Episode 39

"Do as you see fit."

"......Pardon?"

"Whether you secretly put the items back and pretend that nothing happened, or reveal the truth and offer a sincere apology to each and every person. I'm saying that you should choose for yourself."

As if she hadn't grasped the situation, Seo Hee-jin blinked.

"Are you forgiving me?"

"Forgiving you? There's no way."

As I had said many times, I didn't have the right to forgive Seo Hee-jin on behalf of others. I also didn't have any intention of doing so.

"I don't have the right to judge you, and I also don't have the right to pardon you. I'm just a third party who interfered arbitrarily and just happened to find out who the culprit was. Wouldn't it be a bit funny if I was the one who decided your fate?"

Therefore, I was leaving the decision to Seo Hee-jin herself.

"You're thinking that you're being tested on your conscience."

"My conscience, you say......"

"In light of your own sense of justice and morality. Whether it's right to just return the stolen items and go on with your life as if nothing had happened. Whether that's okay. And if it's not okay, what and how you should do to take responsibility for the harm that you caused."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Anyway, aren't we all people who have gathered here to become lawyers?"

They must have had a dream.

They must have had a goal.

That was why they had struggled so desperately to not fail.

It was a story that told her to look back at how just her actions were in light of that dream, that ideal, and to walk down a path that she wouldn't be ashamed of.

It was okay if Seo Hee-jin publicly admitted her crime.

That was also the direction that my personal conscience and sense of justice desired, and it would give Seo Hee-jin, who was weak-spirited, an opportunity to reflect on her actions and move forward.

On the other hand, if she closed her eyes and pretended not to know anything, there was nothing I could do about it.

Because that wasn't a result that I had chosen or decided.

It was, in the end, a conclusion that Seo Hee-jin had opened up herself.

Whether it was in accordance with justice and fairness or not was a problem that Seo Hee-jin had to ponder over and take responsibility for.

'Now, how are you going to act?'

I couldn't know the weight of the dreams that others carried.

Therefore, show me.

Your resolve.

After a long silence, Seo Hee-jin, as if she had made up her mind, quietly opened her mouth.

"I......"

* * *

"So, that's how it turned out."

Han Seol pointed at her smartphone with a subtle expression. What was displayed on the screen was a group chat that all of the law school classmates were in.

[There's something that I'd like to tell you all.]

Seo Hee-jin's message of apology, which started with those words, was floating there.

Of course, it wasn't like she was thinking of just ending it with a few lines of text.

She had written that she would reveal in detail what she had done, and that she would visit each and every person directly, return their items, and apologize.

'Well, I thought that it would turn out like this.'

Seo Hee-jin wasn't a very strong-willed person.

From the start, the fact that she had committed theft was a result of her being tormented by compulsions and anxiety, and she wasn't shameless enough to withstand the pangs of conscience.

In the original story, she had ended up returning the items after being caught in Shin Seo-joon's fake CCTV plan.

It was easy to guess that she wouldn't betray her own conscience.

'And it was also what I wanted to believe.'

I was an outsider to this world.

As a reader, 'In the Law School' was a webtoon that I loved more than anything else.

This Korea University Law School was a stage that I had dreamed of and yearned for, and I had read each chapter, envying and admiring all of the students who appeared in it.

That was why I wanted to give them a chance.

I wanted to believe that they could turn back.

They were still just rookies who hadn't properly stepped into society, so they could make mistakes and be swayed by temptation.

Even so, I was hoping somewhere in my heart that they would be able to face their own mistakes honestly and reflect on themselves.

"How are the kids reacting?"

"A few people turned their backs on her, saying how could she do that...... but it seems like the general atmosphere is to forgive her. It seems like she was originally a nice person who helped her classmates a lot."

There were even people who said that they were sorry for not noticing that she was so mentally cornered, and that they would help her with studying.

It seemed that Seo Hee-jin's reputation wasn't that bad in the first place.

But no matter what, that was a sight that you could never see if she had been forcibly reported.

'Well, it's not like she can get away without taking any responsibility.'

It wasn't like there wasn't anyone who would make an issue of it.

In any case, she had laid her hands on other people's belongings, and she had caused a commotion, so there was a possibility that she would receive some kind of disciplinary action according to the school regulations.

'Since it turned out like this, it'll be difficult to negotiate with the president of the academic society.'

Compared to the original story, I had ended up driving Seo Hee-jin into an even more unfavorable conclusion, instead of helping her.

My original plan of making her indebted to me and softening the sharp attitude of the president of the Property Law Academic Society had gone down the drain.

But I wasn't that disappointed.

As I had said myself, the materials were something that were good to have, but it was okay if I didn't have them.

The presence or absence of materials didn't change the essence of one's skills.

If I couldn't obtain the model answers, then I just had to put in more effort and discuss it to create a solution myself.

'Ah, come to think of it, I forgot to bring them.'

I had hidden the materials related to the Civil Law III exam questions deep inside my locker while putting out the bait for Seo Hee-jin, but I had forgotten to retrieve them.

I was planning to finish the analysis of the past questions tonight, but it couldn't be helped. I turned my steps toward the reading room.

"Hey, you there."

And then, I encountered an unexpected person in front of it.

"......The president of the Property Law Academic Society?"

The recluse who never left the self-study room, the president of the Property Law Academic Society, Seo Su-jin, was standing in front of me.

She scratched her messy hair and replied.

"Don't call me that. The Property Law Academic Society is gone."

"Ah, yes."

I took a step back from Seo Su-jin.

Why on earth had she come to me at this timing?

Could it be that she was going to point fingers at me, saying that I was responsible for her sister being disciplined?

As I glared at her warily, Seo Su-jin, who was averting her gaze, reluctantly opened her mouth.

"Th, thank you."

"Pardon?"

"You stopped Hee-jin. I knew that she was struggling after entering law school...... but I didn't know that she was being pressured to the point that she would do something like that."

Maybe it was because her sister was in such a state. Seo Su-jin mumbled bitterly.

"I'm sorry about last time. I was too unstable and ended up acting harshly. After calming down, I realized that there was no need for me to react like that."

Seo Su-jin took out a pill container from her pocket and poured the pills into her mouth.

I had seen a lot of people taking pills that looked exactly the same at the hospital when I was preparing for the bar exam, so I knew immediately that it was an anti-anxiety medication.

'She was even going to a psychiatrist.'

"And...... you said that."

"Said what?"

"That even those who have failed have worked hard. That it's just that there were more outstanding people."

Seo Su-jin held her forehead with a trembling hand.

"No one had ever said that to me. Everyone was pointing fingers at me, saying how could someone like you fail the exam, and that it was because I was lazy and negligent."

But there was no way that she had actually been lazy.

In the first place, taking on the position of the head of the law society as a law school student was by no means an easy task.

She had probably studied and researched more than others, not less.

Rather, cases like Seo Su-jin's often resulted when they were burdened by too much studying, or when they lost their direction and wandered.

You could say that they were stubborn, but it was an accusation that was unfair to call them lazy.

"What should I say...... it was a little, comforting."

Saying that, Seo Su-jin handed me something that looked like a document.

"Take it."

"What's this......?"

"You're a first-year, right? You'll still be taught by Professor Jeon Gyu-wan for Civil Law III, right? As you can see, I'm in this state, so I don't have anything, but...... still, as a former president of the Property Law Academic Society, I can at least do this much."

The bundle of paper that Seo Su-jin had handed me was the model answers to Jeon Gyu-wan's past exam questions that I had been desperately searching for.

While I was staring at her in a daze, she turned around, waved her hand, and left as if she was running away.

"What the heck was that?"

I had given up on the model answers, but suddenly a gourd had rolled right into my lap.

I followed the direction where Seo Su-jin had disappeared with my eyes, then I unfolded the bundle of model answers.

"They're mostly similar to what we created."

When I roughly scanned through it, the framework was similar, but there were a few parts where they had cited different precedents or introduced a theory that I had never heard of before.

Those were the kinds of points that you could never grasp without looking at the model answers.

Although I was still bewildered, the fact that I had gained a great benefit was clear.

I was smiling with satisfaction as I flipped through the pages when I suddenly realized that the bundle of paper was too thick for just the model answers.

"Is there something more?"

When I flipped through it more quickly, the model answers ended, and documents that had a completely different format appeared.

[Property Law Research: Analysis of Frequently Asked Logic from the Bar Exam]

[Jeon Gyu-wan]

When I looked at it, it was a compilation of creative problems and their solutions that Professor Jeon Gyu-wan had created by processing the logic of past bar exam questions.

The problems from the bar exam era were quite different from the current ones.

The current bar exam often split the text into small pieces and asked about one issue per question.

It was a method that focused on how well you knew and could explain the issues that could be set, rather than the ability to find the issues.

On the other hand, in the bar exam era, they often set broad and comprehensive questions such as, 'Discuss the legal relationship of Gap, Eul, Byung, and Jeong.'

It was a method that asked how many legal concepts you could extract from the given text and how well you could solve the complex relationships between them.

It was a type that required a deeper understanding and analytical ability.

As such, it was a suitable task to test the limits of one's skills, but it was a set of materials that felt somewhat excessive for preparing for an internal exam.

"......But it's nice to see them again after a long time."

In fact, I was more familiar with this than with the current bar exam and its corresponding problems.

My direction of thinking, habits, and the tempo at which I read text were all aligned with this.

I was even at the point where I had to train myself to hold back from writing answers that delved too deeply.

Therefore, I decided to solve these problems together before the exam.

It would be a bit too much to recommend it to the others, but if it was just me solving them, then it was fine.

If I had time left, it wouldn't be a bad thing to use it as a test of my skills.

Happy with the unexpected gain and the problems that had a familiar scent, I went back to my studio apartment while humming.

It had been a very satisfying day.

* * *

"It was a very dissatisfying day."

While holed up in his study, Choi Sung-cheol mumbled like that.

In fact, it wasn't just today that had been dissatisfying. Every single day had been dissatisfying lately. The reason was, of course, fixed.

Choi Sung-cheol glared at the student roster that he was holding in his hand.

His gaze was fixed on a single name.

"Park Yoo-seung......"

Choi Sung-cheol groaned.

It was difficult to even count how many times that Korea University certified delinquent had screwed him over.

It was a tenacious bad relationship that had started since his undergraduate days, and now, not only was he showing off with his grades and activities in the Legal Clinic, he had even made him lose his small bet with Jang Yong-hwan.

"How the heck did this happen?"

He acknowledged that he had talent, but he had believed that he had neglected his studies.

There was no way that someone who had lived his whole life being a layabout could get rid of that dirt so quickly.

But Park Yoo-seung had once again easily overcome the hurdle of Jang Yong-hwan's problems, which he could never overcome without effort.

Choi Sung-cheol ground his teeth.

He wasn't very familiar with failure or variables that deviated from his predictions.

The career that Choi Sung-cheol had built in the financial world over ten years was filled only with successes, and he had always achieved anything that he wanted.

But after he became a law school professor, things had been a mess.

Of course, he had quickly risen through the ranks to become the vice dean, but Choi Sung-cheol had ended up meeting opponents who were not easy to deal with.

Kang Chang-soo, the current dean. That stubborn old man.

And Jang Yong-hwan.

A mysterious man whose true intentions he couldn't figure out.

On top of that, even the dean's inept nephew was now messing up Choi Sung-cheol's perfect plans.

"......No, I can't just let this be."

He could leave the other two alone, but he couldn't tolerate being pushed around by a young law school student.

He had to do something.

He had to create a stage where Park Yoo-seung's true colors would be revealed, where his insignificant nature would be exposed.

"There's a way to do that...... Yes, that's it!"

Choi Sung-cheol's gaze, which had been wandering aimlessly, landed on a bundle of paper that was rolling around on his desk.

They were the midterm exam questions for Commercial Law that he had created for the second-year students, but had ultimately discarded.

There was a simple reason why he had discarded them.

"They're too difficult."

These problems had been created by refining the logic of the issues from the bar exam era.

The academic depth and complexity of thought that the bar exam required didn't match the current trends of the bar exam at all.

They might be effective at differentiating the top students, but they weren't very suitable for training a lot of students.

As a vice dean who had to consider the bar exam pass rate as well as the output of the top students, it was a choice that he was reluctant to make.

"......But this isn't the time to be picky."

Park Yoo-seung's skills had only been established recently. It was safe to say that.

No matter how hard he had tried, he could only have built up his knowledge through cramming with the bar exam questions as a base in that short amount of time.

"With such a superficial method like that, can he really respond to these problems?"

If they were problems that were filled with the essence of the bar exam, then he would surely struggle.

It wouldn't be a bad thing to toughen up this golden group of first-year students.

As he thought more about it, it was a very good idea.

Choi Sung-cheol, with a face that was grinning at the idea he had come up with, began to rummage through his bookshelves.

The materials in his study weren't limited to the problems that Choi Sung-cheol had created himself.

He often received various publications that other professors had created by researching the bar exam problems, for reference.

Since the professors' writing activities were also reflected in the law school's accreditation evaluation, it was only natural for him, as the vice dean, to be aware of the trends.

"I found it."

Before long, Choi Sung-cheol pulled out a bundle of paper, held it in his hand, put it on his desk, and opened his laptop.

And then, he began to write an email to the first-year professors.

-This is the vice dean. Regarding the creation of the problems for this midterm exam......

Choi Sung-cheol glanced at the bundle of paper that he had just put down.

[Property Law Research: Analysis of Frequently Asked Logic from the Bar Exam]

[Jeon Gyu-wan]

One of the proud weapons that he had found, which would surely bring Park Yoo-seung to his knees, was showing off its form.