Chapter 37. The Rabbit Appears
“So, did you submit your entry to the architecture competition all right?”
“Yes. I submitted it, at least. But who knows.”
“What do you mean, who knows? If you don’t win the Grand Prize, you’re screwed.”
“…….”
Geonshin was on his way somewhere after being summoned by Team Leader Mo.
Team Leader Mo had become busy delivering the detailed construction drawings for the Gwangseong University project, but he had to come out today of all days.
The connecting bridge at KAIST was finally nearing completion.
After riding in Team Leader Mo’s car for a short while, a familiar landscape began appearing before Geonshin’s eyes.
Without realizing it, he smiled.
‘I never thought I’d come back here like this.’
“I was going to come alone, but I figured you ought to see the plan that came out of your own head actually built. Besides, the Center Director even invited you.”
“There’s no way I could skip it. I really wanted to see it too.”
Seeing Geonshin’s anticipation, Team Leader Mo smiled as well.
A part-time worker who had once been clumsy even at making a single model had suddenly awakened one day and begun performing brilliantly. And now, a project based on an idea he had personally come up with was approaching completion.
It was something mysterious that even Team Leader Mo had never experienced since entering architecture.
Though it might not offer him much comfort, everything happening now was unfamiliar to Geonshin as well.
The timing of his regression had been the day before the design pool. He had happened to enter an understaffed dumping-ground division, and circumstances had even allowed a mere part-timer like him to offer ideas.
It had been one triumph after another, almost as though some enormous will were supporting him.
Then again, returning to the past in the first place already made no sense….
‘Time really flies. It feels like only yesterday that I was desperately trying to get approval here while going on about Deleuze, and it’s already finished.’
Of course, there were reasons construction had proceeded at such an incredible speed.
First, the Director of the Intelligent Robot Research Center had pressured the Facilities Manager, insisting that the project absolutely had to be finished within two months.
The reason, naturally, was the President’s scheduled visit.
The President was due to visit two months later to see that so-called artificial-intelligence robot, HUBO, so everything had to be completed by then without exception.
When a client insisted that strongly, there was nothing their side could do about it.
Team Leader Mo stayed up through the night to prepare the detailed construction drawings so that the work would not be delayed. The Facilities Manager received them, selected a construction company, and hurriedly began construction.
During the process, Team Leader Mo also came and went periodically to handle site supervision.
But the construction proved more difficult than expected.
The exterior form of the connecting bridge was nothing especially unusual, so there was little there to cause problems.
The interior, however, was another matter.
Then again, it could not have been easy for an ordinary contractor to carry out such intricate mirror work.
When BIG first experimented with designs like this, the necessary technology had already existed, making the process relatively straightforward.
But this was 2002.
Without Team Leader Mo’s meticulous process of translating the concept into construction drawings, finishing the work within the deadline probably would have been impossible.
In the end, Assistant Manager Soomin even had to personally contact a pixel artist for the mirror work on the walls.
Only as construction reached its final stage did they barely manage to meet the deadline.
“You’ve arrived.”
Despite being busy, the Center Director personally came to greet them.
The Facilities Manager was probably overwhelmed with the remaining work and the payments that had to be made to contractors.
Then again, contracts with public institutions had always been popular among workers for reasons like this.
Even if the daily pay was somewhat lower than at private companies, public institutions were at least reliable about actually paying wages.
The Facilities Manager, who had to organize paperwork for everything from every receipt used during construction to the personal information of the workers and submit every last document without omission, was probably typing until his fingers caught fire.
Seeing Geonshin for the first time in a while, the Center Director asked with a serious expression,
“So. Did you read The Logic of Sense that I gave you?”
“Yes. Thanks to you, Director, I learned about some new theories. I was especially impressed by Deleuze’s discussion of Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. He described the language in Carroll’s works as a feast of brilliant paradoxes. I couldn’t claim to understand all of those deeply layered structures, but I also wonder whether Carroll’s background as a mathematician led him to plant those ideas into his stories almost like codes when working with language. Great books really do seem to bring new realizations every time.”
“Hahaha! Exactly. A feast of brilliant paradoxes. That’s why I sometimes go back and reread Alice myself. I’m glad I gave you that book.”
“Yes. I think I’ll need to read the book you gave me several more times too. Fully understanding Deleuze is difficult.”
The Center Director looked extremely pleased with Geonshin’s answer and guided them toward the bridge.
Meanwhile, Team Leader Mo, startled by what Geonshin had said, swallowed hard and muttered inwardly.
‘No, hold on. This guy’s been working late and even pulling all-nighters because of the Gwangseong University project. When the hell did he have time to read a book?’
Once the Center Director walked ahead of them, Team Leader Mo quietly moved closer to Geonshin and asked,
“How did you even have time to read it?”
“I didn’t. Of course I couldn’t read it.”
“What?”
“I figured he might ask me about it today, so I prepared an answer in advance.”
Team Leader Mo stared at him in disbelief.
‘This kid is really something.’
But regardless of what Team Leader Mo thought, Geonshin grew increasingly excited as he climbed the stairs.
His first project after regressing.
The result was now a real structure, and he was walking toward it.
Before his regression, Na Geonshin had only built architecture that amounted to little more than models, with hardly anything that could even be called design. He had never personally dealt with a public institution and carried a project all the way through construction.
Most of what he had produced throughout his life had been so lousy that he would have felt embarrassed even talking about it elsewhere.
Who could have imagined that he would finally resolve that lingering regret this way?
The Center Director walking ahead with light steps already wore an expression that practically screamed that he wanted to boast about it to everyone.
He was probably satisfied that he had revived the nearly derailed Alice Project.
“It’s nearly complete now, so I’ve been crossing this bridge constantly. Every time I walk across it, it puts me in a good mood. Hahaha.”
Hearing that made Geonshin feel good too.
Wasn’t this precisely the power architecture possessed?
Around the middle of the distant corridor, sunlight streamed inside.
It seemed to shimmer as it reflected off the mirrors inside the bridge.
“Here we are.”
Soon, Geonshin stood before the enormous 24.4-meter passageway.
He drew in a breath and stared blankly ahead.
The scene before him was somehow different from the bridge he had imagined in his head and modeled in 3ds Max.
A bridge revealed in the real three-dimensional world produced an entirely different kind of emotion from a computer-rendered image.
‘Ah….’
It felt as though his twenty years of living as a CAD monkey were finally being repaid.
An image he had conceived himself and drawn with his own hands had put on a garment of cement and leaned against a solid steel frame, waiting for Geonshin’s first step.
Team Leader Mo lightly tapped him on the shoulder.
“What are you doing? Your baby’s waiting for you.”
Geonshin could not help laughing.
“Haha. You’re right. So this is what it feels like.”
Twenty-three-year-old junior-college student Na Geonshin.
For the first time across both of his lives, he stepped into the completed result of a project he had personally designed.
Just as intended, the outside scenery remained visible on his right.
Warm sunlight streamed through the rows of glass curtain walls and brightly illuminated the floor.
And with each step forward, light began leaking from the wall on his left.
It was because the light reflected off the floor was striking the mirrors and glittering.
The farther Geonshin walked, the more he felt himself drifting away from reality.
The fragmented mirrors made the wall appear almost perforated, capturing the outdoor scenery coming in from the opposite side.
Geonshin himself was reflected in those mirrors.
It looked as though he were standing outside.
The mirror design created by the pixel artist beautifully expressed a geometric fracture that seemed to lead into another dimension.
‘I don’t know where she found someone this skilled. I should thank Assistant Manager Soomin.’
The mirrors gradually breaking down into pixels made Geonshin’s heart ache strangely.
The bizarre scene seemed to tickle something inside his chest.
Then he saw a shadow rushing past beside him.
A rabbit running somewhere while looking at a pocket watch.
It was as though the rabbit from the fairy tale were beckoning him onward.
The rabbit before him seemed to gesture that countless projects were waiting for Geonshin beyond that point.
Geonshin felt his nose sting.
It was an emotion difficult to describe in words.
‘Ah. A space that inspires the imagination…. So this is what it feels like.’
Having witnessed the limitless possibilities architecture could offer, Geonshin made a vow.
He would create spaces that had a positive effect on people.
No matter the circumstances, he would never allow money to sway him into selling his soul.
At that moment, a status window appeared before his eyes.
====================================
[Pritzker Prize-Winning Project.]
Goal: 100 Lv (8/100 Lv)
Upon completing 10 Lv, the Scale Bar ability will be awarded.
Upon securing the project: 2 Lv — Completed
Upon completion: 2 Lv — Completed
Mission 1. Complete the connecting bridge at KAIST.
Reward: Creativity 0 SP (15/100 SP), Skill 0 SP (15/100 SP) — Awarded
Attachment: 10 coupons for use of a 3-terabyte folder.
====================================
‘It finally says completed!’
The Gwangseong University project still had more than a year remaining before completion, but the connecting bridge, being a relatively small project, had already received its Completion Complete message.
Of course, an endless number of projects would still appear before Geonshin.
But if he completed them one by one, before long he might reach the Pritzker Prize, the mission of his dreams.
And Geonshin would probably remember today forever as a day he could never forget.
‘All right. Now all that’s left is the announcement of the architecture competition results. I need to get over that mountain first.’
The department office at Gyehwa Junior College.
The TA could not sit still in front of the computer.
Today was the day the judging results for the Korea Architecture Competition would be announced.
Normally, he would not even have glanced at the announcement.
But at this very moment, architecture students all across the country were probably sitting in front of their computers.
And there was only one reason he too was pacing nervously.
He was waiting to see whether Geonshin had won an award.
In fact, it was only after he and Geonshin submitted the work that the TA learned its subject was a memorial for the Sampoong Department Store disaster.
He had been so captivated by the remarkable drawings and model that he had not even understood what the work was about.
But the instant he grasped its message, a thought flashed through his mind.
‘Winning something is probably going to be difficult…’
Of all things, Geonshin had taken an issue this sensitive and made it the central theme of his entry in the Korea Architecture Competition.
There was no way the judges would view that favorably.
Of course, even from the TA’s perspective, the Sampoong Department Store collapse had been a tragic disaster, and everything that followed had been infuriating as well.
But when had the world ever moved only in the right direction?
Even if someone put that issue into such a high-quality work, the structural realities of the architecture industry, where you could not afford to step on the toes of giant architecture firms, would probably hold it back from winning.
If he had simply proposed an ordinary renovation or slapped Seoul Station onto it like everyone else did, the quality Geonshin had shown probably would have been enough to win something.
But that was beside the point.
Even an Honorable Mention would mean Geonshin had rewritten the history of their school.
A Grand Prize was far too much to even dream about.
“The Grand Prize… obviously isn’t happening. But maybe he could at least get an Honorable Mention?”
A little while later, the competition website refreshed, and a new line appeared on the notice board.
[Announcement of the Winners of the 2002 Korea Architecture Competition.]
The TA felt as though his heart dropped into his stomach.
If he was this nervous, he could only imagine how Geonshin must feel.
‘We said we’d check it together. He should be on his way right now….’
His pounding heart made it impossible to remain still.
His trembling hand fidgeted with the mouse button.
And finally,
‘Ah, screw it! I can’t take it anymore! Sorry, Na Geonshin.’
He opened the announcement.
Under suffocating tension, he began with the Honorable Mentions and checked them one by one as he scrolled upward.
As expected, the winners were filled entirely with universities in Seoul and famous regional universities.
The TA carefully checked every line: university name, project title, and student name.
Even if it were only an Honorable Mention, he imagined how wonderful it would be if, among all those schools, he found the words:
“Gyehwa Junior College, Second Year, Na Geonshin!”
But…
‘Damn it. He’s not in the Honorable Mentions. That was the award he had the best chance of getting…’
Still, thinking there might somehow be a chance, he slowly scrolled upward one level at a time.
He saw the Excellence Awards.
Then the Special Selections.
Five works appeared, but Geonshin was not among them.
He scrolled higher and checked the Top Excellence Awards.
Neither of the two works belonged to Geonshin.
‘Ha…. So it really wasn’t possible. Right, of course it wasn’t. He threw the thing together in a few days and submitted it. It would be stranger if he suddenly won…. And on top of that, his subject was Sampoong Department Store.’
Deflated, the TA carelessly scrolled upward one more time.
For a moment there was only blank space.
Then black lettering began sliding down into view again.
Grand Prize Winner, above the Top Excellence Award.
‘Ha….’
[Entry No. 143, — Hankuk University, Fourth Year, Joo Hyojin]
Once again, Geonshin was nowhere to be found.
‘Seriously…. Those Hankuk University bastards are taking everything. If they got the Top Excellence Award and Excellence Award too, that means three of their teams won.’
The TA could no longer bring himself to scroll the wheel any farther.
He leaned back against his chair.
But the instant his back touched the chair, a voice called out to him.
“TA hyung, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”
The TA turned around.
Before he knew it, Geonshin was standing there.
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