The black Volkswagen Phaeton glided through the bustling city center and turned into a secluded district known for housing the city's old money.
Here, the noise of traffic faded, replaced by the rustling of leaves from the towering plane trees lining the road. The car eventually pulled up to the heavy iron gates of a high-walled private estate.
"We're here," Juan said, killing the engine and unbuckling his seatbelt.
Ren rubbed her sleepy eyes and pushed the door open. She didn't spare a glance at the intricate wrought-iron gates or the sprawling manicured gardens that screamed wealth. She only cared about one thing.
"Where are the books?" Ren asked, stepping onto the gravel driveway.
"Inside," Juan said. Seeing her single-minded focus, he shook his head with a faint smile. He reached out and adjusted the hood of her sweatshirt, which had gone askew during her nap. "Eat dinner first. Then you can look at the books."
Luke followed behind them, whispering to Ren as they walked toward the main house.
"Sister Ren, do you know whose territory this is? This is **Professor Zimmer's** private retreat in Moon City. Do you know how many people would kill just to step foot in here? Even the Mayor has to make an appointment a month in advance."
Ren didn't hear a word. Her brain was currently occupied by the promise of 1950s nuclear physics manuscripts.
***
Inside the estate's sunroom, the air was thick with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
An elderly man dressed in a sharp three-piece suit sat at a round garden table. His white hair was disheveled, and his eyebrows were knitted together in frustration as he stared at a piece of scratch paper. He gripped a fountain pen like a dagger, aggressively scratching out lines of calculations.
"Zimmer," Juan called out casually, pulling out a chair and sitting down as if he owned the place.
The old man—Professor Zimmer, the Dean of the Physics Department at Capital University and a titan in the scientific community—didn't even look up. He waved his hand dismissively.
"Don't bother me! The data from the particle collider isn't matching up... Did those idiots in the lab mess up the parameters again? I told them the magnetic flux was unstable!"
Juan didn't get angry. He simply pointed a thumb at Ren, who was standing beside him. "I brought the person. Where are the books?"
Professor Zimmer finally looked up. He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose and swept a critical gaze over Ren.
In his eyes, she was just a teenager in a loose hoodie and a baseball cap, looking utterly out of place in his sanctuary of science.
"Her?" Zimmer snorted, his tone dripping with skepticism. "Juan, are you serious? You want to use my rare manuscripts as a toy to impress your little girlfriend? Do you know what those are? I spent a fortune bidding for them at an auction in Zurich! They contain handwritten notes by Fermi himself! Does she even know who Fermi is?"
Ren ignored the old man's mockery.
Her gaze drifted past Professor Zimmer, locking onto a stack of yellowing, leather-bound books resting on the other side of the table.
The smell of old paper and decaying leather was more intoxicating to her than any designer perfume.
Ren walked over and reached for the top book.
"Hey! Don't touch that!" Zimmer shouted, jumping up to stop her. "That's a historical artifact! You can't just grab it with your bare hands! The oil from your fingers will—"
Ren's hands were steady. She deftly avoided Zimmer's blocking attempt. Her long, slender fingers pinch the corner of the cover gently. She opened the first page with a lightness that bordered on reverence.
She didn't handle it roughly, as Zimmer had feared. She handled it like a surgeon handling a heart.
Zimmer paused, withdrawing his hand, but his expression remained sour. "Those are the original English texts with German annotations. Little girl, stop pretending. Go over there and eat some pastries. Don't ruin the spine."
***
Ren didn't respond.
She stood there, turning the pages. The silence in the sunroom deepened. The only sound was the soft *swish* of paper.
Juan poured himself a cup of black tea, a playful smile dancing on his lips as he watched the standoff between the grumpy academic titan and the high school dropout.
Five minutes later.
Ren stopped turning the pages.
She pointed a finger at the margin of a page, where a line of complex equations had been scrawled in faded ink, accompanied by German notes.
"Here," Ren spoke suddenly, her voice cool and crisp. "The derivation is wrong."
Professor Zimmer, who had just taken a sip of coffee, nearly choked.
He slammed his cup down, looking at her as if she had just claimed the earth was flat. "Excuse me? Wrong? Those are notes from a Nobel Prize physicist! You're a high school student. Do you even read German? Do you even know what wave function collapse is?"
Ren didn't waste breath arguing.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a red grading pen—the same one she had accidentally-on-purpose swiped from **Mr. Yates'** office that morning.
She leaned over the priceless manuscript.
*Scritch. Scritch.*
The red ink flowed onto the yellowed page, right next to the historical annotation.
"What are you doing!?" Zimmer screamed, his face turning purple. He looked ready to have a heart attack. "You're vandalizing it! Juan! Control your girl! She's destroying history!"
He lunged forward to snatch the book away.
However, as his eyes fell upon the formula Ren had just written, his movement froze mid-air.
It was as if someone had pressed the mute button on the world.
Zimmer's eyes widened until they looked like they might pop out of his head. He stared at the red ink. His lips began to tremble.
"This... this is..."
He frantically grabbed his scratch paper and his fountain pen. He began to calculate furiously, muttering to himself in a mix of English and German.
One minute passed.
Two minutes.
Five minutes.
The garden was terrifyingly quiet. Luke stood to the side, watching the scene unfold. He saw the sweat beading on the Professor's forehead. He saw the way the old man's hands shook with excitement, not rage.
Luke gulped. "Boss... what did Sister Ren do this time?"
Finally, Professor Zimmer dropped his pen. *Clatter.*
He looked up. The anger in his eyes was gone, replaced by a glazed look of shock, which slowly morphed into fanatical adoration.
"Correct... it's actually correct..." Zimmer whispered, his voice hoarse. He looked at Ren as if she were a deity who had descended from the heavens. "You eliminated the divergent term? You used a topological structure I've never seen before to bridge the gap?"
Ren closed the book and hugged it to her chest, looking at him warily. "The books are mine now. Juan promised."
***
"Yours! They are all yours! Take the whole library! I'll help you pack!"
Professor Zimmer suddenly rushed around the table, grabbing Ren's arm with the desperation of a drowning man. "Little girl... no, Miss! What is your name? Which university are you at? MIT? Cambridge? Are you interested in Capital University? No, forget the entrance exam! I'll send you a direct admission letter tonight! You're not a freshman... you're doctoral material! No, you could lead your own lab!"
Juan set down his teacup and walked over leisurely. He smoothly inserted himself between Ren and the Professor, prying the old man's gripping fingers off Ren's sleeve.
"Zimmer, calm down," Juan said, his tone amused but firm. "She's in her senior year of high school. And she just promised **Principal Shaw** that she would participate in the Provincial Physics Competition for Wolven High. Poaching her now would be unethical, wouldn't it?"
"Principal Shaw?" Zimmer spat the name out with disdain. "That old bureaucrat? What does he know about physics! Keeping a genius like her in that high school is a crime against science! It's a waste of life! No, I'm transferring her. We're going to the Capital tomorrow!"
"I'm not going," Ren said, popping her head out from behind Juan's back. Her refusal was instant and brutal.
"Why?" Zimmer cried, looking heartbroken.
"The Capital is too far," Ren said flatly. Then she tapped the cover of the book in her arms. "Besides... I already got the books."
Zimmer: "..."
*So, the Dean of Physics at Capital University is less appealing than a few old books?*
"Alright, let's eat first," Juan said, patting Zimmer on the shoulder to snap him out of his existential crisis. "The kid gets grumpy when she's hungry. And when she's hungry, her brain doesn't work."
Hearing this, Zimmer immediately spun around and shouted toward the kitchen staff. "Dinner! Serve dinner! Bring out the butter-fried prawns! And the Wagyu beef! And you—go to my study and bring the master keys! Give them to this... this young ancestor!"
Luke watched from the sidelines, shaking his head in awe.
First, it was Mr. Yates gifting a fifteen-thousand-dollar chair.
Now, it was Professor Zimmer handing over the keys to his private library.
Ren wasn't just a "Student God." She was the "Academic Predator." She ate professors for breakfast.
***
Dinner was served in the grand dining room.
Ren had her head down, focused entirely on a plate of butter-fried king prawns. She ate with efficient precision, completely ignoring the table manners usually expected in such a high-class establishment.
Professor Zimmer sat next to her, watching her eat with a creepy, grandfatherly smile. He didn't touch his food. Instead, he kept sliding a notebook toward her.
"Um... regarding the quantum entanglement theory in Chapter 3," Zimmer asked tentatively, like a student asking a teacher. "Do you think the spin variable is redundant?"
Ren had a prawn tail sticking out of her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, and mumbled, "That model is outdated. Look at page seven. I changed a parameter for you. It solves the redundancy."
Zimmer gasped, grabbing the notebook as if it were the Holy Grail. He abandoned his dinner entirely and ran to the side table to study the parameter, muttering equations to himself.
Juan sat on Ren's other side. He picked up a piece of slow-cooked rib, removed the bone with his knife and fork, and placed the meat into Ren's bowl.
"Slow down," Juan said softly, his dark eyes filled with a rare warmth. "No one is fighting you for it."
Ren stuffed the meat into her mouth, her cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk. She narrowed her eyes in satisfaction.
She had rare books to read.
She had expensive meat to eat.
And she had someone to peel prawns and de-bone ribs for her.
This life... wasn't bad at all.
**[Chapter 49 End]**