Episode 2: Not a Genius, Just Ordinary

A few hours before Yu Yuna and Yu Yujeong met in the garage, Chairman Yu Jeongung sat in the chairman's office of Yuseong Electronics—the heart of Yuseong Group, South Korea's number-one chaebol. Before him stood his grandson, Yu Yujeong.

"The time is coming. Prepare yourself."

Yu Jeongung was past eighty, and he could feel his retirement closing in. His mind was no longer the clear thing it had been, and his body had failed in ways impossible to miss. He had raised a great empire, and yet there is no flower that stays red for ten days, and no power that lasts ten years. The succession of Yuseong Group worried him.

He had turned the problem over and over, and the finest answer he could reach was to leap his children's generation entirely and hand the group to a grandson. Could anyone even picture it? Seasoned executives in their fifties and sixties passed over, and a young man in his thirties receiving the conglomerate that stood first in Korea.

"You have been exceptionally brilliant ever since you were small. And..."

There was no mercy in him, not even for family. An ordinary person would have gone cold at that, affection draining away. In Yu Jeongung's judgment, it was an extraordinarily fine quality. He cherished Yuseong Group above his own blood, and here was the talent to carry that vast group past a mere decade of power and forge it into a great thousand-year kingdom.

"Enough. You may go. And see that you are prepared."

"Yes. I understand."

Yu Jeongung turned it over in his mind. There was no outstanding talent in his children's generation—nothing but fools, every one of them cleared away along the grandchildren's line. Not that his sons and daughters were all idiots. A few had been reasonably sharp. But every one of them had stirred up trouble, in business or in society, and fallen. Someone stood behind it. That much was certain. Yet the methods were so subtle that even Yu Jeongung, who held the entire group in his grip, could not see the whole.

At the end of a long uncertainty, he arrived at last at a single conclusion. Who had gained as the children's generation collapsed? His grandson, Yu Yujeong—the only one left standing in the fight for the succession. A man of the grandchildren's generation, who by rights would never even have entered the line of heirs, and who had nonetheless come to be acknowledged as the finest successor of all. Yu Jeongung grew convinced that the hand behind every one of those incidents was Yu Yujeong's.

Alone in the office Yu Yujeong had left, Yu Jeongung laughed. A madman who would sink his teeth into family without a moment's hesitation—a lunatic of that sort was precisely the man fit to rule Yuseong Group. The group under Yu Yujeong would never toss meat to the hyenas waiting outside. It would reign ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the summit of the business world.

Yu Yujeong waited for Yu Yuna in the garage. There were things he did not want their father or their mother to hear. The conclusion, first: Yu Jeongung was mistaken. Yu Yujeong had not schemed their rivals into ruin.

Even I would have been fooled. It was not only Yu Jeongung. Most of that children's generation believed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠their fall was Yu Yujeong's doing. The only person who could strike Yu Yujeong from the list of suspects was the man himself, and he had come to be certain of the real culprit only by removing the two people who absolutely could not be guilty—himself, and their father. The elimination method. Erase everything that cannot possibly be the truth, and what remains is the answer.

"Yuna."

A car pulled into the garage. Yu Yujeong watched his sister step out: nine years younger, far too young and far too lovely, a monstrous child with a career that had no business existing.

Across elementary, middle, and high school, Yu Yujeong had skipped a full four years. Yu Yuna had skipped six. Yu Yujeong had entered the best university in the country at fifteen. Yu Yuna, at fifteen, had already taken a bachelor's degree from an elite university overseas. Yu Yujeong had earned his doctorate in business at twenty-five and only then set his first foot inside the company. Yu Yuna, at twenty-one, already had more than five successful major projects behind her and, in the end, had taken the presidency of the affiliate Yuseong F&B.

At first he had thought his sister had to come off the suspect list. When their paternal aunt—one of the rivals for the succession—died, his sister had been only twelve. A child of twelve could not kill an aunt by means so subtle that even a chaebol chairman failed to notice. So he had excluded her.

Once he was older and knew the family better, he changed his mind. The one who should have been excluded was their father. Their father was weak-willed, not a man capable of disposing of his own family. He had no ambition, and his ability, Yu Yujeong judged, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was probably lacking as well. Yu Yuna, who had finished university at fifteen, a master's at seventeen, and by twenty-one held two master's degrees and the presidency of an affiliate, had to have been the mastermind back then. A terrifying child who had removed a relative at the age of twelve. Yu Yujeong had no wish to fight her for the succession, and he did not believe he could win.

"If you want the chairmanship, I have no intention of competing."

"The chair should be yours, oppa. You're the genius."

At her words, Yu Yujeong swallowed a bitter smile. If I'm a genius, then what are you? You, who were always a step ahead of me. You, who made me look shabby every single time. What in the world are you?

"Then what about you?"

Asked outright, Yu Yuna answered with perfect ease, wearing the face of someone who truly believed it.

"I'm just a precocious kid. A long way from a genius."

It was genuinely ridiculous, and still he could not laugh. What in the world are you? You cleared out every rival for the succession, and now you say your brother is the one who suits the chair? What are you really after?

I finished the family dinner at Dad's house and went back to my studio apartment. I showered, dropped onto the bed, and rolled around. Tomorrow, I thought, I might actually be able to turn the stream on. The busy season was finally over!

A genius? Please. Oppa seemed to have the wrong idea about me. I'm not particularly smart. I'm just an ordinary reincarnator—one who happened to come back a little against the current of time. I was certain I had died in 2025, and yet, for reasons I couldn't begin to explain, I was reborn into 2005. Reincarnation alone was astonishing enough. How was I supposed to know why time had twisted?

Still, a reincarnator's privileges are meant to be used. I had bought up coins and stocks in earnest, and my fortune by now was...

The business with my aunt really is a shame. When I was ten, the whole family nearly died in a traffic accident. Surviving was a miracle, they said. Lying in a hospital bed, I understood at once that this was a chaebol inheritance fight—and that a ten-year-old like me, trying anything inside the frame of Yuseong Group, could never deal with whoever stood behind it. So I built a line on the outside. By then I had already grown enough capital playing with coins that it wasn't impossible.

And the matter of my aunt. Regrettable. I didn't hire an assassin. Not directly. I ruined her financially and socially, and she took to her bed with hwabyeong—the sickness of rage that has nowhere to go—and died. If you mean to kill someone, be prepared to die yourself. Was that how it went? For a person who had tried to put our family in the ground with a car crash, her nerve had been surprisingly weak. To die because she couldn't endure falling even once. She was leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Anyway, I was only a reincarnator with knowledge of the future. A long way from a genius. I had already been an adult before that last death, so even entering university at the age of one would have been late. Graduating at fifteen? Late. Hopelessly late. And I'm not the scholar type, so I never so much as stuck a foot into a doctoral program. Oppa, set beside that, is a real genius: one lifetime, skip after skip, a doctorate at only twenty-five. A monster. He likes to praise my business success as if it were something tremendous, but that was petty theft, possible only because I knew what would take off later.

Fortunately, nothing like a Time Patrol—some security force for the timeline—had ever come to arrest me. I happened to remember the coin timeline in fairly fine detail, so the money I held kept duplicating until it became a considerable sum, but that doesn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mean I'm impressive. Any perfectly ordinary crypto addict, handed a regression, could have managed this much.

Ziiiiiing—

The third phone was ringing. Of the three I keep—one for Yuseong Group, one for streaming, and one for a covert private life—this was the third. A notice came through that mail had arrived. I opened the laptop, and it was not one message, or two.

She had sent plenty. And I had already taken my hands off the work. Of course I had—the future I knew ended in 2025. If I went and played group chairman at this late date, everyone would see I had nothing left in the bag.

It wasn't even something that needed my approval. Im Miyeon was carrying out a chairman's duties admirably. The answer came not by email, but by phone.

Deepwell Financial Group, with three trillion dollars under management. The most successful of every place I had put money into. True, in the beginning I had guided her with what I knew of the future. But the run of successes after that was Im Miyeon's own ability. What I had actually done was use that future knowledge to buy, dirt cheap and at her lowest, a great businesswoman—ruined, yet fully capable of rising again on her own.

No need to grow any stronger now. After I nearly died at ten, I had needed power. Not power inside Yuseong Group. Power that sat outside it. The succession fight was over, so there was no need to build that power any further. Not unless oppa suddenly lost his mind and tried to kill me.

So the mastermind retires.

Of course, retiring wouldn't make the lines, the connections, and the capital I had built disappear. It only meant there was no longer any need to work that capital aggressively. Tomorrow, I intended to go on stream.