The Reborn Genius of an Arts High School - Chapter 146

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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 146.
Twenty years ago, in France.
“I’m going to Beaux-Arts this time!”
Catherine’s heart sank at Chloe’s cheerful voice, unexpected after so long.
Beaux-Arts was among France’s finest art universities.
Still, there was no reason for her to feel this way.
She was puzzled by how startled she’d been, more startled than necessary.
“It’s all thanks to you, Catherine! I’m so grateful!”
There was a considerable age gap between Catherine and Chloe.
While Catherine was almost thirty, Chloe was only now reaching university age.
“If it weren’t for you, I probably would have been rejected?”
Chloe said it warmly, but Catherine didn’t agree.
How much could a few words and minor lessons from her really change?
It was Chloe’s own effort that had brought this result.
Catherine felt proud of her, yet something felt oddly wrong all the same.
As Chloe chattered on, excited about her coming university life, a question emerged.
“But Catherine, why didn’t you go to university?”
A young lady raised in comfort in a good family.
That was how Catherine saw Chloe in her heart.
Her own house—this studio—looked like it might crumble to pieces.
Yet here Chloe stood, asking such innocent, naive questions.
Perhaps she couldn’t understand that there were people who had to abandon their artistic dreams for lack of money.
In any case, the question had been asked, so an answer was due.
Catherine thought quite carefully about what to tell her.
What she ended up choosing to say was
“Why would I bother going to university?”
Nothing but words dripping with false confidence.
The emotions beneath them were complex, but roughly divided into three.
False pride, a joke, and a wish that it might actually be true.
“Anyway, I don’t need a place like that—I already have more I want to paint than I can manage, and I know how to paint it too. I’m busy enough just expressing my own world.”
Catherine laughed lightly as she spoke, but her heart was another matter.
How could she not have thought about wanting to go to university?
She kept missing exhibition opportunities at the last moment, and Julien—clearly inferior to her—kept succeeding. She thought it was because of his credentials.
Catherine believed her lack of a degree was holding her back.
“What a shame.”
“Go and do well. If you mess around like you do here, everyone’s going to laugh at you.”
After that, Chloe came by occasionally, but they didn’t maintain the connection.
Catherine enjoyed being alone, and Chloe had soon immersed herself in university life.
Such topics made Catherine uncomfortable, and relationships that showed discomfort naturally couldn’t continue.
Still, Catherine had so few acquaintances worth remembering or maintaining connections with that she couldn’t help but recall this conversation from time to time.
Mixed with a sense of victimhood, the real lack went deeper.
‘What do I actually want to do?’
The world she’d created in a space barely deserving the name “studio”—something closer to ruins.
But calling it her own world of artworks was overpackaging.
The truth was she was simply trapped with no other choices.
Though she did have talent and perseverance to accomplish something despite this.
She’d made her own story within those constraints and assembled something respectable, but that was all.
The arrogance Catherine carried then was a shield to keep her pride from breaking, and her overconfidence was a thorn to avoid looking weak.
It all happened because she was alone.
Because she was alone.
***
She didn’t remember clearly how the call with Chloe had ended.
Her worries kept piling up, and her heart was divided exactly in half.
The biggest factor that would decide it would be her own heart.
But Ye Ji was still deliberating.
Would she prioritize contact with others, using the past as a stepping stone?
Or would she concentrate on her artwork instead of wasting time on the unnecessary?
Even if she didn’t go to university, it didn’t feel like she’d end up alone like in her previous life….
Ye Ji eventually fell into distraction and, contrary to her intention, frowned at the mixed paint before her.
‘…This is a headache.’
These days she was freshly realizing that living was a series of complex decisions.
And so Ye Ji returned to her ordinary rhythm of artwork and school life.
At lunch, she sat in the cafeteria as usual.
It was a pork cutlet day, and everyone had plates piled high with meat.
“I think the school lunch is what I’ll miss most after graduation.”
Ye Ji agreed with Da Hye’s sentiment.
Cheonglim was a school known for excellent cafeteria meals.
For someone like Ye Ji, who spent every break working and either skipped meals or grabbed whatever was convenient,
a school that made sure she ate regularly would be sorely missed.
Se Hee, picking at her salad beside them, pouted and spoke.
“How can food be what you’ll miss most? I think I’ll miss us always gathering like this.”
After graduation, everyone would scatter to their own schools and their own paths.
“Why do you take jokes so seriously?”
Da Hye, embarrassed, crammed more pork cutlet into her mouth.
Every time she became aware that the end was approaching, she seemed to grow sentimental.
Watching her, Se Hee spoke with an unusually serious expression.
“Why don’t you just not go abroad and take a gap year instead?”
It was already a sensitive time after submitting applications.
At Se Hee’s ill-timed mention of a gap year, Da Hye practically grabbed her spoon.
If her mouth hadn’t been full of food, she would definitely have received a stream of curses.
Da Hye lunged as if ready to smack Se Hee’s forehead with the spoon.
“Eek!”
With an exaggerated shriek, Se Hee hid behind Ye Ji.
Ye Ji managed to grab her and intervened.
“Stop that and just eat more.”
As she said this, Ye Ji pushed another piece of pork cutlet into Da Hye’s already full mouth.
“Still, if you want to see each other, you can always meet again, can’t you? Why be so sad about it?”
At Ye Ji’s words, Se Hee grumbled while dodging Da Hye.
“Maybe we can, but… we’d only be able to meet if both of us make the effort, right?”
A relationship that requires breaking through busy schedules, making plans, and putting in extra effort just to see each other.
Ye Ji was the type to stay close only with those she was already close to, so it felt likely she’d keep in touch with most of her school friends after graduation.
But someone with Se Hee’s personality—the kind who roamed the whole campus—would probably be different.
Most friendships would likely end with graduation, never to meet again.
“Now I’ll just be doing auditions and shows every year, so will I even have a chance to make friends outside of work?”
Once that common touchstone of school disappeared, it had to work out that way.
Listening to Se Hee’s whining and worries, Ye Ji thought back to the brief breaks—mere weeks or so—she used to have.
After graduation, every day would probably feel like a vacation, years going by like that, maybe a lifetime.
“…….”
Suddenly Ye Ji realized this wasn’t so different from her own biggest concern.
Maybe everyone’s thoughts come down to the same place.
“Anyway… look, if you want to see each other after graduation, just see each other! Say one more negative thing like that and—!”
Da Hye finally swallowed what was in her mouth and wielded her spoon with menacing intent.
This kind of scene was only possible because they were school friends.
Relationships made in society wouldn’t easily allow this sort of nonsense.
Especially not for someone like Ye Ji, active so young.
She’d be surrounded mostly by seniors far ahead of her own age.
It wouldn’t be easy for Ye Ji to find a sense of belonging, tied to someone.
But still, the friends she’d made here, in this place, right now—they’d treat her with that bond and belonging to the very end.
With that thought, Ye Ji ventured something.
“By the way, I’m going to submit my Field Practice form tomorrow and audit a class at Korean University.”
Whether sitting in on classes would bring certainty, she wasn’t sure.
In any case, she’d try everything allowed and then decide.
At Ye Ji’s words, Da Hye and Se Hee’s eyes widened.
They’d thought she’d made up her mind when she said she wasn’t going to university.
With expressions full of questions, Da Hye and Se Hee exchanged glances.
Then Da Hye was the first to ask.
“So what class are you going to audit?”
***
The next day, at Korean University’s Art College.
Ye Ji passed quietly among the many students.
Though Hak Su welcomed her warmly, the university campus was far larger than expected,
and Ye Ji arrived just barely in time for the class.
“You can just sit in on the class first, and come back another time if you’d like.”
Inwardly, he was disappointed she hadn’t chosen his class.
The class Ye Ji had chosen was art history.
Hak Su found it a bit surprising, but precisely because of that, Ye Ji had decided to audit a theory class.
Of course she could learn more through practical work too. But ultimately, it all comes down to painting ‘well’.
A single auditing session didn’t feel like it would give her any real technique.
But which paintings belonged to which era and how they mattered, or which artists had which styles and why—
that kind of knowledge was something you couldn’t know without studying it, and a single class could at least give her a feel for the field.
The fact that art can’t be separated from academic background, the reason the scope of theory is so broad—these have their place.
‘Besides….’
Since it was her first class, she wanted to at least get a sense of the lecture hall’s atmosphere.
She’d wandered around a bit,
but having finally found the classroom, Ye Ji pulled her hat down low and took a seat in the back corner.
Ye Ji habitually brought out her notebook and pen, though most students had pulled out tablets or laptops.
The professor came in, and the lecture began.
Being theoretical as expected, viewing from the back meant she noticed quite a variety of behaviors.
Most were concentrating, of course, but some students were up to other things.
A prestigious university was no different, it seemed.
Some dozed off, others quietly checked their phones or exchanged whispered chatter.
Just ordinary college students.
But somehow, it didn’t bother her to watch them.
Ye Ji suddenly realized that this casual way of being was itself a sensibility she didn’t possess.
‘I don’t know how to do anything except work hard….’
She thought of “working hard” as her own way of enjoying things,
but sometimes she wanted to circle back and understand what Hyun Min and others meant when they said, “I don’t think I could live like you do.”
She’d taken it as praise.
‘Maybe it means I’m too rigid.’
A life spent painting every day, concentrated only on that, would certainly be happy too.
For her, painting was what mattered most.
She always had more she wanted to paint, and the time to visualize those images never felt like enough.
Ye Ji wasn’t really the social type to begin with.
She was more comfortable expressing herself with a brush than with words.
But wouldn’t that make her no different from her previous life?
“French critic Nicolas Bourriaud said something like this.”
Suddenly, hearing a familiar name from the professor’s mouth, Ye Ji found herself paying attention.
“It’s called Relational Aesthetics.”
A famous French critic active since the nineties.
Someone who’d been active in the same era as Catherine, so Ye Ji knew of him well.
“Does anyone know what that means?”
No student readily raised a hand at the professor’s question.
But Ye Ji knew.
“Art is not a private object, but a moment of communication arising from relationality….”

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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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