The Reborn Genius of an Arts High School - Chapter 50

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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 50.
Young’s tone was light, but the question was anything but.
“I’ll learn.”
Yura was the first to answer his question.
Faced with Yura’s calm, measured reply, Young pouted playfully.
“I said play, though….”
“I’ll join too.”
Yeji chimed in right after her.
Following suit, Kang Hyeok and Hyun-ah nodded in agreement after a moment’s thought, saying they’d participate as well.
Young clapped his hands in delight at the four affirmations.
“Great. Wonderful. Then let’s all meet here at this time tomorrow, yeah? Sound good?”
Since it was after school anyway, Yeji had no problem with it.
But the others nodded, thinking they’d need to shuffle their cram school and private lesson schedules.
“Just blow it off sometimes.”
His Korean was clumsy overall—so why did he remember expressions like that?
Kang Hyeok joked back at Young’s words.
“But each class costs 300,000 won?”
“What the…. Then that’s a problem. I’ll reschedule.”
Korean hagwons scare me.
Muttering that to himself, Young turned to the students heading home.
“Starting tomorrow, we’re making artworks! Me too!”
***
Zero, Young, Young.
The names people called him varied, but the assessments were largely the same.
A young prodigy with an unconventional inner world.
Because he’d been a problem child who acted on impulse, his education had stopped at middle school, yet he’d succeeded anyway.
That fact made him smug about himself, but Young always worked to resist that tendency.
His lightweight, even crude-seeming behavior and speech were the result of many layered things mixed together.
A flexibility that dismissed everything as trivial.
An impulsive streak that let him easily ignore uncomfortable situations.
There was also his deliberate choice to seem simple, letting others reveal their true nature.
“Hmm, hmm~”
He hummed softly, settling into a chair before his own work.
He had a habit of fixating on whatever struck his fancy, but lately he’d circled back and rediscovered his taste for Painting.
The world of drawing was so endlessly vast.
Just when he was about to tire of it, some new stimulus would electrify him again.
What inspiration might he glean from these young, spirited students?
It was an experience he’d never had before, and he looked forward to it intensely.
Artists express themselves through the art they create.
Andy Warhol once said this in an interview.
‘If you want to know about me, look at my paintings and films. There’s nothing behind that.’
For Young, those words were a refrain that would cross his entire life.
For an artist, the highest form of conversation was communion through works.
In that sense, Young wanted to show himself to these children who would become his first disciples and friends, and he wanted to come to know them.
I wish tomorrow would come so we could all paint together.
Young suppressed his anticipation and slowly dragged out the time that wouldn’t pass.
***
The School bustled with activity as the Final Exam approached.
Yeji was busy too, but it wasn’t overwhelming.
She slept well, ate well, and painted well.
Within the bounds of her routine, Yeji made her effort.
“So, you won’t be able to take extra lessons this semester?”
Another day passed, and it was time to leave School.
To Da-hye’s question, Yeji answered with an apologetic air.
“Yeah, sorry. My Special Class instructor is kind of… unusual.”
“No, don’t apologize to me.”
Hehe, since you won’t be top of the class this time, I guess I should try for first place!
At Da-hye’s playful words, Yeji let out a small laugh.
Compared to last year, both of them had grown in ways that felt significantly different.
Nothing felt better than seeing the tangible fruit of effort that you could sense intuitively.
“Anyway, I got it. See you tomorrow!”
After saying goodbye to Da-hye, Yeji gathered her materials and headed to the designated Practice Studio.
Oil Painting was nice, but this time she’d brought Acrylic Paint.
To have a lot of conversation with an artist named Young through works in a short time, lighter materials would be better.
What Yeji wanted to learn from Young in this opportunity was clear.
‘What kind of experiences that unconventional artist has had, and how he expresses them.’
The act of hearing and experiencing itself was learning.
As for her own artistic world, Yeji was already quite solid.
Precisely because of that, Yeji needed diverse connections and experiences.
It would be a mistake to think all artists simply extract what’s in their heads and put it on canvas.
They needed external stimulus—what’s called inspiration.
Yeji believed the greatest inspiration came only through human-to-human exchange.
Broadening the range of one’s thinking meant meeting diverse people.

“…No one’s arrived yet.”
In the Practice Studio, four Easels and one Sculpture Workstation faced each other in a circle.
Yeji, the first to arrive, took her place by the Easel near the window.
After setting down her bag and waiting a moment, Hyun-ah arrived first.
“Oh, hi Yeji. You’re early…?”
“Hello. I came right after class ended, so that’s probably why.”
“Make way, make way. It’s heavy, heavy!”
Kang Hyeok passed through the two conversing students and entered.
He appeared to have brought a full load of Clay for Sculpture work.
Seeing the bucketful of clay, Yeji marveled at it from several angles.
The weight looked considerable….
“Wow….”
Recognizing her one-dimensional amazement, Kang Hyeok played it up.
“Sculpture is done with muscle, not skill.”
“…You’re just… saying anything, aren’t you…?”
At his antics, Hyun-ah cautiously pushed back.
Though overly cautious, she wasn’t the type to hold her tongue entirely.
While the three of them made small talk,
Yura, arriving last, quietly arranged only her brushes and paints.
“Hey everyone, hi!”
Young entered the Studio today with a cheerful voice as well.
“Oh, you’ve already claimed your spots? Then I’ll take the empty one~”
At Young’s words, Kang Hyeok, seated before the Sculpture Workstation, joked back.
“Seems like I didn’t really have a choice in seats?”
“Want to switch with me?”
“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant.”
Kang Hyeok flustered and waved his hand at Young’s quick offer to trade.
Yeji smiled a little at Young’s easygoing way of taking the joke in stride.
“You told us to just bring any materials, so we work freely, right?”
Yura, eager to get down to business, asked respectfully.
At Yura’s question, Young shrugged.
“Let’s relax a bit. Actually, do you know how backed up traffic was getting here?”
Young chattered on about how Seoul’s traffic seemed insane.
He had a curious personality.
An East Asian man from the West rarely had such a bright, easygoing nature.
Yeji couldn’t fully know what kind of life he’d lived, but she could sense some hardship in his past.
The many works she’d seen from him yesterday unexpectedly contained quite a few pieces that carried such dark undertones.
Especially.
“Anyway, about what our Yura was curious about,”
At Young’s words, using the affectionate “our” before Yura’s name, the girl’s shoulders tensed slightly with goosebumps.
Young dragged a table to the center of their circle and placed a Candle on it, lighting the wick.
“Since this is our first time meeting, I thought we might do a piece introducing ourselves!”
The red, round flame flickering at the candle’s tip was weak compared to the fluorescent lights, but alive nonetheless.
What did a candle have to do with self-introduction?
Young smiled with satisfaction, surveying the still-puzzled faces of his students.
“A work expresses the artist! That’s what I think.”
Yeji agreed with what he said.
For artists gathering to come to know one another, sharing works had to be the best way.
‘So…?’
What does he want us to express through that candle?
Before the four pairs of eyes waiting for Young’s explanation, he smiled mischievously and spoke.
“How about we express life and death through this candle?”
……?
At the unexpected theme from Young, Yeji blinked blankly for a moment.
It was a heavily serious subject, contrasting sharply with his cheerful, seemingly frivolous demeanor.
“Um… the theme seems pretty heavy?”
Kang Hyeok, habitually kneading clay, spoke back uncertainly.
“Is it? Well, I don’t think it is.”
Life and death.
The most pedantic and simultaneously intuitive of themes.
Each person would embrace that pair of words differently.
“Since the special lecture is three hours,”
“We can’t finish!”
Kang Hyeok quickly added to Young’s words.
Young laughed quietly, apparently pleased by his forthright attitude.
“OK. Let’s all finish up to the midway point and show each other. Ask whatever you’re curious about!”
Young’s explanation ended there.
At his words to begin working, the four Special Class students took their places at their workstations.
Four Easels and one Sculpture Workstation.
Yeji, claiming one of those spots, didn’t immediately pick up a Pencil or Brush.
She simply gazed at the Candle sitting in the center for a moment.
‘A burning candle.’
It matched the abstract theme of life and death quite well.
Modern students would likely think of the most common phrase first.
A flame is brightest just before it dies out.
It was a phrase so widespread its origins were forgotten.
But Yeji recalled a more traditional artistic tradition.
A style that had been fashionable in a certain era, where candles were used alongside the symbolism of death.
‘A Vanitas Still Life.’
It was a still-life genre that flourished in seventeenth-century Netherlands, symbolizing emptiness and futility.
The heavy subject matter might suggest philosophical and conceptual works would dominate, but it was the opposite.
Paradoxically, Vanitas Still Life arose from the guilt of the wealthy of that era.
Those who wanted to enjoy art even in dark times—plague, religious warfare, and the like.
Vanitas Still Life was the style such people chose.
‘It meant that even amid luxury and worldly life, they would never forget death and would always remember it.’
Memento Mori.
Remember death.
That Latin phrase, quite famous even among Koreans, was deeply connected to this style.
But the death remembered in Vanitas Still Life was quite magnificent.
With strong design elements infused, it became decorative works that sold quite well in that era.
That grave splendor held both moral instruction and worldly indulgence simultaneously.
Worldly, gorgeous life; the emptiness of death.
Withered flowers, rotting fruit, and candlelight.
It would be good to draw motifs from there.
As Yeji organized her thoughts, the candle came into view.
“…….”
Burning, the candle dripped wax onto the floor drop by drop.
With the wax that pooled clear before turning white, a certain image arose in her mind.
A memory of her previous life.
The rain-soaked streets of Paris.
The streetlight’s glow flickering in the end.
‘Light is death.’
A living death that burned and consumed itself.
And humans, paradoxically, only come to understand in the very moment death reaches their doorstep.
What they truly desired, what they really wanted to have.
“…….”
When Yeji faced death’s moment, it was not like the lantern slides of a life flashing before her eyes.
More paintings, a wider world, more people.
She’d wanted to show her work to them.
Regret remained for the works left incomplete, never finished.
In that final instant, Yeji had harbored such thoughts.
‘That became my deepest sorrow….’
Even in her reborn life, she’d picked up the brush again—such a powerful longing it was.
Boundless imagination and expressiveness unconstrained by human physical limits.
The act of expressing that through art was sacred and beautiful beyond measure.
And the result thus created.
That was herself.
She wanted to share it widely, present it, be recognized for it.
‘Death is not an end. Nor is it the inverse of life.’
Death was the moment when true desire and yearning awaken.
Once Yeji had gathered her thoughts, she immediately picked up her brush.

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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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