Chapter 76

When I was organizing my thoughts, Jiho Hwang spoke to me.

“…… I know that look. You found the answer.”

“What look.”

“that suspicious face.”

“Suspicious” appeared to be fixed as my motto now.

“Come on, Ui-shin Cho, tell me. You solved the code, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that, technically. Because these words represent the coordinate values of themselves. The periods between the words gave it all away.”

“What do you mean.”

It was natural of him to question me.

This system was still new to the world.

Even, Jae-in Kwon, who lived in the UK for a long time, wasn’t used to this system.

“I can’t compare the ones Butterfly clan sent to Jae-in Kwon in the past to this message over here, but, this time, the butterfly didn’t need to use a complicated code.”

“Why?”

“Even you, the guardian of this sacred land, couldn’t see the message. The message was only meant for Jae-in Kwon to see, so they didn’t need to. So I think this wasn’t encoded.”

Jiho made a very offended face but did not object.

The reason the 12 Zodiac Union’s barrier was penetrated that day wasn’t because of Jiho’s lack of competence, but rather a traitor hitting him in the back of his head.

He just must be upset about his barrier being broken by the Butterfly clan.

Or maybe it’s because the existence of a traitor makes him feel horrible, I wasn’t sure.

“There are many ways to specify a place. You can use GPS coordinates, but the GPS coordinates that specify latitude, longitude, and altitude are complicated by using either 60 or 10 decimal. It’s intuitive and easy to use a different address system to specify a place.”

“Do you want to say that the listing of these words is an address system?”

I nodded my head, and Jiho looked like he couldn’t understand.

Maybe it’d be better to explain from the beginning.

“How much do you think the surface area of the Earth in square meters?”

“The Earth’s surface area is about 510 trillion square meters.”

The answer came frighteningly immediately.

He got this right away without googling it or something.

“Yeah. The Earth’s surface area is about 510 trillion square meters. And if you divide the surface of the Earth by 3 meters horizontally and vertically, so by 9 square meters, there are about 57 trillion pieces. There’s a guy who tried to create a new address system by naming each of these pieces.”

I said, opening a hologram.

‘what3words’

The address system was created by Chris Sheldrick’s idea, a figure in the British music performance industry.

“Korea has a well-established address system, but there are many other countries that don’t. There are billions of people who live in places where there is no official address.”

Chris Sheldrick, who had performed around the world.

He has several times been unable to perform due to a poor address system, when equipment is mismatched or lost artists cannot arrive at the stage on time.

There are many countries in the world that have not yet have an appropriate address system, and GPS coordinates that represent latitude, longitude, and altitude in decimal and hexadecimal numbers are overly complex and difficult to use in real life.

Therefore, he put forward the idea create an address of simple words.

“A combination of any three of the 40,000 simple words that everyone would know, results in about 64 trillion combinations. So you can use the three words system to name all the 57 trillion pieces on the Earth’s surface.”

This new address system is currently made available in dozens of languages.

There have also been countries that have adopted this address system nationally.

‘People don’t remember all the numbers in the GPS coordinates, but they can remember three words or so.’

what3words’ webpage was displayed on the hologram.

I opened two windows.

“And this three-word address system can be used in Korean or English. All you need are periods between the words.”

In each window, I entered the messages sent by Biryung Na.

On one window, it showed the results of, ‘Unexpected.’ ‘Reservation.’ ‘You’

The other window had ‘items’. ‘exhales’. ‘dame’ and its results.

“ ……Seokchon Lake!”

The results in both languages were the same.

Seokchon Lake located at 47 Jamsil-Dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul.

The area of Seokchon Lake is about 210,000 square meters.

The six words that Biryung Na left came to be exactly 9 square meters somewhere in Seokchon Lake.

“Yeah, British. A system created by performance industry workers, too. Even if senior Jae-in Kwon didn’t recognize it right away, if she talked to her teammates, who are in charge of planning Kwon’s performance around the world, someone would have recognized it by three words in two languages and periods. I’m sure the Butterfly clan was aiming for that.”

As I finished speaking, the parlor became quiet.

Hogun Beak, he was always quiet, but Golden Tiger couldn’t close his mouth and stared at me for seconds.

After a long silence, Jiho opened his mouth.

“Ui-shin, do you need a Blessing(Gaho) by any chance?”

“No, why.”

I heard something like this at the 12 Zodiac Union.

I curved it without a moment of hesitation, like last time.

Jiho’s eyes sparkled ominously.

“I want to take a look in your head.”

“Yeah right, like I’ll get a blessing from you after I hear you say that.”

I dumped him as I finished my share of pancakes.

*    *    *

The three of us finished talking and moved to the dining area.

Their cooking must’ve been done, because the three descendants of Silver Tiger were eagerly setting the table.

‘I recognize this smell, it can’t be other than ‘that.”

It was the thing that I ate every day before coming to Eun-kwang high, but stopped eating after the dorm’s cafeteria.

Jiho Hwang muttered.

“Instant ramen? ······I don’t remember buying it.”

On the dining table were elegant, sophisticated white porcelain bowls.

In it were mushy, soggy ramen.

“…… Shin-lok oppa prepared it for us! He told us if we fail, we could always cook ramen.”

“So, the rice burned, and all the jjigae* did too…… I didn’t know jjigae could burn. We just thought it’d taste better the longer you boil it.”

“S, sorry…… I spilled all the banchan* on the floor……”

The strings of the apron worn by Silver Tiger’s descendants looked new, but the front was full of unidentified stains and scorched marks.

I could plainly guess how their cooking skills were like and what kind of chaos happened in there.

‘Mr. Shin-lok Kim seemed to have prepared the ramen just in case……’

But ramen is also screwed.

They didn’t really know how much water to put in.

It wasn’t a non-spicy ramen, but the broth was clear, and the noodles sucked up so much water that the broth was almost invisible and the bowl was only full of noodles.

Jiho Hwang also discovered the disaster inside the bowl but spoke to Silver Tiger’s Descendants gently.

“…… Did you guys make something for yourselves, too?”

“Urm…… we failed everything and this is all we have left.”

The pot Seo-ho Eun was holding was only about half full of ramen.

This must have been the result of repeated failures.

“Yeah. Go for a wash. We’ll start eating first. Thank you for the meal.”

“Yeah, thank you guys.”

“······.”

As Jiho, Hogun Beak and I took our seats, Silver Tiger’s descendants left with a relieved look on their faces.

The first to lift his chopsticks was Hogun.

He froze the tiniest bit when he took the first bite, but he began to eat it rhythmically.

I tried to take after my patient and considerate playable character and took a bite.

The mushy feeling spread through my mouth.

‘…… I actually miss the pancakes.’

I was eating nothing more of a piece of cooked flour blob, when,

Whoosh-.

The automatic door leading the kitchen to the outside opened.

“Excuse me during your meal. Sorry I’m late. Here I am. Golden Tiger, White Tiger. Long time no see, Ui-shin Cho.”

“Hello.”

“Come on in, Red Tiger.”

Red Tiger, busy keeping an eye on the Pig clan, showed up.

“We were going to meet up with Red Tiger, too, but it’s a little late. I’ll fill him in on the Jae-in Kwon incident. Let’s talk before you head out again, Red Tiger.”

“Sure thing.”

Red Tiger looked more tired than ever.

According to the context, he needed to go out again.

“……Is that ramen? That’s an unusual shape.”

Red Tiger eyed the bare table once, then the blob of noodles we were eating.

Jiho, who was eating the slowest out of us three, suddenly looked at Red Tiger with a twinkle in his eye.

“The Descendants cooked the ramen Shin-lok prepared. Want some?”

Jiho Hwang began dragging Red Tiger into this ramen mess.

Red Tiger didn’t refuse.

Rather, he looked a little pleased, and replied,

“I’ll eat that, sure.”

Then he ate the whole thing without twitching an eyebrow.

*    *    *

The next day, after school.

The newspaper club’s clubroom for newbies.

The head of the newspaper club gave us a new project.

The topic was Teacher’s Day, covering for the events that students prepared.

Since gifts aren’t allowed, it was a tradition for students to use their psychic powers to host events for teachers.

There had to be lots to write about.

“Class zero was amazing at Teacher’s Day, too.”

“You know, 2nd-grade class zero.”

When I read the contents of last year’s teacher’s day, I was shocked.

‘The talents of Korea’s most prestigious students are wasted like this……!’

Last year’s grade 1 class 0’s Moai Statue incident.

At that time, with the class prez and vice-prez, Chan-sol Geum and Wang’s lead, they made a huge Moai statue of Jae-gul Jegal made in the 1st grade’s field.

The statue was made of Other-world minerals and weighed 100tons and was 20 meters high.

The department of student guidance(sundo department) was appalled and tried to pry out how they made that with psychic powers in such a short time, but failed.

The Geumchan-Wangchan duo responded to the newspaper interview, but they did not reveal the secret to their ultimate mischief.

‘Grade 2 class 0 never change. And currently, 3rd-grade class 0 and their relationship with their homeroom…… is funny.’

There are many types of teachers who tend to the troublemakers.

For example, there are strict types, such as the Geun-hyung Ham type.

His face, gwanglim, and aura are frightening, so no student ever talks back at him.

All the students coming to school in grade 1 class 0 are nice, and the others don’t even show up, so there was no mishaps with the students and him.

‘It’s not like they’re violating anything by not attending school, here in Eun-kwang High. It’s hard to say my classmates are troublemakers……’

Second, there are the too-nice guys, like Jae-gul Jegal.

He’s too much of an angel that the students sort of redeem themselves.

Grade 2 class 0 is still the worst devil, but they stayed out of whatever that might upset Jae-gul Jegal.

And they listen if Jegal is sincerely telling them ‘no.’

‘The problem here is grade 3 class 0’s homeroom……’

The type that goes crazy along with the students.

Yeon-hwa Lim, head of research department, 3rd grade 0 class’ homeroom teacher.

She was the third case.

‘She seemed so normal at her class, ‘Understanding the Original clan 101……’

Yeon-hwa Lim, who is also in charge of ‘Understanding the Original clan 101’, was out of this world.

She was grade 3 class 0’s homeroom since last year.

She repays all the mischief she saw or encountered at least twice as bad, so the current 3rd grade 0 class was suffering from her actions.

‘Grade 3 class 0 seems pretty wacko, what did that teacher do?’

At Teacher’s Day.

They made class 0 into a haunted house.

They worked really hard and were excited to see Yeon-hwa Lim terrified and surprised.

But Yeon-hwa entered the room, she did not come out for one, or two hours.

The class 0 seniors were concerned an emergency situation was going on, so they went in to see what was wrong.

Alas, they were in for a fright of their lives.

‘She actually used what her students made and turned it into a scarier haunted house to prank all her students……!’

Grade 3 class 0 were defeated by their teacher’s wonkiness and they now quietly attend school and feel their place in the universe.

‘…… Or are they really behaving?’

There was some doubts, but I spent the club meeting listening to Saeron Moon’s passionate cover story plan.

*    *    *

My room after evening training.

The first thing I did was check the device message.

I looked at the list of callers, but there was no message from Green Min today.

‘Let’s check the other messages.’

On top was a group chat with Suhyuk and Hyo-don.

[Suhyuk Joo] Yoonsup got caught smoking vape. I think he stole his uncle’s. since vape is cigar too, I made him buy me bread!

[Hyo-don Meang] He’s faster than before but still slow.

[Suhyuk Joo] He tried to make a run for it, but Hyo-don caught him!

I checked all the messages and found that my shuttle, who was secretly smoking vape, was caught by Hyo-don and Suhyuk.

The next message came from Ji-yik dormitory President, Siwan Sung.

[Siwan Sung] Ui-shin, you have time on teacher’s day, late afternoon?

[Siwan Sung] My cousin’s visiting his former homeroom, and he wants to meet the Anonymous Supernova. If it’s ok with you, hang with us  I’ll buy dinner!

Siwan’s cousin?

I didn’t know who he was, but I said yes anyway.

The last was a message from Jiho Hwang.

[Jiho Hwang] going to seokchon lake tomorrow.