The Futility of Conversation and the Outsider
I had been planning to get through this group assignment by doing absolutely nothing, but Lee Narin seemed to be expecting a lot from me.
Had Song Changwon really gone and blabbed about what happened at the gifted education program in Daegwallyeong right in front of her?
If that was the case, then that bastard had basically told the girl he was interested in how thoroughly he’d gotten his ass handed to him.
I honestly had to wonder whether Song Changwon had a screw loose.
What was I supposed to do? It wasn’t my problem if the other kids in class got their evaluation scores dragged down, but...
If Narin ended up getting a lower grade because of me, I’d feel a little bad about that.
For now, I’d have to estimate just how much work this group assignment was really going to take.
Hmm... our topic was to research and present examples of South Korea’s processing trade from the “international division of labor and trade” unit.
Processing trade meant importing raw materials or components and then exporting the finished product after assembling them, which basically meant I could just pick some big-name car or electronics company I’d heard of and do the research.
In the end, since this was only a high school performance assessment, all I really had to do was look up which countries the major imported parts came from, identify which countries the finished goods were mainly exported to...
And then sprinkle in a little national pride by showing off the overseas market share of domestic companies. That should be enough to earn a pretty comfortable perfect score.
Of course, before I regressed, domestic manufacturing had been getting crushed flat by China, but in 2011, electronics, cars, steel, shipbuilding, and the rest were still fighting it out for first or second place in the world.
That meant national pride would go over well, whether anyone liked it or not.
If I did it alone... one hour for research, twenty minutes for the presentation board layout, thirty minutes to write and rehearse the script. Two hours, tops.
But this was a group assignment.
If I defined my teammates as “nice enough that, even if they’re incompetent, they won’t actively drag things down,” then...
I’d handle the research myself and hand the material off to them. That would take a day.
But there was no chance they’d make the presentation board properly, so I’d have to remake that and pass it to the person in charge of presenting. Another day.
And since I couldn’t expect a bunch of high school kids to give a proper presentation, depending on the presenter’s state of preparation, I’d probably have to persuade them to rearrange roles as well.
That brought the total to three days.
Still, that was only under the ideal assumption that the teammates would listen to me and not get in my way.
In reality, the right roles might not get assigned to me at all, some useless teammate might have enough pride to refuse to bend, or someone might keep nitpicking my work and obstructing progress.
If feelings got hurt and we ended up fighting, or if we simply couldn’t reach an agreement, then there was no telling how much longer it would take.
There were four people in each group.
Meaning two others besides me and Lee Narin.
Whether I participated in this assessment or not depended on those two people’s attitudes.
...
...
The two teammates besides me and Narin were one boy and one girl.
“Hey, Lee Narin. I hear you’re Song Changwon’s girlfriend. So why are you dating that piece-of-shit bastard?”
The boy. I didn’t remember his name, so I’d just call him “Teammate One.”
Like all the other boys in our class, Teammate One’s opinion of Song Changwon was absolute garbage.
But the boys in our class had already fallen out with the girls too, so expecting Teammate One to act friendly toward Lee Narin, who was both a girl in our class and Song Changwon’s supposed girlfriend, was a stretch.
Still, seeing a guy who couldn’t make a peep in front of Song Changwon himself suddenly act tough in front of a small girl was a little revolting.
Setting aside how shitty human relationships were, if I looked at him from the perspective of someone I had to work with on a group assignment...
This guy had no intention of studying, but plenty of pride. That made him the worst kind.
“A piece of shit? Changwon’s a million times better than a brain-dead loser like you. You’re all like that, so he called you dog hair. And Narin~ dealing with boys like you makes dating Changwon so hard. Right? If anybody’s giving you trouble, or if dating Changwon isn’t going well, you can always tell me! I’ll help you!”
The one who’d just spoken was the girl in our group...
Since I didn’t remember her name either, should I call her “Teammate Two”?
Teammate Two was one of the biggest Song Changwon fangirls in our class, and she only pretended to study.
Even though Song Changwon had clearly insulted the entire class as “dog hair” on the very first day of school, she was still in denial, insisting it couldn’t possibly apply to her.
What’s more, even though Narin was openly pretending to be Song Changwon’s girlfriend, she kept approaching him anyway, which made Song Changwon himself find Teammate Two incredibly annoying.
She might have seemed friendly toward Narin at a glance, but behind her back she apparently spent her time gossiping about her...
From Narin’s point of view, she was exactly the kind of student you had to be most careful around in school.
Again, setting aside how shitty human relationships were, if I looked at Teammate Two as a group project partner...
She seemed like the type who contributed nothing but complaints, which made me not want to work with her at all.
...
Haa... not even five minutes after facing the group members, I was already itching to run away.
If I forced this group assignment through in its current state, there was no doubt the only outcome would be a finish full of wounds for everyone involved.
Wouldn’t it be better to just accept reality, relax, waste the day away, and settle for the lowest possible score on the assessment?
Sure, internal grades mattered, but I didn’t think they mattered more than a person’s mental health.
Besides, I had no idea what Narin had possibly done wrong to end up with so many enemies...
Wasn’t Song Changwon’s family helping her out?
I had clearly been expecting that some men in black suits would show up at the homes of the students in our class and, through “amicable settlement,” ensure that Lee Narin could enjoy a peaceful school life.
But seeing her still like this, I had no idea whether the chaebol side had any intention of helping her at all.
...
Well, the group project period was only about a week anyway, so for now I’d just have to keep watching the situation.
Leaning on Narin’s support, I obtained the nominal position of “team leader” and explained the main points of the assignment to the group.
I put off role division and planning for later, because that sounded like a pain in the ass.
Even if, besides Lee Narin, none of them seemed to understand my explanation properly, that was fine.
A person who has read one book is frightening.
Rather than letting those idiots half-understand things and start making a mess, it would actually be more helpful if they understood nothing at all and just stayed quiet.
...
...
Wait.
If I handled it right, this might actually turn out simpler than I thought.
...
...
“So... you’re saying we should deliberately make the explanation difficult for the other people in our group, so they can’t keep up with the assignment?”
“Exactly. The more cooks there are, the more likely the ship is to end up on a mountain, right? You don’t need four people trying to make decisions for something like this. And of course, everyone’s score will be the same, so there’s no need to feel bad about those two.”
During break time, I went over to Lee Narin and explained my plan in simple, clear terms.
The gist was to throw around concepts and vocabulary so difficult that the group members couldn’t follow along, crushing Teammate One and Teammate Two’s will to interfere.
They might be curious at first about how the assignment was going, but if the conversation kept going over their heads...
People shut their mouths to hide their ignorance.
If someone is scared of a person who’s read one book, then the answer is simple: hand them a book written so obscurely they can’t even read it properly in the first place.
...
...Still, Narin looked a little reluctant to use the loophole I’d suggested.
“...But isn’t a group assignment supposed to be practice for solving problems by talking things out and adjusting to differences in opinion between team members? If we solve the problem like this, doesn’t it feel like we’re kind of defeating the whole point of a group assignment?”
Narin’s argument was reasonable.
However you sliced it, people couldn’t survive alone, and once they went out into society, they needed the ability to work with others in order to make a living.
The reason high school and university were burdened with the hellish educational method known as “group assignments” was precisely because they were meant to teach you how to suffer while rubbing shoulders with other people.
...
But Narin was still a high school student, so I guessed she hadn’t yet learned the most important thing when working with other people.
“Listen carefully, Narin.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Solving problems through conversation is something people do. As for talking with beasts, you can learn that later if you go major in dog training or something. For now, let’s just think of this as practice in telling people from beasts.”
The most important thing when working with others was checking whether your cooperation partner was actually a human being.
If the beast was below you, you had to civilize it slowly, over time, until it became human.
If the beast was your peer, you had to get promoted before it did, then civilize it into a human afterward.
If that didn’t seem possible, then from that point on there was no point in talking things out—you had to be prepared to become a beast yourself.
But what if a beast was sitting above you?
Quit. If a beast was clinging to the top, that meant the company wasn’t normal in the first place.
...In short, even if you went out into society, there would never be any occasion to solve problems by having a civilized conversation with a beast.
“Jung Ian... you’re harsher than you look. I think I know why Song Changwon wants to get close to you.”
“No, hold on. Compared to Song Changwon, really? I’m not nearly as reckless as that guy.”
At least by my standards, being “someone Song Changwon wants to be friends with” was definitely not a compliment.
That guy was a complete disaster as a person.
I was just a decent student who had become a loner because I had my own unlucky backstory.
Because I was decent, I only cursed people behind their backs.
It wasn’t because I couldn’t handle charging in headfirst like Song Changwon and going all out. It was because I was decent.
...
But Narin watched my reaction for a moment, then looked back and forth as if she were deep in thought before finally speaking.
“Actually, all that stuff about being harsh was just me talking. I wanted to thank you. Listening to you call them beasts who can’t understand human speech made me feel a little better.”
“Is that so? Then I’ll curse at Song Changwon for you sometime soon too.”
“Pffft...! Cough... You’re not allowed to say I laughed just now, okay?”
After that, Narin said she’d join my plan for this group assignment.
...Come to think of it, Narin could laugh like that too, huh?
Usually she had so little expression that the most I’d ever seen was a tiny smile. That was the first time I’d seen her laugh like that.
***
—Han Sia’s POV
I looked into it, and it turned out animal costumes came in a surprisingly wide variety.
Some were just simple accessories, like the cat ears and tail I’d given Narin...
Others were adorable full-body animal pajamas, or decorative pieces that stuck to the face. There were all kinds.
Especially the animal pajamas here—they looked really cute. If I chose these, that would probably be appropriate.
...
Adorable animal pajamas were canceled.
Seeing the item Yu Somi had chosen made it feel like blood rushed straight up into my head, and I shut the bright website I’d been browsing down without hesitation.
The place I opened next was a shopping mall page that was, by rights, not suitable for a student to be browsing.
Since I had already started, I might as well look into Jung Ian’s tastes all the way and make sure I did this properly.
...
Cat Girl, black.
After setting the search filters according to the preferences I’d investigated for Jung Ian, what appeared before my eyes was cat-themed sexy lingerie.
Some had a hole cut in the center of the chest in the shape of a cat, while others had holes in places that made them useless as underwear at all...
Still, I wanted to leave his whole body revealed for some future pleasure, so I set that aside for now.
And if I excluded anything whose design was so excessive that it wasn’t cute anymore, what remained was lingerie whose amount of fabric was so small it was basically equal to a bikini.
...
Well, Jung Ian did say he preferred short-haired cats, so if it was a cat girl costume without fur decoration, this was how it would be.
---