Fifty Rejections and One Voice

"Fuck."

Six ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠times this year alone. Counting back from two years ago, I'd already shoved my resume into more than fifty faces, doing everything a decent, upstanding member of society was supposed to do to take that first step into the working world — and today, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that same cookie-cutter rejection text I'd grown so sickeningly familiar with came along and shit on my mood all over again.

"You rotten corporate bastards. You hire nothing but experienced people — so where the hell is a rookie like me supposed to get experience?"

The big corporations, with their absurd habit of posting entry-level openings and then screening out anyone without a work history first. I'd swallowed my pride and applied to mid-sized companies too, and every single one had sent back a rejection. Which left, well… the so-called fa-mi-ly businesses.

Small and medium enterprises. The ones people affectionately called shit-shops — obscure companies whose names I'd never even heard of — were, as always, plastering job boards with postings and running "ongoing recruitment."

Of course… no matter how many new listings they put up, it didn't look like anyone was actually sending them resumes.

"Hmm… well, it'd be something to build a little experience. Maybe I'll give it a shot, even for a short while."

I clicked through the job listings with a light heart, not really thinking about any of them. But it didn't take long before I was closing the browser window and revising that opinion on the spot.

"Christ. Is there not a single place that tells you the actual salary?"

One glance at the reviews and every company practically screamed run away now. I could see at a glance that no matter how hard I worked at these places, the experience would never count for anything and it would all end up as wasted time. So with a complicated mess of feelings pressing down on me, I stepped outside and lit a cigarette.

"Whew."

The nicotine flooding my lungs settled my nerves a little. But the more I turned it over in my head, the more hopelessly tangled the reality in front of me became.

Bzzzzzzz.

I was deep in thought when my phone suddenly started buzzing. I fished the four-year-old relic out of my pocket, checked the caller ID, let out a long sigh, and answered.

"What."

[ Hey! What's with the cold shoulder to a friend reaching out after so long? Just wanted to see how you're doing. ]

A familiar voice, greeting me with that sly, easygoing drawl — a friend… no, a former colleague, my same-age peer Kim Jaemin. He'd gone nearly silent for years and now acted like we'd been talking yesterday. But I had a pretty good guess why he was calling, so my response came out with its edges sharpened.

"If you've got nothing useful to say, I'm hanging up and blocking you."

[ …Professor Kim Hwan-soo wants to grab a meal with you. ]

At my cut-to-the-chase demand, Jaemin hesitated for a moment before getting to the point. At those words, I just dragged on the cigarette between my lips and said nothing. Which, if anything, made him more frantic, and he started trying to persuade me first.

[ Geon-ah, this is a good thing for you too. It's an olive branch. He's extending a gesture of reconciliation. Are you seriously planning to end your master's without a degree — just wash out at coursework? Enough already. Apologize too. ]

"Apologize? For what, exactly?"

[ Are you saying you don't know how much hell Professor Kim Hwan-soo and our entire ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠research team went through because you blew the whistle on the embezzled research funds and the government project? I got dragged in for a police interrogation over that, you know! ]

"Oh, I remember it well. You all piled on in the end, made me out to be the lunatic, and then it all got swept under the rug, didn't it?"

It's a little embarrassing to say about myself, but until just a few years ago, I'd been a rising star.

I wasn't born with a dirt spoon — more like a slightly tarnished stainless-steel one — but without a single proper private tutoring session I'd pulled top grades at school, marched into one of the top three universities in South Korea, and kept riding the momentum as the local prodigy everyone knew by name.

I majored in electronic engineering, earned the "chosen one" nod from Professor Kim Hwan-soo — one of the hottest names in academia at the time — and entered his lab, walking an elite track where a research position at a major corporation was practically a foregone conclusion. But that was the choice I should never have made.

[ Come on, what were we supposed to do in that situation? Were we supposed to honestly confess that we all knew he was embezzling and just stood by and helped? Do you have any idea what would've happened to us if we had? ]

A few years back. I'd entered that professor's lab wide-eyed, carrying swollen dreams — and in less than a week, every one of those fantasies had been blown to pieces.

[ Hey. How long have you been in my lab, and you still can't manage this much? If this is how you work, get out. Trash like you doesn't deserve a degree. ]

[ You know that research activity fund that got deposited into your accounts? It needs to go toward lab operating costs, so transfer it all back to mine. ]

[ My son studying in the States is on break and stopping through Korea. Someone go pick him up at the airport. Drop him at the house, and on the way back grab my suit from the wife. ]

A predatory professor who worked his graduate students like personal servants and skimmed even the pittance they called a monthly stipend. On top of that, he'd won government projects and bled the grants dry through cooked books, inflated invoices, and every other trick in the book — drinking it away under the banner of "research expenses," committing atrocity after atrocity. And yet, astonishingly, not one of the graduate students under him said a word.

[ Look at you. The whole academic world knows you're a whistleblower now — you can't get a foothold anywhere. Graduate school costs a fortune and years of your life, you slogged through all of it, and now you've been stuck at "coursework completed, no degree" for how long? Word is you still haven't even found a job. ]

He was right.

Not as an undergraduate, no — but from graduate school onward, a supervising professor wielded near-absolute, unchecked power over whether you ever got your degree. The moment you crossed him, everything you'd suffered and built could vanish into thin air. So everyone who'd been through the same thing as me… no, worse, had refused to join my whistleblowing or lend it a shred of support. Instead, they'd thrown themselves into it more eagerly than anyone — painting me as a grudge-holder out to frame the professor.

And… even after leaving the lab, they could only fall silent whenever they looked at me.

[ Honestly, let's be blunt. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Who do you think it is that's kept you from landing a proper job all this time? I don't know what kind of person you are, but your name — everyone in the industry has heard it at least once. Do you have any idea how small this field is? You graduate, you enter the field, and everyone's still a school sunbae or hoobae, a boss, a classmate, a junior. ]

[ No matter how right and righteous you were, how good do you think people's eyes are on a whistleblower? Especially one who drove a knife straight into his supervising professor's back? ]

A powerful academic cartel whose influence reached far beyond the university and into the industry itself. And it made sense — electronic engineering, and the semiconductor field I'd specialized in above all, ran on industry-academia collaboration that went well beyond in-house research, which only tightened the web.

"Enough with the fact-bombing. So what does Professor Kim Hwan-soo… no, what does that bastard actually want from me?"

[ What? ]

"You think I look like some hot-bar sucker who got played? Even if I got outmaneuvered in the political game, do I look that stupid? There's no way he'd suddenly reach out a reconciling hand to a guy he expects to wither away into an unemployed husk if left alone."

This was a professor powerful enough to have served as department head at a prestigious university. A man like that had zero reason to invite a thankless student who'd stabbed him in the back out to a meal, out of concern for the kid's future.

[ That's… not something I'd know. ]

"Really."

Jaemin's reaction made it obvious he knew something and was hesitating to say it. Reading that, I moved to hang up without a trace of attachment.

"Then tell him to enjoy his cozy little dinner with you. I need to go find a part-time job, so I'm hanging up."

[ W-wait. Wait, hold on. ]

Jaemin grabbed at me, his voice flustered by my flat refusal. He wavered, visibly wrestling with something, then finally let out a deep sigh and spat out a curse.

[ Ha. You bastard. I've always thought it — when it counts, you're cold as a blade. ]

"What, you have more to say?"

[ It's not confirmed or anything, but… lately the professor's been huddled with the PhD students, going through the material from that paper you used to mess around with. Looks like he's wrestling with something. ]

"What?"

The paper I'd been scribbling before I blew the whistle. It had stalled at the skeleton stage — I'd never even managed a proper experiment, just raw ideas — and the thought that someone had dug that rotting file out of some lab computer and was actually reading it made me frown.

"Since when do people just pull someone else's old paper out and start going through it? And the topic I picked was—"

[ A Proposal for the Fundamental Design of Optical Semiconductor Computing Based on Direct Photonic Circuits. Yeah, I know. ]

Photonic semiconductors.

An entirely new class of semiconductor technology that processed and transmitted information using the wavelengths of light itself, rather than conventional electrical signals. It was a paper I'd written with giddy excitement over a handful of ideas that had popped into my head, so even years later the memories were still vivid — and as I was puzzling over why anyone would care, Jaemin continued.

[ Word from a sunbae is that a related paper was presented at a recent conference in the States and caused a huge stir — and the basic mechanism and approach of that technology were apparently almost identical to what you'd been talking about. So before the professor even flew back to Korea, he was hounding me to dig the related files off your old computer and email them to him… ]

"And right after that, he suddenly wants to have dinner with me. I get the picture."

[ Yeah. ]

I had no idea how groundbreaking the paper I'd written so carelessly actually was, but apparently it was good enough that a man would offer to break bread with the ungrateful graduate student who'd knifed him in the back. Still, I had not the slightest intention of bowing my head to that professor now and helping complete the paper. So without even a moment's deliberation, I answered flatly.

"Tell him no."

[ What? Hey! Are you out of your mind? ]

"I said no because I don't want to. Why ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the fuss?"

[ Look, I get that you hate the guy, but if Kim Hwan-soo is coming out this hard, it means the paper you wrote is the real deal. Let's be honest — even if it sticks in your craw, if you and the professor properly finish that paper together and publish it, you could claw your way back into the industry. Why the hell are you kicking your own career off a cliff? ]

Jaemin held forth, unable to comprehend how I could stomp on an opportunity with my own feet when bending just a little, closing my eyes just a little, would buy me a far better situation. But I offered no explanation. I left him with one simple line and hung up.

"I'd rather fold the whole thing and fry chicken than pad that bastard's resume."

The very thought of crawling back into that lab, flattering the professor who'd be preening and looking down on me — I'd sooner die. So I blocked Jaemin's number as he kept calling, and resolved that from now on I would fry chicken, live as the proud owner of a chicken franchise, and dispense happiness to the people alongside generous helpings of high-calorie warmth.

…At least until tonight.

Thud.

I was walking down a deserted alley near my one-room apartment, a stretch no one ever passed through, when a dull, heavy impact rang out — and a burst of agony tore through the back of my skull. My face slammed into the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut.

What the…

I thrashed, trying somehow to push myself up, but my body wouldn't move an inch. And as I felt a warm liquid soaking through my hair, spreading fast, I understood.

That massive impact I'd just heard — it had been the sound of my skull being caved in.

Before I could work out who had done it, or why, my consciousness blurred and began to slip away. But in that final sliver of memory, I heard it — clearly.

A voice unlike any human's — artificial, mechanical, as if it were being driven straight into my skull.