, taking in the entire wall, then slowly opened his mouth.
“What’s written all over this wall? What is it all about?”
“It contains a proof that there are infinitely many twin primes.”
“Did you find it online and learn it on your own?”
“No? Why would I solve a problem that’s already been proven?”
Math is nothing more than a puzzle.
You can buy a thousand-piece puzzle as a hobby and put it together.
The thrill and vitality you feel when assembling a puzzle for the first time can never be found again after the second.
“I solved it because it hadn’t been solved.”
An awkward silence fell.
After hearing that, Semin took a deep breath, bent his knees, and lowered himself to meet my eyes.
“Name... I just realized an incredible truth.”
He leaned his intensely serious face toward me, and my body tilted backward on its own.
“W-what is it?”
“There’s no need to work so hard to convince the public. Just show them that you’re a treasure this country will never see again.”
“A treasure...? What?”
Semin gave me a meaningful smile, then threw both arms up toward the sky.
“If you make people feel like they can’t help but protect you, that’s all it takes, right? Then the public will prove it for you on their own.”
“Why are you acting like a chuunibyou middle-schooler? Did you eat something weird?”
Semin whispered his plan into my ear.
“What do you think? Pretty good, right?”
“Why are you acting like a chuunibyou middle-schooler? Did you eat something weird?”