“Lovely weather……”

First year, class ten.

The arts and sport stream is gathered into class ten of each year and run as a single class.

A school built around the children of the upper class does not mean every pupil in it does well at his work.

The arts and sport stream is the remedy laid down from the start for a particular sort with no interest in study.

SKY cannot be taken by the ordinary route, so a way round is used inside the letter of the law.

That said, not every pupil who puts their weight into the stream is one of those.

Here and there is a musical prodigy who competed fairly at an international competition and won.

Those ones are the real thing.

First year, class ten at Cheonghwa High School has one such pupil in it now, gifted and particular.

One of Cheonghwa’s three great beauties, and last year, while she was still at middle school, she took the top performer’s prize at the Pablo Casals cello competition.

Kang Ari, sitting by the window, looking out of it, taking a spring morning whole.

She has no worry about a university place.

On the prizes alone she could enter any university in the country, and a famous conservatoire abroad besides.

Once she is in, she enjoys the peace the school gives her.

Home after school, and every day her work is wrestling the cello.

It is true of every artist, and a musician who handles an instrument fills a life with hard hours, one day after another.

Memorising the score is the basic thing, the way an ordinary pupil piles up knowledge.

Every sense that the five of them can rouse has to be loaded onto the instrument.

Of the whole day Kang Ari loves this hour of the morning most.

The window seat, which is also her fixed place.

Big ginkgo trees out through the glass, and the wide field with its turf laid.

Cheonghwa is serious about its landscaping, and on the outside of it the place is very peaceful.

On a wet day especially you get the sound of raindrops bouncing, and she likes it better still, because they are like notes making a line of music.

“Huuuge! The second-year rooms have gone up, they’re saying.”

“Why! Is there a fire?”

“What’s happened??”

The room went noisy in a moment.

Kang Ari’s face, turned to the window, pulled tight.

Unlike an ordinary class, the arts and sport room runs over with energy at the best of times.

The smallest thing sets off a violent reaction and a burst of feeling.

“Somebody took full marks on these papers, they say.”

“Full marks? On the midterms?”

“The results haven’t gone up yet, have they?”

The arts and sport class has to keep its basic attainment at a level no lower than another school’s.

Without outstanding practical ability behind you, the university you want is hard to reach.

So a good many of them prepare for the national exam alongside it.

Which makes their results unusually strong against the same stream at an ordinary school.

“It came out of second year, class three.”

“Class three, that’s…… Lee Hyoju sunbae?”

“Oh! Hyoju sunbae, of course!”

First years, and they are thoroughly up on who is notable in the school.

Every one of those people is a connection that will be a line to something later.

Let a chance arise of running into one of the sunbaes whose names come up, and every one of them joins the conversation with a will.

“It isn’t Hyoju sunbae……. It’s a charity case.”

“Whaaat? A ch— charity case?”

“Which charity case??”

The word broke Kang Ari’s calm clean across.

And she came to herself with a jolt.

There are two charity cases in the second year.

And the one in class three is——

“Do you lot know a Ha Tae-ung?”

“Ha Tae-ung……?”

“The one you said was good-looking, Yeonju.”

“Ah! That sun— no, the charity case!”

By an unspoken rule, Cheonghwa does not call a charity case sunbae.

Inside Cheonghwa it is unwritten law.

“……!!”

Listening to them talk, Kang Ari’s large eyes grew larger and larger.

This is genuinely enormous.

“He’s up against Maths Thug in the great hall right now.”

“Up against? Fighting? Or…… what!”

“A mathematics contest.”

“You mean solving problems?”

“Whaat? Maths problems, against Maths Thug?”

“He’s gone mad.”

“Hohoho. The charity case will be off to the Han River after today.”

Not one of them entertained the idea that Maths Thug might lose.

Among high-school mathematics teachers in this country the maths thug runs at the top, and that is Lee Jangyong.

“All of you shut your mouths!!”

One cold line put the noise down and rang through the room.

Kang Ari, who ordinarily goes by the noble goddess of the cello, looked coldly round the class.

“A— Ari……”

“……”

They saw the anger filling her face, and every one of theirs went stiff.

Kang Ari’s house is not an ordinary one either.

By the rumour that goes quietly about——

Tatatak.

The words were barely out and she was running for the door.

“Ari!!”

An Aram had her head down on the desk and was still in her morning sleep.

The suddenness of it startled her up out of the seat, and she ran after her.

An Aram’s first commandment on this earth is, always, the protection of Kang Ari.

“L— let’s go too!”

“What’s got into her……”

“Honestly. All over one charity case……”

First year, class ten, who had just been struck by Kang Ari out of nowhere.

With her at the head of them, class ten began to move, and they went for the great hall.

Most of the school, the third years excepted, headed the same way.

It was the same with the teachers.

The second year’s perfect score belongs to a charity case.

On refusing that, the staff were not of a very different opinion from the pupils.

Ha Tae-ung, the charity case who has gone up against Maths Thug.

The peace that lay over Cheonghwa High School on a Monday morning was being smashed to pieces.

An acquired evildoer?

The deep grey dark aura coming off Lee Jangyong.

At some point in his life he turned and chose it, by the look of it.

The force off him is close to the light that came off Park Dojun the golfer, the innate evildoer.

Between the two of them there is nothing to choose. Venom and evil, worked thickly through the whole body.

—Do you wish to PLUNDER the acquired talent, mathematical reasoning?

My grandmother’s buff appears to take the strength of the wicked with no struggle over the choice at all.

There seems to be some enormous plan in it that I have not got hold of yet.

For this moment, absorbing an ability and using it as strength comes before suspicion.

PLUNDER.

Zzt.

The instant the will came out, a small spark jumped in the joined hands.

“Ah!”

It startled Lee Jangyong and he pulled his hand back in a hurry.

He will take it for static, and nothing more.

“First of all, thank you.”

“Wh— what for, you little shit!”

I put my head down briefly and made the thanks in advance.

It put him out, and the scowl came back.

“Sir. A great many of my fellow pupils are watching. It would be as well to refrain from language that runs against Cheonghwa’s proud school rules.”

Cheonghwa’s rules bind the teachers as well as the pupils.

He cannot possibly not know it, and I served it to him in public.

He caught the drift of it and his face went red and hot.

“Shut up! You charity case shit!”

Certain of the outcome, he let the temper out properly.

“What exactly are you doing?”

Han Yura of Korean language threw it out loudly.

There are getting on for several hundred pupils crowded into the hall by now.

And a considerable number of staff among them.

It is nearly time for the first proper lesson.

When something like this happens it ordinarily falls to a teacher with years behind him, or to a department head with rank, to step in.

The mood being what it is, all of them are holding back.

Take a charity case’s side and you can be handled roughly for it afterwards.

Han Yura is still new to the staff, and her position is rather different.

And unlike the others, she has treated me as a pupil, sincerely, from the start.

Of all the societies in this school, and there are plenty, hers was the only one that took me when the rest looked past me.

“Stay out of it, Teacher Han. I am in the middle of punishing an exam cheat.”

Lee Jangyong came back at her on the slant, as expected.

“Have you evidence that Tae-ung committed this cheating you speak of?”

“Evidence? Certainly. That he solved every one of my questions is the evidence in itself!”

“Don’t force it! Tae-ung is a diligent pupil!”

“Diligent? Pff-hahahahahahaha.”

Lee Jangyong let a wild laugh out at her, loud enough to take the hall off its foundations.

Han Yura bites down hard on her lip.

A bright sky-blue aura rolling off her in waves.

Cheonghwa is a place of education run like a training school for devils, and even there an angel exists.

“Which is why we came here, isn’t it. That boy says he’ll take me on at mathematics. He says he’ll prove it in a contest, so watch it. And I’m the one giving him the chance. Is there some problem?”

Sure of the win and sure of himself, Lee Jangyong made his speech brazenly.

“Tae-ung……”

Her eyes on me are full of pity and of worry.

A beautiful moment.

The first time through I lived in worse air than this.

At least there are people worried about me now.

That alone is worth having come back for.

It is a world I have lived through once already.

I never needed all that many friends.

“Stop carrying on and let’s finish this. I have a lesson.”

“Let’s. The audience looks about full.”

I ran my eye over the Cheonghwa people gathered in the hall.

Snap-snap-snap.

Looks that were anything but kind came in at me from every side like daggers, and I felt each one.

Cold as they are, thanks to a thick wallet I do not shrink from any of it.

My name — Tae-ung — which I feel I have only now properly got back.

I turned my head slowly and went round the room.

And found exactly one, with strong hostility in the eyes.

Glaring at me as though he would kill.

Eyes full of a killing air, refusing absolutely to accept the situation.

The famous sight of Cheonghwa, whom the first time through I only ever looked at from a distance.

Right up to the moment I graduated I never exchanged one word with him.

A slow grin.

Seeing him again like this, it stirs something.

I lifted one corner of my mouth and sent him a smile.

And then——

“You there, friend! Would you like to set a question?”

“……!!”

(End of Chapter 54)