The Youngest Daughter of a Chaebol Family
I think I lived a fairly ordinary life.
After graduating from college, I followed my parents’ wishes and started studying for the civil service exam, and in the end I became a ninth-grade civil servant.
Being a ninth-grade civil servant was worse than I could have imagined. Utterly miserable, even.
Still, even someone as ordinary as me knew the standard clichés of possession.
Get hit by a truck, leave a nasty comment, download some suspicious DLC and create a character, hear someone congratulate you on a dome concert and get stabbed in the gut... something along those lines.
I hadn’t done any of that weird stuff.
"Doctor! The patient woke up! Doctor!!!"
"Ms. Kwon Seah! Ms. Kwon Seah, can you hear us? If you can, please blink!"
My last memory was definitely ordinary.
My grandmother shouting that this year’s kimchi was awful and I should take it away.
My grandfather yelling that why was he the only one not getting any benefits.
A woman who called for a whole month, threatening to sue because the snow in front of her house hadn’t been cleared and she’d gotten hurt.
The motel owner who stripped down in the middle of screaming that she’d rather kill herself than pay those taxes.
And even my predecessor, now completely unreachable because a complainant had come at him with a knife and started swinging...
I’d fallen asleep while wondering how I was supposed to handle the bombshell of a complaint call waiting for me tomorrow.
"Good heavens! Seah, you’re awake? What did I tell you, Mom said today was going to be a good day!"
"Hey, Mom! Don’t freak out so much and call Dad over here already!!"
Listening to voices clamoring from every direction, I had no choice but to accept it.
Kwon Se-ah
A young lady with a name I was hearing for the very first time.
A woman who opened her eyes in a lavish private room, its walls covered in expensive wallpaper woven with dense golden ornament.
I had possessed a woman I couldn’t even begin to identify.
* * *
I was lucky.
It wasn’t like I’d been dropped into some other world with no toilet paper, or into one of those terrifying gate stories where monsters spill out everywhere.
Instead, I’d possessed a young lady in a world almost absurdly similar to the one I’d lived in normally.
That meant I had a smartphone in my hands with the same famous social media apps, the same search engine, and even games I’d personally played before installed on it.
"Kwon Seah... Hanseong Group... thirteen-car pileup..."
Thanks to that, I was able to figure out right away who this woman named Kwon Seah was and what had happened to her.
In one sentence: I’d become the youngest daughter of Hanseong Group, South Korea’s number one conglomerate.
To be precise, my parents had been the chairman’s third child and had died in a traffic accident, while I myself had spent a month in a coma.
Technically I was his granddaughter, but he seemed to dote on me so much that everyone called me his youngest daughter.
"So that’s why they brought me here..."
I studied my body and face in the large mirror mounted above the sink.
Kwon Seah was so beautiful that she could have taken up modeling as a hobby and nobody would have found it strange.
If there was ever such a thing as a body with no place to pick at, this was it.
"Anyway... I’m at the family mausoleum under the foundation’s name... I came to see Dad and Mom, whose funeral was a month ago."
At first, I had no idea what was going on.
I’d been told there was nothing wrong with my body in that luxurious private room, then half-forced into changing clothes and brought here in a long limousine.
To be honest, I didn’t even know this was a mausoleum before I got here, and only after I walked in and saw a few adults in suits did I barely manage to grasp the situation.
Asking if I could use the restroom for a moment and escaping that heavy atmosphere had been, in its own way, a stroke of luck.
Thanks to that, I’d managed not to do anything stupid enough to ruin the mood by asking who the hell I was.
— Knock, knock, knock!
"Seah! It’s me. Are you taking a while? Grandfather’s here too."
Ugh... Was I seriously not allowed to hide in the bathroom forever?
First, let’s cram only the necessary facts into my head.
This was the same kind of instinct I used when talking to complainants, anyway.
So Grandfather must mean Chairman Kwon Kigap.
The person who came to get me now was my cousin...!
— Creak!
"Sorry I’m late."
"Late? Don’t worry about that. You woke up in the hospital and came straight here, didn’t you? You’re okay, right?"
Kwon Seah’s cousin, Kwon Siyoung, had her hair neatly braided up, but she was also wearing rather sparkling earrings.
Her shoes, the coat draped over her shoulders, everything about her practically radiated the kind of energy that couldn’t resist dressing extravagantly.
Which probably meant her personality was outgoing too.
As soon as she saw me come out of the restroom, she waved for me to follow and strode ahead first.
"... VIP movement has begun."
The quiet voice from behind me belonged to a bodyguard wearing sunglasses.
As I’d already felt in the limousine, I really had become the youngest daughter of a chaebol family.
"Do you have any problems?"
"... No."
Wow, this was way too much pressure.
The moment our eyes met, he bowed so politely he nearly bent double and started speaking to me?
No, but... was that just natural, considering I was the cherished youngest daughter of the nation’s number one conglomerate?
It looked impossible to run away from here, so I moved quickly, following Kwon Siyoung.
The family mausoleum was somehow noisy and quiet at the same time.
I know that sounds like nonsense, but it was exactly like that.
People were bustling around because I’d arrived, and yet there was hardly any sound of footsteps or movement.
"Oh, good! You’re here, you’re here! Seah, come quickly!"
In front of the mausoleum, where I arrived after walking a short distance, stood the people I’d seen over and over again on my smartphone.
Kwon Seah’s grandfather, her eldest uncle, and her aunt by marriage.
"... I’m sorry."
I gave a quick bow toward my aunt.
Then I immediately bent at the waist and greeted my grandfather.
If I’d done something wrong, I should apologize first.
It was a tiny survival skill I’d learned during my civil servant days.
"I’m sorry, Grandfather."
"Yes... Our Seah must have had a hard time. Come here."
Kwon Kigap.
Kwon Seah’s grandfather, a man with that name, looked impossibly vigorous for his age.
With his wrinkled hand, he took mine and slowly led me forward.
"Seah... you’ve only just woken up, and now you’ve been suddenly dragged into all this. It must be confusing."
I kept my mouth shut and said nothing.
"But what can a person do about what has already happened? As a child, you should at least pay your respects."
In front of me lay two photographs that felt entirely unfamiliar.
Mother, Kwon Chuhee. Father, Park Cheolho.
No matter how you looked at them, they were names I didn’t know, and even the large family portrait hanging behind them only made my feelings more complicated.
"Ah..."
But I was a person with a sense of tact.
I might not be able to perfectly act like a young lady in her twenties, but I could at least manage the absolute minimum of human behavior.
This was like being on the scene of a disaster and not stupidly fumbling with your smartphone.
"Ghk... ugh..."
I sniffled on purpose and scrubbed at the corners of my eyes with my right hand.
"Yes... Seah. Yes... Even I, as your father, feel this pain, so how much harder must it be for you to lose your parents."
Grandfather’s eyes turned red as he patted my back gently.
There was no need to call them Mom and Dad or anything like that here.
Just acting silently overwhelmed by the situation and crying soundlessly should be enough!
"Tsk... This is all because of some bastard who got drunk and grabbed the wheel. What a damn disaster."
"The luck was bad, but that was too much bad luck... to end up in such a massive accident like that..."
Was the relationship between my eldest uncle and aunt actually good?
"I haven’t seen Seah cry in ages..."
"She’s okay, right? She wasn’t bawling her eyes out in the bathroom just now, was she?"
"No? She wasn’t crying when she came out. But her mood was different from usual, so it looked like she was holding it in pretty hard."
Did Kwon Seah get along well with her cousins?
... Honestly, I had no way of knowing that.
Even the internet, which loved picking apart famous people for scraps, didn’t turn every little private thing into gossip.
* * *
Kwon Seah woke from her coma after a month.
To celebrate this joyous occasion, the people of Hanseong Group ended up sharing a pleasant meal with the chairman.
... At least, that was how I understood it.
It wasn’t the sort of atmosphere where savage, cutthroat drama was flying back and forth like in a makjang soap opera, and nobody was trembling so badly under Grandfather’s terrifying temper that they couldn’t even lift their spoons.
"So, are you feeling a little better? Seah?"
As soon as the long meal ended and dessert was served, my aunt spoke to me in a friendly tone.
"Ah... Mom. What are you trying to bring up now? She only woke up today."
"Even if she woke up today, things that need to be done need to be done. If we don’t talk about it while Grandfather is here, when are we supposed to bring it up?"
... Oh.
Was this what I thought it was? The thing you see in makjang dramas and chaebol stories?
Was a blatantly bloody conglomerate succession war about to begin?
No, but I didn’t know anything.
I didn’t know a damn thing about economics, and I’d dabbled in Bitcoin once or twice and lost every cent!
"Anyway, Seah. Since all the adults are gathered here, let’s talk about it."
"Yes... It’s upsetting, but we should speak while your grandfather is still here."
At the words of the two adults, the grandfather himself clicked his tongue with a deeply sour expression.
"Your mother’s business—"
What followed was an immensely complicated and exhausting story from my aunt and eldest uncle.
Financial statements this, stocks that, where I had to sign what, professional management this...
I didn’t know. The flood of incomprehensible words came crashing over me, and not a single one made sense.
"Seah? Are you listening? Seah?"
"Ah... well..."
What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say?
What kind of work was I possessed into? Was this really a chaebol novel? Then what was my position supposed to be?
The early-game experience points for a protagonist whose parents died and who was neatly prepped to be devoured?
The role of someone to be eliminated by a security chief short on cash?
"I... um, ngh... I don’t know."
Tears started streaming down my face before I could stop them.
I really didn’t know.
Honestly, I had survived the civil service exam after going through hell.
If I’d become the youngest daughter of a chaebol family, wasn’t I supposed to start a life of effortless indulgence and laziness?
"I mean... ngh, I can’t even believe my parents are both gone... ngh... sob, I still can’t believe it, so..."
It was unfair. Truly unfair.
If I’d known I was going to end up like this, I should have just gone to another world instead...!
There, I would’ve become a princess, wouldn’t I? A princess wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of thing...
"Ugh, sob... ugh..."
"H-Hey, why are you crying so sadly? Did you even understand what your aunt said? She didn’t say anything bad at all..."
"Mom! How am I not supposed to cry?! I wake up after the accident and get told both Mom and Dad are dead! Why are you talking about money?!"
Even the mother-daughter scene I’d have laughed at if I’d seen it in a drama wasn’t funny at all in real life.
"I... I really... don’t know. I’ll do whatever my aunt and uncle... tell me to do. J-just spare me. I-I won’t overstep."
"Oh dear... Seah..."
"I’m just... so tired... I want to go home."
I wanted to go home and just rest.
I wanted to become a rich unemployed bum.
... Come to think of it, that had been my dream long before I became a civil servant.
Wouldn’t the youngest daughter of a chaebol family make as much from just leaving money in a bank account as my monthly salary?
"Fine. Go rest a little."
"Grandfather...?"
"There are times when a person can work, and times when they can’t..."
With Grandfather’s unexpected words, it felt as though a rope had suddenly been lowered from heaven.
Was I really allowed to rest?
Could I actually enjoy a luxurious week-long vacation as the youngest daughter of a chaebol family?!
You know, that thing... omakase and all that, the trendy stuff from back then—was I allowed to eat that for lunch every day?!
"Yes, rest for a while. Seah. The urgent matters were already finished by your aunt and uncle while you were asleep."
Only after hearing my aunt’s softened voice did I realize it.
The fun, easy, exploit-the-system life of the youngest daughter of a chaebol family had just begun!
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