The Study Focus Totem
This was bad. I couldn't study at all. It had been a long time since things had gone this thoroughly, utterly nowhere.
What on earth was wrong with me? Why had I suddenly lost the ability to study?
I kept turning it over, but no answer came. I'd done fine studying alone. I'd done even better studying together with someone.
So why, all of a sudden, couldn't I get anything done?
"Uuuuugh…"
I was angry at myself for not being able to focus, and somewhere under that, a little disappointed too.
It was almost funny. A year ago around this time, I hadn't been within a mile of the word "study"—and now I was sitting here fretting like this. That alone said a lot about how much I'd changed.
"Haaaaah… What do I do…"
A sigh slipped out on its own. And as if someone had decided that wasn't enough of a push—
"Hey, Jinwoo. Why are you sighing like that? Get dumped or something?"
"And you open with nonsense the second you see me."
The person delivering that nonsense so cleanly was none other than Jihye Kim—a girl I'd gotten reasonably close with after last year's group project.
"Did Lua dump you? Is that what this is?"
Jihye was laying on the "you got dumped, didn't you?" act with maximum smugness, but she was the one completely off base.
"We've never dated. I've never even confessed. How exactly would I get dumped?"
"That sounds like pure nonsense to me."
"You're the one talking nonsense."
"If you two aren't dating, then at least half the couples on the planet aren't dating either—they're just ridiculously close friends."
I was seriously starting to think she was the one running her mouth with total conviction. There was no other explanation.
"Stop saying weird stuff. Why are you here?"
"What do you mean, why am I here?"
"You came because you needed something from me, right?"
"Wow. Rude. Why would I need anything from you?"
With an exaggerated full-body performance of pure offense, Jihye soon dissolved into little snickers of laughter.
"Okay, fine. It's nothing big. I just wanted to ask about this."
"About what?"
Jihye pulled out her phone and held it out. I looked at the screen.
It was a movie review video—one that had clearly been put together with real effort.
"…You made this?"
"Yeah. What do you think? Pretty solid, right?"
"The cuts don't quite connect front to back, do they? And the color grade's a little off."
"I tried, but something kept going wrong. Whenever I touched it, the colors twisted way too hard."
"Don't mess with the color grade—match it with white balance instead. Touch the hue as little as possible. That should clean it up."
"Of course. Thanks."
Jihye gave my head a couple of light taps, then took her phone back and asked,
"So it's not about Lua. Then why is our video master sighing like the world is ending?"
"…I can't study."
"Study?"
"Yeah."
"……Are you sick?"
She asked it with such genuine concern that it almost made me mad.
"Hey. I still landed second- and third-tier grades across the board last year, you know."
"Yep, you're definitely sick. You? Studying? Back in first semester last year your grades weren't anywhere near that."
When she put it like that, I really had nothing to say.
"Could you maybe not call it being sick and just say I've changed a little?"
"Mm. Absolutely not."
Still giggling, Jihye nodded at me and asked in a soft, easy voice,
"Anyway. You're upset because you can't study?"
"Yeah. Or more like I can't concentrate."
"Hmm~ Maybe it's because the environment changed?"
"The environment?"
Jihye pointed at my seat, then pointed at Lua's seat, and said,
"Last year you and Lua were practically glued next to each other. Now your seats are on opposite sides of the room."
"Mmm… I mean, yeah, but…"
"So if you sat next to Lua, maybe you'd be able to study again. Focus might come right back."
"What is Lua, a good-luck charm? You're turning her into a totem."
"Close enough, right? At least for you right now?"
I wanted to fire something back at Jihye as she cackled and pushed the teasing to the absolute limit—but she was already up and gone, fleeing the scene.
Seriously. Why did she even come over just to say something that weird and leave? Couldn't she just sit still?
I was irritated enough to climb the walls, but…
…honestly, the argument had more weight than it looked.
When a person's environment changes, things that used to work stop working. And concentration especially was way more sensitive to surroundings than most people realized.
……
Should I try it?
I stood up for a moment and walked over to Lua. The bell would ring soon enough, but until it did, squeezing every last second for your own work was basically a student's duty, wasn't it?
As I approached, Lua looked up at me and smiled a little.
"Jinwoo, is something wrong?"
"Nothing major…"
I cut straight to the point.
"Could we study together at lunch? Classroom, library, anywhere's fine."
"…Just the two of us? Together?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
She agreed without a second of hesitation. I gave a small nod and added, almost like an instruction,
"After we eat, meet me in front of the cafeteria."
"Got it."
The second our conversation ended, the bell rang as if it had been waiting. I went back to my seat and got ready for class.
Fortunately, the next period was nothing but orientation and free time—no actual work at all.
And so, completely without incident, without a single hitch, lunchtime arrived.
After lunch, I waited a little in front of the cafeteria, and Lua came over to me.
"Jinwoo, were you waiting long?"
"Nah, not really."
It had been maybe three minutes. Whether that counted as long depended entirely on how you looked at it.
Lua fell into place beside me naturally, and we started walking down the hallway together.
We took the corridor to the elevator, rode it all the way to the top floor, got off, and headed to the classroom to grab our study materials.
Both of us picked up our math books—probably because math was the subject we'd covered in class today.
From there we took the stairs down to the second-floor library.
Inside were a few students gathered to read, a few gathered to study, and a few gathered to sneak peeks at their phones.
Lua and I had already decided we'd claim a quiet corner and do nothing but study, so we headed straight for the far seats.
Scrape.
Thump.
We pulled out our chairs at almost the same time, sat down, opened our books on the desk, and started studying.
No conversation. Just straight into study mode, the two of us.
And then I felt it again. Studying wasn't working. Focus wasn't coming.
The material itself was basic, so the math should have been easy. It was easy, and yet…
"……"
The problems wouldn't solve. My head wouldn't turn over.
So it wasn't the environment after all? Something else was the problem?
My thoughts were getting more and more tangled when—
Scratch-scratch, scratch-scratch, scratch-scratch, scratch-scratch.
From beside me came the steady sound of a mechanical pencil working hard.
Along with that sound, I looked toward where it was coming from… toward Lua.
She wasn't paying attention to me, or to anything around her. She was just studying—quietly. Literally, completely still.
And looking at her like that, something in my chest settled.
On top of that, the thought hit me that I really shouldn't be sitting here like this.
Lua's future was brighter and more certain than mine, and she was working that hard. Who was I to sit here doing nothing?
Without a moment's hesitation, I turned my eyes back to the book.
I decided to just grind through it. Look at the problems as hard as I could, underline them, try to solve even one.
And as a result—
"……Okay. Next."
I finally solved one.
It wasn't that hard of a problem, but I'd gotten through it far more smoothly than expected.
And right then—
"You finished a problem?"
"Ah—you startled me."
"Oh, sorry."
Lua made a little apologetic gesture, then glanced at the problem I'd solved.
Maybe because I'd written out the steps reasonably well, she nodded as she looked it over.
"Nice work."
"…Thanks."
"No need to thank me. But this one had the calculations twisted on purpose… and you still got it?"
"It's a basic concept problem."
"Even so, the ones that twist the concept like that are always harder. You did well. Really."
Lua reached out and gave my head a light, gentle stroke.
Hearing praise in that soft, somehow cute voice of hers made me feel better for no good reason.
"…Thanks. For real."
"I'm going back to studying now. You keep at it too, Jinwoo."
"Yeah. You too."
Lua gave me a bright little smile and went right back to work, and I started studying alongside her again.
And from that point on—or so it seemed—the problems started coming apart just by looking at them.
As if the idea that I hadn't been able to focus before made no sense at all, the questions flowed, and my concentration held.
Was Lua seriously a study-focus totem?
Man. I really was under her influence, weren't I?