Chapter Index





    Ch.78Chapter 78. Prodigy (2)

    “I have a serious matter to discuss about Cuss.”

    Never in my life have I heard a more terrifying sentence than this.

    If I’d seen it in writing, that would be one thing, but do you know that feeling when you hear it spoken aloud and your heart drops, doing the twist dance in your chest?

    For a while, I couldn’t even breathe properly because of the cold sweat.

    “You can’t pull that shit again, goddammit.”

    I just hoped I wouldn’t have to face that Snyder or Slider guy again.

    Surely Tom hadn’t lost his patience again and punched him in the face?

    I’d emphasized so clearly that if he had to hit someone, he should always aim for the stomach.

    “Oh shit, right…”

    That kid’s mother was the type who’d strip her grown son naked to inspect him…

    So she found out even though he was hit in the stomach.

    I’m absolutely devastated.

    In that stinking slum school, most decent mothers would kick their kids out for coming home beaten up, saying it was embarrassing.

    How did I end up in this gay-breeding school with a psycho mom catching us?

    “I’ll be leaving early today.”

    “What? Why?”

    “Because it’s my first day at work.”

    “…?”

    The section chief—no, now assistant manager—looked at me like I was mentally ill.

    What’s the problem?

    Isn’t the first day supposed to be light, just unpacking, orientation, getting to know people, and then going home?

    “You little shit. How long do I have to babysit you? Work. Just work, before I lose my temper.”

    “This is an important matter.”

    “What is it?”

    “Parent-teacher conference.”

    “Shit… Well… Fine. Do whatever you want.”

    The assistant manager reluctantly approved.

    I guess since he has kids himself, he understood the gravity of the situation.

    “Hey! Jinsoo! What are you doing?”

    “I’m leaving.”

    “I said leave early, not right now! Didn’t you just arrive?”

    “Then I’ll leave very early.”

    “Hey! Work tomorrow! If you work like you used to, you’ll get fired! I can’t cover for you anymore!”

    “Yes, yes! I know!”

    I turned my back on the shouting assistant manager.

    I left this early partly because I didn’t want to be at work, but I also had a legitimate reason.

    If an uneducated idiot like me went to another confrontation, I’d just get beaten like a dog in the rain and end up making some stupid agreement.

    I needed advice.

    Proper advice from someone young, pretty, smart, and capable.

    Ring ring ring…

    Maybe she’s busy.

    I was driving and calling, but she wasn’t answering.

    Just as I was about to hang up:

    “Oh, hello! Jinsoo! What’s going on?”

    I heard Juliane’s urgent voice.

    Her voice was unusually muffled, as if she’d just woken up.

    Seems like I called at a bad time.

    “Am I interrupting? Should I call back later?”

    “No, no. It’s fine. Go ahead. What’s the matter?”

    “I need some advice. Would that be okay?”

    “What kind of advice? Legal advice?”

    “Life wisdom advice.”

    “Pfft… What’s that?”

    “You could help with anything I don’t know about. I’m being called in about Cuss soon. I don’t want to end up making an unfair agreement by talking alone like last time.”

    “Of course I should help with that. But Jinsoo…”

    Juliane’s voice became quieter.

    “I’m not in LA right now…”

    “Where are you?”

    “Washington.”

    “DC?”

    “Yes…”

    Oh dear.

    The young, pretty, smart, and capable person was already on the opposite side of the continent.

    “Ah… This is troublesome.”

    “I-I can rush over right now! The Hyper Bullet takes less than 3 hours, so…”

    “It would still be too late. You went there for work, right? Just take care of your business.”

    “…”

    Silence fell.

    It was too awkward to continue the call, but also awkward to hang up.

    After about ten seconds, I heard lips moving on the other end.

    “Jinsoo.”

    “Yes.”

    “I have a brilliant idea.”

    “What is it?”

    Her tone was slightly higher.

    This was the tone Juliane used when she was excited but trying to hide it.

    What could be so brilliant?

    “We can talk on the phone. I can listen through your internal phone and secretly give advice…”

    “I don’t have an internal phone.”

    “Oh…”

    I heard her slap her forehead.

    Her plan had fallen apart.

    I could faintly hear her grumbling in frustration, which made me laugh.

    “Then wireless earphones. You have those, right?”

    “You want me to wear them throughout the conversation? That would look rude. No way.”

    “What? Rude? Why?”

    “How can I stick something in my ear while someone is talking to me?”

    “It has sound amplification, so you can hear everything.”

    “It’s not about whether I can hear. It’s about having something stuck in my ear.”

    “Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Jinsoo…”

    I was the one feeling frustrated.

    Do young people these days not find it strange to talk with something stuck in their ears?

    Well, I guess we’ve moved beyond just sticking things in ears to implanting machines inside them.

    Damn, I’m getting old.

    It’s so hard to keep up with technology.

    “Since there’s no other way… Okay. I’ll do it.”

    “Call me when you’re ready! I’ll be waiting!”

    “Alright. Thank you, Juliane.”

    “Hehe. It’s nothing. This is only natural.”

    “No, I mean it. Thinking about it, I feel like I’ve only been receiving help from you. I should repay you somehow…”

    “Jinsoo.”

    Her voice was firm.

    I could immediately picture Juliane’s face matching that voice.

    For a moment, I thought we were on a video call.

    “There’s a saying that the one who falls in love first loses.”

    “Really? I’ve never heard that…”

    “There is! Anyway! So… So… It can’t be helped. Me being more attached to you. Stop saying unnecessary things, and when you come back, just love me lots… That’s enough repayment.”

    “Juliane…”

    “That’s enough! Hang up now!”

    The call ended with her urgent voice.

    I could imagine her flustered appearance, which made her even more adorable.

    If she had been right beside me, she wouldn’t have blurted out such embarrassing words loudly.

    I realized that whispering love over the phone was actually quite nice.

    But still, the one who’s more desperate gets more attached…

    Juliane said that, but no matter how I looked at it, she was too good for me.

    I felt uncomfortable just receiving without giving.

    I wondered if there was a suitable gift.

    I couldn’t afford a 10-carat diamond ring in my situation, but I could at least give something heartfelt.

    As I was pondering about gifts, my wrist phone caught my eye.

    “But… Will she be able to hear?”

    I suddenly became doubtful.

    The maximum volume during calls isn’t that high.

    It would be insufficient to catch every small voice coming from across the table.

    Then how would she…?

    “No way.”

    I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and checked my collar.

    Nothing there.

    Nothing in my pockets either.

    Wondering if it was in the lining, I looked inside and found traces of amateur sewing.

    With a sinking feeling, I tore the thread and lifted the lining.

    I had to close my eyes tightly.

    “Juliane. Can you hear me?”

    “…”

    As I suspected.

    There was a chip as thin as an ultra-thin condom inside.

    *

    “Calm down. Just calm down.”

    It seemed that Cuss and the homeroom teacher hadn’t arrived yet.

    I sat down and took a deep breath.

    With my left hand in my pocket, I fiddled with the listening device.

    “Ah… Ah… Jinsoo. Please don’t fiddle with it too much. It’s extremely sensitive and picks up sound just from being touched.”

    “Oh, really?”

    The voice in my ear was incredibly annoying.

    In anger, I tapped the device repeatedly with my index finger.

    “Ugh! Hic! Hueeee… I’m sorry, Jinsoo. I’m really sorry. So please stop… Hic!”

    I let go of the device when Juliane’s voice started sobbing.

    Is this a habit of hers?

    I wondered if she had developed some new mental disorder like compulsive bugging syndrome.

    When I get home, I need to do a thorough cleaning.

    I’ll even borrow a metal detector from Bob and do it properly.

    I can’t live with this anxiety.

    Before being monitored by the federal government, I was already under surveillance by my girlfriend.

    “Be prepared when I get back.”

    “Eh? What?”

    “You asked me to love you lots. I’ll fulfill your wish. All night long.”

    “Ah, no… I don’t want that…”

    Her tone completely contradicted her words.

    If I could see her face now, she’d definitely be grinning.

    What a masochistic pervert.

    Just then, the door opened, and I saw familiar silver hair.

    “They’re here.”

    “Who?!”

    “Cuss and the homeroom teacher.”

    “Anyone else? Just the two of them?”

    “I can’t talk to Juliane anymore.”

    Since I had to pretend I wasn’t on a call.

    I waved at Cuss and the teacher.

    Soon, Cuss ran past the teacher and scurried toward me.

    “Cake!”

    “Don’t touch it. It’s not yours.”

    I had ordered a slice of tiramisu.

    Of course, it was for the teacher.

    While she firmly refused cash, she wouldn’t reject such a small food gift.

    That’s how it works—after accepting many small treats, before you know it, you’ve received bribes worth a million won.

    “Hello, Joan.”

    “It’s Jane.”

    “Yes, Jane. I knew that.”

    The teacher’s bright smile faltered slightly.

    Cuss pulled a chair next to mine and stuck close to me, while Jane sat demurely across from us.

    But this couldn’t be all.

    “Are the others running late?”

    “Pardon? What others?”

    “Weren’t we called because Cuss caused trouble?”

    “What? Hahaha! No, absolutely not.”

    Juliane’s voice in my earphone couldn’t hide her surprise either.

    It seemed I had completely misunderstood.

    “I have good news, Cuss’s father. Did you know about Cuss’s talent?”

    “…”

    I turned my head.

    All I saw was a creature no different from a beast, drooling and unable to take her eyes off the cake.

    You’re calling this talent?

    “She has talent?”

    “Yes. Cuss appears to have at least a 4th-grade level of thinking ability, and her mental arithmetic and memorization skills are particularly outstanding.”

    “Huh. Mental arithmetic?”

    She’s good at mental math?

    Well, given her intelligence in quickly grasping human language, her computational ability might indeed be quite high.

    “How good is she?”

    “Well, can you solve 2036 multiplied by 5692 mentally?”

    “What? How could anyone do that mentally…”

    “Eleven million five hundred eighty-eight thousand nine hundred twelve.”

    “…?!”

    Cuss suddenly rattled off numbers.

    Shocked, I opened the calculator on my phone and punched in the numbers.

    As if anticipating my reaction, Jane just looked at me with a satisfied smile.

    “It’s correct…?”

    They could be in cahoots.

    I still couldn’t believe it.

    We tested her several more times.

    Going from thousands to tens of thousands.

    Cuss only paused once during all this.

    “Jinsoo. What comes after hundred million?”

    “Billion…”

    She didn’t know the unit.

    Apart from that, her calculations were fast and accurate.

    She was even faster than me using the calculator.

    “Heheh. See?”

    “Why are you so proud…?”

    “Because I discovered it! You didn’t even know, right?”

    “Well… Yes, this is the first I’m hearing of it. I had no idea it was to this extent.”

    To be honest, it didn’t feel real at all.

    It felt like I was dreaming.

    The kid who always forgets simple instructions and gets flicked on the head by me can calculate faster than a calculator?

    Were such prodigies not just in TV shows like “Extraordinary People in the World”?

    It was hard to believe.

    “Would you like to have her take an IQ test? Separately, she could also skip a grade. Of course, she would need to prove she can keep up with other subjects besides math, but I think Cuss would have no problem.”

    “…”

    Skip a grade.

    A completely unexpected suggestion came up.

    It felt so unreal that I was dumbfounded.

    Similarly stunned, Juliane was silent in my earphone.

    “Hey. You eat it.”

    “Really?!”

    I pushed the cake plate toward her.

    After briefly checking my expression, Cuss began mashing the tiramisu with her fork and shoving it into her mouth hastily.

    Damn kid…

    She eats with absolutely no manners.


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