My evening is free today…

The line wouldn’t leave my head.

For a moment I turned into an idiot.

When a pretty art school noona appears out of nowhere and swings her tail at you, how many men are going to hold out?

While I was looking for something to answer, Son Yu-ri left that line behind, smiled broadly and went.

A mysterious female student who appeared like the wind, took one canned coffee and vanished.

It occurred to me that she’d planned the whole thing.

There’s no way she came all the way to the law school to buy a canned coffee with no money on her.

Son Yu-ri, the mysterious female student whose inner world runs on its own rules.

I wanted to meet her this evening.

Anyway, this lecture room is seriously huge.

The large lecture room looked three times wider than any lecture room I’d seen before I died.

Even with the law department’s full intake of two hundred seated, there would be room left over.

It looked like a room where classes like Introduction to Law were held—required for law students, but taken by students from other departments as an elective too.

Awkward-looking men and women were dotted around.

The ratio of men to women was about seven to three.

Some of the female students, though they’re only due to graduate high school, had already shown up in makeup or in suits.

Among the male students there were plenty who were goody-goodies at a glance.

More than half of them wore glasses.

They looked like kids a long way from sport.

But the force coming off them was no joke.

The pride of having entered Korea’s finest school and finest department poured out of their whole bodies.

Almost none of them were talking.

These are classmates meeting for the first time since they passed.

All of them were looking at the documents in the envelopes a senior had handed out at the door.

A few consent forms, a department introduction, course explanations and so on.

More than two hundred of them, and not one opened his mouth.

As you’d expect of the studious type, they read the explanations closely, in an exam-room atmosphere.

The department’s atmosphere ahead was perfectly visible.

Seniors were waiting at the lecture room door too.

Not one of them was anywhere near friendly.

Far from smiling at the new students, they showed nothing but stiff faces.

Just then a bespectacled man who looked like a teaching assistant opened the front door and appeared.

Behind him, seniors who looked like student council officers trailed in in a line.

“Good to meet you all. I’m Kang Hyeok-ju, the law department’s teaching assistant.”

When the assistant gave a light bow, a few of the kids bowed their heads back.

Haa~ what do you do with an atmosphere this awkward.

“First, I offer my infinite respect for the years of effort that brought all of you into Hanguk University law. I walked that road myself, so I know the hardship of the journey well.”

Kang Hyeok-ju seems to be doing the assistant’s job on his way to a professorship.

“From the moment you enroll, you hold the status of Hanguk University law alumni. Do not lose your manners with the professors and the seniors. They will be great helpers to you in living the finest life there is in Korea. Exactly as they have been until now.”

It’s an arrogant statement that only Hanguk University law can utter.

Inside Korea it will be an invincible network.

The kids’ eyes lit up.

A concrete goal had been handed to them, instead of a vague one.

The assistant knew how to scatter bait.

It’s unspoken brainwashing: listen to the professors and the seniors.

The kids’ posture changed at once.

The force went out of them and they started watching the assistant and the seniors standing in front for cues.

They’re still children, so it can’t be helped.

“You’ve all looked at the envelopes we handed out today?”

“Yes!”

The answer came out briskly too.

“Register for the required major subjects slowly, online. But for the electives, ask the seniors or look into them before you register. There are a lot of slots for new students, so this one time you’ll be able to register easily.”

Reasonable advice from the assistant followed.

“Fill in the things that need signing right away and hand them in at the front. Is there anyone who’ll be temporary class representative? Our law department is a college in its own right, made up of the law department alone, so rather than a class representative it’s the status of college year representative. The scholarship is paid at a hundred percent and it’s a position where you can get various benefits.”

As though a semester’s tuition at a national university were anything, he lured them with a scholarship.

The kids here could tutor for a month and earn enough to pay the tuition and still buy beef.

But at the words various benefits, the kids’ mouths will have watered.

“I’ll do it!”

There you go.

A fresh fish, flapping, took the bait and shot its hand up.

“What’s your name?”

“Han Dae-seong!”

“Right. Brave Dae-seong! Collect the kids’ documents and come to the department office. Your hyung will make you a coffee.”

The assistant dropped straight into casual speech.

“Yes, sir!”

The fish is happy about it.

Having settled his own work firmly with a few words, the assistant smiled and left the podium.

“Discuss the rest of the schedule amicably with the student council president and the officers here.”

The assistant waved and disappeared.

“Thank you for your work, sir!”

The student council president and the officers bowed their heads and saw the assistant off.

And then…

“Class of ’08 juniors~ good to meet you. I’m Yu Hak-pil, class of ’03, third year this year.”

Senior Yu Hak-pil, class of ’03, firing off casual speech at people he’s never met before.

His military intake must have gotten tangled, because he looked older.

“I’ve done my military service too. I’m giving up precious time to be student council president, so understand the casual speech.”

His build was fairly solid.

The big-eyed face is the classic face of a stubborn man.

In face-reading terms… he’s the lone-general style. (TL Note: 독불장군 — “a general who cannot stand alone”; the four-character phrase for someone who insists on doing everything his own way and won’t take advice.)

If he becomes a prosecutor, his is the face that can’t stand injustice and stirs things up.

If he turns toward the bench, there’s a strong chance he becomes an unbending judge.

But if his road is set toward the bar, he’d starve to death easily.

Not being able to treat juniors gently is his nature.

Unlike at other schools, it’s true that being student council president at Hanguk University law means giving up precious time.

His classmates and juniors are at the age where they’ll pass the bar exam one by one.

“First, good to meet you. As the assistant said, it’s better to look good to the professors and the seniors, but you don’t have to. Everyone lives on the taste of thinking they’re something. If you want to go alone like the horn of a rhinoceros, I won’t try to stop you.” (TL Note: 무소의 뿔처럼 혼자서 가라 — “go alone like the horn of a rhinoceros,” a line from an early Buddhist scripture and the title of a famous Korean novel; it is the standard Korean phrase for going your own way.)

He seems like a fine senior.

There’s real force in his way of speaking.

“Our department runs a new student orientation too. It would be good if most of you came. It’s where you first show your faces to the professors, and it’s a chance to see the seniors who love this school.”

He must have had a lively time in the army, because his way of speaking is pure soldier.

“You can only sit the bar exam once you’ve completed the credits, so I hope nobody talks nonsense about going to Sillim-dong from their first year. A first-year packing a full major load and holding out for a year makes no sense.”

The advice is very realistic.

But the senior didn’t know there’s another way.

“I’ll form the groups simply. Inside the document envelope there’ll be a paper with your student number and your name. Numbers one to twenty are group one. We’ll divide up to two hundred that way, into ten groups.”

They must have drawn them in order of grades, because I was number 199.

08141119.

It feels exactly like a prisoner number.

“Accommodation and all the costs have been covered by the seniors. Today’s job is to greet the senior in charge of each of the ten groups and pick a group leader. Don’t think about getting close to all two hundred—get close to your group members first. That’ll make school life easier.”

Senior Yu Hak-pil, spitting out lines as dry and stiff as these and calling them advice.

I liked him completely(?).

“That’s all I have to say. Keep in mind that you’re all still minors whose graduation ceremony hasn’t happened yet. Handle drinking according to your ability, and I’ll see you in a week.”

Right, I’ll pass on the drinking too.

What drinking, with kids.

“Officers, please shepherd the kids cleanly.”

“Yes, sir!”

And so the student council president disappeared coolly too.

“It’ll get crowded, so group one come out into the corridor. The rest of you wait.”

And so the male and female officers disappeared with the kids.

After about ten minutes, twenty-odd men and women were left in the large lecture room.

Ah! The awkwardness of it.

The men and women sitting scattered through that big lecture room watched one another awkwardly.

“Everyone gather up here~.”

The leader of group ten is the freshest-looking of the female seniors on the student council.

She’s short, but the cute face and the beaming smile are attractive.

The boys’ eyes filled with interest.

“We’re people who have to be close from now on. If you listen to me, this lovely senior will buy you dinner tonight. Come on, gather~.”

She called her group members together the way you’d handle kindergarteners.

Everyone dragged their heavy backsides to the front of the lecture room and sat.

This is why the power of being a senior is frightening.

They’re the country’s prodigies, but inside the school they’re merely juniors.

The senior is one of those fine national prodigies herself.

“Aw~ good children. Our babies. Your senior will look after you. You don’t know it yet, but in the law department seeing a senior is as hard as seeing a star in the sky. If you want to build a good study group when you go to Sillim-dong, you need to know your seniors. And you can’t play much except in first year, so get close. The group members I met two years ago are still the ones I’m closest to.”

A senior barely twenty-two, behaving exactly like an adult.

Thinking of high school, which was full of boys, I held down the crawling embarrassment.

“This time especially we have to do well. The business school kids are joining us for the orientation. Whatever else, the professors’ pride is no joke. Those kids reek of an inferiority complex about our department. So they’ll come at it like their lives depend on it—let’s prepare the talent show properly.”

Kang Hyeon-su, who was in my class, passed into business administration on the regional selection track. (TL Note: 지역균형선발 — an admissions track that reserves places for students recommended by high schools across the country, so that the top universities aren’t filled entirely from Seoul’s wealthiest districts.)

People out of the legal world are likelier to enter the upper layer of society than people out of the commerce side.

Judges, prosecutors and attorneys carry weight in politics and business in a lot of cases.

The business school kids, at best, take the accountant course or get hired into a company as ordinary staff.

They come out of the same Hanguk University, but the structure makes a rivalry unavoidable.

For that reason commerce students took on the bar exam too.

But the department itself is a built-in limit, and they lose out on the network too.

“But senior, your name is…”

“My name? It’s right here on the badge. Kang A-rin, the best face of the law school class of ’06. Killer name, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t the name that was killer, it was the character.

It’s been a while since I saw a woman promote herself that openly.

She was similar to Seo-ryeon, but weaker in power.

“…” Everyone lost their words.

Senior A-rin, chattering away in front of twenty near-adults, is a good way to lose your grip on your mind.

“Orientation is nothing much. For our department it’s one night and two days, that’s all. You gather at a hotel or a resort and drink. When the professors or the seniors come you greet them, and you do the talent show and drink, and you get close fast. I keep saying it, but if not now it’s hard to make friends. You think you’re fine, but unless your family is a conglomerate or the kind that keeps a hundred billion won in cash in the safe, think of it as social life. Even at the training institute your school year doesn’t disappear, so keep that in mind.”

Among Hanguk University law students, the pass rate for the state exam is the highest in the country.

Every one of the new students here will be aiming at the bar exam.

“The class of ’08, you especially, are the last undergraduates. From next year the law school era opens. It’s awkward to say, but law school students and undergraduates are plainly different. If you are this department’s natural children, law school students are the adopted ones. That doesn’t change until you die, so have some pride. Fourteen thousand law graduate seniors will be with you.”

Plenty of graduates.

All of them are deployed through every corner of Korea.

The kids’ shoulders came up.

“But who are you? Wow~. You really are handsome. You could be an entertainer.”

When Senior A-rin exclaimed at me, the kids started looking at me openly.

I’d sunk to the level of a zoo monkey.

“I’m Jang Tae-san, senior.”

“Jang Tae-san… ah! You’re the Arrogant Mouth?”

Arrogant Mouth? What’s that now?

It’s clearly the name of a seafood, but there’s obviously another meaning.

The image it gives off isn’t especially good.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s short for arrogant, insolent mouth.” (TL Note: 오만둥이 is a sea squirt; the seniors have turned it into short for 오만방자한 주둥이, “arrogant, insolent snout” — the joke is that it sounds like an ordinary nickname until you hear what it stands for.)

“!!!” So I’ve had a hot nickname attached the moment I enrolled.

The kids’ eyes filled with astonishment.

They don’t seem to know about the hammering I gave the interview room.

But the seniors seem to know.

“You said you’d withdraw if you didn’t pass through the second round of the bar exam by second year? And you proposed a statute-picking IQ contest with the professors. Right?”

Senior Kang A-rin asked it openly.

My classmates looked at me, startled.

I hadn’t expected a comfortable life in the department, but the table had gotten bigger than I thought.

If Senior Kang A-rin could say it like that, the rumor had certainly spread right through the seniors.

Right—since when have I lived well enough to need to sit here acting demure?

“Yes. I said that. Is there a problem?”

I came in hard.

Senior Kang A-rin flinched in surprise.

They’ll have chewed me over among the seniors, but not a chance.

She didn’t know that at senior level they still can’t touch me.

It isn’t a hundred billion in cash at home—it’s tens of trillions stacked up.

Even now my assets grow by at least a hundred billion a day.

A confident smile spread across my lips.

I’m not the Arrogant Mouth—I’m Jang Tae-san, the richest man in Korea!

(End of Chapter 80)