Choi Seongwoo
Choi Seongwoo sat at a desk near the aisle. Besides the standard-issue computer with two monitors, there was only a white paper cup and a card printed with the company logo, propped against the keyboard.
In showy print font, it said: Welcome to the Team, Seongwoo!
He tossed it straight into the wastebasket by his feet.
In the center of the open office, a middle-aged man with neatly cropped hair walked over between the rows of desks. His red badge read: Team Lead, Operations Middle Office Group 2.
"Can I get everyone's attention really quick?" the man said. "Let me introduce you guys to a new teammate, Son-who."
Choi Seongwoo stood up because he knew that was meant to be him, even though the team lead had completely mangled the pronunciation.
The moment he stood, an Asian guy carrying a canvas bag and wearing an intern badge walked past in front of him. Seongwoo thought he looked familiar.
Had he probably seen him around before? He can’t remember. Didn’t matter.
The guy glanced at him too, and his expression didn't look pleased. Their eyes met for a second before he backed down, because the team lead was already glaring at the intern impatiently.
"OK, good," the team lead said. "Let me start over."
Oh please don't, Choi Seongwoo groaned inwardly.
"This is our new teammate, Son-who!" the man said. "Give your warmest welcome."
Seongwoo scanned the group. Aside from the Asian intern, everyone else on the team was white and all men.
A few senior white employees just poked their heads up from behind their screens to glance at Seongwoo and applauded. One of them started laughing for no apparent reason.
"Why are you laughing?" Seongwoo walked straight up and asked, without hesitation.
"What, is there a problem with me laughing?"
"Just curious. Wanted to ask."
"Hey, keep it nice, Greg." The team lead said this in passing before hurrying off.
"I'm nice," Greg said. "Why are you picking on me?"
Seongwoo didn't have solid ground to press further, so he let it go.
"You are also Chinese, right?" Greg asked from behind as Seongwoo turned away.
Seongwoo glanced at the Asian intern, whose eyes were full of panic, as if warning Seongwoo not to provoke this guy.
"No," Seongwoo replied.
"Then where?" Greg said. "Japan? Konnichiwa?"
"Korea."
"Ah," Greg went on, "I should've caught that by the accent., I'm sorry."
Seongwoo didn't respond. He just walked back to his desk, one hand quietly curling into a fist in his suit pocket.
Calm down. Stay calm, he told himself. He probably didn't mean anything by it. I'm just being too sensitive, reading too much into it. It's my first day. This is normal.
All morning, nobody gave him any real work. Just a pile of messily formatted Excel sheets and PDFs dumped into his inbox to so-called get familiar with.
By noon, Seongwoo felt unusually drained and hollow. He'd done nothing all morning, completely wasted the time.
Still, maybe that was for the best. Doing nothing was better than losing money by the tens of thousands every minute, like before.
Maybe that's why... he thought, sinking a little.
This was why his parents had sent him to New York with the noble idea of training from the bottom up.
"Just like your older brother did," his mother always said. "You have to train from the bottom to accomplish anything. Don't be so unrealistic."
"I don't want to be like my brother," Seongwoo had argued back in Korean. "Can't I just be myself?"
"Yourself—" his mother, a string of pearls around her neck, had said. "What have you accomplished as yourself? Do you have anything to show for it?"
The memory disgusted him. It felt, at its core, like a kind of manipulation, turning him against his own brother.
What kind of parents do that? What parents don't mind driving a wedge between their own sons? Are they short on money? Am I supposed to be better than them?
I came obediently to New York, and they can't even send a single Kakao message. What more do I have to do to get their tiny little approval? Am I asking too much?
Choi Seongwoo couldn't figure it out. He racked his brain and still couldn't understand. And no one could think it through for him, not even his brother.
Achieve, achieve... to hell with you and your precious achievement.
The angrier he got, the tighter his fists clenched. In the bathroom, he opened his mouth wide and screamed without a sound.
That dry, near-silent scream still made some noise, but with no one else in the stall it didn't matter. Every time he did it, he felt a little better.
Weighed down, he bought a cold chicken salad and an iced Americano from the salad shop downstairs and carried them back up to the break room.
Seongwoo walked past that Chinese intern's workstation. The table was covered with figures from that game, all sorts of Xianxia character figurines.
How much this guy loved that game. He thought to himself. He certainly didn’t worry about achievement… No wonder no one paid him any attention.
He had no appetite, just sat in a corner alone and slowly opened the plastic container.
Greg, in his beige sweater, walked over with a sandwich and pulled out the chair across from Seongwoo without asking, sitting down like it was nothing.
He looked approachable on the surface: short hair, easy manner. But his eyes said otherwise.
"Hey, Sun-woo," Greg said, chewing his sandwich, leaning in a little. "Ni Hao!"
"I said I'm Korean." Seongwoo felt like this guy had already worn through the edge of his patience, and the timing couldn't have been worse.
Several people gradually drifted over, settling into a circle around the long table.
The team lead came in holding a pizza box and sat in the middle, suddenly announcing that they should use the moment for a Team Connect to help the new guy, Seongwoo, settle in better.
Seongwoo scanned the room. The Chinese intern wasn't there. He'd vanished, as if he'd never even been on the list to be invited to this Team Connect.
The others quickly fell into lively conversation, but the topics were mind-numbingly dull. Seongwoo didn't even bother listening, let alone joining in.
What irritated him more was that the team lead couldn't even say his name right.
The lead kept lobbing questions his way: "Hey, Son-who, are you guys in Seoul all into BTS and K-pop?"
As much as he didn't want to answer something so pointless, Seongwoo forced a polite tone: "No, actually, people in Korea like different things."
"That's very interesting."
A bald colleague picked up the thread:
"I love Asian culture! And you know what, imagine living without Panda Express."
"Yeah, right!... Exactly..." Laughter went around the table.
The fake smile on Seongwoo's face was starting to slip.
"But Son-who, your English is actually really so good, especially the accent. How did you do that?"
"Yeah, thank you. I was in California for 10 years."
"Wow, that's crazy," the team lead said. "Since when?"
"Since I was born."
"Oops." Greg jumped in. "That's why you shouldn't ask that! Haha..."
More laughter rippled through the group.
Seongwoo genuinely couldn't see what was funny, so he didn't bother pretending to laugh along.
"You know, I actually had a Korean girlfriend back in college. Man, she was really, REALLY good," someone with curly hair in a button-down suddenly said.
Choi Seongwoo was already running out of patience. He felt like he was surrounded by idiots.
In his twenty-some years of life, no one had ever dared to say something like that to his face and still be fine. But it was his first day to prove to his parents. He'd rather back off.
He slowly set down his salad container and pulled out a napkin to wipe his hands.
"I'm done," Seongwoo said, standing up. "Enjoy your Connect, guys."
Greg was still grinning without end, going on about how Asian girls were so much easier to manage than white feminists, not taking Seongwoo's exit seriously at all.
That reckless laughter finally broke through the last of Seongwoo's restraint.
He raised his hand and slammed the salad container down on Greg's head. Dressing and lettuce scattered over him.
The laughter from the white coworkers around them cut off instantly. Every face went still.
"What the fuck!?" Greg swatted the plastic container off his head, standing up in fury.
"You don't think it's funny now?"
"Hey!" the others snapped at Seongwoo. "What's wrong with you?"
“You don’t do that here! Son-who, apologize now!” The team lead added.
"Ni hao? BTS? Korean girlfriend?" Seongwoo repeated hard, and then said: “이 시발 새끼들이 진짜 적당히를 모르네。”
The words came out in Korean, none of them polite.
Before anyone could figure out what that meant, Seongwoo had already buttoned his suit jacket and walked out of the break room, spine straight.
He was about to get everyone in that break room fired
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and then Add to home screen.