"Son, time to get up Aren't you going to school?"
Even though it was long past time to wake up, I remained completely still in bed, so my mom shouted from the kitchen.
I opened my eyes groggily and let out a sigh.
'Ah... I really don't f*cking want to go....
Today, of all days, I absolutely didn't want to go to school.
It was like having to go straight to school on a weekday after a long training camp.
I tossed and turned my exhausted body and let out sighs.
After a while, when I still didn't come out, my mom eventually opened the door and came into the room.
"Why aren't you getting up? Are you feeling sick today?"
The answer came out of my mouth like an instinctive reflex.
"Yeah... I feel a little sick.."
"Oh my, you pulled an all-nighter over the weekend and pushed yourself too hard yesterday.. I guess you overworked yourself and caught a cold."
Last night, my house was in a festive mood because I won first prize in the competition.
Thanks to that, even with my fake illness, my mother reacted generously, saying that since I'd worked hard, it made sense I might be sick.
Soon after, she briefly took my temperature and half-convinced, left the room.
"For now, you don't have a fever... I'll call the school on my way to work, so you eat breakfast later and go see a doctor. Okay?"
"Okay...."
"Don't play that LoL game too much just because you're home alone. It'll make you feel worse, so even if you're bored, use the computer in moderation."
"Got it.."
I answered in a weary tone, then turned over.
And inwardly, I laughed.
'Score!
***
After sleeping soundly, sprawled out once more, I woke up to find it was already around 11 in the morning.
The house was quiet, as Mom and Dad
had already left for work.
I sat blankly on the bed for a moment,
feeling dazed from sleeping too much.
"...Being alone at this hour feels kind of weird.'
Still, having slept soundly for the first time in a while, I got up with a calm mind.
I stumbled my way to the kitchen, sat down at the table without even washing my face, and yawned again.
"Huuaam~"
As I opened the lid, there was the lavish feast my mom had set out for me before she left.
Braised short ribs, a fried egg, soybean paste stew, and brown rice.
When I told her that I won an award yesterday, my mother immediately went out late at night to do the grocery shopping, saying she would have to prepare delicious meals starting tomorrow, and she must have woken up early this morning and cooked all the dishes.
" I'll enjoy this meal.."
I ate in a daze, having slept too much,
and munched silently on the food.
After sitting and eating for a while like
that, I slowly started to wake up.
Sleeping well and eating delicious food.
It was the perfect way to relieve built-up fatigue.
"Ah~ I guess I should go see a doctor:"
To have it counted as a sick day at school, I need a doctor's note.
'I can easily get one at the local clinic.'
I quickly got dressed and headed to the nearby ENT clinic.
"Every time I wake up, my throat feels
scratchy... I have a bit of a runny nose..
I also feel chills..."
"Do you have a cough or phlegm?"
"I don't have those."
"It seems like you just have a bit of a cold coming on. I'll prescribe you some antibiotics. If you still have symptoms in a few days, please come back for another visit."
"Yes, thank you. And if you could just issue a medical certificate..."
"Where are you submitting it?"
"To my school."
"..Yes, I understand. You can pick it up along with the prescription when you leave."
The ENT doctor looked at me with somewhat disapproving eyes, but he couldn't say anything if I was sick.
I submitted the prescription at the hospital pharmacy downstairs and brought home medicine I wouldn't even take.
I have to show the medicine packet to Mom, after all.'
Skipping school was so easy.
I came back home and only then checked the KakaoTalk messages on my phone.
As expected, there were many messages looking for me in our Ghost Story Club group chat.
[Lee Jinhee: Come quickly f*ck, he's just faking it, isn't he?]
[Ahn Gyeongwon: Is Prez still sleeping?]
[Yoon Sunah: Joon, are you okay???]
[Oh Dukhun: How weak.]
Since I suddenly didn't show up, it seemed the club members asked the homeroom teacher the reason.
I chuckled and typed out a message.
[Lee Joon: Feeling good.]
(T/N: Ang gimotti is Korean internet slang derived from Japanese which roughly translates to "Nya (acting cute) this is good".. ]
The club members reacted immediately.
[Ahn Gyeongwon: Oh, President, are
you okay now?]
[Oh Dukhun: The President has entered the chat.]
[Lee Jinhee: This guy isn't sick after all
lololol]
[Yoon Sunah: Joon, where are you?]
I chuckled and turned on the computer.
Then I took a picture of the monitor while it was booting up and sent it to them.
[Lee Joon: [Picture]
[Lee Joon: Ah~ I'm so sick that I need to play some games.]
[Lee Joon: You guys study hard, okay?]
And the reactions came immediately.
[Lee Tinhee: I f*cking want to kill this dog lol]
[Oh Dukhun: What are you talking about?]
"Keke, you guys.."
I smiled contentedly to myself as I looked at the members' reactions.
The fact that they had all looked for me and waited while I was gone.
Those messages had piled up when I wasn't there.
The feeling was good.
[Yoon Sunah: Joon, don't play LoL too much. You're sick. They say electromagnetic waves are bad for your health.]
[Lee Jinhee: What the f*ck, you're playing LoL? You're so old lol]
[Yoon Sunah: They say electromagnetic waves make you stupid.]
But seriously, what period was it that
these guys were all on their phones like this?
I suddenly got curious and asked them on KakaoTalk.
[Lee Joon: What class are you in that you're all on your phones like this?]
[Ahn Gyeongwon: Science]
[Oh Dukhun: Science]
[Yoon Sunah: Teacher Han Ari is giving
a science test.]
"They're not easy to deal with."
Just because they were at school didn't mean they were particularly diligent.
I sat down in my chair, opened the LoL app, and played a quick game of bots to get my first win reward.
And as soon as Igot warmed up, I jumped into the rankings and played five matches straight.
[zzGODJoonxx: I'm Oh Dukhun from
Nakseong High, Grade 1, Class 3. If you
want, come find me. I'll mess you up.]
[YourName: Oh I'm f***ing doing this
sh**]
Since my personality wasn't the type that could get all that competitive, playing at a high rank was actually more stressful for me.
So, whenever I found myself on a bit of a winning streak, I'd quickly just deliberately throw the next match to drop back down to a lower tier. Part of my enjoyment came from the process of skillfully playing politics so I
wouldn't get reported.
As a result, if I threw ten matches, I'd only get cursed out in one of them. Most of the time, the other players would be too busy hurling insults at each other, not even realizing why the game had gone Wrong.
...Wait. One out of ten?"
The moment that thought crossed my mind, a sudden realization hit me.
Come to think of it, it wasn't that I was just supposed to play games endlessly today. There was actually something I needed to look into on my oWn at home.
'Ability, the Perfect Student!'
The ability to make even the most unlikely of things happen with the probability of one out of ten.
Come to think of it, I needed to do some
research on this ability today.
After successfully completing the last
round, I turned off the game.
Then, I roughly tore up a page of my notebook and cut it with scissors to make ten cards.
"If I write the numbers 1 to 10 here....."
If I do this, shuffle them, and then pick one, that would be a 1 in 10 probability.
I checked the ability again through the
Status Window.
'Status window!'
Pop-
(THE PERFECT STUDENT
Rank: A-rank
Trigger Condition: Passive
Ability: This ability can be activated
when facing a random situation.
If the probability is 10% or higher,
success is guaranteed.)
"It says 10% or higher, but I need to check if it's even 10%.
Sometimes people can't tell the difference between lesser or higher.
Of course, since the system was smarter than me, it probably wouldn't have misworded something like that, but still, I didn't even know who created the Status Window.
There was no harm in carefully checking each and every word.
"It's not like verifying this will wear anything out.'
Unlike the Banality Manifestation ability that completely overturns reality and increases the Causality Rate, this was on a smaller scale than that, so there were no side effects when used.
I randomly shuffled the cards, flipped
them over, and activated the ability.
'Probability of drawing the number 1!'
Pop-
[10%]
Suddenly, my arm gave a slight twitch,
as if flinching, and then it pressed down on a piece of paper on its own as if instinctively.
"..Oh."
It felt like when you hit a knee with a rubber hammer in science class and it jerks up on its own.
That kind of spinal reflex feeling just
happened in my arm.
I flipped over the paper I was still pressing on to check, and sure enough, it was the number 1.
"Okay. Success. This time, let's demand a more complex situation."
Draw the number 1 again, but this time
adding a few conditions.
For example, the probability of the paper tearing slightly while drawing the number 1 on it.
The probability of it being blown away by the wind the moment I try to pick it.
The probability of someone calling me Over the phone the moment I try to draw it, and so on.
Of course, the more conditions I added, the more the probability plummeted, so with the 10% limit, I wouldn't be able to include many.
But if I could succeed in combining even just one or two conditions, once I get used to it, it could prove quite useful.
"Let's see... what should I..."
After thinking for a moment, I decided to go with the phone call.
It was partly because around this time was when Mom would usually call to ask if I'd been to the doctor's yet.
"Okay. Then here's the card..."
I think the probability of Mom calling was about 50%.
Then, multiplying it, it has to exceed 10%, so i removed half the cards.
'One desired card out of five, 20%, and the probability of Mom calling, 50%.
If you multiply the probabilities of the two events happening simultaneously, it comes out to exactly 10%.
Of course, the world doesn't work with such mathematical precision, but I suppose we'll only know once we try. Activate!'
As I said that, I tapped on a piece of paper.
And when I lifted it to check, it was a
different number.
"....?"
It didn't activate.
The probability didn't appear before my eyes either.
I wondered if it was because I added conditions, so I went back to the first
experiment, but this time, even that didn't activate.
"Number 1 out of ten cards. Activate....Why isn't it working."
I pondered for a moment while shuffling the cards.
'No way, could it have a cooldown?'
Come to think of it, the Life Design skill that I had replaced with this also had a cooldown.
I waited for the cooldown to pass and tried to activate it a few times, but when it still didn't work, I turned the game back on.
"I'll kill time with LoL and check occasionally. Then I'll find out."
Surprisingly, the next time I could use the ability was a full 6 hours later.
"Damn, that's f*cking long..."
It wasn't untill late afternoon that I was able to activate it again.
I grumbled to myself as I hung up on my mother's check-in call, which came at the exact moment I drew the number 1.
"I didn't know the cooldown would be this long"
But when I recalled the memory, it seemed perfectly fitting.
It was on a Sunday evening at the bowling alley when I tried to drink from the side of the cola glass that Gyeongwon hadn't touched, and the glass burst.
After that, the next time I used the ability was in the early morning while escaping the building.
And the time I activated it again, throwing a hinge at Teacher Choi Jungim's eyes, was that same afternoon.
"If I'd missed the timing even once, that would have been disastrous. Okay, 6 hours... 6 hours.."
I set a recurring alarm on my phone to go off every 6 hours.
This way, I could test it once at midnight and once more before going to school tomorrow.
"Ive confirmed whether it's lesser or higher, and I've also confirmed that two situations can be combined. Now, I just need to figure out the rest."
And that night, after my parents had gone to bed, I heard the faintly ringing alarm and tried activating the ability again in my room.
'First, time-related activation. The probability of me waking up at 6:59 tomorrow morning!'
"..."
'The probability of Mom oversleeping tomorrow morning! The probability of
it suddenly raining tomorrow!'
"..."
It didn't work.
I thought that if this worked, I might be able to set up several helpful ones in advance each cooldown period.
It seems it couldn't be reserved like that; it could probably only be used for the immediate situation at hand.
"Then this time, about something completely absurd. For example..."
The probability of the Demon King dying right now.
"Activate!"
"..."
Nothing happened again.
I changed my lines and tried to activate it again.
"The probability of the Demon King dying right now from a 'coincidental' meteor strike. Activate!"
Pop-
[0.00000003%]
"That's incredibly low."
The probability appeared, but since it was below the 10% limit, naturally nothing happened.
I looked at the number and pondered it deeply.
'By chance. Randomly. Haphazardly,
arbitrarily... As expected, it only activates in situations where these kinds of keywords are involved.'
Even when I first tried it, it didn't even show the probability, and there was no response when I was bowling with my poor skill level.
However, regardless of my skill, the hinge I threw with my eyes closed landed squarely on Teacher Choi Jungim's eye.
"I guess I'l have to close my eyes when I do something, or else just activate it without thinking."
Then one more thing to check.
The probability right before my eyes.
"....The probability that all the girls in my class will suddenly feel their heart beating fast and text me now late at night. Activate."
Pop-
[0.8%]
"Crazy. This is higher than the probability of the Demon King dying."
I let out a laugh of disbelief and dismissed the Status Window.
I just asked a weird question, but still, it seemed like this method would be quite useful for checking probabilities below 10%.
Of course, since anything below 10% is usually unlikely to happen, I also wondered if there would ever be a need to check such probabilities.
Also, if I activated it and it accidentally turned out to be over 10%, it would come true without fail, so it probably wouldn't be good to use it recklessly.
Nevertheless, after thinking it over carefully, I thought of a certain possibility and quietly muttered again.
"...The probability that while lying blankly on my bed, I'll suddenly have a realization about In Taesang's ability."
Sometimes, when you're lying in bed before sleep, letting your mind wander, isn't there that moment when suddenly things just click, like
'Ah, that's right!', and your thoughts connect?
Those are moments that can only be
described as coincidence.
What about that, I wondered.
'Active!'
Pop-
[6.3%]
"...!"
It was high....!
I had been wondering where I could even use this probability, but that kind of moment had come to me.
The probability of me deducing In Taesang's ability.
It was much higher than I thought.
...What is this?"
Did that mean I already have almost all the clues?
But I had already gone over the events of yesterday hundreds of times, and nothing stood out to me.
At first, I thought it might be some kind of time-related ability, but I couldn't explain the strange high-frequency sound and the noise coming from where he was, and also the reason why he wasn't with his followers.
"..or maybe it's not about yesterday, but about realizing something while recalling something else..?"
Because the daydreams you have lying in bed are usually about old memories.
I wondered if while recalling other old events, I stumbled upon a memory that connected directly to yesterday's event.
The probability of those thoughts connecting so coincidentally was about 5%.
Since it didn't exceed 10%, it didn't activate, but thinking I should at least try mimicking the situation, I flipped Over onto the bed as I set the condition.
"So the probability of just lying here blankly and remembering it is 5%."
Just like that, lying on the bed, I blankly stared up at the ceiling.
After lying there for about 10 minutes, on the verge of sleep, all the cringey memories from my past started flooding back one by one.
F*ck! Back during that Apocalypse ghost story! I shouldn't have acted like such a f*cking know-it-all and tried to play detective!'
The memory of making such a fuss and all the bullsh*t I spewed suddenly came to mind, and I kicked the blanket off.
Worse, since everything from back then ended with a dream ending, even the club members and Joo Yeseul remember it.
'Are they all pretending not to remember? Or does it just not matter to them?'
It was only a cringy memory for me; surprisingly, it might have actually looked cool to others.
Right after that, I did have some moments where I was useful.
'Ah, sh*t. This isn't why I lay down.'
I pushed the embarrassing memories aside, put my arm back under my head, and lay down straight again.
Just like that, I emptied my mind again and lay there blankly.
Slowly, emptying my thoughts.
Just letting images come to mind freely.
"....."
Worse, since everything from back then ended with a dream ending, even the club members and Joo Yeseul remember it.
'Are they all pretending not to remember? Or does it just not matter to them?'
It was only a cringy memory for me; surprisingly, it might have actually looked cool to others.
Right after that, I did have some moments where I was useful.
'Ah, sh*t. This isn't why I lay down.'
I pushed the embarrassing memories aside, put my arm back under my head, and lay down straight again.
Just like that, I emptied my mind again and lay there blankly.
Slowly, emptying my thoughts.
Just letting images come to mind freely.
"..."
"..."
"If the snap happened when it was daytime in Wakanda, shouldn't New York, where Nick Fury turned to dust, have been night?"
".....!"
Come to think of it, that's right.
There must be a time difference, so why was it portrayed like that in the movie? Hmm, Africa and the US...
"...$%^$#..."
"...@#!@$%&*^9%..."
My eyes slowly closed.
"Zzz...."
And just like that, my sweet day of sick
leave passed.