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# Chapter 3. I Became a Genius International Student
Level Test.
‘It's been a long time since I've heard that.’
The moment Jessie mentioned the level test, Hyunsoo, who now possessed a perfect memory, was able to recall all the
information related to it.
1. Every student at Johannes High School took a level test at the beginning of the fall semester.
2. Based on the results of the level test, students were divided into classes according to their ability. Elite
scholarship students had the highest levels, so they were often taught in small groups consisting only of other elite
students.
3. If a student performed exceptionally well on the test, some subjects were automatically considered completed. Many
elite scholarship students passed ordinary classes through testing, and the school supported them so they could use that
time to study their primary fields of specialization.
‘My grades were generally excellent during my freshman year, but my English was seriously lacking.’
Because language was closely connected to culture, it took another ten years or so before he developed English skills at
a native level.
At seventeen, he had lacked confidence in his English, so he remembered performing worse than his actual ability would
have suggested.
“But you're pretty fluent for an international student, aren't you?”
Jessie suddenly asked Hyunsoo as she led him along.
“Did you study during the vacation?”
She seemed secretly hopeful.
Since the level test was important, many students had studied intensively during the vacation.
If Hyunsoo had worked on his weaknesses, there would be considerably less for her to do as his assigned mentor.
“Hmm, I didn't study separately.”
“What? Then what did you do? Volunteer work? Or maybe an internship?”
There were plenty of extracurricular activities that could give students an advantage when applying to college. Many
students used the three-month summer vacation to build up their resumes.
“No. I guess you could say I did all the things I'd wanted to do for a long time.”
“……”
She couldn't help feeling irritated by how casually Hyunsoo answered.
‘What is he trying to do?’
Being selected as an elite scholarship student at Johannes was essentially a direct ticket to the upper class. The
quality of education was exceptional, and the network they built was unquestionably the best on the West Coast.
It was a title they had to earn through rigorous preparation from an early age, followed by even more brutal schedules
during vacations to strengthen their abilities.
Yet Hyunsoo, who had nearly been demoted, was acting far too relaxed.
She found it disappointing.
‘I was stupid to get my hopes up.’
Eventually, the two arrived at the testing center without saying another word.
“You've been here before, right?”
Jessie explained everything in a very businesslike tone.
“You took the test last year, so you should know. Just log in with your student account on the computer and launch the
level test application. As you can see, this test is exactly the same as the one you took during your freshman year.”
“...Really?”
Hyunsoo had actually dropped out around this time in his original life, so even he found this unfamiliar.
The sophomore level test was exactly the same as the freshman level test?
“Yeah. It's the same for everyone in your grade. The test starts at a freshman level anyway, and then the questions
evolve according to your ability. The more you get right, the harder the questions become, and the more you get wrong,
the easier they become. So your final score is curved based on the difficulty of the questions and your accuracy.”
“Ah. That's good.”
Jessie frowned again, feeling as though Hyunsoo wasn't taking the matter seriously.
“For your information, the level expected of sophomores is obviously higher than it was during freshman year. The
freshman test is taken immediately upon admission, but you've already spent a year studying at our school. Naturally,
the standards are different.”
“Oh, then I'd better solve them carefully if I don't want to get beaten by the juniors.”
“Aren't you taking this too lightly? This one test determines the course of your entire high school career. Take it a
little more seriously.”
For the first time, Hyunsoo looked directly into Jessie's eyes.
“I am being serious.”
“...Never mind. Just remember this. The record for the sophomore level test is 76 points. That's Ivan's score. He's a
senior now. The elite average is in the high fifties, while ordinary students average somewhere in the forties, so keep
that in mind.”
Although Jessie didn't particularly like Hyunsoo, she didn't forget her responsibilities.
She explained that the test lasted four hours in total and that he could briefly leave to use the restroom.
“Then do well on the test. I'll come back before you leave. The classes you can take depend on your test results, and
you have to register your schedule by this evening, so make sure you wait for me. If you finish the test before I come
back, just come find me in the lounge.”
Of course, although she said that, Jessie assumed she would be the one coming to find Hyunsoo first.
---
“What? Couldn't you find the restroom?”
Jessie was working on an assignment in the lounge when she was startled to see Hyunsoo come looking for her.
It had only been an hour since he started the level test.
Considering the nature of the test, there was no way four hours wouldn't be needed. So she could only assume he had come
after one hour because he couldn't find the restroom.
“No, I finished everything. We can make my schedule now, right?”
Jessie was speechless as she looked at Hyunsoo's bright, carefree expression.
‘This guy?’
She had no choice but to conclude that he had rushed through the test because he couldn't be bothered.
“Didn't I tell you? If you don't meet the required level on the test, you'll not only be demoted to an ordinary student,
you could even be held back a year. Do you think only one or two people have transferred out of embarrassment
because...”
Jessie was checking the level test results when she suddenly doubted her own eyes.
“What the...”
---
Jessie had officially taken the level test three times.
Once during her freshman year, once during her sophomore year, and once again this year as a junior.
The shock she experienced when she first took the level test was still vivid.
She had received an education appropriate to the Goldstein family's standards all the way through middle school, and she
was a perfectionist who naturally expected herself to receive perfect scores.
‘But I got completely crushed from the very first day.’
The level test at Johannes High School, the highest-ranked high school in America, tested not only her intellectual
ability but also her self-esteem.
70 points.
That was the score she received after four hours of desperate struggle, and it was what drove Jessie to stop eating
properly and devote herself entirely to studying.
Being ranked among the top ten out of the tens of thousands of students who had taken the level test so far meant very
little to her.
The fact that her score was equivalent to a C-minus in terms of grades had become a trauma.
‘There are no losers in the Goldstein family.’
Jessie had personally obtained permission from the board of directors to take the level test every semester, despite the
fact that it was normally only administered once per grade.
That meant she had taken it five times in total as of yesterday, and every single time, her mental state had been pushed
to the brink.
‘After struggling that desperately, I got 81 points yesterday.’
That was an incredibly high score, ranking second among all four grades of the high school.
Of course, Jessie wasn't satisfied.
She absolutely had to surpass Ivan and take first place...
And her ultimate goal was to somehow raise her score into the 90s before graduation.
But the Asian standing in front of her had just made all of her efforts seem laughably insignificant.
“100 points?”
Jessie refreshed the score page several times.
Her access privileges didn't allow her to look at the student's solutions, but the perfect score of 100 was certain.
If a student attempted to cheat in any way, the application's AI could detect it, yet there was no warning whatsoever.
Hyun Lee
English 100%
Mathematics 100%
Science 100%
‘Is a score like this really possible?’
She had taken the level test more times than anyone else, which made the result even harder for her to believe.
Yet the person who had received this monstrous score looked completely unfazed.
“...How was the test?”
“Hmm. Like you said, the test started at a freshman level, and there were a lot of questions similar to the ones from
last year.”
“But it must have gotten difficult pretty quickly, right? Didn't you eventually get college-level questions?”
“Did it? It did get more interesting as it went on. It was nice to exercise my brain a little for the first time in a
while.”
“……”
The more they talked, the more complicated Jessie's expression became.
‘It was fun? The level test?!’
Jessie thought for a moment before remembering one of the questions from yesterday's test that had been so difficult she
couldn't even begin solving it.
“Then could you take a look at this? I'm the kind of person who can't sleep if I can't solve a problem, so I've been
working on it since yesterday.”
“Sure.”
Hyunsoo's eyes even sparkled with interest, as though it would be fun.
“...This one.”
“Let a and b be positive integers such that ab+1 divides……. Show that this is the square of an integer.”
“Oh.”
Hyunsoo admired the problem inwardly.
‘She must be pretty good at studying.’
He had studied an enormous amount throughout his life, and now that he possessed a perfect memory, he could recall
everything he had ever learned with complete accuracy.
That was why the level test hadn't been particularly difficult.
If anything, the problems that appeared at the final stage of the level test had actually been fun.
But that was because this was the Hyunsoo of the present...
Even if he looked at it objectively, the problem was far beyond what a high school student would normally be expected to
solve.
‘She has this level of ability while she's still a student?’
Of course, Jessie wasn't quite at the level of the final-stage problems Hyunsoo had solved, but the fact that she was
still grappling with such a difficult problem made him see her differently.
At first glance, it looked incredibly simple, but once you actually tried to solve it, it was difficult to figure out
where to begin.
‘I can solve it like this.’
The moment Hyunsoo read the problem, the solution immediately appeared in his mind.
He had solved a similar type of problem in the past, so he didn't even need to think much. He simply transferred the
solution onto the iPad.
It took him exactly one minute to solve the problem.
“I'm done.”
“What? Are you joking with me right now?”
Jessie looked offended by how short and simple his answer was.
Even though the answer was brief, his handwriting was so neat that it could have been framed.
From her perspective, she had gathered the courage to ask an underclassman for help with a problem, only for him to
treat it as though it were nothing.
“Joking? What do you mean?”
Hyunsoo genuinely asked back as if he couldn't understand.
Only then did Jessie take a closer look at the answer Hyunsoo had written.
‘No way.’
Her face gradually filled with astonishment.
It actually took her ten minutes just to interpret his solution.
Now she understood.
Hyunsoo had solved the problem using the minimum number of steps.
So many steps had been condensed together that she hadn't understood it at first.
Jessie couldn't help letting out a genuine exclamation of admiration.
“...You. How much do you have to study to be able to solve a problem like this?”
“I don't know. I think reading a lot of books probably helped.”
Her ears perked up.
“Books? You mean textbooks? Do you know any good problem books?”
“Not problem books. It's inefficient to simply explain formulas and focus on solving problems. Instead, if you read
books that develop logical thinking, you can understand most problems without having to memorize formulas or solve a
huge number of practice questions.”
Jessie looked at Hyunsoo as though he were a monster.
Wasn't the fastest way to learn mathematics to understand the concepts in textbooks and solve as many problems as
possible?
Yet he was saying that developing logical thinking was a better way to solve a wider variety of problems more easily.
‘Is he serious?’
Jessie asked without even realizing it.
“For example, what books would allow someone to solve a problem like this as easily as you did?”
The moment she asked, Hyunsoo's eyes lit up.
The books that had developed his mathematical thinking throughout his life naturally came to mind.
“Hmm. Start with The Foundations of Mathematics, then The Young, Dangerous Origins of Thought, The Principles of Proof,
What It Means to Be a Standard, The Universe and Geometry, If You Cannot Define It, It Cannot Be Just...”
He listed the titles one after another.
“Oh, that one's good too,” he added whenever another book came to mind.
At first, Jessie thought he might be joking again.
But as he happily rattled off thirty books without stopping, she had no choice but to accept that he was serious.
“You're saying that if I read the books you mentioned, I'll be able to solve problems like this the way you do?”
“Of course. Those thirty books are the core, but actually, it would be even better if you read around a hundred related
books. Do you want me to list all of them? Do you have time right now?”
“...Oh, what am I doing? We were supposed to make your schedule, right?”
Jessie immediately ignored what he was saying and pulled up Hyunsoo's profile.
Once his level test results were linked, the list of required courses he needed to take appeared.
“Huh?”
But there was a problem.
‘Why is it doing this?’
She repeated the same process several times, but the result was the same.
Required Courses: 0
Normally, based on the level test results, the courses a student had to complete in order to graduate were customized
according to their ability...
But Hyunsoo had none.