Chapter 3The Year I Stopped Feeling Inferior

The competition Sarah mentioned was the electronic design competition for graduate students in our College of Electronic and Information Engineering.

The prize money was thirty thousand dollars, and many people in our college had signed up to participate.

I had participated too.

"Look—"

Sarah shoved her phone into my hand.

In our small competition group chat.

First-Year Grad Mia: [Professor~ Can our team add one more person?]

The professor was probably busy and didn't see Mia's message, so he didn't reply immediately.

Someone below asked her: [Is it convenient to ask who you're adding?]

AAA King of BBQ: [Is it Arthur?]

Destroy This World: [Holy crap, the campus god?]

Don't Call Me Hey: [Is it really Arthur? He's the universally recognized top genius of our college, someone who can independently solve core technical bottlenecks. His advisor is the dean of our college. Whether he participates or not makes a huge difference in a team's success rate.]

The small group chat, which had been dead silent except for competition notices, suddenly exploded with activity because of this message.

The chat was flooded with people talking all at once.

Finally, Mia popped up and replied with a shy emoji.

[I'll talk to the professor privately.]

She said.

I pretended to be calm and handed the phone back to Sarah: "It's not set in stone yet, right?"

"Once it's set in stone, it'll be too late."

"Look what this is?"

Sarah, exasperated, showed me Mia's Instagram story.

The newest one.

[The campus god has joined the team~ Thank you campus god for helping me with the competition~]

In the bottom right corner of the photo attached to the post, the clean, narrow silhouette of Arthur in the lab was partially visible.

I stood there, suddenly not knowing what to do.

Finally, I just put down my lab tool and said calmly to Sarah:

"I'm going to the restroom, Sarah."