Chapter 22 – Episode 22. Academy Starts
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‘What the fuck!’
It’s late.
As soon as I woke up and picked up my phone to check the time, I was startled to see that it was 8:45.
Is it tardy from day one?
It can’t be.
There are still 15 minutes left.
I vigorously got out of bed.
“Huh!”
I roll one wheel to the side and get up from the whirligig seat, and I go straight into the bathroom.
Entering the bathroom, I take off all my clothes at the speed of a bullet, almost as if I was changing into a private in the army.
Then, after hanging clothes on the stainless steel towel rack at the back, start taking a shower.
Turn on the water and rinse quickly enough to call it a shower of rage.
-Shoot it…
‘Oops! Seed bee. It’s fucking cold!’
As soon as I woke up, I tried to take a shower right away like a machine, so the world felt colder in my sleep, so it was cold.
Also, I usually turn on the water and wait a little while for hot water to come out, but I didn’t wait for that short time and washed it right away, so it was like that.
Either that or not, I didn’t want to be late from the first day.
I came out of the shower at a frantic speed, wiped my body roughly, and looked for clothes to run to the academy.
‘Clothes, clothes!’
Just comfortable and warm clothes.
Call.
Pick up and wear right away.
Get dressed and put on socks.
Since it is the first day of the academy, I bring a new book, so I take an empty backpack with only writing instruments in it.
You can rent lockers at the academy, but some can be carried around, so I prepared a slightly larger backpack.
Living in a goshichon doesn’t last for a day or two, so I know that it goes back to a certain extent.
In the case of the problem-solving class starting this December, textbooks are also problem-solving textbooks, so when you first enter the academy, you will buy a few books rather than buying all the basic books.
Even so, even problem-solving books are thinner than basic books, but usually civil service preparation books themselves are fucking thick, so it’s not easy to just carry around by hand.
Get ready and go outside.
The weather today is not that cold.
It was a day when the smell of cool moisture enveloped the interior of the goshichon, as if a slight morning mist had settled down.
Excited about something
First day.
I’m not going to the basic theory class, but I’m going to take the problem-solving class, which is the application stage, but I still have the excitement of the first time.
You can do it well
‘Let’s go!’
All the other people in the goshichon got up and went somewhere.
Unlike the people I see in Gangnam, my hometown, the people I see in the goshichon are all wearing dingy casual clothes or sweatpants.
As for the buildings, there are many residential complexes or shopping complexes that look a bit dated, unique to Gosichon, rather than a forest of buildings, making one wonder if this is a city.
The city itself sometimes feels a bit shady, on better or worse days.
But basically, I think the city itself is livable.
As the area of Goshichon is limited, convenience facilities are located in a fairly dense manner.
So whatever you do, everything is close.
Restaurants with star menus are all within walking distance, cafes, parks, and movie theaters are close by, and even a hospital is just a few bus stops away.
There is nothing that does not exist as much as there is a large floating population.
Walking, and running in the middle.
It wasn’t so fast that I was out of breath, but I ran at a moderate speed.
Since the academy is so close to the studio where I live, I arrive quickly.
Among the studios in the gosichon, the place where I live belongs to the axis that is closest to the academy where there is a problem-solving class that I will register for two months.
After arriving, I looked up at the academy building.
‘Even though I often come here for self-study, it’s been a while since I’ve taken classes.’
I came here once for self-study, and now the academy building where I will take the problem-solving class is large, as befits a large academy.
There are various banners attached to the academy building.
Banners with large faces of famous lecturers and banners with a list of successful candidates lined up are those.
At the entrance, there is a vertical advertising signboard made lightly of thin plastic.
A lot of people are also going to school.
I entered the academy
‘To the second floor…’
It’s a place you know well, so there’s nothing rough about it.
Go in and go to the second floor where the desk is.
There were quite a few students coming and going from the entrance, probably because it was the beginning of the semester, and I could see quite a few people going up the stairs.
And when we all went up to the second floor, the crowd was swarming.
They were forming a long line.
Men and women in colorful training suits lined her up in a suitably noisy atmosphere.
This could be said to be fortunate for me.
It’s not too late.
It will only start when all the people in this line go in to participate in the class.
‘Good. It’s not too late.’
On the second floor, there is a neat reception desk similar to a large office, but there is also a bookstore next to it.
These lines are all bookstore lines.
That said, there are many students who haven’t received the book yet.
So I’m not late
I entered the reception area with a smile.
In the front, there are five or six counselors, each consulting with a student sitting across from them.
Perhaps it is the beginning of the month, many counselors are talking to the students in front of them.
I have nothing to do with counseling.
It’s not the first time, so I’m not really curious.
You can sign up for classes after logging in to the academy website by standing in front of a computer located on the opposite corner a little away from the counselors, that is, in the corner that leads straight after entering the door.
In other words, one side of the large space on the second floor is for consultation.
The computers placed on the other side have a space for self-registration.
After registering for classes, pay the original fee right away.
Even on the computer side where you register for courses, there is a bit of a line because it is the beginning of the semester.
The lines weren’t as long as those at the bookstore, but there were simple lines of two or three people at each PC.
I stood in the shortest line among them.
It was the rightmost line.
But, suddenly, someone called from the side.
“Are you… Lee Jin-hyuk?”
One of the people in the second row from the right was talking to me.
I reflexively looked at him by the side of the registration queue and immediately recognized who he was.
“A relief window?”
We were classmates in middle school, and we had some exchanges even in high school.
I could tell right away just by looking at it.
“Hey~, you haven’t changed since you were in middle school. How have you been?”
“You? What happened?”
Haha! Really? Hey, remember? We were supposed to meet at the courthouse, right?”
“That’s right… It really doesn’t seem that long ago…”
Hochang Koo and I asked to meet later at the Judicial Research and Training Institute when we were in middle school.
Only in those days…
I thought that if you study a little and get to the top level, you will be judged.
That’s why this meeting was even more difficult.
It was because the friends who were discussing judges and prosecutors met at the place where they were preparing for the 9th grade exam.
“Jinhyuk, when did you come up?”
“Me? Third year.”
I lived in the high school village for less than three years, but taking the exam was the third one with a little over five months left, so I answered appropriately.
Hochang said.
“Really? Hey, why haven’t we met in this small place?
Haha, ah, nice to meet you. Are you also listening to the opening of the class this time?”
“Uh. You too?”
“Come~, I’d like to take class together~.”
Rather than the world being narrow, the goshichon is narrow.
It can be seen that the residential districts are set to some extent here, so you can come and meet them whenever possible.
It was also the difference that we were taking the same comprehensive problem-solving class.
There are comprehensive classes and single classes for academy registration.
Comprehensive classes are for all subjects, and single classes are for one subject at a time.
To put it simply… If the single course class is a single hamburger, you order one, and the comprehensive class is a set of hamburgers, so you order this and that.
In case of general class, 9th grade students apply for 5 subjects at once.
I also thought that it would be better to register for a general class because I was a little tired of studying alone, rather than considering the tuition as a priority because I still had enough money saved up from my part-time job.
Hochang also talked to me with a look that welcomed me.
“Ah, even if we didn’t go to PC rooms in middle school, aren’t we meeting as real lawyers now?”
“At that time, I really went every day.”
“The school lunches were delicious in middle school. Now that I think about it, I don’t think such lunches are common.”
“That’s right. If you want to buy something like that right now~”
It’s been a long time since I met Gu Ho-chang, and I’ve been studying almost like a disabled person these days, so I felt like I was breathing.
So the waiting time seemed to pass quickly.
Before I knew it, I had already applied for the course.
And after breaking through the short course registration line, I waited again for the long line to receive the book.
At that time too, time passed quickly as we were robbing hochang and nogari.
After waiting in line to receive the books, we received the books and went to the lecture room to take our seats.
Come to your assigned classroom.
In the case of the main class of an academy, there are a lot of people, so the lecture room is quite large.
There were a lot of people in the classroom.
‘There must be several hundred people.’
Classrooms can be assigned differently for each subject, but during general class common subject classes, even the huge lecture hall is filled with people.
They seem to have gathered to receive battalion-level mental training in the military.
So many fucking
Go to school
However, it is not visible because it is in the back seat.
In a large classroom, a large screen hangs from the ceiling in the middle, and the lecturer also uses a microphone, so I can hear everything anyway, so I don’t prefer the front seat that much.
Some test-takers come out early in the morning to take a front seat to maximize the sense of realism, and they say that if you don’t want to take a front seat, it’s better to take an introductory lecture than to go to the high school.
I don’t think so.
“Hochang-ah, there are two seats over there?”
“Shall we go over there?”
The seats with two seats were only at the back, and we took our seats on that side.
The seat was a bit tight.
So we had to hang our bags behind the chairs too.
Before class started, Hochang and I chatted in whispers.
“Wow, there are so many people.”
“That’s it.”
“These two-month courses will lose half of them after about a month, right?”
“Cook cook, would you?”
Since I and I had experience taking classes, I could have guessed that there would be a lot of people who would drop out without completing all of the classes.
The first class was Korean.
The Korean language professor of the class I applied for is a bit dark and thin, and wears gold-rimmed glasses.
Age is around late 40’s.
He grabs the microphone and starts class standing inside the long, dark green board.
-Who, whoa, ah, mic test, ah. Ah. Now, everyone, this time we will be conducting an orientation. It took a long time to hand out books, so I came in just in time. Open your handouts first.
I just received the printout on the way to the classroom.
Looking at it, I was able to see at a glance the progress plan for the subject in this problem-solving class.
The instructor spoke into the microphone.
-Ah, first of all, this week we are going to proceed with a temporary timetable. Some of the teachers in the comprehensive class needed to adjust their schedules, so this timetable will be provided separately from next week, and that will be applied. Be aware of this.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The students answered.
The timetable doesn’t matter.
-If you look at the handout there, in the first month, we’ll first look at grammar. Language rules and…
There are about 200 people in crowds, but they are all quiet.
You are listening to the syllabus.
In the middle of the crowded crowd, Ho-chang and I started talking in whispers again.
“Hochang-ah, do you know Choi Gook?”
“Of course~, Choi Guk-eo is really hot these days.”
“Really? These days?”
“Uh.”
“When I first came here, I thought Choi Guk language was good, but it wasn’t very popular…”
Since I am also in my third year, I think I can feel the passage of time to some extent.
When I first came up, the instructors who thought, ‘Oh, this lecture is fine’ are becoming more and more famous.
As time went by, it seemed that there were cases in which their social status was undergoing significant changes.
Instructors are also growing, and of course I also had a desire to develop.
The Korean language class was okay in its own way.
I liked the lecture plan, and the early classes that followed the orientation were quite systematic.
The time was already 11:00 AM.
In the beginning, the time definitely goes by, and the concentration is good.
This feeling doesn’t last all the way, though.
Since there were so many people in the large lecture hall, it was a little annoying to move back and forth because the gap between the desk and chair was narrow when going out and coming in, such as when going to the bathroom.
Somehow I sat down and looked at the temporary schedule for the first week handed out by the academy.
And he spoke to Hochang, who was sitting next to him.
“Is it English next time?”
“Uh.”
In a way, English can be seen as the most discriminating subject among the subjects for the civil service exam.
Anyway, I like self-study, and I go to an academy to improve my study efficiency with the purpose of strengthening my resolution and overcoming mannerisms, but if the instructor is good, of course it’s better.
Hochang said as I was looking at the temporary schedule.
“Jinhyeok, did you hear that?”
“Hmm?”
“Yang Mi-ra, I heard you had a car accident?”
“Uh?”
“I wasn’t seriously injured, but they said it would be difficult to come to class right away. That’s why they said they were changing English teachers.”
“To whom?”
“Mr. Kwon Se-ah, you know?”
It was a bit disappointing.
As for Miss Yang Mi-ra, she is a teacher who has a considerable position in the civil service English world. She is a female teacher in her early 40s and is quite famous.
On the other hand, teacher Kwon Se-ah had never heard of it.
It’s not that big of a connection, but I’d say there’s a bit of a sense of regret. It was a feeling like that.
Because there are many teachers who say they can’t teach, if you really listen carefully, there are many cases where they teach well, and there are things to learn, so I tend to listen and watch hard.
In addition, after I came to the goshichon, I was more enthusiastic when I listened to the academy class I had taken in the beginning after a very long time.
I shook my head at the sight of Ho Chang, who was sitting next to me.
“No, this is the first time I’ve heard of it. But, well, I want to listen to it eagerly.”
“You don’t know Kwon Se-ah?”
“Um. I came here for the first time, attended an academy for a year and a half, and then studied on my own. Why is Kwon Se-ah a popular teacher these days?”
“Uh. There’s something like that. I listened to a taster lecture before and I was able to concentrate very well. I have skills… And more than anything, teacher Kwon Se-ah and Pink Lane Se-ah.”
“Pink Lane?”
“Don’t you know? A girl group!”
I tilted my head slightly.
You may hear it that way.
Often, I heard that instructors from girl groups are popular, and such things happen a lot these days.
But basically, I’m not that interested in celebrities.
The reason I don’t like celebrities so much is because I can’t see them outside of TV.
So rather than following a celebrity that I can’t reach at all, I think I’ll realistically go to a club and make a decision to meet a normal person who is prettier than a celebrity.
If you go to a club, there are a lot of ordinary people who are prettier than celebrities.
Oh, and by the way, thanks to the power of my looks, I even slept with a celebrity.
Because of the memory of that time, I didn’t have much interest in celebrities from the beginning, but on the contrary, I came to think that I didn’t want to meet celebrities.
