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# Chapter 1
“Ah, Assistant Manager. I’m really sorry. I ended up checking the quantity on that purchase order incorrectly.”
The voice coming through the receiver was half excuse, half apology.
Jung Woojin let out a deep sigh as he scrolled down with the mouse wheel. The monitor displayed this week’s purchase
orders, which had become a complete mess.
“Assistant Manager Kim. What am I supposed to do if you cause this problem on Friday afternoon? Our logistics warehouse
has already closed for the day.”
“I know, I know. But if this shipment doesn’t come in on our side, the weekend sales at the stores will come to a
complete halt. Assistant Manager Jung, could you please do something just this once?”
“Haa.”
Woojin pressed a hand against his forehead. He was in his seventh year on the sales management team at a mid-sized
distribution company.
Problems like this happened whenever he had almost forgotten about them, but just because he had gotten used to them
didn’t mean they annoyed him any less.
In the end, Woojin had no choice but to make an emergency delivery arrangement by pleading with the logistics
department.
“Fine. I’ll put in the delivery request for now, so please make sure you check properly from next time.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
Woojin hung up and began pounding away at the keyboard. In the empty office, the sound of typing echoed loudly.
When he raised his head, the clock hanging on the wall was already pointing to 10 p.m.
Ten on a Friday night. It was the time when everyone else was enjoying their Friday night, drinking with friends or
relaxing at home.
But Woojin was still at the company.
“Fuck. Why is it always me dealing with this shit?”
After muttering a quiet curse, Woojin picked up the mug sitting in the corner of his desk. The coffee left inside had
already gone completely cold.
He downed the cold coffee in one gulp and turned on his phone screen.
A message sent by his team leader an hour ago was sitting prominently in the messenger app.
[Woojin, sorry. I have my father-in-law’s seventieth birthday gathering today, so I’m going home first. Finish compiling
the weekly report I mentioned yesterday before you leave. We need to use it right away at Monday morning’s meeting.]
A family gathering.
The team leader’s unbeatable excuse.
He always managed to slip away from his own work and dump everything on Woojin, the easygoing assistant manager who was
always willing to take it.
While imagining throwing his resignation letter onto the table for what must have been the thousandth time, Woojin
opened the Excel window again.
He also had to sort out the missing data that his junior, Choi Minseok, had hurriedly dumped on him before leaving that
afternoon.
Fine. I’ll just do all of it. My life is always like this anyway.
With that resignation, he wrestled with the monitor for a full two hours.
It was only when midnight was approaching that he finally managed to finish all his work.
“Done.”
Woojin stretched and stood up.
Rubbing his stiff neck, he turned off the office lights and stepped into the hallway.
The completely empty office corridor seemed especially cold and vast.
As soon as he stepped outside the building, the chilly late-autumn night air hit him.
Woojin raised the collar of his coat and hurried toward the subway station.
The time for the last train was already approaching.
A few exhausted office workers stood around the bus stop like zombies. Woojin was one of them.
While walking through an alley near the subway station, Woojin stopped in front of a familiar sign.
A convenience store that stayed brightly lit twenty-four hours a day.
Ding.
“Welcome.”
After receiving the greeting of the tired-looking part-timer, who seemed to be pulling an all-nighter, Woojin entered
the store.
The first place he headed was the rice ball display.
“As expected, everything’s been picked clean.”
Only two tuna-mayo triangular kimbaps were left sitting on the display.
Even those had only a few hours remaining before their expiration time.
Woojin picked up both triangular kimbaps and turned toward the alcohol refrigerator.
He considered grabbing four imported beers for twelve thousand won, but in the end, he took out just one inexpensive can
of domestic beer.
Four cans were too much for him to drink alone, and he was going to be too busy showering and collapsing into bed
anyway.
As he placed the items on the counter, Woojin spoke.
“I’ll take these. And give me ten thousand won worth of automatic Lotto tickets, and ten thousand won worth of Pension
Lottery tickets.”
“Yes.”
The part-timer operated the terminal as if it were routine.
Along with the mechanical sound, the lottery tickets slowly slid out of the machine.
“That’ll be twenty-three thousand one hundred won.”
After paying, Woojin accepted the receipt and lottery tickets and carefully slipped them into his wallet.
Every Friday evening on his way home from work.
Buying these two ten-thousand-won pieces of paper had been a long-standing habit of Woojin’s.
He had almost no expectation of actually winning. It was simply a kind of legal drug that allowed him, once a week, to
imagine a life where he didn’t have to go to work and could live however he wanted.
“Have a good night.”
Leaving behind the part-timer’s dry farewell, Woojin walked out of the convenience store.
The sound of the plastic bag swinging from his hand accompanied him as he walked, and his footsteps seemed just a tiny
bit lighter than before.
Woojin lived in a one-room apartment with a ten-million-won deposit and a monthly rent of five hundred thousand won.
The moment he opened the front door, a chill rushed over him.
He had left the boiler on away mode when he went out, so the room was freezing cold.
“Ah, it’s cold.”
Woojin roughly took off his coat and hung it over a chair before immediately turning up the boiler temperature.
There wasn’t even a dining table in the cramped room.
His dining area was always the small folding floor table he kept beside the bed.
Thud.
Woojin dropped onto the floor and took the triangular kimbaps and beer out of the plastic bag.
The refreshing sound of a beer can opening filled the quiet room.
Hiss.
“Ahh.”
Only when the cool beer slid down his throat did he finally feel that his day had come to an end.
Woojin peeled the wrapper off the triangular kimbap and took a big bite.
Dry grains of rice and the moderately salty taste of tuna mayo.
It was a familiar flavor he had eaten thousands of times.
Chewing away, Woojin checked his phone again.
Only an hour had passed since he left work, but a bright red notification badge had already appeared on the messenger
icon.
It was the group chat.
[Assistant Manager Jung, leave me one more message privately by tomorrow morning about the purchase orders you closed
today. Just in case.]
It was his team leader.
Woojin felt as if the triangular kimbap had gotten stuck in his throat.
“This guy, seriously. He’s out there having fun, yet he’s a professional at making people sweat.”
Woojin thumped his chest and washed down the lump with beer.
If he didn’t reply, he could already imagine the lecture he would receive first thing Monday morning.
[Yes, understood. I’ll organize it and send you a message tomorrow morning.]
After sending the mechanical reply, he let out a hollow laugh.
Seven years.
It had already been seven years since he had given his youth to this company and worked himself to the bone.
He had taken on all the unpleasant jobs that everyone else hated, and even when his colleagues were preparing to change
jobs, he had quietly endured.
But what he got in return was nothing more than an ever-increasing workload and being treated like an easy pushover.
How long am I supposed to live like this?
Woojin shoved the remaining triangular kimbap into his mouth and finished his beer.
As the tipsiness began to rise, an inexplicable sadness washed over him.
He took his wallet out of the coat he had tossed aside.
When he opened it, he saw the Lotto and Pension Lottery tickets he had bought at the convenience store earlier.
Woojin took out the slips and spread them across the floor.
A Lotto ticket covered in randomly printed numbers.
And a Pension Lottery ticket divided into different groups.
The drawing results would be announced Saturday evening, but Woojin usually didn’t check the results until Monday
morning on his way to work.
If he checked in advance and found out he had lost, Sunday evening would become unbearably depressing.
“How much would I get if this won first prize?”
Woojin lay on the floor and stared blankly at the ceiling as he muttered.
Maybe one and a half billion won after taxes? Two billion?
The Pension Lottery pays seven million won a month for twenty years, right?
If I won both, I wouldn’t have anything left to wish for.
Just imagining it brought a faint smile to his lips.
What would I do first if I won?
First, I’d throw my resignation letter right in the team leader’s face.
Then a house. I’d move out of this cramped one-room apartment into somewhere spacious with plenty of sunlight.
I’d take my parents on trips to places we hadn’t been able to visit all this time.
And I’d buy Mom a nice handbag from the first floor of a department store, somewhere I had never even dared to look
because it was too expensive.
But the sweet fantasy didn’t last long.
Bzz.
The phone lying on the floor vibrated briefly.
Once again, an unexpected notification from the group chat appeared on the screen.
[Assistant Manager Jung, sorry to bother you on the weekend, but would it be okay if I took a half-day off Monday
morning? Something came up at home. ㅠㅠ]
It was his junior, Minseok.
Woojin turned his phone face down.
“Haa, seriously. Just leave me alone.”
The glamorous life inside his imagination and the reality pressing down on him with endless notifications.
Inside this tiny room, the two were colliding terribly.
Woojin roughly shoved the lottery tickets back into his wallet.
A lottery was just a lottery, after all.
Tomorrow, he would have to check his backlog of emails again, and by Sunday evening, he would sigh at the thought of
going to work on Monday.
Because he was just that ordinary, pathetic office worker, Jung Woojin.
“Let’s sleep. At least sleeping is productive.”
Woojin pushed the floor table aside and pulled the blanket over himself.
The exhaustion was far greater than the discomfort of lying down without even showering.
When he turned off the light, pitch-black darkness filled the room.
The streetlamp outside the window faintly illuminated the room.
Woojin closed his eyes.
The very first thought that came to him was that he had to wake up early tomorrow morning and organize the purchase
order details his team leader had instructed him to handle.
He had absolutely no intention of checking right now what kind of miracle the lottery tickets in his wallet might
contain.
As always, they were obviously going to be losers.
Woojin’s steady breathing filled the small room.
And so, his exhausting week slowly came to an end.
Woojin turned over in his sleep and pulled the blanket all the way over his head.
“Monday fucking sucks.”
Woojin’s brief mutter in his sleep lingered in the air.