From elementary school to university, there are countless student councils.
For student councils made up of people who aren’t adults yet, to put it nicely, they guarantee students’ autonomous activities...
“If you elect me, I’ll bring you more student welfare and revive the school soccer tournament that hasn’t been held in years...”
“You! You barely have enough time to get to cram school as it is, so how are you going to make free time to practice soccer?!”
“Yeah, I won’t say anything harsh, so just study quietly.”
To put it badly, they’re scarecrows that can’t do anything if parents or teachers so much as trip them up.
In an era in Korea where nothing matters more than studying, and then going outside to do even more studying.
Every policy that takes away someone else’s study time is nothing but a firefly before the sun in the face of the DNA for rising in the world and making a name for oneself.
“...Goddamn it, this wasn’t the kind of representative of the students I wanted to be...”
“I didn’t speak up in front of everyone just to follow the teachers around and do tricks like a pet!”
They stepped forward confidently just because it was an elected position, and now they must feel self-loathing and hardship over their situation, but what can you do?
Just think of it as a side effect of an era where the people voting don’t expect much either, and where “what is my class president handing out?” matters more.
Was this the price paid for allocating every last quota to university study during the period when people should have learned how normal leadership functions?
Or was it simply because they had become adults for the first time and finally had the chance to touch “proper authority and budgets”?
University student councils were prone to degenerating into structures that could be corrupted far too easily.
“For the general meeting, don’t use expensive snacks, haggle and inflate the price by 1.5 times! Reuse the alcohol from before!¹”
“Ah, for the snacks, don’t buy anything expensive, just put in some labor and make them ourselves... and buy a ton of puffed rice snacks!¹”
“Meat? Haha, make it all pork shoulder and only mix in a little pork belly! It’s not like the kids have much experience grilling meat, right?¹”
To put it simply, just cutting down on food costs for a sizable MT alone left a considerable amount of money.
“The scary ones are the professors. As long as you look good to the higher-ups, the remaining enrolled students are nothing!”
Basically, if you didn’t move as part of the student council, internal information wouldn’t leak.
First-years, steeped in assignments and alcohol, could be unilaterally pressed down by a student council with far more upperclassmen.
And most returning students who had finished military service tended to play solo.
If you provided a way out to some malcontents by saying, “Then why don’t you go do another club activity?”
They believed they would be safe, since those people had always slipped away through that exit on their own.
“Hey, you kept your ledgers and receipts, right? Lay them all out.”
“What?”
“A large number of people’s money got sucked in, so there’s no way you can’t disclose the books, and—huh? Look at these bastards? Did you pocket it?”
Whether they were seniors or whatever, just because they’d plastered someone’s name on a wall and given them dirty looks during class.
“Look at this. These bastards skimmed over 15% on average. If it’s this full of fat, it usually isn’t sold for grilling.”
Murmur, murmur...
After he had pulled up not only the prices from related businesses, but also the average prices near the shops they had frequented now and then.
“M-mistake! It really was our mistake! We’ll do better next time, so let’s just leave it at this...”
“Haha, once you’ve stabbed me, you should get stabbed once too. You can’t start crying already just because your skin got scraped a little.”
Reporters swarmed the school, shoving the reputation of a not-bad university into the mud.
—Recently, at one university, a student council that secretly used nearly 30% of the money collected under the name of customary practice...
They even kindly immortalized that disgrace on the nine o’clock terrestrial news so all of Korea could see it.
“What kind of disgrace is this for the university! Right now, every single one of you ‘remaining members,’ don’t you dare try anything even remotely like a student council!!”
The university president and department head expelled the main culprits and slapped the remaining bastards with fixed-term suspensions.
“...Everyone, I’ve been discharged from the army... what? Where’s the student council?”
“...There was one, but it disappeared.”
However, although the female manpower and upper-year manpower had been ground down at the time, the people who had gone to the military came back.
And among the newly selected people, there were some who said, “I’m going to climb to the top wherever people gather!”
“The first thing we start with is department jackets. Uniform standardization! We can subtly show the class year and apply pressure too.”
“Which company should we use? Still, if we want to show we have at least some conscience, we should use pleather, right?”
Among the collapsed ruins, all they did was order department jackets to show their will that they were open for business as usual...
“Hey, either you open the books, or all of you add criminal records to your résumés and get rejected in the job market. Choose wisely.”
“““Kyaaaaah—!!”””
Just as they were about to start doing business, the grim reaper stormed in and pressed his scythe against their necks.
“Y-you’re that damn bastard who slammed the door and walked out...?!”
“Well now, who do we have here? The guy who was always so late he never appeared in my field of vision was here?”
—Perfect. I can trample you even more mercilessly without a single scratch on my conscience.
Even when their skin had already torn and started bleeding, he put more strength into it without the slightest hesitation as a bonus.
***
Naturally, they tried to give Kim Chomok a simple answer to his request for the books: “Who the hell are you?”
“Y-you didn’t pay money! Shouldn’t someone who at least paid for the department jacket be the one requesting this?”
Logically, that was correct.
“Correct enough to get beaten.”
Craaaack!!!
Previously, he had used his sucker friend surnamed Jeong, who had paid money, to wrench out the receipts.
But the current Kim Chomok had a better means than that friend coiled up and asleep inside his body.
“Now, do you want to appear with me on the nine o’clock news flattened like this desk? Or do you want to receive my thanks?”
Someone might ask if this wasn’t a crime... but come on, something like that only becomes a crime if the victim reports it.
From the police’s point of view, what he had torn out of these would-be fraudsters through threats and property damage were receipts, and the perpetrator’s name was... Kim Chomok?
It was a name used only by women² in Korea, but it was attached to an adult man? Then it was 100% that bastard?
You would be able to see the commissioner of the National Police Agency having a fit and screaming, “What kind of judgment is that? Are you planning to throw police manpower into a gutter?!”
A firefight with revolvers against a madman who fought the military and only got scratched on the outside without a single internal injury? Haha, what a wonderful joke.
“If you want to catch me, every ability-user unit will have to come at once, but do you think they’ll come to protect your fraud?”
Unless at minimum a national corporation was smashed, the National Assembly was in danger, or the president was threatened.
There were no plans going forward for an operation to arrest Kim Chomok, because the cost-benefit simply didn’t add up.
Especially if he committed crimes against criminals, they might just close their eyes entirely.
There’s an old saying that you catch barbarians with barbarians, so catching criminals with a criminal isn’t that strange, is it?
“Is... is this what you call a country...?”
“If you’re pissed, then hurry up and join an ability-user unit too, wrestle with monsters all day, and come back.”
—I should have thrown a bastard like this in there and run instead of the countless soldiers buried at the National Cemetery.
Kim Chomok clicked his tongue as he half-forcibly seized the budget ledgers and receipts.
A few hours after he kicked the door open, smashing it, and left.
“Grrr... Again, it’s your department again...!! What kind of damn ill-fated relationship do I have with you people that we keep getting tangled up like this?!”
The university president, whose face they hadn’t even seen except at the entrance ceremony,
stormed into the empty club room they had been using as the student council room with a furious expression.
“Expelled, expelled!!! Every last one of you is expeeeelled, you bastards—!!”
Telling them to get out of his university immediately, he personally exercised the authority to erase their enrollment records.
“B-but we were just doing things the way they’d always been done...”
“Thanks to you, our university has become prey for news reporters again!!”
It wasn’t even the first time, and the same thing had happened twice, so how could he not be furious?
For starters, even if records of the money they received and the receipts remained.
Whether this data they had recorded haphazardly had been contaminated or not.
From Kim Chomok’s perspective, since he had no ability to see through other people’s hearts, it was impossible to determine...
“But since you have to hand them out to everyone who paid, you can’t lie about the number of department jackets, can you?”
No matter how wildly the price jumped up and down, as long as it was an order with a fixed quantity.
There was no need for a person to go in directly; if you asked the place that made the jackets while pretending to request a similar quote, the unit price came right out.
“I heard from the seniors that it cost this much... is that true?”
“Ahaha, we can provide them at a much lower price per jacket and with similar quality.”
The moment the manufacturer denied three times to Kim Chomok that “that is not the unit price,”
the justification and evidence for internet reporters to drive nails directly into those damned bastards were completed in no time.
—Student council corruption that doesn’t change even as time passes... Is this really the right unit price for “department jackets”?
—No proper wool, only cheap synthetic fibers and polyester, sold at three times the unit cost!
If he sent reporters an email with the evidence and a fresh, innocent whistleblowing sentiment of “This isn’t right!”
“We heard he tipped off other places too! We have to upload quickly to get more traffic!”
“Just put up the headline first, then edit the article afterward! Do you have no sense?!”
Through the internet articles they wrote in an instant, the university’s disgrace began spreading across the world.
“Yes, did you receive a call from the department head?”
“Ah, yes. I’m a reporter from XX Broadcasting... Have you perhaps seen the online article? Could we conduct an in-person interview?”
“...Goddamn it, President!! We have a huge problem!!”
After that, like a bursting dam, he watched the flood called the attention of the entire nation surge in all at once.
Whiiistle...♪
After watching the dominoes to hell topple over, he whistled happily at the dopamine rushing in.
Now, there was only one target of revenge left.
Jingle♪
“Hey! We’ve got a big problem!! The part-timer after you says he can’t come in today³, so you need to work until the dawn shift too...”
“Huh? No, I came to say I’m quitting.”
“...What?”
To the store owner who had already been unable to find a substitute and had planned to force him to work extra hours.
Kim Chomok, quitting just three days after starting his part-time job, stabbed in the finishing blow.
“I couldn’t find any fulfillment in a stupid workplace that violates every law there is.”
—Don’t play word games about probation, and if you don’t want the Ministry of Employment and Labor to crack your skull open, pay me properly for the hours I worked.
With a bright face, Kim Chomok disappeared as if saying, “Then have fun busting your ass alone!”
“...Goddamn it!! Then how many hours am I supposed to work by myself—!!”
The convenience store owner let out a scream of rage as the picture he had wanted and everything else shattered.
“...What?! So that bastard did that to you... urk!!”
Not long after, when he learned why his relative could no longer work part-time,
he couldn’t even finish speaking properly before clutching the back of his neck and collapsing.
“I did think about destroying the convenience store, but now that I think about it, what sin did the person working at dawn commit?”
If possible, isn’t it basic courtesy to move innocent people who would suffer along with them away from the blast zone?
Kim Chomok scratched his head as he headed home.
“Ahhh. I guess I’ll just look for physical labor! I should find a construction site close by with a good cafeteria.”
Instead of his own romance, he chose what he could do well.
And thus, the “Kim Chomok Convenience Store Part-Time Job Incident,” which had produced countless victims in just three days, came to an end.
***
Who was it who said people are animals whose desires and talents do not align?
Even if Kim Chomok was a man who, when it came to the service industry, couldn’t squeeze out a single drop of talent no matter how hard he tried.
“Hey! Young man! Take it easy!! You already moved it all!!”
“...What are you talking about? I was taking it damn easy.”
When it came to the simplest labor jobs, even if he had no interest, his talent pierced the heavens.
While others let out all sorts of groans moving two sacks of cement, or three at most.
He carried five on each shoulder and lightly went up and down, and as if that weren’t enough.
“Ah, it’s hard to balance them with my hands, so can’t I just bring the whole tray over?”
“...What are you talking about...? H-huhhhh?!”
He even treated the wooden tray laid down to keep the cement from getting damp as a makeshift handle to lift the whole thing at once!
“All right! Since we finished work the earliest, let’s eat and then continue!”
“...I mean, it’s convenient for us, so it’s nice... but is this right?”
In the middle of all this, what pleased people most was that he did not show “the will to do more work.”
If they kept accepting more work, others would think that was the average and assign more labor for the same wage.
“Let’s just work for about an hour, you guys and me both, and spend the rest of the time playing around.”
“...He is a god!! Chomok Punch!!”
Wasn’t he deeply, deeply faithful to the most important theory of capitalism: working only as much as you were paid?
Everyone cheerfully carried only the weight they were comfortable with, went up, quickly moved all of their assigned load,
then came back down pretending to be exhausted for the sake of people with other work to do, and played around with the older men to their hearts’ content.
“Is it because you eat ten servings by yourself? Your strength seems easily over ten times stronger too.”
“Ah, sir! Stop talking and move aside! I’m going to finish quickly and lie down again!”
“Oh my, this humble old man has spoken out of turn... Please, go on up, Lord Chomok!”
Once he ate lunch again and spent about an hour quickly knocking out the assigned amount of weight,
a schedule awaited him where he would laze around just like in the morning until the evening ended, receive his daily wage, and go home.
“Thanks to you, I’m going home without back pain. Thanks, young Chomok.”
“I hope we get assigned together again next time! If you’re coming out as a day laborer, let us know in advance!!”
Perhaps because the popularity of the human crane, beloved by everyone despite suddenly joining them, pierced the heavens.
As Kim Chomok looked at the building that had gone up much faster than the planned schedule despite them slacking off a fair bit.
“So, uh, our labor office has gotten pretty good evaluations... and this time, a fill-in security job came in.”
“...Security?”
Since the nearby coworkers’ evaluations of him were normally so good, the labor office’s consideration naturally landed on him.
It was a system a high school near Kim Chomok’s room was implementing on a trial basis to fill the gap from after school until nighttime.
A job filling in for night security work for a few days, which in the near future would be called a “dedicated night-duty officer.”⁴
“...Well, I guess it’s good to build up various experiences...”
For Kim Chomok, who had done nothing but lift things every day before his return to school, which was not far off.
The time had come for his first job experience where he didn’t have to lift anything.