I Became A Renowned Genius At My Arts High School - Chapter 218



Only Noblemtl

Episode 218. A small blessing (1)

When morning comes, it becomes evening, and when it feels like spring, it becomes winter.

A flow that feels natural.

In it, we slowly age and toil, bending and straightening our backs repeatedly.

Choices and directions accumulate and become a trajectory that proves me.

If you look back at it after a long time, the dense connections of dots form a smooth curve, and within it, the events that shook your life to its core are weakly dissolved.

If you stop and look at it, you will be overcome with a strange feeling.

There are problems that time solves, but there are also things that cannot be understood no matter how much time passes.

Why did that happen back then?

Why did this happen to me?

Some cry out to God for answers, others immerse themselves in the truth until their whole body withers away, and others ask questions here and there in search of answers.

However, if the problem is not resolved, you may become discouraged and start wandering.

When he is wandering, he is prone to making emotional decisions, which are more likely to lead him to greater failure.

That is our weak nature and our sadness.

“I did that too.”

Su-hyeon muttered.

Past life.

Su-hyeon gave up many things in resignation.

Financial reasons, love failures, health problems.

Su-hyeon collapsed helplessly as she was faced with a series of tests in which she couldn’t understand the English text.

And I lay there for a long time.

Why don’t my parents love me?

Is this poverty something we can overcome?

Will I be able to continue drawing?

If you have to let go eventually, when will be a good time?

Although he didn’t push himself to extremes like Jerome, he wasn’t any better.

Because I stopped drawing and lived without any hope, spending my time meaninglessly.

Alive but not alive.

The Soo-Hyeon of the past was just a person who earned money to live, and wasted the time given to him as a person who didn’t care whether he was there or not.

If he hadn’t miraculously returned to his predestined days, where would his life have ended up?

Just imagining it was dizzying.

The memory that was suddenly given to me was just something to be thankful for.

however.

‘Why did this happen again? Why did it happen to me?’

Even after returning, the doubts remained.

However, Soo-Hyeon learned things she didn’t know before.

The power of choice.

Even though it is the same life of the same person, depending on the choices made and the line drawn by those choices, life can be completely different.

His present was proof of it.

“Please. Jerome.”

Su-hyeon tightly closed her eyes.

Over the past month, I’ve been drawing like crazy again, drawing pictures of countless tiles.

Of these, I hope just one will touch Jerome’s heart.

I hope his hardened heart breaks down even a little.

Su-hyeon completed the painting with earnest hope.

***

“what?”

“Here too?”

“Wow. What’s going on today?”

After Jerome’s performance, the square became noisy again.

Bam.

Knock knock.

Thud thud.

The movement taking place in Su-hyeon’s small square caught my attention.

“We’ve never done something on the same day.”

“That’s right. Since this is a give-and-take format, when Jerome throws, Soo-hyun catches it, and when Soo-hyun throws, Jerome catches it again and continues. So it’s natural that preparation time is needed.”

“But you answer this quickly?”

“What on earth are you trying to show me?”

Those who had been watching the two work for the past month and had vaguely grasped the rules within them were excited by the sudden event that broke from them.

“I don’t know. I’ll give up on the next class.”

“I should also ask that my liberal arts classes be replaced with reports. I can’t miss this.”

Lunch time was already over.

It was a busy time moving to the designated class location, but the kids who instinctively felt that this was an event that would never happen again could not leave their seats.

‘what?’

Jerome was also taken aback by the unexpected situation.

‘it’s hard.’

Maybe I poured out too many emotions.

It was a time when I was so exhausted that I was about to close my eyes.

Groan, groan.

The audience members who had been enjoying the afterglow were seen chattering and then rushing off somewhere.

‘What time is it?’

Looking at the clock hanging on the wall in the middle of the square, I saw that lunch time was over.

“Is it time for class to start?”

Lisa’s lunch time is a generous two hours.

We started preparing for the show when the bell rang for lunch, and we presented Today’s Death as the kids who had finished eating quickly came in.

And then the bell rang again, so we had been on stage for about an hour.

Jerome nodded, saying that even if he was in normal condition, he would have been exhausted after performing a one-man show for an hour.

Buzz.

So, I could ignore my right hand that was still shaking slightly.

“Fuck.”

Jerome looked longingly at his arms and hands that would not stop shaking.

The performance shown on stage today was his future.

A situation where we are not there yet, but will get there soon.

How much despair would a muscle out of control bring?

Yes, so this choice is correct.

Jerome nodded.

When I still had the strength to decide my own fate, I told myself to finish it off cleanly.

If you hesitate and become too weak to even do that, and end up lying in bed in a daze, you will curse yourself for hesitating and fall into even greater despair.

Is this right? No, it must be right.

But Jerome was afraid.

Making a choice, or not making a choice.

The time for his decision was fast approaching, but his mind was still full of conflict and worries.

Maybe this trembling was from fear. Jerome smiled sadly, looking at his arms bouncing up and down.

That was when.

I saw the kids who had left in a hurry still wandering around the square.

“what?”

The exit was over there, but the crowd was crowded inside. It was a familiar spot.

It was towards Su-hyeon’s small square.

The crowd lined up in layers in that direction.

Damn it.

Jerome, who got up without realizing it, walked towards Su-hyeon’s small square.

“and.”

“Here he comes. It’s Jerome.”

“Move over. This way.”

The kids who found Jerome stepped aside to make way for him.

Since Soo-hyun and Jerome’s work was public, this kind of consideration was only natural.

widely.

Thud.

Jerome walked slowly towards the center, concentrating on the sounds he heard in the square.

And then, the moment my vision opened up.

Jerome’s eyes, half-closed from fatigue, opened wide.

“expansion?”

Jerome muttered without realizing it.

Suhyeon’s tiles extend radially from the central point.

It started from birth and grew around us like a tree’s rings, from infancy and childhood to adolescence and adulthood, recording the events that happened to us and that we witnessed during those times.

Participants remembered the moments of choice they faced and stamped their handprints with the choices they had made, giving them the opportunity to reflect on themselves.

But today new tiles were laid there.

Since the existing tiles represent the birth to the present and the nearby destinations drawn from the present, does the newly expanded tile symbolize a more distant future from there?

Until the moment of final death?

Jerome thought, looking at the black tiles in the distance.

‘What are you trying to do?’

Jerome could not yet fully comprehend the meaning of this design, although he guessed that the black tiles that had fallen off would represent death, the final destination of life.

That’s understandable, Su-hyeon had turned all the new tiles upside down.

Until they turned it over, no one could have guessed what it contained.

thud.

Yet Jerome felt a strange shock, as if his heart was sinking.

I instinctively felt that something big was going to happen.

and.

chuck.

Su-hyeon, who had placed all the tiles, left her small square and headed to the center of the square.

Knock knock.

Su-hyeon reached one wall, placed a chair, and climbed onto it.

Then he grabbed the clock on the wall, pulled it down, and- swish- wound the dragon head, turning back time.

“… … !”

“……uh!”

The quick-witted kids immediately figured out what it meant.

Su-hyeon turned the clock back an hour and a half.

That was the very moment Jerome started performing.

“… … !”

Jerome also realized the meaning of the time that Soo-hyun had set.

‘Today, I’m asked to come on stage as a character in a play, not as a devil.’

Thud thud.

Su-hyeon returned to her small square and smiled.

And he reached out his hand to Jerome.

***

“Wait a minute. Why did you put me here?”

Jerome smiled faintly as he was led to the center of the small square by Soohyun.

Before I knew it, Jerome had become the same Jerome he was on stage earlier.

He played today’s character with his own unique tone and asked Soo-hyun questions with actions and words befitting the character in the play.

“Everyone started from this center point. So why am I here?”

An attitude that at first glance seems like protest.

Onlookers watched the process with fascination.

As Jerome said, up until now, Su-hyeon’s mind map has used the central point symbolizing birth as the starting point.

But today, Soo-Hyeon placed Jerome on the outermost line of the existing tiles, not at the center.

That is, to the spot where you have to choose one of the flipped tiles.

“I’ve already seen enough of your past through your performance earlier.”

Su-hyeon answered clearly.

“That’s right. I’ve heard enough of your stories.”

“The unfortunate times. The moments of despair. We watched it all!”

Onlookers joined in on their conversation, adding their voices to the conversation.

Jerome shrugged.

“The past is already in the past, so there is no reason to repeat it, is that it?”

Instead of answering, Soo-hyun nodded slightly.

“So, from here on out, things might be different, right?”

In an instant, Jerome’s eyes turned sharp.

It seemed like a character trait expressed by the play’s characters, but it was also Jerome’s true feelings.

Su-hyeon was not shaken.

Then he took a step back and waited for Jerome to choose a tile.

“under.”

Jerome shook his head as if he was annoyed.

Onlookers watched the process with bated breath.

In the previous performance, this character chose a quiet death.

However, in the time he turned back, Soo-hyun was urging him to look into a part of his life that he had not chosen.

There was no way I could do that.

But everyone expected Jerome to turn over one tile.

I wondered what was in store for him when he gave up.

and.

“Well, it probably doesn’t mean much.”

Jerome said, tapping his trembling right arm with his left.

And then swoosh-.

The first tile was flipped over.

“Apple pie?”

What was drawn inside the tile was a delicious pie.

Jerome tilted his head and flipped over another tile nearby.

“uh.”

Jerome’s eyes shook slightly.

This time, a movie ticket was drawn on it.

Swish.

Jerome flips the next tile again.

This time it was Christmas.

A tree filled with presents and people laughing together around it.

“ha.”

Jerome moved forward one step at a time, remaining silent as if he had forgotten he was acting.

Freesia in spring and festivals in autumn. Picnics and games. It wasn’t just small pleasures.

A bag of medicine. A syringe. An outsider. A house with the lights off.

There were also tiles hidden there that would become conflicts and obstacles.

chuck.

Chuck chuck.

Jerome, who was flipping the tiles at an increasingly faster rate, looked at Soo-hyun with an angry face.

“you.”

The moment Jerome was about to say something.

Swish.

Su-hyeon held the palette and stood at the starting point where Jerome had stood earlier.

And Chuck.

Jerome stamped his hand on the tile he had turned over.