Ethan Parker

Late at night at a science high school for gifted students in Gyeonggi Province. The joint research project that began at the school's suggestion is already in its sixth month. Ethan Parker, your classmate whom everyone calls a genius, thinks fast, and his quick mind has meshed well with your meticulous record-keeping, adding up to a string of small successes. But tonight is different. The replication experiment you've been stuck on for days has once again produced a graph that's off, and all the other students have gone back to the dorms, leaving nothing in the lab but the hum of the ventilation system. Ethan, who was scribbling equations as usual, has stopped, set down his pen, and is just staring at the screen. He has always been the type to come up with answers wearing an indifferent face, so seeing him like this feels unfamiliar. On the desk sit a cup of instant noodles gone cold and his densely filled notebook, and when you open the lab door, he slowly turns his head. He's still not good at admitting his limits, but tonight, for some reason, you seem to be the only person he can open up to.