Naturally, there was no way Son Cha-hee and Yoon Su-a could single out a particular student in a situation like this.
“We don't mind who we're grouped with.”
Son Cha-hee answered firmly.
It was exactly what Cha Do-do had intended. Unless the girls already had someone in mind, it would be difficult for them to name anyone in this atmosphere.
Satisfied with the result, Cha Do-do picked up the group-assignment sheet she had prepared in advance.
“All right, then. I'll announce the groups.”
“Miss! Can't we make our own groups?”
Some students were still reluctant to give up and pleaded with her.
“I'd like to let you, but you saw what just happened, didn't you? Someone got rejected on the spot.”
“Urgh!”
Devastated, Go Hyeon-seong dropped his head onto his desk.
Cha Do-do then called out the members of all four groups.
“Now, please rearrange your seats according to your groups.”
Kang Woo gathered his things, stood up, and went over to sit beside the girls.
His group members were Son Cha-hee, Yoon Su-a, and Choi Dae-woo. There were the two girls and that large, easygoing-looking fellow from Ulleungdo Island.
He immediately understood his homeroom teacher's intentions. She had paired the two students she expected to struggle because they had not studied ahead with the strongest student in the class.
He had never particularly wanted such preferential treatment, but there was no reason to refuse something freely offered. Besides, he was relieved that he was at least acquainted with them.
Kang Woo greeted his group members.
“Hi, I'm Kang Woo.”
For some reason, however, the looks he received in return were rather chilly.
At that moment, Son Cha-hee's thoughts were in turmoil.
The group assignments could affect their grades, so she could not help weighing the advantages and disadvantages.
Ideally, she would have been grouped with someone like Jeon Sang-cheol, who ranked second in the class. But on reflection, the situation was not entirely bad.
If Choi Dae-woo and Kang Woo knew next to nothing, neither would be able to take the lead in the group. Meanwhile, she was accustomed to taking charge and directing others. That would give her ample opportunity to distinguish herself however she pleased.
Son Cha-hee decided this arrangement might actually suit her very well. She was confident in every subject anyway, so she had no particular need for another student's help.
'And I can't afford to get on the homeroom teacher's bad side.'
There had to be a reason their sharp-eyed, meticulous teacher had arranged the groups this way. She probably wanted Son Cha-hee to look after the two boys, whose grades might be so poor that they could end up ostracized.
Neither of them had done any advanced study, so they would be of no use academically. She could only hope that they would at least work diligently on experiments and collaborative assignments...
Choi Dae-woo, with his broad build and easygoing air, seemed like the sort who would obediently do as he was told. Kang Woo, on the other hand, looked rather sharp and difficult to handle. There was a strangely rebellious air about him.
'This feels like a disaster...'
Then Son Cha-hee suddenly recalled what had happened at the café that morning. Kang Woo had explained a difficult problem without the slightest hesitation. Perhaps he possessed some unexpected flashes of brilliance after all?
'No, there's no way.'
She kept glancing at Kang Woo and sighing heavily.
Yoon Su-a, sitting beside her and apparently oblivious to her worries, had already hit it off with Choi Dae-woo and Kang Woo and was chatting away with them.
* * *
The hectic day finally came to an end.
After a hearty dinner, Kang Woo received his dormitory assignment. In fact, this had been the part of the day he was most concerned about.
At Goryeo Science High School, students were generally assigned two to a room. In other words, he would have a roommate. Just because he had become a new high school student did not mean all the habits and routines from his previous life had vanished. Sharing a room with a boy whose mental age was so much younger than his own would give him plenty to worry about.
That was why he was particularly concerned about choosing a roommate.
Fortunately, the school respected the students' preferences when assigning dormitory rooms.
The only people Kang Woo knew were his classmates. He did not have any close friends among them, of course, but someone he knew would still be better than a complete stranger.
While Kang Woo was considering whom to choose as his roommate, Choi Dae-woo, the boy from Ulleungdo Island, approached him.
“Haaah, want to share a room with me?”
Kang Woo studied Choi Dae-woo with a thoughtful expression.
He was built like a bear and seemed so good-natured that they probably would not clash much as roommates... But was there anyone else?
As Kang Woo looked around, he met the eyes of several other students who were clearly avoiding him. Go Hyeon-seong, the boy who had been hovering around Son Cha-hee, was making an especially obvious effort to stay away.
'...Have I become an outcast already?'
Apparently, he had made some sort of mistake during the introductions. Worried that he might otherwise end up sharing a room with an even more troublesome student, Kang Woo quickly agreed.
“Sure. Let's be roommates.”
And so Kang Woo ended up sharing a room with Choi Dae-woo.
Although he had made the decision almost on impulse, he could not deny that the two glowing S grades above Choi Dae-woo's head made the boy particularly interesting to him.
Kang Woo collected the parcel he had sent ahead and unpacked it in his dormitory room. The parcel contained little more than bedding, clothes, and a few everyday necessities. Even so, they were enough to make the room reasonably comfortable.
He glanced to the side and saw that Choi Dae-woo's belongings were not much different from his own. Just as he had guessed, the boy seemed content to live without making much fuss.
“Don't you think we're going to get along pretty well?”
Choi Dae-woo, who had finished unpacking and was sitting on his bed, was the first to speak.
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“Haaah, Ulleungdo is so far away that I can't go home on weekends.”
“So?”
“Your home is far away too, right? I was thinking we might be the only two left in the dormitory on weekends.”
He had a point.
Every student at Goryeo Science High School lived in the dormitories, but half of them had homes in Seoul. Most students therefore went home on weekends and attended private academies in Daechi-dong.
Naturally, the school became almost deserted on weekends. Only a handful of students who lived far away remained. Of course, during exam periods, students tended not to leave campus...
“Hah. What fun are two guys going to have hanging around together?”
Kang Woo answered gruffly.
Now that he was sitting on a bed in a warm room, exhaustion washed over him and his whole body grew sluggish. He had gotten up before dawn and been on the move ever since.
“Haaah, you said you solved the last physics problem, didn't you?”
Just then, Choi Dae-woo abruptly changed the subject.
Was that problem really so special? Then again, it was not strange for someone to take an interest in a particularly difficult exam question...
Kang Woo answered casually.
“Why?”
“I couldn't solve it properly. I'd never learned how. But you said you hadn't gone to an academy either, so how did you manage it?”
How should he answer? He had to choose his words carefully, or he might end up discouraging a growing student. Especially one with S-grade potential whom he had taken such an interest in.
“If you've never learned something, it's only natural that you can't solve it. There's absolutely nothing shameful about not knowing something you haven't been taught. What's embarrassing is not understanding something even after you've learned it.”
“Really?”
“You've got to be smart to get into this school, right? But from what I've seen, there seem to be more excellent students here than genuinely gifted ones.”
“Haaah! What's the difference between an excellent student and a gifted student?”
“An excellent student understands something after being taught. A gifted student, or a genius, can understand it without being taught. In other words, knowing a lot when you first enter school isn't necessarily such a good thing.”
It was something Kang Woo had only come to understand after devoting himself to research and completing his degrees.
Some children earned reputations as prodigies or geniuses from an early age. But most of those students were manufactured geniuses.
If an elementary school child was taught calculus, even a child who was not a genius could learn to follow the procedures mechanically. Such a child was undoubtedly an excellent student, but that did not make them the kind of genius who would carry the nation's future on their shoulders.
“Still, won't the students who've studied ahead get better grades? From what I heard today... Son Cha-hee, the top student in our class, was one of the best at a famous academy. Won't someone like her do well here too?”
Choi Dae-woo, who had not attended an academy, seemed to have been somewhat intimidated by the other students throughout the day.
Kang Woo chuckled and waved a hand dismissively.
“Maybe, if you're only talking about high school. They've already learned the material, so they get at least one more chance to review it. But in our country, education is all about the college entrance exam. Even students who get a head start eventually reach the same exam as everyone else. A kid who starts working through a standard mathematics textbook in elementary school just keeps going over that same textbook until graduation, doesn't he? There's no further progress.”
“That's true.”
“On average, our students perform well academically through high school, but the rankings can reverse at university. And when they move on to higher levels where studying ahead no longer matters, they can actually fall behind. Whatever advantage they gained by learning things early at an academy can disappear in no time. Over the course of a long life, it's nothing to worry about.”
Choi Dae-woo fell silent, apparently struggling to make sense of what he had heard.
Now that they were talking freely, Kang Woo remembered the S-grade letters he had seen.
“By the way... are you good at Earth science?”
“Hm? Oh! I'm interested in astronomy more than Earth science. I used to look at the stars a lot on Ulleungdo.”
Well, the stars in the night sky would certainly be far more visible on Ulleungdo than in Seoul.
“You're from the countryside too... Didn't you see a lot of stars?”
“Hm? Y-yeah, that's right.”
Stars? He had barely seen anything beyond streetlights. In truth, Kang Woo could count on one hand the number of days he had actually spent living in the countryside. He had hardly ever had the opportunity to look at the stars.
Kang Woo guessed that Choi Dae-woo had developed an interest in astronomy while gazing at the stars, and that his interest had gradually expanded into physics and mathematics.
As the two continued chatting quietly, an announcement came over the speaker installed in their room.
“Student Kang Woo, please come to the dormitory supervisor's office.”
To his surprise, someone was calling for Kang Woo.
“That's you, isn't it?”
“That's my name... But why are they calling me? That's kind of scary.”
It was more bothersome than frightening, really. Wearing a weary expression, Kang Woo rose from his bed.
“Want me to come with you?”
Kang Woo had never been so glad to hear Choi Dae-woo offer something. Having friends really did have its advantages.
* * *
When Kang Woo entered the dormitory supervisor's office, he found the teacher he had met at the table during lunch.
He was the one who had asked about the final Earth science problem, suggested that Kang Woo choose Earth science for his research project, and said they should meet sometime soon.
Seen up close, the teacher had a rather kindly face and appeared to be in his mid-thirties, roughly the same age Kang Woo had been in his previous life.
Upon seeing Kang Woo and Choi Dae-woo, the teacher introduced himself first.
“It's good to meet you. I'm the dormitory supervisor. I teach Earth science. To be more precise, my specialty is astronomy—or rather, astrophysics. My name is Kim Seon-ho.”
Kang Woo immediately understood. So that was why the teacher had asked how he had solved the last Earth science problem.
When Kang Woo glanced at Choi Dae-woo beside him, he saw that the boy's face had brightened considerably. With his keen interest in astronomy, Choi Dae-woo was staring at the teacher in rapt attention, as if he were meeting his favorite celebrity.
“You said your name was Kang Woo... And what's your name?”
“Haaah, I'm Choi Dae-woo. I'm very interested in astronomy, so I came along.”
Choi Dae-woo hastily introduced himself.
“Is that so? Have you done much stargazing?”
“My hometown is Ulleungdo.”
“Ah, I see!”
Kim Seon-ho immediately realized who he was. Choi Dae-woo was the first student ever to come to this school from Ulleungdo, so he had already become something of a talking point among the teachers.
After their brief introductions, Kim Seon-ho got to the reason he had called Kang Woo in.
“So, how did you solve the last Earth science problem?”
“As my teacher told you during lunch...”
“What I'm curious about is that it wasn't the sort of problem you could solve simply by studying ahead. You might learn about buoyancy in physics, but to connect it to an environmental issue...”
Kang Woo struggled to find a suitable answer.
The problem had tested broad scientific understanding rather than detailed knowledge from a particular subject. He had been able to solve it not simply because he was good at physics or Earth science, but because he had lived far longer than the other students and had spent all that time immersed in science. Scientific thinking had become second nature to him.
But explaining that was another matter. He could hardly admit that it was the result of spending some twenty years conducting research.
“That's what you call understanding something without ever being taught. It's one of the characteristics of a genius.”
When Kang Woo remained silent, Kim Seon-ho seemed to draw his own conclusion and studied him with a meaningful look.
Choi Dae-woo's eyes widened at those words.
'Huh? Haven't I heard that somewhere before?'
Kim Seon-ho had just said the same thing Kang Woo had told Choi Dae-woo back in their room.
Kang Woo himself, meanwhile, was preoccupied with concealing his thoughts.
'I think this teacher has gotten the wrong idea about me...'
Still, making a favorable impression could hardly hurt.
He was a little worried about where this might lead, but at the same time, he was pleased to discover a teacher who shared his way of thinking.
Unlike the other teachers, Kim Seon-ho was quite warm and considerate. Thanks to him, Kang Woo even began wondering whether choosing Earth science rather than physics as his research subject might not be such a bad idea after all.