Entrance Exam
Taking walks was never a bad habit.
It was good for the health, and on days like today, when my thoughts had tangled themselves into knots, it gave me the chance to untangle them. So while my aunt might not, I went on walks fairly often.
As always, this walk, too, would clean out the clutter inside my head.
"By the way, Aunt."
"Hm?"
"I feel kind of weird walking around in my uniform."
"Ahh, is the skirt a little short?"
"Only delinquents wear them this short."
"And you say that, after going out dressed up like that…"
"I-I know. I know already. I'll go change."
With that, I fled to my room, clutching my canister of painkillers. I set it down on my desk and slowly began to take off the uniform. Somewhere along the way, I noticed a faint, odd smell coming from it. I buried my nose in the fabric and sniffed—there it was, the sour tang of dried sweat. Probably from moving so intensely during the entrance exam.
"Phew. Thank goodness it didn't soak through."
It was a real stroke of luck that I'd bought half a dozen uniforms with exactly this in mind. Unless something out of the ordinary happened, I could always go around looking clean and presentable.
Grumbling to myself, I folded the uniform roughly and dropped it on the floor, then pulled the training clothes out of my closet and put them on. Pants really were far more comfortable than a skirt, after all.
Once I'd changed, I picked the uniform back up and stuffed it into the laundry basket. Then I waited for a short while—my aunt had said she'd write just this one more report—and we headed outside together.
Our walking route never changed. Step out of the apartment, turn right, and there was a park. If you followed the path that wound through it, the trail looped all the way around the neighborhood. It sounded like nothing special when described, but it wasn't. Being able to walk home on autopilot, without a single thought, was a genuinely useful thing. So I loved that path. My aunt did too—she said it let her focus entirely on the conversation.
And apparently she had something she wanted to say, because the moment we stepped out of the building, she spoke up.
"My dear daughter."
"Yeah?"
"Shall we have a talk while we walk?"
"Fine by me. I was bored anyway."
"Good, then. Now, where shall I begin…"
My aunt deliberated over the topic for a moment. I didn't rush her. Sometimes this deliberation went on for hours.
Thankfully, it didn't take her long this time.
"The Academy seems… rather impulsive, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. Even Ms. Jang Mi-na said so."
"Haha, in truth, it isn't. If it were, would Busan International Academy have become the prestigious place it is?"
"…Is that so?"
"Everything you could want is there on the website, if you dig through it carefully."
"Oh…"
"The textbooks and such will all be posted there… you'd do well to go through them."
"Memorizing is the one thing I'm confident in. You know that."
I declared it with full confidence—because I really was confident in my memory.
My aunt stared at me for a moment, then chuckled softly.
"…Really, it takes me back."
I didn't bother to answer. Just as she said, I was starting to be taken back myself.
I closed my eyes, then opened them again. And naturally, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, a wall of glass materialized in the empty air.
It felt as though my field of vision was slowly sinking lower. I could even hear the clink of metal striking metal with every step I took.
It was probably the moment they tested my intelligence.
What I was meant to memorize was simple. It was the first day of testing, so the text was at a kindergartner's level.
A children's song… it had been. Its lyrics, in other words.
I remembered memorizing them desperately. As though someone would beat me to death if I failed to. My mouth moved without pause as I sang it over and over, soundlessly.
Conversation was not permitted for me back then. The only things the researchers were allowed to say to me were things related to the experiments. Nobody spoke a word beyond that. Everyone treated me bluntly, as if they simply had nothing to say to me.
In the end, unable to bear it any longer, I spoke to one of the researchers first. I made an enormous racket, threw a wild tantrum.
And the price I paid was quite gruesome.
I reflexively touched my nonexistent throat and laughed, hollow and bitter. The chocker around my neck delivered an electric shock every time I made a sound above a certain volume.
And that sound, naturally, included screams.
Before long, I had learned the art of not speaking.
And it was suffocating. Living without saying anything, without making a single sound… it was wretched.
But the researchers apparently saw it differently. Convinced I had grown docile, they pressed ahead with a whole series of tests.
That was probably when they began the intelligence testing.
There was so much to memorize. So much to solve, too. And I threw myself at it like a madwoman.
Even if not a single word passed between us during a test.
The way a researcher's expression shifted the moment they picked up my answer sheet was enough. That kind of communication, flimsy as it was, was precious to me beyond measure.
Even the sound of them whipping out a red pencil on the spot to grade my work was a delight. So I clung to the task far harder than I needed to. I never quite went as far as refusing food and water, but I truly focused with everything I had.
It wasn't as if I had anything else to do. Locked inside that glass wall, staring blankly into empty air—that was the entirety of my daily routine.
And it didn't stop there, either.
The more problems I solved, the more things I committed to memory—the more often the researchers came in, and the more often they looked at me with faces full of satisfaction. They even taught me things I didn't know yet.
And that… that voice.
It wasn't flat or mechanical. There was feeling in it. Even the physics problems I had loathed in my previous life—the ones I couldn't stand to even look at—seemed, back then, so achingly lovely I could hardly bear it.
…And I was able to talk to the researcher, too.
I blinked, slowly.
At some point, a small desk had appeared beside me. On that desk sat me, perched in a chair. Spread across the top were practice notebooks and workbooks, along with a mountain of cheap but dependable ballpoint pens.
My childhood self swung her legs back and forth as she worked through the problems. But it wasn't going well. The formulas she'd memorized so long ago had grown hazy, and without them, the problems refused to come.
In the end, my childhood self reached out for help.
And the one who came inside was Aunt Ailee.
"All right, now. What don't you understand?"
"…I don't know the formula for this problem, Sister."
"Ah, an acceleration problem? Here, have a look."
And with that, Aunt Ailee began to teach me the formulas.
I listened to her voice, blank and dazed. Then I noticed something—the voices were blending together. Only then did the wall of glass begin to dissolve. My lowered field of vision rose back up to its proper height. The grating clink of metal that had followed each of my steps faded away as well.
The very next moment, my aunt rounded on me.
"What on earth were you thinking, that you wouldn't answer when I called you?"
I managed an awkward smile. I didn't much want to admit I'd been lost in the old days.
So I cooked up a suitable excuse.
"I start Academy life tomorrow, remember?"
"Well, yes."
"So I was thinking about that. Turns out I'm nervous, after all."
"Is this the hour where you need your mother's nagging, then?"
"It's not nagging. I take my aunt's words very seriously, you know."
My aunt smiled, looking pleased, and picked the conversation back up. It began with how much there was to look after now, and how she couldn't possibly cover everything for me—and then a whole torrent of advice for Academy life came pouring out, useful bits and pieces that would carry me for a long while.
I committed every last word of it to memory.
Then I told her I'd take it all in slowly, and asked—casually, as if it hardly mattered:
"Aunt."
"Hm?"
"That thing from when I was little. You know, the drug they said would make me smarter. Remember?"
As I said it, the memories surfaced.
The uncles and aunts back then had treated that version of me like a small child. And perhaps it wasn't entirely unjustified. I was only seven years old at the time.
…Except every one of them knew perfectly well that I carried university-level knowledge in my head. They knew my intelligence surpassed that of an ordinary grown man, too.
And still, they treated me like a child.
I knew why. It was to root learned helplessness into me, to make sure I could do nothing at all.
No matter how clever you think you are, right now you're nothing but a test subject locked inside a glass wall. However you might claw your way out, right now you are just a child.
…Of course I understood what they meant when they said it.
And it wasn't only that. I had a rough idea of the drug they were scheming to slip into me under false pretenses, too.
No—even if I truly had been nothing more than a seven-year-old, there was no way I could have failed to notice that something in my body went wrong with every injection.
Painful.
Suffering of every conceivable kind—so varied that even that one word couldn't hold it. A body curling in on itself, instinctively, because it knew something was wrong with it. The primal, animal terror and queasiness that flooded in each time the needle went in. All of it bore down on me, gnawing me away bit by bit.
…And yet I could not refuse the injections.
I had only just barely learned to speak with the researchers again. Solve the problems well and I was praised. I could even coax candy out of them. I could be loved—even if that love was nothing but a counterfeit.
All for the sake of. For nothing more than.
I couldn't go back to how things were before, not over something as pitiful as a shot.
So I accepted whatever drugs they put in front of me.
No matter how much my body suffered.
No matter how much it hurt.
No matter how deceived I was.
None of that mattered anymore.
…And lately, I have become certain of one thing.
One of the drugs they injected into me every single day back then. That syringe of brown liquid, the one they pushed into me with the same lie on repeat—it'll make you smarter, it'll make you smarter.
I was sure of it. That drug had to be connected to this illusion of mine.
Stepping past the image of my childhood self doubled over the ground, retching at nothing, I made it certain in my own mind.
Because of that. Without a doubt, because of that.