His mother's morning litany about vitamins and breakfast was an unwelcome test of his newfound mental clarity. Eun-woo ate hurriedly, his mind already racing ahead, and pedaled to school faster than ever before.
Seeing him leave with such uncharacteristic purpose, his mother could only stare, spatula in hand, at the retreating figure. "What's gotten into that boy?"
In the classroom, the quiet hum of morning self-study was shattered by whispers when Song Eun-woo walked in. Heads turned. His attendance at jachwiseup (self-study) was as rare as a snow day in July. Ignoring the curious stares, he went straight to his seat, pulled out a pristine, barely-used mathematics textbook, and opened it.
A moment later, he couldn't suppress a low, incredulous gasp.
"Sseuleo-tta! (Holy crap!) Is it really this… easy?"
The exclamation cut through the quiet room. Everyone turned to look at the class troublemaker, now staring at a page of calculus with the wide-eyed wonder of a child seeing fireworks for the first time.
Eun-woo was oblivious to their attention. His entire world had narrowed to the symbols on the page. The complex formulas and theorems that once seemed like alien script now unfolded in his mind with crystalline logic. Concepts connected, derivations made intuitive sense. It wasn't just reading; it was understanding, instantly and completely.
Is this the Neural Optimization Tablet? This isn't just a supplement… this is a superpower.
His brain felt like a high-speed processor. Learning was no longer a chore but a process of effortless absorption. More startlingly, fragmented memories of past lessons—times he'd spent doodling or dozing—now surfaced with surprising clarity, filling in gaps in his knowledge.
For the rest of the self-study period, a surreal scene unfolded: Song Eun-woo, the perennial slacker, was meticulously, rapidly turning pages of his textbook. He didn't just read; he devoured. He'd linger on a page for no more than ten seconds before moving on, his eyes scanning with an intensity that was entirely foreign to him.
Of course, his classmates misinterpreted it. He's just pretending, they thought. Trying to look serious after that embarrassing blank test paper.
Ding-dong-ding-dong~
The bell rang. As the classroom erupted into the familiar chatter of break time, Eun-woo closed the math book. The entire curriculum was now mapped inside his head. Yet, he was aware of the gaps—the nuances, the teacher's insights, the tricky applications that never made it into the standard text. For that, he needed a better source.
He stood up. Under the watchful eyes of his classmates, he walked with deliberate steps to the very front of the room, stopping at the desk of Han Soo-jin.
She shrunk back slightly at his approach, a reflexive gesture born of years of avoiding attention.
"Lend me your math notes," he said, his tone direct, leaving no room for polite preamble.
Hesitantly, moving as if on autopilot, she pulled a thick, impeccably organized notebook from her desk drawer and handed it to him without a word.
"Thanks," he said, offering a quick, genuine smile that didn't quite reach his usual cocky grin. He turned and walked back, feeling the weight of dozens of curious eyes on his back.
If I want any future with her, it starts here, he thought, the goal sharpening his focus. Not with empty words, but with results.
Back at his desk, he opened Soo-jin's notebook. Her handwriting was small, precise, and beautiful. It wasn't just a copy of the textbook; it was an analytical masterpiece, breaking down complex concepts with clear steps and personal annotations. Combined with his newly optimized brain, it was like finding the final piece of a puzzle.
He flipped through the pages, his speed even more breathtaking than with the textbook. By the time the next period's warning chime sounded, he had reached the final page. He closed the notebook, a profound understanding settling in his mind.
Without delay, he walked back to Soo-jin's desk. She looked up, confusion in her eyes behind her large glasses.
"Finished," he said, placing the notebook gently on her desk. "Lend me the rest. I'll return them by the end of the day."
"O-oh… okay. You… you can take your time," she stammered, her voice barely a whisper as she bent to retrieve a stack of notebooks for physics, chemistry, and Korean language from her bag.
He took the stack with a nod. As he turned to leave, he paused, looking down at her bowed head.
"On page eighteen, the vertex form of the quadratic function. You missed the square on the h. And page thirty-one, the condition for the fractional exponent where a is raised to the m/n power—you wrote a < 0. It should be a > 0."
He delivered the corrections in a calm, matter-of-fact tone, then turned and walked away, leaving Han Soo-jin frozen in her seat.
For a long second, she just stared at the spot where he had stood. Then, with hurried hands, she flipped her notebook open to page eighteen, then to thirty-one. Her breath caught. He was right. Two tiny, persistent errors she had reviewed a dozen times and never caught.
Her deskmate, Park Ji-ah, leaned over, curiosity overpowering her usual desire to avoid the "weird" girl. "Soo-jin-ah? What did he say? Was he bothering you?"
Soo-jin shook her head slowly, her eyes still fixed on the corrected equations. "No… he… he just pointed out a couple of mistakes in my notes."
Ji-ah's eyebrows shot up. "Mistakes? Your notes? And he found them?" The notion was ludicrous. It was like a preschooler correcting a PhD thesis.
But Soo-jin wasn't lying. Ji-ah followed her gaze to the back of the room. There, Song Eun-woo sat, already immersed in the physics notebook, his fingers tracing down the pages with a focus that seemed to shut out the entire world. He wasn't pretending. The intensity was real.
A single, bewildered thought echoed in Park Ji-ah's mind, mirroring the confusion spreading through the class.
What in the world is happening to Song Eun-woo?
[To Be Continued…]