Time of the Blind Beast - Side Story 6

Most of the new students had failed to endure the dissection practice and dropped out midway, and the incident caused quite a stir. The professor announced the next day that they would have a surprise test drawing human anatomical diagrams, and that it would count heavily toward their grades.

They had only one day. In a panic, students immediately grouped up with their close acquaintances and occupied each practice room.

The problem was the female students. Slower on their feet and fewer in number, by the time they rushed to find an empty practice room, every single one had already been taken.

Asking to share a practice room was out of the question. After all the prideful clashes between them, relations were far from good.

“How many hours are you planning to use it?”

“We’re going to stay here all night.”

“What kind of dissection needs to last overnight…”

“We have to study hard too. The test will affect our grades.”

The female students tried knocking on the practice room doors to negotiate shared time, but failed every time.

As the representative of the female students, Paulina knocked on the door of the last remaining practice room. The moment she saw the face that appeared, she knew it was hopeless.

“What is it?”

It was Ethan. And behind him stood a group of his classmates. The wary looks already on their faces made it clear they wouldn’t give up the room, especially with the rivalry between them.

“Never mind.”

Of all people, he was the most difficult to face. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him to yield the practice room. Nor did she want to hesitate and look indecisive.

Paulina shut the door with a bang and turned away.

“Let’s just recall as much as we can ourselves.”

The female students gathered in the library and spent the night piecing together every fragment of memory left in their minds. When someone finally found and borrowed an anatomy book from the library’s collection, they even shouted for joy.

“This anatomy diagram doesn’t look very accurate…”

“And it’s so old. I guess the library hasn’t been maintaining it well.”

“Who actually stayed until the end of the dissection practice?”

“Paulina was there, and me…”

“I stayed too, but I was too far away, so it won’t help much.”

They all huddled together, trying to draw anatomical diagrams and practicing until their hands grew familiar with it.

“Those guys are seriously stubborn. They won’t leave the practice rooms. How can they stand the stench of corpses?”

“They probably locked the doors because they knew we’d be waiting outside.”

“Let’s just do what we can. This won’t be the last exam.”

One student glanced out at the late night sky.

“It’s too late to go home now.”

“I’m just going to stay here in the library all night.”

“Me too.”

“Since we’re all here, why don’t we study together? Let’s share our notes too.”

Since they weren’t staying up alone but together, conversation flowed endlessly. They even managed to finish both review and preparation for future lessons before dawn arrived.

The female students ate a breakfast of warm tea and biscuits before heading into the classroom. They comforted each other, saying they had done their best, but their expressions were far from bright. No matter how hard they had tried, their work couldn’t match the detail of the male students who had monopolized the practice rooms and completed dissections themselves. With their average scores about to plummet for the first time, it was hard to remain calm.

“What’s that smell?”

As they entered the classroom for the surprise test, the female students wrinkled their noses and covered them with their hands. The male students who had been shut up in those rooms with the cadavers for hours reeked with an indescribably foul odor.

“Open the windows.”

“Paulina, come over here.”

As she walked over, following her classmates’ gestures, Paulina glanced sideways at Ethan. The man who always dressed flashy and neat no matter what, had no time to spare today. He was wearing wrinkled clothes.

“Alright, is everyone present?”

The professor smiled as he looked at the exhausted students.

“For once, no one is late. From the looks on your faces, you all need sleep, but if you finish the test early, you may leave and rest.”

The professor swiftly wrote down a few topics. None of them had anything to do with anatomical diagrams, and the students, flustered, broke into a buzz of voices.

“Professor, wasn’t this exam supposed to be drawing anatomical diagrams?”

“I heard you all practiced anatomy all night. Then you should be able to draw the organs with your eyes closed.”

The professor let out a hearty laugh.

“And this way, no one will vomit or run out in the middle of practice again.”

The faces of the male students, who had spent the night holed up in practice rooms, breathing the stench of rotting corpses in cramped spaces, twisted with annoyance.

Meanwhile, the female students, who had studied in the clean library, resting in between and sharing notes, were in much better condition.

The problems were exactly what they had reviewed.

Paulina stopped writing her answers for a moment and glanced at Ethan. Though yawning and stretching as if tired, he was smiling alone even while his peers grumbled.

Ah, I see. Even if he wasted time pointlessly staying up all night in the practice rooms, he’s confident he can still do well.

If I don’t want to lose, I’ll have to do my best. No, I must.

Paulina diligently filled in her answers.

“Wasn’t that exam pretty manageable?”

“Ah, their stupid expressions, though.”

When Paulina came out after finishing the exam, the female students who had already left and were chatting waved her over.

“Paulina, congratulations. You’ll surely have the best score this time.”

Though she had done well on the test, such congratulations were still premature.

Paulina shook her head. “Well, we won’t know until the results come out.”

“Come on, if we managed, then for you it must have been easy.”

“But really, how did the professor know the students stayed up all night in the practice rooms? The exam topic was suddenly changed, when nothing like that had ever happened before.”

Someone casually voiced a question. Now that they thought about it, no one knew the reason for the sudden change in exam topics.

“True…”

“Could someone have tipped him off?”

“None of us said anything. We were all together the whole time. If anyone, it’d have to be one of the male students, but they had no reason to reveal something that was to their advantage.”

The fact that the entire faculty was male in itself symbolized how narrow the path was for women in higher education. Even if word got out that the male students had monopolized the practice rooms and kept the women out, none of the professors would side with them. On the contrary, they might have simply carried on with the anatomical diagram exam as before.

“Maybe we just got lucky.”

“Well, just looking at their faces, it was obvious they’d stayed up all night. They all looked half-dead and smelled awful.”

“Whatever the case, it turned out well for us.”

Though the outcome had been suspiciously favorable, in the end, it was the female students who had benefited, so there was no need to raise questions. Having done well on the exam, they soon dismissed their doubts. Paulina, to,o did not dwell on it further.

Not long after, the students’ midterm results were publicly posted. Pushing through the crowd gathered to check their scores, Paulina found her name on the board. As her classmates had predicted, Paulina’s name was at the very top of the rankings.

Thank goodness.

Relieved by the results that did not betray her efforts, she was suddenly caught off guard by a voice intruding into her moment.

“Paulina.”

Ethan greeted her with a smiling face.

“As expected, the top student in the medical department is you. I knew it. Do you have time now? How about the two of us go eat together to celebrate?”

Even though his own ranking had dropped because of her, there wasn’t the slightest trace of discomfort in Ethan’s demeanor.

How can he act so unaffected?

It was baffling. Among students, rivalries were fierce, and Paulina and Ethan would be competing as rivals until the day they graduated. Just seeing each other’s faces was uncomfortable enough, and yet he was suggesting a celebratory meal together.

Why on earth?

The thought alone was enough to sour her stomach.

Paulina fixed her eyes coldly on Ethan, who was beaming with a bright smile. No matter how she looked at him, he was a man she could never understand.

I can’t tell what’s inside him. Even the meaning of that unsettling smile is suspicious.

What unlucky woman would end up marrying a man like him?

Paulina ignored the hand Ethan held out and turned sharply away.