The Genius Decided To Live An Ordinary Life [EN]: Chapter 258

She’s always unpredictable, and you never know what she’ll do next, but Yoo Se-ra’s charm, which could almost be called magical, shone brightly once again.

— Okay, I’m taking the kids too. I’ll take care of Yu-jin.

A decisiveness that no one can imitate.

Even if it’s thanks to her wealth and the relaxed attitude that comes from a privileged upbringing, it was a charm that was more than enough to captivate others.

“Could Jin Seon-gyu go with us, by any chance?”

Jin Seon-gyu was a nine-year-older athlete who placed second after Jin-hyeok at the Busan competition and barely met the qualifying standard. If Jin-hyeok hadn’t been there, he would have been the only athlete to compete in the Olympics in the short distance, and the media would have been all over him. But as it was, he was enjoying a quiet prime, overshadowed by Jin-hyeok, who had pioneered uncharted territory.

— Sure. What’s the big deal about adding one more person to the plane? But I don’t know if the athlete will be okay with it.

Yoo Se-ra was worried about the pride of the athlete from the professional team who had been pushed aside by a much younger athlete. As the top player on the adult stage, it was a concern that anyone could understand.

“Could you suggest it to the federation? I don’t know how it would look if I said it.”

— Sigh, fine. It’s my athlete asking.

I thought she would react with ‘Why me?’, but she was surprisingly cooperative.

Looking at it again, it’s a decisiveness and character that no one can imitate.

“You must be spending a lot of money on chartering a plane and getting a mansion.”

— Expenses? Why worry about that? I’m Yoo Se-ra.

We can’t leave out Yoo Se-ra’s wealth.

The catchphrase she always uses, ‘I’m Yoo Se-ra,’ probably means ‘I’m rich.’

Whew-.

Now that Yoo Se-ra has agreed, one hurdle is over.

“Haha! You rascal-.”

“Hehe-.”

He ruffled his younger brother’s already messy hair even more.

What am I going to do with those shining eyes looking at her older brother while carrying the sleeping baby in a mint-colored sling?

Yu-jin, who had heard the whole conversation, had an excited expression.

“Let’s go.”

He pinched Yu-jin’s cheek lightly and left the house.

He had something to talk about with his parents, who were laughing and chatting in the vegetable garden.

Although there was a vacancy in the company housing, Jo Seul-chan and his grandmother decided to continue living in the mud house. They had already completed their change of address. Leaving aside the fact that Yu-jin had put her foot down with Jo Seul-chan, saying she wouldn’t leave until the boat was built, there was a decision for her grandmother behind the reason they stayed.

The moment she heard that there was a vacancy in the company housing, the smile disappeared from her grandmother’s face, who always smiled. She was happy touching the soil every day, picking greens, planting seeds, and strolling around the neighborhood, so it was a perfectly natural reaction.

— “If you like it here, live here.”

So, this time too, Mom stepped in.

There were no empty houses left in the village, so even new residents were having a hard time finding land and building new houses. She readily offered the mud house, saying there was no need to build a new one when there was already a house.

Jo Il-heon’s words that old people who used to touch the soil would get sick or wither away if they went to the city or apartments helped with that decision.

When they arrived at the vegetable garden, his grandmother, parents, and Jo Seul-chan were all happily chatting while pulling garlic scapes from the garlic field.

“It was when Jin-hyeok was about Yu-jin’s age, and he kept going in and out of the backyard. I followed him to see what he was doing, and he was opening the jar of pickled garlic scapes and taking them out one by one.”

“Oh my-, how delicious must it have been for that little one to do that-?”

It was a memory that Jin-hyeok also remembered.

For the side dishes they would eat for the year, his mother made pickled radish, pickled vegetables, etc., herself, and they tasted great with just salt, sugar, and vinegar.

Jin-hyeok would open the jar, remove the round stone that pressed down on the garlic scapes, and chew on the long garlic scapes like little snakes.

‘I gave some to Mi-kyung too.’

It was partly because there were no snacks, but it was definitely an addictive taste.

Memories are memories, and now there are other important matters that take precedence.

“Um-.”

“Mommy-, look at me. Jung-won is on my back!”

Yu-jin quickly made her move. It was a ploy to score points before she had to ask for something.

“Aigoo-, our youngest fell asleep on her sister’s back-.”

Mom, holding a handful of garlic scapes, smiled, tilting her hat.

“Um-.”

“Did I do well?”

Hey, let me talk too.

“Ummu-.”

“I’m going to study English too! I am a Son Yu-jin!”

Okay. Go ahead and talk all you want first.

It seemed like it would be Jin-hyeok’s turn only after Yu-jin was done talking.

Sigh-.

Jin-hyeok, letting out a deep sigh, just looked at the clouds floating in the sky. They look like passenger planes.

Chatter chatter-.

Giggle giggle-.

Ah, I have to go in and study too.

I have to exercise, and there are so many things to do.

*

Finally, he brought up the topic and sat on the porch with his parents.

“What?”

“Ah, that’s a bit-.”

His dad and mom’s reactions were as expected.

What about school, Jin-hyeok has to train and participate in competitions, and who will take care of Yu-jin, etc. It was a reaction that parents would naturally show.

But I can’t back down here.

“The director said she would take care of Yu-jin.”

“What if that clumsy person loses our daughter?”

As expected, Dad knows too much about Yoo Se-ra.

Not long ago, she went to work with the TV remote control instead of her cell phone.

“There will be staff and bodyguards accompanying her, so it’s okay.”

“Still, I wonder if our Yu-jin will be okay without her mom… If it weren’t for Dad and Jung-won, I would go with her to take care of her…”

Mom seemed to be more disappointed that she couldn’t go than worried about sending Yu-jin.

“Yu-jin and I are the only ones in our family who haven’t been to the US. We’ll go this time.”

“If you’re going to say that, Jung-won hasn’t been either.”

Dad, protesting in a low voice, trailed off at the end of his sentence.

He must know that it’s a ridiculous excuse even to himself.

“Jung-won was made in America-, cough-!”

“Ahem-!”

“Ehem-!”

Because he is the type of person who doesn’t talk much because he is careful not to hurt others, he doesn’t talk much, but there is no one in the Son family who can beat Jin-hyeok in a war of words.

Since it was a place to ask for his parents’ permission, he thought he would be looking at his mom and dad, but Yu-jin was staring at her older brother with her mouth wide open. It was an encouraging look.

I held back because of Yu-jin.

Jung-won also went on a trip to Hawaii with Mom and Dad. He was with Dad and then moved to Mom.

It was difficult for Yu-jin to understand, and it was something that only a scoundrel would say in front of his parents.

“We need to move quickly to take Yu-jin’s passport photo and apply for her passport.”

Son Gwang-yeon and Han Yu-young turned their gaze to their daughter.

She kept nudging her younger sister, who was fast asleep, even drooling, looking like the eldest daughter of a poor family taking care of her younger sibling. Her big eyes, which seemed to be looking this way and not looking this way like a general, and her messy hairstyle combined to create the epitome of shabbiness and pity. The constant nudging must have been a result of her anxiety.

How much does that little one want to go to be like that?

But does she even know where she’s going?

“I’ll assign Team Leader Yang to you, so go and come back safely. Be careful.”

“Don’t stray from Aunt Se-ra.”

Son Yu-jin’s mouth stretched wide from side to side.

Her arms and legs were spread out like a jumping frog.

“Hehehehehehehe-. I am a Son Yu-jiiiiiiiiin-!”

***

“How are you going to manage with the exam time so tight?”

“It’s okay.”

After all, I always finished the 50-minute exam in less than 30 minutes, so what’s the big deal?

‘As expected, it came from the past exam papers.’

Internal exams never deviate from the past exam papers.

And even if the schools are different, the past exam papers are similar.

It must be because the world situation, the political world, as well as the education, business, and social culture have changed, but humans have not.

‘It was a problem that came up even when I was in private high school.’

It was called associative mnemonics [a memory technique that links new information to existing memories].

It was a method that Jin-hyeok had completed himself when he was studying in the past.

It wasn’t an ability he had from the beginning.

Since the only thing he enjoyed was studying, he read and reread everything with letters on it. Books, notebooks, exam papers, reference books, newspapers, even advertisements. As he repeated it, he had the experience of storing it in his head as if he were scanning it.

‘This problem even has the same typo.’

However, the combinations of letters in newspapers, papers, and reports that he had simply glanced at were highly volatile, so he had a hard time recalling them in this life. There weren’t many opportunities to use them either.

It was still a blessing that the things he had experienced with his body and the knowledge he had understood and accepted as his own remained and helped him.

‘Was that power the problem? The one that devoured the ego.’

After expelling the energy, things started to come back to life one by one, as if data that had been backed up somewhere was being restored. Not only the high school curriculum but also the bar exam questions that he had studied while holed up in a high school dormitory in his past life.

‘I should have looked at the college entrance exam papers more.’

Who knew he would regress?

Who would repeatedly look at the college scholastic ability test [Korean SAT] several times when their college admission was confirmed? Only a cram school instructor would do that.

“I’ve finished everything.”

When the exam was over, the student affairs officer collected the answer sheets and exam papers.

And he handed out new exam papers and answer sheets.

“Next is math.”

“Yes.”

Math.

It was one of the joys I discovered after coming back.

I had a past where I was devoted to studying, but it wasn’t because I enjoyed it. I was obsessed with it because reading and rereading black printed material made my mind turn black and calmed my confused and lonely feelings.

So, the way Jin-hyeok solved math problems in the past was mechanical.

‘Trigonometric functions are a bit not my thing.’

For example, with equations, he would repeat substitution and replacement infinitely.

And the calculations were as simple as possible.

For simple problems, he would find the answer by repeatedly substituting arbitrary answers, and for more advanced problems, he would simplify the calculations by substituting common unknowns or calculations with arbitrary unknowns. Then substitute again.

‘This is fun.’

Now, solving math problems is enjoyable.

It’s not about wrestling with black letters printed on gray paper.

Even if I don’t have to find an easy way, the step-by-step process of solving the problem made my heart flutter as if I were adventuring into the world of the exam paper with just a mechanical pencil. It was like having a conversation with the number and finding the key to move on to the next step.

‘Life itself is a function-.’

If, if, if, repeating the ifs.

There is no math more difficult and complex than life.

‘The proposition that numbers exist to be calculated is false.’

For Jin-hyeok, numbers were a language.

A language that exists everywhere and nowhere, like a god.

Swish swish-.

If I were completely reborn as a science student, would it be an exaggeration? I was able to solve physics, chemistry, and biology, which had a lot of memorization, without difficulty. It was the result of associative mnemonics combined with additional learning.

It would be easy to understand if two different brains were combined like a photograph, but with clear image quality without any traces of synthesis.

‘This problem seems like it was difficult in the past, but it’s easy to solve?’

Even though the world has completely changed and the history of the era I lived in is now useless, there is nothing more to wish for than the fact that the studies and knowledge I have explored have come back to life. Overdoing it is always a no-no.

“I’ve finished everything.”

I took all the exams in one day.

I wasn’t sleepy because my brain was activated from running all day, but I was overcome with extreme exhaustion and fatigue. This is what it’s like to be human.

“You worked hard. Was it manageable?”

“Yes.”

The student affairs officer, who had been grading his own subject, politics and economics, by eye while Jin-hyeok was taking the exam, had a dark face that had turned white.

He wondered if he had made the questions too easy, but it was a baseless suspicion. He had used the past exam papers, so the difficulty level should be similar to before. It was better for his mental health to just think that this guy was weird.

“Then-.”

“Okay! Have a good trip! I trust you, but don’t talk about the exam questions with your friends.”

Of course.

I had already rejected Choi Mi-kyung’s ridiculous temptation to tell her the exam questions in exchange for a T-shirt.

A T-shirt?

What does Son Jin-hyeok lack?

‘You rascal, what’s with just one?’

Not even two.

No, no. Three.