Chapter 40
The textbooks distributed by the school had formed a tower on one side of my desk.
The stack had already easily surpassed my seated height.
The curriculum at Sephiron Elementary was definitely far more advanced than the one at my previous school, Arabyeol Elementary.
The top textbook happened to be mathematics, so I skimmed through the table of contents.
Arithmetic with large numbers, the properties of plane figures, fractions and decimals, and so on.
Common factors and common multiples finally appeared toward the end, but even these topics still seemed insufficient for properly implementing a first-circle spell.
At most, I could manage spells like ‘Light,’ ‘Heating,’ or ‘Cooling.’
Each student's locker was in another small room extending from the back of the classroom.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, I saw a total of twenty-five lockers packed tightly together.
Since there were twenty-one students in Class A, there were more than enough.
Before recess began, our homeroom teacher told us that we could spend our free time however we liked after finishing organizing our textbooks.
I would probably have to make at least three trips to move nearly twenty textbooks.
I tried carrying ten at once at first, but I nearly lost my balance, so I decided to stop being greedy.
“I'll open your locker for you.”
“Thanks.”
A cute little girl with her hair tied in twin tails, like mine, kindly opened locker number six for me.
The lockers had a three-tiered design for convenient storage. I suppose this was another way a wealthy academy was different.
I was arranging the books neatly from the back of the locker, but the girl who had just helped me didn't leave and continued standing beside me.
“What were you talking about with Yoon Sihoo?”
“Huh?”
“You were talking about some wizard earlier.”
“Oh, I said that a wizard would die if their hands were slow while casting magic.”
Come to think of it, she had been sitting right behind me.
She seemed to have found our conversation quite interesting.
“Yoon Sihoo is a genius. You have no right to advise him.”
So that had been a misunderstanding on my part.
The girl spoke with a blunt, sarcastic tone.
I couldn't begin to guess what grudge she held against me that made her look at me so displeased.
Just as I finished organizing the remaining thirteen books, the bell rang to announce recess.
“Hej, Name! It means hello in Swedish!”
“Hi, Seori.”
“You remembered my name! I'm touched!”
“It hasn't been that long since we last saw each other.”
Led by Han Seori, several students crowded around my desk.
Sihoo was pushed out by the crowd, so his seat naturally became Seori's.
“Are you the transfer student? Or a new student? Anyway, hi!”
“Hey, Han Seori, why are you acting like you're the only one who's close to the transfer student?”
“We really are friends! And stop hitting me on the head!”
“Where is Arabyeol Elementary? I've never heard of it.”
It was truly chaotic.
Along with all kinds of greetings, my classmates surrounded the desks in a circle.
It seemed that everyone had gathered except for the red-haired girl who had criticized me earlier and Yoon Sihoo.
“Name looks overwhelmed, so could you ask questions one at a time?”
Seori inserted herself between us and managed the crowd.
We were bound to get to know one another eventually, but the children whispered among themselves, seemingly unable to understand what they were so curious about.
“Where are you from? Did you come from another academy?”
“You idiot, she said earlier that it was Arabyeol Elementary!”
“Quiet, quiet! Why are you guys being so noisy among yourselves?”
“It's in Dobong-gu.”
It was a small school with only one class per grade, so it was only natural that the Gangnam children didn't know it.
“How do you know Seori? Did you meet before?”
“I told you earlier that we became friends while fighting.”
“How are we supposed to believe you, Seori?”
Come to think of it, Jihye was nowhere to be seen. I had thought she was Seori's best friend, so there was a good chance they had been placed in different classes.
“We're neighbors. We live in the same apartment complex, so we met at the playground.”
“Then is it true that you fought and beat those older boys?”
“We didn't fight.”
I had merely subdued them and run away.
“Name, how can you say it like that? You cast an amazing spell—whoosh, whoosh—and knocked them all down!”
“I knew Han Seori was lying.”
“It was true, though. Hmph.”
I didn't answer every question one by one.
At this rate, they seemed ready to ask not only for every detail about me, but even the color of my underwear.
Seori cleverly noticed that I was uncomfortable and pleaded with the children to stop asking questions.
Instead, we decided to introduce ourselves properly.
That was how I learned my classmates' names one by one.
“Lee Haru is incredibly rich. His grandfather is the vice-chairman of Samyeon Group! If there's anything you want to eat, just ask him to buy it for you. He's such a pushover that he'll never refuse, so don't feel bad about it.”
“Why are you the one showing off about that, Kim Hangyeol? And I told you not to go around telling people!”
“Your big uncle is the leader of the Raon Clan, though. Rich people really do stick together.”
“Am I rich? I practically live without receiving any allowance.”
The students' level of wealth was definitely on another level, as befitted Sephiron Academy.
Unlike the gifted students in the high school division, who were selected for their individual talent and effort, perhaps most of the elementary division's gifted children were shaped by their parents' early education.
Although they all wore the same uniforms, they couldn't hide the air of refinement that came through in details like their schoolbags and shoes.
It was a stark contrast to the children at Arabyeol Elementary, who dragged around half-torn slippers because they couldn't afford even a proper pair.
“Don't talk all at once, or the transfer student will get confused. You should introduce yourselves one at a time, slowly!”
“No, it's fine. I remember all of you. You're Jeon Nuri, the one beside you is Hwang Hyejeong, and the one beside her is Go Gyeongwon, right?”
“Huh? Yes, that's right...”
“Ooooooooooh, transfer student! She's incredibly smart! Sihoo had better watch out!”
I could memorize a hundred Korean names right here.
After meeting the nobles of Kaizen, whose names were already absurdly long and whose middle names and surnames were bizarre beyond belief, I had no choice but to develop a resistance to them.
In that sense, Korea, where surnames sometimes overlapped, felt positively familiar.
“Then what's the name of that red-haired friend?”
I pointed to the girl talking with Yoon Sihoo in the hallway.
“Oh, you mean Jaewang...?”
Kim Hangyeol narrowed his eyes.
He seemed displeased by the very mention of her and bit down gently on his lower lip.
“Her name is Jaewang?”
It was quite a bold name for someone with such a cute appearance.
Haru hesitated beside him, then, apparently unable to pretend otherwise, leaned over to whisper in my ear.
“Not Je-wang, but Jaewang... It means ‘an unlucky outcast.’”
* * *
“Are you really not going to eat? We're buying it for you.”
Jihye said as she sucked on her ice cream.
“Yeah, it's time for me to take my medicine.”
Melona looked really delicious, but I had to resist.
Seori and I had joined up with Jihye from the class next door and taken seats at a snack shop in the north.
“Seo Yuna? The girl who always follows Yoon Sihoo around? She's second in the entire school.”
While we were chatting about the academy, the name Seo Yuna came up, and Jihye said that she knew her too.
“Don't you know her better than I do, Seori?”
“She was in Class C during first year.”
“She used to come stand in front of our classroom every recess.”
“She did?”
“You didn't know because you were busy playing with the other kids, right?”
Seo Yuna... So her name was Yuna.
“Earlier, Lee Haru and Kim Hangyeol seemed to hate her. Why is that?”
Seori told Jihye what had happened earlier.
“Really? According to the rumors I've heard, Seo Yuna has a slightly strange personality.”
“Her personality?”
“Come to think of it, she did that to you last year too. You lent her your pants during the sports festival, but she got milk on them and returned them without washing them.”
“Did she? I don't really remember.”
She hadn't seemed nearly as mean-spirited as the rumors made her sound.
She had a whole pile of books to carry herself, yet she had gone out of her way to open my locker for me.
“Does she like Yoon Sihoo?”
“Noooo? If anything, she probably hates him an awful lot.”
At my wild guess, Jihye looked horrified and shook her head from side to side.
“I think she dislikes kids who are better than her. And besides... Sihoo is number one.”
“Is she trying to keep him in check?” Seori offered a cautious guess.
“Sihoo is good at studying, though.”
“Right. Sihoo and Yuna are probably the only ones who've finished all the elementary-school material.”
“They're both total monsters, aren't they? I get multiplication and division wrong all the time...”
If Yuna was trying to keep me in check, as Seori suggested, then her behavior made some sense.
It was upsetting that I had to be treated this way even by an eight-year-old, though.
I hadn't planned on becoming friends with everyone in the first place, so if she did it again later, I could simply ignore her.
“Seori and Name are lucky to be in the same class... I'm all alone in Class B, so I feel lonely.”
“Oh, is our Jihye lonely? We'll come visit you like this all the time, so don't worry. And there are lots of nice kids in Class B, too, so I'll introduce you to them later!”
“What do you think of the academy, Name? Is it different from other schools?”
“There are definitely a lot of rich people in this neighborhood.”
“Right? It's probably even worse because you're in Class A.”
Corporate vice-chairmen, famous clan leaders, hospital directors, university presidents, and so on.
I wondered what it would feel like to have as family the sort of people I might never meet even once in my life.
“Still, all the kids are kind.”
The ease of the privileged was something else.
At Merlyn Orphanage, the children stole each other's belongings and sometimes even got into group fights, whereas at least the children here didn't do things like that.
“Still, you can't underestimate it. You'll be taking an aptitude assessment this afternoon, so your real academy life is beginning now.”
Jihye sprang to her feet and told me to brace myself.
She warned me not to underestimate the endless homework, exams, and days of practical assessments ahead.
Seori nodded beside her, chiming in with an emphatic, “Exactly.”
“What is the aptitude assessment like? Do they test every subject?”
“No, just magic! Twenty multiple-choice questions and five written-response questions. It doesn't count toward your grades, so there isn't really a set range of material.”
“Then I don't have to worry about it.”
“If you fail to place in the top twenty twice in a row, you might have to move to another class in the second semester! And it's the test where they publish the grade rankings, so it's really important!”
“Oh, don't worry. You don't trust our transfer student?”
Seori tightly clasped my hand.
“Beat Yoon Sihoo and Seo Yuna this time. Let's knock those smug noses down a peg!”