Golden Print [EN]: Chapter 169

Woo-jin blinked, eyes wide, stopping in his tracks.

“What is that?” he wondered.

Golden waves pulsed with light, like liquid sunshine, filling his vision. They were intense, not soft or gentle at all. He’d never seen a Golden Print like this before. It wasn’t a dream. This was real.

Woo-jin stepped back, surprised. His heart beat a little faster.

“But why here?” he wondered.

The Golden Print always helped with building designs, always blueprints. Why was it showing up here, in the real world?

“Mr. Woo-jin, what are you doing over there?” Mr. Yoon asked.

“Ah, just a moment,” Woo-jin replied.

The surprise faded quickly. Woo-jin began to calmly assess the situation.

The Golden Print had always been a help, never a hindrance.

When the Golden Print appeared at Cafe Fresco last time, that was also in a three-dimensional space, not on a blueprint.

Until now, the Golden Print had always provided clues to aid Woo-jin’s designs.

So, while its sudden appearance had initially surprised him, upon further thought, it wasn’t so strange after all.

When you think about it, one of the most important things in architecture is the site itself.

After studying the Golden Print for a moment, Woo-jin spoke to Mr. Yoon.

“Mr. Yoon, would you mind if I took a look around here for a bit?”

“Well, there aren’t any properties listed for sale in this area,” Mr. Yoon said.

Woo-jin gave a small smile.

“Since we’re here anyway, I’d like to take a thorough look at the surrounding environment.”

“Shall I show you around?”

“Ah! There’s no need for that. Could I just take a quick look around on my own?”

“Ah… well, if you prefer. Take your time. I’ll head over to that real estate office first.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Mr. Yoon, not quite understanding what Woo-jin wanted to see, tilted his head and left.

Woo-jin’s gaze returned to the golden lines.

Though the golden lines clearly existed behind or beneath the buildings, it was as if the buildings became transparent, revealing the form of the Golden Print to Woo-jin.

‘Amazing. It’s like everything is X-rayed?’ he thought.

It was a bizarre phenomenon that he still couldn’t get used to, despite having encountered it several times.

Woo-jin clicked his tongue and began to walk slowly.

The site where the Golden Print appeared wasn’t large. It was a small space, not even half the size of the 150 *pyeong* site Woo-jin had initially imagined. (*Pyeong* is a Korean unit of land size.)

So, it didn’t take Woo-jin long to walk around the golden lines, but he had to consider several questions.

The first question, of course, was why the Golden Print had appeared on this site.

Looking at the area of the Golden Print, it clearly spans two lots along this main street.

A ‘lot’ is a registered unit of land with a clear boundary. It is the basic unit that can represent the ownership of land, registered in the land register with a single lot number.

But the Golden Print wasn’t pointing to one particular lot, but rather spanned two lots.

The area itself didn’t seem to be even 50 *pyeong*, let alone 100, but that area was cleverly located on the boundary between the two lots.

It seemed that legal boundaries artificially separated were not a consideration for the Golden Print.

So, in order to secure all the land where the Golden Print was generated, I’d have to buy more than 200 *pyeong*?

Even Woo-jin couldn’t accurately guess the exact area of the lots by sight, but he could roughly estimate it, and he could guess how much it would cost to buy both lots.

The amount that came to Woo-jin’s mind was about twice the budget he had set aside.

“Ahem…”

The Golden Print was presenting him with a rather troublesome challenge from the start.

‘Okay. Let’s assume I can somehow get the money,’ he thought.

The second question Woo-jin had was about the form of the Golden Print.

The golden printing, made up of complex lines, had an abstract shape, as always. It was drawn flat on the ground, but it was by no means in the form of a floor plan.

One characteristic was that all the lines were made up of large and small polygons. It looked as if many different shapes were drawn flat and overlapping; geometric shapes, perhaps?

‘The problem is that I have no idea what this is,’ he thought.

In fact, the most important thing now was to figure out what hint this form was giving Woo-jin.

Only then could Woo-jin design with confidence, and before that, he would be able to buy these sites, even if it meant overextending himself.

But the hint wasn’t easily solved, so Woo-jin wanted to take a picture of it to take with him.

Of course, the Golden Print, invisible to others, couldn’t be captured by a smartphone camera.

‘I have to find it somehow. The hint that the Golden Print is trying to tell me… I can’t just let this pass,’ he thought.

Scritch-scritch-

Woo-jin, leaving a rough sketch in his notebook, left the area and moved to the place he had promised to meet Mr. Yoon.

But even while being briefed on other properties, Woo-jin’s mind was only on the Golden Print.

“Well, Mr. Yoon, I’ll think about it and contact you again,” Woo-jin said.

“Yes, Mr. Woo-jin! Of course. Please decide carefully and give me a call!” Mr. Yoon replied.

So, on the way back, Woo-jin looked at the Golden Print once more before returning to WJ Studio.

And from that day on, Woo-jin’s *gomin* began. (*Gomin* is a Korean word for deep worry.)

A special *gomin* that he had to solve alone, without anyone’s advice.

Woo-jin had a habit from a long time ago: to collect information randomly related to something that wasn’t going well, including design. This time was no different.

Since he couldn’t think of anything just by looking at the shape of the Golden Print, he began to analyze the lot where the Golden Print appeared from various angles, starting with the use of the land, to various location conditions, even what the buildings around the lot were used for.

If there was anything to analyze, Woo-jin would find, study, and organize anything.

‘If I do this, something will come to mind,’ he thought.

Of course, that didn’t mean he was collecting any information randomly. The information that Woo-jin searched and analyzed had in common that it was necessary for designing in that location.

Woo-jin even explored things he normally ignored, like whether the land had any special meaning in *Pungsujiri*. (*Pungsujiri* is a kind of Korean geomancy or way of understanding places based on energy flow.)

He didn’t originally prefer such totemic fields, but he thought that the Golden Print could be a similar area to someone who didn’t know.

“Ugh… Damn it! What the hell is this?” he exclaimed, frustrated.

But even after two or three days, Woo-jin couldn’t find any clues.

So, feeling frustrated, Woo-jin left the office without any plan as the sun was setting.

“I’m going to leave work early today, *hyung*,” Woo-jin said. (*Hyung* is a Korean term used by a younger man to address an older brother or close male friend.)

“Okay. But is something wrong?” Jin-tae asked.

“Huh? Why suddenly?”

“I think I heard a strange scream from the CEO’s office just now,” Jin-tae said, teasingly.

“Ah… Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that.”

“If there’s a problem, you have to tell me, okay?”

“Am I a kid? Don’t worry and go to work,” Woo-jin replied.

Leaving Jin-tae, who didn’t take his suspicious eyes off him, Woo-jin headed to the place where the Golden Print was.

As he walked, he worried for a moment that the Golden Print might have already disappeared, but fortunately, the golden lines were still waiting for Woo-jin, still in a strange and complex form that he couldn’t understand.

Thud- thud-

Perhaps his heart was heavy again when he saw the real thing, Woo-jin sighed and began to walk around it.

‘If Seok-hyun could share the Golden Print, wouldn’t he be able to find some clues?’ he wondered.

He looked at each golden line and thought about random things, but that didn’t mean he could come up with an answer.

‘If I can’t find it in the end… Should I still buy this site? No. If that’s the case, it would be better to just buy the north riverside site as originally planned?’

Rather, the more he thought about it, the more complicated Woo-jin’s mind became.

‘It would be easier to stay in my room and work on the Grasshopper algorithm. At least there’s somewhere to ask about that,’ he grumbled.

But as Woo-jin was grumbling and moving, he could feel a sense of unease again at some point.

“Huh…?”

When he first discovered the Golden Print and entered the alley, he felt something similar to the strange unease he felt at that time.

‘Wait. I definitely felt something alien just now?’

It was a fleeting unease, but Woo-jin didn’t miss it. It was also because he desperately wanted to grab even at straws, but he instinctively felt that there was a clue here.

So, Woo-jin stopped walking. He took a few steps back to pass the place he had just passed again.

‘Okay. If I move like this again here…’

And at that very moment…

Woo-jin’s whole body was instantly covered in goosebumps.

‘Crazy…!!’

When he first discovered this space and when he moved in the same position as just now, he was able to clearly realize the identity of the unease he felt at the same time at this moment.

‘Shadow! Yes, it was the shadow!’

According to Woo-jin’s steps, according to the angle of the setting sun, the shadows containing the silhouettes of some of the surrounding terrain, which were slowly tilting and moving in the opposite direction of Woo-jin’s movement…

The moment those shadows entered the area of the Golden Print, they were disappearing like a mirage.

To be exact, the position of the shadow was falling in line with the golden lines drawn on the Golden Print, and it was disappearing as if it were being absorbed into that position.

‘Shall we move to the opposite side like this this time?’

He hadn’t yet grasped the hint of this Golden Print exactly, but Woo-jin could feel his whole body filling with strength.

He couldn’t escape from the pitch-black darkness right away, but at least he had found a ray of light.

So, Woo-jin moved around frantically, running around to find out what these many shapes meant.

And as the sun was completely setting, one picture was completed in the notebook Woo-jin was holding: Golden Print.