Chapter 215: Supplementary Exam (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 215: Supplementary Exam (1)
The Vanquisher’s quarters.
“…Is this… really the real thing?”
“Yes.”
I confidently presented Artemis’s Bow to the Old Man.
“How… did you….”
The Old Man’s thick, rough hand swept over the bow.
It emitted a faint glow.
“I struck a good deal.”
There was nothing else to say.
“Grandpa, can I have it now?”
“……”
Sion, who had been standing glued to my side, couldn’t even bear to watch the Old Man admire the bow any longer and started to whine.
She hadn’t even waited a few minutes.
I guess that’s how much she liked it.
“…Here.”
“Thank you.”
Sion took the bow and left immediately.
“That should be more than enough, right?”
I asked the Old Man, full of confidence.
“More than enough.”
He closed his eyes slightly and nodded.
“I’d only heard someone had bought it… I never imagined the Three-legged Crow had it.”
“You know of the Three-legged Crow?”
They must be a famous organization.
“To some extent.”
The Old Man met my gaze and answered nonchalantly.
“Tell me the price. She’s my granddaughter, so I should be the one to pay.”
He added with a smile.
“What are you talking about?”
The price?
I felt that even if I gave the Old Man several more bows, it still wouldn't be enough.
That’s just how I felt.
Without him, I would have had a much harder time.
“It’s fine.”
“I’ll send it over.”
The Old Man held out a check to me.
A blank check.
I didn’t answer.
It’s hard to win an argument with a stubborn old man.
The solution was…
I pushed the blank check right back across his desk with my own hand.
“I told you, I don’t need it.”
I replied firmly.
“…Alright.”
Faced with my resolve, the Old Man finally seemed to understand my meaning and accepted.
“I’ll be going now.”
It looked like Sion had run off to the training ground again.
I had to catch her and head back to our dorm.
“…Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
It was nothing.
Without looking back, I gave a short reply and left the Old Man’s study.
*
I sank deep into the bed in my penthouse.
The mattress was plush, as if my nights spent on a hotel room floor during the chaotic few days in Japan had been a lie.
It felt good to be back in my own bed after so long.
I stared at the empty ceiling, reviewing the results of the past few days.
I had successfully delivered Artemis’s Bow to Sion.
I recalled her happy face, and a small smile crept onto my lips.
Glint.
I raised my left hand, letting it catch the light of the fluorescent lamp.
I’d also obtained the ring. Of course, this was for personal use, but… anyway.
Slowly but surely, I was making progress.
Now, only one fragment remained.
Kang A-rin’s fragment.
I figured I could go retrieve it in the not-too-distant future.
The biggest obstacle to getting Kang A-rin’s fragment.
The wall known as the Pentagon.
The reason I’d put it on hold was none other than the fact that ‘I’ was a nobody.
Just another student at Gaon. My voice carried no weight.
So, has anything changed now?
“Maybe.”
I couldn’t say for certain, but…
At the very least, I couldn’t say I had nothing to stand on.
It was worth a try.
In any case… I’d had my break in Japan.
I closed my eyes.
It was time to start running again, full-steam ahead.
“……”
But, as I’m organizing my future plans like this, all alone…
Sometimes, just sometimes, a name I’d tried so hard to forget would surface.
Seong Si-woo.
If I had been a little wiser, a little better, would things have changed?
If I had, maybe he would be right here in front of me as I had this thought.
But I know now.
It’s all a meaningless hypothetical, spilt milk.
The past cannot be changed.
What’s important is…
“The present.”
I have to do my best now.
I don’t have Death Regression.
I only get one chance.
“…I was trying to sleep.”
But now I’m wide awake.
I got out of bed.
Night training can be pretty fun, too.
*
At Gaon, the final exams were fast approaching.
The 2nd semester was heavy on practical training, so the midterm exam was replaced with practical assessments.
This made the one written exam, the final, incredibly important.
That wasn’t to say the practicals were worthless.
They still accounted for a certain portion of our grade.
The problem was…
“……”
I had missed almost the entire process for that important practical assessment.
It was only natural.
I’d been bedridden for a long time because of Belial, and I’d also just skipped classes.
I had countless things to do that were more important than Gaon.
Fortunately, Gaon wasn’t some rigid, military-style educational institution.
While it was a place of ‘education,’ it was clearly aware that its students weren’t ordinary people, but heroes who could be called upon at any moment to face a world crisis.
So, for students like me who were on the verge of failing due to unavoidable circumstances, they offered additional exams in the form of ‘supplementary classes.’
Of course, some students there weren’t in unavoidable situations, but had simply not studied.
You could think of it as being similar to retaking a course in college. The only differences were that it ran concurrently during the semester and for a shorter period.
Naturally, you couldn’t get a high score from it…
But for me, it was a godsend.
Better than nothing.
I opened the door to the designated supplementary classroom.
To be honest, I’d already skipped this once, too.
I’ll start attending diligently from now on.
I made a silent vow and peered inside.
Gaon had its share of monstrous geniuses, but it had far more diligent, ordinary talents.
Thanks to that, this little salvation center for failing students wasn’t very crowded.
Only three or four students were scattered about, striking at training dummies.
It looked like I could just hit my quota for the day and head home.
But then.
“……?”
I doubted my eyes.
Was I seeing things?
The training ground was divided in half: one part for practical training, the other a study hall for bookwork.
The problem was the student with orange hair sitting at the far end of the study hall.
It was unmistakably Yoon Chae-ha.
No way.
Yoon Chae-ha was a genius. It couldn’t be.
Even though she found studying boring and rarely did it, she was the type to get good grades just by skimming the material once or twice before an exam.
I approached her side quietly, careful not to make a sound.
And I confirmed it.
“…It really is her.”
It was Yoon Chae-ha.
She was sound asleep, using the textbook open on her desk as a pillow, one cheek completely squashed against it.
Hah…
She was even breathing evenly.
“Hah…”
What was I supposed to make of this?
I mean, it was strange for her to be here in the first place.
Knowing her personality, if she wasn't going to do something, she wouldn't do it at all.
Should I be proud of her for coming all the way here to study?
Or should I scold her for not studying in the first place?
I hadn’t been paying any attention to her grades.
Yu Hana, Kang A-rin, and Ha Sion were perfect, of course.
Even Cheon Yeo-wool had been getting pretty good grades lately.
So I never even imagined that Yoon Chae-ha would have messed up something as basic as her schoolwork.
“……”
After a moment of thought, I gently stroked her cheek with my palm as she slept.
A soft breath escaped from between her half-parted, pink lips.
She really was pretty.
Then…
Poke.
I lightly poked her cheek with my finger.
“Ooh.”
“Chae-ha.”
“……?”
Yoon Chae-ha finally stirred, her sleepy eyes opening heavily.
Her pupils hadn’t found their focus yet.
It felt like she was still wandering between dream and reality.
“What are you doing here?”
“Huh…?”
“Let’s go outside for a bit.”
I took her wrist and pulled the dazed girl to her feet.
Chae-ha offered no resistance, stumbling along as I led her by the hand.
I didn’t want to disturb the other students who were focused on their training.
Once we were outside, moonlight streamed through the hallway windows.
The sun had set long ago.
It was a supplementary class, after all, so it was held in the evening after all other classes were over.
I leaned her against the hallway wall.
Yoon Chae-ha, still not fully awake, rubbed her eyes with a small hand.
“Uuung…”
She whimpered, oblivious to the textbook imprint on her cheek, and tried to lean her head on my shoulder.
“Jeez…”
I held her in my arms for a moment.
The scent of shampoo mixed with her own unique sweet smell wafted from her hair.
“What are you doing here?” she mumbled, her face buried in my chest.
“I… messed up the test.”
“You didn’t study?”
“It was boring…”
Yoon Chae-ha was the extreme type who couldn’t focus for even a few minutes if she wasn’t interested.
I’d figured as much.
“And yet, you came to this boring supplementary class?”
That was the part I was curious about.
Even if she failed… it probably wouldn’t have been a huge problem.
Given her personality, she could have just ignored it completely.
At my words, she lifted her head to look up at me.
Her eyes were hazy.
“I was worried you’d care… yaawn…”
With that, Chae-ha leaned back into my embrace.
“……”
After hearing that, my earlier dilemma about what to think of her was resolved.
I should be proud of her.
She had forced herself to stick with this boring studying until this late at night.
For me.
Pat, pat.
I patted Yoon Chae-ha’s head.
“Should we go home?”
She’d been a good girl today, so she deserved a break.
We could work hard starting tomorrow.
…No, wait a minute.
On second thought, it felt like I might be the one spoiling her.
Would coddling her like this really help her grow?
“Nnng… no, I’ll study a little more before I go.”
“Okay.”
What a good girl.
Just then, Yoon Chae-ha lifted her head from my chest.
She forced her sleepy eyes open, rubbing them, and took a wobbly step away from me.
The sight of her forcing herself to do something she hated looked quite agonizing.
A thought flashed through my mind: shouldn’t I come up with some kind of groundbreaking reward system for her?
Yoon Chae-ha had no interest in money or fame.
So what could possibly motivate her?
The thing she’d been most deeply exploring… and was most interested in lately was…
“……”
One thing came to mind.
But was this really okay?
“Chae-ha.”
“Yeah…?”
Yoon Chae-ha turned her head.
I walked over to her and whispered.
“If you pass the test tomorrow…”
I hesitated for a moment before adding.
“At night… I’ll pat you.”
It was the field in which she was showing the most explosive interest these days.
At those words, her orange, sleep-drunk eyes flew open.
She seemed to ponder for a moment. Then, she stood on her tiptoes and brought her lips right up to my ear.
Her hot breath tickled my skin.
“That thing…”
“Yeah.”
“The thing you did for Rin…”
The thing I did for Rin?
What was that? I furrowed my brow.
“Do that for me, too. The kneading.”
“Huh?”
Was she talking about pressing on her lower abdomen?
“My lower belly, knead it.”
That was a medical treatment.
Besides, hadn’t Rin been in a lot of pain? It wouldn’t be pleasurable at all.
“It’ll hurt, you know.”
“Mm… I don’t think it will.”
“…Okay, I get it.”
I shook my head, trying to clear my complicated thoughts.
Well, if it boosted her motivation to study, then so be it.
As soon as I gave my consent, Yoon Chae-ha’s face lit up.
Her eyes widened, and she nodded her head repeatedly.
Whoosh.
Yoon Chae-ha no longer clung to me, instead dashing back toward the classroom.
I watched her retreating back in bewilderment.
“……This is the right thing to do, isn’t it?”
…Was it possible that I was ruining Yoon Chae-ha’s dopamine reward system?
That was the thought that crossed my mind on this particular night.