Chapter 41 â Room 104, Cursed Room â âPreparatory Selective, Hotel High Schoolâ (1)
Current Location: Floor 1, Room 104 (Cursed Room â Preparatory Selective, Hotel High School)
âThere have been many attempts to define what music is in terms of the specific attâŚâ Looking at the context of this sentence, we can decipherââ
A) The equation f(x) â x = 0 has two different roots.
B) The equation f(x)x = 0 has two different roots.
As compensation for supplying the royal family and the government with commodities, (A) received a monopoly on a specific market product. According to Six Exemplar Articles of Law that was published in the middle of the 19th Centuryâ-
I just finished my entrance exam, you fuckers!!
Ahh⌠why was this happening to me?
I already sat my college exam, so why the hell did I have to be imprisoned in this âboarding schoolâ with a ridiculous name like âHotel High Schoolâ to study for another entrance exam?
Room 104 was a terrible hell from the get go.
It seemed that our team had been divided into students and teachers depending on our age. The teachers were preparing the tests while students were tasked with studying for them.
Me, Elena, Yu Songee, Kim Ahri, Park Seungyub -> Students
Kim Mooksung, Cha Jinchul, Lee Eunsol -> Teachers
That was how it went but the craziest part was the thing that had happened to us, the Student Team.
This crazy Hotel ignored our actual ages and modified our bodies to all be that of a senior high school student. In other words⌠even Seungyub who had just hit his 2nd year of middle school had been forcibly âgrownâ into a 3rd grader of high school!
Thanks to that, Seungyub who looked very distant from the life of studying was sitting next to me with a bigger body but soulless eyes.
In any case, what exactly was the âriskâ in this room? For starters, studying for the entrance exam itself was already detestable but finding it hard to study wouldnât physically kill us so there was probably a different risk factor.
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): Find anything?
Han Kain (Student): Studying is hard.
Park Seungyub (Student): Yes
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): There are tests everyday. I am writing language tests.
Cha Jinchul (Teacher): Apparently an athletics carnival is in 2 days.
Han Kain (Student): Damn animals.
Kim Mooksung (Teacher): School Rules are strange. Lack of academic ability = punishment at the Old Main Building.
Han Kain (Student): Old Main Building?
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): Itâs an abandoned building behind the one weâre in.
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): No idea. No explanation. Everyone thinks itâs normal.
It definitely was strange. It was common to be scolded and told off for having low grades at a test, but getting sent to a different building was very rare, and I had never heard of any school doing something so tedious*.
In any case, a test everyday⌠Thatâs ama~zing. As expected of a selective school!
We were all ignoring the lessons and focusing our minds on the conversation going on inside our heads when a sudden roar reached our ears.
A chalk flew across the sky.
âUahk! S, sir. What are youââ
âPark Seungyub! Are you not going to focus on the lesson!? I know what youâre thinking about; do you think itâs my first time seeing guys like you? Instead of studying during school time, you waste your life having stupid delusions in your head, donât you? Come out right now!â
Seungyub who couldnât control his facial expression the most was immediately summoned to the board.
Actually, more importantly, what was the teacher going to do? Was he going to send him straight to that âOld Main Buildingâ?
âN, no sir. I was listening to the lesson. You saw it wrong.â
âHuh? You dare say that to me! Then how about you answer this question for us! Weâve been talking about Yeongjo [King of Joseon Dynasty in Korea] for a while so you should know if youâve been focusing on the lesson. When did he start his reign?â
? That wasnât a historical event or anything. How the hell were we supposed to remember the year a king came to power? What kind ofâ
â1724,â Seungyub blurted out.
The teacher suddenly turned quiet in the middle of his fit.
âŚDid he get it correct?
The teacher gave another question with a voice that was comparatively softer than before.
âWhen is the year he killed Sado, the Crown Prince?â
The teacher turned silent again.
Did he get that correct as well? How does that even make sense? Did he remember the entire Korean history or something?
âHmm. So you were listening to the lesson. My bad for that mistake. But still, you should raise your book tall and have your eyes wide open with your soul inside! Youâre looking around everywhere with a dull gaze; so of course others are going to mistake you okay? Now! Letâs focus on the lesson again.â
Yu Songee (Student): What was that?
Han Kain (Student): Are you a genius or something?
Elena (Student): Do Korean students usually remember all the years like that?
Han Kain (Student): Normal people wouldnât, unless theyâre aiming to come first in the country.
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): Use less words. What happened?
Yu Songee (Student): Seungyub got a history question correct.
Everyone was talking in excitement but Seungyub, the one who was suddenly being considered a genius, stayed silent.
Kim Ahri (Student): He probably used blessing.
Park Seungyub (Student): YesâŚ
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): What do you mean
Park Seungyub (Student): When the teacher asked the question, a window popped up saying [100%] and asked me whether I was going to use the Blessing of Fortune or not, so⌠I thought âYes!â. Nothing changed so I shouted a random number but they were all correct.
Kim Mooksung (Teacher): You consumed a blessing with such a long cooldown on something like that? Why did you do that?
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): No. This is important.
Noona was right. This wasnât just Seungyub wasting his blessing â he wasnât the one that actively looked to turn the blessing on.
He said he had a prompt that went something like, âWould you like to use the Blessing of Fortuneâ, and there was no way a prompt like that would suddenly pop out for no reason.
It only popped up because it was a crisis!
If he got the questions wrong, he probably would have been punished at the Old Main Building.
And that allowed us to confirm one thing â going to the Old Main Building was a risk factor.
After that, we pretended like we were reading our books and soon passed the painful lesson time.
During lunch, the entire group of students gathered together.
âHyung! Noona! What do we do? I looked at the book but I have no idea what any of them mean!â
âItâs strange hearing you call me ânoonaâ with that bulky body⌠Anyway, what should we do? Do you have any ideas, Kain-oppa?â asked Songee.
âFor starters, judging from how the choice popped up immediately after the question, it seems that âgoing to the Old Main Buildingâ will be dangerous.â I said as Ahri followed up.
âSo I guess everyone needs to focus on studying~â
âHmm.â Songee said. âSounds like youâre very confident or something, Ahri.â
âOh, no~! Iâm not confident. Iâm just describing the situation.â
Huh? Just then, it felt as if there was a spark between Songee and Ahri. Was I overthinking it?
Elena broke her silence and opened her mouth.
âThe âtestsâ at the end of the lessons are the biggest problem. Honestly speaking, I donât think Iâll ever make it through the tests. I canât understand any of the subjects at all. Korean and Korean History is one thing because Iâm not Korean, but even Maths and English are way too difficult. Is this how the lessons are usually like in Korean schools?â
âNo. Umm⌠I think Iâm the only one here with experience in taking a college exam. In my opinion, the curriculum in this school is even beyond the highly specialised schools, and I bet even the top few students nation-wide would have trouble following these lessons. I assume the tests after the lessons will be an incredible challenge.â
Even though no-one bothered asking each other about school marks after entering the Hotel, I would imagine Songee and Seungyub werenât that good at studying while Elena was a foreigner.
Looking at how things were, it looked like everyone in the Students Team except for me would be wiped out in the next test.
Seungyub opened his mouth first.
âHow about we run away together? Like how I ran and somehow escaped the Strange Family.â
âIn that room, our houses were in a residential district that was connected to the outside but this place is an isolated boarding school. Also, the security is strict around the gates and I donât think it will be easy to escape from this place.â I raised my thoughts as Seungyub then spoke of another plan.
âThen since my body is also a lot bigger, how about we bash the teachers up andââ
âWait, wait.â Ahri interjected. âCan you be quiet for now? Didnât you learn anything at the farm? The teachers here arenât the âstrange phenomenaâ of this school. Theyâre just teachers of a âselective preparatory schoolâ.â
A single remark from Ahri was enough to make Seungyub lower his head and shrink in dejection. Even after becoming bigger, it seemed that he still couldnât do anything in front of Ahri.
Of course, now was not the time to worry about that.
And I could also understand where Seungyub was coming from.
At this rate, a large number of us will fail the hopelessly difficult tests and be wiped at the dangerous Old Main Building!
We were silent when Ahri opened her mouth.
âThere is no need for us to go from the front.â
Everyone turned quiet again.
âOr what. Were you seriously going to study for college exams at the Hotel?â
âNo⌠but how are we going to cheat?â
âWhat do you mean âhowâ â we have a conversation tab in our heads so whatâs the concern? The Teacherâs side is making the tests up arenât they? They can just upload the answers.â
Ah⌠It seemed that I was under the impression that I had become an actual senior high school student because of the school uniform and the classroom setting.
Why did we have to study at a place like this?
We were feeling enlightened and Ahri quickly uploaded her idea.
Kim Ahri (Student): Teachers. Attention.
Kim Ahri (Student): Old Main Building deemed dangerous. Need to pass tests. Please upload answers to your questions.
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): OK. But we canât upload everything.
Han Kain (Student): What do you mean?
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): I am Language, Cha is Phys Ed, Kim is Korean History. So we only know the answers to Language and Korean History.
Kim Ahri (Student): Please upload those at least.
Lee Eunsol (Teacher): OK.
Thanks to the cooperation of these not-so-good teachers, we had a slightly better situation in our hands. There probably wasnât going to be a written exam for Physical Education, and we will have answers for Language and Korean History.
However, we still had many serious problems in our hands.
What were we going to do for Maths, English and other subjects?
I was racking my brain but suddenly found Ahri staring deeply at my face.
âWhat is it? Is there something you want to tell me?â
âIâm just thinking how everything is now up to you, oppa.â
âYou are the only college exam veteran in our group â the future college student who passed into K University. You are our hope.â
They all looked at me with hope and dream in their eyes.
I ended up pulling my hair out.