‘Ugh. Why is it mandatory for freshmen to join a club? I have to submit a club activity report, so I have no choice but to join one.’

This was troublesome.

Seemingly overnight, I became incredibly famous.

Swordsmanship clubs, magic research societies, even art-related associations…The upperclassmen flocked to me.

They fought to recruit me claiming they had vacancies, claiming they couldn’t function without me.

Rejecting them was pointless, Even if I turned away, they reappeared.

They were persistent. Following me everywhere, in the hallways, outside lecture rooms, even in the cafeteria while I was eating.

Their obsession was suffocating. I even considered using the [Infinity Mask].

Why was this happening? I had to know.

And when I cracked my eyes open for a moment… I was met with insidious greed.

All of them. Every. Single. One.

They were only interested in exploiting me.

‘It’s all because of [Cancellation].’

A mere child wielding an unprecedented magic and they wanted to extract it from me.

Pretending to befriend me through club activities, feigning closeness, all to figure out how it worked.

But, it wasn’t something just anyone could use. Even if I explained it, they wouldn’t be able to do it.

‘It’s a spell that requires adaptability. Without [Clairvoyance], sniping is impossible.’

Still, no matter how much I argued, they wouldn’t believe me.

“Sigh.”

A heaved a long sigh as I stood before the cafeteria’s kiosk, selecting my order.

Normally, I’d get something strong, maybe a coffee with a rich espresso base.

Something bitter with caffeine, an adult’s taste. That’s the kind of thing I would’ve chosen.

But maybe because I was feeling unsettled, a different option caught my eye.

An item with an absurdly cute shade of pink.

It had soft, fluffy whipped cream… round, plump strawberry slices…

“It’s really good! Our strawberry latte is amazing!”

As I hesitated, an employee eagerly recommended it.

Her eyes sparkled, face brimming with confidence.

‘They say when a staff member, not the owner, recommends something, it’s genuinely good… should I try it?’

My fingers brushed against the cold cup and, like a kiss, I took a sip.

Pop!

A pink explosion burst in my mind as sugar crystals tickled my tongue.

The milk melted softly, dissolving on my palate.

I felt like I was floating… as if my feet had lifted off the ground, drifting gently.

“Mm…”

The worries that had weighed me down just moments ago fizzled away like bubbles.

This magic of strawberry lattes… this greatness of sweetness…

I cupped the drink with both hands, taking another sip.

Then, suddenly, a cold feeling came close to my right cheek.

I wasn’t startled. To compensate for my blindness, my [Ideation] was always active.

I didn’t need to turn my head, synesthetic perception mapped out everything around me.

I tilted slightly, avoiding the touch, the finger reaching for my cheek never landed.

“Hehe, it didn’t work?”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think? I came to see my adorable El.”

A peculiar girl, disguised as a boy at the academy.

I didn’t know why she dressed that way, but I wasn’t curious either so I avoided prying.

Emanating a strong extroverted aura, Jung Chaemin naturally slid into the seat across from me as if it had always been hers.

She had no fear in dealing with people. Like a stage actor, she was always at the center.

She was the complete opposite of me, born an outsider, a recluse, a shut-in.

“Everyone outside is looking for you.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“I can tell. If you’re craving sweets, you must be stressed. So, which club are you joining?”

“Do I have to join one?”

“If you don’t, things will get even more annoying. This academy is the pinnacle of elite education. Here, social connections equal power, opportunities, and the future. No one will leave you alone.”

“…I don’t care about that.”

The academy was a microcosm of society.

Between the historic stone buildings and lush green lawns, professors leisurely discussed academia while students carved out their social hierarchies.

Deals were made over coffee, a single handshake moving billions in assets.

Secret networks were constantly being forged.

The key players of tower climbing, market influencers, future leaders… they all emerged from these lecture halls.

So a single club, a single gathering, was far more than a mere hobby here.

I lightly bit my straw, the sweetness that remained from my latte melting on my tongue.

No matter how I thought about it, it really had nothing to do with me.

‘I barely have time to study, and now I have to worry about club activities?’

I just wanted to graduate quickly and head to the Tower… that was the only way I could truly see the world with my own eyes.

And yet, here I was, forced to consider club membership.

The academy valued socializing more than studying.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a genius?”

“What do you mean?”

“Most people are scrambling to get into the best clubs, build connections, get close to professors, and find ways to gain favors, meanwhile, you don’t care about any of it.”

Jung Chaemin observed me carefully.

Her gaze understood my isolation, my avoidance, my distance.

“But, I think I get it. You want to avoid the hassle, but you don’t like being pursued either. And at the same time, you don’t want to just join any random club.”

That's funny… I had never made it obvious, yet she had read me perfectly.

Jung Chaemin knew, she knew that I blended in well enough in lectures but cut off all contact once class ended.

She knew that I remained silent in group chats but spoke up when necessary, that I never stood out too much, nor did I drift too far away.

She had seen all of it.

Then, she leaned forward, closing the distance, and made an offer I couldn’t refuse.

“How about joining my club?”

“You started your own club?”

“I don’t want to join one just for networking either. So I made my own.”

“Unidentified Paranormal Phenomena Research Society?”

I repeated the name slowly. It sounded… profound.

But naturally, I had to object.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“That’s why I made the club.”

Jung Chaemin grinned.

“We just have to pretend like we’re researching. I don’t actually plan on taking it seriously.”

“Then what does the club even do?”

“Nothing. Just an excuse to slack off in the clubroom.”

Her confidence was baffling… was this really allowed?

“Club participation is mandatory, but that doesn’t mean we actually have to do anything. People join clubs for networking or hobbies.”

She twirled her fingers casually as she continued.

“So I thought of a way. A club that’s harmless, not competitive, and stays out of the spotlight. Most importantly, a club that no one cares about.”

“Hence, the Unidentified Paranormal Phenomena Research Society?”

“Well, ghosts don’t exist anyway. If you don’t have anywhere else to go, just study here. As you can see, our clubroom is basically a library. No one else comes here, so it’s peaceful.”

I was stunned but realized that this really was the most practical solution.

Being affiliated with a club meant no more persistent upperclassmen trying to recruit me.

I focused my [Ideation] and examined my surroundings.

The fluorescent lights looked like they were at least ten, no, twenty years old, dim and stained with dark blotches.

The floor was littered with cracked tiles and the air was thick with the musty scent of old books.

An abandoned library.

When the new library was built, this place was left to rot.

The administration had called it ‘a space reallocation for student convenience,’ but it was obvious that this building had simply been neglected.

The leftover space was dumped on the students, thus, the abandoned library became a clubroom.

“Hehe. Doesn’t it feel like a real haunted house?”

I still wasn’t convinced. Ghosts? Horror movies?

I had never watched anything on those, no, I couldn’t have since I was blind for most of my life.

I had no idea how ghosts appeared, why people feared them, or what kind of atmosphere they created.

For me, ‘fear’ in a visual sense was something I had yet to experience.

The only exception was the haunted house in the Wednesday Dungeon, but that was part of the Tower, so it didn’t really count.

“Wait. Don’t you need at least five members to start a club?”

“You’re the fourth member.”

“…Ah.”

Establishing a club at the academy required meeting several conditions:

A minimum of five registered members, a faculty advisor, an activity plan submission, student council approval, a budget request, and the hardest part, recruiting members.

But this club? It had already met most of the requirements.

A pointless club about paranormal research.

So who were the other members?

‘As expected of an extrovert. She probably recruited people like me. Students who didn’t care about clubs.’

A club where we’d just sit around, chat, and submit a simple activity report.

I liked it, so I quietly took a seat.

“Then I’m off to find the last member!”

“Okay, take care.”

Creak.

The door made a sound as it closed after her.

‘Since I’m in a library, I might as well study.’

Previously, my only written language had been Braille.

Hangul? When I first saw letters, my mind naturally matched them to Braille.

With my eyes closed, I opened a book. Even if I couldn’t see the text, it didn’t matter.

‘I can read with [Ideation].’

Rustle.

As I flipped the page, all the information flooded into my mind at once.

Not word by word, not sentence by sentence. No, I absorbed entire page in a single moment.

This was synesthesia.

Words transformed into sound and sentences flowed as sensations.

Language became multidimensional.

‘It doesn’t feel like reading… it feels like absorbing knowledge.’

A snake slithers across the earth, sensing the secrets hidden beneath.

It’s not just moving, it’s instinctively trying to grasp the world… and I was the same.

I wasn’t reading letters with my eyes.

Like a snake feeling the ground, I was using all my intellect, instincts, and senses to trace the book with [Ideation].

And the synergy between [Ideation] and my savant-like cognition was remarkable.

‘My reading speed is getting even faster.’

Neurons stormed like an electrical hurricane, synapses connecting at light speed.

My brain instantly analyzed patterns, letter shapes, grammatical structures, phonetic flows… all of it was imprinted in my mind as a single ‘image.’

A complete system of complex symbols.

All language was, at its core, a code. Normally, learning required a process of receiving and interpreting information, but now it was different.

The simultaneous activation of the temporal and frontal lobes resulted in perfect synchronization between the Wernicke’s Area and Broca’s Area.
(TLNote: Broca = speech brain stuff, Wernicke = Language brain stuff)

The concept of memory itself became meaningless.

The process of converting short-term memory from the hippocampus into long-term memory in the neocortex was completely bypassed.

The moment I read something, it was permanently etched into my mind.

This wasn’t learning, it was recognition.

Like breathing, like walking, a purely subconscious process.

Studying like this is fun.

‘My eyes may allow me to cheat, but I can’t rely on that forever.’

Cheating? If an S-rank professor oversaw an exam, that would be the end.

Even if I used my [Clairvoyance] to scan the test problems, seeing them didn’t automatically provide the correct answers.

My eyes could acquire all the information, but it was entirely up to me to extract the correct answers from it.

After all, they were called ‘problems’ because they were intentionally incorrect, incomplete, and twisted.

Numbers were scrambled, blank spaces left gaping, word order and logic intentionally distorted.

Without understanding, no matter how deeply I stared at them, they were nothing more than jumbled letters.

Even with [Clairvoyance], the answer wouldn’t be spelled out as ‘Choose option 3.’

So I studied, deep in concentration, devouring knowledge as if consuming a meal.

One book.

Two books.

Three books.

A towering structure of knowledge slowly stacked on the desk.

Before I realized it, night had fallen. Outside, the sky was pitch-black.

Inside, the dim light flickered faintly, the towering pile of books casting long shadows.

Thud—

A book slid off the desk despite the absence of wind, and of all things, it was a heavy textbook.

I tilted my head slightly, dodging it.

And then, a yawn spilled from my lips.

Stretching my arms, I slowly blinked while rubbing my eyes, my drowsy expression turned blank… and that’s when I noticed it.

On the desk something was peeking out.

“…Huh?”

A head with no neck.

It was just a head, protruding through the desk and it was staring at me.

Something was wrong.

‘[Ideation] didn’t detect anything…?’

But, my eyes can see it clearly.

“…?”

A beat later, my brain registered the situation… and then—

“KYAAA!!!”

I clutched a book to my chest and fell backward, my legs flailing, arms scrambling, completely losing my balance.

Books crashed to the floor around her.

[Can you see me?]

Goosebumps erupted all over my body.