Chapter 3 …

The students’ attention remained completely focused on Yeon Sil-jong all the way until the last class.

Then came the noisy rush of students heading home after school.

“By the way, are you really okay?”

Normally, Hyunmin would have been busy sticking his nose into everyone else’s business.

But today was different.

Whenever he got the chance, he followed Yeji around and kept asking if she was alright.

At first, Yeji thought he must have felt really guilty.

But—

“I told you I’m fine. Can’t you tell by looking at me?”

She was starting to get annoyed.

When Hyunmin followed her all the way onto the route home, Yeji answered even more firmly.

But Dahye also spoke with a troubled expression.

“It does bother me a little. Even the way you hold the brush has changed. It’s kind of unsettling!”

It’s not like she could complain when Yeji seemed to have gotten better.

After thinking it over carefully, Dahye added:

“Isn’t suddenly becoming good at something a weird change in itself?”

At her words, Hyunmin let out a childish snort of laughter.

“Wow. One soccer ball to the head and she awakens as a genius.”

“Maybe the person who caused the accident should keep his mouth shut?”

Watching Dahye and Hyunmin bicker, Yeji chuckled as well.

But when she thought about it, there really was something strange about it.

Because of the bizarre experience of recalling her previous life, she hadn’t even considered it herself.

“I don’t remember anything between getting hit by the ball and waking up.”

The joking expression immediately vanished from Hyunmin’s face.

“R-Really?”

“Yeah. I remember getting off the bus in the morning… and then the next thing I remember is waking up slumped over my desk in class.”

Yeji looked perfectly healthy—better than usual, if anything.

Hyunmin, who had been ready to brush it off, suddenly became serious.

“Please go to the hospital. Please. Please. Want me to come with you?”

Why would I go with you?

As Yeji immediately made a disgusted face, Hyunmin quickly pulled out a card.

“Then at least use this. Please. Pretty please.”

The person responsible was begging this much.

Refusing would feel strange.

Yeji casually snatched the card from his hand.

“Fine. I’m going to spend a lot.”

“Yes, yes. Just please tell me the results say nothing’s wrong.”

After adding that she absolutely had to contact him if anything showed up in the examination, Hyunmin finally left.

“I told you not to kick a soccer ball wherever you feel like it.”

“Exactly.”

Walking alongside Dahye, Yeji asked:

“Don’t you have to go to your academy?”

“I do, but…”

Dahye hesitated, still worried about her.

But soon she nodded.

“Yeah, well, you’ll probably be fine. But if the doctor says you need more tests, go straight to my mom’s hospital!”

With Dahye’s concern lingering until the very end, the two parted ways.

Yeji headed directly to the hospital.

As soon as she arrived, she found herself strangely nervous.

Was it because the memory of being told she would lose her sight felt so vivid?

Even during a simple examination, her palms became sweaty.

“It looks like a mild concussion. I don’t see any other symptoms.”

Ridiculously enough, there was a large bump on the back of her head.

Even then, it only hurt when she touched that exact spot.

Aside from that, there were no symptoms whatsoever.

The doctor reassured her.

“If you’d like, we can do a CT scan for a more detailed examination.”

If everything was fine, was there really any need?

To be honest, Yeji was worried about something else.

“Um… are my eyes okay?”

“…Why? Is your vision blurry or are you seeing something strange?”

Surprised, the doctor checked her pupil response again.

“Oh, no. It’s just… I feel like my eyesight has gotten a little worse lately.”

“Ah, if that’s all, the ophthalmology department is over there. You can register and get examined.”

Though her palms remained damp with tension, the ophthalmology examination revealed nothing unusual.

In fact, her eyesight was good enough that she didn’t even need glasses.

“……”

The feeling was strange somehow.

In the end, Yeji bought some eye-health supplements from the pharmacy before heading home.

After taking a bus and leaving the crowded heart of Seoul behind, rows upon rows of apartment buildings came into view.

Just one among many.

Yet comfortable.

The home of her family.

“I’m home.”

At the sound of her voice, her mother—who seemed to have just returned herself—immediately poked her head out.

“Are you okay? Seriously, why was that Hyunmin kid kicking a soccer ball first thing in the morning?”

Having already heard everything through a messenger app, her mother looked upset.

After feeling the swollen lump on the back of Yeji’s head, she looked as though she might cry.

“The hospital really said you’re okay?”

“Ow, ow, ow. They said it’ll be fine once the bump goes down. Where’s Dad?”

“He said he’s almost here. Want him to buy anything on the way?”

“Yeah. Chicken.”

“Alright. Go wash up. I’ll call him.”

An ordinary, happy family.

Yeji felt both unfamiliar and ticklish inside.

A daily life she had taken for granted until yesterday.

Only now did she understand how precious it truly was.

Only after remembering the unbearably difficult life she had lived before.

“……”

While washing her face, Yeji looked at her reflection in the mirror once more.

Catherine, who had painted while starving herself, was already dead.

The current Yeji was healthy, young, and standing before limitless possibilities.

She no longer needed the desperation of those days.

‘But still… I want to paint.’

Even so, that single desire had not changed in either her previous life or her current one.

Steam gradually clouded the mirror, blurring the reflection.

But the fact that the person reflected there was herself did not change.

Something that remained unchanged no matter how much circumstances and environments changed.

The fact that she was someone who needed to express something with her hands.

And beyond that, someone who felt joy when that expression was recognized by others.

The 17-year-old Yeji and the 30-year-old Catherine.

It was the value and goal that both versions of herself shared.

‘Then nothing has changed.’

Splashing cold water onto her face, Yeji organized her thoughts.

As long as that fact remained unchanged, all that had happened was that memories and experiences from her previous life had been added.

She could accept who she had been then and devote herself to the present.

She was still herself.

The next day, Yeji went to school as usual.

After enduring the packed morning bus, she arrived at school.

Even a day later, the classroom was still buzzing with talk about Yeon Sil-jong.

“They’re saying the studio will be open for overnight work starting today.”

At Dahye’s words, Yeji scratched her chin.

There was still more than a month left.

Did they really need to start working late already?

But that was only her standard.

More accurately, it was the standard she had developed after recalling Catherine’s experiences, so she kept the thought to herself.

“Why is everyone still standing around? Class started ages ago.”

Only after the teacher appeared did the noise finally die down.

This period was a still-life drawing practicum.

The instructor was Jung Mijin, a teacher with short bobbed hair.

“I told you we’d be doing a graded evaluation today, right?”

The moment she spoke, complaints erupted from every direction.

Enjoying the students’ protests, Mijin grinned and walked across the room.

After placing an empty desk in the center of the classroom—

“You’ll have 100 minutes. There won’t be a separate break, so take care of yourselves.”

Then she placed a single glass on top of the desk.

A crystal glass sparkling as though it possessed hundreds of facets.

It had an antique elegance, perfect for serving expensive whiskey.

“Seriously. Where did she even find something like that?”

Dahye muttered under her breath.

Similar groans rose throughout the classroom.

This performance assessment was a basic sketching assignment.

They had to draw that crystal glass using only pencils.

“The class next door had theirs last period. Apparently they had a crystal sun catcher. This is still better.”

Hyunmin, seated diagonally across from them, quietly informed them.

“Oh, right. I almost forgot~”

In an exaggerated tone, Mijin walked to the podium and retrieved her tumbler.

Then she poured the water inside into the crystal glass.

The already dazzling glass, full of refracted light, now contained water as well.

Small groans broke out around the room.

Several students shot sharp looks at Hyunmin.

Dahye glared while gripping her freshly sharpened pencil.

Hyunmin discreetly looked away toward the ceiling.

“…I think ours is harder.”

“Serves you right.”

“……”

Hyunmin couldn’t argue with Yeji and Dahye.

Of course, the teacher hadn’t really forgotten.

She was probably just having fun teasing the students.

“Alright, begin. You can move your desks or change positions however you want.”

The moment Mijin finished speaking, everyone jumped out of their seats.

Determined to find an angle with less light refraction, they began circling the classroom.

“As if that’s going to make a huge difference…”

Sigh.

Dahye merely rotated her desk.

Yeji nodded and did the same.

Anyone who had already passed the entrance exam to Cheongrim possessed solid fundamentals.

Yeji tried to guess what exactly the teacher intended to evaluate.

‘If it were about form, she would have brought a plaster cast instead of something like that.’

To accurately reproduce all those countless facets, even she would need more than two hours.

Yeji alternated her gaze between the sparkling crystal glass and the pencil in her hand.

The defining characteristics of the object.

‘Sparkle. Light.’

This was an assignment about drawing light.

Without hesitation, Yeji immediately began shading the darkest areas.

‘That’s my specialty.’

When people are told to look for light, they usually search for the light source.

But she was a little different.

To truly understand light, one had to see the reflected light.

And that required a surprisingly advanced sense of spatial awareness.

Light collided with countless surfaces, reflected, and bent.

The area receiving the least light was the bottom of the glass.

And the deepest grooves between its contours.

“……”

No, this part should be a little brighter.

Out of habit from her days as Catherine, Yeji rubbed the paper lightly with the bone of her wrist.

The clumped graphite smeared onto her skin and became softer.

After repeatedly identifying the darkest areas and building from there, the shape of the glass gradually emerged.

The basic shadow structure was more or less finished now…

“……”

What about everyone else?

When she glanced at Dahye’s sketchbook, Yeji paused.

It was completely different from her own drawing, where she had already established the form through values and shadows.

Dahye was carefully constructing the overall shape with a sharp pencil and eraser.

Each line was delicate, almost as if she were sculpting.

It looked like she intended to finish the entire structure before adding light and shadow.

‘…That is the standard method.’

And two days ago, Yeji herself would undoubtedly have drawn exactly that way.

But the current Yeji was different.

‘You can’t get ahead by only doing things the way you were taught.’

A free spirit.

Catherine, the artist from the French countryside.

For someone who possessed those memories and experiences, such textbook methods no longer suited her.

She could skip those tedious processes entirely.

The sketch already existed in her mind.

There was no reason to repeat unnecessary steps.

As a result, her work progressed much faster.

“Time’s up. Bring them all here.”

The teacher accepted the drawings only after exactly 100 minutes had passed.

“Ah! I didn’t finish!”

“Did anyone finish?”

Everyone submitted their work with defeated expressions.

Then—

“…Well, someone did.”

Among all the papers still covered with blank white space,

one stood out.

“What? Whose is this?”

As the class began whispering, Dahye—standing nearby—looked at Yeji with the most shocked expression of all.

“It’s mine.”

At Yeji’s answer, not only the students but even the teacher turned to look.

“Mine isn’t finished either.”

Yeji said that, but nobody agreed.

Her drawing omitted the crystal’s intricate facets.

Yet it possessed depth.

The areas where the water reduced light transmission and the areas where it did not.

The sections receiving direct light and those illuminated by reflected light.

At the very least, those differences were unmistakably present.

Because of that depth, the omitted details didn’t feel unfinished.

If anything, they felt like a deliberate artistic style.

“Well, I guess we already know who’s getting the A.”

At Hyunmin’s comment, nobody disagreed.