While talking with the commissioner, I learned one more thing.
Even after moving, I’d been bothered by the black-suited gangster-looking men who stood out around the house, but it turned out they were security personnel assigned by the Tower Administration to protect Suho’s family.
The commissioner said that conflicts over security zones and frequent friction might occur between the security androids guarding Suho’s home and the human security personnel, and asked him to remove the androids.
What a joke.
How was he supposed to trust humans?
Suho’s crappy philosophy was that people could be cherished, yielded to, and treated with consideration, but they were never beings to be trusted.
Suho instead asked them to withdraw the security personnel. If they insisted on attaching guards to him, then they could protect him from as far away as possible.
Honestly, the security androids were far more trustworthy in every way.
And then,
when the commissioner said that it was something the entire nation longed for, and that he would soon announce the birth of South Korea’s tenth S-class Admittee through the broadcast media, Suho was aghast.
So he made a special request about that matter alone.
Please keep that a secret.
The commissioner tried to persuade him, saying that this was an S-class Admittee they were talking about, and how could that possibly be kept secret? Besides, if it were kept secret, it would be difficult to provide him with various benefits.
But most of those benefits meant little to Suho anyway.
On top of that, Suho repeatedly insisted that it didn’t matter, since he wasn’t going to enter the Tower anyway and would only be loitering around the area doing Collecting.
The commissioner, who insisted it had to be made public, and Suho, who absolutely refused, clashed fiercely, and it was only when Suho threatened, “Then I won’t do any Collecting at all, nor will I register any items at the auction house,” that the commissioner finally backed down.
The commissioner, who reluctantly answered that he understood, seemed thoroughly unreliable... but for the moment, the matter was settled.
* * *
“...Suho. What the hell is this place? It doesn’t suit us at all.”
After a long while, he called his friend Seongsik out to an upscale barbecue restaurant.
It was a top-tier beef restaurant that served premium hanwoo aged for a long time.
He rented a private room and sat across from Seongsik.
“What do you mean it doesn’t suit us? It’s not like this is anything special.”
“We could’ve just met at the pojangmacha we always went to, or somewhere like that.”
“Come on, who goes to places like that? You only go when you don’t have money.”
“......”
Seongsik stared at Suho with a startled expression.
With an indifferent look, Suho held out a bankbook to Seongsik.
“What’s this?”
“The money I owe you.”
Seongsik’s eyes widened as he opened the bankbook, then his brow furrowed.
After letting out a small sigh, Seongsik closed the bankbook and pushed it back toward Suho.
It was hard for Seongsik to keep up with the drastic changes Suho had gone through in such a short time.
“Dude, just take it. I’m not just giving you that money. It’s the fee for borrowing your suit before. What did I tell you? I promised I’d pay you back. I wore it really well back then.”
“......You crazy bastard. Don’t give me that bullshit. Who the hell pays 10 billion won as a fee for borrowing a suit...”
Whether he did or not, Suho merely shrugged.
“...I heard from Jiho too. You awakened as an Admittee, right? Well... I don’t know the details, but I heard you made a lot of money thanks to that. That’s good. Really good. I was honestly so overwhelmed, like it happened to me.”
“You were? Thanks.”
“...But listen. Suho. Aren’t you acting a bit strange?”
At Seongsik’s sudden, direct question, Suho took his mouth away from the water he had been drinking and slowly set the cup down.
“Me...?”
“Yeah, you’ve gotten strange. I’m wondering if you’re really the Suho I know.”
“What about me? What was I like before?”
“You saved everything, were thrifty to the point of being petty, timid but still said what you had to say, pretended to be indifferent but were secretly considerate, talked big but were also damn cowardly...”
“Fuck, are you trying to compliment me or insult me?”
When Suho frowned, Seongsik smiled.
“Yeah, you just now kind of went back to the Suho I used to know!”
“You bastard... what bullshit.”
“Right, that’s it.”
Seongsik was happy at some strange point, and for some reason, Suho also felt an inexplicable comfort from him.
After they chuckled for a while over pointless chatter, Seongsik spoke.
“Dude. It’s good that you got rich, and it’s good that you awakened, it’s all good. I really congratulate you. I really do. It’s all great, but there’s just one thing I hope you don’t lose.”
“What’s that?”
“Your humanity. The humanity you originally had, you bastard. You know that? Without your humanity, you’re a corpse, man. A zombie, a zombie.”
Seongsik chuckled again, and only then did Suho feel as though the focus was returning to his pupils.
“...Yeah... You might be right.”
Because he really had felt like everything in the world had become meaningless, as if he were turning into a zombie.
For some reason, emotion surged in his chest.
Whether he knew how Suho felt or not, Seongsik continued.
“Hey, remember when we were kids?”
As a childhood friend, Seongsik was his one and only friend who shared all his memories from childhood.
If he started talking about memories with this guy, there really would be no end.
“We really had nothing to play with back then. Your parents and mine were strict as hell, so they absolutely wouldn’t give kids phones.”
“They were.”
“Thanks to that, I became a master of folding colored paper.”
“Don’t even get me started. Thanks to that, I became a master of coloring with colored pencils.”
At those unforgettable memories, the two of them chuckled for quite a while again.
When the laughter died down, Seongsik spoke as if drawing out a distant memory.
“Still... those days were fun.”
“...Yeah.”
As they talked, memories came vividly back to life.
A good memory came to Suho’s mind as well.
“Hey, remember that? When we packed chicken and climbed the hill behind the neighborhood?”
“Ah, in our third year of high school?”
“Keke, yeah. Saying we needed to clear our heads. Heh. We said the hill behind the neighborhood was just a hill, so we ordered two chickens and carried them up.”
“I remember. I even remember what chicken we ate back then. It was probably soy-sauce fried.”
“Right. Fuck, we didn’t even use our heads at all, so there was nothing heated up, but we said we were cooling them down. Kkkkk.”
“Hahaha. That’s right, that’s right. We were really ridiculous.”
“Ha, seriously. But that chicken back then was really good.”
“It was the chicken of our lives.”
The two of them were immersed in happy memories.
Top-grade hanwoo came out, and even as they ate the meat grilled by the staff, the two of them got heated talking about the cheap junk snacks they’d eaten as kids.
It may have been nothing more than indulging in nostalgia, but chatting quietly with Seongsik made Suho’s heart feel warm.
It felt as though the heart that had been about to pierce through the atmosphere and say farewell to Earth had somehow quietly descended and settled back into the real world.
After laughing for a long while, Seongsik’s face turned wistful.
“When you think about it, happiness doesn’t seem to depend on how much wealth you have.”
“...Fuck, did you become a philosopher or what?”
“Kiki, even I think that was a bit cringe.”
“Glad you know.”
“You too, man. Now that you’re an Admittee, you’ll make a ton of money, but don’t just laze around with it. Try doing some proper work.”
“Work? I am working, dude.”
He bought a house, bought a car, bought security androids, sold items at the Ontower Auction House...... Tsk.
As various things came to mind, Suho simply shut his mouth.
“When I asked Jiho, he said you still haven’t entered the Tower even once?”
Ow, just how much did that bastard Jiho blab?
As a childhood friend, Seongsik was close with everyone in Suho’s family.
“Suho. Let your hyung say one thing.”
“Hyung, my ass. Your birthday’s later than mine.”
“Take it to heart. Work, you know. Everyone works to make a living, but that’s not all there is to it.”
“You do it all to make a living. What else is there?”
“Work is... the point of contact that connects an individual to the world and to society. Through that, people gain relationships, feel a sense of achievement, realize themselves, and anyway, whether they like it or not, they come to find meaning in various ways.”
For a moment, Suho felt his head ring.
Maybe those were the words he had needed most.
When did this bastard get so smart?
“Hehe, look at your face. Were you moved? Pretty amazing, right? But actually, that wasn’t my thought. It’s what my dad said. He said that after he retired, he felt so lonely.”
“Really? Doesn’t your father get a lot in pension?”
As far as Suho knew, Seongsik’s father, who had been a high-ranking public official, received quite a large pension.
“Yeah. He gets a decent amount. The pension comes in regularly, and there’s no problem making a living... but without work, he says he feels like he’s floating away from the world. Traveling only lasts for a while, and he says he doesn’t feel alive and wonders why he’s living. That’s when he said that. So these days, he started working again.”
“Work? What kind of work is he doing?”
“Something like cleaning buildings, but he says it’s rewarding and fun. He’s made a lot of friends there too.”
“......Your father is damn cool.”
Suho truly thought so.
“Work is the point of contact that connects the world and the individual.”
Even after he parted ways with Seongsik, those words lingered with Suho for a long time.
So that was why people who quit everything and sat at home after winning the lottery ended up unhappy?
That thought also came to him.
It wasn’t someone else’s problem. It was an issue more urgent for him than anyone.
To escape this emptiness that made him feel as though he were floating away from the world, he had to be satisfied with smaller things and focus on things closer to him.
He needed work that felt like real work.
* * *
“Mr. Jeong Suho, what is your reason for wanting to join our company?”
“Yes, there’s nothing else. The reason I applied to and prepared for the Agency is because I wanted to form a connection with this place.”
“That’s too abstract. Did you come here to make rhymes?”
“I’m serious. Beyond simply applying for work in management, I applied here because I wished to form a connection in which I could directly manage Admittees, and in particular, properly care for the life and mentality of an S-class Admittee.”
“......I have no idea what you’re talking about... I’m beginning to doubt whether you even looked into our company properly before coming here. Do you think work caring for S-class Admittees will fall into the lap of an agency? Spouting whatever comes to mind like that doesn’t make you look ambitious.”
“It’s the truth. I’ll work hard and produce results!”
“...That will be all. Please send in the next person.”
Suho left the interview room.
For some reason, this made him more nervous than anything else.
Yes, perhaps this job interview was the very fruit that Suho, an ordinary human, had built up through his own efforts.
He had passed the first and second rounds, only to throw away the interview because of Cheonyangwon (Human) and Cheonyangwon (Gold), but there was a reason he had deliberately come back.
The completely unadaptable position of being the owner of Cheonyangwon’s subspace,
and even the fake title of S-class Admittee, did not feel like they were his.
But joining this Agency felt like it was his, like it was his work.
We are pleased to inform you that you have passed the Agency interview exam.
New employees, please refer to the schedule below.
Intern Employee Orientation Schedule
- Date and time: ......
- Location: ......
Perhaps it had been true that the interview was nothing more than a formality, because even after he interviewed like that, a notification of acceptance came.
Cheonyangwon’s subspace wasn’t something he had to work on anyway...,
so while occasionally playing the part of an S-class Admittee, fake title or not,
wouldn’t it be fine to work hard at the Agency?
He decided to think of it simply.
Since he had already nailed down that he would not enter the Tower even as an S-class Admittee, the work that would regularly take up his time would ultimately be the Agency’s work.
“Phew, let’s go! Let’s really do this properly!”
He felt it was the best decision he had made recently.
* * *
Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.
The call came persistently.
Recently, there had been so many calls from unfamiliar numbers, and every one of them had been annoying, so Suho felt tense when he saw an unknown number.
“Tsk, these are usually insurance solicitations or something...”
He tried to push it away and ignored the call, but the calls continued steadily every hour or two without tiring.
“...Hello.”
A clear, ringing young woman’s voice came from the other end of the phone.
— Hello! Are you Mr. Jeong Suho?
“Yes, that’s me...”
— First, congratulations on awakening as South Korea’s tenth S-class Admittee!
Ugh, damn it, that commissioner...
“...How did you know that...?”
— Ah, I apologize for startling you. Since that is our work... Our Towerpia Management is the industry’s number one ultra-large management company, and we maintain close exchanges with the Tower Administration...
“Yes, yes. I understand for now. But what’s this about?”
— Ah, yes. Nearly all of the S-class Admittees in Korea are VVIP clients of Towerpia Management. The categories of our management services are on an entirely different level from those provided to Admittees of other ranks, and while considerable costs arise as a result, the Tower Administration is specifically set to cover those costs for S-rank Admittees.
“Ah, yes...”
Truthfully, he was not very interested.
No matter what they called management, it was just taking care of annoying, trivial parts of daily life, and a considerable portion of that could be handled by the security androids Minsu and Minji. Besides, he also had plenty of family members whose daily life was idleness.
“Thank you for the offer, but I don’t really need separate management.”
But perhaps something terrible would happen if she failed to close this deal, because the voice beyond the receiver turned urgent.
— P-please wait! Admittee Suho, you don’t have to do anything in particular. You can simply sign the contract, and call us only when you truly need us......
As Suho listened to the employee frantically emphasize the flexibility of the benefits, a thought flashed through his mind.
“By any chance...”
— Yes, yes! Please say anything!
“Since you’re also a management company, you must have various agencies below you as subcontractors, right?”
— Of course. As Towerpia Management is the largest in scale, we collaborate with and maintain contact with the greatest number of agencies.
“Oh, that makes sense. All right. That sounds interesting. Then I’ll sign the contract.”
Although he had joined the Agency, it seemed like there would be a lot of annoying matters, so he thought he ought to take out an insurance policy.
— Thank you!!
The voice beyond the receiver brightened.