Exactly What I Wanted
Executive Director Choi sat on the plush leather sofa, yet he might as well have been perched on a bed of thorns for how uncomfortable he felt.
Arrogant little bastards.
When Park Do-hun had waved him in, the gesture carried none of the deference once shown to a superior. It was the sort of attitude reserved for a peddler—or worse, the casual charity of someone granting an audience out of pity. For a moment Choi nearly exploded, but the memory of his father’s razor-edged fury forced him to swallow it down.
Fine. Talking it out is better than nothing.
Get them seated, then persuade them. Show these clueless fools how cold the outside world really was—how much of a blessing a steady paycheck had been—and they would come crawling back in terror.
Choi arranged his face into a carefully arrogant mask and opened his mouth.
“I’m sure you’ve both felt it by now, out there on your own. How freezing it is beyond the company walls. How big a blessing it is to have a salary land in your account every month without fail.”
“…”
“That’s why I went out of my way to convince the president. I put a high value on your abilities, so I secured a full twenty-percent raise—”
“Director.”
Park Do-hun cut him off before he could finish. Choi’s eyebrows twitched. Standing beside him, Kang Minjun was even snickering as he poured coffee, as if the whole performance were laughable.
Before Choi could even register the insult, Do-hun spoke again.
“Director Choi.”
“What? ‘Director Choi’?”
The bare title stung. A former subordinate daring to drop the honorific?
But Do-hun’s eyes were ice-cold.
“Let’s set every past grudge aside and talk pure business. What possible reason do we have to go back there?”
“Ha! You’re saying there’s no reason? Trying to save face, are you? I said twenty percent. Twenty percent of your old salaries—”
“Do you know what our daily revenue is?”
“What?”
“Several million won.”
Do-hun tapped the calculator sitting on the table.
“The units don’t even match. That raise you just offered? It’s less than what we make in a single day.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me! How long have you even been out of the company, and you’re already claiming hundreds of thousands a day?”
Choi refused to believe it. Pure bluff, he decided. Yet Do-hun’s bearing was far too composed.
“D-don’t tell me you poached our clients… That explains it. They’ve been grumbling and trying to cancel contracts lately… I never thought you two would sink that low—”
“You’re about to call us unprofessional, right?”
“Exactly! You know it. That’s betrayal!”
Choi raised his voice. Do-hun let out a short, hollow laugh.
“I’m not finished yet, so keep listening.”
“What?”
“You’re laboring under a complete misunderstanding, Director. This isn’t industry revenue. It’s web-novel revenue.”
He leaned forward.
“And let me ask you one thing. For someone as proud as Executive Director Choi to come all the way out here—our presence at the company must have been pretty significant, right?”
“…”
“Then think about it logically. If we had truly set our minds to it and founded a marketing firm identical to Ad Like the moment we walked out the door, do you really believe we couldn’t have earned more than that twenty-percent bump?”
Choi flinched. Do-hun’s operational skill was top-tier in the industry. If he had deliberately called every client president and started pitching…
Half of Ad Like’s accounts would already be gone.
“What if we scouted the staff? Deputy Manager Kim, Assistant Manager Lee—would those guys rather stay under you, or come work for me?”
“A-are you threatening me right now?”
“I’m not threatening you. I’m simply stating facts.”
Do-hun’s gaze sharpened to a blade.
“The only reason I’ve held back until now is one thing: the debt I owed the president for teaching me everything when I was a clueless rookie. And the desire not to hurt the colleagues still left behind. That single reason is why I stayed quiet.”
“…”
“We’re the ones who’ve been keeping professional ethics, Director Choi—not you.”
He drove the nail home.
“But that patience of mine is just about used up.”
“W-what do you mean…?”
“If you come back one more time and make a nuisance of yourself… then you’ll actually have to compete with us in the same industry. Starting another marketing company is nothing with our capital. It wouldn’t even cost much.”
“…”
Choi’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. The pressure was overwhelming. This was no empty bluster. Those eyes were genuine. The terror that the company could literally disintegrate if he pushed any further settled over him like a shroud.
“N-no…”
He rose in an awkward half-crouch, legs trembling. Leaving now meant admitting defeat, yet he no longer had the justification—or the guts—to remain seated.
“Hah… You seem to think I came because I was desperate…”
He grabbed the doorknob and forced his voice higher. A coward’s excuse.
“I was worried you’d struggle out there… Old feelings came back, so I tried to give you a chance. You’re the ones who refused. Don’t come crying later!”
Choi fled the office like a man escaping a fire.
Bang.
Only after the door slammed shut did peace return to the room.
“That felt damn good.”
Minjun handed over the coffee with a grin.
“Hyung, your mouth is lethal. Are you sure you’re the same timid Manager Park from before?”
“Shut up, you brat. My hands were shaking so hard I thought I’d die.”
Do-hun exhaled a long, heavy breath. Yet a strange satisfaction lingered on his face—the sensation of a decade-old lump of resentment finally dissolving. For the first time, the man who had always bowed his head as the subordinate had become the one holding the power and crushing the other side flat.
“Minjun.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry about any of this. Just write. I’ll handle every scrap of this busywork.”
“Obviously. You know how much I lean on you.”
Minjun shrugged and finished packing up to head for the workroom.
“If we’re going to leave and take proper revenge, the writing has to keep succeeding—you know that, right? Go write. Write!”
“I know, I know.”
Once Minjun disappeared, the expression on Do-hun’s face—now alone—grew steadily heavier. He sat down and opened an Excel file.
Muse Co., Ltd. — Capital Status.
The numbers on the screen pressed down on him.
“Huu…”
He had talked big in front of Director Choi, but reality was nowhere near that generous.
We’re short on capital.
The future was bright—he was certain of that. Minjun’s writing had exploded, and the webtoon quality was insane. Success was already in the bag. The problem was the capital needed to carry them until then.
“Let’s run the numbers.”
Daily revenue: twenty million won. An enormous figure. But that was before platform fees. After fees, taxes, and waiting out the settlement cycle, actual money hit the account next month at the earliest—sometimes the month after that.
On top of everything else…
The fifty-million-won advance.
They had to burn through that first. Until the advance from management was fully recovered, settlement payments would sit at zero.
“Office deposit, equipment setup, incorporation costs…”
A huge chunk of the nearly one hundred million won in initial capital had already melted away. And now they wanted to build a webtoon department on top of that?
Staff salaries? Software subscriptions? Operating costs?
Unlike novels, webtoons were a war of labor costs. During production, revenue stayed at zero while expenses never stopped.
Death valley.
The cursed stretch where most startups died was staring him straight in the face. Do-hun folded his arms and stared at the ceiling.
“I still have to solve it.”
He could never share this headache with Minjun. His little brother needed to focus solely on creation. If money worries blocked the writing, the damage would be far worse.
“The weight of being CEO, huh…”
Do-hun gave a bitter smile and picked up his phone. Studio Nangan, Representative Kang Suk-woo. He pressed call.
“Yes, sir! What can I do for you?”
Kang’s voice was as energetic as ever. Do-hun decided to be completely honest.
“Representative, I need to discuss something urgent. It’s a capital issue.”
“Ah…”
“Now that we’ve decided to produce the webtoon in-house, the initial investment is turning out higher than expected. To be frank, cash flow could freeze before the first settlement arrives.”
He swallowed his pride and laid everything bare. From Studio Nangan’s perspective, a smooth webtoon adaptation meant massive profit for them as well. They were in the same boat. Kang seemed to grasp the seriousness; silence stretched for a moment.
“Are you looking for an additional advance?”
“If possible. Could we pull some of the webtoon adaptation rights fee forward?”
“Hmm… I’m sorry, but we’re a young studio ourselves and our cash reserves aren’t exactly overflowing. Even the last fifty million was a stretch for us…”
The answer he had expected. Do-hun’s face darkened. Maybe he would have to look into loans.
Then Kang spoke carefully.
“But… it’s not as if there’s no solution at all.”
“A solution?”
“Yes. Explode the revenue so we can either accelerate the settlement schedule or scale the size of the payout.”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“Munpia generates solid revenue, but the real ceiling of the web-novel market sits on other platforms. Sirius and Macao Page. We push secondary distribution on one of those two more aggressively—and faster.”
“Secondary distribution? Didn’t we already agree to start after episode 130 once we took the promotion?”
“That’s correct. But with the author’s current stockpile, serializing all the way to 130 is no problem. We simply accelerate the timeline with consecutive daily releases.”
Kang continued explaining. Launching on another platform would stack that revenue on top of Munpia’s. And if they secured a launch promotion, the sales spike in that single moment would dwarf anything Munpia could produce.
“Then the capital problem would be solved to a large degree.”
“Exactly. Revenue would generate simultaneously with Munpia. We’re talking tens of millions—easily crossing into the hundreds of millions. However…”
Kang trailed off.
“However?”
“Even with a stockpile up to 130, the pressure on the author’s writing schedule is real. Writing can flow beautifully one day and suddenly freeze the next…”
There was risk. Burning through the entire stockpile at once meant that if the writing ever stalled, the pressure on the author would be unimaginable.
“If the writing stays smooth, it’s the best possible scenario. But if it freezes even once… the author’s mental state could shatter.”
In the end, everything rested on Minjun. Do-hun sighed.
“Understood. I’ll discuss it with Minjun first.”
“Of course. The author’s opinion is what matters most. I’ll wait for your call.”
After hanging up, Do-hun stared at the workroom door.
He said he writes twenty episodes a day, right?
He had to believe that. He hoped it was true. Do-hun rose from his chair.
10 p.m. Home.
I stretched in front of the monitor.
“Uaaah…”
I rolled my stiff shoulders and grinned. It felt refreshing. The pathetic face of Director Choi earlier that day—still desperately clinging to his pride even as he fled—floated up in my mind.
Meeting Muse was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.
Without this ability? I would still be stuck in some corner of that office, bowing and scraping “Yes, sir” while making whatever absurd design revisions Choi ordered. I would have rotted there for life, never even knowing what my talent was, slowly withering away. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl.
“Focus.”
I shook off the stray thoughts and looked back at the screen. The manuscript for episode 150 of The Regressed Hunter is Merciless glowed on the monitor.
Click, click.
My fingers danced. The deeper I went into the later arcs, the more fun the writing became. It was no longer simple cathartic beat-downs. It was the work of reclaiming every foreshadowing seed planted early on, detonating the protagonist’s emotional line, and cranking the tension with the villain to the absolute limit—while still landing every single scene the readers craved with perfect precision. That pleasure was addictive.
Muse translated the images inside my head into text with flawless fidelity. It felt like only yesterday that I had finished episode 130, yet I had already blasted past 150.
“Is this what happens when your hobby and your job become the same thing?”
It wasn’t hard. If anything, as the tangled scenes in my head organized themselves into prose, I felt like I had become just another reader devouring the novel. It reminded me of the old days—discovering a story so good I would stay up all night binge-reading a hundred, two hundred episodes. That same immersion.
Twenty episodes a day? This barely even registers as fatigue.
The real problem was something else.
“Ah…”
I smacked my lips.
“When do I get to show them all of this?”
Greed. The hunger to show the readers as soon as possible boiled inside me. This progression, these twists, this catharsis—I was satisfied with every one of them. Right now the readers were leaving comments half-worried, half-hopeful.
I wanted to smash their doubts and their anxiety right in front of their faces.
If they saw this, they’d pass out.
The hundred and fifty files stacked in my folder were not mere manuscripts. They were a hundred and fifty nuclear missiles primed to detonate the readers’ dopamine.
Then—
Bzzzt.
The phone on the desk vibrated. Hyung.
The message felt heavy.
What’s this about?
Something leftover from Director Choi this afternoon? Hyung’s personality meant he would never leave a text like that over nothing. I hit save and picked up the phone.
“I’m done, hyung. What’s up?”
“Hey, Minjun. Sorry to bother you while you’re resting.”
His voice was subdued.
“The thing is… I talked with Representative Kang from Nangan. Because of our capital situation, we might need to adjust the strategy a bit.”
“Capital? Are we short on money?”
“We’re fine for now, but building the webtoon team is going to require some cash. So here’s the thing…”
He carefully relayed Kang’s proposal—early launch on other platforms, and the risks that came with it.
“We’d have to increase the release speed… Munpia’s exclusive window runs to episode 130, so even if we slow down after that, we’d still need consecutive daily releases until then…”
Guilt was thick in his voice.
“I know this means you’ll have to push yourself. Writing doesn’t just appear because you force it… I’m not trying to pressure you, but realistically this is the fastest route… If it feels even a little too hard, just say so. We can always push the webtoon adaptation back a bit.”
Listening to him, I couldn’t help a quiet snicker.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I spun my chair around and looked at the monitor. The stockpile. File count: 152.
“The thing you’re fretting over? It’s not a problem.”
“Huh? Really? How much stockpile do you actually have? To reach 130 we might need at least five consecutive daily releases. More would be even better.”
“Episode 130?”
I chuckled under my breath.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah?”
“When I first became a full-time writer, I was worried the writing itself would get hard.”
“Well, yeah, that makes sense…?”
“But the hard part isn’t the writing. The hardest part is not being able to show this work—this work that looks so perfect to me—in real time.”
“…”
“I’m at episode 150 right now. Do you have any idea how insane that made me? If I can just quench this thirst up to 130, I feel like the writing will actually get even better.”
It was exactly what I had been hoping for.
And more than that—
Dozens, hundreds of other works still drifted through my head. Among them, The Regressed Hunter is Merciless had been the safest choice, mixed with a little fear of failing on the very first try. Without even realizing it, I had built myself an escape hatch—the quiet claim that the real masterpieces still hadn’t shown themselves yet.