Golden Print [EN]: Chapter 16

About a week passed quickly.

February ended, and March began.

Winter was ending. The very cold weather was gone.

During that time, Woojin had a lot going on.

First, there was the university entrance ceremony and course registration.

Woojin was busy getting his studio ready, so he only showed up briefly at the entrance ceremony.

Sadly, he completely messed up the course registration.

Woojin was sound asleep when the course registration page opened.

[Han Soyeon (Class of ’10): What? Woojin… Don’t tell me you just woke up? Oh my gosh.]

[Han Soyeon (Class of ’10): The seniors told you about the good courses during orientation.]

[Me: Can I register now?]

[Han Soyeon (Class of ’10): Of course not… All the courses the seniors recommended are already full.]

Luckily, first-year students didn’t have to register for their major classes in the first semester.

The university automatically signed up first-year students for their main classes.

[Me: Well, my major is automatically registered.]

[Han Soyeon (Class of ’10): Ugh, you silly. This course registration was all about the electives!]

[Me: So, did you register successfully?]

[Han Soyeon (Class of ’10): ……]

[Me: What? Haha. You messed up too, and now you’re lecturing me?]

[Han Soyeon (Class of ’10): W-Well, still, I……]

[Me: So, what electives are you taking?]

[Han Soyeon has left the chatroom.]

[Me: ……]

Woojin didn’t really care that the course registration was a disaster.

He only cared about his grades in his major courses.

‘I’m not planning to get a job after graduation anyway.’

While university things went on, Woojin was very busy.

He was steadily preparing for the opening of his studio.

“Yes, bring it in this way!”

“Good. Place the longest desk over here, and leave that room empty. There are other things coming in separately.”

As furniture was brought into the empty office, it started to look like a real studio.

He hadn’t brought in the expensive model-making equipment yet, but Woojin looked proud.

‘My first office, huh?’

This was the first time Woojin had owned an office, in both his past and present lives.

‘It would have been nice if Seokhyun was here too.’

K University and S University, where Seokhyun went, both started their semesters.

Seokhyun couldn’t come because his major classes were at the same time as the moving day.

Woojin also had his first class today, but he had about two hours to spare.

‘The move finished earlier than I thought. I’ll have time for lunch.’

Instead of his business partner Seokhyun, other guests came to Woojin’s studio.

Some of his classmates, with whom Woojin had become close, came.

They decided to have lunch together before class, so they met in front of Woojin’s studio near the school.

“Wow…! Woojin, this is your studio?”

“Wow, man! Awesome. I didn’t know you weren’t living on your own, when did you come up with such a grand plan……”

He hadn’t told them to come into the studio, but they weren’t the kind of friends who cared about such small things.

“I told you to wait outside.”

“We came all the way here, we have to take a look!”

“Anyone would think you’d traveled to some far-off place. It’s just in front of the school anyway.”

“Still!”

Woojin’s studio quickly became noisy with the excited voices of Hyejin and Sunbin.

Woojin’s first class of the new semester was ‘Basic Drafting,’ one of his major courses.

The drafting class was known as the hardest class for freshmen.

It wasn’t a very difficult class.

It wasn’t about learning some grand theory, but about learning how to draw blueprints by hand.

However, a lot of homework was assigned every class.

“The hardest class is definitely Basic Drafting.”

“Never miss the assignments. Once you start missing them, it’s over.”

“You know what’s even worse?”

“Once you have to retake it, it’s like a bottomless pit.”

“There’s a senior named Hyunju from the class of ’05, right? She was a senior last year, and she was retaking Basic Drafting in the first semester.”

“No, wasn’t it her third time taking it?”

“That’s awful……”

“You’d think they’d be easy on you by the time you’re a senior, but Professor Park Junmin is really strict.”

The freshmen looked very nervous because they had heard these warnings from their seniors.

Except for Woojin.

‘Hand drafting, huh……. This is really nostalgic.’

When he had first left the hard work of construction sites and gotten a job at an architectural firm, the first thing Woojin had done as an intern was draw blueprints by hand.

It wasn’t because hand-drawn blueprints were needed.

Using hand-drawn blueprints on construction sites was a thing of the past.

You could draw ten blueprints with CAD in the time it took to draw one by hand. There was no reason to use hand-drawn blueprints on site.

But they still taught hand drafting at this school.

It seemed that people working in architecture found their roots in these hand-touched blueprints.

‘Hand-drawn blueprints on tracing paper have their own charm.’

Tracing paper is the semi-transparent, hazy paper used for drafting.

Architectural students press down so hard on this tracing paper that the graphite marks become shiny.

Perhaps this hand drafting is a memory that the older generation leading the architectural world today can’t let go of.

Creak-

He opened the door and saw the lecture hall.

Unlike the lecture halls in the humanities building, there were spacious desks for practical work.

And neatly installed white drafting boards on top of them.

Woojin slumped into a chair in the corner, Hyejin already sitting opposite him. Sunlight streamed through the window, lighting up dust in the air.

Just then, Soyeon hurried in, looking flustered. Woojin grinned and called out, “Hey, look who it is! Soyeon the philosopher finally decided to join us!”

“Shhh!” Soyeon hissed, trying to be quiet.

Hyejin laughed, “It’s Soyeon! The one who wants to understand all those deep thinkers, right?”

“Ugh, can you guys just be quiet?” Soyeon mumbled, wanting to disappear. She shot Hyejin a quick annoyed look, then glared at Woojin. “Okay, okay, Hyejin got into the class. But why are you picking on me, Oppa?”

Woojin waggled his finger, teasing Soyeon. “Hmm, I’m just saying, wouldn’t it be better to have those two free credits instead of suffering through ‘Understanding Modern Philosophy’?”

Soyeon looked angry and was about to argue back, but she was interrupted.

Creak—

The sliding door opened, and a middle-aged man walked confidently into the lecture hall.

This was Professor Park Junmin, the teacher for the Design course.

The noisy lecture hall went silent. Professor Park Junmin looked around at the students, smiled, and began to speak.

“Hello everyone, welcome to Basic Design! I’m Professor Park Junmin, and I’m excited to start this semester with you all.”

Applause filled the lecture hall.

Professor Park Junmin was an associate professor who worked under Professor Kim Gihwan.

Before teaching at K University, he had managed a well-known architecture firm, thanks to his connection with Kim Gihwan.

Even now, he was still involved in real projects, making him perfect for teaching the Design course.

Even though people don’t draw blueprints by hand for real projects anymore, learning to draw them is still important. It teaches the basic ideas of design.

The theory behind design stayed the same, whether using AutoCAD or drawing by hand.

Students in Professor Park Junmin’s classes usually did well, so he had been teaching the Design course for almost ten years.

He had taught the Basic Design course since he started as a part-time lecturer and still taught it as an associate professor.

Junmin didn’t mind. He enjoyed pushing the students in the Design course.

‘Only two students had to retake the course last year. Should I push them even harder this year…?’

Junmin stepped onto the platform and greeted the students, thinking thoughts that would scare them if they knew.

“Hello everyone, welcome to Basic Design! I’m Professor Park Junmin, and I’m excited to start this semester with you all.”

This was Junmin’s second class of the semester.

Most major classes for freshmen were split into A and B classes. He had already taught one Design class for the A class in the morning.

Now, in this second class, Junmin looked at the students with interest.

He was looking for one student in particular.

‘What kind of person is he? I’m really curious about what he’s like…’

The student Junmin was looking for had been the real leader of the project that won the scholarship at the Night of Design last week.

He had checked the names of the five students who received the scholarship, but he believed only one was the “real” leader.

There couldn’t be many freshmen with that much skill.

‘Maybe he’s worked at an architecture firm before, or maybe he’s a transfer student…’

Junmin wanted to find that freshman for two reasons.

First, he was curious.

Park Junmin had been asked by Professor Kim Gihwan to review the project at the judging.

From the moment he saw it, he had wondered who was in charge of the spatial planning and design.

Second, there was the city design contest.

‘It’s unlikely a freshman will do better than Gitae or Yejin… But it would still be good to have a freshman participate.’

The city of Seoul held a public design contest for undergraduate students every year.

It was a large contest called SPDC (Seoul Public Design Contest).

The prize money wasn’t much, but the SPDC was well-recognized.

Winning the grand prize could even influence the design of a real public building.

Only undergraduate students in Seoul universities could enter, so the competition wasn’t as fierce as the contest’s reputation suggested.

For undergraduates, it was a great opportunity that came once a year.

‘Of course, freshmen rarely participate…’

Junmin also had a personal interest.

If a student won a special selection or higher in the contest, the professor would also get a performance boost.

‘Professor Kim, I’m calling dibs first, sorry.’

Professor Kim Gihwan, who had judged with him, probably wanted “that freshman” too.

But Park Junmin, an associate professor eager for results, pushed aside any guilt he felt towards Kim Gihwan, a senior professor.

‘Now, who is it? Show yourself.’

A student who could draw architectural drawings that well would stand out in the Design class.

A freshman with that level of knowledge would want to show it off in class.

If he called the student after class and mentioned the contest, the student would jump at the chance.

‘Seo Woojin, Han Soyeon, Ryu Seonbin, Oh Yoonjung, Im Hyejin. It’s definitely one of these guys…’

He wanted to ask the students who led the project right away, but he didn’t want to look bad.

So Junmin waited.

And he got what he wanted.

“I usually think of the minimum width of the door as 900. That’s the most suitable length for the human scale.”

“Good, student. What’s your name?”

“Ryu Seonbin, sir!”

A tall male student answered questions about drawings that would be difficult for freshmen to know, without any hesitation.

Junmin asked him a few more questions and was finally sure.

‘Yes, this is the guy!’

It remained to be seen what would come of this.

“Seonbin.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“After the lecture, come see me for a moment.”

“Yes, sir! I understand.”

Woojin, sitting next to Seonbin and dozing off, remained unnoticed.