Retire 562
by Cristae562 (Extra Story 29) Stars That Shine Together_1
“………Mmm?”
The room was dark. Cup noodles and empty cups were scattered messily across the desk, and books and printed reports were piled high. The walls were covered with hastily scribbled notes, written in handwriting so rough as to be nearly illegible.
The window was blocked by thick curtains. Yet, through a gap that hadn’t been fully closed, a single bright shaft of sunlight spilled across the bed. From beneath the blanket, a hand shot out, groped across the bed, found the phone blaring noisily, and then retreated under the covers.
“Yes… hello… hm? Huhhh?”
Sandra, at first speaking in practiced Korean, fumbled and switched to English.
“Ah, um…”
The pile of blankets shifted.
“…Shanshan, uh, didn’t she call? I told her to contact you before entering the dungeon… Ah, yes. You still haven’t heard from her. I did hear the raid was taking longer than expected… Yes, yes. I’ll let her know as soon as she’s out. No, she’s not going in alone…”
Her mind, thick with sleep, was slowly growing clearer. But she still had no intention of leaving the blankets. Whenever her sentences grew longer, her tongue tangled again.
A hand emerged from the covers and grabbed at the curtain, trying to block out the sunlight leaking through the gap. When the curtain wouldn’t move as desired, her touch grew irritable.
“No, I’m up… It’s just that it’s still dawn here in Korea. Ah. Only a two-hour time difference? You knew that… No, I really was about to get up. I mean it.”
Despite claiming to be awake, the bundle of blankets remained unmoved. After a few more excuses, she finally gave up and, half asleep, endured the lecture.
“…Ah, no, I’m listening. I’m not sleeping.”
Only after the long call ended did the blanket finally fall away. Sandra Gamble rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, stretching lazily as she glanced at her phone.
13:56
“…?”
Sandra checked the time again.
13:57
“…Ack!!”
With a scream, Sandra shot upright. Trying to get out of bed in a hurry, her legs tangled in the blanket and she tumbled to the floor with a loud crash.
She wasn’t as sturdy as her childhood friend, but she was an Awakened, after all. Sandra kicked her legs free of the blanket.
She was late.
No one would scold her—she was the one in charge—but precisely because she was in charge, she’d been scolded for not setting a better example! Why did she keep working late when she wasn’t even required to? Why did she keep pulling all-nighters?
As if anyone wanted to work overtime for fun! She just focused better at night—what was she supposed to do about that?
Sandra screamed in frustration as she hurried through her morning routine.
“Good morning, Doctor!”
“Good morning!”
“…Oh, hi, guys. So much energy today… I’m jealous.”
“Did you stay up all night again?”
“I didn’t pull an all-nighter…”
“What time did you go to bed?”
“…Eight?”
“No matter how Awakened you are, living like that will kill you young, Doctor.”
Defeated by the cold, rational criticism of the mage assistants she was supposed to set an example for, Sandra shuffled over to the coffee machine in the lab.
She brewed strong coffee, filling her mug to the brim. Only after taking a long sip did she let out a satisfied sigh. The two assistants snickered.
“If you’re still sleepy, have some candy.”
“Candy?”
Choi Jinwoo pointed to some candies among the snacks.
“Where did those come from? I don’t remember ordering any.”
“Taewoo brought them.”
For a moment, she wondered if she’d ordered them in some sleep-deprived state, but that wasn’t it. Sandra’s eyes widened at the unexpected name.
She didn’t interact much with the other students, but with so few people at the school, it was hard not to know everyone.
“Him? Why? Is it a special day?”
“No idea. He said it was a collection of candies Teacher Woo gave him…”
“Only lemon flavor?”
Choi Jinwoo and Park Seohyun’s faces turned odd. Sandra tilted her head.
“Exactly.”
“He said he really likes them, so it was hard to give them away, but there were too many for him to eat alone, so he’s sharing.”
“He looked really reluctant about it, too.”
“If he likes them that much, he didn’t have to give them out.”
“Then why did he?”
“He said there were just too many… If it were another flavor, maybe, but lemon’s hard to eat all by yourself.”
“He’s a bit odd, isn’t he?”
They clearly didn’t understand, but since he’d said so, they were willing to let it go.
With a disgruntled expression, Park Seohyun twisted a lock of hair around her finger.
“He said he can just get more from Teacher Woo.”
“He never shared like this with us!”
“Is it really sharing, giving out candy?”
“Is it because they’re related now?”
“Academic corruption!”
“Call Ji-eun! She needs to know about this!!”
Watching her assistants descend into madness, Sandra popped one of the lemon candies into her mouth. The taste was sharp enough to jolt her awake.
Well. No matter how much you like them, these would be hard to eat alone. Just how much candy had Woo Huijae given that kid?
Sandra glanced at the fuming Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo.
“What, stuck on the calculations again?”
“…….”
“…….”
Both fell silent, caught out. Sandra snorted.
“What is it? Bring it here. I’ll take a look.”
“Really?”
“Really?”
“…Is it an assignment from Chaemin? If so, I might not be able to help.”
“No! It’s not that!! Teacher Chaemin just said to look at it first!!”
“It’s not homework!! Just to look at it first, that’s all.”
Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo jumped up in a flurry.
If it wasn’t an assignment from Kim Chaemin but was still top priority, it was obvious what it was.
“Jinwoo, Grandpa’s journal! Quick, hand it over!”
Park Seohyun’s grandfather, the great mage Park Nogyeong’s research journal.
Sandra, mug in hand, walked over at a leisurely pace. Behind her, the young mages scrambled to pull out the materials.
Would Sandra Gamble from a few years ago ever have predicted this moment?
Absolutely not.
Most of the life plans Sandra had made with Alex as a child had gone completely awry.
If you asked whether she’d failed to achieve them, she’d say, well, life had turned out strangely well, but nothing had gone as planned along the way.
It was funny… Maybe that’s what life is.
Sandra sipped her coffee as she turned on her computer. The taste of lemon candy and coffee mingled in her mouth—not bad at all.
“How much longer, you two?”
“Just a second!”
“Seohyun, where’s the mana absorption rate calculation from yesterday?”
“Should be on the laptop?”
“There’s only half of it.”
“What?!”
It was a peaceful morning, as usual.
Not that it was really morning, but since she’d just woken up, it counted.
The monitor glowed with the project she’d been working on before. With the bustle of Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo as background noise, Sandra switched to the blueprints. If these were ever made public, they would change every paradigm in the field; the designs filled the screen.
Compared to her grad school days, the security was laughable. If you only looked at the surface, you’d think there was no security at all. But that was only what was visible.
The school, with not a building in sight nearby, was physically inaccessible. Unless you came looking, you couldn’t find it. And how many Hunters lived on campus? There were more Hunters acting as teachers than there were students. Avoiding them was impossible from the start.
Even if you managed that impossible feat, the great mage remained.
Of all places in the school, the great mage had poured the most effort into the security spells here. This lab’s security was nearly on par with Kim Chaemin’s cabin. All those plants Kim Chaemin tirelessly planted around the building whenever she had a spare moment? All magic, every one.
Of course, Sandra had taken her own thorough precautions. She was a scientist, after all—she couldn’t rely on Hunters and magic alone.
Woo Huijae tended to take these blueprints a little lightly, but Sandra did not. In fact, she couldn’t understand Woo Huijae’s attitude. Hunters—so ignorant! Only Kim Chaemin truly understood her.
Even aside from the blueprints, this lab contained information that should never see the light of day. But nothing was as important as these plans: the final design for the mana meter, brought from twenty years in the future.
“…….”
Sandra looked at Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo, who were still frantically gathering materials. They’d grown a lot since graduation, but they still had a long way to go.
How long would it take them to understand these blueprints? At their current level, even if she waved the designs in front of them, they wouldn’t grasp how extraordinary they were.
When would they ever be fully trained? Sandra clicked her tongue.
“Still not ready?”
“All set!”
Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo rushed over, breathing hard, full of determination.
Sandra hid a pleased smile behind her mug, pretending to sip her coffee.
Of course, these two mage assistants had never figured into Sandra’s plans for the future.
Not bad. In fact, it was good. It couldn’t be better.
“So, what’s taking you so long to show me?”
“Uh, well, we were just organizing a bit…”
“You always need to keep your data clean. If you mess it up, you’ll be the ones crying later.”
“We usually do, but we were digging for something and…”
“Grandpa’s notes are all analog, so we thought it’d be easier to digitize them now.”
“You two are in charge of that project, so if you think it’s necessary, do it.”
“But that’s a lot of work… Do you really have to enter everything by hand?”
“Of course.”
There were magical ways to organize it, of course. The magic of being a grad student…
Sandra smiled brightly.
Daniel, who sometimes visited the lab for research consulting at Woo Huijae and Kim Chaemin’s request, had looked around as if to say, what kind of hellhole is this? Even American government agents could be soft.
Did he only ever work in paradise?
From Sandra’s perspective, Daniel’s previous workplace was the real hell, packed with every kind of horror.
How would a mere mana engineer know that?
There are ways.
Sandra Gamble thought back to her life before joining Guild Mimi. She’d been so busy looking after her childhood friend, she barely had time to breathe. Faking the deaths of children she’d never even met, laundering identities to send them across the Pacific, hacking the awakened black market, and more…
Now, she’d washed her hands of all that. Left no evidence behind.
“We can talk about that later. So, what’s the problem? Magic? If it’s magic, Chaemin would be better than me.”
“That’s just it—it’s ambiguous.”
Park Seohyun opened an old diary.
The leather cover was worn and shiny with age and use. The paper was brittle, but Park Seohyun turned the pages with practiced ease. Being a mage’s journal, it was surely far more durable than it appeared.
The many tabs stuck to the diary were the work of Park Seohyun and Choi Jinwoo. Sandra had helped them review the journal before, and so had Kim Chaemin. Sandra, not being a mage, couldn’t fully understand the journal… but then, there was no mage left in the world who could.
The research journal of the great mage Park Nogyeong.
It was one of the things Park Seohyun had brought from her grandfather’s house.