“What’s this? Drinking on the first day of the semester?”

There stood a friend who was in no position to talk.

“Hyeon-su, what about you?”

“Heh heh heh. Came out for drinks with my classmates~.”

It was Kang Hyeon-su, my high school classmate.

Punk. He should’ve just gone drinking with his own classmates!

He’s a bad guy.

I wrote him down in my life’s curse notebook, for sure.

“Oh! Tae-san!”

Huh? And who’s this now!

“You remember me, right? It’s A Yu-ra.”

A Yu-ra, who’d shown off her looks among the business freshmen, acted like she knew me too.

The Juliet who’d betray a woman for Kim Jung-bae’s diamond.

“Is it just the two of you drinking?”

Kang Hyeon-su and A Yu-ra.

It’s just the two of you too!

“Tae-san… who are they?”

Snapping out of the spell, Son Yu-ri looked at the two of them and asked.

“My high school classmate Kang Hyeon-su, a freshman in the business school, and his classmate Miss A Yu-ra.”

The mood was broken.

Son Yu-ri switched on her guard.

“Tae-san, is she a senior?”

Hyeon-su looked at Son Yu-ri and asked if she wasn’t a senior.

Son Yu-ri was too mature to pass for a freshman.

“Son Yu-ri, Western painting, art school, class of ’06.”

Son Yu-ri introduced herself.

“Ah~ you’re an art school sunbae.”

Kang Hyeon-su’s acting had gotten a lot better since he’d started college.

He’d just met her, and here he was calling her art school sunbae.

“Can we join you? Sunbae?”

A Yu-ra, who’d just met her too, called her sunbae and acted all friendly.

What? What’s this atmosphere all of a sudden?

Son Yu-ri looked at me.

“Tae-san. You have no idea the business school orientation turned into hell because of you, do you?”

Unlike law, the business school had scheduled orientation for three days and two nights.

Whether it had been hell or heaven, I obviously didn’t care.

“Tae-san, we’re both class of ’08, so let’s drop the formal talk. We’re not old-timers.”

A Yu-ra had already dropped it, and she sat down as naturally as anything.

She did it without the slightest awkwardness.

And just like that, it suddenly became two-on-two drinking.

“Tae-san, you drank all that makgeolli?”

Can’t you tell just by looking! You enemy of a friend!

This punk used to clean out my wallet in senior year of high school, and now he’d kicked my kindness to the curb.

“It’s raining outside right now—this is perfect!”

A Yu-ra, what do you know about makgeolli?

Business class of ’08 sure had nerve.

“Everyone, have a drink.”

Son Yu-ri smiled brightly and poured makgeolli into the stacked cups beside her.

A deep regret welled up from the bottom of my heart.

I won’t forgive either of you!

This is exactly the moment for the phrase an enemy I can’t share the sky with. (TL Note: 不俱戴天之讐, “an enemy you cannot live under the same sky with”—a mortal foe.)

“Just drinking would be boring, don’t you think?”

“???”

Everyone looked at me.

Innocent lambs, suspecting nothing.

“Drinking means games~.”

“Ah!”

Son Yu-ri’s face went blank for a second.

“Games, yes!”

A Yu-ra clapped her hands.

“Heh heh. Tae-san, looks like you don’t know us business guys—bring it!”

Hyeon-su threw down the challenge.

“Yeah? Challenge accepted.”

I’d already been through college and the working world once.

And this 2008-model rookie had the nerve to challenge me, without a clue.

My head was loaded with every drinking game up to the 2020 version.

There was only one conclusion.

Merciless payback!

“We’ll start with Baskin-Robbins 31 as a light warm-up.” (TL Note: A Korean drinking game: players count upward in turns, saying one to three numbers each, and whoever is forced to say thirty-one drinks.)

“B-Baskin-Robbins 31? What’s that? Some version of 3-6-9?”

Hyeon-su was thrown.

My God, 3-6-9—that’s straight out of the Joseon Dynasty!

“Is it a new game?”

A Yu-ra didn’t hide her curiosity.

“This game goes like this…”

I kindly explained the game.

And we launched straight into it.

Life is always one real battle after another…

I meant to teach them that, loud and clear.

The crime of ruining my mood tonight!

They’d have to be ready to die if they wanted to live.

Heh heh heh.

“Ugh…”

Son Yu-ri frowned at the headache in her skull.

Her foggy mind slowly cleared.

A familiar scent reached her—she’d smelled it before.

The soft feel of the comforter was nice.

Mom had put new bedding…

“!!!”

Her eyes flew open.

Two days ago, her parents had gone to Europe with a group of their friends, couples together.

The housekeeper never came into her room without permission.

“Wh-where…”

The room came into view—familiar after just one visit.

The very room she’d imposed on not long ago!

“Me, yesterday… Huh!”

She pieced last night together and let out a shriek.

She quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

She’d woken up in that man’s room again.

Just like last time, she was still in her clothes.

How much did I drink?

Jang Tae-san had suggested some fresh drinking games.

They weren’t hard to understand.

Through sophomore year, art school had meant plenty of drinking, so she’d gotten as excited as a freshman.

But the games turned out to be surprisingly hard.

Drinking games she’d never even heard of came at them one after another—the nunchi game, Hunminjeongeum, Yi Sun-sin, Image, Dumplings. (TL Note: All Korean party games of later years—Nunchi, where players must call out numbers without colliding; Hunminjeongeum, named for the Korean alphabet, where you may only speak pure Korean words; and so on. In 2008 they would have been brand new.)

The smart business school freshmen drank again and again.

She stayed on her toes, but she got caught over and over too.

Jang Tae-san, maddeningly, slipped past every time.

Later on, it turned into the drinks drinking the drinkers.

Her competitive streak kicked in.

The looks A Yu-ra kept sending Jang Tae-san fired up her will to win.

Anyone could see she was interested in Jang Tae-san.

While Jang Tae-san stepped out to the restroom with his friend for a moment, sly A Yu-ra told her to back off if she wasn’t his girlfriend.

For a freshman, she was brazen beyond belief.

With some drinks in her, Son Yu-ri told her no.

From then on, a fiery war of nerves broke out between her and A Yu-ra.

Under cover of the games, they traded attacks.

And Son Yu-ri won.

Before long, the challenger from the business school had her face planted on the table.

Son Yu-ri held out stubbornly.

A driver from A Yu-ra’s house came and took her home.

Jang Tae-san’s friend, half out of his mind, disappeared, saying he was going back to his rented room.

And that moment…

“Did I black out again? Haa…”

She buried her face in the comforter in embarrassment.

She didn’t know how she could face Jang Tae-san.

At this point she counted as a repeat offender.

She’d taken over a man’s room twice.

Anyone who saw it would call her the very model of a loose woman, no excuses.

“It’s all Tae-san’s fault. Where did he learn so many drinking games!”

She did her best to pin it all on him and got out of bed.

This wasn’t the lazy days of vacation.

She had a full load of classes this afternoon.

She pulled herself together, showered and washed her hair.

She dried her hair, put on toner and lotion from her bag, and came out into the living room.

Her face burned with the embarrassment washing over her, but she bore it.

It was already spilled milk.

And last night’s mood had been strange.

Until the business freshmen showed up, Jang Tae-san had been sending hot signals.

And she’d been drunk on that temptation too, her heart heating up.

“Haaaaa.”

She let out a long sigh of regret she couldn’t name.

♪ Di-ding ting-ting ding~ Ti-di-di-ding~ ♪

Just then, live piano music suddenly came from the living room.

“Rachmaninoff?”

She’d studied piano as a child.

Growing up in Gangnam, she’d had private lessons through elementary school.

That was when she’d come to know the great pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Among his works, the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 36, was considered a masterpiece.

Rachmaninoff, called a master of sweet lyricism.

♪ Ti-ri ti-ring ti-ri-ri-ri-ri ti-ring~ ♪

The first movement opened with a sweep down the keys, striking and powerful.

Explosions of scales bound her from every side.

The emotion swung wildly and shifted fast, then slipped gently into something softer.

Drawn by it, she came out into the living room.

She saw that man’s back.

He was sitting at a grand piano she’d never seen before.

The Han River and the sunlight through the window shone dazzlingly, like stage lights.

A heavenly melody, neither fast nor slow, reached her ears.

Jang Tae-san, playing passionately, his hands never resting on the keys.

The second movement, like the song of lovers grieving a parting.

She sank into the music in a daze.

It was truly amazing playing.

Rachmaninoff’s solo piano works are notoriously hard to express, with their wild swings of emotion.

That’s why world-class pianists keep putting out recordings of them.

♪ Ti-ri-ri-ri-ri ting! Ting-ting-ting! Ting-ting-ting-ting~ ♪

The middle of the second movement is where the emotion builds.

Jang Tae-san’s hands struck the keys roughly and fast, yet precisely.

An accurate interpretation, and superb playing.

Not a single wrong note.

Meanwhile, it moved into the third movement.

The second movement, which had driven so hard, swept through like a finale.

But before she knew it, it had turned gentle again.

The third movement, laying bare its ever-changing emotions without holding back.

♪ Ti-ri-ri-ri-ri-ri ting~ ♪

Rachmaninoff’s solo piano works, which aim for explosion over restraint.

The sound and power were overwhelming, yet it was the height of sweetness.

She nodded at that paradoxical melody.

At this level, his playing was on par with a world-class pianist’s.

She’d woken up hungover, but her head was as clear as it could be.

Amazingly, Jang Tae-san’s piano had a gift for clearing the mind.

It had a power that seemed to purify the blood in her whole body.

♪ Ting~ ♪

Before she knew it, she heard the last note.

“Ah!”

A sigh of regret escaped her.

It had been a long time since her ears had been treated like that.

The high-ceilinged living room, a perfect match for the grand piano, made the sound quality even better.

And on top of that, the playing of a great performer gave her a real catharsis.

It was a wonderful gift early in the morning.

“Hungry?”

“What?”

Jang Tae-san had gotten up from the piano and was asking her.

Why do I turn into an idiot in front of this man?

Her art school classmates called her the Ice Witch.

But in front of Jang Tae-san, she couldn’t keep her head.

“How about some spicy yukgaejang today?”

“Yukgaejang?”

At the word yukgaejang, Son Yu-ri’s mouth watered. (TL Note: Yukgaejang is a fiery Korean soup of shredded beef, bracken and scallions—a classic hangover cure.)

A bowl of hot, spicy yukgaejang would settle her stomach right down.

Only then did she notice the spicy smell drifting into her nose.

The smell alone was heavenly.

“Have a seat.”

The man who’d played the piano so beautifully now headed for the kitchen.

A few side dishes were already laid out on the table.

As far as she knew, there was no man like that in the world.

He was a real-life version of the male lead in a romance comic.

She blushed softly.

Any way you looked at him, a man overflowing with charm.

Waking up at a man’s house again this morning suddenly felt so embarrassing.

“Oh!”

On her way to the table, Son Yu-ri stopped at a pile of canvases heaped up in one corner.

Something felt strange.

Canvases of all kinds that hadn’t been there not long ago.

She walked over to them.

An easel stood on one side of the big living room, too.

And on that easel…

“Gauguin?”

(End of Chapter 115)