Before I knew it, late December 1997 had arrived.
It was a brutal winter. Even the Salvation Army bells that should have rung through the streets had been buried beneath the immense despair of the IMF crisis.
"Chairman. Everything is complete."
Joo Yun-ha's voice trembled over the telephone like a taut bowstring.
I answered while looking expressionlessly through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Y Hotel's penthouse at Seoul's darkened nightscape.
"Has M Investment booked the loan?"
"Yes! We have placed all of Jinsan Construction's land and heavy equipment into a collateral trust. Using those tangible assets as leverage, the Wall Street head office has opened a credit limit of exactly one hundred million dollars in Rubicon's name."
"Our first prize is proving quite useful."
"Yes. To reiterate……."
He exhaled roughly and continued his report.
"The exchange rate is already approaching 2,000 won. That is a full two hundred billion won. At any moment, a single signature from you will unleash this enormous sum of cash dollars to swallow the Korean market."
Hundreds of billions of won in ammunition were fully loaded at my fingertips.
In this hellish market, where even merchant banks' foreign currency reserves were withering away, two hundred billion won in cash dollars was more than money.
It was the power of a god (a deity), an absolute form of violence that could force anyone to their knees.
"Good work, CEO Joo."
I knocked back a mouthful of whiskey from my crystal glass.
The hot alcohol sliding down my throat awakened my whole body.
"The gun is already trained on the target. I will pull the trigger soon. Stand by to deploy the funds at any moment."
"Understood, Chairman!"
I hung up and sank deep into the sofa.
The trap outside was complete.
Now it was time to throw the doors open from within.
***
The next morning, in the Strategic Planning Office at Taeseong Group headquarters, the atmosphere I encountered upon arriving was distinctly different from usual.
It was not the daily pandemonium of shouting and hurled telephones.
Like condemned prisoners standing before an enormous guillotine, dozens of employees stared at the internal computer network without daring to breathe.
I sat down and switched on my monitor too.
In the center of the blue intranet screen was a red notice that had frozen the entire office.
[Establishment of Taeseong Group's Restructuring Division (RD) and Personnel Appointments]
Head of the Restructuring Division: Oh Se-dong (Concurrently Head of the Strategic Planning Office)
Chairman Choi Man-ho's cruel death sentence had finally taken tangible form in a document.
A 'legal slaughterhouse' had opened, one that would decide the affiliates' fates and mercilessly sever their necks.
"W-what is this……? A Restructuring Division? And the controlling family isn't even on the list."
Department Head Park fumbled toward his monitor, his face deathly pale.
Even these elites seemed to have finally grasped that the three siblings' dismissal was not a temporary punishment.
But something else sent the Strategic Planning staff into true panic.
[Staff Assignments to Restructuring Division Team 1]
It was the roster of grim reapers who would handle the work under the division head.
Only three names appeared.
Senior Department Head: Song Jae-woong (Formerly Finance Team)
Manager: Lee Jae-hyeon (Formerly Legal Team)
Employee: Baek Do-jin (Formerly Strategic Planning Team 1)
"……Baek. Why is your name here……?"
Department Head Park's eyes widened as though they might pop out.
Even he, the most senior person in Strategic Planning, had been excluded from the RD's working staff.
Yet the name of a raw recruit who had barely joined the company sat prominently on the list.
Gazes filled with astonishment, jealousy, and primal fear converged on me.
"I am not sure. I have only just seen it myself."
Feigning bewilderment, I gathered my coat.
"I suppose I should go and see Director Oh…… No, the division head."
I left behind the frozen Department Head Park and Manager Oh, along with the dazed Jeong Min-jae.
Leaving the fifteenth-floor Strategic Planning Office, I entered the elevator bound for Division Head Oh Se-dong's office on the sixteenth floor.
The blue employee ID hanging against my chest swung pleasantly.
Until yesterday, it had merely been a mark proving I was one of the controlling family's hands and feet.
But from today, that scrap of plastic was different.
It would become a butcher's license, allowing me to swing a blade mercilessly at Taeseong's rotten affiliates.
When I reached the office on the sixteenth floor, the secretary hurriedly stopped me.
A new office exclusively for the Restructuring Division had been prepared on the twentieth floor.
I returned to the elevator and pressed the button for twenty.
Taeseong Group's headquarters building rose to thirty floors.
At the top sat the Chairman's Office, the seat of absolute power.
With each floor I ascended, I felt closer to the empire's true summit.
At last, I reached the head of the Restructuring Division's office on the twentieth floor.
The moment I opened the door, even the air against my skin felt colder.
"You're here?"
Division Head Oh Se-dong asked in a low voice without looking up from his documents.
"Yes, sir. Baek Do-jin of Restructuring Division Team 1, reporting as ordered."
It was an impeccably disciplined greeting.
He slowly raised his head and surveyed me from top to bottom.
His worldly gaze betrayed no emotion.
Within it mingled interest in the skill with which I had bound the three siblings together, and intense wariness, as though he were facing an uncontrollable variable.
"Well. How does it feel to go overnight from a raw recruit to a member of the RD's working staff, holding the group's power of life and death?"
"I stand ready to put the blade my master has bestowed upon me to the whetstone every day, so that it never grows dull."
At my answer, his lips twisted, and a cold sneer escaped him.
"You certainly have a silver tongue."
He slowly rose and came around to the front of his desk.
Although he was not a large man, the overwhelming force of his presence pressed down on the top of my head.
"Baek Do-jin. Your skill in tying the three siblings' leashes together was certainly exceptional. Those shackles made it far easier for the chairman to decide how to discipline his troublesome children."
"You flatter me."
"Do not misunderstand. That was not praise."
His eyes flashed like a snake's.
"However finely honed a blade may be, I am the one holding the hilt. The moment you escape my hand and try to dance on your own, or turn toward the group's main body, I will snap that blade in two and throw it into a furnace."
It was an unmistakable warning, and an exertion of pressure.
He was declaring that he would use me as a capable hound but never loosen my leash by so much as an inch.
He had clearly sensed something of the predator's instincts hidden inside me.
I bowed even more deeply, assuming a posture of perfect obedience.
"I will remember. The blade will excise only the rotten flesh you order it to cut, sir."
"Good."
He picked up a file stamped in red with 'TOP SECRET' from his desk and tossed it against my chest.
I caught its weight in both hands.
"This is the first cut of meat you will carve away."
The cover bore just four Korean characters.
[Taeseong Pharmaceuticals]
"Taeseong Pharmaceuticals, sir?"
"Yes. On the surface, it carries a pharmaceutical company's name. In reality, it is a parasite that has suffered chronic losses for the past five years while gnawing away at headquarters' precious cash."
He issued his order coldly.
"Freeze every channel of funding from headquarters to Taeseong Pharmaceuticals at nine tomorrow morning. Pressure the creditor group to block maturity extensions, and have it formally declared in default within the week. Throw it into court receivership immediately."
It was a merciless order to end a company's fate in a single week.
Hundreds of employees would lose their jobs overnight and be thrown onto the streets, but mercy had no place in the RD's vocabulary.
"Sacrifice flesh to seize bone. To protect the main body of the group, we must bleed the useless peripheral affiliates dry. I do not care whether relatives of the controlling family object or the union protests. Cut them off as quickly and brutally as possible, no matter what."
"Understood. I will carry out your wishes perfectly."
I had finished my respectful farewell and was about to leave when I saw Senior Department Head Song Jae-woong and Manager Lee Jae-hyeon, who had also been assigned to Team 1, arriving hurriedly after hearing the news.
I gave them a brief nod and stepped outside.
As the heavy door closed, a low voice rumbled within, apparently issuing further instructions.
The moment it shut completely and left me alone in the corridor, an uncontrollable smile of elation spread grotesquely across the lips that had been playing the perfect hound.
On the surface, Taeseong Pharmaceuticals was indeed a hollow company consuming the group's funds.
Division Head Oh's judgment was an entirely rational, flawless decision to cut off a tail and protect the main body of the group.
'But Oh Se-dong, you are wrong.'
I looked down at the red file in my hand.
'This is not a rotten tail. It is the belly of a goose with a golden egg hidden deep inside.'
Its true value was something no one in Taeseong Group, not even Taeseong Pharmaceuticals' own management, had yet realized.
Sleeping inside the file was an overwhelming prize that only I, with my knowledge of the future, could monopolize.
Back at my desk, I opened the red-covered Taeseong Pharmaceuticals file.
From the first page, spectacular graphs of losses cascaded down like waterfalls.
[Cumulative operating loss over the past five years: 80 billion won. Capital impairment ratio: above 70%.]
Judged by the numbers alone, it was an incurable malignant tumor.
The financial statements made it perfectly understandable that Division Head Oh had chosen it as the first target of his blade and wanted it thrown into court receivership.
'But only those who know the truth can remove the blindfold that hides what lies behind the books.'
I scrolled and opened Taeseong Pharmaceuticals' 'R&D (Research and Development) Investment Details' worksheet.
Every year, tens of billions of won flowed into the research institute and evaporated, like water poured into a bottomless vessel.
But the knowledge of the future in my mind (Index) showed me exactly where that vanished money had gone.
It was a miracle drug that would shake the global pharmaceutical and biotech market in the early 2000s.
The key formulation patent for a 'breakthrough hair-loss treatment' with its side effects brought completely under control.
At this very moment, that blockbuster golden egg was entering the final stages of development in the secure section of Taeseong Pharmaceuticals' Second Research Institute, having successfully completed Phase II clinical trials.
It was a veritable One Ring worth at least several trillion won, one that pharmaceutical companies worldwide would be lining up to license for royalties in just a few years.
'Then why has this extraordinary achievement been completely omitted from the reports to headquarters' Strategic Planning Office?'
My scrolling finger stopped at the management roster.
[Taeseong Pharmaceuticals Executive Director Hwang Gi-cheol]
He was Chairman Choi Man-ho's younger second cousin.
An incompetent relative parachuted into the company, awkwardly pretending to belong to the group's blue-blooded elite.
In practice, he wielded even more power than Taeseong Pharmaceuticals' president.
But however inept he was at management, his greedy instinct for snatching up every scrap of personal gain was as sharp as a beast's.
Memories of my previous life surfaced in fragments.
During the IMF crisis, Taeseong Pharmaceuticals had met a miserable default after headquarters cut off its support.
But immediately after that default, an obscure shell company Executive Director Hwang Gi-cheol had set up in advance swallowed only the pharmaceutical company's
'core patent rights' at a pittance through a court auction.
He then sold the patent to a global pharmaceutical company for hundreds of billions of won and sat on a mountain of money.
'What a scheme. He plans to deliberately run the company at a loss until it collapses, then strip out its valuable core.'