Chapter 40
Chapter 40
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 40
Chapter Title: Another Genius (2)
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“Between Ms. Etella and Ms. Shina, which one is your type? Ah, Shirone probably doesn't even care since he has Amy. Nade, what about you?”
“Hmm. Ms. Etella is more my type. Of course, Ms. Shina is nice too.”
“Ooh! A man of culture. Ms. Etella is the best, of course. A baby face, but her body is incredible. Especially her chest… Phew.”
Etella was attractive. Her large glasses made her look dazed, and she wore her waist-length hair tied back carelessly, but she was a beauty nonetheless. In particular, her voluptuous figure, which looked as if only her body had matured from that of a child, was the number one reason for the students’ adoration.
The boys, who had been speaking passionately, suddenly quieted down, ended their conversation, and walked away. Finding it strange, Shirone stopped his Spirit Zone and turned his head.
A peculiar-looking boy was walking over. It was Mercodine Iruki, the eccentric of Class Five. His straightforward personality made his classmates avoid him, but Nade, the friend to all, was different.
“Hey, Iruki. You’re not here to practice, are you?”
“No. Patrolling the grounds. What were you guys talking about so excitedly?”
“The usual. Who’s the better teacher, that sort of thing.”
Nade suddenly remembered and looked back at Shirone.
“Ah, Shirone! This is your first time talking, right? This is Iruki. The outsider of Class Five.”
It had been nearly a month since Shirone had advanced to Class Five, but this was his first time meeting Iruki. It wasn't that he had been intentionally avoiding him; it was because Iruki missed more classes than he attended.
“Oho! Arian Shirone. The genius the whole school is watching, aren’t you? I’m so honored I should write it in my diary.”
Shirone could see why the other kids kept their distance from him. From his analytical gaze to the twisted quality in his tone, everything about him was off-putting.
“Hello. I'm Shirone. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Keke, what’s a genius got to ask of me? I’ve been watching you since Class Seven. When you succeeded with the Detached Form, and when you crossed the Uncrossable Bridge.”
“Huh? You’ve been watching me?”
Shirone realized it in that moment. That thin voice, like scraping metal. It was the voice that had given him advice when his Spirit Zone had wavered under the criticism of the other kids.
“Then you were the one who spoke to me back then?”
“It was frustrating, so I said something. I didn’t like seeing you get pushed around by a bunch of kids.”
Iruki waved his hand dismissively, but from Shirone’s perspective, it was a great kindness. Without his advice, it would have been much harder to escape his slump.
“Thank you. It was a really big help.”
Iruki stared intently at Shirone.
“You’re a pretty dull kid, aren’t you?”
“Huh? Dull?”
It was the first time he had ever been called that, and it was strangely unpleasant. Nade, with his excellent social sense, stepped in to change the mood.
“Hey, hey! Iruki. That’s rude to say to someone who’s thanking you.”
Iruki shrugged and turned away.
“Really? I meant it as a compliment. Anyway, keep up the hard work. Though it won’t be easy. Class Five is full of blockheads. Kekeke.”
As Iruki walked away, Nade shouted at his back.
“Hey, where are you going? Let’s practice together.”
“Too lazy. I’m going to sleep.”
Shirone’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Skipping class because he was too lazy to sleep? Class Five was among the top of the advanced classes. He couldn’t understand how a kid like that could have made it this far.
“He seems… a little strange.”
“Sorry, Shirone. He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”
“But…”
“Haha! I know what you’re thinking. We’ll just wear ourselves out trying to figure him out. That guy’s a genius too. The problem is that he’s a different type of genius from you.”
“A genius? Iruki is a genius?”
“Aha! You wouldn’t know, since you just enrolled.”
Nade told him about Iruki. Contrary to the word ‘genius,’ his grades were similar to Nade’s. But no one among their classmates looked down on his skills.
Iruki was the epitome of a lopsided person. While he invariably scored zero in subjects governed by sensibility, like literature and art, he was a genius who could get a perfect score with his eyes closed in subjects that required calculation.
At first, the teachers had coveted Iruki’s talent, and one after another, they had tried to take him under their wing. But his personality was so unruly that most had now given up.
Nevertheless, in mathematical fields, he was said to have surpassed even the graduates, so many teachers predicted he would be leaving Class Five soon.
Iruki’s major was computational physics, a field said to be possible only for those with special brain functions. It was the study of calculating phenomena that occur in extreme environments, such as temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees.
In academic circles, those with brains capable of such calculations are said to have ‘Savant Syndrome.’ It usually manifests in autistic children, but Savant Syndrome can also appear in otherwise normal people.
The exact cause is unknown, but the prevailing theory is that a specific part of the brain is damaged during the fetal stage, and in the process of natural healing, a unique thought circuit, different from that of ordinary humans, is opened.
Insight had similarities in that it also used a different thought circuit, but Iruki’s Savant Syndrome was different in that it was based on mechanical computation.
Iruki could calculate the date 40,000 years from now in under a minute. Also, if he didn’t sleep, he could recite the digits of pi after the decimal point for his entire life.
Hearing Nade’s explanation, Shirone’s jaw dropped. If that was really possible, it was an incredible talent.
“Why is someone like that still stuck in Class Five? And besides, how can he get a zero? Even if he just guessed, he’d get a few questions right.”
“Kekeke. Well, it’s always like this. A month ago, this happened…”
Nade recounted an incident when Iruki was taking a theory exam. As expected, he got a perfect score in natural sciences, but the problem was that his answer on the literature exam got on the teacher’s nerves.
The question was based on a passage from the poet Gilberto’s poem, .
The question asked for the reason why the leaf fell in a zigzag pattern in the final line, ‘Oh, fallen leaf, descending in a zigzag.’ Most students submitted answers along the lines of expressing the fear of death.
But Iruki’s answer was this:
- The speed of the fluid (in this case, gas) flowing over the surface of the leaf creates varying air resistance, so it moves in the direction of the greater sum of the force vectors of the applied pressure.
Attached is an equation using the standard model of a fallen leaf.
Below that was a bizarre string of equations that were impossible to understand. The teachers who knew Iruki’s personality just let it slide, but the literature teacher, Adelia, could not tolerate it.
A mother of three, she dragged her plump body to the classroom. She slammed the exam paper down in front of Iruki, who was waiting for class to start, and demanded an explanation.
“Iruki! What is this?”
“An exam paper.”
“Not that! Look at the answer you wrote! This is a literature exam, not a math exam!”
“Doesn’t the very act of separating mathematics and literature prove the fictional nature of literature?”
Adelia’s plump face turned as red as a roasted pig.
“What do you know to be so arrogant? You’re a student. It’s years too early for you to act like a specialist! There are profound and subtle ideas in the world that you can’t grasp mathematically.”
“Teacher, such things don’t exist. If any part of the world were illogical, how could we live without fear? My body could turn into an orc at any moment.”
“So you’re saying everything is logical? Even the lines of the poet Gilberto?”
“Of course. That’s why I wrote that answer.”
Adelia huffed and puffed for a long time, then pointed a finger and shouted.
“Then answer me this. A thousand innocent people are about to die. But you have the power to save them all by killing one other innocent person. What would you choose?”
“I’d kill the thousand. The lives of a thousand are a proof; the life of one is a hypothesis. It’s an equation that cannot be equated from the start.”
Adelia suppressed the rage rising from her stomach with superhuman effort. If he was going to be like this, she had an idea of her own.
“Does God exist, yes or no? Answer me!”
“It’s possible that He doesn’t exist.”
Adelia grew even more venomous.
“Your mom or your dad, who do you like more? Pick one!”
“Momdad.”
“Get out.”
The tip of Adelia’s finger, pointing at the classroom door, trembled.
“Get out, you brat! You’re not qualified to be in my class! Get out!”
A faculty meeting was called at Adelia’s suggestion. In the end, the teachers decided that Iruki’s answer contained a mockery of their authority and gave him a zero on all his humanities subjects.
“Wow! He’s really something else.”
Hearing the story about Iruki, Shirone couldn’t believe he was an 18-year-old student like himself.
His nerve to challenge a teacher, and to stick to his own ideas as a student—it showed incredible conviction.
“Haha! I know, right? Anyway, that’s his personality. He’s a really tough guy to get close to.”
“Hearing that, I can understand why he’d call me dull. But why did he say it was a compliment?”
“Who knows? Maybe he saw something extraordinary in you that others don’t. That’s why I introduced you two. I thought maybe you guys could get along.”
Shirone grew curious about this boy named Iruki. If he had known, he would have tried to talk to him a little more. With that thought, he looked for Iruki, and his eyes widened in surprise.
“Huh? Nade, look over there.”
Iruki, with a sleepy face, was heading towards the Image Zone. As he approached, the other kids naturally moved away. It wasn't so much that they were avoiding him because they disliked him, but more like they were making way for him.
“Damn it! What’s that guy thinking now? Let’s go.”
Shirone followed Nade and ran to the Image Zone. Besides the two of them, other students were gathering one by one.
“What’s up with that guy again? He’s not going to strip and lie down like last time, is he?”
At someone’s words, Shirone’s eyes went wide. Stripping with female students around?
Contrary to their worries, Iruki opened his Spirit Zone normally. A sphere with a 15-meter diameter. It was on the smaller side for Class Five.
But the size wasn’t the issue. He was freely using the Detached Form, the most difficult of the Four Directional Methods.
“Hah! Iruki, you bastard, it’s been a while!”
“Shouldn’t we stop him? Ms. Etella banned him from using the Image Zone.”
“Leave him be. You think he’d listen if we tried to stop him?”
The shrunken sphere was moving across an incredibly wide radius. Iruki met Shirone’s eyes. He snapped his fingers, and a target rose up, circling rapidly around the area.
The students sighed and put their hands to their foreheads. Using targets without permission was forbidden. But that thought was brief, as they were mesmerized by the subsequent demonstration.
“Wow…”
Iruki’s zone tracked the target. It moved with complete freedom, as if its user was unhinged from the start. Its speed was overwhelming; every time the sphere cut through the air, he heard the phantom sound of wind howling.
“Huh? Iruki! What are you doing right now!”
Etella, who had been teaching Class Four, ran over with a dumbfounded expression. But Iruki, as if he had made up his mind, didn’t stop his demonstration. From the center of the Spirit Zone that had swallowed the target, small lights bubbled up.
“Atomic Bomb.”
“That crazy bastard!”
The moment the kids recoiled, a powerful explosion erupted, strong enough to push people back. Shirone felt dizzy from the deafening sound, the likes of which he had never heard before. All the students who had been standing were knocked onto their backsides.
Shirone turned to the front with a pale face. Iruki was standing with his hands behind his back, looking at him.
“See you later, Shirone.”