Chapter 236. Labor Union (1)

“Everyone saw the news, right? The chairman passed away suddenly, so they’re proceeding with the succession.”

“I saw it! Then, what’s going to happen to us?”

“What do you think will happen to salaried workers? We just keep our heads down and do our jobs.”

Eun-Ho had lived as nothing more than a wage earner, or worse, a low-ranking contract employee. The chairman was the kind of person he would never have expected to cross paths with.

Yet that same man had come to see him.

The old man’s kindly eyes curved into a gentle arc. Like a courteous gentleman from another era, he tipped his bowler hat in greeting. “Team Leader Lee.”

“chairman.”

“Walk with me for a moment.”

That was all the chairman said, yet it was enough to dispel the stiffness in his legs. Eun-Ho found himself moving. With one step, the bustling crowd fell away. With the second step, the surroundings shifted into a quiet forest. Then, finally, with the third step, a shadow spread over his head.

A shadow? Eun-Ho thought. Is that thirty or even forty meters tall?

A colossal tree stood before him, its branches spreading so wide that even with both arms fully extended, he would never have encircled its trunk.

Among the fir trees that made up the Wailing Forest, such elegant curves of branches were rare. A faint, mist-like smoke wrapped around their dense leaves and thick trunks. The scent was unfamiliar, yet strangely nostalgic. It was a tree of lush, flowing grace. It did not possess much, yet it had the leisure to claim even its empty spaces as its own.

Has this place always existed inside the company? Eun-Ho thought.

He was surrounded by a silence he had never once felt since joining the company.

The chairman began. “You must have many questions, yet you do not ask.”

Eun-Ho had first seen the chairman at the end of his rookie training, during the Outstanding Employee Selection Ceremony. This, however, was the first time they had ever spoken face-to-face.

What kind of man is he?

There was too little information. In that case, he chose to begin from one step behind.

“I was taught that it is only proper not to speak before one’s superior does,” Eun-Ho said carefully.

“You are calmer than I heard.”

Is that a good sign?

It seemed the other side lacked information as well.

Eun-Ho feigned ignorance. “You must be busy, yet you came personally. May I ask what brings you here?”

The chairman chuckled. “Answering a question with a question? That’s not a good habit.”

“If I have offended you, I apologize.” Eun-Ho lowered himself slightly, as if studying an enemy. “But given the circumstances, I have no choice but to be cautious.”

The chairman, however, did not look at him. Instead, he gazed up at a drooping branch and stopped walking. “It has been a long time since I heard a voice of life.”

Eun-Ho frowned at the sudden change in topic. “Pardon?”

The chairman, smiling like a wooden Hahoe mask, said as though recalling a distant memory, “There is no one left around me who speaks with their throat anymore.”

Speaks with their throat? Wait, Eun-Ho thought.

“My voice—” Eun-Ho began.

“... is different from mine, is it not?” the chairman asked.

Eun-Ho had known. From the moment Harona first appeared in the exhibition hall, he had sensed it.

Their voices were clearer, more emotional, and more direct as if whispered to the soul. Instead of vocal cords vibrating, it felt as though sound waves were born from the resonance of the spirit itself.

Come to think of it...

“Daddy?”

When he had broken into the Personnel Bureau division chief’s house, he had encountered the man’s daughter.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Ah, um... N-no one! Sweetheart, you must’ve imagined it.”

“Mmm... I don’t think so...”

At the time, he had briefly wondered about the sense of dissonance he felt. The rush of preparing for battle had quickly erased the thought.

The child’s voice was different from the division chief’s.

It was not something innate, nor was it divided into before and after joining the company.

“It is because our ranks are different.”

Rank was a word that referred to one’s standing, dignity, and qualifications.

“And it’s also because we have raised our rank,” the chairman added.

A memory surfaced, which was his conversation with the gambler.

“Are the residents of this tower human?”

“Of course not.”

Then, he had asked what kind of beings the customers of the Sky Tower were.

“They are far too lacking to be called gods.”

“So they’re not gods yet, but beings who might become one someday, if they fill in what they lack?”

Filling what one lacks... Was that what it meant to raise one’s rank? Eun-Ho thought.

If customers and employees alike were advancing toward some state, raising their rank along the way, he could understand why everyone endured this insane company. In fact, the revelation changed everything. If becoming that final state was their desperate goal, it could become an obstacle when he tried to win them over. They would not fight by his side.

“Is it rank to become a god?” he asked.

“God. A god, you say...” The chairman’s eyes curved once more. “From your perspective, perhaps. We call it retirement.”

“Retirement...”

Mandatory retirement was the twilight years of life when one could finally plan a leisurely old age. When life had grown too harsh, he had thought about it once or twice. However, he had never imagined that retirement could be something so difficult and grand.

“It is the most glorious, noble, and precious proof,” said the chairman.

Rustle—

The chairman’s gaze brushed over a thin branch that seemed too delicate for the massive tree. The pale smoke thickened. Though he wore the appearance of a white-haired elder, he did not seem frail nor weary. If anything, his face brimmed with more hope and yearning than any survivor he had ever met.

Staring at him, Eun-Ho asked the question that had lingered in his mind since the world began to change, “Then what about the restructuring? What is it for?”

He had asked himself this hundreds or even thousands of times.

Rustle—

The pale smoke flowing from the ancient tree grew denser.

“Seung Gi... I was rather fond of that boy.”

A chill prickled along the back of Eun-Ho’s neck. The cold smoke coiled around his legs, his spine and his nape.

“And yet you wiped him out so cleanly.”

“I just eliminated an intruder,” Eun-Ho replied.

He had expected to be reprimanded for it someday, but didn’t expect now to be the time.

“I did not come to blame you.”

“Then?”

“I have a proposal.”

It was something Eun-Ho also had not expected.

“If you accept, I will answer every question you have.”

He fixed his gaze on the chairman. The man stood tall. Despite being similar in height and build, yet he felt enormous. Whether it was the smoke or the oppressive aura radiating from him, the air seemed thin, as though oxygen itself had diminished.

What kind of proposal would it be? If it meant stopping now and surrendering, I...

“I would like to offer you that position.”

Eun-Ho’s breath caught in his throat. Given the context, there was only one position it could mean.

“Division Chief Lee.”

His heart lurched.

“Become my man.”

***

“Huh?”

Dmitri stopped mid-swish, the vial in his hand sloshing faintly before going still.

“Is something wrong?” his colleague asked.

“Ah, no.”

The liquid had moved strangely just now. It was subtle, but something had felt slightly off.

“This is the research I’ve been working on,” Dmitri added.

“What was it about again?” the man asked.

“A potion that pushes the body’s regenerative ability to its absolute limit, strengthening recovery,” Dmitri explained. “There’s a man on the team with monstrous regenerative power. I used his serum as a base and combined it with medicinal ingredients and existing recovery potions.”

“Monstrous regeneration? I’m jealous.”

“There’s no need.” Dmitri smiled faintly. “We’ll have a decent batch ready soon. I’ll set some aside for you. The team leader will approve.”

On one side, he wanted to show an old comrade what he had accomplished. On the other side, he simply could not ignore the man, ragged and torn with scars he had never seen before.

He wanted to help him somehow. After all, he heard that not even a healer could heal wounds that old.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dmitri asked.

The large scar that cut diagonally across his comrade’s face made him look different, but it was the eyes that felt unfamiliar. Even during the horrific training back in their homeland, he had never seen such a fragile light in them.

“You look peaceful,” the man said at last.

“Ah.”

“Well, I barely survived yesterday. A brown bear almost ripped my head off. I suppose I have no right to complain.”

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.

The man finished the rest of the vodka he had been sipping. “Is the New Employee Representative someone we can trust?”

Ah. It’s anxiety.

Only then did Dmitri understand the meaning behind that unfamiliar gaze. Before the restructuring began, this man had hunted brown bears barehanded. He had leaped from five thousand meters above the sea and swam his way out alive. He was a special operative who had survived hell itself.

“But he’s a man who keeps his word, right?” the man asked quietly.

Now his eyes held nothing but unease. Would the man he had chosen to trust and follow abandon him? Had he run from hell to this peaceful place only to be punished for it? That fear lingered in his voice.

“He’s a man who’s proven himself more than once,” Dmitri said firmly, without the slightest hesitation, shoulders squared. “I believe in him.”

***

Eun-Ho met the deeply lined eyes head-on, careful not to fall into their well-like depths. “I apologize, but I must refuse.”

“Refuse?” The chairman slowly closed and opened his eyes. “How foolish. So very foolish.”

Rustle—

Tens of thousands of leaves attached to the massive tree trembled at once. Though there was no wind, the vibration grew stronger and then stopped.

The chairman withdrew his gaze.

Eun-Ho could not tell whether the man simply would not accept his refusal, or whether a mere refusal meant nothing at all.

“I have grown old.” What was certain was that the chairman was not done speaking. “And this place was once abandoned land.”

“Abandoned from what?”

“I cultivated a barren wasteland. Raised pillars and built a house.” The chairman was not answering out of kindness. The words spilled from him like molten lava rising from within. “It was a house where people like you could lay down and rest.”

His tone remained polite, almost like a lecturer addressing an audience. Yet with each added word, the once-chilly air grew hotter.

A house? What should I say? Would he want me to say that I’m grateful for the dormitory provided by the man who had ruined the foundation of my life? Or should I point out that the lava isn’t boiling inside him alone, and that I’m also upset? Eun-Ho thought.

“How many young men like you do you think there have been?” the chairman asked abruptly.

“Excuse me?”

“Those who stirred up trouble, declaring they would stand against the company only to tuck their tails and be demoted in the end. How many naïve pups do you think there were?”

“You will tuck your tail. You will be defeated and cast aside. You are nothing but a foolish pup.” Those were the meaning behind his words.

“Broaden your vessel.”

“I am refusing precisely because my vessel is broad,” Eun-Ho replied calmly.

“What?”

Eun-Ho smiled. “I did not start this just to swallow up the Personnel Bureau.”

The chairman’s brow furrowed deeply, and the wind followed in turn. The ground trembled, and the branches resonated with a low hum.

“I gave you the right to choose a Bureau, and you created a team that had never existed.”

“You mean the Labor-Management Cooperation Team,” Eun-Ho added.

“And what did you gain? By defying the natural order, did you not merely exhaust your subordinates?”

Within the quietly swirling vortex, Eun-Ho answered, “It was not a team that never existed in the world. It simply did not exist in this company.”

“What?”

“Do not mistake the company for the world.”

Fwoosh—!

The chairman’s face twisted, pure white karmic flames flaring to life behind him. The earth trembled, and the crushing pressure weighed down on Eun-Ho's shoulders. Still, Eun-Ho had said his piece and done what he had to.

“You foolish child. Do you not realize that deleting someone like you would be effortless?”

Rustle—

Pale smoke settled over Eun-Ho’s skin.

“I could eliminate you here without a trace, gather your belongings, and walk away.”

Eun-Ho froze, unable to move.

“Then I would brand your team with treason and impose a fine they could never repay, not even in eternity.” The chairman’s voice, born of his soul, became shackles. “Your remaining comrades would remain bound forever, thinking, ‘Ah, we should never have followed Lee Eun-Ho.’”

The weight on Eun-Ho steps, gestures, and tongue grew heavier, like water-soaked cotton.

The chairman smiled brightly. “They would resent you for a time where they can neither live nor die. What do you think?”

Eun-Ho endured the crushing weight and forced his comparatively lighter tongue to move “I... I grew up alone, with nothing. I tend to be suspicious.”

“You doubt my power?”

“Of course not.” He smiled back, trusting in what he had built and what he possessed. “I’m saying I prepared for this.”

“Bluster, in this situation?”

Bluster?

The chairman probably wanted to believe that.

“I have already released all the evidence under the name of the Labor-Management Cooperation Team. The two battles, the arena, and the illegal experiments.”

The chairman flinched.

“If someone who defeated the Personnel Bureau’s Director were to be purged without a sound in this situation, who do you think the employees would suspect?” Eun-Ho moved his fingertips, his toes then his legs. “Go ahead and kill me.”

Then, he took one step forward. “And punish the team.”

With the second step, he planted his foot within the pure white flames. “You will be lighting the spark of rebellion with your own hands, Chairman.”

Then, with the third step, he got close enough to feel the old man’s breath. “Please grant us just cause to bring down the hammer of justice upon the executives who ultimately broke an innocent new employee.”

Eun-Ho hurled an invisible spear. “You will be admitting that the arena and the illegal experiments on employees were issues the company deliberately suppressed.”

“What are you—”

“And then,” Eun-Ho continued, aiming the spearhead he had sharpened in silence at the furrowed brow before him, “the Operations Bureau will be the first to stop. They’re already struggling to get by. They will rise up easily.”

He threw another spear. “If the system malfunctions, so be it. They won’t be able to recycle monster corpses. Even the company cafeteria will shut down. People won’t be able to eat. And what about the others?”

“Nonsense! The other bureaus are running just fine!”

“I’ve seen the evaluation reports. Management, Sales, it doesn’t matter. The targets keep rising, and they’re all half-mad from it.”

“Well that is unavoidable in managing a company—”

“People ignore what doesn’t concern them. But the moment it becomes their problem, everything changes.”

“What?”

“When they learn that the director or the chairman himself personally pressured and purged a mere employee, they’ll think the same thing.” Eun-Ho shattered the logic of the ruler. He smashed through the glass ceiling blocking the way. “At some point, they would think it could be them next.”

The chairman flinched.

“And if, at that exact moment, a labor union appears to represent the employees’ rights, it would make a very good focal point.” Eun-Ho drove the final spear forward. “Can you handle that?”