"I'm dead. Of all things, app development... Sob."

Senior Si-eun, so cocky a minute ago, buried her face in her arms.

Her eyes had gone red at the rims. She really looked like she might cry.

Professor Sati had dumped his crap on her and strolled off without a care.

Plenty of students grumbled, but nobody refused.

They knew that if they couldn't get through this, they wouldn't survive.

And just like that, everyone had cleared out of the lecture hall.

Only the doomed Senior Si-eun and I were left.

"Is app development hard?"

I asked as if I had no idea.

App development was barely born in 2008, and it was a nightmare for CS students.

There was hardly any material to work from.

"Obviously! It's not web, it's apps! The iPhun hasn't even come to Korea. It hasn't passed radio certification—how am I supposed to buy one when they're all overseas? And Android just put out its first early program. It runs on Linux, so it'd be easy enough, but there's no device to run it on!"

She was a CS major, all right. She knew the latest news inside out.

"I have an iPhun..."

"Wh-what! An iPhun!"

"A friend gave it to me. Even if I can't use it in Korea, couldn't we still develop a program on it?"

Clara had brought it back from Hong Kong as a present.

At my place, it was just a decoration.

"No good."

"Why not?"

"The iPhun people are closed off. You make the program here and send it to them, and they have to approve it."

"Can't we just upload it?"

"Of course not! ios programs aren't open. And there aren't any real development tools in Korea yet."

"Is that right?"

"Everyone in the industry knows the iPhun people are nutjobs."

"Hmm... I see."

"It'd be easier to go after the Android camp, since it's open source, but there's nothing to run it on. From what I hear, it isn't stable yet, so bugs and errors are popping up all over the place."

A fourth-year really was a different…