3rd Grade.
3rd Grade.
Time passed, and I visited Hanseong headquarters for the first time with Da-yeon.
I mean, sure, they're ranked second in the country. I figured they'd have one really big building or something...
But three monstrously huge buildings were linked together, and the sprawling park around them was flat-out overwhelming.
I thought our Tower Palace was pretty nice, but it was laughable compared to this place.
The difference was practically like a building made of Legos versus an actual Ji-eun building.
A swarm of executives trailed behind Lee Jin-seok as he walked into the building with Dad.
Behind Da-yeon and me, an enormous crowd followed, centered around Kim Tae-oh.
Okay, I admit it.
Inside this building, Da-yeon was every bit the princess you'd find in a novel.
Honestly, it's batshit insane.
Seeing how the Lee Jin-seok family was treated here was genuinely impressive.
The moment Kim Tae-oh hit headquarters, he snapped into razor-sharp posture and started an exchange with the HSW security team, leaving us off to the side.
I followed Da-yeon onto an elevator tucked deeper inside the building.
An elevator that only went to three floors.
"It goes straight to my dad's room and my grandpa's room~"
Seriously... mind-blowing.
When we hit the top floor, the elevator shot up fast and its doors opened to a view of Lee Gi-seok's office beyond a glass wall.
Lee Gi-seok was seated, and when he spotted us through the glass, he stood up with startled eyes.
"My pretty little puppies! You came!"
"Grandpa~"
Lee Gi-seok hugged Da-yeon, then guided us into his office.
The exterior showed off the pinnacle of modern technology, but inside... yeah, he loves his classic, antique style.
I locked eyes with Lee Gi-seok.
"I came too, you know?"
"Indeed! Come here!"
"No thanks, you smell like an old man."
"Hahahahahahaha!!!"
Lee Gi-seok laughed heartily for a good long while, then spoke while still cracking up.
"Isn't this your first time here? Did you look around?"
"I was curious, but I figured I didn't really need to see any more."
"Why did you think that?"
"Just from the outside and this room, you can feel the truth of that saying: 'The top one percent of Korea's talent goes to Hanseong.'"
"Hahaha, I see."
Lee Gi-seok looked me up and down, then grinned slyly.
"Aren't you curious about the senior leadership?"
"What would you do if I memorized everything and leaked the intel?"
"Then I'd have to prepare a different project, I suppose. But what would you be lacking that would make you do that? Hahaha! When it comes to cash, your father likely has more on hand than I do."
"That much?"
"Hmm... a while back, we were scouting land in Seoul to build a Hanseong Trading building, and it turned out most of the surrounding lots were in your father's name. Heh heh..."
"Whoa..."
"Honestly... I've never met a man so big-hearted. He told me to take good care of you and offered to just give me nearly ten thousand pyeong of land. I was so dumbfounded..."
"So did you take it for free?"
"A businessman mustn't love handouts. A manager must act according to profit and loss... so I purchased every last bit at full market price."
"Oh... so you basically ate it raw, huh?"
Just looking at the attached lots, it was land that would only keep appreciating the longer you held it.
To a degree you can't even predict.
"Hahahahahaha! Refusing a fair deal is a demerit for a manager too. So... I prepared a gift."
I eyed him with interest at the mention of a gift, and he showed me a single photograph.
It was a building right next to Euljiro Station, marked with the letters HSW.
I might not know about the distant future, but right now, it was a high-rise in a prime Seoul transit hub worth more than the land Dad gave him.
And with the law revised, no taller building than that would ever go up in that district again.
My eyes went perfectly round.
"You're giving me this?"
"Yekki, you rascal! Wouldn't that be making the belly button bigger than the belly?!"
"So...?"
"The entrance is separate, underground. The rooftop here, and the fifty-second and fifty-third floors—that's where I used to live."
"Oh, what the heck... I already have a house, you know? And I have to eat the food Dad cooks, so I can't live on my own~"
"I had it turned into a party room."
"...Call."
"Naturally... under your name..."
"This young lady... might I be permitted... to embrace your esteemed person just once...?"
"Very well, come here."
"Yes, Your Grace humbles me beyond words."
Da-yeon was smiling as she watched us.
I was curious how that party room might be decorated, and I was also thinking about what I'd need to buy first if it was empty.
But Lee Gi-seok, of course, had already prepared it separately.
A space that rivaled an aquarium, all kinds of entertainment facilities, an outdoor swimming pool, and more.
Paradise was spread out before me.
And on top of that, they said they'd periodically redecorate the interior to suit my age...
Insanity, truly.
The manager handed over a business card and asked us to give notice the day before whenever we planned to use it.
When I asked what would happen if we told them the day of, they said the prep time for the Hanseong marketing staff would just get tighter the more rushed it was, but nothing about using it would change.
And if we told them what we wanted with time to spare, they'd make it happen with Lee Gi-seok's approval... seriously, mind-blowing.
Da-yeon and I left the party room and explored inside the headquarters.
Employee ID? Temporary visitor pass? Authorized personnel only? None of that crap existed for us.
We just put Da-yeon at the front and charged ahead.
Da-yeon's face was a free pass to any space in the entire company...
Too many adults spotted Da-yeon and tried to cozy up to her, and Da-yeon started finding it annoying and openly showing her discomfort.
Seeing that, I spoke up for her.
"We'll just look around on our own."
"Yes, understood. I was being presumptuous. Ha ha."
People who used the highest formal speech even when replying to me.
There had been an executive-level figure at the Seoul branch before,
someone who'd spoken carelessly to me while Da-yeon and I were running around having fun.
That executive had been promptly exiled to a provincial post.
He must have been much higher in the hierarchy than I'd thought, because after that, nobody treated me carelessly.
It was Lee Gi-seok who'd taken measures practically equivalent to someone messing with a direct Hanseong descendant, so...
Even when people were in grim conferences or heated debates, they'd go dead silent the moment Da-yeon and I walked past.
Wow... so this is the life of a chaebol family...
I could see gazes mixed with envy, and also plenty of gazes burning with the determination to become just like this someday.
And most of all, every single person I could see, from the lowliest entry-level hire on up, was from the top one percent of Korea...
If I walked past, grabbed anyone at random, and asked their alma mater, they'd be from Hanguk University or some top-tier overseas university.
There are so many foreigners too—I guarantee you, grab ten at random and ask, and every single one's a Harvard grad. I'll bet on it.
"Gaaaaah! We're screwed!!!"
"What do we do?!"
"Why didn't you bring it, I..."
"I'm sorry..."
Sudden commotion from a room.
Da-yeon and I poked our heads in to look, and there were four people in the conference room; among them, a man around my dad's age had his head in his hands.
"What do I do? Sigh... I'm gonna get chewed out so hard by the section chief... Hey, Jae-hun, how many hours until the meeting?"
"Four hours left."
"Ah... seriously..."
He momentarily looked up from his laptop, and our eyes met.
""Eeeeeek!!!!""
And the man beside him, who'd been called Jae-hun, spotted us at the same time and recoiled like he'd seen a ghost.
Da-yeon glanced at me, and I just opened the door and walked into the conference room.
"Hello?"
"Yes, YES!!! Hello!"
"Can I look around?"
"Of course!"
Never mind the complaining a second ago—all three suddenly snapped into focus on their work, and the man around my dad's age brought chairs over for us.
"Some coffee... perhaps... no, some kind of beverage?"
Seized by a sudden urge to mess with him, I shot him a sharp look.
"Why did you cancel that coffee you mentioned first?"
The man started breaking out in a cold sweat at my question.
He pondered for a moment, then immediately dipped into an apology.
"I'm sorry!"
"Your reason?"
"I thought you wouldn't like it."
"Why?"
"My niece is around your age... and she hates coffee, so I simply assumed you'd feel the same...!"
Oh... that's a pretty decent excuse, actually.
"Then give us a drink, something a kid would like..."
"...Yes!"
I'd only been messing with this one man, but the other three were sweating even harder...
Da-yeon poked me lightly in the side, as if to say stop tormenting them.
I smiled at Da-yeon, and Da-yeon just sighed at me.
The man who'd gone to get drinks had hunted down the guest cups and poured us some aloe drink.
'Wow... out of everything, you had to pick this...'
This drink was something Da-yeon absolutely hated—she said the bits in it felt scratchy going down her throat.
"".....""
Maybe he picked up on the "we're so screwed" atmosphere, but the man began turning pale.
Sweet Da-yeon tried to force herself to drink it out of respect for his consideration, but it looked difficult for her.
"Wow, Da-yeon really is too nice... she's even drinking aloe juice she can't stomach..."
"Si-yoon... don't... I'm okay... ughh."
"I'm sorry!"
The conference room had heated up, maybe from all their cold sweat.
"Isn't it kind of hot in here?"
The man called Jae-hun sprang up at my single comment, swiftly lowered the A/C temperature, and then dropped back into his seat just as fast.
Look at that knife-like posture—they've got sharper bearing than soldiers from the 1970s.
That woman over there was also focusing on her work with trembling pupils.
'With your pupils shaking that badly, can you even see anything properly?'
"Our Da-yeon likes coffee, doesn't she?"
Watching the man's severely trembling eyes was a little pitiful, but it also felt like teasing Dad, so it was pretty fun.
Acknowledging that I was leaning into a fairly nasty hobby, I decided to quit it.
"What kind of meeting is in four hours?"
The man answered without a trace of hesitation.
"It's regarding the safety of components going into the next-generation mobile phone, contract details with our partner mid-sized and small-to-medium enterprises, the initial development costs, and the direction and planning proposal for future business endeavors."
Just hearing that, it was stuff I couldn't meddle with even if I wanted to. But I could still help.
"Why are you short on time?"
"I left the PPT presentation I'd finished practicing on at my family home, which is far away..."
"And so you're remaking it now?"
"Yes..."
"Don't you usually keep backup copies?"
"I was the one doing the final merge, so..."
"How much time do you need?"
"At least... I think we'll need four hours."
"Then tell them we're here, and that you were showing us around the company and explaining the business, so ask them to push the meeting back two or three hours. If anyone questions it, tell them openly without hiding anything."
Only then did he bow his head, his expression finally brightening.
"Thank you!"
I gave the now-cheerful man a bright smile.
"Da-yeon's coffee..."
"Ah... yes!!!"
I wheeled my chair over and watched the materials they were putting together.
The endlessly arrayed documents made my eyes spin.
"Mm...? Hey, that's a typo."
"Ah! Thank you."
"Are you going to say thank you for every single one? Just fix it quickly. And that English spelling's wrong too..."
I kept watching and tossed out another comment.
"Forty-five tons of silicon at a mid-sized company factory......?"
"They said this was a future projection, but it's just too unrealistic......"
As time passed and I pointed things out one by one, the people began turning aghast.
"Push the meeting back another hour."
"Yes!!"
"New materials... is there a reason you're developing them?"
"Yes, there is a company in Japan that holds an effective monopoly on a similar technology, but importing it is not only expensive—there's also no recourse if the Japanese side halts production."
"So vertical integration through acquisition of a new-materials business...? And what's this?"
"Ah, yes... as I mentioned with the new material just now, it means operating everything from raw-material production to finished-product manufacturing and sales through our affiliates. So for this project in particular, we intend to acquire this company that possesses outstanding technology in new materials...... So to explain vertical integration again..."
"Stop! I understood it, so say it once."
"Ahh... I apologize."
"First, give me the laptop."
I straight-up confiscated the laptop, corrected the mistakes, and rapidly read through the contents.
Da-yeon seemed to find watching from beside me pretty entertaining too.
I still didn't understand even half of this project, but I was satisfied to this degree and handed the laptop back.
"Right?"
"Yes?!"
"What did they say from above?"
"They said to take as much time as we need, and to treat you young ladies well."
Just then, there was sudden noise outside, and the door rattled open.
All four people checked who it was and recoiled in fright.
"Dad!"
It was Da-yeon's dad, Lee Jin-seok.
Behind him, poking his face out to look at me, was my own dad too.
"Come here—work stuff."
"Yeah!"
As expected, my dad—who'd never taken more than five seconds when I called—beamed, stepped behind me, and placed his hand on my shoulder.
"What were you up to?"
"Jin-seok and I were making plans for a fishing trip."
"You had to do that here?"
"Yep, Jin-seok said he needs to pretend to be busy."
Lee Jin-seok's face rapidly curdled.
Heh heh, my dad has zero secrets in front of me.
Dad's brightly smiling remark was quite the bombshell.
"Are you done pretending to be busy?"
"...Ahem, that's right..."
"The people here really took great care of us; they played with us even though they're busy."
"Ho-oh..."
"And we wanted to play more too, so we threw a fit and asked them to push the meeting back a little. Is that okay?"
"Of course."
Lee Jin-seok said something to the secretary beside him, then had their names written down.
Watching their expressions—clearly holding back a rush of joy from whatever mysterious satisfaction was washing over them—was pretty entertaining.
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
"Did you know Da-yeon is good at fishing?"
"Really?!"
"I taught her last time, and Da-yeon had fun, right Da-yeon?"
"Yeah! It was fun. I was going to tell you, Dad, but Si-yoon beat me to it..."
"Ahh... I should've said it sooner..."
"Hahaha, just kidding~"
Lee Jin-seok looked at Da-yeon with sparkling eyes.
"Would you like to go fishing with Daddy sometime?"
"With Si-yoon and her dad too!"
"Of course~"
It seemed Lee Jin-seok felt things had gotten a little awkward lately with his precious daughter Da-yeon and wanted to do something together, anything at all.
"Oh... the father and daughter can go catch some crucian carp together next time."
"That's an excellent idea."
"Right?"
Starting that day, a new rumor began circulating throughout Hanseong.
Along with the idea that if Da-yeon and I came to visit and you were "chosen," you could score a super-fast promotion...
there was the rumor that I was the prospective daughter-in-law of the Hanseong heir...