NN 03

Chapter 3

 Target Set

I lifted the neck of my hoodie and smelled my body odor.

“It doesn’t smell like pig manure, though…….”

No matter how many times I smelled it, my body odor was the kind of human body odor with a high proportion of aldehydes such as hexanal and heptanal. And he called that the smell of pig manure. The Blond Man had spoken as if he were being smart, but he was clearly a shallow person who just made guesses based on general assumptions.

In the first place, how could he smell this from that distance? Did he have some kind of superhuman sense of smell?

It was a thirty-minute walk from King’s College to Emma College, where my dormitory was. My steps felt heavy as I walked.

When was the last time I had felt shame? Probably when I got two questions wrong because of marking mistakes at an elementary school mathematics competition.

It felt just like that day. Before I reached the dormitory, I shed a few tears.

Room 67, second floor, next to the kitchen, North Court, Emma College.

I pushed open the unlocked door with my body and headed straight for the bed. I collapsed onto the mattress and blankly looked around the room.

My room had one window, a desk, and a 3-million-won ergonomic chair that did not fit in at all. Appliances and clothes were scattered everywhere, making it messy.

It looked exactly like how I felt right now.

“I need to feel sexual desire if I’m going to write the paper……”

It would be best if I could even have sex. Then I would definitely know what it felt like.

I did not want to fill the first paper published under my name with shallow knowledge based only on theory and indirect experience. Was that really being too ambitious?

The blue blinking light of my laptop charger overlapped with the Blond Man’s blue eyes.

He looked at me like I was a bug the first time we met. He was disqualified from being my muse based on his personality alone.

“Ah, whatever! I’m not going to think about it.”

I turned my back to the wall and kicked away the blanket.

What did he mean by the smell of pig manure? Was saying, “Sorry, that was rude,” enough?

What if someone stabbed another person to death with a knife and then said, “Oops, sorry. That was rude”? Would that make everything okay? It was ridiculous.

What was the point of having perfect looks if his personality was terrible?

“Rejected!”

I don’t need a man like that!

I got up and pulled out a book by Sartre that was placed horizontally on the bookshelf.

He was my spiritual pillar and the mountain I had to overcome. I had also impulsively decided on the subject of this paper while discussing Professor Cohen and his theories.

I turned on the desk lamp, sat down in the chair, and opened the book.

But what was this?

Not a single word entered my eyes.

On the pages of a book discussing existentialism, there was only the face of the Blond Man floating around in my mind. He had nothing to do with existentialism, and he had even made a ridiculous leap involving chemical formulas.

I wanted to chase after him right away and insist that my body odor was not similar to the smell of pig manure.

Was this what people called the human desire for recognition?

“This is driving me crazy……”

I closed the book and pulled myself closer to my laptop.

“A desire for recognition? Fine. I’ll get recognition.”

I began digging through the information about the King’s College Choir on the Cambridge intranet.

Last night, I searched for information about the King’s College Choir.

Everything was to find out the identity of the Blond Man.

A talented tenor who was skilled enough to sing a solo at the year-end performance. And since he was also quite handsome, his information was incredibly easy to find.

The main page introducing the King’s College Choir even had a picture of the Blond Man singing.

His name was Elias Joshua Montague.

He was twenty-one years old.

Montague was a fairly common surname in Britain. It had even appeared in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. There was also a ducal family named Montague among the British nobility.

And the youngest son of that noble family was the Blond Man.

At fourteen, he entered Cambridge early.

He completed his undergraduate studies in just two years, then passed his master’s course in another two years.

Now he was pursuing a doctorate.

His major was DPMMS.

In other words, pure mathematics.

The Blond Man had already published six papers.

His first paper had been published when he was seventeen.

And it wasn’t even his graduation thesis!

Apparently, he had been mentioned as a recipient of some award this year, but that was not what mattered.

When Elias Joshua Montague entered Cambridge, there were as many as 257 articles published under his name.

When I entered Cambridge, there had only been 48 articles about me.

There were even videos of him being interviewed by major media outlets like the BBC, probably because of his family background.

The most I had gotten was a brief mention on the morning news.

It was so humiliating.

Ever since I saw those articles yesterday, I had spent the entire day thinking about the Blond Man.

“If I had come from a ducal family, I would have entered Cambridge early at ten years old.”

My father had worked at a major corporation for a long time, my mother was a housewife, and my younger brother was hopeless.

Our family was just an ordinary middle-class family.

That was why I was so obsessed with money, whether it was research scholarships or anything else.

My family paid for my living expenses, allowance, and tuition, but I had no extra money to spend freely.

Even so, my mother still nagged me about spending money like water.

Anyway, that was not important right now, was it?

The problem was society, which was holding back a genius like me.

No matter how much I thought about it, the Blond Man seemed to have gotten so many articles because he came from a ducal family.

Even then, unlike me, who attracted attention for being a beautiful genius and a master of studying, he received a lot of academic and theoretical attention rather than attention for his appearance.

With that face, too.

It was so unfair.

Anyway, this morning, I hurried to the laundry room in the dormitory building and did my laundry.

I took my clothes out after drying them until they were soft and dry, then threw them carelessly onto the bed.

Had it really been almost two weeks since I last did laundry?

As the smell of fabric softener spread through the room, which had been filled with nothing but the smell of dust, I felt much more refreshed.

If I had known this would happen, I should have done laundry first instead of locking myself away to study.

Now that I felt refreshed, I thought a lot of good ideas might come to me.

I also took a shower for the first time in a while.

I still had not solved my paper, but there was only one reason my sense of hygiene had returned.

It was because I had decided to seduce the Blond Man, Elias Montague.

There were many geniuses at Cambridge.

Early admission was not particularly rare either, so many of them had appeared in news articles in their hometowns.

But I had never seen anyone who was both from such a good family and as handsome as Elias.

Of course, he did not seem to have particularly good social skills.

His background hurt my pride, but what could I do?

There were 93 days left until the paper submission deadline.

I simply could not imagine finding another person as suitable as him to be my muse within that time.

However, most of the clothes I owned were hooded zip-up jackets.

Ever since my mother stopped buying me clothes, I had only looked for clothes that were easy to put on and take off.

And when was the last time I had bought even those?

The year before last, maybe?

It was not important, so I did not remember.

Among the clothes piled up on my bed, I took out the hooded zip-up jacket whose cuffs were the least worn.

Of course, it was black.

Black was easier to wash.

“Hmm. I’m still a beautiful girl.”

I put on black sweatpants as well and stood in front of the mirror.

My skin and hair, which had become smooth and clean after washing, were shining.

Just in case, I lifted the back of my collar and smelled my body odor.

A sweet scent of body wash and fabric softener came strongly from it.

I felt refreshed.

I kicked open the dormitory door and headed straight for King’s College.

Last night, I had checked the chapel’s unavailable schedule, which meant the choir’s rehearsal schedule.

Three rehearsals a week from now until the year-end performance.

With that much time, there was no way someone as beautiful as me couldn’t seduce him.

My steps felt light all the way to King’s College.

Then, at the entrance of the chapel, I saw his shining blond hair.

I approached him with a bright smile.

You couldn’t spit on someone who was smiling, after all.

The weather was exceptionally nice today.

It was an incredibly clear day, completely unlike typical British weather.

I had a feeling everything was going to work out.

“Excuse me.”

Elias turned his head, his brows deeply furrowed.

After a brief conversation, I received a single answer from him.

“Why should I do that? I don’t want to.”

I had been spat on right in the face of my smile.