Seoul, 1987 (Afternoon)
The folder was thinner than Do-jun expected.
In a house like this, "punishment" usually came wrapped in weight—documents thick enough to feel like a sentence. This one felt light, almost casual, as if Chairman Jin Yang-chul were saying: I'm not wasting paper on you. ([재벌집 막내아들 소개: "머슴처럼 살다 버려진… 진 회장의 손주 진도준으로 깨어난다"]
Do-jun held the tab between two fingers and did not open it immediately.
That hesitation wasn't fear.
It was discipline.
In his first life, Yoon Hyun-woo had survived by doing one thing better than anyone else in Soonyang: he never looked surprised. Surprise was a confession. Surprise told the family you were outside the plan. And anyone outside the plan was disposable.
Across the study, the family pretended not to stare.
Jin Seong-jun, the eldest grandson, didn't pretend very well. His eyes kept flicking down—measuring the folder, then measuring Do-jun, then measuring whether the Chairman's interest was real or merely a cruel joke.
The Chairman didn't look at Seong-jun.
He looked at Do-jun.
"Open it," Jin Yang-chul said.
Do-jun bowed, then opened the folder with both hands the way a child opened a report card.
One page.
One appointment order.
One location.
Soonyang Materials & Service — "Field Support Clerk."
Assignment: Parts ledger, inventory custody, warranty dispute intake.
Reporting line: Secretary Office (비서실) oversight.
Do-jun's expression didn't change.
Inside, his mind turned the words over like a mechanic turning a bolt.
Materials & Service.
Not a flagship. Not an investment crown jewel. Not Soonyang's glamorous front where heirs posed for cameras and promised national growth.
A place where machines broke. Where parts disappeared. Where numbers didn't match and people shrugged because the group was too big to count its own screws.
A place where money leaked in small, constant amounts—quiet enough that executives didn't notice, large enough that parasites lived on it.
A place where you could not lie because reality would contradict you: either the parts arrived or they didn't, either the line ran or it stopped.
So the Chairman had listened.
He had taken Do-jun's "boring" answer and translated it into a test.
Do-jun lowered his gaze, the perfect posture of obedience.
"Yes, Chairman."
Jin Yang-chul's mouth moved as if in a half-smile, but his eyes stayed sharp.
"Don't mistake that for kindness," he said. "It's convenience. If you're going to be useful, be useful where I can measure it."
He turned his head slightly.
"Hang-jae."
Lee Hang-jae stepped forward without sound, like a shadow that had learned to wear a suit. He didn't look at Do-jun with hatred or affection; he looked the way a door lock looked at a key—only caring whether it fit.
"Tomorrow morning," Lee said to Do-jun. "Six-thirty. You'll ride with me."
Do-jun bowed. "Yes, sir."
The meeting ended the way it had begun: the Chairman standing, everyone standing, a room full of people pretending this was family when it was only hierarchy.
As Do-jun followed his parents out, he felt his mother's hand brush his sleeve—too light to be a grip, too careful to be comfort. Lee Hae-in's eyes were tight with worry she couldn't speak aloud in this house.
His father didn't speak until they were in the car.
Jin Yoon-ki stared forward, jaw set.
"They put you under the Secretary Office," he said at last, voice low. "Do you know what that means?"
Do-jun kept his gaze down.
"It means I'll be watched," he said.
His father's laugh was short and bitter. "Watched? No. Managed. Hang-jae isn't a person. He's the Chairman's hand."
Do-jun nodded as if he were being scolded.
But inside, he had already accepted the only truth that mattered:
If Lee Hang-jae was the Chairman's hand, then this assignment was not a demotion.
It was a probe.
A needle inserted into a dirty artery to see whether the blood was poisoned.
---------------
That night, Do-jun returned to his small room and did what Yoon Hyun-woo had always done before a dangerous day:
He prepared as if preparation was the only religion that worked.
He laid out his school uniform. He checked the date again. He wrote three lines in a plain notebook:
1. Speak less than necessary.
2. Be competent in boring ways.
3. Never be "unexplainable."
The last line was new.
It belonged to this life.
Because now there was something behind his ribs, a door that shouldn't exist.
Holder Resources.
He did not call it that out loud. Names created stories, and stories created enemies.
He only tested it the way he tested everything: with a small, controlled action.
He took a cheap pencil from his desk and removed the metal cap.
Then he closed his eyes and reached for the "space" he had felt after waking—an impossible access that responded not to emotion, but to intention.
The door answered.
He placed the metal cap into it.
It vanished.
He waited one breath.
Then he reached in again.
One cap came out.
Then another.
Identical.
No improvement. No miracle polish. Just perfect duplication of something ordinary.
Do-jun returned both caps to the "space" and opened his eyes.
So the power was real.
Which meant tomorrow was not simply a test of his endurance.
Tomorrow was a test of his restraint.
Because if he used it loudly, the family would smell blood.
And if he used it quietly—correctly—then he could do something even a Chairman could not: he could control the conditions under which Soonyang's "machine" kept running.
He closed the notebook and turned off the light.
In the dark, he heard his own heartbeat—steady, boy-light, not yet weighed down by the years he remembered.
He slept.
---------------
At 6:30 a.m., the next morning, Lee Hang-jae's car arrived.
Do-jun got in without being told twice.
Lee didn't speak for the first ten minutes. That silence wasn't awkward; it was a technique. A way to make people talk first, to reveal themselves.
Do-jun didn't talk.
Finally, Lee spoke, eyes on the road.
"Do you know why the Chairman chose you for this?"
Do-jun answered the safest truth.
"Because I said I wanted to learn where we lose money," he said.
Lee's mouth twitched.
"That's what you said," he agreed. "But it's not why."
Do-jun stayed quiet.
Lee continued, voice smooth.
"You know how to hold your face," he said. "That's rare in children. It's useful."
Do-jun bowed his head slightly from the back seat. "Thank you, sir."
Lee's eyes flicked in the mirror—brief, evaluating.
Then he said the real warning, soft as a seatbelt click:
"Don't try to impress the Chairman again. If he thinks you're unusual, he'll either use you… or remove you. Either way, you won't belong to yourself."
Do-jun's fingers stayed still in his lap.
"Yes, sir."
The car crossed into an industrial district where buildings were lower and the air smelled like oil, dust, and labor that didn't appear in brochures.
Soonyang Materials & Service sat in a plain building with a sign that looked tired. Inside, men moved fast but not proud—moving with the urgency of people who were always behind, always blamed.
A manager met them at the entrance and bowed too deeply when he saw Lee Hang-jae.
"Secretary Lee. Welcome."
Lee barely nodded.
"This is Jin Do-jun," Lee said. "He's here to learn."
The manager's eyes flicked to Do-jun—young, harmless, easy to ignore—and relief flashed across his face for a fraction of a second.
Good, Do-jun thought.
Relief meant they believed he was punishment.
Punishment meant they would show him the ugly corners without worrying about appearances.
They led him to a cramped office at the back labeled Inventory Custody / Warranty Intake.
A desk. A phone. A ledger book thick with handwritten numbers.
The manager pointed at the ledger like it was trash.
"Start here," he said. "If you can reconcile this, you can do anything."
Do-jun sat.
He opened the ledger.
And in the first ten lines, he saw it.
Not one leak.
Many.
Small discrepancies—two units here, five units there—written off as "shipment variance," "handling loss," "supplier adjustment."
The kind of theft that didn't scream.
The kind of theft that lived in the word variance.
Behind him, a man laughed at a joke Do-jun couldn't hear.
A phone rang and rang until someone slammed it down.
Somewhere on the shop floor, a machine started, coughed, and then steadied.
Do-jun stared at the ledger until the patterns became visible.
Then he picked up his pen.
Not to fix anything yet.
To learn.
Because this was the place where you couldn't lie.
And if he could make the numbers honest—quietly, slowly—then the people who lived off dishonesty would notice him.
Do-jun's face remained calm.
His pen touched paper.
And at that exact moment, the office door opened and a clerk leaned in, eyes sharp with gossip.
"Hey," the clerk said, grinning. "You're the Chairman's grandson, right?"
Do-jun looked up, letting a beat pass—just long enough to make the clerk feel important.
Then he answered in the dullest voice he could manage:
"I'm just here to work."
The clerk laughed.
"Sure you are," he said. "Then here's your first job."
He tossed a thin file onto Do-jun's desk.
Do-jun opened it.
A warranty claim.
A halted line.
A missing parts batch.
And one handwritten note in the margin, like a casual curse:
"This one goes to the Secretary Office."
Do-jun's eyes lowered.
So the test began immediately.
He turned the page—
and saw Lee Hang-jae's name already stamped at the bottom, as if the hand had been waiting for him to touch it.
The room felt slightly colder.
Do-jun inhaled once, slow.
Then he began reading every number like it was a map out of a cage.