The Self-made Chaebol's Hidden Ember

Spring crept in on the tail end of March with a heat that surprised the city.

Jackets vanished from shoulders and store displays. Windows at cafes were flung open. Cherry blossoms exploded along sidewalks and quiet side streets, the first gentle indicators of the season's shift. Couples hung around on corners longer. The air no longer tasted of exhaust, but of beginnings.

But in the office itself, no flowers—only calendars filled with meetings, quarterly buzzwords intoned as mantras, and a sea of impending deadlines no season could melt.

To Yoo Minjae, the change brought opportunity—and gentle change.

He didn't change his pace. Still got there first, still departed following those who lingered behind to make a statement. But he saw the manner in which voices tightened up a notch. The manner in which meetings extended and patience wore thin. Pressure, and real leverage materialized.

Seori emerged at his desk halfway through morning, tablet sitting before her, forehead creased so deeply. Her coffee splashed with every agitated step.

"Minjae-ssi," she announced, no introduction. "The Operations Team's projection deck is in disarray."

He glanced up from his monitor. Unfazed, as always. "We're presenting with them next week, aren't we?"

"Aren't we. If they crash and burn, we crash and burn. We're meant to be on the same page, but they have competing growth assumptions and one slide simply reads, *'Potential Q2 swing?'* with a question mark. A question mark."

Minjae nodded once, revealing the dismay.

Seori hesitated, then continued, "I can push it higher, but they're. tactful. Not at all receptive to 'strategy' criticism."

He leaned in a bit further. "Will you let me try talking to them?"

She blinked. That wasn't the ask she'd been thinking of.

"Would you do that?"

"I won't lecture them on how to do it differently," he said, voice steady. "Just inquire about what's missing. Some people are more receptive to inquiry than to criticism.".

Her mouth curled. "You sound like a therapist."

"Perhaps they do."

Later that afternoon, Minjae made his way to Operations.

No fanfare. No badge of superiority. He walked softly, talked quietly. Most didn't look up. He waited for them to do that.

He wasn't walking with a critique.

He was walking with questions.

"Was the margin assumption changed after the restructuring memo?"

"Do you compare that to last year's volatility by supplier data?"

"How would you describe investors would respond to the drop in fulfillment rate?"

The words weren't confrontational—only sensitive. Accurate. Not suggestive.

Faces turned one by one. A team lead leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow at Minjae.

"You're… Strategy, I see?"

"Yes."

"You did work somewhere else before?" the man asked, still regarding him.

Minjae shook his head. "Just here."

The man grinned, then laughed. "You read numbers like a man who's taken losses. A handful more than that, I'd wager."

There was no way that he could possibly know what those words said—but for an instant, something old moved beneath Minjae's placid face.

"I read patterns," he answered.

And the words hung there, thick but unsaid.

By the end of the week, Strategy and Operations had jointly submitted a report—rarely agreed in their heyday for harboring grudges, not for working together.

Director Jang signed it with no comment.

And in their world, silence from the top meant the highest compliment.

---

Back home, all was back to normal with Minjae.

His parents stopped asking too much about work. They'd attempted at first. Asked for stories, inquired what "Strategy" ever was. But after so many unclear sketches, they settled for a simple explanation.

"Something with graphs and money," his mother mentioned once with a chuckle while putting the dinner table together.

"Just don't overdo it," his father warned, not unkindly, handing him a bowl of soup. "Burnout's real. Even if you're smart."

Minjae nodded, eyes steady. "I'm careful."

He always was.

Later that night, the apartment quieted. His parents retired early. Distant hallway lights dimmed. A neighbor's dog barked twice, then fell silent.

In his room, Minjae sat at his desk—not reviewing work slides, but checking three separate bank accounts.

None bore his name.

The money was scarce. Deliberately unnoticeable. But it was accumulating—growing steadily and methodically.

One account connected to a small Busan trucking company.

Another routed through a technology startup in the suburbs of Seoul.

A third held convertible notes from a sleeping supplier cooperative renamed with new names.

Under cover of modest investors. Protected by nominee directors. Low-profile. Compliance. Within the law.

He wasn't concealing money.

He was dispersing it.

Power, as with magic, grew brittle when it was amassed in a single location. Even dragons—particularly dragons—had yet to grasp that in time.

Even his own kin.

---

Later, once it had grown dark and the washing machine thrummed in the distance, Minjae sifted through his standard sources—streams of economic information, exclusive research reports, disreputable geological surveys.

And then he spotted it.

A brief article in one of those European academic publications. Esoteric. Refereed. The sort of thing no unsuspecting reader would ever find.

A distant volcanic ridge within the Mediterranean plateau had started releasing weak but periodic electromagnetic pulses.

No quakes. No tectonic activity. Just anomalies.

Metered. Rhythmic.

Minjae sat up straight.

He read the sentence three times. Then once more slowly. The words were technical. Scientists speculated interference, or maybe unorthodox mineral interactions.

But Minjae knew.

He had no idea *what* it was.

But he could see *the shape* of it.

Not magic.

Not in any obvious way.

But the signal… pulsed like a heartbeat. Like a pressure against the veil.

Dysfunctional enough to go unnoticed. Configured enough to be un-Natural.

He bookmarked the journal silently.

Closed the laptop.

Didn't get up.

Outside, a stray cat darted under the streetlamp. The city drew breath in sleep. Somewhere down the corridor, the washing machine stopped clicking.

Minjae sat in darkness.

Still.

Listening.

Waiting.

Not for a sign—but for a pattern to be drawn out of cacophony.

Once king of skies and flame, now reimagined in steel and calculators, he waited with the patience of an occasional ruler only.

Not waiting for power to come back.

But for the first ripple that informed him it had already started.