IHTBN 01

At the age of twenty-nine, I had become a young person who was “taking a break from work.”

Why had I, with all four limbs perfectly intact, become one of those unemployed young people?

The reason was simple.

It was past midnight, after I had finished the closing work as usual.

I was on my way home, using the dim moonlight as a landmark.

Honk!

A car came rushing toward me and struck me with tremendous force before speeding away.

The person behind the wheel was the owner of our store.

Kim Jin-wook, who had spent more than ten years with me since our days at the orphanage and had been like family to me, almost like a real older brother.

When I opened my eyes again, the first thing that greeted me was a blindingly white ceiling.

I heard that the mild-mannered man, who normally never even touched alcohol, had for some reason drunk heavily at a nearby place that day. He then caused the accident while returning to the store while drunk.

At first, all I could do was laugh.

The situation was so absurd that I even wondered if I had somehow fallen under some kind of spell.

It didn’t take long for that laughter to turn into a hollow smile.

All I had left were a huge, permanent scar covering much of the left side of my body, a small amount of insurance money and unemployment benefits.

And a vague career history.

‘At least I’m alive, so isn’t that enough?’

Once I finished my rehabilitation treatment, I should be able to find another job.

I thought I should work a little harder and try to live a better life.

Yes, I thought that way—until Jin-wook, whom I had trusted like family, died without leaving behind any kind of solution.

“……Unni, what are you talking about? Jin-wook oppa…… is dead?”

“He said he couldn’t stand how sorry he was to you. Are you satisfied now? You kept harassing our family over one little accident. Are you satisfied now?”

“…….”

Who on earth was angry at whom?

At the resentful words of Bora, Jin-wook oppa’s wife, who had been like a real older sister to me, I felt more bewildered than angry.

Apparently, that bastard, who deserved to be beaten to death a hundred times over, hadn’t been satisfied with ruining my body.

He had committed the insane act of setting fire to the building where the store was located and killing himself.

“It can’t be…….”

It really couldn’t.

Jin-wook oppa, of all people, had done something like this?

But reality didn’t change.

Not only the employees who had suddenly become unemployed, but also countless other people who had lost their workplaces stood there with blank expressions in front of the building that had burned down.

Naturally, I was there too, dragging along my still-injured body.

Forget about insurance money or compensation.

The store owner had killed himself.

Naturally, that meant I wouldn’t even receive severance pay or the next month’s salary.

‘There has to be a limit to how unfair life can get…….’

Even though I was clearly the biggest victim, all the resentful gazes were directed at me.

It was because that damned bastard had died after creating numerous victims.

What was I supposed to say to my former coworkers who came to the hospital several times a day to cause a scene, or to Bora unni, who demanded that I somehow bring her dead husband back to life?

It had been a reasonably enjoyable life until just a week ago.

I didn’t even have the energy to lament the fact that my life had fallen into the abyss in just one week.

As I listened blankly to the accusations, a fundamental question suddenly began to arise in my mind.

‘Can a person really lose everything overnight like this?’

No, that made no sense.

One misfortune after another.

When it rains, it pours.

People say that life is full of unexpected twists and turns, but there had to be some limit.

It would take more than a year of treatment before I could live normally again.

Was this really a fair balance?

“Haa…….”

Sitting alone on the hospital rooftop, I let out yet another sigh.

My breath rose white into the air before twisting away, and somehow it looked just like my life, leaving me feeling troubled.

My entire body was cold and my bones ached from the aftereffects of the accident, yet I couldn’t really feel the pain.

No, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that because my entire body hurt, the pain in any particular place felt insignificant.

Even though my future seemed as bleak as a night sky without a single star, strangely enough, I never thought about dying.

Perhaps my survival instinct had awakened after already coming so close to death once.

‘What should I do to make a living and have people say I lived well?’

For now, it would probably be best to start by taking care of my body.

And so, a year and a half passed.

Thankfully, my body was able to recover completely without any significant aftereffects.

However, a year and a half had given me a long gap in my career, an unnecessarily increased age, and worse physical fitness.

The job market was already as narrow as the eye of a needle, but because I was starting later than everyone else, it had become even more impossibly narrow.

‘Where should I get a job so people will say I made a good choice?’

I didn’t even have any of the common certifications because I had spent my entire time working at that store run by the bastard owner who deserved to be dragged back from the grave and killed again.

Even if I tried to make use of my previous experience, I had spent my entire life working in the service industry.

Even if I went to an interview with the scars remaining on my face, there would probably be almost no one willing to hire me.

But even so, with so many companies in the world, wasn’t it impossible that there wasn’t a single place I could enter?

So I decided to throw away all the experience I had accumulated and start again from zero.

I searched for a job that a beginner could do and that I could continue doing even as I grew older.

There weren’t many.

Some were jobs people avoided because they were considered difficult and dirty.

However, the more I thought about the future, the more I concluded that those kinds of jobs were actually ideal.

The job that caught my attention was building cleaning.

Perhaps because the average age for getting hired was in one’s fifties, I received quite a few interview offers after submitting my resume.

Even with scars on my face, even with a gap in my career, there were still jobs I could do.

‘The world is still beautiful.’

Just as I was feeling happy about that—

“What? Wait a second. Is this for real?”

I received an interview offer from Hwain Group, a company whose stock and reputation had been soaring tremendously both domestically and internationally.

“It really is Hwain Group?”

At first, I doubted my own eyes.

And why wouldn’t I?

It was Hwain Group.

A major corporation famous as the ideal workplace that young people dreamed of.

The minimum educational requirement was supposedly at the doctoral level, and applicants had to pass an impossibly difficult interview.

Even then, if they weren’t considered suitable during the three-month probationary period, they were fired without mercy.

However, once you became an employee, wasn’t it one of the top welfare-oriented companies in South Korea, providing everything from housing and cars to leisure activities?

Even if my job would only be cleaning buildings.

I kept rubbing my eyes over and over as I read through the email sent to me, unable to believe it.

No matter how much I rubbed my eyes, the email didn’t disappear.

The interview location was definitely Hwain Building in Gangnam.

“Uh…… okay. Let’s calm down first. It’s still just an interview. There are hundreds of applicants, so there’s no way they’ll hire me.”

I forced myself to calm my excitement and took a long, deep breath.

I definitely wouldn’t get accepted.

So I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

With that thought, I calmed myself down, went to the interview, and after answering a few questions about the accident, finished what was otherwise a very formal interview……

“Ms. Lee Seo-young, congratulations on passing.”

As though it had been the predetermined outcome all along, I received the acceptance call and was left staring blankly.

“No way…… Is this for real? I actually got accepted into Hwain Group?!”

Although the job was building cleaning and the research institute was located deep in the mountains with terrible transportation……

Accommodation and meals were provided, and the salary was nearly one and a half times higher than at my previous job.

The conditions were so good that my hands even began to tremble.

“Then, when would I start working?”

“We’re short on cleaning staff at the research institute, so we’d like you to start as soon as possible. However…… if you have a particular date you’d prefer to begin working, we’ll do our best to accommodate it.”

Looking at the calendar hanging on one corner of the wall, I answered the personnel manager’s question.

Today was Friday.

I could start working as soon as tomorrow, but since I had to move into the dormitory, I wanted at least some time to pack my belongings.

“I can start working next Monday.”

“Yes. Then, on Monday next week, please come to Hwain Building with the items you’ll need to move into the dormitory. We’ll send you a separate message with the exact time.”

“Huh? Not the research institute…… I should go to Hwain Building?”

“Yes. You’ll be traveling there by bus together with the new employees from other departments.”

“Ah.”

After hearing the manager’s answer, I wrote down the necessary documents and the list of daily necessities I needed to bring into the dormitory.

Then I hung up the phone and let out a long breath.

They say you can’t see even an inch ahead of you in life.

But even so, could someone’s life really change this much overnight?

“Well…… I suppose there’s no reason it couldn’t.”

I stared blankly at the cloudy sky beyond the window, shrugged my shoulders, and stood up.

Things happened because they were meant to happen. What good would it do to attach some deeper meaning to them?

“I have to start work on Monday…… so I might as well pack.”

I said I would pack my things, but in truth, there was hardly anything worth taking.

After putting everything into a small suitcase, I looked around the bleak room and scratched my cheek.

I had spent a long time in the hospital, and with my financial situation having deteriorated, I had sold one thing after another.

The room had reached the point where it wouldn’t even be strange if I moved out.

I wondered how I had managed to live in a place like this.

“Should I put the room up for rent before I leave? No. Just in case, I’ll keep it for about a month.”

It was still too early to count my chickens before they hatched.

After calming my excitement, I searched through online communities to see if Hwain Group had any special company motto or warnings regarding work.

You know, those kinds of things.

Stories about how large corporations had intense battles over academic backgrounds or how workplace bullying from superiors was severe.

Yet Hwain Group was strangely devoid of information for a major corporation with thousands of employees.

Just in case, I even logged into a workplace-only app I had joined previously.

There wasn’t a single post.

There wasn’t a single post about Hwain Group on any community.

Except for one.

[You must never enter the ㅇㄱㅅ operated by H Group.]