<CHAPTER 1>
“Why me?”
Last year, Daeryong Group ranked No. 99 among Korea’s conglomerates.
This was the director’s office of the Strategic Planning Team at Daeryong EcoCycle Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the group.
The cold, metallic furnishings alone looked like they must have cost a fortune.
Even if the occupant was an executive, there was no excuse for wasting corporate funds like this.
Swoosh.
Director Go Dong-yeol tilted his chin arrogantly and stared at me.
His gaze was as cold and merciless as that of a venomous snake.
His icy eyes gleamed behind a pair of thin, sharply designed silver frames.
He was thirty-three years old.
His short hair, slicked straight up with hair gel, only added to his intimidating air.
Designer clothes and a conspicuous luxury watch were the bare minimum.
For an ordinary employee in his early thirties, becoming an executive at a major corporation was practically an impossible dream.
But Go Dong-yeol was different.
His grandfather was the chairman of the family conglomerate.
His father was the CEO.
And his great-uncle was the founding chairman of one of Korea’s major national daily newspapers.
In other words, he was one of the elite heirs born with a silver spoon in Korea.
“You’re not asking because you really don’t know, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
That morning, I had suddenly been notified that I was being placed on administrative leave.
The stated reasons were neglect of work discipline and personal misuse of the corporate credit card.
It was completely untrue.
It made no sense whatsoever.
I had clearly used the card for entertaining a business client, and I had received approval from my superiors beforehand.
I had never used it for anything else.
And yet they were calling it personal use?
Just last month, the project I had spent an entire year working on had become a massive success.
It was a project I had ambitiously pushed forward after becoming an assistant manager.
I had practically lived in the engineering labs at my alma mater while working toward obtaining the patent.
I had even mobilized my connections, bringing in professors from the business school to help.
Through those connections, I acquired the latest production technology for eco-friendly biodegradable plastics being developed by a professor at Yeonguk University’s College of Engineering—at an absurdly low price.
It was groundbreaking research with enough cost competitiveness to make a real difference.
I had even opened the door to direct contracts with major European corporations that were particularly sensitive to environmental issues.
The final supply agreement had already been signed.
For the next ten years, all I had to do was collect several hundred million euros in annual payments after exporting the products.
As for factory investment, all we needed to do was install the patented equipment onto the existing machinery.
That was it.
My colleagues had congratulated me, saying I was certain to receive a huge bonus and make the list for a special promotion.
That was also the rumor circulating throughout the company.
My superiors had even hinted that I would receive an S rating in my performance evaluation.
And yet, today!
I had been told I was being dismissed.
“You don’t know… Heh heh.”
Go Dong-yeol openly laughed at me.
Click.
Hissss.
Despite the company’s strict no-smoking policy, Go Dong-yeol casually lit a cigarette in his spacious private office.
Fwooooo.
A thick cloud of smoke billowed out, spreading hazily right in front of my face.
“Ha Tae-woong.”
“……”
Go Dong-yeol called my name.
“Are you somehow connected to me?”
“……”
“Through school, hometown, family… You know, something like that.”
“No.”
“Yeah, you’re not. Hell, you don’t even share a smoking connection with me, do you?”
“……”
There was no way an ordinary guy like me could possibly have any connection to a third-generation chaebol heir.
“Every time I see you, you piss me off. Like, really piss me off. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
Go Dong-yeol had only been transferred here a few months ago.
Before that, he had worked at another affiliate of the group.
“Heh heh. Yeah, you shouldn’t know. A clueless, unpleasant bastard with absolutely no sense of the room. That’s you!”
Go Dong-yeol knew perfectly well that I had no powerful connections backing me.
And he was deliberately humiliating me.
I wanted to smash my fist straight into his face.
Outside these corporate walls, he wasn’t even worth one punch.
But I had to endure it.
Outside, where there was no paycheck waiting for me, the world was a battlefield.
Every kind of crisis was sweeping across the globe.
The cracks between nations had begun appearing around 2020.
I never could have imagined the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Then came the war between Israel and the Arab world.
The crisis arrived before the aftereffects of COVID-19 had even faded.
And then, beginning in 2027—
the global economic bubble reached its highest point in history before suddenly—
BOOM!
It burst.
South Korea was no exception.
Under the high-interest-rate policies, the real-estate tycoons who had made their fortunes through gap investment came tumbling down one after another, stripped of everything.
It had become an era in which the once-mighty landlords who had seemed to stand above even God had lost their former glory.
The feast of the nouveau riche had ended in emptiness.
And those caught in the fallout were thrown onto the streets alongside them.
The country was trapped in a seemingly endless state of near-emergency.
Unfortunately, I had terrible luck when it came to employment, too.
When I first joined the workforce, the economy wasn’t particularly bad.
Most of my university classmates found jobs at major corporations.
Even when we submitted applications to the same companies, I was always the one who got rejected.
There were a few times when I managed to pass the first-round document screening at one of Korea’s top ten conglomerates.
But every single time, I was rejected after the interview.
It wasn’t as though my qualifications were lacking, either.
My graduating GPA had been 4.33.
My TOEIC and TOEFL scores were nearly perfect.
I could also speak Japanese and Chinese reasonably well.
Even when I expanded my job search to the top fifty business groups in Korea, I was repeatedly turned away.
It wasn’t just Korean companies.
Even foreign corporations refused to hire me.
It was as if someone was following me around, deliberately sabotaging every opportunity I had.
After wandering around like that for a while, I finally joined Daeryong Group.
The group had around twenty subsidiaries.
At the time, it wasn’t even among Korea’s top 100 conglomerates.
At the time.
Starting next year, it was practically guaranteed to climb several places.
And that was the key.
It was possible because of the success of my project.
And yet, in the middle of all that, I had suddenly been placed on administrative leave for no apparent reason.
I still had unpaid student loans.
The cost of living was brutally high.
There were far too many reasons for me to keep going.
I was in absolutely no position to let my anger get the better of me.
“Is there really no way?”
I clenched my fists and ground my teeth as I asked again.
“Of course not, you idiot. Heh heh.”
Go Dong-yeol grinned broadly.
His eyes continued to mock me.
“What’s the real reason?”
Even if I was leaving, I wanted to know why.
The wave of early retirement offers had already died down the previous year.
I wanted to know why they were getting rid of someone who had brought profits into the company.
“All of them.”
“……??”
“Look at you. That arrogant look in your eyes, that irritating way of speaking, that face I can’t stand looking at. And even that laughable level of competence! There’s not a single thing about you that matches my wavelength.”
This bastard!
A superiority-complex-ridden psychopath with an INTJ personality and an ISFJ streak thrown into the mix!
Was he really getting rid of me just because I didn’t fit his personal preferences?
“And your back is too stiff, too. Someone from such a worthless background acting that damn confident. I hate that. So someone as lowly as you should just leave. Heh heh heh.”
I don’t like you either, you bastard.
Go Dong-yeol had studied abroad at some obscure provincial private university in the United States—one nobody even bothered to recognize by name.
And yet, thanks to the success of my project, his position within the group had only become more secure.
Our positions were completely different.
I was nothing more than a low-ranking employee.
Go Dong-yeol would reap almost all the rewards from the project’s success.
And even then, he was petty enough to be jealous of an ordinary employee like me.
He would never amount to anything truly great.
The conclusion was obvious.
“I’ll submit my resignation.”
“Heh heh. Good thinking. I’ll make sure you get two months’ salary as severance.”
“How should I handle the handover?”
“What could someone like you possibly have to hand over? Get your face out of here. Now.”
Crunch.
I ground my teeth.
He had insulted and mocked me right to the very end without a shred of courtesy.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t been assigned a single new project for the past month.
I had assumed they were simply giving me some time off.
Then, once that period was over, they accused me of neglecting my duties.
So this had all been planned from the beginning.
Once the rabbit is dead, the hunting dog gets cooked.
A classic case of being discarded once I had served my purpose.
Smirk.
Go Dong-yeol’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction, as though he had finally gotten exactly what he wanted.
Like a venomous snake rolling its yellow eyes, he sneered at me.
If I followed my temper, I wanted nothing more than to plant my fist in that thug’s face.
But I held myself back.
I wasn’t some common thug like him.
I was a civilized, educated man.
Still…
Swoosh.
I loosened the tie that had been choking my neck.
“Hey, Mr. Go Dong-yeol.”
I addressed him in a friendly tone.
“Mr. Go Dong-yeol? Are you acting up because you’ve been fired?”
He stared at me, apparently unable to believe what he was hearing.
“No. You and I are the same age, aren’t we? Once the name cards are off the table, that’s it. And is there even one thing about you and me that actually matches? If you want people to speak nicely to you, you should speak nicely to them first. What exactly were you expecting?”
I calmly looked straight into Go Dong-yeol’s eyes.
“Th-this bastard! Have you lost your mind?”
Go Dong-yeol shot to his feet and strode toward me.
Man, he’s short.
Ah!
So that’s why.
I finally realized why I was being fired at this particular moment.
Thud.
I took a decisive step forward as well.
“……!!”
I slowly extended my arm until my hand came close to Go Dong-yeol’s neck.
“W-what the hell?!”
He had been approaching me, but suddenly faltered and stepped backward.
Scared, are you?
“Watch yourself when you’re walking home at night. You know I used to be in the Special Forces, right?”
Tap, tap.
I lightly brushed his shoulder with my palm.
Tremble.
I could feel the rapid pounding of his nervous heart through my palm.
A quiet laugh escaped me.
It pissed me off that we lived in a world where the bullying tactics of worthless bastards like him actually worked.
Ever since I joined the company, I had given it everything I had.
I had no regrets.
I would leave with my head held high.
“Make sure my severance pay is handled properly. You bastard. You’re not even worth the soles of my shoes.”
I had no regrets.
I was walking away from a stable job that had guaranteed me a steady income.
For someone like me, with no connections through school, blood, hometown, or even smoking, I had lasted a surprisingly long time.
I turned around without hesitation.
Even though I had been fired, I felt strangely refreshed.
“Hey! Ha Tae-woong! I’ll fucking kill you! You son of a bitch!”
Crash!
As I walked out, I didn’t even bother looking back.
I simply raised my middle finger.
Fuck you.
That was the first incident of the day.
