Vroooom, vroom.

The Porsche’s sleek body moved off lightly.

The feeling of coming to school for the first time after passing into Hanguk University… was genuinely special.

Now I’d earned the formal qualification to enter the organization called Hanguk University.

Ha — the Hanguk University main gate is built in the shape of that letter, and today of all days it looked magnificent.

Ding!

I passed through the main gate.

The plate was recognized automatically.

Today is the preliminary assembly day for new students.

I drove to the law building, which I’d been to once.

It’s a school built on a large plot, and without a car it looked like a headache.

The provincial university I attended in my past life was on the large side too, but this site was a good two times wider.

“The energy really is good!”

The ridge of Mount Gwanak and its auspicious air came pouring down into the school.

Whoever the founder was, he had clearly taken the advice of a formidable geomancer when he sited it.

The energy of Mount Gwanak overflows with the fire force of seven-fire. Combined with the mountain’s ten-earth and its metal, by the principles of fire begetting earth and earth begetting metal, it could give birth to a powerful force. (TL Note: Korean geomancy numbers the five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal, water — one to ten, and reads a site by which numbered forms meet in it and in what order they beget one another.)

Metal is like an axe.

It’s a condensing of force that fears nothing in the world.

From the look of it, this is the momentum of nine-metal, the most powerful of the metal forces.

That nine-metal force gathers and joins with the water force of the six-water flowing down the Mount Gwanak ridge.

Tangled with a great body of water like the one-water that means a river or a sea, it could easily be broken into a false-begetting force. But it gets help from small water, marvelously.

The pond on the campus plays the important part of mixing in the nine-metal force.

The six-water force gathered that way receives the force of the three-wood in Mount Gwanak and in the school’s planting, and comes through.

It’s a prime site of the whole world, where the five forces of yin, yang and the five elements communicate smoothly.

This is why Korea’s upper layer of power was born here.

Sucking that energy up hard, I headed for the law school.

Passing the Gyujanggak by gate one, I arrived at the law building at the center of the campus.

I could see another reason the law school does well.

The deep heart of the prime site is the law building itself.

An auspicious force had put a protective screen up around the law department.

Admiring it, I drove slowly.

Today’s gathering is in the large lecture room, 301 in law building two.

I parked the car lightly.

The winter vacation was on, but there were men and women in thick jackets around.

They were smoking or drinking coffee, soaking up the warm winter sun.

Anyone would say they were law students.

Until they pass the state exam, they’re the tribe known as drifters.

When I stopped the car in the law department lot, every eye turned.

I passed it off lightly, opened the door and got out.

“Oh! What’s that? Killer car~.”

“That’s a Porsche, right?”

“Who is he, do you know him?”

“He won’t be in our department, will he?”

“Oh my. He’s seriously easy on the eyes.”

Men and women who looked like classmates murmured at the sight of me.

I remembered what my university professor in my past life, a Hanguk University law graduate, had said.

That law students are born unfriendly to groups.

He said they gather around a few close classmates rather than around a title like the department.

I’ve been to a law school myself.

Every one of them had pride that stabbed the sky.

Outsiders outnumbered the ones who conform to a group.

There’s no need to go bowing to a senior first.

Outfit, good~.

I’d put out something of a new-student look.

White sneakers, jeans and a knit, with a light down padded jacket over it.

A department store outfit Mom picked out herself.

Even to me, come from living in 2020, it’s an unremarkable outfit.

But other people’s fashion kept catching my eye.

In 2008, which is the past to me, outdoor products started selling like wildfire for real.

Overseas brands like GAP, the ones called SPA, spread explosively on the internet boom.

It’s a different fashion current from 2007.

It’s the start of coordination moving closer to the future.

Tap, tap.

With a single light leather bag on my shoulder, I headed for law building two.

The eyes on me didn’t let up.

“He really is a freshman?”

“Wow! Not even sports science—a law student with a build like that?”

“Seniors~ you’ll have to start worrying. If a good-looking junior like that comes in, the girls’ eyes are going to roll back.”

“Mi-ran, you’re not that shallow, are you?”

“Senior! Shallow, honestly! Beautiful and fine things are to be recognized and enjoyed for what they are~.”

The law students on their break had a debate about me.

I left them behind and went into the building.

Today’s high was hovering around minus five, cold enough.

The school sits on the skirt of Mount Gwanak, so the cold felt sharper.

But in the law department the heaters ran hard down the corridor.

The heating was excellent, as you’d expect from a recently extended building.

Several vending machines stood along one side of the corridor.

People came and went, pulling coffees.

I saw TOP, the one big brother Bin advertised, which took over the ad market hot in 2008.

A different class from the other coffees.

Zzzzing.

The machine swallowed the note.

Without needing to look, I picked big brother Bin’s hot coffee.

Clunk.

The sound of the can dropping came through crisp.

I still had time in hand.

I’d come out an hour early because I wanted to walk around every corner of the law school.

“Couldn’t you give me one of those coffees too?”

A bright woman’s voice from behind my back.

Holding the can, I turned my head.

And who is this?

A woman I’d never seen before.

But the feeling came through hard.

The legendary art school noona???

A genuinely unusual female student.

First of all her height… she looked to be a good 175 centimeters.

An aura at the level of a celebrity, the kind you don’t see easily, came off her.

Her long hair was tied up roughly in a ponytail.

With a dark gray cap pulled down, she looked at me and put out her hand.

Her fingers were long and thin too.

She wore an olive-drab field jacket, the kind I’d thought only men wore.

Not only the clothes but the shoes had paint on them.

Her skin is white as the first snow of winter.

The even teeth she smiles at me with are good to look at.

“The only place that sells that canned coffee is this law school vending machine.”

She told me something I hadn’t asked about.

“Are you a law student? Hm, I’ve never seen you before… there’s no good-looking man like you in the law school. See those strange uncles over there? Law students reek of middle age even at school, so you can spot them right away.”

Where she pointed, students who were uncles to anyone’s eye were looking at her.

They seemed to have a lot of interest in her.

I felt sorry for her.

I’m one of those middle-aged-reeking law students too.

“Here you are.”

I’m not so petty over one can of coffee.

“Heyy~. It’s warm~.”

She took the can and wrapped both hands around it.

“The heating in the art school studios is a disaster. Would it hurt them to invest the way they do in the law school? This is the classic form of discrimination. Don’t you think so?”

The art school noona whose name I didn’t know seemed to need somebody to talk to.

“Use a hot pack.”

“When I’m painting I forget, so my hands freeze in no time. My heart must be short on capacity for my height. In elementary school I was even a sprinter.”

She seems to specialize in answering east when asked west. (TL Note: 동문서답 — “asked about the east, answers about the west”; the four-character phrase for a reply that has nothing to do with the question.)

Her black eyes didn’t let go of me.

As though she had business with me.

“Is there something you want to say?”

“What year did you enter? Sports science? Or… business?”

Her eyes were full of curiosity.

“Isn’t giving your own first the basis of a conversation?”

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

As expected, she was an art school noona.

“Jang Tae-san. Law, class of ’08.”

I answered short and clean, matching the way she had.

“Oh-eight? What? Then you’re a new student?”

“Yes.”

At my answer her eyes widened.

Women’s changes of feeling mostly start in the eyes and end in the eyes.

Son Yu-ri the art student was the same.

I could see conflict in her eyes.

But before long her eyes firmed up, as though she’d decided something.

“Time really does go fast~ it feels like I enrolled the other day and here come the ’08 juniors. In my heart I’m still a freshman and I’m a third-year… isn’t that too sad?”

Sad? What is?

To me, who lived hard into my thirties and then regressed, her sulking was almost cute.

A third-year becomes a fourth-year, and after that you take the storm in the rough world.

Unless your family is loaded, everybody lives with their body entrusted to a single leaf of a boat. (TL Note: 일엽편주 — “a single leaf boat”; the four-character phrase for one small craft on a wide sea, and for a life with nothing under it.)

The way I see it, she’s still a child who doesn’t know how the world works.

“Rather than sad, isn’t it something to be glad about, that you still have two years of university life left? The benefits of the fence that a school gives you are more than you’d think.”

“Ooh! What’s this? Is a new student lecturing a senior about university life right now?”

I gave Son Yu-ri extra points for likability.

On top of the looks, the way she doesn’t drop into casual speech is decent.

If a woman spoke down to you just because her age and her class year were higher, she’d be thoroughly unpleasant.

“Not a lecture, a turn of thinking. I’m talking about the attitude of knowing how to make this short, precious permitted time into a valuable investment opportunity for the life ahead. It’s the fair span of survival a god gives everyone, isn’t it?”

“Even a new student is a law student after all. Don’t say things like that on a blind date or a group date. Unlike your face, you’re completely… like an old-timer.”

True. An old-timer.

What use is it being an ’08 freshman in body alone?

The memories of the life I’d lived wouldn’t turn me into a child that easily.

“I’m not fool enough to say this sort of thing on a blind date or a group date.”

Do I look like a fool?

I’m not so thick-headed as to throw ashes over a party that’s going well.

“What? Then you mean you’re like that only with me?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why only with me?”

“You said you were sad, so I threw out some appropriate advice, of the consoling kind.”

“Whoa…”

Son Yu-ri looked at me as if I were beyond belief.

It isn’t that I’m doing this because my time is free either.

She’s a senior at school, but two years’ difference at most.

She was pretty enough to be worth liking quite a lot.

Her way of speaking and her manner weren’t vulgar either.

Trading words like this was good too.

Her gentle way of speaking made her like a modest lady inside a Western painting.

“Forgive me if I was rude on a first meeting.”

“Rude? First meeting? Pff~.”

At my choice of words Son Yu-ri answered with a short laugh.

“Never mind. I got a canned coffee out of it and life advice too—it was a useful time.”

Her character reeks of cool too.

“Isn’t that Son Yu-ri, the art school’s best face?”

“Really? Ohhhh! It is! It is!”

“Heh heh heh. We’ve hit the pot today.” (TL Note: 계 타다 — to win the round of a 계, the rotating savings club Koreans run among friends; used for a sudden unearned stroke of luck.)

Law students came over from one side and murmured about Son Yu-ri.

She deserved to be called the art school’s best face.

A celebrity-level aura isn’t something just anyone owns.

“I’ll pay you back for it today.”

“What?”

“Give me your phone.”

She held out her hand.

I looked at Son Yu-ri’s face.

“What is it. You’re embarrassing my hand.”

Her cheeks were faintly red, and still she could say that squarely.

I handed the phone over.

Beep. Beep beep.

She entered a number quickly and showed the care of even pressing the call button.

Tara-ra tara ♫.

A bright waltz-style ringtone sounded from her clothes.

“Are you busy today?”

“???”

“Call me when you’re finished. My evening is free today~.”

(End of Chapter 79)