It was the day I had dreamed of.
"Congratulations, Dr. Seol."
Doctor. Ph.D.
To anyone who knew how much grueling effort was required to attach that title after one's name, it was a fact all would acknowledge.
It was a calm remark my advisor made to me as I stood in the hallway after finishing my defense presentation.
It was nothing more than such a calm remark, yet I didn't know why it stimulated my tear ducts so.
"...Thank you, Professor."
The moment I heard those words, teardrops slowly flowed from my eyes.
They say if you don't shed tears on a day like this, you haven't suffered enough. Those words were true.
"Hehe, seeing you like this, Dr. Seol. You were human too, were you?"
Seeing me shed tears, my advisor slowly patted my shoulder.
While cracking a slightly absurd joke.
"*Ahem*, did you think I wasn't?"
I replied, furtively wiping away the tears that had spilled at my advisor's jest.
Thanks to that single absurd joke, even the tears that had been threatening to fall seemed to be sucked right back in.
"Of course! Naturally. Do you know how old I was when I first received my doctorate? I was thirty-nine."
Thirty-nine.
Since I was currently twenty-five, even a rough calculation meant a gap of fourteen years.
"But you are still in your twenties, are you not? Well, well..."
The professor looked at me as if something were unfair, or perhaps bitter.
In that bitter gaze, nostalgia for the past and a slight hint of jealousy were mixed.
Honestly, even I thought it was an unrealistic matter.
Early graduation from a science high school, a master's from Seoul National University, a doctorate from MIT.
If someone had accomplished all of this by the age of twenty-five, who on earth would believe it?
But I had made it possible, and it had actually happened.
The reason was simple.
Talent.
It was merely a difference in talent.
I had no intention of dismissing the effort it took me to accomplish all this, but
it was obvious that none of my achievements could have been realized without the talent I possessed.
It was because he knew that difference that the professor said such things.
"Be honest with me even now, Yujin. If you said you were actually an alien or a Reptilian, I'd let it slide."
However, my advisor wrapped up those dark, sticky emotions with a single witty jest.
From that alone, I could tell what a magnanimous person he was.
"Kuh... as expected, it seems I cannot deceive you, Professor... Now that this secret has been exposed, I cannot let you leave alive!"
"Oh dear! Please don't kill me...! I have a family to support...!"
Hahahahaha!
Laughter echoed through the MIT lab hallway for quite some time.
It was such a bright and cheerful laugh that anyone hearing it would have smiled.
"Yujin, no, Dr. Seol. You'll come to the graduation party, won't you?"
"Of course, Professor. I'll drink all the alcohol at the party."
"Do leave some for me, haha!"
The professor and I walked toward the lab with very light steps.
My vision was vivid.
My hearing was sharp.
The sensations coming through my skin
told me completely that this reality was truly real.
But because the dreamlike feeling of having entered a fantasy continued,
a smile never left my face as I walked to the lab.
===
"Ah... my head..."
Woken subtly by the sunlight filtering through the window, I clutched my head, which throbbed as if it would shatter.
'I drank too much...'
After all, I had to drink far beyond my capacity.
Part of it was that I was excited,
and my lab colleagues were desperate to get me drunk, so perhaps it was inevitable.
'Hehe, this greenhorn is graduating before me? You need to learn your liquor.'
'No, Yujin! You have to help me graduate, help with the experiments!'
'You selfish bastard, you don't care if our lab goes under?'
Things like that.
Of course, our lab was a good place,
and everyone was a good colleague and fellow student.
They were just a little envious that I was graduating first while they hadn't yet.
So I had no choice but to forcibly drink the drinks the seniors (and 'master's students') poured for me.
By the end, I practically had to drink against my will.
'Ogogok... the alcohol has entered my stomach...!'
"Pffft."
Did I browse too many online communities... I shouldn't be making jokes like this...
Huh.
Wait a minute.
Why do I know this stuff?
Galleries, communities, streamers, memes.
I had never once engaged with such things.
Because graduating with a doctorate at twenty-five wasn't possible through talent alone.
It was only possible by carving up every moment, pouring every second minus eating and sleeping into studying.
So there was no way I should know this stuff,
so why do these "nonexistent memories"...
At that moment.
My head, which had already hurt as if it would shatter, now felt as if it were being completely pulverized into pieces,
as if someone were gnawing and trampling on my brain, sliced into tiny nerve clusters.
Agony surged in.
"----!!"
It was a pain so intense I couldn't even scream.
All I could do was desperately clutch my head, bury myself under the blankets, and pray for this pain to pass.
Along with the agony, what stabbed into my brain like an ice pick, stab-stab-, were memories.
Memories, memories, memories.
Memories that were not mine.
Seol Yuna, twenty-one, middle school graduate, orphan.
Online, communities, streamers, donations.
VTubers, streamers, editors, clippers.
Those kinds of memories.
Once those memories properly settled into my mind,
the pain stopped like a lie.
"Urp..."
Along with that, the urge to vomit surged.
Grasping the crumbling toilet, I vomited everything,
until finally only yellow acidic fluid from my stomach was spewed from my mouth,
"...Ha."
In the mirror, I saw the figure of a woman with long black hair and dark circles under her eyes.
Most regrettably,
the first thought that came to mind upon seeing that appearance was that she was pretty.
Truly regrettably, indeed.
===
What must one do to become a Ph.D.?
Of course, it would differ depending on the laws of the country and university regulations,
but speaking based on the American and Korean academic systems, it was roughly like this.
Obtaining a bachelor's and master's degree.
Coursework and a comprehensive exam.
Selecting an advisor and establishing a research plan.
Becoming your advisor's slave.
Researching and writing your dissertation.
Dissertation review and defense.
Explaining this process deeply and in detail would be tedious and pedantic, so to summarize in one sentence:
"Study your fucking ass off, grovel your fucking ass off, and research your fucking ass off."
would be it.
Do most people in this world,
especially grad students, know why they say not to come to grad school?
It's just because it's fucking hard.
You have to study papers every day that are nearly impossible to read, let alone understand, without considerable background knowledge.
(Of course, I understood them well.)
You have to agonize all day long until your head feels like it will burst to solve just one incredibly unfriendly problem, and wrestle with lab data every single day.
(Of course, I solved them well.)
In that ambiguous status that is neither student nor worker, the compensation given is jack shit.
(Of course, I got paid well.)
On top of that, if your advisor is someone with a twisted personality, they might stamp 'FAIL' on your defense thesis while saying 'Oops! My hand slipped!', extending your slave life.
(Of course, my advisor didn't do that.)
Nevertheless, the reason countless people become graduate students is for that prestigious degree,
and it had flown away.
It was gone.
All of it.
"..."
Let me curse for a moment.
"Fuck."
It's important, so I'll say it once more.
"You fuckin'-fuck!"
No, I just need to keep going.
"You fuckin'-fuck dick-sucking vermin—! You motherfuck—!"
I spewed curses again and again in a mood so incredibly fucked up it was beyond imagination,
but this fucked-up mood didn't even think of disappearing.
Of course, I won't deny that thanks to my slightly outstanding mind, good environment,
and luck, I had an excellent graduate school life,
but the fact that all my efforts until now had become bubbles
was very, very, very, extremely, fucking shitty.
Is this how a soldier feels when they're forced into a dishonorable discharge just as they were about to retire with stars?
Or is this how someone feels when they studied for ten years for a job only to be replaced by AI?
Or is this how it feels when you're gender-bent and summoned to another world, struggle like a dog, and the moment you catch the Demon King, you get sent back to your original world?
Hmm, I suppose the last one is somewhat similar.
In the sense that there's an unwanted sex change and unwanted knowledge crammed into my head.
Why the fuck—how am I not gay despite being gender-swapped,
that the gender-swap otherworld returnee genre has passed its trend,
that the latest trend is now gender-swap rape pure-love—why the hell do I know these things!
And that is thanks to the amazing life trajectory of the owner of this body,
or rather, the 'former' owner's astonishing course of life.
Someone who spent every day shitposting on communities, binging web novels, watching streamers and sending donations, enjoying a deranged life without stepping a single foot outside—
I pay my respects to the professional life-waster, "Seol Yuna."
But now that's me?
"Really... fucking... shit...!"
The urge to spew all kinds of profanities and run amok grew stronger and stronger,
but this body, impoverished beyond measure except for its chest and hips, had such bottom-tier stamina that it couldn't even manage that for long.
"...Fuck."
It's shitty.
This is the conclusion I reached after careful deliberation.
It's fucking shitty.