The Funeral of Hyenas
“Hoo……”
The funeral had been a war.
No — it had been a war.
My father in the memorial portrait, seeing him for the first time in thirty years, was still smiling gently. I forced down the thing swelling in my chest, swallowing it whole. There would be time to cry later.
That place was not for sharing grief. It was a judging ground where hyenas gathered to appraise an ownerless Sunjin Group.
“You have a great deal ahead of you, sister-in-law. Let's get through the funeral first, then talk at leisure.”
I wore the chief mourner's armband and watched them — my uncles, led by my eldest uncle, Kang Tae-yong.
Those disgusting habits of theirs, shedding crocodile tears before my father's portrait while circling behind it to worm their way into conversations with my mother.
“And I saw Kang Jin-ho too.”
I'd seen him, a callow college student.
“Wearing the look of a man who'd just won something.”
In my previous life, Kang Jin-ho's condolences had meant something to me. But looking closely at his face this time, I saw he was holding back a grin.
I wanted to grab him by the collar right then and there and scream, but I bit my lip and held it in.
It wasn't time yet.
Baring my teeth too early would mean losing before the game even began.
“So I really did come back.”
I collapsed into the desk chair.
My familiar room. The scenery of 2003. In the mirror on my desk, an eighteen-year-old Kang Seon-woo — baby fat not yet gone — glared back at me.
“Honestly, this is……”
It was certain, at least.
I had died, and I had come back to life. Why?
I'd turned it over during the whole funeral, but it was a question with no answer.
The only thing that mattered was that I'd been given a second chance.
“Let's think.”
My father had died.
Along with the company's debts, there was a scandal entangling him with the political world, and a crushing investigation from the prosecutors.
Between the overwork and a heart attack, he collapsed — and whether it ran in the family or not, I had ended the same way.
“And those high-and-mighty uncles of mine were involved.”
I hadn't known it at this point in my previous life, but later, various circumstances made it clear.
It was those brothers who had manufactured the pretext for pressuring my father at this time.
“Now the reins of Sunjin Group fall to my mother.”
A woman who had lived her whole life as a housewife, thrown into the middle of that corporate jungle.
“Haah.”
A sigh escaped me despite myself.
The timing couldn't be worse. If whoever sent me back had bothered to return the favor, they could have sent me five years forward — no, even three.
If I had been an adult, with even a few business courses under my belt, my room to maneuver would have been far wider.
“What eighteen-year-old could walk in and expect anyone to actually trust him?”
Legally I couldn't sign a single contract, a minor with no standing whatsoever to sit on a board of directors.
My age — the single biggest obstacle, right from the start.
And yet I couldn't just stand by and watch, either.
I had to make whatever preparations this situation allowed.
“There isn't enough time.”
Sadly, time was not going to wait for me.
The assault of the entire Kang clan would begin soon.
It was the affair people would later call the Brother-in-Law Rebellion, and in my previous life, my mother had held out admirably.
“But she had no choice but to sell off every crown jewel.”
Focused purely on defense, she'd been forced to hand over the choicest subsidiaries for scraps, and the group lost every engine of future growth.
In the end, Sunjin remained a hollow shell and slowly withered away.
“This time, it has to be different.”
Not simply blocking the blows — we had to strike back. Why?
“Because they'll keep coming.”
They would attack to prey on a weakened Sunjin Group — even my father's other brothers among them.
At minimum, I had to show them that the first attack would cost them, too. Only then would they hesitate to move so freely afterward.
Knock, knock—
Just then, a cautious knock sounded at my door.
“Seon-woo, are you asleep?”
My mother. I took a moment to steady my breathing and composed my voice.
“No, I'm not asleep. Come in.”
The door opened, and my mother came in, her face drawn and gaunt. In her hands was a cup of warm milk.
“Can't sleep? You haven't slept in days…… my poor boy, you've been through so much.”
She stroked my hair with pained, sorrowful eyes. Being held in my mother's arms after so long — it felt good.
But there was a problem.
The hand stroking my head.
That was the problem. To my mother, right now, I wasn't a solid ally who could pull my own weight — I was nothing more than a wounded, pitiful boy who had lost his father.
If I couldn't shatter that frame, I couldn't do anything.
“Mother.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“You're meeting Uncle tomorrow, aren't you?”
At my words, her hand stopped.
“How did you…….”
“I heard it at the funeral hall.”
I feigned nonchalance, sipping the milk as I spoke.
“You'll do fine, Mother.”
“…….”
“Because you're wise. I trust you.”
For a moment she said nothing, then a smile returned to her face, and she stroked my hair again.
“……Our son's all grown up.”
“Of course I am. Just look at my height.”
My mother smiled, reassured. But I knew.
I knew how desperately few people existed who could actually serve as her hands and feet at the company.
The existing executives had either already been bought off by Kang Tae-yong and the other relatives, or were too busy watching which way the wind blew. I had to put a trustworthy blade in her hands.
“Oh, right, Mother.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember? That time Father and I went fishing, just the two of us.”
“Of course. Seon-ah and I hated it so much, but your father insisted he had men's talk to do and dragged you along every time.”
I pretended to drift into memory, then slipped the words in naturally.
“Every time, in the tent, Father said something to me.”
“Your father did?”
“Yes. He said that when I grew up and learned the business, there was one person I absolutely had to keep my eye on.”
“Who was it?”
My mother's eyes glittered with curiosity. I spoke the name, clear and distinct.
“Team Leader Choi Dong-soo. I heard he's in the finance department now.”
Choi Dong-soo.
The man who would one day become the CFO responsible for the entire livelihood of Sunjin Group.
A talent my mother had only discovered in my previous life — after she'd absorbed every blow and been left in tatters.
I remembered the lament he'd written in his memoirs years later:
“If the Chairman had only trusted me and used me a little sooner, we wouldn't have lost all those precious companies……”
“Choi Dong-soo…… I've never heard that name.”
“Father said he's honest to the point of being old-fashioned, and that he reads numbers like nobody's business. Said he got passed over for promotion for speaking truth to his superiors without flinching — and that the people who truly care about a company are exactly that kind.”
Of course, my father had never said any such thing.
But there is no stronger letter of guarantee than the words of the dead.
“He said he's like an emergency fund Father left behind for us. When you go into the office, Mother, he's the one you should meet first. He'll help you — I'm certain of it.”
My mother pondered this for a long moment, then nodded.
“All right. If your father had his eye on him, there must be a reason. When I go in, he'll be the first person I look for.”
She nodded and rose from her seat.
“Get some sleep now.”
“Yes. You must be exhausted too, Mother — rest well.”
And with that, she left the room, and I let out a long breath.
“There. That should do it.”
Looking back on my previous life, my mother was never a weak woman.
From the day she resolved to run the company, she convened the board of directors and stood alone before the creditor banks.
The iron-willed woman who faced down the bestial threats of those uncles without blinking.
That was my mother.
“There's no need for me to lecture her.”
If I clumsily interjected now and warped the future, I might actually rob my mother of her chance to awaken.
Facing my eldest uncle tomorrow was, wholly and entirely, my mother's first trial as Chairwoman — her rite of passage.
“Mother holds the main base.”
And behind her, I would be there to help her.
The next morning.
A heavy silence hung over the living room of Seon-woo's home. Across from his mother, Kim Ja-young, sat an uninvited guest — Kang Tae-yong, Chairman of Sunjin Motors.
Thud.
Kang Tae-yong drew a single file folder from the leather briefcase he'd brought and laid it on the table.
“What is……?”
When Kim Ja-young asked with puzzled eyes, Kang Tae-yong answered with studied gravity.
“A shortlist of recommended professional managers.”
“Professional managers?”
“Tae-jin was taken from us so suddenly, and Sunjin Group is the foundation of our Kang family, is it not? Which means, at the very least, the company must run smoothly until the boy — Seon-woo — finishes his university studies.”
Kim Ja-young opened the file with trembling hands.
Names crammed edge to edge. Former bureaucrats, figures from the financial world, restructuring specialists.
Every one of them boasted a glittering résumé, yet to Kim Ja-young's eyes, not a single one looked like a savior sent to rescue the company.
She stared at the list for a long while.
Her mind — fogged and dulled by grief — sharpened as if doused in cold water.
So this is what handing me this list means…….
The previous Chairman, her father-in-law, had settled the succession clearly before he died.
The eldest son, Kang Tae-yong, received the automobile business; the younger sons received Sunjin Heavy Industries and the financial arm; her husband, Tae-jin, inherited Sunjin itself, the root of the group; and their only daughter received the Sunjin Foundation.
The original Sunjin — the group's foundation — came bundled with the resort business, the trading company, and the logistics operations.
The matter had been settled long ago.
So why was the brother-in-law — the one who'd taken the automobile business and ridden it to soaring success — meddling like this the instant her husband's funeral was over?
Transparent.
Until Seon-woo finishes his studies.
That phrase was nothing less than a declaration of war: he would strip the group of its crown jewels before the boy was old enough to grow any real teeth.
Those professional managers were merely Kang Tae-yong's proxies.
“You'll do fine, Mother.”
Just then, her son's words from the night before surfaced in her mind. A smile almost rose to her lips — but Kim Ja-young fixed Kang Tae-yong with a stony face.
Swish.
She closed the file she'd opened and slid it back across the table to him.
“……?”
Kang Tae-yong's brow twitched. This was not the reaction he'd expected.
“I will handle it myself.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am telling you that the affairs of Sunjin Group are mine to handle.”
Kim Ja-young's voice was calm, but iron-firm. For an instant, Kang Tae-yong failed to keep his composure, and his face twisted.
“Now, what could a woman like you possibly know about—!”
He nearly shouted it before catching himself and clamping his mouth shut.
A slip of the tongue. But words once spoken cannot be taken back.
That was his true heart, laid bare.
The contempt and scorn of it: What does a woman who only ever kept house know about business?
“Ahem. Ahem. What I mean is…… running a corporation is no child's game of housekeeping. It is not a weight a former homemaker can shoulder, sister-in-law. The creditor banks will come crashing through that door any day now — can you stand against them? I'm not trying to frighten you. I'm simply telling you the reality.”
Kang Tae-yong adopted a patronizing air and began to launch into his sermon.
How dire the company's crisis was, how grueling and thankless a thing management was.
But Kim Ja-young met his gaze with unshaken eyes.
“I understand all of that quite well. I'm even grateful that you've taken such an interest, brother-in-law.”
“Then……”
“However. Sunjin Group is the company my husband Seon-woo's father answered for to the very end.”
Kim Ja-young drew a slow breath and spoke.
“Until Seon-woo can take my place, I will answer for it.”
Kang Tae-yong's jaw dropped.
He was stunned.
To think the sister-in-law who'd lived like a hothouse flower harbored such venom in her.
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes. I mean it.”
Kang Tae-yong's eyes turned razor-sharp.
“Things could become dangerous for you.”
“…….”
“It will be hard to hold out on your own. Regret will do you no good later.”
An unmistakable warning.
Take my hand — or I will come for you.
But Kim Ja-young offered him only the faintest of smiles.
“I'll hold out as long as my strength allows. And if I truly fall short…… I'll beg for your help then. For now, please show yourself out.”
A perfect refusal.
Kang Tae-yong's face flushed red and purple. His pride had been wounded to the bone.
“Ha. Unbelievable.”
He snatched up the folder in front of him, irritable. There was no reason to sit here a moment longer.
“Very well. But the next time we meet, there will be no smiling faces.”
Kang Tae-yong rose roughly to his feet and strode toward the front door without so much as a backward glance. The slam of the front door reverberated through the living room.
Ugh. Maybe I should have just stayed home today.
The teacher had said I could stay out of school for a while, but staying home meant running into an even more uncomfortable person, so I'd come in — and I fit in about as well as ever.
Having to live high school life all over again, of all things. Unbelievable.
I rested my chin on my hand and looked out the window, but the ownership structure of Sunjin Group wouldn't leave my head.
Sunjin Group.
Say what anyone would, my grandfather had been a titan who lifted this country up on the back of manufacturing.
Even as he tore the group apart and handed it to his brothers on his deathbed, the principle was ironclad.
The eldest — my eldest uncle — got automobiles; the younger uncles got heavy industry and the financial arm.
And our father got the resorts and the trading house.
People said my father had been pushed aside.
Compared to the glamour of automobiles or heavy industry, resorts and trading companies seemed lacking in prestige.
And after the IMF crisis, with talk circulating that general trading companies were obsolete, their value had hit rock bottom.
Nonsense.
I snorted.
Just look at Japan's general trading company model and the answer is obvious.
From iron ore to crude oil — down to the toys children play with.
Monstrous organizations that weave the entire world together and wring money out of it.
In a country like South Korea, with no natural resources of its own, forced to import raw materials, process them, and export them again to survive — a trading house was a business that could never die.
If anything, because it commanded the group's logistics and distribution, it was effectively the circulatory system itself.
And Grandfather believed Father alone was worthy of carrying the name of Sunjin Group, the root of Sunjin.
Grandfather had adored my father. He gave what he treasured most to the son he treasured most.
There's no way the eldest uncle doesn't know that.
By now, my mother would have flatly refused Kang Tae-yong's proposal.
In which case, my eldest uncle would retreat for a while, lacking a pretext……
But the real problem is a year from now.
Another figure surfaced in my mind.
My grandfather's younger brother — my great-uncle. Kang Byung-chul, Chairman of Sunjin Aluminum.
An old man more cunning and avaricious than all his hyena nephews combined.
One year from now, when the group was starved for cash, he would be the first to bare his fangs.
His target was Sunjin Sangsa. To monopolize the export channels for the aluminum he produced, he would try to swallow the trading company whole.
In my previous life, my mother held him off. But……
It was a glory bought with nothing but wounds.
To repel that assault, she burned through every prime property and every won of cash she had.
And because of it, when the financial crisis swept in later, she had no means left and the group collapsed.
I have to help.
This time, I couldn't let her be dragged into another war of attrition.
Before my great-uncle even opened his mouth, I had to build a board where he couldn't so much as part his lips.
But me? Now?
I looked at my reflection in the window glass. A shaggy-haired high schooler in a uniform necktie.
If I went to my mother right now and said, “Great-Uncle is going to attack, so prepare for it,” I'd be dismissed as a pubescent boy's delusions, plain and simple.
I need someone who will help me, constraints be damned.
A justification to legally move money and read the board, within the constraints of being a minor, without any official title.
I was rolling my pen between my fingers, deep in thought, when it happened.
Would that person be possible?
In an instant, someone flashed through my mind.
My mother needs Choi Dong-soo right now — and if Executive Director Kim Seok-jun helped me……
I had to go find him.
Now. Immediately.