Unlike Marie with her plump cheeks, Hans’s body remained perfect.
Was it the difference in basal metabolic rate, or was it the male lead buff?
Her reaction made Hans burst into laughter.
In truth, even to his eyes, Marie hadn’t gained enough weight to worry about.
Her once twig-like arms and legs had filled out, making her look better now.
Plus, with just her cheeks being chubby, she looked adorable like a squirrel.
Due to their height difference and Marie’s extremely youthful appearance, whenever the two went out together, locals always mistook her for Hans’s younger sister, though she was actually a year older.
“Still no news about the listing. It should go public within this year.”
Marie mumbled weakly while picking up a snack.
“That company of Schrödinger’s you invested in?”
“Yes.”
Marie had only told Hans she’d invested in it to reassure him when he kept offering to contribute to living expenses.
He didn’t know she had invested almost her entire fortune except for this house.
Naturally, he also didn’t know that she had been receiving profits from Schrödinger’s company all this time, or how much wealth she actually possessed.
While price fluctuations were normal in the stock market, rumors of the impending public listing had kept Schrödinger’s company stock on a steady upward trend.
“Why not just sell now instead? Going public isn’t that easy. We can’t rule out the possibility that it’s just a false rumor they spread deliberately.”
“Come on, Schrödinger wouldn’t do that.”
Some investors had already sold, believing the peak had been reached due to the delayed listing, but Marie and most others continued to hold.
Patience was often rewarded.
“Are you close with him?”
“Oh, he was a regular customer since I only had the pastry shop. That’s right! The place where we first met twelve years ago was Schrödinger’s shop.”
“Ah……”
Hans nodded with an inscrutable expression.
He worried she might have been swayed by personal feelings and purchased essentially worthless stock at an inflated, bubble price.
“Things are a bit tight because patent application costs and attorney fees are higher than I expected.”
Marie’s ondol heating system patent was going through the proper procedures.
Even without any challenges from patent office examiners, patent registration would take at least a year and a half, and since everything here was done by mail rather than electronically, she needed to allow for even more time.
From patent registration to product launch would take even longer, so while it was her last resort, it wasn’t a card that could solve her immediate livelihood issues.
“I should meet with Schrödinger and ask how far along the listing review is. At this rate, my patent examination results might come back faster. I’ll have to deal with notices for submission of opinions, opinion letters, and amendment documents—such a headache. I just wish the listing review would go smoothly, like water flowing.”
“I still can’t get used to it.”
“To what?”
“You knowing patent procedures so well.”
Marie abruptly closed her mouth, having unintentionally shown off her background knowledge.
Though she couldn’t write specifications like a patent attorney, she was thoroughly familiar with the procedures from her time as a patent administration officer.
In fact, the laws and systems here were fundamentally similar to Korea’s in their basic framework.
That made sense, given this was a K-romance fantasy.
‘The reason people here never skip meals and eat regularly is precisely because it caters to the needs of K-readers who live on rice power.’
But she could hardly say that out loud.
“My patent attorney is so kind that he explained the procedures in such an easy-to-understand and concise way!”
“Really?”
“Oh, I forgot to bring in the morning newspaper!”
As Marie quickly rose to change the subject, Hans guided her back to the sofa.
“It’s fine. It’s cold outside.”
He said this before heading out to the entrance and returning with the morning paper.
Upon entering the living room, Hans called Marie’s name in a low voice with a serious expression.
“Marie……”
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“This, isn’t this Schrödinger’s company?”
He placed the newspaper in her hands with the front page visible.
A familiar company name along with a photo of its headquarters building was splashed across the page in huge print.
Marie’s face instantly turned pale as she read the headline.
“C-closed down?”
The tower of Babel she had built high toward her dream of unearned income came crashing down.
She had forgotten the “first principle of safe and wise investment to protect my money.”
Going all in with your entire fortune is dangerous.
※※※
The headquarters of 「Schrödinger’s Cat, Escape Room, and Pastry Shop」 was already in a miserable state after being ransacked by angry investors.
Marie sat on the sofa, trying to calm her trembling heart amidst the shattered furnishings and overturned furniture.
If Hans hadn’t come with her, she might have fainted long ago.
Nevertheless, she was barely holding onto her sanity.
She still couldn’t believe the situation and felt dazed.
Things were so bad that she had repeatedly asked Hans to pinch her cheek, hoping to wake up from this nightmare.
Though he initially refused, he eventually gave in to her insistence and pinched her hard once, leaving one of her cheeks as red as an apple.
Her entire fortune had turned to scraps of paper in an instant.
Not many people in the world would remain sane in such a situation.
“Strictly speaking, I haven’t filed for bankruptcy yet.”
Schrödinger, who seemed to have aged ten years since she last saw him, confessed with a guilty face.
“Is that… supposed to be reassuring now?”
Marie suppressed the urge to grab his collar and sob loudly.
This wasn’t the time to waste energy on unnecessary emotions.
It was a hundred times better to think of ways to salvage the situation.
“According to the newspaper, an employee embezzled funds and ran off?”
“Yes. I trusted a friend who had been with me since opening and put him in charge of our overseas branches, but I never imagined he would take the money and……”
As Schrödinger’s escape cafés flourished, an escape room boom swept through the Valdek Empire.
After that, imitators who copied Schrödinger’s business model sprang up like mushrooms, engaging in cutthroat competition with differentiation strategies, aggressive marketing through connections, and price wars, bringing several moments of crisis.
He also became entangled in lawsuits with companies that plagiarized his ideas and then claimed them as their own, but thanks to Marie’s advice to register patents for escape room puzzles and props from the beginning, he was able to defend himself.
After overcoming these crises, Schrödinger aimed for overseas expansion. In truth, demand abroad had existed long before, so he was rather late.
Even when many viewed escape rooms as a fading trend, his company alone survived.
Neighboring countries were still a blue ocean, and seeing this as a breakthrough, he decided to expand his business somewhat aggressively by establishing overseas branches.
With the company’s survival hanging on overseas market development, the branch manager had embezzled funds and fled right before the simultaneous opening of five overseas stores.
‘What should I do to that b*stard if I catch him?’
Marie naturally knew this shameless person as well.
When Schrödinger had introduced him, she had thought he was a diligent young man.
Indeed, it was difficult to know someone’s true nature just by looking at their face.
Marie was burning with anger, so how much worse must Schrödinger feel?
The betrayal of someone you trusted isn’t easily forgotten. Fraud involving money hurts even more.
For some people, it’s money they’ve staked their lives on.
Taking someone else’s money means holding their life and future hostage and k*lling their spirit.
That’s why economic criminals should be severely punished.
“The due dates for bank loan repayments and payments to suppliers were approaching, so I used what cash I had on hand to pay them, but……”
The branch manager’s embezzlement was so enormous that it made the newspapers despite the company not being publicly listed.
The estimated amount was over ninety percent of the company’s equity capital.
There was no way this could be resolved by using his personal funds to repay debts.
It was like pouring water into a bottomless jar—never ending.
That’s what a debt spiral was like.
To make matters worse, investors were now suspecting Schrödinger and the branch manager of being in cahoots.
Due to the embezzlement news, the stock price had also plummeted, leaving nothing to gain from selling shares.
“I’m so sorry, Miss. You invested your entire fortune trusting me and my company……”
Hans, who hadn’t known this fact, briefly turned his head toward Marie.
But Marie had no time to worry about such things now.
“I will definitely take responsibility.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I think I’ll have to sell the company.”
“What? Sell it?”
Would there really be a buyer willing to take on the debts of such a troubled company?
Reading the question that arose on her face, Schrödinger immediately answered.
“Duke Schultz has taken pity on my situation and offered this much.”
He showed her the contract sent from the ducal household.
Marie’s expression instantly hardened at the familiar name.
He was the villain from the original story whom she had forgotten about.
The mastermind who had driven a wedge between the current Emperor and Hans, the two brothers, causing Hans to run away from the imperial palace when he was a prince.
Marie suddenly felt extremely displeased.
‘The rich just get richer.’
While Schrödinger might think Duke Schultz was bestowing grace on him when facing bankruptcy, from the Duke’s perspective, it wasn’t a losing deal.
Once the overseas stores opened and the business normalized, the Duke would ultimately be the one to profit.
Marie would end up having cooked the porridge only to feed it to a dog.
“I oppose this sale.”
“Pardon?”
She was resolute.
She couldn’t simply hand over a company she had poured everything into to this world’s villain.
