Nora stared at his data.
Although she only caught a flash of the data that had just been uploaded, she still got a clear look at it—Epson’s experiment was the same as the one she had done in the past. Its final outcome would only be a failure.
She lowered her eyes and kept quiet.
Many of Epson’s students swarmed toward them.
Everyone had painstakingly worked day and night for a month and now it was finally time to get the fruit of their labor. This was the moment that mattered the most to them.
Epson pressed the data consolidation button.
Epson’s students said, “Lisa, you have never seen an experiment like this back in America, right? You’ll bear witness to a miracle today!”
“Yeah, you are so lucky! Even though you didn’t do anything, you still gained Professor Epson’s trust. It’s really a blessing for you to be able to take part in an experiment like this!”
“Yeah! I bet even Professor Anti wasn’t this nice to you, right? Moreover, Staav University is much better than the NYU School of Medicine! At the very least, Anti is the only internationally well-known doctor there, whereas Staav University has many! Professor Epson is just one of the many professors here! You should have a better understanding of how great Staav University is by now, right?”
Amidst their sarcastic, envious, or admonishing remarks, Nora didn’t utter even a word.
“Look, it’ll be done real soon!”
Distracted, everyone stopped focusing on Nora.
At this point, someone tugged on Nora’s arm.
Nora turned her head to see that Oscar had come up beside her. She lowered her voice and said, “Why don’t you apologize to Professor Epson later for showing disrespect towards him? Professor Epson may make himself out to be magnanimous and say that he will forgive you but he’s actually very petty. Once the project succeeds, he will definitely go around saying that he’s better than Professor Anti, and you are going to be the evidence that he’ll use. Be careful not to let him make use of you.”
After speaking, Oscar sighed. “You are ultimately just an exchange student, so you have to go back sooner or later. If you offend Anti, your studies won’t go smoothly in the future.”
Nora: “…”
Oscar had given her so many kind warnings that she didn’t quite know what to do anymore.
Oscar explained, “Actually, I secretly really like Professor Anti because she’s so cool, but I can’t say that out loud. Even if Professor Epson succeeds in his experiment, I’m still not going to think that he’s really better than Professor Anti. It would be nice if I could meet Professor Anti even just once in this lifetime.”
Then, Oscar sighed and added, “Unfortunately, there is probably no hope for that anymore because Professor Anti only took one postgraduate student under her wing. I really wonder who it is that’s so lucky…” Nora: “…”
“You’ll meet her for sure,” she said.
After all, they had already met.
However, Oscar lowered her voice again and asked, “By the way, you must have already told Professor Anti that Professor Epson is carrying out this experiment, right?”
“… Yeah, she knows about it.”
Oscar then asked, “T-then can you pass a message to Professor Anti for me?”
“Sure.”
Oscar sighed. “Actually, I admire her very much. A one-time failure doesn’t mean anything-after all, Professor Anti doesn’t specialize in pharmaceuticals; her forte is her surgical skill.”
Now, Nora couldn’t concur with that. She coughed and said, “Anti… Professor Anti is actually even more skilled in her pharmaceutical knowledge than her surgical skills.”
“Really?”
Oscar was a little surprised. Although she did not quite understand why Nora would suddenly say something like that, she nevertheless said, “Well, that doesn’t matter. Even if Professor Anti is more skilled in pharmaceutical knowledge, I still believe this is just a one-time failure for her. I heard that many of the pills that Professor Anti created have already spread to Switzerland… She is still very awesome, no matter what. Now that Epson has beat her in something for once, he will definitely spread talk about how incompetent Professor Anti is. Do tell Professor Anti not to take it to heart…”
“He won’t have the chance,” Nora replied.
Her reply took Oscar by surprise. “What do you mean?”
Nora’s lip corners curled into a smile. “I’m saying that Professor Epson won’t have the chance to do that.”
Immediately after she spoke, one of the students at the computer with the experiment data exclaimed, “It has stopped! It reached 100%! The result… The result will be out in a moment!”
“It’s out!”
The next moment following their shouts, however, everyone suddenly fell silent.
Oscar hurriedly tugged on Nora’s arm. “For the sake of the credits for Professor Epson’s class, just congratulate him…”
Before she could finish, though, she heard someone exclaim in shock, “How… how can this be?”
“Yeah, why did it fail?”
Oscar: “??”
“No, this is impossible!” Epson let out a low bark. He hurriedly looked at the computer and said furiously, “Something must have gone wrong! Yes, that must be it! There’s no way it would fail! Re-upload it! Re-upload all data!”
“Roger!”
All the students nodded and re-uploaded all the data.
Epson then clicked the Consolidate button.
But five minutes later, the lab was still filled with silence, indicating that it was still unsuccessful!
Epson still refused to believe it. He said, “Someone among you must have made a mistake in the data! Go and get it checked again, pronto! And upload it again within half an hour!”
“Roger!”
Following Professor Epson’s order, all the students once again threw themselves into the intense experiment.
Only Nora and Oscar stood in the corner by the side, one looking like she was waiting for some kind of result and the other looking a little lost-after all, at Oscar’s current level of knowledge, she couldn’t fully understand the experiment yet.
Another hour passed.
They uploaded the data once more but it still failed!
Epson stared at his computer in disbelief. The students started to talk among themselves at this point.
“What’s going on?”
“Yeah, it’s so weird. What’s going on?
“… It suddenly occurred to me that someone had once said that Anti has tried this idea before, but it unfortunately failed. Therefore, this particular hypothesis doesn’t work… We were too confident and got careless!”
As soon as the student said that, though, Epson looked at her furiously. “How can that be? This is the only possible way! How can it fail? This doesn’t make sense, something must have gone wrong somewhere! But where? Where does the problem lie?”
“This… Every line of data is extremely accurate, we have already confirmed it a dozen times and there really isn’t any problem. How could this have happened? What should we do?”
“Yeah, the data is too strange!”
While everyone was deep in thought, a low voice reached them.
“It’s the third set, it can’t be integrated with the rest of the data. This problem is unsolvable.”
Everyone was contemplating the issue seriously, so when they heard this, they all looked at the computer.
Sure enough, everyone discovered the problem.
“How did it turn out like that?!”
“It really is impossible to integrate this part into the rest of the data. In other words, our hypothesis was wrong from the beginning!”
“Have we been doing pointless work this whole month?”
“Professor Anti once said that this method will never work, but we simply refused to believe it and insisted on wasting a month to verify it…”
Amid everyone kicking themselves over their actions, Epson held his head. “How can this happen? How?! This is impossible… I’m definitely better than Anti…”
Seeing his reaction, the students hurriedly comforted him. “Professor Epson, y-you have done your best.”
“Go away! Even if I’ve done my best, I still can’t accept this! This is a matter of academic dignity!”
Epson’s eyes were fixed on the screen.
No one realized that Nora was the one who had pointed out the problem just now.
Oscar, who was standing beside Nora all this time, stared at her in shock. It wasn’t until then that she finally recovered and asked in astonishment, “How did you know that there is a problem with the third set of data?”
“… Well, I have experienced this failure before,” replied Nora.
Oscar was stunned. A moment later, though, she suddenly realized something and said, “I see! Did you also participate in Anti’s experiment back at the NYU School of Medicine? That’s why you knew from the start that this experiment would never succeed!”
“… You can say that,” Nora said.
She had indeed been involved in her own experiment from the very beginning.
But the moment she said that, a besotted look instead came over Oscar’s countenance. “Professor Anti is simply too amazing! As soon as she started the experiment, she noticed the problem and ended it. Gosh, I really wish I could meet her!”
After speaking, she lowered her head and took out her cell phone. “What are you doing?” Nora asked.
Oscar replied, “I’m going to search for photos of Anti… I want to see what she looks like!”
