Younger Man at Work (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 7

When I opened my eyes, everything in the world had changed—even myself.

Seung Joo stared intently at his reflection in the mirror. The beard stubble, now distinctly darker overnight, felt unfamiliar. He’d always had a bit of it before, but never this much.

“What the heck… who’s this middle-aged guy…?”

To anyone looking, his reflection clearly belonged to a mature adult man. His jawline was sharp, his eyes deep-set. Since it was his own face, he couldn’t really judge its attractiveness—but to Seung Joo, whose consciousness remained stuck at eighteen, he looked like nothing more than an old man.

His face had changed, but even more jarring was how his body had suddenly grown overnight. His height seemed roughly the same as yesterday, yet his shoulders had broadened, and his chest and thighs thickened so much that his clothes strained tightly against his frame.

“…”

After gazing at the mirror for a long while, Seung Joo turned his eyes and surveyed the house. Everywhere he looked, things had changed. The wooden floorboards had deepened in color with age, and the ceiling, once stained from rain leaks, now looked freshly repaired. The room he’d woken up in had been his own, yet overnight both the wallpaper and flooring had been replaced.

This house originally belonged to his late maternal grandmother’s family and had been left to him, her grandson. After his parents separated, his mother had brought him here, and they’d lived together ever since.

[“Tell him he can live with a mistress for the rest of his life if he wants—I’ll never divorce him! Not for anyone’s sake!”]

One night, he’d overheard his mother shout those words and realized his father was demanding a divorce. Not long after that, his parents began living apart.

[“Your mom and dad just need some time apart to think things through.”]

His mother had tried hard to conceal his father’s infidelity, but Seung Joo had seen through it all.

When they moved out, he learned for the first time that his mother essentially had no assets in her name. The vast real estate inheritance from her family had all been steadily sold off to expand his father’s businesses, leaving only her stake in Dae Won Group. Even that yielded almost no cash, as every dividend payment was immediately reinvested back into the company.

After the separation, his father stopped sending any living expenses at all—a deliberate tactic to financially squeeze them until his mother finally agreed to a divorce.

But his mother held firm, and from then on, their standard of living dropped drastically. Thanks to generous help from her friends, they never went hungry, but Seung Joo had to transfer from his private school to a regular local one.

[“Still, Mrs. Kang, how lucky you kept hold of your shares! If he really goes off the deep end like this, you can just kick him right out of the chairman’s seat!”]

He’d once overheard a visiting friend of his mother say that in comfort.

[“No matter what, he’s still Seung Joo’s father. And Seung Joo has his whole future ahead of him… I’ll just wait and hope he comes to his senses.”]

His mother had sighed.

[“Even if we divorce, I’ll hold onto these shares tightly until the very end—and then pass them all to our Seung Joo. Dae Won Group was built by my father; I can’t let it fall into some stranger’s hands.”] [“You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Kang.”]

Her voice had been resolute.

[“No matter how painful it gets, I’ll endure it all—to protect our Seung Joo.”]

—I’m sorry, Seung Joo. Mom’s just too exhausted now.

That mother of his had suddenly left home a year ago, leaving only a brief note behind, leaving Seung Joo alone in the house.

Perhaps fearing gossip about her high-school-aged son living alone, Chairman Kwon, his father, had persistently pressured him to move back in. Several times, he’d even sent secretaries to forcibly take Seung Joo—yet each time, Seung Joo had escaped and returned to this house.

After all, the separation had happened because of his father’s affair; with his mother now missing, he had zero desire to live under the same roof as that man.

So Seung Joo remained alone in the house, waiting for his mother to return—washing his own clothes, cooking his own meals, waking himself up each morning to go to school.

A few days ago, his father had finally issued an ultimatum over the phone to Seung Joo, who’d stubbornly refused to budge for a whole year:

—Come home immediately. If you don’t, I’ll demolish that damn house for good this time!

Then last night, a woman had suddenly appeared, talking about demolition—Seung Joo had thought, “So it’s finally happening.”

But she claimed she wasn’t a secretary sent by his father.

[“It’s 2022 this year, and you’re thirty-three years old, Director.”]

It was hard to believe, yet it was clearly true—otherwise, the world wouldn’t have transformed so drastically overnight. Above all, his own reflection proved it.

‘Why in the world…?’

Even if he’d lost his memory in a car accident, why had he returned specifically to this point in time? He could’ve woken up a year ago—or even ten years ago. He racked his brain but found no answers.

Seung Joo sighed and turned away from the mirror.

He felt oddly restless. Naturally, anyone would feel uneasy waking up fifteen years older overnight—but this anxiety felt different somehow.

Glancing at the clock, he realized why: it was time to go to school.

His trained instincts kept nagging that he’d be late if he didn’t leave immediately—but in reality, he’d surely graduated high school over a decade ago.

Not only that—he’d already finished university, too.

[“This is the article published when you became director.”]

The woman who claimed he lived in this house had shown him a news article containing a brief summary of his background: top graduate of Korea University’s Business School.

Korea University’s Business School had always been his dream—he’d kept studying diligently, even alone, hoping to make his mother proud when she returned.

Yet now he’d already graduated. His lifelong goal had vanished into thin air overnight.

He was supposedly the CEO of Dae Won Construction—but he couldn’t possibly go there, not even knowing where the company was located.

He remembered the woman at the hospital, gripping his hand with tear-filled eyes.

[“Seung Joo, it’s Mom. Are you awake now?”]

Though her face was unfamiliar, he had a hunch she was the very woman who’d troubled his mother. He had no evidence—just a gut feeling. The way she boldly claimed to be his mother suggested his father had already remarried.

He couldn’t go back to school, to the company, or to his father’s side. There was no place in this world where he belonged. It felt as if he’d been dumped alone into a vast desert with neither map nor compass.

The only thing tethering him to this world was this house—the place where he and his mother had lived together. Without it, he’d have nowhere to go.

…And that woman.

Though he couldn’t recall her face or voice, she didn’t feel entirely unfamiliar. Stranger still, despite her obvious wariness toward him, he sensed a strange warmth from her.

Perhaps, in this current world, she was the only person he could lean on.

Seung Joo crouched in a corner of the wooden veranda, curling his large frame tightly, waiting for the woman to return from work.

*

[“You’ll stay here tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll contact your office as soon as I get to work.”]

Amnesia sounded implausible—but she couldn’t just kick out a man claiming to be eighteen, especially since he’d saved her life.

So she’d put him in an empty room for the night.

The next morning, when she peeked in quietly, he was fast asleep, curled up tightly in his large body. His eyes were swollen red, as if he’d been crying all night, making her heart ache.

Even on her way to work, Eun Seo’s mind remained tangled in confusion.

She’d let him stay one night—but she obviously couldn’t keep him indefinitely. Most importantly, since he claimed to be eighteen, the best option was to hand him over to his parents.

Of course, as a mere employee of a subsidiary, she couldn’t contact the chairman directly—she’d have to go through his secretarial office.

“Eun Seo, where are you off to?”

Just as Eun Seo slipped quietly out of the office, she ran straight into Seon Ah in the hallway.

“Oh—just somewhere. Why?”

“It’s about our Mr. Seung Joo. Why hasn’t he shown up to work for days?”

Seon Ah looked genuinely worried, as if it were her own problem. Eun Seo, unable to reveal he was currently in her house, desperately feigned ignorance.

“Well… maybe he went on some overseas business trip?”

“If that were the case, his status would show ‘on business trip’ on the messenger app. But it still says ‘away from desk,’ see?”

Seon Ah thrust her phone toward her. “Look!”

“Could the chairman have transferred him somewhere else? Like, you know, stuck him as head of some tiny, insignificant company in a back alley?”

“Oh, come on—that’s unlikely.”

“Unlikely, my foot! Don’t you know he was sent to our company precisely because it was the most useless subsidiary? It was about to shut down before he came and turned it all around!”

“But didn’t he start here as a director right from the beginning?”

“Tsk tsk—people like you are exactly why they bother with media PR stunts.”

Seon Ah clicked her tongue.

“The headquarters paid journalists so much that articles flooded the news—‘While most chaebol heirs join as regular staff, Kwon Seung Joo, eldest son of Dae Won Group, received unprecedented treatment as a director!’ They pushed that narrative because people kept suspecting the chairman was favoring his mistress’s child over his legitimate heir.”

Seon Ah spoke as if personally offended.

“What good does a director title do? It’s all gloss, no substance. The real message was: ‘Here’s this useless subsidiary—take it and leave the main group alone.’”

Eun Seo hadn’t known about these hidden circumstances.

[“Born as the eldest son of a chaebol, appointed director right away—everything must be so easy for you! Climbing to CEO in just four years, you must think everyone else is a joke, right?”]

Recalling what she’d shouted at Kwon Seung Joo, Eun Seo now felt uneasy.

Seon Ah glanced around and lowered her voice to a whisper.

“I read a rumor recently that the chairman wants to groom his second son—the one from his mistress—as the heir.”

“Really?”

“His mind’s already made up, but he’s holding back because of public opinion. Dae Won Group was originally his late wife’s family business, and he was practically a son-in-law. He’s afraid people will accuse him of stealing from his legitimate child to give it to his mistress’s kid—plus, our CEO is undeniably capable.”]

It was common knowledge that Dae Won Group’s foundation came entirely from the late chairwoman’s family assets—even someone as naive about business as Eun Seo knew that much.

“That’s why the chairman’s apparently desperate to find faults in our CEO lately.”

“What? Why?”

“Why do you think? To dig up any excuse to replace him with the second son as heir!”

Seon Ah wore a world-weary expression.

“Don’t you get it? Our CEO works just three or four hours a night and never takes days off because he has real stakes in this—he’s fighting to protect his late mother’s legacy from his half-brother!”

Eun Seo flinched.

…That man was now mentally eighteen years old.

Worse, his understanding of the world was frozen fifteen years in the past. In this state, he couldn’t possibly fulfill his duties as CEO—or even manage normal social life. There couldn’t be a bigger liability anywhere in the world.

‘If the chairman hears about this…?’

He’d seize the perfect chance to install his second son as heir.

Truthfully, who became the group’s heir had nothing to do with Eun Seo. But the thought that one careless word from her could ruin someone’s entire life made her hesitate. Even if that someone was the endlessly infuriating Kwon Seung Joo.

At the very least, she should tell him the situation first—and if anything needed to be said, he should say it himself.

Seon Ah suddenly remembered something.

“By the way, Eun Seo, where were you saying you were going?”

“…Nowhere important.”

Eun Seo shook her head.