A Perfect Score Deserves Celebration
Time flew by, and exam week arrived.
The faces of the students filing through the school gates were gloomy and downtrodden.
Teacher Kim, the duty teacher in charge of dress code inspections at the gate, patted the students on the back with a smile.
"You've got this, kids! Fighting!"
It was the unbridled enthusiasm typical of a fresh young teacher, barely settled into his post.
The kids gave him awkward smiles, ducked their heads, and shuffled past.
These kids at this school really are sweethearts.
They answered politely whenever spoken to and never skipped their greetings.
Teacher Kim smiled warmly as he gave the students' uniforms a once-over.
Oh, look at that one—his uniform is pressed to perfection.
Wait a second.
Pressed to perfection...?
His uniform? Why?
Something felt off. Teacher Kim raised his head and checked the name tag on the immaculately crisp uniform.
Seo Ji-on.
Then his eyes traveled up to the boy's face.
"Huk...!"
Teacher Kim sucked in a breath. By the time he'd frozen solid, the boy—Seo Ji-on—had already strolled calmly past him and vanished into the school building.
"Teacher Kim? Are you planning to stand there all day? You're supposed to be checking the students."
"Ah—yes! Right!"
It was the vice principal, out on his morning stroll. Only then did Teacher Kim snap out of it and resume his inspection.
Of course, his mind was elsewhere entirely.
He couldn't get the expression on that student's face—the one called Seo Ji-on—out of his head.
Must've been my imagination... right?
During exam season, middle schoolers' faces came in exactly two varieties: nervously tense, or gleeful at how quickly it would all be over.
Seo Ji-on had been neither.
That look was exactly like...
Teacher Kim shook his head, brushing the thought away.
"I must've seen it wrong."
Yes. That was it.
How could a kid barely in his second year of middle school wear that grim, battle-ready expression—the kind you'd only see on soldiers heading into reward-leave training?
The desks in the classroom had been spaced far apart so no one could see anyone else's paper. I settled into my seat and quickly scanned the competition already seated.
There was Lee Dae-kyung, who'd held the top spot in the whole school until Choi Seo-dan and I transferred in. And Choi Seo-dan, an honors student from a prestigious private middle school in Seoul whose name carried real weight.
Yes, I have my pride too. No way was I about to lose to a bunch of kids.
I could feel a faint warmth radiating from the pebble hidden in the pocket stitched to the front of my shirt pocket. And I wasn't exaggerating—it was real. To perform its function, the stone had to release mana, and that process generated heat.
Ding—dong—daeng—dong.
The bell rang.
"Whew—"
Day one of exams. Three subjects: math, science, and social studies.
Math and science could be applied directly to the principles behind spell construction, making them endlessly fascinating and useful subjects. Plenty of mathematical theories that had never been properly formalized in my old world were fully defined here, and science was much the same.
Those two exams would be a cakewalk. I could derive the correct answers just by skimming the questions.
But of course, there was one massive landmine waiting for me.
Third period. Social studies.
Damn it...
Select the correct match between each region and its local specialty.
Local specialties. I never got around to memorizing those.
There had to be something wrong with a question like this. If you just made Mana Land and grew things there, everything thrived, no matter where it was from!
But that was just my opinion. As the saying goes, every question has one correct answer—and that answer translated directly into points.
I widened my eyes and racked my brain.
Vmmm—
A very faint tremor pulsed from somewhere around my chest. My makeshift Magic Stone seemed to be working hard. Soon, images began flashing rapidly through my mind.
The operation was a complete success.
"Phew—"
Third period ended, and with it, the dreaded social studies exam.
Clunk—
I had just risen from my seat when—
"Ji-on, are you heading to the field today?"
It was Lee Dae-kyung.
The field needed tending every day, so yes, I was planning to go today as well.
"Yeah, I am. Why?"
"I want to come with you."
...This endearing little rascal. Ever since he filled out the potato farming contract paperwork during club time last week, he'd been even more diligent than before.
"These crops are my responsibility, so I have to take good care of them!" he'd declared.
He'd almost certainly bawl his eyes out when harvest time came and he had to let them go for sale. He'd even sniffled when the Chongmyeonghoe folks came to buy potatoes last week.
I gave his head a gentle pat.
"Now that I think about it, Ji-on, you've gotten taller, haven't you?"
Lee Dae-kyung added, smoothing down his freshly ruffled hair.
"I suppose I have."
growing by the day. Must be all the good food during my growth spurt—not going hungry does wonders.
"Hey! Are you two just leaving me behind?!"
Just as our idle chatter was winding down, Choi Seo-dan lunged at us. I stopped her with a palm lightly pressed to her forehead.
"I'm coming too!"
"Do you even know where we're going?"
"Huh? Aren't you going to study?"
Oh-ho.
Smirk—
Studying is studying. The field is the field.
I smiled pleasantly and led the two of them along.
"All right, let's go then."
And a short while later, Choi Seo-dan let out a scream.
"How—how could you two do this to me!"
"What? You said you'd come after hearing everything."
"Grrr..."
Choi Seo-dan wiped her sweat, shot up from where she'd slumped down, and made a phone call.
"Grandfather!"
Well, well.She's calling in some serious backup.
"Hey, we're done with today's work, right?"
"Yeah. Done."
"I'm going to rest at your place for a bit. Grandfather says he's coming to pick me up."
"He's coming personally?"
"Yep. He said he has something to give you, too."
Something for me, from old Mr. Choi? The question answered itself before long. In less than twenty minutes, the elder Mr. Choi had arrived.
"Ji-on, take this."
"This is..."
It was a box of juice. A box holding about twenty cartons of an orange-colored drink.
"Carrot juice."
"This?"
I'd assumed it would come in juice form like that white pouch I'd received before—but packaged like this, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary soft drink.
"It's barely been a month and a half since last time, and it's already out?"
"Heh heh. Don't underestimate Taeram. There are ways to fast-track approvals for things like this."
At my dubious look, the old man frowned.
"Tch, you brat. As if I'd do anything illegal."
"Of course not. I know."
"Ahem. I'm giving you these so you can try them one at a time. Drink one whenever you get hot working out in the field."
"Thank you, sir."
I accepted the box of drinks with a deep bow.
After the car carrying Choi Seo-dan and her grandfather pulled away (driven, of course, by Secretary Jang Woo-jin), and I saw Lee Dae-kyung home as well, it was already nearly seven in the evening.
"The time—where did it all go!"
Tomorrow's exams were English. That one had taken some time, what with having to learn the alphabet from scratch. But the language system was oddly similar to the one I'd used in my past life, so it wasn't hard to pick up.
The real issue was that I still mixed up the spellings.
And then there was ethics—a subject that left me faintly baffled. A subject where things that made me ask why is this the answer? were, in fact, the answer.
Say you're watching a movie and it turns out to be boring. Should you walk out midway, or stay until the end?
My instinct said stay until the end. There's always a twist coming.
But no! The correct answer is you just walk out!
"Guh."
These were things my common sense simply could not process.
I hurried to my desk and opened the textbook. When understanding fails, there's only one option left: memorize the whole thing.
"Ji-on, how did your exams go?"
Before I knew it, it was the final day. I gave a light nod at Lee Dae-kyung's question.
"Naturally."
"Amazing. How do you find time to study on top of farm work?"
"There's a method to everything."
I thought back over the last few days' full course of body-preservation.
First, you build your stamina with Muscle Strengthening Sweet Potatoes. Then you eat a potato before hitting the books, and when fatigue starts blurring your vision, you eat a carrot to clear your eyes.
And of course, the finishing touch was artifact support. The white pebble had worn down a little more with each use, and yesterday it finally cracked. Completely unusable now.
I'd assumed it was single-use, but it had lasted three days—so was that a win? Thanks to it, I'd made it through the grueling exam period without a hitch.
"When do the results come out?"
"About a week, I'd guess?"
"Ahh. Then I guess you can take it easy until then."
Good. Time to return to my real work. At last, it was time to kick the farm business back into gear after it had been idling for exams.
The sweet potatoes were flying off the shelves at the agricultural cooperative—playing the role of steady cash cow, as it were. The carrots had been successfully turned into a beverage at Taeram and would be on sale soon.
But it was a processed food, so the effects wouldn't last permanently. In other words, customers would have to buy it fresh every time they needed it. The margin would be lower, but it was a product with sustainable sales.
As for the potatoes, they were being sold through the Chongmyeonghoe while Taeram ran research on turning them into new products. I expected the Chongmyeonghoe's sales volume to plateau soon—it wouldn't take long for word to spread through mom cafés nationwide. In exchange, Taeram just needed to succeed at processing during that window. Once that happened, I planned to stop selling through the Chongmyeonghoe altogether.
The only crop left needing a sales channel was the lettuce!
Where was I supposed to sell this stuff? Leaving it to Taeram would be convenient, but it felt too dependent. I was only growing four crops—handing three of them over to one company just wasn't a good look.
I figured I could handle the processing myself. Making it into a liquid like a drink would be hard, but couldn't I compress it into pills?
Yes. Absolutely doable. If I played my cards right, I might even manage mass production beyond just making a few.
◦ Naturally detoxifies mana that has been absorbed.
◦ Detoxification in progress. (16/25)
My mana circles were in considerably better shape these days, after all.
"Time to run a little experiment."
Would crops processed through my magic also only produce temporary effects?
As soon as I got home, I took a head of lettuce from the cold storage and brought it to my room. I divided a single leaf into five pieces—fifty lettuce fragments in total. Even divided up, each piece was as big as a face, so nothing about them was small.
I picked up one piece of lettuce and laid it on my palm, then flowed mana into it. I could feel the mana enveloping the piece begin to vibrate.
From there, I compressed the lettuce until it became a tiny bead.
Vmmm—
The lettuce, unable to withstand the pressure, lifted off into the air. It trembled and shuddered, then slowly crumpled and shrank.
Plop—
Before long, a perfectly dark-green pellet dropped onto my palm.
"There we go."
No spell required—I could make these with mana manipulation alone. At this level, I could probably produce several at once. Consider it training for my mana control, too.
Vvvmmm—
I got straight to work, turning the remaining forty-nine pieces into pills as well.
"Phew!"
The little bead-like pellets piled together made quite the sight. They almost looked like medicinal herbs, honestly.
What a shame that this body wasn't yet an adult—I couldn't drink to test them properly.
Who could I get to test the effects?
Stepping out of my room, I found Mother munching on dried sweet potato strips in front of the TV. Come to think of it, she had tried lettuce once before. If she ate one of these pills, wouldn't I be able to see how the effects differed?
"Mother?"
"Oh, Ji-on. What is it?"
"You're not craving a drink today, are you?"
"Out of nowhere? Is something wrong?"
"No, it's just..."
I studied her face, then spoke carefully.
"The self-graded exam results came out."
Yes, better to just say it. People drink when they're happy, too. Surely this news would put her in the mood for one.
"Ohh, that's right—today was the last day. How did it go?"
"Well. I probably got perfect scores."
Mother nodded, as if it were no big deal.
"Really? In what subject??"
"All of them."
"Huh?"
"A perfect score in every subject."
Mother's body flinched. Her neck turned, slightly stiffly, toward me. She stared at me for a long moment, then asked again.
"...How?"
How does anyone get perfect scores? In every subject? Back at my old school, I studied day and night and had never once pulled off a clean sweep. But here—where studying was an afterthought and I did nothing but farm every day and hang out with friends—how?
Mrs. Kim Mi-suk's inner deliberation carried on for a moment before arriving, at last, at its conclusion, along with its answer.
My son... is a genius!
A genius! A GENIUS, I say!!
Springing up—
Mrs. Kim Mi-suk shot to her feet and hurriedly began gathering the shopping basket.
"Mother? Where are you going all of a sudden?"
"We're having meat."
"Meat?"
"Yes! Beef! Hanwoo! Marbled ribeye!!"