My Company Is Black

#Prologue

“You’re a returner!”

Jung Hwi-kyung was truly shocked. To put it crudely, he wasn’t just ‘really’ shocked, but ‘fucking’ shocked. Shit. How did they know? That I’ve returned thirteen times and am working at this company?

“What do you mean?”

The best response in this situation is to flatly deny everything. Jung Hwi-kyung put on a poker face and blinked, acting as if he had no idea what was going on. At this point, the only option was to make the other person look crazy.

However, the other party was Jung Hwi-kyung’s superior, Lee Gyo-ha, who had parachuted in as an executive director. Lee Gyo-ha scrunched up his handsome face and glared fiercely at Jung Hwi-kyung. But Hwi-kyung had been through hell and high water, so he wasn’t about to be intimidated by such a look.

“Director, there are many eyes watching. Let’s go inside first.”

“…”

“And don’t talk about returning or whatever to others. This could end up in the news.”

BK Group’s youngest son shows symptoms of schizophrenia…

Chaebol family on drugs? South Korea no longer a drug-free country…

Jung Hwi-kyung could easily imagine a few headline titles. Moreover, the other person was his workplace superior. Even though he planned to make him look crazy, he couldn’t embarrass him in front of others. If BK International were to go bankrupt because of this, Jung Hwi-kyung would have to return again for the crime of getting the wrong job.

Can someone who is forced to return after getting a job at a black company even be called a returner? Isn’t that just a pitiful office worker?

Thinking that far, Jung Hwi-kyung dragged Lee Gyo-ha to the emergency staircase. It was quite a sight to see a mere HR employee pulling a parachuted executive director along.

“Now, Director.”

“…”

“Let’s talk about this returner business again slowly.”

“You’re going to deny it anyway.”

“Me? Haha…”

Busted, huh?

Jung Hwi-kyung deliberately put on an awkward expression. But it would be strange to ask “How did you know?” at this point. Lee Gyo-ha just turned his head with a noticeably dejected expression.

Making such a pitiful face in this situation doesn’t really evoke any sympathy. Hwi-kyung intended to scrutinize why Gyo-ha suddenly brought up the word ‘return’.

It was surprising how he could casually utter the word ‘return’ with such an ordinary face. Isn’t it embarrassing to say that word out loud?

However, before Hwi-kyung could politely rephrase “Stop talking about returning, it’s embarrassing,” Gyo-ha spoke first.

“Every time you return, I go back with you.”

“…What?”

“Every time you return, I get dragged along too!”

What is he talking about? Jung Hwi-kyung was dumbfounded. It was nonsense. Although he had returned to the past several times due to getting the wrong job, until now, no one except Hwi-kyung himself remembered the previous rounds. He had even tested various people in the early rounds.

So how could someone now claim to be involved in his returns? What on earth was Lee Gyo-ha saying? Of course, Lee Gyo-ha was Hwi-kyung’s superior and an executive director at BK International, but that wasn’t reason enough to return along with Jung Hwi-kyung.

He’d had so many terrible bosses before, and yet someone like Lee Gyo-ha…

“What exactly are you, Director?”

“What?”

“I mean, why would you return with me? We just met for the first time this time around.”

Jung Hwi-kyung couldn’t help but voice his thoughts. As soon as he said this, an all-too-familiar notification window appeared before his eyes.

Insufficient conditions: Your workplace superior is spouting nonsense.

“We may have just met this time… Originally, I was going to stuff you in a drum and dump you in the Pacific Ocean as soon as we met.”

At this rate, he was about to enter the 14th round. Jung Hwi-kyung dismissed the notification window with just a glance. He desperately wanted to smack Gyo-ha’s head and return right away, but now that his workplace superior had mentioned ‘returning’, he couldn’t act recklessly.

“Nonsense? Does this sound like nonsense to you?”

“…What, you can see this too?”

“Yes.”

“Ha, fuck…”

As he swore openly at work, another notification window popped up.

Insufficient conditions: You have used inappropriate language in the workplace.

Jung Hwi-kyung rubbed his face dry and grabbed Lee Gyo-ha tightly. A workplace superior returns with me when I return? This was truly the worst.

“Given the situation, you’ll have to cooperate with me.”

Seeing Jung Hwi-kyung’s eyes roll back as he brought his face close in an instant, Lee Gyo-ha could only gulp dryly. He hadn’t noticed before, but looking at him like this, Hwi-kyung seemed out of his mind.

It made sense though.

After all, Jung Hwi-kyung was a tragic returner who goes back to being a job seeker whenever he gets employed at a black company…

#001

What’s the favorite color of Koreans?

According to a survey with only about 350 respondents, Koreans like blue the most. That’s assuming those 350 or so people can represent all Koreans.

However, regardless of their preference for blue, Koreans tend to choose achromatic colors when it comes to clothing. This can be seen as people’s desperate attempt not to stand out too much in Korean society, where the saying “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” still exists.

Among achromatic colors, black is considered the most neutral. Even people with the most colorful wardrobes probably have at least one black T-shirt or pair of pants. Unlike white, where stains stand out, and unlike gray, which shows sweat marks clearly in summer, black – or rather, the color black – has long been successful in Korea because it’s less embarrassing.

How successful? To the point where even companies are all black companies.

[Hwi-kyung]

[I didn’t think you were like that]

[Don’t you think you’re being too irresponsible?]

Jung Hwi-kyung checked the message from the CEO of the company where he had worked as an intern for a month, then blocked the CEO’s number.

He shouldn’t have hastily joined a startup that a friend desperately introduced when he was short on money. He shouldn’t have believed them when they said he could balance it with his last semester of university. He should have run away quickly when they tried to make him, an economics major, do design and coding at a startup with fewer than five employees.

Hwi-kyung could fully understand why his friend had urgently stuffed him in there and ran away after just one day on the job. This bastard, he sacrificed me to escape from here. No wonder he suddenly contacted me even though we weren’t that close.

Hwi-kyung himself was also at fault for hastily accepting the job because the salary was higher than working three part-time jobs. Naive new graduates like Jung Hwi-kyung who submitted their resumes without proper research got backstabbed like this.

To think he wasted a month on a salary he might not even receive anyway. Hwi-kyung felt like crying a little.

If he had done other part-time jobs for that month, he could have saved at least a few hundred thousand won.

It was fortunate that he had finished his last semester comfortably by submitting a leave of absence for employment when he had little energy left to study, but even that became difficult to prove because they didn’t provide the four major insurances, so he would have to re-enroll.

Hwi-kyung called his grandmother, pretending not to know about his upset stomach. For now, he could continue living with the money he had saved so far, but according to Hwi-kyung’s calculations, even his life savings would run out in half a year. Even if he canceled all his savings accounts, he would barely last a year.

As he was still a university student without a fixed income, it wasn’t easy for him to get a loan from the bank. Even his quick-calculating brain couldn’t suggest an alternative to Hwi-kyung.

“Mmm, my grandson. Did you finish work?”

“Yes. Just finished.”

“You finished early today. Have you had dinner?”

“I’m about to eat now. What about you, Grandma? The hospital meal is at 5:30, right? Was the soup okay today?”

If it weren’t for the insurance he had taken out for his grandmother, Hwi-kyung would have been out on the streets right away. Although the surgery and treatment costs were burdensome, what troubled Hwi-kyung the most recently was the hospitalization cost.

Even though they were using a relatively cheap multi-bed room, the longer his grandmother’s hospitalization period became, the faster the hospital bills grew to an amount Hwi-kyung couldn’t handle alone.

He thought it would be fine with surgery and chemotherapy since it was early-stage stomach cancer. Hwi-kyung never imagined that cancer cells could spread so quickly in an elderly person’s body. Even after cutting out the cancer mass and part of the stomach, Hwi-kyung’s grandmother continued to suffer due to cancer cells that had spread to other organs.

“I’m just causing you trouble… When you get old, you should die quickly.”

“Why do you keep saying such things? You should be thinking about getting better soon. I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow morning.”

“Why come when it’s hard for you? Just rest at home.”

“Who’s going to play Go-Stop with grandma if I’m not there?”

How could he abandon his only family?

Hwi-kyung’s parents had been out of contact for a long time. They were probably all alive somewhere, but they were now beings that could hardly be called family. Hwi-kyung’s parents, who stamped the divorce papers as soon as their son entered high school, regarded each other as mortal enemies.

Hwi-kyung also didn’t contact his parents first, who had left to find their own way. Until he became an adult, a substantial amount of child support was deposited monthly into his grandmother’s bank account from his parents, but after entering university, all financial support was cut off except for the first tuition payment.

It wasn’t the parents but Hwi-kyung’s grandmother who had taken care of the child wholeheartedly to ensure he wouldn’t grow up twisted. So Hwi-kyung couldn’t easily give up on his grandmother either.

The problem was that his grandmother started getting sick while Hwi-kyung was in the military. Because his parents were still on the family register, Hwi-kyung had to enlist in the military, leaving his grandmother alone.

His grandmother didn’t easily say she was sick, fearing her grandson would worry. As a result, Jung Hwi-kyung only found out that his grandmother had been diagnosed with stomach cancer after he was discharged. It was truly a series of misfortunes.

While walking, Hwi-kyung spent a long time searching part-time job sites on his phone. If he explained the situation to the teaching assistant and professor, they might let him graduate since there wasn’t much left in the semester. Then he could work part-time instead of attending classes. It was clear that earning money through part-time jobs would be more stable than working at such a black company.

As Hwi-kyung was endlessly scrolling through job posting pages without looking ahead, he entered a narrow alley and bumped into a hunched elderly person. His phone slipped from his hand and hit the asphalt ground, cracking its corner.

Ah, repair costs…. Even in that brief moment, Hwi-kyung worried about money.

“Oh my!”

The elderly person who collided with Hwi-kyung, thanks to Hwi-kyung’s quick reflexes in grabbing their arm, fell into the arms of a young stranger instead of falling to the ground. The elderly person, who fit snugly into Hwi-kyung’s arms, which were well above the average height of Korean adult males, just raised their head and stared at Hwi-kyung.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Oh my, oh my… What’s all this. It’s okay. You should check if your phone is broken first.”

After supporting the elderly person until they could stand properly, Hwi-kyung finally picked up his phone from the ground. The screen was cracked, but it still turned on. The text looked broken, but it wasn’t unusable. Hwi-kyung forcibly stuffed the phone into his jacket pocket.

“Oh dear, what are you going to do about your broken phone.”

The elderly person, who hadn’t left and was leaning against the wall, clicked their tongue after looking at the phone’s condition over Hwi-kyung’s shoulder.

“These days, things are made too fragile. Back in our day, you know, a phone would last ten years and still be fine.”

“That’s how things are these days, I guess.”

“It’s all marketing tactics, I tell you. Huh? They don’t even try to make things sturdy from the start.”

Hwi-kyung skillfully checked the elderly person’s condition as he would with his own grandmother. Although his phone was broken, the elderly person was fine without a single scratch.

“Where are you headed? I’ll carry your luggage for you.”

Even after confirming there were no injuries, Hwi-kyung took some of the luggage the elderly person was carrying. Although finding a part-time job was urgent, the situation wasn’t so pressing that he didn’t have time to escort the elderly person he had bumped into to their destination. The elderly person rolled their eyeballs at Hwi-kyung’s kindness.

“You’re a rare, upright young man these days. Not like the usual ones.”

“I hear that a lot. Maybe it’s because I was recently discharged from the military.”

“My, you’re even a bit cheeky for someone so young. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-six. I’ll be twenty-seven next year.”

Walking at a slow pace, Hwi-kyung chatted with the elderly person. More accustomed to conversations with older people than with his peers, Hwi-kyung didn’t mind the elderly person’s rambling words.

On the way to the traffic light, the elderly person recounted their past in detail. Starting from how disobedient their children were to how their grandchildren were all ill-mannered… They had no reservations about what to say to a stranger.

“If only my grandchildren were half as good as you, I’d have no complaints.”

“How old are your grandchildren?”

“I don’t know. The youngest one must be under thirty.”

From badmouthing their grandchildren to not even knowing their ages properly, they were a typical Korean grandmother. After escorting the elderly person to their destination, Hwi-kyung bowed again, apologizing for bumping into them. The elderly person looked at Hwi-kyung and chuckled before asking:

“I like you.”

“Pardon?”

“If I were to choose a grandson-in-law, I’d want a young man like you.”

Hwi-kyung just laughed off the comment. Grandson-in-law? It was difficult to react to every word uttered by an elderly person he had just met today. When Hwi-kyung neither affirmed nor denied, the elderly person straightened their posture. Just by changing their posture, their previously hunched back became quite straight.

“…I can’t just let such a kind young man go. Do you have any wishes?”

“Wishes?”

“Yes. I’m grateful, you see. This old lady used to be called Gwaneum Bodhisattva back in the day. I’ll grant whatever I can, so go ahead and tell me.”

“Haha… I appreciate the thought.”

If it’s about wishes, there are many. Hwi-kyung immediately wished in his mind, ‘Please heal my grandmother’s illness completely.’

But the elderly person before him was neither Hua Tuo nor the god of medicine, so it was obvious they couldn’t grant such a wish. Asking for a lottery win or suddenly having 10 billion won deposited into his account without tax issues was also far-fetched.

“Just… I wish I could get a good job.”

So getting a good job was the most realistic wish Hwi-kyung could think of. It was the same in that this elderly person couldn’t grant it, but at least it had a possibility of coming true.

“Preferably not a black company.”

Hwi-kyung blurted out those words without really thinking. How could this elderly person grant such a wish when they weren’t a genie from a lamp? In Hwi-kyung’s view, the elderly person probably didn’t even know what a “black company” was.

The elderly person rolled their unusually large eyes with prominent black pupils, then grinned, showing their yellowed teeth. Looking closely, there were at least three gold teeth. 

Hwi-kyung thought to himself, ‘She doesn’t look it, but grandma must be quite wealthy…’

“Is that all you want?”

“Come on, what do you mean ‘all’? Youth unemployment is so serious these days… And finding a good company is even harder.”

“Well, since it’s a request from an upright young man, I can’t not grant it. Including the broken phone… Alright, I’ll use some of my power. Oh my, it’s been a while, so I’m not sure if it’ll work well.”

“Haha…”

“I really like you.”

“Thank you.”

“So, let’s meet again next time.”

At that time, Jung Hwi-kyung just laughed when he heard those words. He thought she was a strange old lady, but there are attention-seeking elderly people everywhere. Hwi-kyung safely escorted the old lady to her destination and then turned on his part-time job app again.

[You have 1 unread recruitment alert.]

In that short time, someone seemed to have viewed Hwi-kyung’s hastily written resume. Hwi-kyung casually checked the company information that had viewed his resume. Wow, they provide the four major insurances without a probation period. Should I try going for an interview here? They even provide interview pay…

This was the beginning of all the tragedy.