The Genius Decided To Live An Ordinary Life [EN]: Chapter 133

Jin-hyuk is the first to arrive at school every morning to exercise. Except for rainy days, he hasn’t missed a single day since his first year.

He would run around the schoolyard, climb ropes, and keep a close watch on any movements he noticed.

‘I think there was a new student who used a wheelchair.’

He was an early-arriving student, and his mother always pushed his wheelchair.

He didn’t know what was wrong, but seeing him use a wheelchair for over a month, he wondered if he might be permanently unable to walk.

Of course, it was just a guess.

‘I’ve been too indifferent to my surroundings.’

Since the first-floor classrooms also required going up stairs, the student’s mother and other students would have to help him every time. Although first-year students use the first floor, they would have to go up to the second and third floors as they advanced in grades. As the years went by, his mother would have to carry him and lift the wheelchair.

‘Isn’t there something I can do to help?’

It would be good to make a ramp on some of the stairs to make it easier for wheelchairs to go up. It seemed like the school could have done that proactively without being asked. Come to think of it, it was a shame that they hadn’t taken any action yet.

‘I feel bad for using this for the election.’

Were humans such secular and reward-driven animals?

He felt ashamed for no reason.

He didn’t intend to collect experiences like trophies. However, if his parents would be happy and proud, it wouldn’t be bad to try it once. It wasn’t like he would be in the newspaper for being elected student council president of a rural middle school, and it wouldn’t make his daily life disappear.

‘I’ve changed.’

Thinking of this as a human desire as a social animal, Jin-hyuk realized that he had evolved one step further.

Was Jin-hyuk’s expression too serious? His dad, feeling sorry for no reason, said,

“Jin-hyuk, you know you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, right?”

Jin-hyuk wasn’t listening.

He was focused on checking his serious disqualifications.

‘The kids don’t really like me.’

It was a well-known fact that the sensitive and emotional kids his age found Jin-hyuk difficult to approach. He didn’t yell or use violence, but everyone thought that if they messed with him, they could end up in trouble. The incident when he was a freshman was too big.

‘If I want to get votes from those people…’

Sigh. He sighed.

Was a money-based election the answer after all?

Of course, he had no intention of distributing money. He thought it was important to compete fairly. However, to overcome his unfavorable popularity and win, he needed his dad’s help.

The election bug he had caught by chance was finally starting to take effect in Son Jin-hyuk.

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

Jin-hyuk grinned.

“Would you like to negotiate with me?”

He felt like he understood a little bit of the psychology of someone who holds what the other person wants and proposes blackmail or a deal.

It was so thrilling.

***

“Hello-”

“Yu-jin, hello?”

Son Yu-jin, who bowed to the driver, boarded the school bus cheerfully.

“Yu-jin, have a good day-”

“Yes-. Ehehe-”

She didn’t forget to turn around and wave to her mom.

“Son Yu-jin, come here-”

Kim Ho-jin from An Village, who was sitting at the back wearing a kindergarten uniform, gestured to Son Yu-jin. Son Yu-jin, also wearing a bright yellow and round kindergarten hat, sat next to Kim Ho-jin.

“Did you sleep well, Kim Ho-jin?”

“Eee-”

Son Yu-jin’s way of speaking was unique. It was a way of speaking that was hard to tell if it was informal or formal, but after listening to it for over a month, he got used to it. So, Kim Ho-jin also imitated Son Yu-jin’s way of speaking at home, and his parents liked it, saying it was cute.

He heard that the school bus was supported by a large company in Seoul for the children in the countryside.

This yellow bus. He didn’t know what it said because he hadn’t learned to read Korean yet, but seeing that it was similar to the letters at the school gate, he thought it might be ‘Eodong something’.

Anyway.

He heard from the village elders that Son Yu-jin’s dad had used his influence, but Son Yu-jin didn’t seem to know anything about it. If it were Kim Ho-jin, he would have bragged and boasted about it every day.

The school bus drove for a few more minutes and picked up another friend from an orchard.

It wasn’t just for kindergarteners. Any student going to Eodong Elementary School could stand at the bus stop and raise their hand, and the bus would stop. Sometimes grandmothers would ride, and the driver would help them get on.

The Lee Beom-ho and Lee Dong-ho brothers got on at the halfway point.

Son Yu-jin waved her hand again.

“Hello, Lee Dong-ho.”

“There’s no seat next to Yu-jin again.”

Lee Dong-ho always tried to sit next to Son Yu-jin, but it was impossible. The only seat a latecomer could get was next to the older kids.

Was it because he was from the city? He had lived in a place called Seoul, but he was weak and had no manners.

Anyway, Son Yu-jin was a unique kid.

She greeted everyone. Even if they were familiar, Kim Ho-jin was too shy to do it well.

She smiled and greeted her older siblings and friends, and no one disliked her.

Was it because she was a girl? She didn’t even have a runny nose.

Ah, a runny nose wasn’t important right now.

Kim Ho-jin asked.

“Why do you greet so enthusiastically?”

“You have to greet well to be president.”

What was she talking about?

He had heard of class president, village chief, and fishing village chief, but president was an unfamiliar word.

Was it the president when they said youth president?

Kim Ho-jin rubbed his nose with his sleeve.

‘Greetings.’

Son Yu-jin nodded her head with a serious face, as if making a promise.

She was remembering the conversation her older brother had with her dad a while ago when he was considering running for student council president.

– “I’m not the type to greet people well. And my friends don’t seem to know me well enough to say hi first.”

– “You must have beaten up the seniors, so that’s understandable.”

– “I didn’t beat them up…”

She said that her brother had knocked them down, but he hadn’t beaten them up.

Her brother was someone she could learn a lot from.

Son Yu-jin also vowed not to beat people up.

‘You have to knock them down if it’s dangerous. Beating them up is bad.’

The smart Son Yu-jin seemed to understand the difference vaguely.

To subdue the enemy efficiently, but not to enjoy violence itself.

It was consistent with what she had heard from Jang Jin-nam when she was learning to exercise at the bear gym.

– “Violence is bad. On the outside, your body gets hurt, but what actually gets hurt is your heart? Heart wounds don’t heal easily. This uncle still remembers being beaten by bullies when he was young.”

The words ‘heart wound’. The smart Son Yu-jin also seemed to understand the meaning vaguely.

It was easy if she thought about the betrayal she felt towards her brother who stole her milk powder.

While running around the fields and mountains with Janggun and Hongsi, Son Yu-jin began to acquire character and intelligence by being educated by so many teachers.

‘Greetings. President.’

Her brother seemed interested in being president.

Her friends were pushing him to run, but she didn’t know how many people would vote for him.

If her brother became president, Son Yu-jin had to do it too.

That way, she could be like her brother.

But she heard that her brother might have a hard time because he wasn’t good at greeting people.

Tsk-. He should have prepared in advance.

So, Son Yu-jin was greeting people, looking forward to the day she would become president.

Finally, they arrived at school.

‘Bow to the teacher.’

Son Yu-jin, who was almost the last to get off the bus, bowed deeply.

The kindergarten teacher smiled brightly and patted Yu-jin’s head.

“Our Yu-jin, how can you greet so beautifully?”

Good, positive.

Son Yu-jin stretched out her arm and put it to her ear. She even spread her fingers wide, because she learned at kindergarten that you raise your hand like this when you have something to say.

“Yu-jin, why? Do you have something to say to the teacher?”

Finally.

She said the words she had been waiting for.

“I’m running for president.”

“Huh?”

Kindergartens don’t elect presidents?

***

The election of the middle school student council president was just a place to encourage the experience of elections, which are called the flower of democracy. That’s how it looked to the students.

Therefore, there was no particular reason to get excited about the student council president election.

They would just skip one afternoon class on election day, make campaign speeches, and vote. There wasn’t a particularly popular candidate among the candidates, so the students’ reactions were lukewarm.

The only popular candidate was Chae Gyu-ho.

He was kind and easygoing, and he was good at basketball, so he was quite popular among his friends.

That Chae Gyu-ho had met a strong rival. He only seemed strong to Chae Gyu-ho, though.

“Class president! You said you weren’t going to run! Don’t you know that a man’s word is his bond?”

“That’s how it turned out…”

Chae Gyu-ho, who came to find Jin-hyuk, looked like he was about to cry, but Jin-hyuk closed his eyes and ignored Chae Gyu-ho.

Why did this guy keep calling the class president of another class ‘class president’?

What was a man’s word in an election, you naive guy? He had encouraged him to run, saying he was the top student in the school, but now it seemed like he was just testing the waters.

“But what kind of promises are you going to make?”

“Don’t you know about secret ballots?”

“What are you talking about? The vote is secret, but the promises are made to the voters to promise to carry them out during the campaign period.”

Okay, that’s enough. Jin-hyuk calmly raised his hand and cut off Chae Gyu-ho’s words.

He was muttering nonsense, saying that a guy who said a man’s word was his bond was overusing the word ‘bond’.

‘This guy is too smart.’

He made him speechless.

Looking back, it seemed like he had taught him too much since they became partners in the first year.

‘They say you shouldn’t take in a black-haired beast.’

Was he a black-haired beast?

Anyway, he was a friend who was capable of logical and rational conversation among the hormone-dominated males, but Jin-hyuk didn’t enjoy chatting.

‘Because it’s tiring.’

No matter how much he trained his body, mental fatigue was not something that could be easily offset.

The other candidates went around the school, appealing for votes. They went to every class from the first to the third grade and shook hands. They had seen it somewhere…

Jin-hyuk didn’t even do that. It wasn’t because he was confident of winning.

‘I’m embarrassed.’

He was worried that he had run for the election for no reason.

As Jin-hyuk remained quiet, his classmates, who had been cheering him on, quickly lost interest.

The teachers who entered for class occasionally showed interest.

“Is there a guy running here too?”

“It’s the class president.”

“Hmm, okay. He’s qualified.”

That was it.

It was because the teachers also knew how much of an outsider Son Jin-hyuk was among the students, even though he was a model student.

“Teacher!”

“Oh, why?”

When Lee Seung-hoon raised his hand, the teacher gestured with his chin.

“They get a day off for the National Assembly election, but why don’t we get a day off for the student council president election?”

“Come out.”

The teacher was merciless.

Seung-hoon was getting hit for saying unnecessary things.

Jin-hyuk and his friends chuckled as they watched Lee Seung-hoon get hit on the palm with a bamboo root pointer. That was what true friendship was all about.

***

Finally, the day of judgment dawned.

Jin-hyuk wore a sash with the number 5 on it and sat on a chair on the platform.

The blazing sun looked like a harbinger of destruction to Jin-hyuk. It meant that he didn’t want to stay on the platform.

‘Why am I nervous?’

To relieve his tension, he listened carefully to the other candidates’ speeches. After all, if there were good promises, it would be good to implement them for the voters, no matter who was elected.

However, Jin-hyuk had to hold back his laughter as he listened to the other candidates’ speeches. It was just because the young kids were imitating politicians, and because of their repertoire.

[If I become the student council president, the sales revenue from the vending machine drinks-.]

Even the high school president candidates said that.

It didn’t seem like they actually implemented it.

[I will only make promises that I can keep! I will create an academic atmosphere and make our Taeyang Middle School the best prestigious school in the country-.]

An academic atmosphere is good.

I guess that guy is trying to say that he can’t study because of the school atmosphere.

[So that you can borrow books from the library without any restrictions-.]

No, borrowing books from the library is a matter of will, and there have never been any restrictions. Candidate number 3 was a guy who had the talent to make the school a villain.

[A student council by the students, for the students, of the students-!]

I was wondering why that line wasn’t coming out.

Unable to bear the unbearable cliché, all the students who were listening in the schoolyard sighed. Some students yawned or drew pictures with their feet.

Regardless of the audience’s reaction, the three candidates were having a lively festival of nonsense.

Number 4 was Chae Gyu-ho.

The representative of the black-haired party, who was likely to be elected.

[I will stop the tyranny of the high school seniors who monopolize the schoolyard every lunch break!]

Then he glanced at Jin-hyuk, who was behind him.

Ignoring the bewildered Jin-hyuk, Chae Gyu-ho continued to shout with emphasis. His voice was still clear because his voice hadn’t changed yet. It was also somewhat sharp, which suited his nickname, Jaguar.

[Do you want a school without delinquent students? Do you want a school safe from smoking, glue, and gas? I, Chae Gyu-ho, will join hands with candidate Son Jin-hyuk, who is sitting behind me, for a safe school-.]

Hey, hey. What the hell are you doing without saying a word beforehand? That’s why the black-haired party representative is-.

Wowwwww-!

Oh? But surprisingly, the students’ reactions were good. Especially the first and second graders. It seemed like they had been watching the seniors’ behavior while attending school.

Chae Gyu-ho! Chae Gyu-ho!

The schoolyard was filled with voices chanting Chae Gyu-ho’s name.

‘Should I give up now?’

I should have unified the candidates with Gyu-ho.

While having absurd thoughts, it was Jin-hyuk’s turn.

He bowed his head, but the applause was smaller than the other four candidates. However, he was used to the coldness, and the silence was familiar.

He adjusted the microphone height with a blank expression and looked around at the friends and juniors gathered in the schoolyard.

The third-year classmates in their free clothes and the first and second graders in their uniforms. It was a disharmony caused by the application of uniforms to Jin-hyuk’s juniors from one year later.

Everyone was looking at Jin-hyuk, who had stepped onto the platform, with sparkling eyes.

Okay, let’s see what he has to say. That’s how it read in Jin-hyuk’s eyes.

Unable to bear the unbearable awkwardness, Jin-hyuk puffed out his cheeks.

‘Oh crap. I think I’m screwed.’

I miss my mom.