Surviving Restructuring

A vast plaza stretched out before a towering Castle that loomed like a backdrop to the sky itself. Loudspeakers installed throughout the square blared firm announcements that echoed across the grounds.

—Thirty minutes until the start of the Regular Labor Union Meeting!

—Members and non-members, please line up separately and enter in order! Do not run. You may get hurt!

The Wailing Forest was packed to the brim with employees who had gathered from all places.

“Is it true the trial still counts during the regular meeting?” someone asked.

“It does,” another replied. “I saw the broadcast.”

“Ugh! I have to get promoted this time!”

“Same here. I just hope they don’t cut people off on a first-come, first-served basis...”

The thousands of chairs that had been set up for the labor union’s inauguration ceremony had long since been cleared away. Even after filling the entire plaza with standing attendees, there still wasn’t enough space. The line of those waiting to enter stretched far beyond the forest’s outskirts.

“Hey! Why are you cutting in line?!” a man shouted.

“You think we’re all idiots for waiting here?”

The forest, which had recently been the site of a fierce battle, was now swarming with tens of thousands of employees for a single reason.

“You really got promoted?” someone asked in disbelief.

“Yes. I just checked,” came the reply.

It was because of the trial “Defend Eun-Ho,” which was so outrageously unbalanced that it defied common sense.

“What on earth have those idiots been up to?” Harona muttered, folding her arms as she scoffed in disbelief. “I thought the defeating trial meant the chairman had marked him for death.”

“But the situation has taken a strange turn,” Seung said.

Harona shrugged at Seung’s agreement and fell into thought. There were only two ways to interpret what was happening. First, Eun-Ho had somehow changed the chairman’s mind. Second, this entire affair had been engineered by Eun-Ho himself.

Given that the trial had been altered without prior notice, and that the chief secretary’s expression during the announcement had been unusually cryptic, Harona felt the answer was obvious.

“It has to be the latter,” she murmured.

Seung stared at her in confusion. “Pardon?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” Harona waved him off. “The scale of this has grown too large. Don’t get involved.”

“Understood.”

She had always expected Eun-Ho to cause a stir one day. After all, she had been the one to discover, test, and nurture him until he rose to become the representative of the new recruits. She knew better than anyone that he was extraordinary.

“Ha, Eun-Ho was in the team next to ours during OJT. I should’ve at least said hello back then,” someone nearby lamented.

“Are you serious? Try contacting him now!”

“What am I supposed to say? Do you remember the assistant manager who sat three rows over?”

“You never know! Just try!”

Eun-Ho had formed a team, established a labor union representing the employees, and developed it to such a staggering scale.

“It feels surreal,” Seung said quietly.

“Surreal? Don’t be ridiculous.” Harona scoffed. Despite her curt tone, the corners of her lips twitched upward in spite of herself. “I’m just here to get promoted.”

“Of course,” Seung replied.

“Well, and to issue a warning while I’m at it.”

She had every right to do so. Eun-Ho had taken all the contract workers from her territory, and as a result, the number of monsters in Sector Thirteen had skyrocketed. To be fair, it was abandoned land, and leaving it unattended for another day or two wouldn’t cause immediate disaster.

“When is this damn line going to move?” Harona muttered.

“Shall I contact someone to see if we can enter sooner?” Seung asked.

“No. Why would I stroke that brat’s ego?” Just as her impatience began to show, a blue window abruptly filled her vision. “Huh?”

[New schedule has been registered.]

[11:00 AM - Interview(Chairman’s Office)]

[Please proceed immediately!]

“Out of nowhere?” she muttered.

“Lady Harona? What is it?” Seung asked.

She froze mid-step, her brisk movements stiffening all at once. “The chairman has summoned me.”

A sudden summons from a superior, especially one who might as well have been the sky above their heads, rarely brought good news.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Alright.”

Puff!

They vanished and reappeared ten kilometers away, in the lobby of the towering Administrative Bureau building that stood between the Garden of Genesis and the Garden of Enlightenment. Moments later, she carefully pushed open a door several times taller than herself.

Gathering the hem of her skirt, she bowed her head and said formally, “Administrator Harona greets the chairman.”

At the far end of the long corridor, beneath the authority that ruled their world like the heavens themselves, a heavy voice echoed, its words weightier still. “Protocol 999. It has been a hundred years.”

Harona’s composure slipped as shock overtook her. “Hieek!”

Protocol 999 was, in effect, a death sentence and a declaration that the company would mobilize every resource, every employee, and every system at its disposal to ensure the target’s destruction.

If the target dared to harbor hope, they would be shoved off a cliff. If they placed their faith in others, their limbs would be severed. If they clung to their will, everything they had painstakingly built would be crushed to dust until they found themselves begging for annihilation instead.

In a corporation that did not hesitate to eliminate political enemies, the issuance of an official sentence carried tremendous weight. Not only did it mean that private sanctions were no longer deemed sufficient, it was also an acknowledgment that the matter had grown beyond quiet suppression.

“To whom?” Harona asked.

“To Lee Eun-Ho. That child,” the chairman replied.

If the target was nothing more than an ordinary employee, the implication was even more staggering.

Good heavens.

Harona clenched the hem of her skirt with trembling fingers.

“They say it is treason,” the chairman added.

Her breath hitched.

So this had not been the chairman’s will after all.

Eun-Ho had likely set the stage himself and made fools of the Chairman’s Office in the process. However, she couldn’t believe that things had escalated to this extent.

A gentle voice descended upon her. “My child.”

“... Yes, Chairman,” Harona answered.

Her reply came a fraction too late, barely an instant.

Sssss—

The chairman drifted farther away. The corridor between them stretched and expanded without end, as though it were swelling toward the horizon itself.

Her eyes widened.

“What is it that has startled you?” the chairman asked.

The ground surged upward, transforming into a swamp that dragged her down.

“Is it the fact that Lee Eun-Ho dared to harbor such absurd ambition?”

Sand flooded her mouth as she tried to speak. “That’s—kuk!”

“Or is it because a child you hold dear has been driven to the edge of a precipice?”

The torrent of sand gave her no time to respond. Her face flushed red, then drained white, then turned a sickly blue.

“Or perhaps,” the chairman said. “Did you share his intent?”

The immense gulf in power between them hit like a waterfall, pressing the air from her lungs.

Her heart lurched. “... I did not—kuk!”

Even if her lungs were bursting with sand, she had to deny it.

“You have a prior record, do you not?”

It was the karma of one who had once faced the same situation before.

Thud.

Her heart plummeted. She forced the words out. “No sir... You know of the oath.”

The oath they had sworn beneath the Tree of Genesis. A vow of the soul that she would never again, under any circumstances, repeat the same mistake.

The chairman acknowledged. “Yes. That is true,”

Since he understood the weight of an oath, he accepted her answer. However, since he understood the lightness of the heart, he asked anyway, “Lee Eun-Ho. What is that child’s weakness?”

What’s the weakness of a traitor?

He was demanding her that if her words were true, she would have to prove them.

Lee Eun-Ho’s weakness was not a difficult question. She knew it was compassion that preceded profit. Though he pursued practicality more fiercely than anyone else, he never chose to survive alone. That stubborn sense of camaraderie was his greatest flaw.

He foolishly scrambled to take along useless children and frail elders. Yet, it was also his strength. Even burdened with such dead weight, he not only survived but managed to nurture them beyond their limits, turning them into core personnel who surpassed their original worth.

“His weakness is...” Harona began.

She swallowed the coarse sand clogging her mouth and forced the words out.

***

It was 2:00 PM in the afternoon; the Labor Union’s first regular meeting commenced in resounding success.

[A new observer has joined!]

[A new observer has joined!]

[A new observer has joined!]

...

[The Brain from the Bureau of Investigation asks if they should now address him as Union Leader.]

[The Prince from the Bureau of Investigation smirks, saying the snot-nosed brat has grown quite a bit.]

Approximately fifteen thousand attended in person and another thirty thousand connected through the Eyes. A staggering total of forty-five thousand participants had gathered.

[The Crow from the Bureau of Management grows misty-eyed at a friend’s growth!]

[The Newbie from the Bureau of Corporate Relations slaps their forehead, saying they knew it from the moment Eun-Ho charged forward with a skeleton in tow.]

“Thanks for the promotion!” someone shouted.

“You’ve earned us a hundred years at least!”

A hundred years?

Then, the crowd that had assembled roared his name so loudly the plaza seemed ready to lift off its foundations.

“Lee Eun-Ho!”

“Lee Eun-Ho!”

“Lee Eun-Ho!”

...

Is it because I’ve gifted them the tremendous fruit called promotion?

Boom—!

Fwoosh! Crackle!

Some people set off multicolored confetti cannons. Others conjured heatless fireworks that blossomed into fairies and flowers in the air. Hands shot up and waved wildly.

The atmosphere felt like a festival, but Eun-Ho had not taken this seat to ride a wave of popularity.

“Today’s first regular meeting,” he began calmly, “has a single agenda.”

He paused, letting the cheers die down.

“We will begin collecting union dues.”

Fwoosh...!

A burst of confetti exploded overhead, only to drift down onto faces that had gone blank with confusion.

“Huh?”

“Union dues? You’re collecting money?”

Of course they would be startled. Many of them had joined without knowing much about labor unions at all. They had simply seen the promotion reward and signed up.

“What is this? You never mentioned that!”

Right on cue, the first ripples of dissatisfaction began to surface.

Pop.

Then, a prepared screen lit up in midair.

“In just one day, seventy-eight thousand people joined,” Eun-Ho said evenly. “And we have already received fifty thousand reports of injustice.”

[Union Members - 78,201]

[Reported Cases - 50,930]

“Our growth rate is five times faster than initially projected.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?!” someone shouted.

“It is,” Eun-Ho replied. “But.”

Pop.

[Estimated Cost - 21,974,300 Points]

“It costs money.”

[Labor-Management Cooperation Team - 42 Members]

[Average Cases per Person - 1,213]

“And it requires manpower,” he let that sink in before continuing, “so once a month, we’ll collect one thousand Welfare Points.”

“One thousand?!”

It was not an outrageous amount. At most, it equaled the reward for defeating a single monster or completing a routine trial during work. Still, however small the sum, there was a difference between paying and not paying.

Once someone invests something of their own, they feel responsible for it, Eun-Ho thought.

It was like a free lecture compared to one paid out of pocket. People would skip the former without a second thought, while enduring the latter simply because it felt like a waste to quit.

“If it’s every month, that’s a burden...”

“There are people barely scraping by! I even saw contract workers over there!”

Eun-Ho nodded. “Ah, that’s a very good point.”

In truth, the union dues were not the core of his plan.

“We will establish a foundation.”

“A foundation?”

“The bare minimum of a social safety net.” Eun-Ho’s voice grew firmer. “When you cannot pay your settlement and face the threat of deletion, we will lend to you in the union’s name with funds gathered little by little from all of you.”

The company’s leash around their necks was called settlementand deletion. He was building insurance.

“I’m trying to make a system to stand against the company. A system to stand against the System itself.”

So that the company could no longer wield the System like a blade. And so that the people standing here would no longer live as flickering candles ready to be snuffed out with a single breath, but as individuals in control of their own lives.

“T-that’s...”

“Is that even possible?”

“I never even thought of that.”

The murmurs spread like wildfire across the plaza.

[The Brain from the Bureau of Investigation marvels at how far ahead you’ve thought.]

[The Newbie from the Bureau of Corporate Relations smacks their forehead at your grand design.]

[The Crow from the Bureau of Management applauds, saying they expected nothing less from a friend.]

That was enough groundwork.

Eun-Ho moved to the main point. “Now, we will proceed to a vote.”

[Do you agree to the withdrawal of union dues for the establishment of a union foundation?]

[Y / N]

He opened the prepared survey and waited as the results were collected.

“It’s in.” He glanced over the tally. “Eighty-eight percent in favor. Ten percent opposed. Two percent abstained.”

The outcome was more overwhelming than he had expected.

Honestly, I was worried they wouldn’t trust a plan that exists only in words.

Perhaps, having already experienced the tangible benefit of promotion, they found it easier to believe.

“We will proceed.”

The Labor-Management Cooperation Team, the labor union, and the foundation. Layer by layer, the structure he had built in his mind began to take shape.

“Let’s build a company where employees can truly be happy.”

So that a human life would not vanish over a yellow slip of paper. So that a person would not flicker out because of a single word from some unseen System. And so that lives would not hang in the balance over performance metrics, evaluations, and office politics.

Eun-Ho bowed his head to those who had chosen to follow him. “Thank you.”

He meant it.

Then, a roar of cheers erupted, louder than the gratitude he had offered. The sound pierced through him.

“Woohooo—!”

[The Crow from the Bureau of Management grows emotional, saying they knew from the start you would cause a great upheaval.]

[The Catty Cat from the Bureau of Investigation laughs, saying they trust a clever male lead.]

[The Old Guy from the Sales Department cheers you on to see this through to the end.]

...

The vibrations filled his vision, his ears, his very thoughts. Only when the thunderous support finally began to subside, a new message pierced through the lingering echoes.

Ding!

[The Ferry Man from the Bureau of Management is attempting a private chat.]

A private chat?

The Ferry Man from the Bureau of Management had shown mild interest, considerable distrust, and occasional reprimands since the early days of restructuring. He had never been particularly friendly.

So what brings them here?

The message that followed made Eun-Ho’s expression stiffen.

Ferry Man: Heaven Beyond Heaven warns that it has summoned the Eight Heavens.

What?