My Company Is Black

#007

Because he hadn’t participated in company affairs at all, Lee Gyo-ha had relatively little media exposure for being the youngest son of a chaebol family. He even completed his military service before going to America, so there was nothing to criticize.

‘Still, the youngest isn’t interested in power struggles. That’s good.’

Despite working hard, Jung Hwi-kyung, as a regular employee, didn’t know the detailed inner workings of BK International. Hwi-kyung didn’t like talking about the company with coworkers, fearing he might trigger a forced regression by gossiping.

However, having eyes and ears, he inevitably encountered talk about power struggles at BK International in the previous cycle.

The current chairman has three children.

The eldest, Lee Jung-hye, has long been mentioned as the next successor. The second, Lee Sung-ha, is rumored to be a madman but manages a few businesses as the eldest son. And finally, the youngest, Lee Gyo-ha, who seemingly has no interest in company shares.

Anyone could find out this much with a quick internet search, even if they weren’t Hwi-kyung.

‘They say the chairman begs the youngest son to come back to Korea, promising an executive director position, but he shows no intention of returning. Isn’t that amazing? Even if his sister and brother are scary… How can he not be tempted by money?’

As Hwi-kyung clutched his head, recalling the previous cycle, he finally managed to extract meaningful information. It was information obtained from employees chattering among themselves in the pantry.

In the last cycle, Lee Gyo-ha did not return to Korea.

While Hwi-kyung was rising through the ranks at BK International, Gyo-ha was steadily building his career as a model in America. He wasn’t just modeling either. He even ran his own business unrelated to BK.

Thinking back, most of the articles about Gyo-ha that Hwi-kyung had skimmed over were full of praise. BK might have influenced people to write favorably about the youngest son, but they probably wouldn’t go to such lengths for Gyo-ha, who wasn’t deeply involved in BK-related businesses like Jung-hye or Sung-ha.

Hwi-kyung suddenly thought Gyo-ha’s past success seemed a bit excessive. Succeeding as a model, running an independent business unrelated to his family, and earning a doctorate in America? No matter how he looked at it, it seemed like too much.

Even to Hwi-kyung, who understood English, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and even programming languages, it felt excessive. To suppress the growing suspicion, Hwi-kyung opened an Excel spreadsheet.

Simple tasks were best for clearing the mind. As it happened, some miscellaneous work related to team operating expenses, which the HR team leader had picked up from the management support team, was floating around the intranet unassigned. Hwi-kyung willingly stepped up to take care of it.

The idea of another regression person appearing now? That was truly absurd. Appearing only after thirteen regressions would be too late an entrance. They should have shown up much earlier.

Moreover, it wasn’t immediately after a regression now. It had been over a year since the thirteenth regression. Hwi-kyung forcefully erased his suspicions about Gyo-ha. The whims of a chaebol’s youngest son would surely be an insignificant variable, on par with embezzlement margin of error.

* * *

Lee Gyo-ha was inherently lazy.

Because he found it bothersome to get angry at others, he became a more ‘sensible’ chaebol than his siblings. Born as the youngest son of a chaebol family, as if he had saved a country in a past life, he didn’t particularly need to live diligently.

People usually develop ambition when they’re a bit industrious, but Gyo-ha had neither the inclination nor the energy to be interested in succession battles. From childhood, Gyo-ha only liked living off others. He wanted to do everything in moderation.

He didn’t want to dive into the headache-inducing company affairs, nor did he want to end up as a shrimp caught between two whales, accidentally getting caught between his quarreling brother and sister in Korea, who would say, “Isn’t it time you took your place?”

From the start, Gyo-ha didn’t understand why siblings fought. Wouldn’t it be good to just share things reasonably? Money is nice to have, but not necessary…. This was the typical bourgeois perspective of “let them eat cake.” Having never experienced poverty, he couldn’t understand why people needed to work.

However, even the deceptive life of an overseas fugitive bourgeois wasn’t easy. Gyo-ha’s plan to go to America was, to put it bluntly, fucking sloppy.

I’ll just live comfortably and use my good looks to do some modeling!

This was the first-cycle Gyo-ha’s plan. If it seemed like he had no thoughts, that would be correct. He truly had no thoughts. Gyo-ha was an empty-headed devotee until he got caught up in forced regression.

But Gyo-ha had no problems living like that. After all, he was the youngest son of a chaebol family. If the American dream failed, well, he could just return home and live as an unemployed freeloader….

However, unlike Gyo-ha, his father, Chairman Lee Baek-gyeong of the Baekgyeong Group, had plans for his son’s move to America. He had no intention of letting his beloved youngest son live an easy life.

For this reason, while Jung Hwi-kyung was working overtime to death, Lee Gyo-ha was also being ground down across the water in America. He couldn’t properly start his modeling work despite signing a contract. This was thanks to the chairman personally throwing him into an integrated MBA-Ph.D. program at a prestigious American university.

Since your head is empty, at least fill it with knowledge through graduate school. You can’t live so thoughtlessly. Know that if you escape from graduate school, all support will be cut off.

Even a chaebol’s second generation couldn’t resist the threat of cutting off money. No matter how much Gyo-ha lived with a spirit of non-thought, non-imagination, and non-possession, he didn’t have the courage to give up everything he was enjoying. Gyo-ha reluctantly started his graduate school life. He had barely attended his undergraduate studies, and now a master’s… and not just a master’s, but a doctorate too….

He didn’t even have time to show his face at the agency because he was busy writing term papers and a graduation thesis. Damn graduate school! If they took so much money, shouldn’t they just create a non-existent degree and give it to him? Gyo-ha felt truly wronged. He hated the professor who didn’t understand his feelings.

Gyo-ha’s first regression occurred the moment he received his doctoral degree. The first words he said after returning to the past were “Fuck.” Fuck. Really fucking hell. He couldn’t help but swear. Anyone would want to die if they had struggled under a demanding professor to earn a doctoral degree, only to wake up back in the first semester of their master’s program overnight.

Until this point, Gyo-ha hadn’t even considered the existence of other regression people. It’s natural. If you regress just before getting your doctoral degree, you might think it’s because you didn’t write your thesis properly, not that someone else regressed and you followed suit.

So Lee Gyo-ha went through graduate school once more. Amazing! He attended fewer parties and met fewer people. He participated enthusiastically in classes and monopolized the professor’s praise. His previously empty head started to accumulate ‘common sense’ and ‘culture.’ The second-cycle Gyo-ha earned his doctoral degree faster than in the first cycle.

And then he regressed again.

Fucking hell! Gyo-ha regressed while drinking champagne at the school’s ball party after earning his doctoral degree. It was the moment when Jung Hwi-kyung, who had been forced to regress due to workplace sexual harassment, was about to throw a punch at his superior.

At this point, Gyo-ha finally started to think. Being more open-minded than Hwi-kyung, instead of turning to shamanism, he began to search through movies, novels, and dramas related to regression.

After thoroughly exploring all media featuring regression, Gyo-ha seriously pondered the cause of his regression. Was it because he wanted to kill his professor? Because he just partied after earning his degree? He had no clue what the problem was. There were too many issues.

To begin with, there should be more than just one or two rich kids who party a bit after studying abroad in America and then earn a Ph.D. in business. Gyo-ha did his best to figure out the cause of his regression in his own way. Even a chaebol’s second generation couldn’t handle three rounds of an integrated master’s and doctoral program in graduate school while sober.

However, no matter how clever Gyo-ha was, it was impossible to immediately find Jung Hwi-kyung, the cause of the regression, on the opposite side of the earth. Moreover, until the third cycle, Gyo-ha thought he was the protagonist. The timing of the regression was uncanny.

He regressed after earning his doctoral degree twice, so he thought the doctoral degree was the problem. At least in America, it was certain that Gyo-ha was regressing alone.

If there was a problem with him, it had to be because of graduate school. He couldn’t think of anything else. Not being able to consult anyone else about this problem was also an issue.

He remembered the harrowing experience of almost being reported for drug use when he told Amy, whom he had been close with throughout his time in America, “I’ve regressed.” True to his thoughtless nature, Gyo-ha concluded that he must have become a regression person because he was the student who most wanted to kill a professor in this graduate school. While the assumption that Gyo-ha was the student who hated professors the most in the graduate school was incorrect, it was quite a logical approach for him.

Although he tried to summon a system window that often appears in novels, nothing appeared, but Gyo-ha still believed he was the protagonist. After doing a Ph.D. twice, wouldn’t it be too unfair if he wasn’t the protagonist?

So in his third regression cycle, Lee Gyo-ha dropped out of university. He thought he might go crazy if he stayed in school any longer, degree or not.

He immediately signed a contract with a modeling agency and officially started his modeling career. Thanks to his good looks and decent walking skills, Gyo-ha was able to make a good living as a model even in America.

And then he unexpectedly regressed in the middle of a fashion show.