Chapter 9

‘What’s she doing here?’

There was a war of nerves over who would open their mouth first.

First of all, it certainly wasn’t going to be me.

It would be normal if it was me who came to work here, but it was unusual for her to come. Above all, I was the one who had an advantage.

I’m sitting, and she’s standing.

I had the upper hand in terms of position.

‘Let’s see who wins.’

The brief confrontation only lasted for a few seconds.

It was Seo Ji-won who opened her mouth first.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been here longer than you.”

“Alright then.”

Only then did I understand.

‘Come to think of it, you said you were a long-time student of Professor Lee Jong.’

In that case, apart from being hired in the studio, there could have been many chances of you getting to use this studio privately.

‘You must feel betrayed by the professor.’

She walked in silently and sat across from me.

Druk.

The seat across from me had been strangely clean without a single speck of dust, but it must have been her reserved seat.

“Hey.”

Seo Ji-won called me and said, “I’m just going to do my job, so don’t mind me and keep doing whatever you were doing before.”

She turned her head around and began to paint without saying another word.

It was just that… I was packing up to go home, but now the situation has gotten awkward.

‘If you continue packing up now, you’ll look like you’re running away.’

So instead of going back, I decided to sneak a peek at her paintings.

It wasn’t spying.

Yes.

This was simply to satisfy my curiosity.

*

A long time had passed, and…

‘That’s great.’

I burst into admiration at her painting.

‘Are you trying to reinterpret Monet’s paintings in an Afremov style?’

It was a good choice.

Leonid Afremov.

As a Belarusian-born painter, he was an artist who used extreme levels of light expression as a weapon.

‘Monet handles light well, and Afremov was also good with handling light, though the genre is a bit different.’

Afremov painted only with a painting knife.

His paintings were painted as if they had been applied with oil paints from a knife, and his paintings had one characteristic.

The more you analyze it from a distance, the better it looks.

‘Instead of sacrificing the details, he took the overall feeling of the painting to the extreme.’

The result was a splendor like fireworks exploding.

‘Seo Ji-won. I thought you were only good at drawing, but you’re smarter than I thought.’

Pioneering is good.

It was perhaps the best way to think about it at the undergraduate level.

However, there was one precondition that was needed to keep the Afremov style consistent.

Ability.

Absolute skill.

You would need to be a master at dealing with light, so will Seo Ji-won be able to do it?

Afremov also said that it had taken him nearly 10 years to perfect his technique.

Of course, Seo Ji-won was born with talent, so she probably doesn’t know what would happen if she wasn’t gifted.

It’s been a long time since I began watching her paint while thinking.

Suddenly, I became dazed.

‘······ It’s not the time for me to worry about others.’

That’s because what she was drawing required much more talent than what I had.

But is it okay for me to go back first?

An unreasonably competitive spirit ignited within me.

If you don’t have enough talent, then you’ll have to work harder until you do have enough.

‘Come to think of it, there are no classes tomorrow morning.’

The absence of morning classes at art schools meant only one thing.

It was time for an all-nighter working session.

Scrunch.

I put my bag back down and got out of my seat. From here, it was a half-hour round trip to the nearest shop.

‘I’m going to get some new tape.’

When I come back, I’m going to compete with her to see who will be tired and collapse first.

I’m not sure about anything else, but I was confident in my tenacity.

I’ve made a living out of it before.

Just like that, when I came back to the studio after a short outing, I saw quite the unexpected scene.

‘What?’

Seo Ji-won came to my seat and was thoroughly examining my work.

Our eyes met.

“······.”

“······.”

Another brief confrontation ensued.

Again, I didn’t intend to speak first.

A little later, she sighed and said, “What are you doing?”

That was disappointing to hear.

‘That’s what I was going to say.’

*

Seo Ji-won pointed her finger at my work and asked once again.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well…”

I agonized over what to say for a moment.

Can I reveal the identity of my secret weapon as it is?

After a short thought, I decided to just tell the truth.

“Tape art.”

“What art?”

She tilted her head as if she was confused by what I had said.

“Tape art. It’s literally just making art with pieces of tape.”

As long as we’re using the same studio, it was obvious that she could’ve figured out as much as she wanted to if she was truly determined to do so.

Most importantly, I didn’t think Seo Ji-won, who has a lot of pride, would copy my ideas.

“Hmm…”

She took a step away, examined my work, and spoke again.

“I think it’s a bit boring. Wouldn’t it be better to just make an oil painting instead?”

It was an out-of-the-box comment. However, it was within an acceptable category of exchanging options between members of the same team.

“That’s because I’m not good at it. However, if it’s done well, it’s definitely worth seeing.” I crossed my arms and said in a generous voice.

“You don’t know how to do it properly, but you still chose it as your material for the assignment? Why?”

“You didn’t choose Afremov from the start because you knew you could draw it well, did you?”

She opened her eyes wide as if what I said was absurd.

“How do you know Afremov?”

“It’s possible that everyone knows him.”

“No, but how did you know that I was trying to copy Afremov?”

“The orthodoxy of academia is that if you paint using a knife, it’s always going to be something like Afremov’s style.”

“Did you notice just by looking at it?”

Her eyes widened even more.

Afremov was a painter known to only those who know him currently or later in the future.

I replied nonchalantly.

“Anything can happen in life.”

“····· No. Isn’t it strange for an undergraduate to know Afremov?…. Is it not?”

“You’re an undergraduate, too.”

“That’s…. I…. That’s true.”

While she was talking, Seo Ji-won tilted her head as if something was wrong.

Then she went back to her seat and said, “·····Ugh… I don’t know. Talking to you makes me feel strange.”

She soon began to finish up her painting.

I looked at her with a puzzled expression.

‘What was it?’

Did you want to pick a fight?

However, it felt somewhat different from a quarrel.

‘Would you call it a failed conversation?’

I wondered if there was something more that she wanted to say to me.

After thinking for a while, I came to a conclusion.

‘It’s none of my business.’

I’ll finish my own painting.

Then, I’ll defeat Seo Ji-won.

This was enough.

As I was about to sit down again, I glanced back at her just in case.

I shook my head.

‘…How did you do that?’

The Afremov-styled Monet painting, seen over her shoulder, looked much better than I thought.

It’s really hard to believe that it’s only been painted in just a few minutes.

*

From that day on, a silent competition began.

Every day at the end of the day, I hurried to the studio, saving time to eat.

There were times when I arrived at the studio first, and times when she arrived first.

‘You’re surprisingly sincere. I came almost immediately after I finished school.’

Han Yewon is a small school, and due to the nature of a small school, the schedule for first years was always the same. It was even more so as she and I were in the same department—visual design.

So, even if we didn’t intend to, we will naturally have to share schedules.

We spent time in the same place every day. However, there was not a single word of conversation exchanged in the process.

The conversation that we had on the first day was all.

Instead, we sometimes looked at each other’s paintings from time to time.

‘You failed again.’

Seo Ji-won turned over a painting that seemed almost finished.

‘Is it because of its poor quality?’

It wasn’t.

At least, in my view, it simply wasn’t to the tastes of the person who was trying to replicate Afremov’s style, but to a person who didn’t know it well, it looked fine.

‘Why did you turn it around?’

Oil painting is not easy.

It was as great as the time it took to dry, the money it took to work on, and the tape art.

But I can’t believe you gave up on that drawing without any regrets.

Is that all?

She was drawing on several canvases at the same time, as if she didn’t want to waste time waiting for the paint to dry up.

Her appearance was a good stimulus to me, too.

‘If you do anything wrong, you’ll be pushed back.’

I turned my head and looked at my tape art.

It definitely felt okay when I got home after work yesterday, but looking at it now, it was definitely sloppy. Still, my skills have improved quite a bit thanks to all the hard work in the past few days, but is there another reason?

Thinking about it for a while, I soon realized.

‘It was because of Seo Ji-won.’

My ideal level of perfection went up because of her.

From the beginning, I had started working with the intention of defeating Seo Ji-won. However, as the level of her paintings went up, my skills also went up in proportion.

It was an unintended effect.

‘If I had worked alone, I would have finished it yesterday.’

While I was thinking about various things, Seo Ji-won was teasing the brush.

‘I can’t lose.’

After pouring out the tapes I had bought, I immediately started working.

In the midst of such a quiet war, a week passed in an instant.

The presentation of the first work has begun.

*

Although the presentations have begun, it wasn’t our turn this week.

“Our group chose Van Gogh’s self-portrait as the painting for reinterpretation.”

They went first.

Our turn is still another week away. Therefore, I only focused on the presentation half-heartedly.

‘By the way, Kyu-tae was right.’

I didn’t expect you to bring Van Gogh first.

Four students came forward with their own paintings and hung them on the desk in front of the classroom.

I was lost in a sense of absurdity.

‘Huh?’

Something was off.

Though I wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong yet, the four students presented their works with a triumphant look on their faces.

“I’ve put a vintage sensibility into Van Gogh’s work.”

“I’m a media student, and I’ve re-implemented it into 3D graphics using what I’ve learned in my major.”

“I reconstructed the original with watercolors.”

“I took a picture of it with a camera and added some editing.”

Each of them seemed to have worked hard in their own way.

From an idea alone, it may have looked quite plausible.

‘Yeah, that’s plausible.’

That’s right.

It was only plausible.

The actual level of the work, frankly speaking, was sloppy.

‘What’s wrong with you? Did you leave the assignment until the last hour to do it?’

I don’t think that’s what they did, was it?

No, it had definitely been crammed for the last hour.

After many years of experience with teaching, I could tell just by looking at the dryness of the watercolor.

However, it didn’t feel strange.

Considering the fact that this class was just a freshman assignment, this level of devotion might’ve actually been normal.

Seo Ji-won and I just worked too hard.

In fact, other students seemed nervous at the level of those works.

“It’s a novelty.”

“Ugh….I was also going to take a picture of it with a camera….”

“They used Van Gogh too?”

No one was seen laughing. Rather, they all looked surprised.

It was obvious.

It was right that only my eyes carried high expectations.

“Hey. They worked really hard, right?”

Kyu-tae, who was sitting next to me, asked me as if he was asking for consent.

“Yeah.”

I nodded my head soullessly.

With the class’ atmosphere like that, Professor Kang Noah shouted in a loud voice.

“As I said before, we’ll be holding these presentations in a critical format.”

< Critic >

It was a class where students became critics and exchanged words with the presenter on the subject of their work.

It’s a great way to naturally realize the strengths and weaknesses of a work in the process.

It was perfect for this class.

“We’ll give attitude scores for those who make appropriate criticisms, so we look forward to your active participation.”

Everything was prepared and ready. However, the class did not proceed as Professor Kang Noah intended.

“Did you paint Van Gogh with computer graphics?”

“Yes, a friend from another school majoring in animation helped me.”

“Wow, that’s cool.”

“Thank you.”

“······.”

“You must have used a good camera.”

“It’s been my hobby since I was in high school.”

“Can you give me some of the pictures later?”

“Of course. If you come to the photography club, I will…”

There were only a few conversations that were embarrassing to even call it criticism.

It was an unbelievable skit for a Han Yewon class, but there was nothing that I could do about it. This is because most of the students here were only crazy about the entrance exams from a month or two ago.

‘I’ve only drawn practical works, but I’ve never really thought about it.’

Although Han Yewon students at this time were excellent college students, they were still like babies who grew up only in body. Furthermore, it was only the beginning of the semester.

There was a widespread atmosphere of refraining from criticizing in consideration of human relationships. If you criticize someone clumsily, you’ll receive counterattacks when your turn to be criticized comes around.

That said, it’s going to be hard to proceed with the class.

‘I feel sorry for the professor.’

Did Professor Kang Noah not like their attitude?

She said in a cold voice, “This is not good. This is not critique. You can’t say it’s criticism just by praising other people’s work. From now on, if you can’t participate properly, I’ll deduct points from both the questioner and the respondent.”

Professor Kang Noah brought out Kang Kyung-soo.

She seemed to be very disappointed by the students’ attitude in class.

However, this has caused another adverse effect.

No one is willing to participate in the critique session.

Professor Kang Noah sighed and said, “Maybe I was expecting too much. This time, I’ll choose someone who will criticize one of the artworks. Let’s see…”

She turned her head for a moment, then pointed her finger at someone.

“The student in a white T-shirt.”

“······.”

“Choose a piece and review it.”

It was me.