Ye-rin sunbae?

My first love, the woman who left me high and dry in this second life, was standing in front of me.

She wore a coat that came down to her thighs.

A short skirt that came halfway up her thighs, a warm ivory sweater—Ye-rin sunbae‘s whole air had changed again in the meantime.

The purity she’d had when I first saw her was nowhere to be found.

A dangerous voluptuousness came off Ye-rin sunbae.

It wasn’t the look she’d had when we met over the summer vacation either.

A slim figure that wouldn’t be out of place on an actress, snow-white skin and a beautiful face pulled in every male eye around her.

Soft makeup and faintly red lips made her bewitching.

A fox attractive enough to take the souls out of dozens of males and hand them back.

And that Ye-rin sunbae was standing in front of me.

“Hello, seniors~.”

Ye-rin smiled brightly at the seniors.

“Ah, ah—yes.”

The faces of the shy ones who’d done nothing but study flushed red.

They were attacked by Ye-rin’s femme fatale charm with no defenses up.

Ye-rin sunbae‘s looks are overwhelmingly lethal in this place.

Looks that would have Oh Dong-seong drooling.

“What brings you here? Come to help us? Didn’t you go into Sillim-dong?” (TL Note: 신림동 — the district by Seoul National University where bar-exam candidates live in tiny rooms and study for years; going into Sillim-dong means going under for the exam.)

The assistant and the male seniors didn’t hide their designs, even in front of a sacred interview hall.

“I’ve just stepped out for a moment. A junior from my home town is taking the interview~.”

Ye-rin sunbae‘s voice sounds as though she’s properly learned how the world works in the meantime.

A little charm in it, but not light—a pleasant voice rang down the corridor.

“That kid is your junior?”

“Yes~.”

Answering, Ye-rin sunbae looked at me.

“Tae-san. Good to see you. I couldn’t come for the essay exam — I didn’t have time. You’ll understand, won’t you?”

Ye-rin sunbae slipped into casual speech with me as if it were nothing and put on a friendly face.

Haa… what kind of situation is this?

Do I still look like a kid to her?

It’s behavior she can manage because she doesn’t know there’s a man in his thirties living inside me.

A boy my own age would probably be badly thrown by a senior coming at him with sexy provocation.

But I’m Jang Tae-san, living his life over.

Certifying myself an idiot here, dazed and grinning, is declined.

“Why would you need my understanding?”

“Huh?”

At my question, indifferent and cool, Ye-rin sunbae was thrown.

“!!!”

Every pair of eyes around us went wide.

Anyone watching could see I had no interest in Ye-rin sunbae.

“Tae-san~ are you sulking? Pfft~ all right. Let’s eat after your interview today. We have a lot to talk about, don’t we? And I have something to say too.”

I’d underestimated Ye-rin sunbae badly.

She’s a Hanguk University law student going into her second year.

A woman who has been betrayed by a man down to the bone doesn’t back off meekly—that would be the strange thing.

Everyone was watching.

I looked up at her quietly.

She was smiling, but her eyes were getting ready to cry.

The mood was that if I ignored her any harder here, she’d burst into tears on the spot.

It must have taken considerable courage to come this far.

She had been ignored the way she was at the highway rest stop and still came to find me; that courage of hers was admirable.

“I’ll call you.”

“Really? Then I’ll wait in front of the school!”

Ye-rin sunbae‘s face opened right up.

I could have humiliated her completely, but I wanted to show a first love that last courtesy.

“I have an interview coming up right now. I’ll be in touch when it’s over.”

I didn’t want any more attention.

“All right. See you later, then.”

Ye-rin sunbae got her confirmation one more time.

I nodded.

“Assistants, seniors, keep up the good work~.”

“Huh? R-right.”

Like a chorus of fools, the mostly bespectacled seniors couldn’t pull themselves together at Ye-rin sunbae‘s goodbye.

Ye-rin sunbae waved and disappeared.

The strong scent she left behind ate into the space.

“What was that? Are you really Ye-rin’s junior?”

“That punk… something about him rubs me the wrong way.”

“Ye-rin and Dong-seong are finished, aren’t they?”

“The rumor’s all over the place. That Dong-seong is a serious playboy.”

“Ye-rin was pure. It’s a shame.”

“There’s a line of guys making a move. You should get in it too, senior.”

“If Ye-rin would have me… heh heh.”

Hey, gentlemen, pull yourselves together.

Passing the bar exam wouldn’t get you close!

Only that trash Dong-seong and I know how much Ye-rin sunbae wants.

Ye-rin has not one bit of interest in the men in front of me, who’ve staked their lives on the bar exam.

So why me?

Does Ye-rin sunbae have a money-nose on her, one that smells it out?

Ye-rin sunbae had gone, and I had no interest at all.

In the life I had before I died, I’d have staked my life and more.

I’d have been standing proudly somewhere in the rankings of those sorry males over there.

But not now.

My life was worth too much to stake on Ye-rin sunbae.

Creeeak.

In the meantime the first interviewees opened the door and came out.

“Hnng…”

A girl was crying.

“Aah.”

A boy whose soul had been shaken clean out of him leaked a few tears.

“Hm~.”

Against that, one who’d interviewed well wore a satisfied look.

I don’t know who that one thinks he’ll blame if he throws away his humility like that and then fails.

“Numbers six through ten, go in.”

The frightened, tense competitors rose from their seats and went in through the open door.

The order moved quickly.

And before I knew it my interview turn had come.

“Numbers forty-one through forty-five, go in.”

I rose from my seat.

Forty-four, the number other people avoid. (TL Note: In Korean the Sino-Korean word for four sounds like the word for death, so 4 is the unlucky number — buildings skip the fourth floor the way American ones skip the thirteenth.)

Shoulders back, walking boldly, I went into the interview hall.

However hard it got, it was easier than dying.

“Haaa.”

Ye-rin came out of the law building and caught her breath for a moment.

It had not been an easy walk.

She had laid down every bit of the pride she’d held onto for twenty years.

She had put together the outfit that showed her off best.

She had braved looking cheap so she’d look like the woman at the rest stop, the one Tae-san had been with.

It’s a style she had never once carried off at school.

Before going up to Tae-san she had hypnotized herself over and over.

She thought about the Tae-san who had held out a chocolate to her on the bus, back then.

Well done. Lee Ye-rin! You’ve got over one hurdle now!

She’d looked into Jang Tae-san of Jangju High through her friends.

His house had suddenly become rich.

The rumor that he was the son of a conglomerate family had spread everywhere.

It isn’t because of money.

In Tae-san’s behavior and in his eyes, Ye-rin could feel an enormous ambition, different from other men.

She’d been dazzled by a playboy for a while, but she’d come to her senses.

The eye she’d inherited from her father, a judge since she was small, was doing its work.

There had been one mistake, but she didn’t want it to end like this.

It won’t go badly in the interview either. The professors’ eyes are surer than mine.

Ye-rin, who has been through the Hanguk University law interview, knows the professors’ leanings.

Rather than a prodigy who merely studies well, they wanted a disciple with large ambition.

Picking out talent that would be strength for the school, the law department and the alumni—that was the successful candidate the professors were after.

The eyes of professors who turn out the core people of politics and power are not the eyes of young people with thin experience of the world.

Ye-rin too had scored very high in her own interview.

“Oh! Ye-rin! What brings you to school?”

A woman in her year who is close to Ye-rin spoke to her.

“I came to cheer for a younger friend’s interview.”

“A younger friend? A relative?”

“No, a junior from the neighborhood where I used to live.”

“Something you’d take an interest in, Iron Wall Ye-rin?”

“He’s just a younger friend.”

“Doesn’t look like it to me.”

“What brings you here?”

“I came to check a rumor.”

“A rumor? What rumor?”

“Apparently a fellow like a model has shown up in our department. The kids who came out to help with the interviews are sending texts around, it’s chaos.”

“!!!”

Ye-rin was startled.

The rumor about Tae-san was going around already.

At Hanguk University, overflowing with goody-goodies, there’s hardly a man like Tae-san.

Her tie with Tae-san, which doesn’t look like being easy from here.

Ye-rin bit down gently on her lip.

I will never… let him go!

“Department head. This year’s crop seems ordinary.”

“Just so. I don’t see a clever one.”

“And it’s a shame, since this year is our last undergraduate class…”

Five Hanguk University full professors, all past fifty, traded opinions.

With the 2008 intake as the last, Hanguk University converts to a law school too.

Now all that’s left for the Hanguk University law alumni is to disappear into history.

A law school graduate student and a law department alumnus do not mean the same thing.

The great majority of Korea’s core power class, tightly connected to one another, are Hanguk University law alumni.

Not judges and prosecutors you trip over, but the seed of a future Chief Justice, Prosecutor General or minister-level figure—that was what they needed.

An invisible cartel belonged to Hanguk University alone.

A Hanguk University law professor isn’t merely a university professor; he plays the part of one of politics’ invisible handlers.

With the power of the alumni there was nothing that couldn’t go their way.

Even opposition and ruling party members drawing blood in the National Assembly pulled together under the name of the alumni.

Secret deals that ordinary people can never know about were concluded.

The professors existed at that axis.

Professors like that were clicking their tongues in disappointment.

The people called Korea’s prodigies had gathered, but there was no interviewee who pulled at them.

Usable kids, yes; a clear leader, no.

Sliiide.

The door opened and new interviewees came in.

“!!!”

“???”

The professors, lifting their heads from the interview papers, showed a flicker of interest.

In came a firm, straight-backed handsome man who’d suit the athletics department or the theater and film department.

Interview number forty-four, Jang Tae-san.

A country boy up from a small provincial city.

Snap.

The professors’ eyes met Jang Tae-san’s and struck small sparks.

Among interviewees who were tense or shrunken with fear, he alone had his shoulders back and wasn’t shaking.

He met the professors’ gaze calmly, with enough ease to wear a smile on top of it.

This fellow… what is he?

Professor Ju Tae-yeol, the department head and one pillar of the constitutional law world, was the most surprised.

Among all the disciples he’d met over the years there had never been one with that build and a face to match.

What’s more, the fellow was studying the professors like an interviewer, not an interviewee.

A Hanguk University law professorship isn’t a seat you reach by studying alone.

These were all professors with ties to politics, and they knew that look.

Experience and composure came off the fellow’s bearing and his eyes.

It’s not something you can see at this age at all.

“Good to meet you. I’m Lee Sang-bok, and I handle criminal law.”

Unlike his mild, round appearance, Professor Lee Sang-bok is beyond anyone’s reach where criminal law is concerned, and he took the microphone first.

“Don’t be nervous, just speak comfortably. If you’ve come this far, both we and you know that you are, in name and in fact, Korea’s finest talent.”

Unlike his words, Professor Lee Sang-bok’s gaze was fierce.

The candidates flinched.

They were no different from young deer surrounded by lions.

“The subject of this interview is… a very simple, basic question. Please discuss it as freely as you like.”

Professor Lee Sang-bok smiled.

Every one of the interview candidates swallowed dryly.

“Why did you apply to Hanguk University law?”

An all too obvious question.

“Answer honestly, that’s all.”

Professor Lee Sang-bok put the accent on the word honestly.

All the candidates watched one another for cues.

It’s a question asked in a very basic form.

But at the same time it’s a question that demands the most difficult answer.

Up.

Just then candidate number forty-four raised his hand.

“I’ll answer first!”

(End of Chapter 73)