“Hold on a second. I don’t really know how to film videos.”
Manager Nam fumbled around, pressing several buttons in a row. When Kim Iwol held out a hand, he willingly passed over the phone.
Pretending to change the settings for higher video quality, Kim Iwol casually started the conversation.
“You must be close with your daughter. You even talk about idols together.”
“Pretty normal for a father and daughter.”
Manager Nam had always taken pride in how good his relationship with his daughter was.
Kids these days are supposed to get terrible during puberty, but not our Jua. You’ve got no idea how affectionate she is with her parents.
Kim Iwol had heard those lines enough times for his ears to wear out. Manager Nam’s love for his daughter never seemed to dry up.
“Normal? A father-daughter relationship that close is rare.”
For a man whose greatest pride in life was being “like friends” with his daughter, there was hardly a better thing to say.
Sure enough, Manager Nam’s lips curled upward.
One more thing.
People like Manager Nam — authoritarian, obsessed with appearances and status...
“Must be thanks to Team Lead Nam taking such good care of things.”
...felt a tremendous sense of displeasure when someone got information about them wrong.
“You don’t know what kind of coffee I like?”
“You forgot I don’t eat seafood?”
All fundamentally the same thing.
People like him believed everyone should naturally know things about them. Because they viewed themselves as people who influenced others.
And their swollen egos weren’t limited to people close to them.
That tendency to obsess over even trivial slights surfaced even with complete strangers.
“You expect me to drink something this bitter?”
“You really needed me to spell that out for you?”
Comments like those.
They believed others should accommodate them in every possible way as though providing customer service...
“I’m not a team lead. Assistant manager.”
...and they could never rest until they corrected another person’s mistake, slip of the tongue, or misunderstanding.
If someone understated their achievements, that was actually preferable. Correcting them became an opportunity to make themselves seem even more impressive.
But when it went the other way, their pride got bruised. Even if the other person had no such intention, they interpreted it as disrespect.
So they deliberately humiliated people over it. By pointing out someone else’s mistake, they soothed their own wounded ego.
Still, because Kim Iwol had just spent several minutes flattering both him and his daughter, Manager Nam’s method of correction had been relatively mild.
Which meant Kim Iwol had advanced into the category of “not completely unpleasant” in the eyes of a man who instinctively looked down on strangers.
Especially because Manager Nam currently wanted something from him.
Today’s plan started with provoking Manager Nam using all the information Kim Iwol had accumulated while dealing with him in the past.
To do that, he first needed to push this lukewarm favorability to the extreme with absurd ease.
He needed trust before the real conversation could begin.
“Ah, maybe they haven’t informed you yet.”
“Informed me of what?”
“That your promotion luck has definitely come in. Since it’s basically confirmed you’ll become team lead, I assumed you already knew.”
Manager Nam wasn’t stupid when it came to organizational politics.
He instantly pieced together several things at once:
He had never introduced himself to Kim Iwol as an assistant manager.
The current HR team lead was clearly maneuvering for promotion to department manager, meaning the team lead position would soon become vacant.
And there was no reason an outsider like Kim Iwol should know any of that.
Which was exactly why Kim Iwol deliberately inserted meaningful wording into the sentence.
He wanted the phrasing to linger in Manager Nam’s head while he mulled over whether it had been empty flattery or something more.
In this case, that phrase was “promotion luck.”
If he had simply said “luck,” it might have sounded like fortune or coincidence.
But attaching “promotion” to it gave it a faintly superstitious undertone.
It seemed like a tiny difference, but Kim Iwol needed to carve each point carefully into Manager Nam’s mind.
To the general public — especially middle-aged people with zero interest in idols — Kim Iwol’s public image was overwhelmingly tied to that idol who had declared a comeback victory during the Korea-Japan match everyone thought was already lost.
And the impact of the fortune-teller variety show with millions upon millions of views couldn’t be ignored either.
Even clips alone of the shaman openly declaring that Kim Iwol was “someone who knows the future” had racked up unimaginable view counts.
On top of that, whenever celebrities in Korea became embroiled in scandals or got targeted by gossip channels, countless fortune-analysis YouTube channels inevitably dug up their birth charts and analyzed them publicly.
Kim Iwol had been no exception.
While his name flooded the news every day amid vicious public battles over accusations of abuse and immorality, provocative videos embellished with the real shaman’s mysterious statements — “I can’t see his face,” “He knows the future” — had spread everywhere under sensational titles.
And someone like Manager Nam, who loved taking interest in other people’s misfortunes, absolutely would have watched at least a few of those news clips and fortune-analysis videos aimed at middle-aged audiences.
Kim Iwol knew that for certain because he’d seen the man’s subscription list before.
More recently, footage of him dragging a member away from a collapsing stage before an accident could happen had even aired on national news.
Younger people constantly exposed to idol-related content probably remembered Kim Iwol in a variety of ways.
That guy from the Ministry of Employment commercial.
That actor who played the villain in that drama recently.
But for middle-aged men who ignored things they weren’t interested in, only paying attention to major incidents and remembering little more than the titles of short sensational clips...
Kim Iwol’s image became something else entirely.
‘A tragic young man with spiritual powers.’
Now that very person — someone publicly associated with mystical and supernatural rumors — suddenly knew intimate details about company affairs and calmly predicted a promotion.
At precisely the right timing.
With no apparent benefit to gain from lying.
People like Manager Nam were vulnerable to this kind of thing.
Kim Iwol knew stories about how he’d visited every famous fortune-teller he could find for the sake of his frail daughter when she was young.
Honestly, Kim Iwol didn’t particularly enjoy exploiting that fact.
Manager Nam’s eyebrow twitched.
“Is that so?”
His voice tried to sound casual, but excitement leaked through.
“I’ve never heard anyone say my accuracy rate is low.”
“Well, even if it’s just words, it’s nice to hear. Hahaha!”
While Manager Nam basked in satisfaction, Kim Iwol took a few performative selfies.
“Even if the official announcement isn’t out yet, you should probably tell your mother in advance.”
“You’re that confident? What am I supposed to do if you’re wrong after I tell her?”
“What does it matter?”
He’d already closed the distance using personal knowledge and strengthened his credibility with his public image.
Now it was time to move to the next stage.
Making sure Manager Nam never dared pull something like this again.
Looking into the camera lens as he pressed the record button, Kim Iwol said casually,
“She’ll be dead soon anyway.”
An absurd statement.
Delivered without a trace of hesitation.
“What?”
“Wouldn’t hearing good news make her passing a little easier?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kim Iwol saw Manager Nam’s expression harden viciously.
In the past, a look like that had always been followed immediately by shouting.
But this time, Manager Nam restrained himself for half a beat.
Probably because anger and confusion had collided at once.
“What a disgusting thing to say.”
“I don’t understand why it’s disgusting. It’s not exactly bad news for you, is it?”
Failing to show his mother his promotion to team lead had remained one of Manager Nam’s many regrets.
Every company dinner followed the same routine: he’d loudly proclaim how devoted his mother had been to him, then finish by bragging about how he’d overcome tragedy and risen all the way to department manager.
Unfortunately, this was probably unavoidable no matter how much advance warning he got.
If illness had been the cause, perhaps something could’ve been done.
But age itself left no room for human intervention.
Still, Kim Iwol thought he should at least be grateful for the warning.
“Spend the little time you have left being a good son.”
Compared to the way Manager Nam had kept calling Kim Iwol even while he sat vigil at a funeral until the day of the burial, wasn’t this practically merciful?
Kim Iwol was giving him a chance not to regret things after it was too late.
“She’s carrying the burden of your sins in your place. The least you can do is that much.”
“You little piece of shit!”
Manager Nam lunged for the phone.
Kim Iwol raised the hand holding it high overhead, and Manager Nam shoved him hard.
Dusting off his wrinkled shoulder, Kim Iwol said,
“You should’ve tried living like a decent human being. At your age, you should be making your child’s life easier, not committing this kind of filth as a parent.”
“Shut the hell up. You think I won’t spread this all over the internet and let everyone know what kind of garbage human being says shit like this—”
“You still don’t understand what it means when I say your mother’s going to die because of you?”
Manager Nam blinked blankly, unable to grasp the implication.
“It means you’ve committed so many sins that innocent people around you are paying the price.”
Hearing Manager Nam grow agitated over merely the possibility of someone dying filled Kim Iwol with fury.
The man clearly wasn’t incapable of cherishing people.
So why had he trampled all over other people’s lives so casually?
Kim Iwol wanted to ask.
But he forced himself to stay calm.
He hadn’t come here for personal revenge.
Even if it meant facing someone he wouldn’t want to meet again even in hell, there was still something he wanted to accomplish.
Kim Iwol alone wasn’t enough.
Someone unaccustomed to intimidating others would only produce a pathetic imitation if they tried threatening someone.
He had learned painfully through experience that bluffing while trembling accomplished nothing.
So he thought of Cheon Yunseong.
He recalled the role of the upright man who bowed to no one — whether powerful figures or corrupt monsters — as long as it meant achieving his objective.
Just for this moment, he accepted that his actions were immoral.
He erased from his mind the fact that the man before him was older, that he had his own circumstances and history.
Because he had to stop more victims from appearing.
“Ever heard the saying that evil spirits are cowards who only cling to weak people?”
Just like you.
Manager Nam’s eyebrow twitched again.
Kim Iwol smiled gently.
“Your daughter’s frail, isn’t she?”
Unable to contain his rage, Manager Nam grabbed Kim Iwol by the collar.
“I’m suing you. I’ll spread this everywhere online and make sure the whole country knows you’re a psychotic bastard who goes around saying this kind of shit. You think I can’t?”
“Do it.”
Manager Nam froze solid the moment that disrespectful informal speech came from someone young enough to be his son.
His eyes trembled pathetically.
Of course he was confused.
He was the one grabbing Kim Iwol by the collar, yet somehow he still felt like the one being looked down upon.
He was the one cursing and threatening violence, while the other person merely smiled.
There was no way someone like Manager Nam could process that situation properly.
Looking down at him now, he seemed unbelievably small.
Small enough that Kim Iwol questioned whether the years he’d spent suffering because of this man had ever been real.
Why had someone like this terrified him so much?
How could a man who looked ready to foam at the mouth just because someone younger spoke casually to him ever have been powerful enough to ruin his life?
A hollow laugh escaped him.
“Go ahead. Write your little hate posts online and throw your tantrums. Who do you think loses from that in the end?”
Then he pressed even harder.
Manager Nam needed to feel cornered for this conversation to mean anything.
The more shaken and anxious he became, the longer the fear would linger afterward.
And for that purpose, Kim Iwol had prepared a simple stage effect.
Because he’d been certain from the start that this storage room would become the stage for their conversation.
Manager Nam had dumped, quite literally, “everything” at Hanpyeong Industry onto Kim Iwol.
Years of carrying that burden had turned his mind into a bizarre encyclopedia of useless company knowledge.
For example:
The lights in this trash heap of a storage room shut off on their own fairly often.
But Kim Iwol was probably the only person who knew why.
A faulty switch connection.
The people at this company had an extraordinary talent for tolerating problems that could be fixed in minutes.
Even when Kim Iwol first joined the company, that issue still hadn’t been repaired.
The oversized shelves designed to cram in as many boxes as possible partially covered the switch as well.
Every time the metal frame rattled, the poorly installed switch took the impact too.
And the badly wired contact points — already infamous for shoddy construction — constantly caused flickering.
Whether he could actually make use of the lighting had been impossible to know until he arrived.
Thankfully, the moment the lights came on earlier and flickered weakly, they’d already confirmed the wiring was still unstable.
Everything was perfect.
“You think you’ve lived well because people waited on you hand and foot, praised you nonstop, and told you how amazing you were.”
Be afraid.
Even if you want to run, stay trapped because you’re terrified something will happen to your precious family.
Keep desperately praying that whatever words come out of my mouth next won’t be aimed at you.
Just like I did while working under you all those years.
“Wake up. Wanting good people — people who do everything you ask and practically kill themselves for your sake — to stay beside trash like you forever is greed.”
Manager Nam shoved him violently.
Kim Iwol slammed into the metal shelf with a loud crash.
And when that happened, the unstable light source didn’t even need someone to reach up and switch it off anymore—
“You keep living like this?”
—the indirect impact alone was enough.
With a sharp pop, the lights died.
The storage room was swallowed instantly by darkness.
“That person dies.”
All the blood drained from Manager Nam’s face.
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