The Genius Decided To Live An Ordinary Life [EN]: Chapter 230

Blind date, my foot, and girlfriend? What a joke.

People tend to hang out with their own kind, so blind dates usually happen when one of your close friends who’s dating sets you up. Sometimes, they gather a group, but the overly popular ones are usually excluded.

Especially if that person is known nationwide.

“Who’d even think about going if they’re just gonna be interested in you?”

Lee Seung-hoon chuckled, anticipating the spring break. He looked at Jinhyuk as if he were a rare animal, wondering why he was suddenly showing interest in girls.

“I’m not interested either.”

“Yeah, right. You don’t even glance at someone like Mi-kyung, so what kind of beauty would catch your eye?”

‘Is this guy for real?’

He’s subtly hyping up his own girlfriend?

Jinhyuk wondered if there was something wrong with his personality.

It wasn’t his first life, and he wasn’t afraid of people anymore, but he still wasn’t interested in the opposite sex. But when he looked at his other friends, not all of them were oozing with male hormones and a masculine scent.

Choi Gyu-ho, whom he met during winter break, was like that, and so was Jo Seul-chan.

Choi Gyu-ho said he liked pretty girls like Shim Eun-ha or Woo Hee-jin, and Jo Seul-chan said he wasn’t interested in anyone who didn’t look like his mom. It seemed like neither of them would have much luck with dating. Those types of people weren’t common.

As for Yeom Byung-taek…

He’d already changed girlfriends three times.

And they were all older.

‘Yeom Byung is amazing.’

Seeing that, Jinhyuk figured it wasn’t a personality issue but a matter of personal preference. The only limitation was that his thoughts always ended with Hong Soo-jung in the future.

Shin Woo-sung, who was munching on the Choco Pie that came with the morning meal, looked at him with pity.

“I’m a lost cause, but it’s a shame about you, President. There are so many pretty girls.”

“I prefer natural encounters.”

“Huh?”

“What’s that?”

Shin Woo-sung and Lee Seung-hoon blinked at the same time.

“I’m saying I pursue that kind of thing.”

Shin Woo-sung and Lee Seung-hoon’s hands naturally went somewhere around their crotches.

‘These guys seem to have misunderstood something.’

“I don’t mean meeting and touching *that*, I mean pursuing natural encounters.”

“Aha-”

“Ohh-”

Jinhyuk had just used a word he’d heard by chance, but it seemed like it was too early for this word to become a new slang. Way too early.

“How did the class assignments turn out?”

“I’m in Class 4 again.”

“Me too, Class 4 this year.”

For the first time since the first year of middle school, the three of them were going to be together again.

‘They say time flies when you look back.’

When the same routine repeats, time doesn’t feel precious.

Looking back, time was like light, always ahead of people, and life was such that no footprints were left on the path you walked. Every office worker, every member of society, would feel the same as Jinhyuk.

‘But this time, it feels like it’s going so slow.’

It wasn’t just because he was still a student.

So much had happened.

Secrets only he knew, classified information shared with a limited number of people, and things that were made public for everyone to know. If it were the past, when he knew nothing and couldn’t do anything, these were achievements he couldn’t even imagine. Those events filled the gaps between light and time, making his life feel longer.

“Hey, Class President, I ran into Byung-taek the other day, and he seemed a bit upset. It was just a passing comment, though.”

Jinhyuk chuckled and nodded silently.

He would be upset. He only gave a pager to Jo Seul-chan.

“So I told him, ‘Woo-sung and I got one too.’ Then he was like, ‘Oh, really?’ He seems okay now.”

“Ugh-. President, did you give Mi-kyung one because she’s a girl? Mi-kyung has a solar panel and a house with a tractor and a combine… I mean, it’s not like I’m upset or anything-”

Shin Woo-sung, who had finished his 1000cc milk, asked while looking at Lee Seung-hoon.

“It’s not so much that I gave it because she’s a girl, but-”

‘I felt like I owed her a lot, and I wanted to repay her in any way I could.’

That’s why he also gave Choi Mi-kyung an expensive cell phone.

Of course, he kept the fact that he had a secure phone a secret.

That was a secret even from his family.

*

Pager codes were created and spread by everyone, and they had already become popular.

They were truly the nation of speed and transmission.

That’s probably why delivery apps like ‘Different Race’ [a play on words, referring to a popular delivery app] or ‘Here You Are’ would succeed in the future.

Beep beep beep-.

‘Who is it now?’

Jinhyuk’s pager was busy.

Probably busier than its owner.

Because it had to vibrate.

「3377954545454」

「1818181818181818」

Without checking the sender’s number, he knew it was Choi Mi-kyung.

When she was in a good mood, she would send the above numbers as a sign of support, and sometimes when she overslept and couldn’t take the bus with him, she would spam the number 1818.

‘Why are you yelling at me?’

She could just ask her boyfriend to wake her up.

Because of her outgoing personality, she sometimes seemed brash, but Choi Mi-kyung was a Confucian girl, so she never even held hands with Lee Seung-hoon. Her only expression of affection was a punch. It meant that she didn’t allow calls before dawn.

Once, she pressed 「505」, so he quickly checked it, and there was a voice message asking him to bring toilet paper because she ran out in the bathroom. To the women’s bathroom? He gave her a cell phone, and she was just using the pager for that in the bathroom.

That incident made Jinhyuk certain about Choi Mi-kyung.

‘She’s definitely crazy.’

Well, he couldn’t ignore a friend in need, so he responded by picking up some sycamore leaves from the schoolyard. An eye for an eye, a crazy person for a crazy person.

That’s how he received a pager full of 444s.

He ignored all unknown numbers, no matter how sweet the code was.

You couldn’t build relationships with everyone in the world.

‘It’s a headache and a mess.’

Friends, neighbors, and even his uncles.

His connections were already wide and complicated enough.

Some people pointed out that he spent too much time at home, but for Jinhyuk, his family was always his top priority. Jinhyuk was always worried that his family might be blown away by a typhoon, so they were like young children he had to take care of.

***

In February, when the sunlight couldn’t melt the cold wind, Jinhyuk went back and forth between his study and his room, thinking about a new workout program.

Han Yu-young and Son Gwang-yeon, who were sharing snacks in the living room, watched their eldest son with narrowed eyes. Jung-won was dozing off, and Yu-jin was meeting with Haeng-un through the slightly open living room door. It was a good opportunity for the couple to have a conversation.

‘Didn’t you hide the books, videos, and magazines in the study? Did you hide them well?’

‘Of course. No one can find them.’

‘Really? What if our son can’t sleep after seeing those things? He won’t grow taller.’

‘What if he doesn’t grow taller? If he grows any taller, he could become a basketball player. Isn’t he already taller than most basketball players?’

‘Are you sure you hid them well? What if he makes fun of us for watching those things?’

‘Don’t worry. I can’t find them either. Ah, where did I put them…’

‘We were going to watch Paradise again. Try to find them.’

‘Haa, where did Phoebe Cates go…’

Han Yu-young and Son Gwang-yeon, who had been rustling for a while, scratched the back of their heads when they saw the exercise books and old books in Jinhyuk’s hands. With embarrassed expressions.

‘Ahem, I guess he likes the warm room after visiting a hot country.’

‘Cough, cough. It’s normal for kids to need their own time when they get a little older.’

Regardless of his parents’ gaze, Jinhyuk searched through books and the internet.

He pondered what his shortcomings were and how he could create an opportunity for growth.

Hmm-.

‘The conclusion is that there’s no problem with my posture or stride…’

It’s not like he lacked strength either.

Now that he had emptied the mysterious energy, he no longer felt the frustration that came from having too much power. He was just frustrated with his skills, which only improved by 0.1 seconds after squeezing and squeezing.

‘Does that mean I’m lacking strength now?’

The raw power that suppresses physically and the strength used in footwork are clearly different.

Lost in thought, he even opened an anatomy book to study which muscles he needed to train.

‘Should I place the quadriceps and hamstrings higher?’

It was a challenge that was possible because he was not yet fully grown. If he got injured, he could ask Yu-jin for help, so he didn’t have to worry about his career.

‘Thick calves distribute force evenly on the ground, which helps with balance and the sergeant jump… What? I need to focus on one point, why am I built like this?’

His ankles were thin, but his calves rapidly thickened past the ankle bone, which also seemed like an area for improvement. When he compared them to photos of other track athletes, the difference was clear. Jinhyuk’s soleus muscle was more like a wrestler’s than a runner’s.

It was like a heavyweight bodybuilder running 100 meters in 10 seconds.

‘They say it’s the second heart.’

Was it a stretch to think that the energy that had been in Jinhyuk’s body since he was young had strengthened his heart, and that his soleus muscle, the second heart, had also become thicker?

‘Should I run long distances at medium speed and do weighted squats?’

Even though track and field was a full-body workout, it was a sport that mainly used the legs, and he was only now discovering areas for improvement in his leg muscles. He had been living too comfortably. Well, he was still fast enough that no one could compete with him.

He didn’t just study exercise during his free time.

‘Should I clear my head?’

Swoosh-.

A thick brown book with no title on the cover.

This was a book that Jinhyuk had compiled by writing down what Chun Gil-ryong had said. Chun Gil-ryong’s words were difficult, so he memorized them and then wrote them out. He wrote down the words he didn’t understand almost verbatim.

After being lectured by Hong Soo-jung about the blind date issue, he had been taking it out from time to time to learn how to navigate life.

‘It’s like a worm doing breakdancing in Tapgol Park [a park in Seoul known for elderly people gathering].’

He had written it in a rush to avoid forgetting it. Still, he wasn’t such a fool that he couldn’t recognize his own handwriting.

The subtitle and first sentence of the page he had just turned caught his eye.

「Filling Life」

「The choices of a moment gather like a river to form the sea of life.」

‘Wow, grandpa.’

‘Wow, that’s true. That’s a great saying.’

Could he believe that he had lived without knowing this obvious truth before?

He had never been interested in or needed to contemplate life, so it was more accurate to say that he had been uninterested rather than ignorant.

「…The biggest variable in the world is human, and that is oneself. The first step you take at any given moment can cause changes that encompass history. Will you step straight ahead, or half a step to the side? A person who walks as they please will have difficulty seeing even an inch ahead, let alone their future, while a person who moves according to a plan can predict not only their own path but also the paths of others. The responsibility for that lies entirely with them, and this is where humans are divided. Those who do as they please and blame others, and those who at least admit their own shortcomings and try to fix them…」

He had tried his best to rewrite it, but because he had tried to capture the feeling as much as possible, it was full of grammatical errors and slang. Still, if he read it repeatedly, he could somehow get the gist of it.

「…Desire is the driving force of life, but the final fruit will depend on what kind of heart you put first. Will you put worldly desires first, or will you follow the voice of your soul? Not only the size of the fruit but also the number of fruits will change, and this is determined by how you take each step. That is life, and no one is an exception…」

‘Haa, it’s still difficult.’

Hmm-.

A long sigh escaped him.

‘Many choices have made my life what it is today.’

Looking back, he had always paved his own way since he was nine years old. Knowing that it was only once, experiencing what was meaningful and what was futile, and protecting what he should never lose.

‘I also chose the future.’

Other friends would decide on their career paths in their third year, but Jinhyuk had already completed his future plans. That’s why he had been living one year like ten years and making things happen.

He felt proud.

Along with the fact that he had a healthy and loving family, the fact that he had never wasted a single moment was a source of pride for Jinhyuk.

‘I should take a nap and then try working out with the changed program.’

He needed to start with hip and leg exercises to break records that wouldn’t be broken for 25,000 years.

He laid down on the soft bed with the blanket.

Enjoying the soft winter blanket and wiggling his arms and legs, this was heaven.

As he accepted the coziness that he felt all over his body and the thrill of his spine relaxing, a pleasant drowsiness quickly came over his human body.

‘Heh, this is nice.’

Just as his eyes were closing-

“Jinhyuk-ahhh!”

His mother’s voice, as if tearing apart, came from the first floor.

‘Huh?’

As if he had never been drowsy, his eyes snapped open.

Normally, he would have just fallen asleep or hesitated to answer, but his mother’s voice was unusual enough that he couldn’t take it lightly.

“Jinhyuk-ahhh!”

“Kyaaa-.”

Wasn’t that more like a scream?

Even in the short moment it took him to get out of bed at the speed of light, he considered what situation could have made his mother call him so desperately. It was a calculation only possible for someone who kept his steps within his stride and kept the situation he wanted to control within his sight.

‘Jung-won!’

Without even having time to wonder what was going on, Jinhyuk burst through the door.

Thump thump-!