The Lawyer Kim Cheol-min
Born into a poor family, he had clawed his way into a top metropolitan university on a full scholarship with nothing but a brilliant mind, juggling work and studies through years of blood-and-tears effort until he graduated from law school and earned his bar license. And up until that moment, Kim Cheol-min had firmly believed that nothing but a brilliant road of flowers lay ahead of him.
‘Wow! A Han River view apartment! Wow! A penthouse office all to myself!’
With a career that ranked among the very top of the professions, he thought he could finally live a life of plenty and strut around wanting for nothing. But the world was crueler than his expectations.
That was the reality.
Unlike the days when the old judicial examination existed, the prestige of lawyers had plummeted to rock bottom. Thousands of new lawyers were churned out every year by countless law schools, and for those who were neither former prosecutors or judges turned high-priced defense attorneys nor fresh graduates clutching their licenses, the options were painfully few — especially if you hadn't come from a top-tier elite university.
‘Right. Build up experience first. I need at least a track record as in-house counsel at a corporation before I can do anything.’
So Kim Cheol-min chose the path of corporate lawyer as a stepping stone toward the big firms everyone talked about. By some stroke of luck he managed to land an in-house position at a major foreign corporation, but the work turned out to be nothing like what he had imagined.
And so, swallowing his tears along with the mustard, less than a year after joining Ontel, Kim Cheol-min found himself overnight reassigned from Seoul to the rural backwaters of Cheongju.
He and the other seconded Ontel employees had been buried in one task after another since arrival, becoming deeply involved in the operations of a company called Limitless — but no matter how he looked at it, this company was truly one of a kind.
“No matter how I think about it, this company is bizarre, isn't it? It's not like they're short on money, so why on earth would they build a research institute out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Tell me about it. Even the most brilliant talent isn't going to want to come work out in this rural sticks — not when they could be in the capital region.”
“I heard headquarters even offered to help them secure a site in Seoul, and they turned it down just to come here.”
“They've been aggressively buying up all the surrounding real estate, too. No idea how far they plan to expand — they don't have a single employee yet.”
“Oh, right. Speaking of which, how did the hiring go?”
“Well... it's a bust again this time.”
“Again...?”
The seconded Ontel employees were huddled together over lunch, eating as one group. Since they had all been semi-forced down here by pressure from above, they shared a strange camaraderie and had grown quite close. As the conversation turned to the company, one of the women from the HR team heaved an exasperated sigh and spoke up.
“The CEO here... honestly, I can't tell if he has any intention of hiring staff at all. How many people are going to want to work all the way out in a place like this? The company's gotten some name recognition lately, so a few decent candidates did submit applications — but the CEO rejected every single one of them.”
No matter how many hiring proposals the HR team submitted, the CEO would refuse them all without ever giving a proper reason. As a result, the job posting had already passed its fourth round and was now on its fifth.
“At this point the applicants are calling in to demand what the hell we think we're doing. The number of resumes coming in drops every time we post a new listing... Aigoo... at this rate, who knows when any of us will get to go back to Seoul.”
New hires.
Others might not care, but for the employees currently working at Limitless, this was an extremely important and urgent matter.
Only once Limitless brought on new staff, completed the handover, and got the company's management and operations onto a normal track would everyone finally be able to return to their original departments in Seoul.
But... this company was inexplicably picky about hiring.
“Haah, there's definitely something off about the boss here.”
“Maybe it's because he's still young?”
“They say really smart people all have a few odd quirks. Probably just an eccentric.”
“True. The other day I heard him talking to someone inside his office, so I went in with approval documents — and there was nobody there. He'd been talking to himself for almost an hour.”
“Huh? Seriously?”
“Yep. And I heard the name, too. Alex, or something?”
“An imaginary friend... ugh... that gives me chills...”
“Surely he's not, like, out of his mind or something?”
“Right? Though when he talks to people he seems perfectly normal.”
“Maybe that's all an act! A mad scientist who seems fine in public, but the moment he turns his back — BAM! — overflowing with madness!”
“...Aren't you watching way too many movies?”
“Hehe, I just came back from seeing the Jekyll and Hyde musical, you see.”
The idle chatter had loosened the mood before anyone noticed. As the conversation drifted along in that relaxed atmosphere, one of the accounting staff popped a fish cake into her mouth and suddenly seemed to realize something.
“Oh, right. Now that I think of it, there's one more strange thing about the CEO here.”
“The amount he spends on food is astronomical.”
“Aw, what's so weird about that...”
“He probably just loves eating.”
“No, I mean it — he eats an absurd, frankly unbelievable amount. It was so strange that I compiled just this month's food expenses into a summary, and honestly, I thought he was raising an elephant in his stomach.”
She wasn't joking — her face was more serious than usual as she gestured dramatically, exaggerating for effect. Then she added, half in earnest and half in jest:
“For all we know, if the CEO ever pivots to becoming a mukbang YouTuber, he'd probably ascend to the throne of mukbang king.”
“...”
Whatever else you could say, the CEO of this company was truly strange.
“Sir.”
“Oh, welcome.”
When Cheol-min entered the office, the CEO of Limitless greeted him exactly as he always did. Kang Gun. Cheol-min had no idea what the man was up to, but he was absorbed in organizing something on the computer sitting on his desk, and he looked up with a bright smile to welcome him.
“...The real estate acquisitions you mentioned should be wrapped up soon.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. When we offered up to fifty percent above the asking price, the landowners were delighted and agreed to the deals. The scale is so vast that we'll need cooperation from the local government, but Cheongju City has been quite receptive — a large influx of capital is exactly what they want to see.”
It was a village populated mostly by the elderly.
Proper farming had become difficult, and much of the land sat idle in a village that was steadily withering away. So when word came that someone wanted to buy up the land and build a massive research complex, Cheongju City practically rolled out the red carpet, seemingly ready to grant any accommodation requested.
“The building design is more or less finalized. Once we get local government approval, construction will begin immediately. If the procedures move quickly, we plan to relocate headquarters within two years.”
“Here — these are the projected construction costs. Please review them.”
“Mm, looks good. Proceed as planned.”
Without really reading them, he flipped through a few pages and then, with a satisfied expression, pulled the company seal from a drawer and stamped the documents. Watching him approve everything so readily — as if entrusting the man with complete, unquestioning faith, without a single complaint — Cheol-min felt a genuine curiosity stir in him.
“Sir, if it's not too much trouble, may I ask you something?”
“Hm? What is it?”
Cheol-min relayed some of what the seconded employees had been saying over lunch. He left out the parts about conversing with an imaginary friend (?) or possessing the makings of a future mukbang-king YouTuber, and stuck to what he considered an extremely constructive and productive topic related to Limitless: the matter of hiring.
“Hmm... so those are the concerns you've been having.”
The CEO of Limitless murmured with a grave expression, as if he'd had no idea. Cheol-min pressed on.
“You approve every other proposal without a word, so why are you so strict about hiring?”
Everyone wondered what his criteria were. And to that question, Kang Gun gave his answer.
“Because they're strange people?”
“And the reason you've judged them to be strange?”
“...Let's call it a feeling.”
Asked for a proper reason, the CEO of Limitless fumbled, his mouth opening and closing before he settled on "a feeling." Unconvinced by the explanation, Cheol-min hesitated a moment, then spoke.
“Sir, I don't know your reasons, but if you keep posting listings and hiring no one, it won't reflect well on the company's reputation. There's a rumor circulating in the hiring market lately about unscrupulous companies that post job listings with no intention of hiring anyone, just to harvest personal information from incoming resumes. If this continues, decent candidates may stop applying altogether.”
The most important thing in running a company is people.
A single bad hire can inflict astronomical, unspeakable damage on a company, while one good hire can grow it tenfold or more. That was precisely why the company could not afford to let its reputation sour into that of a predatory employer that qualified talent avoided on principle. With that in mind, he offered his advice, carrying his sincere concern for the company.
“The HR staff seconded here have considerable experience in talent acquisition from their time at Ontel. When it comes to hiring, perhaps you could give a little more weight to the HR team's judgment than to your own personal opinions.”
But the CEO of Limitless said nothing in response to Cheol-min's advice.
Then, after a moment, he pulled several documents from his drawer and held them out to Cheol-min.
“Here. Take a look.”
“What... is this?”
“The files of the applicants your HR team insisted, so strongly, that we absolutely had to hire.”
At his words, Cheol-min opened the folder and examined its contents. And then he understood exactly why the HR staff had argued so passionately for these candidates.
“...They were remarkable applicants.”
“Right? Overseas-educated PhDs, multilingual speakers, department-head-level veterans from major corporations... Impressive, aren't they?”
The resumes were stuffed to the brim with credentials. Several of them were talented enough that even a major corporation would have scrambled to recruit them, which made Cheol-min all the less able to understand why he hadn't hired a single one.
“But here's the thing — why would people like this want to join our company?”
“I'm... sorry?”
“Come on, think about it. We're not a major corporation. We've barely gotten a little name recognition, and suddenly all this talent is lining up to get in? Are we really that enviable?”
“Well, that's...”
Come to think of it, it was strange.
The working conditions were abysmal — a dilapidated building that looked over forty years old and slated for demolition, standing in the middle of rural farmland. Plenty of people would wave their hands in disgust even if you offered them a fortune, so these candidates really were above the level of anyone who'd bother submitting a resume here.
And the moment that doubt took root, the man spoke.
“Every single one of these people is a spy.”
“...I'm sorry?”
“This applicant here was sent from China. This one looks like a researcher from a Japanese government-run national laboratory... Ah, and this person is probably a deep-cover agent cultivated by North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau. That overseas-educated one was likely a French probe... Hmm... and this department head from the big corporation is almost certainly a spy sent by Asung Electronics.”
Frowning as if struggling to recall, he began reciting, one by one, the hidden identities of the people listed in the files. When he spoke their true natures — the things that appeared nowhere on their resumes — Cheol-min was stunned.
“H-how do you know all of that?”
Information no mere CEO should have been able to obtain. It was so sensitive that even hearing it made Cheol-min wonder whether he was allowed to know it at all — and suddenly he felt a chill run down his spine.
“Oh, you know those new security contractor staff who started showing up last week?”
“They're agents from the National Intelligence Service.”
“...?”
“That's where the information came from, so it should be reliable.”
“...”
“Don't go blabbing about it, all right? I'm only telling you because you're my personal secretary, Cheol-min.”
The CEO of Limitless chuckled and raised a finger to his lips, as if sealing a secret between the two of them. A dozen new questions had suddenly sprouted in Cheol-min's mind, but he could do nothing but leave the CEO's office with his mouth still hanging open and his soul seemingly drained from his body.
“...”
Whatever else you could say, this company was truly strange.