Hangover Blues and a Second Chance
“Bro Yihan. One more glass!”
“Hahaha! No problem at all!”
I reached for the glass to refill the new hyung’s. But when I looked at the bottle… it was empty.
Tung. Tung.
I tapped it in confusion, and only emptiness echoed back.
“Hyung, you’re out of soju?”
“Well, that won’t do! On this happy day of being sworn brothers, you can’t go without soju! Waiter! What’s the most expensive soju here?”
“Tsingtao 1573 is available.”
“Perfect! One bottle of that!”
I had no idea how expensive it was, but the waiter approached carefully with the bottle.
“Drinks, Jo-ahwoo.”
“Yes, hyung!”
Glass after glass.
I didn’t know anymore whether I was drinking or if the soju was drinking me.
My vision blurred. My mind went fuzzy.
“Hyung… what do you think? Even if I’m the CEO’s son… it’s not that simple, is it?”
“Eh! You’re the only one who’s soft on me! My plan… no, even if I have to sell my soul to my father, I’ll make the conditions work!”
“Hey! Yihan. No matter how you put it, five-five isn’t reasonable… even six-four is pushing it…”
“I don’t care about the other stuff. Just this… Yihan! I, Ma Chenyu, swear this with my heart!”
I had no idea what conversation I was having with Ma Chenyu right now.
Bang.
My head felt way too heavy. I slumped it onto the table, and that was my last memory.
*
“Ugh…”
It felt like my skull was splitting, my throat burning with thirst.
I clutched my aching stomach, eyes fluttering open.
“Ah… I’m done for…”
I had no idea how many degrees the soju from yesterday was, but it wasn’t normal stuff. Pouring it down like soju like that had sealed my fate.
I somehow managed to sit up.
Looking around, I was in a hotel room.
‘Must have passed out after all the drinking last night…’
Staggering like a zombie, I searched for my phone to check the time. Luckily, it was under the pillow.
[1:26 PM]
[21 missed calls]
[41 texts]
A ton of messages. Something wasn’t right.
Checking the missed calls, most were from the company.
My usual weekend office hours meant I didn’t show up yesterday, so they were worried.
[I’ll wash up and be in right away]
I never imagined I’d be late. I used to show up perfectly after four bottles of soju at Next, but I didn’t even hear the alarm and slept till the afternoon.
If I was this bad, how bad was the other person?
I checked if Ma Chenyu had been rushed to the hospital with acute alcohol poisoning.
[Jo-ahwoo]
Seeing Ma Chenyu’s name saved on my phone made my head throb even more.
‘Why did I do that yesterday…’
Hyung to a brand-new person. Brother to a sworn brother.
I had no idea what I was thinking.
‘I can’t take it back, but…’
At this point, saying anything else would just make him think I’m crazy. I’d have to roll with it and call him hyung.
[Hyung. It’s Jo Yihan. Are you feeling better?]
I sent the message and waited, but no reply.
[Hyung. I have to go to work first. I’ll head out. Contact me when you’re up.]
I stepped into the shower and washed away the thick smell of soju stuck to my body. The headache started to fade as the water hit me.
“Ah… I’m alive…”
I towel-dried my hair roughly, still feeling gross, and left the hotel in the same clothes from yesterday.
“Pangyo. Drive there.”
“Yes~ Fasten your seatbelt~”
The taxi ride to Pangyo was pure torture.
“Uwwk.”
“Customer, sir! If you need to puke, don’t hold it!”
“I-I’m fine. Car, I can hold it. Uwwk. Wp. Ayoh.”
“I’ll drive as fast as possible, so hold on!”
I barely made it in front of the company.
I took the elevator to the sixth floor and opened the office door.
“Hi…”
“Hyup! Director! Why do you look like that?!”
I had no clue what my face looked like, but Cha Ju-hee’s eyes went wide seeing me.
“Be-because of a meeting…”
“Met a Chinese contact? No way. How much soju did you drink to smell this strong?”
Even though it was wiped off, the smell was still there.
“You should go home. You look like you need a hospital, not the office.”
“I-I’m… uwwk. Ha… I’m fine.”
“Fine? You look like death even from a hundred meters away! Everyone, what do you think?”
The other staff nodded, all looking at me like I was a ghost.
“Di-director. We’ll handle the bug fixes. It’s better to leave early today.”
“I’ll stay up all night with Jae-min if I have to fix them! Leave it to us!”
“Se-seok-ho? Wh-what is this…? W-we haven’t agreed to this…”
For a moment I leaned on the wall, thinking about the work I was supposed to do today.
‘There were no urgent bugs to fix… Art team already had assignments… Daniel’s just the lazy guy…’
I could probably leave early without big problems.
But Cha Ju-hee trying to send me home felt off.
“Ju-hee. Don’t tell me you’re avoiding overtime… right?”
“E-Eh~ N-no way! I-I don’t hate overtime that much~”
“….”
“Oh my! Thinking about it, what about Mungchi? Does Mungchi eat?”
“We have a self-dispensing machine…”
“B-but Mungchi must be so sad waiting for the director! Right?! What a cruel world. Abandoned once and now abandoned again… how could he not cry? Aaaah, he’s so sad…”
“….”
Even I thought she was just avoiding overtime.
“Ju-hee. Watch this.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re saying. I-I’ll get back to work…”
Yeah.
Being at the office in this condition was only making things worse.
“So I’ll head out early today. Daniel, you finish the work for me.”
“Okay, boss. Trust me.”
Even though he was just playing around with no work, he was pretty reliable.
“I’ll head home…”
*
[Jo-ahwoo. I’m fine. But you really showed up for work after drinking that much. I saw the person I needed to. I was planning to rest today, but I’ll come back to work as a lesson. I’ll prepare the contract for home and come back. Look forward to it. I’ll get it somehow.]
[I’ll wait trusting you, ahwoo. Xie xie.]
I couldn’t help but feel responsible after the drunk conversation with Ma Chenyu, but seeing him take it seriously made me realize something.
‘Even if he’s a chaebol’s son, he’s not arrogant at all.’
All those weird chaebol stories in the media had probably made me form a bad impression. Thinking back, I heard the CEO’s daughter at Next was a nice person too.
“Media brainwashing is terrifying. Right?”
“Nyaa?”
“No. Eat a churu.”
“Nyat!”
As soon as I walked in the door yesterday, Mungchi was crying so hard I had to give her three churus just to calm her down.
I stroked her fluffy fur and sank into the sofa.
“Ah… I’m still hurting.”
I even brought a bowl of hangover soup from before, but my stomach still felt like it was turning upside down.
‘How many degrees was the soju yesterday…’
I decided to check it.
“52 degrees?!”
No wonder the alcohol felt too strong.
If I only ever drank soju at 14 to 16 degrees or occasional wine, I really must have lost my mind calling Ma Chenyu hyung and swearing brotherhood.
“Being alive is tough, really.”
I promised myself I’d never drink again, stood up from the sofa, and went into the small room. One side had the closet, the other my work room with the computer.
Even though I got home early, I could still do some quick work, so I turned on the computer.
I logged into Storm with my personal account instead of the developer ID.
“Still cruising along.”
Eight days after launch and 370,000 copies sold. Compared to the huge hit Teiraria before ACD, it was almost double the score. Simple sales came to nearly 6.2 billion won.
‘That’s why Ma Chenyu hyung wanted 50% shares for 50 billion. Wouldn’t that catch my eye?’
I refused his proposal partly because I didn’t want to split the shares, but I could afford it because I could earn that much myself.
From the 220 billion won I made on Black Monday, 120 billion was already making small profits in the stock market, and even after spending it all, PlayForge Nexus’s internal reserves still had over 5 billion won left.
But was 50 billion really that disappointing?
No way.
I reached for the small safe next to the computer and pulled out a USB.
“My little cutie.”
I connected it to the computer and entered the password key stored in the safe one by one.
[BTC 83,421]
My precious coin wallet opened.
Selling my shares for just 50 billion? No chance. Selling the coins in this wallet alone would earn way more than 50 billion in a few years.
“Just two more years…”
Unlike Black Monday, I remembered the first Bitcoin hype perfectly. It was when I started my internship at Next, and my seniors kept talking about Bitcoin scams until I couldn’t forget it.
I swept up all the Bitcoin on the market. The price rose a bit, but I didn’t buy more because I was scared it would change everything, but I was planning to keep buying quietly until 2013.
“Just looking at it makes me feel rich.”
I was already making money and using future knowledge to squeeze out more, but I couldn’t help it. I was a money-obsessed guy after all.
‘There were too many things I wanted to do.’
I wanted to build massive data centers for PlayForge in every country, use the codec I made while developing ACD to launch an external voice chat program, and run an internet broadcasting platform related to games and streamers.
And if I had time, I wanted to open PlayForge Academy to train programmers, planners, artists, and all the talent game development needed.
One body, but so many dreams.
To make that happen, I had no choice but to chase money everywhere, not just game development.
I safely sealed the USB in the safe so it wouldn’t break from humidity.
“Next…”
I checked business emails, answered the urgent ones, ignored the rest, and emptied my inbox.
Then I logged into GoodJobKorea, the job site.
“Now I should start hiring.”
The programming team and art team were dying for lack of people, and it was heartbreaking. Now that we had an office and some studio funds, it was time to add staff.
‘If I get more people, I can cut overtime from 11 PM to 10 PM.’
Workload didn’t decrease arithmetically with staff, but even a little less load was important.
‘People aren’t machines. I have to treat them well.’
I took care of my staff.
I turned one whole floor into a rest area so they could rest when tired, gave them vacation pay equal to their salary, and packed on bonuses and performance pay.
‘Where else could you find such an honest small-business owner?’
The staff who joined me received over 80 million won each in the first ten months. I really gave it all away because they worked hard.
“Where should I post the ad~?”
I wasn’t planning to hire anyone extra until Daniel asked, so I was targeting the programming and art teams.
I had already thought about who to hire.
About ten client-side programmers focused on user-facing screens and controls (frontend), and maybe five backend developers to manage and develop servers, databases, and APIs.
‘I’ll hire programmers for the custom engine slowly.’
I was planning to use a commercial engine for the next game, but I had a strong desire to use our own engine for the one after that.
‘How am I supposed to wait for my own engine.’
I was thinking of hiring about nine graphic designers for 3D modeling, and one animation specialist and one effect specialist.
And maybe two QA specialists, so at least thirty people total.
‘Hiring people is everything.’
With only six staff left excluding me, finding almost five times that number at once meant I had to be very careful with talent selection.
I was about to click the post button when I noticed a new banner on the site promoting a feature.
‘Company reviews?’
A new function on job sites that didn’t exist before. Employees who had quit or were still working could rate the company.
Suddenly I wondered if anyone had reviewed our company.
[PlayForge]
I searched for the company name and saw one review.
[It’s really a lot of overtime! ID: j******]
[Rating: 2.5/5]
[I had to think about it a lot. They make me work overtime almost every single day. They give good salary, overtime pay, performance bonuses, and all kinds of bonuses, but there’s no work-life balance. The place that pays the highest salary is the best? If you come here, your mind will change. There are a lot of things more important than money in the world!]
It was clearly Cha Ju-hee’s.
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