The Ten Billion Won Cage
"You actually went and created that team?"
"Yes, ma'am. Under CEO Kwon's direction, the Special Strategy Operations Team has been formally launched."
Vice Chairwoman Kim Inyoung, who had been listening to the report, let out a contemptuous laugh, as if the sheer audacity of it left her almost impressed.
"So that man truly intends to see this through to the end with us."
"CEO Kwon was once Director Geum Gaho's right hand, after all. A most faithful hunting dog, too. He is not a man who would fear a little estrangement from our group."
Kim Inyoung drummed her fingers irritably against the desk.
"And just how is this Special Strategy Operations Team to be run?"
"According to the report submitted by Daeseong Securities, the initial operating capital alone appears to exceed 250 billion won."
"250 billion? You're telling me they're handing that much to a single team?"
"In name it's a team, but in substance it's the size of an independent headquarters. 250 billion won is equivalent to the entire pool of funds a full operations department would normally manage."
Executive Director Gu Daeho pushed up his glasses and continued in a grave voice.
"CEO Kwon has deliberately laid the table for Director Geum Gaho's sake. Kang Suho is, for all practical purposes, Geum Gaho's avatar. He is the blade being swung at our group in the Director's stead."
"Even granting that he was Geum Gaho's old servant, you're saying they entrusted 250 billion won to a mere child in his twenties?"
"He is not someone you can dismiss as a mere child."
Director Gu's eyes darkened, turning sharp and cold.
"Kang Suho is not simply a shield or a puppet that Director Geum has propped up. The overwhelming trajectory he has shown from the Research Center all the way to Delta One is... frankly, extraordinary. He only pretends to be a green, naive newcomer on the surface. In truth, he is a monster that Geum Gaho raised in the darkness throughout his entire time in seclusion."
"A monster raised in the darkness, is it..."
Geum Gaho, that man. All through his years of withdrawal, he'd done nothing but drown himself in liquor, mourning his dead son and wife. And all the while, he had been lurking in the shadows, quietly digging up a genius and driving a dagger into Daeseong Group's back.
"He is a perfect strategist who looks down on the flow of capital as if reading a chessboard and moves only after calculating even his opponent's psychology. That is precisely who Kang Suho is. It may well be that the target we should guard against most carefully is not Geum Gaho, but that young man."
Kim Inyoung lifted her long-cold teacup and elegantly moistened her lips.
Though her insides were burning with anxiety and fury, she refused to lose the dignity befitting the Vice Chairwoman of Daeseong Group.
"So. I assume you have a countermeasure prepared?"
At that, a fishy smile spread across Director Gu's lips.
"There was no justification to block the team's creation itself. Kang Suho's track record has simply been too overwhelming. But every other circumstance surrounding it? Those we can control at the group level as much as we please."
"How, exactly?"
"By forcibly shortening his stride. Making it so that no matter what he wants to do, he cannot."
The confidence on his face suggested he was holding a certain, decisive move in reserve.
"I take it you have a card ready?"
"Allow me to present this proposal for your review."
Director Gu respectfully slid a thin document folder across the table.
Kim Inyoung picked up the proposal with a skeptical gaze.
......
Her eyes had been indifferent as she turned the first page, but the moment she skimmed down to the next, they widened almost imperceptibly.
"Oh my."
With a short gasp, Kim Inyoung's attention was riveted completely to the documents.
Her fingers turned the pages faster and faster.
"And this is your handiwork, Director Gu?"
"Yes. It may look somewhat blatant and dirty, I admit, but there is no better move for snuffing out the momentum of a newly minted Special Strategy Operations Team."
Kim Inyoung closed the folder and let out a deep sigh of admiration.
"Excellent. As you said, the method is a bit crude — but it's perfectly suited to suffocating an enemy slowly, until they die on their feet."
"You need only grant your approval, Madam Vice Chairwoman. Then, before long, you will watch the Special Strategy Operations Team exhaust itself and collapse on its own."
Only then did Kim Inyoung's sharp eyes soften into a look of clear satisfaction.
Tap. As she set her teacup down, every trace of the irritability from before had vanished from her hand.
"Very well. If Director Gu is this confident, I will gladly wait."
"Thank you, Madam Vice Chairwoman. I will move to act at once."
"Do that. Just don't keep me waiting too long. My patience is short. You understand?"
"I will bear it in mind."
Director Gu bowed and withdrew.
Left alone, Kim Inyoung released a sigh laced with equal parts relief and triumph, then leaned back into her chair.
"Geum Gaho. You will come to regret ever coming back."
Last time, his carelessness had allowed her a single strike. This time, it was her turn to repay that humiliation in full.
"...And this is the official directive from headquarters?"
"Yes, sir. The order was handed down directly from the Vice Chairwoman's office..."
The secretary's voice, delivering the document from headquarters, crept in shriveled and small.
CEO Kwon Junyong looked over the Special Strategy Operations Team proposal and let out a hollow laugh of sheer disbelief.
"I expected them to move against us, but..."
Was this not beyond blatant — downright despicable?
"What on earth is in it, sir, that has you like this?"
"The headquarters guidelines for the Special Strategy Operations Team. Everyone, take a look."
The executives passed the documents around with puzzled faces.
And before long, a chorus of strangled, appalled exclamations erupted.
"Hold on. Wh-what is this?"
"10 billion won?! The operating capital allocated to the Special Strategy Operations Team is a mere 10 billion won?!"
10 billion won.
That was less than what a single senior manager in the Trading Division routinely handled.
"Sir, isn't this just... building a grand-sounding department and telling them to sit in a corner sucking their thumbs?"
One of the executives loosened his tie slightly and raised his voice.
"I know headquarters doesn't look favorably on the Special Strategy Operations Team. But this is too much. This is a newly launched team our own securities firm is proudly putting forward — a team all of Yeouido has its eyes on. And you're telling me 10 billion won? That's not even enough to properly touch a single mid-cap stock!"
"He's right. Isn't this making our securities firm the laughingstock of Yeouido? They hand us a shiny title and then confiscate every round of live ammunition we might actually fire — an empty tin can, nothing more."
The conference room boiled over with agitation and fury in an instant.
Among the executives, the headquarters loyalists and the faction backing CEO Kwon were usually at odds, but this time everyone raged as one.
Word travels fast in Yeouido.
Sooner or later, this affair would spread across the entire financial district.
And then the whole of their workplace — Daeseong Securities itself — would be reduced to an object of mockery.
Nothing could wound their pride more.
"Is there truly no way to reverse this?"
"Read the directive. It's written right there in black and white. In the case of newly established departments, since investment safety has not yet been verified, the initial operating limit shall be restricted to 10 billion won for a period of three months as a risk management measure."
The galling part was the line tucked in after it, as if offering a consolation prize: any profits generated from the initial 10 billion won could be used in full.
"They couldn't deny Kang Suho Team Leader's track record, so they couldn't block the team's creation outright — instead they're shoehorning in a forced pretext like this. If we push back here, they'll twist the knife: they'll say we entrusted thousands of billions of the company's money to a rookie team leader like a gamble, with no safety measures whatsoever, and come at us with breach of trust."
It was an undeniably cunning trap.
Piercing through this dense spider's web would be no easy feat, even for Kang Suho.
"If things go on like this... the Special Strategy Operations Team will destroy itself. So many aces applied with bloated dreams, believing they were joining a super team our securities firm would champion behind — but the moment they see that 10 billion won cap, their spirit will snap, and they won't be able to do anything."
An organization that has lost its motivation rarely produces results.
Employees, disillusioned by headquarters' high-handedness, would begin leaving in droves.
Then the Special Strategy Operations Team's numbers would crater, and headquarters would acquire the perfect pretext to dissolve the team, right on schedule.
The whole of it was a big picture headquarters had drawn with meticulous care.
"Sir. Kang Team Leader will have seen this directive by now, won't he?"
"It would have been distributed through the company intranet."
......
A heavy silence settled over the conference room, thick with helplessness.
For all that he possessed a beast-like instinct that pierced straight through the currents of the financial markets, Kang Suho was, in the end, just another salaried employee.
"...For now, let's watch how Kang Team Leader responds."
On the eve of the market opening, an office that should have been brimming with pleasant anticipation and taut, electric tension, every preparation in place.
"Aigoo..."
"What are we supposed to do about this..."
Instead, our team's atmosphere today hung heavy and sunken, thick sighs leaking out from every corner.
The cause was the directive on the Special Strategy Operations Team's funding allocation, handed down from headquarters early that morning.
......
The conference room where the core members who would form the backbone of our team had gathered.
It was a top-of-the-line conference room that management had ambitiously furnished for us, but thanks to our meager operating capital, the space somehow felt hollow and bare.
"This is absolutely outrageous."
The first to break the heavy silence was Team Leader Song.
"How can headquarters possibly treat us like this? After everything Team Leader Kang has delivered to this firm — all that massive performance — and they hand us a mere 10 billion won?"
"Wouldn't it be worth lodging a formal protest with headquarters, even at this point?"
Team Leader Cheon wore her usual cold expression, but there was anger threaded through her voice.
"The CEO and the rest of the executives are sitting quietly even after headquarters issued a directive like this. Which tells me protesting now would be pointless."
"So we're truly expected to run a team this size on 10 billion won?"
......
Another desolate silence followed.
......
What we had anticipated from the start was somewhere between 150 and 200 billion won.
But headquarters had tossed us a measly 10 billion.
'If headquarters is coming out like this...'
They claimed it was for risk management, but I was no fool.
This was an unmistakable intent to strangle me and the Special Strategy Operations Team to death.
"...Team Leader?"
I had climbed all the way here riding this extraordinary sense of smell, from win to win — but coldly speaking, I was still a workplace newcomer.
Having never experienced such blatant obstruction before, my composure was shaking badly.
On the outside, however, I forced my expression back into careful calm.
"Excuse me for a moment. I'll be in my office."
"Ah... yes, sir."
I left the team in the conference room and headed for the team leader's office.
......
With each steady step down the hall, I could feel the anxious eyes of the operations team staff settling on me.
Click.
Only after I stepped into the office, closed the door, and stood alone did I wipe my sweat-soaked palms against my trousers.
......
Suddenly, the conversation I'd shared with Director Geum over that meal came back to me.
So this is it.
This was the weight of being a team leader. I hadn't known that becoming the head of a group of people could weigh this heavy.
If our operations team went down in flames, it wouldn't be my problem alone.
The careers and the lives of these fine employees I had handpicked would go down with me.
It was exactly that heavy burden of responsibility pressing down on me now.
"Whew..."
Stay calm.
The Director had told me, hadn't he?
A leader must never waver.
When the leader shakes, the entire team collapses.
If my mental state shattered here and I did nothing, our Special Strategy Operations Team would come apart in midair, just like that.
I was no longer an intern who could lean on someone else and hope for help.
I was a team leader — the one who had to make decisions on his own authority and shoulder the consequences.
'So let's think this through.'
Why would headquarters go this far to trample me down?
The answer wasn't hard to guess.
"It's because of Director Geum, isn't it."
I had picked up a few things during my time at the company.
What Director Geum symbolized within the group, and how deeply the headquarters brass feared his shadow.
In their eyes, I would appear to be Director Geum's closest confidant.
And that wouldn't be wrong.
The Director was the one who personally placed me into this company when I was scrambling desperately just to find a job.
He had helped me in countless other ways besides.
Which meant I carried a debt to him that I would spend my life repaying.
The problem was that headquarters found my relationship with the Director bitter to swallow.
'This isn't just speculation, I think.'
This new team had been created through a major investment at the company level.
Obstructing a team like that under the banner of risk management defied common sense.
That was why I was angry.
If they wanted to come after me alone, fine — but weren't they about to make my entire team pay the price?
I had no interest in office politics, and no desire to be tangled up in them.
I had quietly told myself that all I needed to do was deliver results in the position given to me.
But now that I'd come this far, it seemed I could no longer play blind.
Not for my own sake — for the sake of my team.
'Then what should I do?'
The answer, unexpectedly, was simple.
Ten billion won, nothing more — but with even that, I would produce results so dramatic no one could look away.
I would make them understand that strangling me and my team meant bleeding the entire group.
I would not cave here. I would not be broken.
"I'll do the very best that I can."
And it was in that exact moment of resolve—
......!
My nose, stuffed completely shut, suddenly burst open, and a cool, crisp rush of air spread through my whole body.
The crushing weight and anxiety that had been pressing on my shoulders moments ago washed away without a trace.
"So you feel the same way I do."
I tapped the tip of my nose lightly.
After all, wasn't there one ability I possessed that no one else had?