Uryat! Uryat! Work, Work! - 4

Next day.

Jeong Yu-ri sat alone in her office, eyes closed.

If this failed, 1 billion won of the Investment Strategy Office’s first-half budget would vanish. If it succeeded, I’d make as much as Arc Network earned in the first half of the year.

It was a wager for the biggest moment of my life, a gamble to cross the last gap I’d never been able to clear.

And yet, for a deal with that much money on the line, my mind felt unnervingly calm.

So it was true after all. They say once the money you make from investing passes a certain threshold, you get weirdly serene, like you’ve attained enlightenment. I really have stopped thinking about anything at all.

Letting go of every expectation, every shred of hope, I sat there with the list I’d kept tucked against my body these past few days and waited for the result of my final move.

One line on the last page kept burning in my head, sharper than anything else. It was advice left by some anonymous stranger, as though they had written the last word of counsel just for me.

With my eyes still closed, I murmured it back to myself.

“Money is harder to protect than it is to earn….”

It really was an eerily practical piece of advice.

Grandfather lost the company because he couldn’t do that, and then he died….

A paper shredder sat in front of me.

No matter how this turned out, this one shot was the last one. If it failed, then I’d have to bear the blame for trusting the devil’s information. If it succeeded, there would still be a future ahead of me that had nothing to do with the list.

It’s all… all my responsibility.

Even if it worked.

If something changed, then it would be time to reclaim my reason.

If nothing changed, then it would be time to look for another path.

But if I could, I hoped something would change.

The weight on my shoulders was simply too much to bear.

“Grandfather… so this is what you always felt like.”

And then.

The moment of fate drew near.

Tick.

Tick.

“!”

I opened my eyes.

At that exact moment, cheers burst from beyond the office door.

“It worked! It worked! It worked!”

“Woooooah!”

“It succeeded!”

Voices overlapped in a commotion from every direction.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Rustle.

Crash.

“Woooooah!”

It was as if they had just watched someone win a gold medal.

The entire Investment Strategy Office was cheering loud enough to shake the building. From the fact that the noise even carried into the other team offices far away, it seemed like the people who had been watching my every move had quietly joined in too.

…So it worked.

Three hundred billion won.

Maybe more.

It had worked.

I just made Arc Network’s production division’s first-half profits with a few clicks.

With that, I picked up the list and started the shredder. I fed it in without hesitation.

The gray teeth chewed through the white paper with a soft, hungry crunch.

Whirr!

As the last page of the list opened up, it delivered its advice to me one more time.

Then the list disappeared into strips thin as noodles.

Fsssh….

….

Like someone who’d been possessed by a god, the dazed fog in my head was slowly clearing. As the shredder kept whirring, fragments of memory surfaced one after another.

-Ah, so you’re Chairman Jeong Cheol-yong’s granddaughter?

-And you’re still grinding away to hit your targets?

-The way you’ve even been touching those weird little business lines nobody else wants… honestly, I thought you’d be in the gutter soon enough.

….

But that line of thought didn’t last long.

Urgent knocking echoed through the office.

Knock, knock, knock, knock!

“!”

The voice on the other side belonged to one of the team members from Team 2.

I froze, then quickly pulled out my phone, which I’d left on silent. The screen was stacked with messages my team had sent in a hurry.

I swallowed hard.

And then I heard something astonishing in the executive conference room upstairs.

“Because Team Leader Jeong has been so flashy about it, the Investment Strategy Office is turning into a gambling den. So we’ve decided to change her assignment this time.”

“Team Leader Jeong, you’re being reassigned from the Investment Strategy Office effective today. You’ll move to the New Business TF under Production Division 2. The money Team Leader Jeong earned this time will become that team’s budget.”

…A sideways promotion that looked, on the surface, like a demotion.

That was the decision reached in the emergency executive meeting.

The New Business TF under Production Division 2.

It was a newly created department this year, still so unclear in its place within the company that no one knew quite what to do with it. Because of that, no executive could really get their hands on it, and everyone treated it like some useless, half-eaten sweet potato they didn’t know what to do with.

Measured only by distance from headquarters, it looked a lot like a demotion. But another way to see it was that I’d been appointed as the new lord of an untamed frontier no one else could touch.

And with it came 30 billion won in budget, enough to shake the entire structure of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Investment Strategy Office. Once that money was folded into headquarters, there was a real chance the office’s entire direction would change.

So they sent it out.

To some dead-end posting where, if I sat still and did nothing, everything would stagnate and rot.

But if I moved fast….

…it was basically a shortcut to executive-level promotion.

It was a position where my ability to protect money would be tested far more than my ability to make it.

And that happened to be my specialty.

So I answered with confidence.

“Yes, understood. I’ll begin office relocation preparations with the team immediately.”

“Also….”

One of the executives added a reminder.

“The projects Team Leader Jeong was running in the Investment Strategy Office should be sold off or transferred to another team according to procedure before you go. Those were all operating on headquarters’ budget, after all.”

New wine should go into a new barrel.

On the surface, that was the logic.

But really, it looked more like a measure to isolate responsibility completely from headquarters….

Either way, it didn’t matter.

Selling ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠things at the right price was also one of my specialties. And most of the projects I’d carefully nurtured were the same ones other teams had been eyeing for a while….

“Ah.”

There was one business line, though, that even other teams would rather avoid.

….

Vtubers.

That one.

What was I supposed to do about it…?

I let out a quiet groan inside my head.

I wonder if anyone would want to buy it….

Thursday at lunch.

Dodam came to the convenience store again, her eyes so earnest she looked like a child asking after her parents’ health. She’d come under the pretense of grabbing lunch.

She’d also casually steered the conversation toward Bigman yesterday and spent two hours talking before leaving.

-Boss, can you tell me what God said when He first started this grand plan? I’m kind of curious how you two even met.

-Nothing particularly special. I just met him while I was consulting overseas investors.

-Aha… so that meeting was fated by the heavens.

-….

It was relentless worship, no matter the time or place.

And today she’d come again.

Dodam, sitting cross-legged beside me, slurped down her ramen. Then, as expected, she brought up Bigman again.

“Boss, did Bigman say anything else? Like what we need to do next…?”

….

I thought about it for a moment.

Once the RD negotiations are done, I do plan to give the content side a proper stage… but there’s no way to explain that right now.

So I told her only what I could say in the moment.

“Everyone is doing well according to their own convictions. Just keep putting in as much effort as you can into what you think is right. That’s all Bigman wants.”

….

Dodam chewed on her ramen in silence.

Then she lifted her can of soda and gulped it down.

When she spoke again, her voice was a little uneasy.

“Am I really doing okay?”

“?”

She was working hard enough.

She went live every single day, and every time she did, she reworked her content around the arcade she owned, D-GAMERS, into something fresh. Thanks to that effort, her subscriber count was climbing fast.

Somehow the word spread, because in just ten days she’d jumped from 50,000 to 80,000 subscribers.

Maybe it was because gaming was such a universal medium.

The interactions happening at the arcade were quickly locking in new viewers, and that was helping the channel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grow at this absurd speed.

And this was all happening before the domestic Big Plan corporation had even officially launched.

She couldn’t be doing any better than this.

In the end, Dodam was the one who was going to become the number one channel in ABCD in terms of viewers. For a Vtuber, this direction was probably the most effective one there was.

But Dodam still looked anxious.

“Bigman’s doing all this for me, you know? I keep thinking maybe I can’t really pay it back with Vtuber activities alone… and honestly, all I’ve ever really done is play games, so it feels like that’s all I have to offer….”

….

“So, yeah. It’s kind of weird.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

Dodam nodded.

“Aki’s been dancing and singing since she was little, so she’s already prepared the kind of stage she’s good at. And she’s got a waist like an ant’s, but she still wiggles around and can pull off performances and all that.”

….

I had no idea what her waist movement had to do with stage preparation, but it was probably something Dodam genuinely thought was impressive in her own way.

I let the sudden question drift past and listened.

Dodam went on, “The other girls all have their own strengths too, and everyone has something in life they can be proud of. I’m the only one who knows nothing except games, so… that makes me a little uneasy.”

“Uneasy?”

“Yeah, just….”

She scratched her head, looking embarrassed.

“The only thing I can do is games. I feel like viewers will get bored and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leave too quickly. Then I’d feel bad toward Bigman.”

Only thing I can do.

Hearing that, I tilted my head a little.

In other words, she could throw herself into the one thing that so many people could easily relate to, and do it with more passion than anyone else. Did she really need to put herself down for that?

So you can even belittle your own specialty that way.

I said, “Dodam.”

“Hm?”

“What is gaming to you?”

….

Dodam went quiet for a moment.

She seemed confused by the sudden question, so silence settled between us.

….

….

At last, she said, “A dream.”

“A dream?”

“Yeah.”

Dodam fiddled with her wooden chopsticks and looked ahead. She gave a little nod toward the Han River rippling in the distance. It was a restless gesture, but one that felt entirely like her.

“People say it’s useless in real life, that it doesn’t make money, that it’s a waste of time….”

….

“But it’s still fun. Something I just want to keep doing, something I hope everyone enjoys, something I can be honest about.”

“I see.”

….

Dodam continued, “A long time ago, I even dreamed of becoming a pro gamer. So I held the priest’s hand and went to youth tournaments too. It was a gathering for young hopefuls.”

….

She wasn’t a pro gamer now.

So I didn’t need to say how that story ended.

Sure enough, Dodam let out a small laugh and admitted it herself.

“Of course I got completely wrecked. I mean, what the hell? The third-grader in the same lane as me had the most insane control I’d ever seen. For a second I thought they were cheating.”

….

“I’d been pretty proud of my rank, too, but the people who were seriously aiming to go pro were on a whole different level… that’s what I learned.”

“I see.”

“So I decided to keep it as a dream, not a job.”

“Gaming?”

“Yeah.”

She muttered, “I’m not cut out to beat other people in a fight. I just wanted something that feels good even if all I do is play games with others….”

….

…something like that. Before I knew it, I’d become a Vtuber while living with that kind of dream.

“That’s right.”

I spoke from the heart.

“I support that dream.”

….

Dodam made a tiny, pinched expression, pushing her lips out like a duck and scrunching her brow as she shook her head.

“You copying Bigman?”

….

I shook my head too.

“I mean it. I think that dream is a good one.”

….

“Playing games… and competing not to defeat someone, but to make it fun, is something special. That’s probably why people feel drawn to your streams.”

“You’re praising me way too much.”

“I think more people share that feeling than you realize.”

“Hmm, that so?”

Even as she said it, the corners of her mouth had risen just a little.

Silence settled over us again.

….

….

I thought about it.

….

Dreams.

A dream….

For some reason, it felt like a word tied directly to the goal of this round. A-young was trying to achieve her path with her own strength, while Dodam was trying to build hers together with other people.

And me, too, as I tried to escape this regression….

Everyone was dreaming.

….

So I decided.

If A was walking her own path, then the dream I should be cheering for this time was….

“I think D would be the right one.”

“?”

Dodam tilted her head.

“What are you talking about?”

….

I didn’t answer.

I decided to leave the meaning of that answer to Bigman.

Right now, I just wanted to feel a little more at ease.

And then, the next day, I heard the news that Team Leader Jeong Yu-ri from Arc Network was wrapping up her project business. That included RD’s management team, Studio Romance.

….

Now.

It was time to begin again.

It was May 19th, and a cool breeze was blowing.