The Chairman's Heavy Burden
The Nartika Corporation #051
Chairman of the Nartika Group. The Far North Elf known in Korean as Cheon Donghyuk had been wrestling with many doubts about life lately. More precisely, he was plagued by questions about whether everything he had built so far was truly right.
It wasn’t about the company. Rather, his current concerns were far more personal. Though his appearance remained youthful, his heart had aged considerably, and these worries weighed on him. Any Korean person would have recognized the problem immediately.
“At this rate, how are they even going to make a living?”
It was worry for his children and grandchildren.
His children, whom he cherished so deeply it hurt to look at them, and his grandchildren, who always filled him with pride and affection. But if you stripped away the pretty wrapping of “family,” they looked nothing like that. Instead, they seemed like waste that deserved to be thrown out immediately.
“Wonjun, Gyuhyeon, Jooeun.”
Every single one of Cheon Donghyuk’s living children was utterly incompetent. Management ability, hunter ability, work ethic, intellect, even basic life skills—none of them had any of it. It wasn’t as if they had been spoiled rotten at home, yet the reality was tragically pathetic. His eldest had shown promise, but he and his wife had fallen into a trap set by Germans and died. Left with no choice, Donghyuk had placed his remaining children in the positions of subsidiary presidents. However, their incompetence leaked out no matter how hard they tried to hide behind the authority of their titles. In the end, those numerous subsidiary president positions had become nothing more than empty shells without real power.
Among the entire family, the chairman himself was practically the only one who actually worked at Nartika.
“What on earth am I supposed to do with these kids…?”
And if the children were bad, were the next generation any better? Not at all. Not in the slightest.
His grandchildren, who had only just become adults, were problems personified. There were so many issues it was hard to even list them all.
His granddaughter—the child of his third child and only daughter—had a completely warped sense of money. Even if enjoying consumption was considered a virtue among today’s youth, this girl took it to extremes. On top of that, she had once dabbled in illegal means in her pursuit of making a fortune.
His grandson—the child of his second son and youngest—was mentally frail. For some reason that Donghyuk couldn’t understand, the boy had become a drug addict. He had even openly done drugs at home and thrown violent tantrums at the family.
“Cough! Cough!”
And then there was his eldest granddaughter, Cheon Mari, the child of his late firstborn son. She was tragedy itself. A problem beyond words, a painful splinter in the chairman’s heart.
As a child, she had witnessed her parents die in the most horrific way imaginable. Left alone, she had transformed into someone gloomy, extreme, and violently temperamental. It was catastrophic. Yet at the same time, she displayed an unnaturally sharp business acumen far beyond her years. No—her insight ran so deep it couldn’t simply be called talent.
Most of Nartika’s recent business expansions had come from Cheon Mari’s mind. The majority of those ventures were already generating massive profits, and even those that weren’t were projected to do so in the long term. In effect, it was all but confirmed that she would be the successor. Among the family, among the employees, even compared to himself, no one else had shown such capability.
“But…”
Her personality was fatally flawed.
It was so severe that the family could barely contain it. Her character was underdeveloped to a dangerous degree. Even the incidents that had occurred regularly during her elementary school years were far from normal. It was only thanks to the generosity of the victim, Kang Sian, and his family that everything had been overlooked. No, they had gone beyond overlooking it—they had become her friends. And after Cheon Mari began following Kang Sian around like a little duckling, her mental state had clearly improved.
Of course, Kang Sian himself seemed… rather exhausted by the whole thing.
That was why, when he heard that the boy wanted to become a hunter through Cheon Mari, Cheon Donghyuk had provided extensive support. Unlimited access to company facilities, free use of consumables—everything. He had originally planned to assign an in-house hunter instructor as well, but Cheon Mari had insisted they would study from books instead, so he withdrew the offer.
“Still, it’s strange. Is it really possible to reach the level of defeating bosses just by studying from books?”
It was truly bizarre, but since they were always ranked first and second in their grade, he simply accepted that they were exceptionally gifted. After all, it wasn’t unheard of for students to excel without academies or private tutors.
That peaceful life between the two childhood friends didn’t last forever.
At some point, Cheon Mari’s mental condition seemed to improve at a slower pace. From what he could see, the healing effect of being by Kang Sian’s side had reached its limit. So he deliberately sent her to a different high school. A prestigious private academy where children from noble families gathered.
It turned out to be Cheon Donghyuk’s greatest mistake.
After only a single year of separation—merely keeping her away at school—the result was utterly horrific.
The innate nature everyone had forgotten about resurfaced.
Ferocious. Reckless. Vicious. Cunning. Cruel. Wicked.
She proved in the flesh that she wasn’t called the hidden boss of the game for nothing. In fact, even being called the Demon King wouldn’t have been an exaggeration.
Especially the incident with the defective potions that she had masterminded before getting caught. Simply because she didn’t like certain people, she had supplied defective potions and prototype drugs to several guilds. Even though the parents of those “addict friends” held high positions in those guilds, the potions were still problematic. People died. Others fell ill.
What made it even worse was how, the moment the lawsuits ended, she mocked the victims who attended the same school in the most malicious ways possible. Because of the ethical issues involved—even if there had been profit in it—Cheon Mari was transferred to the school Kang Sian attended. Better that than letting one school split in two. What else could he do?
One school regained its peace.
One businessman regained his peace of mind.
And one student began suffering again.
Because of all that, Cheon Donghyuk had decided he would tolerate it even if Kang Sian crossed the line a little. Honestly, the boy wasn’t the type to cross any real lines unless someone held a knife to his throat. That was why he had thought that way.
But he never imagined a photo would come up from below showing Cheon Mari holding a knife to Kang Sian and dragging him into a hotel.
“Secretary Kim, do kids these days usually move this fast?”
“Uh… well, I hear it varies from person to person… I’m not entirely sure. My apologies.”
The Westermarck effect. The hypothesis that people who grow up together from a young age tend to recognize each other as family and thus have difficulty developing sexual feelings. Therefore, one thing was clear.
Since the two of them had known each other for eleven years already, something like this should never have happened. If they were suddenly drawn to each other now, it meant they had chosen one another despite overcoming some primal instinct. At this point, separating them through normal means would be impossible.
And unfortunately, worrying about it was a waste of time. Because the concepts of dating or lovers as other people understood them simply didn’t exist in their world.
“This is driving me insane.”
However, humans are creatures drawn to stimulation. Instead of facing reality, Cheon Donghyuk and his secretary chose to accept the worst-case scenario as fact. The scene of Cheon Mari playing a prank out of boredom transformed in their minds into the atrocity of a pitiful boy being threatened with a knife so she could speed-run a relationship.
Naturally, the thought of stopping it arose, but Cheon Donghyuk soon decided to view her crossing the line even more generously. From the beginning, he had never intended to interfere in his granddaughter’s private life. In an era of rampant divorce and divided shares, connecting with someone you truly got along with was an important matter.
Besides, was she the kind of child who would listen nicely just because he asked her to? She would probably start a sit-in protest right in front of the house and use every method imaginable to throw a tantrum.
“Still… what if she throws a fit the moment she becomes an adult and demands to get engaged?”
“I believe it would be right to let her. After all, the young lady’s personality is what it is.”
“……”
“And after that chair-shot incident last time, marriage proposals or matchmaking offers for the young lady have completely stopped coming in.”
Honestly, they did need to see great-grandchildren at some point. The secretary added the advice in a somewhat pitiful tone. At the same time, it was a forecast that she wouldn’t change even after becoming an adult. In any case, no one would willingly take on this massive bomb. Someone had to take in this child that even her own family couldn’t handle.
If one person endured everything so that the rest could be happy, wasn’t that the right thing to do? And if, through that, the company grew even larger, then it would be more than right—it would be a wise action worthy of praise. Logically, it was the best option. There was no second-best alternative.
“When I have some free time later, I should visit that child’s house.”
“You mean Student Sian’s house, sir?”
“He’s a child receiving Nartika’s support. That should be reason enough, shouldn’t it?”
It was unofficial support, but support nonetheless. However, if it ended there, it would be an incredible waste.
“…So whether we go have a talk or draw up some documents, it would be beneficial for everyone.”
“Exactly.”
Even setting aside the engagement talk, the boy was preparing for Palaestra Academy. Simply passing the entrance exam was already impressive, yet he was also carrying out hunter work for Nartika—dungeon raids, monster hunting, material procurement—and more. Through that, he had proven himself and delivered profits to Nartika that would have taken over a hundred F-rank hunters to earn. Even if it was preparation, practice, and training all at once, the results were astonishing.
No matter how you looked at the process, recruiting him would be an incredibly profitable deal. Nartika would never lose out.
Yet precisely because of that reality, a deep sigh escaped him.
Cheon Donghyuk rose from his seat and gazed out the window at the Nartika industrial complex. The streets were empty of people, but his eyes far surpassed those of ordinary humans. Even if they were nothing more than tiny specks, he could roughly make out what they were.
He soon focused on three points. And at those points were…