The Start of the Semester for the Startup Crew
“It’s okay to use casual speech at school, right?”
“Yeah. We’re not at the company.”
“Wow. Summer break was just over two months, but I was busier than I was during the semester.”
“It’ll only get busier now. We’re running a business during the semester, after all.”
We had done our best to align our schedules as much as possible.
And the shared schedule was brutally packed.
From here on out, the company was only going to get busier, so our plan was to clear as many credits as we could in advance.
“Wow. This is really going to be hell.”
“Still, everyone managed to register for the easier classes.”
“Thank goodness there are so many professors who don’t obsess over attendance.”
We were chatting quietly among ourselves when, all of a sudden, people we’d never seen before approached us.
They looked very young.
“Excuse me, are you seniors from TA Medical?”
“Huh? Yes.”
“Do you happen to be recruiting interns?”
They were underclassmen interested in our company.
This was the first time anyone had come straight up and openly shown interest in us like that.
“We’re not recruiting yet, but we probably will this coming break. Are you interested?”
“Yes. Please post it where the school hiring notices go up.”
“Sure, we will.”
“Thank you~”
Watching the underclassmen toss out that random little exchange and then leave so casually, all of us found it strange.
“They’re pretty bold. They must be really confident.”
“Maybe our company looks decent?”
“Probably because we were on TV recently.”
“You remember how much recruiting content we made, right? I guess it’s finally paying off.”
“Ah, right. We should update that later too.”
Everyone had gotten just a little full of themselves, and the way they talked excitedly to each other was almost painfully honest.
Still, the mood was lively enough that the professor only had to step into the classroom and begin lecturing for it to quiet down.
“I heard the students who were on TV enrolled in this class. Where are they sitting?”
But I hadn’t expected the professor to recognize us so abruptly.
“Oh. So once you said the kids from TV, you knew immediately who we were? That’s TA Medical, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Which one of you is CEO Kim Siwon?”
“That’s me, Professor.”
“Oh, right. You’re the student who’s been top of the class your whole life. Nice to meet you.”
At the professor’s explanation, everyone in the lecture hall turned to look at me.
The gaze was more direct than I’d expected, and it was a little embarrassing.
“All the students who raised their hands earlier are geniuses. If you want an A+, you’ll all have to work very hard~”
That little add-on made the mood in the classroom turn strange.
People had come because this was supposed to be an easy class, but that didn’t mean they wanted to enroll in a class where they might lose their grades.
“Hmm. Am I going to scare away too many people with this? Just in case, I won’t take attendance today and we’ll go straight into orientation~”
The professor brushed it off and started the OT, but the students left behind were in no state to be calm at all.
Every so often, someone even took out their phone and canceled their registration on the spot.
I could hear grumbling voices from somewhere in the room.
“This is a bit much.”
At Ha Juwon’s quiet complaint, everyone else only nodded in silent agreement.
Still, the class itself seemed fine.
The professor was well known in his field, and he also believed that assignments and exam scores mattered more than attendance.
“Haha. I suppose if your grades are worse than the students who started companies, that would be a little awkward.”
He did have the habit of making people uncomfortable while joking, which was a problem.
“All right, I think that about covers everything. Since it’s orientation, I’ll end early. See you next week~”
Once the cheerful professor left, the lecture hall felt bleak and cold.
“Should we go eat?”
“Sounds good.”
“Let’s hurry.”
So, without meaning to, we were practically driven out somewhere to eat at the student cafeteria.
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
As we walked toward the cafeteria, we passed people who seemed to recognize us.
But we didn’t go out of our way to speak first or pretend to know them.
We only had one hour between classes, and we had to eat.
“Wow, those are the seniors who were on TV.”
“They say they’re really taking off these days.”
“Aren’t they the ones who made the best-selling AI?”
“But why eat at the student cafeteria? They must have tons of money.”
While we were lining up for lunch, I could hear even more specific murmuring from the students around us.
The things they were saying were a little exaggerated, but it was awkward to correct them.
The expressions on all of our faces were slightly off, as if the whole team was thinking the same thing.
“Should we take a photo to prove we saw them?”
“Hey, no. If you took a hidden-cam shot, their lawyer might sue us.”
“Right. They know a famous lawyer, don’t they?”
Fortunately, some of the exaggerated rumors worked in our favor too.
Apparently there was talk that we were close with a lawyer we had met quite a long time ago, and that kept people from secretly taking photos of us or speaking carelessly.
Come to think of it, people on the school community boards had also been careful about mentioning us. I guess that was why.
“Let’s eat quickly and lock ourselves in the club room. Sound good?”
“Good idea.”
“Next time, let’s order cup rice or something to the club room about thirty minutes before class ends. I’m going to burst.”
“That much? Isn’t this kind of fun?”
All of us, unused to being the center of attention, whispered our discomfort to each other.
Of course, there were people like Seonghun-hyung who actually enjoyed the attention in the middle of it all.
Still, if we wanted to keep clearing even a little of our individual work, the club room was the right place to go.
“This is the way to the club room, right?”
“Yeah. No, wait, have you already forgotten it after only a few months?”
“I could have. Why are you picking a fight?”
“Stop fighting, you guys~”
Even on the way to the club room, a lot of people recognized us.
But since we were headed to our own hideout, those stares felt less burdensome than before.
“Wow, now that I’m seeing this place after a while, it’s really dusty.”
“The fact that Mr. Jaeyun kept working here and still didn’t quit is real devotion to the company.”
“Agreed.”
When we returned to the club room after a long time, there was a strangely dusty smell in the air.
Maybe it was because we had come from the shiny shared office, but the club room definitely felt old and dingy.
Still, all of us were glad to see it, almost like we had come home.
“It’s a shame we can only use this place until next year.”
“By second semester next year, it’ll probably only be Yeonghun using it, right?”
“Ah, right. Yeonghun, aren’t you going to the lab?”
“I was in the lab earlier and came here for class. It’s fine.”
Choi Yeonghun had started working in Professor Hwang Junhak’s lab.
He said the atmosphere there was not one where they gave special treatment just because he was running a business.
But judging by his expression, he seemed to like that intense atmosphere quite a bit.
Anyway, what a strange guy.
“I need to send an email real quick, so I’ll start working first.”
“Ah. Me too. I’ve got to respond to something.”
“Then I’ll start too.”
Everyone fished out their laptops one by one, and I naturally took mine out as well.
For ordinary office workers, this would have been lunch break, but for us it was working hours.
If it wasn’t now, it would be hard to get anything done at all.
“Man, should we have started the company next year?”
At some joking remark, everyone’s fingers stopped tapping on their keyboards.
Then we all fell into thought for a moment.
“Hmm.”
But it seemed like everyone reached the same conclusion I did.
“No. If we’d started next year and another competitor had released a product like ours, we never would’ve climbed this far.”
“Getting going as fast as possible and making money sooner is better.”
“The whole college startup team angle is surprisingly eye-catching, and I like it. We get to use this title for two whole years.”
“There are plenty of office workers who go to night school. Compared to them, we’re fine.”
Everyone was serious about TA Medical enough to accept that level of hardship willingly.
We got a little more attention than we’d like from the students in our classes, and time management was difficult, but we were more than satisfied with the life we had now.
“Set an alarm and let’s go to the next class together.”
“Okay~”
That’s how camaraderie gets built, I supposed.
＊＊＊
Every professor in the Korea University Department of Computer Engineering knew TA Medical and the people behind it.
They had appeared on programs, done interviews, won various awards, and earned excellent grades.
Then they had even been featured on a TV program that people with even a passing interest in animals would know, so there was no way not to know them.
“What do you think the broadcast would’ve been like if they’d focused on the Computer Engineering Department instead of Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine Department?”
“Probably with fewer scenes of dogs while they were explaining what AI is.”
“Haha. Is that so?”
Even among the professors, talk about TA Medical drifted through the halls from time to time.
It was never in a negative sense.
Most people either didn’t care much or had a simple stance of, “How admirable.”
But not everyone could look kindly on TA Medical.
“All right, enough about that. The guy who got tossed aside by Ji Minhwan’s family is here.”
“Ah. Since after the hackathon. Right, right.”
JH Medical’s hackathon.
Ji Minhwan, who was jealous of them, had also entered the competition where TA Medical took the grand prize.
Of course, that was the result of Ji Minhwan’s team being underprepared.
But Ji Minhwan and his family blamed it on the professor who had “helped from behind the scenes but still failed to make sure Ji Minhwan got the grand prize.”
For the professor who had always received lousy support from Ji Minhwan’s family, TA Medical’s rise had suddenly meant losing a rich patron.
“And yet they’re just some mediocre undergrads who got lucky.”
If he was going to blame someone, it should have been Ji Minhwan.
It was also true that the support he’d been receiving was trash and could disappear at any time.
But the more rotten people were, the more likely they were to look for an “easy target” instead of making an objective judgment.
“Those bastards. If they’d taken my class, I could’ve embarrassed them in front of the entire student body.”
The professor muttered on and on, radiating annoyance, and kept a face like he’d bitten into something foul for the entire faculty meeting.
Then, when another professor in the meeting mentioned how happy he was that TA Medical would be taking his class, he pricked up his ears.
“But I think I may have to cancel class for two weeks in a row this time because of a conference. That wouldn’t violate any school rules, would it?”
“Hmm. I think there was some kind of rule if it’s two weeks in a row.”
The professor who was dying to handle TA Medical immediately raised his hand and smiled as if he were being perfectly polite.
“If it’s the week right after orientation, you’ll need to cover the basic concepts, so wouldn’t canceling class and then scheduling make-up sessions be too much for the students? I can take one of the classes for you. Just send me the materials.”
Of course, every professor in the meeting looked at him in bewilderment.
They couldn’t understand why a man who never cared at all about students or fellow professors would suddenly say something like that.
“Ah, yes. Then would it be all right if I ask you to cover just the first class?”
But there was no real reason to refuse, so the deal was made.
At the time, it was easy enough to assume he was just trying to improve his image again.
No one could have imagined that a professor at Korea University would go to the trouble of doing something like this just to get revenge on students.