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It was a holiday morning and the roads were quiet. Lee Juwon arrived at the company earlier than usual. After checking that there were no reporters in front of the main entrance of the company building, it was clear that he was not dead for now.
Despite the holiday, there were many employees at the company. He didn’t know whether they had just gotten to work or couldn’t leave work, but as usual, as soon as they saw Lee Juwon, they flinched and evasively said a quick greeting before disappearing.
He entered the representative’s office feeling relief or rather a feeling that was unknown to him. Lee Juwon ran his finger along the corner of the triangular plaque with his name on it and looked around the room. It was exactly the same as it had been before he left yesterday.
In a good way, it was neat and objectively, it was dreary. There wasn’t a single ornament that would be expected in a representative’s office. Occasionally, gifts of orchids, suiseki, ceramics, and the like came in, but he sold them all.
Lee Juwon felt a bit awkward for no reason. Still, he didn’t do much second-hand trading these days. The manner temperature was low, so the deals didn’t go through well.
Even as he sat in his chair, switched on his computer, and inertially picked through the reports on his desk, Lee Juwon wasn’t in a very good mood. The way of confirming his existence, dead or alive, was to go to work, but there was something fundamentally wrong with that.
Knock, knock.
There was a knock at the door. When Lee Juwon answered “Yes,” the door to the representative’s office opened and Team Leader Yuk Mokseo walked in. A man of average height with a crewcut, Team Leader Yuk greeted him with his usual folder angle. “Greetings, sir. It’s a good morning.”
At Lee Juwon’s curt nod, Team Leader Yuk stepped closer to Lee Juwon’s desk and spoke carefully, “We’ve received a call from BH.”
“That’s fast.” Leaning back in his chair, Lee Juwon clicked his tongue and continued, “What did the legal team say? Is there any way to reduce the cancellation fee?”
“That’s…” Team Leader Yuk trailed off. When Lee Juwon raised an eyebrow, he stroked his chin and continued, “BH said that since it was a national disaster, they won’t be returning the deposit. Rather, they said they wanted to support December, who made a difficult decision…”
“…That can’t be right? That BH?”
“Actually, we were contacted by Director Min Seungah’s secretary. Instead, they said that they’re throwing a charity party at the beginning of the year and that they’d like the CEO and Hunter Kang Inheon to attend.”
“Min Seungah? That junkie is throwing a what?”
“They said it was an unofficial charity event.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard all year, does she even know what charity means?”
“They said that they wished the CEO would attend if Hunter Kang Inheon was busy…”
“Did she take the wrong pill or are you speaking backwards?”
“They said they wanted to talk to the CEO separately about the sponsorship. Would it be alright if I give the CEO’s personal number to Director Min’s secretary?”
When Lee Juwon nodded, Team Leader Yuk lowered his voice to a whisper. “And I found the employee who personally asked Hunter Kang Inheon to take on the Gangjin case.”
Team Leader Yuk unfolded the approval board he wore at his side and held it out in front of Lee Juwon. Inside the approval board was a paper with a resume and personal details.
“Their name is Lee Siwon and they entered as an intern not too long ago. Their hometown is Gangjin.”
“Which team are they on?”
“They belong to planning team 1.”
“If they’re an intern, they can’t be held accountable. Tell Team Leader Choi to just let them go.”
“Yes, understood.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Yes, sir. Leave it to me.”
Team Leader Yuk walked out the door of the representative’s office with backward steps. Even after the door closed quietly behind him, Lee Juwon stared at the tightly closed door for a long time. Then he slapped himself hard on the cheek.
Slap!
The sound of friction spread through the representative’s office. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a red handprint on his cheek and chin. But now he couldn’t tell if it hurt or not.
Right now, Lee Juwon had no intention of blaming anyone because of the Gangjin incident, whether it was the intern or Kang Inheon. It wasn’t that he wasn’t angry at Kang Inheon for acting on his own, and at the people who had goaded him on, but he shouldn’t be lashing out at people in a situation where he wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive, and whether this was a dream or reality.
If he had to pick someone to be most displeased by right now, it’d be Team Leader Yuk who was right in front of him. As soon as he saw his face, he remembered the dirty jokes he had spat out at his funeral.
But to blame him, saying, “You bastard, you swore at me when I died”… He’d have to blame the whole country. If there were too many people to blame, it’d be like having none. Besides, if he added, “You did that in the future, you son of a bitch” he would be treated as a magnificent lunatic.
Besides, Min Seungah? The person who put in the guard request, BH’s youngest, Min Seungjun, was an innocent idiot blinded by love, so Lee Juwon didn’t think twice about accepting the job. Because Min Seungjun just wanted to post a trivial picture with Kang Inheon on his social media.
But Min Seungah was different. She was a lunatic with a shiny face and was known for her broken character in a different sense than Lee Juwon. She was a woman that could spend money like it was water, but that didn’t mean she was the type to throw a charity party.
Public opinion of BH was bad these days due to their tax evasion, so it seemed like they wanted to cover that up with Kang Inheon and wash their hands. She nominally invited him, but she probably only wanted Kang Inheon to come.
If Lee Juwon went, they’ll just be covered in shit and even more shit. Saying that he could come if Kang Inheon was busy was a sarcastic way of referring to yesterday’s event. Anyway, he had no intention of sending Kang Inheon to that place.
But why the hell did he do that? After a few moments of racking his brain, Lee Juwon picked up the receiver and called someone up.
Ddu, ddu, as soon as he heard the other party pick up, he blurted out without even giving them a greeting, “Why haven’t you brought me the list of items acquired from Gangjin yet?”
The team leader of the post-processing team answered the phone before the call had even gone through a single ringtone, his voice hoarse.
-I’m working on it now, sir. If you give me three more hours, I’ll grade them and…
“…Three hours? What did you do all of last night?”
-My whole team pulled an all-nighter and…
“Email it to me in an hour. I have to go down to the Jeju-do Office to discuss the related compensation.”
-Sir, one hour is…
Lee Juwon hung up the phone without another word. Kwang! After putting down the receiver, Lee Juwon closed and opened his eyes repeatedly. But there was no difference between before and after closing his eyes.
After hanging up the phone, he was stunned again. He hadn’t been the least bit curious about what items had been found in Gangjin until he had just spat out those words into the phone.
And what was that about the Jeju-do Office…? He had no intention of going down to Jeju Island to work today, but words came out and his body moved against his will.
“Ah… the meeting…”
He didn’t even have the time to be confused. He looked at his schedule on the computer desktop and saw that he had a meeting at 9 am. He couldn’t put the blame on anyone asking who scheduled a meeting so early when he needed time to collect his thoughts. Because it was a schedule that Lee Juwon set himself to restrict the team leaders from being indolent.
When the clock struck 8:55, Lee Juwon subconsciously got up from his seat and headed to the meeting room.
As he entered the conference room, the team leaders that had already gathered stood up to greet him. Once again, Lee Juwon felt how very rotten their expressions were. He hadn’t paid much attention to the complexion of his employees up until now, but now that he thought about it, the expressions of the team leaders in the conference room at 9 am on a Christmas morning couldn’t be looking good.
Creak.
The sound of a door opening and closing in a room as quiet as a funeral hall was heard. In the deadly silence, all eyes turned to the conference room door. Kim Taeoh, the team leader of the sales department, strode in, his face pale with fear as he continuously bowed his head down. “I-I apologize. My kid suddenly…”
“It’s 9:05.” Lee Juwon looked at his wristwatch and interrupted Team Leader Kim Taeoh. “Because of Team Leader Kim, the seven people sitting here have wasted five minutes each, making a total of 35 minutes… How will you compensate us?”
“…I apologize.”
Head down, Team Leader Kim found his seat and sat down. Even without that, the sunken atmosphere in the room was like thin ice. As Lee Juwon watched himself speak like usual, he realized what he’d been spitting out throughout the entire meeting.
“The budget for the February dispatch is too high. Find the subcontractor and get the unit price down.”
“Let’s stop saying no and find a way. It’s easier to blindly say it’s difficult, right?”
“If there’s an objection, bring an alternative. Do you have to be so negative about everything?”
“Put up a new proposal up by tomorrow… Ha, can everyone give me some constructive feedback? Instead of just wasting my precious time?”
It was as if he was watching an observational video of his daily life. Like watching a video and noticing facial expressions, speech patterns, behaviours and habits that he didn’t normally notice, Lee Juwon saw his own appearance while being inside himself. All this time, he didn’t realize he was making the atmosphere turn cold and nagging them to give their opinions. No, he knew, but he didn’t realize that appearance didn’t look all that good.
After the meeting had ended, Lee Juwon was approached by a secretary employee. The secretary, neatly dressed in a business suit, cautiously told him that all flights to Jeju had been cancelled due to weather conditions. Lee Juwon frowned as he held up a sheet of paper with each airline’s cancelled flight schedule printed on it.
“Why did you print something like this?”
“…I was trying to organize them all into one sheet…”
“And I told you to use reusable paper if possible, right? As if the company supplies belonged to me, yes?”
As Lee Juwon quickly walked down the wide corridor, he suddenly stopped.
Several employees were gathered in the fourth conference room. Lee narrowed his eyes and peeked through the window into the conference room.
There was Kang Inheon. It wasn’t the gaunt, gloomy face he’d last seen by the riverside. It was his usual self, surrounded by his colleagues and smiling happily. The briefing with the other hunters after the suppression of the Gangjin dungeon seemed to have been completed.
Roughly perched on the desk, Kang Inheon stood out from the rest of the group due to his tall and handsome looks. Hunter Lee Serin, who had more than ten years of experience, asked Kang Inheon, “Wow, Inhunter, how did you get through Repain so fast?”
“Do you have some sort of secret?”
After thinking for a moment, Kang Inheon spoke with a serious face, “The secret is…”
All eyes in the conference room concentrated on Kang Inheon. In the distinct silence, Kang Inheon continued quite solemnly, “There is no monster stronger than me.”
He looked around and grinned, and the hunters, who had been stunned for a moment, burst into boos.
“Ah, apart from that!”
“Well, the secret is being an S-class.”
Lee Juwon tried to enter the conference room. He didn’t want to break the good mood. It was good to see, even out of the corner of his eye, that Kang Inheon was laughing while making lame jokes. He knew he’d ruin everything if he went in, but he still wanted to say something to him.
“What a fun conversation…”
However, Lee Juwon walked past the conference room while clicking his tongue. Contrary to his feelings, his feet headed towards the representative’s office on their own.
When Lee Juwon returned to the representative’s office, a pop-up appeared at the bottom of his monitor indicating that he had a work email. After downloading and checking the attachment file sent from the post-processing team leader one hour and fifty minutes after his urging, Lee Juwon replied telling him to summarise only the important items, assign unit prices, and prepare for the meeting by tomorrow.
As he hit send, he realized that the post-processing team would have to work overtime again today, and that would be the 125th reason for that YouTuber’s upcoming <125 Reasons Why Lee Juwon Had No Choice but to Die on Christmas> video.
Now, Lee Juwon had no choice but to admit it. He was at work, but he was still in the dungeon. When he woke up in the car last night, he hoped it was all a dream, but…
The dream was right now.
Just as the message of the status window had told him to live as he had lived before, Lee Juwon was seeing and experiencing how he’d usually spend Christmas in an illusion.
It felt more real because it was exactly what he would have done. Then, will he also die tonight? The reason why the articles about Lee Juwon’s death didn’t appear was because they would be published tomorrow.
He didn’t know if he was going to die tonight or not, but he thought of not approaching Hannam Station’s three-way intersection at all. He also shouldn’t drive so that he wouldn’t hit a tree.
He wondered if he should pull an all-nighter at work, but Lee Juwon shook his head. That would make the employees pray for his death even more fervently. Anyhow, putting out drawn water and praying seemed to be effective. Maybe it wasn’t just normal water, but some kind of potion…
So, it seemed better to walk to a nearby motel. No, first he needed to go to a repair shop and change his tyres. No, what he should’ve done in the first place was go to a car dealership. From now on, there was no need for mileage or corporate taxes, he’ll just drive a Volvo truck. It was a relief he got his first-class license. He had to buy a pair of shoes and buy some clothes, but the most important and urgent thing was…
“A will… I need to write a will.”
If he was really going to die like how it was scheduled, the only way to make his future after death a little less shitty was to leave a will for Kang Inheon. Handwritten, since there was no time to get it notarized.
But it was strange. He was clearly thinking of finding a pen and paper in his head, but his eyes had no intentions of turning away from the report and his hand didn’t leave the mouse.
He felt like he was trapped in a very narrow submarine in the depths of the ocean. His mind was clear, but his body could not move of its own accord, as if his whole body was under pressure.
In the morning, when no one was around, he could talk to himself and slap himself on the cheek, but as the day progressed, there was nothing he could do of his own volition. He could only mechanically look at the list of items.
Moreover, he worked all day after eating a single sandwich. He didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, but he felt that it was endlessly unfair. If he came back to life, he wanted to eat pizza, but he couldn’t even do that and just looked at reports. Whether it was a dream or something else, what he regretted after he died was the pizza he didn’t get to eat, rather than the reports he didn’t get to see.
“Sigh…”
Try as he might, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the monitor. His hands tapped uncontrollably on the keyboard.
Not only was it the day he died, but the time for him to accept his death, yet the last thing he’ll be seeing was the company report… Lee Juwon’s remark to work with a sense of ownership, ready to bury his bones in the company, was the fourth reason he had to die on Christmas, but he didn’t want it to be like that now.
He needed to see Kang Inheon, this wasn’t the time to act like this, he had something to say but the call from last night was their last conversation. The last time he saw him was through the conference room window. He wanted to see him, but his body wasn’t moving the way he wanted it to, and he was going crazy.
Time helplessly passed by. It was the first time that time was wasted even though he skipped lunch and worked. All this time, he thought it was a waste of time to take breaks, but he was wrong. Thinking that today was the last day of his life, the time he spent working was the most wasted.
The short winter days waned quickly, and before he knew it, a purple sunset was setting outside his window. Every time the second hand of the old clock hanging on the wall failed to defy gravity and tilted downwards, going tick tock tick tock, Lee Juwon grew nervous. As time passed, he became extremely anxious, his heart pounding badump badump.
Kwang!
Suddenly, the door to the representative’s office burst open. Only then did Lee Juwon take his eyes off the monitor. The person standing in front of the door was Kang Inheon.
orcinus comments:
it’s said that you don’t realize what you have until you lose it
oh… is kang inheon here to confess?
Goodness no … It would be to heart- wrenching
Lowkey im feeling bad for this scrooge like… bruhhhhhh.
Anyway thankie for the chapturr
I’m feeling bad for Juwon at this moment.
But oh look, Inheon made an appearance.
This novel has me feeling some kinda way, and honestly, I’m not sure I like it (the feeling) much… But regardless, I really appreciate being able to read it (the novel) – thank you for your hard work 💙
Sad that mc can only observe as his ‘present self’ go through the motions and then die off later 😭
But I’m glad that because of this, mc is learning more
…este capítulo es sabiduría PURA¡ he sido adicta al trabajo…hasta que me di cuenta que si moría…no pasaba nada…te reemplazan y ya…y algunos mirarán que pueden heredar¡ por eso decidí en volverme experta en “perder” el tiempo…gozármelo…y cobrar el sueldo
Tbh I really am enjoying the fact that our MC suffers so thoroughly. Let him simmer in this hell that he personally created for himself as well as for others. I really wish the lesson be learns after this encounter will be etched in his bones and stops being such a miserable j*rk