Golden Print [EN]: Chapter 7

Gangwon-do has many ski resorts.

Woo-jin loved snowboarding and used to visit ski resorts in Gangwon-do about once a year.

However, on his first ski resort visit after going back to his younger days, Woo-jin couldn’t even touch the snowboard he loved so much.

“But, why!”

“It’s not on the schedule, Oppa.”

“Then why the heck are we coming here for orientation?”

“Do you get it? I’m a freshman too, you know?”

The orientation was at a large ski resort in Gangwon-do, but the students didn’t have time to ski.

“Damn it.”

Hye-jin chuckled as she watched Woo-jin grumble.

Woo-jin was with Hye-jin.

Se-young, from the Video Design Department, was on a different bus.

Hye-jin didn’t know any Spatial Design freshmen, so she stayed with Woo-jin.

Woo-jin had only met her that morning.

Still, Hye-jin’s friendly personality made them close quickly.

“Oppa, why did you apply to the Spatial Design Department?”

“Wow, so you’ve already served in the military?”

“What? You’re even older than my sister? You’re an old man, an old man.”

When she called him an old man, he almost snapped back, but….

“Okay, okay, no need to get so defensive. I thought my uncle was the only one who got upset when called an old man…….”

Still, being with Hye-jin was better than being alone and bored.

‘Well… it’s much better than being bored anyway.’

They arrived at the main auditorium for the orientation, following the assistant’s directions.

They sat in a corner of the auditorium.

“Spatial Design freshmen, please sit in rows A through C!”

Woo-jin looked at the students’ faces.

‘Hmm. So, the friends sitting on this side are all classmates from the same department.’

He looked a little awkward.

As expected of a design department, most of the freshmen were female.

Out of the 55 students in Spatial Design, it seemed that over forty were women.

Woo-jin, who had always been around men, thought it would be hard to get used to this ‘flower garden’.

‘I thought it would be a female-dominated department… But I didn’t know it would be this much.’

Of course, Woo-jin was a man.

So, he naturally noticed the pretty female students.

But, he also felt a slight twinge of guilt….

“Old man, what are you doing?”

The troublemaker stared at Woo-jin with a tired expression, and the pleasant moment didn’t last long.

“If you keep picking on me like that…….”

“What? What if I do.”

“You know the blind date in the morning will be off, right?”

“Ah, Oppa, wait. No, Older Brother……!”

Woo-jin chuckled as he watched Hye-jin change her attitude.

The blind date Woo-jin mentioned was with his junior colleague, Kim Seong-gwan.

Seong-gwan had dark eyebrows and strong features, making him handsome.

Hye-jin had seen his picture and begged Woo-jin to set up a blind date.

Hye-jin was also pretty, so Woo-jin had agreed.

‘Hehe. I can tease her about this blind date for a while.’

He would postpone the promise until he corrected the brat’s bad habits.

“I’ll see how you do.”

“Ha… You sly old man…….”

“Hehe. That’s 3 points! You’ve been deducted points.”

“How can I get bonus points instead of deductions……?”

“Well. Shouldn’t the thirsty person dig the well?”

“Heeing…….”

While they were bickering in the auditorium, the chairs, which seemed to number in the hundreds, were quickly filling up.

It was getting noisier and noisier.

Zzzzzing-

Suddenly, a bright light shone on the large screen at the front of the auditorium, and a new screen appeared.

The noisy room became quiet instantly.

Woo-jin looked at the screen with interest.

“Oh. I guess that’s today’s schedule?”

Hye-jin, also staring at the screen, nodded.

“I guess so. It’s simple.”

But after a while…

“……!”

They both stared at the bottom of the screen.

Unlike the boring items at the top, the last item caught their attention.

Step 5 – Night of Design.

This is a time for the freshmen who have taken their first step as designers to freely share their ideas and imaginations.

……Omitted……

If Hye-jin and Se-young hadn’t told him the story on the subway, Woo-jin would have been confused.

The title ‘Night of Design’ was too vague.

But now that he knew about the ‘competition’…

Woo-jin realized that this was a design competition.

“This…….”

Hye-jin felt the same way.

“That’s right, Oppa. I think this is a competition?”

“Is that so?”

Woo-jin read the explanation on the screen with excitement.

But there was no specific mention of a competition.

However, the last line caught Woo-jin’s eye.

The Night of Design is your festival.

And this night… May be a much longer night than you imagine.

Woo-jin looked at the explanation, wondering if there was a hint about the competition.

‘It’s going to be a long night? What does that mean?’

But then…

Woo-jin couldn’t think about the competition anymore.

He saw someone walking up to the podium where the screen was displayed.

“Uh……?”

Woo-jin’s eyes widened.

He saw a familiar face that he didn’t expect.

‘Kim Ki-tae……? Why the heck is that guy here?’

The man had a neat hairstyle with a voluminous perm and black horn-rimmed glasses.

Woo-jin knew him well. And he wasn’t happy to see him.

‘Could it be that he was also… at K University?’

Woo-jin’s face twisted slightly as he looked at the man.

Woo-jin and Kim Ki-tae knew each other from Woo-jin’s past life.

Unlike Woo-jin, who was from Seoul, Kim Ki-tae was an international student who grew up abroad.

He was also about four or five years older than Woo-jin.

Woo-jin first met Kim Ki-tae when he was over thirty.

[Nice to meet you, Section Chief Seo. This is Kim Ki-tae from Definos Design Office.]

Kim Ki-tae was the design team leader of ‘De Pinos’, a famous architectural firm in Spain.

Definos was the first company to work on a project in Korea, and Woo-jin was the carpentry foreman of a subcontractor.

Their first meeting wasn’t bad.

Definos was a large architectural firm with a lot of money.

They paid Woo-jin’s team well.

Kim Ki-tae’s tone was sometimes bossy.

But that was normal, so Woo-jin didn’t mind.

[The marble tile finish on the second floor, why is it so messy?]

[The location of the distribution board is too protruding. You should hide these inside the wall…….]

He was like an annoying international student manager.

But he didn’t nitpick or make unreasonable demands.

So Woo-jin wasn’t too unhappy.

About a month before the project ended…

Until ‘that’ happened.

[Ah, no. Section Chief Seo.]

[Yes?]

[Here, on the third floor piloti. Why is there a partition wall at an angle like this?]

[Yes? Well, the drawing is like that…….]

[What? Are you kidding me now?]

[What are you talking about?]

[Where is this bizarre structure in the drawing?]

[……?]

[Ha… I’m going crazy. I’ll upload it to the head office and claim damages.]

[No, what are you talking about? I clearly worked according to the drawing you gave me. And the team leader clearly supervised it until yesterday…….]

Architectural drawings are changed dozens, hundreds of times during the design process, depending on the client’s request, the budget, and the building code.

Architectural drawings were changed many times to create the best space.

In this project with Kim Ki-tae, the detailed design had changed at least five times during the field meeting process.

Kim Ki-tae didn’t communicate with the client, and some drawings were built with incorrect structures.

It wasn’t common.

In Woo-jin’s career, there were only two major accidents like this.

But what was worse was that Kim Ki-tae blamed Seo Woo-jin for his mistake.

He even replaced the drawings, carefully and systematically.

[Here, do you see the drawing files organized by date?]

[…….]

[Our Definos clearly delivered the correct drawings, and the foreman proceeded with the construction using the wrong drawings. Do you understand?]

The incident didn’t end too badly.

The wrongly built drawing was the original plan that they had considered until the end.

So, the design was good.

The client ignored the mistake, and the incident was closed.

After that, Woo-jin hated Kim Ki-tae.

[Don’t live your life like that, Team Leader. You were lucky this time… This industry is small.]

[What are you talking about? Haha. This person keeps trying to blame me for his mistakes.]

[…….]

[And you said something good. As you said, this industry is small.]

[……?]

[And I probably won’t be doing such small projects in this small industry in the future. Because Definos is a global company.]

Woo-jin remembered the bad memory and felt his good mood disappear.

What was worse was that Kim Ki-tae hadn’t experienced that memory yet.

So, if Woo-jin punched Kim Ki-tae now…

Woo-jin would be the bad guy.

‘This is subtly unpleasant and dirty.’

Hye-jin noticed Woo-jin’s bad expression and asked carefully.

“Oppa……? Did something bad suddenly happen?”

“Ah, no. It’s not like that.”

Woo-jin calmed down and looked away from Kim Ki-tae, closing his eyes slightly.

‘Yeah. Just because I went back in time, that dog-like guy won’t change, right?’

He didn’t know if he would clash with Kim Ki-tae again, but Woo-jin was determined.

The guy would do dirty things again.

And if that happened, he would pay back the debt from his past life twice as much.

While Woo-jin was controlling his emotions, Kim Ki-tae’s voice echoed in the auditorium.