Prologue + Fuck You!
Prologue: That Bastard Shiba!
“Take it.”
“……??”
“Hurry up!”
“…….”
An old woman stood there in a deep indigo skirt patterned with peonies blooming in soft relief. Her age was impossible to guess. A grandmother of unknown origin thrust out her right hand.
“Why’s the little bear cub looking so beaten down? Life’s a load of absolute X sometimes.”
“……!!”
My name is Taewoong—Great Bear. Ever since I was small, that name had gotten me mocked as “bear cub.”
“Never forget today! Without money, even holding a woman’s hand is a crime!”
“…….”
The blunt truth hit me square in the chest and made my heart lurch.
Yeah! Today life was pure X!
Fired from the company and dumped by my girlfriend. To her I was just a worthless nobody with no money and no connections.
“Tsk tsk. A boy about to hit the jackpot still hasn’t got his head on straight.”
The old woman clicked her tongue.
“Haa.”
All I could do was sigh.
“My arm’s getting tired. Take it already.”
“Pardon?”
“Can’t you tell what it is?”
I knew. It was a bankbook. A passbook complete with a plastic cover and a seal inside.
“Open it.”
In a daze I took the bankbook and flipped it open.
“What the—!!”
It was in my name. The moment I saw the balance printed there, a groan tore out of me.
“W-what is this??”
A bank account in my name that I had never known about. And the number stamped on it was staggering.
1,000,000,000 won.
A brand-new passbook, yet the account holder was me—Ha Taewoong.
“From now on live however you damn well please! Money? Women? Whatever you want, it’s all yours!”
Before I knew it the old woman had stepped close and was gently stroking the back of my head. There was no sense of rejection. The look in her eyes as she watched me was pure pity.
I was two years older than most of my peers. It had happened when I was in first grade of elementary school. Walking down the street for no reason at all, I took a blow to the back of the head. Those were the days when random assaults were rampant. They never found the culprit. CCTV was still rare. The attack had happened in a blind alley. The police moved, but the case eventually fizzled out. That incident cost me two years. I spent five months as a vegetable, then another half year in rehab the following year. Against every precedent I became the legendary elementary-school repeater who re-enrolled in second grade.
“First use this pocket money to buy that stuff! The thing that’s popular these days…… ta-, what was it called.”
Ta-, tanghulu?
The balance printed in the book was one billion. Coldly speaking, with that money you could just barely buy a single apartment in Seoul……
“You know, that. The fake money the foreigners love.”
Fake…… money?
“The stuff they puff up with electricity and eat!”
Puff up with electricity……?
“Ah! That thing with a moon in the name, and dancing, and even a bastard called Shiba!”
Moon? Dance? Shiba……?
Related words flashed through my mind in an instant!
“C-coin??”
Fuck You!
“Why me?”
Last year Daeryong Group had climbed to 99th place in the chaebol rankings. This was the directors’ office of the Strategic Planning Team at Daeryong Eco Cycle Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the group. The cold metal fixtures alone looked like they had cost a fortune to install. Even as an executive, wasting corporate funds like this was wrong.
Swoosh.
Director Go Dongyeol tilted his head back arrogantly and stared at me. His eyes were as cold and merciless as a venomous snake’s. Through the thin, sharp silver frames of his glasses a frigid light glinted. He was thirty-three this year. Short hair slicked up hard with gel only added to the air of menace. Designer clothes and a flashy luxury watch were standard. For an ordinary office worker his age, a seat as an executive at a major conglomerate was nearly impossible to grasp. But Go Dongyeol came from special circumstances. His grandfather was the chairman of the family group. His father was the CEO. And his great-grandfather had been the founding chairman of a major national daily. In short, he was one of the upper-crust golden-spoon heirs of South Korea.
“You’re not seriously asking because you don’t know, are you?”
“I don’t understand.”
That morning I had suddenly been placed on standby. The reasons given were lax work discipline and private misuse of a corporate card. Completely baseless and absurd. I could not accept it. It had clearly been a client entertainment occasion, and I had received approval from above. I had never used the card for anything else. Yet private misuse?
Last month the project I had poured a full year into had exploded into a massive success. It was the project I had pushed forward ambitiously the moment I made assistant manager. To secure the patent I had practically lived at my alma mater’s engineering research lab. I had even run a networking campaign that pulled in the business school professors. Dirt-cheap I had acquired the latest production method for eco-friendly biodegradable plastic that a Yonsei University engineering professor was researching. It was a groundbreaking process that already secured full price competitiveness. Direct deals with major European corporations sensitive to environmental issues had opened up. The final supply contract had already been signed. For the next ten years all we had to do was export and settle hundreds of millions of euros every year. On the plant side, all that was needed was to bolt the patented device onto existing machinery. Colleagues had congratulated me, saying I was certain to land on the special promotion list with a huge bonus. Office rumors said the same. Even the upper line had given me an informal S-grade performance evaluation.
And then today!
I received notice of dismissal.
“You don’t know……. Heh heh.”
Go Dongyeol openly sneered.
Click.
Hisssss.
In the spacious director’s office he used alone, Go Dongyeol lit a cigarette with complete disregard for the company-wide no-smoking rule.
Hoooooooo.
Thick smoke billowed right into my face and spread hazily.
“Ha Taewoong.”
“…….”
Go Dongyeol called my name.
“You got some connection with me?”
“…….”
“School ties, regional ties, blood ties. You know, that kind of thing.”
“None.”
“Right, none. Hell, you don’t even smoke with me, do you? Right?”
“…….”
An ordinary guy like me having any link with a quasi-chaebol third-generation heir was pure fantasy.
“Every time I look at you my mood turns sour? Extremely! Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
Go Dongyeol had only been transferred here a few months ago. Before that he had been working at another affiliate of the group.
“Heh heh. Yeah, not knowing is normal. A clueless, appetite-killing bastard. That’s you!”
He knew every detail of my background—that I had no backing at all—and still he insulted me to my face. I wanted to smash his jaw with my fist. Outside the fence he would not even be worth one punch. But I had to endure. Outside without a paycheck was a battlefield.
Every kind of crisis was sweeping the world. The fractures between nations that had begun to show in 2020. The war between Russia and Ukraine that no one had imagined. Then the war between Israel and the Arab world. Crises that hit before the aftereffects of COVID-19 had even faded. And finally, starting in 2027, the global bubble hit its historic peak and then—bang!—burst in an instant. South Korea did not escape unscathed. Under the high-interest-rate policy, real-estate nouveau riche who specialized in gap speculation went broke one after another. The days when landlords reigned above even the Creator turned hollow. The feast of the suddenly rich was pitiful. Even those who had merely been collateral damage ended up on the streets. The country staggered through one quasi-emergency after another.
Unfortunately my employment luck was also rotten. When I first joined the economy had not been that bad. Most of my university classmates landed jobs at major conglomerates. Even when we applied to the same places, I alone kept failing. I had passed the first document screening at the top-ten groups a few times. But after every interview I received a rejection notice. It was not as if my specs were poor. My graduating GPA was 4.33. TOEIC and TOEFL scores were near perfect. I could handle Japanese and Chinese reasonably well. Even when I tried the top-fifty groups I kept getting shut out. Not only Korean companies but foreign firms refused to hire me. Bad luck clung to me as if someone were following me around and sabotaging every chance.
After long wandering I had joined Daeryong. It had about twenty affiliates. At the time it did not even rank inside the top one hundred of the domestic chaebol list. That was then. From next year it was certain to jump several ranks higher. That was the key. The success of my project made it possible. And in that situation I received a completely unexplained standby order.
I still had unpaid student loans. The cost of living right now was murderous. There were far too many reasons I had to hang on. Absolute suppression of anger was required.
“Is there no other way?”
I clenched my fists tight, ground my teeth, and asked again.
“Of course not, you idiot. Heh heh.”
Go Dongyeol grinned widely. His eyes kept laughing at me.
“What’s the real reason?”
Even if I left, I wanted to know why. The early-retirement wave had ended last year. I was curious why they were discarding someone who had brought the company profit.
“Everything.”
“……??”
“Look. That cocky look in your eyes, that annoying way of talking, that face I can’t stand, and even those pathetic abilities! You don’t have a single matching code with me.”
This bastard!
A superiority-complex psychopath, pure INTJ mixed with ISFJ!
Getting rid of me just because of personal taste?
“On top of that your spine’s too stiff. A lowly origin acting way too confident. I hate that. So the lowborn has to go. Heh heh heh.”
I don’t like you either, you bastard!
Go Dongyeol’s education—an American regional private university that no one even bothered naming. My project results had only solidified his position inside the group. Our situations were completely different: I was a rank-and-file employee. Go Dongyeol took most of the credit for the work results. And still he petty-jealoused a mere staffer like me. He would never become a big vessel.
The conclusion was clear.
“I’ll submit my resignation.”
“Heh heh. Smart choice. I’ll throw in two months’ salary as severance.”
“What about the handover?”
“What the hell would a nobody like you have to hand over? Get your face out of my sight right now.”
Crunch.
My teeth ground together. To the very end the bastard insulted and mocked me without a shred of courtesy. Looking back, for the past month there had been no project assigned to me. I had thought they were giving me a kind of vacation. Once that period ended they framed me for lax discipline. From the beginning it had all been a calculated scheme.
The rabbit dies, the dog is cooked.
Smirk.
Having gotten what he wanted, Go Dongyeol’s eyes glittered with pure venom. Like a snake rolling its yellow eyeballs, he sneered at me. If I followed my temper I wanted to plant a fist in that thug’s face. Still I held back. I was not that kind of raw street punk. I was a proper intellectual.
However.
Swoosh. I loosened the necktie that had been strangling my throat.
“Hey. Go Dongyeol.”
I called him in a friendly tone.
“Go Dongyeol? You going off the rails just because you got fired?”
He glared as if he could not believe his ears.
“No. You and I are the same age, right? Once the business card comes off, that’s the end. And do you and I have even one matching code? Kind words go both ways. What are you expecting?”
I calmly locked eyes with him.
“Y-you crazy bastard!”
Go Dongyeol shot up from his seat and strode toward me.
Man, short.
Ah! That’s it!
I finally understood why I was being cut at this exact moment.
Thud.
I also stepped forward one solid pace.
“……!!”
Swoosh. I stretched my arm out until it nearly touched Go Dongyeol’s neck.
“W-what the hell!!”
He had been advancing, then flinched and jerked his body backward.
Scared, huh.
“Watch yourself on dark streets. You know I was Special Forces, right?”
Tap-tap.
I lightly brushed his shoulder with my palm.
Flutter.
His tensed heartbeat traveled up through my hand. A snort of laughter escaped me. It pissed me off that the bullying of absolute nothings still worked in this world.
After joining the company I had given it my absolute best loyalty. No regrets. I would leave coolly.
“Make the severance clean. You thug bastard—not even worth the sole of my shoe.”
No lingering attachment. Closing the chapter on the job that had guaranteed stable income. For someone with no school ties, blood ties, regional ties, or even smoking ties, I had lasted a long time. I turned coolly away. Even after getting fired, the day felt refreshing inside.
“Hey! Ha Taewoong! I’ll kill you! You son of a bitch!!”
Crash-clang-clang!
Without looking back as I walked out, I flipped him the bird!!
That was the first incident of the day.