Surviving Restructuring

It was 4:30 AM. In the quiet hours before dawn, when everyone else was still deep asleep, Dmitri slowly opened his eyes. He swung his broad, muscular frame upright, following the same routine as always.

Click.

Then, he switched on the light and reached out to strengthen the bedding.

Ah.

His hand stopped mid-motion. Several strands of blond hair clung stubbornly to the pillowcase.

One, two, three...

Today, dozens of hairs had once again met their untimely fate. With a somber expression, Dmitri finished folding the blanket, before picking up the mirror beside his bed to inspect the top of his head.

Hmm...

His heart ached at the sight of his crown, which somehow seemed a little emptier than it had yesterday. Still, the progress wasn’t terrible. The rate of hair loss had at least slowed down since he switched to the shampoo he had personally formulated.

If only I could keep taking the Scalp Regeneration Potion every day...

It was a thought that crossed his mind every morning, when he woke up, when he washed, when he got dressed, and even before going to sleep. No matter how hard he tried to push it away, the regret always resurfaced. Scalp regeneration meant reviving already dead cells, a technology equivalent to reversing time itself.

Thankfully, this world contained countless magical materials and miraculous elixirs. However, while reversing time at the cellular level wasn’t impossible, the problem lay in the ingredients. The absurd number of rare materials required made the potion extraordinarily difficult to produce.

“Use as many materials as you want,” the team leader had once told him. “If you need something, just let me know.”

He had even explained that groundbreaking discoveries often came from unexpected places. For example, a failed adhesive experiment had produced sticky notes, and a contaminated culture dish had led to the discovery of penicillin. Because of that, Dmitri didn’t need to limit himself to strictly necessary research. If something interested him, he was free to explore it.

However, Dmitri simply couldn’t think that way.

“Please focus on securing materials for combat buff potions,” Eun-Ho had instructed him. “Especially Stamina-type herbs. We’re running out.”

Dmitri was the kind of man who placed the organization above himself. The team’s needs always came first. With that thought firmly in mind, he slipped on his white lab coat and prepared to begin today’s research.

Rustle.

A faint noise came from behind the door.

His posture snapped into readiness. “Huh?”

In one swift motion, Dmitri grabbed the dagger hidden beneath his bed and pressed himself against the wall. He held his breath and listened carefully.

Rustle.

There it was again, but with no voices nor footsteps. Something heavy was clearly moving on the other side of the door.

Is that an assassin?

If so, they had chosen the wrong target. Dmitri was a former KGB operative. Even without a single offensive skill, he had survived multiple rounds of corporate restructuring thanks to that background.

Silently, he approached the door and gripped the handle, then flung it open.

Bang!

His dagger shot forward in a preemptive strike meant to subdue the intruder. The blade, which should’ve sliced toward the assassin’s neck, pierced a sack instead.

“Huh?!”

The small-car-sized sack was floating in midair.

For a moment, Dmitri’s mind went blank.

Am I still dreaming?

Before he could process what he was seeing, the sack tore open.

Fwoooosh—!

The contents exploded out like dumplings bursting from their skins. Fruits of nature poured everywhere.

“What?!”

He could tell instantly just from the scent that those were herbs. Brightly colored medicinal herbs—red, green, blue—began spilling out endlessly.

“T-this is!”

In the dark hour before dawn, while everyone else still slept, the quiet man’s shout of pure joy echoed down the hallway.

***

“It’s done!”

“We’re finished!”

The twins, who had been handling delivery while the exhausted team rested, came flying back with the report.

“Did everything get delivered?” Eun-Ho asked.

The two bowl-cut Ghosts nodded rapidly.

Eun-Ho chuckled and lightly patted both of their heads.

“We surprised him!”

“He liked it!”

“So you’re saying that you surprised him, but he liked it?” Eun-Ho asked.

“Yep!”

“Uh-huh!”

I guess these guys are kind of cute once you get used to them, Eun-Ho thought.

They were Ghosts, technically, but Eun-Ho couldn’t help treating them like puppies. “Good job. Go upstairs and play.”

“Okay!”

“What should we play?”

Eun-Ho gave them another absentminded pat before sending them off toward the surface. The two floated away, chattering excitedly between themselves.

“Want to go for a ride?”

“Sounds fun!”

“Hm?” Eun-Ho muttered.

Ride what?

Eun-Ho suddenly had a very vivid image in his mind. For some reason, he could clearly picture the twins climbing onto Jae-Hyuk’s head and treating him like a ride.

“Wailing Forest!”

“Tour finished!”

“He carried us!”

“He’s strong!”

“It shakes!”

“It’s fun!”

Sorry, Jae-Hyuk.

While he silently offered that insincere apology, the twins disappeared up the dark stairway.

Soon, the underground prison reverted to its heavy, damp, and oppressively quiet state.

“They are Saetani, aren’t they?” Mu Ah finally said.

He had been silent until now.

Earlier that morning, Eun-Ho had asked a few questions about the chairman’s abilities and the company’s structure, but he refused to answer. In the end, Eun-Ho had simply continued doing his work there.

“How did you know?” Eun-Ho asked.

Mu Ah scoffed. “What do you take the Director of Operations for?”

“My prisoner?” Eun-Ho replied casually.

The director fell silent for a moment.

“Anyway, that’s unusual.” Mu Ah frowned slightly as though the conversation bothered him. “They’re not the type to follow someone like that.”

“Oh, right,” Eun-Ho replied. “Come to think of it, our relationship didn’t start out like this. Those brats cracked the back of my head first, and I smashed a window with their skulls.”

“What?”

Now that he said it out loud, Eun-Ho had to admit it sounded rather brutal.

He shrugged. “Well, relationships between people go up and down, don’t they?”

“They’re not even people to begin with,” Mu Ah replied flatly.

“Details, details.”

Mu Ah shrugged his shoulders at Eun-Ho’s dismissive tone.

After a moment, Mu Ah finally asked calmly, “So what’s your plan? Are you going to deal with me somewhere people can’t see?”

“Deal with you?” Eun-Ho repeated.

“You said you had no intention of negotiating.”

“Ah.”

So he’s asking why I didn’t kill him right away.

There were three reasons.

First, he had to put up a show. Having anticipated that protesters would gather, he waited until the largest crowd assembled. The moment when everyone’s attention was focused, before resolving the situation in the most dramatic way possible.

[Administrative Order - Release]

The director had played his part perfectly.

Second, Eun-Ho had to demonstrate that even someone of a director’s rank could end up in the palm of the labor union’s hand.

After all, not only was the union a completely new organization, its leader was also a young rookie employee far junior to most of them. Even if Eun-Ho had built up some reputation recently, reputation alone didn’t create trust. In fact, it could easily backfire. ℯ

Hence, he had to prove something that even a director could be subdued, though it hadn’t exactly been easy.

The third reason is...

“Your relationship with your father must not be very good,” Eun-Ho said.

Mu Ah flinched.

“I was worried he might come personally,” Eun-Ho added.

“You knew?” Mu Ah asked quietly.

“Knew what? That you’re the chairman’s son?”

Mu Ah’s face hardened.

Until now, he had remained completely calm even when Eun-Ho talked about killing him somewhere out of sight. However, for the first time, a faint trace of fear appeared on his face.

“What are you afraid of?” Eun-Ho asked.

“Afraid?”

“Dying without anyone ever knowing? Or being traded as a hostage and sent back to your father?”

Crack.

The sound of grinding teeth echoed faintly.

After a brief silence, Mu Ah asked, “Do I have to answer that?”

“Well, not really.”

It wasn’t an answer, but Eun-Ho didn’t mind. He already understood enough.

So the rumors about their bad relationship were true, Eun-Ho thought.

Still, if the conversation had reached this point, another question naturally arose. Eun-Ho remembered the messages he had seen earlier.

[Congratulations!]

[Based on the soul of a pathfinder who carried everything, the path once walked by a loyal retainer, and the memory of devotion so sincere it would even offer up its life, a Unique Skill has been created!]

Eun-Ho had a question about his newly acquired skill and Mu Ah’s ability.

“That skill of yours, the one that makes people fall in love with you, that’s your Unique Skill, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mu Ah He frowned slightly, as if trying to figure out Eun-Ho’s intentions. “Isn’t your Acceleration the same kind of thing?”

The director seemed genuinely puzzled about Eun-Ho’s question.

Eun-Ho answered, “I used to be a track athlete.”

It wasn’t a story he necessarily had to tell.

“But then I had an accident. My leg was damaged, and for ten years, I lived with nothing but the desire to run again.”

“What?”

It was the kind of story no one would care about, unless there was an empty hole in their chest, unless there was even the smallest sense of something missing.

“You,” Eun-Ho said quietly.

This might be the most important question of all.

“Why did you gain that ability?”

Mu Ah’s breath caught and his lips slowly parted. “I...”

Beeep—!

Just then, a piercing alarm rang out, loud enough to feel like it would split his skull open. At the same time, a series of message windows appeared.

[Alert!]

[Announcing the results of the 8291st Disciplinary Committee.]

The warning window was bright red, as if someone had cranked the red value of RGB to its absolute limit. Since Eun-Ho had often seen the same window lately, he didn’t realize how serious it was. However, the moment he read the next line, his eyes widened.

[A Personnel Order has been issued.]

Eun-Ho stared at the message in disbelief. This was a type of warning he had never seen before.

[Subject: Lee Eun-Ho]

[Reason: Disrupting workplace atmosphere]

[Position Revoked: Team Leader → Employee]

[Department Transfer: Personnel Bureau Labor-Management Cooperation Team → Undetermined]

[Office Relocation: Wailing Castle → Primordial Skyscraper]

“Ha.”

In other words, he had just been fired from his role as team leader.

Then, another series of messages appeared.

[Please pack your belongings and move to your new office!]

[Time Limit: 10 minutes]

A countdown immediately began ticking.

[10:00]

The system had given him exactly ten minutes.

“Where the hell is the Primordial Skyscraper?” Eun-Ho muttered.

Mu Ah blinked. “That building belongs exclusively to the chairman. Why would you be sent there all of a sudden?”

“This is insane...” Eun-Ho muttered.

Now, his office had been relocated to right in front of the chairman’s nose.

Eun-Ho frowned.

Why does this feel like such a familiar move?

***

When Eun-Ho had first joined his previous company, the one he worked at before the restructuring, he had witnessed something strange.

“Um, why does Manager Kim work in the supply room? He only has a desk there. There isn’t even a laptop.”

Manager Kim came to work every day without fail, but no one gave him assignments nor spoke to him. All day long, he simply sat alone at an empty desk, staring at nothing.

“That’s a standby order,” a coworker explained.

“A standby order? What’s that?”

“It means they don’t give you any work. You just wait for a reassignment that never comes until you get exhausted and quit.”

“What? Why would they do something like that?”

“They want to fire him, but if they do it outright, he could claim unfair dismissal. So this is their way of telling him to leave on his own.”

Manager Kim had twin daughters. Having been born late in his life, they were in their graduating class in high school. He had once mentioned that even if he couldn’t fully cover their university tuition, he at least wanted to earn enough to pay for their cram school fees.

“That’s awful,” Eun-Ho had said at the time.

“Right? They might as well just fire him now. If he quits like that, he won’t even qualify for unemployment benefits.”

Back then, Eun-Ho had thought something. A standby order was the most vicious thing a company could do to an individual.

And now that happened to me, Eun-Ho thought.

[You are now under Standby Order.]

[Access to the Team system has been blocked.]

You’ve got to be kidding me.

[You have been removed from the Labor-Management Cooperation Team group messenger.]

[Your office access has been revoked.]

[Team Member Status is now unavailable.]

[Team Benefits Shop access has been blocked.]

[Office Management functions have been disabled.]

[Dedicated Eye system is now unavailable.]

...

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Notification windows flooded his vision so rapidly that they almost drowned out his hearing. Blocking his system access meant one thing, but the company was trying to silence him as well. Of course, if the situation dragged on long enough, information would leak out somehow. That was why they had given him a ten-minute limit.

Seems like they’ve sharpened the knife.

A standby order was the opening move of their first full confrontation. Honestly, Eun-Ho hadn’t expected that. If the chairman stepped in personally, Eun-Ho had assumed he would try to crush them with force. That would have been the easier path from the chairman’s perspective.

So he’s ready to take things all the way?

Eun-Ho quickly organized the possible scenarios this new order could lead to. Just then, hurried footsteps echoed down the corridor.

“Eun-Ho!”

“Hyungnim!”

Several people who had been nearby rushed down into the prison.

“Calm down. Your faces are going to burst.”

For a moment, he wondered if they had come to appoint an acting team leader now that he had been removed. However, that clearly wasn’t it.

“H-Hyungnim! Something weird just popped up! It says our department has been changed!”

“Young Man! What on earth is going on?! It’s telling me to move somewhere called the Skyscraper!”

For a brief moment, Eun-Ho had forgotten something. This company always managed to exceed even the worst expectations.

“Wait,” he said slowly. “All of you?”

“Yes!”

“You all got standby orders too?”

“Yes! Every single team member received it!”

What an insane company!

It was even more vicious than his old workplace! Back then, at least no one had been crazy enough to place an entire team under standby orders?! Then again, even if someone had done it, there would have been nothing they could do. Manager Kim hadn’t lasted even a year before submitting his resignation.

I’m not letting that happen here.

Until this point, the company had held disciplinary committees and removed people however it pleased, but things were different now.

[Union Leader’s authority has been granted.]

[You have acquired the Right to Organize, the Right to Collective Bargaining, and the Right to Collective Action.]

[You may file Objections against disciplinary measures targeting union members.]

[You may organize a Revolutionary Army.]

...

Eun-Ho had no intention of sitting quietly and waiting to be fired.

[09:28]

It was an absurdly short amount of time, barely enough to pack up the things on his desk and move.

“Labor-Management Cooperation Team, assemble.”

“Yes sir!”

“Everyone come over here! The team leader’s calling for us!”

Eun-Ho exhaled slowly.

Let’s take this all the way to the end. Let’s see which one of us wins.