Studying Was the Easiest
Do you know of a genius who has been turned into a taxidermy specimen?
It is the famous line by Lee Sang, the genius writer who stands as a pillar of modern literature.
And it is also the perfect description of my previous life.
An exceptional mind.
And a special superpower that no one else possessed—that was the existence I was born as.
"Oh my, honey! I think our baby is a genius!"
"Hahaha! Must take after us."
My parents bloomed with smiles as they looked at their genius child.
Exactly twelve years and nine months later, they vanished forever, leaving me buried under a mountain of debt.
That is why I hate being told I take after my parents more than anything.
To equate me with those two, who never knew the first thing about responsibility… It is not even funny.
"Kid… We're gonna be seeing a lot of each other from now on. Don't you go hopping off like your folks, got it?"
Anyway.
The moment my parents disappeared and grim-faced men came to the house to slap red foreclosure stickers everywhere, I understood.
That the chance to let my dreams bloom would never come for me again.
I had simply loved studying.
Just packing unknown knowledge into my head had been happiness itself.
But the only time I could pure-heartedly throw myself into my books was during school hours. Every other moment I had to scramble for ways to scrape together money.
If I had even a little time for self-study, becoming the top student in the whole school would not have been a dream.
I carried that regret my entire life, but it means nothing now.
—Beeeeeep……
A ringing in my ears and a crushing pain in my chest.
"…Ah."
I collapsed limp onto the floor of the workroom where I had been hammering at the keyboard.
Excruciating headache and dizziness. In agony so complete I could not even scream, I felt my end approaching.
A life taxidermied by the iron nail of money, thrashing meaninglessly until it withered away.
Why only me?
Everyone else lived laughing—so why did happiness never come to my life?
Rage at the world made my body tremble, and tears spilled out on their own.
But soon my consciousness drifted farther and farther, and even that resentment grew hazy.
"……"
Dying of overwork the day before the CSAT… How ridiculous.
Ah, I don't want to die.
I don't… want to die…
Don't… want…
—Beep… beep… beep…
The sound of an electrocardiogram machine that belonged in a hospital struck my ears.
What?
Didn't I die?
The sound was far too clear to be a dying hallucination, and a question rose unbidden.
Did a debt collector find me and take me to the hospital?
That was the only possibility I could think of.
Then my eyes slowly opened, and the blurry world grew sharper.
An outrageously luxurious hospital room greeted me.
What is this?
Those guys would never put me in a room this nice.
I tilted my head and rolled my eyes until I spotted what looked like a nurse call button. No reason not to press it, so I did.
—Whirr!
Before long a man and woman who appeared to be a doctor and nurse rushed in and spoke to me.
But something was strange.
"Patient!? Can you hear me right now? Can you see my fingers?"
Why was Japanese coming out of the doctor's mouth?
And why could I understand that Japanese so naturally?
…Ah. No way?
In the middle of the confusion, one absurd hypothesis flashed through my mind like lightning.
As a side hustle I had serialized web novels, so I had dug through all kinds of subculture works for research. One device those countless stories loved to use stood out.
I think I've been transmigrated.
If that were true, every confusing question I was facing would be neatly resolved.
Of course, for someone who had lived in a world without a single magical fantasy element, the odds of something like transmigration actually happening were…
Honestly, though, nothing else came to mind.
It was not as if people were running some ultra-hilarious hidden-camera prank on me.
"Patient, do you remember your name?"
The doctor, who had finally calmed a little, asked me.
My name.
My name was, of course…
"…Ryuzaki Ren."
My mouth moved on its own.
At the same time, memories of unknown origin soaked into my head.
Ryuzaki Ren.
A boy who had just become a first-year high school student this year.
He attended Asahi High School, which ranked among the more ordinary schools inside Tsukuyomi Academy City…
Ah, shit. This really is a transmigration.
Under the pretext of market research I had stayed up all night, eyes burning, reading every romance-comedy I could get my hands on. One of them had been this.
Youth in the Academy City Doesn't Seem Normal.
An action romance-comedy in which the protagonist and the heroines navigated various incidents and accidents that occurred throughout the Academy City.
And the high school the protagonist of that work attended was none other than Asahi High School.
I can't quite remember the names of the protagonist or the other heroines…
But I could tell exactly what my current situation was.
I had transmigrated into a romance-comedy I had once read purely for study.
Is there actually a god?
A new life arriving after a tragic ending.
It was so absurd—and so joyful—that laughter spilled out of me on its own.
There had been so many things I still wanted to do.
I hadn't wanted it to end like that.
Thank goodness.
Maybe it was because I had always lived chased by time and money.
Letting my heart rest without a single worry like this… it had been so long.
I let out a sigh of relief and dragged both hands down my face.
—Whirr!
At that moment the hospital room door was thrown violently open.
A deep scar cut across his face.
Harsh, intimidating features.
Vicious tattoos crawling up from under his jaw.
And in stark contrast, an immaculate suit.
A man who looked like a yakuza at first glance stormed into the room.
What?
Was this body also being hounded by debt—
"G-Guardian?! You can't! The patient's condition still isn't sta—"
"Step aside."
"Right now the patient has only miraculously regained spontaneous consciousness—we have no idea when another shock response might hit!"
"My son is not the kind of boy who would collapse over something like that."
…So in other words.
The yakuza is my dad?
Debt collectors, and now yakuza.
Why are my parents always like this no matter which life it is.
Ryuzaki Ren.
A first-year student enrolled at Asahi High School in Tsukuyomi Academy City.
Notable detail: his father was the boss of the yakuza organization Ryuzaki-kai.
I know who that is.
The Ryuzaki Ren in my memory was no mere supporting character or extra.
He coveted the protagonist's heroines, ordered his underlings to pick fights with the protagonist at every turn, and stirred up trouble constantly.
He could be called the main culprit behind the incidents and accidents that unfolded at Asahi High School.
As befitting an action romance-comedy protagonist, the hero had been born with monstrous combat talent—and Ren possessed enough raw power to stand toe-to-toe with him.
Unfortunately he was also a bit of an idiot, and later he would fall into the very traps he set and destroy himself. A mid-boss type character.
Lately there really have been a lot of works where you transmigrate into a main cast member or villain instead of the protagonist.
I used to analyze and read web novels for study, and now that I was actually in that position, the feeling was a little strange.
It would have been nice if I could have transmigrated into the protagonist's body, at least.
Anyway, I had transmigrated into Ryuzaki Ren's body.
And roughly one week after waking up, I was now walking to school.
—…This really is an astonishing recovery rate. An ordinary person would need another full month of hospitalization, but at this rate you could be discharged as early as next week.
It was only possible because this body's recovery ability defied common sense.
Was it because he was a yakuza's son?
In the original work Ren always appeared completely fine by the next chapter no matter how badly he got hurt. Maybe this was why.
So this is Asahi High School.
I had been sightseeing the mysterious scenery of the Academy City and arrived at school before I knew it.
The route to school was hazy enough that it was practically my first time, so it took a fair while.
Still, it was only 8:47.
School started at 8:50, so I was not late.
But…
"…Why is it so quiet?"
The hallway was unnaturally silent.
A high school corridor outside of class hours should never be this quiet.
I tilted my head and headed for Class 1-2, Ryuzaki's class.
—Whirr!
I opened the back door and stepped inside. Students' gazes, thick with fear, all locked onto me at once.
For Ryuzaki, those stares must have been everyday life.
"Ryu-Ryuzaki? Are you okay?!"
"I'm fine. Thank you for worrying about me."
The homeroom teacher… ah, I can't remember the name.
Anyway, I answered the teacher's concerned question politely.
Then I carefully sat down in the seat I remembered as mine.
Attendance check proceeded, and after about five minutes—
"All right. Everyone put everything except writing utensils into your bags."
The teacher began distributing stacks of paper that looked unmistakably like test sheets.
Ah. So the reason everything was so quiet was because today was a test day.
My first exam, and I was taking it completely blank.
I'd still like to get a high score if I can.
I still had no idea what goal I should set for this new life.
Until now my only goal had been paying off debt. The moment I was suddenly freed from the shackles of money, I felt lost about what to do.
But one thing was clear.
I want to get into a good university.
I love studying.
Learning new knowledge and then applying it to seize even more knowledge is fun for me.
I still haven't decided which field I want to dig into.
But as time passes, that direction will naturally become clear.
So that when the time comes I can pursue my desires as much as I want, I want to enter the best university possible.
For that I need good high school grades… yet here I am taking midterms with zero preparation. A bit of a headache.
Academy City students are portrayed as being on a fundamentally higher level than students from other countries.
Still, what can I do?
I just have to do my best with what I've been given.
I may not look it, but I grew up being called a genius.
Even in that hellish Korean college-entrance system I managed to stay in the absolute top ranks.
And I have a special ability.
At the very least I won't get failing marks.
If I'm lucky, I might even land somewhere in the middle.
Let's do this.
Thinking that, I reached into my pencil case for a pencil—
…Why are all the pencils broken?
I seriously start to doubt whether this bastard was even a student.
I let out a small sigh and whispered to the nameless girl sitting next to me.
"Could I borrow a pencil?"
"…I-I'm so sorry! H-here! Please take them all!"
The girl offered ten pencils with both trembling hands, perfectly polite.
No.
I don't need this many.
I tried to give some back, but once the test papers had been handed out, continuing the conversation any further would cause problems in several ways, so I stopped.
I'll return them politely after everything is over.
The test sheet filled my vision completely.
A whole swarm of problems to cut through and conquer.
I stared at those beautiful products of the unknown.
—Click!
A shutter sound only I could hear rang out.
The day after the exams ended, every student's scores and rankings were preserved on a massive bulletin board.
"Whoa… these grades are seriously tragic. Back in middle school I was hanging around the top of the school."
"You're still mid-rank, though. Me… haah, I failed math and science."
The bulletin board in the main building hallway was a sea of bodies—the entire student body packed in front of it.
Some lamented, some sighed in relief, some flaunted their superiority. A cauldron of chaos.
Then a single girl appeared, and the murmuring crowd fell silent.
Like Moses parting the sea, the people split open and a path to the bulletin board opened.
Hiragi Alice.
The top-ranked entrant of Asahi High School.
And one of the five greatest geniuses among all the freshmen in the entirety of Tsukuyomi Academy City.
Her striking beauty, fully worthy of that title, seized every gaze at once and erected a wall that made people hesitate to approach casually.
We are all the same humans.
Is it really that entertaining to deify someone just because they are a little special?
It was not particularly pleasant, but unfortunately Alice was long accustomed to that treatment.
"Alice~ How many first places did you get?"
"Obviously all of them. Ah, though maybe she dropped one on purpose to keep some humanity?"
"D-don't say things like that~ It could be wrong, you know."
A few of her scarce friends had approached at some point and were hyping her up; Alice gave a bitter smile.
Their admiring gazes were burdensome, yet Alice herself had unconsciously assumed she would take first place in every subject.
Aside from the other 5 Geniuses of Tsukuyomi Academy City who stood on equal footing with her, there should have been no one who could challenge Alice.
"…?"
That was how it should have been.
…………
………
……
…
Ryuzaki… Ren?