High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 2 - just ordinary people

At first, Plan had been happy that attending freshmen orientation had at least temporarily gotten rid of the people buzzing around him like flies.

But now, while he was sitting in a hidden corner at the cafeteria, eating the plain rice and vegetables he had brought with him, he asked himself whether he had acted too rudely to the people at UdG and whether it was going to bite him in the end.

While he had sneaked through the labyrinthine corridors of the university just before, to lose the crowds, he had heard people whisper about that rude self-proclaimed genius who thought he was better than everyone just because he had received a special scholarship. A person so arrogant he had even dared to turn down the White Hand, despite having been asked to join by Mean himself.

That wasn't who he was.

He wasn't usually a rude or arrogant person.

At his high school in Chiang Mai he hadn't been a loner. It was just a different situation right now.

He had loved to work on mathematical problems with the other members of the maths club at school and every Friday they had gone out to sing out-of-tune karaoke songs together with the members of the badminton team.

There had been no separation of nerds and jocks at his school and they had had a lot of fun calculating flight paths and optimal approach vectors for the badminton players to help them improve their speed, in return for a few free lunches.

A few months ago, he had even had a short, sweet romance with Win, the team leader of the badminton team. Plan had helped him figure out the problem he had had with his backhand serve and after Win had gone on to defeat the reigning champion from their rival high school, they had kissed each other behind the equipment shed.

But after a few secret romantic dates at the cinema and Win often strolling through the director's garden while Plan was working, they had come to realise that they didn't have a future together and that it was better to end it before it developed into something deeper.

Win had had high ambitions for his life both as a sportsman and as an aspiring entrepreneur, while Plan had only thought about returning to the village to support his grandparents.

It had been a slightly melancholic, but ultimately friendly separation and Plan still had good feelings thinking back on it.

If life had taught him anything, it was not to get attached to people or things in general, but to know what to focus on in the moment to get the most of it.

This was exactly why Plan didn't want to interact with the people here at UdG.

Plan knew his time here was limited.

The people who had been following him around all morning like he was some kind of idol weren't really interested in him as a person, they had invested in the fairy tale of the genius commoner – the soothing tale that told them that if a mere farm boy, an orphan at that, could turn out to be the next Einstein, everything was possible for them, too.

The problem with this story was that it wasn't true and people would eventually figure out he wouldn't go on to win a Nobel Prize in physics anytime soon.

After that, they would abandon him just as enthusiastically as they were supporting him now. He would have to return to the rice terraces and support his grandparents again – and the fewer attachments he had formed at the university in the meantime, the better.

That was why he had been reluctant to come here even after he had realised that the scholarship was genuine.

The director of his former school had sent in his homework assignment to the National Young Researchers competition behind his back and apparently, Prof. Marsden had been so impressed with it that she had pushed the sponsors of UdG to do everything in their power to get him here.