Golden Print [EN]: Chapter 11

Woojin knew every building started with a simple idea: a floor plan. It was like a map of dreams, showing how empty space could become a home, an office, anything. He always thought a good floor plan was half the battle in design.

Woojin started his floor plan. He quickly sketched the rooms they had talked about in the meeting. Usually, he worked on detailed drawings, not floor plans. But today, his pen flew across the paper. Then, suddenly, it stopped. Like hitting a wall.

“What’s that?” Woojin thought, staring at his drawing. Something shimmered there, where his eyes had been fixed. ‘Am I just tired?’ Then he saw it clearly. A shape, like a sheet of golden glass, thin and see-through, floating just above the paper. It glowed softly. He reached out, drawn to it like magic. His fingers went right through it. ‘A ghost?’ he wondered, heart jumping. For a second, he thought it was just sunlight. But it was night outside. And this light was golden, not white.

“Hmm,” Woojin mumbled, still confused. He rubbed his eyes hard and looked again. The golden shape was still there, like a hologram above the drawing. He moved the paper. *Flutter!* The golden light seemed to move with it, like ripples on water. ‘Maybe it *is* a ghost,’ he thought, a shiver running down his back. Then, a sudden thought hit him. ‘Wait… this feels familiar.’ It was like the feeling he had when he went back in time. He remembered the old house from his childhood, the strange vision he saw then. This golden light felt similar. But that time, the vision was clearer, bigger. It was the house itself. This golden thing was small and see-through. But… maybe it was connected. Thinking about the past vision calmed him a little. It hadn’t hurt him then. Maybe this wouldn’t either.

“Okay,” Woojin thought, trying to be brave. ‘I traveled through time. A little golden light is nothing.’ He decided to think about it logically. ‘What does it mean? Is it a sign? Is it trying to tell me something?’ But he couldn’t think for long. He heard voices. His team had noticed he was acting strangely.

“Woojin, are you okay? You went completely quiet,” Sunbin asked, looking worried.

“Yeah, Oppa, you were staring into space,” Yoonjung added, her eyebrows furrowed.

“Oh, sorry,” Woojin said, shaking his head. “Just thinking hard.” He knew they wouldn’t understand about the golden light. And he didn’t want to explain. ‘Later,’ he decided. ‘I’ll figure it out later.’ Tonight was for the design competition. Time was ticking.

“Sunbin, you and Yoonjung, start on the third floor plan,” Woojin said, getting back to work.

“Okay,” Sunbin replied.

“Hyejin and Soyeon, you take the first floor structure,” Woojin continued.

“Got it,” Hyejin said.

“Make sure the stairs line up correctly on each floor,” Woojin reminded them. “We’ll check everything together later, just get the basic layout for now.”

“We will,” Soyeon confirmed.

Woojin quickly gave out the tasks and turned back to his own drawing, the second floor. He pushed the golden light to the back of his mind. ‘I’ll think about it later, after we win.’ He glanced at the golden shimmer again. ‘If I keep the drawing, will it stay?’ He lost track of time, maybe thirty minutes passed.

“Oh!” Woojin gasped, louder this time.

“Oppa, what is it *now*?” Yoonjung asked, sounding a little annoyed.

“What’s wrong?” Sunbin echoed.

But Woojin couldn’t answer. He didn’t even hear them. ‘No way…,’ he thought, his mind racing. He was beyond surprised, he was stunned.

His pen started to move on its own, following a golden line that appeared on the paper. It was like the golden light was showing him where to draw. As he drew a square, the golden illusion seemed to settle onto the paper, right over his lines. Then, it faded into the paper, like snow melting away. And in that moment, Woojin understood. The golden light wasn’t just a strange thing. It was part of the design itself. ‘This is… unbelievable.’ Even more amazing, as he drew following the golden lines, all his worries about the second floor vanished. It was like the perfect plan was appearing in front of him. The second floor plan was suddenly, perfectly, complete. ‘Pantry here, kitchen flowing into the living room… perfect! No wasted space at all!’ Goosebumps covered his arms. It felt like he was seeing a perfect building in a dream. Like a missing puzzle piece had clicked into place, making everything make sense.

*Tap tap-* Soyeon tapped his shoulder, looking concerned. But Woojin was too excited to calm down.

“Everyone!” he called out, his voice trembling slightly.

“Huh? We’re still working on the plans,” Hyejin said, confused.

“What’s going on, Hyung?” Sunbin asked again.

Woojin felt like he had to draw all three floors *now*, while this feeling was still with him. “We need to move the stairs,” he said quickly. “Shift them to the left by thirteen hundred.”

“Thirteen hundred… that’s 1.3 meters, right?” Yoonjung asked, double-checking.

Excited by Woo-jin’s story, Sun-bin tilted his head and asked, “Woo-jin, if we move the stairs like this, won’t the study on the third floor be in a strange place?”

Woo-jin answered without hesitation, “Let’s switch the study and the family room.”

“Like this?” Sun-bin asked.

“That’s right. And we can squeeze a small bathroom in between the stairwell and the study,” Woo-jin replied.

Sun-bin redrew the blueprint on top of his rough sketch, just as Woo-jin had said.

After a moment, Sun-bin’s eyes widened. “Wow, it looks so much prettier this way, doesn’t it?”

“Right?” Woo-jin agreed.

This time, So-yeon asked, “Then, what about the guest room and small living room we were going to put on the first floor?”

If the location of the stairwell changed, all the blueprints would inevitably need to be adjusted, even if only slightly.

But Woo-jin, who already had all the spatial divisions in his head, immediately moved the pen swiftly across So-yeon’s sketch.

“We don’t need to separate the parking area and the inside space so much,” Woo-jin said.

“Hmm……?” So-yeon wondered.

“If we make the parking area in the middle, and build the inside rooms around it…” Woo-jin explained.

“Oh……!” Hye-jin exclaimed.

Hye-jin’s pupils grew larger as she watched Woo-jin draw. The new plan, revised by Woo-jin’s hand, looked much more sophisticated to her as well.

This time again, it was Sun-bin, with his good sense of space, who burst into exclamation first. “Wow! What if we make the entire first-floor wall out of glass?”

“Hehe, you were thinking the same thing?” Woo-jin asked.

“If we park a supercar in the garage in the middle here… It will feel like a real car showroom, right?” Sun-bin said excitedly.

As soon as Sun-bin finished speaking, the gazes of all the students, including Woo-jin, moved to the corner of the living room.

The materials for making architectural models, untouched by anyone yet, were neatly placed there.

Perhaps because the client liked cars, there were small car models among the given materials.

“Okay. This is it,” So-yeon murmured.

The other students nodded without even realizing it, and from that point on, the work began to speed up even more.

The Night of Design was an event with a long history at K University, from the year the Department of Design was first established, some thirty years ago, until today.

This event always happened every year: the Night of Design.

But over those thirty years, the Night of Design had not remained the same.

Initially, it was a short event lasting only an hour or two, where students made quick sketches of ideas.

“So when did it turn into an all-night work competition?” one student wondered.

“I don’t know either. Ugh… I’m so sleepy, seriously,” another replied.

At 10 a.m., the teaching assistants would go around to all the rooms and collect the students’ work.

There were some rooms that had given up, but such cases were extremely rare.

Students who were admitted to the Department of Design at K University had put in truly painstaking effort. These students were very competitive and wanted to win.

Thus, in the Night of Design for the Department of Spatial Design at K University, with a total of fifty-five participants, exactly 11 works were submitted, meaning all the students in all the rooms had participated.

“Sigh… I’m so tired…” one student sighed.

“What should I do? The finishing touches aren’t quite done?” another worried.

“I don’t know. I think I was too greedy. Sob……” a third lamented.

The students of the Department of Design, almost completely exhausted, gathered in the grand auditorium in small groups after a late breakfast.

There were not many students with bright expressions. It was not easy to complete a project, from concept planning to model making, in just one night to a satisfactory level.

In fact, among the works submitted to the Night of Design, more than half were often unfinished.

“Is the scholarship gone with the wind?” one student asked anxiously.

“What are you talking about? The results haven’t even come out yet,” another replied.

“There wasn’t enough time…” someone mumbled.

“Were we the only ones who didn’t have enough time? The other rooms will be the same,” a student said.

“Really?” another asked.

“We won’t know until we see the results,” came the reply.

The students shared stories about the work they had burned the midnight oil on, and sat down in order at the locations assigned to each room.

Among them were the students of Room 202, led by Woo-jin. “Wow, it was really touch and go, right, Sun-bin?”

“I know. I feel like we worked really fast thanks to Woo-jin, but we still almost ran out of time,” Sun-bin replied.

Like the students in the other rooms, the freshmen of Room 202 were talking about the work from the previous night, but the faces of all five of them were bright.

“I hope we get the scholarship,” Hye-jin said.

“Me too,” Yoon-jung nodded briefly.

Sun-bin smiled, revealing his white teeth. “Well, I won’t regret it even if I don’t get it.”

At Sun-bin’s words, Woo-jin chuckled and asked, “Really?”

“Really,” Sun-bin paused for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and continued. “It’ll be a shame, but I can’t regret it even if I want to. Even if I go back to yesterday, I’m not confident I could do better than that.”

At Sun-bin’s answer, the students of Room 202 nodded. His words spoke for everyone’s hearts.

“I wish the results would come out soon,” one of them said.

“Me too, me too,” others echoed.

While they were talking, the grand auditorium quickly filled with students.

Soon the closing ceremony of the orientation was held, but there were not many students who were particularly interested in it.

Everyone was in a daze from staying up all night, and the freshmen’s only concern right now was just one thing: the scholarship results.

“I hope you all have a great time at university. See you at the start of term ceremony,” the president of the planning department said in his congratulatory speech, bringing the simple closing ceremony to an end.

But none of the freshmen in the Department of Design sitting in the auditorium stood up from their seats.

All of them knew that the scholarship recipients would be decided in this place today.

Thud- Thud-

Professor Jo Woon-chan’s footsteps, who had opened the Night of Design, began to echo in the quiet auditorium.

Jo Woon-chan, who came up onto the platform, lightly tapped the space bar on the laptop placed there instead of grabbing the microphone.

Tap-

Bright light poured out again onto the large screen in the grand auditorium, which had been turned off as the closing ceremony ended.

“……!”

“Waaah!!”

The students sitting in the auditorium stood up from their seats, one after another.

Woo-jin, who found his name without difficulty on the screen, clenched both fists.

Golden Print