Except for the time spent out in the field, I mostly stayed in the guild house, but even then, I usually just stood idle out in the yard. Maybe that’s why the inside of the guild house, which I was stepping into for the first time in a while, looked a little different from how I remembered it. Did they put up a new partition wall or move some furniture around? They’d started studying interior design to get into housing, and I guess it really does look cleaner than before.“I felt it from outside too, but… it really doesn’t feel like a game. It feels real.”As soon as he stepped inside, Gang Jaegyung stood by the front door and muttered like he was talking to himself, scanning the whole interior with his eyes. I figured since he’d started this whole housing thing with the mindset of “It’s impossible to buy a house in real life, so I’ll satisfy the urge in-game,” he probably wanted something that looked more like a real home than a fantasy dwelling…But once we were actually inside the guild house, Gang Jaegyung didn’t say much after that first impression. He wasn’t moving around restlessly with his character either.Feeling a little confused, I turned to look at him and saw a deeply pensive expression on his face. His eyes, glowing white from the monitor light, darted nonstop from one spot to another as if analyzing every detail.Is it really worth staring at an in-game house this hard? It’s not like he’s going to live here. And yet he’s being so thorough.I waited quietly for him, but as the silence dragged on and I started getting bored, I recalled what I’d planned earlier and began rambling out an explanation.“The first floor’s just decorated like a regular home. If you go upstairs, the concept changes. The second floor is like a study, and the third floor—”“A study?”Before I could even finish, Gang Jaegyung, who’d been completely absorbed in checking out the house, suddenly turned his head and interrupted.Yeah, I figured he’d like it. The reaction was even stronger than I’d expected, and I barely managed to keep the corners of my mouth from twitching upward.“You like studies?”“Of course!”Excited, Gang Jaegyung dashed straight toward the staircase leading to the second floor. I moved my character to follow him up—but then his character suddenly froze at the foot of the stairs.Thinking there might be a problem, I positioned my character next to his and looked at him. Then Gang Jaegyung stared right back at me with wide eyes and asked:“Is it okay if I go up?”I was dumbfounded.“I literally broke the front door just to let you in, and you think I’d stop you from going to the second floor?”“Still. Out of courtesy.”“Hah.”What a ridiculous guy. These days, kids who act like this get called old-fashioned and get teased for it. I let out a short laugh and climbed the stairs first, and Gang Jaegyung trailed close behind me. He always argues back when I call him dog-like—asking why I’d say that about him (as if I’m calling him a literal dog)…Once we reached the second floor, Gang Jaegyung’s face lit up more than ever.“You like it?”He looked so ridiculously delighted that he didn’t even answer. His sparkling eyes fixated on the study, and they gleamed in a way completely different from how he’d looked at the first floor. Back when we were planning the upper floors and someone suggested a study, I remember scoffing and asking why we’d go with such a cliché concept… But Romantic and Moon Sunhwa, who pushed for the study theme anyway, turned out to be pretty damn admirable.Still staring at the study with shining eyes, Gang Jaegyung murmured softly.“I grew up playing and spending time in a study since I was a kid, so I always wanted to have one of my own when I became an adult. It was only after becoming one that I realized how hard that is financially…”Come on, just open up bigger donation tiers on your stream already. Stop capping it at 100,000 won per person per week.I wanted to shout that, but I held back since I didn’t want him to find out that I was the one poking around his stream every day under the alias “Zero.”“You make decent money from streaming though, don’t you?”“I do get some income, but after I pay the people who help with editing and everything, there’s not much left. Even after saving up, it's still hard to find a house in Seoul that’s big enough for a study…”If I offered to just buy him a house here, he’d probably freak out and rocket into space.“Does it have to be a study?”“Well, if I want to collect all the books I want, I’d need the kind of space only a study can provide, right?”“What kind of books are you even trying to collect?”Our home library back at my parents’ house had all sorts of books—management, organizational theory, self-help, essays… But realistically, the ones we actually looked at were few and specific, so even without a dedicated study, a couple of large bookshelves would’ve been plenty.Of course, Gang Jaegyung’s different from my family. He reads novels and likes studying, so maybe he really does need more space… Still, it was hard not to question why he needed enough books to justify an entire study.“…Too many to list?”When I asked, Gang Jaegyung fell into deep thought and couldn’t answer right away. Fair enough. Stuff like that never comes to mind when you’re put on the spot.“Okay, but at least give me a rough genre?”“Genre?”I tried to give him a hint, but he seemed to drift back into thought without being able to organize an answer.He said he used to read anything he could get his hands on as a kid. If I had to guess, the ones that stuck with him were probably mystery novels, right? Classic reappearing Retaking a Class type. Probably loves books with philosophical content too. Might even be into old literature and pretentious classics.And I remembered that time ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ on his stream when he was bantering and brought up old internet novels that used to be popular—and he admitted to reading all the famous ones, which shocked the viewers. That made me think maybe he even likes romance novels…“Biology, first of all. Neurobiology, microbiology, and psychology too. Social psychology, cognitive psychology, behavioral psychology, ethics… Oh, and emergency medical studies. But beyond the books themselves, I want to organize and shelve the papers I’ve printed by topic. Even though they’re thin, a few hundred, a few thousand sheets pile up fast, and it’s overwhelming.”The image of Gang Jaegyung blushing over romance novels faded into the distance. What the hell is he talking about?“Aren’t you a bodyguard?”“I am.”“And bodyguards these days have to know biology and psychology and all that?”“No? I just read it because I want to.”“Why?”“…Because I want to?”Okay, but why?I was about to press further but realized it would just go in circles. I decided to let it go with a simple “because he’s Gang Jaegyung” and moved on.“…Sure. Even though you’re super busy with your bodyguard job after graduating from a sports university, and you’re also gaming and streaming, and 24 hours in a day isn’t enough… if your academic passion is strong, I guess you could study that kind of stuff on your own.”“Exactly, exactly.”“But why the papers?”“What about the papers?”His constant attempts to control the flow of conversation made me fall silent and just glare at him in dissatisfaction. After a while, he hesitated, then finally answered as if he were being forced.“…Academia doesn’t have a clear end. New discoveries and hypotheses keep coming out, constantly challenging and refining existing theories. So something I read and believed to be true last year might already be proven wrong this year. To keep up with that kind of real-time change, I have to read papers. This field is super sensitive to trends too, and for someone like me who’s not in the field professionally, papers are way faster than books.”He also mumbled something about papers being more cost-effective, but at that point, only one thing was echoing in my head.Academia just lost a prodigy.I thought his sharp-eyed inspection of the first floor felt familiar—it was the look of a professor grading papers. But he was doing it so naturally that I just thought, “Oh, it’s Retaking a Class.” Turns out Retaking a Class and “Professor” were the same concept.“Hey… When you were a kid, weren’t you ever interested in becoming a doctor, a professor, or something? If you went that route, you could get paid to do all the studying you want. With your brain, being a professor would be a piece of cake.”“You think I’m smart, too, Goyoung?”“You sound so dumb saying that with a smug grin.”Gang Jaegyung pouted slightly.“I didn’t really think about it when I was younger, and by the time I was figuring out a career path, I just wanted to be a bodyguard. Plus, I didn’t do any grade management or studying until second year of high school, so if I’d wanted to go to a decent university, I probably would’ve had to take a gap year.”“A gap year? How bad were your grades?”I asked, caught off guard, and Gang Jaegyung hesitated. What the hell kind of kid was he that even this brazen punk is suddenly bashful?“…I picked and chose subjects…”Okay, that’s common.“…Made bets with friends to see who could get more right answers just by filling in answers randomly…”…One semester’s worth of damage, maybe manageable.“…Heard it was harder to get a zero, so I tried getting a zero on purpose. Made a special pen like the ones used for the computerized tests and used it—turned out it wasn’t recognized, so I got a zero anyway. During class, I didn’t listen at all and brought my own stuff to read or just did other things…”“……”“…I was really immature.”How the hell did this guy get into college? And not just any college—he went to the most prestigious sports university. How?!…No. He’s the kind of genius who can cram years of study into a short time. His grades weren’t bad—he just didn’t take the tests.“It’s a miracle you got into college without retaking.”“Right?”“That’s why you’re such a pain in the ass.”Hearing my sigh-laced reply, Gang Jaegyung just smiled like an idiot, clearly amused.

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