Chapter 2
Back to First Year Again
“Oh? You’re really done already? As expected, your hands are fast.”
Su-hyeon still had no idea what was going on when Song Min-sik walked over to his desk, checked the test paper, and commented on it.
“Hmm. That’s enough. You can go out.”
“……Pardon?”
“If you’re finished, submit it and take a break. You have a drawing test in the afternoon too.”
“Ah, yes.”
Su-hyeon stared blankly at Song Min-sik before suddenly standing up.
It was too vivid to be a dream, but he could not think of any other explanation either.
“Ha, what is this?”
After leaving the practical classroom, Su-hyeon could not help opening his mouth wide at the familiar yet dearly missed scenery.
The spiral staircase of the practical building connected to the department building. The exposed concrete ceiling and walls. The lockers in different colors for each grade. The exterior walls of Sehyun Arts High School, painted in its symbolic color, Prussian blue.
……This really is Sehyun Arts High School.
How could something like this happen?
Su-hyeon touched his face.
Ever since his eyesight had gotten worse, even the scenery in his dreams had been blurry. But now, everything was clear and sharp, as if he were wearing perfectly fitted glasses.
No, it was as if his eyesight had returned to how it was before it got worse.
“Whoa.”
He touched his face several times, but there was nothing strange about it.
Whoosh—
When he looked at himself in the mirror standing in the hallway, he saw his own young face in a school uniform staring back at him with startled eyes.
Smack.
This time, he slapped both cheeks hard.
“Ah. It hurts.”
He could feel the pain perfectly.
The face in the mirror gradually turned red.
At a painfully realistic speed and with a painfully realistic color.
Could it really be?
Had he truly returned?
Because he had wanted to go back to those days? Because he had desperately wished for it?
No, how could something like this make sense?
“Hey! Han Su-hyeon!”
Just then, someone slammed into him.
“Ugh!”
Su-hyeon twisted his body and jumped in surprise.
A loud, uncontrollable burst of laughter echoed through the hallway.
“What’s wrong with you? Why are you so surprised like you’re about to faint?”
Cha Yun-hee.
Su-hyeon read the name written on the yellow name tag and quickly raised his head to check her face.
“Cha Yun-hee?”
She was the friend he had been drinking with just a little while ago.
Amazingly, Yun-hee also had the young face of a high school student.
“Hey, you’re already done? As expected of the God Hand of first year.”
Yun-hee smiled brightly and tapped Su-hyeon on the shoulder.
“Gasp.”
His shoulder tingled from the sting of her hand.
Perhaps because she was young and full of energy, her strength was no joke.
Yun-hee had always been straightforward and strong-willed. From the entrance ceremony onward, she had constantly approached Su-hyeon and tried to become friends with him.
Thanks to that, they had remained close friends throughout their years at arts high school, their university years, and even after both of them left the art world.
“Come on, God Hand. We need to eat something before the afternoon test.”
“……God Hand?”
As Su-hyeon quietly repeated Cha Yun-hee’s words, another memory surfaced in his mind.
The God Hand of Sehyun Arts High School.
That had been Su-hyeon’s nickname throughout his years at the arts high school.
His practical skills were far better than those of his peers, and he was extremely consistent. His friends had given him the nickname almost as a term of affection.
He had even injured one of his hands and worn a cast, yet still managed to remain first in the practical exams.
Because of that, he had heard people call him the God Hand so many times that he had gotten tired of hearing it.
A small smile appeared on Su-hyeon’s lips.
Yun-hee seemed to misunderstand it again.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Huh?”
“Looks like you did well on the test again. I just scribbled down whatever came to mind and came out. Ah, bones and muscles. There was way too much to study at the last minute. I think I left seven questions blank. Of course, you probably didn’t.”
Was the test earlier anatomy?
The test paper he had submitted when leaving the practical classroom seemed to have been for that subject.
And if it was an anatomy test, that meant it was the final exam for the first semester.
Jjing—
As if confirming the answer, hot sunlight covered his entire body as soon as he stepped outside the practical building.
Saaah—
The sound of the wind shaking the leaves tickled his ears.
‘It really is early summer weather. Come to think of it, this is the summer uniform.’
Was he being given a chance to remember those happy days, even if only for a little while?
If this was a dream, Su-hyeon wanted to stay in it for as long as possible.
But—
“Ah, crap. We’re screwed.”
“Huh?”
“Hey, run!”
“Why?”
“The line at the cafeteria is already that long! Hurry up! If we’re late, the tuna bibimbap will be sold out!”
As Yun-hee grabbed his hand and dragged him along, Su-hyeon’s thoughts gradually began to change.
Tap tap tap.
The feeling of his indoor shoes striking the hard floor.
Drip.
The warmth of sweat running down his back.
Ahhhh—
The vocal practice of the vocal music students as they passed the music building and practical building.
Ziiing— Ring— Puuuu—
The grand sounds of string instruments, keyboard instruments, and wind instruments.
“The craziest thing you can do is settle for reality and give up your dreams and ideals!”
The theater and film students preparing a performance on the open stage in front of the cafeteria.
Giggle, giggle.
Dance students passed by one after another, laughing and walking with their toes turned outward.
‘This is too detailed to be a dream. It isn’t some image made from my memories.’
By the time he reached the cafeteria, Su-hyeon had no choice but to nod.
He did not know why, but it seemed that he had returned to the first semester of his first year at Sehyun Arts High School in 1995.
‘If my desire to draw again really reached the heavens…… if this is another chance they gave me because I desperately wished for it, then I won’t waver this time. Somehow, I’ll keep drawing until the very end.’
Su-hyeon clenched his fist.
Simply returning to the past was not enough.
If he only focused on drawing whatever his heart desired, he would not be able to live a different life from his past.
‘I can’t repeat my old life.
If I don’t want to lose my paintings, I need to change my environment first.’
In the past, he had worked hard, but his biggest problem had been that he was far too short-sighted.
He had been so afraid of losing his sponsorship and scholarships that he had not properly enjoyed his school years.
Of course, he had focused on the entrance exams and entered a prestigious university.
But later, he realized there had been countless other paths.
‘My view was too narrow. I had no room to breathe.
Instead of obsessing only over my grades, I should have freely made friends with the people who approached me and built strong relationships with them.’
If he had done that, he would have had friends who would have stood by him when Kim Min-jun stole his paintings and falsely accused him.
He would not have had to place his entire fate in the hands of his one and only sponsor.
‘……This time, instead of desperately trying to survive on my own, I need to build allies.
If I want to confidently seize opportunities instead of stupidly letting others take them away, then yes. I need to change my passive attitude first.’
Su-hyeon bit his lip as he recalled several incidents.
Knowing the future meant there were many things he could now see.
Who would approach him with genuine goodwill.
Who would approach him while hiding hostility.
And what kinds of things would happen behind the scenes.
‘If everything repeats itself like fate……
Then I’ll change the environment so that it works in my favor.
I’ll clean up the dirty things, remove the things that could become threats.
And this time, I’ll see how far I can make my talent bloom in that environment.’
I will achieve something even greater with my own hands than what Kim Min-jun gained by stepping on me.
Su-hyeon took a deep breath.
Now that he had made up his mind, there was no reason to hesitate.
Su-hyeon intended to immediately correct the very first incident in which he and his talented friends had suffered losses.
The first-semester final practical exam of his first year at Sehyun Arts High School had been unfair from the very beginning.
“Han Su-hyeon! Are you not listening to me?”
“Huh?”
Yun-hee pulled Su-hyeon back to reality after he had become lost in thought.
“I’m talking about the test. What do you think will come out? Huh? Just guess something.”
“The drawing test?”
“Yeah. I’m going crazy from the nerves. Honestly, isn’t it a little too much that they don’t even tell us whether it’ll be a small or medium plaster statue?”
Yun-hee took her tuna bibimbap and sat down before roughly mixing her food as she complained.
As befitting a prestigious arts high school, Sehyun Arts High School placed great importance on practical exams.
In particular, drawing was a common subject regardless of one’s major.
Among them, plaster drawing, which was directly connected to entrance exams, was especially burdensome.
Most troublesome of all was the wide range of possible subjects.
“Sigh, does it make sense that there are eight possible statues? Look. Each plaster statue can be placed in five positions: front, two three-quarter views, and two side views. That means we have five positions to practice for each statue, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then five times eight is forty. That means we have to draw at least forty pictures. But there are two statues among the candidates that I haven’t even touched. I haven’t prepared for 25% of the test range. Sigh.”
Su-hyeon smiled as Yun-hee continued rattling off her complaints.
“The judging criteria will probably be about how well you understand the essence and basics of drawing. Whether you’re drawing by memorizing the shape or whether you actually understand it. How well you express light and shadow, and how well you show volume and texture. You’re still only a first-year student. It’s not the time to judge advanced techniques yet.”
As Su-hyeon reminded her of the purpose of the first-year drawing test, Yun-hee frowned.
“Then they should just include the large plaster statues too. Apollo or Hermes. Drawing those looks so impressive. At the art academy, whenever the older students draw those, everyone gathers around them going, ‘Wow!’”
“Large plaster statues have to be drawn on a half-size sheet. Do you think first-year students can finish something like Hermes on that size of paper in four hours?”
“Well, true. Even three-quarter-size paper would be tight in four hours.”
Yun-hee sighed again.
Despite all her complaining, Yun-hee was one of the most talented drawing students.
The art department at Sehyun Arts High School divided students into Korean painting, Western painting, sculpture, and design majors, but everyone still took the same drawing exams, allowing them to see their ranking across the entire grade.
Yun-hee was always among the top five out of 138 students in the art department.
Of course, Su-hyeon was firmly in first place.
“Just don’t get nervous. You’ll be fine if you do what you normally do.”
As he encouraged her, thinking of the drawings that had always kept her near the top, Yun-hee raised the spoon she had been eating her bibimbap with and made a determined expression.
“Exactly. I shouldn’t get nervous. I’ve really noticed a huge difference depending on whether people get nervous during tests. Some people can’t even show half their usual ability during exams, while someone like Kim Ha-young can perform 300% better than usual.”
Yes.
That Kim Ha-young.
It was the name Su-hyeon had been thinking about all along.
Back then, he had not known.
He had not known that people like Kim Ha-young were committing cheating and corruption.
He had not known that some of the teachers who looked like noble artists were actively involved in it.
“Hey, is there anything in this world that money can’t buy? It’s not that money can’t buy it. You just don’t have enough money. If you simply pay more, there’s nothing you can’t get. That’s how capitalism works.”
During the fall semester before graduating from university, something had happened at a Sehyun Arts High School alumni gathering.
Kim Ha-young had gotten completely drunk and made a scene.
She had said she had no intention of attending a Korean university and had immediately entered an art school in New York.
But it turned out that she had actually gotten in through a donation-based admission.
She also disgustingly confessed that she had solved many problems with money even while attending Sehyun Arts High School.
“I laughed so much watching you guys desperately prepare for the exams. Just knowing what was going to come out in advance and preparing for it could save you so much time. Instead, you couldn’t sleep or rest. Ah, you poor things. You’re at such an important age for growing.”
Kim Ha-young had proudly bragged that she had bribed Choi Hyeong-wook and So Jin-woo, teachers in the art department, with money and had made the practical exams extremely easy for herself.
That memory remained completely intact in Su-hyeon’s mind after returning to the past.
“What plaster statues were supposed to be on our test?”
Su-hyeon casually asked while stuffing a mouthful of deliciously mixed tuna bibimbap into his mouth.
“Huh. What? You don’t even know the test range? Did you not prepare properly?”
“No. Agrippa, Venus, and Julien. Those three are definitely included as the basics. What were the medium-sized plaster statues again? Caligula, Arias. Was that it?”
Plaster statues commonly used in entrance-exam art were obvious enough, so Su-hyeon casually listed what he could remember.
Yun-hee shook her head and answered.
“The Greek Lady, or Amazon, and Caesar. And Seneca was added to the small ones.”
“Ah, Seneca too.”
Su-hyeon nodded lightly.
The plaster statue that had appeared in the first-year final drawing exam in the past had been Caligula.
The unpleasant-looking plaster statue with curly perm-like hair took up a huge amount of time just to draw all those curls.
Even if he focused on the folds of the clothes, it was difficult to finish the drawing within the time limit.
Unless you were a third-year student already optimized for entrance exams, it was quite a difficult plaster statue for a first-year student.
Of course, if someone had practiced only that statue, even an average student could have received a decent score.
And Kim Ha-young, who was probably an average-level student, must have spent days drawing only the Caligula plaster statue in preparation for today’s test.
The other students would probably say that she was good at staying calm during exams and that she had nerves of steel that made her strong in actual competitions.
But that was not the truth.
Kim Ha-young.
Just wait.
Through this practical exam, I’ll teach you that unfair backroom deals won’t work anymore.
“Let’s get up.”
Su-hyeon smiled.
“Huh?”
“We’re done eating. Let’s at least warm up our hands.”
“Oh, practicing lines? Sounds good. Let’s go.”
After finishing their tuna bibimbap together, Yun-hee and Su-hyeon left the cafeteria with a chocolate milk each.
Swoosh—
When Su-hyeon arrived at the practical building, he looked around the classroom.
Then he began his first preparation to change his environment.
And a short while later, something happened that would surprise everyone.
