Chapter 3

“Well then, please go inside. I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll have to come to work every weekday except weekends. If you work on a weekend, you may take one weekday off.”

Kim Si-min nodded at Park Won-jung’s words as the man drove him home.

Come to think of it, he had been too distracted to notice, but the car Park Won-jung had driven was a high-end domestic sedan.

The chief of the secretariat must have quite a bit of money too.

Kim Si-min went inside his home and quietly fell asleep.

The next day, he went to work as usual with a resignation letter tucked inside his clothes.

He still couldn’t be certain about anything, but if Lighthouse Co., Ltd. really was a legitimate company, he intended to resign from his current job without hesitation.

The moment Park Mun-seong had fallen was still vividly etched in his mind.

The next day, Kim Si-min went to work as usual and once again found himself arguing with debtors.

“Sir, please let me live, too! You know how difficult things are these days. Manager, I… I really want to pay everything back as quickly as possible and stop having these conversations.”

Another desperate person was pleading with him from the other end of the phone.

Just like Mr. Park Mun-seong, Kim Si-min could hear a life hanging by a thread in this man’s voice.

How many times has it been already?

Perhaps because more people had been going bankrupt recently, he had lost count of how many calls like this he had made over the past week.

Kim Si-min felt deeply exhausted.

His job at the bank wasn’t to give people hope.

“Sir… I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do either.”

His job wasn’t to hand people opportunities.

It was to drive the final nail into the coffin of someone who was already barely hanging on.

It was certainly the result of choices they had made themselves.

But still…

This is suffocating. Seriously.

He felt as though his chest were being squeezed tight.

At exactly 6:00 p.m., he checked the time and immediately headed for the office of Lighthouse Co., Ltd.

It was his second time there, so he was already familiar with the elevator. Just as he pressed the button for the eighth floor—

Rapid footsteps.

Someone came running hurriedly from somewhere and jumped into the elevator.

“Huff… huff… I barely made it. Huh? I don’t recognize you. Are you new?”

“Yes, I’m new.”

“Why is a new guy going to the eighth floor? Which department are you in?”

The man had a scraggly beard and messy hair.

It was technically a suit, but he was wearing a peculiar brown checkered one.

He also smelled strongly of cigarettes, as though he were a heavy smoker.

“Legal? Fieldwork? Accident handling?”

“I don’t think I’m any of those three.”

“Oh? Then you’re in an internal position. Did that old man Park Won-jung hire you?”

“Something like that.”

“Wow, must be tough. If you’re part of the secretariat, you’ll probably have tons of work.”

The man frowned when he mentioned Park Won-jung.

“Are there many employees here?”

“Quite a few, actually.”

“I don’t think I saw anyone yesterday.”

“Oh, yesterday was a company holiday. But seriously, you don’t know anything, do you? They should at least assign someone to a new employee. That old geezer…”

“Is there no representative here?”

“The representative? That position has been vacant for quite a while, I think. Park Won-jung handles most things.”

A company without a representative?

Did that even make sense?

How could a company like that function?

“There used to be one. Back when I was young. The representative at the time was really impressive.”

“You’ve been working here for a long time?”

“Me? You could say that.”

Ding.

The elevator doors opened on the seventh floor.

“Anyway, nice meeting you. I’m Hwang Su-ho from the legal team. See you around.”

The somewhat chaotic, shaggy-haired man, Hwang Su-ho, got off on the seventh floor, and the elevator continued upward.

When the doors opened on the eighth floor—

“Welcome, Representative.”

“I didn’t realize it yesterday, but I guess there are quite a lot of employees here?”

“There are. It’s quite a large company.”

Park Won-jung smiled.

Kim Si-min still had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he slowly walked into the representative’s office and sat down.

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

“First, I think you should go out into the field for some practical training.”

“Field training?”

“Yes. You need to understand how the company operates. It would be best for you to experience some of our simplest field operations firsthand.”

Although he was the representative, he knew absolutely nothing about the company’s actual operations, so it was undoubtedly necessary.

At that moment, Park Won-jung placed several documents on his desk.

[Low Rank]

Kim Si-min turned the page of the document labeled Low Rank on the front.

A photograph of an elderly woman appeared.

“What is this?”

“This is an elderly woman named Kim Sun-bok. She has one grandchild. Her eldest son is missing, and her daughter-in-law has passed away. Her second and third children are still alive, but they’re what you might call complete good-for-nothings.”

“And?”

“We received a request from the grandmother.”

“What does she want?”

“You’ll have to find that out yourself.”

“A request came in, but I have to find out what the request is myself?”

“Yes. The grandmother herself doesn’t know that she made the request.”

“…”

That makes absolutely no sense.

The person who made the request doesn’t know she made it?

“This is simply how our work system operates. You’ll get used to it quickly.”

“How do we receive requests?”

At that moment, Park Won-jung brought up a screen on his laptop.

[Lighthouse Co., Ltd. — We Lend Opportunities.]

Underneath those words, countless requests were posted on a bulletin board.

“I told you. We’re a busier company than you might think.”

Kim Si-min couldn’t bring himself to either believe it or dismiss it.

“For this first week, all you need to do is resolve Mrs. Kim Sun-bok’s case. We’ll count it as having come to work for the entire week.”

After Park Won-jung finished explaining, Kim Si-min left the company carrying nothing but the name Kim Sun-bok, the route of the handcart the elderly woman frequently pushed around, and her home address.

“What? New guy, you’re leaving already?”

“Oh, the chief of the secretariat told me to get some field experience for a week.”

“Ah, field training. That’s definitely necessary. Everyone in our company goes through field training regardless of department. Hang in there. If you run into any problems, come talk to this senior.”

The man suddenly pulled a business card from inside his jacket and slipped it into Kim Si-min’s hand.

“Ah… yes. Thank you.”

[Lighthouse Co., Ltd. — Senior Legal Adviser Hwang Su-ho]

A senior legal adviser—something that even fairly large companies had difficulty maintaining.

Come to think of it, the man had said there was a legal department.

Kim Si-min put the business card away and continued walking.

“Has it really been a hundred years?”

“You could say that.”

“Do we really need a representative?”

“Who knows? It’s not as though I’ve ever known what would happen.”

“…That’s true.”

Standing beside Park Won-jung, who wore a gray suit and exuded a quiet, dignified air, was another man in a similar gray suit. However, there was something different about him. His hair was neatly combed, and his appearance was immaculate.

“Take good care of the Representative from now on. My time is coming to an end, and your time will begin.”

“Why would you say something like that? I can’t imagine this place without you, sir.”

“When there is a meeting, there is a parting. When there is birth, there is death. Wouldn’t my time here also have to come to an end someday?”

Kim Woo-jin’s expression was complicated.

“There are times when you have to make an effort, and there are times when you simply have to let things flow naturally. That’s what it means to accept the timing of one’s connections.”

His gaze, filled with complicated emotions, turned toward the spot where Kim Si-min had been standing just moments ago before leaving the eighth floor.

After leaving the company, Kim Si-min rested at home that day.

The next morning, he woke up early and set out to find the elderly woman and her handcart.

Even after walking around diligently for about two hours, he couldn’t find Mrs. Kim Sun-bok or her handcart.

“The person who will be lent an opportunity is nearby.”

How much time had passed?

Just when he was considering going to the grandmother’s house and waiting there, the system’s voice suddenly rang in Kim Si-min’s mind.

His eyes immediately swept over his surroundings.

Where?

He looked around, but there was no one unusual to be seen on the street.

“Oh dear…”

Just then, an elderly woman appeared in the distance, coming over the hill while pulling a handcart.

Anyone could tell that she had been worn down by a hard life.

The mountain of discarded paper piled atop the cart seemed to reveal everything about how she spent her days.

Kim Si-min naturally walked toward her.

“Grandma, shall I give you a push?”

“No, it’s all right. I’m fine.”

The grandmother lightly waved him off and resumed pulling the handcart with difficulty.

Without saying anything, Kim Si-min quietly began pushing the cart alongside her.

“Is something wrong? You look troubled.”

“Who gets through life without problems? Everyone carries something with them.”

It was a wise answer to a foolish question.

Everyone had worries of their own.

“I have one grandchild. What will happen to him after I die? That’s what I think about every day.”

“Looking at you now, I’d say you’ve easily got another twenty years.”

“…”

The grandmother didn’t answer.

Come to think of it, something sticking out of the left pocket of her clothes looked like a packet of medicine.

Of course, elderly people of her age often carried medicine around.

But combined with the grandmother’s heavy silence, the medicine made Kim Si-min feel that there was a story behind it.

“We’re here. Thank you, young man.”

Before he knew it, they had arrived at the recycling center.

The enormous pile of waste paper the grandmother had collected was exchanged for only a few thousand won.

All that for just a few thousand won?

“Thanks to you, I had an easier time today. Here, take this.”

The grandmother pulled several caramels from her pocket and placed them in his hand.

They were the familiar peanut-flavored caramels Kim Si-min knew well.

As he stared at the familiar snack, a new message sounded.

“Listen to the grandmother’s story.”

Kim Si-min turned toward the grandmother, who was smiling like a child after exchanging her waste paper for money.

“Grandma, where do you live?”

“Right up there.”

“I’ll take the empty handcart back for you.”

Since he had already come this far, he decided to listen to her story as they walked.

Almost everything the grandmother talked about revolved around her grandchild.

It seemed that she lived in a single room attached to a house.

Behind a door whose edges were severely worn, the grandmother slowly walked inside.

“Here you go.”

She carefully placed a cup of instant coffee in front of Si-min.

“Did your grandchild go to school?”

“He did. Our Jin-su. My good, precious boy.”

The grandmother, who had been sitting in front of Si-min, suddenly became teary-eyed.

It seemed that simply talking about her grandchild wasn’t the only reason she was crying.

His eyes once again fell on the medicine packet he’d noticed earlier.

Just then, Kim Si-min remembered the face of his own father, who had spent years battling an illness.

“Hey, old woman! Come out! I said come out!”

Crash! Bang!

From somewhere outside came the sound of someone shouting and smashing things in broad daylight.

“That damn bastard is here again…”

The grandmother let out a deep sigh and slowly stood up.

Wondering whether the grandmother might have borrowed money from some shady loan shark, Kim Si-min also stood up.