Don't Give Up Yet
We closed our first deal successfully.
Two thousand units might not have looked like much, but for a small company like ours—selling that kind of volume on our very first transaction—it was enormously encouraging. The substantial sum that landed in our hands was the concentrated fruit of everyone's blood, sweat, and tears.
Perhaps that was why our vision had grown clouded. Maybe all of us had let our eyes go unfocused.
Just as we'd feared from the beginning, our counterpart was a newly established company that had only just set foot in the industry. No matter how favorable the terms, a rational mind would have scaled the volume up gradually—from two thousand to three thousand, then five thousand, climbing the stairs one step at a time. That would have been the right way.
"What? The deal's been called off?"
The news struck like a bolt from a clear blue sky, and I sat frozen at my desk.
Flushed with the success of that first deal, we had set the next order far too large. We had already put in an order for a full ten thousand memory chips—and production was already complete. The problem was that every one of those chips had been manufactured to Company A's specifications. They couldn't be sold anywhere else. If the deal fell through, we would be stuck with ten thousand useless white elephants.
The crisis staring us in the face was a severe financial one. A small company like ours couldn't have undertaken production on this scale with our existing assets alone. On top of our original investors, we had taken out a bank loan. Every resource we had had been poured into this single deal. Raw materials, the factory lease, employee salaries, office rent—when you added up the incidental costs on top of the principal and interest, it was as if we had been buried under a mountain of debt overnight.
Calling it a mountain of debt might even have been putting it kindly. Even with a heavy load on your back, as long as the company still existed, you could wait for an opening. But the situation we were in now made even that impossible.
"Yes, sir. They said there's a problem on the funding side—they can't pay for the order they placed..."
A small company like ours didn't have the capacity to absorb a loss like this. The pillars would simply buckle under the enormous debt. It was as if a snowball that had been rolling along smoothly had smashed straight into a boulder.
"Why all of a sudden?"
We had no way of knowing why Company A had been hit with a cash crunch overnight. The details never came to light. By the time we rushed over in a panic, the company's doors were already shut, and none of the executives could be reached.
Outside, other vendors who had been connected to Company A were holding a sit-in. They were in the same boat we were, pouring out the same story. Even if we sued, Company A had already lost the ability to pay. And with a line of other damaged companies standing behind us, even catching the executives who had fled wouldn't get us paid for those chips anytime soon.
"Do something—anything! Bring me the list of prospective clients we made at the start!"
We couldn't just sit there with our hands in our laps. Money was draining away like water even as we spoke. If we couldn't move the inventory we had produced, a hole would open beneath us—a pit we could never fill.
I gasped for breath as I ran. I tore around like a madman, trying to climb out of that hole. I knocked on the door of every company I knew. I got down on my knees. I begged. Nowhere was there a way out.
If they had been ordinary memory chips, we could have taken a loss on the unit price and slowly filled the hole. But the stock piled in our warehouse was a specialized chip built to Company A's specs—incompatible with anything else, a product unto itself. Nobody wanted to buy them. Goods you can't use are no better than scrap to a company. Garbage that just takes up warehouse space. I swallowed my pride and leaned on whatever thin connections I had, but business runs on self-interest. No matter how much I wore out my shoes, not a single unit moved.
But I couldn't give up. Everyone's lives were riding on this. For the employees who had trusted me and followed me, for the wife I loved—I had to find a way, somehow.
I cut back on sleep. Under the pretext of working late, I barely even went home. Worried calls and texts from my wife piled up in layers, but I didn't dare tell her what was happening. Day after day I sat at my desk, hammering at the keyboard, trying to punch a hole through to some invisible way out. And the result of all that was—
"Oppa!"
The darkened field of my vision brightened. Light seeped into the blackness that had filled my sight, and then everything went hazy, as if a frost had settled over my eyes. The view churned like thick fog, then gradually began to take shape.
"Oppa! Stay with me!"
What came into focus under the lights was my wife, her head bowed, her eyes brimming, shaking my arm.
...Huh.
I blinked. A little more of the room came into view. A white ceiling. Curtains drawn in a square around the bed. Beyond the fabric, slightly pulled aside, nurses bustled back and forth.
Ah.
Looking at them, my mind gradually came back. A hospital? Wherever I was, it seemed to be a hospital. I let my gaze drop. My suit, rumpled and grimy from nights without sleep, came into view. That was enough to tell me what had happened.
I collapsed.
My last memory was the office. I had opened the presentation I had already polished dozens of times—and that was where it cut off. I must have passed out at the company.
"Oppa!"
"...Ju-hee."
Perhaps she felt me stir. Ju-hee's eyes found my face. I could see her clearly now, her eyes wet and shining.
"Oppa—!"
With a cry, Ju-hee threw her arms around me. Her warmth came through the fabric of my clothes. I felt her fingertips lock tight behind my back. The body pressed against mine was trembling like a leaf.
And so we held each other. I don't know how long.
"Oppa, I... I heard everything."
The hands that had gripped me so fiercely loosened. She pulled back and sat down in the small chair beside the bed.
"Why... why didn't you tell me?"
A clear drop rolled from the corner of her eye.
"Things were this bad, and you didn't say a word. You ran yourself into the ground like this..."
As if holding back a sob, Ju-hee bit her lip and stroked my arm. Even through the rumpled suit, her worry came through thick and clear.
"I told you last time. A husband and wife aren't one person—they're two. If it's hard, you're supposed to say so! I... I thought something had happened to you... hhk—!"
Ju-hee's head dropped. The tears that had been falling drop by drop began to run in threads.
At the same time, something hot ran from my own eyes. I could choke down the wretched sound of crying—press it back against my throat—but the tears I couldn't stop. Everything I had been holding together until now was shattering and running out of me.
It was all supposed to work out.
I hadn't done it just for myself. I had worked for everyone. All those hours I had run myself into the ground. To think this was all it had come to.
All that remained now were ten thousand useless memory chips and a mountain of debt. I had nothing to give the employees who had poured themselves into this with me. And once again, I had loaded a heavy burden onto the back of the wife who had given up a brilliant future.
"...Nngh—!"
The thought of it forced the sound I had been crushing down out of my mouth. In front of no one else but her—the person I most wanted to stand tall for—I let out an ugly, broken sob.
At the end of the world. On the cliff-edge of our lives. The two of us sat there and wept for a long time.
"Oppa, don't give up yet."
By the time the streams had thinned to drops and begun to disappear, Ju-hee reached out. Her warm hands closed around my exhausted ones.
"There has to be a way. I'll look into it too."
My wife's eyes were swollen red. Exhaustion was written all over her face. Perhaps she, like me, had tried to wash her regrets away with these tears.
How could she not have regrets? She had been driven from a life racing down the fast track of success to the margins. Taking small cases in a small building—maybe she had felt as if her own life had come to a stop. She had carved the feeling called love into her chest and barely managed to accept this life. And the reward that came for it was an ending that shattered even this.
"We've made it through hard times before, haven't we? We can get through this too. There has to be an answer."
If she were only human—if she had feelings—she would have every right to say something ugly. She could have laid the blame for where we were at my feet, and it still wouldn't have been enough. She had every qualification to do so.
But instead, she was holding onto me. I was drifting away from the world, and she was doing everything she could to catch me and set my feet back on the ground.
A faint smile. Through eyes still wet with tears, Ju-hee smiled a sad, gentle smile.
"...Yeah. I'll try again."
Hearing her resolve, a reality that had been fading found its color again. Reflecting on the self that had been crumbling, I found the courage to look for a life.
...The unexpected call came not long after that.