The Reborn Genius of an Arts High School - Chapter 3

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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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Chapter 3.
Until the final class, the students’ attention was consumed entirely by talk of the head injury.
And so came an unsettled walk home.
“But seriously, are you really okay?”
On any other day, Hyun Min would have been busy poking his nose into everyone’s business.
But today was different.
Every spare moment he trailed after Ye Ji like a puppy, asking the same thing over and over.
At first she thought he must feel awfully guilty.
“I’m fine, okay? Can’t you see?”
Ye Ji was growing irritated.
When he continued to follow her even on the walk home, she answered more firmly.
But Da Hye spoke up too, looking unsettled.
“I am bothered by something. The way you’ve been brushing—it’s different. It feels off.”
She couldn’t quite say anything negative about her doing better.
Da Hye, puzzling over it, seemed to think there was something genuinely wrong, and added further.
“Isn’t it strange to suddenly get so much better? That’s a weird change, isn’t it?”
At Da Hye’s words, Hyun Min let out a foolish laugh.
“Oh man, one hit from a soccer ball and you awaken as a genius.”
“The person who caused the accident should keep their mouth shut.”
Watching Da Hye and Hyun Min bicker, Ye Ji chuckled as well.
But thinking about it, there was something subtly odd about the whole thing.
She hadn’t had time to think about it because of that strange experience of recalling her past life.
“I actually don’t remember anything from before and after the ball hit me.”
At Ye Ji’s words, Hyun Min’s playful expression turned serious.
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah. I remember getting off the bus this morning… and then the next thing I remember is lying face-down in the classroom.”
Ye Ji didn’t just look fine—she actually seemed better than usual.
Hyun Min’s expression, which had been ready to brush it off, grew grave.
“Please go to the hospital. Please, please. Want me to come with you?”
Why would I go with you?
At Ye Ji’s obvious look of disgust, Hyun Min quickly pulled out a card.
“Then use this instead. Please, I’m begging you.”
When the person responsible was pleading this much, it would be strange to refuse.
Ye Ji took the card without hesitation.
“Fine. Should I use it freely?”
“Yes, yes, please. Just let me know the results are all clear.”
Hyun Min added that he should be contacted immediately if the test results came back poorly, then left shortly after.
“So why do you kick balls around anywhere in the first place?”
“Right?”
Ye Ji asked as she walked with Da Hye.
“But don’t you have academy class soon?”
“Well, yeah…”
Da Hye hesitated for a moment, worried about Ye Ji, but then nodded.
“You know what, it’s fine. And if the doctor says you need more tests, we can just go to my mom’s hospital!”
With Da Hye’s final words of worry, the two parted ways.
And so Ye Ji headed straight to the hospital.
Once there, Ye Ji found herself unexpectedly tense.
Perhaps the memory of being told she’d lost her sight was too vivid?
Even in a simple examination, her palms inexplicably grew sweaty.
“It looks like a mild concussion. I don’t see any other symptoms of concern.”
Oddly enough, there was a sizable bump on the back of her head.
But even that only hurt when you pressed on it directly.
Beyond that, there were no other symptoms whatsoever.
The doctor reassured her.
“If you’d like, we could do a CT scan for more detailed results.”
If they said it was fine, why bother?
In truth, Ye Ji was more concerned about something else than her head.
“Um, doctor? Are my eyes okay?”
“…Why? Is something blurry or strange?”
Surprised at Ye Ji’s question, the doctor checked her pupil reflex once more.
“Oh, no. It’s just… lately my vision’s felt a bit worse.”
“Ah, well then. The optometry department is that way. Go check in and get examined.”
Though her palms grew clammy with anxiety, the eye exam revealed nothing unusual either.
In fact, both eyes had vision so sharp she didn’t need glasses at all.
“……”
Something felt off.
In the end, Ye Ji bought an eye supplement at the pharmacy and headed home.
Taking the bus out of congested Seoul, you pass into the sprawling forest of apartment buildings.
Just one among many, yet comfortable—our home.
“I’m home.”
At Ye Ji’s voice, her mother, who’d just arrived, poked her head out eagerly.
“Are you okay? And why is that Hyun Min character kicking a ball around since morning?”
Her mother, who’d already heard the situation through messenger, spoke with concern.
After feeling the bulge on the back of her head, her mother’s expression turned worried.
“The hospital really said you’re fine?”
“Ow, ow… they said just let the bump heal. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s on his way home. Should I ask him to bring something?”
“Yeah. Chicken for me.”
“Okay, go wash up. Mom will call and order.”
A normal, harmonious home.
Ye Ji felt something both strange and ticklish in her chest.
A daily life she hadn’t valued yesterday.
How precious it truly was.
She could only understand this now, remembering the memories of that exhaustingly difficult past life.
“……”
Suddenly, as Ye Ji washed her face, she looked at her reflection in the mirror again.
Catrine, the one who’d drawn while starving, was already a dead woman.
The Ye Ji of now was healthy, young, and standing before infinite possibilities.
That meant she had no need to carry the desperation of that time.
‘But still. I still want to draw.’
Yet that one desire alone remained unchanged between her past life and her present one.
Steam rose and clouded the mirror, blurring the image within.
But what remained unchanged was that the reflection within was still herself.
No matter how situation and circumstance changed.
The self she was—in the end—needed to express something with her hands.
And more than that, she felt joy when it was recognized.
Ye Ji at seventeen and Catrine at thirty.
Across two lifetimes lived, this was what mattered to her—the shared value and goal of her life.
‘Then nothing changes.’
Ye Ji splashed cold water on her face and organized her thoughts.
If that fact remained constant, then the memories and experiences of her past life were simply added.
She could accept who she’d been then and commit to the present moment.
She remained herself.
***
The next day, Ye Ji went to school as always.
She boarded the crowded morning bus and arrived at her school.
Even a day later, the classroom still buzzed with talk of the head injury.
“And I heard starting today we can do night work in the studio too?”
At Da Hye’s words, Ye Ji scratched her chin.
With more than a month left, did they really need night sessions?
But that was only her standard.
More precisely, it was the standard she’d adopted after recalling Catrine’s experience—so she kept it to herself.
“When’s the competition deadline and you’re still sitting around?”
At the teacher’s entrance, the commotion finally died down.
This session was a still-life composition workshop.
It was taught by Jung Mi Jin, the teacher with a short, sharp bob cut.
“I told you we’d be doing the Practical Assessment today, right?”
But her next words sparked complaints from all directions.
The teacher, seeming to enjoy even the students’ jeering, smiled and crossed the classroom.
After setting a bare desk in the center of the room.
“You have 100 minutes. There’s no separate break time, so come and go as needed.”
With those words, the teacher placed a glass cup on the empty desk.
A gleaming crystal glass cup with what looked like hundreds of angles.
It had an elegant, old-fashioned look perfect for sipping fine liquor.
“Seriously. Where on earth did she get something like that?”
Da Hye muttered a complaint almost to herself.
Similar jeers erupted from around the room.
This Practical Assessment was about the most basic skill: Basic Sketch Drawing.
They had to express that crystal cup in pencil.
“The other class did their test last hour. Theirs was a crystal suncatcher—this is at least better.”
Hyun Min, sitting diagonally away, tipped her off.
“Oh, right. I almost forgot~”
Mi Jin, with an innocent air, retrieved her tumbler from the desk.
Then she poured the water it contained into the crystal cup.
The cup, which already refracted light in all directions and sparkled, now had water added to it.
At that, several students let out small groans and glared sharply at Hyun Min.
When Da Hye picked up a freshly sharpened pencil and glared too, Hyun Min quickly averted his gaze to the distant ceiling.
“…This is harder for us, I think?”
“That’s a terrible thing to do.”
“………”
Hyun Min couldn’t deny it against Ye Ji and Da Hye’s words.
Of course, the teacher hadn’t really forgotten.
She’d just played a small prank because the students’ reactions amused her.
“Alright, begin. Feel free to move the desk and change your angle as you work.”
The moment Mi Jin’s words ended, everyone scrambled up from their seats.
They all began wandering around the classroom, looking for an angle with less light refraction.
“Like that’ll make much of a difference anyway…”
With a sigh, Da Hye just turned her own desk around.
At her words, Ye Ji nodded and simply rotated her desk as well.
After finishing entrance exams, everyone at Cheongrim had solid fundamentals.
Ye Ji pondered what the teacher was trying to assess.
‘If it was about form, she’d have brought a plaster cast instead of something like that.’
Drawing those hundreds of angles precisely would take more than two hours even for her.
Ye Ji glanced back and forth between the glittering cup and the pencil in her hand.
The characteristics of the object presented as the task.
‘Shine. Light.’
This was an assignment about drawing light.
Ye Ji immediately began sketching with her pencil, starting from the darkest areas.
‘That’s my specialty.’
Most people, when told to look at light, instinctively seek out the light source.
But she was a bit different from ordinary people.
To truly find light, you had to look at reflected light, which required surprisingly high Spatial Perception Ability.
Light bounces endlessly, reflects, and refracts.
The parts receiving the least light were the base of the glass cup.
And among the curves that formed here and there, the most recessed spots.
“……”
No, this part needs to be a bit brighter.
Following the habits of her time as Catrine, Ye Ji casually rubbed the paper with her wrist bone.
Graphite bunched up darkly transferred to her hand, and the area became slightly lighter.
After finding the darkest areas a few more times and drawing the lines, the form of the cup emerged.
At this point, she thought the basic shadows were done…
“……”
What are the other kids doing?
When Ye Ji glanced at Da Hye’s sketchbook, she paused.
It was starkly different from her own drawing, where she’d captured both form and light-and-shadow in one pass.
Da Hye was carving out the overall form with a sharply sharpened pencil and an eraser.
The lines were drawn delicately, almost like sculpting.
It seemed she would add the light and shadow based on the light only after completing the overall form.
‘…That is the proper way.’
And two days ago, Ye Ji would have certainly drawn the same way she was taught.
But the Ye Ji of now was different.
‘You can’t get ahead by just doing what you learned.’
A free spirit, an artist from the countryside of France—Catrine.
With the memories and experiences of that time in mind, such orthodox methods didn’t suit her.
She could skip such tedious processes.
With a sketch already in her head, there was no need to repeat unnecessary steps.
Because of this, she could work much faster.
“Alright, time. Everyone bring your papers.”
The teacher coldly ended the assessment at exactly 100 minutes and collected the papers.
“No, I didn’t finish!”
“Did anyone actually finish?”
As the others submitted with resigned expressions.
“…There is one.”
Among papers mostly blank.
One paper stood out.
“What? Whose is this?”
As everyone murmured, Da Hye beside her looked at Ye Ji with the most shocked expression.
“Mine.”
At Ye Ji’s words, the gazes of her classmates—and even the teacher—focused on her.
“Mine isn’t actually finished either.”
Ye Ji said this, but no one agreed.
Her drawing, though it omitted the precise angles of the crystal, had depth.
Where the water was and light penetrated less, and where it didn’t.
Direct light and reflected light.
At least such clear differences were felt.
Because of that depth, the omitted parts didn’t feel incomplete.
Rather, it almost felt like a painting style.
“I think we know who’s getting an A.”
At Hyun Min’s words, no one disagreed.

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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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