The Reborn Genius of an Arts High School - Chapter 136

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 136.
New York, Blank.
The Curator, who had been organizing documents, posed the same question once again.
“You’re really sure about this, right?”
And Emma, who had received the identical question multiple times, offered the same reassurance as always.
“Yes, yes! I’m telling you, it’s fine.”

Blank was a gallery famous among collectors, befitting its position under a major conglomerate.
Though not quite among the top tier of galleries one could count on a hand across New York’s many establishments.
Still, a gallery quite renowned among those who collected artwork.
In other words, it had only ever displayed pieces that were already assured hits within a certain established enthusiast base.
So the fact that they had suddenly launched the New Artist Discovery Project was bold enough in itself.
But….
“I was startled when Emma requested VIP invitations, but I was even more surprised when the director approved such an unconventional promotion so easily.”
Shin Hye Ran, the representative of Blank.
The Curator couldn’t fathom what she had been thinking when she authorized the daring promotion Emma had proposed.
Watching the Curator’s anxious expression, Emma let out a slight smile.
She sipped dark coffee—a triple shot—and laughed with easy confidence.
“Don’t worry. I’m certain. This kind of push is exactly what’s needed at this level. Trust me.”
With her habitual refrain of “trust me” and a laugh, Emma checked her mobile phone.
[Ye Ji♥: What’s this email about?]
[Ye Ji♥: Are you really going to do all this????]
The girl had kept her usual stoic expression, but now she was showing quite the reaction.
Seeing Ye Ji respond so noticeably, Emma felt the effort worthwhile.
Kids should live like kids—but Ye Ji had always seemed oddly mature for her age.
“I’m tired of pouring everything out and barely scratching by. Let’s make a big push this time and grab some incentives for ourselves too, yeah?”
Emma messaged Ye Ji back, speaking in a leisurely tone.
To bring in an already-famous artist for an exhibition, the gallery had to propose terms equally unconventional in return.
It meant offering a ratio far more favorable to the artist than industry averages.
But there were complications.
First, there was the matter of being in New York, where rental prices were merciless.
Added to that, an exhibition required proportional promotion, and those costs were no joke.
So even when exhibitions closed successfully, there was often nothing left to show for it.
But if Ye Ji’s exhibition succeeded, the story would be different.
In exchange for their full support, they would split the revenue at the standard industry rate of fifty-fifty.
“Next time we host this artist, there’s no way we’re doing an exhibition on these terms.”
Now that Emma knew Ye Ji was Goyo.
She was certain of it.
The pieces would sell for far more than anticipated, and the likelihood of a complete sell-out was high.
So if it was going to sell anyway.
The right move was to call in those who would recognize her work and pay handsomely for it.
“So you see, this time the situation is different. Anything extra we do just adds to our bottom line.”
Emma’s position at Blank was Senior Manager.
Bluntly put, she was a seller—she made money by selling artwork.
Her easygoing nature bore no room for needless pride; she understood her role very well.
Emma had recognized Ye Ji’s potential at first glance.
Her initial offer of an exclusive contract stemmed from the same calculation.
Her work had enough value to skyrocket—so if they locked in an exclusive contract now?
It would amount to buying in at the bottom.
Of course, the intention wasn’t to manipulate her into a bad deal.
She meant to treat Ye Ji well enough to sustain a long partnership.
In fact, thinking of her connection with Goyo, she’d planned to treat her even better.
‘But if Goyo is Ye Ji… I can understand why she’s hesitant about an exclusive contract.’
She didn’t seem like the type to obsess over money.
But that didn’t make her someone who’d turn down real income either.
Looking at Ye Ji, Emma felt the girl had an objective grasp of her own level.
Exceptional talent paired with youth and a thin resume.
Through pseudonymous work that concealed her weaknesses, she had already garnered considerable fame.
But from Emma’s perspective, the unmasking of Ye Ji’s pseudonym was only a matter of time.
The fact that Ye Ji and Goyo were the same person would soon become public knowledge.
But by then, Ye Ji would likely be an adult, with a solid body of work behind her.
‘When that happens, money might not even be the issue—she might be a figure we can’t afford to work with at all.’
This reasoning led Emma to a clear conclusion.
Plant a debt in advance.
Give what can be given, offer what can be offered.
Offer so generously that others would call it a loss, so generously that Ye Ji herself would recognize it as a favor.
She was destined for fame anyway—this was simply an investment.
“Is there something on your mind?”
The Curator asked, noticing Emma lost in thought with a sly smile on her face.
At the question, Emma burst out laughing.
Amusingly, the mobile phone the Curator was holding was none other than a Goyo Edition.
“Actually, what do you think of that? You were so thrilled when you finally got it—the Goyo Edition.”
“Huh? Oh, this?”
At Emma’s question, the Curator, now easily distracted, looked down at the mobile phone in her hands.
“It’s just the best. So special and beautiful. I’m obsessed with it, you know?”
She spoke proudly, holding the phone up with both hands to show Emma, her expression glowing with satisfaction.
“I was part of the first batch of preorders, so I already have it. People who ordered later are still waiting, apparently.”
The Curator gushed about how the real thing was a hundred times prettier than the promotional images.
Whether to praise the technical prowess that preserved the texture of living paint or the artist’s meticulous use of brushwork—
Either way, both were at an exceptional level, the Curator decided, gazing happily at the device now in her possession.
Watching the Curator cradle the phone tenderly to her chest, treasuring it, Emma’s laughter spilled out again.
“Haha, well, that worked out nicely. Glad you like it.”
“Wait, that’s not the point! You’re changing the subject, aren’t you?!”
Realizing belatedly that she’d been teased, the Curator bristled and pressed on.
“The director does it, you do it. Why won’t you share with the staff? And stop laughing!”
Emma understood her frustration.
The staff in New York had only seen photos of the works displayed in Seoul.
Of course they wouldn’t know that Goyo was Ye Ji.
But she couldn’t reveal it now—that was the problem.
“You’ll all find out when the time comes. Please appreciate my deeper intentions.”
Emma laughed playfully and returned to her work.
Everything was a matter of time.
Until then, perhaps the chance to witness Ye Ji’s growth through her artwork would be a privilege reserved for those who’d stumbled upon the secret.
***
Goyo lay sprawled on the sofa, watching the conversation between Emma and Ye Ji unfold before her.
Spacious, expansive. The large living room overlooked the Han River in perfect clarity.
Lying alone in a daze, Goyo only then realized the music had stopped playing at some point.
Time spent in Korea was both a lesson and a rest for her.
Initially, she hadn’t genuinely set out to gain some profound insight.
She’d thought it sufficient to glean some stimulation to ease boredom and monotony.
But when had that changed?
When had she grown earnest about this role of teacher?
“…….”
Ye Ji was far more fascinating and impressive than Goyo had initially thought.
At first, watching her succeed felt simply endearing and remarkable.
Her bold yet serene temperament, unusual for her age.
But as these moments repeated, Goyo’s own emotions began to tangle.
It wasn’t envy of Ye Ji’s success, of course.
No matter how complicated her feelings grew, she was certain of that much.
Envy would have been simpler.
Just envying a young painter who walked the path of success fueled solely by passion for her own work.
Had it been mere envy, she wouldn’t be lost in such turmoil.
She couldn’t articulate the complex emotion that arose each time she viewed Ye Ji’s pieces.
Especially the work Ye Ji had created in their final lesson.
‘Negative space on canvas….’
That simple painting lingered in her mind’s eye, recurring like an itch.
The meaning of emptiness could be interpreted in countless ways.
Of course, the still-developing students simply worked toward visual beauty.
But Ye Ji’s painting was different….
‘It felt like something veiled.’
The emptiness within her work was veiled as if by gossamer cloth.
Yet it revealed its presence beyond the canvas, displaying an infinity paradoxical in nature.
Like the tip of an iceberg.
The true magnitude hidden beneath depended entirely on the imagination of the beholder.
The emptiness in her painting was never truly empty.
How did she manage, every single time, to fill her work so completely with her own emotion and possibility?
Anyone who saw her pieces could not help but grow fond of her and take interest in her.
‘……That’s a painting I could never create.’
Repeatedly, Goyo was forced to acknowledge the gap between Ye Ji and herself.
Perhaps through her painting, she could fill her own void. That was a hope she harbored.
Did Ye Ji sense that longing?
The last words Ye Ji had spoken before the break suddenly resurfaced in her mind.
‘I don’t think a work has to have clear reasons and intentions behind it to be complete.’
Alongside those words, Goyo recalled her own teenage years.
Ye Ji’s exact age, back then.
Who she had been at that age.
“…….”
Struck by memory, Goyo rose abruptly from the sofa.
Opening the refrigerator, she found only water and beer cans filling the sparse shelves.
She surveyed her apartment—austere even in its scarcity—and retrieved a beer.
She’d only lived in Seoul for about a year.
Yet unfinished works lay scattered everywhere, strewn about haphazardly.
The time spent here had been an endless cycle of moments that summoned inspiration and anguish.
Impulsive bursts of creation, then stopping, then discarding.
Surveying this pathetic state of her living space, she traced her steps back through memory.
The stories about Goyo’s unruly adolescence were true.
Though it hadn’t always been that way.
She too had once been a fairly ordinary student.
Her parents’ divorce, her grandfather’s death, the abrupt move abroad to follow her father—
She had been merely a teenager struggling to adapt to shifting circumstances.
Click—
The pull-tab of the beer can made a crisp, bright sound.
Drinking down the beer, Goyo began gathering her incomplete works and stacking them aside.
Her life had begun to warp around high school.
Blended with a banal, thus all the more vicious, experience of severe racial discrimination.
She learned, without any reason, that there was something inherited at birth—
Something that couldn’t be accepted.
She discovered this then.
Though she hadn’t endured it long.
In those days she was fiercer, more willful.
Before the year was out, she could bear it no longer and beat down the instigator.
She didn’t regret being expelled alongside him.
Sometimes she wondered if things might have been different had she acted sooner.
The memory of being a target for ridicule simply by existing, simply by breathing—
If she had acted before those memories wounded her soul so deeply, would something have changed?
No matter how hard she tried to live a blithely cheerful existence, the wound was unavoidable.
No matter how healed, scars would remain.
There was no returning to the days before the injury.
“…….”
Goyo sat with her concealed emptiness laid bare in the works she stacked before her, sinking into thought once more.
‘Being empty is a meaning in itself, right? I don’t think the artist has to fill everything.’
She mulled over Ye Ji’s words again and again.
Something that couldn’t be reached by her paintings.
Among vague things, the frustrating sensation of grasping at something just beyond her fingers.
Should she have opened something stronger than beer?
Looking briefly at the drink inadequate for her turmoil, Goyo suddenly understood.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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