Prologue

I hate parachutes.

Not the kind you use when you jump out of a plane. I mean the kind who “land” in a company through family connections even though they don’t have the skills, the kind of spoiled rich kids who get unfairly placed into a job.

I’m sorry to my parents for saying this, but I was what people call “dirt poor.”

I was born into a family so poor we were basically falling apart, and I spent my entire life drowning in debt. From the moment I finished elementary school until I became an adult and finally got a job, there wasn’t a single kind of work I didn’t do.

Of course, I mean only legal jobs.

After suffering through every kind of hardship during my school years, I naturally came to understand something.

If I wanted to escape poverty, I had to graduate from college.

During the day, I worked like an emotionless machine. At night, I clenched my teeth and studied while fighting off sleep. I wasn’t especially smart, but when it came to persistence, I never lost to anyone.

I couldn’t afford private tutoring, cram schools, or even paid online lectures like other kids.

But the fear that if I didn’t study, my future would be nothing but a hopeless rock-bottom life… that fear made me stubborn and relentless.

I devoted myself to nothing but part-time jobs and studying. Through pure effort, completely on my own, I kept my grades near the very top of my school.

My report card was my only source of pride.

Because I had no money, no connections, and no support, my grades were the only thing that let me hold my head up and live with dignity.

Every single day, I worked myself to death, and I studied myself to death.

And when I finally got accepted into the university I wanted… I was so happy it felt like I owned the whole world.

Looking back now, I think it was just a naive dream a young person could have.

Back then, I didn’t know.

That if you work yourself to death and study yourself to death…

All you get in the end is dying sooner.

It was my fifth year after joining the company.

That was when it happened.

A parachute hire landed in our team out of nowhere.

Not just any rich kid either.

A diamond spoon.

The grandson of a powerful political figure, a four-term National Assembly member who had even served as the leader of a major political party, failed to “land” at headquarters and got shoved into our company instead, one of the affiliates.

As soon as the news spread, everything related to our company, online and offline, exploded.

People dug up everything: his family background, his personal life, all kinds of business connections tied to his family, school ties, regional ties… even the breed of the pet he supposedly owned.

Unverified rumors and wild speculation flooded anonymous message boards.

And on his very first day at work, the parachute hire proudly introduced himself.

“I’m ○○○’s grandson. You know, the National Assembly member.”

And unfortunately…

I ended up being the one assigned to train him.

In the middle of our busiest season, too.

I complained to HR again and again (I objected, argued, raised hell… call it whatever you want), but it was useless.

My luck had always been terrible, but this was on a whole different level.

Like most companies in Korea, the place I worked at was a modern-day slave factory that ran by grinding its employees down and squeezing them dry.

In my five years there, I’d been taken to the ER three times.

And I don’t mean times I walked in on my own because I thought I might die.

I mean three times I collapsed while working overtime and got carried into an ambulance.

Even back when I was a student, working part-time jobs and staying up all night studying, I’d never once fainted.

But at this job?

I did.

That day was another brutally busy year-end, like always.

After more than ten straight days of overtime, my body and mind were barely connected anymore.

By the time you’ve been working five years, people say you’ve built up experience.

Meaning, you usually don’t have to push yourself as hard as you did when you first joined.

Not because the work decreases, but because the longer you work, the more you learn tricks to handle things faster.

Even if you have more work than a new employee, you can finish it way quicker.

So why was I, a fifth-year employee, pushing myself like a rookie again?

For the obvious reason.

The parachute hire.

Even though he was a newbie, he had the mindset of an executive.

He came to work later than the company directors and left earlier than the CEO.

The company was located on the outskirts of the capital area, in a newly developing new-town district.

On his first day, he bragged that he had no choice but to buy an apartment nearby just to commute to work.

And yet, even though he lived only a ten-minute walk away…

He was late every single morning.

When I warned him not to be late, he said he couldn’t help it because he only drank coffee from a specific brand.

So he had to stop at a café twenty minutes away by car first.

Then he complained nonstop about how the area was underdeveloped and there was nothing around.

His attitude was beyond shameless.

It was so thick-skinned and arrogant that I had to control my blood pressure every day.

The parachute hire was missing a lot of things: basic manners, common sense, tact, awareness…

But one thing he also didn’t have was excuses.

Because he didn’t even make excuses.

He simply acted like everything he did was completely natural.

During work hours, he openly used the company computer to search Michelin restaurants and trendy “hot places,” because he needed to maintain and improve his relationships with the women he was flirting with.

He had to “make time” to call them every hour, too, of course.

And because he needed to enjoy his evenings, he left early no matter what.

Even if the whole team had to stay for overtime, he would just leave by himself.

He dumped his work on everyone else and walked out of the office smiling like he owned the place.

Out of all the paycheck thieves I’d ever seen in my life, he was easily number one.

A complete robber.

Even after more than a month, he still couldn’t make a single proper graph in Excel.

His “science major” label felt like a joke.

The only time he showed any computer skills was when he searched articles and wrote nasty comments online.

And that degree he claimed he earned in the US?

I couldn’t help but wonder if he bought it with money.

Because even his conversational English was weak.

For proof, he openly avoided calls from overseas business partners.

And he wasn’t even sneaky about it.

Because the youngest member of a team is usually the one who answers the phone, our team had no choice but to reroute the calls to me.

He had no skills, no sense, and no ability.

And yet no one could touch him.

Even the team manager and the senior staff couldn’t say a single harsh word to him, afraid of upsetting His Precious Parachute Highness.

So what chance did I, just a regular employee, have?

Timing also made things worse.

Our company had been selected for a government-funded national project.

It was thanks to headquarters’ flawless lobbying, but that lobbying also meant we ended up having to accept the grandson of a four-term lawmaker…

Anyway.

We won a massive canal construction project jointly funded by three Central and South American countries.

It was a huge long-term project, so a lot of employees were sent overseas.

In Korea, we supported them using every method possible.

Everyone was so busy they were practically going insane.

But of course…

Of course, I had to be the one stuck dealing with the rotten byproduct of that lobbying.

Seriously. Why?

Why did I have to carry this?

Why did I have to carefully “host” and “serve” a diamond spoon so useless he was no better than the pigeons wandering around the flowerbeds outside the office?

Why did I have to wipe his ass for him?

Sometime after 3 a.m., I finally finished my delayed calls with staff from a Brazilian partner company and put the phone down.

My throat tasted like metal.

My eyes burned and stung like sand had been rubbed into them.

I couldn’t breathe properly.

The graphs on the screen looked like they were swaying like ocean waves.

I had felt these symptoms before.

Right before I got taken to the ER.

And based on experience, once these symptoms started, I wouldn’t even last one hour before collapsing.

I knew I couldn’t keep going.

So before I could get carried away again, I decided to go to the hospital on my own and at least get an IV drip.

As I started packing up to leave, my phone buzzed nonstop.

At this hour, there was only one place that would contact me personally.

Home.

Instead of answering, I lifted my unfocused eyes and scanned my desk.

A filthy mess scattered with empty high-caffeine drink bottles and calorie bar wrappers.

In one corner, pamphlets and manuals about rental deposit loans were jammed into place.

The vibration stopped, and a moment later, I received a text message.

Mechanically, I picked up my phone and opened it.

It was from my mom.

[Your brother got badly hurt. Come to ○○ Police Station right away.]

Why was it that at that moment… I suddenly remembered something the parachute hire had said a few days earlier in the cafeteria?

> “That’s all just an act, honestly. If they can’t afford food, they should just eat ramen. They’re poor because they’re lazy. If you’re hungry, you should work. Why are they begging and showing their face like that? It’s pathetic. Our country’s minimum wage is so high, everyone knows that. People starving to death because they can’t buy ramen that costs a few hundred won? That’s just fantasy in Korea. Poverty fantasy.”

The screen he pointed at with his chopsticks was showing a public service advertisement encouraging people to donate.

From middle school until right before I joined the company, I worked nonstop.

Now I was over thirty, five years into my career, and I still had less than three million won saved.

Student loans that still had a long time left before repayment.

Household debt and interest under my parents’ names.

And the debt deducted from my paycheck every month because I was listed as a joint guarantor for my older brother, who kept starting businesses, failing, and going bankrupt over and over again.

Debt.

I was sick of this miserable home.

I wanted to escape so badly that I scraped together every last bit I could save.

But even that tiny amount of money…

If I went to the police station and paid off my brother’s “settlement money” again…

It would vanish like smoke.

Would that bastard call even this kind of poverty “laziness”?

I hate parachutes.

No…

Maybe…

Maybe I’m just jealous of the overflowing confidence someone can have when they can link poverty to “fantasy.”

Dragging my heavy legs, I left the office.

Wet snowflakes made a soft crunching sound as they covered the empty streets.

It was a white Christmas.

I stood by the roadside, trying to catch a taxi.

My phone kept buzzing, urging me to answer.

My head spun.

Even while staggering, I kept remembering the things the parachute hire had said.

And I started laughing. Heh. Heh.

“If you can’t eat, eat ramen? Who the hell do you think you are, the Rose of Versailles? The fantasy is your brain, you amazing psycho.”

Even as I slipped on the icy sidewalk tiles half-frozen with sleet, I think I was laughing.

Or maybe I was crying.

Either way, I lost my balance, bounced into the empty road, and fell.

And of course, right at that moment…

A car speeding through a red light slammed into me.

I don’t remember whether, in my final moment, I desperately wished that in my next life I could live like a parachute hire, with an “amazing brain circuit” that had eaten common sense for breakfast.

But one thing was certain.

Right before I died, I thought something like that.

And some unknown existence must have granted my wish.

“A-Agassi! Please wake up! Miss, please wake up!”

Then it should’ve ended there.

So why the hell did you bring back my memories from my past life too?!

“A-Agassi! Miss Marie!”

Who am I even supposed to complain to about this?

I can’t even begin to guess.