Translator: SourKimchi
"I can't do that."
Park Ji-hun answered, his tone firm.
Kim Tae-jun's expression hardened.
"Just help me out, this once."
"Like I said, no."
After a short silence, Kim Tae-jun asked.
"Is there really no way?"
Park Ji-hun didn't waver.
"You know the rules of my stream."
Kim Tae-jun said nothing for a while.
Then he quietly set down the bag of money he'd been holding.
Park Ji-hun's gaze sank, cold.
"Take it back."
Kim Tae-jun stared at him for a moment, then gave a resigned smile and said:
"Spend it, donate it, dump it in the Han River, do whatever's easiest. I'm leaving it here."
Park Ji-hun's expression hardened.
"I said take it back."
Only then did Kim Tae-jun falter.
But in the end, he didn't look back.
He climbed into the driver's seat, shut the door, and sped out of the alley.
Park Ji-hun stood there in silence until the red taillights vanished into the distance.
At his feet, the bag holding 100 million won remained exactly where it was.
Park Ji-hun lifted the bag and muttered.
"Heh. What a hopeless guy."
"Right? Crazy bastard, maybe?"
At the voice that came out of nowhere behind him, Ji-hun turned his head.
Woo-sik poked his head out, as if he'd been waiting for the chance.
"What the, how long have you been standing there?"
"Just now. No, more to the point......"
Woo-sik's eyes went to the bag in Park Ji-hun's hand.
"That's really 100 million, right?"
"Yeah."
"And he just left it?"
"Yeah."
"Whoa......"
Stunned for a beat, Woo-sik went on.
"100 million, that'd make most people lose their minds."
"Still, rules are rules."
"Yeah, good call. The moment you break a rule once, there's no going back."
Woo-sik shot another glance at the bag and asked.
"So what're you gonna do with it?"
"Just don't spend it. Simple."
"And if he won't take it back?"
"Then I'll find some way to return it."
Park Ji-hun said it like it was nothing, then opened his mouth again.
"So I'm thinking of reworking the Reservation system."
"Huh? How?"
"The basic frame's fine. One free, five paid. That part stays."
"So what changes?"
"I switch the Reservations to First-Come First-Served, day-of only."
"And the people who already reserved?"
"The backlog's pretty much cleared. Turns out a lot of people reserve and then never show up for the reading."
"Ah, then there's no real problem."
Woo-sik thought for a moment, then asked.
"So you're not gonna do Private Spirit Readings anymore? You could just do them like the one you did for your mom before, right?"
Park Ji-hun raised his glass and downed it in one.
"If I need to."
Woo-sik tilted his head.
"But what if just anyone asks for a private one?"
Park Ji-hun said it calmly.
"I won't take just anyone."
"By what standard?"
"It has to be something they can't say openly, and only when I decide it should be done in private."
Only then did Woo-sik nod, slowly.
"That'll do. Leave it all open and it just gets tangled up again."
"Going halfway only makes it more of a hassle."
While he was at it, Park Ji-hun pulled out his phone.
"I should post the notice."
"Now?"
"Yeah."
Park Ji-hun opened the community board and tapped the New Post button.
He typed without hesitation.
[Notice]
Starting with tomorrow's stream, Reservations will be First-Come First-Served, day-of only, 5 people.
The 1 free slot stays as is.
If you're not present when the Spirit Reading starts, you're out. Showing up late won't help.
The moment five slots fill, it closes immediately.
You can still request a Private Consultation. But I'll only take it if it's a matter that's hard to discuss openly, and only when I decide it should be done in private.
Park Ji-hun skimmed over the notice he'd written.
Not a wasted word in it.
"How's it look?"
"Clean. Very you."
Park Ji-hun tapped Post right away.
Click.
The notice went up on the board.
A moment later, comments started rolling in.
-wait, first-come first-served starting tomorrow?
-only a five-person cut? thats gonna be brutal
-ah fk from tomorrow im camping right on the dot no excuses
-this is literally Course Registration lmaooo
-damn we're really doing Open Runs for Spirit Readings now lmaooo
Park Ji-hun read the comments and let out a short laugh.
He suddenly remembered Course Registration back in his college days.
Back then too, if you were late, you were done.
Woo-sik said, lifting his soju glass.
"Tomorrow's gonna be loud."
"Probably. Still, better this than leaving it half-baked."
Park Ji-hun switched off his phone screen and went on.
"You've got to hold the line."
***
The next morning.
The moment the elevator doors opened, Kim Tae-jun strode straight into the office.
These days, Kim Tae-jun came in earlier than everyone else and stayed at the office late.
The smell of liquor that used to cling to him had been gone for a long while now.
Tae-jun skimmed the documents piled on his desk.
Material he'd been poring over all night and never finished.
A month ago, at the Chairman's wish, he'd taken the seat of Management Planning Director.
It wasn't that he'd been handed the whole company.
Instead, what the Chairman had placed in his hands was a single bio project that had been dragging on for ages.
Too good to scrap easily, too risky to push hard.
The Chairman had only handed it over; he hadn't set the direction.
But he would surely be watching, right to the end, how Tae-jun handled it.
A little while later, the door opened and the Secretary came in.
The Secretary his father had assigned to him.
"The meeting's in ten minutes."
Tae-jun nodded.
"The bio item is on the agenda as well."
"I know."
The Secretary checked the tablet, then added.
"You'll need to settle on a direction before the report goes up to the Chairman."
At that, Tae-jun bit his lip slightly.
A short time after, he arrived at the conference room.
Meeting materials were spread across the long table.
On the screen mounted on the wall, a timeline and the project's status were displayed.
From the very start, the mood was heavy.
The first to speak was an executive from finance.
"PJ-301 should be wound down right here. It's a Pipeline we've been running for the diabetes Indication, but the primary endpoint is falling short of expectations. The longer we drag it out, the more we lose."
Right after, the man sitting across from him, his Maternal Uncle and Strategy Planning Director Park Sang-heon, picked up.
"We're right to fold this one here."
When his uncle finished speaking, the conference room fell quiet for a moment.
Tae-jun looked up without a word.
His uncle went on.
"You're only just starting to find your footing. There's no need to shoulder something like this right out of the gate."
"......"
"Cutting your losses while you still can is a sound decision for a manager too."
Yun Jeong-ho, the Research Director sitting on the opposite side, opened his mouth, his face set hard.
"I'm against it."
Research Director Yun Jeong-ho continued, his expression resolute.
"We can't fold here. All the data we've built up so far dies with it."
"Director."
The finance executive cut straight back in.
"You said the same thing at the last meeting."
"This is different from last time. The diabetes metrics were weak, yes, but we're getting a response on another target. The problem right now isn't efficacy, it's reproducibility."
Yun Jeong-ho's voice was firm.
"We just need a little more time to look."
"How much more time?"
When Kim Tae-jun asked, Yun Jeong-ho answered at once.
"Give me until the week after next. I'll show you the results then."
"On what basis?"
"We just need to rerun the newly confirmed response as a Validation Batch. Once we have those results, there's no reason to fold here, at the very least."
The finance executive's face hardened.
"Two weeks means more budget on top of what we've already spent. You know better than anyone how much it costs just to run a Validation Batch again."
His uncle weighed in too.
"A project that can't be explained in numbers is one you fold right here."
Tae-jun stared down at the documents in silence.
In his head, finance was right.
If he wanted to cut losses, folding now was the correct move.
From the Chairman's standpoint, that call would be the safest one too.
And yet, strangely, Yun Jeong-ho's words kept nagging at him.
He thought back to what he'd seen during the Site Inspection he'd gone on himself a few days earlier.
Faces that plainly showed they'd been up all night.
Researchers who, exhausted as they were, had clung to the data right to the end.
It wasn't something to fold so easily, he thought.
'......I didn't read it wrong, did I?'
No one had proven it to him in numbers.
It wasn't something he could explain in a single line of a report.
It was just that what he'd seen and heard with his own eyes and ears was telling him not to let go here.
The problem was that Kim Tae-jun couldn't trust it.
He was more used to hiding behind decisions other people had made.
That way, even if it went wrong, he'd at least have an excuse.
If it were up to his heart, he'd have poured in more of his own money to buy time.
He could shoulder that much easily enough.
But the moment he did, it would stop being a decision and become an obsession.
That wasn't what his father wanted to see, either.
In the end, this wasn't about money; it was about showing what kind of person he was when it came to making a call.
Which was exactly why it scared him more.
Tae-jun made his decision.
"......Let's watch it a little longer."
The meeting ended.
Even as people gathered their papers and filed out one by one, he stayed seated where he was.
Ever since the Site Inspection, one corner of his heart had already tipped.
And still he couldn't take that last step.
Because if he got it wrong this time, it really would be the end.
Tae-jun checked his watch.
There was still a long way to go until eight in the evening.
He muttered, lip caught between his teeth.
"He said to get in line."
He steadied his breath and went on.
"So I'll get in line."
The plan was to lock in a Reservation the second tonight's stream went live.
After that, he wanted confirmation: whether he could trust what he'd seen and push it through.
***
Even after the world outside the window had gone dark, Tae-jun was still at the office.
He leaned back against the chair and slowly loosened his tie.
The tightness around his throat eased a little, but the knot inside him didn't loosen at all.
He pulled up Ocean right away.
PerpetualJobSeeker's stream standby screen.
His login status showed in the top right.
He checked his top-up history again.
He had plenty of Water Drops.
Money wasn't the problem.
He had to get in the moment the stream went live and get in line.
Tae-jun looked at his watch again.
7:58 p.m.
Time crawled by, strangely slow.
He waited, the stream window open in one corner of his screen.
His fingertips tightened and loosened around the mouse, over and over.
7:59 p.m.
People started crowding into the chat, one by one.
-Ertel : five-person cutoff today right?
-SsomyeonMaster : lol it's not even Course Registration, this is insane
-SilentRoom : so you're screwed if you're late
-TurtleHubby : anyone who already got a reading is the real winner lmao
Tae-jun frowned.
Talk he couldn't make sense of was flying back and forth in the chat.
8:00 p.m. on the dot.
The stream went live.
The standby screen switched, and a familiar face appeared.
It was Park Ji-hun.
Tae-jun hit the Donation button right away.
But the Donation function was disabled.
"What?"
Tae-jun scrunched his brow.
Thinking it might be a glitch, he refreshed, but it was the same.
Just then, Park Ji-hun spoke.
"Everyone saw the notice, right?"
The chat shot up in an instant.
-ChickenBox : everybody ready for the Open Run?
-FrogKing : first slot's mine, everybody move
-SquishyCheese : so when do reservations actually open
-BongcheonFireFist : im holding it in and everything just open it already
Park Ji-hun went on.
"Reservations open at 8:05. I take five people. Anything sent after that doesn't count as a Reservation."
The chat turned rowdy.
-SsomyeonMaster : this is so brutal lol
-SquishyCheese : five-minute countdown starts now
-ChickenBox : if you don't make the five you'll be crying blood lmao
-Ertel : it's a full-on war just to sign up for a Spirit Reading lmaooo
Tae-jun clenched his teeth.
"Ha......"
Just five people.
Five, out of thousands of Viewers.
Biting his lip, he put a clock up in one corner of the screen.
The second hand was crawling along.
8:04:52 p.m.
The chat heated up more and more.
Tae-jun gripped the mouse tight too.
He couldn't be late.
And then it hit 8:05 p.m.
The Donation function went live.
In that instant, Water Drop alerts began rocketing up one corner of the screen like crazy.
[FrogKing nim has gifted 500 Water Drops.]
[Harahyang nim has gifted 500 Water Drops.]
[dldngur1 nim has gifted 500 Water Drops.]
[AreYouCrying nim has gifted 500 Water Drops.]
[Nathan nim has gifted 500 Water Drops.]
(remainder omitted)
Tae-jun's eyes swept the Donation list.
The first four slots filled in a flash.
In the fifth was Nathan.
Tae-jun's eyes flew open.
"......I'm in!"
The chat was exploding, cheers and screams tangled together.
-FrogKing : yesss first!
-Harahyang : Open Run successful lmaooo
-Deoktong : ah i blew it, fk
-Surprise : of all things, sixth ugh
Park Ji-hun said curtly.
"Today it's FrogKing, Harahyang, dldngur1, AreYouCrying."
A brief silence.
"And Nathan. That's the five I'll read."
For a moment, Tae-jun stopped breathing.
His arms were still shaking.
His heart was pounding like mad.
Only then did Tae-jun slowly lean back into his chair.
The corners of his stiff mouth twisted upward.
"......Fuck."
Behind the curse that slipped out low, a laugh spread across his face.
"This is it."