The office air was cool, virtually remote. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, providing a clinical white light over ranks of matching desks and polished floors that echoed with the muffled beep of keyboards. A window wall bathed the city in morning gray, the light not strong enough to penetrate the usual pre-dawn murmur. The world outside was still unfurling awake, hesitant and serene.
Yoo Minjae loosened the knot of his tie again and looked at the nameplate on the glass door, just to remind himself where he was.
"Finance Strategy Team 2
Seojin Capital Solutions"
The subsidiary was just one of several under the giant umbrella of Hwaryeong Group, a low-profile dominant finance, real estate, and technology firm based in South Korea. Hwaryeong's business tower towered over Jongno, Seoul, a shining tower capped with metal and glass. Seojin Capital Solutions had offices in a building next to it in Yeouido, the financial hub of the city, just a few minutes' walk away from the business tower.
Not the company's best division. Not the worst, though. Dull, risk-free. Some place he could fade into the shadows without making any waves.
A door opened from within. A bright voice interrupted the hum of work.
"Good morning!"
Minjae turned, meeting the gaze of a woman standing in the threshold. She blinked, then smiled with careful politeness. Her expression held a practiced warmth, the kind cultivated from countless HR manuals read with more curiosity than obligation.
"You must be the new hire. Yoo Minjae, right?"
"Yes," he answered calmly, voice even. "It's my first day."
"I'm Ha Seori," she told him, moving aside to let him in. "HR sent me to help with onboarding. Come on in—your desk is just over there."
The room vibrated with hushed conversation. Finger-tips against the keyboard clicked, coffee was sipped, and eyes wandered across dashboards covered in numbers and charts. No one so much as looked twice. Just what he had hoped.
He followed Seori, his eyes quietly absorbing the layout—who sat where, who issued orders, who was just pretending. In the far corner from him, a man laughed too loudly, and a pair of annoyed glances trailed him. Elsewhere, someone blatantly yawned, already tired although it was morning.
Minjae tallied it all effortlessly. His gut had never been dulled, even in this unfamiliar, more subdued reality.
"I've sent your company portal login to your email," Seori indicated, gesturing toward a small desk near the window. "The project managers work here in the mornings, but they're all away on business this week."
Minjae nodded, placing his bag down with cautious steps. "I'll review the orientation materials today."
"You'll be great," Seori said, smiling. "Honestly, this team could use a smiling face right now."
He smiled graciously back to her, although his thoughts were already miles away. As she walked into the distance, Minjae relaxed back in his chair and allowed his eyes to drift out the window.
He had sat once upon thrones of charred stone, under skies ablaze. He had trodden warfields that were etched with fire, inhaled air from mountain crests where eagles dared not fly. He had tasted power that thundered and was shattered and silence that was more vocal than any.
And now here he was—sitting in a swivel chair with a plastic back next to a dying potted plant that no one had watered for days.
And he made that choice.
For power was more deceitful when spoken in hushed tones.
Below this floor—ten stories below in the corporate wing—his name was already on deal documents, property deeds, and webs of subsidiaries buried in paper chains designed to remove every trace. Hwaryeong Group's reach stretched through dozens of corporations, and Seojin Capital Solutions was but one among them. He owned all of it in all the ways that mattered.
And today, it didn't matter.
Today, he'd been an intern learning how to master spreadsheet macros and audit streams. He'd been a ghost in the system, watching and waiting. That's how it started.
A soft voice broke his daydreaming. "Hey," someone whispered across the cubicle next to him, stretching over the partition. The kid was young, with shaggy hair and restless fingers drumming on the desktop.
"You're the new guy?"
Minjae leaned back his head. "Yes. Yoo Minjae."
"Park Joohyuk," the man said with a grin. "I hear you're from Korea University. Top ten percent, right?"
Minjae's lips compressed. "I tried."
Joohyuk smiled gently, looking around before approaching. "Good. That means I can slack a bit, and you'll bail me out."
Minjae gazed blankly for a moment.
Joohyuk coughed. "Joking. Mostly."
A small laugh escaped Minjae, one he'd rehearsed until it would be believable to the human ear. "I'll try not to disappoint."
Joohyuk's expression contorted into a smile of relief and amusement before he leaned back in his chair.
As morning leaked into routine, emails started coming in. His screen overflowed with acronyms, charts, and jargon—but beneath the surface, Minjae was already a few layers deeper than everyone else.
He was reading between the lines, expecting market action, tracking inefficiencies that veteran analysts had overlooked. Not magic, not really. Just observation. Memory. And time.
Time—something he'd learned to master long ago.
Over lunch, Minjae quietly noted two small but growing discrepancies in departmental spending. Nothing earth-shattering, only quiet shifts in trends. They could wait.
Don't repair everything too fast, he cautioned himself. Even a dragon requires stretching before it flies.
Afternoon hours crept by in lethargic waves. Soothing chatter hummed. Keyboard clacks and soft ring of telephones became a rhythm that was somehow reassuring to him.
Now and again, Minjae found himself gazing at the faces around him—their routines, their transient expressions that spoke meanings beyond meaning.
There was something moving in this ordinariness, he found. In these quiet hours of no flame or tempest.
As exactly 6:00 p.m. struck, the office started to clear. Minjae stayed with his co-workers, giving a polite bow to his boss before making his way to the elevator.
"First day over," Seori remarked, falling into step behind him as the doors opened. "Not too overwhelming?"
Minjae's mouth twisted into a small smile. "Not at all."
The elevator went down, and beyond the city gradually lit up in neon and darkness. Minjae glimpsed himself in the door—youthful, clean-cut, well-dressed in a suit. No fire. No wings.
But in his eyes, the fire never burned out.
He hadn't forgotten.
He had merely. waited.