I Need the True Ending to Graduate - Chapter 21

【 The Diligent Graduate Student 】

After borrowing all the books I needed and leaving the library, I found the sun already high in the sky.

The sunlight was so warm that it almost stung my eyes.

I raised my empty hand to my forehead and made a small shade with my palm.

Only then did the scenery outside the library come fully into view.

Since it was just past lunchtime, there were hardly any students visible within the Academy.

It seemed everyone had gone to eat at the cafeteria.

“Ah.”

Suddenly realizing something, I stopped in place and let out a small sigh.

‘The cafeteria would have been fine.’

The problem was going together to Bell Restaurant, not eating at the cafeteria.

Since Evan Bell was not an Academy student, there was no chance of running into him, and besides, he would be busy with restaurant business during lunch, so he wouldn’t come anywhere near here.

It was an option that would have come to mind with just a little thought, but I had been so consumed by the flustered thought of a disastrous scenario that I hadn’t even considered other choices.

‘What should I do? Should I go back right now and suggest we eat at the cafeteria together?’

When I thought of Ruad Rochef’s disappointed face, I turned my body back toward the library, but then faltered.

After refusing so firmly, it was embarrassing to go back and suddenly suggest eating together.

Just a moment ago, I had said I didn’t want to eat lunch with him, and now if I went back and said I had changed my mind, no matter how I looked at it, it seemed strange.

‘Let’s just eat together next time. I’ll say I’ll treat him at the cafeteria then.’

Settling it that way, I turned again, but something caught my eye.

Wondering what it was, I looked and saw that a newspaper stand was piled high with newspapers.

‘I didn’t see this when I came in this morning.’

Curious, I walked over for a closer look and realized it was a newspaper published within the Academy itself.

A paper sign on the stand read, “Please take one copy each.”

‘Come to think of it, Ruad Rochef said Karl Evenhart’s face was plastered all over the school paper.’

I had no good feelings toward Karl Evenhart, but I was still curious.

About how he ended up falling so far.

I didn’t know whose thesis he plagiarized, but I did want to see what that shameless face looked like.

And at the same time, I could get a sense of the Academy’s atmosphere and check if there was any useful information beyond what I had gathered on my own.

‘Let’s grab one.’

I quickly picked up a copy from the stand, slipped it into my bag, and returned quietly to the dormitory.

***

After finishing a simple lunch prepared by the staff, I sat at a round table with the hot tea I had asked for and unfolded the newspaper I had brought.

With the rustling sound, the distinct scent of paper and ink wafted up.

And on the front page was the face of a man who looked to be in his early to mid-forties, with strands of white hair beginning to show.

His face took up nearly half the page, printed in bold, and beneath the picture, in small letters, it read:

[Karl Evenhart. Age 45. Former Professor at Calypse Magic Academy.]

‘Former, indeed.’

The single word “former” attached to his title looked colder than anything. But I felt no sympathy.

How much had I feared being expelled from the Academy because of this man? There was no way I could feel pity or compassion. Just seeing his face was enough.

I began reading the headlines carefully.

[Shocking! Karl Evenhart, the third in Academy history to suffer the disgrace of dismissal from professorship!]

[Dismissal followed by bankruptcy… What will become of him next?]

The lines were quite sensational for a school newspaper.

My interest suddenly piqued, I started reading through the tightly packed article beneath the photo.

[…Former Professor Karl Evenhart, who had appeared to be actively engaged in research, plagiarized a total of five theses written by students of Calypse Academy, including Strategic Research on Barrier Magic, Security Magic in the History of the Calypse Empire, and Arguments on the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Barriers, passing them off as his own research and presenting them in the academic world. Two of these theses even won awards from related academic societies and were published in their journals…]

“Much crazier than I thought.”

Starting from Karl Evenhart’s brief biography, as I continued reading the article, the following information shocked me so much that I couldn’t hold back and ended up blurting out harsh words.

I had assumed he had plagiarized some published thesis, but it turned out he had outright stolen the work of his own students and passed it off as his.

He was truly out of his mind.

I continued reading further.

[…This misconduct by former Professor Karl Evenhart was revealed through an anonymous report and brought before the Calypse Academy Ethics Committee. After more than fifteen days of lengthy meetings, the final decision was made to dismiss him.

There was a shared opinion that Professor Karl Evenhart’s plagiarism had gravely damaged the reputation of Calypse Magic Academy, making it impossible for him to remain in his position.]

‘So it seems the committee members are relatively decent people.’

The article went on to explain the circumstances and reasons for Karl Evenhart’s dismissal, and next, it detailed his financial ruin.

[…According to reports, he recently invested a huge sum of money in an abandoned mine and lost his entire fortune. As a result, his mansion was seized as collateral and is currently being auctioned off, and even his title of count was sold at a bargain price to pay off his debts.

People lament that he fell from nobility to commoner in an instant, but there is no sign of anyone willing to help him.

Since then, no news of Karl Evenhart has surfaced, leading to rumors that he either committed suicide or defected abroad, but all of these have been proven false.

For now, attention is focused only on what course of action he will take next…]

‘So he lost everything by investing in an abandoned mine.’

Though I didn’t feel much about it, there was something strange.

‘Why would he invest in an abandoned mine?’

He was both a professor and a noble. If he were in his right mind, he would never have invested in a closed mine with no profitability. Anyone could see it was a losing prospect.

And yet, he poured his entire fortune into it.

Even if he had been swindled, for someone wicked enough to steal his own students’ work and claim it as his, it seemed too clumsy a mistake.

“Hmph. Serves him right, though.”

I set the newspaper down and sipped my tea, murmuring quietly to myself.

Whatever the circumstances, the important fact was that he had fallen.

Because of his downfall, I had been forced to go through the crisis of almost being expelled before even starting the semester, but that didn’t mean I wanted a man who plagiarized and even won awards for it to live well.

“He’s the biggest piece of trash I’ve seen in a long time.”

After giving the article a brief final judgment, I quietly stared at Karl Evenhart’s face for a while, and suddenly a question came to mind.

“Now that I think about it, just how old is Jeran Ennessy?”

The Karl Evenhart in the picture was forty-five, with a dignified appearance that suited a professor.

Even a stranger would be able to easily guess his profession at a glance.

But Jeran Ennessy’s appearance didn’t look like that of a forty-five-year-old at all.

‘At the very least, he looks around my age or close to it.’

That meant he would be in his mid-to-late twenties…

“Is that even possible?”

Even if I didn’t know much about this world, I knew enough that becoming a professor in your twenties was unheard of.

‘Unless you’re some prodigy who entered the Academy in your early teens and earned a doctorate by twenty.’

I hoped instead that he was simply an unbelievably youthful-looking forty-year-old, but then paused.

Because I had to seduce Jeran Ennessy and sleep with him.

No matter how young he looked outwardly, no matter if this was a game world and not reality, if he was actually in his forties, then from an ethical and moral perspective, a woman in her twenties sleeping with a man in his forties was questionable.

But on the other hand, it was also strange to think he was close to my age.

‘Next time I see him, I’ll have to ask about his age.’

At the same time, I planned to dig up more information about Jeran Ennessy, get closer to him, and find out what kind of women he liked.

‘But what if he really is in his forties?’

Even if he looked like he was in his twenties, if the actual age difference was that big, I wasn’t confident I could go through with it.

‘I don’t want to have sex with some man in his forties.’

I prayed that the game developers and scenario writers had at least set his age within the bounds of common sense, and turned back to the newspaper.