The Subconscious Diary (2)

So this power was the real deal.

The thought alone was enough to make me laugh all over again.

Getting an ability like this right after transferring departments?

Someone's got to be messing with me.

What, was I supposed to become some legendary figure in the transfer-student hall of fame?

Yeah, yeah.

I took the Red Pen that had naturally appeared in my hand and started scrawling across the diary page. This was how it worked, right?

The professor's lecture was so interesting I lost track of time. I even took diligent notes!

The words crossed out in red crackled and burned away as if set on fire. I pressed the pen firmly into the empty space they left behind.

Spent the entire class messaging under the desk. Lost track of time chatting.

And then the grand finale.

After parting ways with Seonghyun, I went to the library and reviewed my major coursework for three hours. As expected, I'm a model student. I'm definitely landing a scholarship this semester!

I put a thick, heavy X through that entire section.

After parting ways with Seonghyun, I went to the PC bang and crushed League of Legends for three hours. Ate ramen and so-tteok-so-tteok too. As expected, I'm a hardcore gaming addict. This semester's already a write-off.

Once I'd finished writing, the red sentences I'd put down soaked into the paper and turned black, matching Eugene's original handwriting perfectly.

A cheerful ding rang out as the system window refreshed.

"Withdrawal?"

They really thought of everything.

What happens if a student withdraws?

"So as long as I keep the Completion Rate from dropping… wait."

Hold on.

Then how exactly does the Completion Rate go down?

The simple answer would be that it drops when you fail a diary correction… but something about that felt incomplete. If this ability really was modeled after a schoolteacher grading summer vacation diaries, then—

There's got to be another way to use it.

Sure enough, a new system window appeared in answer to my question.

"See? I knew there was more to it."

My heartbeat picked up a little.

If I dug back through my memories, whenever we turned in diary homework over summer break as kids, the homeroom teacher always left a one-line comment in red pen at the bottom of the page.

Very good. I hope you'll be a good child who listens to your parents from now on…

But I had a feeling this system's "Feedback" wasn't going to stop at simple words of encouragement. Etching teachings into the subconscious… wasn't that basically hypnosis? Brainwashing?

That said, the explanation that followed came with a fair number of corresponding conditions.

For instance, if the Feedback content was too out of left field or failed to align with the student's plausibility, the student could feel a sense of incongruity — and as a result, the teaching delivered through Feedback could fail.

And if that teaching fails, the Diary Completion Rate takes a hit.

In other words, dropping something completely absurd like "It would be good to tell Lee Seonghyun your bank account password" would get you absolutely nowhere. The teacher's Feedback written in the diary would be scored as a minus, and the Completion Rate would drop.

I brought the Red Pen down to the empty space beneath the floating diary.

There's one thing about her I've been wanting to fix.

Whether she meant to or not, Eugene always dragged a small army ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of guys around with her. That warm, familiar personality of hers, that figure, and that eye-smile that left people thoroughly confused — they made a habit of shattering the hearts of countless men.

I'd personally inherited more than a few of those wrecked tutoring students and suffered for it.

I pressed the tip of the pen down carefully and wrote with deliberate care.

That sounded enough like a teacher's moral lecture, didn't it?

But ending it there felt incomplete. A mischievous impulse took hold, and I tacked on one last sentence.

The red letters I'd written soaked into the diary paper, then etched themselves in deep.

My heart lurched.

Was it going to fail?

"Whew."

I let out a breath of relief and closed the floating system window.

Now then — what would happen from here?

I was already looking forward to the days ahead.

The past three days had been one long stretch of trial and error.

From Tuesday through Thursday, every night at midnight without fail, Eugene's diary would arrive for me to inspect. The results: two successes out of three attempts, one failure.

Thanks to that, the current Diary Completion Rate was hanging on by a thread at a precarious 20%.

And the diaries she'd submitted over those three days? Absolute spectacles.

That was the diary that came in on Tuesday.

Since Feedback affected the subconscious, you could say even a diary like this was written by her subconscious self.

So why all the lying?

After spending a token to check, it turned out she had gone to do volunteer work during her free period that day — but she'd basically just cleaned a bit and barely spoken to the kids at all. Classic résumé-padding volunteer work.

After that, she'd sprawled on her bed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and doomscrolled YouTube Shorts for over three hours.

I picked up the Red Pen, ruthlessly wrote in the truth, and luckily got a success judgment.

The problem was the diary submitted on Wednesday.

The cause of the failure was, of all things, the system's "spell-check" playback speed.

As usual, I mindlessly ran through her day at 3x speed.

That was the mistake.

The footage flying by at triple speed was far too fast, and I completely missed the scene at the end where she got into an argument with her friends.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠result: Fact Check Failed.

She had clearly been chatting away cheerfully with her classmates — but at the end, for some reason or another, she'd gotten into a fight with them.

One attempt raises or drops it by 5%. I need to be careful.

Creating a diary started you with a base Completion Rate of 10%, and from there it rose or fell in increments of 5%.

To prevent failures, I either had to spend multiple tokens to rewatch, or invest two or three at once to slow the playback. Resource management was essential.

Finally, Thursday's diary went like this.

This time, taking the lesson from yesterday's failure to heart, I boldly spent two tokens and checked at 2x speed.

Sure enough — diet regulation, my ass. After finishing at the gym, the footage clearly captured her walking out of the barbecue place on the first floor of the building, having single-handedly demolished three servings of samgyeopsal.

Well… her figure was solid enough to begin with that she could pull off a bikini just fine without any of that effort, but still.

"She's genuinely at pathological-liar levels, huh."

I picked up the Red Pen with practiced ease, crossed out the lies in thick strokes, and wrote in the fact that she'd eaten pork belly.

Meanwhile, for three days straight, I'd been steadily pushing the same teaching through Feedback.

When I'd first left that Feedback, I'd honestly doubted whether it was doing anything. On Wednesday afternoon, when I ran into her at school, she was still smiling sweetly with her arms linked among a cluster of male classmates.

Well — if a person's personality changed overnight from a single line of writing, that wouldn't be a teacher's job. That'd be a hypnotist's, or a cult leader's.

But I'd etched the same content into her subconscious three times now. It was about time for a reaction.