Choi Seongwoo
A string of low, angry words slammed through the phone.
"Who do you think you are? Over some small argument, you used your connections to get an entire team fired?" Korean had never sounded this harsh to Seongwoo. His spine straightened on instinct.
"You didn't even ask me first. I only found out what you did through Secretary Kim. Do you even see me as your father anymore?" His father's voice carried nothing but disappointment and rage.
"They were just ordinary employees. But you're my son, a son of the Choi Family! Picking fights with regular people, that's stupid and reckless! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find work in this economy right now? Those people have families to support too! You snap your fingers and get them all fired; did you even think about the consequences? When are you going to grow up like your brother?"
The whole call was one-sided, nothing but scolding.
His father never once asked what those people had actually said to him. He didn't care.
He cared more about the so-called normal families, more about the livelihoods of strangers. Yeah right…
It was almost funny, as if lecturing his own son like this could somehow convince himself he was not THE exploiter.
Seongwoo sat on the edge of the bed, head down, not daring to say a word, not even brave enough to admit he was wrong.
The call ended with a sharp click.
The next second, Seongwoo collapsed backward onto the bed as all the air had gone out of him.
He clenched his fists and shouted furiously at nothing:
"Why? Why can't I have a temper? Am I not human? Am I supposed to be some emotionless immortal with no feelings at all?”
“Why does my father understand me less than that random Chinese Intern today? Those bastards deserve worse!"
He was breathing hard.
"If they have families to feed, then they should just do their jobs properly and not go around insulting people! Why is this my fault? Ssibal... this world is so unfair."
Before he could calm down from his anger, his phone rang again.
The screen showed: Seongwon (Hyeong).
Seongwoo took a few deep breaths, forcing his shaking breath under control, and answered.
"Hyeong."
"Seongwoo, are you okay? Dad just went off on me too..." His brother's Korean was gentler, and it eased him a little. But even that comfort felt sharp.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I know, right. I hope you can feel better, though.”
Clearly, Seongwon on the other end also understood that more comforting words would be pointless at this point.
"They set a condition. For the next full year, nothing like this can happen again. Since your identity at the office is probably already blown at this point, starting tomorrow, you have to take over as head of your operations team. Within a year, you need to make sure that when the company's next round of layoffs comes, your team doesn't get wiped out."
"Aigoo," Seongwoo let out a bitter laugh, lying flat on his back. "That's really placing a lot of faith in me."
"I'm not joking with you," Seongwon's voice grew heavier. "The economy's bad right now. Not getting laid off matters more than anything to ordinary people. It's their livelihood. It's not a game anymore."
"Yeah, yeah, don't lecture me."
Seongwoo cut him off, irritated. He hated how close his name was to his brother's. He hated that his whole life he'd only ever been called the Choi family's second son, never his own name.
But what he hated the most was being treated like a child who needed to be taught how to behave, as if he'd lived his whole life in some other world entirely.
No one cared how many nights he'd stayed up. No one cared how hard he tried. Everyone was just waiting to laugh at the young Choi's failure.
"...What happens if I fail?"
Over the years, Seongwoo had gotten used to preparing himself for the worst outcome before doing anything at all.
There was silence on the line for a few seconds. "They'll freeze all your bank cards."
"And if the Americans don't dare to lay anyone off? Does that count?"
"Secretary Kim will personally keep watch over whether your team produces any real results. The final call won't come from your department head; it'll come from headquarters." Seongwon's voice grew hesitant. "And... if you pull something clever like last time again, they said... they won't let you come home."
"What do you mean, kick me out of the family? Something like that... why wouldn't they just tell me themselves?"
His first reaction wasn't even about how harsh the punishment was; it was why something like this had to be relayed through his brother at all.
Seongwon let out a long sigh on the other end. "I don't understand them either."
"Fine. Thanks, Hyeong. Take care."
“Call me when you need me.”
“I will.”
Seongwoo hung up.
The room fell back into dead silence. Seongwoo stared at the ceiling for a long time, blank.
Whenever a company did layoffs, new media and marketing were always the first departments cut everywhere, seen as expendable.
Damn it.
How could his parents not know something this simple?
Seongwoo could understand his parents favoring his brother, but did they really have to push him this far into a corner?
He wasn't trying to fight for the family fortune. He didn't have some huge ambition to take over the company. He just wanted to earn a little money honestly on his own merit, and even failing at that got him treated like this?
Just then, his eyes landed on the black neural module.
He picked it up and remembered yesterday, being chased around by black bears and then saved in one stroke by that sect leader in white.
What a groundbreaking piece of tech. Way too good for stress relief.
He took a deep breath, pressed the module to his temple, and logged back into the game.
By the time he disconnected and pulled the module off, it was already deep into the night.
He checked the time: Two in the morning.
He hadn't even taken off his shirt, drenched in cold sweat, collapsed on the bed like all his strength was gone.
The game was too addictive, too immersive. The feel and visuals were indistinguishable from the real world. Just eating a meal or fighting a monster in the game was enough to send dopamine spiking, like he was really there.
No wonder more and more people were getting seriously hooked on this game.
That sect leader who'd saved him yesterday had ended up helping him several more times today without even being asked. Not only had he taught him the basic breathing techniques, but he'd also appeared out of nowhere again when Seongwoo got surrounded by a pack of wild wolves.
That felt different, somehow.
In the game, he was just some guy in tattered clothes. His face matched his real one, but nobody recognized him here.
He could mess up and fail as much as he wanted, and no one cared.
No one demanded that he only succeed. No one greeted him with a fake smile all day long.
He knew that flattery and pandering had never been aimed at Choi Seongwoo the person, only at the surname behind him, at the massive Choi family empire.
And yet, in the game, in just three or four days, he'd already died four or five times. Either killed in one strike by some expert right outside the beginner village, or wandering into a bear den by accident and getting eaten.
That made him strangely happy.
Without that handsome sect leader, he probably wouldn't have survived even two nights.
But it was still just a game, and he didn't want to lose himself too deeply in the virtual high.
He thought of that Chinese intern's desk, which was covered with Xianxia figurines.
What’s his name again…? Chen Xiao? Lin Xiao?
Whatever, the players of this game were willing to spend money, but unfortunately, the game featured neither pay-to-win mechanics nor advertisements.
Seongwoo genuinely couldn't figure out what the developer behind it was thinking. What were they making money from to keep a server this massive running?
Maybe it was some kind of scarcity marketing strategy.
If my investment hadn't failed before, I would've put money into this for sure, then demanded they stuff the taverns and notice boards in the main city with brand ads.
Seongwoo thought, rubbing his temples.
Wait.
Maybe this was an opportunity.
If he could use his team's new media resources to strike a partnership with this neural cultivation game, get ahead of the trend, then forget about not getting laid off, even his brother would have to look at him differently.
This was a great idea.
What could go wrong?
ns216.73.216.248da2
and then Add to home screen.