IMCT 03

Chapter 3

“Then, please go inside. I’ll see you tomorrow. You have to come to work every weekday except weekends. If you work on the weekend, you can take one weekday off.”

Kim Si-min nodded as Park Won-jung, who had driven him all the way home, explained the rules.

Come to think of it, he had been too distracted to notice earlier, but the car Park Won-jung had driven was a high-end domestic sedan.

That meant the head of the secretarial office had quite a bit of money too.

Kim Si-min went inside his house and quietly fell asleep.

The next day, he went to work as usual with his letter of resignation tucked inside his clothes.

He could not be certain about anything yet, but if Lighthouse Co., Ltd. really was a decent company, he intended to hand in his resignation without hesitation.

The moment Park Moon-seong had fallen was still vividly engraved in his mind.

The next day, Kim Si-min went to work just like always and continued dealing with debtors.

“Sir, please let me live, too! You know how difficult things are these days. Team Leader, I… I really want to pay everything back as soon as possible and stop having these conversations.”

Another person was desperately clinging to him from the other end of the phone.

Just like with Park Moon-seong, Si-min could hear a life hanging on the edge of a cliff in the man’s voice.

How many times had it been already?

Maybe because more and more people were going bankrupt these days, but he had no idea how many calls like this he had taken over the past week.

Kim Si-min felt deeply exhausted.

His job at the bank was not to give people like these hope.

“Sir… I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do either.”

His job was not to give them an opportunity. It was to drive the final dagger into the throats of people who were already struggling to breathe.

It was certainly the result of the choices they had made.

But still…

This was suffocating. Really suffocating.

It felt as if his chest were being squeezed tight.

At exactly 6:00 p.m., he checked the time and immediately headed to the office of Lighthouse Co., Ltd.

Since it was his second time there, he was already somewhat familiar with the elevator. Just as he pressed the button for the eighth floor—

Tap tap tap tap tap tap.

He heard someone hurriedly running from somewhere, and someone jumped into the elevator.

“Huff… huff… I barely made it. Huh? I’ve never seen you before. Are you new?”

“Yes, I’m new.”

“Why did you press eight? Which department are you in?”

The man had a scruffy beard and messy hair.

It was technically a suit, but it was a peculiar brown checkered suit.

The smell of cigarettes clung to him as well, as if he were a heavy smoker.

“Are you in the legal department, field operations, or accident handling?”

“I don’t think I’m in any of those three.”

“Really? Then you’re in an internal department. Did that old man Park Won-jung recruit you?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Wow, that’s going to be tough. If you’re in the secretarial office, you’ll probably have a lot to do.”

The man frowned as he mentioned Park Won-jung.

“Are there a lot of employees here?”

“Well, there are quite a few.”

“I don’t think I saw a single person yesterday.”

“Ah, yesterday was a company holiday. But seriously, you really don’t know anything. They should’ve assigned someone to you if you’re a new employee. That old man…”

“Does this company not have a representative?”

“A representative? I think that position has been empty for quite a while. Park Won-jung handles most things.”

A company without a representative?

How did that make any sense?

How could a company like that even function?

“There used to be one. Back when I was young. The representative back then was really impressive.”

“Have you worked here for a long time?”

“Me? I guess you could say that.”

Ding.

Just then, the elevator doors opened on the seventh floor.

“Anyway, nice to meet you. I’m Hwang Su-ho from the Legal Team. See you around.”

The somewhat chaotic, messy-haired man, Hwang Su-ho, got off on the seventh floor, and the doors closed again.

When the elevator reached the eighth floor, the doors opened.

“You’re here, Representative.”

“I didn’t realize it yesterday, but I guess there are quite a lot of employees.”

“There are. It’s quite a large company.”

Park Won-jung smiled.

Kim Si-min still had no idea what was going on, but he slowly walked to the representative’s office and sat down.

“So, what am I supposed to do now?”

“First, I think you should go out for some field training.”

“Field training?”

“Yes. You need to understand how the company operates, so it would be best for you to experience one of our simplest field assignments.”

Although he was the representative, he knew absolutely nothing about the company’s actual work. So clearly, this was something he needed to do.

Just then, Park Won-jung placed several documents on his desk.

[Low Rank]

When Si-min turned the page of the document marked “Low Rank” at the very front, an elderly woman appeared.

“What is this?”

“This is an elderly woman named Kim Sun-bok. She has one grandson. Her eldest son is missing, and her daughter-in-law is dead. Her second and third sons are still alive, but they’re what you might call complete good-for-nothings.”

“And?”

“We received a request from the grandmother.”

“What is the request?”

“You’ll have to find that out yourself.”

“She made a request, but I have to find out what she requested myself?”

“Yes. The grandmother herself doesn’t know that she made a request.”

“….”

It made no sense.

How could the person who made the request not know that she had made one?

“This is how our work system operates. You’ll get used to it soon.”

“How do we receive these requests?”

At that moment, Park Won-jung opened a screen on his laptop.

[Lighthouse Co., Ltd. — We Lend Opportunities.]

Below the words on the screen, countless requests were posted on a bulletin board.

“I told you. We’re a busier company than you might think.”

Si-min couldn’t bring himself to disbelieve it, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it either.

“For this week, all you have to do is resolve Kim Sun-bok’s case. This week will count as having completed your required workdays.”

After Park Won-jung finished explaining, Kim Si-min left the company with only three things in hand: the name Kim Sun-bok, the route of the handcart the grandmother frequently pushed around, and her home address.

“What? New guy, you’re leaving already?”

“Ah, the head of the secretarial office told me to get some field experience for a week.”

“Ah, field training. That’s definitely necessary. Everyone in our company goes through field training, no matter what department they’re in. Good luck. If you run into anything difficult, come talk to this senior.”

The man suddenly pulled a business card from inside his clothes and slipped it into Si-min’s hand.

“Ah… Yes. Thank you.”

[Lighthouse Co., Ltd. — Legal Advisor Hwang Su-ho]

A legal advisor.

That was a position only a fairly large company could afford to have.

Come to think of it, he had said there was a Legal Team.

Si-min put the business card away and continued walking.

“It’s been 100 years?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“Do we really need a representative?”

“Well, I don’t know. Did we ever know what we were doing?”

“…That’s true.”

Beside Park Won-jung, who wore a gray suit and gave off a quiet, solemn air, stood a man in a similar gray suit. But there was something different about him. His hair was neatly combed back.

“Take good care of the Representative from now on. My time is coming to an end, and your time will begin.”

“Why would you say that? I cannot imagine this place without you, sir.”

“When there is a meeting, there is a parting. When there is birth, there is death. Just as all things have their end, don’t I also have an ending here?”

Kim Woo-jin’s expression became complicated.

“There is a time to make an effort and a time to simply let things flow naturally.”

His gaze, filled with strange emotions, turned toward the spot where Kim Si-min had been sitting just moments ago before leaving the eighth floor.

After leaving the company, Kim Si-min rested at home that day. The next morning, he woke up early and went looking for the grandmother and her handcart.

Even after walking around diligently for nearly two hours, he could not find Kim Sun-bok or her handcart.

“There is someone nearby who is eligible to borrow an opportunity.”

How much time had passed?

Just as Si-min was wondering if he should go to the grandmother’s house and wait there, the system’s voice suddenly rang in his head.

His eyes immediately swept across his surroundings.

Where?

He looked around, but there was no one unusual to be seen along the road.

“Oh, dear…”

Just then, he saw an elderly woman in the distance coming over the hill, pulling a handcart.

Anyone could see that she looked worn down by a hard life.

The mountain of scrap paper piled onto the cart showed exactly what her days were like.

Si-min naturally walked toward her.

“Grandma, would you like me to push it for you?”

“No, it’s all right. I’m fine.”

The grandmother lightly waved him off and struggled to pull the cart again. Without saying anything, Kim Si-min quietly began pushing the handcart alongside her.

“Is something wrong? You look troubled.”

“When you’re living a life like ours, who gets through it without any problems? Everyone carries something with them.”

It was a foolish question met with a wise answer. Everyone had their own worries to carry through life.

“I have one grandson. After I die, what will happen to him? I think about that every day.”

“From what I can see, you’ll easily live another twenty years.”

“….”

The grandmother did not answer.

Come to think of it, something that looked like a medicine packet was sticking out of the pocket on her left side.

Of course, elderly people that age often carried medicine around with them. But seeing the medicine packet together with the grandmother’s heavy silence made Si-min feel that there was a story behind it.

“We’re here. Thank you, young man.”

As they talked, they had arrived at the scrap yard.

The mountain of scrap paper the grandmother had collected was exchanged for only a few thousand won.

That was all that mountain was worth?

“Thanks to you, young man, today was much easier. Here.”

The grandmother pulled out several caramels from her pocket and placed them in his hand.

They were peanut-flavored caramels, a familiar snack even to Kim Si-min.

As he stared at the familiar treat, he heard another message.

“Listen to the grandmother’s story.”

He turned toward the grandmother, who was smiling like a child after exchanging her scrap paper for money, and spoke.

“Where do you live, Grandma?”

“Just up there.”

“I’ll pull the empty cart back to your house for you.”

Since he had already come this far, he decided to listen to her story while walking with her.

Almost everything the grandmother talked about was about her grandson.

It seemed she lived in a single room attached to a small house. She slowly walked through a door whose edges were severely worn down.

“Here.”

The grandmother carefully placed a cup of instant mixed coffee in front of Si-min.

“Did your grandson go to school?”

“He did. My Jin-su. He’s such a good and lovely boy.”

The grandmother, who had been sitting across from Si-min, suddenly had tears welling up in her eyes.

It seemed that simply talking about her grandson was not the only reason she was crying.

His eyes went back to the medicine packet he had noticed earlier.

At that moment, he suddenly thought of his father’s face from the days when his father had been battling an illness.

“Hey, old woman! Come out! I said come out!”

Crash! Bang! Bang!

Someone was shouting in broad daylight, followed by the sound of things being smashed.

“That damn bastard is back again…”

The grandmother let out a deep sigh and slowly got to her feet.

Wondering if she had borrowed money from some shady private lender, Kim Si-min stood up as well.