Ch.170Second Year (5)

Ireh Hazlen. She approached me with a textbook tucked under her arm.

Judging by the evident fatigue in her dark eyes, she must have just finished her General Physics lecture.

“Why on earth are they covering the full curriculum starting from orientation…”

Ireh muttered.

Ireh had never chosen a science or engineering major in any of her previous cycles. In most cycles, she hadn’t even enrolled at Stellarium, and when she did, she typically chose military studies or linguistics.

This must be her first experience with this.

I need to help her.

“It’s hard even though I studied in advance. The level here is too high. The students are intimidating.”

“It’s always like that at first. Keep studying and it’ll get better.”

Encouraging the protagonist is part of my job.

Unlike Mezulen, Ireh’s eyes brightened with just a few words of encouragement. She must have a fundamentally strong mentality.

“Want to take a walk to clear the air a bit?”

“…Sure.”

We took a light stroll around the campus.

“It’s peaceful.”

“Indeed.”

The sound of people laughing and chatting on benches. Children playing on the campus grounds. Water flowing from the fountain. Ancient trees playing melodies with the wind. Birds singing in chorus.

I wish these sounds could continue forever.

But no one except Ireh and me knows.

That the explosion of Quasar B-34, which will attract countless foreign gods, is not far away.

“…have to.”

“Pardon?”

Ireh mumbled again. She was maintaining a distance of 3-4 steps from me, like someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her precise footwork was so sharp it suggested nervousness.

“…have to protect it.”

“Yes.”

I could guess what she was thinking without spending any Pron.

“I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s about my major. I looked at this concept again but I still don’t understand it…”

Ireh opened her textbook to show me.

“Is this a question from your lecture?”

“Yes.”

My goodness, this year’s professor is teaching intensively. I can’t believe they’ve already covered this material.

“Why didn’t you ask the professor directly?”

“Well… it’s a bit, how should I say, intimidating.”

“I understand.”

Of course, professors can be intimidating at first. Especially for someone like Ireh who couldn’t focus on studies until now.

“You could ask classmates sitting next to you or behind you. Physics majors here are all hardcore physics nerds. They’ll explain kindly if you ask.”

“That’s hard too. It’s also intimidating.”

“Why?”

“Looking around, everyone except me was male.”

Male?

Everyone?

Does she mean the gender ratio is 1:0 excluding Ireh?

“…You don’t have any female classmates?”

Ireh quietly nodded at my question.

That’s awkward in a way.

“It’s a bit, how should I put it. Being the only woman makes me feel like I’m getting strange looks. I know that’s not really the case, but still… sigh.”

Ireh let out a long sigh.

“I shouldn’t be having these delusions…”

“Try not to be too conscious of it.”

Seeing her psychological burden, I deliberately increased the distance between us. But something was strange. Every time I took a step back, Ireh took a step forward. She seemed to be maintaining the distance.

What’s going on?

I added:

“There are several female professors in the department. Why not ask them, or try asking questions remotely?”

“Not yet. I’d be lucky if they don’t mock me for not knowing such basic things.”

“Come on, it’ll be fine.”

“I’d rather just ask you this time.”

“Alright then…”

I looked around. Our walk had brought us to the campus café.

We naturally entered the café. I ordered two coffees, the essential tool of college students.

“Shall we sit at that table?”

“This spot is perfect.”

Ireh sat at a fairly spacious table. Calculating the width, there was still about 2-3 steps between us. Here, I formed a hypothesis.

Ireh Hazlen wants to maintain a certain distance from me.

“Here. This part I don’t understand.”

Ireh carefully turned the book toward me. Several concepts were marked with asterisks. These were advanced topics, difficult for a first-year student.

Future general physics is different from what I studied on Earth. The content is more extensive and the difficulty level higher.

However, as a specialist, explaining or solving these problems wasn’t particularly difficult. I calmly explained to Ireh using analogies until she understood.

When I finished my explanation, Ireh let out a short sigh.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just wondering why I couldn’t think of it that way…”

“You’ve been studying for less than a year. I wasn’t brilliant enough to explain things like this from the beginning either.”

Ireh reluctantly agreed.

“You really aren’t the Eidel I knew.”

“Why state the obvious now?”

“Just. It’s reassuring.”

Just. I noticed Ireh had a habit of frequently using the word “just.” And each time, she would accompany it with a sigh. This was another aspect of her I hadn’t known from just reading documents.

Ireh said:

“On one hand I’m reassured, but on the other hand I’m anxious. The future has changed, and this is a pattern I haven’t seen before. What if this path also leads to destruction? What if I die and can’t go back in time?”

“…”

“That’s what I fear. I still don’t know how strong the enemy is. I’m not even sure how to win. In fact, I’m just a fool who suffered continuously and was finally rescued by you. That’s exactly where I stand right now.”

“I suppose that’s possible.”

My casual response made Ireh’s eyes widen slightly.

“…Sorry. Do I sound like I’m whining?”

“No. It’s a reasonable anxiety, I understand.”

I stirred my coffee and tried to comfort her.

“Even if you convince yourself you’ll win, it’s natural to keep feeling anxious. It’s human instinct. Our ancestors were cautious when facing unknown threats. That gene is still imprinted in us today.”

Because ancestors who weren’t cautious all died.

“So feeling anxious despite your determination isn’t your fault, junior. Even without foreign gods, the prospects for physics majors are, well, a bit challenging compared to other fields, right?”

I was the same.

When I decisively chose theoretical physics, my family and acquaintances all tried to dissuade me. The uncertainty about the future was too great. I was scared too, as any human would be.

“Shall I tell you my story?”

“…Your story?”

I hadn’t shared much of my personal history with her.

Just that I’m from a different world than you.

I like physics.

That’s about all I had revealed.

“Yes. When I was in the other world, I lived a difficult life. Just as you struggled in the border zone, I was born and raised in a harsh environment.”

I know Ireh well, but Ireh doesn’t know me well yet.

That’s why.

I thought I’d share a bit about my life this time.

***

The boy grew up in a poor household.

Whenever it rained, water dripped from the ceiling of his semi-basement room. The ceiling was moldy and discolored, and five or six dead insects were always stuck in the frame of the fifth-rate refrigerator.

“Poverty bred unhappiness. My parents didn’t get along. Kitchen utensils would fly around at the slightest provocation, and occasionally when plates broke, it was my job to sweep up the pieces and throw them in the trash.”

Ireh was the same.

People living on frontier planets were often violent due to madness. Her parents were no exception.

Unable to afford even a cheap first-generation android, she had to repair broken windows by hand and constantly clean the sand accumulated on the window frames. Constantly, constantly, constantly.

“Why did they act that way?”

“It’s simple. We had no money.”

The direct cause was his father’s alcoholism. But the essence was financial. Without money, his father turned to loan sharks and gambling, and naturally, the family sank.

“Money. It’s important.”

“…Yes.”

Ireh moistened her lips bitterly. The boy continued.

“In the end, my father crossed the line. He took even the last emergency fund my mother had secretly saved and used it on roulette. We went bankrupt. So when I became this person, I felt absolutely terrible.”

“So. What happened next?”

“Here’s where things get a bit deflating.”

The boy’s father soon disappeared without a trace. Because of this, loan sharks constantly harassed the boy’s mother. His mother couldn’t respond properly.

“Bankruptcy! She could have filed for bankruptcy!”

“My mother didn’t know at first.”

“But why…”

“If she had known about such things properly from the beginning, would she have taken loans from sharks?”

“…You’re right. That’s true. That’s how it was.”

Ireh could empathize. Even though bankruptcy protection systems existed in the world, there were more people who couldn’t utilize them properly because they didn’t know about them. People in the blind spots of the legal system. Ireh was one of them.

“Feeling like there was no way out, I went to my teacher.”

The boy said.

“Teacher, how should I live to avoid being poor? And the teacher said: First, you need to study well in any field. Second, you need to do what you want to do.”

“Study…”

“If I want to be an idol, then practicing dance would be studying too. But back then, I thought only Korean and math counted as studying. So that’s all I did obsessively.”

It was difficult at first. There was no immediate reward, and he didn’t know why he was doing it.

“I wondered if this was really helpful for life, so I looked into it. Someone told me to read general books, not just boring textbooks. They said if I read various things, I could find what suits my aptitude.”

That’s how he came across a popular science book on physics.

“At first, it was just okay. I wondered what was so interesting about it. But I persevered and read it to the end, thinking I would thoroughly digest this one book.”

But as he continued, it became fun.

The first reading was different, the second reading was different, and the tenth reading was different.

After immersing himself in one book, a new path appeared.

The boy became absorbed in other books as well, and eventually, a new perspective began to dawn on him.

“I decided my goal would be to understand the fundamentals of this world.”

Science, which had been boring, suddenly became interesting. Mathematics, which he hadn’t known why he needed to learn, transformed into an essential subject. It was a miraculous change.

“I was poor. But I realized the cause of poverty wasn’t lack of money, but that I wasn’t happy. So I thought, even if I have a little less money, I should do something that allows me to realize myself.”

“So theoretical physics… Weren’t you anxious?”

“I was. But I went ahead without looking back. I had burned my bridges.”

Hey, this is the only thing for me.

“What happens when you burn your bridges? The neurons in your body start screaming: If you don’t want to ruin your life, rack your brains with determination. If you don’t understand a concept, think about it until you do, and always keep your books by your side like a lover.”

“…”

“Wow, so in college, I would say to my electromagnetism textbook, ‘Good night, my love.'”

Ireh felt an indescribable horror for a moment. The boy cleared his throat at that point and returned to being Eidel.

“What I want to tell you is this: ‘It becomes fun as you do it.’ So don’t get discouraged over a little difficulty, don’t be anxious, and don’t think about giving up.”

He concluded:

“We’ve already burned our bridges, and we must live or die together.”

It was a brief conversation.

But Ireh felt many things.

First, that anxiety is natural, and second, that one must move forward despite it.

Most importantly, the third:

She had come to know the man before her better.

“…I see.”

Ireh nodded as she put away her textbook.

They say all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Nevertheless, the one certainty of unhappiness made it a story Ireh could empathize with.

Somehow, she felt proud that she could understand him better now.

“Well, shall we go to the lab now?”

“…?”