The Mechanical Engineering Student

Section 1: The Hello Kitty Incident

Lawson could barely remember most of his first day of college anymore. Ten years was a long time, after all. The classrooms, professors, and endless hallways had long since blurred together.

But there was one thing he could still remember clearly: the first time he met Mildy.

Ten years earlier, eight-year-old Lawson had arrived on campus with a bright pink Hello Kitty backpack hanging from his shoulders. His mother had packed his lunch inside, along with a few of his favorite toys. Unfortunately, within minutes of entering the Mechanical Engineering building, Lawson was completely lost.

“Room 304… Where the heck is Room 304?”

Just then, Lawson saw a beautiful young woman with a curvy figure walking toward him. She was wearing a fitted white shirt with a palm-sized Hello Kitty printed over the chest pocket, carrying a thick textbook at her right side.

Lawson’s attention was immediately drawn to the Hello Kitty on her shirt. His eyes locked onto it with laser-like focus as he walked straight toward her, never looking away for even a second.

The woman noticed the old man staring directly at her chest. Growing uneasy, she instinctively brought the thick textbook up and held it against her chest, hunching forward slightly as he approached.

The moment Lawson stopped in front of her, she flinched. “Ah! Don’t touch me!”

“Oh, I… I’m lost. Could you tell me how I can get to Room 304?”

The woman relaxed a little. “Oh, Professor! Just go straight, take the stairs, and turn right. You’ll see the room on your left.”

Lawson gave her a small, polite bow. “Thank you very much, big sister.”

The woman lowered her guard a little and let the textbook fall back to her right side. Lawson smiled. “Actually, I’m not a professor. I’m a freshman here.”

With the textbook no longer covering her chest, the Hello Kitty was visible again. Lawson’s eyes immediately returned to it, lighting up with excitement.

“I’m only eight years old, big sister.”

The woman immediately grew uneasy again. This creepy old man was staring at her chest again, this time with a strangely passionate gaze, while claiming to be eight years old. Was that supposed to be some kind of cheesy pickup line? Confused and increasingly suspicious, she stared at Lawson with a guarded expression.

Lawson took a step closer. The woman immediately recoiled half a step, but Lawson simply raised his hand and pointed at the Hello Kitty on her shirt, stopping his fingertip barely an inch away from it.

“May I touch your Hello Kitty, big sister?”

Section 2: A Win-Win-Win Situation

That was the last straw. The woman slapped Lawson’s hand away with her left hand. “Get your filthy hand off me!” As far as she was concerned, she had finally seen through this greasy old geezer’s dirty little trick. The “Hello Kitty” was obviously just some disgusting nickname for her boob, and she had had enough.

She raised the thick textbook high in her right hand, turning its hard corner toward Lawson’s face as she prepared to bring it down.

Before she could strike, a small figure rushed in from behind her. He was barely 149 centimeters tall, wearing a T-shirt two sizes too big for him—with a Hello Kitty printed across the front.

In one quick motion, the young man grabbed her raised wrist with one hand, while wrapping his other arm across her chest from behind and pulling her firmly against him.

For a moment, the woman was too startled by the sudden intervention to react. Then she glanced at Lawson and seemed to understand. The old man in front of her looked so fragile that one blow from a heavy textbook might actually kill him—and then she would be the one facing the legal consequences.

Her anger quickly faded. She abandoned the attack and slowly lowered the book, feeling strangely grateful to whoever had stopped her before she did something she might seriously regret.

Lawson was just as grateful. From his point of view, this complete stranger had rushed in at the most dangerous possible moment and saved his life.

Realizing it was finally time to let go, the young man first released the woman’s wrist.

His other arm, however, stayed around her for another two seconds before reluctantly pulling away. Just before letting go completely, he gave her breast one quick, sneaky squeeze.

Then, as if absolutely nothing had happened, he finally released her.

The young man was Mildy, another freshman in the Mechanical Engineering program. And he was a pervert. No doubt about it. He had not rushed over because he was heroic or particularly kind. He had seen an opportunity to cop a feel and, within that tiny window of timing, immediately figured out how to take advantage of it.

And apparently, it had worked perfectly. The woman had been stopped before she could get herself into serious legal trouble, Lawson had been saved from taking a textbook to the face, and Mildy had gotten exactly what he wanted.

It seemed to be a win-win-win situation.

Section 3: Room 304

The woman turned around and gave Mildy a polite bow. “Thank you very much for jumping in. You probably just saved me from going to jail.”

Before Mildy could say anything, she turned and hurried away. Lawson looked at the oversized T-shirt hanging from Mildy’s skinny frame and immediately noticed the familiar character printed across the front.

“Oh, you have a really cute Hello Kitty on your shirt. Can I touch it? I love Hello Kitty too.”

That was all it took to get them talking. As they walked together, their shared love of Hello Kitty quickly broke the ice, and they soon discovered one coincidence after another. Mildy was also a freshman in Mechanical Engineering. He was also looking for Room 304. And, incredibly, they had even been assigned to the same dorm room.

From that day on, Lawson and Mildy became close friends—despite the fact that there was a full ten-year age gap between them.

Back in the present, a faint smile appeared at the corner of Lawson’s mouth. He reached up and rubbed the top of his head, still looking genuinely grateful as he remembered that day.

“If Mildy hadn’t jumped in back then, that book might’ve cracked my skull wide open. I might not even be alive today.”

Lawson continued walking, leaving the elementary school behind. After a while, he came to a bridge and started across. Below him, the river flowed through the city. Lawson glanced over the railing at the moving water and suddenly slowed his steps.

“Oh… now I remember something else. Mildy always had a lot of really crazy, really stupid, absurd ideas. But surprisingly, people almost always seemed to buy them.”

The sight of the flowing water pulled Lawson into another memory.

Section 4: Engineering Medicine

It was during their sophomore year of college. All ten students in their Mechanical Engineering class had gone on an outdoor class trip together. The area was beautiful, surrounded by trees and open countryside, with a clear river running beside them.

The water looked peaceful from a distance, but the current was surprisingly strong. It rushed quickly downstream toward a waterfall not far away.

Nearby, two of the male students had somehow gotten bored enough to start fooling around with a pair of scissors. One of them suddenly raised his middle finger at the other.

“Fuck you!”

The other student swung the scissors at him as a joke.

Snip.

The blade closed around the raised finger and cut it clean off. The severed middle finger dropped onto the grass. For half a second, the student simply stared at his hand.

Then he clutched the bloody stump and screamed.

“MOMMY! IT HURTS! IT HURTS SO MUCH! SAVE ME, MOMMY!”

Everyone around them panicked.

“What do we do?!” one student shouted.

Another was already reaching for his phone. “Call an ambulance! Quick!”

Mildy immediately stepped forward. “Hold it. We don’t need an ambulance. I can fix his finger right now.”

Mildy reached into his bag and pulled out some kind of quick-setting construction compound from his engineering supplies. Before anyone could question him, he smeared it over the injured hand, then wrapped the whole thing tightly with a strip of industrial tape.

A short while later, the bleeding appeared to have stopped. Mildy nodded proudly.

“There you go. The wound is sealed. You’re good as new.”

The student stared at his hand in disbelief, then looked at Mildy with admiration. “Mildy, you’re amazing! I didn’t know you knew so much about medicine. You actually combined medicine with Mechanical Engineering!”

Mildy waved it off casually. “Eh, no big deal.”

Section 5: The Missing Finger

Then Mildy happened to notice the severed middle finger lying in the grass. He crouched down, picked it up, and held it in front of the student.

“Oh, right. This is your middle finger.”

The student reached out to take it.

“Oh, but I don’t think you need this anymore.”

Almost absentmindedly, Mildy tossed the finger into the river beside them.

The current caught it immediately and swept it away.

The student froze.

“NO! What the hell did you do to my middle finger?!”

Back in the present, Lawson chuckled at the memory.

“Oh, man. I still feel sorry for that guy. If we’d just called an ambulance and gotten him to the hospital, they probably could’ve reattached that middle finger. But thanks to Mildy’s great idea, he ended up losing it forever.”

Lawson was still laughing as he shook his head and continued across the bridge.

“Mildy… what a guy.”

Section 6: Playing Dead

Lawson continued on until he reached Local Alley. As he passed by, he noticed Benson getting robbed again.

Lawson blinked. Hadn’t he seen Benson getting robbed by this exact same guy when he passed through Local Alley earlier this morning?

The robber slapped Benson across the face. “What the hell?! This morning you only had five bucks, and now you got nothing?! You’re wasting my fucking time!”

Lawson gave them a brief glance and kept walking. He didn’t seem particularly concerned. If anything, the scene reminded him of another night from his college days, when he and Mildy had finished dinner with nothing better to do. The two of them had left their dorm and gone for a leisurely walk through a small neighborhood park, strolling side by side almost like a couple.

Without warning, a huge man burst out from behind a nearby bush. He was tall, broad, and heavily built. Raising one massive fist at them, he blocked their path.

“This is a robbery! Give me everything you got! And I’m beating the shit out of both of you too. I just found out my wife’s having an affair, and I’m in a really fucking bad mood!”

Lawson’s legs immediately went weak. He froze where he stood, terrified.

Mildy, on the other hand, remained completely calm. Without saying a word, he suddenly collapsed onto the ground in front of the robber. His eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. His body gave several strange, violent twitches before his arms and legs stretched out and went completely stiff.

The robber immediately lowered his fist and stared at Mildy in alarm.

“What the hell?! This is my first time robbing somebody and this happens? Is he fucking dying? Wait… is he already dead?”

He took a nervous step backward.

“Shit! If the cops show up, how the hell am I supposed to explain this? They’re gonna think I killed him! I could go to prison! What if I get executed?!”

The more he thought about it, the paler his face became. A second later, he turned and ran, screaming as he fled.

“It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it! I don’t want to go to jail! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

By then, Lawson was already far away, crouching behind another bush and peeking out from between the leaves.

Once the robber was gone, Mildy slowly climbed back to his feet. He brushed himself off and looked toward the bush where Lawson was hiding.

“I knew it would work.”

Section 7: The Perfect Deception

Lawson stared at him. Mildy looked completely serious—and completely confident.

Even back then, Lawson had been skeptical of Mildy’s absurd trick. It had worked, but only because the robber happened to believe it. The moment Mildy dropped to the ground, he had left himself completely wide open.

A different opponent could have stomped on his head and cracked it like a watermelon.

Or driven a fist straight into his stomach hard enough to leave a hole.

Or simply grabbed him, lifted him upside down, and slammed him headfirst into the ground, snapping his spine on impact.

And those were only the first few possibilities that came to Lawson’s mind. He could already imagine plenty of other ways Mildy’s little trick could have ended in serious injury—or instant death.

The more Lawson thought about it, the more risky and unreliable the technique seemed.

There had to be a better way.

A more reliable way to deceive an opponent.

A trick that, once used, would work flawlessly every single time.